“He must have come in after the coffin was carried down the aisle. I could swear he wasn’t there when we all stood as the Kennys were bringing her in.”
“He wasn’t there until later.”
“You saw him enter?”
“I felt him.”
A strange thing to say, but Prudence didn’t question it. Geoffrey’s natural instincts of discovery had been sharpened by years of Pinkerton training.
“What’s he doing here?” Prudence whispered.
“I don’t know. But he’s grieving as deeply as any of Nora’s brothers. Perhaps even more so. Look at him.”
Prudence knew the face of deep sorrow and loss. She had seen it reflected in her mirror often enough. An anguished emptiness in the young man’s dark eyes proclaimed the stark absence of joy. Lines had carved themselves into his cheeks and across his forehead; it was plain he had slept badly if at all during the past few days. He seemed to yearn to touch the polished wood of Nora’s coffin; one hand had begun to reach out toward where she lay, so far away, so hidden. As they watched, he caught himself, arrested the gesture in midair, made a sign of the cross across his chest with a quick, sketchy motion.
“Who could he be, Geoffrey?” Prudence breathed.
As if he had heard her, the young man’s empty, despairing eyes met hers, boring into them with all the strength and power of a desperate passion.
The congregation stood as the final strains of “Panis Angelicus” gave way to the opening chords of the solemn recessional hymn.
Then the priest descended the altar steps, swinging an incense laden gold thurible before him. Before he finished blessing the coffin, the stranger slipped out of sight as unobtrusively as he had appeared.
“We’ll have to let him go,” Geoffrey said.
“But we can ask questions. Find out who he is.”
“Not yet. Not today.”
“We may never have as good a chance again,” Prudence protested.
“He isn’t going anywhere that we can’t find him. He’s an islander. I’m sure of it. But he isn’t Irish, Prudence. If I had to guess, I’d lay odds he’s from one of the Italian villages.”
“Romeo and Juliet. My father used to speculate about what would happen if boundaries were crossed that had been put up to keep people apart.”
“And what did he say?”
“That Staten Island would be bathed in blood.”
“That’s why we have to let him go. Whoever he is. We’ll find him when the time comes. When we need him.”
*
Detective Steven Phelan stood in the shadow of one of the side altars. He watched Nora Kenny’s brothers and father shoulder the coffin to the altar, raking his eyes over every pew as they passed it. He heard not a word of the priest’s eulogy, nor did he bother with the Latin Mass responses he knew by heart from years of altar boy service. He was looking for a murderer.
He had expected to see Prudence MacKenzie seated near the Kenny family, and wasn’t surprised that Geoffrey Hunter accompanied her. They’d warned him, after all, that the firm would be investigating the case. Idly, he wondered if the two private investigators might not serve the interests of the Metropolitan Police more than they intended. If he appeared to cooperate with them, hell, if he really did extend some cooperation, they might end up doing some of his work for him.
Maybe he shouldn’t have said that Nora Kenny had been gutted. He knew the word had gotten Miss MacKenzie’s back up. He never meant to imply that he wouldn’t do his damnedest to find the man who killed her maid; cracking and solving a case was a point of pride. But the girl shouldn’t have been out on the street alone in the first place. That’s all he and every other cop believed.
What was it Miss MacKenzie was staring at? She’d gotten Hunter’s attention and was whispering something to him.
Phelan turned in the direction they were looking. He saw a handsome young man who definitely wasn’t Irish, as out of place in this crowd as it was possible to be. Three days ago in Colonial Park, Phelan had decided that Nora Kenny very likely caused her own death. It was a common story, but he’d kept an open mind. He’d come to Staten Island in case he was wrong, on the off chance the murder hadn’t been committed by the girl’s fiancé. Who happened to be a fisherman. Who used a gutting knife with the ease and skill of long years of practice.
He ran the scenario over in his mind again, liking it even more now. Nora’s fiancé had caught her with another man and killed her in a jealous rage. The proof was standing at the rear of the church, drawn irresistibly to the funeral, but ready to bolt as soon as it was over.
Whoever he was slipped out the door as soon as he sensed he was being watched. Phelan would find out his name after the girl was safely in the ground. The priest would know. And if he didn’t, Staten Island had its own police force. They’d hardly refuse to provide information to a fellow detective.
CHAPTER 6
“Tell Geoffrey Hunter the Kenny murderer is in custody.” Detective Steven Phelan’s voice faded in and out over the phone lines that had been hurriedly restrung after the Great Blizzard. “We arrested Tim Fahey yesterday. The case is closed.”
“Is there anything else I should let him know, Detective?” Josiah Gregory reached for a pencil and his stenographer’s notebook.
“That’s all. Chief Byrnes will be making a statement to the press. He can read about it in the afternoon papers.” Phelan didn’t trouble to hide the gloat of quick success.
Josiah sat for a moment staring at the earpiece through which he’d clearly heard a snort of derision before the connection was broken. The door to Mr. Hunter’s office stood open, as he always left it when Miss Prudence was with him.
“Josiah?”
“That was Detective Phelan. He called to inform you and Miss Prudence that the police have caught Nora Kenny’s killer.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“Tim Fahey. Wasn’t he the fiancé?”
“I don’t believe it for a moment,” Prudence said. “I watched him at Bellevue. No one could have pretended to that kind of grief. Agnes told me they’d known each other since they were children. She said the only thing surprising about the courtship was that it took Tim so long to propose marriage.”
“He’s a fisherman, like Nora’s father,” Geoffrey remarked. “Nora was gutted.”
“That sounds like something Detective Phelan would say.” Prudence walked to the window overlooking Wall Street. It was a bright, crisp November morning, but wherever Tim Fahey was being held would be dark and dank.
“It’s the way Phelan would think,” Geoffrey explained. “Fishermen have to be as good with knives as they are with nets. Fahey has the skill to do what Nora’s killer did. Phelan has to provide motivation and opportunity to make his case.”
Prudence paced from the window to her partner’s desk, heels tapping her outrage that an innocent man had been arrested. “Why did he call us, Geoffrey?”
“It’s a warning not to dig any deeper into the case. We’re supposed to drop it on his word alone.” Geoffrey tented his fingers and leaned back in his chair. “He wants us out of his way while he puts together evidence and charges are brought. Was there anything else, Josiah?”
“Just that Chief Byrnes would be talking to reporters and you could read what he says in this afternoon’s papers.”
“Byrnes doesn’t want speculation about a Ripper copycat to surface. I’ll lay you odds he’ll suppress the autopsy report so the public won’t know about the mutilation. He probably pressured Phelan to find a likely suspect before reporters started asking questions he doesn’t want to answer.”
“Find a likely suspect, Geoffrey?”
“It’s been known to happen, Prudence. Wall Street might love him for drawing lines around the financial district that the underworld doesn’t dare cross, and there’s no doubt he’s transformed the detective division. But Byrnes can be brought down just as quickly as any of his predecessors if he makes a big enough mistake. Admitting to the
possibility of a copycat when he’s boasted that a killer like Jack the Ripper would be no match for the New York Metropolitan Police could be that mistake. Especially if the murderer strikes a second or a third time. He needs to put the Kenny killing behind him, declare it a case of lover’s jealousy that’s been solved, and bury it in the police archives.”
“He won’t get away with it. Nora came from a respectable working-class family.”
“That’s why it’s so important to solve the case quickly. Nora’s death could remind New Yorkers how vulnerable they are. Society matrons all over the city won’t want their maids going out for their half days if there’s a chance they won’t come back. So the killer has to be found, tried, and speedily executed. It’s the only way the city can have any kind of confidence in its police force.”
“What about your theory of a copycat?”
“It’s only a theory. Based on the type of mutilation Nora suffered. I might be wrong.”
“How do we find out? Where do we start?”
“We set Josiah to using his connections in the court system to learn where Tim Fahey is being held. Then we go see him. We hear his side of the story.”
*
The Tombs was as massive and threatening as its name suggested, a mammoth, perpetually damp structure poorly built over marshland, fronted with pseudo-Egyptian columns blackened over the years by layers of city soot. Visitors were issued tickets that had to be presented to a keeper before being allowed to leave the building. God help the hapless family member who misplaced or lost his pass.
Josiah Gregory found Tim Fahey within an hour of making the first of several calls to court clerks who owed him favors. His late employer, former US Senator Roscoe Conkling, had insisted on cultivating a network of lower level judicial employees. He claimed that without the grease of their labors the wheels of justice would grind to a dead halt.
“Remanded without bail to the Tombs,” Josiah reported. “Subjected to the third degree before he got there, though not by Byrnes himself. Phelan wore the black leather gloves this time, and at least one of my sources said the suspect’s hands had to be bandaged. Which means thumbscrews were used.”
“I thought torture ended in the Middle Ages,” Prudence protested.
“Not in New York City,” Geoffrey said. “Nor in the South where I grew up. I saw things done there that no human being should have to endure.”
Murderers Row was on the second tier in the Tombs, built like all of the other cells along an iron railed walkway where visitors stood to converse with their incarcerated loved ones. Pass contraband they’d paid keepers to overlook, clasp hands through the bars, raise skirts and lower pants to assuage long denied hungers. On Sundays the catwalks were thronged; today, a Friday, most of the few visitors who had positioned themselves in front of the cells were women and children.
Tim Fahey, asleep or unconscious, lay on a hard wooden bunk. Only after Geoffrey and then Prudence repeatedly called his name did he raise his head. His face had been so badly battered that one eye was swollen closed and the other nearly so. His nose appeared broken, and through the dried blood on his cheeks could be glimpsed deep cuts and flesh swollen purple and black. Dirty gauze swathed both hands. His black wool pants and jacket were ripped and filthy, white collarless shirt spotted brown with blood spatter.
Favoring ribs that were cracked or broken, barely able to stand upright without holding on to the cell wall, Fahey made his halting way to where his visitors stood on the other side of the bars.
“I hoped you’d come, Miss MacKenzie,” he said, his voice scarcely audible. “Mr. Hunter.” When he moved his lips, the scabs around his mouth cracked open; fresh blood flowed. Prudence reached into her reticule for a clean handkerchief and passed it through the bars. He shook his head, but when she insisted, he pressed the fine scented white linen to his face. It immediately turned red.
“What happened, Tim?” Geoffrey asked.
“They arrested me the day after Nora was buried. Yesterday. Early in the morning.”
“Fewer witnesses that way,” Geoffrey muttered.
“The detective accused me of murdering her. I told him he was crazy, that I would never have harmed her in any way, but he didn’t listen. I was outside when they came. I’d walked up the hillside to where Nora and I used to sit sometimes, looking out over the water and planning our future.”
“You were going to buy your own boat,” Geoffrey said. It was every fisherman’s dream.
“The Nora,” Prudence murmured.
“I was on my way back to the house, so no one saw them come after me. The detective had brought two uniformed patrolmen with him. I was handcuffed, shoved into a closed carriage, then put aboard a ferry. The next thing I knew I was in what they called an interrogation room and the detective had put on a pair of black leather gloves. He punched me in the face or the belly after every question. He said I was lying, but I wasn’t.”
“Was it Phelan? Steven Phelan?”
“I found that out later, when one of the policeman called him by name.” Fahey raised his bandaged hands. “They used thumbscrews when they decided the beating wasn’t enough.”
“We’ll get a doctor to you,” Prudence said. “We won’t let them get away with this.”
Geoffrey carried a dipper of water from the barrel that stood at the end of the tier of cells. “I can’t vouch for how clean it is,” he said, passing it through the bars. He exchanged Prudence’s small lace-edged handkerchief for his own more substantial one.
Fahey wet Geoffrey’s unsoiled linen, then pressed it gingerly to his face. Gradually, inch by inch, he soaked off most of the dried blood. Finally, he held the damp cloth to the eye that had swollen shut. It would be weeks before the cuts healed and the bruises faded, provided he wasn’t subjected to the third degree again.
“Can you tell us why the detective thinks you murdered Nora, Tim?” Without having to consult with Geoffrey, Prudence knew that she would have to be the one to ask the painfully personal questions. Only the fact that she was Nora’s Miss Prudence would persuade Fahey to open up to her. “He must have given you some reason, some explanation.”
“It doesn’t make sense, Miss Prudence, but the detective kept saying the same thing over and over, as if I knew what he was talking about.”
“What was that?”
“He said Nora was seeing someone else on the sly and that when I found out about it I flew into a rage and killed her. He said jealousy does terrible things to a man and that if I’d admit to it, a jury would understand. They’re all men on a jury; they wouldn’t condemn me because it was really Nora’s fault for being unfaithful. He promised to stop the beating as soon as I confessed.”
“But you didn’t.” Geoffrey knew the answer, but he wanted Fahey to say it aloud, to prove to himself that he’d had the strength to withstand the brutality of the third degree. It might help him to bear it when they came after him again.
“No, I didn’t. Phelan was telling terrible lies about Nora. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking me.”
“Your hands?”
“I passed out from the pain. They threw water over me and then one of the uniformed patrolmen wrapped them.”
“They can’t have any evidence because we know you didn’t do it.” Despite Geoffrey’s warning about what the third degree could do to a man, Prudence hadn’t imagined that Tim Fahey’s injuries would be so bad.
“Is there anything else you remember, Tim? Anything Phelan said that might give us a clue about what he plans to do next?” Geoffrey asked.
“What he said about my Nora shouldn’t be repeated, Mr. Hunter. And I swear to you it’s not true.”
Prudence stepped closer to the bars of the cell. She wanted to reach out a consoling hand, but she thought any touch, however light, would hurt rather than comfort. “Nora and I played together when my mother and I stayed on Staten Island a long time ago,” she said softly. “You can tell me anything. I’ll only believe the best ab
out Nora.”
Fahey hesitated, then dropped his eyes. He would confide in Miss MacKenzie, but he couldn’t look at her while he told her the filthy thing Phelan had accused Nora of having done. “He said she was expecting a child, but that it wasn’t mine. He said I found out she’d been with another man and that’s why I killed her.”
Prudence was too stunned to say anything. Her mind flew back to Colonial Park, to the brief sight of Nora’s disemboweled body before Detective Phelan drew the burlap wrapping over her again. She shook her head in denial, but Geoffrey wondered if it could be true and how he would be able to prove or disprove the allegation.
“We weren’t, we hadn’t … Nora was a virgin, Miss. I swear by all that’s holy that I never touched her in that way. I wouldn’t. She was going to be my wife. We loved each other.”
“I’m so sorry, Tim,” Prudence said. It was all she could manage. The cold had penetrated her bones; the stench of unemptied waste buckets in the horror that was the Tombs made it hard to breathe.
“It doesn’t matter what they do to me. I’ll never believe what they’re saying about Nora. It’s all lies.” Fahey walked away from them, toward the far wall of his cell and the hard wooden bunk that was the only place he could sit or lie down. He moved slowly, each step taking enormous effort. The pain was intense.
“We’ll get you a lawyer,” Geoffrey said. “If it comes to it, I can represent you myself.”
Fahey was closing them out, drifting into another world. It was as though having allowed himself the release of talking about Nora, he now decided to build a wall around the place inside himself where she still lived. It was the only way he could hold on to her.
*
“What will happen to him?” Prudence asked as she and Geoffrey followed the small group of visitors being hurried toward the outside world by blue uniformed warders. She clutched her precious pass in her hand.
“That depends on whether or not they decide to bring him to trial and then hang him. If they don’t, if his lawyer is good enough and the evidence weak, he’ll eventually be released. After that, who can say?”
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 6