“So she was there.”
“I didn’t see anyone in the church who answers to the description you just gave me.”
“You prayed over her corpse as she was being carried out of Colonial Park, Father.” Geoffrey watched for a reaction, but Father Brennan disappointed him. No uncontrollable facial tic or rapid blinking of the eyes. No flush of fear or anger. “Does that help your memory?”
“I wasn’t told her name,” Brennan said smoothly. “I don’t think the men carrying the stretcher knew it.” He sighed. “It doesn’t really matter, though. The prayers are said conditionally over the dead, just in case the soul might be lingering. It’s not necessary to know a name for the sacrament to be efficacious. But it is sadder.”
“I won’t have you badgering one of my priests,” Father Mahoney interrupted.
“Only a few more questions, Father, “ Geoffrey soothed.
“We understand that young Mr. Nolan had at one time expressed a desire to be a priest himself,” Prudence said.
“I believe he did.” Father Kearns’s smile faded. He’d been at Saint Anselm’s long enough for Father Mahoney to have told him Joseph Nolan’s story. It was one of those parish tales that everyone knew and relished because the ending was still in doubt. If there was nothing else to gossip about, there was always Francis Nolan’s two strange adult children and their missed vocations to the religious life. “The Nolans are a good Catholic family,” he said.
Father Mahoney got to his feet. Immediately, Fathers Kearns and Brennan joined him. “We’ve answered as many of your questions as I feel we need to. We’ll remember these two poor girls in our prayers, but that’s all we can do.”
It went against the grain to tell parish secrets to outsiders, and there were things about young Joseph Nolan that didn’t bear too close examination. Lately he’d seemed odder than usual, as if he were teetering on the brink of some catastrophic decision that would have dire consequences. He had the look about him of a drinker who’s been on the wagon contemplating the glass of whiskey that will tip him back into inebriation. Father Mahoney weighed the good of the parish against his private doubts about Joseph Nolan’s stability, and opted to damp down even the hint of scandal.
“And I wouldn’t have talked to you at all if one of the poor dead girls hadn’t been a part of the Nolan household.”
Where Joseph Nolan saw her every day, Geoffrey thought.
Father Brennan held the parlor door open as the pastor and Father Kearns passed through.
When the housekeeper appeared to show them out, Prudence and Geoffrey left without another word being spoken.
*
“That was one of the oddest conversations I’ve ever had,” Prudence said as she and Geoffrey climbed into the carriage that would take them back to Fifth Avenue. She glanced across the street as something bright caught her eye. “I think there’s a dog and a redheaded man over there in the alley. They look like they’ve made a hut for themselves out of cardboard.”
“There are people like that all over the city,” Geoffrey told her. “In the winter the police stations open up their basements for them. At least it gets them out of the cold.”
“Did you get the impression the pastor was hiding something?”
“Mahoney went out of his way not to link any of the Nolans to Ellen Tierney’s murder, but I thought Father Kearns was on the point of letting us know that the younger Nolan is worth keeping an eye on.”
“I want to talk to Colleen again when we get home,” Prudence said. “I’m not sure I asked the right questions. I keep thinking something is about to make sense to me, then whatever it is slips through my fingers.”
“We know that Ellen Tierney went to Saint Anselm’s regularly. We have Colleen’s verification of that. And we’re sure that Nora Kenny was there at least once before the day she was killed.”
“She had time after the ferry docked to stop by Saint Anselm’s on her way to Fifth Avenue, yet Father Brennan claims he didn’t see her. Why, when she left the hens at the kitchen door, didn’t she stay to knock until someone opened it? Or go around to the stables. As a last resort, she could have rung the front doorbell. Cameron might have scolded her, but at least she would have been safe. That’s the great mystery, Geoffrey. That’s what we have to find out. The only thing that makes sense is that she was in such a hurry to get somewhere, somewhere she was expected to be at a certain time, that she didn’t think she could spare the extra few minutes to attract someone’s attention.”
“Just as important, she must have felt safe about where she was going or who she was supposed to meet. Safe enough so it didn’t occur to her that someone should be informed of her whereabouts. Could she have been meeting a female friend? A cousin? She might have written to this person to set up a time and place to meet.”
“Wishful thinking, Geoffrey. She spent her whole life on Staten Island. She didn’t know anyone in the city but us.”
“Then the only other thing I can suggest is that she had an appointment with someone who was either going to confirm that she was pregnant or perform an abortion.”
“I’ll grant you a visit to a midwife but not to an abortionist. Nora had to know that many pregnancies end in miscarriages. I think that’s why she hadn’t told Dominic what she suspected. Despite the danger of being found out, she had decided to wait. There’s something else. We know that Ellen went to confession at Saint Anselm’s. Suppose Nora did, also. Not for the convenience of stopping in as she was passing the church, but because she didn’t want to confess to her parish priest on Staten Island.”
“What difference would that make?” Geoffrey asked.
“It might take her back there later than was safe. Suppose the lines were long. We already know that only Father Brennan was hearing confessions that Saturday. What if she gave up, got tired of waiting, went to the house with her hens, then changed her mind at the last minute and raced back to Saint Anselm’s to catch the priest before the church closed for the evening? What if someone saw her alone on the street? What if that’s how she was caught and killed? Off her guard because she was hurrying back to the church, or even nearly there? Could that be the link? Proximity to Saint Anselm’s?”
“Our murderer lives or works nearby?” In his mind’s eye, Geoffrey was picturing the streets around Saint Anselm’s.
“Why not? He’s killed two young women, two servants. He has to lie in wait for them somewhere, has to have chosen a spot where he’s sure potential victims will pass by. The girls would be careful near the mouths of alleyways, might even cross the street to avoid them. But no one thinks anything bad can happen within the precincts of a church. So why wouldn’t that feeling of safety extend to the street in front of the church? After all, you’re only a few steps from sanctuary. I think that’s our link, Geoffrey, but I’m not sure we could convince anyone else of it.”
“Perhaps not Detective Phelan, but why not Ned Hayes?”
“He won’t be blinded by reverence for religion.”
“We need an unbiased, neutral eye.”
“It’s not just any church. It’s Saint Anselm’s. It has to be,” Prudence decided.
The lace curtain in the rectory parlor window twitched as the carriage drove off. For a long time the man standing behind it stared out into the empty street.
CHAPTER 17
Joseph Nolan had wanted to be a priest from the day he made his First Holy Communion. Instead, he became a butcher.
When he was ten years old his father, Francis Patrick Nolan, handed him a tin lunch pail and a sharp butcher knife. Then he took his son to one of the family owned slaughterhouses in lower Manhattan where Joseph stood on a wooden box and used the long, wide blade of his knife to slit the bellies of freshly skinned steers hanging upside down from hooks in front of him. He learned to evade the gush of entrails, schooled himself not to gag at the stench of blood and excrement, became quick, deft, and skilled at the job of evisceration. Francis occasionally nodded his approval; he be
lieved that to tell his son he was proud of him would weaken the boy.
Francis Nolan was a rich man. He never told anyone how he’d managed it, but in 1861 he secured an Army Commissary Department contract as victualler to the Union troops. With the profits that poured into his pockets, he climbed into what the New York Times called the shoddy aristocracy, that crowd of brand new millionaires who made their fortunes from the conflict that tore the country apart.
Substandard uniforms. Poorly stitched shoes. Hardtack alive with worms and weevils. Rifles that misfired. Medical supplies that never reached field hospitals. Bacon so green or salty it was inedible. Rancid pork, dried beef a soldier could crack a tooth on. Desiccated vegetable cakes that turned into stinky green mush when dissolved in water. Whatever the Commissary Department needed was farmed out to hordes of suppliers eager to pay as many bribes as it took to buy themselves the lucrative contracts.
As the post-war years passed, the millionaires of the shoddy aristocracy gradually slipped into the ranks of the cultural and business elite of New York City. They married dowerless daughters of old families and turned respectable. Learned how to dress and partner a lady in the dance, how to manage their silverware and curtail their drinking. Kept their mouths shut, listened and learned. Not too long after the Times first bestowed the title on them, few cared who might or might not be shoddy. New York City was built and run on money. Society, for all its pretensions, couldn’t exist without the substantial fortunes and profligate spending of its new members.
Joseph Nolan wasn’t allowed to lay down his knife until he had learned the lessons his father set out for him. Francis was shrewd and demanding; not until his son mastered every skill of a workstation was he moved to another. Only when Joseph could step effortlessly into any man’s place in all of the lines that stretched from killing floor to packaging was he permitted to remove his bloodstained apron and rubber boots.
The Nolans became respectable. To see father and son leave their Fifth Avenue mansion in the morning was to imagine them on their way to a bank, a law office, a gentleman’s club, or the stock exchange. The most important advancement Francis made to his new way of life was to open offices well beyond the stink of the several slaughterhouses he now owned. He directed the Nolan empire from a wood paneled retreat that would have satisfied a Vanderbilt. Nolan meat was served in the finest New York restaurants and homes, yet the Nolan name was never associated with commerce. Empire Quality Meats and Purveyors. The company name had a ring to it and was entirely anonymous.
The family was wealthy beyond even Francis’s early dreams, but everyone who knew them agreed that the Nolans weren’t happy. Not a single member of the family was content with who he was or what he possessed. Francis could never be rich enough, Lillian would always crave the social position from which being Irish and Catholic excluded her, and young Alice feared the touch of a man and yearned for the cool, safe chastity of a nun.
When people gossiped about the Nolans they speculated most often and most freely about Joseph, the handsome son who hadn’t married. There were some who said he never would, that he was one of those sad cases known as missed priests, men who did not answer their heart’s call to the priesthood. Misfits in a secular society. They were often gentle, frightened souls who seemed baffled by life’s choices. Women felt sorry for them and yearned to comfort them.
But in Joseph Nolan’s case, denial had sharpened and embittered him so that everything about him had an edge to it. Marriageable young ladies who were initially attracted by his good looks and affluent prospects soon avoided him; he made them uneasy, though it wasn’t anything overtly objectionable he said or did. It was more who he was, the essence of the man. Something about him set off alarm bells, a reaction that would have amused his father, who considered him an unambitious weakling.
Francis was deeply disappointed in his only son and didn’t trouble to hide his dissatisfaction whenever it was just the family together. In front of outsiders, the Nolans didn’t break ranks. They were Irish enough to know that their only hope of making it through life was to stick together.
*
Kevin Carney and Blossom kept watch in the narrow alley across from Saint Anselm’s, the man and dog huddled close for warmth inside a makeshift cocoon of torn newspapers, blankets, and rags. The dog’s name hadn’t originally been Blossom, but she looked so dejected and smelled so much worse than Kevin himself that he decided she needed cheering up. Sitting on her rear haunches and leaning against her human, she was bigger than the man, her thick fur as mottled red and matted as the hair on his head. Kevin had never grown a beard. No one knew why.
They seldom spoke as they observed the church, only an occasional muffled growl or clicking of teeth breaking the silence, but they were in agreement. The man they had seen coming out of Saint Anselm’s two weeks ago with the fragrant rolled up body on his shoulder had not put in another appearance while they were there. They took turns sleeping during the daylight hours, and Kevin left Blossom on duty when they grew hungry or thirsty. Not that he was a more skillful scavenger, but he did have Billy McGlory’s money in his pocket, which made for better feeding than what could be pawed out of a garbage bin.
It wasn’t often that Billy McGlory made a mistake, but when he insisted that Kevin and Blossom bed down in his storeroom on Saturday night, he’d made one that was to have grave consequences. Whoever killed Nora Kenny had struck again, but this time the burlap cocoon had been laid inside the stable yard of a private home. If they’d been in their alleyway, Carney and his dog might have seen the rug man again, would have followed and stayed with him. Instead, comfortably full of steak and potatoes, they’d been lying on a pallet of blankets snoring away the midnight hours in the back room of the Armory.
Kevin felt sorry for the Irish girl who’d been killed on Saturday night, but he knew there wasn’t a thing in the world he could have done to prevent it. He was a realist. People died. Other people killed. He hoped Mr. McGlory would explain to them what was going on; the newspaper stories that appeared in the Monday morning editions were confusing and contradictory. One paper proclaimed in huge headlines that a Ripper was at work in the city; another printed only a few inches about an Irish maid killed by an unknown assailant.
They saw Miss MacKenzie and Mr. Hunter arrive at the Saint Anselm rectory on Monday afternoon and ducked down out of sight behind their cardboard barricade when they left.
“She may have seen us,” Kevin told Blossom, “but I don’t think it matters.”
They grew twitchy as night fell and then another whole day passed. Newsboys shouted a headline about a copper who’d been arrested for killing his girlfriend. Both of them Irish.
It wasn’t a good idea to bed down in the same place too many times in succession, but Kevin reminded Blossom that they were working for Mr. McGlory, which meant they had no choice in the matter. Both of them shuddered and moaned as they took turns dozing.
He didn’t know what dreams disturbed the dog’s sleep, but Kevin himself only ever had one nightmare. He sat on the floor of a small room that smelled of sickness where a woman lay on a stained mattress, a blue faced baby cradled in her arm. The woman didn’t speak, the baby didn’t cry. Time passed and the stink got worse. When he left the room, he passed a copper lumbering up the tenement stairs. He stepped out into the street and never went back.
They had just finished a cone of newspaper filled with fried potatoes and bacon from the vendor on the corner when they heard footsteps. Kevin heard them before Blossom, but she confirmed the approach of their prey with a quick whine. Not even bacon interfered with the dog’s extraordinary nose. They slunk back into the smelly darkness of the alleyway, aware that while the man probably couldn’t find them by scent, he most certainly would be able to see them unless they hid. A streetlamp stood at the mouth of the alley, its light pooling on the sidewalk, casting fingers of illumination into the darkness. It was still dusk, Tuesday evening; the man hadn’t waited for full darkness to fal
l.
At first, it didn’t seem the man would go into the church. He walked past it, not even turning his head to say a quick prayer or nod hello to the power who dwelled within. He must be in a terrible hurry to forget something like that. Kevin made a rapid sign of the cross in silent apology and Blossom snuffled politely. They might not be rich, but they knew their manners.
The man turned back and walked quickly up the steps, opened Saint Anselm’s huge central door, and disappeared inside. He was back out again before they could decide whether to creep out of their hiding place. He carried a small black bag in one hand, the kind of satchel doctors often used to transport their medicines and instruments. He was in a hurry, didn’t spare even a few seconds to look around him. They let him go.
Joseph Nolan was a full block ahead of them before Kevin and Blossom crept out from their alleyway. It didn’t matter if they occasionally lost sight of him; the scent trail he was laying down was strong, even in the midst of all of the other smells through which he was moving. He didn’t smell of blood; Kevin decided he must have washed it off with strong soap and then doused himself with a leathery smelling men’s cologne to hide what he might have missed. No matter. Each human gave off a distinctive odor that no soap or perfume in the world could entirely obliterate. A good nose would always find it.
Blossom agreed. Nose to the pavement, she rarely so much as twitched a nostril at any other trail though she did stop once to relieve herself of some of the potatoes and bacon.
When Nolan hailed a hansom cab, Kevin and Blossom trotted along behind the vehicle, having told the horse pulling it not to give them away. The streets were congested with traffic, slowing vehicles to a frustratingly sluggish crawl. Kevin and his dog used the frequent stops to rest and look around them.
Twenty minutes after he’d climbed into the hansom cab, Joseph Nolan descended in front of a house that looked no different from every other brownstone on the street except that its parlor windows were so heavily curtained that not a speck of inside light shone through. A curious person could stand right in front of Madame Jolene’s establishment, hearing and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Even when visitors climbed the steps, rang the bell, and were admitted, the outer door opened into one of two small vestibules illuminated by the weakest of gas lights. You might catch a glimpse of a pert maid wearing a black uniform complete with frilly white apron and cap, but nothing more interesting than that.
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 17