Lies That Comfort and Betray

by Rosemary Simpson

  “Don’t,” Jolene said when Ned Hayes reached out to touch the folds of skin collapsing down, across, and into the empty abdomen.

  “I have to find out what’s been taken,” he explained. “What’s been left. I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t important. There have been two others, but so far the police have kept that quiet. If there’s a connection, if the same person killed all three, he won’t stop. He’ll kill again and again. Until he’s caught.”

  “You don’t have to look,” Hunter said gently. Madame Jolene had held up well so far, much better than he had expected. He admired courage wherever he encountered it.

  “Yes. I do. I have to witness for her. I have to take the place of the mother who should be weeping over her.”

  As gently as possible, with the reverence that would made the examination easier for Jolene to bear, Ned lifted aside the skin that was already puckering along the cut edges. He folded each long piece back, then probed the cavity as quickly and thoroughly as he could. He slid a forefinger into the gaping slit of the throat, satisfying himself that the thrust had been a backhanded stroke from left to right, made with such force that the bones of the spine had been partially severed.

  “You’ll need this for your hands,” Jolene said, holding out a woman’s handkerchief edged with lace. She’d moistened it in the washbasin that sat atop a small dresser. The water had turned the white linen pink.

  “We’ll wrap her back up again,” Ned instructed, “as like to the way we found her as we can.”

  Jolene did not protest when the two men laid Sally Lynn back on the hard floor where her killer had positioned her, where the police would find her when they finally arrived.

  They stood together at the door, looking back into the room, not saying a word. For Ned Hayes, the hardest part about being a copper had always been seeing the wreckage of a human being in the aftermath of violent death. He’d never forgotten a single one of them; they haunted his dreams.

  Geoffrey Hunter’s features were set and grim. His face betrayed nothing of what he was thinking or feeling.

  Jolene yearned for a life where death came as a blessing when a peaceful old age welcomed it.

  *

  Billy McGlory came and went like a dawn shadow no one is quite sure of having seen. Big Brenda handed him a cup of coffee, but never said his name aloud.

  She and Tyrus had carried Kevin Carney into the sick room just off the kitchen where whores who were too ill to work could be nursed back to health within calling distance of the woman who fed them nourishing soups and washed the fever sweat from their bodies. They called it the infirmary, though it only held one bed, a small table, and a single chair. Big Brenda had nailed a crucifix above the bed, like she’d seen done in the clinics and hospitals run by the Sisters of Charity. Whether anyone prayed in the brothel infirmary didn’t matter; it was the presence of the cross that counted.

  McGlory sat in the chair beside Kevin’s bed. He set the coffee cup on the bedside table, then took one of Carney’s hands in his own. Blossom perched on her haunches watching his every move. She snuffled when he touched her human, but sensing no harm meant, allowed it to happen.

  “Kevin. Kevin, lad. Wake up and tell me what you saw.”

  Nothing. The man who lived on the streets and spied for the owner of Armory Hall lay as still as the dead whore upstairs. Clean, too. Big Brenda and Tyrus had washed him as thoroughly as she did her kitchen floor, which had only been possible because Kevin was unconscious and couldn’t fight her off. She’d trimmed his hair, working as fast as she did when there was dough to roll out. Carney was as neat as a pin, the sheets pulled tightly across his chest and tucked under the mattress on either side of him for good measure. He was breathing better. Big Brenda had poured a concoction of whiskey, lemon juice, laudanum, and crushed rosemary down his throat. It was kill or cure, and more often than not, her remedies cured.

  “Will he live, Missus?” McGlory knew a man dead to the world when he saw one. It would be a while yet before Kevin came out from under the influence of what he’d been given.

  “I’ve seen worse, though he was in a mortal bad way when I started working on him.”

  He handed her a five-dollar gold piece.

  “What’s that for?” She wasn’t as terrified of McGlory now as when she’d looked up from tending to her patient and realized who she was smiling at.

  “I’ll send someone around to find out how he’s doing.” By which he let her know that she’d have to earn the gold coin with her ears and her tongue. He wouldn’t have taken it back if she’d dared return it. When McGlory hired you, you stayed hired.

  Then he was gone … long before the police arrived to see what new trouble Madame Jolene would pay them to get her out of.

  Blossom, bathed and defleaed by Tyrus Hayes, smelling as sweet as her name suggested, continued her watch.

  *

  The first thing he had to do was notify Chief of Detectives Tom Byrnes that his worst nightmare was coming true. Detective Steven Phelan knew from his initial examination of Sally Lynn’s body that there was no more point trying to conceal what was happening in the city. Either the Whitechapel killer had crossed the Atlantic or an imitator had taken up a knife in his stead. Two weeks had separated the Kenny and Tierney killings. Sally Lynn died a short seven days after Ellen. And this time the newspapers would print the truth of the murder scene, every lurid detail. He’d seen Russell Coughlin slipping past a handful of whores gathered in the hallway outside the dead girl’s room. It was too late to stop him.

  The thought of it chilled Phelan to his bones, though the room where the whore had lived and worked was stiflingly hot. He blew out the candles that still burned and opened a window to let in some breathable air. The smell of a murder scene often stayed with you as long as the sight of what had been done. He didn’t know a copper anywhere who didn’t suffer from nightmares. That was one of the reasons they all drank as much as they did.

  The coroner from Bellevue had taken less than ten minutes to make his initial determination.

  “It won’t be official until I’ve done an autopsy and written it up,” Dr. Robert Estin told Phelan, wiping his hands with a mixture of water and carbolic. There was a new idea going around in some medical circles that invisible bugs could contaminate a wound and jump from one person to another. He’d decided to take precautions.

  “Your killer has removed the organs I’d like to have a look at, but I don’t believe either one of us needs them to understand what happened here. He slit her throat, then gutted her. Plain and simple. The killing itself probably happened fast; the girl might not even have had time to realize what was going on. We can certainly hope so. One thing, Phelan. This is the third girl I’ve seen in the last three weeks with the same kind of cutting done on her.”

  “If Byrnes were to ask, would you be able to tell him that all three dead girls had been killed by the same man?”

  “I’ve got notes that didn’t make their way into the official autopsy reports. In case I need to jog my memory. Or I decide to write a book someday. When you find whoever killed this girl, you’ll have your answer.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Between us and off the record? Yes.” The coroner finished wiping and drying his hands. He held them up to his nose and shuddered. “I wish I knew for sure whether this does any good. I’m going to smell like carbolic for the rest of the day.” He put the damp towel back in the leather bag that held his tools. “Byrnes is probably the best we’ve ever had, but he’s likely to go off half cocked if he has to admit there’s a Ripper working in New York City. When he releases the autopsy reports, the newspapers will have a field day accusing him of arresting and trying to frame a fisherman from Staten Island and one of his own coppers to cover it up. My guess is the papers will jump the gun. It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Detective Phelan. A slow news day.” Estin smelled his carbolic hands again. “I’ve seen what his third degree can look like; it’s not something I’d w
ish on any man. It gets results, but I’ve got my doubts about the reliability of what you beat out of a suspect.” He waited for Phelan to tell him whether either of the men had confessed to a crime it was now obvious he hadn’t committed, but the detective just asked another question.

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “He’s right-handed. But you already knew that. What I don’t understand is why he left this one in the same place he killed her. The other two weren’t murdered where we found them. That’s your big mystery, Detective. What happened to make our Ripper change his pattern?”

  “Don’t call him that. Not yet.”

  “He needs some kind of a name. You don’t want to wait for the newspapers to give him one.”

  Steven Phelan sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. He could feel gray strands popping up through the black like creases on an old man’s face. This case would age him.

  “Take her away,” he told the attendants from the morgue wagon. “We’re done here.” There wasn’t any more he could learn right now from the body that had once been the pride of Sally Lynn’s working life.

  The four-poster bed was heavy and ornate; the curtains must have floated from it like mist over a river. Clothes hung neatly in the armoire, perfumes and cosmetics sat in neat rows on a silver tray, the brush that still contained strands of her hair was otherwise clean. Sally Lynn had tried to live as neatly as if she had a lady’s maid to straighten up after her.

  It always happened to the ones who didn’t deserve it.

  CHAPTER 23

  Saving the Metropolitan Police Department from renewed attacks by the city’s reform-minded clerics depended on how quickly the chief of detectives could present his side of the story Russell Coughlin was writing for the next edition of the Tribune.

  “Is that it?” he demanded of Steven Phelan. They were sitting outside the brothel in a hansom cab whose leather curtains had been rolled down and secured against prying eyes. Phelan had used Madame Jolene’s fiercely guarded telephone to inform Byrnes of what he’d found, but Byrnes had cut him off before he could give any details over the wire. The hansom cab belonged to the police department and the driver only ever had one customer.

  “It’s the same man,” Phelan said confidently. “I saw all three of the bodies. There’s no doubt in my mind, even though this last time he left the girl where he murdered her.”

  “It’s a break in his pattern. I don’t like it.”

  “Everything else was the same, right down to wrapping the body up when he’d finished with it.”

  “What does the coroner say?”

  “We may have a problem there. Estin kept private notes, information he didn’t include in the autopsy reports.”

  “Buy the notes. Pay him a reasonable amount but make sure he knows that there can’t be a copy anywhere. Explain to him that if he talks to a reporter on his own he’ll wish he hadn’t.”

  The whole time he’d waited for Byrnes to arrive Phelan had worried over what he was obliged to reveal next, but there was no way the chief wouldn’t eventually find out. “Ned Hayes was on the scene when I got here. So was Geoffrey Hunter.”

  “What about Judge MacKenzie’s daughter?”

  “No sign of her.”

  “That’s one small thing to be grateful for.”

  “I’d bet my last dollar Hayes was the one who leaked the story to Coughlin.”

  “Who leaked it to Hayes?”

  “That was Madame Jolene. She’s usually got a calmer head on her, but I think she toyed with the idea of not calling in the police at all. Getting rid of the body, cleaning up, and then opening for business tonight as if nothing had happened. My guess is that Hayes disabused her of the notion that she could get away with it.”

  “I have calls out to all the papers that I’m giving a statement in half an hour, so I’ve got to get back to Mulberry Street. You stay here to close the scene and find out whatever Hayes and Hunter know. Flatter them if you have to. Suggest cooperation. We need to get this solved before our killer has a chance to strike again.” Byrnes was fully aware of the impossibility of what he was asking, but he hadn’t made his reputation by hanging back and doing things the way they’d always been done. He’d keep his fingers crossed that the London Ripper would claim another victim. And soon. That would at least put paid to the notion that he’d decided to grace New York City with his presence. A homegrown copycat wouldn’t generate nearly as much bad publicity. New Yorkers might be perverse enough to take some kind of twisted pride in their own killer’s audacity. You could never predict how people in this city would react to anything.

  He ran over in his mind exactly what he would say to the reporters. A prostitute has been killed and from the evidence of what was done to her body, it has been determined that the man who took her life may also be guilty of the deaths of Nora Kenny and Ellen Tierney. Questions. Questions. Questions. All of which he intended to answer to keep the press in line. Then he’d volunteer the information that until this new theory could be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, the suspects currently in custody would remain in the Tombs. For the sake of guaranteeing public safety. Until Sally Lynn Fannon’s assailant had been caught and had confessed. Only then, and only if the evidence warranted it, would Fahey and McGuire be released.

  Byrnes leaned back in the cab and closed his eyes. It helped to picture what he planned to do before he actually did it. He thought of himself as an actor preparing for a role, readying himself to step out on stage.

  It had to go just right or everything he’d built would be in jeopardy.

  *

  “He’s the key to what happened last night.” Looking down at the sleeping form and listening with cocked ear to the stertorous breathing, Detective Phelan stood at the foot of the bed where Kevin Carney lay. “The cook says he’s better, but it sounds painful to me.” He motioned to the chair that was canted just far enough from the side of the bed to indicate that someone had recently been sitting there. Someone who’d left in a hurry. “Who do you think was here?”

  Geoffrey Hunter shook his head, as if he had no idea or it wasn’t important. “Take your pick. Most likely the cook. She’s done a good job with him. Carney probably owes his life to her.”

  “Her name is Brenda Mulligan,” Phelan said, consulting his notebook. “She told me she washed the dog, too.”

  Blossom thumped her tail vigorously against the floor. Except for worry about her human, she was feeling better than she had in a long time. Less itchy.

  The two men stared at Kevin as if wishing him to wake up and begin talking would make it so. But it didn’t. Kevin Carney, tucked away in a bed for the first time in years, slept deeply and dreamlessly. The noisy breathing that concerned Detective Phelan was phlegm loosening itself in his lungs. Big Brenda could have told him that, had he asked her. Kevin didn’t have the pneumonia, just a chesty catarrh. He was on the mend and she fully intended to keep him that way.

  They left the door open a crack in case a miracle happened and Carney woke up. Big Brenda had coffee waiting for them, a basket of hot popovers on the kitchen table, a slab of butter and a honeycomb sitting in white china dishes beside it.

  Ned Hayes was eating his third popover, now and then dipping it into a brew that looked deadly dark and thick. “Tyrus told her how I like it,” he explained. “New Orleans style. I don’t expect you Yankees will take to it.”

  “No one in his right mind would do that to decent coffee,” Big Brenda declared. She’d welcomed Tyrus’s help with Kevin and Blossom, but only reluctantly allowed him to tinker with one of her smaller coffee pots. The result was an affront to the nose and the eye. Smelled like burnt weeds and looked like dirty pond scum.

  She’d found new clothes for Kevin from the piles of garments left behind by satisfied and forgetful clients, but the ex-slave had gathered up the rags Kevin had been wearing and dumped them into the wash pot in an open sided shed behind the house. She could see out the window that he’d got a fire g
oing and was stirring the clothes with a wooden paddle taller than he was. The man could work. She’d give him that.

  “I’m going to need to feed the girls,” she said briskly, putting hands on pillowy hips and following the trajectory of popovers from basket to mouths. People who ate her cooking knew to show their appreciation. “This is a working establishment.”

  “We won’t be long.” Detective Phelan stirred milk and sugar into his coffee. “We’ll get out of your way faster if you could leave us alone for a while, Miss Brenda. And shut the door nice and tight behind you,” he added as she turned on her heels and huffed a bit for show.

  He’d not said a word about meeting with Chief Byrnes in the hansom cab, but he had a feeling the two men sitting opposite him hadn’t missed a thing. They’d settled in around the table as if they were comparing notes back at Mulberry Street, fellow coppers picking each other’s brains. If that was the way they wanted to play it, Phelan could adapt. He hadn’t forgotten a word of Byrnes’s instructions.

  “We have a Ripper.” Phelan drank off half his coffee.

  “Imported or homegrown?” Geoffrey asked.

  “The last Ripper killing in Whitechapel was November ninth. There hasn’t been another one since,” Phelan reminded them.

  “Nora Kenny was murdered the night of November tenth.” Ned Hayes kept a policeman’s notebook in his head. He seldom forgot anything.

  “Which means the London Ripper wouldn’t have had time to get to New York City.” Geoffrey had mentally calculated dates and distances.

  “And if we’re all of the opinion that our three victims were killed by one man, that pretty much confirms that it’s a copycat.”

  “The mutilations are the same, so we can say with reasonable certainty that we’re looking for one man. Agreed?” Phelan looked from Hayes to Hunter. Both men nodded their heads. Phelan pushed the basket of popovers in Hunter’s direction.