“Who was that?”
“The girl up at Madame Jolene’s who got herself killed last Saturday night. Sally Lynn Fannon.”
“What else did they want to know?”
“They asked about your mother, may she rest in peace.”
Neil Slattery waited patiently. He knew there was more, and he suspected Davey had been warned not to reveal too much to his employer. The boy wasn’t bright, but he did well enough for an hour or two when Slattery had to make a delivery or pickup. He laid the twenty-five cent piece he’d promised Davey on the counter, then placed another one beside it. “Can you remember anything else, Davey?”
“They wanted to know if two other girls had bought uniforms here.”
“What were their names?”
“I had the man print them out so I could look them up in the book,” Davey said confidently. He wasn’t very good at reading but with a little bit of time and effort he could match words that looked alike. “Here it is.” He drew a scrap of brown wrapping paper out of his pocket. “Alterations. They came back for alterations. That’s what I told them. But I didn’t let them see the book themselves. You told me that was private.”
Nora Kenny. Ellen Tierney.
Slattery held the piece of brown paper out over the chimney of the gas lamp sitting on the counter. When it caught fire he let it burn until there was nothing left but ash. “What did they look like? Can you describe them?”
“One was very big and dark, the other had light hair and blue eyes,” Davey said proudly. Remembering and describing was a game he often played with his mother. “They didn’t talk like we do. At first I had a hard time understanding, but after a while I got used to it.”
“Did they say they were coming back?”
“I forgot what you told me, Mr. Slattery, so I said you wouldn’t be here any more today.”
“Did you tell them where I’d gone?”
“Saint Anselm’s. That was right, wasn’t it, Mr. Slattery? I told them you always went to Saturday afternoon confession at Saint Anselm’s.”
“Take your money now, Davey, and go on home to your mother. She’ll be expecting you. And forget about the men who were asking questions. They had no business bothering you like that.”
“Do you want me back tomorrow, Mr. Slattery?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. The store is closed. I’ll send a note around when I need you again.”
Neil Slattery turned the sign in the door to CLOSED. He folded Davey’s black apron and put it in a drawer beneath the counter, turned off the gas lamp, and looked around to be sure everything was as it should be. Dozens of domestic uniforms hung from racks on two of the shop walls, flat, ghostly shapes waiting to have life breathed into them. The sewing machine where his mother, and now he did alterations sat in a small alcove along the back wall behind the counter. He could work and watch the shop’s street door at the same time. Boxes containing stiffened maids’ caps, aprons, black stockings, and removable cuffs filled floor to ceiling shelves to the left of the door that led into the back storage rooms and the staircase to the apartment above the shop.
One of those back rooms had been his mother’s private preserve when he was young. Then his sister had been trained there to assist. When she left them to get married, Neil had taken her place, though sometimes clients objected. His mother never argued, but when she handed back the coins they’d put in her hand, they changed their minds and let him do what had to be done. He was good at it, faster than his mother and nearly as skilled.
One day he picked up a carving knife and discovered that the heft of the sharp, heavy blade felt more natural in his hand than anything he’d held before.
Everything changed.
*
Alice was the last parishioner in the church when she started her Stations, but she liked being alone to pray. No one was around to peer curiously at her blotchy, tear-stained face; she wasn’t one of those girls who wept prettily.
It might be full dark by the time she knelt before the last Station, but no one at home would notice she wasn’t there. Joseph was dead, her mother had climbed into a laudanum bottle, and her da had as good as disowned her. She thought the housekeeper, Mrs. Flynn, might remember to send up a tea tray, but they were all still so shaken downstairs by Ellen’s murder and Joseph’s horrible death that she might not. Jack Scully would stay with his horses once he’d put them up after driving Da home, and Tynan the butler looked aged beyond his years. She was so often invisible in her own house that Alice knew she wouldn’t be missed.
The First Station. Jesus is condemned to death. She stood in the aisle looking at the painted wooden plaque hanging on the wall. The artist had pictured Christ standing with head to one side, the Crown of Thorns on his brow, hands tied before him, a Roman soldier leading him from the crowd presumably gathered for the pronouncement of sentence. Alice had picked up a prayer book from the vestibule, and now she knelt in one of the pews to read the meditation and recite the prayers for this first step in what was called the Via Crucis in Latin. Alice wondered if many of the prayers she would say in the Visitation convent would be in Latin. Concentrate, concentrate. Don’t let yourself get distracted.
Jesus carries the cross. Jesus falls the first time. Jesus meets his sorrowful Mother. Each station had its painting, the wooden plaque surmounted by a cross. Explanation of the scene, meditation, prayers. The repetition created a rhythm that was hypnotic in the silence. A faint trace of incense tickled her nose, her eyes strained to see in the dimness. The church was chilly, but she’d worn a warm winter coat and put on thick gloves before leaving the house.
Alice was so tired. She’d kept another vigil last night, worrying over what she would say in the confessional, then disgraced herself by weeping. More than anything she wanted to lie down and fall asleep. After the Stations, she had to say a rosary. She decided to say the Joyful Mysteries in honor of the Virgin.
Just a few minutes. She’d pray better if she could close her eyes for just a few minutes. She’d kneel at every station, say all the prayers slowly and fervently, not skip a single word of the meditations. Not let her attention wander during the rosary. Her head full of promises, Alice sat back in the pew where she had been kneeling, brought her feet up, curled them under the broad skirt of her coat, lay down until her head rested on her arms, and fell asleep.
Alice thought she was alone in the church. But she wasn’t.
*
“If we’ve reasoned this out correctly, he’ll choose another girl today,” Geoffrey Hunter said.
“And if we’re not in the right place, she’ll be dead by morning,” Ned Hayes commented.
“We’re not wrong, Ned. We’ve thought this through too carefully.”
They were hidden as far back in the alleyway opposite Saint Anselm’s as they could get and still be able to see the front of the church and the sidewalk on either side of the main steps. Closer to the mouth of the alley Kevin Carney and Blossom melted into the brick wall, sheltered by an odd structure of cardboard boxes and newspapers that looked like a pile of windswept debris. Their job was to hear and scent out the killer’s approach before he came into view. They’d been there since early afternoon.
The expected stream of parishioners climbing the stairs to go to Saturday afternoon confession did not materialize. Too close to Christmas, they decided. Too many things to do, shops to visit, homes to clean and decorate.
Being Protestant, they didn’t realize that December eighth was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church when the faithful were required to hear Mass and encouraged to receive communion. The parish calendar had changed to accommodate the feast; long lines had waited outside the confessionals yesterday. Today there was only a token hour of confession for anyone still in need. Perhaps two dozen people, mostly women, straggled into Saint Anselm’s late that afternoon. One by one they came out again. Nobody stayed inside the church longer than fifteen or twenty minutes.
&nbs
p; Each time someone approached or left the church, the watchers froze in place, but nothing happened. People came and went in apparent unconcern and perfect safety.
There was no wind today, but the pavement beneath their feet was as cold as a block of ice, and even the thickest gloves gave little protection to fingers that had to stay still. Noses ran, eyes streamed, cheeks and foreheads reddened. Heavy clouds obscured the pale winter sun; by late afternoon everything had a gray cast to it.
A woman carrying a market basket appeared at the corner, bent over with the weight of what she was carrying. Blossom sat up, tilted her head, lifted her muzzle, and flicked her ears forward.
“What is it, girl?” Kevin whispered. He stared at the figure for a moment, then sat on his haunches, grinning. He glanced back at Mr. Hunter and Mr. Hayes. They, too, were following the woman’s progress down the street, but so far they didn’t seem to realize who she was.
Prudence had sent Colleen out to a second-hand clothing store with instructions to buy an assortment of well-worn skirts and shirtwaists. “Boots, a shawl, and as face concealing an old hat as you can find,” she’d instructed her maid. She was heartily sick of sitting on the sofa concentrating on healing her bruises and struggling through Louisa May Alcott’s Jo’s Boys. Her father had given her the novel two years ago, when it was first published. She hadn’t been able to get interested in it then, and she still dozed off every third page or so. Dr. Worthington would have approved.
The woman carrying the heavy market basket reached the steps in front of Saint Anselm’s then suddenly darted across the narrow street and into the mouth of the alleyway. She unwound a moth-eaten gray knitted scarf from around her neck and chin, smiling broadly at the success of her deception. “I’ve brought hot coffee and sandwiches,” she said. “I thought by this time you’d be desperate for them.”
Geoffrey took the basket from her and placed it on the ground. “You shouldn’t be out, Prudence,” he said.
“I’m perfectly fine, Geoffrey. It’s been a week.” She pushed up one sleeve of the overly large shirtwaist she was wearing. “Look, no bandages. I can flex my wrists again.” She demonstrated.
Blossom crawled on her belly until her nose rested against the wicker basket. Was that beef and bread she smelled?
They both looked down at the dog happily ensconced near her next meal. Blossom the Peacemaker.
Prudence busied herself pouring cups of heavily sugared milky coffee and unwrapping sandwiches. She’d instructed Cook to include the biggest soup bone in the kitchen for Blossom, who picked it up in her enormous jaws and nibbled delicately at the gobbets of beef clinging to it.
“How much longer do you plan to stay?” Prudence asked. She could feel the cold already, though she’d only been in the alley a few minutes.
“Until something happens,” Geoffrey answered grimly. “Every one of the murders has been done on a Saturday night, the body found the next morning. And there was always a link to Saint Anselm’s. Nora, Ellen, Sally Lynn. We think each of them came to this church on the day she was stalked and slaughtered. The killer repeats himself by choice, circumstance, or compulsion. Perhaps all three.”
“I did what you asked, Ned,” Prudence said. “Josiah found copies of the newspapers for the dates when your reporter friend remembered a story that resembled our murders. It made a change from reading Louisa May Alcott.”
“What did you learn?”
“Not as much as we’d hoped. But enough so that we might get Detective Phelan interested. If he’ll cooperate.”
“How many?”
“Seven over the past six months, not including Nora, Ellen, and Sally Lynn. All of the women were very young, either working as maids when they were killed or with a past history of domestic service.”
“Which would give them a potential link to the uniform shop.” Ned poured a healthy dollop of bourbon into his coffee and offered the flask around. Kevin was the only one who refused.
“They were all knifed, but the mutilation and wrapping the bodies in hessian is a new development. Josiah thinks there had to have been some sort of crisis that caused the change. He has a theory.”
Ned poured more bourbon into his cup.
“He thinks that instead of a cocoon, we should think of the wrappings as swaddling.”
“Isn’t that what’s done to newborns to keep their limbs straight?” Geoffrey asked.
Prudence nodded. “I asked Doctor Worthington about it when he came to unwrap my ribs. He said it has a calming effect, especially for babies with colic. The impression I got was that since they couldn’t move, they screamed themselves to sleep more quickly.”
“What does that have to do with our killer?”
“I don’t know. And neither does Josiah. The only other thing we could come up with was a straitjacket, but that only covers the upper part of the body. We’ve run out of ideas.”
“Look.” Ned Hayes stepped forward then back into the shadows. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Alice Nolan.” Prudence recognized her immediately. “Stand still. She’s so absorbed in herself she may not even look in this direction.”
“What’s she doing here?” Ned swallowed the last of the bourbon and tossed his empty cup into the wicker basket.
“They’re Catholic. Saint Anselm’s is their parish church,” Hunter reminded him.
“Ellen Tierney worked in the Nolan household. And came to Saint Anselm’s for confession the day she was murdered.” Prudence waited until Alice disappeared into the church, then hastily rewrapped what remained of the sandwich she had been eating. Blossom surrendered her bone without argument.
“We haven’t been able to confirm that. The housekeeper says she did, but the priest on duty claims not to have seen her.” Ever the Pinkerton, Geoffrey refused to jump to unproven conclusions.
“I don’t like coincidences, Geoff,” Ned said.
“Neither do I.”
“Shall I go in after her?” Prudence volunteered.
“Not you. And not right away. Give her twenty minutes. That’s what we’re clocking everyone else at. Fifteen or twenty minutes. If Alice isn’t out by then, Kevin goes in.” Geoffrey snapped open the lid of his gold pocket watch, stared at the face as if he’d never seen it before, then closed it again, slipping the heavy timepiece back into a vest pocket.
Kevin and Blossom glanced at the two men and the tall, slender woman standing deep in the shadows, then edged their way closer to the mouth of the alleyway. Blossom raised her head to sniff the currents of air that were human height; Kevin’s shoulders rose to his earlobes and he bent forward like a stork over a pond of fish. They didn’t have to be told that something might be up; they knew it instinctively.
The minutes ticked by slowly, unhurried by the frequency with which Geoffrey consulted his watch.
A tall priest wearing a biretta and a caped cassock came down the street and mounted the church steps. Red piping ran along the edges of the cape; the buttons were covered in red silk. A scarf protected the lower half of his face from the stinging cold.
“The red means he’s a monsignor, one step down from a bishop,” Ned explained. “We had to know things like that when I was on the force.”
“A monsignor at Saint Anselm’s?”
“Where did he come from? It wasn’t the rectory.” Prudence had been watching in that direction.
“I don’t like coincidences and I don’t like anything that’s out of the ordinary. Alice Nolan is still in there and nobody has come out for the last fifteen minutes or so. She may be alone.” Geoffrey snapped his watch shut and put it back into his vest pocket.
“Except for the monsignor,” Prudence reminded him. “Alice has been in there for half an hour, Geoffrey. The monsignor arrived fifteen minutes ago.”
Hunter and Hayes looked at each other, then moved quickly down the alleyway, sweeping up Kevin and Blossom as they passed them at a run and made for the steps into the church.
“Alice Nolan isn�
��t somebody’s maid, and she’s certainly not a lady of easy virtue,” panted Ned Hayes.
Blossom was whining, standing on her hind legs with front paws scrabbling on the wooden door. She wouldn’t bark unless her human told her she could, but she was plainly agitated.
“The door’s locked.” Geoffrey tried each of the handles on the three pairs of doors. “All locked,” he reported.
Kevin disappeared around the side of the building, reappeared seconds later. “Side doors, too.”
On his knees before the main door, Geoffrey inserted a burglar’s pick into the lock, making minute adjustments as he worked the cylinders. He was practiced and fast at lock picking, but not quick enough to stop Hayes from tapping his foot impatiently and Blossom from whining in short, frantic bursts.
“Got it!”
They burst through the door and into the vestibule, Blossom barking because Kevin had finally told her she could. Hayes pulled a Remington revolver from a holster worn strapped under one arm. An Army Colt .45 suddenly materialized in Hunter’s right hand, and Prudence fished her derringer from the bottom of her reticule. Kevin armed himself with a folding knife from his boot, a present from Billy McGlory that Billy would have been surprised to know he’d given.
The church was empty.
*
The first thing Alice was aware of when she woke up was a funny smell, bitter and sweet at the same time, sharp and pungent. She tried to wipe it from her nose and her eyes, but only succeeded in rubbing it deeper into her skin.
She’d fallen asleep, curled up like a child, her head pillowed on her arms. Then nothing. Velvety blackness. The sensation of floating. Not even the suggestion of a dream. What was it she was supposed to be doing before fatigue overcame her? Praying, yes, that was it. Making the Stations of the Cross. The little prayer booklet was still in her coat pocket along with her rosary. She could feel the slender bulk of one and the bumpiness of the other against her hip.
She rolled herself over to keep the rosary beads from digging into her skin. Opened her eyes. Tried to sit up. Her head ached, and every muscle in her body felt made of jelly. The harder she pushed against the floor, the less progress she seemed to make. Pushed against the floor? Beneath her bare hands she could feel the coldness of stone. She was no longer lying on the insulating warmth of a wood pew; she was in a small stone vault whose ceiling arched above her head into blackness.
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 32