A Study in Revenge: A Novel

by Kieran Shields

  “I see.” Grey leaned forward a bit in his seat and stared at his interlocked fingers, contemplating the information gathered over the lunch. Finally he leaned back and turned his attention once more to Phebe, who regarded him with a look of intense curiosity.

  “It’s agreed, then, Miss Webster. Our own business dealing: I will find this thunderstone, if it is to be found. And you, in turn, will tell me everything you know, or believe, with regard to your sister’s whereabouts.”

  [ Chapter 25 ]

  LEAN STOOD IN DEERING OAKS WITH HIS SHOULDER AGAINST one of the park’s trees. His eyes moved over the crowd of pedestrians meandering beneath the tall canopy of the ancient oaks, seeking shelter from the July sun. Soon enough he caught sight of Tom Doran. The man was hard to miss. He stood well over six feet, and when the massive Irishman came face-to-face with him, his broad chest and arms seemed to occupy an equal amount of horizontal space.

  Earlier that day, when Lean had tracked down Tom Doran, it had been in an alley behind one of the unlicensed saloons that Jimmy Farrell operated. Farrell, along with his counterpart, McGrath, headed the two rival Irish gangs that controlled much of the flow of illegal liquor into Portland. The Maine Liquor Law was mostly enforced when it had to be, when the flouting of it became too public, too visible in the city’s commercial heart or in respectable neighborhoods. Doran hadn’t flinched at the sight of a deputy catching him unloading barrels of illegal beer. His boss paid people higher up than Lean to let him do business, so long as it was done quietly.

  Three hours later the deputy noted that the big man had changed out of his grubby work clothes. He was smartly dressed, with a brushed bowler squatting atop rusty hair that had been freshly slicked back. Even his regularly bushy mustache had been trimmed since that morning.

  “Shouldn’t have come around earlier,” Doran said. “Don’t look good for either of us.”

  “An act of desperation, I suppose. Need a bit of help,” Lean said. Then he smiled and added, “You know I asked to meet strictly for business?”

  “Course. Let’s keep walking.” Doran moved along, circling the park’s duck pond, while Lean struggled to match his long strides. “What’d you mean about strictly business?”

  “You’ve gotten all dapper-looking. I thought you might have it in mind to ask me to go for a paddle.” Lean nodded toward several short rowboats available to let, often to aspiring couples, for a trip past the pond’s water fountain and elaborately modeled Victorian duck house.

  “Funny.”

  Most men would have thought twice about attempting such a joke with the somber-faced behemoth. But then even Doran wouldn’t be so bold as to drive one of his massive mitts into a deputy’s nose in broad daylight. Also, there was a shared history; a year earlier the two men had risked their lives together in the daring rescue of Helen Prescott’s eight-year-old daughter. Most important, the big man was grateful for Lean’s role in avenging the murder of Dr. Virgil Steig, who’d been a father figure to Tom Doran.

  Doran stopped walking and positioned himself with his back toward the acres of tall oaks, facing the fingers of land that poked into the irregularly shaped duck pond. A look approaching deep contemplation clouded his face. “What do you want anyway?”

  “Information.”

  Doran’s brows creased at the request.

  “Frank Cosgrove.” Lean paused to gauge Doran’s reaction, which amounted to a hint of a shrug. “Buried with a hole in his chest, but then …”

  “Yeah, everyone knows about that.”

  “But they’re all scared to death to talk. Not much happens in Portland that your boss doesn’t know about. You must’ve heard something.”

  “Heard all sorts of things,” Doran said.

  “Right. Any of those things involve who dragged the poor bastard out of his grave, burned him up, and stashed him over on Vine Street?”

  “Sure. Devil did it. Took his black soul down to hell, then spit it out again. Wasn’t done with his business on earth. A score to settle. The man was cursed, and so’s any that gets involved in his business.”

  “Is that so?” Lean asked.

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Someone’s got to know better. Who has a reason to do this? Who could pull it off if they even wanted to?”

  “It’s always been if something big happened round here, it was ’cause Jimmy gave orders for it to happen, or else McGrath put the word out. And if there’s a problem between the two of ’em, it would come down to who’s got more muscle or money. Now maybe there’s someone else having a say on things, and there’s more on the table than muscle or money. Even Jimmy seems a bit shaken.”

  “Heard any names?” Lean asked.

  “Not a whisper.”

  Lean was about to press the issue further when he noticed Doran staring past him. The Irishman seemed fixated on a young woman in a pale green dress, strolling arm in arm with another woman, probably her mother. Doran pulled a golden locket from within his vest and worked it over in his thick, callused palm.

  The true nature of the encounter rushed into Lean’s brain, though Doran’s current reaction threw him off.

  “Is that her?” Lean wanted to ask more, but he’d forgotten the young woman’s name.

  Doran nodded. “My daughter, Katie. Mullen now. She were married in the fall.”

  “Congratulations.” Lean was unsure of what else to say. “Did you go to the wedding?”

  Doran’s head shook. “Never spoken to her.”

  Lean stared at the man who struck instant fear into the hearts of many of Portland’s rougher elements. The massive figure looked utterly cowed by a pretty young woman strolling fifty yards away. He stood amazed at the sight of Doran, all washed, buffed, and tucked on the off chance that his daughter would happen to glance over. All so that she might not be offended, even at a distance, by the appearance of a man to whom she couldn’t fathom the slightest connection. Lean wondered how many times this scene had played out in the year since Perceval Grey, in a bit of emotional blackmail, had handed over the identity of Doran’s long-lost daughter.

  “You’ve never talked to the girl? Told her who you are?”

  Doran stayed silent until the two women came to a stop by the edge of the pond.

  “Your wife’s had kids, Lean. Tell me, do you think Katie might be with child?”

  Lean craned his neck a bit, trying to get a better angle at the young woman’s profile. There was a slight bulge there, in a spot normally constricted by the various machinations typically hidden among the many layers of modern female apparel.

  “You know,” he said in a slow, studied voice, “I think she may well be.”

  The two men kept a quiet vigil until the women continued moving away along the path.

  “You go to church regular?” Doran finally asked.

  “Mostly.”

  “What if, next Sunday, you were walking out and they handed you a note. Inside it says one way or the other whether your soul’s going to heaven or hell. Would you open it?”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Lean said. “You?”

  Doran’s hefty shoulders raised and dipped. Lean sensed that the man had thought this through, probably over many long, trying hours, but still he needed to search out the right words.

  “Sometimes when you think you’ll never really know the truth of something, you get used to it. You sit yourself down in a spot where you think you ought to be. After a while that spot just feels right. Then one day some smart fellow comes along and says he’s got the answer you were waiting on. And you think you’re glad for it. But then what if you were wrong all along? That spot that seemed good was all wrong, and you can’t stay there no more?”

  As the words sputtered forth from Tom Doran, Lean stared after the departing young woman. She probably carried another whole lifetime inside her, while a troubled soul, all that was left of those who’d given her life and first loved her, stood close by, fearfully watching. She walked along, bl
issfully unaware of how the past, present, and future tangled together around her in an unknown, unknowable knot.

  “Don’t know what to say, Tom. You can’t always know what you’re supposed to do. You’ll go mad thinking over it too much. Maybe someday you’ll just feel in your gut the time’s come to say something to her.”

  Doran gave a noncommittal nod and walked in the opposite direction from his daughter.

  “Frank Cosgrove.” Doran’s voice was flat, and Lean could tell he was simply desperate to change the subject. “I don’t know what happened to put him on Vine Street. Whatever secrets that house is holding from that night, it can keep them. And if it’s the devil’s business, you should just let it lie.”

  [ Chapter 26 ]

  THE SHARP CLATTER OF IRON HORSESHOES ON CONGRESS Street’s paving stones made Lean look up from the brick sidewalk. One of the city’s horsecars passed, carrying a load of people who’d wisely elected to ride the trolley rather than walk in the sweltering heat. The deputy threw his cigarette into the street and cursed the midday sun. As he did every summer, he vowed never again to complain about the depth of Maine winters, a promise that he would likely keep until the first week in January, at which time he would vow never again to complain about the humidity of Maine summers. He felt drops of sweat pooling at the small of his back where his shirt was collected and tucked into his waist. Suddenly aware of the moisture in his clenched right palm, he switched the large manila folder he was carrying to his other hand, fearful of dampening the two gruesome pictures that Grey had requested he bring along.

  He walked by a long stream of shops and doctors’ offices before reaching the entrance to the Baxter Building, which housed the Portland Public Library and the Maine Historical Society. The Romanesque Revival building, opened only four years earlier, featured elaborate ornamentation on its central façade of brown freestone accented over the arched doorway and windows with pale Ohio sandstone. Lean glanced up as he approached the double doors. Three figures, representing Art, Literature, and History, topped the roof, one at each front corner of the building’s buttressing side sections and the third atop the sixty-foot-high central gable. Once inside, he was glad to be spared the direct sunlight. The interior walls, hard-plastered and tinted, set off by ash trim work and hardwood doors, gave a relaxed, fresh feel to the library, but the lack of circulation did nothing to relieve the heavy air.

  The wide entrance corridor extended back into the building and held the reception desk as well as a section of wall lined with rows of stacked drawers that made up the card catalog. Lean crossed the black and white floor tiles to the library’s well-appointed reading room on the right side of the corridor. He peeked in and scanned the various occupants. At one end of the room, enclosed by a gilded rail, he spied Benjamin Paul Akers’s famed sculpture The Dead Pearl Diver. The white marble figure lay stretched upon a large rock. In search of a far livelier, and less alabaster-toned figure, Lean headed back into the wide hallway. As he moved toward the stack room at the rear of the building, Lean glanced up the broad flight of cast-iron stairs leading to the great Baxter Hall on the second floor. There was no sign of Perceval Grey, only the high, Gothic-styled, open-timbered ceiling with its chamfered, varnished beams.

  The spacious stack room held a desk at its center that was often used by the library clerks but now sat empty. Solid sets of shelves stood out from the walls, forming book-lined alcoves that held more than thirty thousand volumes. A railed upper level of shelves was topped with a series of marble busts looking down over the stacks. Tall windows filled the room with light during the day, while incandescent electric light fixtures hung overhead to illuminate the evenings. Lean wasn’t overly familiar with the classification used by the library to sort its books, nor did he have any idea what Grey was researching, so he resorted to glancing down each row as he passed.

  “There you are,” Lean said after spotting Grey’s slender, neatly dressed form in one of the last aisles.

  Grey gave him a nod and approached with a thin book tucked under one arm. He slipped by and headed for the vacant clerk’s desk.

  “They’ve reorganized, made some changes to the place,” Lean noted.

  Grey looked at him queerly. “Yes, some time ago. When was the last time you came to the library? Please tell me it wasn’t last summer.”

  “I’ve been busy. Work, the new house, another child at home. We don’t all live a life of casual luxury. It’s nice.” Lean looked around. “Still, it’s just not the same without Helen Prescott. Has she told you if she’s returning anytime soon? I’d have thought she’d have come home already.”

  “At the end of the summer,” Grey said absentmindedly. “In time for her daughter to begin the school year, I think.”

  Lean started to ask another question, but Grey cut him off with an impatient look.

  “If we’ve covered the social niceties, could we proceed with the actual business at hand?”

  “I suppose, though I should warn you about the cavalier attitude you’re displaying toward Helen. If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up on your own, sitting in a dark room, blind from peering through microscopes and whatnot. You’ll have to hire an assistant and resort to having descriptions of crime scenes read aloud and dictating your conclusions. A sad end, if you ask me.”

  “Well, then remind me not to ask. You seem to have given the idea quite a bit of thought. If it’s the promise of future employment you’re angling at, then I have to warn you: You’ll need to improve your atrocious handwriting before I allow you to take dictation from me. Now, again, the business at hand.”

  Lean nodded his consent. “Which is what, exactly? Don’t know what you need with these murder-scene photographs at the library.”

  “That will come later. But first let me tell you something of Horace Webster. You’ll recall I had word of the ailing man’s passing that day we returned from our inquiries in Boston. I’ll spare you all but the most necessary details for the time being. This Webster was in possession of an unusual family heirloom called a thunderstone, which had apparently been unearthed several generations ago. Due to what I can only describe as family peculiarities, the item was kept guarded from the public eye. The sole existing image or description of it is from the state of Maine’s fiftieth-anniversary exhibition, which took place in 1870. Various historical items and curiosities were displayed, including the thunderstone.”

  “Fascinating.” Lean pretended to stifle a yawn.

  Grey almost grinned but otherwise managed to ignore Lean’s sarcasm. “At the reading of Horace Webster’s will, this thunderstone, contained in a lockbox in possession of his attorneys and executors for the past two decades, was found to have been stolen.”

  “A theft from an attorney’s office? I don’t recall hearing anything.”

  “The property was left to Miss Phebe Webster. She’s elected not to file a formal complaint. She’s requested that I locate the thunderstone for her.”

  Lean frowned. Though he held Grey’s abilities in the highest regard, he still took it as something of an insult to his professional dignity that the Websters hadn’t even thought it worthwhile to notify the police of the crime.

  “The attorney last viewed the items about two weeks prior. The thing that makes this thunderstone such a curiosity is the presence of several unusual etchings carved into its otherwise smooth surface. Look here, closely.”

  Grey set down the cloth-backed book he was holding, one whose title bore reference to Maine’s statehood. He angled the book toward Lean and opened it to a photograph of a thin, proud-looking man standing next to a short, rectangular glass case. Inside the case, set on a padded box, was an oval-shaped stone. Lean bent his head toward the picture on the table.

  “This will help.” Grey handed him a magnifying glass that he’d taken from his leather equipment satchel. Lean moved in with the glass just above the paper, finding the optimal magnification. It took him a moment to make out the small, faint image. He pul
led his head back a touch and then refocused, starting from scratch, wanting to make sure he saw the item clearly before he jumped to what seemed an impossible coincidence.

  “It’s blurry.”

  “Granted,” Grey said, “but …”

  “But it certainly looks like …”

  Grey placed a white page on the desk, next to the book on Maine history. It was the image stolen from the Boston Athenaeum, a circle topped with an upward-facing arc and with a cross extending from below.

  “That same symbol. So this … what do you call it? Thunderstone? It was stolen in the past two weeks. And since then Chester Sears flees Portland and dies in Boston with an identical image in his pocket. And scared out of his wits that some diabolical fate will befall him, the same as his partner, Cosgrove.”

  Lean paused as his train of thought splintered in various directions. Grey picked up the thread for him.

  “Cosgrove was shot dead two weeks ago, possibly in the same time frame that the thunderstone disappeared from its lockbox.”

  “So just a minute while I sort this out. Old partners Cosgrove and Sears are working together and steal the stone. Someone kills Cosgrove, maybe even Sears himself—got greedy, perhaps. In any event, someone’s angry about the situation, digs Cosgrove up and burns him, leaves threats around the body as a message. To hear Tom Doran tell it, that bit of handiwork has every criminal in the city spooked, but maybe it was intended specifically for Sears. He flees for his life down to Boston.”

  “Or does he? Perhaps he’s still at work. Trying to appease whoever killed Cosgrove. After all, it seems he still had work to do. He managed to break in to the home of the late Professor Horsford, only to find the book containing the strange symbols already gone. Then he pressed on in his endeavor, breaking in to the Athenaeum on a night when the commotion from the gathering downstairs would provide cover for his attempt to gain the pictures from that book.”