I, Joseph Liam O’Malley, of the Dens, Town of Pullman, do swear that, on the tenth of April, I killed my brother Brian O’Malley in the brickyard shed of the Pullman works. It was not planned but done in anger. I will regret it for the rest of my life and surely beyond. For Brian is dead and I can never pay for an act as terrible as killing your own brother.
I can never be forgiven by my family for this but know it came about, not from hatred, but from jealousy caused by love for his woman. I won’t name her, for she has done all she can already and nothing I can say will harm her.
I also killed that traitor and murderer, Leonard Stark, with the gun of Detective Whitbread that I took from the clinic last night. He killed my sister’s fiancé in cold blood and he tried to kill my sister. I took the gun, followed him, and we fought. He fired his gun first, but I killed him. It is as the Lord wills that he is gone to his deserts and I am sure he burns in Hell where I will someday meet him.
I was stunned. Joe was claiming the death of Stark for himself. He had gone to great lengths to make me promise not to report what had happened the night before. Now I understood. I thought he only wanted to prevent information about the dynamite from ruining the reputation of the strikers in Pullman, but he had planned this all along.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I listened to Gracie read the rest of the letter. He told the story of Fiona and Brian, as he had told it to me the night before, only he said nothing about the fact that she was carrying his child. He told of the awful fight with his brother, and how he had fallen and hit his head and how Joe had disguised the murder by hanging the body with the sign. He didn’t mention Fiona’s part in that. He did put some blame on his father, and Fiona’s father, for preventing the young people from marrying in the first place. Finally he described taking Detective Whitbread’s pistol, while people were milling around the clinic after the shooting, and following Stark along the track until he confronted him and they both shot, but Stark missed, and Joe hit his target.
Gracie’s voice wavered a little as she read the end of the letter:
I’m confessing to Detective Whitbread to thank him for saving my sister Gracie O’Malley Foley. I hope she will take care of our younger brother and sister, Patrick and Lilly. I will never contact them again. They are innocent and I ask them to pray for me and for Brian and for our da. Except for shooting Leonard Stark, I regret what I did and I will to the end of my days.
Joseph Liam O’Malley
When she finished reading, Gracie took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
“Do you know where he’s gone?” I asked. I was concerned. “He wouldn’t do anything to harm himself? He wouldn’t take his own life, would he?”
“No, no. ’Tis forbidden by the Church. Although he’d no great fondness for the Church—as he says—he would be hard put to go against such a teaching. No, I don’t think he would do it. Though I know I’ll not be hearing from him again. It was a tearful goodbye. I’ve a thought he will have gone back to Ireland. It’s a sorry place and such a one that would allow him a might of suffering if he’s repenting his sins.”
Detective Whitbread snorted. “Gone west, more likely. A man can get lost out there and there’s plenty of company for those who want to be forgotten. He’s gone west.”
“You don’t know that,” Gracie objected.
“I do. We’ll have to put out a warrant.”
“Not now, you won’t,” the doctor said, stepping over to remove the pillows behind Whitbread’s head. “He needs to rest now. We must leave him.”
He looked too ill and tired to object but, just as we were about to leave, the door flew open. It was my brother, Alden.
“Have you heard? They arrested Debs and the heads of the unions. They put them in jail. All the trade unions and fraternities he was trying to get to join the strike have refused. Some of the railroad unions are going back to work, too. They’ve done it. They’ve broken the strike.”
THIRTY-THREE
“He should be at home in bed.” Dr. Chapman shook his head as we watched from a distance. The big, open brickyard shed where so many horrible things had happened was behind us, the wind from the lake whipping through, drying the bricks. We were standing, watching as a wagon was being loaded with all the meager belongings left of the O’Malley’s. The doctor had rushed over when he heard, worried about the strain on Detective Whitbread, but we were unnecessary. All the neighbors were helping Gracie and the children load the wagon, while Detective Whitbread sat on the high seat in his bowler hat and woolen suit, holding the reins. “I sent him home yesterday. Apparently he only left because he wanted to tell his landlady that he would be bringing the pack of them.”
“He’s marrying Gracie and taking in the children, too,” I said. It still amazed me.
“I’m not sure he’d take her without the children. And I’m not sure how two such strong-willed people will inhabit the same dwelling. It certainly won’t be quiet.”
Even from as far away as we were, we could hear Gracie calling out orders. “I’m still so surprised,” I told him. “I never thought of Detective Whitbread marrying.”
“Why? Because he is so single-minded in his job? It won’t change him.”
“Nothing can change him.”
“Exactly. You should not be surprised. He saw the great injustice of what happened to Gracie Foley and he admired her for not submitting to it, for fighting it, no matter how hopeless the struggle. It is what he would do.”
“He is right to admire her. She will do everything she can to take care of him. And she can see how someone so independent needs taking care of. She could see what he needed.”
“Indeed. I expect them to be very happy. Or, at least as happy as any couple may be and happier than most. Mrs. Foley, soon to be Mrs. Whitbread, has known much sorrow. It will make any happiness that much sweeter to taste, I think.”
I remembered how her first husband had beaten her, and I recalled Mooney, the dapper little man who brought her flowers. “I hope she is happy. Detective Whitbread is a good man.”
“He is.” We stood watching for a few more minutes. It was about a week after Whitbread was shot and Stark was killed. I had come to the uneasy conclusion that I must let Joe O’Malley’s false confession stand. To tell the truth would require explaining about the dynamite and to do that would only harm the remaining strikers. I had many sleepless nights over it, but I could not believe that my stepping forward would do anything but harm, as Joe had feared. Reluctantly, I kept silent.
“You have delayed your departure for Woods Hole.” Dr. Chapman had stayed to care for Detective Whitbread. He had not left on the following Monday, as he had threatened. “Will you be leaving now?” In the sudden calm, as after a storm, that followed the breaking of the strike, I was fearful of what it would be like not to see the doctor every day. I had become so accustomed to his presence.
“Soon enough.” He was still staring off towards the wagon. The children were being helped into the back, and they were waving goodbye to neighbors, as they prepared to take off. Gracie climbed to the high seat beside Whitbread and took the reins from his hands.
“Doctor, I am so grateful that you have given your time here during this awful strike. I know it was not a happy time for you, and only your very great generosity has been responsible for keeping you here, when you could have been doing your research at Woods Hole. I hope it has not been too disappointing.” That word reminded me of our earlier conversation about Fiona MacGregor and I could see him stiffen as if it reminded him, too. It was an unfortunate choice. I hurried on to cover it. “I am so glad you were here, though. For myself I do not know how I could have survived this, if you were not here, and I thank you. We all thank you. You are the kindest, most dependable of men.”
He shook himself, then, and turned to face me. “Emily. I once asked you to be my wife and you refused me. I know you believe the offer was made from pity and that is somehow insufficient. A wild enthusiasm or easy intimacy,
such as you might find with someone like Mr. LeClerc, appears more like affection to you.”
I felt my eyes fill with tears and struggled to keep them from falling. Raoul LeClerc had been such a mistake. I had been so misled by him. But it was my own mistake, my own stupidity and naïveté that had tricked me. He was what he was.
“But there is something I must tell you, Emily. I know you think some great generosity on my part brought me down here to care for these people. You are wrong. I am not that fiercely generous. You somehow came to believe I cared for Miss MacGregor and was disappointed in her actions in running away with Mr. LeClerc, as she seems to have done. You were very wrong about that, all wrong.
“The only reason I came down here and remained all this time was for you, Emily. It was care for you that brought me, concern that you would bruise your heart on the hopes and failures of the people you were trying to help. I wanted to watch out for you. When I saw you attending to LeClerc and admiring him, it was all I could do to keep from lecturing you. But it is not the sort of thing you learn from a lecture. And you are not a child for me to teach. You are a woman for whom I care very deeply—more deeply than I have ever cared for anyone in my life. If you cannot believe in the strength of my affections, then I will never mention them again. But then you must expect me to avoid you at all cost, as it would be too painful for me.”
The tears would not be restrained and I could feel them on my cheeks. I felt myself trembling. At last, this was what I wanted, I could see it now. But how could I accept him after what I had done? How could I ever tell him what I had done? I gulped for breath and started to turn away, but he took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “What is it? What is wrong?” I shook my head, unable to answer, I felt choked with tears I could not shed. “Emily, Emily.” He was shaking his head at me. “It’s Stark, isn’t it? Joe O’Malley didn’t shoot him, did he?”
He held my arms so I had to look him straight in the eye. I could not avoid it. “He said he had been at the clinic and took the gun, but he was never in the clinic. It was you, wasn’t it? You took the gun. What happened? Tell me, Emily, tell me.”
Before I could answer, I found myself sobbing in his arms. It was such a relief that someone knew. We embraced on that windswept expanse of mud flats and I told him what had happened. He made me see that, while my actions were foolish, there was nothing else I could have done, once Stark attacked me. In the end, I felt more at ease in my heart than I had since the death of my father.
Collapsed in his arms, with the warmth of him encircling me, comforting me, I felt at home. A thrill ran through me. Never had I thought to feel like this. I pushed back and looked up into his kindly face and felt so sad. He looked exasperated. I hiccupped in the most awkward manner. “Knowing what I’ve done,” I blurted out, “you couldn’t possibly marry me now.”
“Oh, Emily.” He lifted my chin with his hand and planted a firm kiss on my lips. I felt his other hand on my shoulder blades pressing me to him. The instinct to resist lasted less than a second before I responded eagerly, wrapping my arms around his neck. I hung on to him, as if he were a life raft in a troubled sea, not wanting the embrace to end. He kissed my neck and hugged me to him. “I will marry you, Emily Cabot. I must, you know.” He pulled back, not letting me out of his arms but wiping a few tears from my blubbering face and brushing aside a lock of hair. “We will manage, Emily, I promise you. If Whitbread can sweep away all obstacles, surely we can deal with this. I won’t let you lose your place at the university, my dear, you’ll see.”
I stopped him with a hungry kiss. It was a few more minutes before I asked him breathlessly, “What about Woods Hole?”
“You’ll come. Surely you want to come.”
“Woods Hole . . . I suppose we could stop in Boston.” The world was reeling. I leaned against him, watching the Dens settle back to normal after the departure of the O’Malley clan.
He handed me a white linen handkerchief and I could feel his heart beating in his chest. “It will be all right, Emily. You’ll see.”
I knew logically there would be heartache and problems, but at last I did not care. It was the beginning, rather than the end, of our personal tribulations, but we would weather many storms together.
EPILOGUE
The strike fell apart. The trade unions had not joined the strike, the ARU leaders continued to be held in jail, and the railroad union workers began to negotiate a return to their jobs. There were rumors that the Pullman factory would soon reopen, but jobs would be offered only at the original pay scale, and those who had been blacklisted would not be rehired. It was bitter to know the same conditions would ruin the viability of the pretty town. There were others, besides the O’Malleys, who were leaving. Something had broken.
Governor Altgeld and Mayor Hopkins demanded an investigation and, later that summer, members of a congressional committee came and listened to endless testimony. But these things take time. It was another year before the General Managers’ Association was banned and companies were forbidden to do the kind of joint price-fixing and wage-fixing that they had participated in. It was another ten years before a battle through the courts—that I continued to be involved in—resulted in the decision that the Pullman Company must give up its real estate holdings and sell the houses to the workers instead of renting them.
Even before that, George Pullman died. So hated was he, and so afraid of what people thought of him, that his casket was encased in a wall of concrete to avoid the kind of desecration that he fully expected to be his due, from the people he had wronged in his life. It was a sad end for a man who had the potential to be much loved by his workers. But, even when planning his own burial, he thought there was “nothing to arbitrate.” I wondered how far that statement got him in the afterlife, if he pronounced it so finally there. But, at the time of that declaration, the strike was only just coming to a sorry end.
* * *
The reporting of my brother Alden, Nellie Bly, and others forced the government to act, so the congressional committee was eventually able to make some reforms. Miss Addams published a thoughtful essay, comparing George Pullman to King Lear. She concluded that philanthropy would not succeed if it was imposed as if by a king on his subjects. Change comes only with the consent of those who must change—a perfected social order, like that of the planned factory town, cannot be forced upon people. I never heard anything of Raoul LeClerc again. I think he must have gone on to do more agitating, but I have no knowledge of it. Joe O’Malley was good to his word and was never seen in Chicago again. Gracie managed to keep her husband too occupied to allow him to go off in search of her brother, even if he was a murderer. He complained sometimes, but she was ever ready with an argument. He had much to do in his police job in Chicago. Fiona MacGregor I heard of only many years later. She became a prostitute and rose in her profession to the post of madam. It was said that she was wily and her tricks had gotten her ahead of others. They told me she was feared and mistrusted.
I don’t suppose she ever contacted her father again. Poor Mr. MacGregor not only lost his child, but was blacklisted as one of the strike leaders. I tried to help him to fight it, but any attempts at legal action only made matters worse. He was forced out of his house and drifted around doing part-time work—always trying to have his condition righted. Several times I saw him at Hull House—he would arrive and carry me off to a corner to tell me, once again, the long and sorry tale of how he had been unfairly treated. I always spared the time to listen for as long as he wanted to talk. For, when it was all told, and even he was spent with the telling, it was still true that he was treated very unfairly. But there was nothing I could do.
THE END
HISTORICAL NOTE
Reading the original articles in the Chicago Tribune, and some of the later testimony in the report of the congressional investigation, gives a wonderful feel for what people were thinking during the action. There is also a contemporary account, The Pullman Strike by Willi
am H. Carwardine, a minister in the town, that paints a vivid picture of conditions.
Another important source of information for me was Touring Pullman; a Study in Company Paternalism, by the Illinois Labor History Society. This walking guide, which is still available at the Pullman Visitor’s Center, gives useful details on the geography of the town at the time of the strike. In particular I learned of the existence of the brickyard, and the brickyard cottages known as the Dens.
The Pullman Strike; the Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval, by Almont Lindsey, was helpful in getting a full picture of what was going on in Chicago, Washington, and the rest of the nation as the ramifications of the strike and boycott spread. There are many other publications and websites about the strike. Over the course of time, I consulted a number of them. I was also able to visit the thriving neighborhood of Pullman as it exists today. The Pullman Visitor Center houses a video presentation and exhibits about the history of the town. I was also able to attend the annual tea at the Florence Hotel and a number of the annual Fall and Christmas house tours of the Historic Pullman Foundation. It is a great place to visit.
Death at Pullman, like the other volumes in the Emily Cabot mystery series, includes a mixture of real and fictional characters. It’s always a tricky decision to choose which real characters to include and how to portray them. Real people in this book include George Pullman, Eugene V. Debs, George W. Howard, Jennie Curtis, and Nellie Bly, as well as Jane Addams. In many places I have quoted or paraphrased things said by these real people that were printed in newspapers or in the compilation of the findings of the congressional hearings published after the strike. In particular, the words of Pullman and Debs at the beginning of the book are from such sources, and the speech of Jennie Curtis is from her own accounts, which are included in the hearings and may be found on various web sites about the strike. What Debs says during his visit to Pullman is drawn from the article “They May Go Hungry”, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1894. The words of his speech are quoted from the article “Can Stand a Siege”, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1894. The description of how the system was set up at the relief station, and the stories of some of the people of the town, were drawn from “Hunger In Its Wake”, Chicago Daily Tribune, June 4, 1894.
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