The Haunting Ballad

by Michael Nethercott

  “Perfervid! It means ardent, of course. Hot in the blood.” He groaned. “Dear God, sir, sometimes I think that you and the English language aren’t even on speaking terms.”

  “Listen, no one says things like ‘perfervid.’ At least no one who hasn’t read War and Peace a dozen times.”

  “Three times,” Mr. O’Nelligan informed me. “I’ve only read War and Peace thrice.”

  “Only three times? My, what a lazy scholar you are.”

  “Scholarship is in the eye of the beholder.”

  “Then I must have a nasty case of conjunctivitis.”

  My companion sighed pleasantly. “Ah, Lee Plunkett, you have more wit than one might give you credit for.”

  I took this as a compliment and let it go at that. Mr. O’Nelligan now opened the thick volume that he’d brought along and read aloud. “‘Call me Ishmael.’”

  “Shouldn’t I call you O’Ishmael?”

  “More wit, I see. Be truthful, is this not arguably the most memorable first line in all of literature?”

  “Must be, since I actually know it. Moby-Dick, right? Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you just read that last fall?”

  “I did, but coming off Hemingway’s sea tale has inspired me to ship aboard the Pequod yet again—for the fourth time, I might add.”

  “Trading a marlin for a whale … that’s some hefty upgrading.”

  “Although still within the nautical realm,” Mr. O’Nelligan observed. “For, after all, aren’t Hemingway’s Old Man and Melville’s Captain Ahab both obsessed mariners in pursuit of an elusive leviathan?”

  “I was just about to say exactly that.”

  My comrade smiled and buried himself in his book for the next hour and a half.

  As we arrived in Greenwich Village, Mr. O’Nelligan traded literature for history, giving me a brief lecture on the area. In 1822, he explained, a yellow fever epidemic in lower Manhattan drove thousands of New Yorkers north to Greenwich, a village of underpopulated pasturelands. Prior to that, it had been the realm of wealthy landowners who craved a bit of country living. The yellow fever changed all that, and before long the place became a bustling sprawl of grocery stores, coffeehouses, tailor shops, restaurants, banks, and bars. As early as the nineteenth century, Greenwich Village had gained a reputation for its artists, radicals, nonconformists, and generally memorable characters.

  Turning onto West 12th, my friend indicated the oblong granite cobblestones that paved the street. “Belgian blocks. They made their way to America as ship ballast and became the very carpet of the Village. And speaking of ships, down just a ways stands the pier where, some forty-five years ago, the survivors of the ill-fated Titanic were put ashore.”

  “Am I going to be tested on all this?” I asked.

  “No, Lee. Knowledge is its own reward.”

  I spent a silly amount of time finding a parking space, but once I’d docked Baby Blue, we easily located the old Manhattan apartment building where Lorraine Cobble had lived. It was squeezed in between two brownstones, and its lower story (her cousin had told me on the phone) had been a carriage house a century before. The front door was surrounded by black iron in the form of a hanging lantern, a low gate, and a pair of framing columns. As I’d been told to expect, the door was left unlocked, due to the buzzer system having been on the fritz for over a month. We climbed four flights of narrow stairs to our destination. I’d barely gotten a knock in before the door flew open and Sally Joan swept us into the apartment.

  “Oh, thank you so much for coming, Mr. Plunkett! I’m so grateful.” She looked it. Now that I could fully take her in, I saw a young woman in her early twenties with bright, healthy features and blond curls. She wore a pink and white checkered dress that suggested a good figure without bellowing the fact.

  I introduced my partner, and Sally Joan Cobble shook our hands with embarrassing vigor. “Thank you for coming! Thank you both.”

  She gestured us to a sofa and took the chair opposite. I gave the room a quick once-over. The walls were covered with framed posters of concerts and music festivals come and gone, plus a scattering of photographs, most notably one showing Lorraine Cobble with a group of extremely wrinkled old men, each sporting overalls and a banjo. The room itself was a controlled jumble of books, stacks of paper, and record albums scattered across several surfaces. One long table supported a sizable phonograph and two or three other gadgets that I guessed might be recording devices. A number of stringed instruments—some of which I could even name—crowded every corner of the room.

  “The place is a bit of a whirlwind, I know,” our hostess said. “Pretty much like my cousin herself.”

  Getting right into things, I flipped open my trusty notebook. “Were you here in the Village at the time of Lorraine’s death?”

  “No, I was back home then, but I’ve been up here since her funeral about a week and a half ago. I’ve been staying at a hotel—I couldn’t bear to sleep here in her apartment knowing that…” Sally Joan glanced up at the ceiling, no doubt visualizing the rooftop above. “Anyway, I’ve been organizing her belongings, meeting with her lawyers … Those sorts of things.”

  Mention of lawyers brought an obvious question to mind. “Who’s her beneficiary?”

  Sally Joan’s face reddened. “I am. Or, I should say, it’s mostly me. She left some smaller bequests to other family members and to a few music societies, but she left me the bulk of it. Not that it’s a huge amount, you understand. Lorraine spent a lot in pursuing her work, but it’s a nice amount all the same.”

  Mr. O’Nelligan nodded. “Do tell us about her work … and her life.”

  Whereas I was more inclined to aim for the facts of the case, my colleague was always interested in the human angle.

  “Lorraine was like…” A little smile played across the young woman’s lips. “A patchwork. Yes, like that—made up of a lot of different pieces. Kind of a crazy quilt, some people might say. It’s really unfortunate, Mr. Plunkett, that you only saw her that one time when she was so … Well, you know.”

  I did know. “Volatile?”

  “Yes, she could be very agitated where her work was concerned. You really need to understand, though, that she wasn’t just that … that nutty woman you saw. She could be very tender and sensitive.” Her voice now trembled with emotion. “She was always kind to me.”

  “We understand,” Mr. O’Nelligan said gently. “Every soul is a mix of many things. Your patchwork comparison is a fine one, indeed. So, you were quite close to your cousin?”

  “Sort of. Though it’s not like we spent tons of time together. She’s seventeen years older than I am.” Sally Joan paused. “I mean, was older. I have three brothers, but I’m the only girl, so I always looked up to her in that way. I think Lorraine thought of me as something of a kid sister. She was living with my family when I was born. Her parents—my uncle and aunt—died in a car accident when Lorraine was a teenager, so my folks took her in for a few years.”

  “Was she always involved with music?” my partner asked.

  “Oh yes, for as long as I can remember. She was already collecting songs when I was little. I remember when I was five or six, she came back from Appalachia and played a dulcimer for me. That one, I think.” She pointed to one of the nameless instruments in the corner, expanding my musical knowledge. “That’s what her job was—she was a songcatcher.”

  “Songcatcher?” This was the first time I’d heard the term. “That’s a job?”

  “Oh, it definitely is. Lorraine would research and gather up songs from all different areas of the country, and Britain, too. Musicology, it’s called. I understand that it’s really quite a science. I’m not all that up on these things myself, but there’s a woman here in the Village named Minnie Bornstein who used to work with Lorraine. She’s someone you could talk to if you wanted to know more. She runs a shop a couple of blocks from here. I can give you the address.”

  “That would be helpful,” Mr. O’Nelligan said. “In fact
, perhaps after this interview you could construct a list for us of all those people significant to your cousin. With phone numbers and addresses. It would be useful in our investigation.”

  I shot my colleague a perplexed look. Investigation? We hadn’t heard anything yet that warranted an investigation.

  Sally Joan continued on, painting a portrait of her cousin as a vigorous career woman who had risen in her field through a combination of skill and bullishness. Early on, Lorraine had apprenticed herself to several prominent scholars in the world of song hunting and had made a name for herself. Along the way, she had briefly acquired and discarded a fairly well-to-do husband whose name she jettisoned after the divorce. The alimony settlement had provided her the means to travel extensively and further pursue her calling. Besides Mr. Moneybags, she had slid through several other short romances in her time, but her true passion was always the music. Despite the glut of instruments in her apartment, Lorraine had been only a passable musician at best. It was in the pursuit and chronicling of songs that her talents lay. As an offshoot of her songcatching, she had identified and promoted a number of promising young folksingers and through that had maintained an ongoing connection with Café Mercutio.

  Though I really didn’t want to utter the name, I felt I needed to. “What about Byron Spires? What exactly was her beef with him? Something about stealing a song, wasn’t it?”

  Sally Joan nodded solemnly. “Yes, it was a ballad she’d found on a recent trip to Scotland. I think she got it from an old sheepherder.”

  “So Spires stole it?”

  “Lorraine certainly saw it like that, but to be honest I’ve never been quite sure how that all works. I mean, one person discovers some ballad that another person sings, and then yet another person sings a new version. It’s all kind of a muddle to me. As I say, someone like Minnie Bornstein could explain it much better.”

  It was time to get down to brass tacks. “They say Lorraine flung herself off the roof of this building,” I stated, perhaps a little too bluntly. “That’s the official conclusion. So why do you think otherwise?”

  “For several reasons.” Sally Joan’s tone took on a new hardness. “First of all, it just isn’t the sort of thing Lorraine would ever do. Not in a million years.”

  “I’m sure that’s what you believe,” I said, “but can anyone ever really know what’s going on in someone else’s mind?”

  “Maybe not, but you can know the type of person it is, can’t you? You can know what they’re capable of and what they’re not. Lorraine wouldn’t kill herself. She had too much … too much…” Sally Joan fumbled about for the word. “Ego. Yes, that’s it. She had way too much ego to throw her life away like that. Plus, she had such vitality and such a hunger for living.”

  Mr. O’Nelligan stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Could her death have been an accident? Might Lorraine have stumbled off the roof?”

  Sally Joan shook her head. “Absolutely not. When you see what it’s like up there, you’ll understand. The sides are raised all around. They’re high enough that you couldn’t just stumble off—but you could definitely be shoved or thrown over.”

  “Or jump,” I felt the need to remind her.

  “Like I’ve said, my cousin would never willingly end her life.”

  “Any idea what she would have been doing on the roof to begin with?” I asked.

  “It’s just something she’d do from time to time,” Sally Joan explained. “Lorraine liked to go up there to look over the skyline and sing to herself. She’d sing and collect her thoughts. She called it her pondering place.”

  “One might well wonder what she was pondering that fateful night,” Mr. O’Nelligan said quietly. “Tell us, lass, how was your cousin dressed when they found her? Bathrobe? Evening wear? Her attire might indicate if she was in for the night or had been out in the world.”

  “I asked the police that myself,” the young woman said. “They told me Lorraine wasn’t wearing anything special—just a green housedress.”

  I moved on. “You said there was a note, Miss Cobble.”

  She grimaced. “I’ve misplaced it somehow! When we spoke on the phone, I thought I knew where I’d put it, but it’s not there. I spent a long time rummaging around the apartment, but I can’t find that envelope now. I’d shown it to the police at one point, but I haven’t seen it since.”

  “Do you remember what this note said?”

  “More or less. It was something like ‘Meet me at ten tomorrow morning.’ It was dated the day before she died.”

  This was possibly interesting. “Was her body discovered early in the day?”

  “No, she was found that night in the alley next door, just before midnight. The coroner figured she hadn’t been dead more than two or three hours at most.”

  I did a quick analysis. “So, almost a whole day of activity had passed between her morning rendezvous and her death.”

  Mr. O’Nelligan rejoined the discussion. “How was the letter signed, Miss Cobble?”

  “It wasn’t,” Sally Joan answered. “There was no signature, and the letter was typed, so you couldn’t even guess if it was written by a man or a woman. Plus, here’s something really odd. Her name was typed on the envelope—just her first name—but there was no address or stamp, so it couldn’t have come by mail. Which means it was hand-delivered to her. Why wouldn’t the person just call her to set up a meeting?”

  “A valid question,” my colleague said. “Have you any guesses as to whom your cousin might have been likely to rendezvous with?”

  “I really don’t. Lorraine knew a lot of people, so it could have been anyone.”

  “Was there any…” Here Mr. O’Nelligan hesitated, and I knew that he was searching for some genteel phrasing. “Any individual to whom Lorraine was recently displaying affection?”

  “Like a lover?” The young woman smiled lightly. “That’s what you mean, right? If Lorraine had someone on her dance card, she never let on. At least not to me. I’d only visit my cousin maybe two or three times a year, so I certainly didn’t know all her comings and goings.”

  Mr. O’Nelligan went for a different angle. “The downstairs door, has the lock been broken since before your cousin’s death?”

  “It has,” Sally Joan answered. “At least since I was last here over a month ago.”

  “That suggests that a stranger might have entered the building that night.”

  “And just happened to make their way up to the rooftop? Gosh, Mr. O’Nelligan, that doesn’t sound right, does it?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Anyway, I’m thinking the group that hangs out down at the Mercutio might have a better take on things. You should go talk to them.”

  “We shall,” my partner said.

  Oh, shall we really? I still wasn’t seeing a case here, and I said as much. “Miss Cobble, there’s a heck of a lot of details we’d have to shift through to even entertain the idea that your cousin was murdered. You know—timelines, habits, who was last seen with her…”

  “I’m a little hazy on all that myself,” Sally Joan admitted. “You could check in with the police to see what they’ve already found out. There’s a Detective Wilton who seemed to be in charge of the investigation. I’m sure he’d be glad to help you.”

  I’m pretty certain I kept my eyes from rolling, but it took an effort. Oh yeah, cops just loved to share information with private dicks who popped up to second-guess their efforts.

  Seemingly oblivious to my doubts, Sally Joan pressed on. “So you’ll take the case, Mr. Plunkett?”

  I cleared my throat apologetically and glanced over at Mr. O’Nelligan, immediately wishing I hadn’t. He fixed me with a look that said, You’re not really going to turn this poor young lady down, are you, lad? I moaned softly to myself, knowing that my fate was sealed. True, the fee would be welcome, but being in Byron Spires’ stomping ground would not.

  “Yes,” I said to Sally Joan, feeling like I was agreeing to a blindfold bef
ore the firing squad took aim. “We’ll take the case.”

  She beamed forth a smile that almost melted my misgivings. Almost.

  Mr. O’Nelligan got down to business. “Now, young miss, if you can compose that list of noteworthy individuals for us as soon as possible. Include any other information you think pertinent.”

  “I’ll do it immediately,” Sally Joan promised. “Actually, there are people here in this building you might want to talk to. You can start with Mrs. Pattinshell, who lives one floor down. I can write up the list while you’re there. I’ve already mentioned you to her.”

  Apparently, this was all a done deal before we’d even stepped into the apartment. “Who’s Mrs. Pattinshell?”

  “She’s one of the people that Lorraine helped set up in this building. She even chipped in with her rent, I think. Like I said, my cousin had a kind-hearted side that not everyone got to see. Of course, Mrs. Pattinshell has a certain skill that Lorraine was very interested in, but even so…”

  “What skill is that?”

  Sally Joan offered an embarrassed smile. “Look, I’m not saying I believe it, but I know Lorraine did. Mrs. Pattinshell is a ghost chanter.”

  That raised my eyebrows. “Come again?”

  “A ghost chanter. It’s what she calls herself. It means she can sing songs that dead people teach her.”

  “Can’t wait,” I lied. “I never met a ghost I didn’t like.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  No sooner had we stepped out into the hallway than a ghost appeared two doors down.

  At least he looked like a ghost—rail-thin, dressed all in white, and stooped over a gnarled walking stick. His narrow face, impossibly wrinkled, turned slowly toward us, and his pale lips parted to deliver his unearthly proclamation.

  “Good day, gents.”

  I was struck dumb by the sight of this apparition, but Mr. O’Nelligan wasn’t so afflicted. “A good day to you, sir,” my partner returned.

  The ancient man nodded, tossed us a little salute, and vanished into his apartment. Once the door had clicked shut, Mr. O’Nelligan gave a wry chuckle. “It’s not often I’m made to feel like a young stripling!”