by Mike Ashley
“What tea?”
“There was a package of China tea on the table. Now, where would a girl like Jenny Thomas –”
The district surgeon stared at him. “Deliver me!” he said sardonically, and turned his face to the window.
After that, Church stared out his own window and kept his own thoughts. Even a police surgeon like Lucas was inclined to sniff at scientific crime-detection. People forgot that this was 1857, that the whole nation was in an upsurge of science; man’s brain had liberated his back from a thousand enslaving tasks. But when it came to law-enforcement, they were still back in the old days of watch-and-ward. If the thief was not caught with his hand in the till, the tendency was to forget about it.
But Tom Church knew that if you assembled enough molehills, you had a mountain. What about the tea and the mother-of-pearl box, for instance? What about the two hundred and thirty-seven dollars? Jenny Thomas had not been a street-walker – she had held a job; and anyway, street-walkers did not make that kind of money.
But then, he recalled, there was her husband, and yet none of the letters had mentioned enclosing any money. They were all stilted and self-conscious, the letters of a sea-captain who had no thought beyond the caprices of the weather and of his ship, and who signed himself, “Your husb., Evan Thomas.” The envelopes bore the dogged rubric: “Evan Thomas, Master, Brig Philadelphia.”
Well, this was a starting point. In the spiteful drizzle, Church left Sixth Ward station. A clerk in the harbourmaster’s office opened the Arrivals ledger for him. His finger stopped at the top of the third to the last page.
“ ‘Brig Philadelphia, May 7,’ ” he read. “ ‘Master, Evan Thomas.’ But I wouldn’t wait dinner on him,” he added with a grin. “She’s flying the yellow flag, suspected of cholera. The last ship in from San Juan was rotten with it.”
“You mean,” Church said, “that no one has been ashore?”
“And won’t be for forty days!”
There was no other Captain Thomas on the books. This left Church the unpleasant task of learning whether or not Thomas was still aboard ship.
He took the Staten Island ferry, and debarked at Castleton in mid-afternoon. Behind the town were the new brick pest-houses about which the citizenry was raising such a cry. Offshore stood the Philadelphia, sea-worn and wet, a yellow quarantine flag hanging limp from a forestay.
A grizzled lobsterman agreed to row the detective to within speaking-distance for a dollar. In a snub-nosed dory they thrust across the grey water of the bay. They approached another rowboat in their path whose owner was casting for junk. He let them pass, and then the dragnet splashed again just astern of them.
The lobsterman rested on his oars. “Far as we go, mate.”
It was the distance of a long shout, but Church cupped his hands and succeeded in bringing to the rail a square-set figure in black jacket and trousers. “Sergeant Church, Metropolitan Police,” he announced. “Would you be good enough to call the captain?”
“You’re talking to him,” the other man shouted; “but if you’re from the police, the only favour you’ll find here is a bucket of slops amidships. I’ll talk to you when this damned yellow flag comes down!”
Church thought, For a sea-captain, he talks like a fool. But he said patiently: “You must understand, Captain, that the quarantine laws are for the good of the city.”
The master leaned on the rail. “For the good of someone, yes,” he agreed, “and I could tell you who. But there’s no more cholera aboard this brig than there is in your back yard. We haven’t been within two hundred miles of San Juan!”
Church had the quick warm tingle a hunting dog must experience when he flushes game. To the lobsterman, he said: “Another dollar if you’ll row me closer.”
The lobsterman pocketed the money. He brought the dory alongside. Close up, the master appeared to be in his forties, his face as brown and hard-looking as the leather visor of his cap. His beard was crisp and blond, and followed the line of his jaws.
“Perhaps,” said Church, “we can make a trade. If your log bears you out, I’ll see what’s to be done toward putting you ashore. But in return I want a plain answer to a plain question.”
Thomas stared down at him. “That’s a fair bargain.” He disappeared. The junkman, drifting close, made a great clatter by pulling in a rusty contraption resembling an old ship’s-lantern.
Then the captain came back to lower, by a line, a fat volume which Church laid on the thwart.
“Now, then,” he said, “why would anyone want to keep you from going ashore?”
“A little matter of supply and demand,” returned the other. “If you’re a cigar man, you’ll know that New York hasn’t a cigar worth setting fire to. I had the news in Havana, so I loaded up with all the good tobacco I could buy. But a certain gentleman has cornered what decent smoking is left in the city, and he can’t afford to let me unload until he’s made his profit. So it’s cheaper for him to cross the proper palms with silver. For your information, his name’s Hawes, of South Seas House.”
“Is this guesswork?”
“No sir! I had it in a letter from my wife. His warehouse is supposed to be full of Havanas that he’s selling as dear as diamonds.”
Tom Church asked carefully: “Your wife lives in the city?”
Thomas nodded. “In Bloomingdale, up-island.”
“If it’s as you say,” Church declared, “I’ll speak to the Health Commission. And now, maybe you’ll tell me this: how long were you ashore this morning?”
Captain Thomas did not stir. “I’ve been telling you I haven’t been ashore since I left Cuba.”
“Then how was it that a man answering to your description was asking for a Mrs Thomas in Ludlow Street?”
Thomas began to look grave. “There’s something wrong, here,” he said.
It put Church in a corner, but he said what he had to. “I’m sorry if I’m the first to bring you this news, Captain; but there is indeed something wrong. Your wife has been murdered. From the landlady’s testimoney, it seems that you might have visited her about the time she died.”
Thomas’ hand passed over his face. He said falteringly: “This is – I don’t quite understand, sir –”
Church repeated it. “It’s very sad, Captain, and I wouldn’t trouble you, except for –”
Thomas was still staring down at the dory, but he wasn’t seeing him. “Will you do what you can,” he asked, “about clearing my ship? I’ll talk to you later. I – I don’t think I can – You understand?” He vanished from the rail.
When they pulled away, the junkman was standing in the stern of his boat, trying to raise the dragnet.
It was dusk when Tom Church reached Manhattan again. The rain had cleared off, but a grey ceiling pressed down on the island, and the cobbles glistened in early gaslight. He bought hot-buttered corn from a girl, and ate as he walked.
He felt sorry for the Captain; he seemed an honest and sincere man. But unless Jenny Thomas had had other sailor friends, he had been lying about not having been ashore.
There was time for one more small excursion tonight. In about an hour the shops of Manhattan would release their underfed pigeon-chested army of clerks and shopgirls. He might, before then, sift the place Jenny Thomas had worked, for a lead or two.
He found the Gotham Hat Works in an old frame building near South Street. A bay window infringed on the sidewalk: behind it he saw work-tables and shelves, and three women bent over half-finished work.
Mrs Emma Flynn, who operated the shop, was a bony woman with a long nose and a smudge of dark hairs on her upper lip. She was treadling a sewing-machine when the bell over the door tinkled. Two girls sat at tables, stitching breakfast-caps, and on the tilted shelves along the left wall was displayed a variety of millinery.
Tom Church held his high-crowned derby against his stomach. He introduced himself. He said: “I suppose the unfortunate news –”
Mrs Flynn said: “Yes.” She continued
to hold a ruffle of ribbon under the foot of the machine. “What do you want?”
“Just a bit of information,” Church told her. “It may possibly save both of us some trouble. Strange as it may seem, the law requires you to answer correctly anything I may ask you relative to the death of Jenny Thomas.”
Mrs Flynn laid the work aside. “Does it, now?” Her smile said he would get nothing here worth carrying away.
Church walked past the bonnets on the shelves. He picked one up and abstractedly inspected it. “What was Jenny’s work, Mrs Flynn?”
“Capmaker.”
“Did you know any of her friends? The men she knew?”
Mrs Flynn hesitated. “Well – I dare say she had a many, but they came and went. Right now it’s Harry Burritt, from Mr Hawes’. There’ll be a long face for you! He’ll have to find somebody else to walk home and spend his money on!”
Church put the bonnet down again. “Hawes – would that be Hawes, of South Seas House?”
Mrs Flynn selected a spool of green ribbon, and threaded a needle. “He’s the only Hawes I know, and he’s enough! He charges for his silk as though the Emperor’s own silkworms had spun it!”
“I don’t suppose,” Church said, “that you would have known Jenny’s husband?”
The way the girls at their tables looked up told Church he had cracked a nut with meat in it. “In a way,” Emma Flynn said. “He’s a ship-captain. He was in this morning, looking for Jenny. I think,” she added, “that he left a paper of some kind.”
She found it under a pile of scraps, a wrinkled envelope addressed to Captain Thomas, with a return address in Bloomingdale. “Seems as though he couldn’t find her at the old address,” she said. “She was still using it for mail, though, and picking letters up there. It’s almost like she was hiding from him! I gave him the new address, and he copied it down, and forgot this when he left.”
Church kept the envelope. He turned, as the bell over the door jingled. A man in a brown linsey-woolsey suit and a heavy jacket came in. He carried a gunnysack over his shoulder. He was about forty-five, with a swarthy handsomeness that gin was eradicating; his hair was curly, and his eyes were dark, but bloodshot.
Looking at him, remembering him, Church knew he had his hand in a tangle of threads like a spider-web. Somewhere there was a radial point; somewhere there was a connection between them all – Hawes and Jenny Thomas and this grubby hat-shop; for the man in the door was the scavenger who had been casting his net beside the brig two hours ago, while Church talked to Captain Thomas.
“Well, Flynn!” Mrs Flynn said, “has it taken you all day to bring home such a handful as that?”
Flynn grunted, passed her and opened a door in the rear to throw the sack through. It landed on a dirt floor several steps below shop-level. He sat down, rubbed his hands together, and stared at Church.
“This gentleman,” Emma Flynn told him, “is a detective, come about Jenny.”
“What about Jenny?” Flynn’s face did not admit that he had ever seen Tom Church before.
“Dead,” Mrs Flynn said. “Murdered!”
Flynn slowly sat up. “Murdered! Jenny?”
“A terrible thing,” said Mrs Flynn, but her eyes were wickedly bright. “She was such a pretty little chit. We shall miss her, sha’n’t-we?”
There was one thing about women, thought Church: their emotions tricked them into saying things they would not have put into writing. He had a whole history, now, of jealousy and suspicion, of kisses stolen behind doors, or merely imagined by a woman who was not young and not pretty any more.
Flynn sat with his elbows on his knees, thumbnail digging at a callus; and just then the front door opened again, and a young man in a claw-hammer coat, with an unbrushed silk hat, poked his head in to say: “Pardon, ma’am. Mr Hawes says, will there be any hats tonight?”
Mrs Flynn’s cheeks burned, but she kept the treadle rocking. She said: “No. Not tonight.”
“But he said you promised –”
“Tell him I’m sorry! This thing of Jenny put me behind. And then there are the police to entertain – detectives, and all.”
“Detectives –” The young man’s eyes found Church. “Yes, I suppose there would be. Well, good evening, Mrs Flynn. I’ll tell Mr Hawes.”
He closed the door briskly, and his tall form passed the shop-window.
Mrs Flynn remarked dryly: “That was Burritt, Jenny’s young man.”
“So I judged,” Church said. Presently he too started toward the door. “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” he told Mrs Flynn. “But I have to bother a lot of wrong people to find the right.” Then he picked up one of the bonnets from the display shelf. “Forgive my masculine ignorance, ma’am. All I truly know of millinery is what Mrs Church’s bonnets cost me. But I wasn’t aware that mull had been used for several years.”
“When you’re as busy as we are,” snapped Mrs Flynn, “you can’t always keep your display shelves up to the minute. All our hats are sold wholesale, anyway.”
“Of course!” Church said goodnight, nodded to Mr Flynn, and went out. He was smiling to himself as he started home. Yes ma’am, he thought, you doubtless keep very busy indeed. But I suspect it isn’t with hats!
In the morning he took a four-cent omnibus to 106th Street. Here commerce defiled the pure air of Harlem with the odours of Indian rubber factories, breweries and tanneries. Hawes’s place appeared no grimier nor less grimy than the rest, a two-storey brick structure with a gateway at the left by which drays might enter and leave the warehouse.
Clerks were already busy, their fingers scuttling over accounts and copy-books. Behind a railing, a little army of women was packaging and labelling merchandise. Farther back was a corner walled off by waist-high wainscoting topped by windows. Church was not surprised to see, working just outside the door of this cubicle, the young man in the claw-hammer coat who had come to Flynn’s about the bonnets for Mr Hawes. But he passed by him to knock at the door.
Mr Hawes was a precociously stout gentleman who left his desk to greet the visitor. He put much of his weight on a stout snakewood cane; Church could sympathize with a lame man of his avoirdupois. Mr Hawes wore a frock coat with a cream-colored waistcoat; his face was pink and pouched. When Church mentioned Captain Thomas, he slapped his thigh and went into wheezy laughter.
“Ah, poor old Thomas!” he chuckled. “Yes, I might have had something to do with the cholera story. But it’s quite all right, now; I have sold my stock well. You may release him, with my best wishes!”
He balanced his cane against the desk as he sat down; Church saw it falling, and reached forward to catch it. He said, holding it an instant: “Of course you realize that charges can be pressed –”
Back of the merry little eyes was shrewdness. “I don’t believe Captain Thomas will make me any trouble. You see, there is the matter of a ton of sugar he sold me one time which was so weevilly I had to let it go to a candy-maker, at a loss . . . We’re old friends, Thomas and I.”
He reached to open a cabinet on the desk and offer cigars. “Take several, detective. You won’t find these on the market, I’ll vow. A gentleman’s cigar, from the Vuelta Abaja.”
Church brazenly took six. He lighted one and let his taste-buds revel in the benediction of the warm smoke. Then he said: “Oh, yes – I thought these might mean something to you –” He began to take a number of articles out of his pocket which he laid before the importer.
Hawes picked up the packet of China tea. “Where did you get these?”
“In the room of Jenny Thomas, who was murdered yesterday morning.”
Hawes grunted. “I heard about Jenny. A shame; such a pretty girl. You know,” he said, “it’s very curious about these. Generally, a retailer would have substituted his stamp for mine, or at least have added his. We never sell tea, by the way, in amounts this small. Someone packaged this from the bulk, and closed it with my seal. I am wondering if one of my clerks hasn’t been making her gifts, at my
expense.”
Through the open door, Church watched Burritt’s neck redden. “It seems possible,” he remarked. “Did you know the girl?”
“She used to bring an order, occasionally, from Flynn’s hat-shop.”
“But you don’t deal in hats yourself?”
Hawes looked at him, steadily. “I have. There’s no profit in them. I don’t handle any at present.”
Church stood. “I think that’s all, then. No, don’t get up,” he said. “I may visit you again, sir. Good day.”
He stopped at Burritt’s desk and appropriated a sheet of foolscap. He dipped a steel pen and wrote slantwise across the page: “The Hen and Chickens, at twelve.” He said, “Thank you,” and departed, leaving the foolscap on the desk.
The Hen and Chickens was a chophouse in lower Harlem, where a man with Church’s appetite could lunch well for thirteen cents, beer included. Burritt arrived a little after the hour. He took the other seat in the booth.
His skin was moist; a little colony of pimples on his chin stood out. “I don’t understand this at all, sir,” he declared.
Church picked up his cutlet. “Shall we be hanged for a thief or a murderer?” he asked.
Burritt gripped the edge of the table. “Sir, I would appreciate –”
Church laid down the cutlet and wiped his fingers. “Of course,” he said. “My reasoning is somewhat in this direction: that, according to Mrs Flynn’s testimony, you were Jenny Thomas’s current lover. That many of the more valuable objects in her room came from South Seas House. It is my guess that you stole them.”
Harry Burritt’s amber-coloured eyes closed. His narrow chest took a shallow breath. Resolution and defiance were deserting him; when he opened his eyes again, they looked down at his clenched hands, resting on the table.
“A thief, yes,” he said. “But not a murderer. Believe me!”
“Is there,” Church asked him, “such a difference? A man steals to please a girl; he trades his honesty and peace of mind for her kisses. And then he finds she is already married, that he had played the fawning poodle for nothing, and for a moment the poodle becomes a mastiff, biting, snarling, killing –”