The Pinks

by Chris Enss

  “Death!” shrieked Annie as she fell backwards and fainted.

  Miss Seaton helped to revive Annie, and escorted her out of the studio and toward home.

  Annie was alarmed and frazzled. She was convinced that Lucille was the genuine article, and once she’d regained her composure, admitted to Miss Seaton how desperately she needed to return to the fortune-teller.

  A few days prior to Annie’s initial visit to Lucille’s, Pinkerton’s operatives in the Far East had tracked Henry Thayer to a shipping line he commanded in the South Seas. Henry had hoped that traveling would make him forget Annie, but it had not. Lucille would use this news to her advantage.

  Miss Seaton and Annie’s next visit with Lucille was just as emotional for the young woman as the first. Annie was seated across from Lucille, who looked her straight in the eye for several moments.

  “There is some peculiar influence about you which prevents a clear reading of your future,” Lucille explained to Annie. “Even your past, though much of it is easily determined, seems obscured by strange inconsistencies—not to say impossibilities. Some of the results were so startling as to make it necessary for me to refuse to reveal them until by a second test I can decide whether there was no mistake in the solution of certain calculations. Tonight, therefore, I shall do what rarely is necessary in reading the horoscope of ordinary humans—I must invoke the aid of my progenitor and master, Hermes.”

  According to Lucille, Hermes was an ancient king who could help her see Annie’s future clearly. Annie was spellbound by Lucille and hung on every word she said. Lucille suddenly began to speak earnestly, with a faraway look in her eyes, as if she actually realized the presence of ghouls and goblins. Annie was terrified, but said nothing, and Lucille continued.

  “There has been with you frequently, during your past years, a man some years older than yourself. He appears to have been a sailor and, though often away from you, he has always sought you out on his return. He loves you, and is undoubtedly your true friend; he is unmarried, yet he does not wish to make you his wife. He wears a peculiar ring which he obtained in the East Indies. He often consults this ring, and it informs him whether he is in danger, or the reverse. You do not love this sailor as well as he loves you, and he wishes to remove you from the other man. He does this to protect you.

  “I cannot understand the actions of the woman whom I mentioned yesterday; I cannot tell whether she is living or dead. The man you love has been with her; he gave her something in a spoon, which she was forced to take. Ah! I see! It was a medicine, a white powder—and now begins the obscurity. Further on, I see that he visited you; you ran to meet him and plied him with caresses. If he were your husband, it would partly clear away the cloud. Is it so?”

  “Yes,” Annie replied, “he is my husband.”

  As the session continued, Annie wanted to know more.

  Lucille conveyed to her that she couldn’t go on unless Annie was completely forthcoming about everything. Any unconfessed deeds prevented the seer from seeing clearly. Annie agreed to hold nothing back. Lucille let the whereabouts of Henry be known, and questioned Annie about the other man she had married in his absence.

  Annie was frightened and confessed to marrying Alonzo Pattmore in a private ceremony shortly after she became convinced that Henry was dead. Annie broke down and sobbed. “I have been very wicked, I know,” she lamented.

  According to Pinkerton, Annie returned a third time to see Lucille to learn what she needed to do to make amends for what she had done. She also wanted to know what she could do to ensure that she could be happy moving ahead.

  Lucille explained that the only way to make things right and ensure a future filled with peace was to reunite with her “sailor husband” and abandon the notion of poisoning her brother. Annie burst into tears. She admitted to having the poison, but said now that she was going to use the poison to kill herself and not her brother. Annie was on the verge of revealing how Pattmore had killed his wife, but great sobs kept her from speaking.

  “You are involved with someone who does not return the affections of a true husband,” the sibyl continued, as she studied Annie’s palm. “This man loves you only for selfish, sensual purposes; he will fondle you as a plaything for a few years, and then he will cast you off for a younger and more handsome rival, even as he has already put away his first wife for your sake. If you cannot give him up now, someday he will throw you aside or trample you underfoot. When he wearies of you, have you any doubt that he will murder you as he has already murdered his first wife?”

  According to Pinkerton’s writings, Lucille had spoken in a rapid, sibilant whisper, leaning forward so as to bring her eyes directly before Annie’s face, and the effect was electric.

  “Yes, the heartless villain murdered his wife by poisoning her. I can see it all as it occurred; it is a dreadful scene, yet I know that it must be true. A woman of middle age is lying in bed; she was evidently very handsome, but now she shows signs of a long illness. Your lover, her husband, enters, and he wishes to give her some medicine; but see, she motions him away, though she is unable to speak. She must know that he is going to poison her, yet she cannot help herself, and the nurse does not suspect his design. Now he has given her the poison, and she is writhing in an agony of pain. She is dead, and her husband is her murderer.”

  “Oh! For God’s sake, spare me, spare me!” Annie exclaimed between her sobs.

  Lucille explained that there was only one sure way to be saved, and that was for Annie to confess what she knew to a court of law. Lucille warned her of the sad fate that awaited her if she ever decided to see the “blackheart” again. She told Annie that she needed to tell the whole truth about her association with Alonzo Pattmore to a mysterious man who has secretly been following her. “He has great power, and if you follow his counsel, he can save you from harm,” Lucille added.

  When the session with the fortune-teller had ended, Annie left the office, still crying over what had transpired. Allan Pinkerton approached her on the street and introduced himself as the one who had been keeping an eye on her. Annie recognized him immediately as the one Lucille spoke of, and didn’t hesitate to accompany him to his office. Through broken tears, Annie told Pinkerton the whole truth about her difficulties. Her story began with how happy she was when she and Henry had first married. She was lonely during his long voyages at sea, and it was during one of those lonely, vulnerable times that she had met Pattmore. Pattmore was lonely, too, and despondent over what to do about his wife. He felt he was wasting his life with a woman he didn’t really love. Annie and Pattmore had an affair and she became pregnant. Shortly after the pregnancy was terminated, Pattmore convinced Annie that they needed to kill all those who stood in the way of their happiness. He would kill his wife, and Annie was to do away with her brother.

  Annie was brokenhearted over her actions, and begged for forgiveness. Captain Sumner had no intention of pressing charges against his sister, but Pattmore was in danger of being charged with murder. Pinkerton released Annie into Captain Sumner’s custody and promised all would go well for her if she stayed and devoted herself to change.

  Physicians in Ohio found large traces of poison in Mrs. Pattmore’s bowels. Pattmore was arrested, tried, and found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

  Henry Thayer returned home to Annie, and they reconciled. The couple had two children and eventually moved to China, where Henry became a partner in a wealthy shipping firm. Captain Sumner kept Pinkerton apprised of his sister’s remarkable reversal of fortune, and thanked the skilled operatives at the Pinkerton Detective Agency for the happy ending.2

  The case of the murderer and the fortune-teller was the last known case Kate Warne worked. She died on January 28, 1868. Historians such as Daniel Stashower believed she succumbed to a “lingering illness.” News of her passing was covered in newspapers from Pennsylvania to France. According to the M
arch 21, 1868, edition of the Philadelphia Press, Kate was not a member of any church, but she was “buried with all the Christian graces.” The article praised her strength and devotion to her job. “She was quick to perceive and prompt to act; she proved that females are useful in a sphere to which the wants of society have long been loath to assign them,” the Philadelphia Press noted. “As she lived, so she died, a fearless, pure, and devoted woman.”3

  Kate is buried at the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, alongside other Pinkerton operatives.

  Notes

  1. Pinkerton, The Detective and the Somnabulist; The Murderer and the Fortune Teller, pp. 105–239.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Philadelphia Press, March 21, 1868; Anglo Times, March 28, 1868; The Magnet, Agricultural, Commercial, and Family Gazette, July 13, 1868.

  Bibliography

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  ———. May 25, 1869.

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  ———. September 22, 1951.

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  ———. March 5, 1961.

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  ———. October 21, 1861.

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  ———. March 8, 1861.

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  ———. June 4, 1856.

  ———. February 20, 1861.

  ———. February 25, 1861.

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  ———. September 26, 1900.

  ———. December 11, 1911.

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  ———. October 8, 1864.

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  ———. February 29, 1868.

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  ———. Spy of the Rebellion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2011.

  ———. Thirty Years a Detective. Warwick, NY: 1500 Books, 2007.

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