by Oak, B. B.
“Done!” She took up my hand and pressed it between her cool palms to settle the matter.
Thenceforth we addressed each other by our Christian names and chatted most amiably until Adam and Henry returned. Lidian persuaded Adam to have a glass of her home-brewed beer before we departed, and from his expression I surmise it tasted as bitter as her wine.
Less than ten minutes into our journey back to Plumford we came upon the badly injured farmer. Hence, I had no opportunity to question Adam about what transpired during his visit with the Bidwell ladies. Perhaps I can find out more from him tomorrow. It seems we are on better terms now.
ADAM’S JOURNAL
Tuesday, December 7
Henry and I took the milk train to Boston this morning and went directly to Bidwell’s Oxford Street boardinghouse. We let ourselves in when our knocks on the front door went unheard due to the deafening clamor emanating from the dining room. We found there a dozen or so young men seated at a long table, and although they appeared from their attire to be aspiring professionals of one type or another, I must say they were behaving more like pigs at a trough. The strong-armed serving girl could barely keep up with their demand for more of everything. As quick as heaping platters of corn bread, grits, boiled eggs, fried potatoes, sausage, bacon, pork steak, codfish, and salmon were brought out from the kitchen and laid upon the table, hands reached out to grab and push other hands aside. But the men were cheerful enough as they jostled each other, all the time chewing and talking at breakneck speed.
This spirited mayhem was presided over by a stout, beady-eyed woman of middle age standing at the head of the table. She wore a formidable frown under her frilled cap and brandished a long wooden serving spoon that she looked ready to crack upon the knuckles of any who overstepped whatever loose rules of dining etiquette there were. She gave us an appraising glance and then walked over to where we stood at the door.
“I am Mrs. Barker, proprietor. If you young gentlemen are in want of breakfast, you will have to wait for a seat and make do with whatever is left over after my boarders get through stuffing themselves. I will charge you accordingly, of course. If you are in want of a room, I have one available. It is rather small for two, but again, I will charge you accordingly.”
“What we are in want of, Mrs. Barker,” Henry said, “is information regarding a boarder of yours, namely Chauncey Bidwell.”
Her tiny eyes narrowed. “You do not look like coppers to me.”
“Nor are we,” I said. “My name is Walker, and I am a doctor. This is Mr. Thoreau and he is a . . .” My mind searched for a way to introduce him. Teacher? Surveyor? Carpenter? Pencil-maker? I was about to settle on writer, albeit an unpublished one, but Henry finished my sentence for me.
“A friend of the Bidwell family,” he said.
“And has Chauncey’s family sent you to pay his back rent?” When Henry shook his head, she folded her arms and looked even crosser. “He owes me for a month’s room and board, and since I ain’t seen hide nor hair of the rascal for the last week, I reckon he has run off and left me high and dry. Indeed, it was his room I was offering you.”
“He did not run off on you,” Henry told her. “But neither will he be coming back.”
“You speak in riddles,” she said.
He ushered her away from the boisterous dining room and out into the hallway, where he told her the circumstances of Bidwell’s demise.
“Poor scalawag,” she said and looked sincerely sorrowful. “What is his family’s address?”
“Do you wish to send them a letter of condolence?” I asked.
Her face hardened again. “I wish to send them a bill!”
“Pray do not trouble them,” Henry said. “They are in deep mourning and have no money to spare.”
“Then I shall sell whatever Chauncey left behind in his room.”
“Let us see what there is to buy,” I said.
She led us up to the third floor and stopped before Bidwell’s locked door. Henry tried the smaller key Bidwell’s sister had given us. It fit the lock. He showed Mrs. Barker the larger key, but she did not recognize it.
There was not space enough in Chauncey’s small room for the three of us, so Mrs. Barker lingered in the hall, her small, bright eyes watching our every move as we searched. Beneath the bed we found a pair of well-made, polished shoes and a box containing three spotless white collars and two cravats of high quality. A very fine woolen frock coat hung on a peg, along with a red satin waistcoat and a pair of striped trousers.
We continued to search the room. In the desk drawer all we found were playbills and ticket stubs from the Howard Theater. We proceeded to turn over the bed, upend desk and chair, and peer into every crack and cranny. Mrs. Barker did not try to stop us. In fact, she encouraged us to look well and good, supposing we were hunting for treasure. But when we came up empty-handed she was not the least bit surprised.
“He was such a spendthrift, that Chauncey. Went out every night.”
“Did he have visitors?” Henry asked.
“If it’s women you mean, they are not allowed upstairs. This is a respectable house. He had no male visitors, either.”
“Was he friends with any of the other boarders?”
She shook her head. “He considered himself superior to them. And he was in a way. He was clean and polite and well-spoken. You could tell he’d been raised up proper. And he was such a handsome young man! He always looked quite the dapper spark.” A film of tears softened her eyes as she recalled this. She blinked, and her eyes beaded up again. “How much will you give me for his clothes?”
I pulled out my wallet and gave her all the bills I had.
“That does not cover what he owed me.”
“Keep the clothes then, along with the money,” Henry said. “We have no use for them, and neither do the Bidwell ladies.”
After leaving the boardinghouse we went straight to the offices of Curtis, Hayden, and Lardner on Tremont Street. Informed the young man at the desk in the foyer that we wished to speak to a senior partner regarding Chauncey Bidwell. He looked at us with some curiosity and seemed on the point of speaking to us, but then went off to announce us. We then cooled our heels for nigh an hour until we were shown into Mr. George Hayden’s office. Without rising, Mr. Hayden gave me a fleeting glance, and then peered over his pince-nez spectacles at Henry, apparently put off by his country clothes and stout, unpolished boots. Henry, in his turn, stared back at Hayden with his usual aplomb.
“I have little time to give you concerning Chauncey Bidwell,” Hayden told us, clearly annoyed that we should presume to have asked for something so precious. “Now tell me why you are here and be quick about it.”
Henry did just that. “We are here to learn as much as we can about Bidwell in the hope of finding out who murdered him.”
“Chauncey has been murdered?” Hayden’s pale eyes widened behind his spectacles. “My God!” As astonished as he was with this news, in the next moment he seemed resigned to it. “I feared he would come to no good end after he left here.”
“He gave up his apprenticeship with your firm?” I said.
“We gave him up,” Hayden replied. “Young Bidwell was let go months ago.”
“Really?” I glanced at Henry, but he did not seem much surprised.
“His family had such high hopes for him,” he said to Hayden.
“As we did.” Hayden’s countenance became more benign. “Chauncey was a most impressive young man, intelligent, articulate, and in possession of considerable social graces. But his eagerness to pursue the law was not sustained beyond a few months, and he fast showed more attention to the fit of his britches than to the form of a case brief. So full was he of empty airs and excuses for unfinished work that we decided there was no room left in him for improvement. It fell upon me to dismiss him. And Chauncey did not seem to be much affected when I did so. He gave me a deep bow in parting, to mock or respect me, who knows? And then he sailed out of this office as
if he had not a care in the world.”
Hayden asked for details as to how Chauncey was murdered and seemed truly distressed that his demise had been so violent. He slipped off his spectacles and pressed a fingertip to his dampened eyes. But after a moment’s silence he told us he had no further information to impart and made it clear he was done with us by taking out his pocket watch and giving it, not us, his full attention.
We next made our way the short distance to Scollay Square and the Howard Theater. As we approached, Henry asked if I’d ever attended a performance there.
“Often when I was a student in Cambridge,” I said. “And you?”
“Never,” Henry said. “I was far too poor to pay for entertainment when I attended Harvard, and I hardly desire to do so now. My life itself is my amusement and never ceases to be novel.”
“How fortunate for you to find such enjoyment in your own company,” I said wryly.
“Yes, I am fortunate indeed,” he replied with a straight face but a twinkle in his eye. “I am not averse to the simple sounds made by an Italian music box, however. Or the voices of my friends singing, of course.”
When we reached the theater Henry took in the Gothic façade. “Mighty elaborate exterior to house such a flimsy enterprise,” he remarked.
A notice upon the locked entrance door informed us it would be open at seven in the evening for admission to see Junius Brutus Booth in a performance of Hamlet. “Shakespeare can hardly be called flimsy,” I said.
Henry made no reply. His attention was taken by a group of boisterous young men and women who had walked past us and turned down an alley at the side of the building. He set off after them, motioning me to come along. When we saw them enter the theater by a stage door, we followed. A boy of about ten was stationed at the entrance, and he raised his wooden sword to block our way.
“Halt or I shall slay you,” he declaimed as if reciting lines on the boards.
“And who may you be, young man, to threaten us so boldly?” Henry inquired with great seriousness.
“Why, I am John Wilkes Booth, son of Junius Brutus Booth.” He lowered his sword and took a bow. “Someday I shall be even more famous than my father, and you will not have to ask such a stupid question.”
“And for what will you be famous?” Henry said.
“Acting, of course.” Up went his sword again, pointed at Henry’s throat. “And slaying varlets who offend me.”
“Why, we mean no offence,” Henry said. “We are here on an important mission and would like to enlist the aid of a brave soldier such as yourself.”
The boy immediately picked up on this plot change in his invented play. “At your service, sir!” he said and gave a smart salute. “Tell me whom you would like me to assassinate, and I will go do it forthwith.”
“Do not be so eager to draw blood, pretend or not, lad,” Henry told him. “Our mission is to find a murderer, not engage one. Tell me, did you know a young man called Chauncey Bidwell?”
“By sight only,” the boy replied. “We never exchanged so much as a word. Whom did he murder?”
“It was he who was murdered, I’m afraid,” Henry said.
The boy did not so much as blink his dark, strange eyes. “Who would want to kill a mere nobody like him?”
“We don’t know why Mr. Bidwell was murdered,” I said gruffly, put off by the child’s coldness. “We would like to talk to anyone who was acquainted with him here.”
“Follow me,” John Wilkes Booth commanded and marched off with great haughtiness. He was a most insufferable child, but follow him we did.
He led us across the stage floor, where men were removing a painted canvas scene of a forest glade and replacing it with one of a palace entrance. Above us hung a labyrinth of ropes and pulleys, and below us were the pit stalls where I had sat with my friends as a student, preferring them to the stuffy box seats, which we could ill afford anyway. The boy then took us round back of the stage and down a narrow hall. At the end of the hall was a large room with doors flung open. Inside, twenty or so young women of exceptional pulchritude were chatting and laughing and staring at themselves in mirrors that lined the walls. I don’t know about Henry, but I felt mildly intoxicated by such an abundance of uninhibited femininity. We men see so little of women when they are open and expressive instead of defending their social position and virtue or assessing a candidate for a suitable marriage. That is why Julia has always enchanted me. She never cared a whit for such things. It occurred to me she would have made a superb actress. For aught I know she might have been acting a part when she declared her everlasting love for me two years ago.
Young Booth ran into the room and was greeted with hugs and kisses by the actresses. Henry and I remained in the doorway, hesitant to intrude. But we were beckoned to enter by more than one fair damsel. Apparently they were used to male visitors encroaching upon their female sphere.
“Have you come to see our rehearsal?” one of the beauties inquired. “We’ll be performing it for the public next week, but I suppose you want a teasing little preview such as this.” She lifted the edge of her skirt just enough to show off a slender ankle. “Curtain up!” she cried. Then dropped the hem much too quickly. “And curtain down!” The girls all laughed.
“They have come to investigate the murder of Chauncey Bidwell!” the boy bellowed most dramatically over their titters.
His announcement was met with more mirth. But then, as the actresses regarded our serious visages, the laughter faded. “Is it true?” the bold teaser asked. “Chauncey is dead?”
Henry nodded and gave a succinct account of how and where death had come to Chauncey. Lest they thought us Boston police, he explained we came from Concord seeking justice on the mother’s behalf for her murdered son. His simple and honest manner put them at ease, and they let loose a flood of sad recollections of the young man’s handsome face and generosity. Not a single woman, however, could suggest any reason whatsoever for his murder. He had no enemies they knew of, or even jealous rivals. It seemed Chauncey was not taken very seriously by anyone.
Before we could inquire further the actresses were called to the stage for their rehearsal, and the precocious Booth boy followed after them. The only one who remained was a handsome woman of perhaps fifty who was seated at a table mixing tinted powders into ajar of paste. To my surprise Henry took a seat beside her and introduced himself. She told him her name was Mrs. Perry, and he inquired if she too was an actress.
“I used to tread the boards when I was younger,” she said, obviously flattered that he thought she still did. “Now I stay behind the scenes painting faces and gluing on false hair and noses. Hardly as exciting.”
“But still important,” Henry said. “Do not the illusions you create backstage make it possible for actors to create them onstage?”
“Well put!” she said. “I can indeed make an actor look young or old, beautiful or ugly, or any which way in-between with these tools of my trade.” She waved her hand over her collection of shallow pots, saucers, jars, tins, and vials. “Or should I say the tricks of my trade? For I am as much a conjuror as a craftsman. See you this?” Mrs. Perry picked up a short, thick white stick and waved it before Henry’s face. “It’s called French chalk, and it can do wonders. I could lighten your sun-browned complexion with it, if you’d like.” Henry quickly pulled back, and she laughed. “I don’t suppose you have any use for my India ink or lampblack, either. Or my rose powder tinged with carmine.” She pointed to a pot of crimson pigment.
Henry looked back at the table with renewed interest. “Carmine is a dye derived from the cochineal,” he said.
“What, pray, is a cochineal?”
“A scale insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Sternor-rhyncha.”
“Are you telling me I have bugs crawling around in my rouge pot?”
It was Henry’s turn to laugh. “Not at all. What you have in there is the carminic acid extracted from the female scale insect’s body and eggs.”
> “Good Lord a’mercy!” she gasped.
“There is no cause for alarm,” Henry told her. “I should think the substance would be quite safe to apply upon the face.” He glanced at me. “What think you, doctor?”
Having far less knowledge of invertebrates than Henry, I merely shrugged and said, “It is probably safer than applying arsenic to the face at any rate.”
“I use arsenic rarely but to great effect,” Mrs. Perry said. “A dusting of it gives the performer’s visage an eerie glow. An even better effect is to prepare the skin with an alkaline wash, fill in any wrinkles and depressions with paste, and then enamel it with lead paint. But enough about my methods. It is Chauncey Bidwell you have come to learn about, is it not?”
Henry nodded. “Did you see a great deal of him backstage?”
“Oh, he was always hanging about here. ‘Don’t you have a home, Chauncey?’ I would ask him. ‘My home is where my pipe is,’ he’d reply.” She gave Henry an arch look. “I don’t suppose you know what he meant by that.”
“I venture he meant that his home was an opium den.”
Mrs. Perry raised her painted eyebrows. “You are not as green as you appear to be, young man. Have you smoked opium yourself?”
“No, but I admit to smoking lily stems once.”
“Lily stems!” She gave Henry’s arm a playful slap. “Such a devil you are!”
“Do you know where Bidwell went to indulge his opium habit?”
Mrs. Perry leaned closer to Henry. “Well, I know he once took several of the girls to a most disreputable place called Chandoo Gate on Ann Street. They would probably not admit to it if you asked them, though.”
“Then I shall not,” Henry said. “What else can you tell me about Bidwell?”
“Nothing you didn’t already hear from the girls. They’ll miss him, I suppose, but not for long. He’ll be replaced by others of his ilk soon enough. Chauncey might have thought himself special, but alas he was not.”
“To his family he was,” Henry said.
“Ah, yes. His poor mother.” A head shake and a sigh were the extent of Mrs. Perry’s commiseration. “Now if you’ll pardon me, I must get back to my mixing, gentlemen. I am preparing face paint for an actor who is due here soon to fetch it. At present he is not engaged in a theater production, and to make ends meet he performs Shakespeare soliloquies at lyceums in the region. Such amazing range! He can play Hamlet one moment, and Ophelia the next. You will be recognized for the fine actor you are one day, Orlando, I tell him.”