A Golden Grave--A Rose Gallagher Mystery Page 4

  “If you’re still willing to offer me one.” It was a feeble joke, thoroughly deserving the cold silence that greeted it. “We’ll speak tomorrow, Sergeant, once I’ve had a chance to discuss the matter with Mr. Wiltshire.” Oh, how it stung my pride to have to say that, but the truth was as stark as the bodies on those tables: I’d been as good as useless. I needed my partner, even if he didn’t need me.

  We’d just turned to go when Mr. Burrows said, “By the way, Sergeant, how did it come out? The convention, I mean. Whom are they putting forward for mayor?”

  “Some Knickerbocker called Roosevelt. Quite the dude, judging from his picture in the papers.”

  Recognition flickered across Mr. Burrows’s features, but he made no reply, turning and heading for the door. All I could do was follow.

  “I’m sorry,” I said once the coachman had shut the carriage door. “I didn’t realize—”

  “It’s done.” He gazed out the fogged window, his profile sketched in shadow. “I’d rather not dwell on it.”

  “I feel awful.”

  “That makes two of us.” He paused, sighing. “But I’ll get over it, as should you.”

  The remainder of the ride passed in silence, Mr. Burrows staring out the window while I turned Sergeant Chapman’s murders over in my mind. I had no idea what to do next. Chapman had been right about the coroner’s lies. That, and the strange behavior of the chief of detectives, suggested that whatever had really happened at the Republican County Convention, powerful people wanted it kept hush. But why?

  By the time we pulled up at Number 726, I was so lost in thought that I’d already stepped down from the carriage before I noticed Thomas standing on the stoop.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mr. Burrows, sounding grimly amused. “I do believe you’re in hot water.” Then, with the faintest of sighs, he descended from the carriage himself, since it would be terribly bad form to drive off without greeting his best friend.

  “I’m very glad to see you both,” Thomas said, his expression a mixture of relief and irritation. “I was concerned. When I asked after you, Clara said you’d gone out, but she had no idea where. You could have at least left me a note.”

  “Something came up suddenly.” The chill in my voice surprised even me. “Sergeant Chapman came by with a case. I thought I could be useful there, at least.”

  Thomas blinked, taken aback.

  “Alas, I was recruited to the cause as well,” Mr. Burrows put in, “but I’ll let Miss Gallagher fill you in on the details. I’ve an engagement with a very expensive bottle of armagnac.” He touched his hat and alighted in the carriage once more, and with a jingle of harness and clatter of hooves, he was gone.

  “I do beg your pardon, Thomas,” I said coolly, sweeping past him into the foyer.

  “Rose.”

  I checked my stride. Hurt as I was, his voice still cast a spell on me.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  I didn’t turn around. If I could avoid those pale eyes, maybe I could get through this without losing my composure. “It was late, and Sergeant Chapman was afraid the evidence would be buried.”

  “You could have left me a message. I’d have come straightaway. We’re partners, Rose.”

  “It seems to me that you’re the one who left.”

  “Left? I merely suggested you take the night off.”

  “It wasn’t a suggestion. You informed me that I wasn’t to come. Because of what Mr. Jackson said, I suppose.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  I couldn’t help it; I whirled to face him. “I heard you. As I was coming down the stairs, I heard Mr. Jackson say that I was”—my voice wavered dangerously—“I heard him say it was a mistake.”

  “He disagreed with my decision, it’s true, but I thought it for the best. You’ve had so little time to yourself recently.”

  “Wait.” I paused, digesting this. “What decision did he disagree with?”

  “To carry on without you. He thought it a mistake. But I know how wearying it’s been these past few months, and Jackson said he thought you seemed terribly unhappy, and so it seemed to me that the thing to do—”

  I blew out a breath. I’d had it all wrong. Part of me wanted to kiss him, but another part wanted to grab him by the lapels and give him a good shake. “Thomas, the next time you’re tempted to presume how I feel, just ask me.”

  “Yes. Well.” He fidgeted with his cufflinks. “I shall certainly do that.” An awkward pause. Then he said, “Tea?”

  * * *

  My insides felt warm again, and it wasn’t just the tea. Thomas and I sat in the kitchen, just the two of us, his lean frame angled toward me as he listened to my account. He didn’t interrupt except to nod every now and then—that is, until I came to the part about enlisting the help of Mr. Burrows, at which point he reeled back with a horrified expression. “Rose!”

  “I know. I feel awful. I didn’t realize what it would involve, not fully.”

  “Poor devil. What a thoroughly revolting idea. And yet”—his beard twitched as he tried to suppress a smile—“undeniably ingenious.”

  “Ingenious? It was a beastly thing to ask of him.”

  “I wouldn’t have suggested it, certainly, but mainly because the idea would never have occurred to me. It was terribly clever of you. And to think he actually agreed…” Thomas shook his head. “We’ll have to make it up to him, of course.”

  I wasn’t sure what sort of flowers said, I’m sorry for making you sense the stomach contents of a corpse, but I supposed they must be very expensive.

  “And what of the result? No typhoid, I presume.”

  “That’s the worst of it. Poor Mr. Burrows went through it all for nothing. He couldn’t find anything unusual—no disease, no poison. No sign of a shade, even.”

  “A null result is hardly nothing. Eliminating hypotheses is always useful. Though as to the shade, that remains the most likely explanation. If the spirit touched its victims only briefly, any trace of ice would long since have melted by the time Burrows got hold of them.”

  “What about the shade in Harlem? Did you and Mr. Jackson catch it?”

  Thomas shook his head. “Not so much as a glimpse. We’ll have to wait for another sighting.”

  “What if it’s the same one?”

  “That would be quite a coincidence.” He paused, slender fingers tapping the table in thought. “You said there was a witness?”

  “Yes, but he was spirited away by the chief of detectives. Sergeant Chapman doesn’t feel he can press the matter, but maybe if we spoke with the chief ourselves—”

  Thomas hummed a skeptical note. “Inspector Byrnes is a formidable figure, and widely rumored to be corrupt. If he’s been enlisted to conceal this crime, whether by power or money, I doubt he can be enticed to change his mind. Not without leverage, and we haven’t any.” Another thoughtful pause. “Tell me more about the victims. Do you have their names?”

  I handed him a page torn from Sergeant Chapman’s notebook. “Mr. Burrows didn’t seem to recognize any of them.”

  “Why should he?”

  “I just thought since they were at the convention…”

  Thomas smiled. “Not everyone on the Avenue is a Republican. Besides, whatever Burrows’s preferences as a voter, men of his stature are rarely involved in politics. They view it as a vulgar sort of business, quite beneath them.”

  “He seemed to know their candidate for mayor.”

  “Oh?” Thomas tilted his head with interest. “Who got the nod?”

  “Someone named Roosevelt. Sergeant Chapman called him a dude.”

  Thomas’s eyebrows flew up. “As well he might! Well, doesn’t that give the lie to everything I’ve just said. The Roosevelts are about as close to royalty as it comes in New York. I’d heard Theodore’s name bandied about for some of the less notable positions, but mayor … Why, he’s only twenty-seven years old!”

  “That seems plenty old enough to me.”

  “Does
it?” Thomas cocked a dark eyebrow playfully. “You do realize that makes him only two years older than me?”

  Of course I realized it. I was acutely aware of Thomas’s age; in particular, the fact that he was five years my senior and getting on in age to still be a bachelor, two things I tried very hard not to connect in my mind.

  Aloud, I said, “I think you’d make a wonderful mayor,” whereupon he suffered a mild shudder.

  “We’ll want to head down to the venue tomorrow and take a look around. I’ll telephone Sergeant Chapman in the morning. And speaking of morning”—he consulted his watch—“it’s terribly late. We ought to turn in.”

  I took an instinctive step toward the servants’ staircase before remembering that I didn’t sleep in the attic anymore. Louise had taken over my old room, while Clara had moved into the housekeeper’s generous quarters. As for me, I lived on the second floor now, so I followed Thomas up the main staircase like a full-fledged member of the household. Already, I could feel my eyelids drooping, and I felt sure I’d sleep better than I had all week. There was something perverse in that, I suppose, but that didn’t bother me much. For the first time in a long time, it was just the two of us. No Mr. Jackson. No Viola Fox or Cabot Fisk. Just me and my partner, and a brand-new case.

  Murder or not, that was heaven.

  CHAPTER 5

  PAPERING OVER THE TRUTH—THE GRAND OPERA HOUSE—FINGERS AND PIES

  If the actions of the coroner and the chief of detectives weren’t evidence enough of a whitewash, the morning papers made the matter plain. Not a single one mentioned the mysterious deaths at the Republican County Convention.

  “How can that be?” I tossed The New-York Times aside in disgust, narrowly missing the butter dish. “Column after column about Roosevelt’s nomination, and not a word about six dead delegates!”

  “I’d have thought to see the incident attributed to typhoid, at least,” Thomas agreed, scanning the Herald. “To have no mention of it at all, in spite of an auditorium full of reporters … I don’t think even Byrnes wields that kind of influence.”

  “Then who?”

  He shook his head. “Someone very powerful. More than likely several someones, in fact. I daresay we’ll have our work cut out for us today. Speaking of which, we’d better get on. Sergeant Chapman will be waiting.”

  The cab ride down to the Grand Opera House took almost half an hour, most of which I spent worrying. The events of last night had made it painfully clear just how green I was when it came to investigating murders, and the last thing I wanted was to flaunt my inexperience all over again. Just follow Thomas’s lead, I told myself. You have nothing to prove.

  If only I believed that.

  Sergeant Chapman met us under the twin stone arches at the front entrance. “Had the place opened up for us,” he said as he pulled on the door, “but we’re on our own from here. Didn’t tell my captain I was headed down here.”

  “Prudent,” Thomas said. “If your suspicions about your superiors are correct, it’s best to keep a low profile.”

  Electric lighting blazed through the lobby, but the auditorium itself was illuminated by gaslight, its soft glow burnishing the edges of a vast cavern of stone and velvet. Row upon row of seats lined the floor and mezzanine levels, the latter fringed by elaborately carved balconies, rather like frosting between the layers of a cake. This place must hold two thousand people, I thought. Where do we even begin?

  If Thomas felt overwhelmed by the size of our crime scene, he hid it well. “How many in attendance last night?”

  “About eighteen hundred,” said Chapman, “not counting the press boys.”

  Thomas strolled down one of the aisles, surveying the hall with an unhurried air. Not knowing what else to do, I mimicked his movements down another aisle. Sergeant Chapman, meanwhile, observed from the back row. “Party bigwigs was either up on the platform or in the boxes,” he called, gesturing at the scalloped balconies on either side of the stage. “Rank and file here, press mostly there, and random curious types in the back here.”

  “And the deceased?” Thomas’s smooth tenor carried easily under the domed ceiling. “Were they together?”

  “Not that we know of. I got some fellas at the station looking into what they might’ve had in common—besides being delegates, I mean—but so far, it don’t look like they came as a group. Only two of ’em was sitting in the same spot, down near where Miss Gallagher’s standing. Fifth row, about the middle there.”

  I scanned the row the sergeant had indicated. “So to reach them, the killer would have had to file past all these seats?”

  “That’s right.”

  Thomas and I exchanged a look across a sea of red velvet.

  “Hard to do without touching anyone,” I said, speaking the substance of that glance aloud for Chapman’s benefit. “If it was a shade, it was a very careful one.”

  “Maybe it was after someone in particular.”

  “Even so,” Thomas said, “one would expect to see multiple victims in the same row, if only accidental. The merest touch of a shade can be fatal, whether the spirit wills it or not.”

  “And even if you survive, it’s painful, not to mention terrifying.” I should know. I hadn’t even been able to scream when the shade of Matilda Meyer had touched me back in January. It was like being dropped into a freezing river. My muscles had seized, my lungs refused to draw air. Even my eyelashes had ice on them. “I don’t see how something like that could go unnoticed.”

  “Apparently it was a pretty lively affair. People standing most of the time, calling out from the floor and whatnot, which would’ve distracted from any doings in the seats. And there was plenty of milling about in the lobby n’ such. That’s where the witness saw two of ’em fall.”

  “Tell us about that,” Thomas said, turning.

  “Like I was saying to Miss Gallagher, I only found one fella who noticed anything suspicious. He was out in the lobby most of the time, doing some last-minute vote peddling, so he had a better eye on things than most. Said the victims went down about twenty minutes apart. In both cases, they was approached by the same man a minute or two before they fell, which was what struck the witness as fishy. To be honest, as many people as there was milling about, we was lucky to get that much.”

  Thomas frowned. “Others noticed someone collapsing in their midst, surely?”

  “Noticed, yeah, but they didn’t think much of it, least not at first. You see a guy faint, you figure he’s sick, ’specially if the event organizers drag him off before you have time to think about it. Far as you know, it’s an isolated incident. Took a while for people to catch on that there was more than one sick delegate, by which point the party machine had its story straight.”

  “Only your witness happened to see two victims fall, both of whom were speaking to the same man a minute or two prior to collapsing.” Thomas drummed his fingers on the back of a seat. “Was it closer to one minute, or two?”

  “Yeah, the witness wasn’t too precise on that point. Said one fella went down quicker than the other. The first victim just keeled over like he fainted, but the second was clutching at his chest.”

  “No signs of ice? Or shivering, perhaps?”

  “Not so as he mentioned.”

  By this point, I’d wandered up to the stage. Gazing out over the rows of seats, I imagined eighteen hundred faces staring back at me, packed into tight rows like kernels on an ear of corn. A shade making its way through a crowd like that … “It sounds awful to say, but it could have been so much worse. If it was a shade, it could have killed dozens, maybe more.”

  “You keep saying if,” Chapman said. “What else could it be? Your friend Burrows said it wasn’t poison, so…” He trailed off, shrugging.

  “Burrows isn’t a physician,” Thomas said, sounding distracted. “But perhaps … Sergeant, you said the coroner had already gone home by the time you and Miss Gallagher visited the morgue. Did you speak with him before that?”

 
; “Sure. He peddled the typhoid story.”

  “Was he the only physician on duty?”

  “The only one I was allowed to talk to, but no, now you mention it. There was a couple of others there. Assistants, I guess. But I don’t think they was allowed to examine the bodies.”

  “Even so, one of them might know something.”

  The sergeant narrowed one sleepy eye. “Even if they did, what makes you think they’d talk to you?”

  “The Pinkerton Agency keeps a number of coroner’s assistants on the payroll. As you can imagine, it comes in handy from time to time.”

  The sergeant didn’t like that answer one bit. He scowled, muttering something about fingers and pies. “Lemme guess. You’d rather I passed on this next interview.”

  Thomas at least had the grace to look awkward about it. “To preserve the confidentiality of our sources. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Oh sure, Wiltshire, I understand. It’s not as if corruption is half our problem in the first place.”

  “I didn’t set up the chessboard, Sergeant. I merely play my pieces to best advantage.”

  Chapman rolled his eyes but otherwise let it go. “Can I at least assume I’ll get the benefit of what he says?”

  “We’ll send word when we’ve finished,” I put in before Thomas had a chance to demur. I didn’t know much about chess, but I did know cards, and Thomas liked to keep his pretty well hidden until he was ready to play them. But this was Chapman’s case, and it seemed only fair that he be kept in the picture.

  Since I was the junior partner, it wasn’t really my decision to make, but if Thomas was annoyed, he didn’t let on. Instead we spent the long ride crosstown going over what we’d learned at the Grand Opera House. To my way of thinking, that wasn’t very much, but as usual, Thomas saw more than I did.

  “We can rule out random attacks, at least. Accidental or opportunistic deaths would have been clustered together, not dispersed throughout the auditorium. At least some of the victims were deliberately targeted, which means there was motive.” He tapped a finger on the griffin head of his walking stick, gaze abstracted in thought. “Perhaps we’d do well to consult police records, or even newspaper archives, looking for suspicious deaths of local politicians over the past year.”