I point. “Twine under the stove.” He moves past the thrashing three of them, finds the twine and hands it to Buck. Tom has squirmed free to punch wildly at Tim, then screams as they force his arms tight behind him and tie his wrists.

  I carry my lamp to stand over him, trembling. “What have you done to Saskie?”

  “Nothing! You’re insane! You should go to jail for lying – to the asylum for raving lunatics!”

  Another white ghost appears in the doorway.

  “What’s this?” Liza whimpers in her nightdress and shawl. She nearly drops her lamp to see her husband on the floor, trussed in twine used for tying roasts. Then she gapes across to me. “What is the meaning of this?” she stammers, her face stretched in revulsion.

  “Pack his clothes. He’s going to jail.”

  “What for?” she cries, cringing back. “What for?”

  “Forging our signatures, stealing our property.”

  “You are demented! He did no such thing!”

  “Don’t lie. You knew about it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Liza backs away, the would-be patrician shrieking like a fish wife as Tim pushes past her, heading out for a carriage.

  “Pack for him fast,” he tells her. “You have three minutes.”

  She gapes at him, open-mouthed; then, shaking violently, turns for the stairs. I watch her go, feeling suddenly weak. I reach for a chair and miss. Everything goes suddenly darker than the air in this kitchen.

  Buck comes, grips my arms. His eyes in the shadows are alarmed. “What?”

  “Feel faint.”

  He pulls me to him. I lay my head on his shoulder, close my eyes and feel the floor flip.

  “Bad night,” I hear Dunbar say, feeling his hand on my arm. They help me to the table, where I droop with my brow in my hand. My ears are ringing and I hear all of them: Tom kicking and yelling; Buck’s face close to me saying “Sleep at the office,” and Dunbar promising to get me safely back there.

  “You’ll do it?” from Buck, cupping my cheek. “Sleep at the office?”

  I manage a nod.

  “I’ll see you there, gotta get your brother behind bars.” He bends to pat my skirt pocket holding the Colt. “You’ll be okay?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Dunbar brings me water from the sink, and Buck straightens, looks toward the hall.

  Chill wind whooshes in from where Tim left the door open. There’s tumult in the street as he hollers for a cab, then more tumult as he’s back saying he’s got a carriage waiting. Buck joins him, and they drag Tom out. Footsteps pound down the stairs and Liza is heard, out in the street in her nightshirt bleating, “Clothes! Trousers!”

  Then she’s back, a lamp-carrying, giant white night moth flailing and weeping, running up the stairs. “See what you’ve done!” she sobs over the railing. “See what you’ve done!” she repeats till her voice disappears. A door upstairs slams.

  And the others are gone.

  Dunbar helps me to my feet, and follows me into the bedroom. “Sit or lie down for a bit?”

  I head for the wardrobe, the vanity. “No, I want to get out of here.” I push Saskie’s watercolors and other things into my travel bag. Dunbar turns down my two oil lamps and relights his coach lamp; adds the ledger to my bag which he insists on carrying.

  By the door, I look back at the room I shared with Saskie, feeling a tidal wave of grief.

  “Oh sister,” I whisper.

  Dunbar looks grimly at the room, then holds my arm as we leave through the kitchen and hall. By the stairs, we hear loud weeping.

  Serves you right. You destroyed my sister.

  The driver and Patient Patty await. “Woo,” George says. “That was some ruckus.”

  Dunbar hangs his lamp back on its hook by the carriage door, helps me in, and slides in next to me. Patty whinnies, and the carriage jolts forward. I lay my head back against the leather, close my eyes.

  “Your breathing’s slowing,” Dunbar says. I feel his gaze in the dimness.

  “For how long?”

  “Rest. This is not over.”

  “Please say that again.” My voice is hoarse, edged with exhaustion.

  “This is not over. This is not, not, not…”

  “Alright. Appreciated.”

  I open my eyes and look at him. The carriage sways. “That girl in the watercolor. It was the same girl you saw at the laundry?”

  “Definitely. Saskie really caught that dimple in her chin, her expression.”

  “How did you hear about that laundry in the first place? You never said…”

  “Another doctor at Bellevue, also addicted, said their opium was pure not tainted – and he heard about it from a patient, some society lady.” Dunbar pauses. “I complained, said the place was just a steamy mess. He said I should’ve looked harder, but the place looked dirty. I didn’t go back.”

  He said I should’ve looked harder. Dunbar’s words echo.

  It’s a short drive, and the carriage stops on darkened Wall Street, just one gas lamp lit near our door. Dunbar exits and helps me down. The eighteen-inch drop from the cab to the curb has never seemed longer.

  “I don’t usually need help, but thank you,” I say. “For this whole night.”

  “It was good. We found out things.” He looks past me to our building’s dark door, and wants to accompany me in. I demur. He sighs, and his mustache twitches as he hands me my bag. “We never told them about the druggist’s daughter who saw that lout, top hat, red coat…”

  “I will. It’s been chaos.”

  Patty paws the cobbles, shakes her head. “Patience, sweet girl,” says George, hunched quietly.

  Dunbar looks up to him, then reaches back for the carriage lamp by the door. “Take this,” he says, looping it over my elbow.

  “I’ve never seen my brother that violent,” I blurt.

  “Evil shows its face when cornered.”

  He reaches out, and gently squeezes my shoulder. “Rest,” he says. “To be strong for tomorrow.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He looks again to the closed door behind me. “You’ll be alright?”

  My free hand pats my skirt pocket. “I’m an armed, overwrought woman. I’ll shoot anyone who even looks at me cross-eyed.”

  The corner of his mouth pulls. “Excellent.”

  Then he climbs back into the carriage, pulls the door closed, and leans out his window. “Go in,” he says. “I want to see you off the street.”

  I give him a wave, turn, and enter the foyer.

  Closing the door, I hear his carriage start away, then climb the tired old stairs.

  35.

  The office feels so empty. Deserted and lonely, with moonlight angling in on Hattie’s desk and the desks of Tim and Buck looking hurriedly deserted. Right, they were chasing after me…

  I cross to the interior steps, leave my bag on the bottom one. Then I carry Dunbar’s oil lamp to the darkened rear, to the stone sink and the water pump. Wash, I need desperately to wash, imagine plunging into some cool river and just submerge, feel oblivion.

  Instead, I fight with the pump. I lift its handle and push down; lift and push, again, again, till at last there’s the sound of gurgling and water splashes. I fill the bucket that sits next to the sink, then re-loop Dunbar’s lamp over my arm and carry both – the bucket sloshes - back for my bag.

  I lug them up the stairs to my room, which is small, like the three others. They’re for nights of working late or bad weather, though in my case, returning home looks doubtful for some time. The thought of Liza still in that house is appalling.

  I place Dunbar’s lamp on the nightstand, put a match to another lamp, and look around. The room is barely longer than the army cot and a bit wider, with cramped space for a desk and chair and the pitcher and wash basin.

  I pull off my dress, corset and the rest, and fling them onto the chair. My Colt thumps as it hits the wood; I retrieve it, cross the small space, and put it on the nightstand. Then I wash, first filling the pitcher with enough for tomorrow, next pouring water into the basin. The alkaline soap burns but I scrub, top to bottom. Then I pull on a fresh chemise and unpin my hair, let it drop to my shoulders.

  Mere moving is hard. The extent of Tom’s evil…and Saskie: four days gone, tomorrow the fifth.

  Finally I turn down both lamps, and climb under the cot’s army blanket.

  The room is dark, save for a silver shaft angling in from the window. I hear a bell toll and then a hansom pass, the horse’s clops slow and mournful.

  My mind won’t slow.

  I close my eyes, and it all floods back: the awful scene in the kitchen…Tom getting dragged off to jail…the murdered girl in the Astor, Cornelia Berry…then Flower Girl running from me.

  And Jake Dunbar saw her! His words echo. She was outside some laundry I heard was an opium den.

  Then what?

  He went in with her, but it stank and steamed and he didn’t see any den. His source at Bellevue – another doctor – said he should have looked harder. But Buck and I searched the laundry including its cellar, and found nothing.

  I thrash and pull at the pillow, too knotted to sleep, so I roll over and stare at the wall. A bar of moonlight is there. It dims as a cloud crosses it, then brightens again as the cloud moves away. Moonbeam watching, Saskie called it. When she couldn’t sleep and I’d see her at the window, she’d look back and smile in the dimness, say she was watching moonbeams.

  “It helps me think magic and beautiful thoughts,” she’d say. “You can fly away in a moonbeam.”

  Saskie, my sister… I feel tears sting.

  Suddenly, sounds downstairs.

  The door, opening and closing, then heavy feet trying to be quiet. Male voices murmur, a chair scrapes, the coffee pot clanks.

  Coffee means they’ll be working late, writing reports about Tom and the ink blotter and the source of his mystery money - us, his two sisters. Saskie found out, presented a danger. There was a moment back there when I wanted to kill Tom. Wish I had. If I ever get my hands on him again…

  The feeling builds, hardly conducive to sleep.

  Minutes pass. Then footfalls on the stairs, a faint knock at the door testing to see if I’m awake.

  “Come in,” I groan.

  36.

  Buck enters, a lit lamp looped over one arm, carrying two small glasses and a bottle.

  “Sleep coming?” he says softly, a silhouette bending to me.

  “Not a chance.” I pull the blanket to my collarbone. His white shirt is loose, unbuttoned at the neck, and his hair’s a drooping mess. He puts his lamp and bottle and glasses on the nightstand. “Can’t shut the thoughts down?”

  “No. Plotting to kill Tom.”

  He sighs in the dimness. His lamp flickers. “Actually, I’m relieved you’re awake, need to talk. Can you stand another twenty minutes of lost sleep and stress?”

  “Fire away.”

  “How ’bout some brandy first.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  He switches my dress and underthings from the chair to the desk, pulls the chair close, and gets busy with the bottle, clinking and pouring. I raise up on an elbow and give a choked laugh, hearing Tom again screaming men in your bedroom! Now Tom is behind bars, and this tousled, woodsman-looking former cop is seated alone with me by my bed, pouring brandy.

  “This,” he says, holding a filled glass to me, “will help you sleep and me talk, because now’s my only chance and I’ve gotta talk fast.”

  “Paperwork?”

  “That and more.”

  I nod, and we drink. My chemise sleeve droops. He leans to pull it back up, then push strands of hair from my face. His fingers are warm.

  “Nice, your hair down like that.” In the lamp’s glow, his cheeks redden. Then he clears his throat and breathes in, holding his glass.

  “Vile disgusting brother in jail?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah. Prime real estate in the Tombs. He got so crazed denying our charge that he punched two cops. Four of them dragged him off.”

  The Tombs is a dank, foul-smelling prison built over a badly filled-in pond. The cells reek, the inmates scream all night, and the whole block is sinking.

  I make a strangled sound. “Suits him. What did you want to tell me?”

  Buck drinks more, waves his glass.

  “Two things. Since Ship’s Tavern there hasn’t been a free second but - for starters, I’m not going to be here or reachable tomorrow. We’re closing in earlier on the gang digging to the bank vault. Spies have outed us, apparently.”

  “How?”

  “Frank Mason doesn’t know; some informant. He heard after I left you with the snob ladies.” Buck’s eyes probe mine. “Wood’s people are raging, bent on stopping the war and killing pro-Union people and I…worry about you.” He flounders, looks back to my naked shoulder. “You’re exhausted…”

  “Getting there.”

  “That makes you vulnerable to mistakes. Dangerous mistakes. We don’t know who Tom’s new pals are. We don’t know if what’s become of Saskie connects to them or Cornelia Berry or Wood directly. Cornelia’s father was his arch enemy.”

  I look into my glass, recalling his If you were mine I wouldn’t let you…I’d be fearful…I’d block the door…

  “Buck, I know you mean well-”

  “Do you hear yourself? We’re all worried – including Pink; we just dropped in on him before coming back. The Tom news has him worse worried than at the meeting. He wants you to know it. He was pounding his fists.”

  From his pocket Buck pulls a sealed letter of pale gray paper that I recognize, and hands it to me. “Give a read.”

  I open it. Skim Pink’s familiar, hurried scratch urging me “not to go about alone. A partner is a must! – and your Colt.”

  I close the note, and reach it to the nightstand. “Message received.”

  “I’m going to make detailed notes for Hattie. Hell, she knows nothing about tonight – at least she’ll be rested. Work with her, alright?”

  I nod. Hattie would have insisted anyway on braving the day with me. But let the men think they’ve persuaded us. “You said there’s more on your mind?”

  Buck stares down into his brandy glass.

  “Tell,” I say.

  He looks at me, breathes in. “Before running off to your soiree with Dunbar, we found out more about the Berry murder. There is a pattern.”

  I sit bolt upright, hold out my empty glass. “More, please.”

  He refills my glass and I empty it. The brandy burns my throat and fires me. I forget my blanket, sit up facing him in my chemise.

  “What pattern?”

  “Background first,” Buck says, trying not to look at my bodice. He swirls his brandy.

  After he left me at the snob ladies’ tea, he returned to find Cornelia Berry’s father sitting with Pinkerton, his head in his hands, unintelligible with grief. She was the youngest of his three daughters, his rebel child, bored with the strictures of their class and slumming because it seemed fun. She and a debutante friend were addicted to laudanum. They decided it would be jolly to seek “a real den to experience opium,” so they went together to Chinatown.

  “Together,” I repeat, my voice flat.

  “Yes. Unchaperoned, traipsing around. The friend named Isobel was already high on laudanum and there – she saw the murder; spent all today in her room mute with shock, then exploded in grief. The police were still questioning her when Cornelia’s father left their house and came to Pinkerton.”

  I stare at Buck. “This Isobel was with Cornelia – but only Cornelia was murdered?”

  “Correct. She was the greater daredevil. Went alone into some den that scared Isobel who turned back; then Cornelia came running out terrified with someone after her. Isobel hid behind crates or something. She’s incoherent.” Buck gestures grimly. “But she saw it happen.”

  Breath stops. “And the murderer?”

  “Masked, wore black. Opium gangs don’t just fight for control and secrecy; they also cater to the rich who fear shame, hence more secrecy.” Buck’s lips press. “Can’t have a woman running out advertising their presence.”

  I sit, blinking at nothing.

  “This drug den is apparently near where we were - in or behind the laundry and tavern. Problem is, the police can’t find it. In both places, they searched upstairs and down including the cellars, threw open closet doors, ransacked storage rooms…nothing.”

  “We searched the laundry cellar, found nothing.”

  “The police searched harder.”

  “This Isobel is sure where they were?”

  “As sure as anyone already high as a loon can be. She’s been a heavy user for two years, plus she spent all day in her room downing more laudanum before the police came. They found ten empty bottles she’d hidden. She was far gone.” Buck’s eyes stay on me. “Her full name is Isobel Blanchard, and her nickname is Izzy. Rhymes with dizzy.”

  I feel my heart thud. “Say again how hard the police looked?”

  “Tore both places apart. It’s one building, right? So it should have one cellar but it doesn’t; the laundry owner was vehement, said they walled off their half because the tavern attracts thieves.” Buck gestures. “Simeon Berry is a patron of police causes. They looked very hard.”

  My glass is empty. I reach to put it on the nightstand, and hold up three fingers.

  “It’s the laundry, has to be.” I touch one finger. “First, we showed Saskie’s watercolor to the kid in the tavern, and his eyes bugged straight to the laundry wall.” I touch a second finger. “Then we showed it to the worker in the laundry, and his eyes darted straight to the rear.”

  “Yes, yes…”

  I touch my third finger. “Next - and here’s a surprise: Dunbar on the ride back said another doctor recommended the laundry as a den, which is why he was there in the first place and saw Flower Girl. When he went back and complained that he hadn’t found the den, his colleague told him he should have looked harder.”

  Buck’s frown deepens. “The police turned that whole building upside down.”

  “Want something to complicate this even further? A woman near Dunbar’s office said she saw Saskie followed by a man in a top hat, plaid pants, and red coat. That makes two sightings – Mary Dill and this woman, a druggist’s daughter - and when did we stop talking about Tom? Could Red Coat have been Tom? The rat stole from us, needed to cover it up. Maybe there’s no connection to the Berry murder.”

 

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