Coming to Terms With Guilt

Francis Smalling, Smalling Apple Farm, Sangamon County, Illinois

April 15^th 1866

 

Thinking of myself as the ‘man’ of the house, I felt deeply guilty. I wept in the privacy of my summer house, the windows whitewashed from the inside to keep prying eyes from my work. In public I remained stoic, keeping a strong shoulder for mamma or Margaret to lean on. As the farmhands came to pay their respects I could see their condemning stares; the boy that did nothing to save his own sister. No one could understand the depths of my own frustration as I psychologically lacerated myself every time I thought of the events that night.

When the sheriff arrived, I stood behind mother, my arm round her waist in case she should fall. She cried, and wandered around the house, but ventured nowhere near our bedroom. Marsha, our housekeeper, marshalled her into the kitchen, where she sat crying some more.

“We’ll get him ma’am.” The sheriff said as he left the room. He indicated that I join him on the long white fenced porch. “What’d he look like, son?”

“Tall, light brown hair,” I began. “He wore a long overcoat, Confederate grey.” I paused sorting my memory, trying to categorize the information to deliver it in a structured form.

The sheriff nodded. “Sorry for your loss, son,” Mister Tandy, the funeral director hovered outside in the sunshine. “In you go, Tandy, it’s all yours.”

I stood mystified, I’d been cut off, and I had so much more to tell. “Sheriff?” I asked, my hand pulling at his sleeve.

“Yes son?” Halfway up the path he turned. He looked tired.

“There’s more.”

“I know son, but you don’t need to go into details.”

“No, there’s…”

He held his hand up in the air, stymying my words. “I got a posse to rustle up, son. There’s no time to lose.” He said, demeaning me further by not asking me if I wanted to ride with them. I owned both rifle and revolver, and considered myself proficient at both. And then the Sheriff patted me on the head, like I was a puppy, like he would have done if I’d been ten years old.

I was a man now, God-dammit. I could fight for my country, if the war hadn’t finished last year. Men of my age were already being taken to the west, guarding the railway lines against the Indians.

The sheriff had already turned away, talking in hushed tones to Tandy.

Why hadn’t the sheriff asked more questions? He was leaving with hardly a thread of information, and was now going to get a posse together? It made little sense to me.

I took a piece of paper out of my pocket; my notes on the man.

 

Six foot, probably. Right handed.

Flat ears, large nose, long fingers, he bit his nails.

Wide brimmed hat.

Almost new, black boots, maybe military.

Accent was mid to southern.

Sword had a black handle, gold filigree.

Slight limp on his left leg.

 

In the sunshine I looked at the notepaper and my penciled words, seemingly so important a few hours ago, now discarded by the figure of law in the county. I folded the paper, and tucked it back into my hip pocket.

That night, I lay awake on my bed, a loaded Colt by my side. I watched my sister Margaret turn in her sleep, sometimes whimpering, but at least she slept. My eyes did not close till the sun rose across the apple orchard. Smiling, I could do no more, and succumbed to my frustrated exhaustion.

I awoke with the sun bursting in the loosely curtained window. Margaret still lay on her bed, curled on her side, fully dressed but sleeping soundly.

I roused myself, and found Mamma in the kitchen, elbows on the table, her eyes red with crying. I found myself incapable of any more outpouring, so I kicked open the door and walked across the yard and across the yard to the summer house.

Only in my laboratory did I feel comfortable. My Jedlik motor still spun on one of my dusty workbenches. I looked at its constant spinning. An oval loop of copper wire gave it its base, and the magnetized spinning arms looked so strange in this primitive world.

I marveled at the man’s invention; so far ahead of his time. My own version of the motor had been spinning constantly for five weeks now, the large bell-jar battery cell never seeming to run out of charge.

To take my mind off my sister’s violation, I re-read the latest fliers and determined to travel into town to the post office for new mail. With little impetus to continue my experiments, I took out some frustration hammering on a poor copper sheet, beating it far thinner than I needed for my new capacitor project. But my body felt good delivering the organized hammer strokes, and the noise of iron and anvil did my soul some good.

After supper I got Marsha the housekeeper to fire up a huge pot of coffee, which she sat by my bedside. I lay in the dark, listening, waiting, tensed for the door to open, and the man with the wide brimmed hat to present himself. He’d promised to return, and I took him at his word.

I got roused by Margaret leaning over me. “It’s time for the funeral, Francis.”

It proved to be, of course, a time of more weeping, no resolve, no feeling of closure, and no comfort in revenge. I stood in the dust, resenting the people around me, begrudging the time I had to devote to this social discarding of her carcass.

I tried to remember her as she had lived, but to my disgust, was only rewarded by a memory of her tense bosom, heaving as she reached her release.

After the funeral, I again retreated to my workshop in the summer house, a new package been delivered, a large box with four large thick glass bell-jars. Perfectly made, flawless, I gazed through the glass for ages. They would house my new capacitors, large spirals of copper interlaced with rubber sheeting for electrical insulation.

As the sun fell, I had a silent supper with Mamma and Margaret, then with my now obligatory large jug of coffee, I retired for the night. For the next nine nights I repeated the same pattern, sleeping from dawn to noon. I worked in the orchard in the afternoon, and I worked in candlelight in the summerhouse in the evening.

After the tenth night, I put the coffee aside and decided to attempt to sleep normally.

As I slipped beneath my covers, I noticed Margaret sitting up, her back against her pile of pillows. “It’s difficult, having her bed still there.”

I looked over at Rebekah’s bed, now freshly made up, her covers flat and unblemished. “Maybe we should move it out?” I suggested. I glanced at the place where she’d been violated, where her breasts had arched as she’d orgasmed under the stranger’s ministrations.

And I’d done nothing.

I felt the tears come again, and heard Margaret standing by my bedside saying something to console me. Then I felt my own mattress move as she pushed her body under my covers. I instinctively moved away, but she held my arm and pressed her warm body tightly against mine. “We couldn’t have done anything, Francis.” She said. But as I heard the words, they seemed so insignificant.

I lay back on the pillow, aware of the heat emanating from her body towards me. With tears in my eyes I fell asleep.

But I could not rid myself of the notion that I could have prevented the Johnny Reb in some way.

The next day as I readied myself for work, a stranger rode up the dry clay road to the house. He wore a dark charcoal pinstriped suit, unusual in the country. His dark hat was narrow brimmed in the style of city folk, but he wore a pistol on his hip, the black holster showing below his jacket. As he reined his mount to a halt at the garden white gate, he nodded to me. I tugged my watch from my hat band; ten past ten, early for a city man to be up and around.

“Is this the Smalling place?”

I walked to the gate. “Yes, sir, my name’s Francis. How may I help you?”

He dismounted stiffly, as if he’d had a long ride already that morning. “I’m Paul Chapman, a detective from Cook Country Sheriff’s office.” He whipped his horse’s reins to the rail. “I’m investigating a series of murders.” He took a small notebook from his breast pocket, and whipped it open. “Francis Smalling.” He read.

The word ‘detective’ had sidelined me, and it felt strange to hear my name read aloud from the book.

He looked up at me, his fingers turning the well penciled pages.

“I wonder, son, if I may take some of your time today.”

“Well I have my work up at the orchard.” I slipped my time-piece back into my hatband.

“I can walk with you, if you don’t mind.” He said. “The sheriff has given Pinkertons wide license in this case, and with your permission I need to ask you about your sister’s murder.”

I tensed, the memory flooding back. I patted my pocket, knowing my notes still lay there, folded, fraying at the edges, the pencil marks fading.

“That’s it, son.” He said animatedly. “What’s going through your mind, right now! That’s what I need.”

I welcomed his aggression and passion for the case details, here at last was a man I could decant all my notes to. Here stood a man who seemed to understand what law-making meant.

I walked to the orchard that morning and poured the whole story to Detective Paul Chapman. As I pruned the dead wood on the trees, I told him every detail I remembered, and there was a lot. The tears fell down my cheeks like a waterfall, but I set myself to sawing as I spoke, and he wrote plenty of my words down in his notebook, and that encouraged me. At last something seemed to be getting done.

When I was done, he stepped forward and embraced me. I stood for a second, not quite knowing what to do with my hands, then I put them softly on his back.

“You did well Francis.” Chapman stood back, looking at my notes. Then he repeated them to me, asking if I remembered any other details.

When I replied to the negative, he then flipped the notebook to the first page.

“Taylor County, Wisconsin, 16^th October, 1874. The murder of Annabel Joyce, aged 18 years.” He looked up at me, not needing to read the next part. “Death by a lethal cut to the neck. A sword. The husband, Tom Joyce had been tethered to a chair to watch.”

We shared a look between us, then he bent to the notebook again, turning the page. “Decatur, Macon County, Illinois, 18^th March, 1875. Just along the road really. The murder of Grizzell Wallace, aged seventeen years.” He turned the page once more, but spoke from memory. “Then on 21^st September, back up to Wisconsin, last year. Christine Bismark, aged eighteen. All killed the same way.”

He paused, and I knew that details of my sister’s demise rested on the next page. Now just a collection of facts, details to solve the crime. “Then my sister.” I said. In my mind I saw all of these poor girls, witnessed all their choked screams, and felt for their families.

“Then your sister, Rebekah.” He folded the notebook closed.

“There’s a pattern.” I said, my mind still hurting.

“Young girls,” Chapman said. “All newly married.”

I looked up at him. “No, not that; the dates, all roughly six months apart.”

He looked at me quizzically, then checked his dates again. “No, five months between the first two.”

“But that could just be ascribed to a delay by winter or summer weather.” I tried to remember if the harvest had been early last year. “A change in harvest time, perhaps he’s a seasonal worker.”

Chapman’s look could only be described as incredulous. “So we have to work out what he’s following; what crop?”

“It could be any, or none.” I said. “Maybe he’s following the heat. I suspect he holds up somewhere for winter.”

“In Wisconsin?”

I shook my head. “No, he kills on the way north in the spring.” I suddenly remembered an article in one of my papers. “Have you got any fingerprints yet?”

“Fingerprints?” his look challenged me.

“Come,” I strode confidently for the summer house, and once inside began to leaf through the scientific journals sent to me by subscription. I looked up to speak, only to be met by the most curious stare from Chapman. “What is this place?”

“This place?” he spun slowly, his eyes alighting on many or my experiments, my bell jar batteries. “What is it?” He wandered over to my motor, still spinning.

“It’s our summer house.” I said somewhat glibly.

He looked up from the Jedlik motor. “How does this move?”

“It’s run by a current from the battery.” I looked at the spinning arms with pride. “It’s been spinning for weeks.”

“Will it go forever?” Chapman asked.

“No, the current drawn from the battery will eventually fade.”

He shook his head, and crossed to one rack of batteries; large glass jars with electrodes jammed into round cork stoppers. “What are these?”

“That’s my battery stack,” I replied. “I’m currently linking them to this small piano.” I moved to let him see. “As I play the piano keys, different sounds are played over on the other side of the room. It’s a kind of telegraph, but I don’t use Morse code. I’ve went beyond that. I can get letters without dots and dashes.”

He shook his head. “What use would it be?”

“Well, we could type letters and numbers instead of Morse code. There’d be no need to train operators, we all could do it.”

“That’s quite an idea.” He seemed impressed.

“But of course, every letter would need its own wire, so solving the practical side is beyond me right now.” I leafed through my journals looking for the right article.

“But you’re just a kid.” Chapman looked at me through squinting eyes.

Ignoring his remark I found the sheet with the fingerprint article. “All Fingerprints are Unique.” I read.

“I think I know that.” Chapman said, “But we have no way of getting them from any surface except glass.”

And my subsequent explanation of the method for the ‘lifting’ of fingerprints from other surfaces led him to taking many more notes.

Only after the detective had left did I reconsider the first date; October 1874; before the end of the war, yet he’d dressed as a Johnny Reb.

“That makes him a deserter,” I said into the empty room.

I grabbed some sheets of writing paper, and hoped my ideas would reach Paul Chapman in Chicago.

 

 

Paul Chapman, Pinkerton National Detective Agency, 6^th Street, Chicago

22^nd October, 1865 (Six months before)

 

As I rode back down into Chicago from Wisconsin, I had far more information than I’d left with. Gordon Bismarck, Christine’s father, had been initially unwilling to spill the details of his daughter’s murder so close to her funeral, but a bottle of bourbon had loosened his tongue.

At last I had a motive, and although it was shrouded in sexual deviance, it certainly gave me far more to write in my notebook, and gave me a far better picture of the crimes.

Our suspect had been dressed as a southern officer, and he had masturbated onto the victim before slicing the throat. That was a significant element in the murders. The page dedicated to the Bismarck crime had filled with details. According to the funeral director, the sword had sliced the throat in one movement, indicating a great degree of sharpness of the blade. We looked for a kind of rapist, a man who liked to defile young women in front of a tied and helpless audience, a man who enjoyed power over the helpless.

I strode into the Pinkerton building with resolve, feeling very smug at my new revelations.

But as I presented my findings to the ‘Boss’, he seemed distant.

“There’s money to be made, Paul.” He said at length, supposedly not having heard my report. “The railroads will expand civilization upon this land, but it will distribute crime as it grows.” He tapped on my notebook. “We must strive to stay one move ahead of the criminal, Paul. Although we think of ourselves at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency at the cutting edge of catching criminals, we are yet at the dinosaur age of such an art. Soon we’ll have a national base of information, accessible by telegraph from anywhere in the country.”

I’d heard such rantings before, as we shared a bottle or two in tents, guarding Lincoln, but it had been rare for Pinkerton to give rise to his innermost fantasies lately. To my mind, the end of the war had changed Allan Pinkerton; he now had a payroll to cover, and no easy army banknotes to pay it with. He needed backers for his schemes, and the railroads were now the companies with money to spend. Huge contracts were being given every week, the war was over, and the railroads promised to expand to every part of the nation.

“I must get down to Decatur to verify the details there.” I said, collecting my notebook as it was pushed across the desk to me. “And I need to make it quick; winter comes early this year, I can feel it in my bones.”

“Aye,” The single word hung heavy in the air, full of Scottish accent, and I sensed the lack of interest in his tone. I made my way out of the office, and spent a day in my own digs.

My own bed. No horse under me. Good restaurant food.

I awoke the next morning to a hammering at my door. On opening it, I saw Henderson, a farrier for the company, standing with a letter. He dismissed himself as soon as he’d handed it over.

Paul,

I have a new assignment for you.

Present yourself at your convenience.

AP

I dressed, grabbed a slice of bread and cheese, and made for the office.

“Paul,” Pinkerton began slowly. “I have always considered you to be the brightest of my detectives.” I sat in front of his desk and reeled under the revelation. “Partly for this reason, and partly because of your expertise in the homicide department, I have decided to send you to school.”

“What?” I gasped. “I’m thirty-six years old!”

I stopped my diatribe as Pinkerton doubled over the desk in mirth, laughing so hard he had to hold his sides. He eventually held his hand up, tears rolling down his cheeks into his huge beard.

“Forgive me, Paul, I couldn’t contain myself. A wee joke o’ mine, sorry you were the butt of it.” He sniffed loudly. “You know that I’m a benefactor o’ the Northwest University, here in Chicago?”

“Yes, Mister Pinkerton.” I knew that he’d donated money to the Evanston project for quite some time, and had often mentioned it.

“Well, I have often thought that Chicago’s own University should have a law department, especially since the country’s largest detective agency is in town.” He seemed to gather himself, his face now quite serious. “Harvard has a law department, although they limit their students to those who want to practice law as solicitors, barristers or lawyers. It has often been my belief that we detectives should have a far better grounding in law, and I have strived to bring such to bear on Northwest.”

“But my men can’t just learn law. As the railroad spreads crime to every corner of the country, there is a need for my detectives to know everything that pertains to the criminal, their crimes, and the process of the crime’s detection. I have plans for the next ten years, and intend in 1870 to have such a class at Northwest University in Chicago. All my detectives will move through the class, and I want you to become part of the ground-roots set-up. I need the class to not only teach the basics of law, but concentrate on the up-to-date developments in as many facets of crime detection as we can identify are helpful. I need the class to be at the cutting edge of technological progress, including the most modern advances in the field. Things we haven’t even thought about; sociology, psychology, phrenology, forensics. I don’t want to miss out on anything. If any science has an application to detective work, then it becomes part of the class.”

He looked across at me, and knowing the man so well, I knew the axe was about to fall.

“Paul, I do not intend to send you to school to learn law; that would take more years than you’re willing to serve and more than I’m willing to wait. But I do need you to bring together the individual studies that form the core of criminology; basically I need you to build the first university course that teaches criminology as a science. And I’m giving you four years to do it.”

I felt totally overcome by the direction the conversation had taken, and sat for a moment in silence. “Does this mean I’m not on cases anymore?”

Pinkerton shook his head. “No, this won’t take all your time, but it will draw you away from some of your detective work. For instance, this year you’ll winter in Harvard, picking from the archives there; just remember you’re building a university course. You’ll work independently, but I’d want regular reports of your progress.”

He paused, leaning forward onto his elbows, his beady eyes boring into mine. “What do you think? Are you up to it?”

It took a few seconds for the weight of the task to settle. I would study criminology, and build a course fit to be taught to our detectives. “I think so, sir.”

Pinkerton leant forward and stuck out his hand. “One and a half times your salary, the instant you agree.”

That did it. I shook his hand firmly and long, both grinning like Cheshire cats. “Winter in Massachusetts, huh?”

“Building the first University course in criminology,” Pinkerton looked triumphant.

So the sword-through-the-neck case got dumped to the sidelines, and I set off to the east coast, and the town of Cambridge for a winter of sitting in cold Harvard libraries, copying documents and making lots of notes.

The more I dug into the science of criminology, the more it splintered into other connected subjects. Each facet called for a new page in a new notebook, and as winter progressed, each notebook page soon grew into a folder of its own.

I wrote a letter to Allan Pinkerton every month, detailing both my work and my out-of-pocket expenses, to which I never got a reply.

A regular a visitor to the law libraries, I welcomed 1866 in a small staff party in the University, then as January opened the doors to a new year, I got back into my studies. January folded into a very snowy February, and I began to get anxious to get back on the road, but the roads were impassable, even the railroads having difficulties. So my folders got bigger, and with every entry the span of my knowledge increased.

By the end of March the weather had cleared, and I took the train back to Chicago.

Once again, Allan Pinkerton was absent, on a railway trip of his own, so I left my new folders on a pile on my desk, and rode south to Decatur.

This time I had questions to ask that led to specific answers.

Grizzell’s husband, Walter, looked a quiet nervous man, wiry thin and about thirty. He told me immediately that he felt he’d been under suspicion from the local sheriff since he’d reported the murder, a year ago.

“I don’t suspect you, sir.” I said in my most sincere tone, indicating that he sit down. “Your young wife is the third such murder I have investigated.”

My questions went easier from that exchange.

Like the others, Grizzell Wallace had blonde, fair hair, Walter had been tied up, the killer had been dressed as a southern officer, with the proper accent, and he’d been very vocal.

Under some pressure, Walter admitted that his wife had been molested, and yes he’d masturbated and ejaculated over the victim.

Sword slice, and gone.

I rode back to Chicago weary from my travels, disappointed that we’d learned nothing new, but happy that we’d established a pattern to our man, and that meant we’d got a leg up to finding him. As I rode north into town, I began looking at the color of the bedrolls of the men I passed, looking for tell-tale confederate grey. The man would never wear his southern outfit in daylight; in Illinois he’d be run out of town on a rail. So the coat had to be in his baggage. But it would be more difficult to conceal the sword.

The man had done exactly the same thing in the last two of the murder cases, and probably had done in the first. He was a man of habit, and habits meant repetitive patterns, and patterns were his weakness. As long as he maintained his level of depravity, we had a good chance of catching the son-of-a-bitch.

In jubilant mood, I rode directly to the office, dismounted and led my horse into the company stables.

Charles Henderson met me at the wide barn doorway, taking the reins. “Everybody’s got word that you’ve to report immediately on arrival.” He said, his face a grim mask. “Immediately.”

I rushed upstairs to the office, but to my dismay it was deserted. Even Missus Bainbridge had left for the day.

I knocked on the boss’s door, and got a loud ‘come in’.

“Paul!” Pinkerton rose from behind his desk, and grabbed a piece of paper. “New murder.” He brandished it firmly, stalking round the desk. “Just four days old.”

“Where?” I asked, finding his excitement infectious.

He looked at the note. “Sangamon County. Down near Springfield.”

I sighed. Springfield was less than fifty miles from Decatur.

“Dammit.” I said, exasperation building within me. Allan Pinkerton looked up at me with a curious expression. “I was down there three days ago, sir. I just missed him.”