The sun hung in a red ball over the Hudson by the time they arrived at the Fearing Pell townhouse on West Tenth Street near Washington Square Park. Harry’s motherly housekeeper, Mrs. Rivers, greeted them at the door in a cloud of delicious cooking smells.
“I thought you’d miss Christmas dinner,” she said reprovingly. “It’s been ready for half an hour.” She sniffed. “You smell rather awful. Where have you been?”
“The Morgue.” Harry hung her red coat on a peg by the door. “They just performed the post-mortem on Julius Sabelline.”
Mrs. Rivers drew her shawl closer around her shoulders. “How perfectly morbid. Are you joining us for dinner, Mr. Weston?”
“If you’ll have me.”
“Of course, dear. But they’re not expecting you at home?”
“We hold our family dinner on Christmas Eve,” John explained with a wink. “And if that’s your famous Apple Jonathan I smell in the oven, I’m not above celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior twice in a row.”
“I imagine you’re not.” Mrs. Rivers shot a harried glance at the kitchen. “The Butchers are here. I told Connor to round them up and give them a scrub. Nasty little rascals, but we can’t have them going hungry on Christmas, can we?” This was said with fondness.
The Bank Street Butchers were Connor’s old gang: Clyde, Danny, Two-Toed Tom, Kid Spiegelman, Little Artie and Virgil the Goat. Despite their fearsome moniker, not one was a day over eleven years old. The police in the Ninth Ward mockingly called them the Bank Street Bedbugs—pests who had proven impossible to eradicate. They lived by their wits on the unforgiving streets of New York, pooling various talents for pickpocketing (Clyde), defrauding charitable institutions for orphans (the cherubic Little Artie), larceny (Danny and Kid Speigelman), gambling (Virgil) and acting as a gopher for older delinquents (Tom).
Connor himself had been rescued from the streets by Harry’s sister, Myrtle, who took him into her employ as an informant and general errand boy. He had saved Harry’s life twice during the Hyde investigation, and now lived in a small garret on the top floor of the house. She’d come to think of him as a little brother and he’d done his best to fit into his new household, although when the Butchers came around, he tended to fall back into his old ways.
The boys greeted Harry and John with rowdy enthusiasm from the rear parlor, where they lay sprawled under the Christmas tree playing a fast-paced card game they called Jewish Faro.
“Hooked a new case, Harry?” Tom called out.
“Oh yes, and it’s a humdinger,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
“It’s got Egyptian mummies,” John put in. “And fatal curses.”
“Yer jokin’,” Kid Spiegelman said, turning over a ten of diamonds to the groans of his companions.
“Not in the least,” Harry said. “And there may be a job in it for you boys.”
“Minus my ten percent commission,” Connor added absently, copper curls gleaming in the lamplight. He eyed the thirteen cards laid out in a row on the carpet, muttering something about the hock.
“Call the turn, Spiegelman,” Virgil said.
“Hang on, Clyde ain’t bet yet.”
Connor’s nose wrinkled. “You smell pretty ripe, Harry.”
“So I hear. Give me ten minutes to wash up.”
Mrs. Rivers had raised all the leaves on the dining room table and they just managed to squeeze everybody in. She ordered John to say Grace, which the boys piously clasped their hands for, though they fell on the food like a school of piranhas before the final syllable of Amen had been uttered.
“I’ve been thinking about the removal of the eyes,” John said, heaping buttery mashed turnips on his plate. “Don’t you think it’s telling they were ripped—”
“I won’t have murder talk at the dinner table.” Mrs. Rivers shot him a stern look. “I simply won’t have it!”
“Sorry,” he mumbled contritely. “Of course, it’s perfectly savage of me. What about curses?”
That earned a disdainful sniff, but Harry could tell it wasn’t a veto. Like John, Mrs. Rivers had a fascination with the occult.
“Pass the ham, would’ya pleeze?” sang out Two-Toed Tom from the far end of the table. Harry complied and the platter of meat traveled through a series of slightly grubby hands, growing a bit smaller with each encounter.
“What do you mean by curses?” Mrs. Rivers demanded.
“Oh, there’s a doozy associated with the case,” John said blandly. “But I wouldn’t be so crass as to recite it now.”
“I should hope not.”
For many minutes, the only sounds were the clanking of cutlery and enthusiastic chewing of the Butchers. Finally, Mrs. Rivers could no longer contain herself.
“Is it connected to a particular object?” she inquired. “I only ask because I just finished reading about Thomas Busby’s Dead Man’s Chair. Do you know of it?”
“Why, no.” John leaned forward, a gleam in his eye. “By all means, tell us.”
“Well,” she began in a conspiratorial tone. “Thomas Busby, a Yorkshire man, murdered his father-in-law in 1702. Strangled him for daring to sit in Busby’s favorite chair. I think there was some bludgeoning too. Well, just before they hung him from the gibbet, he put a curse on the chair.”
“And?”
“Sixty-three people who have sat in the chair met with untimely deaths,” she whispered loudly.
“Oh God,” Harry said. “Where did you read this?”
“One of Connor’s penny dreadfuls,” she said, still in that booming stage whisper. “You know I confiscate them from the boy whenever I find them. Absolute filth!”
“Filth,” John agreed, suppressing a grin. “In fact, the curse in the Sabelline case is connected to an Egyptian amulet. Claims that anyone who touches it will die in about a dozen unpleasant ways.”
“Oh dear. Is that why the S.P.R is interested?”
“Partly,” John said evasively. He raised his glass. “I must say, this is a smashing dinner, Mrs. Rivers. The glazed ham is a work of culinary art. I’d say we earned it, don’t you think, Harry?”
“I’m just glad you’re all here.” She looked around at the eccentric gathering with a warm smile. “It would be awfully lonely otherwise.”
“Indeed it would,” the housekeeper said. “I know your parents are stuck in the Canary Islands, Harry, but far be it from Myrtle to send a telegram letting us know if she’s dead or alive, let alone whether she’ll be home for Christmas.”
“No word from Paris then?”
Harry’s older sister had departed two weeks before, hot on the trail of a jewel thief who’d been plundering the boudoirs of wealthy women in the exclusive 16th Arrondissement. She usually solved her cases within a few days; Harry wondered (with a degree of jealousy) if Myrtle had decided to stay and enjoy the sights. More likely, another case had come along to catch her attention and she hadn’t bothered to send a letter home. Although she often complained that “there was nothing new under the sun” when it came to crime, Myrtle was always on the lookout for cases of sufficient complexity and weirdness to challenge her formidable intellect.
“Not a peep,” Mrs. Rivers said.
“Just as well,” John chimed in. “Myrtle would be second-guessing us every step of the way.”
“True. But she might have some valuable insights.” Harry stirred her oyster soup. “Do you think the police have a hope of solving it?”
“Of course not. Unless the killer has an attack of conscience and confesses, which seems unlikely considering the savagery—”
“Oh no, you don’t.” Mrs. Rivers put on a bright smile. “How about dessert?”
They talked of more cheerful things after that. John regaled them with stories about his brothers that had Mrs. Rivers red-faced and laughing. The Butchers cleared the table, bantering amongst themselves in street flash barely recognizable as English. Harry didn’t mind, as she had a feeling their conversation touched on criminal activities she would prefer to be in the dark about.
Once the Apple Jonathan had been consumed down to the last sugary crumb and they sat before the fire in the drawing room, Mrs. Rivers relented and the talk turned once again to the strange death of Julius Sabelline.
“There are two possibilities as I see it,” Harry said. “The theft of the relic in the strongbox was the reason for the murder, or it was intended as misdirection to make the scene look like a robbery, when in fact the true motive was entirely different.”
“And the eyes?” John said quietly.
“Strongly imply a personal hatred. Punishment for some perceived sin.”
“I agree. The stabbing had a clear purpose—to cause death, quickly. Six wounds. The killer didn’t mutilate any other part of his anatomy. It wasn’t torture, as Sabelline was dead already. Gouging out the eyes seems pointless.”
“Clearly not to whoever did it. It required an extra minute or so to accomplish. Someone could have walked in at any time. Quite a risk, but one the killer was willing to take. The question is why.”
“Oculi quas fenestrae animi. The eyes are the windows of the soul. Do you remember, Harry?”
“Bruno Alighieri, you mean. The demonologist we consulted in the Brady case.”
“It’s an odd parallel.”
Harry kicked her shoes off and wiggled her stockinged toes at the fire. “It’s useless to speculate until we know more about the amulet itself. I’ll ask Sabelline’s wife about it tomorrow. Any other ideas?”
“Here’s one. What if it isn’t an enemy of Dr. Sabelline, but of the museum?” John said. “Someone who wanted the exhibit to fail.”
Connor had been listening quietly the whole time. Now he shook his head.
“Yer not thinking it through,” he said patiently.
“What?”
He spread his arms wide. “Just pitcher it. Famous explorer gets his candle snuffed inside the museum just before the exhibit opens. Cursed object nicked! People will come in droves. They’ll be beating ‘em off with a stick.”
“He’s right,” John said. “Which presents another possible motive.”
“Nelson Holland killed Dr. Sabelline in a spectacularly gruesome fashion to revive the museum’s attendance?” Harry asked with a smile. “Or maybe it was Morris K. Jessup himself?”
“I know it sounds far-fetched. I just think we should consider everything.”
“Fair enough.”
“What about the money? You ought to find out if there was an inheritance involved.” Mrs. Rivers sipped her dry gin with a happy sigh. “At least half the murders in this city have profit as a motive.”
“Half?” John snorted. “Try ninety percent.”
“I’ve no idea if he was wealthy,” Harry said. “The address Mrs. Winter gave me is in Brooklyn Heights. A respectable neighborhood but hardly Mansion Row.” She grinned. “It’s not far from that roller skating rink on Fulton and Orange Streets you dragged me to a couple of years back.”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t have a good time,” John laughed.
“I think I still have the scars.”
Harry wandered into the kitchen, where the Butchers were drinking mulled cider and practicing some sort of cheating strategy that involved attaching a nearly invisible silk thread to the cards and dragging them to different piles in the faro deal. Virgil the Goat, the undisputed wizard of gaming sleight-of-hand, watched the others’ efforts with a jaundiced eye, offering pointers in a bored tone.
“I have a job for you,” Harry said. “All of you.”
They perked up at this.
“There’s a man named Count Balthazar Jozsef Habsburg-Koháry. I need you to find out where he lives and keep an eye on the place. Discreetly. That means without getting caught. We’ll all be in the soup if you muck this up.”
“Please,” Little Artie said with quiet dignity. “Yer talkin’ to professionals. We won’t get nicked. What’s the feller’s name again?”
Harry repeated it, more slowly this time. There was no point in writing it down as she doubted any of them could read. “He’s very rich.”
“Probably lives uptown with the other swells then,” Danny said. “Don’t worry, Miss Pell. We’ll track him down fer ya.”
“Excellent. Keep me informed.”
At ten o’clock, the Butchers thanked Mrs. Rivers for a “lov-er-ly dinner” and cleared out for their shared flophouse by the docks. Harry gave them each a quarter and a ham sandwich from the leftovers. She and Mrs. Rivers stood on the front stoop and watched as the six small forms melted into the shadows along Tenth Street.
“New York is no place for children,” Mrs. Rivers said, an edge of anger in her voice. “Those boys can’t be blamed for what they do, when they have no one to take care of them.”
“No, they can’t,” Harry agreed.
When they went back inside, they found John going over his notes from the day, adding details while his memory was still fresh.
“What about Jeremy Boot?” he said. “I know the charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence, but that’s not the same as being proved innocent. At the least it could be useful to get his story firsthand.”
“Is that an offer?” Harry asked with a smile.
“His address is in the police report. I’ll pop over tomorrow.”
“Perfect. I’ll see the Sabellines and we can meet afterwards for lunch at the St. Denis.”
The clock chimed and Harry suppressed a yawn.
“Don’t you think we ought to exchange presents now?” Mrs. Rivers said. “It’s getting rather late.”
“Oh no.” John looked stricken. “This is so embarrassing.”
“Ignore him.” Mrs. Rivers gave John a playful swat. “He dropped them off days ago. Swore me to secrecy.”
Connor passed the gifts around and they took turns opening them. Harry had bought John the latest edition of Grey’s Anatomy and a cashmere scarf. For Mrs. Rivers, whose love of the macabre was only surpassed by her love of quackery, Harry had ordered a Dr. Scott’s Electric Flesh Brush. Dr. Scott was a great favorite of Mrs. Rivers, and she seemed pleased with it.
“And this is yours.” John handed her a rectangular box. Harry opened it. Her breath caught at the object inside, gleaming in its velvet lining.
“Oh, John. You shouldn’t have. But it’s lovely.”
“Well, so are you,” he said lightly. “A good match then.”
Harry pointed the gun at the fireplace, admiring its sleek curves.
“It’s a Colt Derringer,” he said. “Walnut grip with an engraved silver barrel. Perfect for a stocking, muff or bodice.”
She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You’re not afraid I’ll shoot you with it?”
He grinned. “I’ll just have to stay on your good side.”
Harry laughed. “I won’t have to swipe Myrtle’s anymore. Oh, thank you!” She leapt to her feet and fairly bowled him over with an embrace. John grinned, his cheeks reddening.
“All right. I’m glad you like it. There’s no point in telling you to stay out of trouble, so I figured you might as well be armed.”
Connor received some useful but boring items such as new socks and coat, but his eyes lit up when John gave him The Legacy of Cain, Wilkie Collins’ new horror novel. From the way Mrs. Rivers eyed it covetously, Harry had a feeling the book would end up among her extensive collection of confiscated penny dreadfuls.
John left at a little before midnight and they all toddled off to their rooms, warm and replete with food and camaraderie. Harry curled up in bed but as exhausted as she was, her mind kept running through the crime scene and the odd bits of evidence that didn’t add up. Keys and shoes and missing weapons.
More akin to an icepick…sharp but shallow ridges.
Harry threw the blankets off, rolled over. Got cold and pulled them back on. She felt she was missing something. Something important. But what?
The eyes were found approximately six feet from the body.
They nagged at her, those eyes. Like John said, unsettling echoes of the Brady case.
Pervadunt oculus.
It comes through the eyes.
Harry felt a chill. She thought of the crow she’d seen outside the Morgue that afternoon. Just like the one that had perched on her windowsill when Elizabeth Brady came to visit that summer, staring in such a queer, un-birdlike way through the glass. They all looked the same. It couldn’t possibly be the same bird.
Could it?
Don’t, she ordered herself sternly. Leland Brady is dead. You saw him die. The Hyde case is closed. You caught him in the act, about to kill Billy in the tunnel. Don’t look for connections that don’t exist.
No, the simple truth was someone wanted Julius Sabelline dead, and that someone was almost certainly one of a small number of friends or acquaintances. She had only to eliminate them one by one, by gathering as many hard facts as possible. The amulet of Osiris seemed a promising line of inquiry. Why take that particular artifact when far more valuable ones would have been easier to steal?
Deep waters, Orpha Winter had said.
It was of water that Harry dreamt when she finally fell asleep. Dark and still and fathomless. Tall grey reeds swayed in the murk. Harry drifted among them, her bare toes brushing the muddy bottom. She had a strong sensation of being watched by hidden eyes. She flapped her arms to move quicker. Light shone in the distance, and in the way of dreams, she knew the edge of the queer forest lay not far ahead, if she could only reach it. But the not-water (for she breathed it easily) seemed to thicken the harder she tried to swim.
And then her heart froze as a larger shadow moved in the reeds. In an instant, the watchers scattered, a school of barracuda before a great white. She leaned forward, trying to dig into the muck, but every movement was painfully slow and labored.
He’s been looking for you. The Hunter. The man named Hyde.
And now he’s found you.
Harry opened her mouth to scream, and suddenly she was back in her bed. Paralyzed and sticky with sweat.
The night terrors.
Some part of her remembered, although she hadn’t had them since she was a small child. The unshakeable conviction that someone—a man—was climbing the stairs and coming toward her room. She couldn’t stir, couldn’t draw breath to scream, and when he opened the door….
Harry woke up, truly this time. Her eyes flew to the doorknob, heart clawing at her chest. But it didn’t turn. Ever so slowly, the panic ebbed. She lit a candle with shaking hand. She wished her parents would come home. At nineteen, she considered herself an independent woman, but the house felt awfully empty with just Connor and Mrs. Rivers.
Harry opened the drawer to her bedside table and confirmed that the gun John had given her lay inside, loaded and ready to fire. She took a drink of water and picked up the latest edition of the Journal of Forensic Botany.
Dawn was still hours off, but she knew there would be no more sleep that night.