Chapter 16
Jesse and I lingered at home long enough for him to telephone the police station and arrange for two officers to meet us at the address indicated on Mr. Griggson’s card. Then he and I set out together.
Webster Street intersected Bellevue Avenue and continued east to dead end at the Cliff Walk and the ocean. The street also skirted the northern border of Ochre Court. No wonder Mr. Griggson had chosen to lease a house here. Even on foot, he could be at Ochre Court in minutes. No bachelor’s rooms at the Casino for him. I wondered, had he hoped to lure Cleo to this lovely clapboard house, with its arched, mullioned windows, on its tree-shaded property? If she had not wished to go willingly, would he have found a way to coerce her?
While Jesse guided the police buggy onto the short, circular driveway, I glanced down the street toward Ochre Court. I couldn’t see the house, not from this angle, but I spotted a familiar figure about fifty yards away. Or the back of a figure, I should say. A man in military uniform hurried along the street, one hand raised to keep his cap on his blond head.
“That looks like Sam Caldwell.”
Jesse leaned to see past me. “The captain?”
“Yes. I wonder if he was just visiting Mr. Griggson.”
“Do they know each other?” Jesse sounded skeptical, just as I had questioned their acquaintance when I’d seen them speaking at the ball. On the surface it seemed unlikely that a man of Griggson’s questionable background would have anything in common with a young officer who hailed from the Four Hundred, but times were changing. However much it galled the old guard, families like the Astors and the Goelets were no longer the untouchable bastion of society. People could now buy their way in. My own relatives had; it had taken several generations, but they had won the right to dance upon the same gleaming parquet floors as those who considered themselves old money, American aristocracy.
Obviously, Silas Griggson had paid his entry fee, or he would not have been a guest at Mrs. Goelet’s ball, and she would not have considered him an eligible catch for her friend’s daughter.
“I believe they do know each other,” I told Jesse. “I don’t know how. It could have to do with real estate matters. Perhaps Sam’s family is having a house built, or they might own property that’s being developed for rental housing.”
“Do you wish to ask him something? Should I catch up to him?”
“No, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go in and have that chat with Mr. Griggson.”
Jesse pulled the carriage up by the front door and we alighted. When I would have raised my hand to knock, I discovered the door ajar. Jesse and I traded curious looks, and, frowning, he nudged me behind him.
Slowly, he widened the door and put one foot over the threshold. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
No answer came. I craned to peer over his shoulder, scanning the front hall for signs of a disturbance. Everything looked in order. The ticking of a clock met my ears. The only other sounds were those from outdoors, birds chirping and carriages rumbling along nearby Bellevue Avenue.
“Stay outside,” Jesse murmured. Need I say I followed him inside, staying close at his heels, my hand on his shoulder as we tiptoed into the house? We crossed the front hall and entered a wide doorway into the parlor. Here, too, everything appeared tidy. But something felt wrong, something that prickled at my nape. Jesse felt it, too, or he would not have continued to hold out an arm in an attempt to keep me behind him.
We continued through to a dining room, furnished in such dark woods and heavy curtains as to essentially block out the daylight. The shadows seemed to breathe with a palpable presence. Jesse and I lingered in the doorway, framed on each side by floor to ceiling pocket doors that had been slid to a partially closed position. A darker shadow crept out from behind the far end of the long dining table.
“Jesse, there.” I pointed, even as I tensed to flee. But then I realized nothing had crawled or moved, it had merely been a trick of the shadows and my own eyes that had yet to adjust to the darkness. Whatever lay beyond the table remained inert, lifeless.
Jesse moved to a window and yanked open the curtains. Sunlight fell in a thick shaft to illuminate the room, the table, and a prone Mr. Griggson.
“Jesse!”
He was already at my side. Mr. Griggson, in his shirtsleeves, vest, and dark trousers, lay on his back. His eyes were closed, his body utterly still. My breath suspended, I raised a shaky finger to point down at him, or, rather, at the odd discoloration that drew my gaze.
“What is that?”
The center of Mr. Griggson’s forehead was marked with a kind of blackened, irregular star.
Jesse swore and fell into a crouch beside the prone man. “Emma, go. Please.”
“What is it?” But the answer was already dawning on me. That was no star, but jagged flesh and bone, blackened by gunpowder. “A bullet wound.”
Jesse stood. “There’s nothing we can do for him.”
“But . . . who?” My features tightened in disbelief. “Sam Caldwell?”
“We don’t know for sure the captain was even here. Come on. We need to go. I need to alert the station house and the coroner.”
I nodded vaguely as a sense of unreality took hold of me. I grew cold and shivers racked me. Jesse saw and drew me to him. He ran his hands up and down my arms.
“Let’s get you out of here.” He started me toward the entryway, when I dug in and stopped.
“The wound. It reminds me of something.”
“Tell the coroner.”
“No. Let me check.” I turned back to the body, but Jesse was quicker and stepped in front of me.
“All right, tell me. What is it?”
“His right wrist. The underside. He has a tattoo, a star. The wound reminded me of it.”
His eyebrow tightly knitted, Jesse knelt beside Mr. Griggson’s body again and tugged his shirtsleeve up. Yet where the tattoo on his pulse point had been, now there was only a flesh wound, as if—
“It’s gone. Not just gone. Removed.” I shuddered and squeezed my eyes closed.
“Cut away,” Jesse murmured. He lowered Mr. Griggson’s arm to the floor and pushed to his feet. He grasped my forearms again. “You said it was a star? Are you quite certain of that?”
“I . . . Fairly certain. I only saw it for a second or two.” I thought back to when Silas Griggson stood in my parlor, demanding to buy Gull Manor. When he had thrust his calling card at me, I had believed he was going to strike me. My eyes were riveted on his hand, his arm. His sleeve had ridden up and I had seen the star rendered in black ink. “Yes,” I amended. “I’m certain.”
Jesse swore again. “Two stars.”
I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
“As you said, the wound is like a star, to match the one he had on his wrist.”
“But that one is gone.”
“Yes. This was no crime of passion, or anything we’ve ever seen in Newport before, at least not in my lifetime. The wrist, the bullet wound—this contained a message.”
My throat ran dry. “What kind of message? And for whom?”
“I don’t have the answers to those questions, not yet. But this much I do know. It was an execution. The black star is a symbol of New York’s Five Points Gang. Or it was, at any rate, early on, when the gang first formed. They wore it on their wrists as a sign of solidarity and as a warning to rival gangs. At least, the young ones did. The ones who came up through the ranks.”
“Came up through the ranks?”
“The ones who started as boys, running messages, committing petty crimes for the gang. They worked their way up to more serious crimes.”
“That would explain how a man as wealthy as Griggson seemed to come from nowhere.”
Jesse nodded and glanced down at the body. “And now he’s nothing once again. He must have crossed them. . . .”
“They’d kill one of their own? A powerful man like Silas Griggson?”
“I can guarantee you there are far more powerful men than Griggson. Men who have their hands in legitimate concerns as well as illegal, and who have influence over Tammany Hall and the New York Police Department. Even the mayor’s office.”
“Power over Mayor Van Wyck?”
Jesse nodded. Not wasting another moment, he grasped my hand and drew me from the dining room back through to the entry hall. There he hesitated. “There’s probably a telephone here somewhere. . . .”
A sense of urgency came over me. “You already told the station to send two men. They should be here any moment. But Jesse, if Sam Caldwell did this, and he’s headed to Ochre Court, we have to warn them.”
Jesse nodded. “Yes. But not you. If Sam Caldwell did this, I’m not bringing you there. Wait here for my men. I’ll go. Stay here, Emma. Here.” He pointed to the floor where I stood. “Don’t go back in the dining room.” Without waiting for my response, or perhaps the argument he expected from me, he rushed out the front door. A moment later I heard his carriage hurrying away.
* * *
At the sound of a groan, I whirled. My heart thumped wildly. Silas Griggson couldn’t be alive. No one could survive a bullet to the head....
A second groan traveled, not from the dining room, but from a room on the other side of the entry hall. I peered through an open doorway into a room lined with bookshelves. A library. A dragging step somewhere inside sent me backing up against the front door. My first thought was to flee, and I wrapped my hand around the door handle.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice called weakly. The voice broke into coughing. My fingers tightened, ready to press the latch.
The voice called out again, “Please, help me. . . .”
Recognition washed through me. It was Dorian Norris. I moved to the doorway, seeing nothing but bookshelves, sofas, a table, and chairs. “Lieutenant?”
“Who—who’s there?” More dragging footsteps drew my gaze to the far corner of the room, where a figure came into view. He leaned heavily on the frame of a sofa, hunching over, his head hanging. He seemed unable to focus at first, but stared blankly across the room, leaning, struggling to remain upright. Then, his vision narrowed on me. “Miss Cross?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” I rushed into the room. When I reached him I slipped an arm around him and dragged one of his across my shoulders. “Can you walk? You can sit here.”
He hesitated before shaking his head. “Please help me out of here.”
Once back in the front hall, he swayed precariously. I helped him onto the bottom step. I remained standing, gazing down on him.
“What happened? How did you come to be here?”
After breathing out audibly, he raised his face to me. “Where is Sam Caldwell?”
My pulse lurched. “Was he here? I saw him hurrying toward Ochre Court.”
“I followed him here.” He lowered his chin again, propping his elbows on his knees and allowing his forehead to fall into his hands. “He’s been acting so strangely and . . . this friendship he’d struck up with Griggson. It didn’t make sense. Griggson’s a dangerous man.”
I nodded my understanding. “Then they did know each other?”
He nodded. “Rather too well, I’m afraid.”
“So you followed him here today.”
“I hoped to help him out of a difficulty. I thought perhaps Sam owed Griggson money or something of that nature.”
“What happened when you got here? Was Sam here?”
The lieutenant nodded. “I found the door unlocked, so I came in. As I did, I heard a noise, caught a flashing glimpse of Sam, and then . . .” He shook his head.
“And then what?” I pressed him.
“Then I heard someone out here in the hall. It was you.”
I stood back a moment, considering. Dorian had said Griggson was a dangerous man, but Griggson was dead. Sam had been here, and apparently he had knocked Dorian unconscious. “Did you hear a gun go off?”
“A gun?” He looked alarmed and shook his head.
With a sigh I sat beside him on the step. “Silas Griggson is dead.” With my chin I indicated the doorway into the parlor. “He’s through there, in the dining room.”
I let this sink in, and then continued. “Lieutenant, have you ever heard of the Five Points Gang?”
“I’ve heard of them, yes. They’ve a terrible reputation. Why? Oh, you don’t think Griggson—” He broke off, his mouth open. “But then Sam . . . Wait. If Griggson is dead, and Sam was here and . . . and probably knocked me unconscious. . . does that mean Sam . . .” He didn’t complete the thought, but I understood and nodded.
“We can’t be certain, but it does look that way. The police are on their way now. They’ll sort this out.”
“Wait a minute.” He turned to face me more fully. “Did you say you saw Sam rushing to Ochre Court?”
“It appeared so. He was headed in that direction, and walking fast.”
His eyes sparked with fright. Grabbing the newel post beside him, he struggled to his feet, wobbled a moment, then took a couple of steps. “I have to go,” he murmured.
“Lieutenant, you’re not fit to go anywhere just now. We should wait for the police. Detective Whyte is already on his way to Ochre Court.”
He pinned me with a determined, feverish stare. “You don’t understand. I must go. Everything I care about is there. Camille.” He stumbled his way to the front door and threw it open. I came to my feet, protesting but knowing I would not be able to stop him. Only his physical state had the power to do that now. But with each step his determination shored him up, and by the time he reached the driveway, his stride became firm, fleet. He loved Camille Tate. He needed to protect her.
And then I thought of Grace, of Ilsa, of Mrs. Goelet’s daughter, May. Jesse was only one man, and Ochre Court was huge. He would need help, and the police still hadn’t arrived. Quickly, I drew out the notepad and pencil I always carried in my handbag. I scribbled directions, tore out the page, folded it, and secured it beneath the door knocker. The policemen would know where to go.
I hurried after Lieutenant Norris.