Conjurer (6 page)

Thomas Kelman pays the grumblers no heed. His profession has put him in contact with many people; some are good, some are not. Rich men steal and lie no less frequently than the poor; it's just that their numbers are fewer.

For his part, he's deeply disappointed in the results of the massive search—but not altogether surprised, although the matter of the missing rifle continues to niggle at his brain. He senses something peculiar, a lost piece of the puzzle, but with so little of substance to ponder, his thoughts keep slipping into formless conjecture.

He decides to write to Martha and request the opportunity of
paying a visit to speak in private regarding Mr. Beale
. The wording causes him grave difficulty—which in turn produces frustration and self-rebuke. Penning a note to a lady he scarcely knows should be a simple matter. Instead, the effort seems stilted, indirect, devoid of humanity, although he wants the missive to sound ambiguous, as if he continues to hold out hope of success.

In fact, he has none. Lemuel Beale has vanished, and either his body remains still river-bound, submerged in some dam created by rock and waterlogged debris, or else the flood has carried him into the Delaware—and so out to sea. Or perhaps there is some more malign explanation.

My Dear Miss Beale
, Kelman's awkward note concludes,
I hope I may call upon you this afternoon
. A boy gallops off into the countryside with the letter, and four hours later hurries back with a reply.

Miss Beale is indisposed. She is not receiving visitors
.

Kelman turns the response over and over in his long fingers. The handwriting isn't a woman's—appropriate enough if she's ill and able to dictate only. But the terseness of the message pains him; he feels his face flush and his neck muscles tighten. Unconsciously, he touches the scar on his cheek, then thrusts the letter away, heaving it angrily onto his crowded desk, from where it falls, forgotten, to the floor.

Martha Beale is no better than the rest of her breed, he tells himself. Wealthy, heedless of others' emotions, she has no more warmth or compassion than a statue sitting in a park. Naturally, her reaction is of the shallowest nature. Why, he wonders, didn't she instruct her scribe to include a monetary gift as the final insult? She and her pinch-hearted father can go to the very devil.

“I will give you a new name,” the man in the fur-lined cloak tells the girl. The narrow city alleyway on which they stand is dank and chill, devoid of all light and life. No omnibus passes; no merchant journeys homeward; not even a solitary beggar boy can be found in the derelict space.

“I will call you Mary,” the man continues in a lush and soothing tone, “the beloved of Christ. Will that make you happy?”

The newly dubbed “Mary,” small, lithe, with a child's reckless grace, nods assent and is quickly enveloped in the hot and perfume-soaked fur.

“You have a place to take me, do you not, little one?”

With her face pressed against the man's chest, the girl nods again. She opens her mouth to speak, but he wraps gloved fingers around her lips. “Do not speak,” he says. “It's better if you do not …”

Ladies of Pleasure

I
ALREADY TOLD YOU TWO
gents I can't describe him. Or haven't you been listening to anything I've said?” Dutch Kat's tone is beleaguered and irritable, her words directed not to the tall man who introduced himself as Thomas Kelman but to the police sergeant who stands squat and bulldog-like at his side, his uniform stretched tight about the belly and shoulders as if an actual animal rather than a person were inside. “He wore a fur-lined greatcoat, a tall beaver hat same as any other gent, and some type of colored scarf that just about concealed his face. That's all I saw. I don't generally waste my time on the customers my girls bring in from the streets. I've got regulars, I do, and they like a bit of fancy entertainment now and then. The kind of sophisticated show we did back in the old country—”

“Height?” the sergeant interrupts as he writes Kat's paltry description in a small, smudged book. “Weight?”

Kat sighs archly. “We've been through this all before, constable. Middling to tall—or maybe not. He had a hat, as I said, so it could have been the hat I was noticing. He and Claire passed through the front door, then they made for the stairway fast. I never heard him speak. As to whether he was heavy or thin, I couldn't possibly tell you.”

“Claire.” The sergeant makes note of the name while Kat continues to regard him. His nose, she decides, is exactly the color of watered wine. And about as attractive, too.

“No point in writing that down, either, Sergeant. It wasn't the girl's real name.” Dutch Kat all but sneers this piece of information. “The kid said she was called Claire when she landed on my doorstep begging for work. I knew it was a lie, and a dull and foolish one at that. Solange would have been better, or Inez. My customers like a taste of the exotic. As I said, we get foreign gents here on many an occasion.
Noms de guerre
one Frenchman told me the names was. He's the one who dubbed me Dutch Kat—‘a woman as ripe as a Holland cheese.' I'm from over there, myself. From Zwolle. I don't remember anything special about the cheeses, though. The ale, that was another thing.” Kat studiously avoids looking at Kelman as she speaks. Something about him is beginning to unnerve her. Maybe it's his silence, or maybe it's the faint scar that slivers along his cheek. He looks like a dangerous customer even though she can see that he's quite clearly a toff. For the life of her, she can't understand what a man who's not a policeman is doing snooping about her establishment; and Kat is supremely uncomfortable with paradoxes.

“No, and I don't know her age, neither,” she says in reply to an additional question posed by the sergeant. “Look, if I'd had all these facts and figures at my fingertips, I would have said so downstairs and saved myself the trouble—and you two gents, as well. She was young, though. Ten, maybe, or eleven. And then there's that silly name, like something in a nursery song. It didn't help her gain regular customers, I can tell you.”

“It looks like nothing helped her,” the sergeant observes.

Dutch Kat releases another long sigh, and she and her visitors continue crowding into Claire's small and rank-smelling room. The sergeant again writes in his ledger while Kat swings around to face Thomas Kelman, then immediately regrets her decision. “I don't wish no trouble with the law,” she mutters, attempting to crinkle her eyes and flutter her lashes in a practiced picture of naïveté. The expression only makes her look deceitful and cunning, while the effort greatly increases her distress. Men like this fancy gent don't have any place in Kat's fancy house.

“Not a clue,” she huffs in reply to the sergeant's next question: this one concerning the girl's parentage. “Sold by her father to some wealthy gent, I'd imagine. I get a lot that's been sold—then released by their masters to fend for theirselves. The men that buy 'em don't take 'em for long—once they're no longer babies, that is. And it's simple enough to purchase another kid.” She shrugs her ample shoulders. “‘God helps those that help theirselves'; that's what the Good Book says, ain't it—?”

Another question interrupts her, and Kat's tone turns more belligerent. Her fleshy bosom heaves. Ill concealed beneath a lace and cambric bodice that is none too clean, her upper body gives off an acrid odor like cold boiled cabbage. “No, I did
not
inquire what her family name was, constable!” she all but sneers. “Oft times, the girls don't know, neither. We're not all blessed with fancy pedigrees—or didn't you know?” As she says this, she forces herself to stare at Kelman, who returns her suggestive gaze without flinching.

Kat has a sudden mind to grab for his crotch; it's a lunatic notion, and she finally and truly grins at the boldness of the thought. Her front teeth as she produces this garish expression are intact and very white. No matter that the rest are gone; it makes for “easier business.” “You're a right gentleman, ain't you, mister?” she demands of Kelman. “I can always sniff them out. What I can't figure, though, is what you're doing poking around down here on lower Lombard Street. Don't you get enough pickpockets and footpads bothering the fancy folk over on Washington Square?”

Kelman doesn't reply. Instead, his black eyes regard her intently. Kat, shorter by far, unkempt, unwashed, feels herself squirm under the relentless scrutiny. “Can we finish this up?” she demands. “I got paying customers waiting.”

“We can haul you in as a common scold,” the sergeant growls. “The Criers' Docket has plenty of those. Adultery, too.”

“Don't make me laugh!” Kat throws back. “‘Common scold.' I'm only saying my peace as a law-abiding citizen.” Then her pugnacious façade again begins to crumble under Kelman's steady perusal.

Inadvertently she touches her rumpled curls. She knows they need coloring; years and strain have turned their former blond to patchy gray, and she imagines him gazing down into the mismatched thicket as if surprised at such a multitude of colors. “This is a clean house, Dutch Kat's is,” she states in defiance. “We're recommended in the
Guide to the Stranger
—only forty-four of us fancy houses made the list. Most exclusive, the publication is. The pamphlet's carried in the best hotels and lodgings.” This last statement ends as a sort of appeal. She looks to Kelman, but he makes no response.

“Can we finish this up?” Kat repeats with a nervous giggle. “It's a chill night out, and I have gents waiting for my better girls. Men like a bit of warming on a bitter winter evening like this. Now, I could supply you two with something to cozy you up. We'll get this palaver over first, and then—”

The sergeant shakes his florid nose, then blows it on a rumpled bit of linen. He looks tempted by Kat's offer; Kelman does not.

“That's not the Bible you're quoting,” he says in a tone of such resonance that Kat unexpectedly thinks of church bells. Church bells in a house for ladies of pleasure! “The words were penned by Benjamin Franklin—”

“As I live and breathe.” Kat forces a snicker. “Our fine guest's got a tongue in his head after all!”

Kelman stares down at her. “And you can't tell us who did this?” he finally says, his fingers indicating the bed. Not one pair of eyes follows the gesture.

“I already said I hadn't a clue, didn't I, mister?”

“But there must have been something you noticed, madam. A slight limp or a manner in which he carried himself that might have indicated his age … whether his face was broad or thin … there must have been some discernible mark—”

“He was wearing a scarf and expensive coat. That's all I can tell you. Look, if I'd known what mischief he was up to I wouldn't have let him in, would I? I'm a business woman, not a monster.” Kat spits out these words. “And it will be a right mess to clean it up, too! A nice mattress, that, horsehair. Feather pillows, too. They're pricey bits, and bloodstains don't disappear with soap. Lye soap, neither.” Dutch Kat snaps her ruined teeth in frustration, then stabs the floor with a grubby foot. “Country girls! They're more bother than they're worth.”

The sergeant again makes an entry in his book. “You're certain she was a country lass?” he asks.

“Look at that hair, why don't you, constable? Blond—and plenty of it. And her skin! Not a mark upon it. Leastways, not one made by nature. You don't get that type here in the Fifth Ward or the shacks north of Cramp and Sons Shipyards. Them girls is small and gray as rats, but they don't kill easy.”

She stamps her heel as she speaks, and the vehemence of her movement shakes the bedstead. Kat and the two men look down just in time to see Claire's naked body slide downward to lie in a small, angular puddle on the dusty carpet. Murdered, she was posed half on the bed, her arms bending forward gracefully, her head turned gently sideways, and her thin, young legs trailing floorward as if sleep had overwhelmed her at her prayers.

Finding Claire thus dozing during working hours, Kat had first upbraided the girl for being “stuck on religion.” Then she noticed the red-black sheets, the deep gash slicing the neck, and the child's pale tongue placed like an offering on a separate pillow.

Cherry Hill

“C
HERRY HILL” IS WHAT THE
locals have dubbed the place. The name is accompanied by a twisting set of the mouth that indicates a combination of contempt and terror, because Cherry Hill is no longer the broad and bountiful cherry orchard that once sat atop a promontory at the bucolic northern outskirts of the city, but a penitentiary for Philadelphia's convicted criminals. None inside, neither the warders nor those sentenced to repent their crimes in solitary confinement, call the prison Cherry Hill, however. But then those who reside within its stout stone walls seldom speak. Absolute silence is the prison's rule.

Absolute silence within ten acres of land that's been divided into a central rotunda from which emanate cell blocks, a kitchen and laundry, a surgery, kennels for the Great Danes that guard the walls, a vegetable garden, and a pump house where dray horses pace endless rotations. Built a brief thirteen years ago in 1829, the complex officially called Eastern State Penitentiary is a miracle of modern invention; warders monitor each cell door through a series of mirrors that image interior corridors, and so maintain an appropriate air of monastic repentance and mute reflection. The notion that isolation and prayer can teach murderers and thieves alike to atone for their crimes has made the prison a famous place not only in the nation but abroad. All foreign dignitaries and European
artistes
touring Philadelphia insist upon visiting it.

But the prison is also notorious for its stench. Human waste is flushed through the great drains twice a month only; when flooding or heavy rains occur, the sewers regurgitate inside the cells themselves, carrying drowned rats, mice, swimming toads, snakes as thick as eels. The stink permeates the air, burrows into the skin and clothing of those incarcerated and even into the great stone slabs themselves. The smell and the enforced seclusion make suicide endemic.