Privy to the Dead (6 page)

“Is that all of it?” Lissa said, sounding disappointed.

“That's what I was told.”

“And we care about this why?” Shelby asked, still looking confused.

“While the late Mr. Scruggs was showing this object he found to the bartender, someone else started talking to him about it, and they left together. I'm wondering if the second guy had reason to think that object meant something important. Whatever it was, Carnell Scruggs didn't have it on him when he died, so either he lost it on his way home, which could have taken him down Thirteenth Street outside, gave or sold it to this mysterious stranger, or that the stranger took it from him. That's why I want to know what's in that box of stuff. If we find something similar and it's nothing important, we can go back to business as usual. If there
is
something, we turn it over to the police as a clue. Everyone okay with that?”

Shelby gave me a searching look. “What're you thinking? You're guessing that this has something to do with why the man ended up dead?”

Well, yes, but that was a can of worms I didn't want to open. I chose my words carefully. “The police are treating this publicly as a tragic accident, but since Detective Hrivnak is on the case, they must think there's more to it. They have no evidence to suggest anything else. However, the object that Carnell Scruggs had in his pocket is a wild card here, so if it came from the Society, I want to know what it is.”

Nods all around. “What're we looking for?” Eric asked.

“I don't really know,” I said. “Something that survived being down in that pit for who knows how long—the foreman said everything that they pulled out was from a pre-plastic era, and Lissa can tell us when that hole in the ground would have been closed up. Hrivnak said the bartender described it as a few inches long, metal, maybe brass, flat, and curly.”

Shelby grinned. “So we're looking through old trash for something flat and curly. Beats writing begging letters any day.”

“From 1907 or earlier,” Lissa said. “That's when construction was finished here, that time around.”

“Let me get something to cover the floor,” Eric volunteered, “so then you can spread everything out.”

“Thanks, Eric.” He disappeared down the hall, and I turned to Shelby and Lissa. “Who said working here was dull?”

“Do you seriously think that this trash has anything to do with the man's death?” Lissa asked.

“You know, Nell,” Shelby said, her tone skeptical, “traffic accidents happen all the time in the city.”

“I know that, Shelby, but I don't believe it was just a
random traffic accident. I swear I'm not looking for trouble. But you all know that it seems to find me.”

“Does that detective think there's something suspicious about Mr. Scruggs's death?” Lissa asked.

“She hasn't said so, not in so many words, but I think she has doubts about the accident theory, too. She made sure to tell me that the man fell
backward
into the street, in front of that car.”

“Oh,” Shelby said, quick to grasp the significance of that. “She thinks he was pushed?”

“Officially this is still an accident. But if we brought her some new information, I think she'd listen. All I'm trying to do now is eliminate one possibility and make sure that the Society is in the clear.”

“What does Mr. Agent Man think?” Shelby asked.

“He thinks this is not his problem, and he has faith that I can handle this all by myself. He doesn't know all the details.”

Eric returned with an aged drop cloth that was already dirty—perfect. He knelt and spread it out on the floor, then looked at me. “Should I hunt down some gloves?”

“Ladies?”

The women both shook their heads.

I waved a magnanimous hand. “Then dig in. Just try not to break anything—if there's anything breakable in there. And watch out for splinters and broken glass, please.”

“What about spiders?” Shelby asked with a wicked grin.

“Don't even go there!” We all knelt around the battered boxes, as if worshiping at some obscure shrine. I figured I had first rights, so I reached in and pulled out . . . a broken fountain pen. I laid it carefully on the drop cloth. “Next?”

We went round and round the group a few times. The boxes emptied, and the pile of detritus on the floor grew. We'd nearly reached the bottom when Lissa stopped and pointed. “There. It's metal, flat, and curly.”

We all peered into the depth of the box, and I reached in and pulled out . . . a flat, curly piece of metal. I laid it on a clear patch of the drop cloth and we all stared at it.

It was flat. It was curly. It was the right size to fit into a pocket. Eric handed me a tissue without even being asked, and I rubbed the piece gingerly. To my eye it appeared to be brass. And I was going to guess that it dated from a long time before 1907.

“What is it?” Lissa finally said.

“It's got to be from a piece of furniture,” Shelby said. “It's got two screw holes, to attach it to the wood.”

Like the bartender said, according to Detective Hrivnak, it looked like a drawer. “I think they call it an escutcheon,” I said tentatively. “It goes behind a handle on a drawer, maybe to protect the wood. Anybody have a guess how old it is?”

“Eighteenth, early nineteenth century?” Shelby suggested.

“I'd agree, although I'm no expert,” I told her. “Let's
see if there's anything that goes with it in the bottom of the box?”

With renewed energy we started sifting through the remaining bits and pieces and came up with a handle, a single hinge, a few brass screws, and some large splinters of wood. We lined up the wood pieces and the metal bits together on the drop cloth and studied them.

“Well,” I said intelligently, then stopped because I couldn't think of anything to add.

“You got that right, Nell,” Shelby said. “Looks like we've got pieces of something made of wood with brass fittings. And that biggest metal thingy is definitely the right size and shape to match the thing that bartender described, so maybe we can guess there was a pair of 'em? And the dead guy pocketed the other one? He must've missed this one.”

“Works for me,” I said. “It would have been easy to miss. It was dark in that hole, and there wasn't much room to move down there—I bet he just grabbed a handful at a time and passed it up. Not that it looks particularly interesting or important. I wonder why this thing, whatever it was, ended up in the hole.”

“Looks to me like it was broken a long time ago, but who knows if it was already broken when it was pitched into the hole, or the fall broke it up,” Lissa added.

I considered that comment. “Let's assume no one carried it into the privy with him. Unless it's like one of those television shows where somebody's traveling with a briefcase chained to his wrist. It doesn't look like it ever got wet, so maybe it went in after it was no longer a privy?”

“Hey, could somebody explain this whole privy thing to me? Is that really what it was?” Shelby said plaintively.

“Lissa, you want to take that?” I said.

“Sure. Shelby, there's a long rich history of the archeology of privies in Philadelphia, even some that were known to have been used by Ben Franklin and his peers. A surprising array of stuff fell in or got tossed in over time.”

“Such as?” Shelby appeared honestly interested.

“Broken china, glassware, pipes, buttons, coins, dice, even the odd doll or toy. They offer amazing insight into ordinary life at various points in time, before the widespread use of indoor plumbing. For the most part, privies were located outside and behind a residence, but not too far, of course. When one would get . . . um, exhausted—”

Shelby interrupted her. “You mean, filled up?”

Lissa nodded. “Yes. Then the homeowner would often just close it up and dig another one, near the first.”

“This may be off topic, but what did they use for, uh, paper?” Shelby asked.

“Whatever they had,” Lissa said. “Out in the country, that would be grass, leaves, corncobs, maybe scraps of sheep's wool. In the city, maybe newspapers or, if you had money, cloth. Standards were a bit different in those days.”

“I'm glad I live now,” Eric said.

“And we think this pit was a privy, why?” Shelby asked.

“Because it lay just outside the foundation of the original building on this site, which was built over just after 1900,” Lissa told her.

“I don't see any paper or cloth here,” I commented. “Would they have survived? Some of the wood did.”

“Maybe?” Lissa replied. “That's not really my area of expertise.”

“What? There aren't graduate courses in sanitary management of the eighteenth century?” Shelby joked.

“Let's stay focused here,” I said, trying to keep this discussion on track. Despite its absurdity, we were dealing with the death of a man. “With the old mansion, the privy would have been outside, but when the new building was built, the addition would have extended past its location. Ergo, we can deduce that the wooden item with the brass thingies went into the pit around the same time as the new building was built, because there wasn't a whole lot of stuff down there.”

“Nell, you want me to call that detective for you, so you can tell her about this metal thing?” Eric volunteered.

I thought for a moment. “Let's hold off on that just a bit. I do think we should share the hardware with her—she'll want to show it to the bartender and see if he recognizes the escutcheon—but first I want to take some pictures and measurements and all that important stuff, because once we turn it over to her, we may not see it again.” Was I on shaky legal ground here? I wasn't concealing anything, and I did plan to turn over the escutcheon to the police. “It's not like she's going to get any fingerprints from it, not after this long,” I rationalized.

“Will she want the wooden pieces, too?” Lissa asked.

How was I supposed to know? I was concerned that if the dead man had walked out of the Society with a twin to this escutcheon, and someone had seen it at the bar and killed him because of it, then what we had here could be important, although the downside was, if the pieces matched, that
pointed straight to the Society. But I wasn't sure if Hrivnak would see how a bunch of splinters could help. Maybe there was a compromise: what we needed was someone who specialized in antique furniture, or things with handles. There should be a record of one or more members who did somewhere in the Society's files . . .

“What's going on?” Marty was standing in the doorway, staring at the four of us all still kneeling on the floor, around the array of century-old trash.

Maybe the solution had just walked into the room. “We're trying to figure out what it was that Carnell Scruggs showed the bartender.” When Marty looked blank, I realized I hadn't told her about Hrivnak's latest crumb of information.

“The good detective told me this morning that the police had found where Scruggs had dinner after he left the Society. He showed the bartender a metal thing, which attracted the attention of a stranger, who then left with Scruggs. The bartender gave kind of a weird description of it—it was metal, curly and flat, and possibly old—and I figured that since Scruggs had been sent down the pit in the basement to clean it out, maybe he found something there that he pocketed, figuring it wasn't important. I asked Joe Logan to let me have the other stuff that they'd hauled out of the pit, and that's what we're looking at here.”

“Let me get this straight,” Marty said. “You're trying to figure out why this man died by sifting through trash from our basement?”

“Exactly.”

Maybe her question had been facetious, but Marty being Marty, she immediately zeroed in on the critical piece among
the scattered objects. “That came from the pit?” She pointed to the escutcheon.

“It did,” I said. “You know what it is?”

“Hardware from a piece of eighteenth-century furniture, I'd guess. Why was it in the pit?”

“That is an excellent question, to which we have no answer. You have any idea what kind of item it came from?”

Marty shook her head. “I'd have to do some digging.” She realized that Lissa and Shelby were looking at her with curiosity. “Terwilligers know furniture,” she said bluntly. “Nell, you think this matches the thing that Hrivnak told you Scruggs showed the bartender?”

“I think it may,” I answered. “First we need to record what we have here, and then I need to call the police and tell them what we've found. I was hoping you might know someone who could analyze these pieces—the wood and the metal and the finish and anything else—and tell us what they used to be.”

“Sure, I know a guy. Let me make a call.” Even as she spoke, Marty kept her eyes on the pieces of metal. What was so fascinating about them to her?

Then she shook herself. “I'll go call him now.” And with that she walked out of the room.

The rest of us looked at each other. “Was that odd even for Marty?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Shelby said, getting back to her feet. “Do you need me for anything else? Because I've got a whole pile of . . . privy deposits on my desk that need my attention.”

“Go,” I told her. “Just don't spread this around, okay? This could be part of a murder investigation, kinda sorta.”

“We hear you. Right, Lissa?” Shelby looked at Lissa, who nodded. I knew Eric would be discreet. It wasn't that I didn't trust them, but the knowledge we had just uncovered might have led to someone's death, and I didn't want to put anyone else at risk, remote though that possibility might be.

Lissa and Shelby went out the door just as Marty returned; Eric was already back at his desk. “What the heck is really going on?” Marty demanded, dropping into a chair in front of my desk.

“I told you, I had yet another chat with the charming Detective Hrivnak,” I began, and quickly explained what I had deduced based on what the detective had told me, and what had led to our own mini–archeological dig. “So my best guess is that Mr. Scruggs found the mate to this escutcheon here when he was in the pit, and he showed it to somebody who recognized it for what it was, and might have known or guessed where it came from and how Scruggs came to have it, and the next thing we know Scruggs ended up dead, and the escutcheon was not on his person. Does that about cover it?”

“Close enough,” Marty said. “And that's all the stuff that came out of our basement here?”

“That's what the construction foreman told me. You have doubts?”

“No, of course not. People find privy holes all over the city, every time they dig. I'm surprised nobody noticed it here—you'd think it would have been filled in years ago, when they built the new building on top of the old one.”

“That would be the logical thing to do, but we know it didn't happen, and we'll probably never know why. Maybe
the construction workers back then were in a hurry, or they didn't feel like trucking a lot of fill down to the basement, so they just slapped a cover on it. In any case, the question is: What is there about that piece of metal that is so important?”

“You really think that's what's behind all this?”

I shrugged. “I don't know, but I don't have any better ideas. Are you comfortable labeling this death a ‘random city crime'?” I made air quotes. “I'm not saying it wasn't. Luckily for us, the police have labeled it an accident, so the press hasn't gotten hold of it—we've had enough bad publicity. But I'm not sold yet on the accident theory, and I'm betting Hrivnak isn't, either.”

“This isn't going to hold up the renovation project, is it?” Marty asked. The Society was always at the top of her priority list.

“I don't think so. As far as I know, the only connection to the Society Detective Hrivnak has found is that the victim was briefly a worker on the crew here, and had been in the building on the day he died. There's no suggestion that he died here. The police can't shut us down just in case, can they? So far there's no indication that they want to.”

“What about once you show them this stuff?” Marty waved her hand at the little pile of brass and splinters.

“It might change their minds, but maybe not. The detective may think I'm making a lot of out nothing. Which would probably be better for us. But I'll give it to her anyway.”

“My furniture guy said he could see us this afternoon. Can you wait until after that to tell the cops?”

Given the feeble connection between our find and the dead man, I didn't have a problem with that. It wasn't that we were concealing evidence, because we weren't sure it
was
evidence, merely a string of guesses. Whether or not we found out anything more from Marty's guy, I would talk to Hrivnak before the end of the day. “Works for me.”