Secret of the White Rose (23 page)

“I have it on authority from both women. In fact, Miss Porter let me borrow her brother’s appointment book.” She reached into her coat pocket and passed me a small black leather-bound volume with “Angus Porter, Esq.” in gold letters on the cover. “Look here.” She directed me to the morning of Monday, October 22. “The three of them met the day of Judge Jackson’s murder.”

Alistair’s voice echoed in my mind from that night he’d brought me into the Jackson case. “We’d grown apart,” he’d said. “Haven’t seen him in years, though I think Angus has kept up closer ties.”

“I’m worried about Alistair,” she said. “He knows something he’s not sharing. And I don’t understand why.”

I flipped through the pages of the book; Alistair’s name was used many times.

Why had he lied?

“Judge Porter fully expected to be asked to take over the Drayson trial—or, rather, to preside over a new trial in the likely event of a mistrial,” she said. “In fact, with official permission, he had already brought much of the trial material into his chambers for review.”

“They were more worried than they wanted to admit, then. But especially after Hugo Jackson’s murder, they ought to have shared this information.” I rubbed my forehead. “Alistair wanted the police—and specifically
me
—kept out of it.”

“Also, Angus Porter was hiding a cipher that he had received,” Isabella said. “I left it where I found it: at the back of his appointment book.”

I turned to the final pages in the book, where among blank pages meant for notes, there was a thick, cream envelope addressed to Angus Porter. It bore no postmark—only the judge’s name, written in a thick, black script I recognized from the musical cipher that Hugo Jackson had received. I opened it and found a musical score.

“It’s not the same one…?” I looked at her with curious eyes.

“No. See—there’s a white rose in the staff, just like the one sent to Judge Jackson. But it’s in the first bar, not the last.”

Sure enough, the hand-drawn image of a white rose was there, this time replacing the opening treble clef.

“Avenge Leroy, again?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t decipher it, but the melody is entirely different.”

“Did the name Leroy Sanders come up during your visit to either man’s household?” I asked with renewed interest.

“Not unless it’s in the message contained there,” Isabella said, indicating the composition score I was holding.

So Judge Porter had received a musical cipher of his own in recent days. And yet he had not mentioned it during his final meeting with Alistair, when we had discussed and deciphered its twin. Why had he kept it a secret?

The only answer that made sense involved the Drayson case. If he wanted the case for himself, he may have feared sharing anything that would be considered a conflict of interest—for then he would have been compelled to recuse himself and send the case elsewhere.

That might explain why Angus Porter had hidden the extent of his own preexisting involvement with Hugo Jackson and the Drayson trial. But it shed no light on Alistair’s secretive behavior.

“You still have the key to the cipher, right?” Isabella asked.

I nodded, placing the black appointment book and letter in my own coat pocket. “But not with me. I’ll have to decode it later.”

I managed a reassuring smile for Isabella as I bid her good-bye, promising to stop by to give her an update tomorrow. Meanwhile, I needed to find Mulvaney. He ought to know that I’d failed with Alistair—as well as news of these other developments.

“Be careful, Simon,” she said with a wistful smile, reaching up with her hand to touch my bruised cheek. “This is a dangerous case.”

Her hand lingered just a moment too long—and instinctively I took hold of it. For a minute we stood in silence, until I let go, saying roughly, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As I walked down Seventy-second Street, I was increasingly troubled. The big question remained: Who was Leroy Sanders and how was he connected to the murders of two prominent judges? I could have used Alistair’s help, which wasn’t forthcoming.

Had I only imagined the expression of fear I’d seen in his eyes?

I would stop by home to make some telephone calls. One way or another, I’d find out where he went—and bring him back.

What sort of game was Alistair playing? I wondered. And as my thoughts returned briefly to Isabella, I faced an even more uncomfortable thought: What sort of game was I?

CHAPTER 17

Outside the Tombs, Centre Street. 4:30
P.M.

“What the hell do you mean, he went to Boston?” Mulvaney thundered, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk off Centre Street in front of the Tombs as we awaited the commissioner’s arrival.

“That was the message he left with the law school office at Columbia. He said he was going to Boston for a few days to present a paper.”

“This is a murder case and your professor’s a material witness. I can bloody well bring him back.” Mulvaney stopped pacing, turned, and gave me a look of reproach. “How could you have let him go?”

“What did you expect me to do—arrest him the moment I saw him? He left when my back was turned. I didn’t expect that. Not from him.”

“I won’t blow this investigation because of your professor.” Mulvaney gave me a hard look. “My own job is on the line now, thanks to him. And if you could hear the way the commissioner’s been ranting this morning, you’d know it’s only a matter of time before—”

“I understand,” I said, interrupting him. “This case isn’t moving quickly enough—not for you or me or anyone. And you’re not going to like this, but I’ve just come into more information that Alistair has been holding back from us. We now have a real motive for Judge Porter’s murder.”

There were few passersby on the street this morning, but I lowered my voice so no one could hear and briefly filled him in as to all Isabella had learned from the Jackson and Porter households.

Mulvaney set his jaw. “So Judge Porter would’ve been Jackson’s replacement; that firms up the anarchist link. We can use that to our advantage—especially now that we’ve got a whole wing of the Tombs full of them. We’ll take ’em out one by one for interrogation, and I guarantee the weaker ones will break.” He sighed. “The commissioner himself may want to question even the low-level anarchists.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I thought the General was planning to supervise interrogations of only the highest-level suspects?”

“From our slow progress, he seems to believe we’re incompetent to handle even the smallest of tasks,” Mulvaney said with a tight grimace. “If he doesn’t fire the lot of us, then he will at least make our jobs a living misery.”

“Have you personally interviewed—”

I stopped talking mid-sentence because of a prickling at the back of my neck, the result of some sixth sense that detected a change in the atmosphere. I turned to find Mrs. Strupp staring at me, her face lined with anguish. With her thick black woolen shawl drawn close around her, she was a picture of grief itself. She must have just exited the building, where she’d no doubt visited with Jonathan.

“What have you done?” Her voice was a charged whisper. “The last time I saw you, I lost my daughter. Now, the moment you finally return, I suffer the loss of my only son.” Her breath came faster now, in ragged bursts. “I asked you to save him. And now he sits, rotting in a filthy cage that’s not fit for an animal.” Her final words disintegrated into a sharp, keening noise.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I talked with him—but he wouldn’t listen.”

“You might have tried harder,” she said with a look of reproach. “You could have refused to give up.”

I didn’t bother mentioning that Jonathan had given me no opening whatsoever—that, in fact, he had betrayed me by revealing my identity and setting his anarchist thugs on me.

“I can still help him, if he’d let me,” I said. “But he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough the other night.”

The tears she had been holding back now streamed down her face. “My only remaining child is locked away. They won’t let him go free for years; I know it. His child will grow up not knowing her father. She’ll have no one to raise her except for me.” She clutched her stomach as she doubled over, stricken with grief.

I stepped forward awkwardly to catch her—feeling my stomach churn as I thought of the devastation wrought on the Strupp family and Hannah’s niece. It was exactly what I had warned Jonathan of, to no avail. And it did no good telling myself that Jonathan’s choices alone had brought on their troubles; I regretted my own involvement. Not to mention my helplessness, for I could do little but watch as the Strupp family continued to suffer.

We were interrupted by a series of raucous shouts from somewhere behind the building.

Mulvaney, who had stepped back during my exchange with Mrs. Strupp, now spoke. “Drayson’s got a court hearing this afternoon. The officers planned to sneak him out the back, but it looks as though the crowd figured that out.”

“Let me take you home,” I said to Mrs. Strupp; she was in no shape to travel alone, especially with an angry mob nearby. I would be late for our meeting with the commissioner—but I trusted Mulvaney to make it all right.

He nodded, his eyes sympathetic, before he turned and walked alone into the Tombs.

I took Mrs. Strupp’s arm and escorted her across the street. “I promise I’ll look in on Jonathan. And I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to make him more comfortable…”

Her crying had stopped and she followed me, though she gave no indication that she had heard either my words or my directions.

We had made it to the other side of Centre Street when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a brilliant flash of light—one that caused me to stop and turn.

I was just in time to see a plume of white light surrounded by thick black smoke; it rose slowly above the stone towers of the Tombs. An arc of light flashed inside the building as well, shades of orange and white just beyond the point where I had last seen Mulvaney’s tall frame.

The sound of the explosion itself was delayed, coming what seemed like minutes later—though it could only have been a fraction of a second. The boom was deafening—and the ringing that echoed in my ears drowned out even the sound of Mrs. Strupp’s horrified screams beside me.

A powerful aftershock followed. We felt it even across the street: the cobblestones shook underneath us, causing Mrs. Strupp to stumble to the ground. Even as I knelt to assist her, I couldn’t look away; I suppose I was attempting to make sense of a sight unlike any other. The building now sparkled—and not just the building but the very air, for even the dust and the black smoke had begun to shimmer. Thousands of small, glittering rays of light danced up and down the building. And it was only when I heard the tinkle of tiny bells that I realized what I had seen. Most of the windows in the mighty Tombs had broken and were now falling in shards of glass to the ground.

Those men who were unhurt in the blast were running from the building—ordinary men, transformed by the dust into gray ghosts.

How many more had been hurt or—

I was superstitious enough that I didn’t dare form the thought. Not with Mulvaney inside.

I searched wildly for any sign of him near the entrance to the Tombs. But he had disappeared—into the thick smoke and acrid fumes that choked us into unseeing oblivion.

CHAPTER 18

Centre Street—After the Explosion

Just ahead of me, a newsboy scrambled to his feet, chasing his papers, which had fallen to the ground and were now blowing away in the brisk afternoon breeze.

It didn’t matter. An explosion had just ripped through the Tombs. Everything had, in a matter of seconds, become stale news.

I righted myself and called to him. “Can you help?”

“Sir, is she hurt?” He ran over to where I was attending to Mrs. Strupp. She was insensible to everything around her as she stared, openmouthed in horror, at the smoking building.

“Only shocked, I think,” I replied. I helped her to her feet, then reached into my pocket for several coins. “I’m needed inside.” I motioned across the street to the Tombs. “Could you please see that she gets home safely? One twenty First Avenue.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, pocketing the money and taking Mrs. Strupp’s arm.

She balked, not wanting to leave the area.

“You need to go home,” I said, helping her move forward and continuing to reassure her. “I promise to stop by later. I’ll check on Jonathan and make sure he’s okay.”

She didn’t respond, but this time she allowed herself to be led away.

With my anxiety mounting, I hurried across the street, determined to find Mulvaney.

*   *   *

The acrid stench of smoke choked me when I approached the main entrance.
Nitroglycerin
. There was no mistaking its pungent smell—one I’d learned to recognize when the city first used dynamite to create the tunnels that would house our new underground subways.