Seven for a Secret (5 page)

“The wall wasn’t
dirty
!” I cried, slamming my hands flat on the tabletop. “Idiot. Of course the servants clean under the artwork, they’d pay with their hides if they didn’t. I am such an
idiot
.”

Mr. Piest stared, wide-eyed as a fresh shrimp. Probably wondering if I might be combustible.

“So the wall in question was . . . clean?” he attempted.

“It’s the middle of the month.”

“Mr. Wilde, are you all right?”

“Grace. Grace is one of two upstairs maids. Of course. That makes all the difference in the world. If I’m right, that is, and—”

“I thought you said it was none of the servants.”

“It wasn’t.” I dropped a shilling on the table as Piest did the same. “Mr. Piest, I’ve a harebrained theory. I’m likely wrong, and you’ll lose your sleep this afternoon by it. But you’re welcome to come.”

I set off, faintly hoping he’d choose to find a little peace before another sixteen-hour shift.

Wasted sentiment. The man is mad as a moon-addled barn owl. I’ve been grateful for the fact more than once.

“I’ve a particular fondness for harebrained theories. Lead the way, Mr. Wilde,” called Mr. Piest, his boots sending terrified shivers through the helpless plank boards. “Leave sleep to the dead, for they’ve no better pastime, and leave the solving of crime to Ward Six’s very own copper stars!”

•   •   •

The hack dropped
us at 102 Fifth Avenue a bit after two o’clock in the afternoon. Already the sky had turned an ominously soft grey like the inside of a clamshell, and I didn’t need a cook’s enchanted knee to guess that snow was in our immediate future. We bypassed the front entrance and its dispirited gryphons, for I wanted none of the Millingtons. I wanted Turley the Bristol butler, my new bosom companion, and thus I headed behind the house. Piest trotted eagerly behind me, coat collar turned up against the still but piercing air.

Buzzing with hope, I rang the service bell. Ellen the downstairs maid appeared. Eyes like dull pennies, looking not best pleased with anyone. Herself included, I’d wager.

“I need Turley, Ellen. Quietly, all right? I’m hoping this will be over soon.”

“Truly, Mr. Wilde?” she asked.

“Truly.”

She quit us with the forward momentum of a jackrabbit. Barely two minutes passed before Turley appeared, sideburns bristling.

“Mr. Wilde. How unexpected.” The imperious London lilt had returned, but I supposed he’d not risk talking like a deckhand in the back area.

“Turley,” I said under my breath, “please take no interest in the questions I’m asking. Do you savvy? I ask them, you answer, and then you forget them.”

“I have not the smallest doubt of my capacity to retain a discreet silence, sir.”

“Much obliged. Now. Grace’s suitor, Jeb, visits her daily?”

Turley’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Yes, he does. He brings poesies, notes. A valentine just an hour ago. It’s all in broad daylight, visible to myself or to the housekeeper, and quite respectable.”

“Of course it is. And Grace and Amy are the maids responsible for the rooms on the second floor, the music room included?”

“Now, just one moment,” Turley objected sharply, “you clearly have formed a mistaken—”

“When was the music room’s chimney and flue last cleaned?”

He stopped.

New Yorkers abhor the threat of fire. Particularly since half of downtown vanished last July. Fires are about as popular as smallpox, and households are required by law to have their chimneys swept monthly, enforced by the superintendent of sweeps. The actual sweeping is performed by a class of emaciated kinchins who appear to remain forever childlike. That’s because they find better work by the ripe age of twelve, when they’ve grown too big for such narrow spaces—or they’re already dead. Sweeps are invisible. About as conspicuous as gnats. And the sweeps, God help them, are all colored boys. If a white sweep exists on this island, I haven’t glimpsed him.

“Households either clean their chimneys midmonth or near the first, so as not to forget,” I explained, watching comprehension dawn upon the faces of Piest and Turley. “If the flue in the music room was being serviced, and Grace stepped away—maybe to have a word with Jeb—she’d not have thought anything of it. Why should she? And then, if she discovered that the painting was gone . . . I needn’t tell you what that might have looked like to some. A black maid, a black sweep, an artwork stolen when she’d left the room.”

“The accusation of conspiracy would have loomed over her the instant she gave the alarm,” Mr. Piest hissed.

“I found soot on the wall where the painting had been. I’d thought it merely dirty, but that was absurd. The sweep touched the paper with his knuckles when he took the art down, and the painting was small enough to hide in his shirt or his kit,” I concluded.

Turley rubbed at his cheeks with one hand. He hadn’t any gloves on, and his fingers and face were flushed with cold.

“Call for Grace. If I’m right, there’s still a chance we can end this nonsense.”

Turley considered my request. Likely not trusting me, and likely afraid for his staff. I admired him for it. Then he disappeared within the house. We waited, I staring at the paving stones in breathless anticipation and Mr. Piest grinning toward the side of my head.

“Have you considered delivering lectures on the application of common sense in police work, intermixed with divine inspiration?” he teased me.

“Spare me, please,” I muttered, stamping my feet against the cold as a slow smile twisted my features.

Minutes passed. When Turley and Grace did appear, my heart curled in on itself at the sight of her. Turley led her gently enough by the arm into the yard, but her entire body trembled like a bell freshly chimed.

It was the first occasion, as a copper star, I’d terrified someone. Simply due to the metal pinned to my lapel. It was a repellent feeling. As if I’d awakened another species, something with serrated teeth and long, gleeful claws. I wanted to scrape its hide off of me with a tanning knife, return to a short-statured fellow with a fresh-poured drink in his extended hand.

Doubtless Grace’s discomfort was far worse. But just then, I could scarce stomach my own.

“I wanted to shield the child,” Grace gasped. “I never meant any harm, on a Bible I didn’t.”

“We aren’t arresting you,” I protested in dismay.

“I’ll never find work again without a character, you can’t—”

“Quieter, Grace, and no one need know about it,” I pleaded.

“Just tell him what happened, Grace,” Turley requested. “He’s not the sort to rake an honest girl over the coals.”

It took a bit more cajoling. But if there’s one thing I can do effectively, it’s look like a dimber place to deposit a story. Where stories are concerned, I am a man-shaped safety deposit box.

The household’s usual chimney sweep had been coughing wretchedly for months; and Grace, not having the heart to let him starve just yet, had convinced Turley to keep him employed. But the lad had at last disappeared—into a colored hospital ward, or a charity society, or the ground. So Grace, whose job it was to interact with other blacks, had found a new sweep.

“He was crying on the street corner with a bell,” Grace told us, wringing a handkerchief into a coiled knot. Crying out one’s business is a useful if deafening practice. Everyone from milk vendors to scissors grinders screams their professions from the sides of the road. “A quick little mite, very neat and nimble.”

“Where was he stationed?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I won’t say.”

“But you must, Grace,” Turley exclaimed.

“No. You can’t send him to the House of Refuge, Mr. Wilde. He’d not live through it, and I don’t think he understands. I’ll not use him again, I promise.”

Children guilty of vagrancy or criminal acts are meant to be sent by copper stars to the House of Refuge. I’ve flouted this order upward of a hundred times in my short six-month tenure, as I’m not of the opinion that cat-o’-nine-tails improve kinchins’ character. A session with one certainly didn’t enhance my brother’s moral stamina. Whenever I think of how close my little friend Bird Daly came to being buried behind those stone walls at the behest of Madam Silkie Marsh, the old jolt of fear still echoes through my chest. If I could raze that institution to the ground, I’d consider my life to have been a parade-worthy success.

“I would never send any kinchin to the House of Refuge,” I said grimly. “Where did you find the lad?”

“Don’t make me say it. He’s not quite right, but he’s—”

“I’d sooner cut my arm off than send a child to the House of Refuge,” I vowed, my hand over my copper star. “Please, Grace. Where does he cry his work?”

Grace stared back with wide, fierce eyes. I think if she could have taken a damp cloth and wiped the answer clean from her mind, she’d have done it. She’d no earthly reason to trust me. But she’d no guarantee I wouldn’t throw her in the bowels of the Tombs for disobeying me either. Finally, she answered, “God help him. He stands at the corner of Eighteenth and Third Avenue, the poor boy. God keep him from harm.”

Grace’s throat sounded as if it were grinding glass, and
harm
meant
that horrible copper star in front of me.
So I said, as Piest and I turned away, “I’ve no proof, you know. I only want to talk to him.”

A humorless laugh flew from Grace’s mouth. “That you’ll never do.”

“Why not?” Mr. Piest inquired.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Then she buried her face in Turley’s coat, her body wracked with deep sobs that made me understand something I hadn’t before.

I wasn’t the first copper star Grace had encountered. Or perhaps heard tell of. Something about us frightened her, yes, but it was the distinct, explicit breed of something. I wondered with a ticklish sensation in my chest what it was, but she was clearly now past speech. Grace’s tears, and Turley’s hushed words of comfort, followed us as we quit the corridor, and above us the skies sharpened to a wicked shade of steel.

three

He asked, “Are ye a slave for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life . . . They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free.

—FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE
,
1845

W
e soon reached
Third Avenue.
A tensely snapped gust like the crack of a driving whip blew up the street. Third is a vast swath of McAdamized roadway, much more pastoral and less shielded by tall buildings than is Fifth. It teemed with people, for Third is one of our headiest driving courses. Omnibuses rumbled toward the Twenty-seventh Street depot, hardened American dead rabbits whizzed by in pleasure traps, and swells took their ease in carriages with gaily painted bodies that looked like so many tropical birds. Every so often, a driver would glance up at the sky. Curious as to how far he could make it before the air was pale with snow.

“I only hope the boy isn’t engaged at his profession,” Mr. Piest observed, clutching at his top hat as it made a bid for freedom.

I hoped the same. But I needn’t have worried, or at least not over that. When we crossed Seventeenth Street, a faint chiming sound met our ears over the strengthening gale.

A tiny colored lad stood at the corner of Eighteenth Street and Third Avenue, ringing a hand bell. I put him at six years—not over, and anyhow that’s a common age for a new sweep. Charcoal coated him from head to toe. Novice sweeps often exhibit one or more limbs askew from falling down chimneys, but this kinchin appeared unscathed. So far. When we drew closer, I saw that his eyes were inflamed, red and weeping and blinking compulsively. Typical affliction, considering the incessant dust. They nevertheless searched with cutting focus for potential employment. He wore his coarse hair short but unbraided, and he’d a filthy broom at his feet.

“Hello,” I said affably.

Ringing the bell a bit faster, he smiled. It didn’t fool me—he was exhausted. Not to mention starving, judging by his wrists. The smile was pure sales technique, and a fine one.

“Do you sweep the chimneys in these parts?”

A nod, long lashes wicking the moisture from his brown and scarlet eyes.

“Do you know what this means?” I asked, touching my copper star.

He shrugged. But that didn’t nettle me. I was constantly informing adults that the police force existed, let alone six-year-old kinchin who live in fireplaces. Then Grace’s parting words echoed through my skull.

“Can you speak?” I questioned.

He shook his head and then stuck his chin up, ringing the bell beside his ear.

“That’s all right, I know you can hear me. But you’re mute?”

The child adopted a bored expression that demanded to know
Why the devil does it matter to you.
I exchanged a look with my fellow star police.

“That is going to make questioning him a bit of a wrench,” Mr. Piest owned.

Frowning, I considered tactics. Surely the child had never lived in an asylum where sign was taught. And if anyone had bothered to show him his letters, I was prepared to watch Manhattan’s numerous stray pigs take flight over the Hudson.
Tell us where the painting is. Have you stolen any paintings of late? We’ll not harm you, but we’re reasonably sure you filched a Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin.
All sounded either brutish or ridiculous. Finally, I lowered myself to my haunches.

“Do you like art?” I asked him. “Pictures?”

The bell stopped. Then, with a youthful happiness that would be trampled in a month’s time—if not much, much sooner—he nodded.

“What sort?”

Quick as thinking, he’d set the bell down. First he drew a square before me with his fingers, and then flashed a palm. Next the shape of a vase materialized out of thin air, followed by the same brief palm-forward motion. Finally he circled his arms in an expansive flail, encompassing anything and everything, showing his palm quickly one more time to signal he’d finished, and then staring at me with his head cocked.

I glanced back at Mr. Piest.

“Did you understand that?” I asked, feeling a bit dizzy.

“Mr. Wilde, I believe it is safe to say that I did,” he answered, equal parts admiration and frank awe.

“I like art too,” I told the sweep. “Paintings and vases and the like. All of it.”

An honest thread of fellow feeling had burrowed into my tone. I’ve met plenty of queer people in my time, but never a kinchin who’d invented his own version of sign language. And a comprehensible one, no less.

“Have you ever seen a picture being made?”

This answer was in the negative. Wistful and longing.

“Would you like me to show you?”

Bell and broom scraped against the pavement as he leaped forward.

“Mr. Piest, have you a memorandum book?”

Within seconds, I’d paper on my knee and my pencil stub in hand. The boy came round to see what I was doing, and I confess it freely: I cast out bait no fish would have been able to resist. Maybe I needed the Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin back, and maybe I wanted to give the kinchin ten minutes of fun. Probably both motives were true, and neither pure. In any event, within a short space of time, I’d completed a small portrait of a chimney sweep.

A sweep who now stared at me with the soft light of wonder in his swollen eyes.

“What do you think?” I prompted.

The boy explored his face with his fingertips, brushing them carefully over his even brow, his sharply edged lips, the bridge of his up-tilting nose. Lacking a mirror but clever enough not to need one. A smile bloomed across his features as he searched.

I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of my facility myself. It’s generally a useless knack altogether.

“That is the most magnificent artwork that I have ever seen,” Mr. Piest announced.

Grimy fingers hovered over the memorandum book. When I moved it away, the sweep’s face snapped to mine. Quivering with desire and asking the most direct question I’ve ever seen rather than heard.

“All right. It’s yours, but I need payment.”

He seized the broom and bell.

“No, I don’t have a chimney to clean. As I told you, I’m very fond of art. I’ve shown you a painting. Now I want you to show me one, as a trade. Have you anything worth looking at yourself?”

He lit up as only a six-year-old boy can. Before permanent lines are drawn between victims and tormentors, before suffering quite registers as cruelty. Before the falsehoods adults tell acquire a tinny ring.

Meanwhile, a generous splash of vinegar seeped into my belly. Lying to him shamed me, but I hadn’t much of an alternative. And I thought to make it up to the lad.

The sweep flew across Third, barely pausing for traffic as we hastened after. A dogcart swerved, an open landau filled with champagne-swilling ladies in dark furs nearly flattened Piest, and we stopped once in the middle of the road to allow for a speeding omnibus. But all three emerged unscathed from the perilous avenue. When the boy sped north along the road’s margin, we kept pace with him, the spreading oak trees casting blurred shadows into the milky light.

After ten or twelve blocks, we’d quit the developed city for the farmlands surrounding Bellevue Almshouse. We like our benevolent institutions much farther afield than our blinding rainbow array of vices. Only the fanatical reformers brave the streets as Mercy did, a basket over her shoulder and a ferocious calm in her eyes. By the time the boy veered off of Third into the woods, the streets intersecting the avenue were no longer paved. They were hints at the grid design—square forest canvasses, blank pages in a diary. Now roots caught at our feet, and the slender elms and maples grew scattershot. Birds called out from the branches rendered in sable ink against the ice-hued skyline, and every so often a wild creature crashed away through the bracken. I glimpsed the red tail of a fox, trotting over the undulating ground in search of supper and shelter and rest.

Before us, the tiny black figure flew onward like a gap in space. A cutout, the silhouette of a boy running through the undergrowth.

I hadn’t the smallest notion what to expect, of course. But when he’d reached our destination, I took a moment to blink in astonishment.

“By all the saints,” Mr. Piest exclaimed softly.

Many years earlier, from the looks of the waxy ivy and the trailing brown vines, a carriage traveling up Third Avenue suffered an accident. Likely the horses had panicked. It happens all too frequently. The beasts had crashed into a barely visible ditch in the middle of a theoretical block within a glade no one occupied, almost in sight of the East River. I didn’t bother wondering why the owners had abandoned it, for the back axle thrust at a wrecked angle up through the dead leaves. And even if no humans had died there, it was obvious from the carriage’s state that horses had. Nothing sounds like a dying horse. That sort of scream sends a sick shock through your guts every time you hear it. No, the carriage had been rendered unusable.

Temporarily unusable, it seemed. The sweep trotted up to it and threw open the double doors with a flourish.

“Mother of God,” I whispered.

The carriage had been converted into a display case. Cracked pieces of bright blue pottery lined the floor, shards of green glass were strung from the upholstery buttons, singular finds including a chipped ceramic rose and a chunk of sparkling river granite rested on the rotting seat cushions. Loose chandelier crystals and broken paperweights and a slender French liquor bottle—a cherished museum of unmourned, unremembered objects. I wondered if, before he’d joined the regiment of chimney dwellers, he’d lived nearby. It was probable. But I supposed I’d never know the answer. Stray children hereabouts are as closely tracked as the ants underfoot.

The showcase’s pièce de résistance sat propped against the opposite door panel, festooned with a string of cheap amber-colored beads: a tiny painting by Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin. The shepherdess peered coyly at us, her head tilted back against a scandalously rosy summer’s evening. The curves of her fingertips and of her bosom echoed one another, and she seemed to be in the act of repressing a beautiful confession, tasting words of adoration on her tongue.

The sweep pointed at it in triumph.

Reaching, I plucked it from the glittering yellow glass. When the boy’s face tensed with worry, I took a seat on the carriage’s footrest and hung my wide-brimmed hat from my knee.

“This came from a house on Fifth Avenue. You cleaned their chimney, didn’t you?”

He rubbed at his eyes with ash-covered hands. Stared up again—not at me, but at the painting.

“You must have known it was stealing, lad. Why should you have taken their property?”

Furiously, his little fists rent the air. He made about a dozen stabbing finger points in all directions, then circled one hand with the other in a gesture of endlessness and concluded with a fraught, exasperated wringing of his fingers.

“I know they’ve more art than they know what to do with. I’m sorry. But this painting already has a home.”

The vitriol in his raw eyes was fully deserved on my part. So it burned me all the worse. I’d tricked him, and now he’d cottoned to the fact. Worse still, I understood him perfectly: the tender young shepherdess was far more passionately beloved in a ruined carriage than she was in that snob art warehouse on Fifth Avenue. I wished to holy Christ I’d never heard the name
Millington.

Tearing my sketch from the memorandum book, I passed it to the scowling youth, who stood digging his boot toe into a patch of frozen earth.

“This is yours. I’m not going to punish you for stealing, but you must promise me never to do it again. Scavenging is one thing, but thieving could get you croaked. This is your first and final art theft.”

He reached for his portrait. Like enough thinking my art better than no art at all, and already deft at quick choices.

“Promise me,” I insisted.

The boy did, with an enraged little shrug. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Though he wasn’t weeping, or not any more than he did perpetually.