The Alchemy of Murder (7 page)

I sat down, crossed my arms and tapped my foot and tried to will the attendant to return and let me out. I should have anticipated this—the attendants left their boring night duties to smoke, play cards, and heaven only knows what else.

As the minutes ticked away, my patience evaporated. Staring at the door as I paced back and forth, I was ready to attack the iron door with my feet and fists.

The old woman came awake and stared at me.

“I need to get out of here,” I told her, as if she had the key. I patted my stomach. “Stomachache. Have to see Doctor Blum.”

She shook her head, rocking back and forth. “Rub-rub-rub, Doctor Blum, rub-rub-rub.”

I ignored her and went back to pacing.

“Doctor Blum puts in the water. Rub-rub-rub.”

I froze and stared at her. “What are you saying?”

She stopped rocking and stared at me, suddenly fearful. I took a deep breath and smiled. I didn’t want to frighten her away. “Tell me,” I said, quietly, “who does Dr. Blum put in water?”

She rocked and chanted. “Rub-rub-rub, rub-rub-rub, in the water, he puts them in the water.”

I’d seen her stop the nonsense when Nurse Grupe snapped at her and I did it now. “Stop it! Look at me.”

She stared at me with wide eyes.

“Now tell me … who does he put in water?”

She looked around and then leaned forward and spoke in a stage whisper. “The women. He puts them in the water at night. Rub-rub-rub.”

“Stop that. Tell me—”

She flew off the bench and ran back down the hall to the wardroom.

I stood perfectly still, my whole body turning cold, fear crawling on my flesh. Water. Women. Dr. Blum. Had the old woman seen the enigmatic Dr. Blum putting the bodies of women in water?

The door opened and the attendant stepped in. I flew by her, clutching at my stomach. “Pain. Doctor Blum knows.”

I hurried in the direction of the infirmary. When I heard the door slam behind me, I veered and ran for the old pier in a panic. My rational mind told me my paranoia was nonsense, that I was panicking for nothing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread. When the old woman had chanted about Blum and water it raised the hair on the back of my neck—not a good sign.

I admit that I’m not the most book-learned person in the world. But if anything, I had good instincts. My brain sometimes failed me but my intuition never did. And my guts were tied in knots thinking about Josephine alone with Dr. Blum.

A rack at the pier entrance held wooden pins that sailors used to tie down lines—when they weren’t using them to crack heads during drunken brawls. I grabbed one.

I’d never been on the pier but had walked by it many times. Dry-rotted, the jetty and building on it looked ready to be washed away in a good storm. I was told that Blum used half of the building as his personal quarters while the other half stored kerosene for the asylum. The only light I saw at the shack was a dim lamplight that shone through a cloth curtain at a window to the right of the front door.

I broke my frantic momentum down to a slow walk as I came to the shack.
Now what?
Should I knock on the door and ask sweetly to see Josephine while I held a wooden club in my hand?

What if the doctor really was doing an innocuous experiment … and I spoiled Josephine’s chance to get off the island? I couldn’t guarantee that I’d be able to get her off the island even if Mr. Pulitzer liked my story … but a doctor could.

I stopped and stared at the old wood building. I needed to look through a window. Both windows facing the jetty were curtained. A narrow ledge no more than a foot wide ran along the river side. Walking by in the daytime, I’d seen a window and a door in the back. I didn’t know if the window had closed curtains. The only way to find out was to get a closer look.

Facing the building, I held my arms out wide for balance and worked along the narrow ledge. The window was dark and curtained. On impulse I decided to try the door. It wasn’t a standard house door, but one that slid open sideways to receive cargo from a boat.

Edging closer, I found the door fastened with a heavy padlock. I tested the lock by jerking on it. The nails holding the hasp to the old, dry-rotted wall were loose. I pulled on the padlock, nearly sending myself backward into the river. Getting my balance again, I pulled and jerked the lock, hoping my efforts weren’t being heard inside. When the long nails holding the hasp were out far enough, I pried the hasp off with the boat pin.

My heart pumped like a steam engine. I leaned my head against the building, slowing my breathing to get it under control. Putting my shoulder against the door, it slid over reluctantly, making a scraping noise more irritating than fingernails on a blackboard.

I slipped through the door and into a dark room, wondering where I was. Not daring to move without some light for fear I’d knock something over, I pulled the curtain on the window open enough to let in faint moonlight. It was a bedroom, a small one with just a cot not unlike the ones used for patients, but with a thicker mattress and many blankets.

I went across the room to a door. The door squeaked as I opened it and I cringed, ready to explain that I had entered by mistake. I was surprised I hadn’t been discovered and chastised already. I put my head through the open doorway and saw a kitchen. As with the bedroom, it was small. No light was in the room but another door was opened. A source of light came from there. I assumed it to be a living room and the light I saw from the outside. My estimation was that his personal quarters ended there because the kerosene storeroom was next.

I listened and heard nothing but the foghorn on a distant watercraft. No talking between Dr. Blum and Josephine, no sighs or grunts of passion—thank goodness! Nothing. There was hardly enough light in the living room for two people to sit and comfortably converse socially.

Had Josephine misspoke when she told me she was going to his quarters? Could she have meant his office? Not a hundred percent certain I was alone, I slipped quietly across the kitchen to the open living room doorway.

The lamp on the table next to the window put out enough light to see that the doctor used the living room as his laboratory. And that the lab was much more complex than I had expected. A long table in the center of the room was crowded with scientific apparatus—a microscope, a Bunsen burner, stacks of petri dishes, and a forest of glass tubes and bottles. Two other small tables against the wall held more bottles and canisters.

Dr. Blum obviously took his scientific studies seriously. This was more the workshop of a full-time chemist than a doctor hoping to make a discovery with a microscope and some petri dishes.

The only sitting area, other than a work stool at the large table, was a couch across the room with a mound of blankets on it. It appeared blankets were heaped atop something—the “something” being the right size for a small built woman like Josephine bent in a fetal position.

I carefully went to it and pulled the blankets off.

Two pillows. Probably used by the doctor when he sacked out on the couch.

I smelled something, an odor that I didn’t instantly recognize. Not a chemical odor, but something different, something more organic. Two dark mounds about the size of a man’s fist were on a glass sheet on the table. Getting closer to sniff them, I recognized the scent. Blood. The stench of raw meat—animal innards. What in God’s name could Dr. Blum be experimenting with?

A small, narrow, whitish object lay next to the dark mounds. I leaned down to get a look at it and caught my breath.

A human finger with a ring on it … Josephine’s ring.

I screamed.

The door flew open and a dark figure emerged. Dr. Blum wore a bloodied white smock. He held a large knife in one hand and something else in the other, but my brain was too frozen with shock to comprehend what it was.

He started for me and I screamed and threw the wood pin. It flew by him and hit the lamp. The glass bowl exploded in a burst of fire.

With mindless panic, I grabbed his laboratory table with both hands and sent it crashing over, the forest of bottles and glass apparatus flying at him and breaking at his feet.

Flames exploded behind me as I blindly ran back through the same rooms I had entered. I stumbled out the cargo doors into the cold river.

7

Raging flames engulfed the shack and pier when the fire hit the stored oil barrels, rousing the entire island. Patients and staff poured out of the buildings, but there was nothing they could do to stop the huge blaze—the shack and pier were dry rotted and ignited like kindling wood.

I crawled out of the river and collapsed on the ground.

Dear Miss Maynard spotted me and came running. She took off her shawl and wrapped it around me. I told her that Josephine had been murdered by Doctor Blum and that he tried to kill me, but my words were a frantic jumble.

“Hush, they’ll think you burned the place.”

From out of nowhere Nurse Grupe appeared, grabbed my hair, and pushed Miss Maynard away.

I babbled that Doctor Blum killed Josephine and tried to kill me. She acted as if she hadn’t heard a word I said and kept a tight grasp on my hair. As other nurses looked away, she shoved me into a padded room where they put out-of-control women and locked the door.

I screamed and pounded the door until I finally gave in to exhaustion. I was freezing and my lungs were raw from yelling. There were no blankets, nothing to get me dry and warm. My hair felt like it had been ripped off of my scalp. I curled up in a ball and started to cry.

I killed Josephine.

I sensed something was wrong with the man and chose to ignore my instincts in order to get a story. No matter how I tried to justify my actions, I knew it was my fault. She died because of me.

Josephine and the doctor were both missing and presumed drowned or incinerated in the fire. But an annoying voice tucked away in the recess of my brain wouldn’t allow me to believe the doctor was dead. He either swam or rowed to the Manhattan shore. As hard as I tried to shake the feeling away, I couldn’t, so I went to the alienist in charge of the ward and made accusations about Dr. Blum. He stared at me for a moment and then wrote something in his log book.

“What did you write?” I asked.

“That you are hopelessly insane and delusional.”

*   *   *

A
FTER
I
WAS
released from the insane asylum by the
World
, I told Mr. Pulitzer about the mad killer. I was disappointed when he expressed no interest, but I couldn’t blame him—the fire had destroyed the evidence. But he was ecstatic about my mad house story. The report blew the lid off the terrible conditions at Blackwell’s Island and Mr. Pulitzer called it the most important story of the year. And I was able to get Miss Maynard released, with a job and a place to live.

Best of all, because of the strength of my story, New York City’s committee of appropriation provided $1 million, more than ever before given for the benefit of the insane.
*

In regards to Dr. Blum, even though my nagging feeling continued that he had survived the inferno, I had to let it go—but the guilt, grief, and anger stayed with me.

*   *   *

B
ECAUSE OF MY
huge success with Blackwell’s Island, Mr. Pulitzer assigned me to other undercover stories: I became employed by a doctor as a maid and did an exposé on the cruelty to servants; I posed as a sinner in need of reform, and committed myself into a home for unfortunate women to report on how the stay did nothing but empty the pockets of helpless women.

Mr. Pulitzer even had me go undercover as a prostitute. Nobody really knew the truth about their lives—why they became prostitutes or how many were really single women working the streets at night. It was dangerous, but in a way I did it for Josephine.

My first night out I befriended a woman and asked her, “Why would you risk your reputation and
life
in such a way?” Her response saddened me deeply and I made sure to share it with the public by printing her exact words:

Risk my reputation! [She gave me a short laugh.] I don’t think I ever had one to risk. I work hard all day, week after week, for a mere pittance. I go home at night tired of labor and longing for something new, anything good or bad to break the monotony of my existence. I have no pleasure, no books to read. I cannot go to places of amusement for want of clothes and money, and no one cares what becomes of me.

I cared.

For my next assignment I went undercover at the factory where I worked during the day and wrote an article exposing the unfair treatment and working conditions to women—how they were doing the same job as men, putting in the same hours, and many times doing it better, while only men got raises and promotions.

To my delight it created quite a stir and Mr. Pulitzer liked it. As long as circulations climbed, he didn’t care whose feathers were ruffled. I just prayed it would initiate change.

In time I began acquiring success and fame as my stories kept making the front pages of the
New York World
. The staff jokingly called it the
New York Nellie
.