The Dark (31 page)

Unseemly? The newspaper report was dust-dry in tone, and yet Chauncey recalls every word. Again he imagines Leah scantily clad and then the doctors—no, him—gently prying open her knees until … Stay off, you debauched damnedo thoughts, Chauncey orders himself, and return to the quandary at hand.

The doctors said no knocks were heard when the knees were held.

“The spirits are affronted by such intrusiveness” was Leah Fox Fish’s retort. The final blow came when this Mrs. Patcheon admitted that she was astounded and mystified at the Fox rappings, that hers were nothing like theirs. Hers were faint and raspy and done only with great effort.

Was Madame Patcheon paid off? Chauncey wonders. Or is Leah merely possessed of the luck of the bold? Likely the latter. For Leah rivals Chauncey himself in boldness and luck. Perhaps that is why he has become so determined. Obsessed even. He is like a famed hunter after a wily she-wolf—or fox, rather.

Of course the Fox women were thronged with spirit-seekers after that latest investigation. Publicity. Publicity. Now they’ve got the
spirits ringing bells. Now the spirits are writing messages through the slender fingers of the sisters, a damnedo sight easier, no doubt, than that toilsome alphabet board and “yes” or “no” knock-knockings. Easier even than trancing. Improvise. Improvise. Yes, Chauncey admires the Fox sisters three. He truly does, even as he is determined to expose their chicanery. Their reputations might suffer, but they will rally, find some other means of survival, just as he always has, for they are of the same ilk. This he has never doubted.

Chauncey halts and looks about. He has made a wrong turn. Barnum’s Hotel is on Maiden Street. “Well, shit, shit, shito,” he mutters, and strides off again, unbuttoning his coat in response to the sun prodding round the buildings. He passes two poor-shod girls who are hawking hot corn. Near on, another girl holds out wilted posies. Yes, Chauncey can follow Leah’s reasoning: females have few ways to earn substantial coinage. Who could begrudge them a niche or two?

A newspaper boy spits a tobacco stream with elderly aplomb. Holds his paper high. “Citizens now obliged to help capture slaves! Jail and a one-thousand-dollar fine for any who help them! Lawmen to give ten dollars for every slave caught! Owners promise bounties in the hundreds for their own runaways. You’ll get their descriptions! Right here, sir, right here!”

The boy waves the paper in Chauncey’s face; Chauncey flips him a coin. He thumbs through the paper. Much on the wayward Sir Franklin and the latest expeditions that are being sent to find him in the Arctic Wastes, but nothing more about the Foxes, though there are advertisements galore touting phrenologists and biblio-mancers. Advertisements, too, for palmistry, crystallomancy, and various kinds of sortilege. And yes, indeedo, a plethora of advertisements for mediums, spirit sittings, séances.

Chauncey tears the newspaper to pieces and tosses the bits in the gutter. A fire cart tears by, bells clanging, startling a small cat. No, not a cat, Chauncey realizes, as the rat scuttles into an alley where four pigs nose at a refuse pile. The pigs must have wandered in from the shanties. Where’s the hog reeve? Pigs are not allowed any longer in the uptown of the metropolis.

The pigs knock over a stack of crates. The racket startles them and they trot off down the alley.

“Just my damnedo day,” Chauncey says to himself. Behind the fallen crates three men are fixed in a momentary tableaux. Two are lank-haired white men in oiled greatcoats. The third is a young black man, his face purpled with bruises. He is hand-tied and gagged. Chauncey’s stance is official. His eye appraising.

The slave-hunters look over. “We’s found him first,” says the one, and shows his scarce teeth.

“Yes, sir. We’ve been hunting this one a while,” says the other. His face is constellated with pustules, his breath fearsome even at five paces.

“It must be bloodyo satisfying to capture the wily rascal, then, eh?” Chauncey is close. Closer. The alley narrows and he nearly blocks it with this bulk.

Pustule-Face adds, “Yessir, but he’s a fighter for all that he’s scrawny.”

Chauncey taps his steel-tipped cane to his boot. “The scrawny ones are the most obdurate, I’ve noted.”

Scarce-Teeth nods. “And stubborn, too. This one’s got a bounty of two hundred dollars on him. Ain’t that something?”

Pustule-Face whacks his companion. Says to Chauncey, “Ignore him. He’s an idiot. No, sir, the fee is just the usual ten dollars from the law.”

Chauncey dips his free hand in his pocket. “Allow me to assist you.” He looks down at the young man, who glares up at the lot of them.

“Appreciate your good citizenry, sir,” Pustule-Face replies. “But … fuck the devil. What?”

Chauncey levels his pistol at Scarce-Teeth, his stell-tipped cane at Pustule-Face. Pustule-Face reaches into his belt. Chauncey stabs him in the throat with his cane. He drops gasping beside his quarry, Chauncey’s boot on his neck.

“Untie him,” Chauncey orders Scarce-Teeth, and cocks the pistol. “Or I’ll blow out your idiot brains and let the fucko pigs lap them up for breakfast.”

Scarce-Teeth slobbers out an insult but obeys. And then Chauncey beats him and Pustule-Face senseless with the butt of his pistol, his fist and, for good measure, his hessian boots.

The young black man spits out the rag. Rubs his wrists. Eyes Chauncey, who tells him, “You’re a bloodyo idiot yourself, getting caught. Canada’s naught but a boat ride off. I advise you getting your carcass there forthwith.”

The young man stammers out his thanks.

“Oh, I’m merely making my sainted mother proud, as would any man. Here.” He hands the man two dollars. “Now bugger off.”

The man does so and Chauncey pockets his pistol and wonders how much money he has lost playing the valiant these days. Seems these damnedo escaped slaves are around every corner. And he can ill afford it. Ah, but his sainted mother
would
be proud—his mother who was not, of course, the same mother as Heman’s, nor Edwin’s. No, Chauncey’s mother was the cook, Hester. Chauncey’s father freed her after she birthed Chauncey, but she stayed on, brave woman. Endured Mrs. Burr’s hatred for it, though Mr. Burr senior treated Chauncey like his own son, which, of course, he was.

Chauncey leaves the slave-hunters moaning in pig shit and continues on his path. Yes, he knows exactly what the Fox women are about. He, too, hides in plain sight, as Heman likes to remind him. It is the best place to hide and certainly beats acting the happy, servile nitwit like his whip-smart mother had done, so as to keep her employ and her son. As for the Fox sisters, they are only acting the part allotted them: empty-headed women, innoncents incapable of subterfuge or calculation or any kind of guile.

At last: Barnum’s Hotel. It is five storeys with a pillared entrance and little balconies on every window. It would be a marvel in some village, but here, in this city of astounding edifices, it is of average wonderment. In the lobby Chauncey flings off his coat, and sets aside his cane so as to look less imposing, less Chauncey Burr-ish. Near on, a boy porter kicks surreptitiously at a heavy trunks. A maid scrubs the marble floor. Chauncey stands out of the arc of her suds and rummages up his smoothest persona: “Madame, would you chance to know if the remarkable Fox women are still about?”

The maid shakes her head. “They’re gone.”

Chauncey lowers his voice, asks if, when cleaning their room, she overheard any comments about toes.

“Toes?” the maid whispers back. “If it’s toes you’re wanting, my aunt runs a place.” She winks, and Chauncey thanks her and hastens on to other game. The boy porter only says that the Fox ladies were kind and merry and tipped handsome. Chauncey turns on his heel. Ah. There: A man who is like a statue vivified by some pagan god. Though truly, what god would bother giving such a countenance life? It has no significance whatsoever. The man waters a fern as if he has done so all his days, though Chauncey knows he hasn’t, no indeedo.

“Alfie, is it? Forgive me, I’m ignorant of your family name.”

Alfie stares up. “It’s Kincaid. How you got my acquaintance?”

“I witnessed you at the Fox ladies’ ‘séance’ in August. I heard Mrs. Fish call to you. She seemed to rely most heavily upon your presence. Forgive me, I am the Reverend Chauncey Burr.”

Alfie considers him, then takes the proffered hand.

He doesn’t even have an odour, Chauncey notes. No smell of hair grease or rot-mouth or sweat or musty wool. The perfect accomplice. I’d cherish a tenfold of him my bloodyo self, he thinks.

“May I treat you to luncheon, Mr. Kincaid? There is a well-spoken-of establishment a block from here.”

Alfie agrees to meet him there in an hour. Chauncey nearly skips out the door.
Leah, Leah, you are not the only one adored by Lady Lucko
! For the situation is obvious. An argument, a misunderstanding, and Alfie given the heave-ho, resentment like cement in his veins. Hadn’t Alfie barely considered whether to meet him? He must be burning to spill the beans.

“Oh, March,” Chauncey says to the skies. “You lovely, traitorous month.”

Chauncey is correct and righto. Alfie gives up the goods, but only after pondering the menu a quarter-hour. His job, he informs Chauncey, was to take care of the books, count the takings and hand them to Leah, who then doled out the money to the others. “Tight-fisted, that one. Said she worries about how the girls spend, but I think she likes a short leash on ’em, is all.”

“Yes, I imagine she does, Mr. Kincaid, I imagine it well.” Chauncey orders more wine, more dreaded oysters. He is sparing no expense and does not hurry Alfie Kincaid. Looks him straight in the eyes and says his name at every turn, taking a page from the manual of Leah Fox Fish herself. It is enough. Alfie becomes more animated, garrulous. It isn’t the wine, the pullet, the costly
fricandeau
of veal. It is the attention given a lonely man who cannot even comprehend that he
is
lonely, so accustomed is he to the state. I might be of the minor pantheon myself, Chauncey thinks, as Alfie’s cheeks flush, as he emits a rattle sound that might be a chuckle.

Chauncey speaks of Mrs. Fox Fish with respect, even admiration.

“Sure, sure. But she’ll cut you down, that one,” Alfie says, and extracts a morsel from his teeth. “I did everything for them. I was their dog’s-body. Loyal as a knave. And here Mrs. Fish accuses me of skimming. She were bug-eyed on a laudanum brew then. They get lie-down-and-cry headaches, all three of them.”

“Do they? I am aggrieved to hear of it. But it must be difficult for such honourable women to be so … on display. And difficult for you, as well, Mr. Kincaid, to cope with their feminine ways and overwrought demands.”

“She’ll ask me back. Heed me on that score.”

“I heed you. More wine?”

“I offered myself to Barnum’s Hotel when she tossed me to the midden heap. Not that I like it any … To the top now.” He indicates his glass. Chauncey keeps pouring. Alfie keeps talking. “The job takes no braining at all. Water this plant. Haul that up.” Alfie has not yet shown any curiosity as to Chauncey’s purpose, Chauncey’s profession. Still, he must understand that more pointed questions will come with the cream cakes, the brandy, the cigars.

Chauncey says, “The doctors in Buffalo unearthed a Mrs. Patcheon who could make a knocking sound with her knee joints by slipping them in and out.”

“But you’re betting it’s the toes.”

Chauncey sits back in surprise.

Alfie slurps the wine and rattles out another chuckle. “I know what
you’re about. I’ve seen your show. ‘Imagination, Ghost-seeing and the Temperament of Genius,’ was it? Weren’t the worst show ever.”

“I see, righto. My lectures, you mean.” Chauncey leans forward. “Tell me more, Mr. Kincaid. I am abrim with curiosity.”

“They don’t let me in on the all of it. And I’ve never caught them in any kind of … indelicate doings.”

Chauncey contemplates him. It is not a lie. Chauncey, having to lie constantly himself, can spot one a league off. “What of other, ah, employed persons? Those who have, alike you, offered their services, their loyalty, their skills to the Fox sisters, or their associates?”

“Associates? Like the Posts. Their maid Machteld? Wouldn’t know. Would I?”

“No, I suppose not,” Chauncey says, barely containing his glee.

“Too bad she’d hang by her neck, that Machteld, before she’d gift anyone with conversation—anyone sides those Posts, I mean.”

“I see. Mr. Kincaid … Alfred. You’ve been about the family aplenty. Surely there’s someone who might know. Who might wish to reveal … who has seen with their own eyes … You understand, Alfred, that taking money from the bereaved is neither right, nor moral?”

“Right and moral has got sweet all to do with it.”

“Yes, of course,” Chauncey says hastily. He has put a step wrong. Morality? Righteousness? These things hardly mattered to one such as Alfie Kincaid. Getting even is his tipple. Sure enough, he evades Chauncey’s questions about what else he did for the Fox women besides organize their accounts. A dull man but not a stupid one, Chauncey realizes. For Alfie’s spying—and Chauncey is certain now that Alfie spied out information on the dead to pass along to the sisters—might be a matter for the law. It thus takes all of Chauncey’s resources and several costly brandies and several promises not to utter Alfie Kincaid’s own name, to pry out the name of the one Fox kinfolk who might be of any use.

“ ’Course, you’d have to go to Arcadia,” Alfie adds, and licks the cream out of a puffed shell.

“A
nd were you betrayed?” I asked my patient. “By whom? What kin would do so?”

“Guess.”

“I don’t like to guessing games. I’ve told you that … It wasn’t your father, was it?”

“The good grief, no!”

“Katie? Was she in Arcadia then?”

“No. She was at the Greeleys’ home in Turtle Bay when the tell-all appeared in the
Times
. Mother and I were there, too, on a short visit from Rochester. And how could Katie have betrayed us? She loved us, not to mention that she believed in her own magic by that time, lock and stock. Indeed, I recall her denying the tell-all so strongly to the Greeleys she nearly had me convinced of her version of things.”