Things Half in Shadow (2 page)

“They also didn't save your life on the battlefield,” I replied. “Or have you forgotten about that?”

“How could I when you're always around to remind me? Now, do you have any more questions or can I proceed without further interruption?”

I had no doubt that Barclay was speaking in jest. He and I had been friends for close to seven years now, having met as members of the Union Army. While it was true that, during a surprise skirmish in a Virginia forest, I threw him to the ground before a minié ball to the skull could do the honors, I think he rather enjoyed having me around. Whenever a ghastly crime occurred, Barclay sent a policeman to my house to whisk me to the scene. That's exactly what had happened earlier that morning. Much earlier than I would have preferred or was prepared for. The bell at the front door clanging at five o'clock had not only jerked me from a deep sleep, but sent Lionel, my butler, practically tumbling down the stairs to answer it.

But now, forty-five minutes later, I was starting to wonder why Barclay had felt it necessary to disturb my slumber and almost cause physical harm to a member of my household staff.

“If this is a simple case of drowning,” I said, “then why am I here? Why are you, for that matter? Certainly a few policemen
could handle this. It doesn't seem important enough to take an inspector away from his home so early in the morning.”

“It's about the girl's identity, Edward.”

“Do you know who she is?”

Barclay turned to face the river, where another wave of fog was threatening to crash upon the shore. “We do not. That's the reason I summoned you.”

“Ah. You want my bloodthirsty readers to try to identify her.”

“Exactly. No matter how she died—and I fully believe it was accidental drowning, by the way—we've found nothing to indicate who she is or where she came from. From what I can tell, she looks like she was relatively healthy.”

What he meant was that the girl didn't resemble those desperate or ill women who sometimes threw themselves into the drink, their pockets stuffed with bricks. Nor did she look like one of the prostitutes who prowled the waterfront. Occasionally, those same wretched women would be found floating down the river, done in by either their employers or one of their customers.

“You think she has family somewhere in the city?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Has no one reported a girl of her description missing?”

Barclay shook his head. “Not yet, anyway. But a vivid description of her in today's
Evening Bulletin
might help us find out who this poor thing is.”

The fog bank he had been watching rolled onto shore and enveloped the pier. A policeman burst out of it, leaving tendrils of haze in his wake as he ran toward us.

“Inspector,” he called, “someone is demanding to be allowed onto the pier.”

“Tell them to wait for the ferry like everyone else,” Barclay snapped.

“They don't want the ferry, sir. They want to see the girl. They think they know her.”

We both turned to the crowd at the cusp of the pier, which materialized into view as the fog bank drifted farther inland. At the front were two women, one young and the other much older. Their arms were linked as they tried to bypass the wall of policemen. The younger one spotted me and Barclay standing next to the dead girl. The wail of grief that followed told us both that she did indeed know the victim.

“Well then, Barclay,” I said quietly, “it appears you don't need the help of the
Bulletin
readers after all.”

Barclay took a few steps toward the street and ordered his men to let them pass. As the women, arms now linked more tightly, continued onward in halting steps, I got a better look at them. The younger one appeared to be thirteen or so, although her face was so contorted by anguish that it was difficult to tell. The older woman appeared to be approaching forty. Unlike the girl, her features were as blank and unreadable as a recently erased blackboard.

When they reached us, the girl fell to her knees, keening and crying next to the corpse. The other woman—her mother, very likely, for the resemblance was undeniable—remained standing. She kept hold of her daughter's hand while staring not at the body but at the river from where it had come.

She said something to the girl in German, words too quick and rough for me to comprehend. Her daughter eventually stood and, still weeping, wrapped her arms around her mother's waist. Barclay gave her a moment to compose herself before saying, “I take it that you know this girl?”

The girl looked first to her mother, who nodded faintly, then to Barclay. When she spoke, every word was punctuated with grief.

“Yes, sir. She is my sister, Sophie.”

Barclay gave me a brief, knowing look. This turn of events wasn't a surprise to either of us.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” he said.

The woman nudged the girl. A brief exchange in German followed, their conversation both hurried and hushed.

“My mother thanks you for your condolences,” the girl eventually told Barclay.

“I'm going to need to ask a few questions,” he replied. “Giving me your names would be a good start.”

“I am Louisa Kruger.” The girl gestured to the other woman. “This is my mother, Margarethe.”

I stepped away from them, listening at a discreet distance while Barclay and Margarethe Kruger conversed, using young Louisa as an interpreter. During this complex back-and-forth, I learned that the family lived in Fishtown, just a few blocks from the waterfront. Sophie had last been seen at nine o'clock the previous night, when she climbed into the bed she shared with her sister. Sometime during the night, Louisa awoke to find her sister gone. When she hadn't returned by dawn, Margarethe knew something was wrong, and they went looking for her.

“And you don't know when or why she left?” Barclay asked Louisa.

“No, sir. When I fell asleep, she was there. When I awoke, she wasn't.”

“Does your mother have any idea?”

“She doesn't, sir.”

“Did your sister disappear like this often?”

I watched Mrs. Kruger's face as Louisa repeated the question in German. The woman's stoic expression didn't change, even as she shook her head. Her daughter, however, revealed her emotions freely, making it clear she didn't agree with her mother.

“
Wir mussen ihm sagen,
” she said.

Margarethe Kruger shook her head again. “
Nein.
”

Barclay moved his gaze back and forth between them. “Is there something wrong?”

“My mother does not want me to tell you that Sophie often left our home during the night,” Louisa said, eyeing her mother with caution. “I am grateful she does not understand English, so I can tell you without her disapproval.”

“Why did your sister leave so frequently?”

“I do not know, sir. I was usually asleep when it happened. But sometimes I heard people at the door, whispering if Sophie was awake. Sometimes she wouldn't be, and my mother would wake her and send her off with the people who had called.”

“You never asked why?”

“I did once,” Louisa said. “But Mother slapped me and said, ‘
Die neugier ist ein gift.
' ”

“What does that mean?”

Louisa lowered her eyes. “Curiosity is a poison.”

Barclay stroked his chin before tugging slightly on the ends of his mustache. It was another one of his gestures that I knew well, indicating he was confused by something and trying to make sense of it all. I often said it made him look like a villain in a penny dreadful.

“How long have you been looking for your sister today?” he asked.

“An hour, sir.”

I glanced at my pocket watch, seeing that Louisa and her mother had been walking the streets since well before five o'clock. They must have searched every square inch of Fishtown before reaching the waterfront and seeing the crowd gathered there.

“When Sophie left during the night, was it uncommon for her to return after sunrise?” asked Barclay.

“Sometimes,” Louisa said, “she would arrive as late as seven or eight.”

“If that's the case, why did you and your mother go looking for her so early?”

The girl turned to her mother again and presented the question. This time, a flicker of emotion passed over Mrs. Kruger's face, as quick and unwieldy as the tufts of fog sliding off the river. But it was enough for me to tell she was feeling an enormous amount of pain. The hurt filled her voice as she uttered her response in German.

“My mother says we needed to go looking for Sophie because she knew she wasn't going to return,” Louisa said on her behalf.

“She suspected your sister had run away?”

Louisa shook her head. “No, sir. My mother says she knew my sister was already dead.”

Barclay's eyes widened. I suspect mine did the same. For a moment, I thought a mistake was made and that something had been lost in translation. Then Barclay said, “How could she possibly know that?”

“Because,” Louisa said, “Sophie told her so.”

T
he
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
was headquartered in a rather dim and drafty building on Chestnut Street. Four floors high, it sat in the middle of the block like a weathered mausoleum. Surely that's what the building's architects intended, because the interior had a distinctly cryptlike feel. Its interior was gray and lifeless, with walls stained by the smoke of gaslights and rooms that echoed every footstep, cough, and chuckle. It was, I must truthfully report, a depressing place of business.

The room in which the reporters toiled took up an entire floor. Most of the space was filled with paper-strewn desks arranged in a rigid grid that provided little room to walk between them. The arrangement made the office feel like a sweatshop for which the main product was words.

Directly below us was the printing press, a massive contraption that, when at full steam, rumbled with enough ferocity to shake the floor we trod upon. The smell of grease and ink wafted upward through cracks in the floorboards, often making those of us in its path dizzy. Faintings were so common that I kept a small vial of smelling salts in the top drawer of my desk.

The telegraph station occupied the floor above us, where news from across the nation arrived with an incessant
tick, tick, tick
ing that could drive a man mad if he let it. Above that, on the top floor, was space reserved for editors and other important decision makers. They each got their own office, with access to windows—a subject of much envy. Here, sunlight was a luxury.

That morning, though, I was one of the lucky few able to bask in the sun's rays. It was five hours after my experience on Pier 49 and my editor, Mr. Hamilton Gray, was perusing my account of those events. The fog, which dissipated not long after I left the waterfront, had been replaced by a sun as yellow and pleasing as a daffodil. As Mr. Gray read over my work, I leaned back in the chair in front of his desk, stretching slightly so that the sunlight could warm my face.

“I don't understand, Clark,” Mr. Gray suddenly said, frowning.

In keeping with his name, Hamilton Gray was the most colorless man I've ever met. His faded clothes, his uninflected voice, even his personality all rendered him about as exciting as a patch of mud on a scorching day. His skin retained an ashen shade, making it difficult to pinpoint his age. Some said he was only forty. My own guess was that he was a few years shy of seventy.

“What's so difficult to understand?” I asked.

“You expect me to believe that this drowned girl
informed
her mother of her death?”

“So the mother says,” I replied. “According to her, it happened at quarter to five this morning.”

“But that's not even possible. The girl—this Sophie Kruger—was most likely floating in the water at that hour.”

It was preposterous, there's no denying it. Yet Margarethe Kruger seemed convinced of it as she told the story to her daughter, who in turn told Barclay and myself what had occurred. Mrs. Kruger insisted that she had been awakened before daybreak by the sound of someone in the bedroom she shared with her two
daughters. When she opened her eyes, she saw Sophie standing in the center of the room, wearing the same gray dress in which she had drowned. Her daughter stayed motionless a moment before opening her mouth to speak.

“She said, ‘
Mutter, ich bin verloren,
' ” I told Mr. Gray. “It means, ‘Mother, I am lost.' ”

After that, according to her mother, Sophie Kruger's words ended, although her mouth remained open. That's when a single bee crawled from between her lips and flew into the room.

“A bee?” asked Mr. Gray, positively flummoxed by that part of my article.

“Yes. A honeybee. Margarethe Kruger swore by it. Then she said that when she blinked, her daughter was gone.”

According to Louisa Kruger, the family lived in a narrow, two-story home deep in the heart of Fishtown. The downstairs contained a kitchen and not much else. The entirety of the upstairs was the bedroom. There were no footfalls following Sophie out of the room, no creaking of the stairs. Louisa said she and her mother thoroughly searched both floors moments later, finding no indication that Sophie had been there. The front door was still locked, as were the windows.

“But how in heaven's name is all of this possible?” Mr. Gray asked. “How was this Sophie girl able to quickly enter and exit the house if she was dead in the water at that time?”

I provided him with the same answer that had been given to me. “Margarethe Kruger claims it was Sophie's ghost.”

At last, Mr. Gray showed an emotion other than abject confusion. Lifting his brow in surprise, he said, “Her
ghost
?”

“Or her spirit. Or some unexplained manifestation. All I know is that Mrs. Kruger claims to have seen her daughter in that room. She heard her daughter speak. Then she was gone in an instant. Even more odd is what allegedly occurred after that. After searching both upstairs and down, Margarethe and Louisa
returned to the bedroom. In the middle of the floor—right where Mrs. Kruger claimed to have seen poor, doomed Sophie—was a honeybee.”