A Curtain Falls (24 page)

He leaned forward to address the driver. “The dead house.”

The driver circled his horses around, directing our wagon downtown along Broadway.

“Why not deliver the note to the precinct?” I grabbed at my satchel, for the uneven jostling of the cart threatened to toss it and all its contents onto the muddy floor below. “It seems a waste of time to travel downtown when Dr. Wilcox can’t possibly have completed the autopsy yet.”

Mulvaney gave me the same strange look. “Wilcox plans to do the examination late tonight, when Detective Marwin is stabilized. And Wilcox’s assistant had begun the usual preparations when he noticed the letter.”

“Too bad he couldn’t find a messenger to deliver it,” I said, grumbling. “Is it just like the others?”

“Sort of. It’s definitely his style— a poetic rhyme that makes little sense.”

“Well, what’s different about it?” It wasn’t like him to be less than forthcoming, even if he was describing something unlike what we’d seen before.

He looked me in the eye, and I knew what he had to say was going to be very bad.

I tried again, hoping to ease him into it. “Where was the letter found?”

Then he answered, and I realized he was simply having trouble finding the words to explain what he did not yet understand.

“The letter was on her back,” he finally said.

“You mean tucked beneath her shirtwaist?” It made perfect sense. Pinned as she was to the stage curtain, we’d been unable to examine her body closely.

“No,” he said, “It was actually
on
her back. Permanently.”

He looked me full in the eye. “He tattooed it in blue ink.”

I am not a believer in the supernatural, but I prefer to visit the dead house in the daylight, when the sun’s warmth manages to dispel some of the gloom that lurks in dark corners and ill-lit hallways. To night, I felt the dark rather than saw it— and its chill permeated my bones in a way that was deeply uncomfortable. And though the autopsy room was lit with no fewer than six electric lights, it did little to dispel my uneasiness.

Splayed out on the soapstone countertop— in the same room where we had learned the details of Annie Germaine’s autopsy just two days ago— was Emmaline Billings. She lay facedown, her head and lower body obscured by thick white coverings that seemed to accentuate the spidery blue markings we could see on the only exposed portion of her body.

Dr. Wilcox’s assistant, a small man with a Hungarian name that I could never pronounce, came over to greet us.

“I sent word as soon as I saw,” he said in soft, accented tones.

Mulvaney circled to view the writing from a different angle. “Can we get more light over here?”

“Certainly, sir,” the assistant said. He brought over an electric lantern and held it high above Miss Billings’s corpse.

The lantern cast eerie, half-lit shadows all around us, but brightly illuminated the writing in question. It was done in blue ink, but the skin around it was irritated and inflamed such that, in the light, each letter seemed bathed in a red glow.

“The ink looks to be a standard blue henna injected beneath the skin,” the doctor’s assistant said.

Mulvaney shook his head sadly. “This is sloppy work. Do you see how uneven the lines are? Given that— as well as what we know about the Aerial Gardens, where she was killed— I think this was done by hand.”

I saw the smudged lines that drew some alphabet letters closer together, kept others farther apart; they were thick in places, thin in others. The man who had done this work had taken little care, possessed poor skills— or both.

“No doubt you’re right,” I said. “It’s too sloppy to be otherwise. Even an electric tattoo machine in the hands of an amateur would produce better work than this.”

Mulvaney nodded. “Plus, he would have attracted attention carting a machine that large into the theater— or so I’d like to think.”

We stared at the writing once more.

“Who would still have access to an old hand machine?” I asked. The new tattoo parlors around Chatham Square— in addition to those tattoo artists practicing in the backs of saloons and even barbershops— had more or less switched to electric machines within the last ten years. And with faster, better methods, tattoos had become more popular, at least among certain groups: sailors, gang members, and the rebellious young men of the privileged classes.

“Do you think he did this before he killed her— or after?” I asked.

“I can’t say, sir. Perhaps Dr. Wilcox will have an opinion.”

I hoped, for this victim’s sake, that the answer would be the
latter. If she had been alive— and the tattoo had been done by hand— then Emmaline Billings had been subjected to the tortuous process of having dye injected, one needle prick at a time, until the two lines of verse were written.

That would indicate a mea sure of cruelty that we had not seen in the two prior killings. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of it, however. After all, I didn’t pretend to understand what kind of person we were dealing with. His blue lettering mocked us, sending chills down my spine, as I tried to imagine why he had left his message this way.

I steeled myself to the task at hand and focused on the words.

Lo! ’tis a gala night

. . . its hero the Conqueror Worm

I could only stare.

“What the hell is this?” I finally said. “ ‘Gala night’ mimics the phrasing in this killer’s letter to
The Times
— but ‘Conqueror Worm’?” I knew I was missing something important.

“Your professor will no doubt have plenty to say about it.” Mulvaney looked away, asking the assistant, “Do you have a camera for some photographs?” He made a face of apology to me. “I left ours at the station, unfortunately, in the rush to get downtown.”

The assistant nodded, left us, then returned just moments later with a No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak just like the one at Mulvaney’s precinct. I took it and snapped several photographs— some close-ups to focus on specific letters, others far away to capture the two lines together.

I removed the film and returned the camera to Dr. Wilcox’s assistant, thanking him.

“Based on his opinion of the murder scene— even before we discovered this tattooed letter— I can guess something of what Alistair will say,” I said the moment Mulvaney and I were once more alone. “He will likely point to the theatrical nature of it. It isn’t writing that merely communicates; it makes a point visually . . . and viscerally.” I shuddered. “He has marked her body for the first time.”

“But the tattoo didn’t kill her,” Mulvaney reminded me. “It appears he strangled her, just like the others.”

“True. But it’s still a change in his behavior that may mean something,” I said. And I went on to explain all that I had learned during my interview with Charles Frohman— including how in addition to the theater magnate himself, I felt his closest adviser, Leon Iseman, was a suspect worth serious consideration. “Odd coincidence, isn’t it, that this message surfaces on Miss Billings’s corpse— the week Frohman is rehearsing his next premiere— or ‘gala night’?”

I found the fact extremely unsettling, but Mulvaney grunted in disagreement. “Actually, there’s one more thing I’ve got to tell you.”

I groaned inwardly— for after this day’s revelations, I was hoping to hear no more discouraging news.

He looked at me steadily. “We took the fingerprints off the syringe on the hypodermic needle that pricked Detective Marwin.”

“And?”

“Timothy Poe was the first guy I had them run the comparison against. They’re a perfect match to the set of prints we
took from him when he was at the precinct station following Annie Germaine’s murder.”

“How can that be?” I asked incredulously.

An amused look crossed his face. “You can’t be hypocritical now, Ziele. You’ve always been a big advocate of fingerprinting, saying our department needs to do more to embrace new technology. So you can’t discount what it tells you, just because you don’t like the results.”

He was right. But the fingerprint match went against every instinct I had. Poe had been duplicitous and less than straightforward, yet I did not believe him to be a killer. He made no sense as a suspect given the behavioral profile we sought, and I told Mulvaney so— knowing as I did that I sounded just like Alistair.

“And,” I added, “you’ll need evidence other than just finger prints— unless you’ve got ten pristine prints on that syringe, your fingerprints won’t be admitted into court.”

Fingerprint evidence had achieved partial acceptance in New York as a marker of identification in one case only: where the prints were clean and complete. The prisons, for example, already used fingerprints to identify and keep track of all inmates, because they could obtain ten quality prints from each inmate in a controlled setting. But in real life, prints were incomplete and smudged. And no one yet had fully trusted a partial print as evidence.

Mulvaney regarded me indulgently. “There’s always a first time, Ziele. Besides, we’ll have more evidence shortly. While we were down here, I sent my men to Poe’s flat with a warrant to search his rooms and arrest him. He’ll be waiting for us at the precinct station.”

But Mulvaney was wrong on at least that one count. When we returned, Poe was not at the precinct house. In fact, he was absolutely nowhere to be found.

Mulvaney’s men were harried and exhausted when we met them. Ben Schneider and Paul Arnow had begun to show the strain of the day’s events— and they remained concerned about Marwin.

“Poe wasn’t at home, Captain,” said Ben. “And his roommates claim they haven’t seen him the past two days.”

“Days?” Mulvaney looked at them in amazement. “But they must have some idea where he’s gone?”

Paul shook his head wearily. “They claim they do not. Poe apparently even missed his performance last night, which is unusual for him.”

It was an infraction that Frohman’s stage manager would never tolerate— and the information I was now duty-bound to make public would doom his career in any event. But Poe was facing arrest on three charges of murder. He had larger worries now.

“We ran to ground all leads, right? The places he frequents. The people he associates with.” Mulvaney cited the checklist of protocol almost by rote. “We’ll find him and bring him in— and secure the evidence that will close this case.”

Despite the fact that I’d never known fingerprints to lie, I could not accept Mulvaney’s unwavering belief in Poe’s guilt. Still, I owed it to him to share what I knew about Poe’s whereabouts.

I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “I’ve got another address for him you can try. It’s a flat down on MacDougal
Street. Number 101. Apartment Five C. I’ve visited him there before.”

Mulvaney stared at me for a split second, then ordered his officers to check it out. Once they had left, he pulled me into his office and closed the door. I expected him to be angry, for his temper could be fierce. But instead, he sat perfectly still.

Eventually he spoke, his voice unnaturally quiet. “How did you know that Poe had a second address— and more to the point, why didn’t you tell me?”

Reluctantly, I filled him in— telling him all about how Riley and Bogarty had given me the tip, how I had visited Poe there, what I’d learned, and how neither Alistair nor I truly believed Poe was culpable, despite his duplicity.

“I repeat: why didn’t you tell me about it?” Mulvaney remained stone-faced.

“Because with all the political pressure bearing down on you, I feared it would provide you with an easy— but incorrect— solution,” I said.

“In other words, you didn’t trust me to get it right? To understand the basics of evidence?”

“As a matter of fact, no— I did not. You’ve been prejudiced against Poe from the beginning, prone to believe him guilty before any factual evidence proved it so. How much more inclined would you be to assume his guilt, once you knew he had lied to us? That his lifestyle is an unusual one, sure to prejudice any jury against him?” I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. “And because the public would denounce him based on that fact alone, I had the man’s very career in my hands, to ruin— or not— as I saw fit. And I didn’t see fit. I didn’t believe him to be guilty, so I felt it was my duty to protect his interests.”

“Your duty . . .” Mulvaney shook his head in disappointment. “We’ve found solid evidence connecting him to today’s crime.”

“Which is why I have told you his whereabouts now.”

But Mulvaney said, “We might have had solid evidence earlier, if you’d been more forthcoming. Your sense of duty to Poe may have cost another young woman— not to mention Detective Marwin— their very lives.”

“If that’s the case,” I said, nearly collapsing into my chair, “do you think I won’t remember it every day for the rest of my life?”

Stung by what ever he had heard in my words, he immediately retracted his charge. “You know I didn’t mean that, Ziele. We make the best decisions we can, based on what we know at the time. It’s all we can do.”

He was right. With limited knowledge, it was our only choice.

But that was something we would learn to live with— eventually. It neither corrected the mistake nor altered the terrible consequences resulting from it.