The Blackest Bird (3 page)

B
ecause Old Hays had a daughter of his own, the last surviving of his children, the other four, all sons, having succumbed during the feral yellow fever epidemic of 1822, all within the short span of a sweltering, humid August weekend, the death of the segar girl Mary Rogers took on for him added significance. His cherished youngest, also a Mary, in her case Mary Olga, although called by family and friends exclusively Olga, was not that many years older than Mary Cecilia Rogers herself, and therefore the death of the segar girl evoked for him a special poignancy. Sarah, his wife of forty-eight years, had fallen ill from arrhythmia of the heart only January last. She had just made dinner, had taken her place at the table, when she lost consciousness and hit the floor, facefirst. She woke almost immediately, but as her eyes blackened, her organs began to fail, and within three days his most beloved was forever gone. Since then, understandably, his daughter had assumed a role something more than precious to her father.

Hays did not usually make habit of having his emotions become involved in his cases. He knew even if he had acted when first he had heard of this newest disappearance of the segar girl, there was surely nothing that could have been done. She was already dead.

Still, burrowing guilt had taken hold of him.

From the time of her first disappearance, Hays knew Mary Cecilia Rogers to be in her twenty-first year, having been born in Connecticut in 1820. Her mother, Phebe Mather Rogers, had married into the family of the sour Puritans Increase and Cotton Mather. But Phebe’s first husband, Ezra Mather, had died of an infection at thirty-seven, leaving her with two children, a boy and a girl. She remarried, this time to a descendant of another well-known Connecticut family, religious zealot and Quaker James Rogers, founder of the troublesome and dissenting Rogerene sect. Mary was born when Phebe Rogers was forty-two years old, the only child of that union. Hays recalled there had been some spurious talk that Mary was not Phebe’s child at all, but her granddaughter, the out-of-wedlock child of Phebe’s daughter, also called Phebe.

In 1835, when Mary was fifteen, James Rogers had been killed in a Long Island Sound steamboat explosion, leaving mother and daughter in a state of economic travail.

During the financial panic of 1837 they had moved to New York City, where they hoped there would be chance for better circumstance. At first they had lived at 116 Liberty Street at the home of John Anderson, a young shopkeeper and family friend of Phebe Rogers’ first husband, Ezra Mather.

Anderson was proprietor of a segar shop on lower Broadway, at number 319, opposite City Hall Park. Up until that time the shop had been the meeting place of a disappointingly craven lot of loafers, gamblers, and blacklegs, most drifting over from a nearby establishment of poor reputation which Hays knew all too well, called “Headquarters.”

At seventeen, Mary was unquestionably a great beauty, and Anderson was very much aware that such a fresh young lady as she would attract the respectable and influential male clientele he so craved to transform his establishment. He offered her a job, and after conferring with her mother, Mary accepted.

To all accounts, with Mary’s presence behind the counter, Mr.
Anderson’s expectations were met, and his segar shop, purveyor of “Anderson’s Solace Tobacco and Snuff,” located just a few short blocks from the busy and influential Publishers’ Row and Printing House Square, soon became the meeting place for all sorts of important newspaper and publishing types, including many writers and editors.

At the time of that first disappearance, Hays had been told by her aunt, Mrs. Downey, and her cousin, Mrs. Hayes (no relation to the high constable, the names spelled differently), how Mary loved and thrived on the attention paid her, and she reportedly talked often in a gush about the varying men who frequented the shop.

Her beauty was only part of her charm, these female relatives said. Mary was vibrant, outgoing, comely, and graceful. Admittedly, she was somewhat given to wildness. Occasionally she had been known to slip out from the family residence on Liberty Street for secret assignations and rendezvous. With whom, she never divulged.

As previously stated, the first mystery surrounding Mary occurred three years before this present tragic disappearance, almost a year after the start of her employ at Anderson’s. At that time, Mr. Anderson and the rest of her admirers at the segar shop were thrown into a sudden state of high tizzy when she unaccountably disappeared. Her mother turned, in a mood of grand and helpless flux, to the newspapers and the wealth of varied publishers and reporters, all of whom knew and admired her daughter. Mrs. Rogers tearfully admitted that she had found a suicide note on her bureau and had become understandably panic-stricken.

Stories appeared in the
Evening Tribune
as well as the
Journal of
Commerce,
the
Sun,
the
Mercury, Atlas
, and
Commercial Intelligence
. The depictions, tinged with melodrama and despondency, expressed dread that Mary may very well have destroyed herself, explaining how she had for some months been paid particular attention by a suitor (unnamed) who frequented her employer’s tobacconist’s shop.

It was related that this gentleman had since ceased his attentions
and left the city. As portrayed in the
Tribune:
“vanishing like the smoke of one of that gentleman’s segars in thin air.”

When questioned by Hays at the time, Anderson alleged that this difficult affair (for her) had so taken its toll on the impressionable young lady as to produce the circumstances of mind which the press accounts described.

During the course of his investigation Hays had asked Anderson several times who the mysterious gentleman may have been. Anderson contended he did not know. He mentioned several names upon whom he might speculate, among them the American men of letters Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, the acerbic southern critic Edgar Poe, at the time a resident of New York, and the laureate poet Fitz-Greene Halleck. Even the name of the swashbuckling frog Alexis de Tocqueville, author of
Democracy in America
, and the eminent British scribbler Charles Dickens came up, the latter a snuff-seeker, and as such, a frequent guest in the shop while on his last American book tour; all customers, all purportedly infatuated by Mary.

Again at that time, in support of what Mrs. Rogers had reported in the press in regard to her daughter taking her own life, Anderson, upon reflection, told how when last she left his establishment, he feared Mary might have taken with her a shilling from the till with the intention of purchasing poison.

With the fertilizer of this revelation, now even further speculation blossomed in the public prints and among the many gossips of the hub, only to soon wilt when Mary reappeared some weeks later, none the worse for wear, speaking innocently of a visit to a relative in Brooklyn.

During her absence much curiosity had been engendered, but when she returned and learned how John Anderson had spoken quite liberally to the broadsheets about her personal affairs, particularly in regard to men, Mary stormed from his establishment in a fit of pique, never to return.

Anderson expressed sadness to see Mary go. She had months earlier left his home on Liberty Street for her cousin Mrs. Hayes’ home
on Pitt, made uncomfortable, her mother revealed, by the man’s over-solicitation and unwelcome attentions.

Additionally, there was some belated speculation, especially in the sixpenny
Commercial Advertiser
, to the effect that Mary’s disappearance might have been concocted by Anderson (with cooperation from Mary) as a way to attract business to his segar and tobacco enterprise.

Now this.

I
N THE
T
OMBS’ COURTYARD
, Balboa awaits the high constable, standing in front of the barouche, feeding the dappled carriage horse a stubby carrot, at the same time engaged in easy conversation with another Negro, a man employed as prison sweep.

Stepping into sunlight, Hays signals his driver that he is needed. “Yes, suh, Mr. High,” Balboa says, breaking off his conversation, and without a further word he opens the carriage door.

Hays climbs in and takes his accustomed seat facing forward in the back, supported by a brocaded East Indian pillow. The prison gates open and the carriage exits onto Elm Street, to make a sharp left.

Nassau Street began one block from the southeastern edge of City Hall Park, a winding street just beyond Park Row, home to the city’s publishing and newspaper industries, what is known as “the City Brain.”

Some twenty-six newspapers and magazines maintained offices on Nassau Street. The Rogerses’ boardinghouse stood at number 126, between Beekman and Ann streets, a flat-roofed three-story red brick building, nondescript among a block of similar structures.

After using the large brass knocker, introducing himself to she who answered, and asking for the Widow Rogers, Hays was ushered into the home by the colored maid.

The front door of the boardinghouse opened onto the parlor floor. Two matronly women and a sullen girl of about fourteen were gathered in the dark-draperied room, surrounding a seated old woman, dressed in black, Hays immediately recognized from his previous audience with her three years before. The high constable took the grieving mother’s
cold hand in his. Her lap was covered by a pink and black wool crocheted coverlet despite the warmth and humidity of the day. Hays peered into the mother’s bleary, reddened eyes, noting her blank stare.

“Mrs. Rogers,” he said gently, “do you remember me? I am Jacob Hays of the constabulary.”

She said nothing, and the expression on her face, faraway and otherwise distracted, did not change. It was as if, standing in front of her, holding her frail hand in his, he had made no impression of being there on her whatsoever. At one point her glance did seem to wander in his direction, but she did not focus.

Those attending her as she sat stiff and wan in the parlor were her aforementioned colored servant, one Dorothea Brandywine, now standing off to the far side behind her, the two matronly women, and a girl, also mentioned, introduced as a cousin to Mary, a resident worker in the house; the two older women, one Mary’s cousin, Mrs. Hayes, and the other her aunt, Mrs. Downey of Jane Street.

Hays inquired of Mary’s cousin, Mrs. Hayes, if it was not her home on Pitt Street where Mary had been living and from which she had vanished from sight three years previously. Mrs. Hayes said that it was, the high constable noting she was pleased he remembered.

Mrs. Hayes explained that shortly after that incident Mary and her mother, financed by funds supplied by Mary’s half brother, a seaman, had rented this residence from one Peter Aymar.

They eked out a small living running the boardinghouse here. Mary’s mother was able to do little, feebleness and bone fatigue having set in, so it had fallen on Mary to take charge of the daily chores and administration. Mrs. Downey said that of late, there had been an air, nearing desperation, surrounding Mary, but when pressed, she could not speak of what disturbed her.

Hays returned his attention to the grieving mother. If she had been listening to the course of his conversation with Mrs. Hayes, she gave no indication. In deference to her years, her loss, and the devastation such tragedy had obviously wrought upon her person, he chose not to press her personally with any undue questions at this time.

Instead, he requested of Mrs. Downey if a list of all boarders over the last year might be prepared for him, any tradesmen who frequented the house, and any visitors.

With that Hays bid his leave. He once more took Mrs. Rogers’ frail hand in his thick fingers and told her he was sorry for her loss. He said that he hoped God would give her strength, and then left.

Once outside, against the hubbub and racket of the district’s afternoon traffic, the daily standard commerce and hurried foot transit on Nassau Street, Balboa had already helped his superior up into the police carriage in front of the boardinghouse when a tall, thin-faced gentleman in a great rush made his appearance from the rear of the building.