The Case of the Petrified Man (20 page)

I said, “I am trying to solve the murder of Short Sally.”

He waved his pipe. “Last month’s news.”

I kept quiet. I did not want him muddying my waters anyway. He seemed to twist every fact he got hold of.

Then he leaned forward. “Yesterday Dan suggested I go down to the Coroner and get some stories from him. You know, children run over by Quartz Wagons or puppies fallen down Mine Shafts. Now that was a good idea, the reader loves that sort of Tragedy. The only problem is that the Coroner and I are feuding.”

“Do you mean Mr. G.T. Sewall?” I said. “A big red-faced man with a silver-tipped walking stick?”

“That is the varmint!” cried Sam Clemens & pointed at me with his pipe stem. “See? You arrived the same afternoon I did and already you know more about this town and its denizens than I do.”

“I do not like G.T. Sewall,” I said.

“Nor do I,” said Sam Clemens. “So here is my proposition to you. I will pay you a dollar to go down to the Coroner and find out if there have been any grisly or gruesome deaths recently.”

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean: no?”

“I mean I went down there yesterday to ask about my Case. He thought you had put me up to it and he almost brained
me with his silver-tipped walking stick. He already thinks I am in cahoots with you.”

“That could be a problem.” Sam Clemens sat back & puffed on his pipe.

I sat back, too, and took a sip of yesterday’s cold black coffee.

I had an idea. “Would your readers like to hear about a man cut in half by a Quartz Wagon?”

He shook his head. “Too commonplace. We had one of those last week. I need something new. Something fresh.”

I thought, “I’ll bet you would like the story of a little girl who witnessed a crime and now the killer is after her.” But I did not say it.

After a moment Sam Clemens sat forward. “You could go down in
disguise
,” he said.

“My disguises are for shadowing people,” I said. “Not for interviewing them. They only work because they help you blend in to the background. They don’t bear close examination.”

“There is one disguise you have that might work,” said he.

“Which one is that?” I asked. But already I thought I knew what he had in mind.

“That one where you dress up as a little girl,” he said. “It quite transforms you.”

“That is a time-consuming disguise,” I said. “I am in the middle of an important investigation. I have to check the whereabouts of various suspects on the evening of Friday last.”

“Give me their names,” said he. “I will question them with
tact and discretion, under the pretence of writing an article. I will find out if any of them are unaccounted for.”

I took another sip of cold black coffee & pondered his proposal.

It was a good one. I had not had much luck interviewing suspects. They always seemed to get mad at me, probably because I came straight at them as Jace had said. It might be that Sam Clemens was better at flanking maneuvers.

“All right,” I said. “I will question my next-door neighbor, Mr. Isaiah Coffin. If you question a barber named Pierre Forote, a policeman named Isaac Brokaw and a telegraph operator named Yuri Ivanovich, then I will visit the Coroner for you.”

I did not say it out loud, but I thought, “If my disguise is convincing enough, I might even get some more clews about Short Sally’s Killer.”

BEFORE I WENT DOWN
to the Coroner’s Office to get news of grisly murders and/or gruesome deaths for Mr. Sam Clemens, I fortified myself with a hearty Detective Breakfast of two mutton chops, eggs & buttered toast with marmalade.

Then I went next door to interview Suspect No. 6 on my list. I was still pretty sure No. 1 had done it—Ludwig Hamm—but this would give me a chance to practice my interview skills.

I knocked at the door of Isaiah Coffin’s Ambrotype & Photographic Gallery.

His Chinese assistant, Ping, opened the door with a scowl.

“How are you, Ping?” I asked carefully. “How is everything at home?”

He shrugged. “All right. Everyone still asleep,” he said.

I nodded to show I understood. “May I come in?”

“Why?” he asked.

“I need to borrow a costume,” I said. “And also to question your boss.”

“He busy,” said Ping. “He is teaching me to mix chemicals. Also, he is vexed because you keep borrowing clothings. He say you wear and tear.”

“I will pay him for any damaged goods,” I said. “Please let me by?”

Ping stood back to let me by. He was wearing an apron over a smart gray worsted suit. The suit looked store-bought. I reckon he had bought it with some of the $500 I gave him for helping me the previous week.

Ping followed me into the clothes cupboard.

The door to the small Dark Room was open. I saw & smelled Mr. Isaiah Coffin mixing chemicals. Isaiah Coffin is tall & slim with a wispy billy goat beard & one eyebrow almost permanently raised.

“Good morning, P.K.,” he said in his English accent. “How are you today?”

“I am well, thank you. Ping says you are vexed at me.”

“Ping is quite correct,” said Isaiah Coffin, raising his raised eyebrow even higher. “You have been using up my costumes. Wear and tear, my boy, wear and tear. My problem, you see, is that they belong to my friend Maguire. I’m only storing them until he opens his theater.”

“May I borrow the Prim Little Girl costume one last time if I buy a replacement?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “As long as your replacement is of the same quality.”

“Thank you,” I said. I went behind a rack of clothes and began to change. I could have taken my costume to my own place next door but I wanted an excuse to stay & question him.

I remembered Jace’s advice so I tried coming at Mr. Isaiah Coffin from the side: a “flanking maneuver.”

I cleared my throat and said, “Mr. Coffin, do you ever go to the Melodeon or the Dog Fights of an evening?”

He stuck his head out of the small room and frowned at me. “What?”

“Topliffe’s Theatre, for example. Do you ever go there?”

“B’yen syoor,” said Isaiah Coffin. “I love the theater in all its forms.”

I unbuttoned my faded red (not pink) flannel shirt. “Were you there last Friday by any chance?” I asked. “Only I noticed the poster said a woman was doing a ‘Fancy Dance’ and I was wondering what that was.”

“I was not there,” replied Mr. Isaiah Coffin. “I had a Secret Meeting. But I imagine a ‘Fancy Dance’ is some sort of energetic jig.”

“Secret Meeting?” I said, turning to face his open door. “What Secret Meeting?”

“It is a secret,” he said, his voice was muffled as he bent over a tray.

I tried coming at him from another side.

“Where do you live, Mr. Coffin?” I asked, as I slipped on the calico dress.

“I live in a boardinghouse south of here, near the Divide.”

“Were you up late last Friday night?” I asked, as I pulled on the bloomers. “At your ‘Secret Meeting’?”

His head appeared over the clothes rack & almost made me jump out of my dress.

“Why all these questions?” he asked.

“Just curious,” I said.

“Cease and desist,” he said. “I am teaching Ping how to develop tintypes and we are using dangerous chemicals. You are distracting me.”

“I apologize,” I said. “I will not bother you anymore.”

They closed the door of the small dark room behind them & I sighed.

My flanking maneuver had failed. I hoped Sam Clemens was having more luck with the French barber, the American policeman and the Russian telegraph operator.

I finished changing into my Prim Little Girl Disguise. It takes about five minutes to do up all the little buttons on each boot. I was glad I did not have to wear such an outfit every day.

The strange thing about wearing a disguise is that it makes you feel different. It is a little like adopting a person’s posture. Wearing a calico dress & boots & bonnet, you can almost imagine what it would be like to be a Prim Little Girl. It changes the way you walk and the way you see the world. Your dress prickles your neck & your bonnet blinkers your vision & your too-tight white button-up boots make you take
wincing, mincing steps. Bloomers feel strange, too, because a breeze comes up under your skirt & whistles around your nether parts & this can be unsettling. The temperature had dropped so I also took a knitted, woolen woman’s shawl. It was a shade of purple and did not match my pink calico dress but that could not be helped.

When I took my own clothes back next door, I observed there were still no clients waiting outside to hire me.

I thought, “I had better solve this case or my career as a Detective will soon be over and I will never get to Chicago.”

When I finally got down to the Coroner’s office it was about 11 o’clock a.m. The door was closed.

I knocked politely.

“Come in!” said a voice from within.

I opened the door. Sure enough it was that red-faced bully G.T. Sewall.

“Good morning, sir,” I said in a little girl’s voice. I kept my head down as if I was shy so he would not get a good look at my face. Under my pink bonnet I was wearing a wig with black ringlets. “Are you the Coroner?” I asked. I perched on the edge of a wooden chair facing his desk.

“I am,” he said. “What brings you here?”

“My brother has gone missing,” I said. “My ma sent me to see if you’ve had any deaths recently. She is too upset to come herself.”

This was the story Sam Clemens had coached me to say. He said to be as vague as possible about “my brother.”

“You look familiar,” he said. “Have we met before?”

“No, sir,” I lied. I caught myself pulling the prickly lace
collar away from my neck & forced myself to sit still with my hands in my lap.

“You Mexican?” he said, squinting at me. “You got a kind of tinge to your complexion.”

I lowered my head even more. “Only on my pa’s side.”

He said, “Well, some prospectors did find the body of a young man yesterday evening, but he ain’t Mexican.”

“My brother had a different pa,” I said, still keeping my head down. “So it could have been him. How did he die?”

“Appears to have been kicked by a mule or horse. They found him down in Six Mile Canyon with a hoof-shaped dent in his skull.”

This sounded interesting. I sat up a little straighter. “May I see his body?” I asked, glancing towards the morgue.

(Sam Clemens had told me to ask this so I could examine the body & make note of any grisly wounds.)

“Trust me, little Missy, you do not want to do that. The coyotes have been at him. Besides, his body is not here. It is at the undertakers.”

“Oh,” I said. “Have you heard of any other grisly accidents?”

“Well, there were two shootings yesterday but both men are still clinging to life. One of them was Irish. Name of Murphy. You ain’t part Irish by any chance?”

I shook my head.

He said, “Then there was that killing down on D Street. Two drunks arguing about the war and that new proclamation. The Reb forked the Yank.”

“Forked?”

“Yes, sir. Stabbed him in the neck with a fork. The Yank
received a mortal puncture to the carotid artery. He bled out in about five minutes.”

“Mortal? Does that mean he is dead?”

“It does indeed,” said G.T. Sewall.

I pondered that for a moment. I had seen two men survive being riddled with bullets at close range and yet here was a man who died in less than five minutes from a fork-inflicted wound. I reckoned Mr. Sam Clemens would like this story.

“May I see the body?” I asked. “He might be my brother.”

“I doubt he is your brother. That one’s forty if he’s a day.”

“It might be him,” I said. “May I look at him?”

“You have a forty-year-old brother? What is your name, anyway?” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. That was Expression No. 5: Anger or Suspicion. Or both.

Sam Clemens and I had not decided what my name was to be.

I needed to think of one quick.

“Maisie,” I said, using the name Dan De Quille had given me the week before.

“And your last name?”

“De Quille,” I said. “Maisie De Quille.”

“What? You’re Dan De Quille’s little girl?”

“Yes. I am Dan De Quille’s little girl.”

“Why you are telling a big story! Dan ain’t Mexican!”

Too late I remembered I had told him my pa was Mexican.

“Also,” said G.T. Sewall, rising up from his chair, “I happen to know that Dan’s family ain’t here in Virginia. He left them all back east. Also, his real name ain’t even Dan De Quille.”

This was news to me. I looked up. “It ain’t?”

“No. It ain’t. Now, who are you?”

I quickly looked down & tried to think of a convincing reply.

“Why, you’re that danged Injun boy who came round yesterday, ain’t you? Only today they dressed you up as a girl! That varmint Sam Clemens sent you, I’ll bet. You tell that conniving skunk that he will get no information out of me. As for you…” G.T. Sewall lunged for his silver-tipped walking stick.

I did not hear the rest of his threat for I was out the door faster than a cricket from hot embers.