The Salem Witch Society (2 page)

D
r. Virgil Steig was a slight man of about sixty with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard gone mostly white. From where he stood by the entrance to the machine shop, the doctor could hear the gentle sloshing of the harbor against the wharf pilings just a good stone’s throw away. The various buildings of the locomotive foundry and machine works were crammed into ten waterfront acres near Portland’s East End. At the sound of approaching horseshoes and the clatter of carriage wheels over the cobblestones, the doctor returned his attention to the land. He let his gaze drift past the carriage to the open space before him, then up to the dome of the Grand Trunk Railway. Dr. Steig stepped away from the machine shop door, ready to greet the mayor’s landau as it arrived at the entrance to the Portland Company. A uniformed patrolman moved across the compound and opened the carriage door. The ample frame of Mayor Darius Ingraham disgorged itself from the cab.

“Dr. Steig. I should have known,” the mayor said between heavy breaths. “The officer didn’t mention it was you.”

“Would you have come if he had?”

“This is no ho
ur for jokes. Why the hell am I here?”

“I thought you’d want to see this, in a manner of speaking. It’s going to cause quite a stir: a young woman.” Dr. Steig led the mayor toward the front door.

“Prostitute?”

“Yes.”

“That’s something. I mean, it could be worse.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Dr. Steig.

“Who’s the investigator?”

“Lean.”

The mayor drew in his breath.

“You appointed him,” said the doctor.

“There were other considerations.”

“Aren’t there always?”

The mayor seemed to weigh the need to defend himself but settled for, “Where is he?”

“Inside with the body.”

“I don’t know; he seems bright enough,” the mayor said.

“Plenty bright. Not the most seasoned.”

“He’s been around a few years.”

“I have scars older than him.” The doctor turned and reached for the doorknob. “I just think this case might warrant someone with a bit more expertise.”

“It’s just a dead whore, Virgil.”

“And
Macbeth
is just a play about a Scotsman. All the same, better prepare yourself for what you’re about to see.” Dr. Steig led the way inside. Deputy Marshal Archie Lean was standing twenty paces ahead.

“Holy Mother of God!” The mayor drew a handkerchief and clapped it to his mouth.

“Not by a long shot,” Lean said.

The mayor moved forward with halting steps. “Who is she?”

“Maggie Keene,” Lean said. “One of Jimmy Farrell’s newer girls. Usually works North Street.”

Mayor Ingraham tapped
his cane on the ground. “Oh, just wait until news of this gets out. Blanchard and his temperance fanatics will drag me over the coals. A dead whore, some bloody killer roaming about—”

“And a watchman too drunk to notice anything.” Lean saw the mayor grimace. The Maine Temperance Union had been firing broadsides against the mayor since the day he took office. Newspapers with Republican leanings routinely ran stories accusing him of failing to enforce the Maine Liquor Law that—on paper, anyway—had banned the sale, and nonmedicinal use, of alcohol since 1855. There were even allegations of payoffs by the larger Irish gangs that controlled much of the flow of booze into Portland.

“Why isn’t Marshal Swett here anyway?” asked the mayor.

“Prefers not to conduct business before breakfast,” Lean said.

“Takes a better photograph after a full night’s sleep,” Dr. Steig added.

Mayor Ingraham stared at them in disbelief, his jowls starting to quiver.

“I did speak with him on the telephone,” Lean said with the unenthused voice of a man obeying dubious orders. “He wants the men to scour the docks and alleys, dredge up whatever drunks and vagrants they can. Find one with no memory of the last few hours, some blood on him, and that’s our man.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Apart from those few still on watch outside, I’ve got everyone out looking.”

“Good,” Mayor Ingraham said. “So we throw out the net and examine the haul.”

“You think they’ll find him?” Dr. Steig said.

“I don’t know what to think about … whatever you call this.”

“Someone killed a whore.” The calm was returning to the mayor’s face. “Someone in the grip of extreme passion. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Lean shrugged. “It’s more than just a guy getting rough; a beating ’cause the girl wouldn’t give his coins back after he can’t finish up his business. Or worse yet, the horse bolts the gate before the starter’s pistol.”

“All such pleasan
t imagery aside, I agree,” said Dr. Steig. “This doesn’t appear to be a blind rage or a drunken fit. The presentation of the body is all wrong.”

Mayor Ingraham frowned at the opinion. “What, then? What sort of man would do such a thing?”

Lean could almost picture the images that must have been running through the mayor’s mind. The editorial cartoons would show a caricatured, blurry-eyed Irish watchman and paint the mayor hoisting the whiskey jug for the ape-faced brute to drink from. Now the mayor’s eyes lit up at the prospect of pinning this all on something other than demon rum and his failure to curb the flow of alcohol.

“We’ll roust Farrell’s joint,” Lean said. “See if the other girls will talk. She’s dressed rather fancy for the work; maybe her friends will know who she was getting so dudded up for.”

“You don’t sound hopeful,” Dr. Steig said.

Lean crushed his cigarette beneath his heel. “Never seen anything quite so …” He failed to finish the thought before being interrupted by the sound of a carriage approaching.

“Now what?” the mayor said. “The photographer?”

“Can’t be,” Lean said. “I only sent for him twenty minutes ago.”

Dr. Steig cleared his throat. “I know who it is. A thought occurred to me after I saw the body, and I telephoned for someone. Now, it’s a rather unusual step I’m suggesting.”

“Why not?” said the mayor, his voice leaden with disappointment. “Desperate times and all that rot.”

“There’s a man recently returned to Portland. The grandson of my old commander, Major Grey. The young man was a student in some of my anatomy classes. Would’ve made a great surgeon, actually—”

“Cyrus Grey? Wait a minute—that scrawny red-Indian boy of his?” A look of puzzled doubt landed on the mayor’s face.

“Only on his father’s side. Anyway, knowing the family and all, I followed his career, the odd bit of news and whatnot. He joined the Pinkertons, gained a bit of notoriety there.”

Lean snorted. Ever since
Allan Pinkerton had famously uncovered a plot against President Lincoln during the war, the private detective and security force of the Pinkertons—with their pompous symbol of the all-seeing eye—had been held to be a notch above all other police forces. But since that success thirty years earlier, Lean considered that the Pinkertons’ true talent, exposed in their operations infiltrating unions as strikebreakers, was for cracking skulls rather than using their own.

“Deputy, do you recall, about a year ago, news of Jacob Rutland, the Boston shipping magnate whose young daughter went missing?” Dr. Steig asked.

“Heard something. Pinkertons got her back, didn’t they?”

“Their men were brought in but made no further headway than the city police. Another week went by, and still no trace of the girl. Nothing at all. In desperation they called in this fellow.”

“Desperation?” Mayor Ingraham’s eyebrow arched.

“His methods are a bit unorthodox.”

This did nothing to smooth the mayor’s forehead. “Smoke signals and spirit visions?”

“Quite the contrary,” Dr. Steig said. “He’s known to employ a rather modern, scientific approach. Where the other detectives couldn’t find a hair of the girl after two weeks, this fellow brought her home alive within forty-eight hours.”

“I don’t recall hearing anything about that,” Mayor Ingraham said.

“He was also involved in the Athenaeum burglaries,” Dr. Steig said, “and the Bunker Hill murders.”

“That was him?” Mayor Ingraham exchanged a long look with Lean.

“Can’t say I care
much for involving some Pinkerton with half-cooked ideas about police work.” Lean imagined much time being wasted by some fool using uncertain techniques such as taking fingerprint samples and rambling on about the Frenchman Bertillon’s system of identifying criminals by their precise body measurements. “But I suppose there’s no harm in talking to him,” Lean said. “We’re already rounding up derelicts, and I can take some men over to Farrell’s after sunup.”

“Agreed, then,” the mayor said. “Though not a word of this to anyone. I don’t want it known about town that we’re consulting, in desperation, with this Indian fellow. Has a name, does he? Chief Something-or-Other?”

“Just Grey. Perceval Grey.”

The three of them stood, waiting for the machine-shop door to open and this Perceval Grey to reveal himself.

“Where is he already?” Mayor Ingraham said.

“Perhaps that wasn’t him after all,” Dr. Steig said.

“Could be a reporter. Better have a look. Cover the body, just in case.” The mayor reached out and took Lean by the arm. “I don’t want any newspapermen stealing a look at that … that travesty.”

T
he doctor’s newly arrived hansom sat twenty yards away, the driver still atop the cab. There was no sign of anyone else until the driver nodded his head to the side. Lean saw the dark outline of a tallish man standing near the watchman’s shack, staring down the alley that ran between the long machine and erecting shops of the Portland Company. Dr. Steig wandered forward to his carriage, the mayor and Lean following behind.

“What’s he doing?” asked the doctor.

The driver shrugged. “Whatever it is, he’s been at it since we got here.”

“Grey?” the doctor called out. The man answered by holding up a hand, one finger extended skyward. Then he turned and stared at the small outbuilding that served as the watchman’s shack.

Lean was only thirty years
old and fit enough, but this night was unusually cold and wet for mid-June. A driving storm of the type usually reserved for September or October in New England had ripped through during the prior afternoon, and the dampness was making his knees stiffen. He stomped his feet on the stones underfoot, forcing the blood to move along. After several more moments, Perceval Grey finished whatever he was doing and approached the others.

“Dr. Steig, I was pleasantly surprised to receive your message.” Grey took the doctor’s hand in both of his own. Lean noticed a caution in the movement, then recalled the doctor’s mention that Grey had been a student. Of course he would know of the doctor’s weakness in his right arm, the Civil War wound that had ended his career as a surgeon and still caused tremors in that hand.

Grey stepped back and regarded the other two guests. “Mayor Ingraham and Detective Sergeant …”

“Deputy Marshal Lean.” Lean glanced down at his front, looking to see if his badge or pistol was somehow visible. Neither was.

“Deputy Marshal?” Grey cocked an eyebrow. “Rather an odd title for an investigating officer. Barring a stagecoach robbery, that is.”

Lean studied Perceval Grey as the man talked. Grey’s eyes were dark and focused, giving no hint of the late hour. He was only slightly taller than his guests, though his height was accentuated by his thin, angular frame. His complexion was tan, but not as dark as Lean expected. His face held sharp features topped by short black hair parted on the right and slicked back under a fine beaver-felt derby. Lean wasn’t exactly sure of what he expected to see of this half-blood Pinkerton, but it wasn’t the man before them, dressed in a black dinner coat, charcoal waistcoat, and black tie, the four-in-hand still tightly knotted. The suit was so well tailored that the man could be taking in a concert at Kotzschmar Hall with the mayor rather than responding to a murder investigation in the dead hours of the morning.

“Thank you for coming so quickly. You see, something’s happened and … well …” Dr. Steig cleared his throat. “Grey, the thing is, we were hoping you might be able to assist us in a matter.”

“Actually, I’m not planning on taking on any full inquiries at this time; I’m here in Maine on a sabbatical from practical work. But for you, Doctor, I am willing to provide a quick overview of the prostitute’s murder.” Grey’s face was perfectly reserved as he made the announcement. “Peculiar for the killer to enter through the front door, in plain view of the night watchman’s shack—and possible other witnesses passing at a distance,” Grey said.

“Well, the watchman
admits he was asleep inside the shack. And, in any event, our man entered a side door.” Lean nodded in that direction. “Busted a pane of glass to reach the lock.”

“Interesting.” Grey headed for the door to the machine shop.

“Wait. My note made no mention of a murder, let alone a prostitute. Rasmus?” The doctor looked to his driver, who held up his hands in a display of innocence.

Lean’s entire body tensed.

“What’s this?” The mayor stepped back from the others. “I demand an explanation!”

“It’s hardly reasonable to expect a complete explanation of the case until I’ve examined the murder site. Through here, is it?”

“I mean the murder, a prostitute—how did you know?”

Grey ignored the mayor and disappeared inside the doorway.

There was a brief silence as each of the men contemplated Perceval Grey’s remarks. A crooked smile settled itself within the confines of Dr. Steig’s neatly trimmed beard. “You see, gentlemen—Grey can be of considerable assistance in pursuing this matter, if we can just overcome his reluctance.”

“I don’t trust him,” said the mayor. “Don’t see how he could possibly know those details unless he’s had some involvement in the crime. What do you say, Lean?”

“Perhaps we should head inside and see what this Grey makes of the scene.”

Lean led the way inside,
where they found Grey standing just a short distance into the shop, not yet in sight of the body.

He turned to them. “Who has set foot at the scene?”

Dr. Steig answered, since he was standing closest. “Present company, the first officer, and the watchman. Additional officers have examined the rest of the compound.”