Things Half in Shadow (35 page)

Barclay, eyes as wide as wagon wheels, said, “Get inside at once! All of you. Before you catch your death from cold and I become the scandal of the neighborhood.”

We moved indoors, retreating to Barclay's sitting room. Thomas curled up on a divan and promptly fell asleep. Lucy traded my coat for a few wool blankets. I warmed myself by the fire while Barclay lit a pipe, his hands shaking. After a hurried puff, he said, “I see you've spoken to Robert Pastor about the man without a nose.”

“I have,” I said. “I've also seen this man in person. Twice now. And, considering what just happened to us, I don't relish seeing him a third time.”

“What reason would this man have to kill you?” Barclay asked.

“You don't believe that it happened?” Lucy asked as she angrily tightened the blankets around her shoulders.

“I see no reason to doubt your story,” Barclay said. “I'm just curious as to what could have prompted this man to want you dead.”

“We obviously know too much,” I declared. “I haven't a clue as to what that information might be. But this man had something to do with the murder of Lenora Grimes Pastor and now he's targeting us.”

Barclay, as was his wont, sighed in my direction. “I suppose this means you've been continuing your ill-advised investigation?”

“We certainly have,” Lucy retorted. “And it's only ill-advised if you're not the one being blamed for murder.”

“But don't you suppose it would be wiser to let me, as the official investigator, do that? Especially seeing that your efforts have now apparently put you in danger.”

I didn't, and I told Barclay as much. While I was fearful of the noseless man, his actions indicated that Lucy and I were on the right path. A dangerous path, to be sure, but one that could possibly lead to our exoneration.

Barclay stroked his mustache for a moment, no doubt thinking about the best way to handle the situation. He then surprised me by saying, “Perhaps it's best if we shared information. You tell me what you have learned, and I'll do the same.”

While he smoked his pipe, I told him everything Lucy and I had discovered in our two days of sleuthing, from that first chat with Stokely to what Mr. Barnum had told us in the kitchen of the Continental Hotel. Barclay seemed to know many of the same things we did, such as Barnum's failed efforts to convince Mrs. Pastor to tour the country. Other tidbits, like Mr. Dutton's private Saturday séances, were a surprise to him.

“This is all very interesting,” he said when I had finished. “The two of you are tenacious, to say the least.”

“Thank you,” Lucy replied. “Unlike you, our situation demands it.”

“Now I suppose it's my turn,” Barclay said. “And the biggest bit of news is that the toxicologist has discovered what substance led to Mrs. Pastor's death.”

“What was it?” Lucy asked.

“Apitoxin.”

“Apitoxin? I've never heard of it,” I said. “Is that some new form of poison?”

“I thought the same thing,” Barclay admitted. “I had never heard of it, either. But the toxicologist told me it's very common. I've been poisoned by it, as, most likely, have the two of you.”

“I don't follow,” I said. “How have we all been poisoned?”

Barclay gave me a coy smile, pleased that he at last had more information than we did. “You've been stung by a bee, haven't you?”

“Of course,” Lucy said.

“Well, that's what apitoxin is. Bee venom.”

I scratched my head, confounded by this news. “Bee venom? You mean Mrs. Pastor was killed by a bee sting?”

“Not quite,” Barclay said. “She was still poisoned. It's simply that bee venom was the method. It's a natural neurotoxin, you see. In large doses, it causes paralysis of the body and its organs. Everything inside her simply seized up.”

“Are you certain it wasn't a bee sting?” I asked, naively holding out hope. “Perhaps Mrs. Pastor had an allergy to them.”

“She didn't,” Barclay said. “The toxicologist discovered far more apitoxin in Mrs. Pastor's body than what is possible from a single sting. And the puncture wound in her neck was far larger than one left by an average sting.”

“But how can someone be poisoned by bee venom without being stung by one?” Lucy asked.

“By using the venom of many bees,” Barclay said.

“You're telling us that someone collected bee venom?” I then asked. “How is that possible?”

“I haven't the foggiest idea,” Barclay replied. “But that's what happened. And one of the seven people in that room is responsible for it.”

Lucy leaned back in her chair, seemingly relieved by the news. “Well, it certainly wasn't me. I don't know the first thing about bees.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “In fact, I can't recall ever being stung by one.”

Yet at that moment, I
did
recall something else. What I remembered was Mrs. Pastor's surprise appearance during my nightmare and the way a single bee had flown from her mouth. At first I had thought it strange, but only in the way that dreams are, with long-forgotten faces suddenly popping up and doing unexpected deeds. Had it been any other person, I would have chalked up her nightmarish appearance and what Barclay was telling us as mere coincidence. But since it was Lenora Grimes Pastor we were dealing with, I began to suspect that coincidence had nothing to do with it. Just like the table-tipping incident on Sunday, it was possible that her presence in my dream had been real and on purpose. As ridiculous as it seemed, I was starting to think that Mrs. Pastor had been trying to tell me how she had been murdered.

Even more startling was the fact that she wasn't the first nightmarish apparition to involve a bee. A similar incident had occurred only a day before her death.

“Sophie Kruger,” I blurted out.

Lucy and Barclay both looked at me as if I were mad, which I was starting to think I was.

“The girl who drowned the other day,” I reminded Barclay.

“I remember her,” he said. “But why bring her up now?”

“Because it is my belief that she was
also
killed by bee venom.”

It took a good deal of explaining on my part. I must have spent at least ten minutes describing Mrs. Pastor's visit in my dream before reminding Barclay how Margarethe Kruger witnessed her daughter Sophie make a similar appearance the morning she drowned.

“Mrs. Kruger said Sophie was in the room with her and a bee flew out of her mouth,” I said. “The same thing happened to me last night, only it was Mrs. Pastor.”

Lucy reached out to me, concerned. “Edward, when you jumped off the bridge, did you hit your head?”

“No,” I said, swatting her hand away. “I'm quite right in the head at the moment. Enough to think that Lenora Grimes Pastor and Sophie Kruger were both killed in the same manner, most likely by the same person.”

“But that's impossible,” Barclay said. “I doubt the two of them had ever met. Then there's the fact that the Kruger girl drowned in the Delaware River.”

“We don't know for certain that she drowned,” I quickly replied. “If you recall, I questioned her cause of death that morning on the pier. And I doubt the coroner did an examination of her body.”

Barclay released another sigh. “He did not.”

“So we have no idea why Sophie Kruger died.”

“Edward,” Barclay said with as much patience as he could muster, “you realize what you're saying is preposterous.”

Preposterous it was. But a small, stubborn kernel of certainty rested in my gut, telling me I was right. I just needed to find a way to prove it.

“Is that toxicologist from New York still in the city?” I asked.

“Yes,” Barclay said. “He's scheduled to depart in the morning.”

“Then he must examine the girl's body before he leaves. It's the only way to know for certain.”

Barclay scoffed at the idea, saying, “That's impossible. The girl was buried days ago.”

“Then you must exhume her. Right away.”

This time, I thought Barclay was going to faint dead away from disbelief. His jaw dropped, followed by the pipe that had been lodged between his lips. Then he stammered, unable to form actual words. Finally, he laughed, hoping I was joking.

“You're . . . you're not serious, are you?”

“As serious as I've ever been,” I replied. “I understand your doubts. If I were in your position, I'd likely feel the same way. But the worst that could happen is that we learn Sophie Kruger really did drown.
Or
we could learn that she died in the same manner as Mrs. Pastor and that their deaths are indeed related.”

I could tell from the way Barclay tugged on his mustache that he was actually considering it. I'm certain Lucy swayed him further when she said, “If you don't do it, I'll grab a shovel and go do it myself.”

“Don't think she's bluffing,” I told Barclay. “I've seen her do far worse.”

My old friend looked first to me, then to Lucy. Seeing that neither of us had any intention of giving in, he said, “I don't know why I'm about to agree to this.”

“Because you believe me,” I replied.

“Possibly,” Barclay said. “But that's not much of an excuse to offer when I cart in the corpse of a girl who has just been buried.”

Knowing that Barclay had faith in me made my heart swell. After our friendship had been strained to the snapping point, we were once again on the same side and working together.

“Tell whoever asks,” I said, “that you're helping the man who once saved your life.”

I
f this was a work of Gothic fiction, and not a true account of my experiences, I'd feel compelled to embellish the details of the cemetery into which we crept that night. I'd write about the elaborate tombs we encountered and how a mist as thick as cotton swirled around them. But, since my goal is honesty, I must admit that no such frights awaited us.

The truth is that Sophie Kruger was buried in an unnamed cemetery on Front Street. Barely a step above a potter's field, it was a vast meadow of wooden crosses caught in the light of our lanterns, their shadows stretching and bending across the trampled grass. Because the souls resting there had been poor in life, there were no proper family plots or spaces reserved for loved ones. The dead were buried in the order in which they died, the graves filled in one after the other like bricks in a wall.

When we reached Sophie Kruger's grave, I saw there were already six fresh ones beyond it—which said a great deal about the city's mortality rate. Even at that late hour, two gravediggers were busy digging more.

“Who's that one for?” Thomas asked them.

“Don't know yet,” one of the dirt-smeared men said.

“But it'll be filled in the morning by someone,” the other added. “Mark my words.”

Meanwhile, over at the grave of the Kruger girl, three policemen were performing the opposite job—unearthing a hole that had just been filled in. The trio of policemen, taken off the streets to do Barclay's bidding, muttered as they stuck shovels into the ground, disgruntled by their task.

“Can I dig, too?” Thomas asked any adult who would listen. Wide awake now, he circled the grave eagerly, dodging the shovelfuls of dirt being thrown his way.

“Back away, Thomas,” Lucy told him.

She was wearing a shirt and trousers borrowed from Barclay. Somehow, she had managed to make even menswear look fetching, as if she wore it all the time.

Again, I thought about what had transpired between us on the bank of the Schuylkill River. The events between then and now had clouded my perception a bit, and I wondered if perhaps I had misinterpreted Lucy's intentions. After an ordeal such as the one we had experienced, it was only natural for emotions to be high.

Either way, it didn't matter. I had kept my pledge to Violet and Lucy seemed to be back to her old self. What had happened earlier that night was now in the past.

“Thomas!” Lucy said again. “I told you to leave those men alone. You're being a pest.”

Barclay stood next to her, pretending to watch the gravediggers but secretly eyeing her instead.

“So, Mrs. Collins,” he said, “how is business?”

“Not very well, thanks to you.”

“I'm simply doing my job.”

“And I would like to do mine.”

“Don't worry,” Barclay told her. “Business will be back to normal once your name is cleared. In fact, I suspect the notoriety will only benefit you in the end. That is,
if
your name is cleared.”

Lucy huffed with indignation. “I assure you, Inspector, it will be.”

While I knew no good could come from letting the two of them converse, I was too exhausted to intervene. Still trying to recover from one sleepless night, I found myself in the midst of another. By that point, I was so tired I could have lain atop a grave and instantly fallen asleep, not caring if the gravediggers mistook me for a new resident there. Yet I remained standing, trying to keep my eyes
open as the policemen emptied the grave and Barclay continued to pepper Lucy with questions.

“Were you in the Spiritualism business before you came to Philadelphia?”

“No,” Lucy said. “It wasn't until Mr. Collins passed away.”

“And where did you meet Mr. Collins?”

Lucy laughed—a nervous, birdlike chirp. “It was so long ago, I scarcely remember.”

Thomas, still circling the grave, looked up at his sister and said, “You remember, Lucy. It was in Baltimore.”

“Of course,” Lucy said through gritted teeth. “Baltimore.”

“Is that where you hail from?” Barclay asked.

“No,” Thomas called out again. “We come from Richmond.”

Barclay gave the boy a grateful nod. “Son, you have a better memory than your sister, it would seem.”