Beyond Rue Morgue Anthology (23 page)

I looked at Dupin.

“It’s quite all right,” he said. “A last remnant of the borderland. Its calling card has been taken away.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be,” he said.

With that, we strolled homeward, the moon and the stars falling down behind the city of Paris. As we went, the sun rose, bloomed red, but a different kind of red to the cloud that had covered the moon; warm and inspiring, a bright badge of normalcy, that from here on out I knew was a lie.

By

Peter is dead.

Dear, young Peter Garrett, the handsome fellow who delivered milk with his horse and wagon to all the flats along Riggs Road, dead. Murdered. Killed and dragged into an alley, as his horse Sue stood alone out on the street, pawing the ground, sniffing, and nickering.

My heart is broken, my mind spinning. For I loved Peter. I loved his voice, his face, and the way his large but elegant hands held the reins, patted Sue’s broad shoulder, tossed biscuit crumbs to dogs on the street, and ladled milk from the tanks into the jugs left on doorsteps. That someone would hate him enough to steal his life is beyond any sort of reason. That he is dead is beyond comprehension. It was the one bright spot of my life, watching him from my third-floor window, imagining that he might someday come up and carry me off to be his bride. No, we never spoke. We never met. But I knew that, somehow, he would find me and love me.

But such hopes and dreams shall delight me never more.

For Peter is dead. I can barely breathe with the horror of it.

I pull away from the window and fall into my little chair. I pick up my knitting, a partial scarf for my mother, then put it down again. I get up, pace the room barefoot. I have shoes in the bottom of the pie safe, but I don’t wear them except in the winter when it is cold, for I never go outside. My feet slap softly against the irregular wooden floor.

This room serves as my bedroom, parlor, and kitchen, collectively. It is eight feet by fourteen feet. We’ve one other room to our flat; it is eight by six and my mother’s bed is in there. She never closes the door, though, because she doesn’t like to sleep alone, and when the door is open it’s as if we are in the same room.

Back and forth I pace across an anemic puddle of summer sunlight, past the kitchen table, stove, and pie safe, my chair and cot, my mother’s chair and the little stand on which she keeps her Bible and the matches that light the gas-lamps at night. The front door is locked but the transom is open, and I can hear people out in the hallway and on the stairway talking, coughing. I can smell the pork and cabbage that Mrs. Anderson across the hall has put on for lunch. Flies, confused and excited by the thick scent, buzz in and out through the transom, seeking the source. I bat at several, but miss.

I return to the window, dabbing sweat from between my breasts with a loose fold of my blouse. Men down on the street are still discussing Peter’s murder. It happened only last night, during the thunderstorm, and the news is fresh. Fresh as fish caught off Coney Island and hauled on ice to Mr. Denny’s Meat Market. I bite the inside of my cheek so as not to cry. I put one hand to my temple to press away the pain, but it remains.

There is a police officer amongst the men, standing tall in his big hat and shiny badge. I push the window up a bit farther and stick out my head. It’s hard to hear over the other sounds down there—children running and squealing, the creaking of the rag man’s cart, a mongrel barking at his shadow in a puddle. But I catch bits of the conversation.

“So he was stabbed, was he?” This is Mr. McCary, who owns the hardware store.

“Clear through, you say?” This is Mr. Denny, the butcher. “Then dragged off behind some garbage?”

I cringe.

“Horrid, horrid.” This is Mr. Bruce, a hateful old gentleman as round as a beer barrel and red-faced as a tomato. He has no job, but enjoys the business of everyone else. I’ve spent many hours listening to this man from the vantage point of my window. My mother calls him a busybody, and indeed, he is. Mr. Bruce mutters, “horrid,” again, and smiles as if such a dreadful crime is enticing, thrilling. It looks as though he’s licking his lips.

The officer says something and the three men shiver and shake their heads. Mr. Denny mumbles and the officer replies, “We think it was done with a pistol. Bit of dark residue at the hole. Shot clean through, and we didn’t find the bullet.”

Mr. Bruce nods, and purses his lips. “We can’t have no criminal like that on the loose.”

“Not to worry,” says the officer. “We arrested the culprit we think done it. Ugly fellow, head like a crushed can. Had a gun on him, newly fired from the smell of it. Don’t speak no English, and he fought like a mad dog. Got him in the jail now. He didn’t confess, but we’ll get it out of him, don’t you worry.”

The murderer had already been arrested? That surprises me. The cops on the beat in our neighborhood are hardly careful and often drunk. From tales my mother tells me when she returns home from her work at the clothing factory, the officers are happy to have the jail cells full, regardless of guilt. That keeps the alderman and police chief happy, thinking crime is being properly addressed. I find it highly improbable that Peter’s murderer has already been apprehended, due to the incompetence of the force and the interference of the rainstorm that ended just four hours ago.

I wish I could do something. My shoulders and arms sting with the wanting! I wish I could solve the murder, for I don’t believe the jailed immigrant did the deed. How terrible to be imprisoned wrongly and facing certain execution. And how terrible for a criminal to still be at large somewhere nearby and planning his next kill.

Yet I cannot leave our flat. Mother won’t allow it and the idea frightens me to the core.

I watch as the men fall away from one another, heading off in their own particular directions. I slump down at the window and try to think past the pain. Think.

Think.

Thinking is pretty much all I do, you see. Thinking, pondering, evaluating, considering. I may have a small world, but my mind is large. I read the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant consulting detective, and try to guess the perpetrator before the great man does. I enjoy the large and complex wooden jigsaw puzzles my mother buys for me whenever she finds a spare nickel. I savor poring over my mother’s accounting books and planning what she can spend each week for meals and fuel. I love creating new patterns of my own design that I knit into scarves and sweaters and leggings and stockings. Sometimes I count handfuls of rice grains from the lidded tin, or try to guess the number I spill from the tin onto the table top, because I like the order of numbers. I find fascinating the intricate water patterns on the ceiling, which, when I lay on my cot at night, I imagine into fanciful stories of fairies and dragons and knights and ladies.

My desire to untangle matters should not be a surprise, however. My last name, Dupin, means little to those here in Brooklyn, New York. But for those in France, the name would certainly bring awe. My great-grandfather was Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian, a brilliant mind, a deep thinker who solved many mysteries. I like to imagine I take after him.

However, I, Molly Dupin, am wholly American, brought to this country from France in April 1893 when I was but two years old by my mother, Martha Dupin, a gentle, quiet, yet slow-witted woman who now works a sewing machine at the Louder Shirtwaist Factory to keep us fed and clothed. I am eighteen now, a grown woman, and yet, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve not stepped foot outside the apartment since I was a little girl. Peculiar to some, but it suits me. The world outside is dangerous, as exemplified by Peter’s murder last night. Miscreants, villains, thieves, molesters, killers. My mother rightly encourages me to stay inside. Every morning she kisses my cheek and says, “Be good, my Molly. Stay here and do your chores and I will be back soon.” Soon is twelve hours. They work the women to pieces at the factory. I would work there, too, if the world weren’t so treacherous.

And so I stay here, doing puzzles, knitting, thumbing through the account book or Holmes books or old magazines Mother finds scattered in the street and brings home to me or making up stories while gazing at the water stains overhead.

I sit in my chair again, pick up the knitting, then put it aside. I close my eyes and imagine all sorts of horrors surrounding Peter’s death, and in each one I am a heroine, saving him in the last moment.

In one moment I see Mr. Denny, distraught because Peter’s wagon ran over Mr. Denny’s beloved dog, Charlie, last week, crushing Charlie’s spine and causing Mr. Denny to break the dog’s neck to save it from suffering. I saw the crushing of the dog beneath the wheels, or rather I heard about it from the shrieks of some of the women in the street. So vivid in my mind, it is as if I were actually there, and so sad, about the dog and how Mr. Denny cried so pitifully. Peter, shocked and sorry, offered him a dollar to get another dog, but Mr. Denny refused. And so I imagine what transpired late last night. Most of the city is sleeping and Peter is driving his horse home through the rain. Mr. Denny waves at him to stop. Peter ties off the horse and enters the warm, dry meat market. Mr. Denny offers Peter a drink, which Peter accepts, but then Mr. Denny snatches up a meat skewer and makes to stab my young love clear through. But I rush into the shop and shove Peter out of the way just in time. Peter thanks me, then proposes marriage.

My heart pounds with joy.

In another moment I see Mr. McCary, waving Peter down through the rain well after midnight, to tell him he’s noticed a wheel wobbling on the wagon and to say he has just the thing to fix it. Peter hasn’t noticed the wobble, but is tired and so perhaps Mr. McCary is right. Mr. McCary invites Peter into the hardware store where he grabs a long metal spike from his shelf of wares and plunges it toward Peter’s chest for bringing him soured milk that morning, milk that made him vomit for hours on end. Yet I come in again at the right moment, and push Mr. McCary away. The spike clatters on the floor and Peter catches me in his embrace. He tells me he loves me and we plan our wedding date.

The next moment I see a police officer patrolling the street in the pouring rain, bored and a bit drunk, tapping his stick against his thigh, hoping for trouble so he can smack someone on the ear with it. Peter steers his wagon home, exhausted from the long day, hunched down in the rain. The copper waves at him to stop. Peter draws his horse up, waits. The policeman says, “I said get down here now!” Peter frowns, but does as the officer asks. Then the copper punches Peter for no reason, and hits him with his stick. Peter punches him back and the stick goes flying away. The copper laughs, draws a pistol, and aims it at Peter’s chest. I am out on the street, and rush over to throw myself in front of Peter. “Don’t shoot!” I cry, and the officer scowls and staggers away, pistol hanging limply from his trigger finger. Peter hugs me, kisses me, caresses me so tenderly and completely. He says I will be his forever.

But Peter is dead. I didn’t save him.

I weep. I bury my face in my hands and pour out my anguish. If only I were brave enough to go down and outside, I would use my wits, the skills passed down to me by Auguste Dupin, and find the real killer. I would avenge Peter!

Lunchtime comes. I fix a cold biscuit with cold ham. I note that there is a glowing coal down in the stove, which is odd as we haven’t cooked or heated our rooms in several weeks. Maybe Mother has taken up smoking after I’ve gone to sleep, and hides her cigarettes in her purse. I spit on the coal until it winks out. Then I return to the window. I look down and watch as Mr. McCary stands just outside his shop door and shows a handful of nails to a potential customer. Mr. Denny’s meat market door is open. He’s inside sweeping, and I can see clots of wet dirt and small bits of fat and pinkish meat fly out onto the street with each
whisk.
Mrs. Anderson’s daughter, Katherine—likely the prettiest woman in our neighborhood, which irritates me for reasons I can’t quite fathom—tries to maneuver her way across the steaming street without stepping in a rain puddle. She fails, topples, and stomps down hard in the middle of one particularly muddy pool. Water splashes her skirt and she curses. The she marches angrily on, over to the butcher shop where she disappears. She loves mutton and pork. I don’t know how her family can afford so much meat as her father is a cripple from fighting in Cuba and he begs on the corner. Her brother, James, ran off last year to join the Navy against the wishes of his parents. From what I’ve heard through the transom, he’s never sent home one thin dime.

I sit in my chair in this blasted mid-July heat, my hair damp and clinging to my neck and forehead, and re-read “A Scandal in Bohemia” in an old issue of
The Strand Magazine.
My great-grandfather Auguste was so like brilliant Sherlock, and I often think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fashioned his character after Auguste. Had my great-grandfather still been alive, and had he been here, I would task him to help me solve Peter’s murder. I sorely wish I had the courage to go down, go out and investigate. If I were a man I would go by myself. I would be brave.

I get up and go to Mother’s room where I find her little looking glass. I study myself and imagine my appearance adorned in a cap and pipe. Perhaps I could dress as a man and go out in disguise. Maybe that would give me the courage to interview my suspects, to question them in oh, such subtle ways as to coerce the perpetrator into confessing.

But we’ve no men’s clothing.

I think I’ll ask Mother if she might steal some from a clothesline behind our building.

No, she is an honest and good woman. And if by chance she acquiesced, she would certainly be caught and arrested. She isn’t clever and cautious. And she is so simple, so innocent of mind and heart that she would die in jail. She wishes she were smart, I know that. She told me once that soon after I was born she had surgery on her brain to make her smart, but it didn’t work. It was then we left Paris and came to the States, with the assistance of one of her friends who had also decided to emigrate. Her friend found us this flat, helped Mother secure a job, then took a train to Chicago. Mother has a scar on her skull from the surgery where the hair doesn’t grow right.