In the Shadow of Gotham (5 page)

Peter listened intently as he pushed his empty glass of ale to the side.

I went on to explain, “When women kill, they usually choose methods that are less messy, like poisoning, or that require little physical strength.” I leaned back and gazed into the fire; the image of Sarah Wingate’s battered, lifeless face seemed to lurk within the flames. “To put this murder in practical terms, I don’t think even a strong, muscular woman would have had the strength to accomplish what was done to Sarah Wingate.”

Joe nodded in agreement. “You didn’t see the victim in person, Peter, but even judging from how she was injured . . .” He shuddered at the memory. “I agree with Ziele that it had to be a man who did it, and a large or heavyset man at that.”

“Have you found the weapon used?” Peter asked.

“No,” I replied. “We’ll have to search the grounds—and the woods—more thoroughly tomorrow.”

“Any idea what you’re looking for?”

“Something with a broad, blunt edge,” I said.

I had begun to recognize my own habit of mind in Peter’s questions. Like me, he attempted to sanitize the horror of this
crime by reducing it to base analytical terms. Today, in the midst of so much blood, I had trouble facing up to the Wingate crime scene. But tomorrow I would have no difficulty reviewing and analyzing the autopsy report. It was always far easier to deal with the violence of murder when it was reduced to words and facts on paper.

We ate and drank in silence, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts, until Peter interrupted us. “Let’s look sharp, boys. We’ve got company.”

I turned around and saw a tall, lean figure purposefully striding toward us. John Fuller, our mayor, was sputtering with anger, and we were fortunate that his respect for our fellow diners—not to mention his own self-interest—kept his voice civil and controlled when he spoke to us.

“Good evening, Chief.” His icy stare was directed at Joe. “You’ve got time for socializing, but no time to inform your mayor about the first murder this town’s seen in twelve years?”

Joe responded evenly, his voice filled with gravity. “If you’ve heard about the murder, then you’ve also heard what a horrific scene it was. Can’t think you would begrudge a spot of dinner to men who have worked such a tough case.”

“Dinner?” The mayor looked pointedly at Joe’s empty pint glass before continuing to complain. “I had to hear the news from Mrs. Keane.”

I groaned inwardly; the interference of the village busybody certainly would not help matters. I had seen her among the group of neighbors clustered on the Wingate property. Since she could know only the barest of details, she no doubt embellished them with whatever her fertile imagination could invent.

“She had quite a tale to relate,” the mayor said, continuing to berate us for not notifying him. Because he had known the
Wingates so well, he was personally offended, but his true concern involved how the public would react.

“This kind of news can cause widespread panic if we don’t handle it right,” he said. He rambled on in terms that ignored the loss of human life we had witnessed today; he was more concerned with how Dobson’s business community would react. If businesses were scared away, tax revenues would be lost. But once he finished saying his piece, he bid us good night. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one, men. I expect to see regular reports—and solid progress, mind you. We need this case solved straightaway.” He walked away with a confident step, as though his command alone could accomplish the task at hand.

Of course, I knew better. For every murder case I solved in the city, there were at least ten I didn’t. Merely
wanting
to solve a case wasn’t enough. And neither was political pressure. You also needed sufficient skill, intelligence, and more than your fair share of luck. But a man like Fuller—who was less concerned with the murder itself than he was with its political fallout—would never understand that.

“Did you have any thoughts about the locket?” I asked quietly after the mayor left, for I had asked Peter his opinion about the two miniature photographs it contained.

“I can make some inferences from these photographs,” Peter said, “though whether they’ll help you is another matter.”

“Go on,” I said. I certainly hoped something he had discovered would help, for the locket otherwise seemed a dead end. While Peter had developed our photographs in his darkroom, I had dusted the small locket for prints. I found none that were usable, unsurprising given how dirty the locket had been.

He pulled the locket photographs gingerly from his pocket and turned the two pictures toward us. “As to the type of print,
though the photographs are small, I was able to determine that they are what we call Woodburytypes.”

Joe and I simply listened, knowing Peter would go on to explain what that meant.

“The Woodburytype is a process that reproduces a high-quality photograph and, to the untrained eye, may look exactly like a gelatin silver print. And both processes have much in common: This process is used when the photographer wants to produce a print that will last for years without any loss in quality. And it allows photographs to be enlarged with no loss of detail whatsoever.”

He sighed, closed the locket, and returned it to me.

“But the fact remains it is a Woodburytype—which for your purposes is significant in two respects. First, I would expect there to be other, much larger prints of these photographs in existence. Most photographs made with this process are large prints suitable for gluing into luxury albums. You wouldn’t normally choose a sophisticated development process like this if your only goal was to create small photographs.”

He paused a moment. “And second, because these photos are Woodburytypes, we know they were taken at least five years ago. The Woodburytype process was discontinued in 1900 because its cost had become too high. I myself stopped doing it even earlier.”

Joe breathed a soft, low whistle, as he settled back in his chair. “So she has known the man in the locket for at least five years—and yet her closest cousin could not identify him!”

“Looks that way,” Peter said.

I suspected I already knew the answer to my question, but I had to ask anyway. “Both photographs were taken at the same time, by the same photographer?”

“In my opinion they were,” he said, and his opinion was unequivocal. “You’ll notice the backdrop, the lighting, and even what I call the tone of each picture seems markedly similar. If they were taken in the New York area, it may be possible to locate the photographer, since the expensive nature of the process would necessarily limit the number of photographers offering it.”

Our conversation continued along these lines, exploring different possibilities, until we were interrupted by a commotion near the front of the bar. After a moment, I heard my name called. I hastened to join Mrs. O’Malley by the door, where a delivery boy waited with a telegram for me. He had attempted to come inside, but had been hindered by Mrs. O’Malley’s inflexible idea that boys should be at least sixteen years old before they were permitted to enter a bar. After giving the boy a coin—well earned for tracking me down at this time of night—I returned to the table, where the three of us read the telegram together.

Received news of murder in Dobson. Must meet immediately.

Know suspect
.

Your office 7:30 A.M
.

—
Alistair Sinclair, Esq
.

“Alistair Sinclair.” Joe tried out the name, practically snorting as he chuckled. “And the man paid good money to sign himself ‘Esquire’! Either he’s so rich he doesn’t care about the expense, or he’s that full of himself. How do you know him?” He looked at me, one eyebrow arched, obviously suspicious that I had gone behind his back and contacted Alistair Sinclair about our case.

“I don’t,” I said. “I have never heard of the man—and I have no idea how he has heard of me. I can’t even imagine how news of the crime itself could travel so fast.”

It was the truth, though Joe would think what he would. Others repeatedly told me that Joe was a good-hearted man and would come around in time. But he perceived me as a younger, smarter man destined to take his place. I did not dislike Joe, but I did chafe under his constant questioning of my motives and habits.

I glanced at my watch; it was now almost half past midnight. I made my excuses and left Joe and Peter talking quietly, for there was unfinished work I wanted to complete before the night was over.

I folded the telegram into my pocket, stopped by the office to make a brief telephone call, and then caught the trolley home straightaway. But I could not stop thinking of Alistair Sinclair’s strange message as the ache in my arm pounded unrelentingly and kept me from sleep well until dawn began to show its earliest light.

Wednesday, November 8, 1905

After a fitful night’s sleep, I rose early and headed toward my office, buying a cup of coffee and the morning
Times
on the way. I skimmed the paper before beginning my own work.
MCCLELLAN REELECTED MAYOR—HEARST WILL CONTEST
was its headline, and multiple stories about yesterday’s election fraud filled its pages. The Tammany machine toughs had intimidated would-be Hearst voters, meting out terrible beatings to keep them from voting. One Hearst supporter had actually lost a finger in such an altercation, the
Times
reported. And multiple boxes of ballots had ended up in the East River rather than the election office. All disgusting, but unsurprising. Anyone who knew Tammany boss Silent Charlie Murphy knew he would do whatever it took to ensure his candidate won.

But the case at hand was what demanded my attention this morning. I read through the contents of a report left by Jimmy Meade, the detective from Yonkers who had taken charge of the grounds search and interview efforts last night. As I tried to focus upon his summary of interviews with the Wingates’ neighbors, questions about my strange appointment with Alistair Sinclair continued to unsettle me. Why had he contacted me? By all rights, he should have reached out to Joe, my boss. And what made him think he knew anything about who may have murdered Sarah Wingate? There had been no similar murders in the city in recent months. I had placed a call to Declan Mulvaney, my former partner in the city, late last night to check. Mulvaney had been working late at the office because of the unrest surrounding yesterday’s city election, but he had nonetheless taken the time to search the department’s files for me.

I forced my attention back to the interviews, ascertaining that no information of importance had come from them. The Braithwaites next door had been home at the time, but did not remember hearing or seeing anything unusual. Elderly Mr. Dreyer across the street, who spent all his waking hours in the rocking chair on his wraparound front porch, had noticed a strange man at the Wingate house in the recent past. But that had been at least three months ago. I resolved to follow up with Mr. Dreyer and the Wingates about the sighting, but given the time lag, it did not seem the sort of detail that would crack open the case.

The common theme in each interview was that around half past three, almost everyone had heard the strange wail Miss Wingate had described. It was an interesting coincidence, but not evidence. Generally speaking, no neighbor had offered any
detail of substance—only a composite picture that verified the whereabouts of all concerned, including the Wingate house hold help. We had proof no one lied, but little else.

I hoped Joe would have better luck discovering information that would help us. He was attending Dr. Fields’s autopsy of Sarah Wingate, which had been scheduled early, at five o’clock this morning. With a sigh of frustration, I turned to place the folder in my file cabinet when the steady sound of footsteps on the stairwell informed me that my visitor had arrived.

In stepped a middle-aged man with a meticulously trimmed mustache and dark hair just beginning to gray around the temples. He was fashionably dressed; his expensive leather shoes were polished to a high gloss and his coat was made of fine, soft, dark wool. He immediately took full mea sure of me with intense blue eyes, and flashed a charismatic smile that revealed perfectly white, even teeth. When he spoke, his voice was very smooth and cultured, reflecting a muted European accent.

“Detective Ziele, I presume?” He gripped my right hand and shook it firmly—too firmly. Through sheer willpower, I forced myself not to wince. “I am Alistair Sinclair. You should call me Alistair.”

In manner and voice, he seemed far more cosmopolitan than his English name had led me to expect. I would learn in coming days that he had traveled extensively in addition to spending part of his childhood in Rome.

He removed his coat and hat. “May I?” He gestured toward the wooden coat rack by the door.

“Please,” I said.

“It was good of you to meet me on such short notice; I can
imagine how busy you are after yesterday’s events. I promise to take up no more of your time than necessary.”

I made a polite reply, even as I reflected that his telegram had given me little choice in the matter.

“Shall we sit?” Although he claimed the guest chair across from my desk, Alistair conducted himself as though the office were his and not mine. Yet once we were seated, facing one another, he regarded me silently and seemed unsure how to proceed.