Smoke and Mirrors Read online

  ‘If we knew where Mr Hollister might have gone …’ I lifted my arms and let them flap back down again to my sides.

  ‘We’ve been thinking about it, don’t think we haven’t.’ Bess went back to the door, opened it, motioned out to the hallway and, with a start, I realized how long I must have stood frozen, staring at the wall where my name was scrawled. The morning’s display of our oddities had ended and now some of them paraded into the room.

  Jimmy O’Connell, our tattooed man, led the way, still dressed as he was for the morning’s show in sit-upons but without a shirt, the better to display the birds and flowers and swirling designs he told our patrons had been inked onto his chest and arms and back by voluptuous virgins when he was stranded on a South Seas island. He was followed by George and Harry, our one-legged gymnasts, still in the costumes that made them look like jesters at a medieval court, then by Clara Foyle, our fat lady, and finally by Prince Mongo, who, three times a day, six days a week, regaled the crowd with stories of his life as a Zulu chief in the wilds of Africa. Had our patrons known his real name was Charles Hemple and that he was a free colored man from Vermont, it is my opinion they might not have hung so upon his every word.

  ‘So …’ It was clear from the start that Bess had been elected the spokesperson of the group, but she looked from one to the other of the curiosities in any case, just to be sure she had their permission to speak. When no one objected, she clutched her hands together at her waist. ‘We couldn’t talk of nothing else last night, nothing but Jeffrey and that poor young man what lost his life here.’

  ‘And do any of you think Mr Hollister responsible for what happened in the Portrait Gallery?’ I asked them.

  When Clara Foyle made to sweep around the table and stroll to the other side of the room, both George and Harry had no choice but to move; Clara was as wide as she was tall and, in her rose-colored gown, she reminded me of a plump cloud bedecked with sunset hues.

  ‘You know he had a temper. I reminded you all of as much last night.’ Clara raised all three of her chins. ‘Jeffrey had a temper.’

  ‘But he had no reason to take it out on Andrew Emerson,’ I reminded her. ‘He didn’t know Andrew.’

  ‘He knew you.’ Our Zulu chief gave the wall behind the bed a knowing look and I felt heat rush into my cheeks. I could not say if anyone else noticed Jeffrey’s scribbles – Charles didn’t give them a chance. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he moved forward and pushed the bed back to its original position, the better to hide the telltale writing on the wall. ‘He always held you in high esteem,’ Charles told me. ‘Perhaps you didn’t know.’

  I feared my cheeks were the color of Clara’s gown and struggled to find the words that would explain away the whole thing as impossible. ‘I … I don’t think …’

  ‘It ain’t like it’s your fault,’ Bess said. ‘And so it’s nothing to be ashamed of. He’s a gentle sort of soul is Jeffrey.’

  To which Clara snorted her opinion.

  ‘Well, he is,’ Bess insisted, and just in case Clara thought to again dispute this, Bess gave her a narrow-eyed glare. ‘He feels things. Down deep inside. Sometimes so much that he can’t control what he says or what he does.’ When she turned her gaze to me, Bess’s expression softened. ‘He wouldn’t never have said anything to you about how he felt, of course, knowing how unseemly it was. But we all knew …’ Again she glanced around at her fellow performers so as to elicit their support. ‘We all saw the way he looked at you. We know he admired you and felt a sort of … well, I suppose you could call it affection. Not that he meant it as inappropriate!’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’ I wasn’t sure I did, not right then, not when this news of a fondness offered me by Jeffrey Hollister was so fresh and so unexpected. ‘But still …’

  ‘You don’t think he done it,’ Bess said.

  ‘We don’t, either,’ George put in, hopping closer on his one leg. Harry, his partner in the act, was missing a left leg, George a right. Nevertheless, they managed to tumble and juggle and twirl for the audience, uncannily graceful and as agile as if they were full-bodied. ‘We saw him come up here to his room last night.’

  This was the first real news I’d heard all morning and, encouraged, I looked from George to Harry. ‘How did he act?’

  Harry had an unfortunate stutter, the result, no doubt, of years of being taunted and belittled for his unusual appearance. ‘H … he was agitated. H … h … Jeffrey fairly run up them steps and here into his room.’

  ‘And then?’ I asked them.

  George and Harry exchanged looks and, just like they did in every precisely timed acrobatic feat in their act, they moved in unison when they shrugged.

  ‘S-slammed the door and that was that,’ Harry said.

  ‘Didn’t see him again,’ George added.

  ‘Did anyone see him leave?’

  None of them had an answer, and I was forced to try and find another avenue of investigation. ‘Then tell me this,’ I said. ‘Do any of you know where he came from? Before he joined us here at the museum, where did Jeffrey live?’

  Like Cook back home, Jimmy O’Connell had been born and bred in Ireland and his words had the musical lilt of his homeland. ‘On the streets, or so I hear tell.’

  ‘Here in New York?’ I asked.

  O’Connell nodded. ‘Five Points, he once told me. Over near Reade Street.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be going there!’ Bess – and her beard – bristled with indignation. ‘That’s no place for a woman, and to be sure.’

  ‘Not a place for anyone.’ A shiver snaked over Clara’s wide shoulders. ‘Sin and villainy, that’s all you’ll find in Five Points. Sin and villainy.’

  ‘And perhaps answers?’

  ‘No!’ Charles and Bess both spoke at once and, when I looked from one of them to the other, I was just in time to see Charles shake his head. He was a handsome man with a thick mane of hair which, for the purposes of his appearance as Prince Mongo, was frizzled around his head with the help of a daily washing in beer. He had a wide, noble nose, strong hands and dark eyes. ‘Your brother can send someone to inquire,’ he said in no uncertain terms.

  As much as I was loath to admit it, I knew he was right. I had never myself ventured into Five Points, of course, but I knew about the area well enough from the stories I’d heard. As Clara had been so quick to point out, it was a place where whorehouses and gambling dens shared space with taverns and the small, squalid houses called rookeries that are built one atop the other in tumbledown disarray. Truth to tell, I feared neither the poverty of the area nor its residents, but there were even more sinister scoundrels about in Five Points, or so I’d heard, including pinch-purses, thieves and those shanghaiers who were said to waylay the unwary, drug them and drag them off to sea, where they were made to work out their lives on ships in servitude.

  ‘I am not going to Five Points,’ I told the oddities and reminded myself.

  ‘W-w-we would come with you,’ George volunteered.

  I gave him a smile. ‘I thank you for your kindness, and I know you are earnest, but I don’t think it’s wise for any of us to venture there. As a group, we might attract far too much attention.’

  ‘And alone, you’ll dice with death if you go there, and that’s for certain,’ Bess added.

  ‘Then what are we to do?’ I asked no one in particular. ‘There must be some way of finding Mr Hollister.’

  ‘Well, there is Carey’s, of course,’ Jimmy O’Connell said, and when I looked at him in wonder because he would keep such an important morsel of information so much to himself for so long, he grinned and tugged at one tattooed earlobe. ‘Just thought of it. And it might not mean a thing. But Carey’s, you see, is—’

  ‘No place for a lady!’ Bess snapped.

  I did my best to shush her with the waving of one hand. ‘Carey’s is …’ I asked O’Connell.

  ‘The freak house.’ Clara’s opinion was clear from the way she clicked her tongue
. ‘Devils, every one of them there. Sinners and godless men who take cruel advantage of those such as us.’

  ‘And Mr Hollister …’ Again I looked O’Connell’s way. ‘He knows of this place?’

  ‘Worked there, he did. Some five years or more. Before he left for the circus where Mr Barnum found him.’

  ‘And this Carey’s …’ My excitement at hearing what actually might be helpful information nearly got the best of me, and I reined it in with a deep breath. ‘Carey’s is not in Five Points, is it?’

  ‘Nah!’ Bess ran a hand through her beard. ‘Which don’t mean it’s a place a woman should go alone.’

  ‘And I’m certainly not saying I’m going to.’ This was not a lie, for I had not come right out and said that no matter where Carey’s was I was planning a trip there. ‘But it would be helpful to know where Carey’s is located.’

  ‘That’s an easy one!’ O’Connell grinned. ‘To find Carey’s place, you must head for the Bowery.’

  FIVE

  It is a well-known fact to those of us who live on the island of Manhattan that the Bowery is a step up from Five Points.

  It was no wonder then that though I was not nearly courageous enough to attempt a trip to the latter, I had few qualms about a visit to the former – at least once the oddities had returned to work for their two o’clock performance and thus would not notice my absence and report it to my brother.

  It is not that Phin is like so many others and assumes that a woman should have neither a healthy amount of curiosity about life nor interesting work to occupy her. The fact that he employs me at his museum proves as much. No; in fact, Phin believes women are equal to men in every way and have every bit as much intellect as men.

  Still, I was convinced he would not take to me traveling to the Bowery on my own. Especially if he knew I planned a stop at Carey’s while I was there.

  Assured that I would not be followed or interfered with, I set out in search of the aforementioned establishment in the hopes that Jeffrey Hollister might be there. I knew it would not be hard to find Carey’s, for it was often advertised in the newspapers, as was our own museum, and I committed the address to memory and headed for the avenue known as Bowery.

  It was the island’s oldest thoroughfare, or so Phin had told me soon after I’d arrived in New York. Having begun life as an Indian path, the Bowery was first settled by ten families of freed slaves nearly two hundred years earlier. In later days, it was lined with the farms and estates of prosperous Dutchmen and then the row houses of Federalists. These days, those houses, with their steeply pitched roofs and the fan-shaped windows above their doors, served as taverns and brothels, and the Bowery had metamorphosed from a street of stately homes to—

  The moment I turned from Delancey and my boots hit the pavement of the Bowery, all thoughts of the history and significance of the place flew out of my head. The music of a brass band thrummed through the air, the weighty rhythm of its song in counterpoint to the cheerful tune of a piano being played in a nearby tavern. Across the street, a man in brown held one end of a leash with a bear on the other end of it, and the people who gathered around threw pennies and applauded when the bear stood on its hind legs and caught an apple in its mouth.

  ‘Well, hello there, miss!’ The sound of a voice so near startled me back to awareness, and I turned just in time to see a young man with long sideburns tip his stovepipe hat to me. He was dressed as was typical of the jaunty and rambunctious fellows from the neighborhood who were known as b’hoys, in a black frock coat and with his sit-down-upons tucked into heavy boots. He smelled of a great deal of rum.

  He stared at me intently, no doubt to try and bring me into focus. ‘What’s a beauty like you doin’ here all by your lonesome?’

  Yes, I was alone, but I had no fear of the man. It was daylight, after all, and at the museum we saw a large number of Bowery b’hoys and g’hals. They were hard workers, most of them. Butchers and bakers and other laborers like those who manned the German-owned breweries that proliferated nearby, and they were, for the most part, a jolly crowd, more interested in amusement than harassment.

  I offered this b’hoy a smile. ‘Carey’s,’ I said quite simply. ‘If you could point me in the right direction.’

  He bowed at the waist and made a sweeping gesture to his left, and when he stood again I did not wait for him to steady himself on his feet and offer to show me the way but headed off.

  I saw other such men on my way past cheap dancehalls and dime museums I wished I might have stopped in so I could see how they compared to our own establishment. Where Broome Street crossed Bowery, three b’hoys, arm in arm, sang (badly, I must say) along to the music of an organ grinder who played while a lively little monkey squawked from his shoulder. Nearby, a lemon and orange seller plied his trade and a woman sold apples from the steps of a theater. There was another woman nearby and, though it was a cool afternoon, she wore no cloak, the better to show off the dress of flimsy fabric that she wore low over her shoulders. I might have been away from Bethel for only two years but I knew full well what it was she was selling. It was not apples.

  I quickened my pace. Across the street beyond a stately brick Federal home that had been turned into a place called the Three Horse Tavern, I saw the sign for Carey’s swinging in the breeze and walked faster. I suppose, in some ways, it was a pity I did. Had I been moving slower and paying more attention to my surroundings, I might have been able to dart out of the way when the doors of the boxing emporium I was just passing bumped open. In that one second, I was overwhelmed with the smell of tobacco, the odor of sweat and the sound of a rough voice screaming, ‘And don’t you ever dare come back!’

  It was but a second after that when a man, cursing to beat all, came hurtling out of the door and slammed into me.

  For one moment, I was too astounded to do anything other than let out a surprised, ‘Ooph,’ but that moment did not last long. The next thing I knew, the full weight of the man took me down and I found myself flat against the pavement, the man – still swearing – atop me.

  ‘Darnation!’ he growled.

  I had landed on my back, the man on his stomach, and when he raised himself up I saw that the stump of the cigar clenched between his teeth was smashed at the end. He was a rough-looking fellow with a beard and dark hair that spilled over his shoulders, and he was dressed as I’d seen many of the boatmen who worked along the Erie Canal, in fawn-colored buckskin sit-down-upons and a jacket made of the same material that was fringed at the sleeves, the hem and across the chest.

  ‘It’s a mercy I’m out here and not in there to beat the Dutch out of you, Kimbal!’ he called over his shoulder, but though there were men with their noses pressed to the windows of the building this man had so recently and so quickly exited, Mr Kimbal did not appear.

  ‘Blast the cussed old imp,’ the man growled.

  To which I decided I had no choice but to respond. ‘Excuse me.’

  He plucked the cigar butt out of his mouth and glowered at it before he cast it away.

  I tried again. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Eh?’ As strange as it seemed – at least to me, considering the fact that he was sprawled on top of me – the man looked at me as if he had no idea where I’d come from. ‘What in tarnation are you doing there?’ he asked.

  ‘It seems I am the one who prevented you from having your nose smashed against the pavement.’ I made to sit up and, when I did, he finally came to his senses and rolled off me. He sat on the pavement, his knees bent, and I took the opportunity to collect what I could of my dignity and untwist my cloak and my skirts from around my ankles. When I made to pull myself off the ground, he sprang to his feet.

  ‘Are you telling me you weren’t there the whole time?’ he asked. ‘When I walked out of Kimbal’s? Are you telling me …?’

  ‘Really!’ I gathered my skirts and got to my knees and, when he offered a hand to help me to my feet, I accepted it. His hands were rough and his fingers strong. T
hey wrapped around mine and, with a tug, he lifted me as if I weighed no more than a feather.

  My knees shook but my chin was high and my head was steady when I reminded him, ‘You hardly walked out of Kimbal’s. You were thrown out. And of course I wasn’t just lying there on the pavement. You exited the boxing emporium—’

  ‘And knocked you down.’

  It was difficult to say because of his whiskers, but I thought his cheeks darkened to the same deep red of the primitive beads he wore around his neck. He cleared his throat with a cough. ‘I do beg your pardon.’ He made a bow that wasn’t nearly as showy as the one I’d been given so recently by the b’hoy. ‘Are you injured?’

  Was I?

  I tried out my limbs and found them to be working sufficiently. ‘It doesn’t appear so.’

  ‘Then are you thirsty?’ His dark eyes lit up. ‘I am nothing if not a gentleman,’ he insisted. ‘After I’ve been on top of a woman, I always offer to buy her a drink.’

  I am hardly prudish. But, unlike my brother, I am not glib-tongued. I opened my mouth to say something – anything – and, when nothing came out, I snapped it shut again.

  ‘Sorry.’ As if the very word was painful, he squeezed his eyes shut. ‘I’ve been away from polite company for quite some time. It seems I’ve forgotten there are certain women …’ He looked me over quickly, head to toe. ‘Certain women one talks to in such a way and certain women who are of better quality. You are not a sister to those who ply their wares up and down the street, I can see that. Though what a lady such as you is doing here alone …’

  I clutched my reticule at my waist. ‘What makes you think I’m alone?’

  ‘If you weren’t, whatever man you were with should have come to your aid instantly when I knocked into you and taught me what for while he was at it for putting you in danger. Hence, you are either alone or the man you are with is a total and utter fool to take the chance of offering such an insult to so pretty a woman.’