My driver didn’t let up for a moment during the trip to Stuyvesant Square, and in a remarkably short time I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Kreizler’s house. I gave the cabbie a generous amount of money without asking for change, to which he announced that he would wait for me at the curb, suspecting that I would need another ride soon and not wanting to lose so openhanded a fare at such a slow hour of the morning. I moved cautiously but quickly to the front door of the house, which was pulled open by Sara.
She looked uninjured, for which I was grateful enough to give her a big embrace. “Thank God,” I said. “From the way Harriet sounded I was afraid that—” I suddenly pulled back when I caught sight of a man standing behind Sara: white-haired, distinguished, wearing a frock coat and carrying a Gladstone bag. I glanced at Sara again, and noticed that her face was full of an exhausted sadness.
“This is Dr. Osborne, John,” Sara said quietly. “An associate of Dr. Kreizler’s. He lives nearby.”
“How do you do?” Dr. Osborne said to me, without waiting for a reply. “Now, then, Miss Howard, I hope I’ve been clear—the boy is not to be moved or disturbed in any way. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.”
Sara nodded wearily. “Yes, Doctor. And thank you for being so attentive. If you hadn’t been here—”
“I only wish that there was more I could have done,” Osborne answered quietly. Then he put his tall hat on his head, nodded to me, and set off. Sara pulled me inside.
“What in hell’s happened?” I said, as I followed her up the stairs. “Where’s Kreizler? And what’s this about a boy? Has Stevie been hurt?”
“Shush, John,” Sara answered, quietly but urgently. “We’ve got to keep things quiet in this house.” She resumed the climb to the parlor. “Dr. Kreizler’s—gone.”
“Gone?” I echoed. “Gone where?”
Walking into the dark parlor, Sara made a move toward a lamp, but then decided with a wave of her hand to leave it alone. She collapsed onto a sofa, and took a cigarette out of a case on a nearby table.
“Sit down, John,” she said; and something about the range of emotions contained in those few words— resignation, sorrow, anger—made me comply instantly. I held out a match for her cigarette and waited for her to go on. “Dr. Kreizler’s at the morgue,” she finally said, in a smoky breath.
I took in air quickly. “The
She nodded. “He will be. He’s upstairs, along with Cyrus. We’ve got two cracked skulls to care for now.”
“Cracked skulls?” I parroted again. “How in—” A sudden, sickening rush swept through my gut, as I glanced around the parlor and the adjacent hallway. “Wait a minute. Why are you here? And why are you letting people in and out? Where’s Mary?”
Sara didn’t answer, at first, just rubbed her eyes slowly and then drew in some more smoke. Her voice, when it reemerged, was curiously faint. “Connor was here. Saturday night, with two of his thugs.” The twisting in my stomach became more extreme. “Apparently they’d lost track of you and Dr. Kreizler—and they must have been taking a lot of heat from their superiors, based on the way they were acting.” Standing up slowly, Sara strode to the French windows and opened one just a crack. “They forced their way into the house, and shut Mary in the kitchen. Cyrus was in bed, which left Stevie. They asked him where you and Dr. Kreizler were, but—well, you know Stevie. He wouldn’t say.”
I nodded, and mumbled, “‘Go chase yourselves,’” softly.
“Yes,” Sara answered. “So—they started in on him. Along with his skull he’s got a few broken ribs, and his face is a mess. But it’s the head that—well, he’ll live, but we don’t know yet just what sort of shape he’ll live
Though afraid to ask, I did: “And Mary?”
Sara’s arms went up in resignation. “She must’ve heard Stevie screaming. I can’t imagine what else would have made her act so—rashly. She got hold of a knife, and managed to get out of the kitchen. I don’t know what she thought she was going to do, but…The knife ended up in Connor’s side. Mary ended up at the bottom of the stairs. Her neck was…” Sara’s voice trailed off.
“Broken,” I finished for her, in a horrified whisper. “She was dead?”
Sara nodded, and then cleared her throat to speak again. “Stevie got to the telephone, and called Dr. Osborne. I came by when I got back from New Paltz last night, and everything was—well, taken care of. Stevie did manage to say that it was an accident. That Connor didn’t mean to do it. But when Mary stabbed him he spun around and…”
For long seconds my vision faded, everything around me blending into a kind of vague grayness; then I heard a sound that I’d last detected on the Williamsburg Bridge anchor the night Giorgio Santorelli was killed—the powerful churning of my own blood. My head began to shake, and when I put my hands up to hold it still I noticed that my cheeks were moist. The kinds of memories that usually accompany news of such tragedy—quick, out of sequence, and in some cases silly—flashed through my mind, and when I heard my own voice again I didn’t really know where it was coming from.
“It’s not possible,” I was saying. “It isn’t. The coincidence, it doesn’t make—Sara, Laszlo was just telling me—”
“Yes,” she said. “He told me, too.”
I got up, feeling awfully unsteady on my feet, and went to stand by the window with Sara. The dark clouds in the dawn sky were continuing to prevent daybreak from really taking hold of the city. “The sons of bitches,” I whispered. “The lousy sons of…Have they got Connor?”
Sara threw the stub of her cigarette out the window, shaking her head. “Theodore’s out now, with some detectives. They’re searching the hospitals, and all of Connor’s known haunts. I’m guessing they won’t find him, though. How Connor’s men found out you were in Boston is still a bit of a mystery, though it’s probably safe to say they checked the ticket sellers at the depot.” Sara touched my shoulder as she continued to stare out the window. “You know,” she murmured, “from the very first time I walked into this house, Mary was afraid that something would happen to take him away from her. I tried to help her understand that that something wouldn’t be me. But she never seemed to lose the fear.” Sara turned and went back across the room to sit down. “Perhaps she was smarter than the rest of us.”
I put a hand to my forehead. “It
“Yes,” Sara answered, taking out another cigarette. “I couldn’t tell him what happened—Dr. Osborne did it. He said he’s had practice.”
I gnashed a new surge of remorse away with my teeth, tightened my fist, and headed for the stairs. “I’ve got to get over there.”
Sara caught my arm. “John. Be careful.”
I nodded quickly. “I will.”
“No. I mean
I tried to smile, and put a hand on hers; then I kept on moving, down the stairs and out the door.
My cabbie was still waiting at the curb, and when I appeared he jumped back up onto his hansom smartly. I told him to get me to Bellevue in a hurry, and we sped off at the same lively pace. The rain was beginning to pick up, blown by a strong, warm, westerly wind, and as we bounced up First Avenue I pulled off my cap and tried to use it to shield my face from the water that was spraying off the roof of the cab. I don’t remember having any thoughts, as such, during that ride; there were just more quick images of Mary Palmer, the quiet, pretty girl with the remarkable blue eyes who, in the space of just a few hours, had evolved in my mind from housemaid to future wife of a dear friend to no more. There was no sense in what had happened, no sense at all, and even less in trying to create any; I just sat there and let the images fly by.
When I reached the morgue I found Laszlo outside the large iron door in the back that we’d used to enter the building when we’d examined Ernst Lohmann’s body. He was leaning against the building, his eyes as wide, vacant, and black as the gaping holes our killer had left in the heads of his victims. Rain was cascading down off a gutter on the edge of the roof above and drenching him, and I tried to pull him away from it. But his body was stiff and intractable.
