31 Bond Street (9 page)

A
ugusta and Helen sat in their bedroom at 31 Bond Street, usually so neat, now in disarray. Trays of half-eaten food sat on tabletops, meals brought by a matron from the prison who kept watch over them and took them out to the water closets. They had been allowed to see their mother only twice. The girls had been led to her bedroom, where she started to weep when she saw them. They were ordered to say nothing about the murder and were taken away in tears after a brief meeting. From below, the house was filled with chaotic noises that burst every now and then up the staircase to their room, but mostly it was quiet, their door kept shut, sealing them inside an envelope of uncertainty.

Helen’s trunks were still on the floor since that terrible day, over two weeks ago, when she was to leave for boarding school. The detectives had rifled through, pulling out her petticoats and under things, leaving clothes strewn across the floor, as they had done with the contents of every drawer and closet. Ribbons and trinkets lay about, mixed up with fashion sheets and penny jewelry. A straw hat with rice paper flowers lay trampled by the door.

Helen sat curled on one of the beds buried in a romance novel. Augusta spent her time at the window seat before the deep-set window that looked out over the garden behind the house, past a large sycamore tree and a small stable that was attached to the brick wall shielding the house from the alley. She could see across the yards to the backs of the houses that faced Bleecker Street. Since being confined, she had gazed for hours at this rear-window view of the city, seeing only occasional shadows, gaslight flickering on in the evening, a back door briefly opened by a cook—evidence that domestic life continued on, muffled and serene. The backyards were like a cloistered garden, an empty place of the imagination, sheltered from the calamity inside 31 Bond Street.

Their door banged open. It was the matron, a wide squat woman who wore a heavy wool skirt, black boots, and a white shirt with a crooked tie. “Getcher things,” she announced from the door.

“Where are we going?” asked Helen. She was always the one to speak first. She could react instantly to a situation, while Augusta could never make out the circumstances fast enough to respond.

“Just the older girl, you’re to stay here,” replied the matron.

“I don’t want Augusta to go!” said Helen defiantly. “Don’t take her away!” Now her voice sounded childish and alarmed.

“You ain’t got no choice in the matter. Them’s the orders. Getcher things,” the woman repeated. Augusta shuttled around the room confused as to what she should be getting. She picked up a
cloak. The matron grabbed her by the arm and hurried her from the room.

“Mama!” Helen cried out, sobbing as Augusta was lead down the stairs.

Snarky ran with Thayer to the court offices. “Meet me right here,” Thayer said as he dashed up the steps. Snarky stayed on the sidewalk for what seemed an interminable amount of time, but he knew that there was a procedure for retrieving the papers from the judge, and they would have to be shuffled from clerk to clerk, unmindful of the minutes that hung in the balance. He paced back and forth along the street in his plaid pants and spats, pulling off his hat and smoothing his hair. He didn’t dare stray more than several paces from the entrance in case Thayer should suddenly emerge.

He tapped his foot and pulled out his pocket watch only to see the second hand tick loudly round the dial. A girl of about seven years old stood before a little cart at the corner. She was selling sticky buns on a stick. She dipped the buns into a vat of honey and then placed the sticks upright into holes on her stand, waiting for customers. Snarky pulled out his pocket watch again; twelve minutes had gone by when finally he saw Thayer bounding down the steps. “Here it is,” said Thayer. “Signed and sealed by the Judge.”

“Good going,” said Snarky. “That’s some speedy lawyering.”

“It took awhile because there was an old gent that had to make a slow ritual of melting the wax on the Judge’s seal. I had the notion to throttle him and light the place aflame.” Thayer wiped his brow. He handed the rolled documents to Snarky as if handing off a baton. “Two fifteen,” he said. “I am sure they have the girl on the stand by now.”

Snarky looked around. There wasn’t a cab in sight, and even
if there were, the route uptown would be congested and slow. He had a backup plan. He dashed off toward the Herald building. In the alley near the reporters’ entrance he ran up to a horse that was always tied to a hitching post. He grabbed its reins, and a boy groom yelled, “Hey, that horse is the editor’s, Mr. Bennett’s, for his courier.”

“Tell him I’m just borrowing it for a bit,” Snarky said, undoing the tether and putting his foot in the stirrup, pulling himself onto the saddle. “I’ll bring her back,” he yelled, kicking the hindquarters and bending forward to get her moving. The horse trotted out of the alley, clattering along the cobblestones, and then broke into a canter. At the bend in the narrow street, he turned the corner. Snarky knew that when he reached Mulberry Street, he could ride straightaway north at a near gallop. If he didn’t fall off, or rear into a pile of bricks, he’d make it to Bond Street in fifteen minutes.

Augusta stepped through the doorway of the parlor dressed in a dark brown-plaid silk dress. She had gathered her warmest cloak, a Russian sable cape, not sure if she was going to be taken away from the house. She hesitated long enough to be examined by the crowd, hushed at the sensation of her presence. Stunned, she was led to the metal chair that Dr. Burdell used for his patients, and a terrible feeling of foreboding came over her. Her expectations were suddenly askew. She recognized no one in the room; in fact she did not recognize the room at all, which no longer looked like the parlor of the house. The furniture was rearranged and the light was murky and strange. Mismatched chairs from the kitchen and dining room, even stools from the attic, were scattered all along the room, and so many men were everywhere, leaning against the walls. From the sea of bodies popped individual faces, springing toward her like jack-
in-the-boxes, each facial characteristic momentarily distinct, jeering, and foreign.

She sat down in the chair while two men paced around her.

“You are the oldest daughter of Mrs. Cunningham?” Coroner Connery began to interrogate her, even though he had questioned her several times in her room.

“Yes,” she replied meekly.

“Please speak so that the reporters can hear,” he said, more for their benefit than hers.

“I will speak as loud as I can.” Augusta tried to sit straight and appear composed, but her body felt heavy and unwilling to respond.

“How long has your father been dead?”

“A year last June.”

“Where were you living after his death?”

“On Twenty-fourth Street.” She tried to raise her voice, but no matter how loudly she tried to speak, it came out in a murmur.

“What number on Twenty-fourth Street?”

“I cannot remember the number.”

“Between what streets—do you remember that?” asked another man sharply. This man and the Coroner were alternating questions to her, like taking turns practicing at a rifle target.

“Between Eighth and Ninth Avenues?” she replied, but she could not tell if the feeling of confusion was hers or was emanating from everyone around her.

“Was your mother planning on going away from this house to Europe with Dr. Burdell?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she was planning that.”

“Aren’t you in the habit of talking with your mother about her affairs?”

“I never spoke to her about her plans—whether she was going to leave here or not.”

“You never even asked the question?”

“No, sir, I never did.” Augusta struggled for air.

“You felt no interest in whether you were going to remain here or were going away?” The Coroner appeared incredulous. Augusta could not keep her heart still. She did not know how she managed to both hear the questions and answer, and she felt as if her heart was pumping the air right out of her body, and at any moment her breath might stop altogether.

Clinton had made it to the sheriff ’s office and commandeered Sheriff Crombie, the constable’s stagecoach, and a prison van to head up to Bond Street. The sheriff had been skeptical about heading uptown without a set of orders from the chief, but Clinton had convinced him he was obtaining judicial orders, and that they would be waiting for them at the house. “You better know your business,” warned the sheriff. “If you don’t have the papers, it’s you who is going to prison.” Clinton’s goal was to keep Mrs. Cunningham and her girls from testifying inside the house, and the only hope of preventing that was by serving the papers to Coroner Connery, suddenly and by surprise.

The caravan started up Broadway, which was a mistake, and as they tried to get through the traffic the two vehicles got separated. “Hurry up, man,” Clinton urged the driver from inside. Finally he stuck his head out of the coach where he sat with the sheriff and yelled, “Take Orange Street to Elm.” When it appeared that the driver couldn’t hear him, he opened the door and jumped out onto the carriage step and swung up onto the high driver’s bench. “Let’s get out of this mess,” he yelled, and the driver handed him the reins.

Clinton gestured for the van behind them to follow at the next
turn. When they got as far as Third Street, he hoped that none of the crowds amassing in the neighborhood, especially any of the reporters, would spot them. On Bleecker Street there was a little driveway that led to the stable alley behind Bleecker and Bond Streets. Clinton wedged the coach up the driveway, and the prison van followed down the lane. They stopped at a high wall behind 31 Bond Street and Clinton got down. “Wait here,” he said to the sheriff, who was inside his coach.

“I am the New York City sheriff and I am not hiding in an alley. You said the Judge’s papers were ready to go. You better have them ready now.”

“Just give me two minutes,” Clinton said, wondering whether he should go to the front of the house to look for Snarky. He knew there was a slim chance that the papers had made it before them.

“You said there’s going to be an order and I’m taking prisoners to a hearing with the Judge. If anything’s not right, you’re going to get in a heap of trouble,” called the sheriff. Just then, a horse leapt over the low gate at the end of the alley and bounded toward them with a man on top in a bowler and plaid pants, charging forward like a jockey. Snarky pulled the horse’s reins in an abrupt tug, and the horse reared on its hind legs. He jumped down and fished in his rucksack.

“Here you go, sir, the orders from the Judge,” Snarky said, handing over the papers to Clinton.

Clinton waved to the sheriff, who got out and took a look. “This is it. Orders to release,” the sheriff called to the men in prison wagon, and the deputies poured out.

“What do you mean you don’t know what happened that night?” the Coroner yelled. He was pacing back and forth before the wit
ness. Augusta noticed the edges of the parlor darkening and disappearing. “Did you see your mother get out of her bed that night?”

Augusta thought she saw the Coroner raise his hand, and then that part of her vision turned black, like an aperture closing in from the edges. She heard a loud sound, like a “Whoa!” from the crowd, then darkness and silence. The next thing she knew her face was on the ground. “Get away, give her air!”

“She’s fallen,” screeched another, and there was calamity and footsteps.

A police officer leaned over, and the next thing she knew, he was lifting her in his arms. He looked down at her and said, “You fainted, miss.” As the drowsiness subsided, it left a feeling of exposure and then she became fully conscious of where she was: back in the parlor of 31 Bond Street, in the middle of a nightmare.

Clinton banged on the kitchen door. An officer opened it, and the men rushed through. Police officers were loafing around the kitchen table; they looked up startled. “Hey, you can’t come in here!” they called. Clinton and the deputies rushed past them, up the kitchen stairs to the parlor, which was packed solid with people standing or milling around in confusion. Mrs. Cunningham’s daughter was sitting on an armchair surrounded by men, sipping a glass of water.

“What is this?” declared the Coroner at the sight of the sheriff ’s posse. He spotted Clinton and sputtered, “What is going on?”

“I have come with orders from the Court of Common Pleas,” said Sheriff Crombie, reciting loudly. “This proceeding is suspended until further notice, by order of Judge Davies. I have writs of habeas corpus delivered for Emma Cunningham, Augusta Cunningham, and Helen Cunningham, to release them to appear before him, to determine the nature of their imprisonment.”

“You can’t do this! My investigation is not concluded!”

“Your investigation will not include these women. The people you have in custody are being removed from the house and will appear before the judge. If there are no charges against these girls, they are freed.” The reporters rushed around to their table, scribbling the sheriff ’s words, and the jury members looked perplexed.

The group of sheriff ’s deputies had followed, and within a few moments, a line of six men in deputy’s uniforms pounded up the stairs.

The Coroner put on his spectacles and was thrashing through the papers that the sheriff had delivered. “This is my investigation. They are not free to leave this house. Just because a judge orders…”

Within minutes, the deputies reappeared at the top of the stairway and were descending with Emma Cunningham. She came down slowly, looking bewildered. It was the first time she had been out of her room in weeks. A matron followed, bringing down Helen. When Helen reached her mother, Emma grabbed her and hugged her on the crowded stair.

“Mama, Mama,” cried Helen, looking childlike and burying herself in her mother’s embrace. Emma lifted her face and placed kisses all over her daughter’s tear-stained cheeks. Then the matron intervened and continued to move them down the stairs.

Mrs. Cunningham spotted Clinton in the hall. “What is happening? Is it over?” she blurted.