Winter at Death's Hotel (3 page)

The wagon made its slow way down Bleecker Street, then east until it was in the Bowery itself—the Bouwerie, as it had once been when the Dutch were there, now a bower no longer. Paved, built on, decayed, fallen from whatever grace neighborhoods achieve, it was at night the home of the preyed-on and the predator—rats and feral cats; men who staggered when they tried to walk and slept where they lay when they fell, and men who turned out the pockets of the fallen and would steal even their shoes while they slept. By day, it had its pool halls and its dime museums, its Yiddish theaters and its saloons and its scams and its whores, as well as its businesses and its churches, its almost new buildings with their cast-iron fronts and their hydraulic elevators, its mission for the destitute and its police stations, whose gas lamps burned in the dark like the last hope of any honest citizen mad enough to wander there.

The old man on the wagon seemed not of the place, neither predator nor prey. The horse clopped on; the old man's head stayed down. When, however, he reached a short alley that offered its dark opening like a narrow mouth to Elizabeth Street, he glanced aside down the alley but did not stop. At the next corner, however, he turned right again, then left to go south on Mott Street until he passed a beat policeman going slowly north. The old man glanced aside with only his eyes. The policeman opened his dark lantern and shone it on the wagon.

“
Shalom
, Mr. Policeman.”

“And the same to you. You're in a rum neighborhood, Ikey; they'll kill you for the rags in the wagon, much less the horse.”

“I am careful. Thank you.”

They turned away from each other. The policeman dropped the flap of his lantern. The wagon went on but turned left at the corner, then moved faster as the old man flicked the reins on the horse's back. The horse did nothing so noticeable as trot, but the wagon was moving now a good deal faster than the policeman on his parallel track. It went back up Elizabeth Street, slowed opposite the mouth of the same alley, and made a half-circle in the street so as to stop with the wagon blocking the alley.

The old man got down. He almost ran into the alley; muffled sounds came out—nothing more, perhaps, than a rat, the scrape of a trash can. Then the old man hurried back and, with surprising agility, lifted a bundle of rags from the wagon bed and half-staggered with it back into the alley.

Now the sounds were furtive, unclear—the trash can again, the old man's wheeze, a grunt as if at some effort. Then a silence. Something soft falling. A couple of thuds.

The old man came out, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He carried some of the rags, threw them into the wagon, and lifted out a burlap bag that looked wet in the dim light of a distant lamp. A strong stench of manure was carried on the breeze that blew dirt and a days-old newspaper along the pavement. The sack went with him into the alley; no sound, then a soft fall of something, a rustle, silence, then footsteps as the old man came out, threw the now empty sack into the wagon and climbed up behind the horse and touched it into motion. Forty-five seconds later, the street was empty.

Not, however, for long. Four minutes later, the beat policeman rounded the corner a street north of the alley and began his slow progress south. The dark lantern threw its soft beam into doorways; the policeman's hand tried every door. On he came, not pausing at the crossing of Grand Street because there was no traffic now, and then hardly pausing for two bodies crowded into the angle of an ancient brick house, now empty, and its broken front steps. The policeman flashed his light on them, assured himself that they were alive, moved on and crossed Hester Street.

Three buildings lay between him and the alley. He tried each door—one, long ago a merchant's home, now a warehouse; one new, with a neoclassical front, a jobber's in hardware goods; the third a near-ruin with a closed saloon on the first floor.

He came to the alley. He opened his dark lantern and held it up to throw the light down its length. He was already poised to move on, ready to see nothing but a rat or two and perhaps a cat. But he paused.

He took a step back up the street to get a better angle. He moved closer to the building, almost leaning on it. He held the light out ahead of himself to try to get the beam closer to what he thought he had seen.

It hadn't changed: it still looked like a bare leg, not down on the pavement but up in the air.

Fear of the new commissioner drove him into the alley. In the old days, he'd have left it for the next man and for the light of morning, but now it would be hell to pay and no pension if he passed up something like a man naked and dying of cold. He had a pal who'd passed up a drunk who'd fallen off Gansevoort pier and drowned; that had been the end of his pal's police career.

Gripping his truncheon and the lantern—he carried a pistol, thanks to Know-It-All Roosevelt, but the nightstick was the weapon he trusted—he moved into the alley, the dark lantern thrust out ahead like a talisman that would protect him from evil. As he got closer, he saw that he had been right about the human leg. There it was, sticking out.

He went closer. Not a man's leg, but a woman's. Sitting on a trash can as naked as—

“Oh, Mother of God!” He bent to vomit.

Louisa Doyle woke before six. She didn't know that it was before six; she knew only that she felt wonderful, that she was happy and safe and loved, and that she was in
New
York
and her husband was beside her in a marvelous bed. She put a hand out to feel the mound of him under the bedcovers; she moved a foot to feel his hairy leg, like a guarantee, a surety of marriage. Of protection.

She stretched. Daylight waited behind the closed drapes; streaks of it bled around the edges and told her at least that it was day. She heard sounds from the street, too, the rumble of iron wheels and the clop of hooves. It was all very well to say that the hotel was quiet, but, even with double glazing on the windows (a particular point made of it in the brochure), New York was too energetic and too loud to be kept out completely.

She slipped out of bed. She was wearing a rather too demure floor-length nightgown, ten inches of frothy lace at the bottom and the cuffs of the sleeves, a gift from Arthur's mother. She laughed to herself, then at herself: Arthur's mother thought that, even married, she should be fully covered at all times; she, who had been naked in bed with her athletic husband (they had made love again after the early supper: after all, it had been too early to go to sleep), but had got up in the night only to put on the nightgown. As he, she supposed, had got up to put on a nightshirt.

What
funny
things
we
are.

She peeked out between the curtains. An apparently gray day, although she couldn't see the sky because of the buildings across the street. Directly below, somebody was sweeping the pavement. A man in a bowler hat was pushing a barrow that was covered with a tarpaulin. A hackney carriage was already waiting on the hotel side of the street; as she watched, another pulled up behind it. Across the street and toward Fifth Avenue, a man in a duster and a black soft hat was opening the front door of a shop.

Life. Life was beginning
. Had she ever felt like this in London?

Something pinged and hissed in the room.
Central
heating
. Another of the New Britannic's boasts. There was a smell of warm metal. The hotel itself was coming to life.

She made a very quick
toilette
, promised herself to do better later, and, uncorseted, got herself into a favorite, very simple dress—the faintest plaid over dove-gray wool, the sleeves full to the elbow, its own tiny pillow of a bustle nestled up high on her rump. Shoes to match—gray, at any rate, leather—no hat needed, surely; it would be like going out into a house to step into the hotel corridor.

She planted a feather-light kiss on Arthur's cheek, willing him not to wake, not to spoil her little adventure. She wrote a few words on a sheet of hotel paper, “Gone for a newspaper for you,” and propped it where he would see it on the bedside table.

There was a key somewhere; Arthur had been given it by the boy yesterday. How vexing not to have one's own key. Well, she would demand one at Reception. Ask for one, anyway.

When she opened the door, she almost fell over a newspaper that had been dropped there. A glance told her that there was a newspaper in front of every door. The
New
York
Times.
Headlines about something American, in fact something New Yorkish; she'd look at that later. Staid columns of print. It seemed a let-down after the pleasure of seeing the city wake. She tossed it into an armchair and went out.

The corridor was carpeted, and so her feet went silently along. Did she dare to take the lift herself? She couldn't make it work, she was sure; but there must be a boy on duty. It made sense that there would be a boy on duty all night.

She rang.

After some seconds there was a sound overhead, as if something mechanical had been woken and didn't like it. Then there was a sound below, a clash of metal on metal. And then a kind of hum as the hydraulic (whatever that was; she must ask Arthur) began its work.

The doors flew open. A boy—a real boy this time, not an old man—grinned at her, said “Down?” and then threw his weight into closing the doors again with the same clash.

“Rest'ernt ain't open yet, miss. Cuppa tea if yous ast fort at Reception.”

“Oh, tea would be very nice, thank you.”

“Juss ast fort.” He threw the gates open with a noise that he clearly enjoyed. “Watcherstep!”

The lobby was empty except for two women, both apparently middle-aged, thick, one with a bucket and mop and one with a large can, into which she was emptying ashtrays. She had a rag tucked into the back of her apron; she whipped this out and wiped each ashtray clean. Neither woman looked at her.

Louisa felt pleased, as if she'd been allowed to look in on the hotel's secret life. She went to the Reception. There was nobody there, but there was a little metal bell, like a breast lying flat, and a sign, “Please Ring for Service.” She touched it, got a silvery clang, waited. A man she hadn't seen before came out of some inner sanctum with a suggestion of pulling straight a tailcoat he'd just wriggled into. “Madame?”

“Oh, I'm up terribly early, I'm afraid. I, uh, might it be possible to have a second key to my room? And a cup of tea at this hour?”

“Tea, of course, madame. What room?”

She didn't know what room. Arthur knew what room, but she didn't. She said, “I'm afraid you'll have to look it up. Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle. I, uh, thought it would be nice if I could find a newspaper for my husband. To read, I mean. Oh, other than the
New
York
Times
, which is a splendid newspaper, I know, but something—lighter?” Why was she babbling? She did this; she knew she did; flustered by a man younger than she with no power over her and no reason to care what she did or why. Almost angrily, she said, “Where can I buy a newspaper?”

“Newsstand right next to the hotel, madame—out the entrance and turn to the left.”

“Oh, thank you. Oh, I didn't bring a hat.” She said it to herself, but he heard it and immediately rang a different bell for a boy—like most of the “boys” old enough to be her father—and said to him, “Tell the kitchen tea for Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle,
now
—will that be tea here or in the room, Mrs., um, Conan Doyle?—here, then. Then come right back and hop it next door to get her a newspaper; she'll tell you which one.” He gave her a smile to tell her what a fine job he'd done of passing on her commands.

She had to wait only seconds while the boy trotted somewhere in back and shouted “One tea now!” in a voice she could hear: the ground floor of the hotel was
not
to be congratulated for its quiet, then. And he was back, asking which paper.

“Oh, something, mmm,
masculine.
I should think something…” She was going to say “literary,” but the boy said, “Sporting, I'm on it,” and he was gone. Then he was back, she handed over a coin, and then she was seated in a leather armchair at one of the tables in the lobby holding a folded sheet of pink newsprint with POLICE GAZETTE across it in highly decorative, in fact vulgar, letters. Below that it said, EXTRA EDITION, the letters only slightly smaller, a jot more tasteful, and then in huge black type MURDERED AND DISFIGURED WOMAN'S CORPSE FOUND UNCLOTHED IN BOWERY ALLEY.

Tea, toast, something called gooseberry jelly, and milk and sugar were put down in front of her.

“Good heavens!”

“Ma'am?”

“Oh? Nothing. Oh, thank you.” A young woman was trying to spread a serviette over her lap.

“We got coffee, too. Just ast.”

“Yes, thank you, thank you so much.”

She turned the pink page. There was an engraving of a woman lying in what could have been taken for an alley—something cylindrical might have been meant as an ashcan—but the woman was fully clothed. There was also a smaller engraving of a decrepit building and another next to it with a large sign that said “Bar,” under it the caption, “A Scene in the Bowery.” The rest of the page was type:

“Worst Thing I ever Saw”
Says Policeman

Veteran of Thirty Years

“She Shone in the Light of My Dark Lamp Like Marble”

One of the most hideous crimes in the history of that hideous place, the Bowery, literally came to light yesternight when a policeman's dark lantern picked out its disgusting lineaments from the gloom of an offal-strewn alley off Elizabeth Street. Making his rounds as was his wont, this grizzled veteran of three decades on the force, Patrolman James Malone, said to the
Gazette
of his awful discovery, “It's the worst thing I've ever seen. I never knew that human hand could be so cruel. This is the work of a fiend.”

The unfortunate victim, undoubtedly a lady of the pavement who chose her Lothario neither wisely nor well, was mutilated in ways not fit to be described in print, nor will we stoop to give words to the disfigurement of a once-pretty visage. With flaming red hair and a statuesque physique, this broken blossom met her Destiny at the hands of a man—dare we say that word,
man
, for one so heartless?—whose savage use of the knife surpasses the worst excesses of such grisly legends as Geronimo and Bluebeard.

Readers of the
Gazette
will recall the murder a few years back of another fallen female, one who called herself “Shakespeare” for her ability to quote at length from the Bard. We recall the ravaging of her body and cannot but wonder if a similar—nay, perhaps the same!—hand was busy here.

The Municipal Police are hard at work on the apprehension of the perpetrator of this atrocity before—it must be said—he might strike again. A member of the Murder Squad who must remain nameless told us that their eyes are turned toward the docks. “This bears the marks of a foreign, probably an Oriental, mind. The knife may well have been one of those with a curved blade called the kris or the kukree.”

Officer Malone hinted that the victim was unclothed when found. More terribly, she seems to have been arranged deliberately in a place and posture that would emphasize the horror of her death. Although neither Officer Malone nor his superiors could speak to us in detail at the time of going to press, citing public safety and the strict moral code insisted on by Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, we were able to infer from the small amount of blood noted by Officer Malone that the unknown woman was murdered elsewhere and brought to the place where she was found. The means of conveying her there is unknown, as of course is the identity of the person who did it.

We will say, after our long familiarity with the police and with crime, that neither the location nor the final position of the victim was accidental. This poor creature was not “dumped” in the alley. What the policeman found when first he looked with his dark lantern was
deliberate.
It showed forethought and it showed a mad intelligence of the foulest kind.

What has been let loose among us?

On the facing page was a large photograph of a buxom young woman in what appeared to be a corset with a lot of frou-frou above the bosom—perhaps what was called a Merry Widow—and tights. And a large hat. Louisa was bewildered: was this the victim before the murder? No; a caption said, “The Lovely Miss Adelaide Keecher, now Singing ‘When I Take You to My Heart' at Tony Pastor's Theatre on Fourteenth Street at Third Avenue. She's a peach!”

The only remaining page, the verso of the lovely Miss Keecher, was all advertisements—for pills of several sorts (“Men's Romantic Failure Cured!”), corsets (illustrated), pistols by mail, practical jokes (The Flatulence Pillow, The Drip Glass, The Rubber Snake), books on dreams, Masonic conspiracies, the Rosicrucians, Hindoo love secrets.

How
extraordinary!

She looked again at the first page, then at each of the four; then she went back to the account of the murder and read it again. As perhaps was intended, she got more questions than answers from it: What sort of mutilation? What “disfigurement”? What was that about “posture”—was the dead woman standing up somehow? Why did the policeman say it was the worst thing he'd ever seen? He was a
policeman
; surely he saw ugly things often—wasn't that what the police were for, to serve as barriers between the ugliness of life and decent people?

She dawdled more than an hour away, thinking these thoughts, watching the first people drift into the lobby, then into the restaurant. She had all the time in the world, she thought. A great luxury.

She had some notion what the Bowery was. There was a song about it; she couldn't remember it, but she knew there was a song. And there was something in her guidebook, she thought, probably a mention in the section called “Areas of New York City to be avoided.”

Murder was hardly surprising to her. She had followed the Ripper murders in London several years before; so had everybody, she supposed. And her husband, after all, had dealt at second hand with murder and all sorts of crimes; they were what had made Sherlock Holmes go. But this murder, she found, disturbed and fascinated her. Perhaps it was its happening on her first day in New York. Or her first night, more precisely. It seemed foolish to be distressed by the murder of a prostitute (and of course she knew what prostitutes were; she hadn't been raised in a convent, after all). Nothing could be further apart than her night, in the arms of her husband in a luxurious hotel, and that of the woman who had been killed and mutilated (
how?
) and disfigured (
how?
)

She would ask Arthur.

She left a coin by her teacup and got up, turned and almost fell on her front as she tripped on a small wrinkle in the carpet. Well known in her family as clumsy, she blushed very red and looked around to find if she had been seen. The two charwomen had vanished. One of the “boys” had been rushing toward her, now slowed as he saw she hadn't fallen. “I'm quite all right!” she called, and turned her head and saw a man in a dark overcoat just coming through the bronze front doors. She realized it was the hotel detective. He smiled at her—he had seen her trip, the wretch, hardly a license for him to
smile
.