The Gods Of Gotham (14 page)

“Who is he?”

“How the deuce should
I
know?” Val answered irritably, green eyes flashing.

“Has he been reported missing? Has any child who looks like him?”

“If you don’t think that’s the first thing we checked, you’re a noddle. Anyway, he’s Irish as they make ’em. You have any notion how hard they’re looked for when they go missing? Might as well tell the parents to keep a tenderer watch over their fleas.”

“When did this Jenny open the keg, then?”

“Quarter of seven.”

“The barrel itself is full of blood, though?”

“Come to think of it, it isn’t. I did palaver for a spell with the
restaurant owner, and the cook, and the oyster boy. There’s two waiters employed, but they’d not arrived yet. We talked down here so as to have a little atmosphere,” he added, rubbing a hand over his knuckles in an unconscious power gesture that was completely wasted on me. “It’s their damn scrap hogshead, they ought to know what’s in it. Who’s in it. Well, they didn’t, and they didn’t know who the kid was, either. I made
sure
that they didn’t. Never mind how.”

I was about to tell Val that I hadn’t asked and in fact would prefer not to know how when we both heard tentative footsteps. Our heads swiveled identically. Frustratingly enough.

“Dr. Palsgrave,” said Valentine as a very small man entered the room. “Glad you came.”

“Oh, God have mercy,” the other fellow cried when he viewed the ghastly table.

And, as happens shockingly often in New York, in particular to barkeepers, I knew him by sight. Dr. Peter Palsgrave is the last descendant of a prominent old family, the lucky sort who’d held on to their money and the town house on Broadway. He’s known citywide as an expert in children’s health. And that’s what makes him so peculiar—no one specializes in children’s health. A doctor is a doctor, after all, unless he’s a surgeon or an asylum keeper. Dr. Palsgrave has animated eyes of a golden amber color, a pair of neatly trimmed silver side whiskers, and a queerly erect posture from his old-fashioned habit of going corseted under his gleaming white shawl-collared waistcoat. His beaver hat was quite tall that day, his sapphire coat very fitted. In all, a riveting mixture of jumbled-up nerves and expensive polish.

“Not my cup of tea either, Doctor, though my brother Tim here can’t stop keeking at it.”

This was, amazingly, not the worst introduction I’d ever received from my sibling.

Dr. Palsgrave mopped his broad forehead with an expensive piece of hemmed green silk.

“I apologize, gentlemen, but my heart is forever impaired,” he confessed. He sure enough looked it, for my money. “Rheumatic fever at a tender age, which has led to many compensatory measures on my part. If the Hôpital des Enfants Malades or anything like a children’s facility existed in this country of ours, I might not be so vulnerable to startlement. As it is, my pulse is racing. Now. You are Captain Wilde, I take it?”

“The genuine article,” my brother affirmed.

“You’re well aware that I am no coroner. Yes? And yet I received an emergency summons from this … this so-called police force. You’ll tell me why, and at once.”

“Actually,” Valentine said with a razor-lipped smile and a sweep of his hand over his high tawny hairline, “you’ll now take a good look at that boy’s mazzard and tell the captain of Ward Eight whether you’ve ever tended to him in a charitable way before, or I’ll knap you off to the Tombs for a few days. Don’t try to lion me. And I thank you for your help.”

Dr. Palsgrave looked ready to suffer a second heart episode. Then he shifted his weight and tried to make himself … well, taller than me, because we were dead even, and nowhere near as tall as Val. It didn’t work too well. Meanwhile, I felt a rare glint of family pride that I quashed like a cockroach in the pantry. The forcible bluntness of Val’s approach couldn’t be denied—but then, neither could its potential.

“It’s
outrageous.
You wish me to attempt to identify a child I may never have seen, and out of thousands that I have?”

“That’s just it,” Val agreed coolly, running a thumb over his vest buttons. “Plus tell us whatever else you happen to notice, purely as a favor to the copper stars.”

I smelled imaginary money in the air, prettily metallic. It was
the moment when—knowing my brother—Valentine could have offered a bribe. Unless he decided that the subject wasn’t worth it and didn’t bother. Val said nothing.

He was dead on.

Shrugging, Dr. Palsgrave approached the corpse, linking his arms behind his back. When he reached the lifeless husk, his face softened quickly, as if the sight of death still grieved him despite his anatomical education.

“He is between eleven and thirteen,” he reported in a clipped tone. “I can see no clear sign of what caused his demise, but it was not these … twin wounds. They took place postmortem. Perhaps a foreigner raised upon heathen spells intended to steal his organs and was interrupted. Perhaps he swallowed a valuable and someone sought to recover it. Perhaps someone was in desperate need of meat. Whatever it was, he was already dead.”

It was all more than a bit thick, the nod to cannibalism in particular. I found myself glancing at my brother for some sort of anchor to reality, and to my shock found him already looking at me. I snapped my eyes back to the doctor.

Dr. Palsgrave’s eyes were almost tender now, deeply regretful, and he brought one hand out from behind his back and passed it gently over the kinchin’s stiff arm, “Poor little soul. As for who he is, I have not the
slightest
notion. Doubtless he is a street arab who scavenges for his daily bread and met with a fatal misfortune.”

“He isn’t,” I said, not really recognizing my own voice. “His fingernails are clean. You ought to look closer.”

Val’s entire gaudily clad chest fell back an inch as he laughed. Wincing as he always does when laughing, because the subject isn’t ever a fit one for humor. Meanwhile, I heard in my head
We’ve a new occupation, my Tim … one you’ll take to like a bird to air,
and beat back hot twin urges to be either irked or else to smile myself.

“Do you mean to tell me,” hissed Dr. Palsgrave to my brother, “that I am to be subjected to the … the
insolence
of this fellow?”

“Yes, but only so long as he’s beating you at physicking. Go on, Tim. Where’s he likeliest come from, this little one?”

“From either a respectable house or from a brothel,” I said, very carefully. “But even if he’d washed his hands, his complexion is all wrong for summer in the open. He’s very pale. Won’t you tell us what you think he died from, Dr. Palsgrave?”

Reluctantly, the angry flush seeping away, the doctor bent back over the corpse. We hadn’t any tools for him, so he took his cuffs off and searched with his fingers, my brother standing over him wearing a very encouraging scowl. He pulled back the lad’s eyelids, and he poked in his chest cavity, and, swooping down, he smelled the boy’s lips. There was a palpable reverence to his movements, a respect for what had once been a boy. Finally, he turned to wash his hands in a stone basin near the table.

“Nearly faded marks on his body indicate that he was about a year ago subject to varicella. That is chicken pox to the layman, and
highly
contagious. His health was not overall good. He is, as you say, a boy of attentive hygiene—however, he is quite thin, and his lungs give every indication of having suffered a serious case of pneumonia at the time of his death. I should identify it the cause of death outright, for there are no other signs of violence to his person other than these terrible postmortem wounds, but I cannot be completely certain.”

He cleared his throat. Hesitated.

“His spleen is … missing, which is undoubtedly peculiar. It could
very
easily have been absconded with by a rat, however—there are clear signs this carcass has been picked over by vermin within the open abdomen.”

Valentine, as a reward to us all for good behavior, went to pull the grey tarp back over the nameless kinchin. The poor lad left
behind him the smell of lifeless tissue not yet gone to rot. Also a rapidly increasing dislike on my part for unanswered questions.

“You’re dead to rights that you’ve never tended this pup before now—at a hospital, or inside private digs?” my brother persisted.

“I tend to thousands of children and have few colleagues willing to assist me. Why I, a doctor of medicine, should be expected to recall their
individual
faces I cannot say,” Dr. Palsgrave huffed, drying his hands. “You’d be much better off asking a charitable worker. I bid the pair of you good day.”

“What charity worker would be best?” Val drawled with a smile that meant unfinished business would be tolerated with bad grace.

“One who has a good eye for faces, is trustworthy, and who is willing to visit Catholics, of course,” Dr. Palsgrave snapped, reattaching his cuffs to his sleeves. “An anomaly amongst charitable types. You’ll want Miss Mercy Underhill for that, I shouldn’t wonder. I work intimately with the Reverend Thomas Underhill in poor Protestant wards. But there aren’t many who venture where Miss Mercy does, not even her father. Now for the last time,
good-bye
.”

His quick, nervous footsteps thudded up the stairs. Something had gone wrong with my mouth. It was dry as bones. If I moved it, I thought, it might possibly splinter apart.

“Well, if that isn’t a ream bit of luck for us.” Valentine slapped me on the back. “You can find Mercy Underhill blind in the dark with your hands trussed, can’t you now—”

“No,” I said clearly. “No. I only wanted to help you, to help you with the body. That’s all.”

“Why in hell would you want to help me? And once you’d wanted to, for whatever cracked reason, why would you stop?”

“I won’t make Mercy look at that. Not for anyone.”

“Not for the dead kinchin himself?” When my mouth opened furiously, Val lifted a wide and admittedly authoritative hand. “You saw a croaked Irish chit and it funked you, so you came with me to
learn whether you had the nerve to do it twice. I savvy, Tim. But you were aces. Listen, I’m going to have his body cleaned up and put in a robe, so all she’ll have to ruminate on is his name. I’ll even send it to St. Patrick’s, it’s only six blocks down Prince, and see whether they recognize him first. It’s possible the priest will know where he hails from.”

“I’m not even posted to this—”

“Matsell was ready to sack you this morning, chit or no chit, so I’ll tell him I need you to sort this out for the Eighth. It’s perfect. I’ll mention what you said about fingernails. That was sharp. Comes of tending bar, I suppose?”

“But I don’t know how to—”

“And who does, Tim? All my men are questioning the neighbors as they make rounds, and I’ll sling you the fresh news when you report back to me tonight. I’ll be at the Liberty’s Blood after ten. You can cock an organ with me.”

“Please tell me that means smoking a pipe.”

“What in buggering hell else would it mean?”

“I can’t just go and interrupt Mercy’s entire—”

“It’s for a murder. She’s a game sort, and plenty brainy, she’ll be white about it. Farewell, Tim, and best of luck.”

“This is not just about murder!” I snapped, rubbing at my own high brow in despair.

Valentine was already halfway to the stairs. “Oh,” he said, stopping.

I braced for ridicule. But he only flipped me a coin with a knowing smirk on his face. “That’s a shilling, I think. Get yourself a mask to match that flush hat of yours. Something patriot-red and bully and mysterious.”

Fisting my hand over the coin, I protested, “A mask is never going to solve—”

“Give that tired red rag in your mouth a rest, Timothy. I didn’t
say it would. There’s a whole world of things I can’t solve, much as it may surprise you.”

His voice had been positively greased with sarcasm. Then quick as a wolf, Val grinned at me with an honest dazzle of teeth. “But it’ll help, eh? It’ll help. Go to it. Then find Mercy Underhill and figure out who’d crack open an Irish lad like a lobster. I don’t mind telling you, I’m keen to know as much myself.”

R
ed masks are for bandits in Bowery theatricals and possibly Italian pantomime artists. My rogue of a brother, of course, wouldn’t know the difference. But the idea itself was infuriatingly sound. So I bought a charcoal grey strip of soft cotton, and I tied it angled around my head over the thin oiled sheet, so my eye was exposed. Then I went to the Pine Street Church.