Miss Whitby,
Writing to you on English tour.
Met Mulciber once. Set my teeth on edge. He’s not right. Something’s disturbed about that act but can’t put finger on it. Levitation would be done by levers and angles. Mesmerism: harder to say. Not every audience is a plant. Some want to believe, to be mesmerized, to give over control.
Mulciber ran afoul of infamous, underhanded bookers now touring in England. Ask about Snare & Fiddle. M. swindled plenty. They’re the ones still out for him, even though a third party was said to have intervened, they weren’t paid in full.
Had a chat with A. Conan Doyle. He and I may start addressing sham acts that prey upon the vulnerable. “Spiritualist” liars when simply magicians. No betraying a magician’s vow if none claim they’re magicians. I’d be exposing their spiritual lie. Thank you for your inspiration.
H. H.
“Well, that’s something,” Eve said excitedly. They needed any association to crimes they could get, and she was pleased the magician had been so moved by her desire to see genuine Spiritualism lifted up and the charlatans revealed that he wished to take up the cause.
“I was in touch with Fitton to be sure that Jim Boot, Mulciber himself, was to be watched in custody at all times after what happened to Dupont,” Horowitz explained. “Can’t have Prenze coercing his associates to trepan themselves in custody. I’d planned on doing further interrogation, and now we’ve specific names to mention, with no time to waste. Shall we to the Tombs?” He rose to his feet and palmed two official-looking papers. “Then, after that,” he added, brandishing the papers with a sparkle in his eyes, “I’ve more on the case docket if you’d be willing to spend the day with me.”
“More than willing,” she said eagerly, his smile contagious. Any moment with him was a joy, even if working on the most dreadful tasks.
“Good, then,” he said, circling around toward her again.
He held out a hand for her. She took it, and he lifted her up and toward him and the magnetization returned. In this brief moment of closeness, she breathed him in, inhaling his freshness, a pleasant aroma of clean soap and a trace of mint. Her cheeks flooded heat again at the thought of tasting that mint, and as she looked away, he let go. Not here.
Out the office door at a clip, he looked back over his shoulder at her with a tantalizing smile. It was then that she realized how much he was enjoying the temptation of their closeness, testing the boundaries, teasing her at every tense turn, dancing around the edge of control with playful excitement. Driving her endearingly mad. She stared at him incredulously as she rushed to keep up down the long hall and out the headquarters’ wide front door.
A few curious spirits bobbed along beside her as she exited the headquarters; she was grateful their chill cooled her blushing cheeks. Once outside, the spirits, like Eve, were accosted by the myriad sights and sounds of New York and were instantly distracted, especially at this curious Mulberry intersection of a finer neighborhood ahead and a vice-ridden area behind. The city existed all at once and on top of itself, constantly active.
A familiar form in shades of grey appeared at her side. “Take care where you’re going; it’s not a good place for young women,” the elderly Vera warned in the street, drawing her floral shawl over thin, transparent shoulders. “The Tombs.” The ghost shuddered.
Eve only nodded that she understood, not wanting the detective to think she was afraid of the prison. Her ghosts worried too much.
“What’s your angle of attack with Boot?” Eve asked Horowitz.
“Lean on him about a positive identification of Montmartre as Prenze, and to see if he can confirm his involvement in the Arte Uber Alles group as an engineer and architect of suicide. We might not be able to get Prenze directly for murder, but by proxy, perhaps.… But now with Houdini’s clue, we might do better offering Boot a plea and protection in exchange for information, especially if Scotland Yard wants anything to do with money owed across the pond, we might be able to dance around extradition.”
“Smart.”
“Once we’ve hopefully pinned down something damning, we’ve got an appointment.”
“We do? With?”
“Officer Bills and the Irvington area precincts have been surprisingly helpful. All the pretty parts outside the city don’t generally like working with our grubby metropolis, but I’m happy when an officer disproves the pattern.”
He handed her two papers as they walked. Eve’s eyebrows raised at the bold type across the page. “A warrant?”
“Two warrants,” he corrected with a victorious smile, snatching the warrants back before she could read the addresses and tucking them in an interior breast pocket of his frock coat. “But first things first. This work is nothing if not due process one clue at a time.”
Bordered by Franklin, Leonard, and Elm Streets, the Tombs was a massive granite complex of pure Egyptian architecture occupying an entire block, all courts and prison cells. The name arose from its ponderous appearance and funereal associations.
Moving in lockstep, they passed the main entrance on Centre Street, which gave way to a lofty porch supported by numerous stone columns, and turned toward the Bridge of Sighs, so named for the condemned prisoners moving along its path from court of special sessions to the prison itself. Without hesitation, they walked up to the barred and grated door on the Franklin side and, once inside the dark lobby, veered left toward the warden’s office. Eve felt a shudder of unease, but she was sure not to show it.
Eve reminded herself that death was not quite so present here as it had been earlier in the century; executions were once held in the central interior courtyard, but since the advent of electrocution, such punishments were now outsourced to Sing Sing or Auburn. Still, many spirits haunted their last moments along the dark hall. There was nothing she could do for them, and thankfully none of them pinpointed her as a channel to try; the weight of guilt sifted them away from her carefully calibrated Sensitivities that tried to block genuinely negative or violent spirits.
These sad souls hung there as mere echoes of their final moments, not full-consciousness spirits like those who worked for the precinct. She said nothing of what she saw to Horowitz, and he didn’t ask, only spoke to the front watchman and explained his business.
They were seen to one of the three hundred cells, arranged in tiers one above the other, a corridor through each tier.
Rude and lewd comments from the first few cells near the door—from inmates not expecting a woman to grace their path this morning—Jacob entertained none of it. A man who whistled at Eve through opposite bars as they stood before their quarry received a growling reprimand.
“Shut it or you’ll regret it.” The detective’s tone was so ferocious, the prisoner actually turned away, startled.
Before them, Jim Boot flailed toward the front of his cell, reaching out with shaking fingers ragged from nail-biting.
“I didn’t do anything, officer, ma’am,” Jim Boot pleaded, slurring. He’d managed to make a mess of his sparse bedding; everything looked wet and grimy. Boot wobbled on his feet and gripped the bars. “I was just…there.… A body. Everything else moved around me; Heaven and Hell. I was just Purgatory.…”
“Is he drunk?” Horowitz turned to the warden who had seen them to the cell.
The warden nodded subtly and matched the detective’s low tone lest the other prisoners get any ideas. “Your friend Fitton was very clear that we were to keep him preoccupied and clear of any self-violence. Only way we could do that was keeping him…under.”
“I suppose everyone chooses their own form of control or shielding,” Eve muttered. “Perhaps that’s how Boot managed it all.”
“We don’t have much time, Mr. Boot,”