Not Quite Dead (13 page)

He knew nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that which is vulgarly called ambition, the hard wish to succeed——not serve, but he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit.

We must omit any particular criticism of Mr. Poe’s works. As a writer of tales he was scarcely surpassed in ingenuity of construction or effective painting. As a critic, he was little better than a carping grammarian. His tales will retain a prominent rank. They illustrate a morbid sensitiveness of feeling, a shadowy and gloomy imagination, and a taste for that sort of beauty most agreeable to his temper.

“After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Philadelphia

Wrath
,
n
. Anger of a superior quality and degree.

—Ambrose Bierce

T
he town house near Walnut Street was typical of a certain brand of professional or businessman—wealthy men with no inheritance and no land, who had migrated to the west side as the population of central Philadelphia doubled, retreating from the hordes of immigrants and Negroes who had chosen to disfigure the birthplace of America.

The wealth represented here had been acquired too late for a plantation; too late for one of the great rural estates of the landed gentry; too late for the heightened status, the noblesse oblige, the droit du seigneur of a slave-owner. The latter were now the lords and ladies of the day, whose sons would inherit, as would their sons after them, creating a social class as exclusive and long-lasting as any dukedom.

Questing for nobility in some alternate form, the men who owned these houses had made a virtue—even a fetish—of the urban work ethic, as the embodiment of economic and social virtue. They were part of a new breed of American, destined to uproot the anachronistic plantations and their decadent heirs; whose sheer financial heft would one day open the salons of the landed gentry to industrious fellows like themselves, and their children would inherit the earth.

As an expression of solidarity perhaps, the marble steps to these houses met the broad brick pavement at precisely the same angle; their railings paralleled one another all the way to the end of the street, like the string section of an iron orchestra.

On this morning as on every other, dozens of uniformed Negresses scrubbed the steps and sidewalks with flat stones and sand, whitewashed the trunks of the trees, polished the gleaming brass
rails, the door knockers and numerals, also seemingly in unison, like figures in a Swiss clock.

For this rigorous cleansing procedure, water was provided in abundance by the city. Philadelphia prided itself on its water supply, with a tap located in front of every house and stone gutters bisecting each cobbled street—in the respectable areas, at any rate. Wherever the residents owned their properties, each morning the taps produced a veritable river that poured down the street and over the sidewalks, rinsing away the previous day’s accumulation of manure and debris and the city was reborn.

However, at Number 207 Chestnut Street on this crisp fall morning, no housemaid whitewashed the steps or shined the brass. That the front curtains remained closed was typical, but not the way they were closed—not with the folds carefully in place and a precise gap in the center, but hastily thrown together with folds aslant. No maid would close the curtains in such a way and expect to retain her post.

As well, the building seemed shrouded in hush, as though the property were holding its breath, transfixed by something gone terribly wrong.

Inspector Shadduck remembered an identical silence having descended upon the barn of a Mexican farmer and his wife who had hanged themselves, or had been hanged by someone else. Either way, as soon as the barn came within sight you knew something bad happened in there.

In front of 207 Chestnut Street the top-heavy bulk of an elderly police van rested on tired springs, like a hippopotamus. In front of the van, two spavined nags with feedbags over their muzzles stared perpendicularly with vacant, startled expressions.

At the entrance to the house, between wooden Greek columns and blocking the front door stood two coppers in pot hats. Previously employed as day-watchers or “Leatherheads,” they had had first crack at becoming members of the city’s first salaried police force.

Inside the house, past the vestibule, a broad hallway opened onto an enormous, oblong parlor, made larger by two recessed floor-to-ceiling windows at one end. These opened onto an Italian veranda. The windowpanes were of crimson-tinted glass, set in rosewood framing and curtained by a thick silver tissue.

Folds of crimson silk surrounded the recess. Carved gilt-work
encircled the room at the juncture of the ceiling and walls. A Saxony carpet quite half an inch thick, the same crimson as the curtains, covered the maple floor.

These decorations served as a sort of frame for a collection of paintings by noted English artists, depicting mythic, sentimental themes—the fairy grottoes of Stanfield, the dismal swamps of Chapman, the forests of Moole—displayed at intervals as though at a gallery and separated by silver-gray paper. Some of the paintings were huge, which lent a distinction to the decor it might not otherwise have claimed.

In further emulation of an art emporium, the room contained virtually no place to sit. In a space the size of a ballroom, guests were apparently compelled to make do with two low sofas of rosewood and crimson silk, and two small conversation chairs, also of rosewood, by the fire; otherwise, they would have to sit on the floor like Arabs in a tent.

So prevalent was the color red in the decor itself that, upon entering, Shadduck’s eye at first failed to appreciate the truly spectacular quantity of blood in the room. It spattered the walls, the paintings and pianoforte, rich-arterial blood, soaking the silk and velvet as though bottles of wine had been indiscriminately poured out.

Once the eye succeeded in taking this in, other details became queasily evident.

On the hearth before a dead fire, four large, gorgeous Sèvres vases were now in jagged pieces, while a profusion of sweet and vivid flowers had been spread throughout the area as though in preparation for a spring rite. Against one wall, a bookcase for two or three hundred books stood empty, its magnificently bound contents strewn about. Some volumes appeared to have been cut apart with a sharp instrument, while others remained untouched. There was of course no telling which ones had gone missing, if any

The corpse in the center of the room should, strictly speaking, have been described as a torso with thighs and arms. The body appeared to have been cut apart with a machete or other large cutting tool, and the severed parts placed in appropriate spots around the room; for example, the feet stood side by side near the fireplace, like a pair of overshoes put out to dry.

As his mother once put it,
Every feller has a dark side
,
and some have two
. Shadduck had known certain officers like that, smart fellers who enjoyed killing and mutilating. Momentarily he wondered what they did upon leaving the service, what line of work might have suited their taste and temperament.

“Well, I have seen the elephant,” commented Watchman Coutts, whose use of the current street jargon served to camouflage a dim mind.

“Sure, and a butchered elephant too,” added Watchman Smit, who was a tad brighter.

“Keep low on the levity, fellers,” said Inspector Shadduck. “This is a grist of trouble. It will need serious thought.”

Not that he knew where to begin.

Shadduck was in his late twenties, tall with a slight stoop and a permanent sunburn, and an older man’s eyes with the creases at the outer edges indicating either an acquired sadness or a habitual squint, or both. Almost absentmindedly he slouched about the room, sidestepping pieces of human flesh as one might dodge piles of manure on Market Street.

The leaden smell of blood filled the room like an inert gas. Shadduck had seen this sort of a mess in the army, when cleaning up after a company of mercenaries who had requisitioned golden Jesuses (their own private savior), with or without permission from Command. Land pirates really, no different from British privateers at sea—gangs of common criminals with a license to commit atrocities on specific nationalities.

But that was war. In a war, people are killed and maimed as a matter of course, often for no particular reason. When you found a dead body on a battlefield, you didn’t ask what feller killed it, because there could be no meaningful answer.

Now it was Shadduck’s job to find out precisely that—who killed somebody else. Killings are disturbing to civilians, and must seem to be put right if the city is to remain governable. That distinction, between the army and policework, had not occurred to him when he applied for the job.

Where to start?

Pausing in the middle of the room, he experienced a slight wave of panic in the crook of his sternum, the feeling he had experienced every time he entered a field hospital… Of course. The smell of
blood. It still had this effect on him, couldn’t look at a plate of blood pudding.

He reached into his chest pocket, extracted a cheroot, and lit it. Thank God for tobacco, he thought, even cheap tobacco was better than nothing.

This new development put the inspector in a considerable pickle. Shadduck had not been given the rank because he was a species of French detective.

To understand Shadduck’s position, recollect that the only police force Philadelphia County had ever known descended straight from the medieval police of Europe: a volunteer watch of citizens, plus a daytime constable, who supervised the volunteers and charged fees for his services. The watch was a tedious chore with no thanks to it, and so in practice, when a gentleman’s number came up for service he would pay for a substitute, who was usually unemployable for anything else—stupid, illiterate, allergic to any sign of danger. In the usual course of things, watchmen dealt with crimes only when the victim agreed to a fee.

The system changed in 1844, when Philadelphia County undertook to create a police force on the model of New York and London, and directed offers of employment to veterans of the army and the civilian militia. Just out and none too flush, Shadduck wanted the job, and went whole hog in securing it.

Over several weeks he downed consecutive glasses of Old Orchard with former messmates in the militia; having seen action, he was the one to lead the toast to victory and to General Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready.” This circle of acquaintance provided him with a popular base, at least for the time being. And his chances were done no harm by the two hundred dollars he sunk into the Swift campaign, not to mention the fact that he was an elbow relation of Commissioner Clark. To be on the safe side, Shadduck even contributed twenty dollars to the campaign of Councilman Wendel Grisse, a canny Pennsylvania Dutchman, who ran on a platform of lawful and orderly streets.

Upon his admission to the force, and being considerably less flush than ever as a result of his political expenditures, Shadduck undertook a campaign of self-advancement that turned out mighty effectual.

In the chaos of war it had been Shadduck’s primary duty as an officer to put a solid face to everything, for the morale of the enlisted men—who, when discouraged, tended to desert. As a function of his rank, Captain Shadduck perfected the steady-as-she-goes facade of a master mariner, implying that, though he was not personally in control, he knew the man who was, and had been assured of a satisfactory outcome.

In Philadelphia’s current disarray, with a council led by terrified civilians well out of their depth, Shadduck was like an anvil in a windstorm, and promotions accrued.

His streak of good fortune hit an apex with his appointment to the newly created position of inspector—a rank taken from the London Peelers to go with the coppers’ designations, and dead certain to infuriate the Irish.

From this high point, as though having reached the summit only to find a cliff on the other side, Shadduck’s career began to plummet. First came Swift’s announcement that he planned to retire—seemingly to practice law, spend time with his family, and enjoy a fortune mysteriously amassed while in office.

It was as though Shadduck’s best hoss had died under him, and after due consideration he chose to back the Independent candidate Joel Jones, the best of a bad lot. If Jones lost the coming November election, Shadduck’s goose was cooked; his only hope was that it wasn’t Thanksgiving.

Even with a Jones victory, the inspector would occupy a chancy position. Swift had been, after all, a Whig with a minority in council, and Shadduck was, therefore, viewed as a de facto Whig. Democratic knives would be kept sharp, Republican eyes peeled for the slightest lapse or error. Already the inspector could not safely accept even the most innocent private payments from supportive members of the public, and he was feeling the pinch.

In the past, the duties of an officer of the law had been to uphold the morals of one segment of the populace against those of another. In practice, this meant arresting drunks, lewd women, able-bodied beggars, and people found sleeping in a public place. Less public was the policeman’s role as the intermediary between politics and business, moving payments from one hand to the other through a network
of tailors, carriage makers, and other trades, taking deposit on work that would never be done.

What altered this long-standing arrangement was the increasingly urgent task of riot control. In Philadelphia, with her clean streets in a precise grid pattern, disorder was the enemy, and anarchy was the Antichrist in civic form.

The trouble began in the early forties. Suddenly crowds would accumulate out of nowhere and begin marching down the streets, breaking everything in sight. Gradually the crowds became more violent. (The inflammatory role of gangs could not be underestimated— organized groups of hoodlums for whom disorder and profit followed like seeds and tobacco.)