her floured apron, she huffed up the staircase, her grey hair flying from her cap. Hannah reached the doorway and peered in. “Oh, my God, my God,” she screamed, putting her apron to her face.
Emma Cunningham, hearing the noise, rushed from the third floor, with Augusta and Helen behind her. “Hannah, what is the commotion?” “The master is dead!” cried Hannah.
“That’s impossible,” Emma said, pushing Hannah aside, craning her neck to peer into the office, her voice trailing, “I just saw him yesterday before supper….” She turned away, clasping her hands to her breast.
“It’s a carnage!” wailed Hannah. “A bloody murder!”
Augusta looked inside, and then dropped to the floor in a faint. Mrs. Cunningham grabbed Helen to keep her away from the gruesome sight, and the younger girl started to cry. John stood next to the pile of women, his eyes welling with tears.
“What are you standing there for, you foolish creature?” screamed Hannah. “Run down to the street and fetch the doctor that lives next door. Then go to the precinct house and look for an officer.” She hit him on the side of the head, as if spurring a horse.
John turned and rushed down the stairs two at a time. In the vestibule he pulled the bolts on the heavy front door and jumped down the stoop. The street was misty and the rain had turned to snow. He paused and looked back at the house. For a moment he had the sensation that he had lost direction, not knowing which way to turn. Then he ran toward Broadway, his boyish figure, bundled in scratchy grey woolens, dissolving in the dim, snowy light.
The teakettle whistled with an insistent shriek. John replenished the firewood in the stove while Hannah muttered prayers. The door under the stoop opened and men came in, bringing a gust of wind and wet snow. The coroner slammed the door shut. Edward Connery was a stocky man with a heavy stomach that protruded from his waistcoat, a rumpled shirttail trailing beneath his vest. He entered the kitchen and removed his oilskin coat, dropping his wet garments in a pile on the kitchen floor.
“The Coroner’s arrived, Captain, the Coroner is here!” came a deputy’s voice from the hallway.
“I could use a good cup of stew to chase this wetness from my bones,” Connery said.
“It’s about time someone hauled you uptown,” said the Police Captain, George Dilkes, joining him in the kitchen. He had a lilt to his brogue and the doleful eyes of an Irish setter. “The errand boy came to the precinct,” he said, pointing to John. “Then I sent my men to fetch you, over an hour ago.”
“And how about a spike of rum, lass?” asked Connery. Hannah brought him a cup of broth and poured some rum into it. “A good Irish wench would give a man a double shot.”
Hannah turned, reddening. “This is a respectable home, not a downtown gin mill,” she sputtered. “A man’s been murdered in this house, and the Coroner is tanking up on rum? God, help us!”
“A dead man is just as dead on Bond Street as in the lower wards, wouldn’t you say so, Captain?” said Connery, sipping the oily mixture.
“Could be,” Dilkes replied, “but uptown or downtown, this man just had his head near cut off. You’d better brace yourself,” he said. “I never seen anything so bad. He’s got fifteen stab wounds, and his throat is cut from ear to ear.”
“Oh God, dear God,” lamented Hannah, crossing herself.
“Catch me up,” Connery said with authority; as City Coroner, he was the elected official in charge of the crime scene: besides attending to medical matters and an autopsy, it was his job to call a coroner’s jury to the house. The jury, pulled by lots, would interrogate neighbors and family members—anyone with knowledge about the victim—using testimony to piece together evidence at the scene. With a coroner’s deft handling, the coroner’s inquest could point a finger in the right direction, nabbing a perpetrator and solving a crime.
Dilkes led Connery out of the kitchen, passing a policeman with a shovel, stamping the snow off his boots. “The men have been digging up the backyard for the weapon,” explained the Captain. “I sent them to search in the outhouse and down the latrines.”
“Dirk or dagger?” asked the Coroner.
“From the depth of the cuts, I figure it was a two-sided blade.” The two men climbed the small back stairway, their bulky frames bent, with Connery puffing behind. They emerged onto the first floor, with its soaring ceilings and chandeliers. A cluster of officers was lounging against a marble table.
“What are you waiting for, men?” shouted Connery. “Some politician to give you a handout? Go into the parlor and turn everything upside down. We’re still looking for a weapon.”
Dilkes led Connery to the main staircase and pointed to some tiny blood spots along the wallpaper, almost imperceptible, at the height of a man’s hand. “There’s hardly any trace of blood anywhere, except with the body. This morning, the cook didn’t notice anything amiss. The doors to the house and the windows were locked tight.”
Connery squatted, examining the specks, touching a blood spot to determine if it was still wet. “Who else lives here?”
“The victim is a dental surgeon, unmarried, about forty-six years old. A housemistress lives on the two upper floors, with her daughters.” Dilkes flipped through a small notepad, reading from his notes. “The cook sleeps in the attic. A serving girl was dismissed yesterday, and there is a carriage driver who drove Dr. Burdell last night, but he doesn’t live here.”
“Does everyone have a key?”
“We are still checking to see if any keys are missing.” “Was anything taken?” asked Connery.
“There’s plenty to take, but it seems nothing’s been touched. It doesn’t seem to be a robbery.”
The two men started up the stairway. Connery leaned over the banister and gazed upward along the graceful arc as it curved to the top of the house. Forty feet above, a skylight was embedded in the roof, an oval of wood and glass that sat atop the stairwell like an elegant crown. He whistled. “This is a fine place, all right.”
They entered the room where the body lay across the floor. Dr. Burdell’s dental office, converted from a bedroom, was furnished like a parlor with engravings and a velvet-fringed sofa. The dentist chair sat in one corner, a torturous contraption with clamps and wooden blocks that held the patient’s head still when a tooth was pulled. The body lay in the center of the floor. A pool of blood spread several feet in diameter around the corpse. The dead man’s shirt had been torn open, exposing the purple knife wounds that punctured his white flesh.
“This is a bestial crime,” muttered Connery.
An officer entered. “Your men have arrived, sir,” he announced. In the hallway were several men from the Coroner’s office, carrying microscopes and medical bags, and behind them, a crew of reporters, arching their necks to see the body. “And these reporters came from the New York dailies. They want to know if they can come in for a look.”
“Get them out of here,” said Dilkes, waving his arms.
“No,
