can make a likeness of the scene. Besides, if I send them away, the editors will cry foul all the way to City Hall.”
“We’d be most obliged to you, sir,” said a newspaperman from the crowd in the hall, doffing his hat.
“Take the body to the bedroom and strip it naked for an autopsy,” Connery ordered. Two coroner’s deputies entered and rolled the dentist’s body onto a sheet, grabbing the corners like a sling and lifting the sagging mass. Dr. Burdell’s neck twisted at the open wound and his head fell sideways. His eyes remained open, as if he were following the conversation.
“He sure didn’t go down without a fight,” said Connery. “It’s hard to think that no one heard the attack, or any cries or footsteps.”
“Well,” pondered Dilkes, “these ceilings are pretty high. The victim didn’t come home until midnight, after everyone in the house was asleep. The attacker could have been hiding in the wardrobe passage.” The coroner paced around, opening the door of the closet that formed a wardrobe passage between the office and the man’s bedroom. There were cabinets with shelves of bottles and tonics, but nothing seemed out of place. The doctor’s gumshoes were placed carefully in front of the fireplace, on the sofa his shawl. His desk had papers stacked on it, in an orderly fashion. A chair had been pushed away from the desk several feet, marking the spot where the skirmish began.
Connery rifled through the papers on the doctor’s desk. A ledger lay open with a quill pen on top. He put on his spectacles, pushing them along his nose, squinting as he looked over the fine columns of numbered entries. A locked safe was beside the desk. He took a tangled handkerchief from his waistcoat and wiped his face. “Something smells rotten here.”
“I don’t know,” protested Dilkes. “Everyone seems to be telling it straight—after all, the housemistress’s story is backed by innocent girls.”
“Innocence—in this city?” countered Connery.
“If someone in the house committed this deed, the perpetrator would be covered in blood from head to toe,” said Dilkes.
“There was plenty of time to clean up after this bloody brawl, and I don’t see any trace of the killer leaving the house.” Connery went to the door and yelled down the staircase to one of the officers. “I want everyone detained in their rooms until they are interrogated.”
“It’s the weekend, sir,” said Dilkes. “Maybe we should confer with the District Attorney before we put anyone in house arrest.”
“The District Attorney will be here fast enough. He’ll be jumping all over this one. With a murder on Bond Street, he’ll want it solved quick. Pull a jury. Drag them from their Sunday suppers if you must. Now, let me speak to the woman of the house.”
On the third floor, Emma Cunningham sat by the window in her bedroom. She was lost in a reverie, almost a stupor. Augusta and Helen sat with her, weeping by the fire. It had been several hours since the trauma, and the wind still howled through the street. The wood of the stairway heaved, and the bedroom door opened. The Police Captain entered along with Coroner Connery and several officers. They crowded in, an imposing presence in her floral bedroom.
“Excuse me, Ma’am,” said Captain Dilkes. “We need to ask you some questions. We will be placing you under detention in your room while we conduct a full inquest.”
“Detention?” asked Emma. “Why?” Connery looked her over carefully. She had been described as a widow but was remarkably youthful, seeming not much older than her teenage daughters, who were huddled on an overstuffed ottoman by the fire. Her body was prone, leaning across the arm of the chair, as if the distress of the morning had left her languishing in despair. Her linen blouse was disheveled, revealing traces of her camisole and a corseted bustier. Her complexion was blotchy from tears, her lips pink, her dark hair glossy, falling wildly from her hairpins and curling across her shoulders.
“With all due respect to you and your daughters, Madame, I need to ascertain how a man came to be viciously massacred while so many people were home. You’ve haven’t told us everything, now, have you?” asked Connery.
“I have told the officers everything,” Emma replied, her voice tinged with alarm. “I was sleeping, and did not hear a thing.” She tried to summon her best composure but her expression changed like a cloud movement: flashes of red emerged in sudden streaks across her face, and tears began coursing along her cheeks. Her countenance betrayed such anxiety that Connery eyed her closely. His instinct told him to remain still—emotional moments like these were often followed by a confession. She clutched a paper in her hand. Pale and shaking, she lifted it and offered it to the Coroner. It was a scroll wrapped with a blue satin ribbon.
He slowly opened the scroll. He looked it over, his eyes darting across the words, and then to the faces of the men.
“This sheds quite a different light on matters, doesn’t it?” he said. It was a certificate, dated January 14, 1857, two weeks earlier, and signed by the reverend of the Reformed Dutch Church on Greenwich Street. He passed the paper to Dilkes. “Is this yours, Ma’am?”
“Yes, it is mine …,” she said, barely above a whisper. “It was supposed to be a secret and not to be made public until the spring.” She drew a breath, and spoke louder, with clear diction, “This is my marriage certificate and I am Harvey Burdell’s wife.”
MYSTERIOUS MIDNIGHT MURDER
AN EMINENT CITIZEN ASSASSINATED
INTENSE EXCITEMENT IN BOND STREET
An atrocity, almost unparalleled by any of the atrocities committed in this City, came to light on Saturday morning in the house at No. 31 Bond Street. Dr. Harvey Burdell was found in his office, foully murdered, and frightfully and fiendishly mutilated. Dr. Burdell was a man of considerable wealth, and respectably connected.
All the inmates of the house, which is also occupied by the family of a housemistress, Mrs. Cunningham, are prevented from leaving the premises by a body of Police, who are detailed for that purpose by the Coroner’s orders.
Bond Street was visited by hundreds of persons who came out of curiosity, to look at the house.
The New York Times, FEBRUARY 3, 1857
Monday, February 3, 1857
Henry Clinton scraped the blade along his neck and then tapped the razor against the side of the china basin. He heard a newsboy crying the headlines: “Murder, Murder! Murder on Bond Street!” As the call echoed closer, it drifted into his bedroom like a song. He continued scraping the skin and tapping the bowl without missing a beat. Bond Street was just across Broadway, a block east from his house on Bleecker Street, yet the news did not interrupt the rhythm of his shave. Clinton was a criminal lawyer and no stranger to bloodshed.
He pulled the towel from his neck and wiped away the last beads of lather. He fastened a collar to the top of his shirt, adding cuff links and a silk-lined vest. Lifting a gold watch from his dressing table, he fastened the chain to his pocket. Bond Street, he thought. That would teach her. It was his wife’s idea that they move uptown from Warren Street. As the burgeoning commerce of the city spread like a fan through lower Manhattan, the fine homes downtown, once belonging to bankers and merchants, gave way to shops, and the houses along the side streets were now flanked
