The Museum of Extraordinary Things(88)

“Does your family have anything to do with the Triangle Shirtwaist Company?”

“My brother is an attorney. He may have done some work for them. I believe he did.” She gazed deeply at Eddie. “And the work was questionable, I presume.”

“What if it was murder?”

Juliet suggested they walk around the corner, to the park, so they might find privacy and speak more freely. They did so, and the dogs were overjoyed to find they were not being dragged in the direction of home. They took a path that led to the reservoir. There were many starlings and sparrows on the branches of the trees. “Welcome to the petting zoo of the wealthy,” Miss Block said bitterly. Once they had found a bench hidden by bushes, she took out a French cigarette and lit it, which surprised Eddie.

“Oh, stop looking at me that way.” She laughed. “You can’t be that easily shocked. I’ll do my part to help you get Herbert, and in exchange you’ll forget about my brother. In all honesty, Harry probably has no idea of his henchman’s methods. He says make it so, and it’s done.”

“It was a young woman that was killed, if that makes a difference to your opinions regarding your brother’s responsibility in the matter. She worked on the ninth floor at the factory, but it wasn’t the fire that did her in. She never made it to work that day because somebody murdered her. They sewed up her mouth with blue thread, then tossed her into the river.”

Juliet stared at him long and hard. “It matters to me very much, whether you believe me or not. But he’s my brother. My offer stands. I’ll give you Herbert, and in return, you’ll leave Harry alone.”



JULIET BLOCK was to inform Frank Herbert that her brother had given instructions for him to bring a file of information to a meeting in the alleyway behind Greene Street. Eddie would see to the rest. The hour was late, after workers in the nearby factories had gone home. Dusk was settling. It was murky enough so that Herbert could not see clearly when he turned off the street, yet he spied the slim figure of a young woman who found her way into the alley. He likely gritted his teeth, annoyed to see an interloper in the very place where he was to make a delivery of important papers to his employer. He didn’t like taking orders from a woman, and had felt humiliated being told what to do by Miss Block, who, in his opinion, thought much too highly of herself, as if she was a man’s equal. He had his bully stick with him, and he didn’t mind issuing a threat or two to a stranger, then acting on those threats if need be. But before he could chase off the figure before him, Herbert took note of something odd. The girl in the alleyway looked familiar. Her pale hair plaited into braids, her girlish blue coat. It was the dimness surely, only a trick of the shadows, yet Frank Herbert hesitated, unsure. Quite possibly, the thing before him was not human in nature. Then, thinking himself ridiculous, he moved toward her. “Go on,” he said with menace in his tone. “This is no place for ladies.”

She looked at him fully. “Neither is the river.” The young woman opened her hands. There were the buttons she’d pulled from his coat when she struggled with him.

“Get on with you,” he said, confused. He took her now to be the girl he’d had to get rid of. Somehow she had returned from the river and found him. She had torn the blue thread from her lips to speak to him.

“I have your buttons,” she told him. “From when you killed me.”

He stepped forward, his club at the ready. “If you’re a ghost, then you won’t die again, though it was easy enough to kill you the first time.”

It was then the wolf came from behind her, the one who’d been on the porch when he’d seen to the prying old hermit who’d been on the hill the day he dumped the girl’s body. It seemed the wolf had died and returned as a ghost as well, and yet he was real enough that he had to be restrained with a chain, so intent was he on lunging at the man he recognized as his master’s killer.

“Hold on to him,” Herbert shouted. “He’ll be after me!”

“Because you killed the old man?”

“I did him a service putting him out of the misery he lived in. Now go away, the both of you! Vanish from here! There’s real business of the living to be going on in this place, and we don’t need the likes of you.”

Herbert did not hear the men from the Workmen’s Circle as they circled him, then leapt upon him. They were indeed the living, who beat him down and shackled him with a length of rope, then slipped on iron cuffs. Isaac Rosenfeld got a black eye in the process, of which he was quite proud. There had been six witnesses to Herbert’s confession; most Eddie had known as boys in the factories. Eddie took a photograph of the men who gathered around Frank Herbert, a memento they could show their mothers and girlfriends. Eddie had promised Juliet he would not pursue her brother, but that didn’t mean others wouldn’t take up the cause and do their best to connect him to the events that had led to Hannah’s death.

Rosenfeld took the buttons as further proof against Herbert. Ella, who had so bravely consented to play the part of her sister’s ghost, was asked if she would accompany them to the Tenth Precinct and make her statement as well.

“I need to go with them,” Ella said when Eddie wanted to walk her home safely. “My father will understand. And it’s you he’ll want to hear from. You’re the one he’s trusted.”