In the Shadow of Gotham - By Stefanie Pintoff Page 0,49

so much to have things back, just as they were.”

As she stood before me in her wrap on the porch, I looked at her with pity and thought that she suddenly looked very old and frail. “Of course,” I said gently, and bid her good-bye, thinking that no matter what tricks of mind Virginia Wingate might employ, not even the best of imaginations could ever make things just as they once were.

“Joe?” I called out from the foot of the stairs. “Are you ready to go?”

There was no answer.

“Joe?” I called again, more loudly this time.

Miss Abigail’s pale face appeared suddenly at the top of the stair railing. “Come up now,” she said, her voice filled with worry. “He’s behaving strangely. Something is wrong, but I don’t know what.”

I bounded up the staircase, taking three steps at a time, and Miss Wingate quickly ushered me into a small bedroom where Joe awkwardly hugged the back of a rocking chair.

“Ziele.” He uttered my name and took a step toward me, but his left leg buckled the moment he put weight on it. His large frame collapsed onto the floor and he looked up at me with un-seeing eyes. “So dizzy,” he murmured.

“Help me get him onto the bed,” I said to Miss Wingate.

Once he lay flat, he continued to complain that he could not see, nor could he feel anything in his left leg. I cradled his head against the pillow and felt his pulse. “Don’t worry. Just be still for now.”

“Please go call Dr. Fields,” I whispered to Miss Wingate, who stood helplessly next to us. “Immediately!” I called after her, when she left the room rather too slowly. “We’ve absolutely no time to waste.”

CHAPTER 12

By early afternoon, Joe was resting at home, and I was suddenly on my own in this investigation. “Apoplexy” had been Dr. Fields’s diagnosis. “He’s had a bad stroke,” the doctor had said. “I think his vision may return; I’m less hopeful about the movement he has lost in his left leg. But rest can work wonders for one’s health, so let’s wait and see.” While Joe recuperated under the care of his industrious wife Anna—who had vowed to make all the preparations she thought appropriate for an invalid in the house, including vast quantities of soup—I stopped by the office to check for messages.

No good news awaited me. Mayor Fuller was unhappy about our apparent lack of progress. And there was no word from Alistair—odd, given that he had promised me an update. Fortunately, the information I had requested from my former partner Mulvaney had arrived. I had asked him to locate the police records for the housebreaker who had previously victimized Sarah Wingate. His name was Otto Schmidt, and his arrest record described him as a recent immigrant with no visible means of support and a long history of arrests on charges of vagrancy and disturbing the peace. But the incident involving Sarah Wingate was his first arrest for theft. It was likely, of course, that he had stolen before and simply never been caught.

It took only a few moments to scan through the relevant facts. On September 15, 1904, at nine o’clock at night, he had been arrested for breaking into Mrs. Gardiner’s boarding house for young ladies on Riverside Drive. Several items belonging to Miss Sarah Wingate had been taken. After Schmidt was convicted on that charge, he served six months in jail before disappearing during the confusion that followed a jail house fire. He had not been located since, and it was questionable whether anyone had even attempted to find him. Many offenders considered far more dangerous had escaped during the same fire, and Otto Schmidt was, by comparison, not worth the effort.

As always, Mulvaney anticipated my next request; his note indicated he would determine whether Otto Schmidt could be located, in hopes of ascertaining whether he was even in the New York area at the time of Sarah’s murder. To be honest, I did not believe Otto Schmidt bore any relation to the murder; despite his long criminal record, the man’s history was that of a petty thief, not a violent murderer. But his prior criminal connection with Sarah Wingate placed him under suspicion—a suspicion I would need to clear, particularly if only circumstantial evidence continued to connect Fromley to the case.

Reassured that Mulvaney would handle that angle of the investigation for me, I headed back into the city for the day. I planned to follow up on Stella’s