The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose Read Free Book Online

determining identification. The old lady staggered into the cavernous Dead House, supported under either arm by the two ex-roomers, Arthur Crommelin and Archibald Padley, but, despite Acting Mayor Purdy’s insistence, was unable to bring herself to gaze upon the body. Decomposition had already taken place to such an extent that no trace of the once-beautiful girl could be recognized in the black and swollen features, and Hays reiterated to the acting mayor for the third time his conviction that it was unwise to insist the old woman perform this hellacious duty.
    Instead, through an anguished veil of tears, the grieving mother, with Hays at her side, eventually identified her daughter’s body by articles of clothing stripped from the corpse.
    That evening when Hays returned home from the Tombs, Olga already had dinner laid out on the table. She also had a newspaper tucked underneath her arm. “Annie Lynch brought this to my attention,” she explained, referring to her dear friend from the Brooklyn Female Academy. “It is an admonishing tract from the New York Advocate of Moral Reform . Papa, the editors have taken this opportunityto voice their moral repugnance with the state of affairs in our society,” she snorted. “Mightn’t I read you what they opine?”
    “Most assuredly, my dear, if you don’t mind me having a seat first.” At this late hour, after a day such as this, it was comfort he sought.
    She began:
    “One word to the young ladies who may read this, from a voice from the grave, speaking to you in tones of warning and entreaty,
    Had Mary Cecilia Rogers loved the house of God, had she reverenced the Sabbath, had she refused to associate with unprincipled and profligate men, how different might her fate have been!”

8
The Investigation
Begins in Earnest
    L ater that night, having returned to his office at the Tombs, High Constable Jacob Hays officially registered the death of Mary Cecilia Rogers as murder, whereupon New York coroner Dr. Archibald Archer confirmed in the Dead House the results of the autopsy performed by Hoboken medical examiner Cook, with the exception of listing cause of death as “drowned,” whereas Coroner Cook had it listed as “strangulation.”
    Hays fumed. Over the years, the more he had grown to depend on them in his investigations, the more skeptical he had grown of doctors, their acuity and theory. He had asked this specific question of Dr. Cook: Had Mary Rogers been drowned? To which said medical man had responded unequivocally that she had not been drowned, citing the absence of frothy blood in her mouth as proof.
    “Dr. Archer,” Hays now pressed the New York man, “according to your colleague Dr. Cook, Mary Cecilia Rogers was dead before she went into the water. How say you to this?”
    Archer relented without a fight. He said it might indeed be so. “Consider Dr. Cook kerrect,” he said. To which Hays knew he could rely on neither of these men, but would have to pick and choose what was valuable and what would prove less than gospel.
    In spite of the hour, Hays trekked back across Chambers Street and up Centre to his office to consider the facts he had at hand. Once seated in his hard chair, two or three of the prison’s ubiquitous mousers began to gather about him with their annoying mewing and pestering.
    Hays was no pussyite. He made no bones about that. He could not stand the felines. Yet, perversely, the prison cats seemed to take particular delight in him. Hays took that as testament to their misconceived character.
    He considered the possibilities of the crime as they presented themselves to him:
Mary Rogers died at the hands of a gang of ruffians.
Mary Rogers died at the hands of a beau, or ex-beau, in the murderer’s misplaced estimation, somehow wronged by her.
Mary Rogers died at the hands of a stranger: until the day of her death, someone she did not know.
Mary Rogers died by her own hand. (Unlikely, considering the manner in which she was found