Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“He said that?” asked Ransom.

“Something to that effect, yes. Implied a lot.”

“And you boys got angry and argued with him?” asked Reahall.

“I pulled Thomas off, and we went searching elsewhere for his Uncle Anton.”

“Searching where?”

“His house, hoping he’d gone home to bed, thinking him perhaps unwell.”

“I see.” Reahall rubbed his chin, striking a pose, looking thoughtful. “And next thing we know, Tuttle is gone as well… and no one has seen or heard from O’Toole. I arrested O’Toole a couple of times for drunk ’n’ disorderly. I warrant the man is somehow behind this mystery.”

“Unless he, like the others, is a victim,” suggested Ransom.

“Four men gone missing…” muttered Declan. “All in a matter of one night.”

“I presume you interviewed the other Pinkerton agents?” asked Ransom of Reahall. “Agents are rough men, often hired for their transgressions and brought into the fold. Some have been known to go bad once they’re given a spot of power and a gun.”

“A falling out among the scum, eh?” said Reahall. “I suppose you know all about that, being from Chicago.”

“Boston, actually. As for Chicago, I have found it no worse than any other major city, including Irish cities; each having its underbelly.”

“So now that you have your start here at the mine in searching for Fiore,” replied Reahall, taking another tack with Ransom,“where might you go next to locate the missing watchman or O’Toole for that matter?”

Ransom continued huddled with Reahall. “If there is a connection between Fiore and O’Toole, perhaps the shipyard is the place to continue,” suggested Ransom. “401 – Titanic as of now a fourth man’s gone missing from this general locale. Tuttle was guarding the ship, Fiore guarding the yard, McAffey in a sense, being a super, was by definition a guard at the mine.”

Reahall beamed at the direction Ransom was taking now. “Shades of anarchy at work, you surmise?”

“It would be my first guess—if not for the elephant in the room.”

“You mean the beast here?” Reahall pointed a boot at the animal carcass.

“If it weren’t for that and the condition of McAffey’s body, I’d definitely be rounding up suspected and known anarchists about now, yes.”

“You are a policeman at heart—a detective in Boston, you say?”

“I was a private detective there,” he lied atop the lie. He’d only passed through Boston on his way to taking a berth on a merchant marine bound for Ireland after his escape from Chicago.

“Suppose our anarchists have some new chemical they’ve doused McAffey and some pony-sized stray dog with? Something that blackens the skin and turns it hard?”

“Yes, these anarchists—least the ones I encountered in Boston—they were always seeking to find new types of explosives and chemical weapons, true. True indeed. Knew one fellow who had cultured a batch of smallpox, but I know of no such chemical that could kill a man so surely as this. Why look at these two! What could’ve done this? To leave a man like this?” Ransom indicated McAffey’s horrid remains. “Do you, Constable Reahall know of any chemical form of combustion to do this?”

“Acid perhaps?” Reahall looked to Dr. Bellingham for an answer, but Dr. B was once again mesmerized by what his eyes were taking in. It took Reahall shaking the man to bring him to reply. “Yes, yes… well… we need to view the man’s entire body sans clothing to make any intelligent guesswork. As to an estimate of time of death, given the petrified nature of the exterior… . I mean it has gone from seeming like tanned hide to a rocklike texture just since I’ve arrived—and a likely corresponding dehydration of the interior makes any estimate sheer folly.”

Bellingham was clearly out of his element and dazed.

“I mean the discoloration is so damnably uniform about the face and hands and forearms. I suspect if we cut away his shirt…”

Declan finished for Dr. B, saying, “The blackened skin will likely cover the man’s entire frame. Isn’t that right, Dr. B?”

. “I’ll ask the questions here,” Reahall said, anxious to control the uncontrollable. He then looked into Bellingham’s eyes and said, “Well then, Enoch, cut away the man’s clothes and let’s have a look, shall we?”

But Bellingham seemed no more anxious to touch the dead man than did Reahall, and no one could blame him.

Declan snatched out a scalpel from a double-thick leather sleeve clipped to an inside pocket of his tweed jacket. Both jacket and scalpel had been given him by his father—a surgeon back in his home town in Wales where he grew up neighbors to Thomas and his family. As a result, Declan carried the scalpel on him at all times, and so now holding its gleaming surface up to everyone’s eyes, he asked Dr. Bellingham, “Would you like me to do the honors, sir?”

Bellingham stammered, “Ahhh… well, son… Declan…”

“I’ve already handled both corpses, sir; if it’s contagious, I’m already dead—along with Mr. Wyland and likely Thomas as well.”

Bellingham took a deep breath. “Yes… by all means, Mr. Irvin, do cut away the clothing. Let us have a look at the chest. You there, man, hold the lantern closer.”

Walter McComas did as asked, no questions, his beaked nose like a snapping turtle, his frame that of a scarecrow.

Declan kneeled and began cutting away the miner’s shirt to reveal his chest. “Uniform discoloration… no splotches, no isolated patches, and the cloth itself fully intact. Whatever this is… it didn’t come about by a torch or acid thrown on the man or even a bomb blast; this discoloration, sir comes from within—”

“Enough, Declan,” ordered Bellingham. “We can’t do any further medical examination here in the dark.”

“Understood, sir, but—”

“Declan, Mr. Irvin, we need the body transported to our lab at the hospital morgue—the one devoted to Queens University, gentlemen. I’ll send the knacker-man ’round.”

“A horse butcher?” asked Ransom, astounded. “Would you tell the man’s wife that her husband’s body was carted about on a butcher’s wagon?”

“The knacker doubles as our body man,” said Thomas, shrugging and frowning.

“For corpses, you see, to work on… at the morgue, you see, for surgical study,” added Declan as if informing a child.

Reahall slapped Ransom on the shoulder and said, “What you fellows in Chicago call a John or Jane Doe, we designate as A. N. Other; any unidentified body found dead in the gutter or dead of mysterious causes—and this certainly qualifies—goes for dissection and studies like your John Doe types.”

“Boston, man. I am from Boston.”

“But wait, sirs, this man is known,” piped up Walter who’d remained respectfully quiet, holding the lantern, keeping a certain distance from the educated men. “He’s no ‘Nother’ for your dissections! The miners hear of you cutting on McAffey, you’ll have a riot on your hands, for sure.”

“Hold on there, big fella,” said Reahall, a hand going up; this followed by a near imperceptible signal for two uniformed Belfast coppers to step forward out of the waiting shadows to lend a hand and to keep Walter in his place. “You can send one of my men to fetch the knacker,” he told Bellinghan.

“He’s not far,” said Declan, back on his feet. “Name is Mitchem… lives in the back alleyway near where Grovesnor meets Hilltop End just past Falls Road.”

“Aye, that’s the place,” added Thomas, “and you need only ask anyone in the neighborhood and they’ll point it out.”

Constable Reahall ordered one of his men off on the errand. “You’ll do your best then to determine cause of death, Dr. Bellingham?” Reahall’s rhetorical question hung in the air for a long moment until Bellingham met his eye and slowly nodded. Ransom recognized the unspoken signal—that the constable, as with the knacker-man, would get a kickback on the corpse.