Speakers of the Dead: A Walt Whitman Mystery

Prologue

In the dream, Elizabeth Blackwell sits opposite Jane Avery’s deathbed. She dabs Jane’s furrowed forehead with a wet cloth and whispers that all will be well. Jane tilts her head toward Elizabeth and tries to speak through her cracked lips caked in muck. Then Jane slips into an irreversible coughing fit—

And that’s when a noise wakes Elizabeth.

She opens her eyes, relieved. She hates that recurring dream, the helpless feeling of watching her friend die. It’s been six years since Jane Avery’s death, and not a day goes by that Elizabeth doesn’t believe she might have saved her had she been properly trained as a physician.

The noise sounds again.

Around her, in the dormitory of the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan, the other four students do not stir. Perhaps it was nothing.

She closes her eyes and summons the image of Jane in her prime, her long, elegant frame and creamy skin. After Latin class at the Cincinnati English and French Academy for Young Ladies, Jane is cleaning the blackboard. She erases the word mulier. She senses Elizabeth watching, turns and smiles—

There it is again. A metallic banging this time.

Elizabeth reaches for her robe and slippers. She lights a candle, waking Miss Zacky in the bed next to hers.

"Lizzy. Miss Zacky checks her pocket watch. It’s three in the morning, and Abraham’s trial begins at nine."

Abraham Stowe, cofounder of the women’s college and a married man, has been accused of manslaughter, the result of a botched abortion performed on Mary Rogers, with whom he admitted having a love affair. In his defense, and for the sake of Abraham’s wife and college cofounder, Lena, the students stayed up late preparing anatomical diagrams outlining the effects of abortion on a woman’s body. The diagrams would be compared with the Mary Rogers autopsy report, which Lena and Elizabeth believed had been altered to implicate Abraham.

Be that as it may, I heard a noise downstairs. I should have a look.

Miss Zacky groans. You know that means I have to accompany you.

I also know that you are capable of making your own decisions.

The two women skulk across the room into the stairwell, closing the dormitory door behind them. They make their way down the stairs past the third-floor maternity ward, all silent, then to the second-floor infirmary.

Inside, the patient nearest the door, Mrs. Cook, sleeps soundly. Mrs. Stephens, a few beds over, also lies still. Mrs. Dowd, in the bed next to the window, shifts at the sound of their entrance. She sits up straight, struggles to breathe through the dehydration associated with the cholera-like symptoms that landed her in the sickroom the day before.

Elizabeth props Mrs. Dowd with a pillow while Miss Zacky goes for laudanum.

There, there, Mrs. Dowd, Elizabeth says. Take your time.

But Mrs. Dowd’s deep, panicked breath can’t catch up to itself, and suffocation is closing in. Elizabeth keeps talking, rubbing her back. You can do it, she says.

Mrs. Dowd’s eyes roll back, and she heaves.

Elizabeth doesn’t hesitate. She slides onto the bed and wraps her arms around her patient. She finds the sternum and pushes hard. Nothing happens, and so she repeats the move. This time, Mrs. Dowd coughs up a bite of meat, which lands on the white sheet at the end of the bed. Elizabeth holds the woman until she catches her breath. Didn’t quite finish our supper, did we?

While Elizabeth holds her upright, Miss Zacky raises the glass to Mrs. Dowd’s mouth. She struggles to swallow at first, but then works it down.

When the laudanum takes effect, the results are swift. Mrs. Dowd’s body weight collapses into Elizabeth’s lap. She looks at Miss Zacky, who mouths the words Her eyes have closed.

Relief washes over Elizabeth. She has the fleeting thought that healing is what God put her on earth to do. She eases out from behind her patient, tucking the blanket under the sleeping woman’s chin.

Back in the stairwell, Miss Zacky whispers, You’re going to be an excellent doctor, Lizzy. Elizabeth smiles in response.

In the dormitory now, Elizabeth observes the rise and fall of the sleeping bodies and contemplates the miracle that is a medical college for women. And it’s all thanks to Abraham and Lena Stowe. Later this morning, they’ll begin the work of proving Abraham’s innocence, and the college can return to its primary mission: to advance the welfare of women through medicine and education. Slipping beneath the covers, she lays her head on the straw pillow and closes her eyes to dream of Jane once again.

Suddenly, loud and chaotic noises, a string of grunts and screams, ascend from the first floor.

She glances at Miss Zacky, eyes wide. The other students pop up, one after another: Karina Emsbury, Olive Perschon, Patricia Onderdonk. What is it? they want to know, and Elizabeth bids them Wait here.

She and Miss Zacky hurry down the stairs to the dissection room on the first floor. Elizabeth puts her ear to the door. Nothing.

From behind her, Miss Zacky whispers, The body snatchers . . . ?

A scream sounds.

Elizabeth throws open the door, searching for signs of the fearsome resurrection men who dig up fresh graves and sell the corpses to medical colleges like this one. A single candle on the back wall illuminates the familiar sight of a large central table ringed by shelves and counters. A lone figure hunches over a body, laid out as if for dissection.

It’s Lena Stowe, gazing down at her dead husband. His eyes and mouth are open, and his chest has been split apart, his rib cage sawed in two. Blood is everywhere. On Abraham. On Lena. On the table and floor.

Elizabeth wraps her arms around a sobbing Lena, and while they cry together, she can’t help but stare at the monstrous carnage.

It’s not yet morning on February 12, 1843.

TWO WEEKS LATER

Chapter 1

They are going to kill her .

Walt Whitman, reporter for the New York Aurora, is standing in the courtyard of the Tombs, with several hundred New Yorkers who have crushed past his cold, aching body for a glimpse of the execution.

The sun is at the halfway point on its short cycle through the winter sky, and its low angle casts long shadows from west to east, shadows that cover all but the east wall of the prison. It is on this wall that Lena’s large and lonely shadow is cast as if by stage light.

The noose dances in the harsh winter wind, and below the gallows, a layer of frost blankets the dirt. Walt pushes his way to the front of the crowd, the ice crystals crunching beneath his boots. They are all waiting for Sheriff Jack Harris to return from his meeting with Mayor Morris about whether or not to grant Mrs. Stowe a stay on her execution because of her pregnancy. Walt worries that the decision to deny the stay is a fait accompli, which is why he brought with him a sheaf of testimonials from Lena’s medical students in which they argue that the fetus has quickened, a legal problem for the city, because if the fetus has begun to move, New York would be executing two of its citizens instead of one.

The sheriff’s coach, a new yellow phaeton, rumbles through the prison gates, around the crowd, and skids to a stop. Jack Harris’s silver hair is stuffed under a top hat, his bearded face deceptively slight compared to his stout body. By reputation, he is a man who sometimes puts instinct before protocol.

Whitman calls out to the sheriff, and when he tries to follow the lawman, two guards block his way. He scurries back around to the front of the gallows for a better view. The arrest and trial were rushed affairs, rigged against her from the beginning, it seemed, and her defense never gained real traction with anyone but those closest to her. The students know Lena and Abraham. They spent time with them every day for months, and they saw what Walt saw: a couple who, despite their problems, had become closer. None of them even considered Lena as a suspect until Sheriff Harris arrested her.

At the sheriff’s appearance atop the gallows, the crowd quiets.

The silence presses down on Walt, and he fights back feelings of despair. The woman who treated him like a son is beautiful and haggard, still wearing the medical school–issued black dress and white apron stained with her husband’s blood, having refused to change since her arrest. Her long black hair ribbons stream in the wind, and her dark eyes are red and swollen. His heart aches to see her suffer like this.

The sheriff approaches the condemned woman, her body quivering, and he whispers in her ear.

There is a moment of nothingness—

—and then she reels backward, emitting a preternatural scream that convulses Walt’s soul.

Lena flails until the wiry priest powerfully grips her shoulder. And God hath both raised up the Lord, he calls out in his baritone voice, and will also raise you up by his own power.

But the baby!

Whitman rushes the stairway but is again blocked by the two guards. He shuffles backward, stands on his tiptoes. Behind him, the bloodthirsty crowd stirs.

Harris pauses for a moment, then nods to the jailer, Little Joe, who holds Lena fast while the sheriff ties her hands behind her back.

Walt’s heart races.

This time Whitman charges, using his large frame to knock one guard to the side, the other to the ground, before ascending the staircase, two steps at a time.

On the hanging platform, half a dozen coppers line the back end. There’s the priest, wide-eyed and hunched over. There’s Little Joe, twice as big as any other man in the city, and there’s Sheriff Harris. Walt holds up the leather-bound sheaf. These medical testimonies demonstrate that Mrs. Stowe is quick with child.

The sheriff shakes his head. Mr. Whitman, our medical expert reached a different conclusion.

A few feet away, Lena’s sobs are muted by the wind.

Walt takes a step toward the sheriff, and two policemen meet him. Mrs. Stowe’s colleagues disagree.

Those women are not doctors.

The sheriff turns away, but Whitman catches him on his shoulder. You’re a good man. I saw how you restored order after the cigar girl was murdered.

The law is the law.

Whitman pushes a little harder. This city does not need another controversy.

At the delay the crowd jitters, the kind of tottering that precedes a mob action.

The sheriff briefly looks Walt in the eye, then gestures to two of his men, and they promptly take Walt into custody.

Her death will be on your watch, Whitman shouts.

Knowing that Walt has failed, Lena resumes her struggle to get free. She rolls toward the edge of the platform and nearly goes over—

But Little Joe grabs her from behind and lifts her to her feet.

During the commotion, Walt wrestles away, but a third man kicks him in the stomach, and the other two retake him. The pain is searing. He rolls to the side. The watchmen have the platform covered, and there are more of them on the ground for crowd control and even more at the gate. He is surrounded.

The sheriff slips the black hood over Lena’s head and reaches for the noose, and that’s when the men holding Whitman loosen their grip just enough—

He wiggles free, dodges Harris, and scoops up Lena, black hood and all. She is heavy in his arms, but the adrenaline drives him to brave the blockade of six men, their Colt pistols drawn, their faces blank. He charges through them, and miraculously sees daylight between him and the stairway. If he can only make it down—

—and then the space closes, and the men are upon him. Walt clings to Lena with all his might until she whispers, her voice strong and deliberate from beneath the hood, It’s over, Walt. You did your best.

He holds back his tears. But you’re innocent.

Keep the college going so our deaths are not in vain.

He holds her tighter.

It takes four men to hold Whitman, and two more to pry Lena away from him. The men push him to the ground and cuff him, the metal cutting into his wrists. Walt screams, curses, thrashes about, mad with rage over what is about to happen.

He watches as the sheriff slips the noose over Lena’s head, positions her over the trapdoor, and addresses those who condemned her to this fate: For the murder of Abraham Stowe, he bellows, you have been sentenced to death by hanging, after which your body will be dissected at the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan.

The crowd roars.

Walt breathes in.

The sheriff claps three times, the lever is pulled, and the floor falls away—

Lena’s body drops.

—her neck breaks.

—and Walt Whitman collapses on the platform, sobbing now, and waits for his friend and her unborn child to die.

Chapter 2

Whitman’s wrists sting where the skin has abraded, and his spirit is raw. He wants to look away from the gruesome scene, but out of respect for Lena’s wishes, he will bear witness. Before him, her body twitches, and two men with pistols stand guard over him. He watches until she stops moving altogether, her last prayer smothered in its utterance.

At that moment, Coroner Barclay, a tiny excuse for a man, creeps onto the scene and pronounces Lena dead. Little Joe cuts the rope suspending her body midair, and she drops into the back of the coroner’s wagon. Barclay tosses a tarp over her, and drives away.

As Walt stands, restrained, the sheriff finishes up interviews with James Gordon Bennett from the New York Herald and Horace Greeley from the New York Tribune. The fact that Greeley and Bennett, both with readerships in the twenty thousands, are in attendance illustrates the enormity of what has happened, and Walt will add his own account to the Aurora as soon as he can. Before joining the Aurora, with its five thousand readers, he worked as a printer for Park Benjamin at the New World. While there, several of his short stories were published by Benjamin, who later hired him to write the novel Franklin Evans, despite their public disagreements that led to his departure from the New World.

The meeting disbands, and Harris approaches. Walt holds out his hands to be released.

Sorry, Mr. Whitman. You’ll be coming with me. He tugs at the heavy metal cuffs. The newspapers are about to run wild with your antics.

But I have an appointment to transport Mrs. Stowe’s body from the coroner’s to the women’s college today.

That is the coroner’s responsibility.

I promised Miss Blackwell, and Dr. Barclay agreed.

Perhaps you should have had this in mind before you attempted to halt the execution.

The watch house jail stinks like an outhouse, and is as dark. Walt squints to see better but has to rely on sounds—the shuffling, scraping, and breathing of confined men.

The sheriff leads him to a cell near the back of the hallway. With a key larger than his hand, Harris unlocks the door and uses his full body weight to push it open. He nudges Whitman into the cell, where a freckle-faced boy with bright red hair sits on the cell’s one cot. Dressed in socks but no shoes, tattered pantaloons, and a ripped white shirt, he can’t be more than thirteen years old.

This is for your own protection, Harris says as he swings the cell door shut.

Do those words ease your conscience?

You rushed the gallows, Harris says. You assaulted my men. You should be grateful I don’t lock you up for a year.

Whitman stands strong and tall until the sheriff is out of sight, then doubles over in grief. He is surrounded by stone and one window, less than a square foot in size and set above eye level, the only break.

The boy catches him eyeing the window. There’s no way out, he says. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Walt sinks to the floor. He cannot escape this situation, nor his own grief. Lena is gone forever from this world, and he’ll never sit across the table from her or Abraham—no more conversing into the late hours of the night, no more comparing their readings of Emerson, or listening to Abraham and Lena discuss Oliver Wendell Holmes’s latest précis on hygiene and disease.

The boy asks, You tried to stop the hanging?

Of an innocent woman.

No offense, mister, but she had good reason to kill her husband after what he did to the cigar girl.

The boy’s version of events matches popular opinion: Abraham Stowe had an affair with Mary Rogers, the pretty cigar store clerk. She became pregnant, Abraham botched the abortion, and Rogers died. Abraham panicked and tossed her body in the river. Lena found out about the affair and abortion, and killed him. The State of New York executed her. Done.

I know what has been said about this matter, but the City of New York has made a terrible error.

The boy leans forward. You couldn’t find proof that she didn’t kill her husband, could you?

It’s an eventuality.

But she’s dead. Why not leave her be?

Walt locks eyes with the boy. The truth always matters.

The boy does not pursue the topic further. Instead, he confesses his own crime. I was arrested for grave robbery. The boy pauses, then continues. I tried to dig up the body of my neighbor, Mrs. Abernathy.

Whitman tries to ignore him, but the boy persists. Have you ever dug a grave, mister?

He shakes his head. Of course not.

It ain’t as easy as you might think. The ground is frozen solid, and it took me two hours to break up the dirt. The boy stands, pretends to dig. His movements are pained, but he perseveres. "I’m shoveling and shoveling. How far down is she? I’m in the hole about waist deep when I finally reach the casket. I’ll chip the lid off the casket and slide her out that way. If I’m still at it by sunrise, I know I’ll end up—he flashes his biggest smile—I know I’ll end up in jail."

The sheriff arrested you before you could sell the corpse? Walt presses, warming to his subject. He knows about the resurrection men and their grisly trade in dead bodies.

The boy shakes his head. Mrs. Abernathy’s brothers were standing guard, looking out for folks like me. They’d slipped away for a couple of pops, and when they returned, I had her nearly out.

Walt understands this too about body snatching: The burden is on the families to guard their loved ones’ bodies—whether by armed guard or by technology. The Patent Coffin, for one, is made out of wrought iron and lined with spring catches so the lid won’t open. There are cages, straps, or even dead houses—places where loved ones can leave the bodies safely until they are no longer good for dissection. Or, as in this case, the family itself might stand guard—

Suddenly, Walt is concerned about the boy. His face shows no sign of injury, but the way he moves—And they roughed you up?

The boy coughs.

Whitman joins the boy on the cot and reaches for his shirt. The boy resists at first, but Walt reassures him with a soft look and a nod. The bruises, deep browns and purples, cover his chest and back.

Where are your parents?

He pauses. Dead, sir.

Maybe Walt can give the boy a chance, bring him to the women’s college, where they’ll look after him until he’s recovered.

I’m sorry for your loss, mister.

Memories of Lena come unbidden, and Walt is flooded with the awe he felt observing her medical lectures, Abraham always in attendance. Her distinguished beauty matched her quick wit. Her strong, confident voice would fill the room, and when the students’ questions inevitably came, she fielded them with a generous tone and a precise logic.

And now he’s crying.

The boy slides close and wraps his scrawny arm around Walt’s neck. It’s okay, mister. My mother used to tell me that death is not the end but a start to something better, something glorious. Do you believe that too?

Whitman considers himself a deist with Quaker leanings, a man who believes that death is a curvature of the ringed self, all part of a larger cycle of comings and goings, that the mind and soul are eternal. But the tragedy of Lena’s and Abraham’s untimely deaths has undercut these beliefs. For now, he will have to rely on the boy’s faith. I do believe that, Walt says. Absolutely.

We’re all right, then, the two of us, the boy says.

A clatter of footsteps sounds in the hallway. The key clanks, the chamber turns, and the heavy iron cell door opens to reveal a young man whose sculpted cheekbones and square jawline are framed by dark shoulder-length hair. His low-crown top hat tilts rakishly toward a wilted pink boutonniere on his lapel.

Henry? Walt faces his past.

You look terrible, Mr. Whitman.

After a short courtship, the men had parted a few years earlier—Henry bound to his family farm in northern Manhattan, and Walt to teach school in Brooklyn. They had promised to write letters, and while Walt had written several, Henry had written none.

What are you doing here?

"I’m your new boss at the Aurora, Henry says, leaning on his chestnut walking stick. And Mr. Ropes sent me here to bail you out."

Walt rises to shake Henry Saunders’s hand—his skin is soft and his grip strong. I’m grateful, he says, but the only way I’m coming with you is if you bail out my friend here, Mr.— He turns to the boy.

Smith. The boy stands despite the pain. Azariah Smith.

Chapter 3

Walt follows the coroner, Dr. Kenneth Barclay, down a long white hallway that opens up to a makeshift morgue. Once inside, Dr. Barclay removes the sheet with all the flair of P. T. Barnum revealing an exhibition.

Walt gulps back tears.

Lena’s dark eyes are open, her mouth twisted halfway between a smile and a scream. Walt attempts to close both her eyes and jaw—her skin is cold and greasy—but