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CHAPTER THREE
MYSTERIOUS MIDNIGHT MURDER
AN EMINENT CITIZEN ASSASSINATED
INTENSE EXCITEMENT IN BOND STREET

An atrocity, almost unparalleled by any of the atrocities committed in this City, came to light on Saturday morning in the house at No. 31 Bond Street. Dr. Harvey Burdell was found in his office, foully murdered, and frightfully and fiendishly mutilated. Dr. Burdell was a man of considerable wealth, and respectably connected.

All the inmates of the house, which is also occupied by the family of a housemistress, Mrs. Cunningham, are prevented from leaving the premises by a body of Police, who are detailed for that purpose by the Coroner’s orders.

Bond Street was visited by hundreds of persons who came out of curiosity, to look at the house.

The New York Times, FEBRUARY 3, 1857

Monday, February 3, 1857

Henry Clinton scraped the blade along his neck and then tapped the razor against the side of the china basin. He heard a newsboy crying the headlines: “Murder, Murder! Murder on Bond Street!” As the call echoed closer, it drifted into his bedroom like a song. He continued scraping the skin and tapping the bowl without missing a beat. Bond Street was just across Broadway, a block east from his house on Bleecker Street, yet the news did not interrupt the rhythm of his shave. Clinton was a criminal lawyer and no stranger to bloodshed.

He pulled the towel from his neck and wiped away the last beads of lather. He fastened a collar to the top of his shirt, adding cuff links and a silk-lined vest. Lifting a gold watch from his dressing table, he fastened the chain to his pocket. Bond Street, he thought. That would teach her. It was his wife’s idea that they move uptown from Warren Street. As the burgeoning commerce of the city spread like a fan through lower Manhattan, the fine homes downtown, once belonging to bankers and merchants, gave way to shops, and the houses along the side streets were now flanked with tradesmen. The well-to-do had long ago moved north to the quiet elegance of Bleecker Street, Bond Street, and Washington Square.

It wasn’t to keep up with the wealthy that had prompted Elisabeth to insist they move. She had argued for it because their old home was walking distance to his office on Chambers Street and the courts, allowing Clinton to rush back and forth at all times of day and night, never sitting still long enough to eat a proper meal. Now his ride downtown took half an hour on the Bowery omnibus, the distance allowing, Elisabeth had hoped, for a fuller domestic life. In fact, the long commute aggravated him, and his longer absences made her nervous. Now, she was always traveling downtown to visit him and to deliver him food.

Putting on his jacket and fixing his cravat, he entered the breakfast room. Out the high windows, wisteria vines hung bare with icicles and snow drifted deep across the garden from the weekend storm. The aroma of fresh muffins came from the kitchen below. The cook was at it again, making batches of baked goods for his office. His wife fretted about his nourishment and believed that if pies and cakes accompanied him downtown, they would buffer him from the harsh world of the prison and the courts.

The New York Times was folded next to his plate. Elisabeth entered, and as she passed his chair, she kissed him on the head. She sat down at the opposite end of the table, fluttering her napkin to her lap. She had a blooming complexion even in the deep of winter.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, snapping his newspaper open.

Elisabeth eyed him warily. “Just fine. I dreamt that newsboys entered the bedroom and wouldn’t leave until I got my purse.”

“That wasn’t a dream, dear, it is the spectral presence of the press.” Just an hour earlier her auburn hair had been a tousle of silk, curling across her pillow as she slept; now it was expertly pinned and caught the morning light. He had met his wife after he had finished his law degree at Harvard and come to New York to work as a junior counsel for a pair of septuagenarians on Battery Place. A classmate, a New Yorker, invited him to meet some girls. Unfamiliar with the social rites of ambitious mothers and their unmarried daughters, Clinton was pulled along to an afternoon tea, which featured a roster of pretty girls taking turns at a piano, each attempting to play music that was beyond their reach. Elisabeth sat on a chair at the edge of the parlor, the loveliest in the room. Irritated by the music, he eyed the chair next to her, and whispered, “How do you do, I am Henry Clinton. I am afraid I am a bit tin-eared.”

“I am, too,” she whispered back.

“Tin-eared?” he asked,

“No, a Clinton,” she replied. “Elisabeth Clinton.” It turned out that she was indeed a Clinton, but unlike his family, who were from a small town in Connecticut, she was descended from the illustrious Clintons of New York. Her grandfather DeWitt, a Mayor, a Governor, and a candidate for President, had used political office to plow through the end of the eighteenth century and reshape the continent. He had spearheaded the construction of the Erie Canal, allowing the riches of the West to flow into the ports of New York, and then forced the streets of Manhattan into a grid to absorb the backsplash of commerce. At present, the logjam of vehicles on the city streets was so fierce as to convince its inhabitants that New York was the capital of the world.

During the course of that afternoon tea, Clinton was smitten by Elisabeth, and in a matter of weeks he had fallen in love. He wooed her with his small salary, his best wit, and invitations to entertainments that they never reached, instead walking the streets of New York, lost in conversation until the moon shone through the quiet elms and it was time to take her home. She had a passion for the Romantic poets and had devoured Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill. Without much resistance, she had married him, making her Elisabeth Clinton Clinton. Had there ever been a woman lawyer, she would have been a superior one, and he often imagined their partnership, with twin names painted on a door.

He glanced at her from across the table. Now, nearly thirty to his thirty-six, there was not a moment of their habitual domestic life that failed to suit him. They had not been blessed with children, a circumstance that had once filled them with melancholy. Sometimes he still found her alone in the sitting room, paused over a book, looking sadly out past the lilac bushes, but as the years passed, each of them seemed to have eased their own personal wound of regret.

“I see you have already read the paper,” he said. The newspaper showed evidence that his wife and the maids had been picking through it in the kitchen for news of the murder.

“The cook fears that the murderer has satisfied his revenge for dentists, and lawyers are next,” said Elisabeth.

“Well, if an assassin is lurking in our alley, she will take good care of him. She wields a fierce knife. I have seen her butterfly a lamb,” he replied, scanning the many pages of bold headlines.

“Do you remember you visited him once?” asked Elisabeth. “You had an abscess, and he removed it,”

“Dr. Burdell?” said Clinton. “He persecuted me mercilessly, with clamps around my head and steel calipers in my jaw. It appears he had his throat sliced from ear to ear—a just retribution for a dental surgeon, I’d say.”

“Henry, please,” said Elisabeth. Inured to the cruelties of life, Elisabeth could be happy if only everyone would eat a full breakfast every day.

A maid entered and passed biscuits with dried apples and nut breads thick with walnuts, crocks of butter, honey, and peach preserves and a stack of corn cakes drowned in syrup. She carried a pot of tea back and forth from the sideboard.

‘“Intense excitement in Bond Street!’” Clinton read from the paper, piercing a breakfast sausage with his fork and waving it for emphasis. “My dear, I know you had hoped we’d escaped the intense excitement of my profession by moving uptown, but here we have it, practically at our doorstep.”

“They’ve locked everyone up in the house, even the cook. The police have turned the parlor into an interviewing room. No one has been permitted to speak to a lawyer,” said Elisabeth.

Clinton flipped through the pages. “Do you know why the editors are trumpeting this crime, when there are murders in the poorer wards every day?”

Elisabeth said, “Because, Henry, as you like to tell me ceaselessly, our illustrious, but corrupt mayor, Fernando Wood, has so polluted our metropolis, that this city is going to hell.”

“Precisely,” said Clinton waving his sausage in the air and taking a bite, for he loved to spar with her at breakfast. “However, as much as I enjoy blaming everything on Mayor Wood, I sense other motives afoot. Politics and crime make comfortable bedfellows and the District Attorney is about to throw his hat into the ring. A population roused to a fearful state by a frenzied press will be easy to deliver at the next mayoral election.” He stuffed the sausage in his mouth.

“Henry— “

“Don’t you agree, darling,” he said, interrupting her, “that if this murder had occurred in the poorer wards, we would not be supping on it for breakfast?”

“Listen to me,” she urged. “There is someone in the front parlor, to see you.”

“Here? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I was sure he could wait until you’d finished your meal. It is a messenger with a packet from your office.” Messengers were often sent from his office to deliver urgent news.

“Well, excuse me, my dear, while I attend to the man. He is, no doubt, wondering why I am dallying over sausage.” He pulled his napkin from his lap and dropped it on the table.

Clinton went into the front parlor, where a man sat on the edge of a seat with his satchels and parcels on the floor beside him. “Good morning, sir,” said Clinton. “I am sorry to keep you waiting. My wife has an obsession with breakfast and I regret to say, as her spouse, I am a prisoner of the meal.”

“Mr. Clinton,” said the man, rising. “I was sent this morning to bring these to you.” He bent down to untie the elaborate laces on his satchel.

“Has Mr. Armstrong been into the office yet?”

“No, not yet, sir, just the morning clerk.” Armstrong was Clinton’s partner, his senior by twenty years, who had distinguished himself as one of the city’s top attorneys with formidable legal skills and a permanent air of reproach. The contrasting style of the two law partners was a source of entertainment for the junior staff. James Armstrong was sober and exacting, his clients a roster of the rich and socially connected, while Clinton was impetuous and dynamic. His cases were more exciting, with dramatic consequences at the eleventh hour. The firm of Armstrong and Clinton was one of the most notable criminal firms in the city, built by the reputation of both partners. Clinton had made a name for himself with a string of successes at trial, but he chose his cases differently than Armstrong. He was forward-looking and preferred cases where the principle of the law was at stake, championing the wrongly accused, or the newly arrived, often representing those who could not pay.

The messenger handed Clinton a clerk’s note with the address of Josiah Livingstone, a mansion on Lafayette Place, not far from Bleecker Street. The case was about property disputes, with multiple lawsuits and fractional divisions arranged around lot lines. Such cases bored Clinton, for the outcome was always the same, with the bluebloods getting richer, simply by juggling pieces of earth and air.

“Mr. Armstrong would like you to stop over to Mr. Livingstone’s, sir,” said the messenger, “and witness his signature on these papers. They need to be filed by noon. And here’s a letter for you.”

“This came from the office?”

“Yes, sir, the morning clerk said it’s been at the door since Sunday.” It was a thin envelope on blue paper, with his name in ink across the front, in a shaky hand. When he opened the note he could see that it was written by a woman.

Dear Mr. Clinton,

I have gotten your name from my solicitor and I hope that you might come and see me. I am in need of legal assistance, but am told I can speak to no one, and have not spoken with anyone who can counsel me. This is about a murder, occurring

Friday night, at this house where I am sequestered, perhaps you have heard.

Please respond, as I am confined to house arrest, Sincerely,

Mrs. Emma Cunningham, 31 Bond Street

According to the newspaper, the murder scene had been turned over to a Coroner’s inquest, whereby the Coroner and his minions occupied the crime scene until they finished interrogating all possible witnesses, to gather facts while the crime was still fresh. In Clinton’s view, calling a jury to the scene of a murder was an antiquated custom, descended from English law, no longer suited to crime in modern cities. In addition, he knew that the Coroner, Edward Connery, was a blustery blowhard with a flair for theatrics. In Clinton’s mind, there was no greater obstacle to justice than the reckless ambition of an incompetent man.

Clinton returned to the breakfast room to find the table cleared. It was now eight thirty and his morning was slipping away. Elisabeth appeared with his overcoat.

“I’m off,” he said, distracted.

“Henry,” she said, looking at the envelope. “That’s not about the Bond Street murder is it?” She met his eye, which confirmed her guess. “There is no need for you to get involved—it sounds as if it’s turning into a Broadway melodrama.”

“From the reports, I suspect it is more like a circus, and I pity the animals in captivity,” he said. “You wouldn’t blame me if I stopped by to take a look—as a concerned neighbor, that is.”

“As a concerned neighbor, I fear you will try to give legal aid to every person at the scene.” There had been a recent lull in his workload and she cherished the calm. Elisabeth followed him to the front door, wrapping a white scarf around his neck, tenderly fretting about the cold air. From the street, he took a last look at her, shivering at the door.

“Good-bye, my dear,” he said. “Please promise me you will not make a pilgrimage downtown today to bring me lunch—it’s far too cold. It’s best to remain inside, in the warmth.”

“I will, if you promise to stay away from that murder on Bond Street,” she said blowing him a kiss.

CHAPTER FOUR

Out on the street, Henry Clinton peered at his watch to fix the time. When he reached Broadway, it was just coming to life. Downtown, the avenue would be deep into the activity of the day, but uptown, at eight thirty in the morning, shopkeepers were still lowering the shutters and cranking the blinds. A block north, a flock of newsboys was hawking their papers to passersby who congregated, their breath mingling in the cold air. As Clinton approached, he saw that the length of Bond Street, with its stately row of residential homes, was lined with a curious crowd. In the course of the early morning, the news of the crime had rippled across the city. Ragged boys in striped mittens and woolen wrappers, idle shopgirls and respectably dressed men passing to work were standing before 31 Bond Street, staring up at the façade, as if there were no entertainment more festive than murder.

Clinton ventured down the block. Policemen were standing like sentinels before the entry, occasionally stepping away to push back the crowd. The front door opened, and a murmur went through the pack as the District Attorney, Abraham Oakey Hall, emerged and paused atop the stoop in the morning sunshine, his silk hat gleaming above the heads of the throng. Hall hoisted his cane and hurried down the steps until he was swallowed into the crowd. He wore a flowing cape, a silk cravat in fuchsia; his shirt linen was deep plum. Known by his middle name, Oakey, Hall had been given the nickname “The Elegant Oakey” by the newspapers for being one of the few dandies in the legal profession. Clinton and Hall knew each other well, for they had tried many cases from opposing sides of the bench. In the courtroom, Clinton found Hall’s rainbow hues to be a distraction, where the law was written, case by case, in black and white.

“Well, well,” said Hall. “If it isn’t Henry Clinton, the illustrious defense attorney, searching for his next case.”

“And here is the District Attorney, canvassing for votes at a homicide,” said Clinton.

Hall put a hand to his breast, pretending offense. “I have come to assure the people of this fine neighborhood that the perpetrator of this abominable act will be brought to justice.” Hall’s voice swelled with traces of the South. As a child, his family had migrated between the North and the South, and the District Attorney could enchant a group of New York ladies at Delmonico’s, speaking with the upper-crust tones of the Northern gentry, and then, chameleon-like, drawl to a visiting congregation of the Southern elite, who had suddenly become numerous at political gatherings all over town.

“I have heard that there are residents of this house, under house arrest, who are being denied counsel,” stated Clinton.

“An inquest is under way, and there is no need for attorneys,” replied Hall.

“A Coroner cannot refuse anyone the right to counsel if they request it,” said Clinton.

“It is not my jurisdiction to interfere with the Coroner. I’d wager you rushed here fresh from reading your morning paper. As much as you may prefer to be the first, there will be time for the piling on of lawyers later.”

“And I would wager that prosecuting this case in the full view of the press would warm the Mayor’s seat for you,” said Clinton.

“You came to elect me Mayor?” asked Hall, bowing with mock gratitude. “Or are you here to offer your calling card to the poor widow upstairs?” The district attorney slid away, leaving his insult trailing in the air. Crossing the street, Hall greeted a man in a fur-collared coat and a yellow-and-black-striped vest, and the two men strolled off, huddled together.

Clinton pushed past the bystanders and headed toward the house. That a murder would become a sensation did not surprise him, but a crime scene where people were in detention and were being denied legal counsel disturbed him. He presented his card to an officer, and as he suspected, the officer recognized his name and swung open the door. Through the gloom of the vestibule, Clinton could barely make out the group convened in the parlor. The shutters were pulled tight across the tall windows to the street, blocking out the morning light. Cigar and coal smoke hung near the ceiling, and the stale odor of tobacco, broadcloth, and damp wool permeated the room.

The double parlor had been converted into a makeshift interrogation room for the purpose of the Coroner’s inquest. Extra chairs had been brought in, and every seat was filled, with men standing along the walls and leaning against the mantel. A table on one side of the room was for the stenographers, members of the press, who were recording the interviews, word for word. The New York Times donated this service to city proceedings, and in exchange, the newspaper was permitted to print the reports verbatim, making them “The Paper of Record.”

Opposite the stenographers sat the Coroner’s jury. They were a motley crew of city dwellers: retired men in fraying waistcoats, working men in faded twill, and a few poorer souls who kept their clothes from falling away with twine. In a peculiar arrangement, Dr. Burdell’s dentist chair had been brought down from his office and placed in the center to be used as a witness chair. Since his murder forty-eight hours before, the doctor’s home had been transformed into an instrument in the investigation of his own death.

A gavel banged against a table, accompanied by the Coroner’s booming voice. Edward Connery sat framed by a gilt mirror that hung between the windows overlooking the garden.

“Order! Order!” Connery called out, his rs trilling: “I have a long list of witnesses to interview,” said the Coroner. “I will commence with the Reverend Marvine.”

Two policemen brought a confused man with oily whiskers into the room. He was led to the dentist chair, where he sat with trepidation, holding on to the arms of the iron chair as he gingerly settled himself in. He stated his name as Uriah Marvine, Reverend of the Reformed Dutch Church. The coroner got up and strutted across the room. He placed a scroll on the jury table. It was the marriage certificate, stamped into evidence by the sheriff’s office, which passed from hand-to-hand among the jurors.

“Sir, did you conduct a marriage between a man calling himself Dr. Harvey Burdell and a woman named Mrs. Emma Cunningham, two weeks ago, on January the fourteenth?” asked Connery, pointing to the scroll.

“That is my name on the certificate,” replied the Reverend.

Next, Connery presented him with a daguerreotype of Harvey Burdell, a formal portrait in silver and black tones, taken at a photography studio downtown. “Do you recognize this man as the man who came before you to be married?”

Reverend Marvine held the picture close to his face, removed his spectacles, and examined it ponderously. “I believe I recall this face, but then again, I am not sure. A great many couples come to my home to be married. But I do recall the ceremony. It took place in my parlor. It only took a few minutes. The woman described herself as a widow.”

“Did she now? Could it be possible that she arrived at your home with an imposter, or a man impersonating Harvey Burdell?” Connery asked, suddenly raising his voice.

The coal shifted in the fireplace, causing the flame to flare. The Reverend recoiled. “I would not know, sir. I never question the identity of the people who come to be married; it is not my business.” He studied the daguerreotype again. “Now that I think of it, I wonder if perhaps the man who came had hair that was falsely applied. He whispered to me that the marriage should not be published in the newspapers.”

“Is that so!” Connery exclaimed. “False whiskers?”

“The woman on the other hand, seemed eager and very fetching, and she was younger than the man.”

“The marriage is a fake,” someone whispered, and a ripple began to echo through the crowd.

“Silence!” bellowed Connery. “Could you describe the woman’s attire?”

“She wore a cloak, I believe, and a blue dress, or maybe grey. Oh I remember now, it was not a dress at all, it was a suit with black buttons!” The Reverend beamed with satisfaction as the room erupted in laughter.

“Bring her in!” Connery shouted to officers waiting outside the parlor door. Two police matrons ushered Emma Cunningham to the entrance of the parlor as a hush fell over the room. She stood just under the parlor doorway, framed by the carved moldings that rose up to the high ceiling. Her image was reflected in the tilted pier mirror, making it possible for those in the back of the room to see. She was wearing a dark dress, expertly tailored. Her hands were clasped nervously before her. Her hair was swept up with twists, and her skin was porcelain, with high color in her lips and cheeks. Her eyes were green, darkly ringed by lashes and set at a tilt. She stood perfectly still while all faces were transfixed upon her. She had an unexpected allure, a curious blend of features not often found in the drawing rooms of New York—a beauty, thought Clinton, by any standard.

She leaned to the officer at her side to whisper a question but was cut off by the booming voice of the Coroner. “Quiet!” Connery ordered. “You may not speak! You are here to be looked at, Madame, not to speak. We will interview you before this jury at a later time, and you may speak then.” Mrs. Cunningham stood before him quietly blinking back tears. “Take a look at her,” the Coroner said to the Reverend. “Study her features, for we will send her away so she does not hear the testimony.” He waved at the officer to take her away again, and they departed into the hall and up the stairs.

At her departure, the room erupted into excited whispers, and Connery rushed over to the table to bang the gavel, which had the effect of creating more confusion. “Is that the woman who came to you to be married?” he demanded.

The Reverend began to stutter in confusion. “Why, I am now more certain about the man,” he said waving the daguerreotype. “That woman has a much larger bosom than the one who came, and that is all I can say for certain.” The room erupted again, and the Coroner yelled for quiet.

“We are speaking of a matter of the utmost importance,” he cried. “There was a murder under this roof, committed while that woman and her daughters were at home. We must determine if she had a role.” Clinton listened for a while longer, then edged his way out of the back of the parlor. Disgusted, he could the see the wheels at work: Connery was leading the witness and molding the investigation toward a theory that the marriage certificate was faked. The reporters were transcribing every word, readying them for the press engines downtown, which would grease the wheels for an arrest and a criminal trial. Solving the murder quickly was a political expediency, which would quell the fears of the populace. And a hanging would be another feather in the cap of Oakey Hall.

As Clinton stepped from the room, two men at the parlor door were whispering. “I heard the Doctor had some business on the night he was killed with a large sum of money, and none of it was found. The detectives are looking for a servant, a Negro, who drove Dr. Burdell’s carriage that evening.”

“That seems to me a waste of effort,” replied the other. “That woman was after his money. The lady upstairs is the culprit, if you want my opinion.”

Clinton mounted the staircase, unnoticed. Upstairs, the hall was empty. The policemen guarding the rooms had been drawn to the drama in the parlor below. Clinton passed the room where the murder occurred and saw the profuse amounts of dried blood that covered the floor and the walls. Inside the next bedroom, the corpse was spread on a bed as doctors leaned over, intently measuring the lesions with calipers. A man peered into the lens of a microscope. After a murder, the poor went straight to the morgue; when the wealthy were victims, an autopsy included the latest techniques of anatomical science to allow the tissues and organs to be delicately probed and examined. A newspaper artist sat sketching the scene for one of the illustrated newspapers.

Clinton mounted the next flight to the third floor. An open door led to an attic, and through it he heard the voice of a police officer chastise a boy about cleaning out the chamber pots. There was no one guarding the bedrooms. The last door on the third floor was closed, and taking a guess, he turned the knob and stepped in.

The shutters were pulled tight and the only illumination came from the coal in the brazier. His eyes adjusted and he saw a figure in an armchair.

“Excuse me, Madame, for intruding,” he said. Her chair was close to the fire. She looked up with alarm, and he could now see the fearful and tired expression in her features. She studied him with wide eyes, wary of his presence.

‘Madame, please don’t be frightened. I am Henry Clinton, the lawyer that you summoned. I am with the firm of Armstrong and Clinton.”

“Oh, thank God, you have come. I asked to speak with counsel, but I was not permitted,” she said. “The Coroner has forbidden me.”

“You have a right to speak to counsel. It is the Coroner who is in error.”

“What is happening?” she whispered. “I have answered so many questions and yet no one has answered mine. This is such a terrible state of affairs.” Her voice was unsteady and trembling. Clinton pulled an ottoman close and sat next to her, leaning forward so that they could speak softly without being heard.

“You have the right to speak to counsel,” he repeated. “There is no law that says a person under house arrest in a coroner’s investigation can be denied that right. Furthermore, anything you say to me will remain in confidence.”

“I have been in my room now since Saturday,” she said, distraught. “How long must I remain here? Why am I being detained? I have already told them what I know.”

“I believe the Coroner intends that you will testify before the assembled jury downstairs, this time under oath. They will interview many people who knew the deceased, and I am presuming he will interrogate you last, so I imagine you will be here for several more days. I would strongly advise you to refuse to testify before the Coroner’s jury so that you do not incriminate yourself.”

“Incriminate myself? Am I a suspect? But I have not been charged with any crime. I am innocent!” she exclaimed.

“Regardless of your guilt or innocence, I am afraid that what you say now may have grave consequences later. Your testimony will be transcribed for the record.” He saw her confusion as the firelight flickered across her features revealing her dark lashes, now thickening with tears.

“It is all so terrible. I have told them everything. The last time I saw Dr. Burdell was before dinner, on Friday. He had his carriage brought around. I asked him where he was going, but he did not tell me. I stayed here in my room all evening by the fire, with my daughters, sewing. The three of us went to sleep in my bedroom, around eleven o’clock. We decided to sleep together in my room because it was my daughter’s last night at home.”

“Did you hear any commotion, or any noises during the night?”

“I am generally a sound sleeper and I didn’t wake at all. I heard nothing. In the morning, the errand boy found him—he was dead!” She broke into sobs. She knocked a sewing basket from her chair onto the floor, spilling lace and ribbons. The room smelled faintly of perfume. Clinton handed her his handkerchief.