Christie's Little Black Book

New York City, 1895

When the package arrived at my humble lodgings, it was wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

It looked unremarkable and had it not been for the distinctive writing upon it that listed my name and address, I should have discarded it on my desk to look at it another time.

But the writing belonged to Christie who, by that point, had been missing two days.

I cradled that parcel in my hands, unable to comprehend quite what it was. It was small and hard, but other than the words and stamps upon it, it had nothing to identify its contents to me. I was trembling as I carried it into my small apartment and deposited it upon the desk by my bed as if it might be poisonous.

I took two long strides back from it and glared at it, as if that little parcel were to blame for Christie not being there. I could not bring myself to open it, not in that moment.

Christie and I…

You see, we were far from conventional in our association. We were lovers, which is such a simplification of the matter it stings to say it. We were so much more than that. We completed one another, two rather curious misfits in this world who together found a way to be more than they were on their own.

We were mismatched. Christie was a working girl who had dragged herself up from the gutters to be in charge of her own business and, as she liked to put it, her own fate.

I was the wastrel son of a brewery billionaire who had disappointed his father repeatedly in his short span of existence. I ran from my fate, while Christie ran towards hers.

Perhaps, after all, that is why she ended up vanishing.

Her disappearance has been all over the newspapers since I learned of it. You have surely heard all the speculation? The details are sparse and so people fill in the gaps.

Christie Harkness ran The Parisian Boudoir, which, if you could not guess or had not read the correct papers, is a bordello. A respectable one, as such things go.

The papers are wrong when they say Christie was one of the offerings at her brothel. That lady never consorted with clients. I can assure you, though you may not care to believe me, that Christie was a virgin before I found my way to her bedchamber.

Her early days are a mystery, even to me. She did not care to talk about them and since I disliked doing anything that upset her, I never brought the matter up.

I loved her. I still love her.

I think she loved me, but I have always found these things difficult to determine. Still, she allowed me liberties no other man had ever taken. That must mean something.

I learned of her disappearance a few hours after her ladies had realised she was gone. I went to the Boudoir as was my habit around lunchtime. I preferred, if I could, to avoid working hours when there were far too many other men I cared not to meet around. Some of them might have known me and could have mentioned where I was to my father. I did not require him to know I was consorting with a Madame.

When I arrived, I found the house in a panic. Half-dressed girls were running back and forth as if there was a fire blazing. I managed to grab the attention of one of them to learn what the matter was. She poured out the information in fits and starts – Madame had not been in her bedchamber when they took up her breakfast. Madame had not told them she was going anyway. Madame had not been seen in hours. Madame was missing.

I understood their consternation. Christie rarely left her brothel. Her desire to avoid going outside was almost to the degree of a psychological complaint. She always told me it was because she was too busy running the business, watching over her ladies closely, but I suspected it was more than that. I do not think Christie felt safe outside those walls. Which made her disappearance all the more curious.

I went up to Christie’s bedroom, where just hours before we had made love on her glamourous four-poster bed. I went in expecting to see some sign of what had become of her, some clue as to her sudden departure. A shoe tossed on the floor, a chair overturned, a rug displaced. Something to indicate a struggle that had caused her to leave. I had to believe she had left unwillingly, the alternative being too unhappy a thought.

I saw nothing other than a room I recognised, as neat and orderly as always.

My heart broke a little in that moment.

I managed to herd the girls into the drawing room eventually, which had not yet been cleaned from the night before. Feather boas and delicate undergarments littered the furniture, while cigarette and cigar ash were scattered on the floor. Christie would never have allowed this room to remain so shabby after nine in the morning.

I extracted the full story from the ladies after that.

I had left around one the previous night. Christie had called for some hot chocolate after I was gone and took a bath in her private bathroom. One of the girls brought her the hot chocolate around two. She had thanked them and climbed into bed. It had seemed like any other night.

Christie always rose at seven, no matter how late she had gone to bed. At seven thirty a girl always took her up a cup of coffee and some toast. That morning, the girl went up with the tray and found the room empty. She thought Christie was in the bathroom and left the tray on a table.

When eight o’clock had come and gone with no sign of Christie, another girl was sent up to see if she was well. The coffee and toast were untouched and when the bathroom was checked, there was no one there. Slowly it dawned on the girls that Christie was absent.

They hoped she had merely slipped out, as extraordinary as that might be, and would be back soon. But with each passing hour their hopes had diminished.

My arrival had found them in uproar as they tried to determine what would become of them without Christie. They turned to me in desperation, wanted me to replace Christie or at least tell them what to do.

I was of no use to them. Something had fractured inside of me as I realised Christie had silently and deliberately disappeared.

I had to leave them, though they called my name and begged me to return. I had to get outside.

I had to think.

The newspapers speculated.

All manner of fanciful stories emerged about Christie’s disappearance. I opted not to read them, though I could not help but glance at the pictures in case there was one with me in it.

I was ashamed of myself for being so self-absorbed, but I could not help it. I was fearful what my father would think if a picture emerged of me going to a brothel, even if it were not for the purpose he would suppose.

He would cut off the small allowance he was currently giving me and that I could not face. I am not too proud to admit I should not be able to cope with being poor.

I ignored the package for hours. I carried on with my own mindless search for Christie.

This consisted of wandering around the city and hoping to catch a glimpse of her. You can imagine how successful that was.

Finally, I came home as dusk was falling and the package caught my eye at once. It was a like an accusation glaring at me, as if I were somehow ignoring Christie herself.

She had sent this to me for a reason. I told myself. I ought to look at it.

I still did not have the stomach for the contents, expecting some emotional farewell, a meaningless ramble about it not being me, but rather it being her. Or maybe she would say it had all been a game, nothing real.

I kept wavering between opening the parcel or ignoring it, but eventually I could not bear the way the damn thing sat there accusing me and so I yanked violently and impulsively at the string, causing the package to tumble off the table and spill out of its brown paper, like a moth from a cocoon.

I stared at the object that had fallen to my floor.

It was a plain black notebook.

Why had she sent me this?

I picked it up and it was in that moment – as if an electric charge had jumped up my arm – that I felt for certain Christie was never coming back. I somehow just knew she was dead, that her disappearance had been for the most sinister of reasons.

I collapsed into the chair by my desk. Suddenly the book with its tatty corners and scars on the black leather from heavy handling held immense significance. It was my last piece of Christie. She had gifted it to me, for that reason.

I wondered what had become of her, what terrible things had been done to her. I told myself I should have been there to stop them – but stop who?

Clearly Christie had suspected someone was coming for her, otherwise she would not have prepared this book to be sent to me.

I opened it slowly, you might say reverently, taking care not to damage a single page by incautious handling. The first thing I saw was that each page was headed with a name; the names of prominent men in the city. I knew these men as visitors to the brothel.

Beneath those names were jotted notes. I knew, before I read them, what they would be. A list of secrets Christie had collected on these men. Collected and stored in this book.

I had not taken Christie for a blackmailer, but perhaps I had just been naïve. There were only so many ways a lady without prospects could make money for herself in this city, and most were illegal.

I was disappointed more by the fact there was no letter to accompany my gift, no final missive to give me some clue as to what had happened, or to let me know how Christie had truly felt about me.

I felt cheated. The book more of a disappointment than anything else.

I flicked through the pages angrily now, glaring at names and wondering what I was expected to do with all this.

Then I came to a central page and stopped.

Christie had written me a letter; she had just written it in her black book.

Dearest,

I am so sorry I could not say goodbye to you properly. I could not let you know my fears, for the concern it might embroil you and put you in danger. I know you would have done anything for me, but please understand, in this instance, there was nothing you could do.

I have earned my fate. I have taken risks that are now coming back to haunt me. I am not afraid, for I have been expecting this for so long.

I do not want to dwell on that, for there are more important things I must share.

First, I want you to be happy. I want you to forget me and find another girl you can love freely with all your heart. One who is respectable and who your father will be pleased with. Do this for me.

Secondly, I want you to be independent and for that you require money. Thus, I gift you this book, within which I have collected many profitable secrets.

You may feel such things are beneath you, but do not be that way, for these men I have listed are no saints and their sins are ones that have been detrimental to our city, or at least to some people within that city. Since it would be impossible to prosecute these men properly, consider yourself an arbiter of justice.

Or throw this book in the fire, I leave the choice up to you.

But, if you do decide to try your hand at these things, begin with the gentleman on page 10. I have done the sums and I can assure the fellow is good for $20,000 and will most certainly pay up. If you only ever attempt this once, attempt it on him.

I wish you well, my love.

I want you to be happy, do not forget that.

Forever yours,

Christie.

I do not know why I flipped to page 10 almost at once, some devil got into me and seemed to control my hands. I had to look at this fellow who was worth so much.

I saw his name. A senator who had taken bribes. In that way I was not terribly surprised. Christie had listed the sum she thought he was good for again, at the bottom of the page.

$20,000 – I could do a lot with that money. Get myself on my feet. Invest in stocks and bonds. Become a man free from my father.

I sat there stunned. I do not know what ashamed me more, the fact I was considering blackmail, or the fact I had so swiftly forgotten about Christie in the face of money.

I was beginning to think she knew me better than I did.

But I did need that money, and the senator would not be in this position if he had been a fair-minded man who played by the rules. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I would do this, just the once.

I would make something of myself, as a legacy to Christie. Yes, that was it. I could spend some of the money on private investigators to try to discover what had become of her. I would honour her, in my own way.

The more I dwelt on it, the more certain I became and, terrible as it sounds, joy swept through me. I saw a future for myself at last and this revelation lifted me out of the doldrums I had slumped into long before Christie went missing.

There was a knock on my door.

I jumped and the book fell to the floor again. I left it where it was and answered the door. When I saw the policemen stood there, I knew they had news about Christie.

“She is dead,” I said.

“That’s right,” said a fellow behind the two uniformed officers. “Dragged her from the river this morning. But you knew that.”

I did not register his words. My heart was sinking, the joy ebbed from my body. There would never be another like Christie.

“You are under arrest.”

My head shot up.

“What?”

“You are under arrest for the murder of Christie Harkness.”

I stared at the man, who I now realised was a detective.

“That is absurd!” I told him.

“Funny how you knew she was dead before I told you about it,” the detective said casually. “Almost a confession.”

“What? No!”

I tried to protest, but handcuffs were slapped on my wrists and suddenly I saw everything spinning away from me. The future Christie had conjured for me, the future I had been so desperate for.

“I didn’t kill her!” I protested.

“They all say that,” shrugged the detective. “Especially the ones that did do it.”

They dragged me out of my apartment, my protests in vain. I shot one last look towards the black book on the floor, hard to see in the growing shadows.

My $20,000 dollar freedom.

My message from Christie.

My hope.

Then I was being dragged down the stairs and I knew it was all over, all at an end. I might as well have tumbled to the bottom of the river with Christie. Together, forever.