Wanted

Chapter 27

Waiting to get word from New York for Jeremiah, was like sitting beneath that goddamn sword hung by a horsehair above his head for poor Damocles. And when at last the letter did arrive it did not even bring the needed resolution, but only more questions and a new dilemma.

Tom, Jeremiah's friend in New York had found out that Kitty Finnegan, John's mother had died in the Almhouse, to which she was committed due to 'vagrancy and disturbance of the peace' which according to his friend was code for prostitution. Her death it seemed occurred roughly two and a half months after the small family had become homeless. Because she had not been a first time offender she was given the rather long stretch of three months which she was not to survive due to an outbreak of phthisis as pulmonary tuberculosis was known then. As next of kin she had named her friend, Ingrid Holm, a dance hall girl of Swedish descent.

Ingrid at first was somewhat reluctant to share any information about her friend but on hearing that Tom was making his enquiries on behalf of her best friend' son, she opened up. She turned out to be a kind-hearted woman who had been very fond of her friend's children and often wondered what had become of them. All of Kitty's belongings that she had on her on the day of her arrest were given to Ingrid after her untimely death, which Ingrid gave to Tom, with the assurance that he would send them on to Jeremiah who would then in turn pass them on to John.

It wasn't much. There was a marriage certificate, some costume jewelry, a photograph of her parents, another of Kitty and Ingrid taken at a picnic in what was probably Central Park, and one more of her and her husband, a Johnathan Finnigan on their wedding day, in which Kitty was holding a small bouquet of flowers and neither of them smiled. The resemblance between John and both of his parents but especially his father were remarkable. He had inherited his mother's black hair but his father's nose, eyes and mouth. According to Tom, Ingrid was reluctant to hand over her friends belongings and became rather emotional when she handed him the three locks of hair that Kitty had kept of her children. One black and two blond, each one tied up neatly with a black velvet band.

The most interesting piece of information however was a letter from a Mrs Sarah Taylor to Johnathan's mother, dated 1876, two years after John's birth, letting her know that her husband had died. It was a very emotional letter, telling the reader how a Mr Johnathan Finnigan, died a heroic death. According to Sarah Taylor, her husband William and his friend who remained unnamed, had been taking a swim at a popular bathing place but gone out too far. Sarah Taylor went on to explain that Finnigan heroically and with no regard for his own safety jumped into the treacherous water and saved first Sarah's husband who survived and then went back out to save her husband's companion. But there he got into difficulties himself so that both men drowned despite Finnegan's best efforts. The letter went on and on about how grateful and sorry the woman was and what a wonderful man Johnathan Finnegan was. There was no return address but the postage stamp was from Helena, Montana.

Only Ingrid very plainly told Tom that she believed the letter to be a fake. Her friend she told the journalist, never had missed an opportunity to defend her husband to her, who Ingrid had always judged to be an "out and out scoundrel and complete arse of a human being", her words not his he told Jeremiah in his letter. Had Kitty Finnegan believed that there was even the slightest chance of her husband to be such a hero, Ingrid claimed, she would have hollered it of all the rooftops of New York for everyone to here. But Kitty Finnigan had kept the letter to herself, never breathed a single word of it to her best friend and she only heard of the story when she found the letter among her best friend's personal belongings that the prison personnel handed over to her. Intrigued, his friend told Jeremiah he would continue to investigate and wished him and the boy all the best, and passing on Ingrid's love to the boy.

What on earth was he supposed to do with this kind of information? Jeremiah had been agonising over it for a whole week and was nowhere near an answer by the time he was due to go back to the post office in Salesville to check for the letter that had already arrived. It had robbed him of his sleep for several days in a row which left him on edge and irritable for most part of the week which of course peaked on Saturday, the last day of the week on which the post office was open.