Thanksgiving Bonus Episode: The Pinkertons w. Jamie Loftus

This holiday week, go down a rabbit hole with me and Jamie Loftus as I tell her a detective story I can't stop thinking about, and we learn that the line between investigation and community theater used to be even blurrier. Digressions include Dracula, Jack the Ripper, and Victorian antisemitism. Content warning: the unscrupulous investigation at the heart of this episode ends in an apparent death by suicide. 

And a brief correction: I say early on here that the Pinkertons "helped create the Secret Service," but realized while checking my research after recording that they helped create a Secret Service. It's complicated.

Transcript below.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I am so, so thankful for you.

Love,

Sarah

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S: ‘I know vampire stories little bit boring, but trust me, I am cool vampire.’

[You’re Wrong About theme music]

S: Hello Jamie Loftus.

J: Hello Sarah Marshall, what’s up?

S: Oh I’m in my fort, I’m drinking some hot gummy water which is an Alicia Keys recipe – I read that Alicia Keys had hot gummy water for her voice sometimes.

J: I was holding off on asking you what that is the first time you said it because I was hoping it would just come to me but I don’t know what that is. What is that?

S: It’s you take a bunch of gummy candies, whatever kind you want, and then pour boiling water over them and then stir it up, and then drink it like tea, it’s gummy tea.

J: Is it good for your voice or does it just taste good?

S: It definitely tastes good and there’s also apparently something in gummy bears or gummy worms or whatever that is good at coating your throat. Also it’s really nice.

J: That sounds so pleasant.

S: And how are you today? What are you drinking?

J: You know I’m doing okay. I’m drinking this sparkling water from 7 Eleven, 7 Select. They only have one flavor, and it’s always on sale, so I’ve been getting into it lately.

S: What’s the flavor?

J: It’s a little indecisive, it’s cranberry/raspberry.

S: That’s great. So now you know what everybody’s drinking, that’s very important, and welcome to the bonus episode. I’ve been researching a few topics and one of them is the Pinkerton detectives. And because of life I want to take a snack a break on the way to the Pinkerton episode mountain and tell you about this one aspect of my research that I have not been able to shut up about since I first read this. Without having like a whole story ready to present to you I want to tell you this one little part of it which I think is amazing and I just want to know what you think when I tell you this story.

J: So it’s like a chapter in the Pinkerton expanded universe?

S: Yeah.

J: Cool, love it.

S: Okay, so what do you know about the Pinkertons?

J: Honestly Pinkerton to me is a Weezer album I’ve been pretending to have heard for a long time. I know truly nothing.

S: That’s great. I mean you know they have maybe based on that a very long pop cultural legacy. But basically they are the first American detective agency.

J: Oh!

S: Pinkerton Detective Agency. They helped create the Secret Service. They guarded President Lincoln. And one of the agents who worked that job was the person, because she worked for them, history gets to know as the first woman detective in America, but be warned.

J: Oh, okay. Strong marketing. I would see the Jessica Chastain movie about this.

S: Oh my god, yes. I can’t believe that isn’t already out there – maybe it is and I missed it. Like this is the period of time we’re inventing the figure of the detective, and when the detective figure starts to emerge both as an actual job and as a pop cultural fixation. Another genesis moment is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Which is the first modern detective story, written in 1841. So mid-nineteenth century we need the detective suddenly, which is like – I’m very interested in this topic generally and sort of looking at how did the detective come to be and what was the evolution of this figure.

J: So Edgar Allan Poe wrote the first short story revolving around a detective? Is that correct, so they just sort of came into fashion?

S: Yeah at the same time that the police forces of various places, the concept of the police as being created as well, like the detective as well, you start reading detective stories, we get our first one with Poe and then that quickly rose and then to the point when the first Sherlock Holmes story appeared in the 1880s there has to this whole digression with Holmes being like ‘Of course like Poe’s detective is dumb and not like a real detective like me, I’m like a real detective and it’s …

J: Wow.

S: Uh huh.

J: Sherlock was a pick-me detective. He’s not like the other detectives.

S: Yeah.

J: In that context it sounds like it could be the “copaganda” I am most likely to fall for and engage with involves detectives and I feel like they do kind of have this reputation for being more inherently interesting or like truth seeking form of law enforcement in spite of the fact that that’s, I’m assuming, probably not true. I think about all the copaganda that appealed to me over the years before I was more actively aware that that was what I was engaging with and it’s mostly detectives. I feel like there’s no other area of law enforcement that’s like romanticized

[05:00]

to the extent that there’s like children doing it, you know?

S: Like Shelby Woo? Yeah.

J: Shelby Woo, yes, an iconic child detective. Your Shelby Woos, your Nancy Drews. I used to love a kid detective and they wre always seeking the real truth and they were always getting results. Unless I’m really missing something I feel like that is a particular form of copaganda that…

S: Yeah.

J:…that you get inoculated into very very young.

S: Well I feel as if Sherlock Holmes, became the genre had had time to develop and evolve, he remains this weird[ur?] detective still – because he was kind of an evolved character and there had been time to see what worked and didn’t work evolutionarily.

J: Sure.

S: But yeah it’s also wonderful how at the time yeah he had really – I know this is like a tired genre written with cliches but like trust me, I’m fun.

J: I like that, I’m going to start writing like a vampire story with that. To be like every vampire you’ve read about before, I think we’ve worked out the kinks in this genre and now I can really create the sexy vampire for the ages.

S: Yeah. Yeah right it’s like if Dracula was like ‘I know vampire stories little bit boring but trust me, I’m the cool vampire.’ I love that you mention that because I am obsessed with the fact that Dracula and Sherlock Holmes emerge at about the same moment.

J: Yes! There has to be a Dracula/Sherlock Holmes crossover.

S: Yeah.

J: This is fascinating. The Pinkertons were they among the first celebrity detectives? I’m also wondering how much this has to do with mass media and cultural figures becoming more involved and accessible.

S: That’s a very good point. I mean one of the things that I think about for this time period especially looking at Sherlock Holmes times, the 1880s, when things have come to a boil. People are living in the time of the Industrial Revolution. This exodus from the country side for many people and entrance into city life. Cities are growing in a way they haven’t before and modernity is here. I mean one of the things I think about a detective is that like you don’t really need a detective if you kind of – know everyone in town. But if you’re surrounded by people who are strangers to you then suddenly you really need a Sherlock Holmes who’s able to look at someone and say what they’re up to. Because you only need that if you don’t trust people to either tell you what they’re up to or you feel like that’s Billy, that’s Walter’s boy, he gets drunk every Friday night, but he’s sweet as a lamb at the 4H shows or whatever.

J: That’s why I’m still a sucker for like local detective stories, even though I’m at the point where I’m like well I know, I know what’s happening. I still watched – like did you watch ‘Mare of Easttown’?

S: No I heard everyone loved it though right?

J: I watched the hell out of that show – when the detective already knows everybody. I feel like it in some ways scratches the same itch as the journalist who gets in too deep.

S: And I feel like pop culture believes in the basic societal need for detectives in a way that is definitely also true of journalists, or maybe true of journalists in a way we only want it to be true of detectives sometimes. Which is one of the reasons why Spotlight is weirdly a feelgood movie for me because that whole movie is made out of like solid reverence for the press. One of the things I find fascinating about Jack the Ripper also, who appears within a year of the first Sherlock Holmes story being published is that at the time the crimes were cause for constant anti-Semitic speculation and one of the favored theories…

J: Wow.

S: …was like well this is why we can’t have immigration from Europe – it had to have been done by a Jew. And it’s like oh, look at that.

J: Jesus Christ.

S: Why did I ever imagine that people wouldn’t be saying that a

t the time based on how everyone seems to waiting for this random excuse to toss out that argument.

J: Wow.

S: There’s this huge undertow of anti-Semitism to a lot of Victorian villain mythology which was – just thought I’d throw that in there. To bring this back to the Pinkertons having talked about detectives being such a persuasive form of copaganda, and I totally feel that too and specifically about Lenny Bruscoe because I grew up watching hours and hours and hours of Law& Order.

J: Uh huh.

S: And I think the story telling abilities of Dick Wolf made me think of detectives as people who like – sometimes their old buddies did corruption but they were like “Hey, don’t do corruption, and their buddies were like ‘No, I will.’ And then they got killed in a deal gone wrong and then the detective’s like, ‘Ah, man, it’s hard not being corrupt. But I’m doing it. Goodbye, good night.’

J: But I’m doing it and probably most of us are.

[10:00]

J: And the fact that they so often incorporate zeitgeisty crimes into their shows makes it kind of…sells it, sells it even harder.

S: You think Briscoe and Logan ever go out for a drink after work or you know Briscoe having a seltzer. And then you’re like ‘You ever notice how strange it is that every murder we have to solve is like somehow reflecting current issues in American life, many of which have been discussed in Time Magazine?’

J: And then one of them sips their O’Dools and is like ‘Nah.’

S: And then it goes *does Law&Order theme.* Speaking of the dream of the detective that we encounter on TV and that so many of us grew up with – who is this person and why do we feel fondly toward him? Sometimes it’s a woman but let’s be honest it’s really an older dude.

J: There definitely is often a rogue element to a detective, they don’t always work with the police system at large. They’re sometimes telling the chief I need to do this. Sometimes they break the rules to get closer to the truth and like police detectives in particular I feel like you very often see them like quote unquote breaking a rule because the truth is more important to them than this stuff, which totally gives an accurate reflection of reality. But you’re right that it tends to be older guys, and they’re almost always loners or othered in some way that kind of connects you to them a little closer like either they can’t find love, they live alone, they’re so into their job. I feel like again there is overlap with like the journalist who’s journalisming too hard.

S: I feel like also the detective is comforting in the way that maybe any character archetype is comforting where you kind of know what you’re going to get. I really like repetition in story-telling. Like – I don’t want a new thing all the time, I don’t want to be constantly surprised.

J: Yep.

S: And I think maybe a lot of people are like me.

J: Any piece of media that truly demands my full attention I’m like okay I’m at work this is not fun for me.

S: It’s like – I have a lot of laundry to be folding so –

J: I can give you a good 78% of my attention but no more.

S: Starting around like 9th grade which is when I started watching Law&Order I think I became really enamoured with the detective character because in the way the detective is I feel like the opposite of the adolescent girl or even the young woman because those are TVs archetypal murder victims. And then like older women get murdered but TV doesn’t care.

J: I was really brought in – I think that Nancy Drew probably would have been my OG detective. It like tied into that same appeal where I was like Oh, you know teen girls are most often the victims of the crimes I was seeing but the idea that not only did Nancy Drew work independently she also gained the respect of law enforcement which again is like that journalist thing of like – oh if you work hard enough at this independently the end goal is to get recognition from this establishment and to find truth for regular people and have those two goals be intertwined.

S: Yeah. And to be kind of a conduit maybe between the establishment and normal people. Like I think having the character who searches for the truth by cutting through red tape and not following the rules. And like Okay but like rules exist for a reason but I think that we valorize that character so much over time because the fantasy is that an individual person, probably some guy, can like figure it all out on his own and not need any kind of larger governing body to stand in for his instincts.

J: A way of like existing within a system but also existing outside of it at the same time.

S: Yeah and like recognizing that maybe the system has flaws but then deciding that the way around that is to just like make stuff up and do whatever you feel like. Choke people a lot if movies are any indication.

J: I guess it is helpful that detectives often have weapons cos I was also like – do rogue lawyers fall into this category as well but I think that might be a little bit different.

S: That one at least it’s maybe more obviously criminal. Some of the same things – yeah I feel as though the detective character was so appealing to me as an adolescent because it’s someone who moves freely throughout the world. In the world where everyone gets kind of siloed in their little field the detective is someone who gets to talk to everyone and potentially learn everything. Which, again, like that sounds a little like journalism to me, when I put it that way.

J: At least the way that it’s portrayed

[15:00]

in a lot of media is like – detective work is action journalism.

S: Right.

J: That’s another thing that I really liked about detective characters is how – I’m like I don’t know what this says about me as a child but I was like ‘wow, they lie about everything, but it’s cool.’

S: But they’re supposed to.

J: Right. Oh it’s a part of the job and it’s actually good that they’re constantly lying to people.

S: Right and like the goal can become to find the job where you’re supposed to do that as opposed to not doing it. But yeah I do feel like the chill detectives are journalists who have the power to arrest people.

J: Yes, when you put it like that I’m like I understand why that would be appealing in the abstract to a kid that didn’t really have any access to understanding why that is inherently fucked up.

S: So let’s talk about what some detectives were doing in 1858.

J: Okay.

S: I will be reading you passages from a wonderful book called “The Pinks” by Chris Entz. This is about Kate Warne and the other female detectives who worked for the Pinkertons.

J: Okay.

S: This chapter is adapted from a book by Mr Pinkerton himself called ‘The Detective and the Somnambulous’ I would say like a grain of salt I would prescribe. This was adapted from a detectives book about his own agency’s cases so – you know – that can affect how you depict a story. But also like the most far out things that, to at least a modern eye make him look not great. Yeah, so let’s jump in. So we’re going to the town of Atkinson, Mississippi where there is a lovely hotel and where two guests, Mrs Franklin Robins and Mrs RC Potter decide to have a horse race, which is I guess what people do, at the time, if they’re staying in a fancy hotel.

J: Of course, what else are you going to do?

S: Yeah. They each have a horse, they start their race and then at a certain point Mrs Robins pulls ahead. And then realizes that she’s left Mrs Potter behind. She goes behind, she can’t find her, realizes that Mrs Potter has taken a spell. And the closest house belongs to this guy names Alexander Drysdale. They bring a settee to carry her back to the house and they’re like ‘Please stay with us until you feel better, it’s 1858, it seems like the thing to do with someone who’s been in a horse accident’ and she’s like ‘Oh no I couldn’t possibly impose on your hospitality’ and they’re like ‘No no please stay it’ll be lovely’, and so she stays. So far a lovely 1850s type story of horse-racing and visiting neighbors.

J: Okay.

S: Okay so another thing about Alexander Drysdale is that his friend who works at the bank has recently been murdered and some people suspect Alexander himself.

J: Wow, okay. Do we know why people suspect that?

S: Because they were friends and the first indication is that when Drysdale is asked to be foreman of the jury when there’s a trial he reacts very strongly. So this is a quote from the book by Chris Entz ‘in summoning the jury the coroner put down for foreman the name of Mr Drysdale, George’s most intimate friend. But it was found that he was not in the crowd outside and when they sent for him he begged so hard to be excused that he was let off.’

J: Okay. That is suspicious.

S: So the bank suspects Drysdale – where the victim, Gordon, worked. And so they call the Pinkertons because when you absolutely positively need to find a murdered in 1858 you know Pinkertons are probably your best option. At least as far as Pinkertons PR suggests.

J: So they’re like the celebrity detectives of the era.

S: Yeah, they already have a reputation – the interesting thing about their being called in in this story is that if this were like a 90s movie this is like – you call the FBI if you were like the locals can’t figure it out, we need the big guns. This is when you want the Pinkertons.

J: Right, okay. And are they a formal law enforcement – or are they still at this point an independent agency?

S: They’re a private detective agency. They’re the first private eyes.

J: Got it.

S: So Alan Pinkerton comes to town, and here are some more of the clues that they tell him about. Something had been burned in the fire place. Clothes were suspected because several buttons were found in the ashes. A charred twisted piece of paper was also found. Pinkerton inspected the paper which proved to be a fragment of a bill for nine hundred and twenty seven dollars and seventy eight cents. The signature and part of the name could be read as well – the signature was that of Alexander Drysdale. There was no question in Pinkerton’s mind that county clerk Drysdale was George Gordon’s murderer. But the only evidence he had against him was

[20:00]

circumstantial. Bank executives wanted the culprit apprehended. Just as importantly they wanted to recover the stolen $130,000. Pinkerton devised a plan to remedy both problems.

J: That’s just a lot of mid 1800s dollars.

S: It is, I know, I feel like you could buy an estate for that much.

J: I feel like this is another thing about detective stories that comes up a lot is they decide who the suspect is very early on and then will not budge in spite of evidence to the contrary.

S: That’s the first thing I find really interesting about the story in that part of me wants to be like ‘Oh what a wacky story from the wacky 1850s’ except it’s like happening today and will happen tomorrow and the day after that – the ace detective is called in and he’s like ah, seems like it’s the obvious guy. And the money’s on black.

J: Right – and then how often it’s like oh well we just need to get a conviction so let’s just you know rearrange the pieces to make it most likely.

S: Some of the funds that have been stolen are in fact gold, which never happens any more, or hardly ever. I don’t know enough.

J: We’ve got to bring that back.

S: So if you were Alan Pinkerton, what would your next move be?

J: I have just decided that I do think that Drysdale did this. My goal is what, to get him apprehended?

S: Your goal is to prove that he did it. To uncover some actual evidence. You’re like well I know the guy did it, in my heart, but like how do I show it to somebody else.

J: I would either try to interview him to see if he’ll say anything incriminating, or talk to people he knows to see if they’ll say incriminating things about him. What’s Drysdale’s alibi, do we know?

S: That’s a great question.

J: I’m Mare of East Town, over here. But she wasn’t a very good detective I don’t think.

S: I bet she was as good as Alan Pinkerton. It’s also possible that Alan Pinkerton did not find that part relevant to put it into his own book.

J: Yeah I can see that.

S: I don’t know his alibi. I don’t know if we even get to questioning about that. So here’s what Alan Pinkerton does – he calls his friend, ace detective Kate Warne, and he’s like okay Kate, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to go to a fancy hotel, tell everyone you’re a fancy widow, challenge somebody to a horse race. And then pretend to hurt yourself near the murderer’s house so you have to stay there until you recuperate.

J: No!

S: It’s like okay.

J: That’s way more funny than what I thought of. But it doesn’t seem ethical.

S: Yeah but asking for an alibi that’s not fun at all.

J: I was going to do some procedural bullshit and sounds like he’s trying to put on a play.

S: And so Kate is not the only agent he brings to town. He also sends an agent named Green who has a very special job, and an agent named Timothy Webster who plays Kate’s father.

J: This sounds like an episode of Punk’d – like what is this?

S: Also it reminds me of Nathan For You.

J: Yeah it does.

S: To solve a murder you have to have like a whole cast of characters staying in a country hotel.

J: You can hear the voiceover of like ‘This is Kate. She’s going to pretend to break her leg in an attempt to apprehend the criminal.

S: There’s something about this that feels to me exactly like the kind of thing cops do now where you hear about these elaborate sting operations where like someone was posing as a highschooler for four months so they could trick someone into selling them some weed or something. Like I feel like I’m only slightly exaggerating about that kind of thing.

J: Oh yeah just like the amazing use of taxpayers money.

S: And there’s a third agent who’s playing a rich businessman named John Andrews who comes to the hotel before Kate.

J: Okay.

S: So his job is to make contact with Alexander Drysdale and talk about buying a bunch of land off of him, which Drysdale is going to be open to because one of his apparent motives is trouble with money.

J: Okay – so they’re trying to prove motive to an extent, in a very complicated way.

S: And so things are working out – so you have Kate installed in the house where she can over hear things and have access to the suspect and you have Webster playing Andrews who’s befriending Drysdale and going on a hunting expedition with him actually.

J: Oh. Okay so now I have my cast assembled. How does Pinkerton picture these dominoes falling – what is like the order of operations here?

S: I’m going to tell you what happens next and then maybe you can guess what the plan is. Okay?

J: Okay.

S: After a pleasant night’s sleep John and Alexander set off on their hunting trip. Game was plentiful and the two were so preoccupied with the success of their venture that they lost track of time. It was dusk when they started back to the Drysdale plantation, and the mists of night began to form and spread over the landscape. John rode ahead

[25:00]

of Alexander. Both were too tired to talk about the day’s activities. Suddenly Alexander stopped his horse and let out a gasp. John rode back to find out what was wrong. All the color was gone from Alexander’s face. He was trembling violently and could barely speak. He finally found his voice. All he could say was – look there. Pinkerton’s report of what transpired that night noted that John found Alexander extremely frighted and nervous. According to John his lips were ashy and he had a convulsive grasp on the reins of the horse. He was pointing at something in the near distance. It was the figure of a young man walking through the timbers, turning his eyes neither to the left or the right Pinkerton reported. He was apparently twenty-five or twenty-six years of age. He wore a business suit of light grey clothes, but he had no hat on his head, his curly hair was tossed lightly in the breeze. And when he passed through a clearing and the light from a rising full moon shone on him, it seemed he was more ghost than man. As he moved farther along the back of his head was more directly exposed and presented a ghastly sight.

J: Wait –

S: The thick brown lots were matted together in a mass of gore. And large drops of blood slowly dribbled down on his coat.

J: Wait –

S: The whole back of his skull seemed to be crushed in while the deadly pallor of his face gave him the pallor of a corpse.

J: Did Pinkerton go to like a spirit Halloween store and hire someone to play a ghost to like freak Alexander out? Did he do that?

S: Don’t be silly he hired one of his own detectives to play a ghost to freak Alexander out.

J: No! Oh my god – this is a Nathan For You episode. At this point I’m like even if Alexander is a murderer I kind of feel bad for him. Because this is just like a very high level of Pinkerton manipulation.

S: Like don’t the police have to tell you if they’re pretending to be ghosts? Is that not entrapment. I guess they’re not police so that’s why.

J: Right – I mean even if they were the police he would have to say, he would have to go to the ghost ‘Are you a police officer? You have to tell me.’

S: Right you have to ask the ghost if they’re a ghost.

J: First of all that just sounds like expensive. Who was paying Pinkerton in this scenario? Is anyone?

S: The bank I guess, yeah.

J: So they just gave him like a canvas bag with a dollar sign.

S: Because they’re the ones who hired him to solve their employee’s murder. Yeah I think when people are nostalgic for an economy this must be what they’re talking about. To solve a single murder you would hire a cast of at least for, with special effects.

J: Oh I hope they were union.

S: I guess it helps to do it at night because then you know the look doesn’t have to be quite as good. But yeah this is Pinkerton’s plan. He’s got Kate installed in the house, he’s like once again very sure he’s got his murderer and he’s like I’m just going to have one of my detectives dress up like the victim and terrify him until he cracks and confesses and if that doesn’t happen then *shrugging noises*

J: Then maybe we’ll consider interviewing him.

S: Yeah, I mean just questioning maybe hadn’t been invented yet. Maybe all detectives were like ‘We just have to terrorize people with the ghosts of their victims until they confess, that’s the only thing anyone’s thought of.’

J: So does it work? They freak him out, but that’s not evidence right? To be afraid of seeing someone who’s bleeding at night, what does that prove?

S: Right, I mean it freaks him out. He doesn’t confess anything, and the agent playing John who’s with him is like ‘What ghost? I didn’t see any ghost.’

J: No!

S: So the goal is also to make him question his reality. Alexander according to Pinkerton’s account again starts drinking, he’s looking worse for the wear. Kate, luckily enough has her room next to Drysdale so she can overhear him kind of unravelling. One of the things she hears Alexander upset about is that there’s all this blood in his room. His wife says well you he had a terrible nose bleed overnight so that’s why. But there’s blood all over the bed, there’s blood on the floor and a trail out of the bedroom and then down to the front door and out of the house. There’s a trail of blood that he woke up to find.

J: Okay.

S: So, of course, Kate did that.

J: Sure, as one would.

S: So they’re like ‘Okay, Agent Green – you put on your make-up and you’ll walk around in the field and pretend to be the ghost. Agent Warne do you have your vial of fake blood? Great so sprinkle it in a trail from the bed to the door to further terrorize our alleged murderer.

J: Right, they don’t even know – they’re operating on a gut instinct that he’s guilty and then spending however much money – it does sound very like timing dependent too. Like you have to time it

[30:00]

so carefully to ensure that the suspect saw the ghost at the right time. And the fact that she had to have heard this going on. It’s very delicate and very expensive.

S: Right. And like again this makes me wonder about this being an account that Pinkerton himself wrote because things seem to be going so well given the fact that this is such a convoluted plan – like nobody’s getting caught leaving blood everywhere or pretending to be a ghost or anything.

J: Like I don’t know if this could be pulled off with texting available.

S: I know! So much of detective work is dependent on it being the nineteenth century. And then of course the word is spreading around town that there’s a ghost haunting Drysdale. But another development is that Kate Warne and Agent Green who is playing the ghost are using their proximity to Drysdale to monitor his activities. And what they find is that he appears to be sleep-walking outside, and maybe sleep-walking some of the time unconsciously, some of the other time –

J: Okay.

S: But going to the creek where he seems to be checking that something is in there. And then satisfying himself and going back upstairs. So they’re like ah-hah, that’s where the treasure is. So they mark the place where he’s going in the creek. Meanwhile, Green has played the ghost a couple more times. So Alexander is disintegrating.

J: Sorry – how long is this going on for?

S: Like weeks – they’ve been in town for a while.

J: He’s playing a ghost full time for a couple of weeks?

S: I mean he’s also monitoring his night time activities so he’s a ghost and then he’s a regular detective.

J: I mean get you a man who can do both.

S: Pinkerton also convinces the bank executives to let him sprinkle blood around the crime scene for Alexander Drysdale to also see.

J: Okay – so the independent detective aspect does keep throwing me here. Cos all Pinkerton needs in order to do what sounds like a very hard left in terms of solving a crime is get permission from the people who are paying him. Like he just needs permission from the bank to say ‘Okay sure that sounds ethical enough, go for it.’

S: Right. And of course they’re highly invested in catching the murderer. And if – they trust Pinkerton this is the guy that all he needs is them to be like yeah you can sprinkle blood around the crime scene to freak this guy out and try and make him crack faster let’s do it.

J: Cool, I mean yeah they have to be – this has to be getting expensive at this point.

S: Yeah I guess they’re already in for a lot of fake blood – or maybe it’s real blood they’re using, since this is probably before carro syrup. It’s unclear what they’re using for their blood effects so I feel like if it were 1850 you might just be going to get pig blood or something like that. Drysdale is so stressed out by seeing the blood at the crime scene that someone calls a doctor to tend to him, gives him a shot of morphine and then Pinkerton is like cool, okay. Now that he’s out, let’s all go look for the buried treasure. And Agent Green stays hanging around the house dressed like the murder victim ‘ready to scare Alexander should he wake up unexpectedly.’ So –

J: They find a decoy corpse. This does sound like a British comedy that I would watch.

S: There’s such a combination here of the whole thing being really pretty tragic because you’re thinking about this poor man who they’re, by their own self-description, doing their very best to drive him insane. Depressingness of the fact that this is how a lot of detective work that seems to happen still just like find the person you personally most suspect and try to destroy their sanity. And yet it’s also so silly, it’s so ridiculous, like I cannot you know this is not a self-deprecating kind of a story that we’re being told here. So I have to assume that at least the ghost parts of this are totally true.

J: Yeah, I feel like there is just enough distance time-wise and mentality-wise from current detective swindles that this just feels silly.

S: And they find the treasure, though only the gold, not the cash. So they still have to find the remainder.

J: So he was guilty, question mark?

S: Apparently yeah, according to this account.

J: Wow. I guess Pinkerton wouldn’t have written about this if he was dead-ass wrong but I didn’t see it going this way.

S: Chapter Seven – the time I drove an innocent man insane. So Alexander Drysdale is doing worse and worse but like the evidence – even more apparently than the treasure they found. And here’s what Pinkerton wrote in his account ‘I had assumed a terrible responsibility in taking such extreme measures with him. For there was danger that he might go insane without confessing his guilt.

[35:00]

In that case my position would have been really dangerous. I should have been accused of giving the orders to drive him crazy with no proper justification for my actions. And the result might have been most disastrous to me.

J: A moment of startling clarity.

S: So – they take him into the office. He’s really deteriorating apparently and they’re like well, let’s throw another ghost sighting at him, why not? So they have Green dress up as the ghost again. He faints. So Pinkerton comes to arrest him, which he’s able to do. And in one final effort to squeeze a confession out Agent Green walks by casually. Theyre at the bank, at the crime scene. Walks casually by, stands in the place Gordon was killed. And Drysdale collapses and when he comes to, once again, everyone says that they didn’t see anything, he’s the only one who saw the ghost.

J: My god.

S: There’s something so sinister about that.

J: I don’t know like systemic or independent forces that are willing to enlist people to be like oh no we’re gaslighting this person for the greater good because I have a hunch that he’s a murderer.

S: Right. And like you’ve pointed out based on this account. It’s like, did you try talking to him, did you question him at any time? I’m not saying – I’m not advocating for giving the third degree or anything but did you try saying ‘Did you kill this person?’ – was that ever a tactic you used?

J: Did you ask for an alibi of like where were you on the night of – I feel like a fool for even suggesting it. Clearly this is not the Pinkerton M.O.

S: Yeah you first gotta pretend to be a ghost. Drysdale denies that he had anything to do with the murder so Pinkerton pulls out some of the gold that he found buried in the creek by his house. And is like well, did you bury this in the creek by your house? And they also found paper money buried on his property by now. And then here’s what Pinkerton says he said ‘If you’re not satisfied with the evidence that we can prove you are guilty, I will call upon the murdered man himself to testify against you.’ As Pinkerton spoke, Green slowly reappeared behind the desk. Alexander covered his face with his hands and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh my God, I am guilty, I am guilty’ he cried out. Once Alexander began confessing he didn’t stop. He told every detail of the crime except for why. He had no answer to that question.

J: Do we believe this guy?

S: I guess like that’s one of my big questions for you cos once I read this I was like – I cannot believe that any of this happens and I feel like the parts that I find least believable are probably the most believable ones, like that you would impersonate a ghost for weeks to try to get someone to confess to something. But yeah the self-aggrandizing parts, the confession, the fact that all this worked without any kind of hitch in it. Yeah, what do you think about all that?

J: I have a lot of like conflicting instincts. I’m totally with you where it’s like the truth is stranger than fiction a lot of the time, do I believe that this man hired someone to play a ghost for weeks, I guess I don’t know why he would lie about that, because that is so dumb to do. Like you would, it would make you sound ridiculous if you hadn’t actually done it. If you faked this story to Goodreads as fiction would it fare well? I don’t think so. I guess I believe the bones of it. It does sound like Alexander Drysdale is a very plausible suspect here so it’s not like I don’t believe that he did it, and it’s not that I don’t believe that Pinkerton was able to stage a regional production. But how much those have to do with each other –

S: I’m picturing at this point Alan Pinkerton looking like Corky St.Clair.

J: Imagine what he had to leave out for this chapter to come together the way it did. There had to have been days that did not go well, or people who were very on to what was going on. And I know that this goes on to a less comedic extent now – but the fact that this was so possible to have happened for such a long amount of time in plain sight where there were just multiple full-time detectives playing ghosts and injured equestrians like – because if they were the best at the time…were they the best or were they just the most creative? I don’t know.

S: Or were they the only?

[40:00]

S: Because if you invent a field you don’t have to be good at it, you just have to be kind of doing it.

J: Was any of this admissible in court if there was like clear psychological torture on behalf of the subject? But again that happens in police forces now – but this is so silly.

S: It’s so silly and so sinister at the same time. I think that’s maybe how you know that it’s a police story. Yeah one of the things I find so revealing about the story is that you assume that early police stories or early detective stories are going to be about kind of what is at the core, what are the essentials of the field before we built it up and it became the modern thing that it is now – what is the essence of detective work? And it’s like – pretending to be a bunch of people and trying to drive someone insane, apparently.

J: I mean I don’t know what his origin is or how he got into this line of work. It’s giving a lot of Count Olaf energy to me. Well this man has a lot of costumes and interest in performance and criminal activity. So how is he going to marry these passions?

S: I guess like to me one of the lessons here is that what we have ended up with in terms of what detectives are and what they do is not inevitable and it’s not the survival of the fittest. It seems in some cases to be the survival of the weirdest. The fact that the spirit of Pinkerton lives on like that’s not great actually. He was a weird guy.

J: So do we know – what happened to Drysdale? What happened?

S: There’s a tragic ending to this. Which is that Pinkerton does what he planned, he gets Drysdale to crack and confess, Drysdale asks if he can write a note to his wife. So he writes it, and then dies by suicide.

J: Oh wow.

S: Which again either that’s the tragic outcome of Pinkerton’s ideas or that’s more depressingly if one is to take this approach it’s like – the Pinkerton version of events which I have no reason to think that, but I have no reason also to rule that out, that’s my own personal detective brain talking.

J: God.

S: Yeah all this sort of weird fluff of they did what? But somehow the skeleton of the story is the same as – we encounter this in less bizarre and far more unhistoric circumstances and one of the things that I feel like recurs through time and is still the same now is that if people suspect you of something and will go to the ends of the earth to get you to confess to it and are successful in doing that. They get to tell the story on what happened to you and on your life, and you might not survive your encounter with them. Which makes it all the easier for them to tell their own story.

J: I feel like it’s very easy for Pinkerton to say – oh yeah no I think that the guy that you said did it, he definitely did it. Whereas it’s like of course that’s what you’re being paid to do, you’re being paid to prove that – I guess I’m trying to figure out how attached Pinkerton is to justice or truth in the way that we’re conditioned to believe that detectives are.

S: In some ways it doesn’t tell us, because he’s fully on board and thinks that their prime suspect – he’s like yeah sounds right to me. And if he thought something different like – what would he do then? If you’re going to be a detective then adherence to some kind of code is important because then you don’t get to hire someone to be a ghost for weeks. There would be a rule against that. Like I think that’s good.

J: I think that fictional detectives should be allowed to be ghosts because I do want to watch that.

S: Yeah.

J: But in the real world yeah that shouldn’t be allowed.

S: In the real world where people get hurt, let’s just be as boring as possible. And also there’s so many little like cute children’s books about like Kate Warne the first female detective in America. And I don’t think any of them talk about how she had to get up in the middle of the night and sprinkle blood around some guy’s house who she was trying to perhaps frame.

J: I don’t know much about her so I don’t want to play down her accomplishments but it sounds like she’s America’s like five-thousandth regional theatre actress. Where does the detective work come in in what she was asked to do? It sounds like everyone’s just being asked to prove what Pinkerton is being paid to say happened.

S: Yeah. Like she got to protect the life of the President later on which is like – not really a detecting job, it’s a body guard job.

J: I mean that is pretty cool, in theory right?

S: It’s pretty awesome. So maybe this is early moment in the bio-pic where she’s working for a ridiculous boss who makes her sprinkle blood over someone’s house in the middle of the night.

J: This is her dues paying era.

[45:00]

S: What I find sad and useful about this story is that people make the same riduclous mistakes over time. And in a way what is implausible to me as the like pretend to be a ghost to get him to confess thing is, I feel like it’s not that different than the way perhaps you would pretend to a suspect that you have forensic evidence that was much more damning than it actually was but really pointed to their guilt.

J: Yeah.

S: Because to a nineteenth-century person a ghost pointing the finger at you is about as real as like a finger-print somewhere.

J: Yeah. What would have been plausible to the average person, because obviously ghost cos-play sounds really silly to us but would have probably been more plausible at this time. Which makes it more insidious in the context of when it happened.

S: Yeah – I feel okay laughing about it in the end because to me the laugh is on Alan Pinkerton himself, world’s greatest detective slash cos-player.

J: Right like if he were in today’s world he would be like in San Diego every summer really putting on a show.

S: And that would be a better outlet for his skills and maybe he’d be a lot happier.

J: I did do a light Google – they’re still operational now? They’re still a thing?

S: Oh yeah. They’re still around. They’ve got that Pinkerton name, that people associate with quality.

J: Their logo looks like a combination of CVS and Welcome to Nightvale. What are you taking away from the Pinkertons so far?

S: In my quest to try and understand the actual detective, and the detective character, this one is helpful to me because it shows how something like grand and dignified and seemingly essential to American life can grow out of something really really inept and funny and ultimately sad. That like if you want to understand the oak tree, look at the acorn and be like wow, that was a weird, weird acorn.

J: Right.

S: That’s the thing it’s like Alan Pinkerton, based on this plan, you’re like what a lovable dork and also what a scary scary guy is where I’m at.

J: That does kind of toe the line that the most memorable detectives do – is like you feel very very personally connected to them, you feel like oh well even when they are acting out of turn, their goal is inherently good and rooted in justice and trying to do the right thing, they’re just unorthodox in how they approach things. That still feels like, even as I feel like people are slowly coming out of a copaganda fugue state – that’s something that – at least for me has been a little more difficult to shake because it feels

S: Yeah.

J: …very very like ingrained into stuff that I liked and still engage with now kind of in spite of myself.

S: It’s not that detective stories are so great necessarily it’s that detectives as a character allow us to access great stories, and they feel like the only way to get there. Even if those could be like journalism stories or theatre kid who likes to dress up as a ghost stories.

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