The Ironclad Alibi Page 8

  “Yes, Marse Harry,” said Caesar Augustus, rising. He returned quite quickly, and the two of them gently draped the counterpane over her body, pulling it high to cover her stricken face.

  “Now what do we do?” Caesar Augustus asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  There was a sudden pounding on the door. Reluctantly, Harry opened it, finding himself faced by two wild-eyed men. The one in front, as he should have expected, was Nestor Maccubbin, looking righteous. Just behind, looking powerfully grim, was Palmer Mills.

  Maccubbin pushed his way in, while Mills stood glowering at Harry. The detective took note of the severed rope hanging from the chandelier, then of the form beneath the blanket. He pulled it away.

  As he caught sight of his wife, Mills’s countenance drained of all comprehension. Then all at once he erupted in a mixture of anguish and fury, lunging toward Harry with stark murder in his eyes. Maccubbin caught him, the two of them spinning around and crashing into Harry and all tumbling to the floor. As Harry fell, he heard shouting in the hall and the heavy thumps of many running feet. Soldiers crowded into the room, with much cursing and shouting. Harry tried to get clear of them, but someone struck him a blow at the back of his head as he was rising, and he went down on the floor again hard, landing so that his face came within a few inches from Bella’s dead eyes, as they stared out from beneath the cover. He rolled to the other side, hearing Mills call out his name several times. Then someone kicked him. He recalled seeing Caesar Augustus pressed against the wall, his eyes widened with fear as Harry had never before seen in all the years that the two of them had been friends. Then all became very blurry.

  Whatever curiosity Harry had had about McDaniels’s private jail from reading about it in the newspapers was more than sufficiently alleviated by examining it firsthand—from within. It occupied what had been a large, long storeroom in the rear of Dickinson and Hill’s auction house at Franklin and Sixteenth Streets, the interior now cut up into several small cubicles of varying dimensions.

  Harry had been put into one of the larger chambers. It boasted a barred window that looked out onto the alley. This must have been a comfort in the heat of a Richmond summer, but it was February. Though the window was shuttered, there were cracks big enough to see through, and gusts of chill wind found their way through every one.

  Caesar Augustus had been dragged into this dreadful place as well, shoved into accommodations with doubtless far fewer comforts than Harry’s. When the furor accompanying their arrival had calmed down, Harry tried calling to Caesar Augustus, but the only response came from the guard outside his door, telling him to shut up.

  Happily, he’d been in his great coat when taken. He curled up in it, seeking his own body heat, and tried to go to sleep, but seemingly every time he approached the edge of slumber, the horrible vision of Arabella hanging naked from her rope intruded, spurring him to wakefulness. Twice he found himself crying.

  He felt so wrenchingly sorry for the woman. Arabella had never meant anyone harm, least of all him. All she had wanted was to marry him and live a life much like her mother’s. Had it not been for her sharing her mother’s racialist ideas as concerned slavery, that might well have come to pass.

  Now, instead of her mother’s life, she had none.

  Whatever the cause of Bella’s death, he shared some guilt in this. He had an obligation here, to his mind one that superseded his mission for Allen Pinkerton—not that he stood much chance of carrying that out now.

  Sitting up, he moved to the warmest corner of his cell, huddling into it with his arms wrapped around his knees. For some reason, probably simple haste, they hadn’t searched him for weapons. He still had his pocket pistol and the sheath knife. But these would be of small avail in the midst of so much soldiery. If he was to escape his plight, it would have to be by means of mind and tongue.

  Slowly now, as he’d been unable to before, he went over the entire tragic occurrence as it had transpired from the instant he’d opened his hotel chamber door. He thought hard, this time keeping back the tears.

  Arabella had been without a stitch of clothing. Many a good husband was not able to see his wife so exposed in the cold of winter, when bathing was done in parts. Her clothes had been in a pile on the carpet beneath her feet, next to the overturned chair.

  All these things and the chair might indicate suicide, yet her clothes had been beneath her, as though she had divested herself of her garments one by one as she hung from the chandelier. That fixture, fueled by means of an extended pipe, barely held her weight. The snap of a rope with a human being on it should have brought it down. But it remained roughly in place.

  Had she left a note? The notion crossed his mind that she might have intended this horrid act as some twisted means of revenge. If so, was the man to be so awfully punished himself—or her husband? She’d said herself that she no longer loved the man—if she ever had at all.

  There was a rattling of keys, and his door banged open. Maccubbin came in with one of his Plug Uglies, both halting just inside the door.

  “Your story has been verified,” Maccubbin said. “You’re free to go.”

  “Verified by who?”

  “By General Robert E. Lee, Confederate States Army. He said you’re telling the truth—that he and you left the president’s house at the same time, which was barely enough time for you to walk from there to the Exchange. We had a doctor examine Mrs. Mills’s remains. She’d been dead for a fair while. There was dried blood on her ear. She had a cut on her ear—and a bruise on her cheek. Sure didn’t come from the rope. We think she was assaulted.”

  “You mean rape?”

  “I do.”

  Harry shook his head, as though to clear it. “In my room?”

  “That’s where you found her. Now get out of here, Raines. We’ve other business this night, and we’re going to need these chambers.”

  Harry got stiffly to his feet. He’d come in for a few blows in the earlier altercation.

  Maccubbin stepped aside to let him pass.

  “The Exchange Hotel doesn’t want you for a guest anymore. We packed up your things. They’re waiting there for you.”

  “Where am I to stay tonight?”

  “That’s your worry. Unless you want to stay here.”

  Harry shuddered. “No thank you.”

  He stood in the narrow hall, brushing off his coat. “Where’s my man?” he said.

  “Your man?”

  “My servant. My, uh, slave. Caesar Augustus.”

  Maccubbin grinned. “He’s been hauled off to ‘Castle Godwin.’ Best we can figure it, he attacked Mrs. Mills and then killed her, trying to make it look like a suicide.”

  “You’re charging him with murder?”

  “We’re not charging him, Raines. He’s a slave. Tomorrow, we’re goin’ to take him out and hang him. Just like he did her.”

  Chapter 7

  It was nearing dawn, but darkness still cloaked the city. On the strong chance of his being followed, Harry went through the charade of stopping by a few hotels to inquire after rooms, knowing they’d be full. Then, pausing by an alley and making certain no one was near, he ducked into the blackness, inching his way along the fences to the other end. Keeping out of the lamplight, he went uphill from there, following Grace Street up Church Hill to the mansion that looked to be his best refuge under the circumstances.

  Responding to Harry’s repeated knockings—as well as the barking of some nearby dog—the elderly Negro man finally opened the back door. Harry pushed past him, apologizing, then looked to the further doorway, where Miss Van Lew stood in a long dressing gown, wraithlike and ghostly.

  “What’s afoot, Harry?” she asked. “What brings you to my door at such an hour?”

  He gave forth his story in a rush, halted finally by Miss Van Lew, who put finger to lips and led him to the kitchen, where a fire had been kept in advance of the morning’s breakfast cooking.

  “Now, tell me all this again c
arefully,” she said, pulling two chairs close to the hearth and its glowing coals. “Leave nothing out.”

  He did as commanded, including even the details of Bella’s previous visit to his quarters and the unfortunate history of their truncated courtship.

  “And they have arrested Caesar Augustus?”

  “Yes. He offers no defense. He wouldn’t tell me where he was.”

  “But you’re his friend.”

  “I know. I don’t understand.”

  She put her hand over her eyes. “It is a tragedy out of the classics,” she said.

  “I can’t believe she’d take her own life.”

  Miss Van Lew got up to prepare tea. “Her behavior is said to have been peculiar these last few months. There are rumors of her having taken up with several young officers—though I daresay she’s entitled to some riposte to her husband’s dalliance with another woman.”

  “This is commonly known?”

  “In Richmond, Harry, everything is commonly known.”

  “I think she was with such a young officer on Inauguration Day—at the capitol. But that’s not a sign of suicidal intent.”

  “Certainly a flagrant display of marital infidelity. In normal times, she would have been shunned for that.” She brought a small kettle to the fire. “With the war on, society begins to lose its moorings.”

  “I don’t believe Arabella lost hers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t believe she came to my room to kill herself.”

  “Then who …?”

  “Miss Van Lew, I do not know. But it was not Caesar Augustus. He’s been my friend nearly all my life. He could not possibly do such a thing—murder an innocent woman. No matter what the provocation.”

  Her blue eyes searched his for the truth of this statement. “There was a provocation?”

  “He is a friend of Mrs. Mills’s maid. While calling on her, he was chased off the Mills property.”

  “You’re sure your judgment is not clouded by your friendship.”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  She took a deep breath, her countenance for a moment resembling Lincoln’s for the many matters on her mind.

  “I’ll help you, Harry—as much as I can—as long as there is no jeopardy to our cause. The Union comes first. It must.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  He was not being fully truthful. As he could not bear an ultimate Confederate victory, neither could he abide being responsible for the death of his friend.

  Harry hunched forward, paying no mind as the kettle crackled a splat of water onto the coals near him. “Forgive me, Miss Van Lew. I am woefully remiss. I have information we must get to Union forces at once. I believe the ironclad is very near to ready. The ironworks has stopped shipping plates. The construction must be complete. I could get no one at the president’s dinner to speak on it, but their impassivity carried a message in itself. I think it is only a matter of days. When Bella spoke of it, she did so in terms of great immediacy. The ‘Monster’ is about to be unleashed.”

  “I have heard similar reports.”

  “There’s more, Miss Van Lew. Conscription. The Confederate Congress next month is going to adopt a draft. Whites for the army; blacks for the labor battalions. The vote is assured. I have this from Congressman Bonham himself, with General Robert E. Lee concurring, right there at the president’s dinner table.”

  She took a towel and wrapped it around the handle of the kettle, lifting it with surprising ease and taking it to the teapot on the table. “That I already know,” she said.

  “But I’ve only just this night learned of it.”

  “The same for me.”

  She poured the teapot full, then set down the kettle and went to a large tin box, removing from it several biscuits and putting them on a plate.

  “I told you that a way would present itself to you,” she continued, setting tea, biscuits, and cherry preserves on the table. “It was at your elbow throughout the evening.”

  He stared blankly. She smiled, a little playfully.

  “Mr. Raines, have you the planter class’s habit of paying no attention to servants?” She poured him a steaming cup of tea, which he accepted gratefully. “Do you heed them no more than the furniture? If you had been more observant, you would have noticed that one of the president’s serving maids was my very own Betty.”

  “Betty?”

  “Mary Elizabeth Bowser. The young lady with whom you and Caesar Augustus shared my table the other evening. Securing her employment at the ‘Gray House’ was one of my more felicitous accomplishments. She hears all. And, yes, she fully comprehends what she hears. When my father died, ten years ago, my mother and I freed all his slaves. Most stayed with us, for honest wages. Betty I sent to Philadelphia for her education. She’s as smart as you, Harrison Raines. Smart as a whip.”

  He stared down at the floor. “So, too, my Caesar Augustus.”

  “If you think so highly of him, why hasn’t he a last name?”

  “His choosing. He says he wants to wait until he finds one of sufficient merit.”

  “Not Raines?”

  “No.”

  She sipped from her cup. “And now he’s in the hands of that vile Captain A. C. Godwin, who serves his spurious nation as provost marshal and commandant of prisons.”

  “Maccubbin said Caesar Augustus is to be hanged.”

  “As a freeman he’d get a trial, though the result would be much the same.”

  Harry began spreading preserves on a biscuit, feeling guilty as he did so. They’d no doubt given Caesar Augustus nothing to eat.

  “Miss Van Lew, I mean to spare him that fate or die trying. I also mean to discover the villains who killed Arabella.”

  Her mind was turning elsewhere. “We must get our news to Fortress Monroe,” she said. “They have a telegraph there direct to Washington. I have no trouble acquiring information here. More than I can keep track of, frankly. The rub is in getting it to where it needs to go. That becomes more and more difficult.”

  “Madam, I am followed.”

  “Sir, I am followed constantly. Three days ago, on Main Street, I turned and found a detective at my elbow! He seemed about to pounce on my market basket! They have men outside this house at all hours. With all your banging out back, I fear they are well apprised of your presence.”

  She brought her cup to her thin, small lips once more. Harry had devoured his biscuit, and reached for another.

  “They’re turning the screw, Harry,” she continued. “They’ve taken Frank Stearns, closed our refuge there on the James. Martial law, midnight arrests. We poor Virginians might as well be under the thumb of Napoleon.” She paused, then grinned. “But we who labor in the Good Cause are more numerous than they think.”

  “There is one person I might ask to help us,” he said. “She has no love for the institution of slavery, but she is a loyal Virginian. Still …”

  “I am a loyal Virginian,” said Miss Van Lew, sternly. “That is why I am with the Union.”

  “It’s my sister,” he said.

  “Harrison. You have not spoken to her in years.”

  “We’ve written …”

  “There’s too much at risk to take a chance on her. No, Harry. I’ve just thought of someone—a Lincoln man, a civilian, who now works in General Winder’s office as a telegraph clerk. I told him I would not use him except in extremis, but we are in extremis now, are we not, Harrison?”

  In the rosy firelight, he could see how she must once have been very pretty. She was the same age as Rose Greenhow, the Confederate spymaster in Washington City who had retained her allure so perfectly it had become the principal tool of her craft.

  Yet Rose now languished in Washington’s Old Capitol Prison, where Pinkerton had her under constant watch. If a drab spinster, Miss Van Lew was by far the more successful at her trade.

  She rose with a rustle and went to the window. “It’s nearing sunrise. You must leave, Harry, while you still mi
ght be invisible. I’ll give you the name of a man who keeps a boardinghouse not far from here on Cary Street. I pay him to keep a room free in the event I have unexpected guests. You are that, sir, and I will send you there. It’s near the waterfront.”

  He stood up. His fatigue was dizzying, and he had not an ounce of desire to rejoin the cold outdoors.

  “Come with me,” she said, reaching for a lantern. “There’s a short tunnel from my cellar to the smokehouse. I do not know why my father had it dug, but it has proved very useful.”

  “You are an amazement, Miss Van Lew.”

  “We all must live by our wits, these days. Return to me tonight, after midnight, by means of this same smokehouse.”

  She took his hand. He felt almost like a small child in her company.

  Despite her demonstrable competence, Harry was disinclined to throw himself on the hospitality of one of Miss Van Lew’s operatives. For all he knew, the boardinghouse keeper might be on Maccubbin’s list of prospective detainees. If not, with so many detectives keeping watch on him, Harry might himself put the fellow on such a list by turning up at his premises.

  He headed toward the other end of town, near the theater. Louise had told him where she was staying—in an old mansion turned boardinghouse, noted for both its elegance and discretion.

  It was fully sunrise when he reached it. A Negro manservant in worn black coat was on the porch, holding an armful of firewood and attempting to open the front door without dropping any of his burden. Harry rushed to his assistance, causing the other some surprise—and wariness.

  “I’m calling on Miss Devereux,” Harry said.

  The black man hesitated just inside the door. “Ah don’ think de lady is home. Wait here, sir.” He kicked the door closed behind him.

  Harry moved to a corner of the porch, near a hanging pot full of winter-dead plants. A trash wagon was making its laborious way up the street. In the other direction, two drunkards were weaving along arm in arm, either returning from revels or seeking more.

  “And who be you, sir?”

  Harry turned to find himself confronted by a large, gray-haired woman wearing a thick overcoat over her nightdress and enormous slippers.