Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  “I’ll find him,” Sylvie assured her, but Anna’s concern had become her own. After bidding the woman good-bye, Sylvie wove through footmen and patrons, urgency building. She looked in the hallway, cloakroom, reception area, and gallery, her pulse crescendoing along with the music still coming from the string quartet.

  He was gone.

  For a man who had spent two years fantasizing about escaping from a prison camp, slipping away from an art show had been easy.

  His breath clouding in front of his face, Stephen bounded up the front steps of his old friend’s home and pounded the brass knocker on the door. This was Hiram’s house. No one else’s. There had to be a reckoning with the man inside, and as the police had proven worthless, Stephen would be the one to do it.

  He banged on the door again, this time with the side of his fist. A light came on above his head.

  The door opened. “Mr. Townsend?” How young Jasper looked, how sharply hewn. He was wily, this one.

  But so was Stephen. “I’d like to come in.”

  “Please do.” Jasper—no, George Skinner—stepped back to allow him entrance.

  Stephen hadn’t been here since the day he first met this young man, which was also the last day he’d seen his friend alive. Coincidence? No. “Can you guess what’s on my mind?”

  Skinner’s mouth pressed as flat and thin as the white scar lining his brow. “I reckon I can. Come, we’ll visit in the parlor.”

  Stephen followed him into the room but remained standing. “I don’t much feel like sitting.” Or visiting, for that matter. What he felt like doing, he couldn’t do, on account of not having his gun.

  He glanced at the untidy tea service on a table and recalled that the maid and housekeeper had been at Meg’s art show. All the better that they were still gone. This confrontation was for George Skinner alone.

  A kerosene lamp flickered next to the teapot. When Skinner noticed Stephen staring at it, he said, “Habit. I keep forgetting the gaslights work again.” He pushed his girlish locks off his brow and folded his arms. “If you’re here about Sylvie, I’ll tell you right now that we’ve done nothing dishonorable.”

  “Sylvie?” This was disorienting. “What about her? What have you done?”

  Skinner frowned. “As I said: nothing. She returned my photograph to me, but Meg and Nate were also present, and they can tell you everything that transpired. I accepted what was mine and returned what was yours. That is, I told her we would honor your wishes and not see each other again.”

  Stephen’s limbs told him to pace and slap, to move, to give vent to the energy tumbling through him. But he stood his ground. “I’ll bet you were glad to have that photograph back. George.”

  The boy-man blanched. “What did you say?”

  “I said I know you’re not Jasper Davenport.” Stephen straightened and threw back his shoulders. He was a soldier again and ready for the fight. “Your name is George Skinner, you were a prisoner under Hiram at Camp Douglas, and you came back to take revenge. You took his life, you took his estate, you almost took my daughter. But the jig is up.”

  “Be reasonable, Mr. Townsend,” Skinner said, but he steadied himself with a hand to a chair. “You’re at odds with yourself. Again.”

  Oh no, he wasn’t. “Not this time.”

  “If it’s your word against mine, who do you think the police will believe?” Skinner said. “You may have been cleared of the murder charges, but you’re still unstable. Folks know it. Besides, all I have to do is say you tried to harm me, and you’ll be locked up for the rest of your days. Is that what you want? Is that what your girls want for you? Do you want them to live in the shadow of your insanity for the rest of their lives too?”

  Stephen paused, but only for a moment. This was a battle of the mind, but wasn’t he a veteran of those too? Skinner was striking where Stephen was most vulnerable. But Stephen refused to yield. “What I want,” he said, “is justice.”

  “You are suspicious and paranoid because of your soldier’s heart. Perhaps we were mistaken when we had you released. You ought to be under a doctor’s care.”

  “You mean I ought to be locked away and discredited so you can get away with murder. Hiram was my friend. You killed my friend, and it wasn’t even a time of war.” The faces of all of Stephen’s lost comrades paraded through his mind. They’d been killed in battle, or died of starvation, or of epidemics no doctors could stop. But Hiram had been murdered. Shot in the back, Meg had said. “Coward.”

  Stephen launched his fist into Skinner’s nose.

  Skinner’s head snapped back, but he rallied, punching Stephen square in the jaw. Tasting blood and fury, Stephen returned a blow to Skinner’s gut. Doubling over, Skinner caught himself on the parlor table, sending the tea service and lamp smashing and skidding across the floor. He lunged forward and boxed Stephen’s cheekbone so hard that the light flickered.

  Stephen shook his head and stumbled away, then leaned on his knees to catch his breath, feeling every one of his forty-five years. “If anyone’s going to be locked up, it’s going to be you,” he said.

  When he looked up, George was training a Colt Army revolver on Stephen’s chest. “No, Mr. Townsend. I don’t think it will.”

  A crack rent the air, and the parlor filled with smoke.

  A second later, Stephen blinked at the plaster rosettes on the ceiling. Distantly, he realized he was lying on the floor, bleeding from his thigh.

  Across the room, a small flame leapt from a puddle of oil surrounded by broken glass.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Nearly breathless with suspense, Sylvie paid the cab driver and dashed through the gate—left open, she presumed by her father—between the stone lions, and up the steps. Just as she reached Jasper’s front door, a gunshot sounded inside the house.

  She thought she was going to be sick. She imagined Jasper bleeding out on a rug, her father standing over him. But the blood was on her hands too, for she’d been charged with watching over Stephen.

  Stomach in a vise, she beat on the door, then tried to open it only to find it locked. Bunching her skirts into her fists, she ran back down the steps, over a boxwood hedge, and around the side of the house, where she saw light seeping from the window.

  She gasped when she looked inside. Jasper was pointing a gun at her father, who lay motionless.

  Had she lost him already?

  Fear was the force that moved her. Fear, and regret, and love for the only father she had.

  A large stone urn stood beneath the window, empty of flowers for the winter. After climbing onto it, Sylvie opened the window and tumbled inside, knocking over a pedestaled fern. It sprawled on the floor in a scattering of dirt and broken pottery.

  “Sylvie!” Jasper made no move to help her. His gun was still trained on her father.

  “What have you done? What did you do?” She ran to Stephen and knelt at his side. One look at his leg, and she peeled back the hem of her skirt, tearing strips from her petticoat.

  “Daughter,” Stephen said, “his name is Skinner.”

  She jerked her attention to the man with the gun.

  Sweat trickled down Jasper’s temples, and blood smeared from his nose. “Sylvie, it’s not what you think.”

  “I think you shot my father!” she shouted. “He was unarmed!” With all the strength she had, she ripped fabric and wove it beneath his leg, binding the wound.

  “So was Hiram,” Stephen whispered.

  Three words, small and soft as gunpowder. They exploded in Sylvie’s mind.

  “What does he mean?” she said.

  Cold night air brought a dampness to the room. A fire popped and snapped.

  “I can explain,” Jasper said desperately. “If I’d wanted to kill your father, I’d have shot him in the chest. You’ll understand me once I explain.”

  She tied the petticoat tourniquet as tightly as she could. “I have no idea who you are.” Her voice was strangely controlled, but inside she was flying apa
rt. “Tell me your name. Tell me everything.”

  He wiped the back of one hand across the blood leaking from his nose. “My name is George Skinner.”

  She couldn’t look at him. She looked at her father instead, cradling his head on her lap.

  “I was right,” Stephen rasped. “Right all along. Beware an enemy in the camp.”

  George’s laugh was short and dark. “But I didn’t have to be your enemy, Mr. Townsend. And, Sylvie, I’m certainly not yours. I was a Confederate prisoner at Camp Douglas. What we suffered there, you cannot begin to conceive. I told you I lost my toes to frostbite, but I didn’t tell you men lost their fingers too. One of my friends lost all ten of his. He had only clubs for hands. We took turns feeding him, trying to keep his body and soul together. But he stopped eating so he would die.”

  Sylvie stroked the side of her father’s face, feeling the stubble beneath her fingertips. She saw the scabs still on his scalp. But she was listening to every word.

  “I can’t bear to tell you the torturous games the prison guards played with us. Hiram was one of my guards. He wasn’t one of the worst. He inflicted no physical pain, but he did take everything that mattered to us. He took all of it.”

  “The gold?” she asked, her head still bowed over her father. Outside air swirled with the warmth of the fire, mottling her skin with an odd mixture of cold and hot.

  “Mine. That coin you found was mine, and many more pieces besides. Never mind how I came by it, but it belonged to me, and he stole it. It was my future. Without it, I had nothing. He knew that, and he took it anyway.”

  Tears clotted her throat. “I can’t believe he would do that.”

  “You held the proof yourself.”

  Sylvie lifted her head and gasped. The fire she had thought was in the hearth was instead a wild thing, loose in the room. It had crawled up the wall and was chewing the doorframe that led to the hall. Chunks of flaming molding fell to the floor. Smoke billowed out through the open window. They had to leave. They had to leave now.

  “The fire,” she said, her tongue already feeling thick. “The room is on fire. We have to go.”

  Stephen pushed himself up to sit.

  George came closer, aiming the gun at her. “Not yet. My story’s not through.”

  Her chest heaved, her stays an oppressive constraint. “Don’t be a fool, Ja—”

  “George,” he corrected her. “You might as well say it.”

  “George. The fire. I can’t—we can’t—” Her thoughts jumbled in her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut, and it was October 8 again. She was in the art studio in the apartment, pulling Meg away from the fire. Stephen was gone. Meg was burned. They had to run for their lives without him.

  “Sylvie.” Her father grasped a fold of her skirt. “We’ll get out of here together.”

  Each breath sliced so sharply, she almost couldn’t think. Bewildered, she looked at the blood seeping through his bandage. “Can you walk?”

  “Help me stand.”

  George glanced at the fire, then back at them. He stepped closer, too close, much too close.

  Leaving her father on the floor, Sylvie stood between them. “Let us go. We have to leave, all three of us.”

  “And let you run to the police? Just listen to me, and I don’t think you’ll want to. You love me, Sylvie, I know you do. You owe it to me to listen.”

  Sweat bloomed beneath her arms and across her back and chest. She looked at the gun. “Then speak.”

  “I never meant to hurt you. And I never meant to hurt Hiram either.” The fire lit one side of his face, casting the other in dark shadow. “It’s true I was a Galvanized Yankee, though it meant betraying the sacrifices my fellow Confederates had made. When the war was over, I went home, only to find that my brothers had died in battle, and my parents told me I was no son of theirs. They were so ashamed of me for turning Yankee that they told everyone I was dead. They preferred to believe it too.”

  Sylvie’s gaze shifted to the fire creeping across the floor. It lapped at the settee, and the upholstery began to blacken. “What happened next?”

  “There wasn’t enough work at home, so eventually I reenlisted. After one three-year term, I wanted another way of life, but I’d managed to save only a pittance on my army pay. If I’d had that gold Hiram stole from me, I could have set myself on a new path. So I returned to Chicago to take as much as I could from him.”

  Smoke swirled along the ceiling, smudging the plaster with soot. There were no flying firebrands or fiery whirlwinds here, and yet through strength of memory Sylvie could feel sparks piercing her clothes and skin. She rubbed her arms and patted her hair to extinguish them. She felt herself slipping and turned to Stephen.

  His presence grounded her to the present. He was here. This wasn’t October 8.

  “Hurry,” Sylvie begged. “We need to go.”

  But George was completely ignoring the fire. “Before I could take anything from Hiram, he saw me on the street and welcomed me in as his long-lost nephew. I recalled him saying in Camp Douglas how much I looked like him. His mind had grown stuck in the past, and I decided to play along. He would give me far more than I could ever take.” He edged a little farther away from the fire. “I could have played the part forever.”

  “Then why did you kill him?” Stephen ground out between his teeth.

  “I never intended to. I found him wandering outside the night of the fire on my way home from the library. He had a moment of lucidity and realized I wasn’t his nephew. When he threatened to go to the police, I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t let my life fall apart all over again. I have a future now, don’t you see? An education that will lead to a solid job. A house, a home fit for a wife.”

  Sylvie bristled, the hair rising on her arms. He was a murderer. He had confessed it. The man she’d fallen in love with had killed her father’s best friend. Behind her, Stephen groaned.

  On the other side of the room, table legs burned away, and the tabletop crashed to the floor. When George’s attention jerked that way, Sylvie lunged for the gun, wresting it from his sweat-slicked grip. She turned it on him with a trembling hand.

  “Daughter.” The voice behind her sounded far away. “Give me that weapon.”

  But she held it on George with both hands.

  He backed up a pace. “You’ll never do it, sweetheart. You wouldn’t shoot the man you love.”

  Shaking, sweating, Sylvie gritted her teeth. “The man I love doesn’t exist.”

  As soon as someone told Meg they’d seen Sylvie dash off without taking her cloak and hat, she knew why her sister had left. She only wished Sylvie hadn’t gone alone. With a quick apology to Mrs. Palmer, Meg left the sparkling gallery to chase her sister, who could only be chasing their father. And there was only one place they would have gone.

  The parlor in Hiram’s house was glowing when Meg arrived.

  No. Not glowing. Burning.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Finding the front door locked, and the side door too, she ran to the side of the house and climbed onto a stone urn to see through the open window. At first, all she saw was the fire on the opposite side of the room, blocking the door to the hall. Then her heart skipped a beat. In the middle of the parlor, Sylvie trained a gun on Jasper. They stood unmoving, a living tableau about to be burned. Her father, she couldn’t see.

  Heat from the flames took the chill off the outside air. Meg shed her cloak and hat, dropping them to the frosted ground. Inside, Sylvie was shaking her head. Was she looking at Jasper or at Meg?

  “You’re in shock,” Jasper was saying. His back was to the window. “You’re upset—you’re not thinking straight. Put the gun down, nice and slow.”

  “You murdered Hiram,” Sylvie said loudly enough for Meg to hear. “You shot my father. Why do you think I would trust you enough to put this gun back in your hands?”

  Breath stalled in Meg’s lungs. The revelation hung like something dark and uncaged in the room.
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  “Because you love me,” Jasper said. “You forgive me because you love me. And I love you, Sylvie. Give me the gun, and we’ll work this out. I never would have shot your father if he hadn’t attacked me first. I had to defend myself.”

  “Don’t listen to him, daughter!”

  Relief jolted through Meg at her father’s voice. She’d heard enough. Stephen was incapacitated, and Sylvie would never pull the trigger.

  Every fiber in her being told Meg to run from the fire. Her hands tingled with apprehension, as if they had memory of their own and fears separate from the rest of her brain.

  But this fire was not big enough to consume a third of the city. It was not even big enough to have alarmed the neighbors or night watchman yet. She would not run from this, but into it.

  Bending, Meg wrapped her skirts around her left wrist and carefully climbed inside the parlor, the noise of her movement covered by the crackling fire. Instantly, sweat covered her.

  Sylvie kept Jasper talking. “And what will become of us? What future could there possibly be for you and me after this?”

  Meg couldn’t hear his response and didn’t care to. He’d murdered Hiram, shot her father, and was manipulating her sister. She felt a rush of courage born of fear and anger. She knew what she had to do.

  Silently, she reached into the alcove next to the window for the marble bust of Robert Burns, her right hand struggling to find a good purchase. It felt awkward in her grip and far heavier than the sum of its pounds, and the muscles in her arms trembled. Her palms were slick, the fused fingers of her right hand maddeningly in the way. Smoke choked the air and her lungs as she moved away from the wall.

  Sylvie was faltering, the gun shaking, lowering.

  Jasper had taken a step closer. “Enough negotiating.” He lashed out and grasped the revolver’s barrel, twisting it while Sylvie held fast.

  It happened in less than an instant. But in that flash of time, past, present, and future melted together in Meg’s mind. She saw Stephen as a wounded soldier, a prisoner, and as her father, wounded still. She saw Hiram in his nightclothes, shot in the back. She saw her sister longing for romance, falling for Jasper, and being shot by him, just as he’d shot Stephen.