[Mark Twain Mysteries 02] - A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court

by Peter J. Heck

  When we came out onto the banquette, the summer sun still shone brightly, although there were a few small, fluffy clouds in the sky that hadn’t been there earlier in the day, and a pleasant breeze had picked up. That seemed wrong; the weather should have been dark and stormy, to match the atmosphere inside the voodoo woman’s parlor. There should have been thunder and lightning and hard, driving rain. Instead, two young women were wheeling baby carriages along the banquette, followed by a lazy-looking hound dog. On the bench by the little store, three old men sat in the shade and argued good-naturedly about baseball. I shook my head and adjusted to a world that had suddenly become ordinary again.

  It made the most sense for us simply to walk to the Galloway home, a mere three blocks away from Eulalie Echo’s house. Someone had laid a series of planks across the street to preserve the boots of pedestrians from the mud, and we crossed from one wooden banquette to the next. Before we had gone half the block, a voice called out behind us: “Mister! Where you going?”

  I turned to see two of the local boys who had been loafing on the street corner when we had arrived at Eulalie Echo’s door. Mr. Clemens had also turned, and it was he who answered them. “Why, we’re just walking over to the Galloways’ house on First Street. Do you want to show us the way?”

  “Sure, mister,” said the larger one. I recalled that his name was Joe Jackson. “It ain’t too hard to find.” He strutted up to join us and pointed down Howard Street. “This-away,” he said, and off we went to see Aunt Tillie, with the other boy bringing up the rear.

  “I sure appreciate the favor,” said Mr. Clemens to Joe Jackson’s back.

  “Thank ’Lalie Echo, not us,” said the youth. “She told me and Diggy to keep an eye out for you, and make sure you didn’t fall into no trouble.”

  Mr. Clemens followed along at his usual unhurried pace, and after a bit, leaned over and confided to me. “Now, Wentworth, you see the advantages of consorting with a voodoo woman!”

  I myself was not about to forget that our two young escorts had just a short time previously reacted to our presence in their neighborhood with unfeigned hostility, and I resolved to remain on my guard. Perhaps a good word from Eulalie Echo had gained us the respect of Joe Jackson and his cohorts; but how quickly would respect turn again to hostility if one of us said or did something that met with their disapproval? It was while I was contemplating the latter issue that we turned the corner onto First Street to find Buddy Bolden lounging on a front porch, with an open shirt and no jacket.

  A smile spread across his face as he took in our little group. “Well, I didn’t know we was going to have a parade today,” he said. “You got everything but the band.”

  “Hello, Buddy,” said Mr. Clemens. “If I’d known we’d have an audience, I’d have sent out for a couple of elephants and a troop of cavalry to put on a real show for you. But I’m afraid you’ll have to be content with just the four of us. Joe and Diggy are taking us to Aunt Tillie’s house. You want to come along, too?”

  “Why not?” said Bolden. And he stood up and joined us as we marched the remaining half-block to our destination, whistling jauntily as he walked with us.

  At Aunt Tillie’s, Mr. Clemens promised to send for Joe Jackson if he needed any errands run in the neighborhood, and we went inside.

  Aunt Tillie was delighted to see us, and she bustled about, getting us settled and insisting on bringing us refreshments before she would join us to talk. She chattered and smiled, but as she listened to Mr. Clemens describe our visit to Eulalie Echo, I had the sense that something was bothering her. She looked more strained than when I had seen her two days earlier, although she did her best to hide it. She seemed genuinely pleased that the voodoo woman was willing to help, and readily agreed not to tell anyone of Eulalie Echo’s involvement. But when Mr. Clemens asked about her conversation with the Robinson’s butler, her face fell. “Oh, Mr. Twain, there’s bad news. Arthur don’t want to talk to nobody,” she said. “Not me, not you. I begged and pleaded, and told him it was to save Leonard. I ’bout broke down and cried, right there in front of the church, but he just shook his head, sad-like. I don’t know what’s the matter with that man. I thought he was friends with Leonard, but now I just can’t understand.”

  Mr. Clemens frowned. “I knew we’d hit a snag of some kind sooner or later,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to be the butler, though.” He took a sip of the lemonade Aunt Tillie had brought us and leaned back on her couch, lost in thought for a moment, staring up at her ceiling. Finally, he looked around the room with a curious expression.

  “Maybe this isn’t as bad news as it seems,” he said. “If the butler won’t talk to us, maybe we can figure out what his silence means. Why wouldn’t he talk to me if he knew it might help clear his friend?”

  I pondered for a moment. “Perhaps he’s shielding someone else,” I suggested. “But whom?”

  “Very good, Wentworth, that’s the same conclusion I’d drawn,” said Mr. Clemens. “Now all we have to do is figure out who that could be.”

  “Humph,” said Buddy Bolden. “You don’t suppose ol’ Arthur killed Robinson himself?”

  I had thought exactly the same thing, and nodded to him. He crossed his arms on his chest, nodding at me with a conspiratorial air.

  “I don’t suppose anything,” said Mr. Clemens. “Especially about a man I’ve never met.” Bolden’s smile faded, and I was suddenly less certain of my suspicions of the butler. Mr. Clemens continued, “I’m trying to get invited to the Robinsons’ house, if only to meet this butler who doesn’t want to talk. Maybe he still thinks Leonard’s guilty. Or maybe he’s hiding something. We’ll see. Meanwhile, we’ve plenty of other lines in the water, and one or the other is bound to get a nibble before long. I hate to think of poor Leonard stuck in that damned Parish Prison an hour longer than he has to be. I’m not a patient man, Aunt Tillie. But I’m afraid all we can do at the moment is wait.”

  “Lord have mercy,” said Aunt Tillie. “If I knew anything else to do, I’d have done it long ago. I just can’t understand why that man won’t talk.”

  “He may not be talking now,” said Mr. Clemens. “But he will. I guarantee you: he will talk to me, by the time I’m through.”

  10

  Mr. Clemens spent most of Monday doing research for the book he was writing about our journey down the Mississippi. Even though he had been a pilot before the war, he had not kept abreast of the more recent history of riverboat travel, and he felt the need to check his facts. “It doesn’t matter if you know more about boats than Noah himself,” he said. “You can write five hundred pages of absolutely bulletproof facts, and if there’s one little slip on page five hundred and one, somebody is guaranteed to find it and hold it up to prove you an ass in front of the whole world. The great problem of getting older is that your memory fills up with all sorts of nonsense, and just when you think you know something, it turns out to be dead wrong. So I have to double-check everything, and then see it all with my own eyes, before I dare believe it.”

  I accompanied him to the Custom House, from the roof of which there was a fine panoramic view of the city. We spent half an hour picking out various landmarks and looking at the course of the river both upstream and down. After satisfying himself that he had a good mental picture of present-day New Orleans and environs, he went for a look at some older maps of the city in the Howard Library on Lee Circle. Henry Dodds had pointed out the Romanesque building as he drove us out to the Garden District, and my Baedecker identified it as one of the last works of the noted Louisiana-born architect Henry H. Richardson. But I had spent more than my share of time in libraries while at Yale, and Mr. Clemens had no need for my assistance. I decided instead to pass the afternoon in walking about the city, sightseeing.

  I walked along the levee from Canal Street to Jackson Square, enjoying the ever-changing spectacle of the river and the boats. There was far more commerce on the water than I would have expected, to hear Mr. Clemens’s tales o
f how the steamboat business had declined from thirty years ago. But even before his comments on the fallibility of memory, I had learned that when a man of advanced years speaks of the things he knew in his youth, a prudent listener should allow for some margin of error.

  In fact, there were more kinds of steamboat than I had ever seen before, from small packets that offered cheap transport to minor river ports, to the Streckfus excursion boats catering to holiday crowds, and the cargo boats bringing cotton and sugar into New Orleans to be reloaded onto oceangoing ships bound for dozens of ports both domestic and foreign. One of the excursion boats had a steam calliope on the texas deck, and it was playing a cheerful (if a bit out of tune) version of “Dixie” to greet the passengers as they boarded.

  The wharves along the river swarmed with half-naked men glistening with sweat as they wrestled crates and barrels and cotton bales on and off the boats. Here were larger ships, as well: steamers from Veracruz, Havana, Port of Spain, Rio de Janeiro, others bound for Portugal and France and the coast of Africa. Shouted orders, angry curses, and hearty work songs filled the air, not only in English, but in Spanish, Italian, Creole French, and other, even more exotic, languages. By one recently arrived boat, a group was gathered around a man with three creased playing cards atop a barrel—a game I had learned the hard way to avoid. At another spot, a group of young colored boys were diving into the river to wash off the dust and escape the heat, whooping and laughing and splashing. I remembered my own days of swimming in the river at New London, and I envied them their innocent fun.

  The riverfront was the best free show in town, I decided. Half the loafers in New Orleans seemed to agree with me; everywhere along the docks I saw men sitting contemplatively on pilings or bales, watching other men at work. Here a slim Negro strummed a banjo; there an old fellow in a straw hat flipped through the pages of a newspaper; another dozed, his back against a piling, waking intermittently to spit a stream of tobacco juice through his mustache and into the river. As a veteran of a long river journey on the Horace Greeley, I watched it all with an appreciative eye, until the summer sun drove me indoors for a cool drink and something to eat.

  I had lunch (little bits of tender veal braised in red wine with garlic and spices, served with hominy grits) in a restaurant near the French Market, whence I heard the melodious cries of the vendors—almost a sort of music in themselves, with the words marvelously distorted. Then I decided to explore the Roman Cathedral of Saint Louis, which the guidebook informed me was built in the Spanish-Creole style of a century before, but refurbished in 1850. It was cool inside the church, and quiet, although a few solitary worshipers knelt in the pews, counting their rosaries, or brought candles to light in little niches by statues of the saints. According to my guidebook, the large mural behind the altar (of the French king Louis XI) and the frescoes painted on the ceiling were of newer vintage than the rest, but I found them impressive, nonetheless.

  The cathedral is flanked by twin buildings of colonial vintage, the Presbytère (or parsonage) and the Cabildo, the seat of government during the city’s Spanish era, both now courthouses. In the center of the large square in front of the cathedral, surrounded by greenery, stands a large equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, reportedly the first of its kind in America. Whether the rider is an accurate portrait of Old Hickory is apparently a constant subject for debate in New Orleans, although few still living can have laid eyes on its subject; not that the citizenry allows the shortage of eyewitnesses to curtail its enjoyment of a good argument. The horse is unquestionably a fine piece of work.

  I wandered about the streets adjoining the square an hour or two longer, then returned to our Royal Street pension where I found Mr. Clemens, back from his day at the library, smoking a pipe and nursing a drink. “How did it go?” I asked.

  “Not as badly as I expected,” he drawled. “Half the things I want aren’t to be found anywhere in Louisiana, and another half is unreliable, and another half is flat-out lies.”

  “That’s three halves,” I said.

  Mr. Clemens snorted. “Yes, but I told you that the first half isn’t to be found, and the third half is a pack of lies, so neither of those ought to count at face value. You can’t apply mathematics to literary research, Wentworth. I’m surprised they don’t teach you these things at Yale. I may have to give them back that honorary master’s degree they gave me.”

  We spoke a bit more about his work in progress, in particular two or three details of his research that I would need to follow up for him, then went to our separate rooms to change for dinner. Tonight we were to dine with the family of the murder victim, John David Robinson, at the home of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Percival Staunton. Mr. Clemens reminded me that the entire family were suspects in the murder; he and I would have to put our powers of observation to good use.

  Mr. Clemens had arranged for Henry Dodds to drive us to our dinner party, and the coachman was waiting with his cab when we walked out to the street. “How d’ye do, gen’lemens, hop on board,” he said. Then, surveying our formal outfits, “Looks like y’all dressed fit to kill. Whose funeral is it goin’ to be?”

  “Yours, if we’re late for dinner!” said Mr. Clemens, climbing to his seat. “But if you don’t get us lost, we should be there in time.” Then, he leaned over to me and added, sotto voce, “Not dressed fit to kill, but maybe fit to catch a killer!”

  Henry Dodds clucked at his horse and edged our cab out onto Royal Street, as Mr. Clemens laughed at his own joke. “Hang on, Wentworth,” he said as we headed toward Canal Street. “If Henry doesn’t break our necks, we’ll soon get a look at how the other half of New Orleans lives!”

  Dodds took us along the now-familiar route to the Garden District, out Saint Charles Avenue past the statue of Henry Clay, City Hall, Lee Circle, and the Howard Library, where Mr. Clemens had spent the day working. But when we reached Jackson Avenue, instead of turning to the right, toward the working-people’s homes on the lake side of Saint Charles, we turned left into the Garden District proper, where some of the finest homes in the city were sited. The houses and the lawns grew larger and more magnificent, and the people we saw on the street were better dressed than in the French Quarter. Even the servants seemed to be wearing their finest outfits. We passed several carriages with parties dressed as if for an evening on the town. A few of them recognized Mr. Clemens, or perhaps it was merely the famous Southern spirit of hospitality that made them wave to us.

  I had visited many of the finer homes in Connecticut and Massachusetts, belonging to my father’s family and social circle; and, if I may say so without boasting, I had grown up in a rather fine house myself. The ancestral Cabot home in Boston, in which my grandparents still resided, was perhaps even more impressive. But very few of them could match the magnificence of the houses we passed on the streets of the Garden District, each of them seemingly grander and more impressive than the last.

  The Staunton residence was a substantial prewar mansion in Greek Revival style, at the corner of First and Chestnut. The house was painted a pale lavender color, setting off two tiers of elegant white columns at the front; Ionic on the ground-floor porch, Corinthian on the balcony. The galleries and the fence around the neat front yard were of the wrought iron lacework characteristic of New Orleans architecture, a baroque touch contrasting with the more restrained Grecian lines of the house itself. A pair of live oak trees planted on the strip between the banquette and the road made a picturesque frame for the visitor approaching the front of the house.

  No sooner had Henry Dodds pulled his rig to a halt in front of the Staunton house than the front door opened. A little lady in a dark blue dress with a white lace shawl fairly danced out onto the porch. “Mr. Clemens! You’ve come!” she cried, as if there had been some doubt about it. This, I took it, was our hostess.

  “Mrs. Staunton,” said my employer, as I helped him down from the high seat of Henry Dodds’s cab. “Of course I came. Have you ever known a writer to turn down a chance fo
r a free dinner?” He tipped his hat and bowed, and our hostess skipped back and forth from one foot to the other, all but overcome with delight.

  A vigorous, dark-haired man appeared on the porch beside her and strode down the walk toward us. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said in a deep voice with a thick Louisiana accent. “Tell your driver to take the cab ’round back, and he can tie up his horse. Louisa will give him something to eat in the kitchen.” He dismissed our driver with a gesture toward the back of the house.

  “Why, I surely ’predate it, sir!” said Henry Dodds, raising his cap. He flicked the reins and disappeared around the corner.

  “Mr. Clemens, welcome,” said our host. “My wife has hardly spoken of anything else since she invited you, so I’m glad to make your acquaintance at last. Percival Staunton at your service.” He was a remarkably handsome man, with chiseled features and penetrating blue eyes over a thin moustache. I judged his age to be somewhere in the vicinity of forty, but in his well-cut blue suit, he could have passed for younger. He shook Mr. Clemens’s hand, then mine. His grip was firm, although his hand was somewhat cold and clammy.

  “Come on inside,” said Staunton. “We’re still waiting on two of our guests, but most of the party came early, in anticipation of you.”

  Mr. Clemens formally introduced me to Percival Staunton and his wife Maria, and Mrs. Staunton declared herself delighted to welcome us to her home. She wore her dark hair in a Psyche knot, and her oval spectacles gave her a distracted look. Her silk dress was slightly old-fashioned, cut high at the neck and bustled, but of excellent material and workmanship. She beamed at Mr. Clemens, favoring him with a crooked smile, then shook my hand very gravely, peering at me through her spectacles. “I must say, I envy you, Mr. Cabot, spending your days in the company of such a famous writer. Welcome to our home.”