The Ironclad Alibi

by Michael Kilian

  That macabre night in the mortuary, he had wished for nothing more than to have this poor woman safe at last beneath the ground of this gentle bower, a place of peace and endless rest by the broad river she had loved so deeply. He had thought there’d be consolation in this, and resolution. But he felt just as troubled and frustrated as before.

  “You weepin’, Mister Raines? You weep for her?”

  He put his hand to his face. “I suppose I am. It’s very sad.”

  “It gets sadder, Mister Raines. Here come my master.”

  Harry looked to see Mills striding toward him with great purpose from the direction he had gone in. He was moving fast. Unless Harry turned now and fled like a thief, or a coward in battle, there was no avoiding this confrontation.

  Mills stopped about ten paces away. “You were not invited, Raines.”

  “I realize that. That’s why I waited until you had finished.”

  Mills pulled out his Le Mat revolver, holding it firmly and keeping beyond Harry’s reach. “I want you to go. Now.”

  “All right.” Harry gave Arabella’s grave a small salute and then started back up the hill, taking Estelle by the hand.

  “Estelle,” said Mills. “You come back here!”

  She looked at him, and then at Harry, and then broke into a run. Harry waited for the pistol shot, but it didn’t come.

  “What are you doing with her?” Mills demanded.

  “Found her in the street.”

  “You catch her again, you send her home.”

  “Good-bye, Palmer.”

  “I warn you, Raines. You ever come back here, I’m gonna have someone shoot you down.”

  “You can’t do your own killing?”

  “I have business elsewhere.”

  “That’s right. The ironclad. It’s keeping you so busy.”

  “I do mean what I say, Harry. Mark me well. You stay away from this sacred ground.”

  Climbing into the saddle, Harry urged the clumsy horse into a trot, catching up with Estelle at the top of the hill.

  “Estelle, stop!” he said.

  She did.

  He dismounted again, then led her to a nearby boulder, where he made her sit. She looked up at him apprehensively.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to get you to a safe place. But you can’t stay with me. Mills will come looking for you there.”

  He smiled. She did not.

  “You say I’m free.”

  “You will be. I need to ask you some more questions, Estelle.”

  “Please Mister Raines, I don’t know nothin’.”

  He sat down next to her. “Can you tell me exactly when Mrs. Mills left the house to come to my hotel?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Afternoon.”

  “Early afternoon?”

  “No. It was later. Late afternoon.”

  “Was the Mills’s carriage at the house until then?”

  “I guess. They keep it in the barn.”

  “Where was Mister Mills?”

  “He warn’t home. He go to the Ironworks. Like every day. Stay there late.”

  “And did Mrs. Mills tell you where she was going?”

  “Nosir. She just say I can’t go.”

  Harry studied her light brown face. “How was she dressed?”

  “Like always. Like you found her.”

  “Estelle, when I found her, she wasn’t dressed at all.”

  She began crying and put her hands to her face. Harry put his arm around her, then got her to her feet.

  “Come on, then. We’re going to find you a safe haven.”

  There was, of course, only one such place in all of Richmond that Harry knew about. He dared not go right up to the door again. Instead, he took her up the back way to Church Hill, tying his horse to a tree outside St. John’s Episcopal Church.

  Leading her by the hand, he took a seat in the rearmost corner. A rector at the front of the pews looked their way curiously, and for rather a long time, then shuffled off through a doorway. There was an old woman in an aisle seat several rows ahead, on her knees and bent in prayer. Harry, who’d been raised Presbyterian, knelt as well.

  Taking a piece of paper from his pocket, he used the moment to scribble a quick note:

  “I am liberating this poor woman, Arabella’s maid.

  She needs swift passage to freedom. H”

  “Can you read?” he whispered.

  “Not much.”

  “No matter. There’s a big house just the other side of Grace Street from this church. I want you to go to the back door and present this note. They will take care of you.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “There is no doubt, Estelle. I’ll rejoin you tonight. Now go.”

  He waited a few minutes after she left, then slipped out the door and went into the churchyard, using what cover its bare-limbed trees provided to observe Estelle’s approach to the door. She was accepted within. A moment later, the thin, yellow-haired figure of Miss Van Lew appeared, coming out onto the steps and looking about in all directions—whether for him or Nestor Maccubbin’s men, he could not say. Then she returned inside.

  Harry looked down at the gravestone at his feet. “Elizabeth Arnold Poe,” the beautiful Richmond actress who had so besotted his father’s generation, but died young, and in near poverty.

  So many such women to weep for.

  And thousands of men.

  He took lunch in a small tavern, paying a reasonably honest-looking boy to hold his horse for him in back, out of view of the equine press gangs. There was a fresh copy of the Richmond Sentinel on the bar. He put down twice the price and took it to his table.

  The news was mixed. There’d been skirmishing up along the Potomac, near Pohick Church and Mason’s neck, the Confederates and the Sentinel proclaiming victory. Yet, over in Harpers Ferry, federal troops under General Nathaniel Banks had retaken the town for the Union.

  Ominously, there was a story announcing that the Confederate Congress had voted to give President Davis the right to suspend habeas corpus. Anyone could be arrested now for anything and held without trial at the government’s pleasure. This was a power Mister Lincoln had already conferred upon himself, mostly to deal with the rabid Secessionists in Baltimore, but it gave Harry a chill to read the words.

  The South had likened its rebellion to the fight for independence from Britain, proclaiming its “Second American Revolution,” and a blow struck for freedom and liberty. Yet, there was slavery, and now this.

  Were it not for Caesar Augustus, Harry’s course would be simple. Ride out of town and keep going until across the Rappahannock—perhaps never to return again. He had proved to be an inept spy—or “scout,” as Pinkerton preferred to call his people. Miss Van Lew was by far his superior at the calling, and now it seemed his mission had been fulfilled by some person unknown to either of them. All he had to show for this long, unnecessary journey behind enemy lines was a dead former sweetheart and an imprisoned friend.

  And if he didn’t quit this place soon, he’d find himself a member of the enemy’s armed forces. There was a result of this enterprise that would cheer Mr. Pinkerton all right.

  He finished his beer, and then his wretched stew. Davis had declared a forthcoming National Day of Fasting to consecrate the Confederate cause. Meals like this put Harry in the mood for it.

  Turning sideways in his chair, he looked out to the street. Soldiers had been marching by, in bunches, but so regularly they seemed almost a procession. There were so many army camps around Richmond the city seemed under siege by its own army.

  There was disease in those camps—bad food, cold quarters, nasty companions, lice, rats, boredom, pointless labor, and more card cheats than Harry had seen in four years as a professional gambler. He had criticized John Wilkes Booth for refusing to put on a uniform so often and reflexively, Caitlin Howard had accused him of haranguing her on the point—a just charge.

  But how better was he? Booth was ser
ving his beloved Confederacy as a smuggler, spy, and agent provocateur. His duties on behalf of the Union and Mr. Pinkerton were much the same, absent smuggling.

  He passed the afternoon—wasted was truer to the fact—roaming the city along the path of his earlier footsteps. He stopped at the Exchange Hotel, asking after the Negro boy Jimmy, only to be told to go away. Harry went out back and tried the rear door, but the boy was not to be found and the kitchen staff were uncooperative.

  Walking past the capitol, and then the War Department, he could think of no useful reason to stop at either place. There was nothing further to be learned from Tredegar. The saloons yielded nothing but whiskey, and Louise, once again, was not at her boardinghouse domicile, though the servant who talked to him said she would be at the theater that night.

  At the end of the day, he was seated on his own bed, persuading himself that the best thing he could do for Caesar Augustus was to stock up on sleep. Maybe then his brain would function better. As he lay there, listening to the wind rattle his window, he couldn’t make it work at all. The only means of deliverance for his hapless friend that came to his mind was attempting to convince Maccubbin and his “Plug Ugly” friends that he had himself murdered his old sweetheart.

  But that would be folly. Given the choice between hanging a white man and a black, the Confederacy would go reflexively for the latter. Harry had seen it happen all too often.

  He awoke to darkness. Lighting a candle, he set about washing himself, changing into cleaner clothes, arming himself with Derringer and Navy Colt, and putting on great coat, gloves, scarf, and wide-brimmed hat. Then he went out into the night.

  There was a livery stable of some reliability but two blocks from the theater. Harry bribed the stable hand an outrageous sum to safeguard his mount from the government’s thieves, instructing him to leave the animal saddled.

  The streets were again acrawl with drunken soldiery and the cutpurses, confidence men, and easy women they attracted. Outside the theater, two dogs were fighting over a scrap of food. Harry warily stepped around them, just as a third hound darted into the fray and snatched the morsel away. The sneak bounded down the alley that ran along the side of the building, with the two former enemies now allies in pursuit. It would not go well for the thief. The alley was a dead end.

  In a moment, there were yelps of pain. The chastened interloper came limping out a moment later. A lesson in life. The escape should be the highest priority, not the loot.

  Harry leaned back and lighted a cheroot. There would be a considerable wait. The play was long, and Louise liked to linger in her dressing room until the theater was clear of its audience. Happily, he’d refilled his flask, but he’d be careful. He needed his wits about him.

  She came out the stage door much earlier than he’d expected and moved so swiftly she almost caught sight of him before he ducked back into a doorway. But she was bent on her destination, whatever it was, and kept her attention straight ahead, her face largely hidden within the hood of her cloak.

  Harry gave her a minute’s head start, then moved out in pursuit, turning right at the corner as he saw her do.

  She was climbing into a carriage. Pausing to put on his spectacles, he thought he recognized it, but wasn’t entirely certain. He remained where he was until the driver flicked the reins across the backs of the team and the vehicle began to move.

  At the next corner, the driver turned south, toward the river. Now Harry was certain. He ran pell mell for the stable. The door was unbarred, but the stable hand was not in evidence. Swearing silently, Harry went to the stall, dropped a half dollar onto the floor, and took his reluctant mount in hand. The animal’s gait was flawed, and the dirt streets hard and a little slippery in the cold, but Harry had no choice. Moving the horse into a brisk trot, he returned to the intersection he had just left and then to the carriage’s trail. Crossing the north channel of the canal and turning into Byrd Street, he accelerated to a full gallop. He’d been under fire for hours in the battles of Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff, but in neither case was he as frightened as he was now. A single misplaced step on the frozen ground and this horse might kill them both.

  Somehow they survived. Pausing at the edge of a small ridge behind two leafless trees, he watched the carriage proceed down the entrance drive to the bridge and the gate beyond. The driver barely halted and was waved on.

  Harry waited several minutes, wanting his prey to get where they were going. Then he followed, coming up to the sentry at a gallop.

  His pass again performed its mission, but Harry wasn’t content with that. “I have an important message for Lieutenant Mills,” he said. “Is he at the office?”

  “No, sir. He’s at his house.”

  “His house? You mean in Manchester?”

  “No, sir. The house he has here. It’s a little brick house just along the ridge there, right past the spike mill.”

  “You’re sure he’s there?”

  “Yes, sir. Should be just arriving there. His coach just came through.”

  Harry moved his beast on down the lane at a good clip, but, once past the big armory rolling mill, slowed and proceeded the rest of the way with more stealth.

  The carriage had stopped where the driveway ended, about fifty yards from the house. Tying his horse to the railing of a fence, Harry crept close, keeping to the shadows.

  The house was tiny—no more than two rooms. A lamp was lit in one of them, but the windows in the other end stayed dark. Harry moved close to the window.

  When he looked within, he found the room empty. The two from the carriage had moved into the other chamber, which remained dark. He remained there until he could stand the cold no longer. He doubted, at all events, that the two would be coming out anytime soon. That, apparently, was the whole point of the house.

  After climbing into the saddle, he looked back. He thought he saw a shadow move across the glow of firelight in one of the windows, but there was nothing more. No one called out to him.

  Moving across the Tredegar yard, he thought he heard a door slam shut, but the sound could have come from any of the buildings.

  The sentry stopped him again before he could cross the bridge. “You find Lieutenant Mills?” he asked.

  “I did,” said Harry.

  “How’d he receive you?”

  “I decided not to disturb him.”

  The sentry laughed, letting Harry pass.

  The Van Lew smokehouse, frustratingly, was locked, compelling Harry to go once more to the back door of the mansion itself. He rapped gently at first, then, after a brief interval, with some vigor.

  Miss Van Lew herself responded. There was anger and surprise evident in her face, but as he stepped inside, that vanished, replaced by melancholy—and some anxiousness.

  She led him to the kitchen, and quickly poured him a glass of brandy.

  “I’ve been trying to find you for hours,” she said. “I feared for you. Dictator Davis has had his Congress grant him the power of arrest and imprisonment without trial. He means to use it.”

  “He remains my father’s friend. I should be all right.”

  “That counts for little, as you see. We’ve so little time now.”

  “Time?” Harry said. “Time for what?”

  “You’ve not heard? Caesar Augustus has confessed to the murder of Arabella Mills.”

  Chapter 15

  “Are you sure?” Harry asked, thinking her crazed indeed. “This could be their contrivance—a scheme to hang him before I can do anything about it.”

  Miss Van Lew sank back into a chair. “No, Harry. This is, lamentably, the truth. I was told it by one of the prisoners—a Union officer. You need not know his name, but he is a man to be trusted.”

  “A tall man, with red hair?”

  Miss Van Lew remained silent. She took this business of spying far more seriously than Harry did, though she was not officially enrolled in the ranks of Mr. Pinkerton’s Secret Service.

  “His name is Joseph Leahy
,” Harry said. “We work together—or did in Washington. I had until now thought him one of the most sensible men in the Federal cause, but he has committed this folly—allowing himself to be taken prisoner in the guise of a Union officer. He says there is an abundance of military information to be had from prisoners, but getting out of prison with it is quite another. The only Yankees who come out of that place are the dead.”

  “We will attend to Mr. Leahy’s deliverance by and by,” she said. “Our worry now is Caesar Augustus.”

  “I thought he was secondary to the greater mission.”

  “Indeed he was—as were you and I. But that is accomplished. So now we must deal with this injustice. It represents to me every evil of this vile system.”

  She put her hand to her brow, closing her eyes. He could scarce imagine how exhausted she must be.

  “I cannot think of any reason for Caesar Augustus to do this,” Harry said.

  “He must have been in great torment. They treat him badly, as you must know.”

  On a plantation near his father’s, a Negro boy about thirteen had run away on his master’s horse, breaking one of its legs in an ill-taken jump. When captured, he had been tied to a tree and then had both his legs cut off, after which he had been left to bleed to death. Harry and Caesar Augustus had gone that night to help him, but he had lasted no more than a few minutes after they cut him down.

  “Caesar Augustus is a singularly brave man—far braver than I. He would not succumb to torture so easily.”

  “He might, if he were trying to protect somebody.”

  “Give up his life for a murderer’s? If Caesar Augustus knew who killed Arabella, he would tell me. He would not put me through this, or put our cause at risk.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have known him since we were small boys. Yes, I’m very sure.”

  Miss Van Lew fretted with her hands, glanced to the glowing red coals on the hearth, and then turned to look at Harry quite directly.

  “Would he have reason to commit this crime?”