‘He does,’ the lady whispered. ‘How much, I have no idea, but … a great deal, I think. Oh, Mede, can you play? Could you?’
‘Of course, M’am,’ responded Mede at once. ‘He gave me my freedom, for me to play this game.’ He turned to January. ‘I’ll be at the field at four. Mr Springer at Blodgett’s gave me today off …’
‘If you’ll be playing –’ January laid a hand on Mede’s shoulder – ‘especially now, you need as much rest as you can get. Please excuse us, M’am,’ he added, as Mrs Bray began to speak, and, rising, led the younger man into the hall.
‘He needs me.’ Mede said this as if it explained everything.
January lowered his voice almost to a whisper. ‘It may be that’s what someone counted on. Did Mr Bray ever take opium? Or drink laudanum?’
‘No, sir!’ Mede sounded shocked.
‘Did you ever know him to get so drunk he spilled liquor on his clothes? I didn’t think so – but his clothes smell too much. As if someone took him aside and sprinkled him.’
Mede only stared at him, not understanding.
‘I don’t think Mr Bray got himself that drunk,’ said January softly, ‘and I don’t think Mr Bray slit his own wrists. He doesn’t sleep with Mrs Bray, does he?’
Had the light in the hallway had been better, January guessed he’d have seen blood flush up under the young man’s skin. ‘No, sir. Not for the longest. Sometimes when he’s drunk he’ll … But she keeps her door locked.’
‘So someone knew if he got falling-down, stinking drunk at the Pageot’s soirée he’d be in his bedroom alone.’
‘Who—?’
‘Someone who had a thousand dollars bet on today’s game? Slitting a man’s wrists isn’t the way to kill him, Mede. As suicides go, it’s a poor choice, and an even worse one for murder. It might be that someone did this simply to make sure you weren’t in fit shape to play. Either because you hadn’t had any sleep … or because you’d be coming across the Paper Mill bridge late tomorrow afternoon by yourself.’
Mede stared at him, appalled. ‘For a ball game? Ben, that’s insane!’
‘Not a ball game,’ said January quietly. ‘For a thousand dollars? Or two thousand? Or three thousand, depending on what the odds are?’
Or maybe for the honor of America?
Mede only shook his head. A country boy, thought January, when all was said and done. Raised in the peaceful hills of Kentucky, a bucolic world of horses and deer and the grinding rigors of agricultural labor. Exhausting and unfair, but straightforward, like Robinson Crusoe’s island.
‘I don’t believe it.’
No, thought January. Neither do I.
In his pocket he fingered the fragile notepaper, scribbled with magic squares.
So what IS going on?
SEVENTEEN
‘There’s nothing further you can do tonight, Rowena.’ Mr Oldmixton’s voice was soothing as he led Mrs Bray from the bedroom. The upstairs hall formed a sort of gallery around the main stairwell, which descended to the center hall downstairs. On the other side of that dark gulf a lamplit door stood open, though Oldmixton didn’t approach it closer than the head of the stair. ‘I shall remain with Luke tonight. In his current state of mind I don’t think he ought to be alone …’
A maid appeared in the bedroom door. Mrs Bray clung to her friend’s hand, and very softly, January breathed to Mede, ‘Delay him.’
He slipped back into Bray’s room. It was ridiculous on the face of it to think he’d be able to see anything useful by the low amber gloom of the lamps, but he took one up nevertheless, crossed to the window which looked east over the neglected lawn, and examined the casement around the latch.
Back in New Orleans, Abishag Shaw – January reflected drily – would take one look at the chipped old paint, the ill-fitting frame, and pronounce, Forced open with a penknife not later’n midnight, I reckon, by a left-handed man what used to be a sailor …
Damn him.
January himself could see nothing. Whether the scratches in the paint on the latch were new or old was a mystery to him and probably would be so even in full daylight. He undid the latch, opened the casement inward, and looked at the corresponding latch on the shutters. There was nothing there either that screamed at him, This was forced! but he had no idea what such a mark would look like. The brass had been treated with a dark stain of some kind – his brother-in-law, Paul Corbier the upholsterer, would have been able to tell him what – and it was liberally scratched all around where it fitted into its slot on the other shutter.
But it was a latch, not a bolt. It could have been easily forced.
The wood between the shutters was worn pale by the nightly friction of being opened and closed.
And our wrist-slitter – if there was one – could have entered through any window in the house and tiptoed up here. Everyone was asleep.
A pallet bed was rolled up in the corner. Presumably, the new valet Peter hadn’t been required to sleep in his master’s room, if Bray could slit his wrists in despair and privacy: the pallet was probably Mede’s. Many men – and women, too – held to the old custom of keeping their servant nearby. A country planter, even a young one, might well have been raised to think it indispensable. He’d talked to ex-servants in both Paris and London who’d told him of aristocratic masters who’d adhered to the same habit, either because they feared an intruder or because they simply couldn’t conceive of not having someone at their beck and call every second of the day.
Did Mrs Bray – a banker’s daughter – require her maid to sleep at the foot of her bed?
He doubted it. The modern way was to give servants a room in the attic, but enough people still followed the old custom to make him wonder, Who knew there would be no servant asleep in the room?
Everyone in Washington, of course, would have heard from Bray that Mede had forsaken him like a thief creepin’ off in the night.
And a great many would know that Bray would not be in bed with his wife.
Oldmixton’s firm tread creaked the waxed floorboards of the hall. Close by the door Mede spoke: ‘Is there anything further I can do, sir?’
January returned soundlessly to the bedside and replaced the lamp on the chair. From his satchel he drew his stethoscope, knelt to place the flared muzzle of the long cherrywood tube to Bray’s chest.
‘Any change?’ Oldmixton’s shadow bulked against the candle flicker of the hall.
‘The heart’s action is a little slower. That’s a good sign.’ January returned the tube to his bag. ‘I’ve asked Mede to have the cook make broth. Keep him on fluids – clear broths and juice – for the first day or so. His digestion will be weak. Marrow or meat jelly is good. No alcohol of course—’
Oldmixton, who had knelt at January’s side to study Bray’s face in the honey-gold light, turned his head to regard him for a moment, then asked, ‘What the hell are you doing playing piano for your living, sir?’
‘How long have you lived in the United States, sir?’
The secretary laughed mirthlessly. ‘I do beg your pardon. But—’ He shook his head, and January held up a hand.
‘I was a surgeon in France for six years and never made enough to wed, or even buy myself a new waistcoat,’ he said. ‘When I took up a profession considered more suitable for a man of my race, I was able to do both. And,’ he added, ‘I’m a very good piano player. If you believe that joy has value, it isn’t as much of a waste as you fear. Will Mrs Bray be all right?’
‘Married to a drunkard who runs up nearly two thousand dollars in gambling debts in an evening? I doubt it.’
January was silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ Oldmixton apologized at once. ‘Shockingly bad form, but— I feel responsible. I fear I played Cupid in this match. She met him in my house, three years ago, on a visit to Washington with her aunt. He’s some connection of Mr Pointsett’s – the Secretary of War – and seemed promising to go far. I hope Mrs Bray will accept my offer and return to London
with me once Congress rises – Washington in July is beyond frightful. Like Hell without the Devil’s conversation to enliven it. If for no other reason than because if something does … happen … she’ll hear of it second-hand, and after the fact.’
‘You think he’ll make another attempt?’
Or someone else will?
‘Mrs Bray says she has feared this for some time. She knows her husband better than anyone. I should call in a nerve doctor, did such a thing exist in this benighted country, but the only specialist of the kind is that ghastly wretch in Alexandria. Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t send a rabid dog to that man’s asylum if it had bit me, Mr Bray would never consent to be seen. It would be the end of his career with the Navy Department …’
‘And the end of Mrs Bray in decent society?’
‘It sounds heartless to say so,’ agreed Oldmixton quietly, ‘but yes. The world is monstrously unfair to women who are so unfortunate as to marry good-looking scoundrels.’
He rose from the bedside and walked with January down the wide stairway to the front hall, Mede following quietly with a lamp. Trust an Englishman, reflected January, not to have it cross his mind that a black man, be he never so much a surgeon, ought not to be permitted to use the main stair …
‘Has she family in England?’ The single lamp barely made a dent in the blackness that filled the tall space around them.
‘Oh, heavens, yes. Hurlstone and Ludd is one of the five largest private banks in England. But I suspect she married Mr Bray – quite aside from his undoubted comeliness – to disoblige her parents. Her father is one of the most horrid men I’ve ever encountered, and there was a reason she chose to come with her aunt to America when she finished school rather than return to his house. There isn’t a great deal to choose between living as a grass widow beneath her father’s roof and stultifying on a two-by-six tobacco-farm in Fayette County, Kentucky. She deserves better than either.
‘She’s a woman of great promise,’ he added as they reached the outer door – a portal through which no butler in the United States would have permitted January to pass, much less Mede. ‘And she likes Washington. As you’ve probably seen, she’s a born political hostess. But I fear that, married to a man like Bray, it’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes.’
Movement at his side drew January’s eye. He glanced sidelong, to see Mede looking into the distance with a face like stone. Only when the great front door had shut behind him did the young man say softly, ‘He wasn’t that way before I left.’
‘If he can’t take you becoming a free man,’ said January, ‘is he worth going back to?’
Jem had brought the phaeton around to the front of the house. He looked both sleepy and rather nervous about driving back to Washington at this late hour, and no wonder. The moon had set, and the mist had grown thicker. The glow of the carriage lamps was absorbed by a softly impenetrable black wall, as light is by velvet. In this dead hour, January guessed there would be little chance of meeting slave stealers, but getting safely across the bridge and through the marshy land north of town would be a matter for great care.
Mede took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘No. But that don’t change it, that I’ve left him alone.’
‘We all get left alone,’ said January, ‘one time or another in our lives. And I still believe that whatever your master felt about you leaving him, he didn’t do this himself. And if he got drunk to the point where he couldn’t protect himself – if you’re thinking that you should have been there, sleeping on the floor of his bedroom like a dog, to protect him – it’s time he grew up.’
And you, too, he didn’t add.
The carriage moved off slowly into the darkness.
Mist, like old ashes, still lay thick on Washington when January woke. Breakfast was over – just as well, since the sight of everybody else consuming bacon and sausage was, as the Philadelphia priest had intended, a sorrow and a burden to him – and he had to sweet-talk leftover porridge from Mrs Trigg. At ten he sallied forth with fifty dollars of Henri Viellard’s money in his pockets, in quest of a half-dozen of the surgeons on his list, in various corners of the District. He spent a tiring day, paying ‘earnest money’ to open negotiations with the potential suppliers of cadavers – being careful to remember whether he was acting for ‘Mr Allan’ or M’sieu Viellard – and then striking up conversations either with the surgeons themselves, or with their servants if they had them, which eventually led to the question, ‘You think this man would be willin’ to take on a helper?’
‘Fact is, sir –’ or Bill, or Lou, as the case might be – ‘I know other gentlemen, friends of M’sieu Viellard –’ or Mr Allan – ‘that’s in the same case. They can’t pay so well, but if I could speak to this resurrection man myself, I think maybe somethin’ could be worked out.’
Two of the surgeons he asked put him off: ‘Does Mr Allan –’ or M’sieu Viellard – ‘know you’re about asking this?’
Neither Bill nor Lou – the surgeons’ servants – were able to give him the name of the grave robber with whom their masters dealt, but Lou – a solemn elderly man with a crippled leg – put a hand on January’s shoulder and said worriedly, ‘I know it might not be my business to say it, Ben, but you sure don’t want to go mixin’ yourself up with folks like that. Sure, they makes a pile of money, diggin’ poor folk up outta their graves. But leavin’ out what it’d do to your soul, if you cares about such things, you lettin’ yourself in for more trouble than you know. They are evil men, an’ care no more about the livin’ than they do for the dead.’
Bill, on the other hand, contracted with January for the sum of a dollar to find out the name of the resurrectionist, half of which would be paid immediately, which January did.
He then returned to the boarding house, feeling only moderately besmirched by the day’s business, to change his clothes for the ball game against the Invaders.
The fog had thinned away all morning while January tramped the streets around the Capitol, and had finally burned off around two. By four the bright air was sweetly hazy, the weather balmy, and the field along Reedy Branch thick with spectators. In addition to the usual friends and families of the Stalwarts (and of the two or three Centurions who had been added to their ranks), neighbors, workmates, and total strangers had turned up, some of them with flat-bed wagons in which makeshift benches had been installed, with seats for sale at a nickel apiece. French and Neapolitan and English clerks arrived from the embassies, Prussian and Bavarian and Russian, boisterous at the Invaders’ earlier victory over the ‘Yankees’ and shouting to see how the ‘legions of Ethiopia’ would play.
One of the first faces January recognized when he, Mede, and Darius Trigg waded through the trampled grass from Connecticut Avenue was that of old John Quincy Adams, perched in a gig. ‘Good Lord, January, there’s a dozen of us from the House here,’ the old man replied to January’s exclamation of surprise, blinking down at him with his huge pale-blue eyes. ‘And the clerks and secretaries of a dozen more – Southerners who won’t admit an interest in the proceedings but want to know the outcome … or have a bet on it.’
‘I’ll admit an interest, all right,’ added the lanky Mr Noyes, who stood by the horse’s head. ‘After hearing nothing for months in the Department, except how any white man created can trounce a dozen Negroes – and I should dearly love to see Mr Stockard attempt to trounce you – I have a powerful academic interest in seeing how white shall stack up against black after all.’
‘What you shall see, sir,’ replied Trigg, ‘is how men stack up against men, on this particular day, in this particular light … And that is all you shall see.’
‘Oh, I think should our friends the Stalwarts win,’ said Adams, with a creaky chuckle, ‘we’ll be treated to any number of interesting expressions on the faces of the Southerners present – and that’s what I’m here to see. I dare say they don’t know who to “root” for: the Invaders of their soil, or defenders who they have claimed
repeatedly shouldn’t be able to defend. You behold me –’ he flung up his kid-gloved hands and waggled his fingers like a schoolgirl – ‘all a-twitter with anticipation.’
Trigg laughed and strode off to meet Jules Gonesse beside the worn dip in the grass that marked the thrower’s position in the middle of the square. The three referees were chosen – Charlie Springer of the Stalwarts, one Invader (a Prussian secretary who’d been in Washington for years and spoke excellent English), and Perce Inkletape, one of Senator Webster’s clerks known for his fairness and his abolitionist sentiments.
The Stalwarts won the toss and took their places on the line of goods boxes to await their turn at bat.
‘You think he’s here?’ Mede whispered to January.
No need to ask who he meant. Or to guess at how much sleep the young man had had, judging from the drawn look around his eyes.
‘I doubt he’s even awake.’
Mede nodded. Of course. I should have thought … ‘I’ll go there once the game’s done. He’ll want to know,’ he added, as if he heard January’s thoughts, ‘and it’s what a friend should do. I’m still his Man Friday, even if I am free now. He shouldn’t be alone.’
No need to ask, January reflected, whether a man with his wife at his bedside and a family friend like Oldmixton at hand was to be considered ‘alone’. He’d had friends in Paris, after his wife had died. ‘Alone’ was not something reckoned by how many other people were in the room.
‘You still think he did it himself.’
‘I still think he might have.’ Mede’s eyebrows tugged together. ‘If what she says is true …’ Again, no need to define who she was. January could almost hear a capital letter on the name: She. The only She who mattered, in that household or in the small, closed circle of Mede and his master.
‘If what she says is true, he’s changed so … Debts never used to trouble him. Yes, he gambles too much, and he did sell off two of the horses … but he sold Caro because she stole Mrs Bray’s earrings, not because he was desperate to pay what he owed. But he laughed about the horses, and his friends joshed him something terrible.’
Good Man Friday Page 16