‘He may not believe her. He knows Singletary, knows him well. I wasn’t sure he was telling me the truth, when he spoke of his own efforts to find the man, but now I think he was sincere. Mrs Bray may have counted on him going back to England when the special session of Congress ended in October; she’d only have had to keep Singletary alive in the asylum for a week. As it is, she knows he’ll be watching for any sign of a body – and from what Pease told us, he’ll have Fowler watching as well.’
A chaise appeared from around a thin copse of trees ahead. January knelt and fussed with his bootlace until it had gone past.
Even if it was her, why would she look at two workmen walking along the road?
‘That explains why she had to work without accomplices,’ said Poe thoughtfully. ‘Because – like poor Singletary – she doesn’t know who might speak the wrong word to whom.’
‘Oldmixton seems to be genuinely fond of Mrs Bray as well,’ said January. ‘But if he recruited her as his agent I’m guessing he knows exactly what she’s capable of.’
They resumed their walk, through the heavy heat that smelled of woodlands and the river’s tidal mud.
‘When does Oldmixton go back?’
‘Unless war actually does break out, June or July. Which I suspect,’ January added drily, ‘is when Luke Bray’s scheduled to commit suicide.’
Poe frowned at the sailboats winging like white birds along the river, at the distant gray hilltop mansion of Arlington – home of the last family of George Washington – looming above the Long Bridge. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We get Singletary out of there,’ said January. ‘Immediately – tonight if we can. If Mrs Bray gets even a hint that people have been asking about him I think she’ll risk it and put something in those medicines she’s having Gurry give him.’
‘If Oldmixton knows her father,’ reflected Poe, ‘he might very well know that Singletary came here to check on her finances. For all we know, her husband’s isn’t the first pocket she’s picked.’
‘Now who’s got a Machiavellian turn of mind?’
‘Do we go to Oldmixton? That doesn’t sound very safe to me. And personally, I share your doubts about the police.’
‘Doubts?’ January’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I have certainty – that if Fowler is taking pay from Oldmixton, probably anything we tell the police is going to get tabled until they see who’s going to pay them the most. No, we do what everyone in Washington does if they really want something accomplished,’ he went on. ‘We go to a member of Congress – in this case, Mr Adams. He should be able to arrange everything we need.’
‘But, P’tit, Chloë has gone with Senator Buchanan and his p’tit ami to the opera in Baltimore.’ Dominique unpinned her bonnet – a pink-and-parakeet fantasia of ruching and lace – and peered into the hallway mirror to rearrange her curls. ‘Henri is sending the carriage for me in … great heavens, is it only two hours? I shall let him know. She did send you a note this afternoon …’
January had seen the note already, advising him that M’sieu Viellard would be in touch with him, but unless the matter was urgent, she would speak with him tomorrow …
And of course when he’d written the note that morning asking for a meeting, he reflected in frustration, the matter hadn’t been urgent.
‘I am perfectly willing,’ put in Poe, with a glance at the hall clock, ‘to put on my top hat and fancy vest and go in and take the place by storm tonight. I suppose I should need some sort of forged bona fides proving I am “Mr Leland’s” son …’
‘It wouldn’t answer.’ January knelt and put Charmian up on to his knee; the child immediately produced a not-quite-skeletonized mouse from her pinafore pocket to show him. ‘For one thing, you might be recognized as a piano tuner—’
‘Oh, spite …’
‘And for another, if Gurry isn’t convinced – that’s quite a fine mouse, ma belle, did you catch it yourself—?’
‘P’tit, don’t encourage her! You’re as bad as Henri!’
‘—all we’ll have done is alert Mrs Bray that her prisoner has been found. No, we need to emulate Frederick the Great: strike hard, fast, and without warning, and we need to succeed on the first strike.’
‘Musette, dearest, would you get rid of that thing for me? Oh, and Thèrése – where is that girl? – Thèrése, I need your help with my hair at once …’ She vanished up the stairs in a silvery frou-frou of taffeta: ‘Oh, M’sieu Preston, bon soir …’
‘I rather think you’re right.’ Poe’s dark glance slid sidelong as the young railway conductor came downstairs and went on into the parlor, his face, for an unguarded moment, grim and sad.
January’s eyes followed Poe’s; then for a moment their gazes met, and January, very slightly, shook his head. After a moment he resumed, ‘The Viellards have to be the ones who go in,’ he said. ‘Preferably with Mr Adams to back them up. I don’t think even Dr Gurry will question a man who used to be President of the United States. And I think that means, one of the Viellards is going to have to speak to Adams—’
‘And the only one of the Viellards available is—’ Poe caught back quickly whatever unwise or sarcastic words were about to leave his lips. He glanced up the stairs to make sure Minou wasn’t about to flutter into the hall (He obviously hasn’t clocked her getting dressed, thought January …), then into the parlor, where Preston was reading The Influence of Natural Religion Upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind in concentrated silence, and finished: ‘—is likely to be occupied all evening with other matters.’
In the end, January had to be content with writing three brief accounts of his findings at the asylum and dispatching them – after a worried glance at the fast-advancing twilight – via young Ritchie to the Indian Queen Hotel, and to the Adams house on F Street. (‘Don’t worry about me, Mr J, I’ll run all the way and won’t speak to a soul …’)
The reports were accompanied by requests to meet as soon as humanly possible, though January suspected, as Dominique snatched up the report to Henri from the table, that none of those missives was even going to be read until sometime the following morning.
‘Nonsense, P’tit.’ Minou tucked the paper into her gold-stitched reticule and bent to tie Charmian’s bonnet ribbons in a becoming bow beneath the child’s chin. Henri’s rented coachman had brought a note from him that he wanted to see his daughter that evening, so Thèrése, in addition to Minou’s valise, curling irons, cloak and coffee set was burdened with Charmian’s coat, an extra carriage-rug, the doll Philomène, and a bunch of grapes done up in paper – ‘Heaven knows what sort of food that frightful entremetteuse has in her house … Don’t worry, darling! I shall insist Henri read your report, even before I give him a kiss … and Chloë reads everything before she goes to bed, even if she’s been out drinking champagne all evening. Yes, Musette, I shall see that she stays warm and doesn’t stay awake a moment past eight thirty … And I shall make Henri come back here, first thing in the morning.’
Which will be, reflected January uneasily as he watched his sister and her child, trailed by the disgruntled maid, flutter up the path toward the dim glow of the carriage lamps, not a moment sooner than one in the afternoon …
But he was wrong about that.
An hour and a half later, as Octavia Trigg and the older children cleared away the supper dishes from the communal table and the talk turned – as it had all week – to whether the Warriors would actually put in an appearance on the playing field Saturday, Poe appeared in the dining-room door. ‘I do beg your pardon for interrupting your supper,’ he said, into the silence that fell. ‘But I thought you should know, Mr Trigg, that the carriage that was standing across the roadway from this house an hour ago is still there.’
January had noticed this vehicle just before supper – a closed dark bulk in the moonlight, a pair of lamps and the momentary flash of a horse’s eye. He thought at that time that it had been there for some minutes already. During the meal, Trigg twice had gone into the par
lor, to tweak the curtain aside and look out.
Each time, a tiny silence had fallen on the room, though the landlord himself had made no comment. Even the children knew that something had happened last Wednesday morning, though from things Ritchie and Mandie had asked him, January gathered that they believed Mede had fled because of O’Hanlon and his teamsters.
If Mede dreamed of vengeance, asleep beneath his tomb of coal, he had not so far emerged to seek it.
‘Would you be so good as to come out with us, Mr Poe?’ Trigg laid aside his napkin.
He didn’t say, We might need a white man for a witness, but in any case, January guessed that the poet’s insatiable curiosity would have added him to the party whether asked or not. Frank Preston and the Reverend Perkins gathered up lamps and followed them. Their feet crunched softly on the gravel; the moist night air was heavy with scents, like the breath of some strange and ancient time. The lamplight flashed on harness brass and door handle.
The coachman sprang down from the box as the four men approached, and January recognized him at once as Esau Rivers, one of the two or three that the livery would send, turn and turn about, with Henri’s rented carriage.
But if something happened to Dominique why didn’t he come in …?
‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ Rivers touched his hat. ‘But is Miss Janvier going to be coming out this evening? I’ve been sitting here over an hour—’
‘She came out.’ For a moment, January could only stare at the man. It was like those dreams, he thought, when he’d encounter three or four duplicates of his old piano-teacher in various places in Paris, all giving him contradictory instructions … ‘You picked her up at just after seven.’
‘No, sir, I didn’t get here until seven thirty by my watch. But, I know Miss Janvier’s often a little late …’
This was tactful understatement – January had known his sister to put in an appearance at two in the morning, at entertainments that began at ten. How many nights, from his place behind the piano, had he seen Henri pacing and fretting, waiting for his beautiful and maddening nymph …?
His blood was ice in his veins as Preston exclaimed, ‘She is indeed! I’ve frequently told her—’
January said, ‘Shit.’ And he knew with complete certainty what had happened. ‘Can you take us to M’sieu Viellard?’
The coachman hesitated, it being completely illegal for blacks to ride in cabs or carriages—
‘Can you take me to him?’ Poe stepped forward. ‘Ben, get on the box …’
This was perfectly legal, for a white man’s servants.
‘Darius,’ said January, ‘get up behind, if you would … Reverend, can you get someone to take a message to Mrs Viellard, at the Indian Queen? To wait there for her, until she gets back; it may be late. Tell her we’ll be going on to the British Ministry, to speak to Mr Oldmixton. Tell her that Miss Janvier has been kidnapped.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Kidnapped?’ Henri’s pendulous cheeks turned to chalk.
‘Sir,’ began Rivers, ‘there wasn’t anything I could have done! I reached the house at seven thirty—’
‘I should have thought there was something amiss when the carriage came early,’ said January as Henri sank blindly into the broad velvet chair of the parlor. Mrs Purchase, it appeared, gave good value for her money: the house of accommodation was set in a grove of chestnut trees on the outskirts of Georgetown, furnished with beauty and taste. In the adjoining dining room, covered dishes sheltered what was left of an elegant little supper – they had arrived to find Minou’s inamorato halfway through the second course and eyeing the sweetmeats.
Candles burned halfway down to their sockets on mantelpiece and wall sconces; a fire flickered low in the grate.
‘When Miss Janvier went out to the carriage,’ said Preston – January guessed he had watched in despair from the parlor window – ‘the coachman handed her a note. She came back in and fetched Charmian—’
Henri made a small sound, like a hurt animal.
‘In the darkness,’ January said, ‘I doubt Minou got more than a glimpse of her face.’
‘Her—’
‘I’m fairly sure,’ said January, ‘that Mrs Bray did this herself.’
‘That’s insane.’ Luke Bray looked with bloodshot eyes from man to man, of those gathered in his parlor as the night deepened to eleven. ‘You’re all crazy.’
‘Are we?’ asked Poe quietly. ‘Is Mrs Bray home tonight?’
Bray shoved the hank of blonde hair from his eyes. In the parlor lamplight it looked dark against his pallor, and his eyebrows seemed nearly black. The smell of liquor breathed from his rumpled shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat; the tabletop before him was a rummage of newspapers, letters, bills, an interrupted game of solitaire and a three-quarters-empty decanter of whisky. ‘None of your goddam—’
‘There is no time to waste, sir,’ Poe cut him off. ‘If your wife engineered the abduction of Miss Janvier and the child – Mr Viellard’s child – then they may be in danger of their lives. Does your wife drive?’
‘That’s none of your—’
‘Don’t argue with me, man!’ Poe grabbed a handful of the drunken man’s shirt, almost pulled him from his chair.
‘Don’t you know yet,’ put in January quietly, ‘that your wife is a dangerous woman, sir? Haven’t you seen that?’
Bray blinked up at him. January saw the knowledge in his eyes.
He was afraid of her.
And he’d thought he was the only one.
But accusation of a man’s wife was one of the things that a man must answer with blood, even if he himself suspected the accusation to be true. Bray’s eyes shifted as he revolved the problem in his mind, fumbling with it as a drunkard would fumble with his fly buttons, trying to sort out whom to challenge, what to do.
Before Bray could gather his thoughts, January drew from his pocket the crumpled sheet of numbers that he’d taken from Bray’s desk, held it out to him with the decoded translation and the magic-square key. ‘Mede gave me this before he disappeared,’ he said. ‘He said he’d found the key to the code in your watch case when you were ill. But he didn’t know how to decode it. Mr Poe here figured it out only this Saturday.’
Bray’s wandering eyes focused as he recognized the text of the decryption. ‘Mede …’
‘Mede told me that he had to leave your house,’ January went on. ‘Not from ingratitude or from any desire to run away from you, but because he suspected Mrs Bray was mixed up in something dangerous and he didn’t know how to tell you about it. It wasn’t his place, he said. And he feared what would happen, if you took her side against him.’
‘I never would …’
But it was clear he sought to convince himself.
Poe spoke up, giving weight to his words like Kean playing Macbeth. ‘He said he’d found things hidden in her room, sir. Spoke of a secret compartment in the top of her armoire, and of a key there that would open another hiding place down under the hearth—’
January shot the poet a glance of startled admiration – he’d been racking his brains for a way to reveal this proof to Bray without opening himself to accusations of searching a white lady’s room.
‘He said you had loved her.’ Poe dropped his voice, torn with pity and sadness. ‘And, he said, he did not know who to tell, nor how he could learn if what was going on was harmful or not.’
Luke Bray buried his head in his hands. ‘It sounds like him,’ he whispered. ‘It sounds just like Mede. My Good Man Friday, always lookin’ out for me …’
He looked up, eyes hard as gunmetal in the gloom. ‘She’s gone out,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where. I never know where she goes. She drives herself, most days, handles a four-in-hand better’n that lazy buck Jem ever did. This evenin’ she had Jem drive her to the National Hotel, said her friends would see her home …’
Which means she can come back in a cab, and no one the wiser …
‘You know where Mede’s gone?’
January shook his head. ‘He just disappeared, sir,’ he said. ‘Went out one evening and didn’t come back. Left all his things in his room.’
‘Bitch.’ Bray’s voice turned soft. ‘God-damned crawling bitch. Who’s she sendin’ this to?’ He held the papers up, with a hand that trembled. ‘It’s that English nancy Oldmixton, ain’t it? Fucken God-damn spy— He put her on to me …’ His face twisted suddenly, and the papers fell from his hand as he suddenly pressed it to his chest. ‘Damn her to hell—’
January caught Bray’s bandaged wrist, then sought the pulse in his throat. It was thready and irregular. Henri’s valet Leopold, who had ridden from Mrs Purchase’s behind his master, stepped quickly to the bell pull and tugged it. When a servant appeared January said, ‘Get your master some hartshorn,’ though he guessed that the action of the mild sedative, on top of the amount of whiskey he’d consumed, would put him to sleep.
Just as well …
In the few minutes of waiting for the servant to return he glanced around the dim-lit parlor, noticed that Poe was nowhere to be seen …
The poet slipped back into the room in the wake of Bray’s valet Peter with the glass. ‘She’s cleared,’ he whispered as he knelt at January’s side. ‘The key was lying beside the hearth, soot everywhere. The compartment below the hearth is empty. Looks like she grabbed what she could and fled.’
Bray leaned back in his chair, his face ghastly. Peter – a middle-aged, wiry man with grizzled hair – helped his master to his feet and guided him toward the door. A well-trained servant – though, speaking no English, he could have had only the faintest notion of what was going on – Leopold caught up the nearest lamp and followed into the darkness of the hall.
‘But why?’ Henri turned to January like a lost dog, his brown eyes flooded with tears of shock and terror. ‘You say she’s kidnapped Minou … Surely she knows we’ll come after her? She won’t hurt her, will she? And Charmian—’
‘Why take a child?’ broke in Preston. ‘Won’t that only slow her down? She can’t have hoped that we wouldn’t know …’
Good Man Friday Page 26