by Mike Ashley
Arnold stood with some difficulty at Peggy’s side, supported by his cane, while the minister read the vows, concluding with, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” The happy couple kissed while the small audience applauded.
Some bottles of French champagne were produced and servants filled glasses for the guests to toast the new husband and wife. Following the toast, Swift noticed for the first time a tall, angular man whose clothes seemed a bit loose. He sipped the champagne as he moved about the parlour, stopping first at one group and then another. No one seemed to acknowledge his presence until he finally reached the Cutlers and Molly. Major Cutler and his wife said a few words to him and he set his champagne glass on a table momentarily to take something from his pocket to show them. Swift turned as General Arnold approached with his bride. Across the room he spotted Molly conversing with a woman guest.
“Mr Swift, I have the pleasure of introducing my bride, Peggy.”
Seeing her close up, Swift was struck again by her youthful beauty. “I wish you both every happiness,” he said. “General Washington was quite disappointed that he was unable to attend.”
“Tell him we missed him,” Peggy Arnold said, her voice soft and melodious.
When they’d finished making their rounds of the guests, Arnold signalled for quiet. He thanked everyone for coming and then announced that as a wedding gift to his bride he had purchased Mount Pleasant, a large Philadelphia estate on the banks of the Schuylkill River. It had a hundred acres of gardens and orchards, and Peggy seemed to glow with pleasure at the news.
“How can he afford such a place?” Swift wondered, speaking to the Cutlers a few minutes later.
As usual Major Cutler said little, but Louisa lowered her voice and told them, “I hear that he is deeply in debt with loans from moneylenders. He has borrowed on his house in New Haven and pledged the back salary and commissions he hopes to obtain from the Congress.”
Swift was troubled by the news. He knew Washington would not be pleased.
Others were proposing toasts now, and the lanky man in the ill-fitting suit stepped forward to raise his glass. “To the Sons of Liberty!” he announced, speaking the name of a patriotic society, originally secret but now disbanded. “To Sam Adams and Paul Revere!”
He took a long drink from his glass as someone else started to propose a toast. Then, barely a moment later, he uttered a sharp cry and doubled over, clutching his stomach. Swift stared at him, frozen to the spot like everyone else. The man seemed to fold in half, then topple slowly to the floor.
A doctor emerged from among the guests, a neighbour of the Shippens named Caleb Wade. He was a big man with long white hair, though his face was not especially old. He quickly knelt by the body, feeling for a pulse.
“This man is very sick,” he announced after a moment’s examination. “Can we get him to a bed?” Several of the men came forward to help carry the stricken man upstairs. By now he seemed almost unconscious, struggling to breathe.
“Who is he?” Swift asked Major Cutler. “I saw you speaking with him earlier.”
For a moment Cutler looked blank. “Did you?”
“Of course, dear,” his wife reminded him. “He was the odd man who came up to us and started talking. Remember? We were wondering if he was a friend of the bride or the groom.”
“What was he talking about?”
“Just the wedding,” Louisa Cutler replied. “He took out a little drawing of an animal to show us. I thought it very odd.”
“It was a deer,” Molly McVey verified. “A female deer. I said it was nice and he gave it to me.”
General Arnold came up to them then, much distressed. “Do any of you know that man? I’ve spoken to the judge and his wife and he wasn’t on their guest list. They assumed he was a friend of mine.”
“We spoke to him,” Cutler replied, “but we don’t know who he is.”
“I had better see to him,” Swift decided. “Is it all right if I go upstairs?”
“Of course,” Arnold said. “Dr Wade is still with him.”
He found the doctor in the bedroom of one of Peggy’s sisters, at the top of the stairs. He was bending over his patient but he straightened up as Swift entered. “Can he speak, Doctor?”
“I’m afraid he’s passed away, just a moment ago.”
Alexander Swift stared down at the body, suddenly smaller in its ill-fitting garments. “Did he say anything before he died?”
“Just one word. It sounded like dough, or perhaps do, as in music.”
Swift remembered the drawing the man had shown to Molly and the Cutlers. “Could it have been doe, a female deer?”
“I suppose so.”
“We’d better go tell Judge Shippen and General Arnold that he’s dead.”
The death of the uninvited guest cast a pall over the wedding party. While arrangements were made for the removal of the body, Alexander Swift again separated Benedict Arnold from his bride. “I think we should talk about what happened, General. Washington will want a full report when I return.”
They were in the judge’s library at the rear of the house, looking out on a sloping yard with more apple trees in bloom. “I never saw the man before,” Arnold insisted. “I have found no one who invited him.” As he spoke his hand went to his injured leg, massaging it as if to drive away the pain.
“Could he have been someone to whom you owed money?”
“Certainly not!” The question seemed to offend him. He stood up, leaning heavily on his walking stick. “If you will excuse me, I must rejoin my bride. We have nothing more to discuss.”
Swift helped him out the door but did not follow immediately. The body was being removed under the supervision of Dr Wade. The rest of the wedding party had gone outside while the grisly task was performed. Swift caught the doctor’s eye and motioned him into the library.
“Would you care to speculate as to the cause of death, Doctor? Could it have been a heart attack?”
“Certainly not that. The stomach cramps, together with his death within such a short time, suggest a poison of some sort.”
“Do you mean the man took his own life?”
“Either that or someone took it for him.”
The festivities had been dampened by the death of the unknown man, but once the body was removed the family seemed determined to make the best of it. Before long there were more toasts to the bride and groom, and with a final round of goodbyes the happy couple went off in a carriage for a bit of privacy. “He’s a real American,” Judge Shippen remarked. “My daughter is lucky to have him for a husband. That’s a beautiful estate he’s bought for her.”
Later, as the party was breaking up, Swift asked Major Cutler about his brief conversation with the dead man. “He showed you a drawing of a female deer, and Dr Wade thinks his final word might have been doe. Would that have any meaning to you?”
“None at all.”
Swift and Molly walked to the carriage with the Cutlers and the major instructed the driver to take them home. On the way the conversation was mainly about the wedding, with only a passing reference to the dead stranger. It wasn’t until they were alone in their bedroom at the Cutler house that Swift reminded Molly of the drawing she’d said the unknown man gave her.
“I have it here, but it is hardly a work of art.”
He took the small sheet of stiff paper which she’d rolled into a tube and slid up the sleeve of her dress. It was not an original pencil sketch, he saw at once, but a printed copy. The deer seemed to be prancing through some underbrush. On the back a name was written, very small: John Slate. It was followed by the words Penn House Inn.
“Do you think that’s the artist or our uninvited guest?” Molly wondered.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it gives me something to work on.”
“To work on? General Washington sent us to attend a wedding, nothing more!”
“He told me Judge Shippen has Loyalist sympathies. If that’s the case, a killing at his h
ome – on the very day of his daughter’s wedding to an American general – could be important.”
Molly thought it over. “Most likely he was simply an old beau of Peggy’s and she didn’t want to admit it.”
“Wouldn’t her father know him if that was the case? Certainly he’d be a familiar figure at the balls she attended.” He looked again at the back of the picture. “Where is Penn House Inn?”
“It’s here in the city, down near the waterfront. Did you see me speak to that girl at the wedding? We worked together briefly in Albany. She told me she’s a waitress at Penn House.”
“Strange that she was invited to such a small wedding.” He tapped a finger thoughtfully on the drawing. “Of course there’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“She might have come with the man who was killed. Did you notice her after his collapse?”
“No,” she admitted, “but I wasn’t really looking for her.”
“What’s her name?”
“She calls herself Persia Tolliver.”
“Suppose we pay a visit to Penn House Inn.”
Alexander and Molly excused themselves, telling the Cutlers they wanted to see a bit of the city before they headed home the following day. Molly had changed into a riding costume and they set out in early afternoon, heading their horses toward the Delaware River. “I never expected to be in Philadelphia,” she confessed. “A few days away from the tavern at West Point seemed a good enough idea. I should have known nothing is ever simple with you, Alex.”
“If this man Slate, or whatever his name was, is a murder victim, Washington will want the details. Philadelphia is full of Loyalists, and they seem to be getting closer to Benedict Arnold all the time.”
“I don’t like your getting involved in these things. You could have been shot as a spy when the British captured you in New York last year.”
“Washington needed me there,” he said simply. It was something they’d talked little about.
“You saw your wife in New York.”
“And her British lover,” he emphasized. “There is no love lost between us.”
Molly rode silently for a time, until at last they came to a large three-storey building that displayed the sign Penn House Inn. They dismounted and went inside.
“You have rooms for the night?” Swift asked the innkeeper, a bearded man with sly eyes.
“That we have! Our rates are posted on the wall.”
“I’m looking for John Slate. Is he staying with you?”
“Slate? We may have had someone by that name, but he is no longer with us.”
“What did he look like? Lanky, with ill-fitting clothes?”
“Perhaps.”
Molly could see his mounting frustration and she asked a question of her own. “Is Persia Tolliver working today?”
The sly eyes shifted. “You know Persia?”
“An old friend. I saw her this morning at a wedding and she told me she was working here.”
He nodded. “I expect her soon. She’s due in at two o’clock.”
They waited at a table in the bar and presently the young woman Swift had glimpsed at the wedding came through the door from the kitchen. She had changed out of the dress she’d worn to the wedding and she carried a bar rag, ready for work. Molly stood up and addressed her. “Hello, Persia. My friend wanted to meet you. This is Alexander Swift.”
She shook her head, a look of fear shooting across her face. “I don’t know anything about what happened.”
Swift tried to keep his voice low and non-threatening. “Were you invited to the wedding, Persia?”
“I know the family. Peggy’s brother comes in here sometimes.” Up close she was older than he’d thought, easily into her thirties. Her pale blond hair was already showing some grey.
“So you decided to attend the wedding and take John Slate with you.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Don’t play games. The tall thin man who had to borrow a wedding garment that was a poor fit. The man who was poisoned, Persia.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It was a bit loose, wasn’t it? He got it from the cook here, just before we left for the wedding. But what’s this about poison?”
“You know he’s dead, don’t you?”
Her eyes widened a bit. “I slipped out after he fell down. I thought he was drunk and they’d find out we weren’t invited. I didn’t know he’d been poisoned.”
“Who was he?” Molly asked.
Persia Tolliver sighed and made a sour face. “You had it right. His name was John Slate, or at least he told me it was. He’d been here at the inn for three or four days. He told me a lady friend had information that would make him rich. When I mentioned knowing Peggy Shippen’s brother he insisted we must attend the wedding.”
“Her brother didn’t recognize you?”
She blushed a bit. “I didn’t really know him. I only waited on him once. His father approached us before the ceremony and I said we were friends of General Arnold.”
“He showed us a drawing of a female deer,” Molly said. She took it from her pocket. “What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.”
“His name was written on the back, along with the name of this inn,” Swift told her. “It was meant as a message, an address where he could be reached.”
“I know nothing about it,” she insisted.
“This city was under martial law,” he reminded her, “and the army retains a great deal of power here. You could be imprisoned as a spy.”
She snorted. “For what? For spying on a wedding?”
“Are John Slate’s belongings still here at Penn House?”
“I suppose so. They’d be up in his room.”
“The innkeeper said he’d left.”
“Morris? He probably heard of Slate’s death and hopes to keep his possessions for himself.”
“Could you get a key to his room?”
Persia frowned at the question. “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”
“John Slate was murdered. We’re trying to keep you out of trouble.”
She thought about that, wiping the table with her rag. “I’ve got a key,” she said finally. “I’ll take you up there.”
She disappeared into the kitchen and returned after a moment, nodding for them to follow her. They went up the stairs quickly while the innkeeper was busy with his ledgers. She stopped at the third door on the left and inserted a long slender key into the lock. The room was somewhat drab, with a big brass bed as its major feature. Persia went immediately to a closet and opened the door. A jacket, pants, and shirt hung there.
“These are uniform pants,” Swift said at once, examining them closely. “Was he in the Continental Army?”
“I know next to nothing about John Slate. He appeared at Penn House on Easter Sunday morning and took a room for several nights. I had some drinks with him after my work was done, and came up here a few times because he was lonely. I guess he was in the army for a while.”
“What did he talk about?” Molly asked.
“Not about himself. Nothing about himself. He asked about Benedict Arnold and his officers. When he found out I knew Peggy’s brother he insisted we go to the wedding, even though we weren’t invited. I was crazy to agree to it, but he said he had to see somebody to get his money.”
While they continued talking, Swift went quickly through the few clothes in the closet. He found nothing, nor was there anything of interest in the leather saddlebags on the closet floor, other than a paper confirming that John Slate had indeed served in Washington’s Continental Army as a private. He was about to abandon his search when he noticed a small sheet of paper on a writing desk near the window. It was a duplicate of the printed drawing of the deer Slate had produced at the wedding.
There was a small cast-iron stove in the room for heating purposes, and Swift noticed a few scraps of paper waiting to be burnt. He picked them up and saw at once that it was a letter, o
r the draft of one. The date and salutation were missing, but after piecing the rest together he was able to read it: This is your second warning. I know your secret. Leave one thousand pounds at Penn House –
Something after that had been crossed out, and then he’d torn it up and probably started over. There could be no doubt it was the beginning of a blackmail letter, threatening someone with exposure. Probably it had been written that very morning, before the wedding, since the stove would have been lit the previous night to take away the chill. Even with the early spring that year, the Philadelphia nights could be cool in early April.
John Slate had written that note in the morning, knowing he was to attend Arnold’s wedding with Persia Tolliver. It seemed likely that the blackmail message was meant for someone who would also be attending the wedding. Had he delivered it, and had that caused his death?
Molly paused in her examination of the room to peer over his shoulder at the assembled pieces of torn paper. “It is certainly not a suicide note,” she observed.
“No,” he readily agreed. “If John Slate was contemplating suicide he would hardly be hatching a blackmail scheme. It seems likely that the person being blackmailed acted quickly to remove the threat.”
“That quickly, Alex? Who would carry a vial of poison with them, especially to a wedding?”
It was a logical question and he had no immediate answer for it. Something was stirring in his memory, though. Something –
“Didn’t General Arnold own a pharmacy and bookstore in New Haven before the war?”
“I don’t know, Alex. I know nothing about his early days.”
“A pharmacist, even a former one, might be a source for poisons.”
“But he must have sold the store long ago.”
Swift shook his head. “I believe he left it in the care of his sister.”
“Certainly you can’t imagine he might have poisoned a guest at his own wedding.”
“Anything is possible.”