by Mike Ashley
Burritt looked as though he were strangling. “I swear –”
“You needn’t. I can’t prove a word I’m saying. But when I take a trail, young man, I don’t easily lose it.”
Burritt hesitated a moment and then declared fervently: “I’ll tell you all I know about her. I was in love with Jenny, yes. I met her at Mr Hawes’s about six months ago. She loved to get presents, and I – I got to stealing. If I didn’t bring something one week she would pout; she’d talk about the other men who wanted to marry her.”
“She had others?”
“I used to see Flynn walking her home when she had worked late. Maybe it didn’t mean anything; she said it didn’t. But I’ve caught her in lies before. The last time I saw her was the night before she was killed. I’d walked her home, but she wouldn’t let me come in. Tired, she said. And then the next day I heard about it.”
Church drank deeply of his beer and wiped his mouth. “Did it ever strike you as strange,” he asked, “that Mr Hawes should handle ladies’ bonnets?”
Burritt shrugged. “We handle almost anything.”
Church signified, by wiping his mouth and pushing away his plate, that the dinner and the questioning were over. “Just remember,” he said, “that I shall regard it as eminently suspicious if you change lodgings or leave the city. If you try to run away, I’ll have you in Tombs before you reach Stryker’s Bay.”
Burritt was too emotionally wrung out to do more than swallow. “All right,” he said. “All right.”
Tom Church was on the South Street wharf when the brig Philadelphia was brought to the dock. As soon as the plank was run out, he boarded her, to find Captain Thomas putting a gang to work in the holds.
Thomas had a hard handshake for him. But Church said regretfully: “It’s hard lines, Captain, to have to lay by another week. But there is some difficulty. Mr Hawes has been properly reprimanded; but the Health Commission thinks you should wait seven days before unloading. Saving face, I suppose.”
The Captain swore. “And a copper-bound crew eating the profits of the trip as fast as their jaws’ll wag! They should have been paid off a week ago.”
“You and the crew,” said Church, “are at liberty to go ashore when you like. You can pay the men off today.” Then he added, with a sidewise smile, “Any sugar this trip, Captain?”
Thomas chuckled. “Ay, he told you that, did he? Well, he was of age; and in this business a merchant wants a sharp eye in his head.”
“Caveat emptor,” said the detective. “Well, good luck, Captain. Oh, yes – there was this, that you left at Mrs Flynn’s. You might want to keep it.”
Captain Thomas was still staring at the wrinkled envelope when Church went down the gangplank.
His trade, Tom Church thought, was not unlike lobstering. You baited your trap with care, set it down on the sand as nicely as possible, but after that, you could do nothing but wait with as much patience as possible.
He did not leave the harbour district until he saw the crew of the Philadelphia swing down South Street to their long-awaited pleasures, to the whisky and soft arms waiting to solace and fleece them. He wandered the dusk-softened streets until night, hearing the cries of shad- and clam-vendors, the clattering progress of a tinker with his pack.
Over a glass of spruce beer he tested, in his mind, the cords he was holding. He thought of Mrs Flynn, with her out-of-date bonnets and the backward air of her shop. And her husband, with his dragnet and his dory, quietly working the waters where the big ships lay, watching and listening. And poor Harry Burritt, with the soul of a rabbit but the desires and passions of a man. And Mr Horace Hawes, with his mysterious dealings with the Flynn family.
By midnight Harlem had turned out the lights of its shops, thrown its slops into the streets and gone to bed. But in South Seas House someone still worked, the small light of a lamp just touching the windows. Church stood in a doorway across the street.
He had had five beers on the way uptown, and it was making him sleepy. He roused groggily when the church clock at Dominie Hook sounded two. It was not long after this that a solitary dray came up the street. Church made out a man on the driver’s seat, and someone else who stood in back among a load of boxes.
The dray stopped before South Seas House. The one in back went to open the warehouse gate. He watched the dray move into the dark interior, and then quickly walked to the business entrance of the building and rapped. Through a window he could see Mr Hawes leave his office and limp to the front. Then he saw the big revolving pistol in his hand. Hawes was taking no chances this time of night.
The door opened a crack. Hawes squinted out.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Detective Church. Do you realize you are being robbed?”
Hawes gasped: “What?”
“I’ve been watching your warehouse for two hours. Just now a dray pulled in to it. What’s the matter with your watchman?”
“We’ll soon see!” Hawes admitted Church and started off down the room, stopping to secure the lamp. Church had taken a locust-wood club from under his coat. They descended a short flight of stairs and followed a long gloomy hallway. They came to a turn, beyond which light gleamed under the crack of a door.
Hawes snuffed out the lamp, grunting as he stooped to place it on the floor.
After an instant the door flew open, giving Church a view of a big cluttered store-room. The dray was halted directly in front of the door. At the tail-gate, Flynn and his wife were handling a load of battered wicker boxes.
Hawes had his pistol in his hand. He was going through the door as fast as a lame man could move, and he was crying out: “You damned thieves! I’ll teach you to come robbing and pilfering!”
Flynn stood befuddled in the back of the dray. Mrs Flynn’s hands were upraised to receive a crate. Church had not expected quite so much speed from a fat man. He had to step out, the club swinging, to reach Hawes before the gun went off. Even so, the pistol filled the whole room with its thunder just as he cracked down on Hawes’ forearm. The bullet struck the stone floor and went wailing off to finish against a wall.
Flynn jumped down from the dray. Church reached the door an instant ahead of him. He stood with his back to it. Flynn’s hand went to his belt, and a knife came out. When his arm went back, Church knew he was going to have to go back to his Fourth Ward tactics.
The club shot out like a sword, punching Flynn in the belly. Flynn grunted, making him throw quickly and wildly. Church came into range, measuring the force he put into the club-swing. A little too hard, and you had a corpse on your hands. Not hard enough was worse. He thought, from the sound of it, that this was just about right.
Flynn took a step forward, reached out as though to grapple him, and collapsed.
Mrs Flynn, burly, mustached, terrified, started blindly for the door; and with fine sagacity Church stepped aside. Let the wagon handle the ladies, he liked to say. When he turned back, Hawes was on his knees, groping for the gun, but Tom Church hurried to recover it from under the dray and tuck it in his belt. Hawes pulled himself up. In the lamplight, his pink face was wild.
“Why did you stop me?” he demanded. “If a few of these sneak-thieves were killed, we might have fewer robberies. A man scrimps and saves, and then –”
“And then,” said Church, “a little chit like Jenny Thomas comes along and threatens to expose him for buying stolen goods. I don’t wonder she ended as she did!”
Hawes’ face became less hysterical. His pudgy lips pressed together. “Do I understand, sir –”
“Sit down, Mr Hawes,” Church said. “That leg must bother you considerably. A pair of scissors makes an ugly wound.”
“This is beyond me!” Hawes declared. “My leg – it’s something chronic. Are you implying that I – that Jenny –”
“I’m implying,” Church said, “that you killed her, Mr Hawes. That she knew the Flynns sold only enough hats to keep the police from knowing that their real business was harbour pir
acy. They stole from the ships and sold the cream to you. Jenny didn’t come here with orders. She came to ask for money to keep her from going to the police. She wasn’t a nice girl, but clever, and even courageous, in a way. That last night, when you went to her room, she realized that what you had brought this time was really a noose, rather than money. But the best she could do was to stab you in the leg with the scissors. And then you went out, letting the landlady think you were a doctor.”
Hawes desperately held his eyes. He said: “I’ve bought from the Flynns, yes. Tonight it was Captain Thomas’s tobacco. Flynn was so sure there was no risk, with the crew all discharged. But I didn’t kill the girl! Perhaps Flynn, or even his wife . . . I suppose you knew Flynn and Jenny were lovers?”
“I assumed; I didn’t know. Just as I assumed that because of your limp you were the one whose blood was on the scissors, back in Jenny’s room. I added to this the fact that you were clumsy with your cane, even dropping it once. And then your boot – A chronically lame man, one who walks with his foot splayed out as you do, doesn’t wear his boots evenly. Yours should be badly worn on the outside: but it is worn as evenly as mine.”
For a moment Hawes was silent, and then he began to nod. “I see. I see.” He was perspiring, but the tension had gone out of him. This was the moment, Church well knew, when a man either broke, pleading, cajoling, or accepted what was inevitable. He watched closely as Hawes picked up one of the wicker cases and broke the wrappings.
But Hawes was merely taking a mahogany cabinet of cigars out of the package. He was saying thoughtfully:
“I – I’m sorry about Jenny, detective. But after it was started, I knew how it must end. She never intended to protect me. She meant to have all she could out of me before she told the police. It’s the old story: when it comes to business, a woman seldom behaves like a gentleman.”
He offered the cigars. “Havanas! It’s on Captain Thomas, this time.” And he smiled.
Well, it might be stolen goods, but the gesture was just as generous. Church bit the end off one and lighted it. He filled his mouth with the smoke and blew it gently at the lamp. It was as sweet as hickory; it was smooth and rich.
“Mr Hawes,” he said, “you may be a poor judge of blackmailers, but you never go wrong on a cigar.” But just the same, remembering Jenny Thomas, Tom Church did not dally long about producing the manacles.
The Abolitionist
Lynda S. Robinson
Lynda S. Robinson is best known for her mysteries set in ancient Egypt, featuring Lord Meren, the series starting with Murder in the Palace of Anubis in 1994. But for the following story she brings us to events on the eve of the American Civil War. We have already encountered one story involving slaves, Clayton Emery’s “If Serpents Envious”, and this story reminds us again of the theme of prejudice.
Richmond, Virginia, June 1860
He was outnumbered.
Temple Forbes paused on the threshold of the drawing room in the Jessops’ grand Federal townhouse and surveyed the family gathered for afternoon tea. Uncle Henley, Aunt Laurietta, his cousin Oram and his wife, and the spinster sister, Clemency – secessionists all. He would keep his blamed mouth shut during this visit. Nothing worse than a guest who argued with his hosts, even if they were wrong. He was only staying here to satisfy Pa, who wasn’t up to travelling all the way from Texas to visit his sister.
Henley Jessop turned and saw Temple. “There he is. Temple, come meet our new daughter, Odette Moreau, now Mrs Oram Jessop.”
Plastering a smile on his face, Temple bowed over the hand of cousin Oram’s new wife and uttered the usual wishes for a happy future. Oram stood beside Odette, grinning proudly. Odette stood out among the black-haired Jessops, the only blond except for the stately Laurietta. She had a doll-like face, round with plump cheeks and small, red mouth, and she promptly thwarted Temple’s resolution to avoid divisive conversation.
“Papa Jessop tells me you were quite a while in New York, Mr Forbes. It must have been uncomfortable being so deep in the land of abolition.” The family exchanged uncomfortable looks.
“No, ma’am,” Temple replied. “I was tending to matters of business and didn’t have a powerful lot of time for politics and such.”
He was lying. He’d talked to a lot of his friends about the recent Democratic Convention. William Lowndes Yancey and his fire-eaters had sabotaged all efforts at unity, and the party split. Now Stephen Douglas headed the northern Democrats while the southern pro-slavery faction backed John C. Breckenridge and the border states had thrown their support to John Bell of Tennessee. As the fire-eaters intended, the self-destruction of the Democrats meant victory for the Republicans and Lincoln, which would prod the southern states to leave the union. Temple wondered if anyone in the Jessop drawing room understood how a minority of fanatics had engineered the desperate political showdown that was coming. Yancey and those of his persuasion were keeping the south whipped up to a fury with their dire forecasts of the forced end of slavery.
“But surely you championed the cause of states’ rights while you were there,” Odette was saying.
“Well, ma’am, I don’t think I would have changed any opinions, no matter how eloquently I phrased my arguments. Folks up there are real fond of the Union, and they just don’t take kindly to the idea of slavery. Everybody knows that.”
Oram cleared his throat. “Odette, my dear, Cousin Temple doesn’t favour slavery either. Remember, he has a ranch down in Texas, and there’s not much call for it there.”
Eyeing him as if he’d sprouted a forked tongue and tail, Odette murmured, “Oh, I see. Good heavens. The wilds of Texas.”
“Cattle, ma’am. Lots of cattle in the hill country. The cotton plantations are farther east.”
“But don’t let old Temple fool you,” Hezekiah said, joining them. “His folks sent him to Harvard to get educated. That’s where he learned all those odd notions of his.”
“What, like reading?” Temple asked with a grin. If they didn’t abandon this subject, there was going to be arguing.
Aunt Laurietta saved him when she spoke from her place of honour on the settee. “Tea, everyone.” She looked pointedly at the tall Negro butler, Augustus, who entered bearing a silver tea tray and the footman who followed with another bearing cake and sandwiches. Politics and abolition weren’t discussed in front of Negroes.
Temple scuttled away from Odette before the lady could ask him another flammable question. Laurietta beckoned to him, and he sat beside her to help serve the tea. Augustus, a stately man in black and starched linen, glanced at him as he set his tray before his mistress. Temple winked at him. Augustus frowned, but Temple saw the cynical amusement in the butler’s eyes. Laurietta, like many ladies of the southern aristocracy, could ignore most anything if it didn’t fit with her notions of gentility. To Laurietta, Odette and Cousin Clemency, slaves were “servants”, gentlemen never consorted with “serving women”, and only disobedient or dishonest Negroes suffered the whip.
Temple was holding a cup and saucer for his aunt when he heard a door slam and footsteps pound through the reception hall. Cousin Hezekiah, the oldest Jessop son, rushed into the room, breath coming in gasps, and stumbled to a halt.
“Zachariah is speechifying again!”
The china teapot rattled, and Laurietta put it down quickly. Henley jumped to his feet, as did Oram.
“Where?” Henley asked.
“At the markets on Wall Street.”
“Oh, no!” Laurietta cried.
Oram had turned red with agitation. “Not again.”
“What’s wrong?” Temple asked as he rose to join his uncle.
“I was going to talk to you about it,” Henley said. “Zachariah came home two weeks ago. Just suddenly appeared and started preaching on the streets.”
“Preaching? Zack? I thought he was reading law in Baltimore.” Temple found it hard to imagine his cousin as a Bible preacher.
“Not any more,” Henley replied whil
e drawing a hand through his white hair. “Seems he met that fool William Lloyd Garrison and a bunch of other damned abolitionists. They’ve turned him into a madman.”
Hezekiah was hovering in the doorway. “Are you coming? He’s going to get himself killed for sure this time!”
“Serve him right,” Oram said from his place beside Odette. “He won’t listen to us any more than he did last time. I’m staying here.”
“We could use your help,” Henley said with a scowl at Oram. He turned back to Temple. “Zachariah has got it in his head to preach his message to ‘the worst sinners’, as he calls them. He won’t listen to reason. Nearly got himself killed a couple of times. Been arrested and warned and threatened, and I don’t know what all. He promised me he’d stop the last time I got him out of jail, and now he’s stirring up trouble at the slave markets.”
“Damnation,” Temple muttered. Cousin Zack was the youngest Jessop, the smartest, and the most arrogant, his brothers would say. He and Temple had been at Harvard together, but they’d lost touch since Temple went back to Texas. If Zack was confronting people at the slave markets, there would be a hell of a fight. Slave owners didn’t take kindly to being preached at and reminded of the essential injustice of slavery. “You go ahead, Uncle Henley. I’ll meet you there.”
He wasn’t far behind the Jessops when he reached the Wall Street slave markets mounted on Henley’s big bay stallion. The markets were low, mostly whitewashed buildings where slaves were auctioned. Holding cells lurked in the back, out of sight.
Temple found himself stuck behind a bakery wagon and had to work his way around it. Ordinarily the street was busy with traffic, but the flow carriages, pedestrians and wagons had been staunched by the cart that had been drawn sideways across the road. Zack Jessop was standing in the cart, hair wild in the southern breeze. Although he was a block away, Temple could hear his cousin clearly as he harangued his offended audience. At the same time Henley and Hezekiah were fighting their way through bystanders toward the speaker.