[Mark Twain Mysteries 02] - A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court

by Peter J. Heck

  He paced for a moment without saying a word, seemingly oblivious to the carefree vacationers around us. His serious expression was a strange contrast to those of the people walking and laughing as they passed by us. Down by the lake, I could see a group of children skipping stones, and the music of two bands came faintly from the distance. Then Mr. Cable turned and looked my employer in the eye again. “You don’t have enemies down here, Sam. You’re the best-liked writer in America, bar none. Your name will open any door in this city. On top of that, you just solved a murder case that probably had the police chiefs up and down the Mississippi singing your praises. They’d listen to you, even if you were telling them things they didn’t want to hear.”

  Mr. Clemens’s face seemed to harden, then a strange glint came into his eye. “Well, I can see you might have a problem or two, George. Oh, hell, give me a chance to think about it a little bit and poke around to see what the facts are. If I’m convinced this fellow really needs help, I’ll do what I can for him. Is that good enough for you?”

  “I suppose it’ll have to be,” said Mr. Cable, somewhat reluctantly, to my thinking. “I think you’ll be eager to help once you’ve looked into the case. Can you promise me you won’t shilly-shally around instead of making a decision?”

  “First thing in the morning,” said Mr. Clemens. “Meanwhile, there’s important business to be looked into. It’s been twelve years since I had a taste of pompano, and it was as delicious as sin. Find me a restaurant that makes it right, and we’ll show Wentworth just how good New Orleans cooking can be.”

  “You’ve come to the right place for that, and I’m just the man to show it to you,” said Mr. Cable. He pointed down the street, and the three of us began walking toward the noise and lights of one of the waterfront resorts. “I’ll tell you what. If we can get Leonard out of jail, I’ll do better than that. I guarantee he’ll cook up the best pompano you ever tasted, and you’ll be my guest to share it with me.”

  “You’re trying to bribe me, George,” said Mr. Clemens, grinning. “You know my weaknesses all too well. But are you sure you want to offer me a sample of the man’s cooking before you’ve proven he’s not a poisoner?”

  Mr. Cable smiled back at Mr. Clemens. “Once you’ve tasted Leonard’s cooking, poisoning will be the farthest thing from your mind. But come; I know just the place for a pompano, and until we have Leonard to cook for us, it’ll be an acceptable substitute.”

  He led us to a garden restaurant from which we could hear the music from a nearby bandstand. As if by tacit agreement to leave the question of the murder case until a better time, the two writers spoke of old times, old friends, and of books still to be written. And the pompano, a tropical fish from the Gulf of Mexico, was every bit as delicious as promised.

  * * *

  We parted company with Mr. Cable after dinner: he took a carriage back to the Garden District, and we caught a train to the corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets, a short walk from our pension on Royal Street, in the French Quarter. (I had followed the advice of my Baedeker’s Guide and given the local hotels a miss in favor of a suite of furnished rooms.) We settled into a quiet corner of the smoking car and watched the lights of West End fade into the distance as Mr. Clemens puffed contemplatively on one of his corncob pipes.

  After a brief silence, I asked, “Why is Mr. Cable so eager to involve you in exonerating this Negro cook? I am surprised at his vehemence on the issue.”

  “I’m not,” said my employer. “There’s a lot of courage in that little man, whether you agree with everything he believes or not. And when he makes up his mind about something, he doesn’t give a damn what anybody else thinks. I found that out when we did our lecture tour together as the ’twins of genius.’ If he’d been more willing to bend to the prevailing wind when he lived down here, he might have had an easier time of it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Mr. Clemens frowned. “George was a staunch advocate of a fair deal for the colored man long before I first met him. That has never been a popular position to take here in Louisiana, even a dozen years ago, and the tide has been running entirely against colored rights ever since.”

  I was surprised. “Is the situation really that bad? The Negroes I’ve seen on the streets seem happy and prosperous enough.”

  “You’ve still got a few things to learn, Wentworth,” said Mr. Clemens. “There are laws on the books in Louisiana that deny a colored man the right to sit on a streetcar or in a train, if a white man wants his seat. It doesn’t affect you, so of course you wouldn’t notice it, but the colored man has to live with it every day. He can’t eat in the same restaurant as you can, or shop in the same stores. Hell, it doesn’t matter if his skin’s as light as yours and mine, if the law can prove he had one black great-grandparent. That’s the way the good people of Louisiana want to run their state, and God help any man with the audacity to tell them they’re wrong. George may have been a native, and a Confederate veteran, and the best writer Louisiana has ever produced. That didn’t help his case at all. It just made him more a traitor in their eyes.” His voice took on considerable heat as he spoke, and I looked apprehensively around the car to see if anyone had overheard him, but the nearby seats were vacant, and none of the other passengers seemed to be paying us any mind.

  “The ironic part of it is,” Mr. Clemens continued, “George fell out of favor with the Creoles, as well. He tried to portray them honestly and accurately in his writing, which is exactly what a writer is supposed to do.”

  “Who exactly are the Creoles?” I asked. “I thought they were the descendants of the original French settlers.”

  “They all speak the patois, but there’s Spanish blood in the mix, as well as French, and sometimes a touch of the African or Indian, too. George probably has as much real affection for them and their way of life as any man alive. But when he published his books about the old times in New Orleans, some of the leading Creoles thought he was mocking them—the stiff-necked fools! And so, between them and the damned lily-white bigots, George found himself surrounded by enemies in his own hometown. Finally, a few years ago, his friends convinced him to move to Massachusetts, where his opinions were less likely to bring armed men to his door.”

  “Ah, I thought he still made his home in Louisiana. Why on Earth has he come back, then, if he has so many enemies here?”

  “The same thing that brings me back: writing a book. A man can only trust his memory so far, Wentworth. There comes a time when you have to set foot on the ground you’re writing about, even if it costs you a certain amount of pain. Despite all that’s happened to him, George still loves this place. I can understand why. If you’d spent the first part of your life eating meals like that one tonight, could you live out your days in New England, knowing you were condemning yourself never to taste pompano again? For a plate of fish cooked like that, and an evening of talk like that, I’d make a dinner date with the devil himself, even if the table was set by the hottest furnace in Hell.”

  I wasn’t certain I’d go to quite that length, but I had to admit that, barring the local predilection for excessive spice, I could easily grow accustomed to the food in New Orleans. And, after Mr. Cable’s extravagant praise of Leonard Galloway’s prowess in the kitchen, I found myself almost wishing that Mr. Clemens would decide to help the poor fellow, if only so I could sample his cooking.

  3

  Mr. Clemens spent the next morning catching up on his writing and correspondence, which despite our best efforts, he had fallen behind in during our journey down the Mississippi on the steamboat Horace Greeley. He dictated a number of business letters to me, and once again, I regretted that Yale had not offered courses in shorthand, although I had gotten the knack of quickly jotting down his intention, if not his exact words. Later, I would turn my notes into finished letters while he took care of matters that required his personal attention. As usual, he devoted much of his time to a long letter to his wife and daughters, whom he had sent to Eu
rope, where they could live more cheaply than at home, while he worked to liquidate his debts.

  Toward that end, he had boarded up his home in Hartford, Connecticut, and, with the backing of Mr. Henry H. Rogers, the oil millionaire, embarked on the steamboat cruise and lecture tour down the Mississippi on which I had served as his secretary. (While I was responsible only to Mr. Clemens, I had learned that Mr. Rogers was actually the one who paid my salary, as well as Mr. Clemens’s traveling expenses.) At the same time, he had begun a book describing our journey, with plentiful observations on the customs, the history, and the life of the great American waterway. We were scheduled to give two final lectures here in New Orleans; meanwhile, Mr. Clemens worked on his newest book.

  It was already after noon when a knock announced the arrival of Mr. Cable. Mr. Clemens greeted him enthusiastically, but his expression changed when Mr. Cable asked, “Have you looked into the Galloway case?”

  “Damnation! I meant to, but I got involved in business, and it completely slipped out of my mind,” said my employer, slumping back into his overstuffed chair. I was somewhat embarrassed, also having completely forgotten his promise to investigate the cook’s arrest for poisoning his master.

  “I wish you wouldn’t swear, Sam,” said Mr. Cable, a stem expression on his face. “I’m disappointed in you. You told me last night that you wanted to find out the facts before deciding whether to help poor Leonard Galloway, and the facts aren’t going to walk up to your door and knock.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Mr. Clemens admitted. “I’ll work on it this afternoon, if I get the chance.”

  Mr. Cable gave my employer an indulgent look. “Sam Clemens, I know you better than that. You have the best intentions in the world, but you’re lazy as an old dog on a hot summer day. Well, I’m here to see that you don’t have any more excuse to put off fulfilling your promise.”

  “Promise? I don’t remember promising to help the fellow.”

  “No,” said Mr. Cable. “You promised to find out the facts—first thing this morning. Well, here it is after noon, and you don’t know any more than you did last night. Luckily for you, I still have a few friends in New Orleans, and one of them has offered to meet us for lunch and talk about the Galloway case. The facts may not come knocking, but if you’re willing to walk two or three blocks with me—and you’d better be, Sam!—I can promise you’ll find out some things that didn’t get into the newspapers.”

  “It doesn’t look as if I have much choice,” said Mr. Clemens, standing up. “Come along, Wentworth, we might as well find out what George has up his sleeve. At worst, we’ll get another good meal out of it.”

  We walked down to Saint Peter Street, where at a table in the courtyard of a little café, smoking a dark-colored cheroot, sat a rotund man of medium stature, meticulously dressed, and sporting a dark mustache waxed to sharp points. Mr. Cable introduced him as Richard LeJeune, a detective with the New Orleans Police Department, whom Cable had met when he was a writer for the New Orleans newspapers.

  LeJeune stood and shook hands with Mr. Cable and Mr. Clemens. “I’ve heard about that business on the riverboat, where you caught that murderer, Mr. Clemens. A good piece of detective work,” he said. “A lot of policemen don’t like it when outsiders do their work for them. Me, I’m thankful for any kind of help we can get.”

  “Well, I appreciate the compliment, although I don’t expect to make a habit of solving murders,” said Mr. Clemens. “It’s more work than I’m accustomed to, for one thing. But it was more or less in the line of self-preservation, and that’s a pretty good antidote to indolence.”

  After the introductions, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Cable seated themselves on either side of the detective, and I took the fourth chair at the table. We ordered drinks, and when the waiter had gone to fetch them, Mr. Cable told my employer, “Richard is one of the few honest policemen still left in New Orleans. He’s assigned to the Robinson murder, and he’s agreed to tell us something about the case. So where would you like to begin?”

  “Well, all I really know is what that newspaper said yesterday: that Robinson was poisoned and that the police have arrested his cook for it,” said Mr. Clemens, looking at the detective. “That seems straightforward enough, but I was a reporter long enough to know that no newspaper ever gets the whole story. Why don’t you start with the main facts. How did Robinson die, and how did the police decide it was a murder?”

  The detective looked at Mr. Clemens intently for a moment, as if sizing him up. “Well, Mr. Clemens, Robinson died of jimsonweed poisoning. Now, jimsonweed is powerful stuff. The whole plant is poison, and most people around here know it. There’s not much chance Robinson would have took it by accident. For one thing, it has a pretty rank smell. The country folks call it stinkweed, and it’s hard to mistake for much else. We found some of it growing in a vacant lot near where the cook lives, and the cook admits that he fixed Robinson’s last meal.”

  “How long was that before he died?”

  “The coroner says four hours at least—maybe a lot longer. Sometimes the poison takes twelve, fifteen hours to kill a man. Split the difference and say eight or ten. We figure the poison was in his food at supper the evening before he died, disguised somehow so he wouldn’t smell or taste it—most likely in some kind of spicy sauce. He was the only one who ate the meal, on account of his wife was out of town to visit family. Later that evening, Robinson saw his brother-in-law, and complained of a headache and blurry vision. The servants say he went to bed early. The next day—this was Friday, nearly two weeks ago—his wife arrived home late in the morning and got worried when she learned he hadn’t come down for breakfast. She went into his room and found him. Old Doc Soupape was suspicious right away and asked for an autopsy.”

  “And found evidence of the poison, I assume.” Mr. Clemens took a puff on his cigar. “Any reason to suspect the cook besides the plants growing near his home?”

  “Yes. A couple of days before, Robinson found the cook drunk on the job. He dressed him down pretty fierce in front of the other servants, docked him the day’s pay, and sent him home in shame. The cook didn’t like it one bit. Would anybody? The way it looks is that he went home mad, stayed mad, noticed the weeds, and decided to put them in his master’s soup or maybe his salad. Nobody else was home for the meal, so he didn’t have to worry about killing the rest of the family.”

  “Has he confessed any of this?”

  “No,” said the detective, “but that don’t mean anything. Sometimes they confess, sometimes they deny everything. And sometimes they confess when they didn’t do it.”

  We were interrupted by the waiter arriving with our drinks: lemonade for me and Mr. Cable, a whisky and soda for Mr. Clemens, and a fresh coffee for the detective. We ordered our food, the waiter departed, and Mr. Clemens leaned both elbows on the table, a thoughtful look on his face. “So,” he said at last, “the cook’s guilt or innocence seems to ride on whether his motive is strong enough to make him poison his employer.”

  “True enough,” said LeJeune. “That’s right where the case stands or falls, the way I see it. Nobody denies the cook had the chance to get the poison, though he claims he didn’t know it was growing there, and he had a perfect opportunity to give it to the victim. The main question is whether being yelled at and docked his pay made him mad enough to kill the man who did it to him. George doesn’t think so, and he claims to know this fellow pretty well. And the cook doesn’t have any history of previous trouble with the law. So I think maybe there’s some room for doubt.”

  “Well, if everyone whose boss yelled at him turned into a killer, we’d be in a sad way,” said Mr. Clemens. “From what you say, the cook had plenty of time after Robinson bawled him out to sober up and think things over. What makes the police think he stayed mad? Did any of the other servants hear him make threats, or anything like that?”

  “No, but that’s normal. These people always stick together—”

  “As well they shoul
d, seeing how little help they can expect from anyone else!” Mr. Cable interrupted angrily, but Mr. Clemens silenced him with a gesture.

  “Now, George, let’s stick to our business,” said my employer. “Mr. LeJeune’s come here to tell us what he knows about the case, not to argue about the racial question.”

  Mr. Cable glared at both Mr. Clemens and the detective for a moment. Then the detective looked at him with a wry smile and a shrug, and the little man’s anger seemed to melt away. “That’s all right, Mr. Clemens,” said the detective. “George and I know where each other stand. We go back a long way. The fact is, one of the things that bothers me about this case is that the papers are talking as if the cook is some sort of black monster who killed his boss because he hated white men. Well, I was one of the men who questioned the cook when we arrested him, and if he hates anybody, I sure didn’t see it. So when George asks me to take a closer look at the evidence, I think maybe I should listen to George. But the prosecutor wants to treat the Robinson murder as a closed case, now that we’ve made an arrest. And the captain has been making hints that maybe I should get on with the rest of my caseload, which is plenty big enough, no question about that. Trouble is, I don’t think we’ve nailed the lid on it yet, and I guarantee you I don’t like being told to stop looking when there’s still something I’m not sure of.”

  “So you figure you’ll let us do your looking for you,” said Mr. Clemens.

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said the detective. He took a sip of his coffee, put his cup down precisely in the center of the saucer, and continued. “I’m going to give you enough information to let you start, and then you’ll tell me anything you find out. I’m taking a bit of a chance, because most amateurs don’t know the first thing about a murder investigation. But you did do a pretty good job in that riverboat murder, so maybe you will find something. If you can prove the cook is innocent or even raise enough of a doubt that he did it, maybe I can still arrest the right person instead of going into court with the wrong man in the dock and making myself have a guilty conscience. And if you find something to prove the cook really did kill Robinson, I will trust George to tell me. So I can’t really lose, can I?”