The Ironclad Alibi

by Michael Kilian

  He supposed it might be possible to stroll up to the gate and ask for Palmer Mills, and so he did just that.

  A civilian watchman and two soldiers were lounging at the gate.

  “I am calling on Mr. Palmer Mills,” Harry said. “He is supposed to have a position here.”

  “Ain’t on the premises.”

  Harry’s suspicions about the readiness of “the Monster” required confirmation. There was no one better qualified to provide that than Mills.

  “My name is Harrison Raines. My father owns a plantation down the James. Mr. Mills is an old friend. I have just now returned to Richmond and would like very much to speak with him. Sir.”

  “I tole you he ain’t on the premises. When he is, we know it, but he ain’t, and we know that, too.”

  There was the sound of boots on the gravel. A sergeant and two privates, looking much better uniformed than the soldiers Harry had seen out in the field, came up and arranged themselves around Harry.

  “Who’re you?” the sergeant asked.

  “I live here—downriver, at the Belle Haven Plantation.”

  “What’s your business here?”

  “No ‘business.’ I’m calling on a friend. Lieutenant Mills, of the Confederate States Navy.”

  Harry produced one of his cartes de visite with a flourish. The sergeant eyed the card with grumpy suspicion, then shoved it into a pocket of his unbuttoned tunic.

  “How’d you get across the canal bridge?”

  “I walked.”

  Wrong answer. The man glowered. “How’d you get past the sentry there?”

  “There was no sentry there.”

  The sergeant fidgeted in frustration. He appeared about to become very angry over something—the absent sentry, the present Harry, or both.

  “Mr. Mills don’t want no visitors—unless they’re from the government. You from the government?”

  “No.”

  “Well, be off then.”

  “Is he here? I’ll wait on the other side of the canal, if you’ll just send word—his old friend, Harrison Raines.”

  “I said be off!”

  “Perhaps I’ll come back at another time,” Harry said, “or call on Lieutenant Mills at his home.”

  Harry turned and started walking quickly away, half fearing one of the soldiers might rush up and grab him. He wished he was a better actor.

  Apparently his performance sufficed, however. No one came after him. At the bridge, the absent sentry, a youth too small for his uniform and musket, was back in his place. He let Harry pass unbothered.

  If the war had utterly transformed Richmond, so much still seemed the same. As Harry went up Twentieth Street, he glanced at the familiar landmark that was Libby’s warehouse as he had done countless times in the past, then abruptly halted. The drab, multistoried, utilitarian structure was in no way altered in appearance, but it had of course become something altogether different—and frightful. Instead of tobacco, grain, and dry goods, it was now used to store living flesh. Coming up from the riverbank, he’d heard the sound of coughing. Some of those poor men had been behind these forbidding walls since Bull Run, nine months before.

  He knew very well it was unwise for him to go near this place, to show any interest or concern for the Union Army. But he could not pull himself away. He wanted at least to look at some of these men, to reassure himself that they were surviving well enough.

  There were a few locals standing around in front of the prison’s main entrance, only two of them in uniform.

  “Any chance of getting a look at a Yankee soldier?” Harry asked one of the men, a pleasant looking fellow in eyeglasses, who might have been a schoolteacher in civilian life.

  The reply was as chilling as the rising wind.

  “They bring out the dead ones first thing in the morning,” he said. “You can look at them then.”

  “They do that every morning?”

  “Yes sir. Pretty near.”

  Harry thanked him and turned away, then halted again. One of the civilians there was an elderly Negro Harry recognized as Miss Van Lew’s servant, the man who had stood so stoically through dinner. He was standing in much the same stiff manner now, much like a toy who’d been put away on a shelf after use.

  As Harry moved toward him, he shifted slightly, pretending not to notice Harry’s approach.

  “Is Miss Van Lew here?” Harry asked.

  The man said nothing. His eyes flicked once toward Harry, but that was all.

  “Did you hear? I asked if Miss Van Lew was here,” Harry said, a bit more insistently.

  “You best go away from here, sir,” was the hushed reply. The fellow barely moved his lips.

  “Why?”

  The older man made no reply, but his eyes, which had been looking off at some vague point in the distance, now shifted and became sharply focused at something or someone over Harry’s shoulder. Harry turned about and saw Miss Van Lew emerging from the warehouse door, greeted by some rude remarks from the soldiers.

  Harry started to go to her assistance, but was held off by her sharp rebuke. “You there!” she cried. “Why are you bothering my man?”

  He stood with mouth slightly agape. What was afoot? “Miss Van Lew …”

  “You be quiet!”

  She lifted her skirt slightly to come at him all the faster. He was struck by how shabby she looked, as though she’d been transformed overnight into some poor woman of the streets who got by selling flowers or begging—even to the large, empty basket she carried on her arm.

  “You stay away from my servant, you horrible slaver!” she said, far more loudly than was necessary. “You’ll not be selling him down the river.”

  She stood close to him now, her delicate blue eyes hooded, reminding him of a snake about to strike.

  Harry lowered his own voice. “Miss Van Lew, I have things to tell you. Things …”

  She grabbed at his shoulders, pushing him away, but at the same time holding on so that he could not move. “Not now,” she said, softly, then quickly added, for all to hear, “I hate you. You and your kind brought on this awful war! It’s penance of sin! Penance of sin!”

  “Miss Van Lew. Tonight I dine with the president. I …”

  Her eyes now widened, she pulled him very close, hissing, “You’ll see the means before you, Harry. Look for them.” Then she shook him. “Slaver!!!”

  The old black man now at last intervened, touching his mistress gently on the shoulder. It was as though he’d pulled the lever of some mechanical switch. She abruptly pulled away, saying not another word as she walked off with her servant in tow, making for the street up the hill.

  Harry shook his head, then went over to one of the soldiers. Everyone present had followed the encounter.

  “What ails that woman?” he asked.

  “That there’s Crazy ‘Bet,’” said the soldier. “Crazy old rich woman lives up on Church Hill. Goes around town in ragged clothes muttering to herself. Brings food and such to these damned Yankees. Pretty far outa her mind, but don’t worry about her none. Harmless, far as we can tell.”

  Harry nodded his thanks, and started for his hotel a block distant.

  He smiled to himself. Elizabeth Van Lew was about as harmless as three army corps.

  Chapter 5

  Harry changed clothes, dressing in the expensive black suit he had brought with him, along with a clean white shirt and a black silk cravat. It was hours before he was due at the presidential mansion, but he didn’t want to take a chance on being late in the event he was waylaid.

  As it turned out, he waylaid himself, encountering two old friends in the bar of the Exchange who invited him to join them in a poker game over at the American Hotel on Main Street by the Capitol. They were amiable fellows—planters’ sons, as he had been—with surprisingly small interest in the war, or knowledge of it. The other two players, whom Harry did not know, were much the same, only visitors from Charleston. This pair carried on as though the war had been w
on with the firing on Fort Sumter, awaiting now only the formal Yankee acceptance of the impossibility of ever defeating the Confederacy.

  With minds such as this involved, the game turned quickly in Harry’s favor. Having no suspicious officers at the table this time, Harry indulged himself, raking in a number of splendid pots. When the final round was dealt, he was sixty dollars ahead—precisely his monthly pay as a captain in Pinkerton’s Secret Service.

  Money was a poor substitute for genuine intelligence about the ironclad—which his card-playing companions lacked utterly—but Davis’s table was a far more likely source for that at all events.

  Out on the street, it was fully dark and the gaslights were lit. He was late, and there was no time to stop back at the Exchange to gather up Caesar Augustus and horses. Hurrying up the hill that led to the President’s House on foot, Harry hoped he’d find the black man there waiting for him.

  Harry had every expectation of learning something of real significance at this presidential gathering—an opportunity Allen Pinkerton could only dream about. With luck, Harry might come away with all that he’d come to Richmond to discover. He wanted Caesar Augustus standing by, ready to carry the information to Union ears as quickly as possible—a task Harry could not well perform himself without further arousing Maccubbin’s suspicion. Caesar Augustus, however, could simply scamper off into Dark-town—much like the rabbit who disappeared into his briar patch in the old Negro folk tale.

  Miss Van Lew had made that odd, daft promise that a way to fulfill his mission would present itself. Did she suppose President Davis would offer him the use of a courier? Perhaps there was good reason to be calling her “Crazy Bet.”

  It was much busier outside the presidential mansion this cold evening than when Harry had come by on inauguration day. A dozen or more soldiers now stood about the front steps and gallery. There was a carriage in the yard, and two others standing in Clay Street. But no saddle horse and no Caesar Augustus. Soldiers at the front door came to attention at Harry’s approach, making a presumption, for they could not possibly have known who he was—or how unimportant he was in the Confederate scheme of things.

  Just inside was an ornate foyer, where Harry removed his great coat and broad-brimmed hat. He was then ushered through two curved double doors into the warmth of a small parlor beyond. There, a butler stood with a brass tray that already held a half dozen cartes de visite. Placing his upon the rest, Harry proceeded into yet another parlor, and then to another beyond that of greater dimensions, a high-ceilinged room, lavishly draped and furnished. When he had first visited Mr. Lincoln in the presidential mansion, he had felt rather in awe. Here, he was merely curious.

  Davis stood with his wife, Varina, near the door. He turned to greet Harry with a weak handshake and a slight nod of recognition. Harry’s father and Davis had known each other from the Mexican War and Harry had met the great man once when he was a boy. But he’d had no personal encounters with him after that, even upon moving to Washington City, where Davis served as a U.S. senator from Mississippi in the days before Sumter.

  The Rebel president seemed tired, just as Mr. Lincoln usually did, and perhaps a trifle ill. There seemed something wrong with one of his eyes. But there was some small cheerfulness to his smile when he thanked Harry for the gift of General Hooker’s horse.

  “I’ve given it over to the army,” Davis said. “An officer in General Stuart’s command now has it.”

  “Perhaps the animal will encounter his old master,” Harry said.

  “I believe that is a possibility—though I’d be happy for Hooker to have it back if he’d ride it straight home to Massachusetts and take all his soldiers with him.”

  Mrs. Davis was somewhat less amiable. She was a pretty, oval-faced woman with straight, severe hair done in a fashionable coiled coif and sad, almond eyes—quietly full of the pride of her place and station. Harry recalled that she came from Natchez, where they indulged in such pride abundantly. “Good evening, Mr. Raines,” she said, coolly. “Word of your exploits precedes you.”

  Her voice was soft but her accent broad—far different from the echo of Restoration England to be found in the speech of Harry and his fellow Tidewater Virginians. There was something mocking about the way she emphasized the word “exploits.” Harry wondered if she had been informed in some way of the less respectable aspects of his comport and life in the Federal capital.

  “Trifling matters all, Mrs. Davis,” Harry said.

  Her countenance darkened slightly. “I am told you are acquainted with Abraham Lincoln.” The words came coldly, his name uttered as though it were a satanic reference.

  “I have had a conversation with him,” he replied, quite truthfully, “enroute to my imprisonment at Fort McHenry.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “However did you escape that predicament?”

  “I was brought back to Washington for further questioning,” he said, then bent the truth. “An opportunity to escape presented itself. I took it—with the aid of General Hooker’s horse.”

  “Yes. That was audacious of you. And we do thank you for the generous and patriotic gesture of the gift. The army is so desperate for mounts.”

  “It’s kind of you to reward me so abundantly with your invitation this evening.”

  “The invitation is from my husband, but you are of course welcome.” She smiled, with some effort, then took him by the arm to introduce him to the others in the room. Most were strangers to him.

  It was a small group. Harry was presented first to an older man in civilian clothes who had an oddly military air. He proved to be Milledge Bonham, until recently governor of South Carolina and now a Confederate brigadier and a member of the Rebel Congress as well. As he was quick to mention, he’d fought at Bull Run.

  Then there was James Chesnut, Davis’s aide de camp, accompanied by his wife, Mary, an attractive, dark-haired, older woman who seemed very much at home in presidential company. Another South Carolinian and member of the Confederate Congress, her husband had once been a member of the U.S. Senate.

  The only one present in uniform was a remarkably distinguished general with steel gray hair and beard and impeccable manners more correct than courtly. Harry recognized him from visits the man had made to his father’s plantation. His name was Robert E. Lee, and he was serving as President Davis’s principal military advisor. Harry’s father had spoken highly of his military abilities in the Mexican War, but Lee had proved a failure in his first field command of this war, losing an engagement the previous September in western Virginia at a place called Cheat Mountain when he’d been serving as commander of the Virginia militia.

  Harry felt sorry to find such a magnificent looking officer relegated to a desk and office, but he’d been thrilled by the news of Lee’s defeat. The farm his mother had left him was in western Virginia, and there was a chance now that those counties might secede from the mother state and become a new Union one, free of slavery. He liked the idea of being a local citizen of such a place.

  The general was with a somewhat younger woman, plain but pleasant, who was introduced as a Mrs. Judith McGuire. She said she and Mrs. Lee had escaped from Arlington together and that she was standing in for the ailing Mrs. Lee at this dinner.

  There was one more female present, a raven-haired young lady in an expensive black silk gown with low décolletage. She’d kept her fan fluttering about her face but Harry instantly recognized her, stunned as much by her presence as by her beauty.

  “Miss Devereux,” he said, as Louise casually offered her hand to be kissed. “I’m surprised you’re not at the theater.”

  “It’s early yet,” she said, with more fan flutter. “I trust you’ve had a happy day, sir.”

  “It’s happier now, mademoiselle.”

  Mrs. Davis was eyeing Louise coldly. When she noticed that Harry had caught her look, she turned to Lee, placing her arm on his. “If you would be so kind, General,” she said. “I do believe it’s time to go into dinner.”
/>   It was indeed remarkable that an actress would find herself in such august company, even one as celebrated in the South as Louise was. Though Andrew Jackson had happily brought the great British Shakespearean player Fanny Kemble to the presidential mansion in his time, Harry doubted Mary Todd Lincoln would be so welcoming—especially of an actress with Louise’s reputation for amour. Mrs. Davis seemed of a similar mind, but was being circumspect about it.

  Richmond’s population had been about forty thousand before the war began. It was now twice that, and most of the newcomers were far, far less respectable than anyone in Louise Devereux’s profession.

  Harry hoped that he might be seated next to her, but instead found himself placed between Mrs. McGuire and Mrs. Chesnut. It was just as well. Louise, seated opposite, ignored him entirely as she chattered flirtatiously with Congressman Bonham.

  “You have come to us from Washington City?” Mrs. Chesnut asked Harry, after they’d all settled into their chairs.

  “Yes, Ma’am. Had to work my way around the Union lines.”

  “That was very intrepid of you.”

  “I simply wanted to come home.”

  She nodded. “Well, Sir. You are most welcome here in Richmond. Your family must be pleased to have you back.”

  In truth, he’d informed neither his father nor his brother he was coming. He assumed they were still up in Northern Virgina with Longstreet.

  “It’s been a while,” he said.

  “Are they enjoying our misfortunes in Washington City?”

  “No, Ma’am. I’d say they’re mostly anguishing over their own. No one expected the war to last so long. They’re hoping now for another big battle to end it.”

  Mrs. Chesnut had a high forehead, a very fair complexion, and sad, dark eyes. She lowered her lashes, looking down at her plate.