The Ironclad Alibi

by Michael Kilian

  He thought of declaring himself Louise’s husband, or brother. Truth was something that served her convenience, and for all he knew she had several of both.

  But it was a maxim in the U.S. Secret Service that lies were always best held to a minimum, and so he refrained from telling yet another one. “My name is Harrison Raines. I am from the Belle Haven Plantation on the James, and a very good friend of Miss Devereux.”

  The woman folded her arms. “She has many very good friends.”

  “Yes, but I am the only one standing here.”

  “At an ungodly hour of the day, sir.”

  “On the contrary, Madam. ’Tis now when you find God-fearing folk arisen and at their labors—as I intend to be, after speaking with Miss Devereux.”

  He imagined the soft warmth of her bed. And then a bath and shave and a good breakfast.

  “Well, she is not here.”

  “Please, Madam. If you would just tell her Harrison Raines from the Belle Haven Plantation is here, and that it is important.”

  “It don’t matter how important it is, because she isn’t here. Hasn’t been since yesterday morning.”

  “You’re sure? She didn’t come home after the theater?”

  “You deaf?”

  Listening to her, he wished he was. Harry took out one of his cartes de visite and handed it to her. She glanced at it, then without another word, withdrew into her house.

  Despite the early hour, there were already three others in the anteroom waiting to see the general—two of them fancy officers, and one a well-dressed civilian. Each had in turn looked disapprovingly on Harry’s disheveled evening clothes and stubble.

  A polite and industrious young major stood guard at the desk that dominated one end of the room, dealing with an immensity of paper that was recurringly augmented by couriers.

  To Harry’s surprise, he was the first one called, though the others had been there before him. The two officers were visibly affronted.

  General Lee’s office was surprisingly small, and extremely quiet. The gentleman sat at a much larger desk than his aide’s, and it was heaped with an even greater abundance of papers. The general might have been a clerk himself, were it not for his magnificent, immaculate uniform and his station as one of the highest-ranking officers in the Confederacy.

  He stood, shaking Harry’s hand more as an obligatory courtesy than a gesture of friendship, then indicated a chair. He sat back carefully in his own. His eyes were dark and soulful, and it bothered Harry to look at them, for they seemed to see so much.

  “I am distressed by the circumstance that brings you here, sir,” Lee said. “I have shared the news with the president, and he is sorry for it as well.”

  “It is the sorriest thing that has ever happened to me, General,” Harry said, “but for my mother’s own death.”

  Lee ran his hand over his mouth, looked over Harry’s unkempt and decidedly civilian appearance, then resumed his steady gaze at Harry’s eyes. “Both Mrs. Mills and her husband are of excellent families, and he, I am told, is a very valuable young officer. The government desires as little public attention brought to this matter as possible.”

  “I understand, sir. But they have taken my slave.”

  The general’s brows lifted slightly. “Your slave?”

  “My manservant, Caesar Augustus. They have decided he is responsible for Mrs. Mills’s death—for no other reason than that he found her body hanging in my hotel room. They have taken him to be killed this morning. No trial, just a rope.”

  Lee frowned, deeply. Harry recalled that he had been one of Virginia’s foremost proponents of manumission—freeing the slaves and returning them to Africa.

  “I do not believe such an act has sanction in law,” he said, finally.

  Harry felt like screaming that there was no such thing as law anymore in Virginia, that it was all military rule, with the rights of citizenry replaced by the whims of the likes of Nestor Maccubbin or the wrath of lynch mobs and drumhead justice.

  But the same was true of the North—in significant parts of it, at all events. Certainly Baltimore had become one large federal prison camp.

  “Nevertheless, he is taken,” Harry said. “He is worth fifteen hundred dollars, and they strip me of him like cut-purses in the night.”

  The dark eyes took on a sterner cast. “You have come here to argue over a loss of property?” The general’s quick glance at the piles of paperwork indicated how great an intrusion Harry had made.

  There was something more on the general’s mind. Harry reminded himself that Lincoln had thought so much of this man that he had offered him command of the Union armies. Had Virginia not seceded, he might now be sitting in an office in Washington.

  “General, I’ll confess it. This man is my friend. I trust and value him as much as you must that bright young major outside. I know that he could not have committed this crime. He is a good man, a decent person, yet they’ve accorded him no rights. He’s no more than an insect to be squashed on the wall.”

  Such talk on a public street, Harry knew, would be enough to get him locked up himself.

  “Mr. Raines. I have always valued your father’s friendship and am disposed to look kindly upon your complaint. But I should not intrude upon civil matters concerning the police. I serve as President Davis’s military advisor.” He waved at the stacks of paper, pulling one forth. “A request for an officer’s commission. This is my jurisdiction here.” He cleared his throat and pulled more papers to the fore. “I must return to my duties, Sir. I am sorry, Mr. Raines.”

  Harry stood, nodding sadly, then leaned forward, hands on the general’s desk. “Then let me do it,” he said.

  “Do what, Sir?”

  “Find the man who killed Arabella Mills, and so spare my slave an unjust fate.”

  Lee looked a little pale. He was so obviously overworked. “It is my understanding that Mrs. Mills may have taken her own life,” he said, quietly.

  “Provost Maccubbin will tell you otherwise, sir. And so will I. What I need to prove is that my servant did not do it.”

  “But what can you do?”

  “Give me a week, and a letter of marque.”

  “Letter of marque? You are to become a privateer?”

  “No, Sir. I mean a pass—a letter authorizing me to make inquiries in this matter. Something very official. If I do not resolve this in a week’s time, then Maccubbin can do with Caesar Augustus what he will.”

  Lee leaned back in his chair, then swiveled it to one side, looking out his windows toward the east, and the rising sun. “I’m afraid this is not a matter for me to decide. The president …”

  “All the better, sir. A letter signed by President Davis. And I promise you, General Lee, one way or the other, if you do this for me, at the end of this week you will find me fully in the service of my country.”

  The general pondered this, and Harry’s anxious, earnest face. He sighed, much as Miss Van Lew had. “I will order Mr. Maccubbin to leave your manservant unharmed but imprisoned—until His Excellency decides what is to be done. I’m sorry, but I can do no more.”

  “I am grateful, sir.” He started toward the door.

  “If you wish to be assigned to your father’s regiment, I can arrange that instantly.”

  Harry gulped. “Thank you, sir.”

  “A moment more,” the general said.

  “Sir?”

  “You have lived in Washington City through all these months of war. Do you have much knowledge of General McClellan?”

  “I do, sir. Were he an enlisted man, he would be regarded as a shirker.”

  “We talked of this a little last night. Do you really think he will soon move against us? What do they say in Washington City?”

  “They say he had better move. The politicians are giving him no choice. He will move reluctantly, but he will move—or lose his position. He could not bear that.”

  “But move where? I am not interested in rumor. You have been in Wa
shington society, I’m told. In Mrs. Green-how’s circle. I believe we had a brief encounter at a reception there—before the war. What are they saying? What is your best guess?”

  Harry had no specific knowledge of the Union Army’s plans, but Pinkerton had voiced his own opinion to him, and Pinkerton was a man at Lincoln’s right hand. Pinker-ton had said the Union Army would have to cover Washington as it advanced. It could not leave the road open to the capital. That meant a march along the western shores of the Potomac—a flanking move around Fredericksburg.

  Harry hated lying to this excellent man—a friend of his father’s, but truth was an easy casualty in this conflict.

  He seized upon what struck him as the least likely eventuality—offering it has an uninformed guess, so the betrayal of honor between gentlemen would be less. “I believe he will try a flanking move, sir. But he will bring up his entire army for it, and the pace will be slow.”

  “Flank us how? To the left, or right?”

  “To the rear, sir. It’s just a guess, but think he’ll come up the river.”

  “The James?”

  “The James. Perhaps the York. But from that direction.”

  “Why?”

  Harry tried to think like a soldier. “Surprise. It would relieve the pressure on Washington. The Confederate forces would have to pull back far.”

  “But we have batteries on the Potomac. McClellan could not easily move transports down the river.”

  Another guess. “Annapolis, sir. A day’s march from the Union camps.”

  The general rocked gently in his chair a moment, his eyes again to the window. “Thank you, Mr. Raines.” He bent to scratch something in the margin of the request for a commission. Harry could doubtless find himself transformed into a serving officer just as readily.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Where are you staying?” Lee asked, as Harry turned the knob. “I assume you wish to be informed as directly as possible of Mr. Davis’s thoughts upon this matter.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harry said. He gave Lee the name of the landlord Miss Van Lew had urged upon him. It occasioned no unusual interest from the general.

  Chapter 8

  At the mention of Miss Van Lew’s name, the landlord turned and, without a word, led Harry upstairs to a front room that overlooked the street and possessed a view of both the Capitol and the James River. When Harry asked the man if he would send someone to the Exchange for his luggage, he received only a nod in response. His thanks for the man’s good offices produced only another nod as the landlord went out the door.

  The room boasted a rope bed with a tick mattress and two feather-filled pillows. Had they been filled with nails, it would not have mattered. Harry lay back still dressed in his evening clothes and was asleep before he could turn his mind to a single thought.

  He awoke to find that the sun had moved to the other side of the room and that the landlord was standing over him, holding an envelope, which he thrust into Harry’s hand.

  The mute had found his voice. “A colonel brought this,” he said. “Better read it.”

  Not quite shed of sleep and ever mindful of the looming conscription bill, not to speak of his promise to General Lee, Harry half wondered if this might be an order to report for duty as a soldier.

  “When did this come?” Harry asked.

  “Minute ago. Maybe two. Better read it.”

  The man stood there, as though waiting to be informed of the letter’s contents. Harry glared at him until he finally shrugged and walked away, annoyingly leaving the door open behind him. Harry examined the envelope noting the seal of the Confederate States of America. He opened it carefully.

  There was a brief note from Lee:

  Mr. Raines:

  I trust this will prove sufficient for your purposes. It is all that can be managed in the present circumstance.

  We look to honor to be well served here, in most particular as concerns the good lady’s name.

  Your svt.,

  Robert E. Lee, Lt. General

  C.S.A.

  Enclosed was a simple but all-powerful pass, signed by President Jefferson Davis, authorizing the bearer to enter any and all military jurisdictions.

  The landlord reentered, bearing Harry’s luggage from the hotel. “Is this everything you had?” he asked.

  “I’ll know when I open the bags. Thank you.”

  He gave the man a dollar, which was a mistake, for it only encouraged him to linger.

  “Anything else you need?”

  “A meal,” said Harry.

  The man left, promising to stir his wife to culinary preparations. Harry washed, shaved, and changed into clean clothes. Both his saddlebags and grip had been gone through, probably at the hotel, but nothing appeared to have been taken.

  He needed desperately to visit Caesar Augustus in prison, if that could possibly be arranged, but there was another visit he needed to make with an even higher priority.

  The desk clerk at the Exchange took note of him, but made no attempt to bar his passage through the lobby, perhaps presuming that, if Harry was now at large, someone important must have commanded it. Richmond was no place to interfere with authority. Not with so many people being dragged off to jail on the slightest pretext.

  Detective Cashmeyer, one of Maccubbin’s police thugs, was in the lobby, but was in conversation with another man and failed to note Harry’s entrance.

  Up the stairs he went, then, with no one following.

  An advantage of working in the U.S. Secret Service was the education one received from the endlessly resourceful Pinkerton agent Joseph “Boston” Leahy. The muscular Irishman had been a police detective in Massachusetts before joining the Federals and had acquired a vast knowledge of criminal tricks and methods. One of the most useful things Harry had learned from him was the art of picking locks. Using a slender-bladed pocket-knife, he had the door to his former room open in a few seconds.

  The bedding had been changed and the furniture put roughly back in place, but otherwise the chamber seemed little changed. Closing the door behind him, Harry stood thinking a moment, then set about on a quick but careful search of the premises, looking for things he or Caesar Augustus might have left behind—as well as what any third parties might have.

  The pickings were slim. Whoever had tidied up after him had overlooked one drawer in the chest that stood against the wall, and thus Harry was able to retrieve a clean shirt of his as well as two pairs of socks. Otherwise, his search produced only a deck of playing cards, a tin of tooth powder, a rag that smelled of saddle oil, a brass uniform button that he supposed probably belonged to a previous tenant of the rooms, and a small African figurine that Caesar Augustus had carved for himself and carried about as some kind of totem.

  If it brought luck, he surely needed it now.

  Placing the little sculpture and the military button in his coat pocket, Harry used his shirt to make a bundle of the other items. He was tying the sleeves together to hold it fast, when the door behind him opened.

  Harry paused, but did not turn.

  “Make no move, Raines, for I have a revolver aimed at your back.” The voice was high and quavering and slightly familiar.

  Harry turned to face the man and smiled. “Now you have it aimed at my front.”

  The intruder was the manager of the hotel, a small balding man with a moustache far too large for his face. He did have a revolver—an out-of-date Colt from the look of it—but did not seem to be aiming it anywhere in particular.

  “You’re trespassing,” he said. “I’ve sent for Detective Maccubbin.”

  “I merely came back to retrieve some things you people failed to pack,” he said, lifting his bundle. “This nice shirt for one. I paid four dollars for it in Washington City.”

  “Why aren’t you in jail? You’re a murderer.”

  “The answer to your question is in the breast pocket of my coat, if you’ll allow me to bring it forth.” He reached, but halted, as the barrel of
the pistol came up, aimed quite directly now.

  “That’s where you keep that gambler’s pistol of yours, isn’t it?”

  “No. I keep that in the other pocket. Please, I wish to show you something.”

  He snatched out the envelope from General Lee quickly, in the event the fellow actually was contemplating firing off a shot.

  “Read them both,” Harry said. “And then return them.”

  The manager was incredulous, he read both letter and military pass twice, squinting at the signatures.

  “You should be in Castle Godwin,” he said, “with that murderin’ Negro of yours.”

  “Those two pieces of paper say I should not,” Harry said, taking a big step forward to retrieve them. The man frowned, then held them out, somewhat gingerly.

  Harry took another big step. His long nap had restored him to the point of reckless overconfidence. He was becoming very tired of having people point revolvers at him.

  He snatched away the letter and pass with one hand, then grabbed for the man’s pistol, gripping the barrel and twisting sharply to the left.

  The manager stepped back, holding and massaging his now empty gun hand. In twisting, Harry had caused pain.

  “I mean you no harm, sir, and none to your hotel,” Harry said. “In fact, I need to talk to you, as my services have been enlisted to assist in the inquiry into Mrs. Mills’s lamentable passing.”

  “What inquiry?”

  Harry waved the pistol barrel back and forth in front of the man’s face. “This one.” He turned the weapon over and handed it back with the butt to the fore. “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. If you’ll be more civil, I’d like to make it over whatever passes for good whiskey in the bar of this establishment.”

  The bar was just off the lobby. As they entered, Harry heard a small commotion and glanced behind him in time to see Maccubbin go pounding up the main stairs from the lobby. The manager didn’t notice this—or had decided he didn’t want to.

  As the bar had already depleted its stocks of Harry’s favorite Old Overholtz, he settled for a Tennessee sour mash.

  “The deprivations of war,” he said, as they both sipped. The bar was noisy and smoky and full of soldiers. But for the uniform color, it reminded Harry of Washington City.