The Ironclad Alibi

by Michael Kilian

  Harry found several. The New Market Hotel, over at Sixth and Marshall, was one. There was a private party in its central hall, called “the saloon,” and the guests were mostly politicians. Harry pondered the why of a hotel across from the Capitol forbidding spirits, but another, full of legislators, keeping its guests awash in them.

  Their generosity extended even to him—for a time. Then he was asked again to move along.

  The name of the last bar he entered eluded him. He knew only that it was near the canal and that the sinks in the alley behind it smelled awful. He made use of them nevertheless. Then, reeling with fatigue and an incredible sorrow, he sat down in the alley and fell asleep.

  He awoke to find himself with friends—gentlemen so affectionate they were running their hands all over him. Displeased, he started to rise, when he of a sudden realized they were going through his pockets. One already had his wallet out. Harry went clumsily for his Colt, but it was missing from his belt. He then tried reaching for the knife he carried in his right boot, but this produced oaths of a foul sort from one of his new companions. Then came two blows of a pistol butt.

  Harry pitched forward, covering his head with his arms. His assailants then turned to kicking him. He lost count of how many blows he received by the time oblivion blissfully returned.

  Chapter 18

  A patter of rain was falling—on his face. Harry blinked, painfully, and slowly opened his eyes. He was still in the alley, curled up on his side. It was still night, the only light coming from a streetlamp. A scrawny dog was licking at a puddle a few feet away. Otherwise, he was entirely alone.

  Slowly, he stretched out his limbs, barely able to keep himself from crying out. It was impossible to tell which of his many discomforts came from the night’s carouse or the beating he’d received at the hands of thieves. At all events, they quickly blended into a single, all-encompassing agony.

  Sitting up, he began to take inventory. Amazingly, his arms and legs seemed to function. No bones were broken, though his head felt as though someone had emptied a pistol into it.

  As might soon prove to be the case.

  He reached inside his coat. His Navy Colt was missing. His Derringer was still in its hiding place, however. His assailants had also somehow overlooked the two pistols Miss Van Lew had given him. They’d been much more attentive as concerned his wallet, which he found lying in another puddle. He’d been carrying a mix of United States and Confederate money. The thieves, demonstrating a sagacity that few in President Davis’s circle seemed to possess, had left the Confederate dollars.

  They’d also failed to examine his belt, which had five twenty-dollar gold pieces sewn into it.

  All in all, he supposed he’d been fortunate. He hoped he hadn’t used up too much luck. He’d soon be needing a great deal more.

  The door to his boardinghouse stood open, a warning he ignored. Entering, looking about the first floor rooms, Harry found no one present but Estelle, who was in the kitchen, gnawing a ham bone. She gave him only a glance—nothing more, no greeting—returning to meal.

  “Breakfasting early?” said Harry.

  “Where you been, Mister Raines? I been waitin’ for you to come back.”

  “I was busy being robbed and beaten. Where is our friend the landlord?”

  “They come for him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They come for him, and they took him. That Nestor Maccubbin and his Plug Uglies. They say he was a Union man.”

  “They took him to Castle Godwin?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She set the ham bone down very carefully on the kitchen table as though it were a fragile object, then wiped her hands on her dress.

  “Where we goin’ now? We ain’t stayin’ here?”

  He slumped into a wooden chair and took out his flask, taking a generous swig. It didn’t help.

  “We’re leaving,” he said. “I have an appointment down the river, and then we’re leaving this fair city. I hope.”

  “Down the river?”

  “Up the river, actually. Up by Belle Isle.” He took another swig, then put the flask away. “I fear I am tardy.”

  “They took your horse, too, Mister Raines. They said it was for the army.”

  “Then we’ll have to walk.”

  At the door, he paused, taking out the four-barreled pocket pistol Miss Van Lew had given him. He placed it in Estelle’s hands. “The appointment I’m going to keep is a duel, Estelle. Do you know what that is?”

  “Yessir. White man’s way of settlin’ quarrels.”

  It was time to face facts. “If I don’t survive this encounter, I want you to run away. Not just to some place in Richmond, but out of the city. Any place in the country where you think you can find friends.”

  “What if you live?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.” He wrapped her hands around the pistol. “If you find yourself in grave danger, use this. But only in extremis.”

  “What that mean, Mister Raines?”

  “Only if you think someone is about to kill you.”

  They were standing in a small group by a coach at the end of the small field, all much the same drab color in the lingering morning mist. As Harry approached, one of them detached himself from the others and came forward. It was George Broward, in uniform, his pocket watch in hand.

  “You are forty-two minutes late, sir,” he said, pompously. “If you did not arrive by the stroke of the hour, we would have left the field. Your reputation would be in ruins.”

  “Better the reputation than the mortal coil.”

  Broward frowned, in brief puzzlement, then sneered. “You come without a second, Mister Raines.”

  “I’ll be my second. I would have chosen my manservant, Caesar Augustus, but he has been murdered.”

  “Surely you have friends …”

  “I suspect that what friends I still have in Richmond have been run off or rounded up by the Plug Uglies.”

  “I was your friend.”

  “No you weren’t, Broward. Mills was, but now, demonstrably, he is not.”

  “You understand what this means?”

  “I understand the rules of the Code Duello. Accept this as one of the shortages of war. Now let’s get on with it. Here I am, prepared for the complete pageant.”

  The other stood uneasily a moment, then bade Harry to stay where he was and walked swiftly to the group by the carriage. They were all in uniform. They conferred a moment, then Broward returned.

  “All right, we’ll proceed.”

  “What weapons?”

  “Pistols. Are you armed?”

  Harry took out the .44 Remington, checking the cylinder. It was fully loaded. “Yes.”

  “I’ll show you your mark.”

  Harry stood on it, unhappy, waiting for Mills to take his position at his back. Realizing he had forgotten something of no little importance, he reached into his pocket and pulled forth his spectacles.

  Both lenses were smashed from the previous night’s encounter. A piece of glass stuck in his finger. He pulled it out, jamming his ruined eyeglasses back into a pocket.

  “Are you all right, Raines?”

  It was Mills, no more than a few inches behind him.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” It was a lie.

  Broward called out instructions. Each man was to step off ten paces at Broward’s count, then turn and fire. Each would have one shot.

  Harry cocked the revolver. He had, of course, never fired it and had no idea how true its aim. But, without his spectacles, it wouldn’t much matter.

  “One,” said Broward.

  The command took Harry by surprise. He took a faltering step, but made it a long one. Without his spectacles, he had small chance of hitting Mills, even if he wished to, which he did not. All he could do was put as much distance between himself and the offended Mills as possible.

  He tried to remember:
Was Mills a good shot?

  Broward, a little unevenly, continued the count. At “five,” Harry took a quick look to the right, at the river. The James had been an important part of his life. It was a depressingly appropriate place to be taking his leave of it.

  “Seven.”

  Harry stumbled a bit on that one, but quickly regained his balance.

  “Eight.”

  He was holding the pistol straight ahead of him, the barrel pointing down slightly. This would not do. He bent his arm fully, aiming the revolver straight up. He practiced in his mind how he might turn, aim, and fire. There would be no time to aim.

  “Nine.”

  This was absurd. Everything that had happened to him since he had returned to this hard city of his youth had been out of the Theater of the Absurd.

  Now this, from the Grand Guignol.

  “Ten.”

  There was only one thing to do.

  With a sharp report that startled him, his pistol discharged straight into the air. Sneezing from the smoke and powder that came into his nose, Harry turned slowly to face his adversary.

  Mills made his own turn as deliberately, aiming his pistol with great care. Harry saw him take a deep breath, then exhale only slightly, holding perfectly still. He meant this shot to be perfect and true.

  Harry shifted his gaze to the river, remembering his interludes there with the young Arabella, especially the last one. If the situation weren’t so darkly comic, someone might make a grand romance of all this.

  There was only the tiniest instant between the gunshot and the sudden, ripping pain and blow that spun Harry to the ground.

  Chapter 19

  The echoes of the gunshot dissipated in the misty air, and then there was an eerie silence. As it continued, Harry wondered if he was dying in pieces, his hearing the first of him to go. But then at last he heard a crow calling, and some chirpier birds. Listening with more care, he could discern the distant thump and grumble that was the Tredegar Ironworks beginning to busy itself.

  Mills and Broward were standing over him, Mills’s smoking pistol still in his hand.

  “He’s alive,” Broward said.

  “Of course he is,” Mills said. He leaned close. “How are you, Raines?”

  Harry’s left arm stung as though swarmed by a thousand bees, all of them seeking the same spot. He looked to it, and saw the cloth of his coat stained red above the elbow.

  “Tolerable,” said Harry. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

  “Why did you discharge your weapon before you turned? Why didn’t you take a shot?”

  “I wished you no harm.”

  “That was a very brave thing to do, for I sure as hell wish you harm.” Mills stepped back, placing his revolver in its holster.

  “Put him in my coach,” he said.

  Two army officers Harry did not know came to either side of him and reached to lift him to his feet. As they pulled, his left arm felt as though it was about to come off, but he somehow refrained from crying out.

  Erect at last, he leaned heavily on the man to his right.

  Samuel, glowering, sat on the driver’s seat, making no move to assist Harry. It was Mills who helped lift him inside. Wincing, Harry slumped back against the rearward facing seat, clenching his teeth and closing his eyes against the pain.

  “You promised you would not hurt him.”

  At the sound of this very feminine, Louisiana-accented voice, Harry opened his eyes wide.

  “I didn’t promise that,” Mills said, seating himself next to Louise and closing and fastening the door. “I said I wouldn’t kill him.”

  “A man of his word,” Harry said, grimacing. Runnels of blood had reached his wrist. “Why are you here, Louise?”

  She gave him a scant glance; nothing more.

  “I’m taking him to Chimborazo,” she said, to Mills.

  “Do as you will,” Mills said. “After I get to the Navy wharf at Rocketts’ Landing. They’re holding the boat for me, and I am late.”

  “You’d be on time if you’d avoided this foolishness.”

  “Miss Devereux, ma’am,” Mills said, removing his hat. “You do not understand the ways of Virginia.”

  “I come from a place where men kill each other this way all the time,” she said. “It’s just as stupid back in Louisiana as it is in your ‘Old Virginia.’”

  Mills made no reply. They seemed so displeased with each other they resembled more a long-married couple than lovers fresh from a dalliance.

  Harry shut his eyes again. It would be a short ride to Rocketts’.

  Mills hopped down to the ground but lingered by the open door, waiting as though hopeful of a farewell kiss. After a moment’s hesitation, Louise leaned forward and gave it to him, showing affection, but not exactly ardor.

  He took her hand afterward. “I’ll write to you when I can.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Louise asked.

  “You keep asking that. I cannot say.”

  “But it could be weeks.”

  “If we succeed, and replenish coal stocks and munitions, it could be a long time, yes.”

  “But you’re not even a member of the crew?”

  “I represent Tredegar. Things may go wrong. It’s essential I be aboard.”

  “While I sit here and wait—and wilt—with no word.”

  “No worry, Ma’am. You will shortly learn that we are invincible and master of the seas.”

  He brought her hand to his lips, then stepped back and saluted her. As he walked away, Harry leaned to watch him descend to the quay, where a small, side-wheeled gunboat stood waiting, steam up.

  “He’s off to Gosport,” Harry said.

  Louise put a finger to his lips.

  “Harry,” she said, “I told you to flee. Now look at you.”

  He shrugged, instantly wishing he hadn’t. “I’m fine.”

  She patted his knee. “I do hope so, but you do not look it.” She then rapped twice on the coach’s padded side. There was a slap of reins and then the jangle of harness as the carriage began to move.

  “Chimborazo Hospital,” she commanded.

  “Yes’m.” The black man said it almost in a grunt.

  “We’ll tend to your wound,” she said. “If you are well enough to travel, then truly you must go. President Davis this morning is ordering more arrests.”

  “The Plug Uglies have already begun that work.”

  “‘It is the part of men to fear and tremble,’” she recited, “‘when the most mighty gods by tokens send such dreadful heralds to astonish us.’”

  “Shakespeare aside, Davis is no Caesar.”

  She smiled, then continued her recitation. “‘And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, but that he sees the Romans are but sheep. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire, begin it with weak straws.’”

  Harry pushed himself up in the seat. His pain was easing—or at the least, in her presence, he was better able to ignore it.

  “These are strange words to hear from the lips of a Confederate spy and assassin,” he said.

  Her countenance darkened. “Be still, Harry. Talk no more of this.”

  “I will think upon it.”

  “Do so elsewhere. Not in Richmond. I think this now the most dangerous place on earth.”

  “Then why do you linger?”

  She shook her head, sadly. “You trespass, sir.”

  “Tell me one thing, before you leave me,” he said. “The day Arabella Mills was killed, you were seen on the street outside my hotel, stopping by the Mills’s coach.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Arabella in it?”

  “No.”

  “Who was?”

  “Palmer was.”

  “What were you doing there? A public rendezvous?”

  “I had come by to see you, to explain the invitation to the president’s. With Palmer there, it was best I did not come calling
.”

  He studied her, trying not to be distracted by her loveliness. “I wonder which side you serve,” he said.

  “If you wonder, then I am succeeding.”

  “Just one question more. When I helped you escape from Washington, you showed me a paper—a document testifying to the purchased freedom of a New Orleans mulatto woman. A creased and worn piece of paper some three decades old.”

  “Please, Harry.”

  He wondered why he was asking this. Her answer would likely prove nothing. “Was that woman your mother?”

  She gazed at him, looking wonderfully and terribly beautiful. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend, as you have seen.”

  “Then you will know the answer to your question.”

  The coach rolled along briskly. The street here was cobbled, to support the heavy freight wagons from the wharf. The rumbly bumping brought back his pain.

  “Why Mills?” he asked.

  “He’s not really such a bad fellow.”

  “I fear he may have killed his wife.”

  “Many a good man has done that.” She leaned forward. “Harry, he was with me—in that little house at Tredegar where you have subsequently discovered us. His coachman took us there from the Exchange, and he stayed with me until I left for our dinner.”

  “Where did he go then?”

  “To his office. It’s just down the hill.”

  “So he could say he was doing work for the ironclad.”

  “He was with me until past dark, Harry.”

  “How did you get to President Davis’s house?”

  “Samuel drove me to the hotel and I hired a hack.”

  He winced. “This doesn’t ring true.”

  “Then you are a poor detective.”

  “Well, you are right on that. I’ve made a mess of the whole thing and got my best friend killed.”

  “These are terrible times, Harry. This is a terrible place.”

  The coach crossed the stream called Bloody Run and followed the street named for it, clattering over the tracks of the York River Railroad. They were soon across the city limits. Ahead, Harry could see the sprawling complex of Chimborazo.

  Louise took note of it as well. She moved herself to sit beside him, taking his hand.