“The new Illinois State Prison,” said Lincoln. “The first one in the state—a modern prison to match a modern penal code, at least it’s supposed to be.”
“The bird will be visible just around this bend,” said Logan. “It’s on the cliff face immediately below the prison walls.” We were right on the edge of the stately river now, the walking path nearly in the rushes that trimmed the waters. We turned sharply right around a boulder. “There.” Logan pointed up.
A phantasmagorical monster rendered in green, red, and black shone horribly in the moonlight some forty feet up the sheer rock face. Bloodshot eyes stared out from a man’s face, but the rest of the figure was animalistic. It had the horns of a deer, the beard of a lion, a body covered with scales, and the wings of a griffin. A stream of blood flowed from a wound on its breast. A long tail wound all around the body, passing above the head and going back between the legs before coming to an end in a fish’s fin.
“Who painted it?” I asked, gaping in wonder.
“No one knows for sure,” said Logan. “Father Marquette first described it here one hundred fifty years ago. The Indians believe the creature actually lived, in long-ago times, and carried off one of their ancestors in its claws every day to feast upon in its lair. Until a band of six young, brave tribesmen decided to attack it. Five of them were killed by the beast, but the sixth shot it dead with an arrow dipped in poison. It’s said the survivor painted the image in memory of his comrades who had perished. Evidently Piasa means ‘the bird that devours men’ in some ancient tongue.”
“I can scarcely imagine how anyone could have painted it,” said Lincoln, retreating to the very edge of the river to get a better look. “Even today, to say nothing of hundreds of years ago.”
“Climbed the rocks hand over hand with paintbrushes clenched in their teeth?” suggested Logan.
A clutch of logs bobbed at the riverbank, snagged by a tiny spit of land that fingered out into the river. Lincoln stepped onto one of the logs, flapped his gangly arms for balance, and then edged out into the swirling current, his eyes still riveted to the painting.
“Careful,” I called.
“It’s a sheer face the whole way up,” said Lincoln, taking another two steps out. “How they managed it I can’t—oof!”
I peered through the darkness. He had disappeared.
“Lincoln?” I shouted. “Have you gone into the river?”
“A little damp, nothing more,” came his muffled voice. “And perhaps a bruised kneecap. The logs shifted in the current.” I saw the shadowy figure steadying himself and starting to rise slowly from the snag. “Only—what’s this?”
“What is it?”
“Something’s caught among the logs. Come have a look.”
“I think you should come back to dry land before you drown,” said Logan, sucking in air through his teeth. “No piece of river trash is worth the trouble.”
“I don’t think it’s ordinary debris,” said Lincoln. “Come help me, Speed.”
Doubtfully, I edged down the riverbank toward the log snag. Lincoln was pointing at a large, oblong object, shrouded in white, which was bobbing next to the snag. A discarded household item, I imagined.
“I can’t see how we’d land it without going into the current ourselves,” I said. “Even if we wanted to. Which I can’t—”
“You stay there on the bank,” Lincoln directed. “I’ll guide it toward you.”
Kneeling on the floating snag, he picked out a log eight or ten feet long. It looked much too heavy to be lifted, but Lincoln managed to hoist one end onto his shoulder, and he maneuvered the other end behind the bobbing object. Using the log as a kind of paddle, Lincoln guided the object toward where I was crouched on the shoreline.
I reached down and, on my second attempt, grabbed ahold of the object’s leading edge. The material felt like canvas, of the sort used to bundle cotton.
“I think we’ve performed a daring rescue of a lost cotton bale,” I said.
“Let’s take a look,” said Lincoln as he scrambled across the snag back to shore and came to kneel beside me.
Together, we attempted to drag the article up the riverbank and onto dry land. It took unexpected effort, and we managed it only on our third heave. Whatever was inside the shroud, it was too heavy to be cotton.
Lincoln looked over at me gravely. “I think it’s a body,” he said.
The canvas was held in place by several winds of twine secured by a couple of knots. Lincoln worked quickly to untie the knots. Finally, he loosed the last piece of string and pulled the covering away. Each of us gasped.
Cast in sharp relief by the moonlight were the doughy face and still eyes of John W. Jones of Ames Manor, Nashville.
CHAPTER 5
“I know him,” I said grimly.
“Who is he?”
“A planter’s son from Nashville—name of Jones. He was aboard the War Eagle with me. He was involved in a commotion last night.”
“Commotion? What kind?”
Before answering, I gazed again at the dead man. It was sobering to see a man my age, hailing from similar circumstances, whose life had been snuffed out prematurely. Devol’s boast that Jones wouldn’t have risked it all without my counsel rang in my ears. Would Jones be dead if I’d been more forceful in my warnings that he avoid the monte? All at once, I felt a chill shoot through my body.
“There was a gambler aboard last night, a good one. Name of Devol. He ran the monte better than I’ve ever seen it run. This fellow fell for it. Hard.”
“Men who lose hard at cards are more likely to end up the perpetrator of murder,” said Logan, “not the victim.”
“He was almost that too.” I described the confrontation in the salon after the monte and the captain’s trick in disarming Jones. “When I last saw him, he was being carried away to his cabin, yelling about revenge. I haven’t any idea how he ended up dead. I wonder if he could have thrown himself overboard. He lost his family’s fortune in the monte.”
“Who’s responsible for investigating the death?” Lincoln asked Logan.
“The levee police should be, for any crime committed on the waters,” the senior lawyer returned. “I think I saw a copper loitering near the steamboat landing when we left the hotel. I’ll walk back and see if I can’t fetch him.”
“Had you ever met him before last night?” Lincoln asked me as Logan hurriedly retreated down the shore.
I shook my head.
“Did you—how is it your sort puts it—did your kin know his kin?”
Despite the somber setting, I chuckled. In the six months we had shared living quarters, Lincoln had never tired of contrasting my grand origins with his much more humble ones. And his tone left no doubt as to which of us he thought was the butt of his running joke.
“I imagine we share a relation if you go a few generations back,” I said. “Most of Tennessee is related to most of Kentucky, one way or another. But I’d never heard of the Joneses of Nashville before yesterday.”
I examined the dead man in the moonlight. His frockcoat was waterlogged. His hair was slicked back. His face was wrinkled like an overripe prune, but it was otherwise unmarked.
“Can you see a wound?” asked Lincoln.
I patted my hands along the front of Jones’s soaking costume. “None that are obvious,” I said, “though it’s hard to be certain in this light. Only—what’s this?” I had brushed against something hard. I felt inside one of the lower pockets of Jones’s coat and pulled out a heavy, round object. I held it up to the moonlight.
“A ballast stone,” said Lincoln. “Whoever put it there didn’t use enough. Or maybe some fell out of the sack in the current. Otherwise, he would have lain at the bottom of the channel for all eternity. Might as well have been carried off by the Piasa Bird.”
I glanced up at the painting on the looming cliff face. I felt sure that, given the choice, Jones would have preferred to vanish without a trace. That way, his family never would
have learned of his folly at the tables. As it was, I knew his body would eventually be shipped back to Nashville in a rough pine box, a note nailed to the outside describing in spare, pitiless words his final days.
“Here’s Logan returning,” said Lincoln. “And it looks like he’s brought company.”
I stood and gazed down the shoreline at two approaching figures. Logan was carrying a flaming torch, and as they came near, I saw that the man accompanying Logan had a highly distinctive appearance. He was short and compact, with close-cropped hair, a smooth face, and almost childlike features. Instead of the usual drab uniform of a levee policeman, he was wearing a black robe that reached nearly to the ground, with a white collar and a brilliant purple cravat extending six inches down from his neck. Perched on the very top of his head was an elegant lavender bonnet.
“This is Constable Daumier,” said Logan.
“Avocat Daumier,” the man said with a little cough. “It is a small matter, but I hope you will not mind if I pray you to use the correct honorific.” His accent and affect marked him at once as a member of the French nation.
“Quite right,” replied Logan, looking at Lincoln with amusement lurking behind his eyes. “Avocat Daumier—this is Lincoln. And Speed. And the dead man.”
Daumier squatted beside Jones’s figure and poked about, muttering to himself in his native tongue. “I understand, Monsieur Speed, you steamed upriver yesterday with the victim,” he said.
“That’s right, aboard the—” I began, before suddenly realizing the last thing my father’s ship needed was the notoriety of an unexplained death. “Aboard an ordinary packet steamer. His name is—was—Jones. He was very dejected when I last saw him. Perhaps he disembarked the ship and later decided life was no longer worth living.”
“I shall be the judge of that,” returned Daumier. “Was he wearing these same clothes when you last observed him?”
“He’d shed the frockcoat by evening’s end,” I said. “He was down to his shirt-sleeves.”
“What would cause a man of this station to strip to his shirt-sleeves, I wonder?”
“He had a bad turn at the tables. Lost a small fortune. That’s why I suspect he got off the ship at the levee here and later decided to take his own life.”
Daumier made a noise that seemed to indicate doubt. Even Lincoln shot me a skeptical glance, but I glared back at him, willing him to hold his tongue.
“From my post, I saw only one steamer docking this morning,” said Daumier as he continued to examine Jones’s clothing closely. “The War Eagle. I saw her pull in shortly after daybreak and depart upriver several hours thereafter. That was the ship you and he were aboard.”
It was not a question. I realized I had no choice but to acknowledge it. “That’s right,” I said.
“The captain of the steamer?”
Daumier would soon discover the answer on his own, if he did not know it already.
“A man named Pound. Richard Pound.” Thinking again of my antipathy for the captain, I added, perhaps a little too eagerly, “A possible suspect for murder, in my opinion, if the poor fellow died at the hands of another.”
Daumier rose and took two sudden steps toward me, his index finger raised. Despite his small stature and unusual dress, he managed to project menace.
“I find it very interesting, Monsieur Speed, that you are so eager to suggest another who might have been responsible for this deed. In my experience, men who appear to be helpful in this way are not doing so from a place of—how do you say?—altruisme.”
“It’s nothing of the sort, I assure you. I met the man for the first time yesterday evening, and even then it was only in passing.”
“Do you have any witnesses who will swear to that on your behalf?” asked Daumier.
“I imagine everyone aboard the ship would say so. Jones seemed a friendly chap. I had no reason to bear a grudge against him.”
“But did he have a grudge against you?” pressed the Frenchman. My eyes must have shown surprise at the guess because he took another step forward, his arm outstretched with accusation, and demanded, “Well? Did he?”
I took two steps back. “Not—not that I know of,” I stammered.
“See here,” said Lincoln, interposing himself between myself and the avocat. “Let’s be methodical about this.” Daumier frowned while I gave my friend a grateful look. “When did you last see Jones alive, Speed?”
“It would have been shortly before midnight,” I said. “A crewman—a huge Spaniard by the name of Hector—was carrying him from the ship’s salon. He’d caused a ruckus, and Captain Pound directed Hector to confine Jones until we reached Alton.”
“Where were you last night?” Daumier asked.
“Sound asleep in my cabin all through the night. I had no reason to be otherwise, nor to be in anyone’s company.”
“Did you hear any unusual noise during the night?”
“Only the silence. Usually the snoring of my room-mates keeps me awake.”
Lincoln smirked and Daumier favored me with a brief smile before continuing. “Did you see Jones disembark from the boat in Alton?”
“I didn’t. That’s why—”
“And what did you do when you yourself disembarked in Alton?”
“Went straight to the inn,” I said, gesturing toward the town behind us. “The Franklin House. The innkeeper, Kemp, can attest to it.”
“Of course you did,” Daumier said. His eyes shone dangerously. “We shall see, in the course of due investigation, whether that alibi—if indeed it can be called one—is genuine. In the meantime, I wonder what you have to say about this.”
Daumier unlocked his hands from behind his back. He was holding a small rectangle of card paper, perhaps four inches by six. “I found it in one of his pockets,” he explained.
Lincoln, Logan, and I bent forward to examine the object in the light of Logan’s torch. It was a trade card, sodden but mostly legible, featuring a colored engraving. A painter, his back toward the viewer, sat at an easel. He was in the midst of producing a painting of a young woman, who was posed to the painter’s left. To his right, an older woman, presumably meant to be the sitter’s mother, looked on with approval at the painter’s sympathetic rendering. In the blank space of the canvas was printed, in small lettering:
G. C. Bingham
Fine Portraits
Daumier turned the card to show us the reverse side. On it was handwritten in pencil a single word, smudged and difficult to make out in its waterlogged state. It began with a capital M. But after that—
“‘Madhouse?’” I suggested.
“‘Moonlight?’” offered Lincoln.
“‘Mandamus?’” tried Logan.
“‘Midnight,’” said Daumier triumphantly.
The three of us squinted at the card again. He was right. “Midnight.”
“Tell me, Monsieur Speed,” said Daumier, “was there an artist aboard the War Eagle last night? One who perhaps had arranged a meeting with the unfortunate Jones at midnight?”
The Frenchman’s leaps of logic were uncanny. “There was,” I said, nodding. Lincoln looked over with interest.
“And do you happen to recall where you last saw him?”
“As a matter of fact, he was dining near us at the Franklin House not two hours ago.”
“Ah,” said Avocat Daumier, bobbing his head. He smiled. “Then let us go see what Monsieur Bingham has to say for himself.”
CHAPTER 6
The artist was drunk. Very drunk. So drunk that each time Daumier tried to hold up his stubble-encrusted chin in order to look him in the eyes, his head instead flopped back against the dirt-streaked wall of the taproom.
We were inside the Tontine, a loud, dimly lit tavern a few streets down from the Franklin House. It was one of a number of grog shops, all more or less equally disreputable, that squatted opposite the levee. Kemp, the hotel proprietor, told us he’d sent Bingham here some time earlier after he’d worn out his welcome at t
he hotel.
“I’m speaking about Jones, Monsieur Bingham,” Daumier said, talking excessively slowly. “A planter’s son named Jones. You encountered him aboard the War Eagle.”
“Jones . . .” Bingham echoed, his eyes shot through with red and pain of some unknown source.
“Exactly—Jones. He’s turned up dead. I’m hoping you can tell us how it happened.”
“Jones is dead.” It was impossible to tell whether Bingham meant this as a question or statement of fact, but Daumier seized upon it as the latter.
“Exactly! You knew it already, didn’t you? You knew Jones was dead because he died at your hands.”
“Jones is dead,” repeated Bingham. Again, it was impossible to tell how he intended to punctuate the remark. In fact, I supposed that in his present condition, punctuation was very likely the last thing he was capable of.
“Exactly. Why did you do it, sir? You argued with him—over a woman, perhaps.”
“I don’t know Jones,” said Bingham.
“I’m certain you do,” said Daumier, waggling his finger like a teacher reprimanding a disobedient student. “You and he steamed together yesterday, perhaps for several days prior as well. This man, Speed”—he gestured toward me—“told me so himself.”
“I was on the War Eagle,” Bingham mumbled, “. . . two voyages . . .”
“There you go, you do remember,” said Daumier encouragingly. “Two voyages on the War Eagle. On the most recent one, you and Jones came to hate one another. You wanted him dead. You met at midnight to settle things for good. Isn’t that right?”
Bingham blinked repeatedly, seemingly trying to get his eyes to focus. Then he gave up, closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the wall, breathing labored breaths in and out. Daumier allowed him to rest for a moment before pressing ahead.
“Look at this trade card, Monsieur Bingham. It is yours, is it not?”
The artist opened his eyes, squinted at the card resting in Daumier’s smooth palm, and nodded. And then he closed his eyes again.
Perish from the Earth Page 4
