Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

  “Keep order there!” Val yelled out to the provost’s guards, and the voices subsided.

  “I fear that things could get out of hand if the soldiers conclude that the contraband and his son were responsible for this.”

  Val removed the layer of hair covering the girl’s shoulders and brought one of the lanterns closer. I could now see an inch-wide band of ugly bruises around her neck.

  “Thanks to the natural curiosity of the soldiers, any important information about the murderer or his vehicle has been trampled out of existence,” he said.

  Removing a small magnifying glass from his coat pocket, he gently pried her mouth open and peered inside the oral cavity. Then he proceeded to study virtually every inch of her body. For several minutes he inspected her toes and the soles of her feet. I turned away when he began to make a close examination of her genital area.

  “She was murdered elsewhere, of course,” he said, “but the fact that the snow melted and then refroze directly beneath her suggests that she was still warm when placed here. Whoever left the body obviously wanted to leave no trace of her identity. The only thing I can state with any certainty is that she is of foreign origin, probably German, and made her living as a prostitute. From the traces of chronic inflammation around the pelvis, I would also be willing to wager that she was in the early stages of a serious venereal disease, possibly syphilis. An autopsy should confirm it.”

  He asked for my help in turning the body over, and we did so together, carefully placing her on an army blanket adjacent to the place she had been lying. I saw then that the area between her narrow shoulder blades was covered with a pattern of livid weals. Val used his glass to examine them more closely. Then he conducted a thorough examination of the back of her head, legs, and feet.

  That was when I happened to look over at the frozen outline in the snow where her body had lain. My eyes were immediately drawn to an object that was glistening brightly in the reflected glare of the lanterns. Crouching down next to the spot, I could see a shiny black object protruding from the snow where her head had lain. I cracked the thin film of ice that surrounded it with my fingers.

  The object was no sooner in my hands than the words were forming on my lips.

  “I know who she is, Val,” I said.

  “You knew her?” he asked, incredulous at the prospect.

  “I didn’t know her, but I saw her. She was one of the guests at General Hooker’s party last night.”

  I held the lacquered black object up to the light. It was six inches long and emblazoned with tiny gold dragons.

  “The girl was wearing this barrette in her hair when I first saw her. She was talking with another girl. I thought they were probably the daughters of officers.”

  “This one was no vestal virgin. She played in the sacred fire,” he said, covering her body with another blanket. “And I’m sorry to add that she was probably pregnant.”

  He gently closed her eyes with two fingers.

  “At least we know why she was in Falmouth. The far more difficult question is who brought her down here for the assignation.”

  At that moment I heard angry shouts from outside the enclosure.

  Regaining his feet, Val stepped outside and ordered that a wagon be immediately brought to us. Perhaps, a hundred soldiers were now clustered around the Negro man and his young son. The soldiers were being held back at the point of bayonets by the men Val had assigned to stand guard.

  Someone in the mob yelled, “Did these two niggers kill her, Colonel?”

  “There is no reason to believe they are responsible!” Val shouted back as he strode toward them. He didn’t stop until he reached the Negro contraband, whose arms were still wrapped protectively around his son.

  “For your own protection, sir, I am having you and your son taken into custody,” he said quietly. “I will see you in the morning and arrange for your release.”

  There was a hint of fear in the Negro’s eyes as he stared silently back at us. I wondered then if it was because he had something to hide or was understandably worried about the safety of himself and the boy. He nodded once, and we moved off.

  A raw gray dawn was breaking when we finally left that desolate place and headed back to Falmouth. The sleet had stopped and even the blustery wind had died down by the time we deposited the young woman’s body in the icehouse of the estate where General Hathaway’s office was located. Val ordered that a guard be kept at the door to the icehouse until further notice.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Who are you, sir?” I asked.

  “My name is Thomas Beecham,” the black man replied in a low voice. “This is my son, Daniel.”

  It was almost nine on that same morning. Val and I were sitting in the kitchen of a large, two-story brick building that had once served as the overseer’s house on the country estate where General Hathaway had established his headquarters. It was located about a mile from the mansion house at the end of a shallow valley. Sam had promised to notify us as soon as his men had captured Major Duval.

  Opposite us were our only witnesses in the murder of the young prostitute. In the light of day, the man looked much older to me than the night before. Of course, he might very well have thought the same thing about me. I had gotten barely two hours’ sleep, and even less the previous night aboard the Phalarope. That combined with the whiskey I had stupidly drunk at General Hooker’s party had left me completely jaded. Fortunately, one of the provost’s guards had brought us a small pot of coffee.

  Although he had been up all night, Val seemed immune to exhaustion.

  “Don’t you ever get tired?” I asked him as we arrived at the overseer’s house.

  “Fatigue is almost entirely mental,” he said, striding through the door. “You should learn to control it.”

  I thought that twelve hours’ sleep would be a better way to control it, but didn’t bother to tell him so. He sat down at the kitchen table and began writing case notes into the small, leather-bound notebook that he always carried in his coat. Mr. Beecham and his son were brought in a few minutes later.

  While waiting for him to finish his notes, I attempted to employ one of his investigative methods, which was to closely observe every important detail about a witness who might have a bearing on the case.

  I started with Mr. Beecham, observing that although his skin color was of the blackest ebony, he also had a thin, sharply pointed nose that suggested mixed blood. Daniel Beecham was much lighter skinned than his father. He was also of slighter build, but he had the same intelligent black eyes.

  Mr. Beecham’s suit and matching waistcoat were made of fine wool, but the style was very much out of date. The material was worn to shininess at the elbows and knees, although the numerous tears in it had been carefully mended. The boy’s clothes looked like castoffs, but they had been brushed clean.

  Beyond that, I could discern nothing of import or interest.

  Val finished writing in his notebook and put down the pen. Looking up, his eyes focused for a moment on the boy and then his father.

  “I’m surprised that a trained medical practitioner would have been subjected to such extensive physical abuse,” he said.

  A look of astonishment transformed Mr. Beecham’s impassive face.

  “I am at a loss to know how …”

  “Forgive me,” said Val, as if he had simply indulged in a cheap parlor trick. “After observing the tincture of mercury stains on your thumbs and the corked scalpel blade in the breast pocket of your waistcoat, I concluded that you were obviously versed in the medical arts. Then I happened to notice the scars you still bear from the iron betsy.”

  As he spoke, my eyes were drawn to the collar of the man’s white linen shirt. Just above the neckline, I could see the upper edge of a band of livid pink tissue.

  “The betsy was riveted around my neck until the day we escaped,” he said, glancing at his son. “I was also hobbled with leg manacles.”

  “It seems incongruous tha
t a man of letters would be subjected to the collar and chain.”

  “The answer is this, Colonel,” he said. “My first master was a cultivated man, an English-trained doctor who maintained a large farm in Calvert County, Maryland. That is where I grew up and was fortunate to be granted an education, including his teaching me the rudiments of medicine. After my training, I became responsible for the care of all his slaves. When he died many years later, I, along with my wife and children, was sold to a tobacco planter named Gisbourne in Port Royal, Virginia.… He was not a cultivated man.”

  “When was that?” asked Val.

  “In 1859.”

  Through the window I could see that a small crowd of soldiers had gathered alongside the road that ran past the front of the overseer’s cottage. There were no more than twenty of them, but their angry voices carried into the room where we were sitting.

  “And then?” said Val.

  “Two years ago, my wife and daughter were sold to a planter in Mississippi,” he said. “It was then that I … I attempted to go after them. I was overtaken by slave catchers a week later in the Carolinas and have worn the collar and manacles ever since. That is, until a week ago,” he said.

  I wondered how he had effected his most recent escape, but Val did not pursue it.

  “Where is your wife now?” he asked instead.

  “I do not know,” he replied, his black eyes expressionless.

  “How long have you been at the contraband camp?”

  “We arrived there late last night. After warming ourselves near one of the fires, I saw the stand of coniferous trees just off to the west of the camp. Daniel and I went there to cut boughs for a temporary shelter.”

  “Tell me how you discovered the body of the young woman,” said Val.

  “She was brought to that spot in a carriage while we were gathering boughs inside the wood stand,” he replied.

  “Did you see who left her there?”

  He paused for a second and then nodded.

  “How many of them were there?”

  “Just one. He was driving a coach. The lamps were unlit. It made no noise in the snow.”

  “You have excellent powers of observation,” said Val, at which the boy looked up at his father with obvious pride.

  “How many horses?” I asked.

  “Two,” he said. “After coming to that place, the man stepped down from the box and removed the young woman from the coach … although I did not then know it was a woman. She was wrapped in a blanket. He put the blanket down on the ground and unfolded it. Then he lifted her in his arms and laid her on her back in the snow.”

  Mr. Beecham stopped for a moment and shook his head.

  “It was very strange,” he went on. “That man stood for almost a minute looking down at the body. Then he knelt down next to her, pressing his palms together as if in prayer. After a few moments, he stood up again, went back to the coach, and drove away.”

  “How far away from him were you?” I asked.

  “About twenty yards,” he said. “Close enough to see that he was wearing the uniform of a Union soldier.”

  Val nodded approvingly.

  “An officer or an enlisted man?” I said.

  “I could not tell.”

  “What did you do after he left?” asked Val.

  “I did not know then whether the woman was still alive. I went to her. She was dead.”

  “And then you sought help,” said Val. “Leaving the cut fir boughs at the edge of the lane.”

  “Yes. Daniel and I walked all the way to the sentry post at the military encampment down the road.”

  “That was a very brave thing to do. You could have just walked away,” said Val.

  “I have a daughter, too,” said Mr. Beecham.

  “Do you think you could identify the soldier?” I asked.

  “I never saw his face clearly,” he said. “I did see his outline against the snow. I can describe his size … his walk, if that would be helpful. And there are one or two other points.”

  There was a knock on the kitchen door. One of the provost’s guards entered the room and handed Val a message. After reading it, he leaned toward me and whispered excitedly, “It’s from Sam. They have taken Major Duval. He is in Sam’s office right now.”

  Standing up, Val said, “I’m sorry to interrupt our talk, Mr. Beecham. You have been very helpful, but there is another matter that we must address immediately.”

  I followed Mr. Beecham’s eyes as he glanced toward the window. The crowd of angry soldiers beyond the post-and-rail fence had doubled in the time since I had last looked. I mentioned it to Val as we headed outside.

  The day was raw and bleak, with ominous black clouds racing across the sky. Just above the horizon, I could see the hazy outline of the previous night’s sliver of moon. As we walked toward our coach, one of the men in the crowd yelled, “Give us them bastuds, Colonel! We know what to do with them!”

  “They are not guilty of any crime,” called out Val. “They simply discovered the body.”

  “So you say,” came back the same voice.

  Val looked hard at the man, and then went straight to the sergeant in command of the sentries around the building.

  “I’m ordering you to find your lieutenant. Tell him that I want a full squad to be posted around this building,” he said, “armed and with bayonets. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The two Negroes inside are very important witnesses, and I don’t want these idiots trying to take matters into their own hands.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “I understand.”

  Val took a moment to examine the door at the front entrance. It looked stout and solid.

  “See what you can find to reinforce the downstairs windows,” he said. “We will be back in less than an hour.”

  “It will be done, Colonel,” said the sergeant, saluting him as we boarded the coach.

  “Bigotry is by far the ugliest of man’s sins,” Val said, as we rode in the open coach to General Hathaway’s headquarters.

  The captured inspector was already sitting in General Hathaway’s office when we arrived at the mansion house. Sam was seated behind his desk, drumming his fingers in obvious frustration. Billy Osceola was standing at the window, looking across the river at the Confederate positions on the heights above Fredericksburg.

  “Meet Major Duval of the War Department’s Inspection Bureau,” said Sam.

  He was no longer wearing his gold-braided uniform, and his carefully cultivated imperial moustache drooped forlornly below his chin. The brown civilian suit he had on was heavily spattered with dried mud.

  “He was taken while trying to board a supply ship at Aquia Creek,” said Sam. “After he gave our men a false name, they were smart enough to search him and found his real papers inside his boot. At that point he asked to be taken to General Nevins’s headquarters.”

  The man glanced up at Val and me and gave us an obsequious smile.

  “I have been trying to tell the general that I was ordered to report back to Washington right away,” he said, in a pronounced French accent.

  “Major Duval has refused to answer any of my questions about the defective gun carriages,” said Sam.

  “I must again ask you to send me to General Nevins,” repeated Major Duval. “He will vouchsafe my honor in every way.”

  “I don’t care if Montgomery Meigs vouches for you,” said Sam, with rising anger in his voice. “I am ordering you to tell me who paid you to pass muster on those gun carriages.”

  Major Duval gave him another shrug.

  Val and Sam took turns asking him questions that would help us to identify the defective gun carriages. In response, Major Duval kept replying that he didn’t know. Every few minutes, he asked for a message to be sent to General Nevins.

  Behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, Sam’s eyes had narrowed to steely slits. Val stood up from his chair near the fire and stretched his massive frame.


  “Frankly, I’m not sure if Major Duval understands his position,” he said, grinning pleasantly. “Sam, you say that when he was taken at Aquia Creek, he gave a false name before his identity papers were found in his boot. What are we to conclude from those actions?”

  “That he was obviously deserting his post,” I said.

  “I had no intention of deserting,” Major Duval came right back. “I was reporting back to headquarters in Washington.”

  “What is the penalty for desertion?” asked Val casually.

  Sam slowly opened the drawer of his desk and removed a Colt revolver.

  “By the powers vested in me by the provost marshal general,” he said, placing it on his lap, “I find that you are guilty of the charge of desertion in the face of the enemy.”

  “You cannot be serious,” cried the inspector, as Sam began rolling his wheelchair toward him. Billy Osceola moved up behind the French officer’s chair and placed his hands on the man’s shoulders.

  “You cannot do this,” cried Major Duval. “I demand that you take me to General Nevins.”

  “You’ve had your chance,” responded Sam, as the wheelchair drew closer.

  “You cannot do this,” he shouted again, as Billy gripped his arms more tightly.

  “The punishment is death,” said Sam, with glacial calm. “My sentence will be carried out immediately.”

  As Sam reached the inspector’s chair, he lifted the Colt from his lap. From the look on his face, I fully believed that he was going to execute the man on the spot. Seeing the grin on Val’s face, I relaxed.

  “Mon Dieu … non,” cried the Frenchman, sending a spray of spittle into the air.

  His eyes darted from Val to Sam and back again.

  Sam placed the barrel of the revolver against Major Duval’s temple.

  “Tell us what we need to know, and you will live,” said Val. He stood up and took several paces away from the chair.

  From the corner of his eye, Major Duval saw him moving out of the line of fire.