The woman nodded again. The answer seemed to reassure her, and the spiritualist opened her eyes. Grant could see them flicker through the veil. “I think I have an answer for you. You witnessed a parlor trick.”
Hart clapped his hands together, and two men sipping coffee across the room both looked up, glaring at the group.
Grant was vexed, as he’d hoped to keep this meeting quiet. He didn’t need to have people gossiping that he’d been spotted talking to a spiritualist on this trip. Good Christian voters would not take kindly to it at all.
“It’s not all that difficult. I’ve seen it done. If the hallway is relatively dark, and you’re standing at a distance, a person can make it look like they are walking into a wall when actually they are stepping into a cabinet. They look to a place on the wall, and your eyes travel to that same spot. It’s human nature. He could have left the door open for him to enter. With the sheet over it, a sleight-of-hand trick could make it seem like the person simply disappeared.”
Hart looked rather disappointed. Grant wasn’t sure if he was upset that the ghost had such an easy explanation or he wanted to find out who’d tricked Grant. “Are there very many of these charlatans in Cincinnati? Would it be easy to find out who did this?”
Madame Blanche was silent for a minute, and Grant wondered if she’d try her trance again now that she’d ruined the parlor trick or if she’d just speak to them as a plain woman. “I think that you’re following this from the wrong angle. You’re asking yourself who could have performed this trick from the standpoint of misdirection. I’d think you’d be better off to ask yourself who could have impersonated Israel Granby. A person could use some play make-up and powder for effect, but the resemblance would still need to be strong for someone to recognize the spirit.”
Hart’s eyes widened. “We identified Granby from a newspaper sketch. So it had to be someone who resembled him a great deal.”
Madame Blanche gave a small gasp, but Hart didn’t seem to notice. He was often and running off on his own path.
“Mrs. Granby mentioned a grown son. I’d think that may be the place to start,” Grant said. “Didn’t you take notes on where he worked?”
Hart flipped through the open notepad on his knee and smiled. “Yes, it’s right here… Mill Creek Iron Works. Let me take Madame Blanche home, and then I think we have a call to make.”
Hart held out an arm for the lady to take, which she accepted graciously. The pair whisked off towards the entrance hall, Hart smiling all the way. Grant followed behind. He paused and cut his cigar, wondering exactly what they would find at the Iron Works.
Chapter 7
Grant had no trouble locating the Mill Creek Iron Works. All the foundries in town congregated along the Miami and Erie, the major waterway that brought the coal and unprocessed ore to the city. The Brass Foundry and the Robson Copper Smith lay to the east of the city, as well, waiting to cast bells and ornaments.
The Mill Creek Iron Works had no pretense of beauty. The iron works had been converted to work on the war effort and now was trying to meet the needs of the railways. The Iron Works opened out onto Front Street, only a few steps from the Public Landing where the Grants had arrived. The factories sat between the river and Front Street, so that the barges could unload onto the docks at the back of the buildings.
Grant tasted the soot on his tongue before he could even see the factory; the air was thick with dirt and grime. It wasn’t a pleasant way to greet boatfuls of tourists to the city, but Cincinnati didn’t seem to mind, as it pumped out millions of dollars of iron a year. Grant’s advisors had already primed him on the importance of wooing Cincinnati’s manufacturing magnates for a successful campaign. The war had sped the North’s industrialization, and the Federal Army had better cannons and armaments, all from factories like this. Grant’s father would tell him that progress was good, but Grant wasn’t convinced.
The smoke in the air was as thick as any battlefield cannon could muster. The acrid smell had been replaced with the odor of progress, but the air was still heavy and gray. Grant tried to ignore it, and as he stepped into the factory, he recalled the offal smells of his father’s tannery. At least animals hadn’t died for the sake of this process. Nothing could permeate his senses or his emotions faster than the stench of dying animals, even after twenty years away from home. He felt queasy just thinking of those memories.
The temperature rose twenty degrees inside, and sweat trickled down his neck into his collar as he looked around for Mitchell. Grant had considered it fortuitous that he’d met the owner of the foundry two days before. It was strange though that he hadn’t mentioned that Granby’s son worked for him. Grant continued to scout his surroundings for an office or managers but to no avail.
Many of the men here went shirtless, exposing skin too smudged with soot to tell their race. Loud voices shouted over the sounds of the men ladling hot metal into molds. Grant thought that they might be parts for railway cars, but it was impossible for him to tell.
Even though Grant had spent many years as a physical laborer, he felt lost in this place. He hadn’t any notion of how to talk to these men, who weren’t in uniform and were working on a product he knew little about.
Hart seemed to recognize his companion’s discomfort and took the lead, stopping one of the workers. Soot and grime made a Holstein-pattern on the man’s shirt, but even under the dirt and matted hair, the worker had a look of authority about him.
“Excuse me, sir. We were looking for young Granby.” Hart’s quiet intellectual tones were as out of place here as fine china. The men looked like the types who’d have made good soldiers, not afraid to take what life threw at them.
“Who?”
“Granby. Young black man.”
“Ahh, I don’t know those people. They’re a-coming and a-going before I can learn their names. You’d best ask Henry about them.” With a whistle, he motioned to a black man stoking a fire.
The man was tall, maybe six feet or more, but everything looked tall to Grant’s own stature. The man was thin as a whip, but had thick muscular arms that shone against the sweat on his body.
The man shuffled over to them and hung his head. “How kin I help you?” His face bowed down so he didn’t look the men in the eyes. His gaze darted from side to side, checking out the others in the factory.
“We were looking for young Granby. Can you tell us where he is?” Hart’s tone was soothing and soft, unlike what the man would have expected in a foundry.
Henry forgot his avoidance and looked directly at the two men. “Oh, sir, you don’t want to be looking for Jericho. He’s more trouble than a body would want from a man.”
Hart’s hand slipped into his pocket, but Grant knew that someone taking notes as he spoke would scare Henry; the man was obviously not used to white folks listening to him.
Grant decided to interject. “Do you know who I am, son?”
“Yes, sir. You’re the man what whooped old Bobby Lee and set us all free. We talk about you all the time, and here I am meeting a man who knew our Father Abraham. But you still don’t want to be looking for that no-account Jericho Granby.”
“Why do you say that?” Hart’s reporter instincts had taken over, and his voice had regained its normal timbre.
“He’s been planning all sorts of wickedness and talking to people about dead folks. Some boys here say he’s holding truck with the devil himself.” Even with his powerful body, the man looked frightened.
Grant wondered if it was from the thoughts of Granby or any punishment that could be meted out to men who talked about Granby’s plan. Still, Henry had confirmed that the boy had been dealing with ghosts. Grant might be on the right path after all.
“Do you know where he lives?” Hart coughed as one of the furnaces belched gasses into the air. The heat grew oppressive, even though it wasn’t yet noon on a crisp September day. Grant couldn’t imagine how hot it would be in August in a city known for its sticky summers.
; “Not rightly sure, sir. I know he’s in Bucktown, but I think he was throwed out of his last place. He lived with Izzy’s wife for a while, but he ain’t been around there from what I heared.”
“When did you see him last? It’s very important that we talk to him as soon as we can.”
Grant was concerned now that Hart’s urgent tone would scare Henry off, but it didn’t seem to worry the man. He took his time in answering.
“Yesterday or the day before. He came in to work to pick up what was due him. Him and the boss man got into a shouting match before he left. I didn’t find out if he gots his money or not. That was the last I seen of him.”
Grant spoke up. “Who was the man he was arguing with? Can we speak with him?”
“That’d be Mr. Whalen.” Henry pointed to a large man about twenty yards away covered in sweat and soot. He looked as if he’d been put together from iron works scraps. Whalen was all arms and legs, connected to a thin body carrying a potbelly.
The man bent over one of the workers, screaming at him as the worker cowered. Whalen sensed that he was being observed and stood up, brushing off his shirt as if that would help his appearance.
Grant had heard that many of the freed blacks came to work in the North to find situations only marginally above what they had before. The factories hired supervisors every bit as cruel as a plantation’s overseers, and Whalen looked like he could have been brought in from Alabama. While Grant held no grudges against the men who’d fought against him, he did feel contempt for those who tried to subvert the outcome of the war through their actions. It was little better than guerilla warfare. The Union had prevailed and men just best get used to the notion. If Booth hadn’t destroyed the North’s victory, then nothing could.
Whalen walked over to where they stood and extended a hand. “I recognize ye, sir. You’re a great man in these parts.”
Grant took the offered hand and shook it. Hart looked uncomfortable about getting dirty, and Grant suspected that the reporter would have preferred using a handkerchief to shake hands with the supervisor.
“We were looking for Jericho Granby, Mr. Whalen. I understand he was here a day or two ago, wanting to get paid?” Grant decided that the man would respond better to the questions of a Union officer, so he took the reins of the conversation. The intentions of a reporter might be mistaken.
“Indeed he were, sir. I sent the man out of here with a bug in his ear for sure. The nerve of him barging in here, expecting to be given the iron work’s money when he’s missed work for the past three days.” The man brushed his hands together as if he’d removed Jericho with the same ease with which the soot fell away.
“Did he give any reasons why he’d missed work? Had he been ill?” Grant didn’t want the man to know his true suspicions. If he mentioned what he suspected, Whalen might go along with it to please him. Sycophants of this nature tended to agree with authority.
“I’d have been a damned sight more kind if he had. Pardon me, General.” The man blushed slightly under the grime.
Grant didn’t know if the man knew of his own loathing for foul language or was just being obsequious. “No, he said he’d been out restoring his family honor, but I doubted it. The word is that he’s put his woman in the family way. I just figured he was trying to skip out without paying for their bastard baby.”
Hart interjected. Apparently, he could only keep his mouth closed for a short time without bursting. “How do you know about that? Do the men discuss their problems with you?”
Whalen barked out a laugh so loud it could be heard over the clank of the furnaces.
Several of the men stole a quick glance at the man before returning to their work.
“I’m hardly the wet nurse type, but it’s common knowledge. The girl worked for Major Mitchell up at his big house. I don’t know how Granby met her, probably from around Bucktown. Those people all seem to know each other.” Whalen turned his head and glared at the men. “You could go up to the Major’s house yourself. He’s likely there now.”
“But they could marry now if they wanted, couldn’t they?” Hart looked dismayed that his theory had collapsed. A girlfriend in the family way wasn’t part of the scenario he’d set up for the apparition who’d visited Grant at the Belmont.
“Indeed they could, but I know for a fact that a married colored girl would lose her place at Major Mitchell’s house. Course’n, she would anyway with that little bundle of joy on the way.” He leered as if he wanted the two men to join him in a snigger about the way babies are produced.
“I see. Well, how do you know that he wasn’t trying to save the family honor—was that how you put it?”
“Well, there’d need to be some family honor to save. Everybody here knowed that old man Granby had two wives. Not exactly like the Longworths here, if you get my meaning.”
“Two wives? Which one was Jericho’s mother?” Hart looked shocked, as if he’d never heard of such things. Grant had heard of far worse going on with the Latter Day Saints out west.
“The first one. If’n I have the story proper, his master married off old man Granby to a woman. Them two had Jericho, and then the master sold Granby to another family. In the meantime, he’d met this here other woman, and them two escaped to Cincinnati just before the war started.”
“Did Jericho escape? How did he find his father if they’d escaped?”
Grant kept an eye on Hart. He knew that Hart had lost his father during the war, and he could be a tad emotional about the situation. His missing father could set Hart on the wrong path instead of finding out about the apparition.
The supervisor didn’t seem to notice. He must not have spoken to anyone in ages because he seemed happy to shoot the breeze with the men. He chatted like one of Julia’s friends at a tea party. “Jericho came north after his master went off to war. His owner was kill’t, and the wife hung herself, according to Jericho. So the slaves had no master and left the farm as soon as they cut down her body. He and his mama headed to Ohio. It was pure luck that they ran into Izzy here.”
Hart swallowed hard. Grant had closed his mouth and was trying not to breathe too much. The air was getting progressively thicker and stickier, and he could feel the sweat on his neck and shoulders at this point. He didn’t know how these men managed to produce iron in these conditions, though he’d seen men survive in worse.
“Where did Jericho find Izzy?” Hart asked.
Grant was glad now that the reporter was asking the questions so the soot didn’t go down his own throat.
“Accident. Saw him in Bucktown one night and followed him home. Izzy had to introduce Jericho to his new wife and family. I hears it told that she weren’t too happy about it none. Izzy hadn’t told her about his first family, so she had no idea until some boy comes along and tells her so.”
Grant couldn’t even imagine Julia’s reaction to that situation, but then again, they’d always been free to make their own choices. He’d felt her as a soulmate, so adultery would never be an option, but who knew what he’d have done if he’d been forced to marry another?
“So that’s why I don’t hold much truck with the idea of family honor. Girl in the family way, two sets of mothers, didn’t make much sense. I just figured he ran off like his pa did.”
Whalen turned to check out a noise. Two of the men had been burnt by one of the ladles of hot iron and were on the floor screaming. Whalen just shrugged and walked off towards them at his own pace.
Chapter 8
Grant and Hart stood outside Major Mitchell’s house in Walnut Hills. Whalen had provided them with the address, starting that the Major rarely came into the foundry these days, preferring the climes of the hills of Cincinnati.
Unlike the homes in the midst of the teaming city, this one had a spacious yard and a covered porch that the people inside Cincinnati could only dream about. The three-story structure was silent from the outside, though Hart had heard voices through the open window and reported all to Grant.
&nb
sp; The trek from downtown to the home above one of the seven hills of Cincinnati had taken some time. Grant had no trouble in procuring horses, but they’d wasted over an hour in finding the stables and getting directions to the house.
Many of the businessmen had begun to move out of the city proper; the homes were more spacious, and the riots of two years before had done nothing to make people want to stay in town. There were rumors in the city that soon these areas would be connected to downtown via city-provided transportation. Then anyone with enough cash could travel from the city and back.
Hart straightened his tie and looked at Grant. “This reminds me of our time in Georgetown. Taking the lead, hunting down clues.”
Grant cleared his throat, remembering those attacks on his life. He didn’t count those days as a fond memory. “There’s one difference between the two. Then we found a dead body in my hotel room, but there hasn’t been anything close to that here.”
“Just a ghost, which implies a dead man somewhere. Living people don’t haunt houses.”
Grant nodded, against his better judgment. This wasn’t like Georgetown at all, as the threat there had been immediate and real. He couldn’t take a phantom seriously; this matter was just a puzzle. He tried not to think about the implications of Israel Granby’s disappearance and later manifestation in the Belmont.
He raised his hand and knocked on the heavy oak door, the sound echoing inside the house. Grant had hoped the servant girl who’d been involved with Jericho would answer the door, but as if expecting them, Mitchell opened the door himself. He wore his military uniform with the jacket still buttoned, even though Grant suspected that the man’s commission solely was politically motivated. His hair was combed; each strand forced into place, and Grant could see surprise in the brown eyes under the thick brows.
“General Grant, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?”
Grant could see Hart trying to look around the magnate’s shoulders into the home. The interior seemed dark and narrow compared to the open-air ride they’d just completed; Grant had always preferred the spaciousness of open land.
Some Hidden Thunder (U.S. Grant Mysteries) Page 5
