Madame Blanche suddenly sat straight up and spoke. “Welcome here tonight. We are in communications with the spirit world. Who would your noble guests like to confer with first?”
One of the clump of three elderly women shouted out, “Me. Me first. I want to talk to my Herman.”
Even in the low light, Grant could see her face flush and her eyes flash with emotion.
“Herman. Herman, are you with us tonight?” A single rap sounded like a pistol in the room. “Good. You have someone here. Do you know her?” Another rap. One of the tapered candles in the corner of the room grew brighter, its flame shooting six inches into the air.
“What is it that you wish to ask Herman, dear lady?” Madame Blanche’s voice had become deeper, huskier. Grant barely recognized it as the same woman speaking.
“I want to know where he put the money. He died without telling me.” Herman’s wife balled up a corner of the brocade tablecloth in her fist.
“Wait. Herman is passing a vision on to me. I see a dark place, a hiding place. Gold coins and greenbacks. Perhaps it’s buried somewhere? Herman says that you know this place. Does it sound familiar to you?”
Grant was skeptical, thinking of at least a thousand locations that fit the medium’s description of the location. The mysterious location could have just as easily been the hiding spot they’d found in Bethel when his friends had been killed. A plausible yet vague answer. She gave the woman hope without any real information to help her out.
Madame Blanche called on the old man, who asked to speak to his wife who’d passed away the previous year. The rapping started again as the ectoplasm revealed herself to the group. Grant spied what purported to be a beautiful woman of about 30, hazy and shimmering against the darkened window shades. He doubted that the woman would have been married to a man quite so old, but the man quickly identified her as his spouse and shot off questions to the ghost faster than a Gatling gun.
The image disappeared and Grant looked around, trying to learn the source of the manifestation. He was wary enough to be aware that the table jiggled whenever the spirits rapped. This probably meant that someone was creating the sound using the table legs, but it was considered poor breeding to just lift up the tablecloth and look for the source.
Even so, Grant didn’t know how Madame Blanche had summoned this spirit. This illusion must have been what Hart had dragged him here to see. The ghost he’d seen just now was nothing like the spirit he’d seen at the Belmont. Madame Blanche’s creation was ephemeral, hazy around the edges. His ghost looked nigh on a real live person, capable of picking up a table or opening a window.
Grant shook his head and tried to focus on the matter in hand, but his mind kept wandering. These people wanted reassurance that their loved ones missed them as much as they missed the departed. They were lonely and sad—and vulnerable enough to being taken advantage of. He should report the likes of this to Ruffin, but if Madame Blanche demanded no money for her services, and the tricks were sufficiently realistic, it was hard to arrest a spiritualist for a crime. He’d heard the stories in Washington about the mediums who’d preyed on Mrs. Lincoln. They’d built a national reputation through that one client’s pain.
“I think we have an unbeliever here tonight. General Grant, is there someone you would like to talk to?” Madame Blanche turned her head slightly toward him, and the gaze of six other people fell on him as well.
Grant’s face flushed. He hadn’t expected to be a party to this séance. “Yes, could we call up my mother?”
Madame Blanche’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she made a throaty humming noise as she sat there. Grant waited patiently to see the woman’s response.
“Sir, I’m not getting any message from your mother at all. Could that be because she’s not gone yet?”
Grant smiled, knowing that he’d been found out. One of the daily newspapers had most likely profiled Hannah Simpson Grant in conjunction with Grant’s visit to Cincinnati. How easy it would have been for Madame Blanche to do a bit of research before tonight to learn about Grant’s family.
“Wait. I am getting a message. A woman wishes to speak to you. She says that it’s important.”
Grant fidgeted in his seat. This attention on him made him feel uncomfortable, not that he believed any of this malarkey. He’d seen too much death to think that spirits just floated around in the air waiting to be contacted so they could speak to the living. Grant had seen thousands dead in Cold Harbor and the Wilderness. Where would they all go? They’d fill a city the size of Cincinnati by themselves with no room for the living. Unlike so many people today, he thought these souls had gone to heaven. They had no truck with the living once they’d passed.
“Do you know someone named Ellen? She wishes to speak with you.”
Grant cleared his throat and looked at Hart. “That’s the name of my mother-in-law, Julia’s mother. She passed before the start of the war.”
Hart arched an eyebrow at him but said nothing. Grant wondered if Madame Blanche had sweet-talked the information out of the reporter. He knew enough about Grant’s family to fill her in with all that she needed to know.
Madame Blanche’s voice changed. It was now small and yet commanding at the same time. Her tones were the longer sounds of a Missourian.
“Ulysses, Ulysses, are you there?”
Grant had no choice but to respond. “I’m here. Who is this?”
“Ellen. Ellen Bray Wrenshall Dent. I don’t have much time. You must listen to me. The colonel is in trouble in Cincinnati. Powerful trouble. Watch after him and protect him. He’s in grave danger.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grant muttered, not sure how to properly address a spirit.
“Thank you. I know you will. You’re a man of your word. Please give my love to Julia, and let that little Jesse know that even though we’ve never met, I watch out for him daily.”
Grant swallowed hard. Julia had been extremely upset that her mother had passed before the birth of their last son, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to pass that message on to his wife. It would pick at a scab barely healed.
Madame Blanche sat up straight. “I think that the spirits are about finished for the night.”
A voice interrupted her from beside the door. It was masculine, and almost as sharp as the raps the group had heard earlier. “Wait. I have another message for the general.”
A spirit materialized from the doorway, and this one was similar to the one Grant had seen at the Belmont. He was a black man, tall and well-built. He was dressed in thin cotton pants and a tattered cotton shirt. This was definitely the type of spirit Grant had seen at the Belmont. He had an electric shock run through him to realize how easily Madame Blanche could make this illusion real, and he found a new respect for her talents as an illusionist.
“I need to talk to you, General.”
Grant jumped as he realized that this was a person and not a spirit. A very much living Jericho Granby was in the same room with him.
Chapter 13
Hart quickly found a place in the spiritualist’s apartment for the trio to meet. He led Grant and Granby to Madame Blanche’s kitchen with an assurance that made Grant wonder if the reporter had been to her residence in the past. Although her abode was small, the rooms hung off the main room in an awkward pattern, making it difficult to locate any particular room. Still, Hart’s familiarity with the place was a matter for another time; now he had Granby and would get the answers he needed.
“How did you know that we’d be here tonight?” Grant began with the most obvious question. He’d certainly not shared the details of this evening’s plans with anyone but Julia. His wife had wanted to attend out of curiosity, but Grant suggested that by both of them attending, it might give an air of approval. Julia had lingered at Burnet House, but only with the promise of a full report upon his return.
“A friend of mine told me. I’ve had a few people keeping tabs on you to see what you’ve been up to.”
Hart stood up st
raight. “Why would you do that?”
Granby threw him a quick glance and returned his gaze to Grant. “Because at some point, I owed you an explanation. Except it couldn’t be anywheres public, and you sure spend a lot of time in public.”
Grant nodded. If the man had wanted a private audience, the chances were few and far between. No one would ever dream of letting him have time for reflection on this tour. Even at the Burnet House, Granby would have had to learn the Grants’ room number at the front desk, not exactly a surreptitious task even for a white man. A former slave with that impudence would be summarily given the heave-ho, if not worse.
“Well, we can speak here. What did you wish to speak about?” Grant noticed that Hart had pulled out a notepad and was scribbling furiously.
“You don’t believe in this stuff, do you now?”
Before Grant could open his mouth, the man continued.
“That ghost you saw above the table. That ain’t real. She had someone in the other room who—”
“What about the ghost the general saw at the Belmont? Was that real?” Hart stared at the man, waiting for an answer.
Grant wasn’t sure if the man’s intense gaze came from his curiosity or disappointment that Madame Blanche had used subterfuge to create her illusions.
“Naw, that was me. I wanted to get the general’s attention. I figured I’d never even be allowed close to him if I just wanted to explain about my pappy, so I figured that a ghost would make him wonder who the man was and what he wanted. Get him to ask a few questions.”
Grant looked at the man. He seemed flesh and blood enough now. Yet in the hallway at the Belmont, he’d been so ephemeral. “Where did you disappear to that night?”
“Oh that. Well, I’d pulled up the side of one of the sheets on this here cabinet and took off the cabinet door. When it looked like I walked into the wall, I actually slipped under that sheet and into the cabinet. After everyone had left, I let myself out of the house. No one the wiser.”
Grant bit the inside of his mouth. The man had made him look like an idiot, concerned that others would think that his sighting of a ghost was the result of spirits. Now the man undoubtedly wanted a favor. “So why go through all that trouble? What did you need my attention? You could have spoken to me that night if you’d liked.”
“Then I’d have been like everyone else at that there party. Smiling and talking and wanting something. I needed you to want to help. I thought a ghost might catch your eye.”
“But why a ghost?” Hart seemed surprised. The reporter never waited for others to help. He just charged in and expected the world to catch up in due time.
“Someone killed my pappy. That was no accidental drowning. A lot of people think less of him for having two families and not supporting us, but he didn’t have much choosing to do in the matter.”
“I met some of your family.”
“I heard as much. That woman wasn’t much pleased to have guests asking about her man, that’s for sure. Makes me wonder if she had something to do with it.”
“What about your mother?” Hart interjected. “I’d think that she’d have a motive too with your father not helping to support her.”
Granby looked horrified at the thought. “My mother’s a God-fearing woman. She’d never break the commandments like that. She still reads the Bible to me every night. She and Pappy taught me the value of reading and of Lord Jesus.”
“Who’d want to kill him then? If he didn’t drown, then someone had to have killed him.” Even in the half-light, Grant could see the ambition in Hart’s face as he asked the questions. This would be another career-making case for the reporter if he could show that the sheriff had been wrong.
“I don’t know. I just know it didn’t happen like they said. When he lived in Mississippi with his second family, he swum that river all the time. He was strong and knew the water. No ways he drowned like that.”
“Did he talk about enemies?” Grant tried to answer Hart’s question for Granby, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Why go to all the trouble of making the death of a former slave look like an accident? Lawmakers were still writing the legislation on how to treat these people, and sheriffs were hesitant to get involved. As long as the murder didn’t take place in the middle of the Fifth Street Market, the killer could probably have walked away without arrest. The authorities would ignore the pleas of a black family.
“He was moody those last few weeks. The few times I saw him, he came by the place I shared with my mama. That wasn’t like him. He made a point in the past to stop by where I works.”
“Did he talk to you about anything in particular? Some matter that weighed heavy on his mind?” Hart looked up from his notepad to study the man.
“Naw, not my pappy. If you’d knew him, you’d knows that he kept things like that to himself. He wasn’t a bigger talker.”
Hart sighed. “So he didn’t seem to have any enemies; he was moody, but didn’t have any problems that he mentioned. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when he talked to you.”
“He did say something about bad people being in the world. People who should know better.”
Grant shrugged this off, knowing that Israel Granby’s comment could be applied to his own life. That was no help at all. “Why haven’t you been to work?” Grant wondered how the younger Granby would live without a job in these tight economic times.
Jericho looked around the small kitchen area. “It sounds like I’m putting on airs, but someone’s been following me.”
This caught Hart’s full attention. Down went the pad and pencil and up went the eyes. “Who?”
Granby shrugged. “It started the night I was at the Belmont. I didn’t notice it as I left, but when I got to home, two men turned the corner onto my street. I went into my place and shoved the chair under the door. Only way I could sleep. The next morning, I saw knife marks around the doorframe. Those marks hadn’t been there before, and trust me, sir, I got nothing worth to steal. So I ran. Been staying with friends, one night here, another somewheres else.”
The doorframe comment reminded Grant of the scene at the Mitchells’ home. That poor girl, Caroline, had locked herself in with a needle at the doorframe, or so it was made to seem. So many things in this case weren’t as they appeared, starting with apparitions and spiritualists. He opened his mouth to ask Granby about his relationship with the girl, but Hart beat him to another question.
“Do you have enemies? Anyone who would want to see you harmed?”
“Well, sounds nasty to say, but Pappy’s new wife might.” He looked down at the floor, refusing to meet either interrogator’s gaze. Unlike the comments at the Iron Works, Granby seemed genuinely embarrassed by his family’s peccadilloes. Thinking of his own father-in-law, Grant could empathize.
“Why is that? Have you had words?”
“No, but she don’t like me coming around. Said as much to Pappy. That’s why he usually visited me at work. That way, she don’t have to see me.”
“Didn’t she know about you before your father married her?”
Granby looked up now. His eyes were wide and his face slightly flushed. “Sure she did. Still, it’s one thing to know in your head that your man’s got another family, it’s another to see them in the same town alls the time and have them come calling.”
Grant cleared his throat. “Certainly, you can’t think that a tiny woman was the man who followed you home and tried to use a knife to get in your door.”
“No, sir, but she’s the youngest of five children, all the rest are big strapping men. They watch out for her. One of them worked at the mill with me and damned near poured some melted iron on me a few months back.”
“Did your father know that?” Hart looked shocked.
Grant knew that the ambitions and family feelings of men could easily turn murderous.
“Told him a few days after it happened. Pappy was a smart man. He could read and write and everything, but he had a weak spot when it came to the
women. One of them could wrap him around her finger and not let go. He’d have walked into the river for a woman he loved. His second wife couldn’t even write her own name nor make an ‘X’, but he’d do anything for her. Never did get that. He seemed happy enough with me and Mammy.”
Hart began writing again. “It sounds like there have been more than just the two wives then?”
Grant almost gasped at the audacity of the reporter’s question, but Granby answered without hesitation.
“Yes, sir. Pappy was a man who liked the women well. That could be another reason that his new wife hated me. She might have thought he was a using a visit to me as a lie so he could go round with the ladies.”
“Did you?”
“No, sir, but he started courting one of the girls where my woman works—Major Mitchell’s house. He went sparking there a few times to see her. Caroline told me all about it. She wanted me to talk to him and make him stop, like you can make a man do anything he don’t want to.”
Hart looked solicitously at Granby. Grant felt like putting an arm around him; it wasn’t going to be easy to tell him about his woman and their child.
While they were still looking at each other, Granby spoke. “I heard about Caroline yesterday, if that’s what you’re a’wondering. I’m not sure what to think. Part of me believes it could have been her own doing. She was a proud woman and could get het up about things. If she thought I’d runned off, and that she was going to be on the streets with no job, she might have slit herself.”
Hart cleared his throat and spoke softly. “Well, we’re not sure she did.”
“Sir, that would be a comforting thought to me. I wouldn’t like to think of staying in a world where I was to blame for her death.”
“We found a newspaper article in Caroline’s room, a photograph of Dr. Trubel. Do you know him?”
“I know who he is. Caroline had a newspaper with her? That’s a mite peculiar.”
Hart looked shocked, as if not everyone read his every word. “Why is it odd?”
Some Hidden Thunder (U.S. Grant Mysteries) Page 9
