by Diaz, Debra
“You laid the plans, you managed all communications, but you did almost everything by correspondence. You received the payments and doled them out. Most of them had no idea who they were dealing with. Only a few of them ever saw you. But they all knew they were selling out their country.”
“This is insane,” Andrew said. “You can’t prove any of it.”
“Oh, but I can,” Clayton answered. “Because the person who obtained the information for Bart Ingram has talked.”
Andrew looked long and hard at Clayton. Finally he said, “I can’t feel my hands. Would you be so kind as to untie them? I can hardly do anything with so many against me.”
“We’re not against you, Cousin!” cried Miranda. “I don’t believe a word of it.” She turned indignantly toward Clayton. “I just can’t stand it! Andrew is not a criminal. Untie him at once!”
“No,” said Clayton calmly.
“Please, sir.” It was Ephraim who spoke, very quietly. “It’s not right to make a human being suffer.”
“He’s made plenty of people suffer,” Clayton replied, “as you will soon discover.”
“That don’t make it right, sir.” After a moment Clayton relented, moving his coat aside to reveal a long knife in a sheath tied around his waist. He cut the ropes and replaced the knife.
Andrew rubbed his wrists, looking at Clayton. “Thank you.”
Catherine asked, in a faint voice, “This person between Andrew and Bart, the one who passed along military intelligence…who was it?”
“Actually there were two people. One was the wife of someone on President Davis’s staff. She copied it from her husband’s papers…he knew nothing of her activities. She was born in the North and moved here after her marriage. She confessed everything when we confronted her. She hates the South, says she’s never been accepted here. She in
turn passed the information to someone in this room, who then passed it on to Bart.”
All but a few heads jerked in surprise. Martin sat down heavily in a chair. Miranda, still clutching her tangled knitting, pressed close to Sallie, who ignored her.
Mrs. Shirley spoke for the first time, drawing all eyes to her long face with its habitually grim expression. “When Major Pierce discovered the truth about Mr. Kelly’s involvement, after he had been traced to the rental house, we knew there had to be at least one other person acting as a contact between Kelly and Ingram.
“Major Pierce already had suspicions about this officer’s wife, though she seemed to have no connection with Ingram. When it became obvious that she had to be the source, Major Pierce confronted her. We learned that she passed along the information to someone else during the meetings of a ladies’ sewing circle. She was not a member of the circle…she used a servant.”
The cold eyes moved to the prisoner. “An almost-ingenious operation, Mr. Kelly. You could sit back and tell your people what to do with practically no risk to yourself, since almost none of them knew your identity. But the first rule in espionage is to involve as few people as possible. You had too many contacts and too many couriers, some of whom were not very clever. Of course, we would have found out almost immediately, but the woman gladly gave us the name of the member of the sewing circle to whom she gave the reports.”
After a moment Sallie sobbed and put her hands over her eyes. “I didn’t know! They tricked me! Bart tricked me! I thought I was giving information to help the Confederacy, not harm it!” No one said anything. Miranda moved discreetly away from Sallie.
Sallie looked up and cried fiercely, “You don’t believe me! I tell you it’s the truth!”
Martin gave a heavy sigh. “Sallie, this has been hellish for me. I knew something was going on, for months now. I overheard you and Bart talking. I thought you were both traitors. Yet I couldn’t prove anything, and I certainly didn’t know how to question you without seeming to accuse you.”
“Oh, Martin, I’m not like Bart!”
“And then after Bart was murdered—I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if whoever killed him would come after you next. And there were times, heaven help me, when I thought maybe you had quarreled with him and shot him yourself.”
“I didn’t know what was going on! You must believe me!”
Catherine said unexpectedly, “I believe you.” Everyone looked at her. She said, “Uncle Martin, you have only her word. She can’t prove to you what she thought, but Bart tried to trick me, too. I don’t think Sallie would willingly betray the South.”
Martin stared at his niece for a moment, then he stood up and reached out for Sallie. She pressed her face into his shoulder.
“This is all very touching,” said Andrew. “But I’m the one who is being vilified. Major Pierce is saying all this to discredit me, to cover up his own foul deeds.”
“If you’ll be patient, Kelly, I’m not finished vilifying you. Or should I say, exposing you for the villain you are.” Clayton’s voice was hard with suppressed anger. “Not only are you guilty of treason, you plotted with the other members of the group to assassinate General Lee. Your man in the North offered a substantial reward. You’ve been looking for a marksman, again through correspondence. A mercenary. We intercepted some of your letters. Your handwriting will be easy to identify.”
For the first time, Andrew went pale. “Lies! You can’t—”
Clayton cut him off. “Your meeting at the house in the woods had two purposes: to plan the assassination and to get rid of a troublemaker. The two other men present had already seen your face. Bart never had. He had no idea the man living in his sister’s house was the leader of his own group of traitors. He really thought you were just Andrew Kelly, back from a Yankee prison.”
He glanced with concern at Catherine’s shocked face but went on ruthlessly. “You are not Andrew Kelly. You are his brother, John. You’ve been lying low, due to an incident on a riverboat where you were caught cheating at cards and were nearly killed. You were contacted by the man in the North. You made your own contacts and found Bart Ingram…a man with few or no convictions, who wanted money. You set up the spy ring.
“Somehow you found out that Andrew had been shot for desertion, even though his death had not been reported for various reasons. You had access to all sorts of information, thanks to your shady friends. You knew that Bart lived in the same house with Andrew’s wife. Perhaps Andrew had even recommended Bart to you…your brother’s involvement is unclear but it doesn’t matter now. You became dissatisfied with Bart. He made mistakes. You wanted to watch him. So you decided to assume your brother’s identity.”
Miranda gasped. Martin made some sort of exclamation.
The prisoner’s face had gone from white to red. “You are a liar, sir! Why don’t you tell about your own treachery!” His eyes went around the room. “He is the man in black, the man who pretended to be me! He is the spy! He took my wife into his bed!”
“She’s my wife,” Clayton said, so quietly that his gaping listeners did not at first grasp his words. Then they turned as one to stare at Catherine.
“What?” said Martin. “What is this?”
Clayton thought for a moment and replied, “I did pose as Andrew Kelly. I’m a spy, or was. A Confederate spy. My purpose was to stop Bart from getting out information and to find out who his leader was. Catherine discovered my identity quite by accident.”
He looked at her again and said, “I love her. We were married in January.”
Martin and Sallie sat down, thunderstruck. Andrew glared at Clayton. “She is not your wife!”
Clayton gave him a curious look. “Why do you keep insisting that you’re Andrew Kelly? It can do you no good now. We have all the proof we need. Your employer has been captured by our own agents in Washington and no doubt will soon be persuaded to tell all he knows. The other men in your circle have also been arrested, including the two who were there the day you shot Bart Ingram.”
“You killed Bartie!” cried Sallie with a moan.
Miranda looked at her c
ousin with horror. “Oh, I should never have confided in you, Cousin!” She turned to the others, her words rushing out in a torrent. “I listened behind the door the day Catherine was talking to Ephraim, after I finished my pie. I couldn’t hear it all…sometimes she started whispering. But I heard the part about Major Pierce posing as Andrew, and her marrying him. I thought they were wronging Andrew…that’s why I told him. I mean, told John. Of course, I never dreamed he was John.”
Her face suddenly brightened. “But there is a way! A way to prove who he is!”
Catherine frowned. “But Miranda, you told me they were exactly alike, that there were no marks.”
“I was thinking of birthmarks. But this just occurred to me…John was in a lot of duels. Usually he won. But once, before he left home for good, he was hurt. It was a sword fight. The point caught him just under the ribs. I’m sure there must be a long scar.”
The audience sat riveted. Clayton seemed to relax suddenly. “How about it, Kelly? Will you show them your scar, or shall I?”
Nobody moved; nobody spoke. Then Miranda marched forward, saying, “I’ll show them!”
Clayton called a warning but it was too late. Her cousin grabbed her, whirled her around, snatched a long needle from the knitting in her hands, and held the point against her throat. Clayton already had his gun in his hand, but he froze at once when he saw the stance his prisoner had taken.
Pulling Miranda with him, Kelly backed out into the hallway. “Cousin or not, I’ll kill her if you don’t get out of my way.” Miranda stopped squirming and her eyes bulged.
What happened next had the curious effect of time speeding up and yet standing still, every movement drawn out to an impossible degree…
Clayton raced out the first doorway to block Kelly and Miranda. Out of the corner of her eye, Catherine saw Mrs. Shirley, with a revolver in her hand, move swiftly to the second door. Catherine ran after her.
Obviously Mrs. Shirley did not expect Kelly’s quickness, for he flung Miranda into Clayton and reached out to grab Mrs. Shirley by the arm, wresting the gun from her. Miranda screamed and latched onto Clayton, and he could not take proper aim. As he tried to throw her off, Kelly pointed the intercepted gun directly at Clayton’s head.
“Nooo!” Catherine heard the wail, dimly aware it came from her own throat. Ephraim tried to pull her back into the parlor, but she broke free and started toward her husband, intending to help free him from the shrieking woman. Kelly, distracted, glanced at Catherine and his aim lowered slightly, but not enough, as he squeezed the trigger.
Simultaneously, in an amazing, lithe movement, Mrs. Shirley placed herself between Clayton and the bullet that discharged from the gun in Kelly’s hand. She slumped against the wall and began to slide to the floor.
Clayton succeeded in ridding himself of Miranda’s fear-maddened grip and sent her sailing back into the parlor. Before the prisoner could take aim again, he lowered his head and advanced toward Kelly, his own weapon leveled and his face thunderous.
Kelly dropped the revolver with a clatter and raised his hands. Clayton jerked him forward and slammed him against the wall, glancing downward as he did so. “Margaret…Catherine, help her. Ephraim, hand me that rope.”
Catherine ran to Mrs. Shirley, who had crumpled like a doll, bleeding profusely from the middle of her chest. Catherine pulled open a drawer of the hall table and her groping hands encountered a tablecloth. She yanked it out and pressed it tightly against the wound, cradling the woman’s head in her other arm. Tears ran freely down her cheeks.
Even in death, Mrs. Shirley was in control. “You mustn’t cry,” she said. “It was…for both of you. You have so much to live for. I…have never had anyone to care for me.” Her gaze left Catherine and her eyes already seemed to be seeing another world.
Catherine’s hands shook and she kept thinking, Hide the blood, cover it up, Mrs. Shirley can’t stand the sight of blood. But there was no way to cover it or stop it. Clayton knelt beside them, having successfully bound up his prisoner and set Martin to guarding him. He took one of Mrs. Shirley’s hands. “Margaret…”
The fading eyes met his. “No one except you. You have been a brother to me. A brother and a friend.” She made a great effort and summoned a smile. “I’m glad that I—”
She never finished. Clayton gently kissed her forehead, still holding tightly to her hand. The smile melted away. Catherine heard the awful rattle of death she had heard so many times at the hospital, and Mrs. Shirley resolutely closed her eyes.
After a moment, still with the greatest care and tenderness, Clayton moved her head from Catherine’s lap onto the floor and covered her face with the clean edge of the tablecloth, tucking the rest around her long, thin body.
Slowly he stood up and drew Catherine to her feet. He did not speak, but she saw the look in his eyes.
From down the hall Kelly watched them, disheveled, his shirt torn and hanging half out of his trousers. Martin stood just out of reach with Clayton’s gun.
Catherine wiped the wetness from her face, set her lips firmly and walked toward the prisoner. Before he could guess her intention, she grabbed his shirttail and pushed it back, along with a good deal of his trousers. A long scar curved upward from the bottom of his rib cage.
He flinched as though she had kicked him. Then he looked up to meet her eyes.
“Why did you try to strangle me, John Kelly?”
He did not answer for a moment. His eyes narrowed as though he thought that over very deeply. Then he seemed to shrug a little and said, “I wouldn’t have killed you. I only wanted to scare you. I…liked being my brother. I liked you. I thought that if you would not come to me out of love, you would come to me out of fear.”
Her brows knit together as she considered his words. “I don’t think I believe you. And how did you know about my wedding night with Andrew?”
“My brother told me about it himself, months before he died. He very much regretted your illness, I assure you.”
“Today you meant to kill me, didn’t you? You didn’t know exactly how much I knew about your…your operation.”
“No,” he said at once. “It would have been foolish to take you out alone like that and kill you. There would be questions; I would be suspected. Believe me, Catherine.”
“You could always say we’d been set upon by thieves. And you did kill Bart.”
He said, with a humorless smile, “Desperate times, desperate games. I believe I read that somewhere.”
She shook her head. “What happened to you and Andrew, to make you turn out this way?”
“I’ll tell you what happened to them.” Miranda stood in the upper doorway of the parlor, her collar askew and her hair loosened; a flame-red lock of artificial hair dangled absurdly from the side of her head.
“They were spoiled. Never taught discipline. It’s partly my fault. There wasn’t much love between the parents, not enough for the boys. But they grew up believing the world owed them everything and they owed nothing. John was always a rebel. Andrew tried, but in the end he showed what he was, too.”
Her cousin laughed disparagingly. “You have it all figured out, eh, Miranda? You helped raise me!”
“Yes, but some people manage to overcome their raising.”
“Enough,” Clayton said. “I want him out of here.” He gave Kelly a push toward the front door. Then he turned to her. “Catherine, will you see to Margaret, for me?”
“Of course…of course I will. Wait, Clayton.” She pulled him with her into the parlor. There was no one there now but Sallie, who sat watching them with a raised eyebrow and a look of resentment.
