A House Divided

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  Archibald was unpersuaded. “Henry went and looked, as soon as William told us he was dead. Henry saw him, too.”

  “They’re both lying to you,” said Martha, nearly at a shout, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. “They have been, from the very beginning.”

  “I don’t think they’d do that,” said Archibald, but with less conviction this time. The awful truth about his brothers’ betrayal began to seep into his features.

  “Remember what Bill, the little chief herdsman, told us,” said Martha. “He saw three men in the clearing near the millpond pretending to fight. So maybe, when William assaulted Fisher, he was merely pretending to do so, only Archibald wasn’t able to perceive the difference, because of his condition.”

  “But that was at dusk,” I said. “Bill was trying to get his herd home before dark.” I turned to Archibald. “Was it dusk when you and your brothers confronted Fisher out by the millpond?”

  “No, much later. Well after ten, just like Henry testified.”

  “And had you been out at the millpond earlier that afternoon, or evening, with your brothers?”

  Archibald shook his head.

  “So that pretend fight didn’t involve Archibald.” I turned back to Martha. “Maybe they were practicing for something that would later deceive Archibald. Remember, Bill said two of the men he saw had the appearance of brothers. So it was William and Henry and—”

  “Fisher!” said Martha. “He was part of the plot, too.”

  “But that would mean Fisher agreed to stage his own death and trick Archibald in the process. Why would he do that?” I turned back to Archibald. “Did Fisher have a grudge against you?”

  “Not that I know.” The carpenter shook his head blankly.

  Lincoln had been striding back and forth around the office. He rounded on us and said, “You’re getting far afield. William’s the key to the mystery.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Archibald thinks Henry was telling the truth when he testified. Shoot, I wouldn’t be completely astounded if Henry himself thought he was telling the truth. Probably not, but it’s possible. But William must have known it was a lie. Because he subsequently brought Fisher to Dr. Gilmore. That’s what Gilmore testified to, and while he was confused on any number of matters, I doubt he’s mistaken on that one.”

  “But if William knew the murder victim wasn’t actually murdered, what’s he been doing sitting in jail all this time, rather than telling Conkling, telling the world, where Fisher is?” I said. “It makes no sense.”

  “And on top of that,” said Martha, “William is the one who directed the sheriff to Fisher’s supposed remains on the other side of the pond. Far from protesting his innocence, he’s been deepening his own guilt.”

  Lincoln turned to Archibald. “Did William ever suggest to you, while the two of you were in the jail cell together, that Fisher was alive?”

  Archibald shook his head. “All he would say was, ‘Do what I say, and everything will turn out right.’ So that’s what I did. I’ve been used to doing what he says for a long time,” he added, almost apologetically, glancing around at us. “If you think of it, in the end, he was correct.”

  “How can you say that!” cried Martha, as I gaped at Archibald, astounded by his continuing loyalty to his undeserving brothers.

  “Let’s see if Conkling can tell us what William was thinking,” said Lincoln. Hay had returned to town, empty-handed, shortly after Herndon had appeared with the prize, and Lincoln sent him off in search of Conkling. The slight, Princeton lawyer appeared about thirty minutes later, a broad smile still etched across his youthful face.

  “What a victory!” said Conkling, striding toward Lincoln with his hand outstretched. “Even Cicero would hesitate to write such a history. They’ll be talking about this trial for years.”

  “Perhaps they will,” returned Lincoln. “But I don’t understand why William didn’t tell you at the very outset of the case that Fisher was alive and under Dr. Gilmore’s care.”

  “He didn’t know,” insisted Conkling.

  Lincoln explained the logic behind our conclusion that he must have. When he’d finished, Conkling shrugged and said, “He never said a word of it to me. Gilmore was confused in his recitation, most likely. You saw and heard him yourselves. I’m grateful he appeared when he did, of course, but the poor fellow barely knew where he was. Besides, why would a man possibly stay in jail, at risk of the gallows, if he knew he could prove his innocence?”

  “Go ask him now,” I suggested.

  Conkling shook his head. “He’s gone. As soon as we got out of the courtroom, he was in a hurry to leave town. Paid me a little extra above the usual fee and asked me to help him carry up his heavy trunk from the basement of the capitol and put it into a carriage. And off he rode. Heading home, he said, no wish to remain in Sangamon County after the ordeal he went though. Can’t say I blame him.”

  “But if Mr. Lincoln’s right,” said Martha, “he put himself through the ordeal.”

  “If men always acted rationally,” said Conkling with a laugh, “there’d be much less need for lawyers, eh, Lincoln?” Conkling slapped his fellow counselor on the back, said he needed to get back to his law office, and took his leave. In his wake, the rest of us stood there silently, trying to make sense of William Trailor’s strange behavior.

  “I wonder …” began Archibald, before drifting off and shaking his head.

  “You wonder what?” asked Martha.

  “About the note William gave me for Henry.”

  “What note?” said Lincoln sharply. “When?”

  “After court yesterday, William and I were led out together by the sheriff. First we went down into the basement of the capitol building, where the sheriff locked William back into his cell, and then the sheriff took me to my cell, behind his house. But as we were parting, William made a remark about Trailor family business and slipped a note into my pocket. For Henry. Sure enough, last night, Henry stopped by my cell and asked me if William had given me anything for him.”

  All of us were looking at Archibald dumbfounded. “This was all last night?” Lincoln asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “But why didn’t you tell Lincoln?” I said.

  “Trailor family business. Besides, I didn’t have the chance, not with the doctor appearing so early this morning.”

  “Do you still have the note?”

  Archibald shook his head. “I gave it to Henry, just like William said.”

  “What did it say?” Martha asked, her eyes shining brightly.

  “Martha, if he doesn’t have the note anymore, it’s no use,” I said. I added, in a hushed voice, “You know he can’t read.”

  “Yes, he can.”

  “What?”

  “What do you think Archibald and I have been doing, all the time I’ve been spending out at the jail cell with him?” The pride in her voice was unmistakable.

  “Miss Martha’s been teaching me how to read,” added Archibald, giving a loose, toothy grin. “And I’ve been making some advance. I got a ways to go, but I’ve been doing some learning. More than I ever did before.”

  Each of us shouted, more or less simultaneously, some version of, “What did the note say?”

  “I’m about to tell you. I can’t be certain. I guess I need more lessons.” He gave Martha a bashful smile. “But I reckon it said … ‘The … shop … mint … is … ours.’” He pronounced the words deliberately, as if sounding them out from a page of writing in front of him.

  “What’s ‘ours’?” I said. “The ‘shop mint’? But that’s gibberish.”

  “I reckon that’s what William wrote down.” Archibald surveyed our faces and, sensing our confusion, looked away. “I’m sorry, Miss Martha. I wish I learned your lessons more.”

  Lincoln, though, was gazing at the man with dawning comprehension. He had taken out a piece of paper and scribbled down Archibald’s words. “Not the ‘shop mint,’” said Lin
coln. “The ‘shipment.’ ‘The shipment is ours.’”

  “ ‘The shipment,’” repeated Martha. “But what could that mean?”

  Lincoln had already turned to Hay. “Go find Belmont. Sheriff Hutchason, too. Right away! Tell them to meet us at the State Bank building. Tell them it’s urgent.”

  He looked back at us. “I think the Trailors were planning to steal the gold.”

  CHAPTER 33

  We clambered down the stairs of Hoffman’s Row, close on Hay’s heels, and made a direct line for the bank building. The streets outside were still laden with spectators from the trial, and a number of them muttered epithets as we pushed through. It was apparent the crowd was still angry at Lincoln for having produced the victim alive.

  “We should hang ’em anyway, just because,” said one man, nodding at Archibald as we hurried past.

  Martha wrapped her hands protectively around Archibald’s arm.

  We crossed the green, looped around the capitol, and came to the grand bank building just opposite. As we mounted the steps, Sheriff Hutchason raced up from the other direction. Mayor May was trailing right behind him.

  “Hay said it was urgent, Lincoln,” said the sheriff.

  “I was with the sheriff when your boy came up,” explained Big Red. “If there’s a threat to the city, I need to know. There’s plenty of anger out there already about the way the trial ended. If we’re not careful, a mob’s going to form up.”

  “Funny that you’re concerned with that now,” I said, unable to hold my tongue. “This man”—I put my hand on Archibald’s shoulder—“was at risk for his life because you catered to the mob.”

  “I did what I thought was right to protect the citizens of the town,” replied Big Red, “and I shan’t apologize for that.”

  “You owe Archibald an apology,” said Lincoln, “but there’s no time for that now. Ah, Belmont, just in time. Or perhaps too late, I fear.” The banker had hurried up to join us at the top of the steps, Lincoln’s boy Hay at his side.

  “What’s happened?” Belmont demanded, his usual cool absent for once.

  Lincoln put his hand on one of the marble columns standing like sentries at the bank front. “The Trailor trial came to an abrupt end this morning. The victim wasn’t a victim—there was no murder after all. Even more surprisingly, it seems inescapable that one of the defendants, William Trailor, knew from the start he could prove his innocence, yet did nothing to do so.”

  Belmont, who hadn’t been in court this morning, whistled in surprise. As Lincoln detailed what had happened, an expression of worry clouded the banker’s face. “But why?” asked Belmont when Lincoln had finished.

  “That’s exactly the question. It would appear William, and perhaps Henry Trailor, too, instigated the whole thing as some sort of ruse. To what end? Let’s proceed inside. I fear we’re about to find out.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Big Red. “Explain your thinking to us again?”

  “There’s no time,” said Lincoln. “We’ll see for ourselves soon enough. Follow me.”

  Lincoln led the way through the bank’s doors. The cashier of the Springfield bank was a man named Roy, a nervous fellow who kept to himself and always looked behind him as he walked, as if in constant fear of bodily assault. He was the kind of person who locked the door after he entered a room and then checked the lock three times to make sure it was set. In short, he was the perfect man to serve as cashier. Or so it had always seemed.

  Roy came forward to meet the large group as it entered his sanctuary.

  “What’s all this?” he demanded.

  “We need to examine the vault,” said Lincoln.

  “Why?”

  “Because we have reason to believe the gold shipment is missing.”

  “Impossible! Ever since Belmont’s men arrived with it, it’s been sitting in the vault. The day it arrived, I carefully counted out every last coin. Fifty thousand dollars, on the button. And I’ve checked the box twice every day since, once in the morning and again in the evening. I checked on it not two hours ago, upon my arrival this morning, and it was sitting undisturbed.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Lincoln, “we must see for ourselves.”

  Lincoln made toward a staircase leading down from the ground floor of the bank. Roy started to block his way, but upon seeing the menacing Sheriff Hutchason following immediately behind Lincoln, he desisted. After the sheriff went Belmont, who was absently twirling his walking stick and looking more and more alarmed, and then the rest of our little search party.

  The basement level of the bank resembled the basement of the capitol building, a mostly unfinished space with narrow, horizontal windows cut into the tops of the walls to allow outside light to filter in. I remarked upon the similarity to Big Red as we followed the procession along.

  “No surprise,” said he. “The same firm worked on both buildings.”

  At the front of the line, Lincoln came to a halt beside a locked iron door.

  “Open it, if you please, Roy,” he said.

  The cashier looked around warily at the large crowd. He shook his head.

  “We’re not going to rob you, man,” said Lincoln. “We have the sheriff and mayor here, not to mention myself, from the banking committee in the legislature. We’d be robbing from ourselves if we did.”

  Hesitantly, Roy reached inside his shirt and pulled out a chain he wore around his neck. A key dangled from the chain. Roy bent over and fiddled with the lock until it clicked. He swung the door open to a small, cubical chamber, perhaps eight feet on each side.

  “Right there, just where it should be,” said Roy. I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the men in front of me. There was a small wooden trunk, apparently undisturbed, sitting in the middle of the room.

  “That’s it, all right,” said Belmont, giving a relieved sigh. “Looks like you need a different theory to explain the strange ending to your case, Lincoln.”

  “Open the trunk,” commanded Lincoln.

  “This is all irregular,” said Roy, shaking his head wildly. “Highly, highly irregular.”

  “Open it!”

  Grumbling to himself, Roy knelt in front of the trunk and inserted a key. “See,” he said, swinging open the lid, “just as I—” He broke off, then shouted, “Good God!”

  “What is it?”

  “I—I—I …” The bank cashier bent over, hands to his knees, and was sick.

  Lincoln and the other fellows in the front rank rushed forward to examine the trunk. They reached in and pawed about furiously. A hail of shouted epithets followed.

  “Nothing but clothing,” cried the sheriff, holding a dirty smock above his head.

  “Gone, all gone,” wailed Big Red.

  Lincoln was silent. I’d never seen him at a loss for words. He shook his head back and forth, mutely pulling one dingy garment after another out of the trunk, as if hoping by some alchemy to change cloth into gold.

  After all, I thought, some strange alchemy had turned the gold into cloth in the first place.

  “What have you done, Roy?” demanded Sheriff Hutchason.

  “It wasn’t me,” insisted the cashier. “I swear, it wasn’t.”

  “But you just finished telling us that you were the only one with access to this room,” said Big Red, his ears flapping uncontrollably, pointing with an accusing finger.

  The cashier, the mayor, and the sheriff argued back and forth, their voices rising into an angry cacophony.

  Belmont had been strangely subdued during the entire search of the basement vault. Now and then, he used his walking stick to rap upon the floor absently, as if he was making some point of argument to himself. Unlike the others, his demeanor was not that of a man who’d suffered a great loss. I turned on him.

  “This was your doing,” I said.

  It took a moment for Belmont to realize I was speaking to him. Belatedly, he responded, “What did you say?”

  “You’ve been in league with the Trailors from th
e outset. It should have been obvious to all of us long ago. This was your doing.”

  “It’s my gold. I above anyone else would want to protect it.”

  “It’s the people of Illinois’s gold,” I shot back. “It has been, ever since it entered the vault. And now it’s gone. You’ve admitted to spending lots of time with Henry Trailor, over at the American House. Now we know what you were conspiring about.”

  “Preposterous!”

  Martha had finally worked herself to a position near the trunk, and she pulled on my arm. “Isn’t that William’s trunk? It is! It’s the exact trunk we saw in the barn behind Mary’s house.”

  I turned back to Belmont. “Is that the same trunk your men brought from St. Louis with the gold?”

  Belmont’s face was red with fury. He managed a nod.

  “No, it’s the trunk we saw in the hayloft,” said Martha, as the tumult continued all around us. “The one William hid there. I’d swear to it on little Ann’s grave.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath next to me. I turned to see Archibald, looking paler and more agitated than I’d seen him since the evening I’d found him huddled at my storefront all those days ago.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He mumbled something, but it was inaudible with all the hue and cry around us. “Say that again,” I prompted.

  “I made two for him.”

  “Two of what? For whom?”

  “For William. I made him two identical trunks.”

  “What?” shouted Martha from beside me.

  Archibald nodded. “I made him one last year. Gave it to him on his birthday, and he was very pleased. So pleased that he asked me, a few months ago, to make him another. ‘Identical in every respect,’ he said. I’d never seen him so happy with my carpentry.”

  I turned to share this revelation with Lincoln, when a piercing whistle cut through the tumult. Everyone was silent at once, gazing around to find the source of the noise. To my shock, I saw that it was young Hay, standing near one of the exterior walls of the room and gesticulating wildly. Hay was afraid of his own shadow; I’d never known him to make any noise at all in a gathering this large.