“And they’re being arrested now?”
Lenox nodded. He and Hollis were dining in a public house called the Rose and Crown.
Hollis’s entrance had drawn several stares, but they had ignored these, and now were warming themselves by a large fire after the icy walk from the bookstore. Hollis drank claret; Lenox, a strong cup of tea, for he was tired, and besides that not sure whether more work might lie ahead of him that night.
“That is the hope. Mr. Cobb, the American investigator, says the embassy is raring to prosecute them in America for importing slaves to the country.”
“That is what I believe men call ironical,” Hollis said.
Lenox nodded. It was indeed, for all that it had its own queer logic. “Regardless, they have committed crimes enough for the gallows here. Witt finally admitted all of that. In fact, he was rather proud. He instructed Bell to cut the labels out of the clothing in the hopes that it would be mistaken for a random death. He hired the white horse so that blame could plausibly fall on the Patriots Abroad if anyone saw Bell leave the scene. He bought all of the newsboy’s goods so that nobody would recognize Bell as being out of place as conductor. He shoved Bell over the edge of the building when he knew they were caught and then disappeared. It explains why all of the Patriots Abroad were so vehement in their denials. They knew nothing. It was all between Smith and Bell.”
“In its way it was ingenious,” said Hollis, looking down at his food. “Witt must be a man of abilities.”
“I think so, yes. Sometimes strong trees grow crooked and gnarled. My impression is that he kept Jonas and Sheridan together in their scheme; neither is notable for his character. But it’s remarkable that you can look at it so objectively.”
Hollis smiled. “If I took offense at every story of this kind, I would be a busy man.”
Lenox nodded and took a bite from his own plate. The food was very good: beefsteak, mashed potatoes running with gravy, buttered peas and parsnips. “I suppose so.”
“They found the perfect pawn in Winfield Bell.”
Lenox nodded. “Exactly. The ostensible motivation was race. The real motivation was money.”
“It might serve as a motto for our politics in America,” Hollis remarked.
According to Forsythe Witt, it had been no difficulty at all to infiltrate the White Horse Tavern under the stolen name of Bert Smith, playing the role of a former sailor in need of funds. He had known Winfield Bell for all of three weeks before he proposed the murder of Eleazer Gilman.
“When did you become convinced you had to kill him?” Mayne had asked Witt.
“His letter was to Jonas. An informant—I hope to meet him face-to-face someday, damn him—told a local pastor that many of the slaves on the Jonas plantation spoke with odd accents. Word made its way around after that, apparently. Eventually news of it reached Gilman and the other abolitionists in Boston.
“It was Tiptree’s father who pieced the whole thing together. A businessman with interests up and down the coast. He started asking questions. Eventually they reached as far as Jamaica. It seems that even people there noticed that Sheridan’s slaves had moved away in large numbers.”
Moved away. Lenox had braced himself to ask the question during the entire course of the interview. “Are they all sold? The slaves?”
Witt had nodded. “The plantation house is empty.”
“Do you have bills of sale? Records?”
“Would you have kept them?”
“So we have no way of tracking down these men and women who are held in illegal bondage now?”
“No,” said Witt. “You don’t.”
Lenox had left the room. His sense of fury was almost narcotic—his sense of injustice, of rage.
Yet there were were six million human beings in America, and a million of them were slaves. Why should this make him angrier than that?
Perhaps because it was only human to care about the fate of a story whose participants you knew; perhaps because this scheme had been British; perhaps because he knew Sheridan; perhaps most of all because of how tantalizingly close these families had been to freedom—only to be not just taken back into slavery, but then separated.
Strangely, it had been Dunn who had come out into the hallway where Lenox was pacing. For the first time in their acquaintance his voice was dispassionate. “Infuriating, ain’t it.”
“Yes,” said Lenox shortly.
Dunn had taken a pinch of snuff and walked over to the window, looked out at the glittering lights of London. “It’s our job.”
The “our” was a gesture of kindness. “Yes,” said Lenox.
Dunn had glanced over. “Your Willikens was smarter than anyone else.”
“How’s that?”
“It was he who noticed that Witt’s voice didn’t sound right. And it was he who noticed the powder.”
“Powder?” said Lenox.
“The Bert Smith we were after had gray hair. Witt has dark hair that’s graying slowly. We can ask, but I would bet a shilling he used powder to make himself gray. All the judges and barristers have it for their wigs. It may even have been a wig, come to think of it.”
Now, at the Rose and Crown, Lenox described this and more to Hollis, who was steadily eating as he listened. He had the air of a man who savored each bite of good food he took—but out of determination rather than pleasure. It was peculiar; after his talk, Lenox felt he understood less about the former slave than he had before.
“May I ask you a personal question?” said Lenox.
Hollis set down his knife and fork and wiped his mouth, picking up his glass of wine. “Yes.”
“You stole an inkwell from St. Bart’s, and a brass pen.”
“Did I?” said Hollis. His expression hadn’t changed.
“I merely wanted to know why. They helped you there, you know. McConnell helped you.”
Hollis took a sip of wine. “Who will pay for this supper tonight?” he asked.
Lenox frowned. “I suppose I will.”
“And as a gentleman, should I decline your offer?”
“No.”
“I should—as a gentleman. It would be proper. But I won’t. I didn’t own myself for twenty-seven years, Mr. Lenox. This skin you see”—he rubbed his thumb and his first two fingers together, the very skin he meant—“was not my own. Can you imagine the feeling of that?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Now it is my own—yet it is the reason we are dining at this very nice public house, instead of at your private club. Is that true?”
Lenox flushed—for it was. “What does that have to do with St. Bart’s?”
“I expect to be killed sooner or later,” Hollis said. “I have a wife and four sons. I mean to accumulate whatever I can in the time left to me, and however I can.”
“So then, did you steal from the Thompsons?”
“No.”
“Or Mr. Carlisle?”
Hollis looked offended by the question. “No.”
“But why not them?”
“They invited me into their homes. Even if I loathed them, I would not steal from them. But I steal from the machine that made me. I gain particular pleasure in stealing from a rich man, or a miser, or a man who judges me by my race, or the phrenology of my skull. But I do not mind stealing from a hospital either.”
“I don’t know what to call that sort of code.”
“Then you needn’t call it anything.”
They fell into silence. It was bred so deeply into Lenox that theft was wrong that he couldn’t claim to understand Hollis. It was bred so deeply into Hollis that the world was unjust, on the other hand, that it was hard to call him wrong.
Lenox wondered if it was as simple as his wife and four sons; if perhaps the feeling of never being allowed to possess anything had led to a kind of insane desire for possessions, no matter how inconsequential. If the theft was even voluntary.
He broke the silence. “Thank you for answering. It was an impertinent question.”
Hollis looked down and started eating again.
“To finish the story,” Lenox went on, “Winfield Bell leapt at the offer that Witt made him, it would appear. Witt picked him because he was the most violent and vicious man there, or so it seemed. He offered him fifty pounds. Twenty-five before and twenty-five after.”
“For how many of us?”
“All three. Tiptree was not an accident. Gilman was killed the first time he was out of the company of others.”
“I wish I had stayed with him. So they merely wished to silence Gilman?”
“It would seem. In Gilman’s letter he said that he would expose them if they did not all work on behalf of the bill he was proposing. Then they were to forfeit what he had calculated they made to a charity for escaped slaves. It was a high price he asked. Easily high enough to justify murder in the minds of the three men.”
Hollis said, “I myself have wondered if there were other, higher people who wished Gilman dead. From everything I understand, the bill he proposed might have gained the support of your Queen. He had letters of introduction from Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Meetings with the dozen most powerful men in this country of either party. America is strong, but England’s censure would still mean a great deal to her.”
“Interesting,” said Lenox.
Hollis smiled a bitter smile. “But there were a thousand men who wished to see Gilman dead. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if he had been killed at the march.”
“No?”
“No. Indeed, he knew as much. Not least among the people who wished him ill would be those still doing what Sheridan, Witt, and Jonas grew rich from.”
“Importing slaves. You think it still happens?”
“I have no doubt of it at all.”
“I must do my best to speak to people about that.”
Hollis shook his head. “Do you know, in despondent moments, I think of them sometimes, forced aboard a ship, not knowing what awaits them. Unlike so many of my brothers and sisters in slavery, I have not taken Christ into my heart. I cannot see the point or truth of him. I look to this world for justice. And I ask myself: Who will be the last one, the last passenger, dragged unwillingly aboard such a ship? Who will be the last slave to remember what I have known? And how far in the future will he or she be born?”
A quiet settled over the conversation. Finally, Lenox signaled for the bill. “Would you like to come to my house, Mr. Hollis,” he said, “and have a glass of whisky? It settles the stomach.”
“Certainly,” he said. “I thank you for the invitation.”