Arlette Mitchells sat by the window, her sewing forgotten, her hands loose in what remained of her lap. The baby had been kicking like crazy all day but now, suddenly, it was still. She hated her life. She hated being poor little Letty, left in the lurch by that handsome Captain Grand, forced to settle for a man old enough to be her grandfather, almost. When she was alone, she let herself think about his old man’s legs, the veins standing out like purple ropes, his old, dry hands all over her. She carried her thoughts on her face and so when she thought of Grand’s comment about The Day, she frowned and then burst into tears. If only what Grand had suggested was really true, that there had only been one day. But there had been hundreds. The disgusting old goat had more vim than many a man half his age. Oh, God … she threw her head back and let the tears stream down her cheeks. Even now, with the baby kicking and bouncing.
But … she put her hand on her swollen stomach, under her soft house dress. There was no sign of the kicking and shifting she had lived with so long. Everything had gone quiet and still. Her heart skipped a beat. Although she had cursed this child through the heat of the summer, she needed it so desperately. Someone to love her, no matter what Washington society might say. Someone to be just hers, hers alone. She knew that Madison would take no notice of it. His other five children were farmed out to relatives along the eastern seaboard. They came to see them once in a while, the younger ones at least. As soon as they reached their majority, they never came again. When Madison had first come calling, Arlette had felt sorry for the poor man, widowed so sadly and so often. But now, she completely saw their point. The odious old …
From over her shoulder, on a gust of the old-man smell of damp biscuit and cobweb, a veined hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her caressing hand away.
‘What are you doing, madam?’ Madison Mitchells snarled. ‘What would the servants say, seeing their mistress stroking herself in such a way? Only a husband’s hand is allowed to do such a thing.’
There was a pause, during which Arlette held her breath. Then, when he didn’t speak, she ventured to fill the silence. ‘The baby … it has gone so still.’
‘Stupid girl,’ her husband said, dropping her hand. ‘Don’t you know that’s because it is its time. Did it turn?’
‘Turn?’
‘Yes. Turn head down. Mary … no, forgive me, Susan, it was. She was out walking when her child … John, that would be, I think … turned and she fainted clean away, stupid woman. In any event, he was born that night.’
Arlette sprang up, her eyes wide. ‘You mean … the baby could come soon. Now?’ All this childbirth talk was all very fine and well, but he didn’t have to do it.
‘Stupid woman,’ he said, turning away. ‘Not now, no. Unless you are having cramps. Are you?’
She shook her head.
‘Then not now. But soon.’ He looked her up and down and clearly disliked what he saw. ‘I’m going out to the Willard for dinner. I must say I can’t really bear to be in the house when birthing is going on. I’ll send Bessie. Perhaps you ought to think about going upstairs while you can do it on your own.’ He turned and was halfway out of the room when she spoke.
‘I’ll send word when it’s born, shall I? Let you know what it is and that we are well.’
Without looking back, he stopped. ‘As you wish,’ he said, and the next thing she heard was a door slamming. And the next thing she felt was a mule kick her in the belly.
‘Bessie!’ she screamed. ‘Bessie!’
Night had long since fallen over the Willard and three men were engrossed in conversation on the third floor overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.
‘That’s an interesting book you’ve got there, Mr Batchelor.’ Tom Durham tapped the dark green leather. It was Brigadier General Baker’s opus. ‘’Course, I wouldn’t believe everything between its covers.’
‘No?’ Batchelor raised an eyebrow. That was more or less what Grand had told him about Belle Boyd’s book too.
‘First, he didn’t write it. And second, Lafayette Curry Baker was the biggest liar north or south of the Rappahannock.’
Grand and Batchelor looked at him and then at each other.
‘Even so,’ Durham was topping up his glass, ‘I’m not sure lying – except under oath, of course – is an offence worth dying for.’
‘You think—’ Batchelor began, but Durham cut in.
‘I think somebody wanted dear old Laff dead. Hell, yes.’
‘We understood it was natural causes,’ Grand said.
Durham laughed. ‘You’ve been talking to Rickards, haven’t you? Laff’s doctor?’
Grand nodded.
‘Did he tell you he and Laff went way back?’
‘No,’ Grand frowned.
‘They weren’t just doctor and patient. They were friends of nearly twenty years standing. The man was a saint as far as Rickards was concerned. I doubt you’ll do better with Laura Duvall.’
‘Who?’ Batchelor asked.
Durham remembered to close his mouth before he looked hard at the younger man. George Sala must be tearing out what little hair he had left if this was the calibre of his junior colleagues.
‘Laff’s “lifelong friend” – and I’m quoting from his will here.’
‘You’ve seen his will?’ Grand checked.
‘Look, boys,’ Durham reached for a refill of the bourbon. ‘I’ll come clean with you. I think Lafayette Baker was murdered and that’s why you’re both here.’
‘Is it?’ Grand refilled his own glass and leaned back, brazening the situation out.
Durham sighed and put down his glass. Then he fished in his vest pocket and produced a card. He cleared his throat and read aloud, ‘Grand and Batchelor, Enquiry Agents, 41, The Strand, London.’
‘Where did you get that?’ Batchelor was half out of his seat.
‘Journalist shall speak unto journalist.’ Durham tapped the side of his nose.
Batchelor subsided. ‘George Sala,’ he said.
‘George Sala and the miracles of modern telegraphy,’ Durham nodded. ‘I’ve been watching you two since you hit town. My turn to let you into a little secret, gentlemen. I started looking into Baker’s death almost before the vicious bastard hit the floor. The official version stinks to high heaven.’
‘Who have you talked to?’ Grand asked.
‘Who haven’t I talked to?’ Durham shrugged. ‘Washington is full of wise monkeys, Captain. They’re all blind, deaf or dumb.’
‘Luther Baker?’ Batchelor thought it was safe to mention the name, especially as he was paying for the bourbon.
‘You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? But no, Luther and I aren’t exactly on friendly terms, seeing as how he threatened to horsewhip me if he ever saw me again. The Star is a pro-Union paper, gentlemen; always has been. But it’s all about mending fences under Reconstruction. Are we ever going to be a nation again? I don’t know, but stirring up old scores won’t help.’
‘You think the South killed Baker?’ Batchelor asked.
‘It’s the safest bet. Read the book, Mr Batchelor.’ Durham pointed to it. ‘Some of it is true. In the meantime, gentlemen,’ the Star’s man slipped the half-empty bottle into his pocket as he got to his feet, ‘let’s keep in touch. You two do what I hope you’re good at – sleuthing. I’ll check with you regularly, and provide whatever you need. Officially, I can’t do anything.’
‘We understand,’ Batchelor said.
‘One thing,’ Durham paused on his way to the door. ‘I get the exclusive. I don’t want to read this second-hand in the London Telegraph.’
‘You have my word,’ Batchelor told him.
‘One other thing,’ Grand said. ‘Where will we find Laura Duvall?’
‘Laura Duvall’s the least of your worries. One gentleman you’re bound to run into sooner or later in this business is Wesley Jericho. But don’t tell him I sent you.’
Laura Duvall lived along O Street just before it became Hell’s Bottom, where no self-respecting lady would be seen, let alone live. Her apartments were set back from the sidewalk in a tenement shared by three families and if she had ever had a servant, there was no room for one now.
Grand and Batchelor explained to the nervous little woman who peered at them over a chain-lock fitted inside her door that Thomas Durham of the Star had sent them. For a long moment, she hesitated, then she let them in.
‘We are investigating the death of Brigadier General Baker,’ Grand told her. No point in standing on ceremony now.
‘I see.’ Like Jane Baker, Laura Duvall had a quiet dignity. Grand couldn’t imagine either woman being drawn to Laff Baker. But then, at the time, Grand, along with half Washington, was assumed to be a conspirator in Lincoln’s death. It wasn’t likely that Baker would have shown him his charming side. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘We are looking into the possibility,’ Batchelor said, choosing his words carefully, ‘that Brigadier Baker was murdered.’
For the briefest of moments, Laura Duvall’s eyelids flickered. The rest of her pale face was unreadable, her eyes a clear blue, her hair, once mouse, now streaked with grey. Batchelor tried to guess her age. Grand tried to guess what she knew.
‘That,’ she said quietly, ‘is entirely possible.’
‘You were … a friend?’ Batchelor wanted to establish the parameters.
‘I was his lover,’ she said blandly, betraying no emotion. ‘I hate the term “mistress”, “kept woman” even more so. And before you ask, yes, Jane Baker knew about me.’ She laughed, brittle and brief. ‘And I’m sure that every night the woman offers up prayers for my demise.’
‘We are talking about her husband’s demise,’ Grand reminded her. ‘How did you meet the brigadier general?’
‘During the war,’ she said, ‘I was one of a number of ladies employed by the Treasury Department. We wrote letters and made copies. I had … we all had … some trouble with one of the supervisors.’
‘Trouble?’ Batchelor raised an eyebrow.
‘Mr Spencer Clark,’ Laura told him. ‘A beast in the guise of a man. He took liberties with us, ogled us in the offices on the Hill. Without wishing to be too graphic, he placed his hands in inappropriate places. Lafayette Baker stopped him.’
‘How?’ Grand asked.
‘With his fists, I believe. He found me crying one day following a revolting incident I will not trouble you with, and I mentioned Clark’s name. I did not witness what followed, of course; Lafayette was too discreet for that.’
Grand nodded. That was the Laff Baker he remembered, a man who would rearrange a reprobate’s face in the darkness. He hadn’t expected the chivalry that went with it.
‘Did Clark keep his job?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Laura said, ‘but he lost it for other reasons. Let’s just say while groping us girls he was also lining his pockets from Treasury funds.’
Grand and Batchelor both made a mental note. Another name in the long list of those who had cause to hate Lafayette Baker.
‘When did you see the brigadier last?’ Batchelor asked.
‘It must have been three days before he died,’ she told them, without emotion. ‘When possible I visited him at his home in Coates Street, brought him flowers. He loved roses – white ones. In the end, Lafayette took to moving away from home, spending nights in hotels and rooming houses.’
‘Why?’ Batchelor asked.
For the first time, tears glinted in the eyes of Laura Duvall. ‘He became convinced that someone wanted him dead,’ she said, ‘and he came to trust no one. Not even me.’
‘Did he say who that someone was?’ Grand asked.
‘Judas,’ she said loudly, sniffing back the tears. ‘Or Brutus. Take your pick.’
Grand and Batchelor looked at each other. Laura got up suddenly and crossed the little room. She opened a cupboard and produced a box. ‘Have you talked to Jane?’ she asked.
‘We have,’ Batchelor told her.
‘And I assume she was as helpful as a brick wall?’
Batchelor smiled.
‘Talk to Bridget McBane,’ she said. ‘She nursed Lafayette towards the end as his illness worsened. And to Kathleen Hawks – she was Jane’s maid until recently. I happen to know that both women are in Washington at the moment. Why they left Philadelphia is anybody’s guess. In the meantime,’ she selected a small key from the bunch on her chatelaine and opened the box, ‘you may be able to make something of this.’ She handed Batchelor a book – solid, heavy and well-thumbed. He read the title – Colburn’s United Service Magazine, 1864.
‘What’s this, Miss Duvall?’ he asked.
‘A collection of volumes bound into one,’ she said, ‘where the earlier part of Sixty-Four is, I couldn’t say, but Lafayette’s will was most careful about this edition.’
‘It was?’ Grand took the book that Batchelor passed to him.
‘A codicil,’ she said, locking the box again. ‘“To my lifelong friend, Laura Duvall”. I think he meant that we were friends from the moment we met; it had to be that, because I hadn’t known him all that long. I can’t imagine why that particular set of volumes should be so important to him; why he would leave them in my charge.’
‘We’ll take great care of it, Miss Duvall,’ Batchelor promised.
‘The book itself is not important to me,’ she said. ‘Not as long as you nail the heartless son of a bitch who killed my Lafayette.’
There was a knock on the door of Apartment Sixty-Three at the Willard that night. Batchelor was engrossed in reading Baker’s book under the light of an oil lamp, so it was Grand who answered the call.
‘Message for Mr Batchelor.’ The bellhop passed Grand a note and stood expectantly, smiling broadly and waiting for his tip.
‘I’m not Mr Batchelor,’ Grand beamed back and closed the door in the lad’s face. He could hear him knocking on a door further down the corridor, and his muffled voice sharing some news. ‘This is intriguing, James.’
‘Hmm?’ Batchelor was deep in the skulduggery of the Civil War.
‘You have a visitor in the foyer. A Miss Julep.’
‘Mint?’ Batchelor was jerked away from the tome. He was on his feet already.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Grand asked him.
Batchelor looked at the card. ‘Foyer. Important. Julep’, he read. The back was blank. ‘What can happen?’ he chuckled, hauling on his jacket. ‘This is the Willard, Matthew.’
Grand whirled and presented Batchelor with his Derringer, gleaming dully in his hand. ‘At least take this.’
‘My dear boy, we’ve had this conversation. I’d shoot my own foot off. Look, I’m a big boy now; I can handle myself. And no shadow, all right? You stay here and see if you can make head or tail of Baker’s book.’ And he was gone.
The clerk in the foyer was less than happy. It was unusual for a woman to be unescorted at the Willard, and one glance at the gorgeous black girl asking for Mr Batchelor had convinced him of her calling. She wore a velvet cloak that reached nearly to the ground, but her jewellery and her make-up betrayed her street origins. He had told her to move on several times, but she threatened a scene unless her note was delivered to the English guest, so he had reluctantly complied.
Batchelor tipped his hat to her as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and she crossed to him, linking her arm with his and sweeping past the clerk’s counter. At the door she stopped, opened her cloak to reveal her tight scarlet bodice and delicious breasts and shouted, ‘See you at the Wolf’s Den later, honey!’ She laughed as the clerk’s jaw hit the carpet and there was a disgusted inrush of breath from the hotel residents. She turned to Batchelor. ‘On the other hand, the miserable cock-sucker couldn’t afford the Den. Looks more like a Blue Goose man to me.’
‘Miss Julep,’ Batchelor said, as the muggy night air of Pennsylvania Avenue hit him, ‘where are we going?’
A cab was waiting alongside the kerb. ‘The Division, sugar,’ she purred. ‘My second home.’
For a girl who rarely stopped talking, Julep was singularly quiet as the cab rattled west over the hard-rutted roads towards Murder Bay and the Division. She kept her eyes focused ahead as the dark shanties of the Contraband Shacks swept by and the broken skyline of the nation’s capital jutted black against the purple of the night. The gigs and cabs became more frequent as they reached Marble Alley, and the place was alive with riffraff of every colour and persuasion. Julep called out to the cabbie to pull up outside a large, ramshackle building with railings around it. By the dim street light, Batchelor could make out a brass shingle that read ‘Madam Wilton’s Private Residence for Ladies’. Julep hadn’t left her seat. ‘You’re here, sweetness,’ she purred. ‘Room Nineteen. The major’s expecting you.’ And the cab was gone into the night, leaving just a faint trail of her scent; heavy, musky, but not, strangely, minty at all.
Room Nineteen. Batchelor had heard that before somewhere, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember where. An urgent meeting was all Julep had told him, where he would learn something to his advantage in the case of Brigadier-General Lafayette Baker. The front door swung wide and a broad staircase curved up to his right ahead of him. The walls were hung with photographs of coy young ladies in prim, all-covering pelisses and elaborate bonnets. The middle-aged lady, who was presumably Madam Wilton, sat in the middle of them. The hall to left and right was lined with bookcases, heavy with leather-spined tomes that reminded Batchelor of the British Museum Reading Room, where he had spent many a happy hour researching stories for the Telegraph. Room Nineteen, a sign told him, was on the first floor, and he took the stairs, gazing above him into the gloom. It was eerily quiet on the treads, his own footfalls muffled by thick carpet as he padded along the corridor.
He knocked on the door. Nothing. There were no fancy codes here, no quotations from Luther and Byron, just a long, melancholy squeal of hinges as the door opened under his fist. He could see a lamp on a table and the gleam of a pistol, cocked and pointing at him.
‘You alone?’ a gravel voice asked him.
‘I am.’ Batchelor stayed in the doorway. He was unarmed and had seen no sign of Matthew Grand trailing him. He was, indeed, on his own.
‘Come in. Sit.’
There was only one chair that Batchelor could see and he took it, having closed the door behind him. Now that he was on a level with the gun, he felt he could relax a little. The gun owner had other ideas. ‘Keep your hands on the table, Mr Batchelor. Julep.’
The black girl was suddenly there, sweeping out of the shadows. How she had doubled back from the cab and reached Room Nineteen before Batchelor he couldn’t understand. But then, there was a lot about Washington, and especially Murder Bay, that James Batchelor didn’t understand. With his hands firmly on the velvet of the tablecloth, he could hardly stop the girl from going through his pockets. It may have just been his fancy that she lingered a little in his trousers, but within a moment she had straightened up and nodded to the man with the gun. ‘He’s clean.’ And she was gone again.
‘Are you the major?’ Batchelor asked.
The muzzle of the pistol came up and its owner eased the hammer back. He slid the weapon out of Batchelor’s reach but kept it on the table. ‘Caleb Tice.’ A firm hand that moments ago had been tight on the gun’s butt, snaked out and Batchelor caught it. ‘First District of Columbia Cavalry. Course, that was a time ago.’
‘Major Tice,’ Batchelor nodded. ‘You clearly know who I am. Why this summons? We could have met at our hotel – it’s very pleasant and … not at all threatening.’
Tice chuckled. He leaned back and poured two glasses from a table next to his own. ‘Hardly a summons,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to see the man who’s hunting Laff Baker’s killer face to face. I figured a plain old telegram wouldn’t do it. Julep now, that’s different. Quite a looker, isn’t she?’
Batchelor had to concede that she was.
‘Most expensive message-boy in DC.’ Tice raised his glass. ‘To absent friends.’
‘Absent friends.’ Batchelor raised his too. Tice’s bourbon made the Willard’s seem like velvet and Batchelor felt his eyes start to water.
‘So, you’re working for Luther?’
‘Before this conversation continues, Major,’ Batchelor said, ‘I need to know why you want to know.’
‘Of course you do,’ Tice smiled. ‘I would expect that. In the dark days of our late war,’ he said, watching the lamplight sparkle in the facets of his cut glass, ‘I was Lafayette Baker’s right-hand man. We ran this city like a warship, everything tied down and ready. Gambling hells, we closed them. Liquor halls? Gone. Bordellos? A thing of the past. Sodom became Jerusalem.’ Tice broke off to laugh. ‘It’s all back now, of course. Did you ever meet Laff Baker, Mr Batchelor?’
The Englishman shook his head.
‘He was the hardest bastard I ever met. When Lincoln was killed, Stanton ordered him to get his murderers – Booth, Herold, Atzerodt, the others. The four of us were there when Booth was killed – Laff and Luther, Colonel Conger and me. When all the hoo-ha was over, the trial and the hangings, Laff went to work on the city. I won’t pretend we did things by the book. But you don’t get to make omelettes without breaking a few eggs. We all made enemies. And without Laff’s hand, I am ashamed to say the rest of us sort of lost our directions. So the liquor dens are back, and the bordellos – you know that, you’re sitting in one now, albeit of a genteel nature, catering only for the highest of society; you know, clergymen, Congressmen, that sort of cuss.’
Batchelor knew. There were such establishments along the Haymarket too.
But Tice’s fond reminiscences were over. ‘Then some bastard killed him and that was that.’
‘Are you still working with Luther, Major Tice?’ Batchelor asked.
The major spat viciously towards an ornate brass spittoon, but missed, to the serious detriment of the carpet. ‘Let’s just say he and I had a falling out,’ he said. ‘That’s why I asked to see you.’
Batchelor rather liked his definition of ‘asked’ – to be invited into a room at gunpoint seemed to be stretching it almost to breaking point.
‘I know you and Grand are snooping on Luther’s behalf and I know he’s fingered Stanton. All I’m missing are the details.’
‘Why did you ask for me and not Grand?’ Batchelor wanted to know.
Tice laughed. ‘I remember Grand’s reputation when the son of a bitch lived here,’ he said. ‘He’s a by-the-book soldier and a pain in the ass. People like that don’t get the job done. I can see you need him, you being a foreigner and all, but I’m hoping you can cut through this here Gordian knot of Washington politics. I’m guessing most people you’ve talked to have been as tight as clams.’
There was a crash on the ground floor and a series of screams.
‘Shit!’ Tice hissed through gritted teeth and backed out of the lamplight. Before he could leave his seat, the door of Room Nineteen crashed back and three huge Metropolitan policemen stood there, the copper buttons gleaming on their tunics, night sticks in their hands. Batchelor felt himself being hauled to his feet and his arm forced painfully up behind his back. As they frogmarched him along the corridor, Julep was being led just as roughly in the opposite direction, kicking out at the policemen and swearing in a French patois that Batchelor had never heard before.
‘Well, well, well.’ Batchelor turned to see who had stopped his rapid progress to the staircase.
‘Inspector Haynes,’ he said. ‘I can explain …’