James Batchelor felt a little guilty stringing Aloysius Cottrell along but he had, after all, a murderer to catch, and if the reporter had stars in his eyes for a little while longer, that could be construed as a good thing. So, the back editions of the Star were made readily available and young Cottrell felt he was doing his bit in the cause of international journalism. In fact, it was he who found it.
‘Here we go.’ He held up the relevant edition in the dark, damp basement of the Star offices. All morning, Batchelor had shaken his head at the parlous state of the old newspapers. They were falling apart with moisture, where the swamps of Washington seeped ever upwards, turning the walls to a mildewed green and curling the edges of the pages. ‘Eighteenth January, 1866.’ He cleared his throat, about to read aloud, when Batchelor unceremoniously snatched it from him.
‘“A body”,’ he read, ‘“presumed to be that of Major Caleb Tice, formerly of the First District of Columbia Cavalry, was found floating in the Potomac this morning.” Presumed to be?’
‘All right,’ Grand said. ‘So, we know when he was fished out of the river. When did he go in?’
And the search began again, all three of them flicking furiously back.
‘Got it!’ It was Batchelor’s turn to triumph. ‘Or have I? “An eyewitness spoke of her horror yesterday” – that was the fourth of December – “when she saw a gunfight at the Naval Dockyard. Two men, neither of whom could she identify, became engaged in an argument and shots were fired. One of the men fell into the Potomac. The body was not recovered.”’
‘Does the witness have a name?’ Grand asked.
‘Undoubtedly,’ Batchelor said, reading on. ‘But it’s not written down here.’
‘Star policy,’ Cottrell explained, a little sheepishly. ‘Retaliation is a deadly thing. The District Attorney would rather have eyewitnesses to murder, alive; you know, so they can appear in court.’
‘Amen to that,’ Grand murmured. ‘James, the finding of the body; was there an autopsy?’
Batchelor dug out the later edition and his face broadened into a grin. ‘No,’ he said, winking at Grand, ‘but there was a post mortem.’
‘Man, that was two years ago,’ Charles Williams muttered, wrestling with his mountains of paperwork. ‘Have you any idea how many bodies I’ve handled in that time? Oh, it’s not as many as New York, I’ll grant you. But it’s enough.’
‘Can we narrow the field a little?’ Batchelor asked. ‘Body found in the Potomac. Gunshot wound.’ He thought he ought to add one final fact, ‘Male.’
Dr Williams looked aghast. ‘Of course, male,’ he said, outraged that this foreigner should imply that Americans shot women. ‘Ah, oh no. That’s the wrong month. Ah, here we are. January, you say?’
‘The eighteenth,’ Grand confirmed.
The doctor held the paper up to the light. It was his own handwriting and he still found it difficult to read. ‘Male. Aged between thirty and …’ He turned the paper to Grand. ‘Does that say forty-five, would you say?’
Grand nodded. ‘Or ninety-five. Forty-five makes more sense.’
The doctor agreed. ‘Forty-five. Cause of death, single gunshot to the head. I won’t bore you with occipital and temporal, gentlemen – that’s the kind of thing only we medical men understand. Suffice it to say he was shot with a pistol at close range.’
‘Pistol?’ Grand queried.
‘Says here a .44 calibre. Yes, I remember now. I dug the slug out of his cranium myself. I’m no gun expert, Mr Grand, but I’d guess Army Colt, Remington – something like that.’
‘How do you know it was Caleb Tice?’ Batchelor asked.
‘Says so here.’ Dr Williams was an inveterate believer in his own testimony.
‘Yes, but how do you know?’ Batchelor persisted. ‘Our information is that Tice was probably shot on the fourth of December. The body wasn’t found until the eighteenth of January.’
‘That’s five weeks in the water, Doctor.’ Grand did the sums for him.
‘Well,’ Williams had the grace to concede, ‘it’s true the body was pretty battered about. A lot of post-mortem bruising. The river will do that. If I remember rightly, Inspector Haynes believed he had been killed on the quayside at the Naval Dockyard. His body was found, according to my notes, at James Creek. He hadn’t travelled far, but far enough.’
‘The current?’ Grand checked.
‘Sure,’ the doctor said. ‘Something must have held him down, though – ropes, anchor chains, something of that sort. Or he’d have floated clear to the Anacostia.’
‘Do you remember, Doctor,’ Batchelor asked, ‘was the face recognizable?’
‘Not to me,’ Williams said. ‘What with the bullet, the bruising and the fish-nibbling. You’d have to ask Inspector Haynes. He was pretty sure about it.’
‘Oh yes,’ Grand smiled. ‘Thank you, Doctor. We will.’
Julep had lost them. Or rather, him. For a while, before and after the incident with Arlette McKintyre and the baby, Grand and Batchelor had gone about like Siamese twins joined at the hip. She’d trailed them to the Star offices, then to Dr Williams’s, then back to the Willard. Now, as the sun began to set, gilding the columns of the Treasury building and the White House, she sat on a bench along Pennsylvania Avenue and waited. He hadn’t told her who to follow in the event of the twins separating, so she tossed a coin. It had come down Batchelor and so she went for that. He had gone into a tobacconist’s and had not come out. How long could it take to buy a cigar? Then she remembered. The tobacconist had a back entrance and he must have taken it and gone along D Street. Shit!
She hauled up her skirts and barged her way through the sidewalk throng. Then she slowed down. The last thing she wanted now was to draw attention to herself. Black girls walking alone in this upmarket part of town were not commonplace. She didn’t want to stand out more than she had to. She checked behind her that goody two-shoes Sojourner Truth wasn’t breathing down her neck, and when she faced forward again, she ran straight into James Batchelor.
‘Julep,’ he tipped his hat. ‘Fancy running into you,’ he said, although it had actually been the other way around. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were following me.’
For the briefest of moments, Julep panicked. Had that mad old busybody Truth been shooting her mouth off? She was mighty friendly with white folks these days; but then, who wasn’t? ‘Why, sugar,’ she smiled her best smile, ‘you don’t wanna be so forward. This ain’t about you, you know.’
‘Of course not,’ Batchelor said. ‘Think nothing of it. Actually, I’m glad we met. We need to see Luther again.’
‘Something to report?’ she asked.
‘Something to ask,’ Batchelor said. ‘For example, why did he kill Caleb Tice?’
There was a silence. ‘He ain’t gonna tell you that,’ she murmured.
‘What about you, Julep?’ Batchelor closed to her. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Me?’ she laughed. ‘In the middle of D Street in broad daylight? Honey, I want to stay alive.’
Batchelor became serious. ‘I don’t want to make life difficult for you, Julep,’ he said. ‘More difficult than it probably already is, at any rate. But Grand and I are up to our necks in this now. And you know more about Caleb Tice, I suspect, than anyone.’
‘I do?’ Her eyes widened.
‘You were the one who took me to meet him; remember, at Madam Wilton’s?’
She looked deep into his eyes. ‘It’s not gonna help you,’ she said. ‘With your case, I mean.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he said. ‘Can we go somewhere?’
They could. And, as night drew on, Julep lit the lamps in her little apartment. This was the Island, a part of Washington Batchelor had never been before, and it was hardly salubrious. But it was not in the Division and it was not under the watchful eye of Luther Baker.
She sat him down in a comfortable horsehair chair and handed him a glass of bourbon.
‘Can I ask you a question, Julep?’ he said. ‘A personal one, I mean?’
‘You can ask, sugar,’ she said, sitting opposite him and showing rather more ankle than he was comfortable with.
‘Are you Luther’s woman?’
Julep roared with laughter. ‘I ain’t nobody’s woman, honey-child,’ she said; then she paused. ‘And everybody’s. Is that as personal as your questions get?’
‘Tell me about Tice,’ he said.
‘Tice was a soldier,’ she told him. ‘Just about everybody was, back then. He got himself mixed up with Lafayette Baker’s National Detectives – don’t ask me how. He and Luther didn’t exactly get on. Hate at first sight, you might say.’ She sipped her bourbon.
‘Was there more to it?’ Batchelor asked. ‘Luther said it was a matter of honour.’
‘Yeah, well, I think that’s a pretty fancy name for it. Luther also said he didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘You’re remarkably well informed,’ Batchelor said.
‘That’s why I’m still here, baby,’ she purred, ‘with my own place and an account in my own name at the First National Bank. You gotta stay ahead of the field. And the way to do that is to be “remarkably well informed”.’
Batchelor smiled. For a girl from the bayous of Louisiana, Julep did a passable British accent. ‘How much?’ he sighed, hauling out his wallet. He didn’t choose to remind her that this was Luther Baker’s money anyway.
She screwed up her face. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, sugar,’ she said. ‘Look about you. I can buy you twice over. I don’t need your money. I can also outdrink, outsmoke, outpoke and outshoot you. So this ain’t no level baseball field. You came to me, remember?’
That was a moot point, but Batchelor let it go. ‘So, you’re going to tell me what I want to know for free?’ he asked.
‘Oh, there ain’t no such thing as free, honey.’ She shook her head, smiling. ‘I’ll be sending you my check when I’m good and ready. And you might not see it coming.’
‘Fair enough,’ Batchelor said. ‘Luther and Tice? What happened?’
‘They fell for the same lady.’ Julep got back to her drink. ‘You’d think, with both of them closing down the war and hunting President Lincoln’s killers, they’d have enough on their minds; but us women – well, we’ve a way of getting under men’s skin, ain’t we?’
Belle Boyd floated into James Batchelor’s mind but he shook himself free of her.
‘They got into a scrape over her one night. She was mighty free with her favours and both of them wanted more. Luther said he’d kill Tice if he ever saw him again, and he was to leave the lady alone.’
‘And he did see him again?’
‘Sure. You got duelling in your country, Mr Batchelor?’
‘It’s against the law,’ the Englishman told her, ‘but it used to be a problem.’
‘Here too,’ Julep said. ‘Tice was an honourable cuss, all Southern gentility. He called Luther out.’
‘Challenged him to a duel?’
‘Yep. Fields not far from here, at Bladensburg.’
‘And?’
‘Luther turned him down.’
‘He not being an honourable cuss?’ Batchelor felt he had to check.
‘Luther’s pretty handy with a gun, but he couldn’t go up against Cobb in broad daylight. No, he waited until dark.’
‘So, it was murder?’
Julep’s face hardened. ‘I don’t know nothing about the law, honey,’ she said, ‘except how to stay one step ahead of it. When one cuss shoots another, that’s murder. When thousands of ’em put on uniforms and do it, they call it war. Go figure.’
‘Julep,’ Batchelor put down his drink and leaned forward, ‘did you see it? The shooting, I mean?’
‘Sure.’ She topped up her glass and took a swig. ‘Luther got wind that Cobb was going to be at the Naval Yard one night. The National Detectives had been disbanded by then and it was everybody for himself. Luther went to find him.’
‘And he took you along?’ Batchelor couldn’t believe it.
‘Wanted witnesses,’ Julep said. ‘Only it didn’t quite turn out that way.’
Realization dawned and he clicked his fingers. ‘You’re the eyewitness,’ he said, ‘speaking of your horror.’
‘What?’
‘The Star’s account. I knew that was it. The report said that a woman saw the shooting but that she couldn’t identify either man involved.’
‘I may have been a little confused there, sugar,’ she smiled. ‘I could, of course, identify them both. The original plan was that Luther should kill Tice and I could be on hand to tell the law that it was self-defence. When Cobb fell backwards and hit the water – well, that was it. There was no body. Or, if there was, it would just be another poor victim of the Potomac.’
‘So why didn’t both of you just leave?’ Batchelor asked. ‘Go home? Forget it?’ Not that he, as a true blue Englishman, could have done any such thing.
‘There was a beat cop patrolling,’ Julep remembered. ‘We couldn’t tell if he’d seen what happened, or whether he’d seen me with Luther, but he’d seen me right enough, so I had to come out with the Star’s version.’
‘But Tice wasn’t dead?’
Julep took a deep swallow. ‘I damn near died of fright,’ she said. ‘It must’ve been a couple of months later, a time certainly after all the hoo-ha had died down and they’d found what we all assumed was Cobb’s body. He just showed up at Madam Wilton’s one night, bold as brass and asked for me.’
‘You work for Madam Wilton’s as well as the Wolf’s Den?’
‘I told you, honey,’ she wagged a finger at him, ‘I don’t work for nobody. And I work for everybody. Cobb knew better than to come to the Den. Luther had all but moved in by then.’
‘Did Tice get nasty?’ Batchelor asked. ‘Threaten you?’
‘Uh-huh,’ the girl shook her head. ‘Like I said, he was a Southern gentleman. He wanted Luther, not me. Besides, he had other things on his mind.’
‘Like what?’
‘You’d have to ask him that, sugar,’ Julep said.
‘I’d like to,’ Batchelor told him. ‘How do I find him?’
‘Leave that with me,’ she said.
‘All right. And thank you, Julep.’ Batchelor got up. ‘You won’t take my money?’ She stood up with him and shook her head. ‘Then at least take this.’ And he kissed her on the lips, a kiss more lingering than it should have been, for all sorts of reasons. She smiled when it was over and led him to the door.
With his hand on the doorknob, he turned. ‘Two more questions before I go,’ he said. ‘What did you mean about Caleb Tice being a Southern gentleman? If he rode with Luther Baker, he fought for the North, surely?’
‘Again, honey,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to ask him. The Mason-Dixon line ain’t so wide and only the Potomac separated North and South back in the day. What’s your other question?’
‘The lady,’ Batchelor said. ‘The lady that Luther and Tice argued over. Who was she?’
‘Why, didn’t I tell you?’ Julep arched an eyebrow. ‘It was Jane Curry Baker, Lafayette’s wife.’
Grand stood at the door, hat in his hand, polishing his toecaps on his calves as he had so many times before, waiting to be let inside. Old habits died hard. He looked the butler up and down and the butler returned the compliment.
‘Captain Grand, sir,’ he said, with no inflection. ‘I hope you have been keeping well, sir.’
‘It’s plain Mr Grand now,’ he said, realizing as he did so he had no idea what this man was called. Years in London had changed his attitude to things and he didn’t think it was too late to ask. ‘And what should I call you? After all these years?’
The butler looked mildly affronted. He kept himself to himself, he was sure, and he had never asked for too much attention from the snooty bastards he served. ‘Lulworth, sir,’ he said.
‘Like the Cove,’ Grand said, pleased to have retained some English geography.
‘Possibly, sir,’ said the butler, who had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Are you here to see the mistress, sir? Or Mrs Mitchells?’
‘Either. Both.’ Grand had had a rather difficult interview with Arlette’s parents when he had turned up in a cab, with her and little Johnson. Although he was by no means responsible for their daughter’s drug-addled state, or the fact that their only grandchild was close to being starved to death, as well as becoming a hopeless imbecile through the addition of laudanum to his diet, he was nevertheless at first treated like the dirt on their shoe. Then, Arlette had rallied enough to tell them how Matthew had come in like a lion and borne her and her child away from a house of horrors and he was the white-haired boy again. He heard a distant cooing, that could only be Mrs McKintyre.
‘Matthew? Is that Matthew Grand I hear?’
‘Yes, Mrs McKintyre,’ he said, peering round the butler. ‘I’ve come to check on the progress of Mrs Mitchells and young Master Johnson.’
‘Oh, so formal!’ Mrs McKintyre appeared through the dimness of the hall; all frills, furbelows and a smell of slightly old lavender. ‘Come through into the parlour. Arlette and little Jack,’ Grand was happy to hear that his nickname for the poor child seemed to have stuck, ‘are in here. Come through.’ She gestured madly. ‘Come on through.’
Arlette sat in a low nursing chair, her baby in her arms. She was back in her pink and her frills and her curls bounced under a lace bonnet. The baby was swaddled in a snow-white shawl, its little face pinker now than when Grand had seen it last, and a chubby fist, escaped from the bonds, waving in the air. The sunlight touched their heads softly and the golden threads of their hair gave it back in spades. It was a very pretty picture and Grand paused in the doorway to enjoy it for a moment.
He became aware of tweeting at his elbow and looked down into the radiant face of Mrs McKintyre. He smiled at her and she grabbed his arm excitedly.
‘Matthew, Matthew, look at them. Are they not the prettiest things you ever saw? Thank you, for bringing them back to us. That evil man, that Mitchells, he told us that Arlette was too busy with the house to come over. I knew it was wrong, but Mr McKintyre would listen, you know. He thought so much of that … that …’ In the absence of words, she stamped her little foot. ‘But don’t let us fret. They’re back now and Hell itself will not part me from them. My babies.’ She squeezed Grand’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and then suddenly let go, backing off. ‘I’ll let you youngsters get reacquainted,’ she said, archly. ‘Mr McKintyre is at the courthouse as we speak, seeking an annulment.’
Grand thought the baby in Arlette’s lap was perhaps reason enough for that application to fail, but said nothing.
‘I’ll rouse Bella to get Arlette some tea. Would you like some tea, Matthew, or would you like something stronger?’ She gave him a roughish tap in the ribs.
‘No, Mrs McKintyre,’ Grand said, unused to his new status of honoured guest. ‘Tea would be just wonderful, thank you.’
She trotted across the hall and pushed on the green baize door. ‘Bella!’ she bawled. ‘Tea for Mr Grand and Miss Arlette.’
An answering holler came up from the depths.
‘No,’ she answered it. ‘Just for two.’ Then, suddenly, she was back at Grand’s side. ‘You don’t want an old woman like me here, when you two young things want to talk things over, do you?’
Grand, who had hardly been able to get a word in edgewise, was now truly speechless.
‘Anyways,’ she said, ‘I’ll be in my sewing room if you need me for anything.’ She stroked his arm and leaned her head against it for a moment. ‘It’s wonderful to have you back, Matthew.’ And before he could answer, she was gone.
As soon as her footsteps died away, Arlette lifted her head and looked at Grand, her eyes full of cunning. ‘Matthew,’ she said, in her old hectoring tone. ‘Over here a minute, hmm?’
He went across the room, walking gingerly. In all the danger that he and Batchelor had been in, might still be in, he realized that this was probably far, far worse. It would take all of his skills to get away unscathed. He stopped a few paces away and leaned forward to admire the baby. ‘He looks well, Arlette,’ he said, diplomatically. ‘And you, of course. The picture of happy motherhood.’
She curled her lip at him. ‘Likely so,’ she said, and her arm snaked out like a rattler and she had the edge of his coat in her hand before he could step back. ‘Now, Matthew Grand, my deliverer. Have you got any consarned laudanum on you or haven’t you?’
‘Arlette,’ he said, prising her fingers from his pocket, where they rummaged fruitlessly. ‘I most certainly do not have any laudanum on me, nor do I intend to carry any. You are here to get well.’
She stood up, putting the baby all anyhow in his crib, so he gave vent to a howl that at least showed his lungs had come to no harm. ‘Matthew Grand,’ and her face was full of venom, ‘you saved me from one Hell and brought me to another …’
Before she could reach him, he was across the floor of the drawing room and heading for the door. In one silent and fluid movement, the butler opened it and passed him his hat. And, not for the first time, Matthew Grand found himself outside the McKintyre house, listening to the screams from within.
‘What I want to know is, when you two monkeys are going to make a move against Stanton.’
Luther Baker was feeling less than even-tempered that night. The tab that Grand and Batchelor were running up was getting out of hand and, so far, they’d been tinkering at the edges. They had talked to the widow, Jane Baker. They had talked to a nurse and a maid. They’d stumbled – literally – over the body of Tom Durham. And they’d taken themselves off for a sightseeing tour of Tennessee, during which they’d come across some lunatics who liked to dress up and scare the black folks. All in all, Luther was throwing good money after bad and he’d had enough of it.
Grand took the plunge. ‘We’re not convinced,’ he said, ‘that Edwin Stanton is involved.’
‘Not involved?’ Baker snapped. ‘Of course he’s involved. The only reason I bought you two misfits in in the first place is that I can’t reach him. The War Office, the Treasury, the Supreme Court building – if I so much as set foot in any of them, I can kiss my ass goodbye in the Old Capitol Prison.’
‘On what charge?’
‘On what charge?’ Baker mimicked him, although not so well, it had to be said, as Julep had. The girl was nowhere in sight tonight. In his more hospitable moments, Batchelor imagined her safely wrapped up in her Island apartment, knitting or doing crewelwork. Then the conversation brought him screaming back to reality. ‘This is America, mister. What do the fancy dans call it? Postbellum America? Well, it’s all gone to Hell in a handcart, I can tell you. When Lincoln died, his Vice President went to pieces. Turns out Johnson was a secret Southerner anyhow, judging by the way he wants to draw a line in the sand and forget that four years of war ever happened. No, it wasn’t just Washington that was under Stanton’s law, believe me; it was the States as a whole. And he’s still pulling the strings. Somehow. Behind the scenes.’
‘He’s out of office,’ Grand reminded him.
‘Yeah, and I’m William Tecumseh Sherman. So the next man in the White House’ll be Ulysses S. Grant. And who’ll be pulling his strings? That’ll be Edwin Stanton.’
‘All right,’ Batchelor said. ‘Let’s get to specifics. What did Stanton have on Lafayette? And don’t give us any generalities about knowing where the bodies are buried.’
‘That ain’t no generality!’ Baker shouted, then moderated his tone. Even here at the Wolf’s Den, walls had ears. Particularly here at the Wolf’s Den. ‘Take John Wilkes Booth. There are only two men alive now who know where he’s buried. I’m one. Stanton’s the other. The third would have been Laff. And that’s precisely why you boys are here. Now, when you gonna start earning your keep?’
There was a silence while everybody looked at each other.
‘I suppose,’ Batchelor said, ‘I could approach Mr Stanton, in my usual guise as reporter? Piece on great Americans, that sort of thing, for the Telegraph.’
‘Great Americans!’ Baker growled. ‘All right. Do that. It’s not likely the old snake in the grass’ll give much away, but when you see him, be sure and ask him why he turned down the President’s invitation to Ford’s Theatre that night, the night they got Lincoln. I’d like to hear the answer to that. Then I’d like to hear which cowardly son of a bitch he got to kill Cousin Laff.’
‘He’ll only see one of you,’ Julep whispered, ‘not both.’ It was difficult trying to talk sotto voce above the rattle of a streetcar and the snorting of the horses. The noises from Pennsylvania Avenue didn’t help and the crowds were building at the end of the Washington office day. As a black, of course, the girl who worked for nobody and for anybody could not ride inside the jolting vehicle. She was no Sojourner Truth with a crusade to win. She meekly followed the white man’s laws by day and broke most of them, not to say God’s commandments, by night.
‘Let’s let Mr Lincoln decide,’ Grand said, getting ready to flip a dollar from his pocket.
‘When he says one of you,’ Julep kept an eye out for the guard, ‘he means you, honey.’ She was looking at Batchelor. ‘A face he knows, you understand.’
Batchelor did. So did Grand. ‘When?’ the Englishman asked. ‘Where?’
‘Eleven sharp,’ she told him. ‘Madam Wilton’s.’
‘There’s not going to be a police raid tonight, is there?’ he asked.
Julep laughed. ‘No fear of that,’ she said.
‘Well, then.’ Grand put his dollar away. ‘Over to you, James, my boy. And give my regards to Major Tice.’
Julep’s laugh had attracted the streetcar guard, who wandered over to her. ‘What you looking at, cracker?’ she hissed. ‘Ain’t you seen a gorgeous piece of black ass before?’