As we followed the turnkey down the steep hill toward the prison gates, the town of Alton and the glittering ribbon of the Mississippi spread out spectacularly below us. A side-wheel steamer headed down the river at full throttle, fine lines of smoke trailing out behind each giant stack.
“I’ll give the men who constructed this place credit on one account,” said Lincoln. “This landscape must make the terms of confinement feel twice as long.”
“Thrice,” said the turnkey. He sniggered with laughter.
“Have you got a name?” asked Lincoln.
“Runkin.”
“Tell me, Runkin, do you think my client Mr. Bingham can get a fair trial here in Alton?”
Lincoln leaned over toward me and, cupping his hand near my ear, added in a whisper, “Never hurts to sound out the local populace to get a sense of the jury.”
“Most of us ain’t got use for courts and such,” Runkin replied. “Most of us, we know a guilty man when we see him. We know how to pick him out, and we know how to punish him too.”
“Like your brothers across the river in St. Louis,” said Lincoln.
“Exactly,” said Runkin, nodding eagerly. He either missed the censure in Lincoln’s tone or chose to ignore it. “I imagine you’re thinking of what happened last summer to that worthless criminal McIntosh. Oh, boy, that was a good one. I’m just sore I missed the mobbing myself. But I heard all about it. Heard it straight from two of my fellows who were right there in the middle of it.”
“Who’s McIntosh?” I asked.
Lincoln opened his mouth, but before he could answer Runkin said, “A boatman from Pittsburgh who was causing trouble on the levee in St. Louis. A free half-Negro. Thought it was his right to interfere with the police. Stabbed a deputy sheriff right through the neck—stabbed him dead. The boys there in St. Louis, they didn’t need no court to tell them he was guilty. They knew it. They lynched him up but good.”
“His name was Francis McIntosh,” said Lincoln somberly. “A mob of five hundred men pulled him from jail, chained him to a locust tree, stacked wood around him, and set him on fire. He burned to death in open day in the midst of the city.”
“Burnt to a crisp, the way I heard it,” said Runkin. He smacked his hands together with glee. We had reached the front gate of the prison, which he unlocked and led us through. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Lincoln. For a white man like your Mr. Bingham, I expect the courts will do just fine. Don’t think we need to start gathering the wood, not yet at least.”
Runkin gave a shout of laughter and retreated into the prison, locking the gate behind him. We took the path leading down the ravine toward town.
“That’s an awful tale,” I said, “but if it’s true he’d killed a policeman, I’m not sure what else he could have expected. He was going to die at the scaffold if not the stake.”
“You’re missing the larger point, Speed,” Lincoln said. His voice cracked with emotion, and I turned to stare at him. “No matter the crime, we can’t substitute the furious passions of the mob for the sober judgment of the courts. We are a nation of laws and must remain so. If men take it into their heads to burn murderers today, they’ll be as likely to burn innocent men tomorrow. And if the government cannot protect its people from the rule of the mob, the government itself will be disregarded before long.”
“I think you’re worrying about phantoms.”
Lincoln shook his head but did not respond, and we walked along in silence. There was no need for either of us to say more. Lurking just beneath the surface of our conversation, as with so many these days, was the issue of slavery. For that smoldering controversy raised squarely the question of whether men could follow what they believed to be the natural order of society or whether instead the government could impose contrary rules from on high.
Early in our shared residency, I had expressed to Lincoln my conviction, borne of having been raised on my father’s plantation, that the Negro class laboring for the European one was the natural order of things and, indeed, the only benevolent way to treat that disadvantaged race. Lincoln had responded sharply that he considered the institution unjust under all circumstances. We had reached an unspoken agreement to avoid the subject, and the very different ways we saw the sorry story of Francis McIntosh did not make me eager to breach our truce.
The hill we had been traversing down began to ebb as we neared the shore. “It’s a funny thing,” said Lincoln, breaking our silence, “about Bingham and Jones having met in Commerce. Back in ’31, I visited that very area for several weeks.”
“You did? You’ve never told me that.”
“You never asked,” he said with a laugh. “I ended up lodging in the home of Colonel William T. Ferguson, self-described hero of the Battle of New Orleans. Quite a character. I should tell you the story sometime.” He shook his head and smiled at the memory.
“So do you think Bingham’s innocent?” I asked.
“I think he’s not guilty until the prosecution provides convincing proof of it. That needs to be my position, every time I represent a defendant. And his story did have the ring of truth. Come with me to court now. Let’s see what Judge Thomas makes of the plight of Mr. G. C. Bingham, painter of fine portraits.”
“I have an errand to accomplish first,” I said. “I’ll meet you over there.”
Lincoln nodded and headed across the hump of the next ravine, while I turned back toward the Franklin House. The hotel reception was empty except for an elderly woman of generous size, who was spread out on a high-backed chair near the entrance. Some work rested on her lap, and the clacking of her knitting needles filled the still air. I bowed.
“Good morning, madam. Do you know if innkeeper Kemp is about?”
“He won’t be back for another half hour,” she replied in a friendly voice made rough by age. She knitted a row, her needles dancing. “Can I help you?”
“I was hoping to speak with Kemp . . . I had a question about where to find something—someone—in town.”
“Try asking me,” she said as she finished another row and absent-mindedly pulled at the pile of yarn on her lap. Her face was heavily lined and covered with liver spots. “You’re Mr. Speed, aren’t you?”
“I am. Have we met before?”
“I was sitting here yesterday, doing my work, when you came in and gave your name to Kemp. And I was here in the evening when you went out for a stroll with those two lawyers, including the very tall one, Mr. Lincoln. Who’re you looking for?”
“I’m in need of a messenger boy,” I said, vaguely recollecting her presence in the then-crowded lobby the previous day. “A fast rider. And dependable. I need him to deliver a note to my sister in Springfield and to wait for the reply and ride back at once. Do you know—”
“You’ll do well with Joey S.,” she said. “At this hour he’ll be finishing milking his pa’s cows, I should think. Up the hill, first lane on the right, the red house with the large barn out back. You can’t miss it. He’ll ask you for a silver dollar, but you tell him Nanny Mae said he’d do it for seventy-five cents.”
I smiled and touched the brim of my hat. “I shall do. I thank you kindly, Mrs.—I suppose it’s Mrs. Mae.”
“Don’t bother with the ‘Missus,’” she returned, her needles dancing once again in time to their own music. “Everybody calls me Nanny Mae.”
I found Joey S. just where Nanny Mae had said. He was a lanky boy of twelve or thirteen with a squat face and long black hair falling across his eyes. He had just finished his milking chores, and after a brief negotiation, I engaged him at the price dictated by the old woman.
“You’re to give this personally to Miss Martha Speed and no one else,” I said, handing him a note I had scribbled out on the way. “She lodges at the sheriff’s house, Sheriff Hutchason, in Springfield. She’ll pack two saddlebags with my belongings once she reads what I’ve written, and you’re to ride back at once with those bags. Do you understand?”
“Yessir,” the boy mumbled.
“You must ride very fast, and you must not tarry. I need to board a ship, with those bags, that’s docking here in three days.” In reality, I did not expect the War Eagle’s return for another four days, but I wanted to give myself a margin. “So you’ll need to return by midnight, the day after tomorrow, at the latest. I’ll give you that extra quarter dollar if you return by then.”
“Yessir,” he mumbled again, blowing the hair out of his eyes. It flew up for a moment, lingered, and fell down again.
Joey S. jammed my letter into his worn jeans and darted inside his house, shouting. In a few moments, he returned, saddled up a fine looking horse who’d been watching our conversation eagerly, and set off.
I made my way across the ridge toward a long, thin two-story brick building perched on the hillside overlooking the river. Alton did not have a courthouse. Instead, Captain Ryder let the judge use his shipping offices whenever the circuit was in town. I imagined the captain hoped to get a favorable ruling from the judge someday in return for his hospitality.
Ryder’s building was chaotic and cacophonous. In the front reception area, a blackboard nailed to the wall charted the whereabouts of Ryder’s fleet of flatboats, ferries, and skiffs. A clerk stood by the board, chalk in hand, erasing the current positions and noting new ones whenever a messenger boy entered with an update. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s fellow circuit traveler Ninian Edwards, whose strong, arched eyebrows and blunt nose set him apart in a crowd, leaned against the opposite wall and consulted with two men who were gesturing excitedly at a sheet of writing. They had to talk loudly, however, to hear themselves over Judge Thomas, who was busy conducting a hearing in the back part of the offices, the judge standing in between two narrow floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the busy river, while the lawyers sat in a ragged semicircle of chairs around him.
As I neared the rump court in the back of the room, my attention was diverted by a man who was standing a few feet behind the lawyers, watching the proceedings closely. He was older, somewhere in his fourth decade, and dressed like a gentleman, in a tie and tails, with a full, proud face and hair receding on top and bushy on either side, obscuring his ears. But the printer’s ink stains on his fingers gave away his true status as a member of that wretched, much-reviled class: a journalist.
Lincoln noticed my arrival and indicated an empty chair next to him. Prickett was in the midst of an impassioned presentation to the judge. Prickett was the state’s attorney, responsible for bringing criminal prosecutions on behalf of the people of the state of Illinois. I gathered he was arguing the fate of a young millworker from Alton who had pilfered a barrel of flour from his employer.
Logan was apparently arguing the millworker’s brief, as he sat poised on the edge of his chair, ready to unleash his counter-arguments as soon as Prickett paused for breath. I noticed that Avocat Daumier was present too, lingering in the shadows and looking very much like a cat who thought he was about to pounce on a helpless mouse.
After a few minutes of argument, Judge Thomas announced that the millworker was to return the barrel, warrant that the flour was unspoiled, and pay a five-dollar fine. Prickett made a notation in a book he held open on his lap, while Thomas felt through his pockets to find a new cigar. He struck a match and took several long, restorative pulls.
“All right, what’s next?” the judge asked as he blew out a large cloud of smoke.
“We’ve a new one to add, Your Honor,” said Prickett. “It wasn’t on the original circuit list for Alton, but it’s arisen just in time. The People against George Bingham. The charge is murder, with malice implied from circumstances showing an abandoned and malignant heart.”
“Murder, you say? Let’s finish out today’s list and then come back to it,” said the judge.
“As you wish.”
So I sat and listened as the assembled lawyers argued out the case of an unpaid promissory note (Prickett’s client prevailing over Logan’s), a trespass case involving a mill dam (Edwards over Lincoln), a suit seeking to regain possession of two mares (Lincoln over Logan), and a dispute regarding cancellation of a land sale (Lincoln over Logan again).
All the while, I thought about what Bingham had told us. I had suspected that Pound was not being forthright about the ship’s finances, of course, but I was furious to learn he had lied to me so baldly. I was eager to get back onto the ship to confront him and examine his records. Whether or not Bingham was a murderer—and, like Lincoln, I tended toward not—I was grateful to him for his suggestions on how to pursue Pound and my father’s missing money.
I pulled out Bingham’s sketch of the mysterious deck passenger and studied it again. What leapt from the page was the hooked shape of the man’s nose, arching just below the bridge and looping to an end in elongated, flared nostrils. It was an incisive portrait, and I thought I would recognize him if I came across the subject in the flesh.
Judge Thomas’s voice cut through my contemplations. “That does it for today,” he said, “except for your new murder case, Prickett. You’re standing for the defendant, Lincoln?”
“Correct, Your Honor.”
The other lawyers scraped back their chairs and got to their feet, gathering up papers and satchels that had been strewn about during the day’s proceedings. No doubt one of the grog shops opposite the levee was their next destination. Judge Thomas inhaled deeply from his cigar, waiting for them to depart. Soon only Lincoln and Prickett remained in the semicircle of chairs in front of the judge. Daumier left his position against the wall and prowled onto an empty seat next to the prosecutor.
“You may proceed,” Thomas said, nodding at Prickett.
“Your Honor, the decedent, evidently a Mr. John W. Jones of the State of Tennessee, was found last night on the riverbank near town. He had lately been seen aboard a northbound packet steamer, the War Eagle, in the company of the defendant, Bingham. Bingham’s trade card was found on Jones’s person. Bingham admitted to the local levee copper he went to Jones’s room on the night of the latter’s death and that the two argued violently. The two men had a long-running feud, it seems, over a young woman. The People are prepared to prove up our full case at trial, but that about summarizes it.”
“Mr. Lincoln?”
Lincoln stretched his legs and unfolded his arms. “It’s a thin gruel to put a man on trial for his life, Your Honor,” he began.
“What more do you want?” asked the judge.
“For one, it doesn’t sound like Mr. Prickett has any idea about the cause of death.”
“You yourself fished him out of the river,” Prickett shot back. “I think we can be pretty sure he drowned.”
“No—I mean, how did he end up in the river? For all we know, Jones threw himself overboard, perhaps in despondency over the young woman whose hand he’d lost to Mr. Bingham.”
“I doubt very much he would have been able to encase himself in the canvas bag he was found in.”
“The bag’s another thing,” said Lincoln. “It looked to me to be the sort used for baling cotton. I don’t suspect Mr. Prickett has got any way to prove how this fellow Bingham could have obtained it. He’s an artist, not a trader or planter.”
“And you don’t have any way to prove he didn’t,” said Prickett. “Besides, as you say, the fellow’s an artist. That class is well known to use canvases for making their paintings. It’s practically a tool of their trade.”
Before Lincoln could respond, Judge Thomas held up his hand. “If you’re moving to dismiss the charge, Lincoln, it’s denied. Bail’s denied too. The Court finds the People have satisfied their burden of detaining the defendant and going forward to trial.”
Daumier purred audibly. Through the window beyond the judge’s right shoulder, I saw a small transient steamer laboring upriver against the current. Four other steamboats were lying at the landing, in various stages of unloading and loading.
“Now, what do you want to do about the trial?” the judge continued. “I imagine we could round up a jury this afternoon, if you’d like, and hear the case to verdict even if we have to work late into the night. I told Ryder we’d be out of his premises by sundown, but I think he’ll give us leeway if we need it.”
Lincoln shook his head. “At a minimum, I need to interview the passengers and crew aboard the packet, who might have additional evidence as to Jones’s fate. There was an altercation on board, I understand, one involving a good number of persons other than Bingham who might have wished ill upon Jones.”
“When’s the ship due to make its next call at the Alton levee?”
Lincoln looked at me. “Four days hence, Your Honor,” I said.
“We’ll be well clear of here by then,” Judge Thomas said. “If you want I can put you down first on the docket for the next Alton circuit.”
“But that’s not until next April,” said Lincoln. “Bingham shouldn’t have to languish at the prison all the way through the winter when he’s not yet been convicted of a thing.”
“Then he should have committed his murder with a better eye toward the circuit calendar,” the judge said. He sucked on his cigar unsympathetically. “Besides, if the jury finds him guilty, he’ll wish he had more time to languish. I’ve heard on good authority the view from the prison yard is to be greatly preferred to the one from the gallows.”
“How about making a special stop in Alton on the way home to Springfield at the end of the circuit?” said Lincoln. “We have to pass by here after leaving Kaskaskia anyway.”
Lincoln took a small calendar from his frockcoat and flipped through the pages. “It’d be almost exactly three weeks from today. I imagine we could try the whole case in two days if we worked into the evenings.”
The judge pulled on his cigar and considered this. Daumier bent over beside Prickett and unleashed a torrent of words, a mixture of French and English.
After a few moments, Prickett pushed him aside and said, “The People are opposed to any special term, Your Honor. If Mr. Lincoln’s not ready to try the case today, what assurance do we have he’ll be prepared in three weeks? The defendant Bingham should wait his turn, same as with any accused.”
“But he’s not the same as any accused,” said Lincoln. “Your Honor has denied him bail, so he’s already serving a prison sentence, in effect. I daresay that’s not what the legislature had in mind when they built the state prison.”
“I’ll not hear any reargument on the denial of bail,” said the judge angrily.
“I’m not rearguing bail,” Lincoln replied calmly, “but rather explaining the sense of a special term. We’re due to lodge here overnight anyway on the journey home. I expect it would delay our return to Springfield only by a single day in the end.”
“One less day with Mrs. Thomas,” the judge muttered to himself in a tone unmistakably suggesting this was an argument in Lincoln’s favor.
“Your Honor—” Prickett began, but the judge cut him off, saying, “And you’re certain you’ll be ready, Lincoln? If I’m going to put Prickett to his proof on that day, I won’t want to hear you need still more time.”
Lincoln leaned back to where I sat. “Could you do it for me, Speed?” he whispered. “Interview the crew and find witnesses who might be helpful for Bingham? You’re already planning to go back on the ship. I can’t—I’m going to be tied up with the circuit.”
When I hesitated, he added, “If you’re not sure, let’s keep the case on the regular schedule and try it next April. Bingham can manage to last out six months in prison. And the judge is right—if he’s convicted, he’ll be glad to have had those six months.”
The image of the planter Jones as I’d encountered him in the ship’s salon flashed into my mind. I had failed one man my age, of similar circumstances—failed to keep him safe from the depredations of the monte and perhaps hastened his untimely death. Now the life of a second young man hung in the balance. Despite our different upbringings, Bingham, too, was a young man trying to make his own mark on the world. I thought about his foul cell, with the walls covered by water drops that would surely freeze before long. He deserved a better fate than shivering through the winter in an ice-coated cell.
“Take the special term,” I said. “I’ll find your witnesses, one way or another.”