[Continuing chapter ten]
The word came in early evening. Grant, thinking that his guess had been incorrect, was getting ready for the depressing walk back to his rooms when a quiet knock on his office door announced the arrival of one of the legation servants.
This was no Irishman; Grant had been cultivating the negro staff for several days now, and it was a gardener who stood in his doorway when Grant opened the door. “It’s happening like you said it would, Cap’n,” the man said with a sly grin. “Wagon’s just pulled up to the back gate, and they putting the boy in the back, wrapped up.”
“Thank you, Isaiah,” he said. “Remember, this is just between you and me.”
“’Course, Cap’n,” Isaiah said. “It was fun. Thanks for askin’ me to help.”
Grant hurried, as quietly as possible, to an office on the third floor. It was, ironically, enough, Major Brown’s office, and it provided a splendid prospect of the rear of the big house. Grant reached the window just in time to see a canvas tarpaulin being stretched over a carpet-wrapped bundle laid in the back of a wagon. The bundle was the right shape and size for a man, but it didn’t move. Surely they haven’t killed him, Grant thought. I couldn’t keep silent if they have. On second thought, he decided, it was more likely they’d drugged Patton. He was much less dangerous to everyone alive than he was dead.
When the wagon set out, Grant grabbed Isaiah –- who was hovering outside the door –- and sent him to follow the spies and their captive. Then, having noted the direction the wagon had taken after making its first turn, he set out himself to try to determine where they were going. He was still sure they weren’t leaving town.
* * * *
It only made sense to search the brothels and bars late in the evening. Stewart reminded himself of this, and tried to believe it, as he furtively felt in his coat pocket for the small revolver he'd bought that afternoon. Late night was prime business time for both types of establishment, and if their mystery woman was indeed in the line of work Stewart suspected, now was when he should have his best chance to find her. Somehow, he didn't find the line of thought all that reassuring.
True to her word, Pauline had made inquiries, as best she could, into the possible identity of the blonde. Unfortunately, she'd been too successful. She'd presented him with a list of a dozen possible candidates and their places of employment, from which he'd been able to eliminate just one: a woman named Hopping Hannah who, true to her name, had only one leg.
Now they were riding north from Gravier and the theater, the four of them settled uncomfortably into Cleburne's small carriage. "Most of these women work on Dauphine Street in the old quarter," Pauline said as the wheels clacked over the cobbles. "I'd much rather search Dauphine first anyway. If we have to go into the Swamp to get your friend, we're going to need the army. The watch won't go there even in force."
"And the Swamp is much less exciting than it used to be," Marie-Anne said. "In my grand-pere's day, when the riverboat men ruled the Swamp, they took a half-dozen bodies out every morning."
"I'm in full agreement with Miss Martin," Cleburne said. "And I'm thinking the same holds true for Corduroy Alley, Stewart. If we have to go in there, you're probably going to have to bring this little incident to the attention of the authorities."
"Not until I absolutely have to," Stewart said. At least, he thought, one aspect of this evening's work wasn't going to trouble him: Cleburne and Pauline seemed to have come to some sort of accommodation. One less thing to worry about, he thought, means that much more attention I can pay to the question of finding that woman.
Dauphine Street was crowded with revelers, moving with varying degrees of sophistication and sobriety between the establishments that lined the cobbled streets. Stewart felt a little less apprehensive once the carriage was moving—however slowly—amongst these people. The likelihood of their being attacked decreased as the size of the crowd around them increased.
The nature of the crowd confused him; most of the men he could see were well-dressed, and the voices he heard spoke with the accents of the English upper classes. As with every other time he'd been out on New Orleans's streets late at night, he found it hard to reconcile those people, and their flamboyant interest in embarrassing acts, with the sort of rigidly polite behavior he'd grown to expect from the English. "But this isn't England, my captain," Pauline said with a gentle laugh when he mentioned the hypocrisy of the revelers. "New Orleans changes people."
Once they started their door-to-door search, Stewart was surprised to find the madams of the brothels more than eager to help. They seemed proud of their businesses, and concerned that any action by one of their employees might harm their reputations—and, by extension, their trade. The description he was able to offer, however, wasn't sufficiently detailed to allow anyone to attach an identity to the mysterious blonde.
Until they reached their fourth brothel—still on the first block of Dauphine inside the old quarter. "Sounds to me like you're describing Kathleen," the madam said. "She worked for me until a few weeks ago. And don't let that little wretch tell you that she quit, either. I fired her for stealing."
One of the girls, it turned out, had heard from her erstwhile colleague and was able to provide them with an address for Kathleen, whose last name nobody remembered save that it was Irish—"O'Something," the madam offered. The building they were sent to turned out to be on the edge of the Swamp, a dilapidated wooden structure that seemed to be falling in on itself. In the faint light of the newly risen moon, the structure looked like the menacing embodiment of evil in one of Mr. Poe's stories. Yet just a block away was a prosperous neighborhood where Cleburne was able to leave his carriage with, as he put it, "only a mild amount of worry."
Stewart lit a lantern and gave it to Pauline. "I'm probably going to want to keep my hands free," he said.
His new revolver was one of Colt's latest, with a short barrel that made it easy to conceal in a pocket. Stewart hadn't expected to find a Yankee weapon in a country with its own arms industry to support, but the people here seemed willing to trade with anyone and sell anything if there was a profit in it. Trying to steady his nerves, he made an elaborate check of the weapon, ensuring that the caps were properly seated and that the hammer rested on an empty chamber.
Cleburne stepped out of the carriage, pulling two large muzzle-loading pistols from holsters in front of the driver's seat. "Best do this quickly if we're going to do it at all."
They heard voices, some yelling, some crying, some making sounds that lifted the hair on the back of Stewart's neck. But they saw no one as they walked back to the block in which Kathleen supposedly lived. "You're the soldier," Cleburne said as they stood at the bottom of a rickety wooden staircase that was perilously attached to the side of the building. "You go first."
"Perhaps you should wait down here," Stewart said to Pauline. "This might not be safe."
"And who will light your way?" she asked. Her voice wobbled slightly, and her phrasing seemed brittle, as though she knew what was happening and was trying too hard to compensate. "I will come with you."
"We should all come," Marie-Anne said. "I'm damned if I'm going to let you three leave me standing in the street."
Thumb on the hammer of his revolver, Stewart stepped onto the rotting boards of the staircase.
Of course she lives on the top floor, Stewart thought as they reached the third story. The rooms at the back of the house each had their own door, opening onto a verandah which seemed only slightly more stable than the stairs. A woman's voice—or a very young man's, he reminded himself—inquired very drunkenly what the hell was going on. He could hear Pauline just behind him, her shallow, rapid breathing reminding him of his men at Harper's Ferry when the Federals first appeared on the other side of the cornfield. He should say something to reassure her. No; there was no time.
The woman's door was closed, but when Stewart touched the knob to try turning it, the door swung inward with a slight groan. She should have that door fixed, Stewart thought as he stepped inside the room. The smell of mold was almost overpowering, and for a moment he had to move back onto the verandah to catch his breath without gagging. How does anyone live like this? he wondered. He listened for the sound of breathing and heard none. Their quarry was out, probably still working. Perhaps one of her neighbors knows where she is, Stewart thought.
Then Pauline, edging close to him in the doorway, sent a narrow shaft of light from her lantern into the room. Kathleen wasn't working. She wasn't asleep, either.
"Stay out here," Stewart said, taking the lantern from Pauline. The woman had been stabbed several times before her throat had been cut, and her out-of-fashion dress was now as much black with blood as it was lavender.
For a moment, Stewart felt outside himself, as though he was hovering above the scene and looking down on it. By rights he should be horrified. It was one thing to see the bodies of men killed in fighting for a just cause, or to see the corpses of the enemy. To see a dead woman, however, should have repulsed him. This wasn't supposed to happen to women. It wasn't civilized.
He could find no horror in him, though. What he felt was frustration that his search for Patton had once again come to nothing. It wasn't possible, he realized, to look on this sad, thin wreck and see a woman—see anything human, in fact. This was inanimate wreckage, nothing more.
"I'm thinking a Bowie knife did this," Cleburne said. "Those are big wounds. Which makes me suspect the same sorts who set on you earlier. The Irish in this city are fond enough of the Bowie."
"She served her purpose by luring Patton away from Beacon's," Stewart said. "After that, she was more of a liability than a help, so they made sure she wouldn't talk to anyone."
"My God." Stewart turned to see Pauline standing, arms limp by her sides, just behind Cleburne. "My God," she said again. "Who would—?" She looked at Stewart, her face pale but her expression surprisingly neutral. "I had to see," she said, in a quiet, sing-song voice. "I don't know why, but I had to see what this looks like." From the verandah came the faint sounds of Marie-Anne crying. "We have to find who did this," Pauline said, her fists clenched. "That's as important to me now as finding your friend. Nobody deserves to be used like this."
"I agree," Stewart said. "But—"
"But how do we find them?" Cleburne finished. "I see nothing in here that would give us any suggestion at all of who did this."
"And that's significant in itself," Pauline said. Her voice was firm again, and she waved her arm in a circle taking in the whole of the small room. "What do you see in here?"
"Nothing at all," Stewart said. "Just the mattress. Oh, and a box. Crate." He walked over to the corner to look at the crude wooden box. It had once held fruit or something; in the flickering light he could see stains on the slats that made up the bottom. Now it was empty. "Nothing in here, either," he said.
"And that doesn't make you suspicious?" Pauline came to him; he was aware of her presence at his side as she stared into the box. "I've never met a woman yet, no matter how poor, who didn't have something that mattered more to her than food or shelter. Why would the man who killed this woman want to take everything she owned?"
"Because what she owned could link him to her."
"I'll bet he gave her something, either as payment for betraying Captain Patton or as some sort of token. Women of that sort seem prone to demanding trinkets from the fancy-men who ruin their lives." Pauline's eyes were wide and dark, but she still seemed to have her wits about her. "I'll bet further," she said, "that since he couldn't see the object easily, this man just took everything in the room after killing her. There couldn't have been much to take," she added, gesturing at the bare walls and floor.
"But if we can assume that this man knew the woman well enough to want to hide any connection with her," Stewart said, "then we have to assume that someone, somewhere, saw the two of them together."
"I have no desire to be discovered here with this," Cleburne said, nodding at the body. "If we're going to discuss the problem further, I suggest we do it outside. Even better, let's do it at Maspero's, over a glass of wine."
Stewart lowered the flame in the lantern and walked to the door. "Let's go back to that brothel," he said.
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