Case of the Dixie Ghosts Page 2

  Dacers felt Van Trask’s journey from London to the port on the Mersey must be connected to the Union’s bugbear of hostile shipbuilding. He remembered how he spotted suspicious-looking men lurking around the Liverpool consulate, obviously noting the comings and goings of persons. They frequently displayed signs of transatlantic origins: a hat with a broader brim than usual in England; a pair of American square-toed boots, or evidence of addiction to chewing tobacco, an American habit almost unknown in Britain. Doubtless, these were agents of the Southern Confederacy, keeping an eye on their enemy’s nerve centre in Britain. He tried to recall the appearance of some of them, but could not remember any resembling the one the girl spoke of.

  “This man who was threatening your father, Miss Van Trask, what was he like? Did he have any distinguishing marks?” he asked. “I take it you’d know him again.”

  “I certainly should. He was tall and powerfully built, with a heavy moustache rather blond in colour, and there was one very noticeable thing about him—he had a blue mark, what I think is called a powder burn, near his right eye.”

  “You mean the kind of thing soldiers sometimes have, caused by the flashback of the breech of a musket when it’s aimed from the shoulder?”

  “Yes, he looked as if he might have been a soldier at some time, but not an officer. He smelt of whisky and his manner was disgustingly uncouth. That’s why his name of Fairfax didn’t ring true. A genuine Fairfax would certainly be a Southern officer, and they pride themselves on their gentlemanly courtesy. I have to concede that point, though I was opposed to their cause in the late war, but this man had nothing of the Southern officer about him.”

  Dacers smiled slightly. “Well observed, Miss Van Trask,” he praised. “London’s a big place and finding one man in it is no easy task, but at least this fellow has characteristics to mark him out in a crowd if you want me to find him and make him answer for his actions.”

  The girl sighed. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Dacers, I’m in a dilemma and scarcely know what I want. My greatest desire is to see my father free of this worry, and never to be bothered by an armed ruffian barging in on him again. I keep remembering how, on the day Mr. Lincoln was shot, one of the conspirators charged into the sickroom of Mr. Seward, the Union’s Secretary of State, and tried to kill him in his bed. I fear something of that kind, because these men have something against him and it must be something political. At the same time, I do not want Mr. Adams, or his son, Mr. Henry Adams, or any of the Embassy staff, to get wind of the affair. Nor does my father, who is fearful of anyone connected to the Embassy getting to know.”

  Roberta Van Trask sighed again, leaned forward and, after biting her lip as if in doubt about revealing something and dropping her tone yet lower, said: “You see, in the very strictest confidence, I fear my father is mixed up in something. Or, at least, unscrupulous people have entangled him in some intrigue. The Embassy must never know of it, nor the official British police. My father’s illness a couple of years ago weakened him considerably, and I worry that if this mysterious affair, whatever it is, creates a public scandal, it could even cause his death. I came to you because when I first met you, I formed the opinion that you are a truly honest and honourable man, and my father holds the same opinion. I feel you’re the one man in London who can help relieve my dreadful anxiety and, more importantly, my father’s troubles.”

  “I could never see Mr. Van Trask involved in intrigue, and certainly not in anything damaging to the United States,” Dacers said.

  She shook her head. “Mr. Dacers, you do not know Washington—especially the Washington of those years when civil war was raging. There were plots and counter-plots divided loyalties, spying, counter-spying, and every shade of treason. I remained there when my father was posted to England because I had a good position in the Treasury Department.

  “My father became ill in 1863 so, since my mother is dead, I resigned and came here to help in nursing him, but my years in Washington gave me an insight into much double-dealing and trickery. Civil war is a terrible thing. It seems to bring out the worst, even in people who are normally honest, loyal, and trustworthy.

  “America was a divided house, remember, and in such a place there are many people, and what they do and say are often not what they appear. It was easy to quite inadvertently make an enemy, and fall into some dangerous situation. I fear that something of the kind has happened to my father.”

  Septimus Dacers considered that point for a moment then said: “But he has not been in Washington for a long time.”

  “We hear that, since the death of Mr. Lincoln, things are even worse in Washington,” said Roberta Van Trask. “Chickens are coming home to roost and all kinds of revenge is being taken. New and often grotesque rumours are flying about, mostly concerning the actions of people during the war. One says high-ranking people in the North were profiteering through illegal trade with the rebel South; another says Mr. Lincoln’s assassin, through an elaborate plot, was not killed by soldiers after fleeing into Virginia and is alive somewhere in Europe. Yet another makes the unbelievable claim that the Northern Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, was in the plot to kill the President.”

  “So you think perhaps some new and damaging tale about your father has been concocted in the swamp of intrigue that is postwar Washington?” inquired Dacers.

  “Yes, and I worry that these men might continue to harass him to either his ruination or his death,” she said with a half-suppressed sob.

  “Miss Van Trask, on two occasions you referred to “these men”; does that mean there were others in this attack on your father besides the fellow calling himself Fairfax?”

  “Two others certainly accompanied him, but did not enter the house,” she said. “When he left my father after my intrusion, he ran for the street door and was pursued by our butler, who is elderly and not very agile. I attempted to follow too, but,” she indicated her wide hooped crinoline, “a woman simply cannot run in today’s fashions. He flung the door open and got clean away. There was a brougham, a closed carriage, waiting outside the house. At the reins was a man bundled up in heavy clothing and with his hat obscuring his face. Fairfax leapt into the carriage and there was a third man inside who helped him through the door. I caught only a brief glimpse of him before the driver whipped up the horse and they sped away, but I have a strange feeling that I’ve seen that third man before, a long time ago, but I can’t think where. He was small and, for a moment, he looked at me with notably glittering eyes. I had the impression that he was a hunchback.”

  “So,” Dacers mused, “we have your big man with a blond moustache and a powder burn who takes a drink of whisky; one who might be a hunchback, and a driver who, like most coachman in these winter days, looks like nothing but a bundle of clothing. If I locate these fellows, what I can do? You do not want the police involved, but I have no powers of arrest. I certainly want to help you but, at best, I could only warn them off with the threat of police action; after all, this so-called Fairfax did commit trespass and demonstrated threatening behaviour. But a warning might not be enough. A fellow who makes free with a Derringer pistol sounds like a desperate customer, and he might prove tenacious and show up again. There are a few haunts in London where I might find a lead on this crew. I’ll do what I can.”

  Roberta Van Trask gave him a hesitant smile. “If that is the best you can do, and it offers some hope of success, then please do it. I’ll be grateful for anything that might take this terrible burden off my father’s shoulders,” she said.

  “Very well, Miss Van Trask. Tell me, you arrived here unescorted. How did you travel?”

  “By cab. Normally, I would have my maid, Esther, accompany me, but I wanted to see you strictly in private. Although Esther is completely trustworthy, I did not want my father or anyone from the embassy to know I came to consult you.”

  “Then let me escort you as far as the cab stand at the corner of the square, and see you safely on your way. Not that I think you are a
young lady who is easily frightened, but our ugly friends could have been watching your home and might have followed you.”

  The American girl squared her shoulders and set her jaw decisively. “I assure you I am not easily frightened,” she declared firmly. “I’ll stand my ground against any threat to my father, but I’m obliged to you for your courtesy.”

  An admiring smile crossed Dacers’ usually grave face, and she noticed how boyish it suddenly made him appear.

  It was now fully dark outside and, after he had seen her safely off in a cab, Dacers paced homeward through the evening gloom thinking of the narrative he had heard. There was something deep and potentially dangerous in the happenings at the home of the American diplomat, and, only for the fact that police involvement might spark off the public scandal Roberta Van Trask feared, he would have liked to acquaint Twells with the matter.

  “It’s the sort of case old Amos would grab with both hands,” he muttered to himself. “I’m not at all sure where to begin or where it will take me, but a lady in distress must be helped, so some sort of start must be made.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  DARK PLACES, DARK DEEDS

  Dacers walked out early the following morning, after a night in which confused scraps of dreams containing pictures of Roberta Van Trask, various threatening men, and scenes from the war in America chased themselves through his slumbers. He breakfasted, then decided on a stroll to clear his head and think about the matter the American girl had placed before him the evening before.

  The fog had cleared and, as usual, the streets were alive early. Vehicles of all kinds, from brewery wagons to the light donkey carts of costermongers, and from rumbling, crowded omnibuses to more elegant carriages, crowded the roads. On the footways, throngs of clerks, charwomen, milliners, and brisk, impatient men of business, as usual, elbowed and shoved each other, hastening to get to work on time and showing the lack of neighbourly consideration, characteristic of London at rush hour. The sooty form of the sweep, trailed by the even sootier apparition of his boy, laden with brushes, moved among them; milkmen decanted the day’s supply of milk in the areas of Bloomsbury’s substantial houses, then bellowed the traditional: “Milk below!” for the benefit of the cook and kitchen maids. On a street corner, a policeman was trying to mediate between an irate pedestrian who claimed he had almost been run over and a carter who protested his innocence, with the shouts of all three mounting while a ragged old man, hoping to cadge a penny, wailed an almost unrecognisable hymn which set a stray dog howling in a similar morose tone.

  As Dacers turned into Russell Square, which was no more tranquil than anywhere else at that hour, old Setty Wilkins came to mind. Enigmatic old Setty was often worth consulting. There was no telling what might emerge from the aged man’s brimming vault of London knowledge, so Dacers turned his footsteps towards the Seven Dials.

  In that tangled and insalubrious region of London, he came to a short street hemmed in by rickety property, some of it half-timbered and dating from centuries before. Over the door of a tumbledown structure, a roughly lettered board announced: “Seth Wilkins, Practical Engraver.” Dacers approached the door over a surface of broken cobbles and stagnant puddles.

  Inside his shadow haunted workshop, Setty Wilkins lifted a small copper plate from an acid bath with metal tongs, shook off surplus acid, then pushed the end of his nose close to the plate, screwed up his eyes, and inspected the etching he had just completed. Setty was well-trained in his trade: in lines bitten into the metal was the neat depiction of a woman suspended from the hangman’s gallows. The old man gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  “That’ll be capital on a confession fakement come the next time some fair beauty dances the Paddington frisk on the gallows in front of Newgate,” he rumbled to himself. He meant the plate would produce an illustration for a totally spurious “last true confession” of the gallows’ victim, hawked through the bawling, brawling crowd that flocked to public hangings and made gala occasions of them. The “confession” would be what the criminal fraternity called a “fakement,” a piece of sheer fiction, produced for a pittance by some gin-ruined unfortunate employed by a printer of penny broadsheets.

  Ancient Setty Wilkins turned his hand to many shifts to get his living. These days, he was a good deal more legitimate than in years gone by, but it was said that he once risked the Newgate gallows himself by forging banknotes.

  The door of the workshop darkened, and Setty looked up to see the tall, lean form of Septimus Dacers entering.

  “Vy, Mr. Dacers, as ever was!” he greeted heartily. “I ’eard Dandy Jem nearly croaked you with the blade of his snickersnee, an’ now they’re makin’ an Australian farmer of ’im. Not before time. I allus said he didn’t have brains enough to keep clear of either the hangman or Botany Bay for long.” Small, wizened, and gnome-like, Setty was of indeterminate age, and his jargon, tellingly, was largely the criminal “cant” of the previous reign of King William IV, which, around 1830, was replaced by a new underworld language to baffle the “New Police,” which had just created by Sir Robert Peel. He had the reversed v’s and w’s of previous generations of Cockneys.

  The character of London was stamped all over him, and he possessed an almost uncanny knowledge of the city’s obscurest corners and of its myriad inhabitants. He cocked his head to one side and surveyed Dacers critically, then declared: “You ain’t lookin’ so bad arter a mill with Dandy Jem, an’ I ’opes you’re as good as I sees you.”

  “I’m quite well, Setty, and improving every day, thank you,” said Dacers.

  “Come, now, Mr. Dacers,” responded Setty with a change of tone, “you vants somethin’, othervise you vouldn’t be honourin’ me vith a wisit, vould you, old culley?”

  “You’re shrewd as ever, Setty,” grinned Dacers. “I’m looking for a hint or two.”

  “Not on behalf of the crushers, I ’opes,” said Setty, narrowing his eyes. Though he professed to be in a reformed condition, he still regarded the peelers as more a public menace than a benefit.

  “No, you may be sure the police are not involved.”

  “Good. Got to take care. A man never knows vots’s vot these days. So, if it’s information you’re arter, vot are you vontin’ to know?”

  “Where do Americans congregate in London?”

  “Vell, the American Church, Tottenham Court vay, if you means square-rigged, prim, an’ proper Americans—but, knowin’ your trade, I suppose you don’t. I expect it’s Americans more rough around the edges you mean.”

  “Two I can identify and there’s a third I can’t, a carriage driver who might not be an American. I don’t know how you do it, but you seem to know what’s going on all over London, though you hardly ever leave Seven Dials, you old rogue.”

  “There’s one gaff that’s always gathered a crew of different nationalities, Yankees included,” Setty Wilkins said. “The Blue Duck pub at Chandler’s Stairs beside the river, ’ard by Hungerford Bridge. It’s a pretty low boozing-den. Could be the place to try.”

  “Thanks, Setty, only this pair would object to being called Yankees,” Dacers replied.

  Setty Wilkins gave him a crooked grin. “So it’s got something to do vith the big rumpus in America and the bunch that fought the Yankees—the coves from Dixie, as I ’ear they calls it? I heard there was some of that sort lurkin’ around the Blue Duck.”

  “’Nuff said,” responded Dacers. “I suppose the place is at its liveliest at night?”

  “Of course, and it can be no end of a rough shop. So remember that wound you got off Dandy Jem. Watch your step, old culley.”

  * * * *

  Dacers left Setty’s lair and crossed the broken cobbles again, thinking of the old man’s parting observation, and a sudden cold logic took hold of his mind. Here he was, with a strapped-up knife wound and, while unarmed himself, was seeking one man known to go armed and two others whose potential for trouble was unknown. Why? To deliver a feeble message that they had best behave themsel
ves or the police would be informed. All at once, the whole project appeared ludicrous.

  He recalled Roberta Van Trask’s troubled face and the appeal in her eyes as she sought his help. It really was a matter for the regular police, but he had volunteered the limited assistance he could offer, hardly giving a thought to anything but the girl’s beauty and her distress. It was as if he had been mesmerised into it. Then he wondered if he was falling in love with Miss Van Trask.

  Dacers, ran his thoughts, Amos Twells had the measure of you when he called you an interfering busybody, and you certainly are a damned fool of a busybody who fancies himself a dashing knight in shining armour. You might be blundering into something that’ll end with you suffering much more than a swell mobsman’s knife wound.

  Then his inborn chivalry took hold of him as he recalled the way the girl squared her shoulders and displayed her determination to defend the reputation of her father. He believed Theodore Van Trask to be as honest and devoted a servant of his country as any man, and he was being wronged in some unspecified way. So what could an Englishman who abhorred the use of guns, and who did not own one himself, do but take her side—even if it meant recklessly going up against men with the famous transatlantic penchant for firearms?

  Consequently, when another February evening descended and river mists were creeping up from the malodourous Thames, he made his way to the vicinity of Hungerford Bridge and the Blue Duck tavern. Garbed to visit the hostelry described by Setty Wilkins as “no end of a rough shop,” he was in a working man’s suit of fustian with a muffler and a greasy woollen cap. The labourer’s obligatory short clay pipe drooped from his mouth.