Unholy Fire (34 page)

“If that proves to be true, I will have him shot myself!” General Hooker came back hotly.

“That won't be necessary, General. We will be arresting him shortly. Was he a guest at the party?”

“There were several esteemed members of the House and Senate there that night,” he said, with a facetious grin. “Laird was one of them.”

“Where was the party held, General?”

“I cannot tell you that with any specificity. I remember that the house overlooked a pond. That is all I can remember about it.”

“We need to know the exact location, General. The girl may have been murdered there.”

“Of course. Well, Major Bannister can certainly tell you … he arranged the details … no, he can't, I'm afraid,” he said. “Seems he accidentally broke his jaw on the way down here … You can ask Sloat. He was there, too.”

The thought of the toadlike little staff colonel enjoying Amelie's body filled me with a another rush of anger. As I struggled to control it, the windows suddenly began vibrating in their frames, and I felt the floor tremble under my feet. A moment later we heard the first tremendous roar of a massive artillery barrage, followed by a succession of detonations farther south. The door to the hallway swung open, and Colonel Sloat strode into the room.

“We're attacking, sir,” he called out over the din.

“And so it begins,” said General Hooker.

“A wire from General Halleck in Washington,” said Sloat, handing him an envelope.

General Hooker tore it open and looked at the telegraphed message before crumpling it in disgust.

“The battle hasn't even been fought yet, and Old Brains Halleck is already maneuvering to escape responsibility for the impending disaster.”

He stopped to pick up a pair of leather gauntlets from his field chest and started toward the door.

“Please forgive those ramblings of mine, Colonel Burdette,” he said, over the cannonade. “I don't mean to sound callous to the matter you're investigating, but a few hours from now thousands of young men will lie dead across that river and most of them will be wearing blue. If I had been allowed to cross the Rappahannock three weeks ago, we might very well have been in Richmond by now. The fortunes of war, perhaps, but a terrible waste nevertheless.”

Amelie stood up from her chair, and he headed straight for her.

“I wish I had time for you now, little one,” he said, “but I have to go and kill some Rebels first.”

As he leaned over to kiss her on the mouth, she turned her head, and the kiss landed awkwardly on her cheek. Her arms remained rigidly straight.

Stepping away, the general began pulling on his gauntlets. As he passed me on his way to the door, he seemed to remember something, and stopped. In the manner of a kindly father dispensing advice to his son, he leaned close and whispered, “If you get a chance, you should try her, Kit. I meant what I said. She is the best I've ever had.”

I swung at him then, the blow glancing off the side of his handsome jaw. It sent him staggering back against the upholstered settee. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Colonel Sloat grab his service revolver from its holster. Before he could bring it to bear, Val had plucked the gun out of his hand as if it were a toy.

“I will have you court-martialed!” Sloat screamed at me.

As General Hooker rubbed his jaw with his gauntleted hand, a look of sudden revelation registered in his eyes.

“No, you won't, Tom,” he said, grinning ruefully at me. “The young man just happens to be in love.”

Val handed Colonel Sloat his revolver back.

“Remember what I once told you, Kit,” said the general, as he disappeared through the door. “Be a Michelangelo.”

Val slowly shook his head at me.

“Brilliant,” he said.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

The house sat on a tree-covered knoll overlooking a small brackish pond filled with water lilies and marsh grass. It was modeled after an English manor home; with mock battlements, Gothic windows, and a low-pitched slate roof. Three stories high, its exterior brick walls were covered with denuded vines of Virginia creeper.

It had taken us almost an hour to find it. Hundreds of army vehicles were clogging the roads leading to the river, and Val was forced to use a maze of unmarked farm lanes to follow the directions Colonel Sloat had reluctantly provided to him. Through the long ride, I would look up and see Amelie staring at me, her eyes reflecting continued awe at the thought that I had actually thrown a punch at one of the commanding generals of the army.

At one point, we were stopped at a small country crossroads while the driver asked directions of a local farmer. Out of Amelie's earshot, Val whispered, “Our primary mission must continue to be the gathering of evidence against Hawkinshield and his manifold conspiracies. Solving this murder will almost certainly help to accomplish that task. If we're fortunate, there will be something to aid our cause in the place of their drunken bacchanal.”

The furious cannonade from both Union and Confederate guns continued unabated as we slowly threaded our way through the federal positions. By then the fog had lifted, and whenever we traveled across a patch of higher ground, I could look across the river and see a vast pall of black smoke rising high in the sky over Fredericksburg. Sunk in gloom over my conflicted feelings toward Amelie, I only knew that we had arrived at the party house when Val poked me in the ribs and growled, “Look there.”

Our open carriage was winding up a narrow drive toward a knoll dotted with evergreens. As we emerged at the top, I saw that the front door of the house was yawing open at an odd angle. From the dark aperture, two federal soldiers came scuttling out with an immense grandfather clock between their outstretched arms. Seeing us coming, they began running toward the closest line of trees, the clock making loud clanging noises with each step they took.

“We are too late,” said Val.

I fired my revolver into the air, and two more deserters came slithering out through one of the downstairs windows. They ran toward the far side of the knoll and down toward the pond.

Approaching the open doorway, I could see that most of the windows had been smashed out from the inside. Family possessions, including furniture and clothing, lay strewn on the ground beneath the shattered frames.

Inside, the house was a scene of wanton destruction. The marauding soldiers had not been content with stealing everything of value. They had enjoyed ransacking it too. The acrid smell of urine assailed my nostrils as soon as we stepped into the high-ceilinged great hall that took up most of the first floor. A stone fireplace dominated the room, and flames were licking out from the burning furniture that had been stuffed into its enormous hearth.

A wide staircase led up to an intricately carved balcony that overlooked the great hall. It also opened onto the second-floor bedrooms. A smaller set of stairs led to more rooms on the third level. Amelie gazed at the debris covering the floor and shuddered. Wrapping her cloak more tightly around her shoulders, she moved closer to the fire.

Muttering a string of imprecations, Val began to systematically crisscross the room like a huge mastiff searching for a lost scent. He spent less than ten minutes in the great hall, before slowly heading up the staircase to the balcony. An Oriental carpet runner extended across its entire length. His attention was briefly focused on some stains he found beneath the edge of the railing. From there, he moved into the second-floor bedrooms, apparently finding nothing that aroused his interest.

It was only when he entered one of the smaller rooms on the third floor that he became visibly excited. To me it appeared no different from the rooms we had already searched. Most of the furniture had been tossed out through the smashed window. A clutter of broken debris covered the floor, including a cracked chamber pot and the head of a bisque doll.

Val went straight to the window and began minutely scrutinizing its shattered frame. From there, he moved onto the sill, and then the floor beneath it. Standing up, he leaned so far out the window that simple gravity should have caused him to fall the twenty feet to the ground.

When I took hold of his uniform coat, however, he shook me off. With an agility I did not suspect he had, Val lowered himself out of the window, and then crawled slowly down the creeper vines until he reached the ground. After rooting among the rhododendron bushes that grew at the base of the wall, he meandered across the lawn toward the tree line. A few minutes later, he was back in the room with Amelie in tow.

“This was Miss Hagel's room, wasn't it?” he said, as if already knowing it to be fact.

“Yes,” she replied. “We were each given a room to change into our party clothes and then later … to entertain the guests. This was hers.”

Her eyes found mine for a moment, and then returned to the floor.

“She was murdered here,” said Val, without further preamble.

After six months of serving under him, I no longer showed my amazement at his startling deductions. To relieve my own growing tension, I looked at him diffidently and said, “My own conclusions, precisely.”

Ignoring me, he said, “The murderer was not a guest at the party. And he also has the strength of a circus acrobat.”

“How could you know these things?” she said.

“Because he didn't enter the house through the front door. He came through this window, and he left the same way,” Val replied. “From the dried pool of bile at the base of the windowsill, I know that she was strangled to death in this room. The angle of the scraped indentations of his boots on the husks of the vines confirms that he was carrying her on his way down.”

“Why did no one notice her disappearance?” I asked.

“I can only assume that it occurred at a point in the festivities when no one cared,” he said, already heading through the door and down the hall.

“This part of the investigation will have to wait,” he said, when we were back in the carriage. “I must go back and issue the warrant for Congressman Hawkinshield's arrest before he discovers that some of his rats have deserted ship.”

By the time we again approached General Hathaway's headquarters, the army's attack had been underway for more than an hour. Our artillery was still maintaining a constant barrage against its targets across the river. I was wondering if our troops had broken through when Amelie suddenly leaned forward and exclaimed, “Les cartes de visites.”

I looked at Val. His confusion was as evident as my own. She had to repeat the words twice before we grasped what she was trying to say.

“Cartes de visites,” or photographic calling cards, had been the rage of Washington since early in the war. People had flocked to the studios of photographers like Matthew Brady to have their images taken and then have them printed on the backs of calling cards. Soldiers would send them to their loved ones at home. I had my own image taken shortly before Ball's Bluff.

“What about them?” said Val.

“Anya collected cartes de visites,” replied Amelie. “She asked for one from every man she slept with. She always carried them with her to impress her friends.”

“Where did she keep the cards?” I asked.

“In her traveling valise.”

Our carriage was just coming through the entrance columns to Sam's headquarters. Val turned to me and said, “It is probably a fruitless quest, but I would like you and Miss Devereaux to go back to that house. If you can find the cards, one of them might provide us with information that will strengthen our case against Hawkinshield, particularly if he is blackmailing federal officers to help accomplish his purposes. In the meantime, Sam and I will arrest him if he hasn't already left for Washington.”

We dropped Val at the entrance to the mansion and headed back to the party house. On the way I tried to focus on what he had told us about Anya's killer. Perhaps, it was my own jealousy, but the first person I thought of who met the physical requirements was Major Bannister. He was certainly strong enough to have carried her down the vines. The theory fell apart, however, with the recognition that since he was a guest at the party, there was no reason for him to have entered the house through the window.

As we rode back, it became obvious that the battle wasn't going according to plan. Far over on the left of the Union line, we came to a crossroads that was clogged with troops trying to move in three different directions at once. To my astonishment, the largest body of soldiers, two full divisions of ten thousand men in four columns, was marching away from the river. A staff colonel galloped up on a white horse and sat fuming as the endless line of soldiers trooped by.

“Franklin's got twenty thousand men over here still waiting to cross, and no one knows which way they are supposed to go!” he railed in exasperation.

The ransacked house was deserted when we arrived the second time. The fire in the great hall had burned down to ashes. Standing amidst the wreckage, I tried to imagine the house as it was on the night of the party, with a roaring fire illuminating the faces of the guests. I felt surrounded by their ghosts—spectral images of General Hooker, Mavis Bannister, Dan Sickles, Colonel Sloat, Hawkinshield, and all the others, including Anya Hagel. An image of Amelie, a vision of loveliness in her party dress, came into my mind. She was standing in the great hall, surrounded by male suitors. Unbidden, an obscene tableau invaded my brain. I fought to dispel it.

“How many cards did Anya have?” I asked over the wailing of the wind.

“I don't know,” said Amelie. “But she kept them wrapped in a red silk ribbon.”

I asked her to describe the travel valise that Anya had brought with her on the night of the party, and we made a careful search for it, room by room. Amelie finally found the bag lying amidst a jumble of other objects on the floor of the dining room. It had been slashed open with a knife and was empty. We went upstairs to Anya's room and went through all the articles that littered the floor. Amelie couldn't identify any of them as having belonged to her.