Unholy Fire (20 page)

“That was a very brave thing to do. You could have just walked away,” said Val.

“I have a daughter, too,” said Mr. Beecham.

“Do you think you could identify the soldier?” I asked.

“I never saw his face clearly,” he said. “I did see his outline against the snow. I can describe his size … his walk, if that would be helpful. And there are one or two other points.”

There was a knock on the kitchen door. One of the provost's guards entered the room and handed Val a message. After reading it, he leaned toward me and whispered excitedly, “It's from Sam. They have taken Major Duval. He is in Sam's office right now.”

Standing up, Val said, “I'm sorry to interrupt our talk, Mr. Beecham. You have been very helpful, but there is another matter that we must address immediately.”

I followed Mr. Beecham's eyes as he glanced toward the window. The crowd of angry soldiers beyond the post-and-rail fence had doubled in the time since I had last looked. I mentioned it to Val as we headed outside.

The day was raw and bleak, with ominous black clouds racing across the sky. Just above the horizon, I could see the hazy outline of the previous night's sliver of moon. As we walked toward our coach, one of the men in the crowd yelled, “Give us them bastuds, Colonel! We know what to do with them!”

“They are not guilty of any crime,” called out Val. “They simply discovered the body.”

“So
you
say,” came back the same voice.

Val looked hard at the man, and then went straight to the sergeant in command of the sentries around the building.

“I'm ordering you to find your lieutenant. Tell him that I want a full squad to be posted around this building,” he said, “armed and with bayonets. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The two Negroes inside are very important witnesses, and I don't want these idiots trying to take matters into their own hands.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “I understand.”

Val took a moment to examine the door at the front entrance. It looked stout and solid.

“See what you can find to reinforce the downstairs windows,” he said. “We will be back in less than an hour.”

“It will be done, Colonel,” said the sergeant, saluting him as we boarded the coach.

“Bigotry is by far the ugliest of man's sins,” Val said, as we rode in the open coach to General Hathaway's headquarters.

The captured inspector was already sitting in General Hathaway's office when we arrived at the mansion house. Sam was seated behind his desk, drumming his fingers in obvious frustration. Billy Osceola was standing at the window, looking across the river at the Confederate positions on the heights above Fredericksburg.

“Meet Major Duval of the War Department's Inspection Bureau,” said Sam.

He was no longer wearing his gold-braided uniform, and his carefully cultivated imperial moustache drooped forlornly below his chin. The brown civilian suit he had on was heavily spattered with dried mud.

“He was taken while trying to board a supply ship at Aquia Creek,” said Sam. “After he gave our men a false name, they were smart enough to search him and found his real papers inside his boot. At that point he asked to be taken to General Nevins's headquarters.”

The man glanced up at Val and me and gave us an obsequious smile.

“I have been trying to tell the general that I was ordered to report back to Washington right away,” he said, in a pronounced French accent.

“Major Duval has refused to answer any of my questions about the defective gun carriages,” said Sam.

“I must again ask you to send me to General Nevins,” repeated Major Duval. “He will vouchsafe my honor in every way.”

“I don't care if Montgomery Meigs vouches for you,” said Sam, with rising anger in his voice. “I am ordering you to tell me who paid you to pass muster on those gun carriages.”

Major Duval gave him another shrug.

Val and Sam took turns asking him questions that would help us to identify the defective gun carriages. In response, Major Duval kept replying that he didn't know. Every few minutes, he asked for a message to be sent to General Nevins.

Behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, Sam's eyes had narrowed to steely slits. Val stood up from his chair near the fire and stretched his massive frame.

“Frankly, I'm not sure if Major Duval understands his position,” he said, grinning pleasantly. “Sam, you say that when he was taken at Aquia Creek, he gave a false name before his identity papers were found in his boot. What are we to conclude from those actions?”

“That he was obviously deserting his post,” I said.

“I had no intention of deserting,” Major Duval came right back. “I was reporting back to headquarters in Washington.”

“What is the penalty for desertion?” asked Val casually.

Sam slowly opened the drawer of his desk and removed a Colt revolver.

“By the powers vested in me by the provost marshal general,” he said, placing it on his lap, “I find that you are guilty of the charge of desertion in the face of the enemy.”

“You cannot be serious,” cried the inspector, as Sam began rolling his wheelchair toward him. Billy Osceola moved up behind the French officer's chair and placed his hands on the man's shoulders.

“You cannot do this,” cried Major Duval. “I demand that you take me to General Nevins.”

“You've had your chance,” responded Sam, as the wheelchair drew closer.

“You cannot do this,” he shouted again, as Billy gripped his arms more tightly.

“The punishment is death,” said Sam, with glacial calm. “My sentence will be carried out immediately.”

As Sam reached the inspector's chair, he lifted the Colt from his lap. From the look on his face, I fully believed that he was going to execute the man on the spot. Seeing the grin on Val's face, I relaxed.

“Mon Dieu … non,” cried the Frenchman, sending a spray of spittle into the air.

His eyes darted from Val to Sam and back again.

Sam placed the barrel of the revolver against Major Duval's temple.

“Tell us what we need to know, and you will live,” said Val. He stood up and took several paces away from the chair.

From the corner of his eye, Major Duval saw him moving out of the line of fire.

“I would be forfeiting my life!” he suddenly cried out.

“Your life is already forfeit,” said Sam, thumbing back the hammer with a loud click.

Major Duval rocked forward, dragging Billy with him.

“Wait … please wait … I tell you,” he cried out, his English no longer faultless. “Is in shipping documents. They show you where bad carriages were sent.”

“We already surmised that,” said Val dismissively. “Unfortunately, the ones we have are forgeries.”

“But I know where real ones are!” he shrieked, the gun still at his head.

“Where?” demanded Val.

“At the Quartermaster General's Office in Washington.”

“No, they're not,” said Val. “We've already checked those records.”

“You see false ones,” cried Major Duval. “The real ones in different place. I can show you where.”

“It is too late for that, we need the information now,” said Val, his voice devoid of pity.

“You can wire Washington,” he begged. “I'll tell you where to find them.”

Sam eased back the hammer and lay the revolver down on his lap again.

“You are a fortunate man, Major Duval,” he said. “You had better not test my patience a second time.”

As Billy released his arms, Major Duval sank forward and vomited on the floor. Sam summoned two guards, who raised him to his feet, and escorted him out of the room. He staggered out as if drunk.

“Well done, Sam,” said Val.

General Hathaway grinned back at us.

“I suppose it helps if one has reached a level of anger where it actually becomes conceivable to pull the trigger,” he said with relief. After putting his glasses back on, he looked professorial again.

Val went to the desk and began writing in one of Sam's order books.

“After Major Duval gives you what we need, I would suggest that you send this wire to Ted Connell in my Washington office along with the instructions of where to find the shipping files,” said Val. “Connell is completely trustworthy. Once he has the documents in his possession, he should immediately head down here with them. There will be far too many routing manifests and bills of lading for him to wire them all. Once we have them here, we can match the shipping dates with the dates that each artillery unit received its carriages.”

Sam nodded and said, “I will order a packet boat to be waiting for him at the navy yard. With luck, we will have everything we need by late tonight.”

Val looked at his watch.

“In the meantime Kit and I have found an important witness to the murder of that young woman last night. We need to go back and interview him as quickly as possible.”

“Go on,” said Sam. “I'll take care of things here.”

The low dark clouds above us looked heavy with snow as we emerged from the mansion house and headed back in the open coach to the overseer's cottage. The ruts and fissures in the ancient farm lane were glazed with new ice, and the coach wheels made sounds like pistol shots as we cracked through them.

“Wake me up when we get there,” said Val, laying his head back against the rear cushion.

I gazed across the pure white landscape, thinking of the dead girl lying in the icehouse, and then of her sad-eyed companion at the party. Could she be a prostitute, too? It seemed impossible.

We overtook a cluster of soldiers who were striding quickly along at the edge of the lane. Oddly, none of them were carrying their rifles, which didn't make sense if they were on their way to sentry duty or to take part in a drill or exercise. Farther down the road, we passed another group of men headed in the same direction.

As the coach emerged from a stand of hardwoods into open country, I thought I heard the staccato sound of a full battle cry. Startled, I looked over at Val, but he was fast asleep, the collar of his greatcoat turned up against the biting wind.

Then we came over the brow of a hill and the entire vista opened up below us. In the distance I could see the roof of the overseer's cottage about a quarter of a mile away. But it was what lay between our coach and the cottage that caused me to bolt upright in amazement.

An ocean of blue uniforms filled the small valley ahead of us, turning the pristine, snow-covered fields on both sides of the lane into a vast landscape of slush and mud. Perhaps two thousand soldiers were already there, with more arriving every minute. The undulating mass nearest the cottage seemed to sway in the distance like a living thing. Val came awake beside me on the seat as a low roar that sounded like sea surf came back toward us on the wind.

He rubbed his sleepless, bloodshot eyes as he surveyed the scene in front of us.

“I have badly misjudged the speed at which those ugly rumors travel,” he said. “We must act quickly to avert a tragedy.”

Up ahead of us, the lane was completely choked with soldiers. The teamster reined his horses to a stop.

“We need to get through there, Corporal,” Val called up to him.

The teamster spit a slug of tobacco juice into the snow.

“Can't see how, Colonel,” he said, turning to face us. “Not without runnin' those men down in the road.”

For the first time since I had met him, Val looked at me with indecision in his eyes. The soldiers just ahead of us were acting like spectators who had arrived too late to buy tickets to a sporting event. Most were aimlessly milling about at the edge of the throng, while others cavorted among themselves, obviously enjoying the break from camp routine. Two bare-chested men were engaged in a good-natured wrestling match in the snow.

“I have an idea,” I said. “At least it's worth a try.”

I told the teamster to change places with me, and I took his place on the box. Grabbing the reins in my left hand, I removed my revolver from its holster and fired twice into the air. The men standing in the road all spun toward the sound. That's when I whipped the horses forward.

Seeing the coach rumbling toward them, they frantically scattered to each side of the roadway, leaving a narrow path for us to navigate through. Their shouts drew the attention of the men in front of them and we were soon moving at a slow trot down the lane. A little farther on, it was necessary for me to fire another round to set off the same reaction. I was glad to see that very few of the men in the crowd were armed.

It was while driving through that sea of tightly packed bodies that I saw the ugly truth at the heart of a mob. The faces of the men were flashing past me, each registering for an instant as we hurtled by. At first they were basically good faces, some curious and some angry, but open and honest. As we drew closer to the front of the throng, however, they became contorted masks, their eyes like livid gashes, one face after another transfigured with hate and loathing. Above the indecipherable din, one shriek rose toward me.

“I seen what they done to her!” he was screaming.

At the end of the lane, we broke through the last crush of men and into a large patch of open ground near the overseer's cottage. The sturdy post-and-rail fence that bordered the front yard of the property was the only physical barrier holding back the mob.

On the other side of the fence, a single rank of twenty armed guards from the Provost Marshal's Office stood shoulder to shoulder facing the massive throng, their bayonets fixed in front of them. A few feet behind them, a young lieutenant stood by himself in the yard, coolly smoking a cigarette. He held his presentation sword loosely in his right hand, its tip resting against his right shoulder.

Stepping down from the coach, Val turned to the teamster and said, “Take it around to the back of the house.”