31 Bond Street. Ellen Horan
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“But that’s been the nature of your partnership all along. I suppose you two will always disagree.”
“No—we shan’t disagree again, because I am no longer with the firm.” Clinton slumped back in the armchair, as if overwhelmed by the morning’s events. “I have quit, or perhaps it was James that fired me.”
She let out a gasp. “Henry, you are not serious? It came to that?”
“It did. But believe me, it is for the best. I was too comfortable there. I was not doing good work, and I was becoming something of a clown in the office—an affable, but righteous, defender of the oppressed. James was not happy working with a criminal lawyer who defended anyone without a substantial merchant’s bankbook. So I shall strike out on my own. I didn’t plan for it to happen this way, but it is for the best.”
“But what about the Burdell murder? How can you keep on the case? What will you do?” Elisabeth spoke softly, bewildered. He had just sacrificed his job and a large salary and a lesser wife would lash out, or even cry. She had a look on her face now that he had seen before—concerned, but ready to listen. When they had first met he would tell her a story about defending a hardened criminal, with all of its gruesome details, and she would be moved by his passion for securing the rights of both the innocent and the guilty. She would listen quietly, letting him ramble on, until he realized that he had piqued her intellectual curiosity, and she was mulling over the legal arguments, her mind leaping to the best conclusion.
Now, he sensed an opening, and he ran with it. “Darling, this case is a runaway train. It’s a runaway train to the gallows. Everyone who has been inside 31 Bond Street in the few days since the murder—Coroner Connery, the District Attorney, the Mayor, the Chief of Police—have a vested interest in pointing the finger at Emma Cunningham. They’ve found the perfect scapegoat in a bedroom upstairs. It’s as if they had commissioned a newspaper artist to draw up a portrait of a fictional murderess, and pinned her name to it. They’ve captured Emma Cunningham in a large frame and pasted the word guilty at the bottom. They’ll pass the illustration off to the papers, all the while hoping that mob justice will finish the job.”
“But what if she actually did it? You barely had a chance to interview her. Henry, what if you are defending evil?”
“I only interviewed her for a short period, but she is a woman not unlike yourself. She is a woman whose home was turned upside down during a circumstance of violence. I saw her terror at that upheaval. Regardless of her feelings for the murdered man, I saw that her surroundings were her greatest security. A woman does not desecrate her own home. Why would she commit this violence if it put her children at jeopardy and brought about everything she feared most?”
Elisabeth dropped a moccasin from her lap, and she sat, bewildered. “You really intend to keep on it?”
“I intend to. I intend to get an office, small as it may be, and prepare a defense, and take the case to trial. It will be difficult, but I believe that I am up to the task. Perhaps only I can do it. I will need money to float us for a while. The firm owes me money, and I’ll take a loan out against this house. But I promise you, darling; I will pay the loan back, every cent of it. You shall see.”
She closed her eyes for a minute. He could not tell if she was going to cry or lash out at him.
The cook appeared at the open door of the salon. Seeing them sitting so still, she cleared her throat and then rapped lightly against the doorjamb. Clinton swiveled around.
“Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, there’s a boy come round by the kitchen door. He comes from your office. He has some things for you.”
“A boy? Oh, yes. I’ll come down,” said Clinton. He stood up and slipped his stocking feet into the moccasins. He helped Elisabeth up, and they followed the cook downstairs where the boy, John, was standing just inside the kitchen door with a cardboard folder wrapped in string.
“John, my boy,” he said.
“I went to your office to find you, like you asked, sir, and they sent me here with a package,” the boy said, offering the document case.
“John, this is Mrs. Clinton, and this is our excellent cook, Mrs. Fullerton. As you see, between the two of them and these ovens, we have an unending source of shortbread.”
Elisabeth pulled out a kitchen chair for the boy.
“John is the young lad who worked at 31 Bond Street,” Clinton explained, “and had the misfortune of finding his master’s body. He continues on as a houseboy under the Coroner’s regime.” Clinton undid the string on the package.
“Are you hungry?” asked Elisabeth. John gave a shy shrug, but she was already reaching for some kitchen flatware and a napkin. “Mrs. Fullerton, pull him off a piece of the beef. And serve him some vegetables if they are ready.” Clinton unwrapped the parcel and looked over the papers.
“James certainly has not wasted time. This is the formal dissolution of the partnership.”
Elisabeth glanced at him as the cook placed a slab of roast beef on John’s plate and served up some roasted carrots and a potato. The boy began to eat the food hungrily.
“I’ll give you a basket to take with you,” she said. “Are they feeding you enough there, at the inquest?” Elisabeth asked John, concerned.
“I think his meals were scarce before, and now he’s just scraping by,” said Clinton, placing the legal papers on the edge of a cupboard. John tried awkwardly to slice the beef, which was very rare, and he chewed it with difficulty.
“Be careful swallowing now, if you’re not used to red meat,” said Elisabeth. She began to cut his meat for him in small pieces. “Henry, do you remember Thayer?” she asked.
“That young lawyer, fresh out of Columbia?”
“Yes, the fellow who came to dinner with his wife. They were going to have a baby; Thayer, wasn’t it?”
“Barnaby Thayer. Why do you ask?”
“He will do the work of ten James Armstrongs,” Elisabeth said. “He is bright and eager and has trial experience. I was very impressed by him.” Clinton was always amazed by how her mind worked. She had scarcely absorbed the news and she was jumping past him, already staffing.
“Mrs. Fullerton,” continued Elisabeth, “Mr. Clinton is the head of a new law office handling the Bond Street murder,” she said.
“My word!” said the cook, turning around from the stove with wide eyes. “The world will be watching this one.”
“If you’re going to be placing bets, keep in mind, we are the underdogs,” said Clinton, putting his arm around Elisabeth and squeezing her tightly. But the worry was not gone from her eyes, and he was terrified of disappointing her. He would go to the bank in the morning for the loan. There would be a slow reduction of niceties, of the things she was accustomed to, like flowers and chocolates and jewelry he brought home as a surprise, and their trips to Hastings in the summer months, where she grew a profusion of roses that rippled along trellises around the cottage.
“You are a courageous woman to be married to me, Elisabeth Clinton Clinton.”
“Brave or foolish, it is the way I want it,” she said back to him.
“Let’s hope our roof holds out. With a new mortgage, that nasty leak will have to wait.” He had been planning to hire a workman to make repairs to the roof of the townhouse after the winter thaw.
“If the roof fails, we’ll live under the stars.”
September 1856, New York City
Emma sat toward the back of Taylor’s, a ladies saloon, facing the plate glass, watching the men assemble on the street like black figurines,