A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court: The Mark Twain Mysteries #2. Peter J. Heck
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Robinson has a brother and a sister, both living here in New Orleans. The brother, Reynold Holt, is a war veteran, a brooding fellow with a limp. He was wounded and captured by the Federals at Chancellorsville, and spent six months in a military prison. Her sister Maria has literary inclinations; if you wanted to talk to the family, she might be the one to start with. She’s married to Percy Staunton, who’s a bit of a reckless fellow, although he comes of good family. I don’t know anything that would make any of them likely to kill Robinson. Of course, once we arrested the cook, we didn’t really go prying for evidence against any of them.”
“What about other enemies?” Mr. Cable asked. “Robinson was getting ready to run for mayor, or so say the papers. Who would have run against him? Whose share of the pie would have been smaller if he’d won?”
“Robinson was a Democrat, on the reform platform,” said the detective. “There’s been some noise about corruption in the city government in the last few months, and Robinson was one of the main agitators. So Mayor Fitzpatrick could be vulnerable, next election. That’s two years off, though, and Fitzpatrick could turn things around. He might be stronger than ever by then. Or Joe Shakspeare might make another run, and a lot of the reform Democrats would stick with him. Or some other candidate might have knocked Robinson out of the lead—maybe dug up a scandal or found a hot issue to beat him on. So he wasn’t guaranteed the nomination. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything in New Orleans politics, but nobody’s head is really on the block until ’96.”
“No reason to suspect anybody of killing off the opposition, in other words,” said Mr. Clemens. He’d gotten his pipe lit and was puffing away merrily. “But you probably didn’t look far enough to eliminate anybody there, either, did you?”
LeJeune gave a nod and a wry smile. “Not really. Like I said, once we had the cook in custody, the investigation pretty much stopped. So, where do you think you want to start?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of leads,” said Mr. Clemens, “but there’s no single area of suspicion strong enough to tell me I ought to concentrate on it alone.”
He paused, puffing on his pipe and wrinkling his brow in thought. Finally, he said, “Let’s go straight for the brass ring and see if we can prove or disprove the main argument all in one shot. The key to the whole case is Leonard Galloway. If I can satisfy myself once and for all whether he’s innocent—or guilty, if that’s how the cards fall—I know whether to stop right there or go looking for another killer. Can you get me a chance to talk to him?”
“I suspect so,” said the detective, standing up. “Let me go make a telephone call. I know a place around the corner where I can use the phone. I’ll have your answer before you’ve finished your pipe.”
4
“Do you really intend to embroil yourself in this murder case?” I asked Mr. Clemens. He was strolling at his usual leisurely pace (as I forced myself not to rush ahead) along Orleans Street, away from the river in the direction of the Parish Prison.
Detective LeJeune had arranged for my employer to visit the Parish Prison that afternoon, and to spend half an hour talking to a certain prisoner: Leonard Galloway, the cook accused of murdering John David Robinson. Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Clemens had accepted the invitation without hesitation.
Mr. Cable, obviously pleased at how quickly events were moving, offered to accompany us to see the prison. At that, Mr. Clemens shook his head. “No, George, I have to do this one by myself—well, I’ll want Wentworth to come along. But the point is for me to make up my own mind. It’ll be hard enough to keep the cook from saying what he thinks I want to hear, without having somebody there he’s known since he was a boy to complicate things. I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back.” Mr. Cable reluctantly admitted that Mr. Clemens’s objections were well-founded, and we left him and LeJeune sitting over their coffee.
“I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do, Wentworth,” said Mr. Clemens now. “George Cable believes that Galloway is an innocent man; it’s damned near an article of faith with him. But George has been away from New Orleans for ten years, and a man can change a lot in that much time, especially if you figure that the cook couldn’t have been much older than twenty then. And that’s ten years of being told over and over again that he’s less than a real man, and having his nose rubbed in it by every white man he meets.” We paused a moment at the corner of Bourbon Street as a fully laden beer wagon rumbled past, the big horses straining at the traces, headed for some saloon.
We crossed the dusty street and Mr. Clemens continued. “That’s why I don’t want to jump into the case just on Cable’s say-so, Wentworth. Is Leonard Galloway a convenient victim chosen to appease the public, or is he a poisoner? If he really is a murderer, and I lend my name to the battle to defend him, who does it help? It doesn’t help the blacks, it doesn’t help Cable, it doesn’t help the people of New Orleans, and it sure doesn’t help me. So I want to be sure I know what kind of man Galloway is, and the best way I know to decide that is to talk to him. I can tell more about a man in five minutes of talking to him, face-to-face, than in a year of hearing what other people say about him. So here’s a chance to talk to him and see what I can learn.
“Besides, this is as good a chance as I’ll ever have to get a look around the old Parish Prison. It’s a New Orleans landmark in a dismal sort of way, on the order of the Bastille. It dates from before I was born, and there are a lot of strange stories about it. They’ve finally decided to build a new prison up on Tulane Avenue, and tear the old one down. So this is probably my last chance to see the inside of the place. I imagine I’m unlikely to see it as an overnight guest, now that I’m supposedly an honest citizen.”
“I should hope not!” I said, shocked at the notion of my employer spending a night in prison. Perhaps respected authors of mature years were still imprisoned in Russia, or other barbaric places with no constitution, but I could not imagine Mr. Clemens being jailed. Well, perhaps it might have happened in the bygone era of debtor’s prisons—but hardly in these enlightened times.
We walked up Orleans Street to the corner of Tremé, where we found a grim-looking structure, three stories high and covering an entire city block. We presented ourselves at the entrance, where the policeman on duty instantly recognized “Mark Twain,” and waved us through the doors where many wretches undoubtedly met a much less congenial welcome and entered with far less hope of a timely exit than we experienced.
Even at first glance it was clear that the building sadly needed repair—better yet, replacement. One of the senior keepers, Mr. DeBusschere, appointed himself our guide and led us into the heart of the ancient dungeon.
Mr. DeBusschere was a thick, muscular man with a full white mustache and a clean-shaven head. He wore a blue uniform with a holstered pistol at the waist, along with a large ring of keys. He was obviously impressed at the chance to escort a world-famous author, and so he took us on a roundabout route, giving us a full commentary on all the sights and history of the Parish Prison, smiling broadly all the time, although the smile stopped short of his eyes. Mr. Clemens looked at everything with lively interest, and so I refrained from expressing my annoyance that we were not taken directly to see the cook.
Mr. DeBusschere put great emphasis on the lynching of the Italians accused of shooting the police chief a few years earlier; his theme appeared to be the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of the guards (himself prominent among them) to protect the prisoners. “Here’s Cell Number Two, where six of the Italians hid the night the lynch mob came,” he said. “We left the dagos free to run inside the prison, hoping they’d have a chance to save themselves, but the citizens followed them down that way into the courtyard—we’ll see that in a little while—and shot them down.”
I peered into the gloomy cell, lit by a single gas flame from the hall where we stood. Several prisoners stared back, with no sign of recognizing their distinguished visitor. “What a terrible place! It must be a very hotbed of vermin and disease,” I said.