boat made a circle and eased in toward the dock. It had a full load of passengers with both decks crowded, and we sat in the sun until most of the people were off. Two rangers met us on the pier. Koko told them she was looking for Luke Robinson, and we were directed inside the fort, where we found a uniformed man giving the tour.
What remained of Fort Sumter was the outer wall, and under it the shadowy gun rooms with vintage cannons, dark passages that went into black places under the wall, and the brick ruins of the officers’ quarters. Running down the length of the old parade ground was a black battery, a fort within a fort that was obviously of a different era. The ranger was explaining it as we came in. It was called Battery Huger, built as part of the coastal defense system during the Spanish American War. Today it housed the museum, rest rooms, and a small living space for him and his wife. Nearby were the remains of a small-arms magazine that had exploded in 1863, killing eleven men and wounding forty, leaving the wall still blackened and leaning from the force of it.
We waited through the tour, about twenty minutes, then the crowd was sent off to explore on its own. Koko approached the ranger, a lanky man in his thirties with a grand mustache.
“Mr. Robinson?”
“Yes, ma’am, at your service.”
Koko introduced us. “I was told you might know about the time Richard Burton spent in Charleston.”
“Oh, wow, where’d you hear that?”
“In town, at the Library Society.”
“I didn’t know librarians talked about people’s private research projects.”
“I’m a librarian myself. I promised her it wouldn’t go any further without your consent. We’re looking for proof that Burton was here in May of 1860.“
“Good luck. You’re chasing a real will-o‘-the-wisp. We haven’t found a single thing you can take to the bank.”
“You seem to believe it anyway.”
“Whatever I believe, it’s just my own opinion—mine and Libby’s. She’s my wife.”
“Would you mind telling us why you believe it?”
He laughed lightly. “How much time you got? Never mind, I know when the boat leaves. It’s just not something I can answer in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“Come on upstairs.”
We climbed a narrow staircase to the upper level of the battery. There, in the smallest imaginable living space—a bed, a bookcase, a microwave oven, a table, two chairs, a small dresser and a closet, all in one tiny room—we met his wife. She was dark-haired and pretty in a crisp uniform, with a ranger hat in her hand, as if she had been about to go out. Instinctively my eyes scanned their books and found all the Burton biographies on the top shelf.
“Libby, this is Ms. Bujak and Mr. Janeway. They’re interested in Burton.“
She brightened at once and we had to go through it all again: how we got their names, what we hoped to find. It turned out that Libby had been the instigator of their Burton research, and only later had her enthusiasm spread to her husband. She was like a pixie, warm and giving, immediately likable. She said, “Sit down, stay awhile,” and we all laughed. Outside, people were already moving back toward the dock. Our time was short.
They insisted that we take the chairs. Libby sat cross-legged on the floor and Luke leaned against the bookcase. “I’ve been interested in Burton all my life,” she said. “Even when I was a child I thought he was the world’s most romantic figure. It was only by accident that I heard he’d been here.”
“How’d you hear that?” Koko said.
“There’s a Burton club here.”
“You mean like a fan club for a dead man?”
“You could call it that. There are Burton clubs all over the world. That’s one of the first things I did when we got assigned here, I went to the Burton club and we got friendly with some of the people. You know how it is: there are always a few in any group who have offbeat ideas. Most of it’s folklore, theory, hot air. There was one old man in the Burton club named Rulon Whaley who was just like that. Very loud and opinionated, but there was so much energy in him that he made me listen. He’d been fascinated by the Burton myth for years. Rulon not only believed Burton had been here but that he spied on us for England. He was determined to prove it but he never did. He died this year.”
“Do you know where he got that idea?”
“Heard it from another old gent long ago, I think. Once he got something in his head, he was almost impossible to defeat.”
Most of the talk that followed was historical rehash, things we all knew. Koko and Libby talked, the ranger and I watched. I especially watched Libby. A certain tone had come into her voice. A look I had seen many times had come into her eyes. As a cop I called it the knows-more-than-she’s-telling look. Koko had missed it because she had spent her life answering questions and I had spent mine asking them.
I asked one now. “Did you ever learn who the other man was?”
Libby shook her head. “He died years ago, so it always seemed rather hopeless.”
