A Marked Man

The Lieutenant drew off the writing-mitts he had been wearing, donned stouter gloves, and took a cloak from the peg on the wall. He opened the room’s other door, to admit men’s voices and a renewed fug of smoke from the cubbyhole beyond, and called, “Sergeant Muldoon? Please take Mrs. Adams’s things. This way, m’am, Mr. Thaxter.”

“Might I ask the Provost Marshal’s reasoning, in treating this matter as a military one?” Thaxter’s breath puffed white as they passed a window, turned a corner down a hall that seemed to have been converted into a laundry-room, wood-store, and nursery for the ragged little camp children who ran to and fro underfoot like cocky rats. “As I understand the accusation, it rests upon the presumption that the crime was a crime of passion: a young man in love shouting threats at the older man who offered insult to a girl.”

“That is one way of looking at it,” agreed Coldstone. “But one seldom finds that passion retaining its heat for ten days, then lying in wait to do murder once the object of its ire came back into range again.”

“I suppose that depends on the degree of passion,” remarked Abigail, “and the magnitude of the ire.”

“As you say, m’am.” They turned down another corridor, and Coldstone returned the salute of the guard who stood at attention next to a tiny brazier and stingy fire just beyond the corner of a short corridor. “But if the young man is a member of an organization whose stated purpose is to encourage disobedience to the Crown and the victim a servant of the Crown in lawful pursuit of information about that organization, then the crime becomes not passion but treason. And as such, it enters the domain of military law.”

They descended a few steps to a sort of anteroom, stacked in its corners with trunks and barrels: Flour? Apples? It was impossible to tell by the smell because even in the cold, the room stank like a privy, and from the door at one side came the desultory murmur of men’s voices, and now and then, the soft clank of chain.

“I had no idea the Boston Grenadiers encouraged disobedience to the Crown,” said Abigail. “And here I thought their stated purpose was to wear handsome uniforms and foregather in the Bunch of Grapes on Saturday afternoons!” She stepped back as Coldstone took the torch from one of the wall-brackets that burned close to the other locked door, trying to keep from shivering not only with the cold, but with the smell of hopelessness in this place, the sense of trapped despair. “And whatever the criminal’s intent, if Sir Jonathan’s body was found first thing Sunday morning by the Governor’s stable hands, it would follow that he was killed sometime late Saturday night. While Mr. Knox may not be able to prove himself Alibi at that time, I doubt that you or I or indeed the working half of the population of Boston could do so, either.”

“No, indeed, Mrs. Adams.” Coldstone held the torch aloft for the guard, who had followed them in from the corridor, to shift the heavy bar that closed the second, nearer door, and to find and turn the iron key. “But though Mr. Knox was arrested on the presumption of a crime of passion alone, yesterday afternoon an eyewitness came forward who saw him emerging from Governor’s Alley at shortly after three o’clock that morning, only hours before the body was found. Please excuse me, m’am.”

He stepped through the door; Abigail heard him say, “Mr. Knox?” within, and saw the flare of the torchlight on the unplastered brick walls. The room had not, to judge by the judas in the door, been completely dark before. Both it and the common cell across the vestibule appeared to have windows, for which she thanked Heaven even as she glanced in alarm at Thaxter, then in startled enquiry at Sergeant Muldoon. That young man—whom John had once described as a mountain walking about on legs—returned her look with a grimace—I haven’t the faintest idea, Mrs. A—and shook his head, even as Coldstone reemerged from the cell, and signed them with a bow to precede him inside.

Henry Knox was sitting on the low cot that was the cell’s single item of furniture—the single object that the tiny chamber was capable of containing, in fact. There wasn’t even a latrine-bucket, only a hole in the brickwork of the floor from which noxious vapors emerged to make the whole room reek of sewage. Harry rose at once and held out his hands to Abigail, saying, “My dear Mrs. Adams, please forgive me for getting myself into a situation that obliges you to come here—and thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

As his plump, powerful hands gripped hers he glanced across at the three red-coated soldiers still grouped in the cell door, and went on, “And I swear to you, m’am, I didn’t actually get myself into this situation at all! I don’t know what witness this officer is talking about. I was in bed and asleep, as I’ve told these gentlemen any number of times.” His blue gray eyes met Abigail’s urgently as he said this, and she nodded, congratulating him silently on his good sense. Though any number of the Sons of Liberty would be perfectly happy to corroborate any tale Harry wished to concoct, Abigail could only shudder at the thought of the logistics necessary to coordinate a convincing story.

Much better to follow Aristotle and stick with the plausible that could not be proven, rather than come to ruin pursuing firmer proof that ultimately wouldn’t hold up.

“Never mind that for the moment, Cousin Harry.”

He started a little at the claim of kinship but nodded in his turn.

“We’ve brought you food—please don’t tell me they’re feeding you what the troopers get, knowing some of the contractors for it—and blankets—”

Muldoon brought the basket forward, and Harry gathered the blankets to his bosom with the fervor of a mother reunited with her child. Harry Knox was a young man comfortably padded by nature, like a somewhat rotund whale, but the cold in the cell was fearful. Had he not been taken on his way to church, as Sam had said, and thus wearing his greatcoat and gloves, Abigail reflected with an uneasy glance at the single filthy blanket on the insalubrious cot, he probably would have frozen in the night as surely as his purported victim.

“I’ve also brought you a book,” she added, turning the basket a little so that her own body, and Thaxter’s, interposed for a moment between its contents and Coldstone. As she opened the volume of Herodotus that she’d brought, she slipped the unaddressed note from Lucy between its pages. Harry met her eyes again, startled, then colored slightly in the torchlight.

“Thank you, m’am—Cousin Abigail,” he remembered to add. “That is of more worth to me than all the rest put together.” His gloved hands closed briefly around hers again. Then he straightened and turned back to Coldstone. “But as to this man who says he saw me, it is simply not true. I despise the Governor and his friends and wouldn’t go near his house on a wager, much less at three o’clock in the morning. Who was this man?”

Coldstone’s voice was dry as withered grass. “His name is Millward Wingate; he lives in Lindal’s Lane. Last night was clear, though extremely cold as it has been these two weeks, and the moon set late. Mr. Wingate claims that he was passing the lane called Governor’s Alley at three, having been sent to the Governor’s house by his master to claim a wallet that his master had left there at the ball. He says he recognized you clearly—”

“That isn’t true!”

“Moreover,” Coldstone went on, “he says that he found on the ground when you had passed a red and yellow scarf, knit of silk and wool—”

Harry’s mouth fell open with shock.

“Have you such a scarf?”

“I—Yes. But—”

Into his silence, Abigail inquired, “And who is Mr. Wingate’s master?”

Without change of expression, the Lieutenant replied, “Thomas Fluckner. I will add,” he added, “that I personally attach less significance to this evidence than does Colonel Leslie, who considers it damning.”

“Oh, that’s good!” said Abigail hotly. “That’s very good! You establish Admiralty Courts in Halifax because you claim not to trust Massachusetts witnesses, yet when a Massachusetts man speaks against someone you wish to convict, then you’re perfectly ready to believe him!”

“Let us begin our discussion by defining precisely who is meant by ‘you,’ Mrs. Adams.” Coldstone bowed. “I have established no courts because it lies beyond my jurisdiction, as Assistant Provost Marshal of the Regiment, to do so, whether I wanted them or not. And if I, as Assistant Provost Marshal, have a crisis of trust concerning the testimony of Massachusetts witnesses, perhaps it comes from hearing so very many of them swearing to events that I personally know to be untrue. May I?” He gestured toward the blanket. “I’m sure Mrs. Adams will be more comfortable sitting down, and I will not answer for the state of her dress once she sits on that bed—”

“Oh, of course! Absolutely!” Harry unfolded one of the blankets, and together he and the officer spread it over the cot.

As he conducted Abigail to sit, Coldstone continued, “Personally , I consider Mr. Knox as likely, or as unlikely, to have murdered Sir Jonathan as I did before this helpful employee of Mr. Fluckner’s was—ah—moved to come forward. I have little data for any suppositions at the moment, but I prefer to begin any