Anything But Civil

Book 2: Hattie Davish Mystery

by Clara McKenna

Genres: Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

In this historical mystery from the “superb” Hattie Davish series, the traveling secretary discovers some Civil War grudges are still deadly twenty-five years on ( Library Journal). Hattie Davish is delighted to be ably assisting her wealthy employer, Sir Arthur Windom-Greene, an English scholar who is fascinated by the American Civil War and who is hard at work putting together a definitive biography of Union general Cornelius Starrett. Their research takes them to the small town of Galena, Illinois, where they quickly learn that the twenty-five years since the war’s end have done little to heal old wounds. Distrust and betrayal seem to linger in everyone’s minds—none more so than General Starrett’s own pompous son, Henry. Hattie is certain he has something to do with a string of bizarre incidents that have recently plagued the town—and her suspicions are bluntly confirmed when the much-disliked Henry turns up dead. Between her work for Sir Arthur, preparing for Christmas, and unscheduled visitors from her past, Hattie hardly has time to investigate a murder—but her curiosity prevails, and she soon finds herself lost in a labyrinth of secrets and deceit that leads to more questions than answers . . . The bestselling author of A Lack of Temperance continues her Victorian-era mystery series that Emily Brightwell calls “a welcome addition to the genre.”

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“Is he dead?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.

“Damn!”

Sir Arthur paused for a moment from his pacing, lifted his cigar again, and after a long inhale blew several rings of smoke, that floated toward me like dissipating halos. I sat poised with my finger on the brittle, yellow paper waiting for his word.

“Read me the details, Hattie.”

I glanced down to the paragraph detailing the officer’s demise and read, “ ‘The rebels have lately been playing a sharp game in front of a part of our line, near Appomattox. At this point there is a small creek in front of our works, across which they have built a dam, which has threatened to force back our picket line to a dangerous extent. To counteract this, Lieutenant Colonel Regan had devised works which he superintended personally. On visiting a part of the line, a rebel sharpshooter succeeded, after several attempts, in fatally wounding him, the ball entering the right side of the neck.’ ”

“What’s the date on that newspaper?”

“The fifteenth of November 1864,” I said. I made a few notes in my book, checked Lieutenant Colonel Regan from the list, and then returned the newspaper scrapbook to the shelf, lining it carefully up with the others.

“Bloody hell!” Sir Arthur plopped down into the leather sofa and slapped his knee sharply. “I would’ve bet a pint Regan was at Appomattox. No wonder we haven’t been able to track him down. The man’s dead. Well, check him off the list, Hattie. Ah, General Starrett.” The last remark Sir Arthur directed to the elderly gentleman who appeared in the doorway. I rose from my chair as Sir Arthur jumped up to meet the man, shaking his hand vigorously. The old man winced in pain. “Good to finally meet you, General.”

“Is it? Well, I’m glad to be of service.”

Despite the roaring fire and the almost-stifling heat of the room, General Cornelius Starrett was dressed in layers, evident from the bulk beneath the charcoal gray velvet smoking jacket he wore. His eyes, slightly sunken, were bright blue and his skin taut and pale. The only hair on his head was a wreath of dark gray wisps. He stood slightly bent at the waist, leaning on a cane. The general closed the door behind him and motioned for Sir Arthur to return to the comfort of the sofa, which he did, puffing again from his cigar.

Tap, tap, tap. His cane marked the old man’s slow, methodical shuffle as it connected with the bare wooden floor at the edge of the Persian area rug, centered in the middle of the room. I unconsciously leaned toward him, ready to assist him if he faltered.

“Oh, do sit down, young lady.” His voice, husky and deep, boomed, its vibrant command at odds with the feeble body that housed it. I immediately complied with the general’s order, dropping quickly onto the chair.

“My secretary and I were availing ourselves of your newspaper clippings while we waited,” Sir Arthur said without a hint of apology in his voice.

Both us had been at our wit’s end waiting. Sir Arthur had paced the floor and smoked two cigars. I’d straightened every book on the shelf, read a chapter from three separate intriguing books on gardening I’d come across, and counted to one hundred in French. If this interview, our third attempt, wasn’t pivotal to Sir Arthur’s work, we wouldn’t have waited. And then Sir Arthur had found the scrapbooks of newspaper clippings.

“You don’t mind, do you, old boy?” I winced at Sir Arthur’s familiarity, but the general, either slightly deaf or being diplomatic, appeared not to notice.

“Of course not, of course not, Sir Arthur. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To pick my brain? Why not my library as well? My wife, Lavinia, put those scrapbooks together. Hope they were useful.”

“I guess you could say so,” Sir Arthur said, reminded of his disappointment in finding Regan had died five months too early.

“You have quite a diverse collection,” I said. “I noticed a number of botanical books. Are you interested in botany, General?”

Sir Arthur frowned at me. I’d done it again. My job was to record the conversation and not divert it with my own questions. Yet I was forgetting this more and more lately.

What’s gotten into me?

“That’s Fred’s department. So you’ve had time to look around. Am I late for our appointment then?” the general asked, settling himself into an overstuffed leather chair across from Sir Arthur and setting his cane across his lap. “We did say two o’clock, didn’t we? What time is it now?” Instead of looking at the clock on the large marble fireplace mantel, General Starrett looked at me.

“Half past three, sir,” I said.

“Oh, well, nothing could be done.” He kneaded his bony thigh. The skin on his hand was almost transparent. “These legs aren’t worth a damn these days. Pardon my language, young lady.” I fought the urge to smile. Sir Arthur had sworn a dozen times while waiting without giving it a thought.

“Nothing is, the legs, the eyesight, the hearing (so it was deafness and not diplomacy after all), nothing. But don’t you worry, Sir Arthur,” the general said, tapping his head with his index finger. “Everything’s all right in here. Now, what is it you want to know?”

He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and retrieved a sterling silver engraved pocket cigar case. He opened the case, chose a cigar, ran the length of the cigar under his nose, and rolled it between his thumb and index finger before closing the case with a snap. He snipped the tip off the cigar.

“Don’t mind, do you, young lady?”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Sir Arthur replied, brandishing his own cigar. “Miss Davish is far too professional to object to a man’s guilty pleasures.” He tipped his head in my direction. “Working for me, she probably doesn’t even smell the smoke anymore. Do you, Hattie?”

“No, of course I don’t mind,” I said, avoiding the question of smoke. I could’ve enlightened them on the nights spent laundering my suits and dresses since starting again in Sir Arthur’s employ. But I enjoyed working for Sir Arthur, and wanting to stay in his employ, I instead glanced at the bison head mounted on the wall above the built-in bookcases across from me. Then, repressing the urge to inquire about the procurement of the bison and distract the old man further, I studied a pair of silver table lighters, both in the shape of a ship’s lantern, one with green-colored glass, the other with red, sitting on the table. The general reached for the one with the red glass.

The general chuckled, lit the cigar, and took a series of quick inhales, then coughed.

“My, my. A woman who doesn’t object to smoking. You’ve found a gem in this one, Sir Arthur. Now if only Adella would agree. My library or not, the girl won’t even enter the room if I’ve been smoking. And the irony is . . .” A laugh gurgled up from his chest and exploded through his nose, followed by a series of deep, dry hacking coughs. He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket, one silver star stitched into the corner, and held it tightly to his lips. “Damn, old age! Pardon my language, young lady, but I can’t even have a good laugh anymore without having a fit. Should’ve died on the battlefield.”

“What’s so ironic?” Sir Arthur said.

“That Adella, my granddaughter, objects to my smoking cigars, but has no objection to Frederick making them.” He dabbed the handkerchief at the corners of his lips and frowned, looking at the puzzled expression on our faces. “Oh, never mind,” he said gruffly. “What do you want to know?”

As Sir Arthur explained our presence and need, as he had countless times before, I pushed aside the brown velvet curtain and glanced out at the lengthening shadows, stretching across the leaf-strewn yard, the dusting of snow that had fallen this morning all but a memory.

We may not have a white Christmas after all, I thought.

The narrow Galena River, once twice as wide and thronging with Mississippi River steamboats, was still and silent, filmed over with a thin sheen of ice, bits of which reflected brightly in the afternoon sun. Somewhere out of sight a horse snorted.

“Now if you’re ready, General,” Sir Arthur said. “We’ll get started.” I let the curtain fall and turned back to the task at hand.

I dipped my pen in ink and marked in longhand at the top of the page: December 17, 1892, 3:38 p.m., Brigadier General Cornelius Starrett, Union Army of the Cumberland. I propped my notebook in my lap and prepared to take dictation.

“Eeee!” someone squealed. The chandelier bounced up and down, the glass prisms jingling, as something thumped on the floorboards above us.

“What the devil was that?” Sir Arthur exclaimed as we both stared up at the ceiling.

“Oh, never mind that.” General Starrett chuckled. “It’s just Adella’s children romping around upstairs. Now what were you saying?”

“As I said in my letter,” Sir Arthur began, glancing at the swaying chandelier, “I’m writing a book about the men at Appomattox Court House the day of April ninth, 1865, you, of course, being one. I’ve spent the better part of a month researching those men, only to find by chance that one of the officers on my list wasn’t even there. Before you begin your personal account, General Starrett, would you be able to recall those present?”

“Of course! Does a skunk stink? Seventeen soldiers were in the room,” the general said without hesitation, “us boys from Galena, some of Grant’s men, and of course Lee and his aide. I remember because it was my lucky number. I started out with the Seventeenth Illinois Infantry and married Lavinia on the seventeenth of June.” As General Starrett counted off the names on his fingers, I wrote them down to compare to our list later.


“Of course, men milled about in other parts of the house and in the yard then and over the next day or two; Lee’s man Longstreet was one of them. Chamberlain was in charge for the formal surrender. I don’t remember the others.” “Very good, thank you, General,” Sir Arthur said when I indicated with a nod that I had all the names. He beamed at the old man. We were finally getting the information Sir Arthur needed. “Now in your own words, please describe everything you can from that day.”

The general sat back a little more in his chair, his cigar dangling from his mouth. “Reveille was at 0500 hours,” the general began. “Grant was already up and complaining of a terrible headache—”

And that’s when the brawl erupted.

“Traitor!”

“You’re a swine, Henry!” another man bellowed.

The general, startled by the shouting, stopped mid-sentence, almost dropping his cigar.

“Copperhead! Traitor!” Henry answered.

Sir Arthur rushed over to the window as I drew back the curtain. A one-horse buggy, its wheels sliding sideways in the mud, stopped abruptly in the middle of the street. Its owner, a tall, lean man with white bushy eyebrows and a salt-and-pepper beard wearing a brown derby, stood up and shook a clenched fist at a man standing with his back to us on the edge of General Starrett’s lawn.

A single train engine, with one bar of the cowcatcher bent in, rumbled past less than twenty yards beyond the house. Its wheels clanking and its motor hissing made the men’s shouts inaudible until it chugged down the tracks that ran along the riverbank toward the depot and the railroad yard down the hill.

“—should’ve seen you and your rebel friends hang!” Henry, the tall, rotund man on the lawn, was shouting.

“You’re a relic, Henry!” the man in the buggy shouted. “The war ended over twenty-five years ago. You should’ve gone down with one your ships.”

“Y-y-you . . . I’ll,” Henry stammered with rage. “You’re gonna regret that, Jamison.”

“Ambrose, Ambrose!” the housekeeper cried from somewhere inside the house. “Get the mistress. Go get Mrs. Reynard. Now!”

The general, looking slightly disoriented, frowned and inched to the edge of his chair.

“What’s all the shouting?” he said. “What’s going on out there?” He pointed his cane toward the window and shook it as hard as his weak hands would allow. His face was red with anger. “Go see what all the fuss is about.” I knew the order wasn’t for Sir Arthur and so I rose to investigate.

“Spineless traitor!” Henry yelled.

“Bloody hell,” Sir Arthur said before I took more than two steps toward the door.

Someone screeched in pain. A neighborhood dog barked, another followed, and soon a cacophony of yelping and howling arose. I rushed back to the window in time to see the large man, Henry, punch the driver of the buggy, wrench him from his seat with both hands, and drag him onto the dirt. Fists and gravel flew as the two men grappled on the ground. The horse, spooked by the commotion, reared slightly and then bolted down the street, the bells strapped around his neck jingling a frantic tune. A red and blue plaid heavy wool lap blanket, twisted into one of the buggy’s wheels, flapped with every turn. The horse barely missed running over the men struggling in the street. Henry, having the upper hand, landed several calculated jabs to the other’s head before standing up, leaving the man lying groaning on the ground. He delivered one last kick to his victim’s side before brushing the dirt from the road off his coat, turning his back on his victim, and walking toward the house. I gasped.

Henry was Santa Claus, albeit slightly younger; his girth, his white beard and mustache, and the plump rosy cheeks matched the image of the rotund, jolly Saint Nick on the displays I’d seen lately in shop windows and in advertisements printed in the newspaper. He was dressed in a brown sealskin overcoat trimmed at the collar and the cuffs in black fur, a shaggy brown fur cap, and tall brown boots. And I’d watched him force a man from his carriage and pummel him senseless in the street.

I hope there aren’t children about, I thought.

“Is he okay?” I wondered aloud while watching people from neighboring homes converge and stare down on the prostrate figure in the street.

“I don’t know,” Sir Arthur said. Three men lifted the unconscious figure, his head flopping, and carried him away.

“At least the dogs have quieted down,” I said.

We turned away when the door to the library burst open and the culprit of the grisly scene stood in the doorway. Instead of the traditional sack over his back, this Saint Nick carried his gloves and a large valise in one hand and with the other pulled his hat off his head. A bleeding scratch above his left eye and a purple bruise on his left cheek marked where his victim had struck a blow. The housekeeper, Mrs. Becker, hovering behind him, the keys at her waist jingling inharmoniously, was unable to enter the room as long as he was blocking the door. He laughed heartily at her distress and again upon seeing the startled expressions on our faces. He dropped his valise down with a thud.

“Well, Merry Christmas, General!” Henry, the Santa Claus look-alike, declared. “Surprised to see me?”

“Come with me, you rabble-rouser,” Mrs. Becker said from the hallway. “How dare you burst in here uninvited.” She grabbed the man’s arm, attempting to pull him back toward the hall. She was a large, tall woman but no match for the stranger, and sensing her efforts were in vain, she appealed to the general.

“I’m so sorry, sir. He pushed right past me. I’ve sent Ambrose for the mistress. Should I send for the police?” Her comment elicited another hearty laugh from the intruder.

“The police? Now that’s a good one. I know it’s been a while but—”

Mrs. Becker reached beyond him and confiscated the man’s valise. “I don’t know who you think you are, but either you leave right now or I am calling the police.”

He ignored the housekeeper’s threats, and to my discomfort, the strange man took a few steps into the room toward me. He glanced at Sir Arthur, dismissing him with a turn of his head, and then grasped my hand and kissed it.

“My, my, my. You definitely keep better company than the last time I was here, General.”

I fought the desire to slap him, to shout at him, “Who do you think you are?” but instead tried pulling my hand away. He wouldn’t let go.

“It’s all right, Becker. No need to call the police,” General Starrett said, then turned to face the stranger. “Fighting Jamison in the street, Henry? What did you think you were doing, training for a prize fight with John L. Sullivan?” The general pushed himself up with the aid of his cane, his body shaking. The cost of restraining his anger was clearly written on his face. “You didn’t kill the man, did you?”

Saint Nick let go of my hand, shrugged out of his coat, and tossed it over the back of the sofa, a sleeve brushing against me. I immediately moved as far away from him as possible and rubbed my hand on my skirt. I looked up to see Sir Arthur scowling. Before I could apologize for my coarse behavior, he handed me his handkerchief, without taking his eyes off the new arrival.

“He deserved a beating,” Henry said in answer to the general. “You heard what he said to me.” Henry looked at the general and noticed, as I did, that the old man’s strength was leaving him, that he began to sway on his feet. Again I was concerned the old man might fall. “Well, maybe you didn’t hear it, but they did.” The stranger pointed in Sir Arthur and my direction. “Trust me, General. He deserved it.”

“I’ve heard it before, Henry. And Jamison’s right, you know. It was a long time ago. It’s not important anymore. Forget it, forget him.”

“Never,” Henry said.

“Well, my boy,” the general said as he eased back into his chair. “Life’s never boring when you’re around, I’ll give you that.” He chuckled under his breath, shaking his head as he did. His anger was gone. “No, never a dull moment. Though you could’ve come at a more opportune moment.”

I couldn’t agree more, I thought. We were finally getting some work done.

“General,” Sir Arthur said, “I’m afraid I am at a loss. Would you be so kind as to introduce me to your guest?” I could tell from Sir Arthur’s formal tone that he was more than at a loss; he was livid. His interview had been interrupted, his secretary had been imposed upon, he was being rudely ignored, and he felt the sting of the offense.

“Guest?” Henry said, pointing his finger at Sir Arthur. “You, sir, are the guest here and don’t forget it.” Sir Arthur struggled to maintain a calm countenance, but the hands he held behind his back were clenched. It took all my experience with impertinent-behaving employers not to allow my jaw to drop. No one spoke to Sir Arthur as this man had. No one.

“Pardon me?” Sir Arthur said. “I think you’ve forgotten yourself, sir.”

“I think it’s you who have forgotten your place, whatever your name is,” the man said, taking a step toward Sir Arthur. Henry was a good half foot taller. Images of him pounding on the head of the man outside flashed into my mind. Sir Arthur was a brilliant man, but he was no physical match for this perverse Santa Claus.

“I’m Sir Arthur Windom-Greene, sir. And you are?”

“Oh, so sorry, Sir Arthur, I’ve forgotten my manners,” General Starrett said. “Sir Arthur, this is Captain—”

Before he could finish, the sound of footsteps tripping rapidly down the staircase reached us. The captain turned as a woman in her thirties burst into the room. Dressed in a pale gray walking dress, a few tendrils of blond hair loose about her face, she breathed in effort after her flight down the stairs. She stood a moment in the doorway, a book, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, clutched to her chest. She looked at the stranger as if he were a ghost.

“Adella,” Henry said. He opened his arms and she, bursting into a radiant smile, tossed the book and flew into them.

“Daddy,” she squeaked like a child, “you’ve come home!”

“. . . Henry Starrett,” the general said, finishing his introduction, “my son.”

“Blast! What a damn nuisance,” Sir Arthur said, almost spitting the words. “We were finally making progress with the old boy. But bloody hell, what cheek that son of his had.”

We faced each other in Sir Arthur’s glass-front Landau carriage as it rumbled across the Spring Street Bridge toward the west side of the Galena River. Sir Arthur fiddled with his hat, a faded Civil War officer’s slouch hat that could’ve been blue once or could’ve always been a nondescript gray. In winter weather, I’d hoped he’d wear a fur cap. At his age (was he over sixty now?) and with little hair left to warm his head, he could easily succumb to the cold. I should’ve known he wouldn’t wear anything else.

“Bloody hell.” Sir Arthur yanked the hat over his eyes.

Since abruptly leaving the general’s house, Sir Arthur had fumed in silence. It was unsettling, seeing his anger stifled, but I knew Sir Arthur. He couldn’t hold it in for long. I was relieved when he finally spoke.

“And what did he call himself, Captain Starrett?” Sir Arthur said sarcastically. “I’ve never even heard of him. Have you?”

“No, I was as surprised as you were, sir,” I said. “I haven’t come across any mention of General Starrett having an officer for a son.” I pulled my hands out of my new fox fur muff and flipped the pages of my notebook until I came to my notes on General Starrett. “We knew he had a son and at least the one granddaughter, Adella. But I don’t see any references to his son being a Union officer.”

“He’s obviously an ass, but to be thorough we must find out more about him.” I’d worked with Sir Arthur enough to recognize when it was time to poise my pen for dictation. I also knew when he said “we” he meant me. I made a list of the questions Sir Arthur ticked off on his fingers.


“I want any official records you can find, Hattie,” Sir Arthur said. “I need to know if Captain Starrett should be included in the general’s biography.”

Sir Arthur, a millionaire several times over, was a self-taught scholar on the Civil War who had moved from London to Virginia almost ten years ago to “shake the hands of heroes, both dead and alive.” Although Sir Arthur’s preoccupation with our civil war changed my life, it also confounded me. Why would someone be obsessed with someone else’s history? I knew better than to ask.

“Yes, sir.”

“It may also require some below-stairs work on your part,” he said, his way of saying he wanted me to glean what I could about Captain Henry Starrett from the housekeeper, cook, and maids at the general’s home.

“Yes, sir.”

“And I want to know what you can learn by the time we meet with the general again, whenever that will be. Tomorrow, I hope.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Sir Arthur stared out the window. “Did you notice he didn’t mention Custer?”

“Yes, I did. You were right; Custer wasn’t in the room.”

“Yes, it never added up. But we’ll ask the general specifically about him before we cross Custer off our list. Good, we’re here.”

We were on “Quality Hill,” an area of opulent mansions dotting the high bluffs overlooking the wide, flat river valley below. The entire town was laid out before us, the bustling Main Street that ran parallel with the curving river at the base of the hill, Grant Park and the rows of houses on Park Avenue across the river on the eastern ridge, the train depots, the winding tracks that ran along both sides of the river and the river itself. The view was spectacular, one of the best in town.

Leave it to Sir Arthur to rent a house visible from any point in town, I thought as we entered his fully furnished, fully staffed three-story redbrick Federal-style home.

William Finch, a blond-haired man in his thirties, dressed in an evening tail coat, long, black tie, and formal striped pants, yawned as he held the door open for us, the mingled scent of coal, furniture polish, and gingerbread greeting us as we entered. William took Sir Arthur’s coat and hat. I usually came in through the back door, so I stood in the foyer with my coat and boa draped over my arm and my hat and muff in my hand, not sure what to do.

“Finch, take Hattie’s things,” Sir Arthur said. “We’ll be in my library until tea.”

“Sir,” Finch said, awkwardly taking my things, “the mail came a few minutes ago. Do you want me to bring it to you at tea?”

“No, bring it now,” Sir Arthur said.

“B-b-but,” the butler stammered, nearly throwing my things on a chair, “tea’s in a few minutes. I don’t think I’ll have time to bring the mail and then the tea.” I flinched at William’s ill-timed complaint. He obviously hadn’t worked long for Sir Arthur.

Sir Arthur pulled out a pocket watch. “It’s 3:54. You have six minutes until tea. Plenty of time.” He looked up directly at William. “If you . . .