“Belle of Mobile”
Antonio Roman Campos
FICTION
[Deposited in the City Archives, c. 1930]
Mobile, Alabama, in 1886 was a sight to behold. I appreciate, of course, that this place and time likely mean very little to many members of my current audience, and, in fact, the date is likely to precede the birth of several of my younger readers. I know, also, that those three or more decades of post-war years now popularly termed “Reconstruction” will become, and perhaps already are, ill-thumbed pages of the state history books resting between the end of that great “Domestic Conflict” and the beginning of what some have called the “Jazz Age”. In fact, if the members of my readership do recall anything about little old Mobile from the second half of the nineteenth century, it will probably only be fear and folklore more closely associated with that Conflict of which I spoke, and nothing of the end of the previous century at all.
You no doubt remember, for example, that old Yankee Admiral David Farragut from the Battle of Mobile Bay, who uttered that almost blasphemous phrase that has since come to dominate all popular notions about the city, “D—n the torpedoes; full speed ahead!” And, if you care to remember any local boys from the Conflict, they are sure to include Admiral Raphael Semmes, who has been called a “commerce raider” officially, and more appropriately a “pirate” of the Confederacy. You can go see his statue sometime down on Royal Street near the river, already turning verdigris with age, and garbed in an old naval tunic that, I suppose, makes him just about as foreign-looking and old-fashioned to you as King Hamlet’s ghost. But I digress.
Yes, the heroes and villains of the Civil War are already enshrined in the history books, I suppose, and it is right and proper that a nation as young as ours ought to have a few more skeletons in her closet and ghosts in her attic. The heroes and villains of the Reconstruction Period—for there were at least a few—are now passing into the grey steam of the past too, and this is fitting. More so than the residents of any other corner of the nation, we Southern folks love our mythology, and the sooner our ancestors step into the past, the sooner we can start making up legends and folksongs about them.
This is a legend, if you did not know it. I would have written it up as a folksong, I suppose, but, then again, I’m not that ambitious. It’s a true story too, if you can believe that. Much truth is legendary, and many legends are truths. I don’t know if that is a quote from somebody old and Roman, but, even if it isn’t, my momma used to say it, back before I moved to Mobile, and I always thought she was sage enough without speaking Latin. I moved to the city back in 1886, as I started to tell you before, and I suppose I had better get back to telling you about it now. But, we’ve already had some fun, now haven’t we, ruminating on the past?
Now, as I said from the start, Mobile, Alabama, in 1886 was quite a sight. The city, like so many old Southern towns, had a mixture of classical opulence and tropical rustication that made it feel at the same time ancient and mysterious. Here, you could find an entire forum of Greek and Roman revival columns and antique wrought-iron balconies, all hidden away behind creeping bayou vines and Spanish moss. Here, too, you could find both stately old gentlemen in their best linen suits, and fresh arrivals from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean beyond, bringing with them unique cultures and traditions spiced with rum and seared under the tropical sun. Mobile is, after all, a port city, and port cities, so far as I know, tend to be colored with the influences of distant lands and different cultures. I believe that, in this regard, Mobile may be likened to a gumbo not dissimilar from that which is New Orleans or Gulf Port or Pascagoula, with the key difference being that Mobile is a gumbo that has simmered in just the right size of pot, and so the flavors that have melted and boiled here have been permitted to form just the right combinations, without being watered down by one particular group or overpowered by one unwanted flavor. Thus, even in 1886, every crowded street in Mobile appeared wonderfully diverse and exciting. Beneath the branches of the town’s magnolias, between its white antebellum columns, and through its black iron gates, I knew that adventures could unfold—grander adventures than I might have ever dreamed at home in the little cabin in Mississippi, and more sinister ones to boot.
What brought me to Mobile was a job, working as a carriage-driver for a family called “Baudette.” Now, this is a very beautiful and established French-Creole name, which I actually believe means “donkey,” or more precisely “mule,” as in “stubborn as a…” I have this under good authority too, as it was the owner of this name who once told me about its origin, and I must admit that the translation is a fitting one given the singular character of its translator.
From what I have said so far, you might presume, as I did at first, that my new employer in Mobile would be some stocky, old Southern gentleman, set-in-his-ways. However, you’d be mistaken. It is true that, from my home near Natchez, I had answered a newspaper advertisement in the Gulf Coast Presbyterian Journal from one “Bill Baudette of Mobile;” I had corresponded with “Bill Baudette of Mobile” about the particulars of employment, and, hoping to impress my new boss, I even purchased a fine cigar on the ferryboat for “Bill Baudette of Mobile” as a greeting present. But, when I traveled to the gentleman’s beautiful Italianate home, Baudette Hall, and when I crossed the flowery gardens to ring the doorbell of the mansion, and, cigar in hand, when I asked the smiling maid for “Mr. William Baudette of Mobile,” all I received was a roaring laugh and the strange response, “Now, hush your mouth, brother. Do you want to commune with a dead man?”
“Why, what do you mean, sister?” I asked in response. “Ain’t this Baudette Hall? Says so on the sign right over yonder.”
The maid kept on smiling, “Why yes, this is Baudette Hall, House, Office, and everything else it says on that sign, but if you are looking for William Baudette, brother, I’ll have to give you directions down the street to the cemetery. He done breathed his last ‘most nine months ago.”
“Nine months?” I exclaimed, “Land’s sake! But I only answered his advert for a driver three weeks ago. Jumping Jehoshaphat, I was only corresponding with him the day before last!”
The maid stopped smiling and hummed like she knew what was the matter, “Mm-hmm,” quoth she, “and how was this correspondence signed, brother?”
“Why, Mr. Bill Baudette of Mobile,” I explained. “He said that he was a private detective, like Allan Pinkerton, and he needed someone who could drive him around town—and into the country, if need be—every day of the week, excluding the Sabbath. I’m a capable driver, so I wrote back in response to the clipping. My name is Jedidiah Took.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” nodded the maid, “my name is Mary Williams,” she curtseyed. “Now tell me, Mr. Took, did Bill Baudette actually sign her name Mr., because, if so, she must be about the prettiest—and most conniving—Mr. I have ever seen.”
“What exactly are you signifying, Miss Williams?” I questioned. “Have I somehow blundered? Who exactly is the Bill Baudette with whom I have an appointment?”
“I apologize for any unintended subterfuge, Mr. Took, but I am the Bill Baudette whom you are here to see.” Appearing in the doorway behind the maid, the woman who finally effected this introduction was, indeed, the prettiest Mr. I had ever seen. Gowned in an elegant peach-colored dress with white lace collar and cuffs, white lace gloves, and high-heeled shoes with little, peach bows on them, Bill Baudette carried her matching sunhat and parasol in her hands, and a large, woven purse dangled from her elbow. In response to my evident surprise, the mature lady, who was apparently my new master—or, rather, mistress—explained, “My given name, Mr. Took, is Belinda, but my daddy always called me Bill, on account of his wanting a boy to take over the family business. Instead, he got me to fulfill the same purpose. Lots of folks ‘round here call me Belle, but it’s all the same to me. Miss Baudette, I think, will do nicely.”
“Why,” I had to remind myself to breathe, “Why, sweet fancy Moses, Miss Baudette, that will do just fine.”
“What’s the matter, Mr. Took?” Miss Baudette asked as she stepped onto the sunny porch and began tying her hat atop her gorgeous yellow curls. “Haven’t you ever seen a female private detective before?”
“Why… why no, miss!” I shook my head slowly.
“Well, then I suppose I am still the only one in Alabama,” Miss Baudette beamed as she tapped me with the point of her parasol. Then, still regarding my dumbfounded expression, she added, “Is there something else, Mr. Took?”
I gulped, “I’ve rarely met a White woman who would give me the time of day, Miss Baudette,” I explained, “live alone call me Mr. Took.”
My new employer simpered, “Well, I guess that you didn’t know that I am a woman, and I didn’t know that you are Black, so we’re both a little bit surprised today, now aren’t we, but I don’t see a reason why these things should make any difference. When Life makes up its mind to give you a surprise, you shouldn’t question it, but just be appreciative; you never know who you’re going to get. That’s just what my daddy always said, and I never had a reason to doubt him.”
It was the best thing that “Bill” could have said at the moment, but I still felt like she had fibbed to me in her advertisement by holding back the truth. What would it be like working for a woman detective?
“Now, Mr. Took,” Miss Baudette continued, glancing at my carpetbags, “you will have plenty of time later to unpack your things in your new accommodation, but, just now, you have arrived at a perfect time to peacock your driving skills. Something unsavory has happened on Commerce Street over by the cargo docks, and I need to get there immediately.”
As I transferred my carpetbags to Miss Williams, my new employer directed me, “We will be taking the open dogcart from the stable out back; there are two chestnut mares named Susannah and Rosa-Lee. And Mr. Took,” she paused before I had a chance to slip around the corner of the house, “I hope you have a strong constitution. It would appear that a man has been killed!”
I gulped as I made my way to the horses. The fine-smelling cigar was still in my hand.
***
I hope you believe me when I tell you that I do have a pretty strong constitution, and yet it was not strong enough for what I beheld at Commerce Street that Monday morning. My first day on the job working for Miss Baudette saw me standing twenty paces from a corpse near Mobile Bay, waiting with the mares, as grumpy sailors shuffled past a long line of coal-belching riverboats.
“Well, lookie here at what the tide pulled in,” one of several uniformed coppers declared as he espied my new employer approaching the evident focus of some police attention. “Why, it’s Old Man Baudette’s daughter,” cackled the constable, “just in time to see us wrap things up, as per usual. Eh, boss?”
“Belle!” to my surprise, the commanding officer looked up from the body and actually waved his hat at Miss Baudette. This handsome fellow, who I supposed was a detective from his street clothes, seemed friendly enough at first, until I considered that he was not really waving howdy, but actually waving my employer away. “Belle, stand back!” he repeated, as his constable returned to work. “This is no sight for a young lady, and, besides, we have already recorded the incident, officially, as death by misadventure.”
“I am not just some young lady; I am a detective, Clifford, the same as you, and you would do well to remember that,” Miss Baudette claimed as the party to whom she directed her speech drew nearer.
“Come on Belle, we are hardly the same,” the policeman countered with sincerity, but then his voice became more facetious. “For example, I certainly don’t show up to work dressed like I am going to a jubilee ball!”
“Well, I don’t arrive smelling of cheap morning whiskey and chewing tobacco,” Miss Baudette returned. “But there are different strokes for different folks, I suppose.”
The policeman, who the others called Detective Caldwell, frowned. “Your tongue remains as sharp as a hatpin, Belle,” he said, “but your services are not required here on this otherwise fine morning; we have everything wrapped up and under control. There is really nothing to see here.”
Clearly, the detective’s statement was an untruth. Following my employer’s gaze, my curious eyes came to rest upon the body of a poor unfortunate soul that had so far remained concealed or half-concealed from view. Now that I beheld the gruesome thing, however, I found it so revolting that I was just about compelled to retch some sizable portion of my “strong constitution” into Mobile Bay. A man with a large, orange moustache had been more or less crushed by a huge metal sign advertising the drinking hall that he now lay before, and his plain white linen suit had become a scarlet-dyed linen suit at no extra charge. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was contorted something awful, as if mid-scream.
“I might call that something to see,” Miss Baudette noted as I said a prayer for the dead man—and tried to keep myself from retching. “I guess that the tavern’s proprietor could not have chosen a more appropriate name,” she continued, reading the title off the sign that had fallen, “Bullseye Saloon.”
“It is an unsightly business, I do declare,” the detective put his hands on his hips, “but, as I said, it was entirely accidental. There is nothing for you to investigate.”
Detective Caldwell spoke in response to Miss Baudette’s obvious attempt to read from his open notebook. At first, the lawman tried to conceal his annotations from her, but he could not seem to resist her sugary tone when she simpered, “Oh, come now, Clifford, won’t you just humor me a little bit?”
Then the officer sighed and read aloud, “We found the name and address of one Mr. Tyler Peele in the victim’s pocketbook. He was an employee of the Bullseye Saloon, and he was pronounced deceased by misadventure this morning around 5:30, when his body was discovered by longshoremen arriving at the wharf. Apparently, he was locking up the bar when a somewhat oxidized chain on the tavern’s signboard broke, and the heavy weight entered a trajectory that intercepted the victim’s torso.”
“Splat!” summarized Miss Baudette, making a face. “And you thoroughly checked the chain?” she wondered, again trying to read the lawman’s handwriting. “It looks pretty new, really; not too many patches of rust on it.”
While the detective sifted through pages in his notebook, Miss Baudette took it upon herself to bypass her associate and have a little look-see at the chain, “As a matter of fact, I don’t see any links here that are broken, Clifford, ‘cept for this one… and I’d say it’s been cut!”
One of the uniformed coppers turned around in surprise, “Cut? But that can’t be…”
“And yet it is,” came a whistle, as Miss Baudette pulled a sliver of cleanly separated chain-link from beneath the heavy signboard, “and a cut chain means…”
“Sweet fancy Moses, he was murdered!” I exclaimed, having overheard the whole conversation. For their part, Susannah and Rosa-Lee, the mares, nodded along.
“Splat!” Miss Baudette said again, making that same wincing face. She stood up and extended her gloved hand toward the detective. “Gentlemen,” she said, “my usual rate will apply—a pair of double-eagles per day, plus expenses, chargeable to the department.”
Detective Caldwell frowned as he accepted the fragment of chain-link from the lady’s gloved hand, “I’m still unconvinced it was murder, and you only get paid if you catch the culprit,” quoth he. “But I suppose you’ll stick ‘round the scene and find some more crucial details that my best constable missed?”
“No, no, not today,” Miss Baudette smiled as she waved her hand at the frowning copper, “and don’t be too hard on Jerry—this just isn’t shaping up to be his year.” She giggled as she returned to the dogcart.
“Hey, just where are you going all of a sudden?” the detective followed.
“Home, Miss Baudette?” I questioned as I climbed back onto my driving bench, equally surprised by the abrupt departure.
“Not quite yet,” my employer corrected with the knowing grin of a sphinx, directed toward both myself and the lawmen, “I would much rather have a bite to eat first. How do you feel about a hot plate of grits in the morning, Mr. Took? There is a dining-room on Joachim Street, and I have been meaning to try it out…”
“Joachim Street, miss? That’s quite a drive for grits!” I had studied the map of my new city enough to know the location, but I couldn’t understand how Miss Baudette could think of food while standing so near a corpse.
“Good grits are worth a drive,” my employer claimed, intimating some double meaning that was lost on me. But whether I understood her purposes or not, her wish was my command.
***
I couldn’t figure what was on Miss Baudette’s mind as I drove her past the beautiful fountain of Bienville Square and around to the intersection of Joachim Street and Conti Avenue. Sure enough, there was a little café on the streetcorner, tucked between a line of live oaks and a three-story boarding house. But, as I admitted to my new employer, “It sure doesn’t look like much from here.”
“Looks aren’t everything, Mr. Took,” Miss Baudette countered as she dismounted the dogcart and implored me to follow.
“That may be so,” I whispered as I tied the mares before the old hole-in-the-wall, “but they sure are a start!”
To my surprise, my mistress led me into the café and sat me down in a corner. The place was run by folks of my own Persuasion, and the few regulars were more surprised to see Miss Baudette there than myself. She instructed me to order anything I cared for from the menu, which I was only too glad to do, and then she began walking off toward the back of the dining-room.
“Where are you going, miss?” I wondered aloud as the lady gathered her skirts in her hands and stepped through a seldom-used back door.
“Never you mind,” she said at first, but then she changed her answer to, “I’m just powdering my nose, but be sure to give a signal if you see the detective come ‘round. Get me a cup of chickaree, too, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
I whistled again, wondering what I had gotten myself into, and then I commenced my order.
While I was sitting at the table, Miss Baudette was busy stealing her way up the café’s outdoor staircase and across the roof of the dining-room faster than a Mississippi polecat from Bayou Pierre. I realized this much only when I spotted her reflection in a street-puddle, opening an exterior window of the next-door boardinghouse and climbing inside. The private detective sure seemed spry in her petticoats, bustle, and corset, but I wondered how things would go for me if my employer was arrested during my first day on the job. What in creation was she doing up there? I shuddered to think of it, and I began watching the second-hand on my watch whirl around and around like a crazy person, so upset that I could barely even enjoy my cornbread, shrimp, grits, and chickaree.
Eventually, a police-wagon pulled by a sorry-looking grey nag wheeled around the corner with the detective and his constable arguing on its bench. Shooting up like a firecracker, I began whistling as loudly as I could, but this nervous signal only attracted the attention of the whole café, along with that of the two policemen to boot.
“Jumping Jehoshaphat, now I’ve done it!” I gulped as the copper narrowed his eyes at me. “Miss Baudette, I may as well tell you that the police have arrived,” I called innocently.
The peach-gowned investigator popped her head out of the window just in time to see Detective Caldwell cross his arms. “You certainly do know how to be discreet, now don’t you Mr. Took?” she laughingly called down from the boarding-house. “Well, you might as well come on up,” she added, addressing the policemen as well as myself, “I’ll go unlock Mr. Peele’s door down below.”
***
“I’ll admit that you almost had me, Belle—not stumped, of course, but confused,” Detective Caldwell shook his head as we all stood in the victim’s poorly-lit but well-furnished apartment. “If you had not mentioned Joachim Street, I might not have known that you read the victim’s address from my notepad!”
“Maybe I just wanted to throw you a bone, Clifford,” my employer grinned as she sorted through the pile of books and pamphlets that lay on the victim’s desk. “Sometimes it is more fun to play together.”
As I lingered in a corner, quiet as usual, I could see a little grin appear on the detective’s handsome countenance as my employer turned around. If the two of them were not currently an item, then they certainly had once been, I supposed, and the lawman’s covert attraction to my mistress was only matched by his overt—and rather overdone—incredulity towards her actions.
While the constable called Jerry O’Toole feebly poked about the bedroom of the small apartment, my employer searched high and low for anything that might tell of Mr. Peele’s friends, family, and acquaintances. She first checked the contents of his desk, and then about his fireplace, and then beneath his oriental carpet for any possible clue. However, it was Detective Caldwell who ultimately found something this time.
“It looks like Tyler Peele received several letters from someone up in Memphis,” he explained as he sifted through the contents of the victim’s mailbox. “They are all addressed To My Beloved Son, so they must be from his mother. Make a note of this address, Jerry—”
“They could just as well be from his father,” Miss Baudette offered, coming to the detective’s side before he could read off the location. “The handwriting looks more like a man’s—heavy and angular—and there is a picture of a bearded fellow on the wall, about the right age to be Mr. Peele’s daddy. But look at this—a little parcel that arrived yesterday with no return address! How peculiar; it appears Mr. Peele opened it and then carefully rewrapped the paper…”
Now all attention shifted from the detective’s letters and focused upon the mysterious package that my mistress held. It was a little, misshapen thing, sealed in brown butcher paper. Beside a cancelled stamp, an unidentifiable seal on the wrappings had been busted by the recipient.
Zealously, my mistress reached into the packet, but she was not immediately rewarded for her curiosity. Instead, Miss Baudette suddenly recoiled her hand with an “Ouch!” and almost dropped the bundle.
“What is it, Belle?” Detective Caldwell questioned, shouldering up to the lady.
“Some kind of darned straight-pin,” my mistress frowned, and then she dumped the contents of the package into a nearby brass tray.
“Sweet fancy Moses!” I cried instinctively as the contents hit the tray, and I backed up a pace with my felt driver’s cap in my hands. “It’s some kind of a hoodoo curse!”
Sure enough, a voodoo doll had landed on the tray, and it was not some cheap relic made of twine and sticks, either. Instead, the doll wore a sewn linen suit exactly matching that of Mr. Tyler Peele’s corpse, complete with bright red stain. The doll had a little orange moustache, too, that looked like it was made of human hair, and there was a pin impaled through its chest, upon which Miss Baudette had pricked herself. The feet of the doll were spun around backwards, so I did not doubt but that there was something evil in it, as this was the symbol for a kind of black magic called hoodoo, which was practiced along the swamps in the vicinity of my Mississippi home.
The coincidence of the spooky doll appearing in the man’s apartment hours after his mysterious demise was shocking, and Detective Caldwell was momentarily speechless. Miss Baudette, however, seemed unfazed. “There’s something else in this package,” she said, this time being more careful as she fished into the bag, “I think it’s an old daguerreotype photograph.”
The doll still gave me the jitters, but I put on a brave face for the sake of the others—and in order to appear more levelheaded than Jerry, who was now cowering by the door. Stepping closer to my employer, I could see that she held a silvery image in her hands. The photograph showed four men, including the victim, dressed in what looked like naval uniforms. The level horizon of the sea was visible behind them, and, most striking of all, the face of one of the four figures had been scratched out. No words appeared on the card except for the French phrase, La Vengeance, written in cursive capitals.
“Revenge,” Detective Caldwell translated, “is a common theme in the superstitions of the colored folks ‘round here.” He looked at me as he spoke, seeming to expect some further explanation.
“Yes sir,” I obliged, “the voodoo religion spread through maroon colonies back before the war, and now it is practiced by loads of people of all Persuasions. When a doll is made with a bit of a person’s hair or clothes, it is supposed to take on a piece of that person’s soul. Then, different colored pins are skewered through the doll to give its look-alike blessings… or curses.”
“Mr. Peele certainly wasn’t blessed,” Detective Caldwell said as he eyed the figurine.
“No sir!” I agreed. “This doll works dark magic, I reckon.”
Detective Caldwell ordered his constable to collect the doll for evidence, but Jerry refused to touch it, so the lawman wrapped the doll back in the brown paper before placing it in his coat. Meanwhile, my employer seemed more interested in the photograph.
“It is a very worn image, isn’t it?” she thought to herself. “Almost certainly from the war. I think that there are three Federal warrant officers and a commander pictured, if my knowledge of uniforms serves me well…”
“So, whose face is blocked out?” the detective questioned as we all studied the daguerreotype.
“It’s a warrant officer’s, but not the victim’s,” Jerry acknowledged, but this was obvious. One might have expected a murderer to mutilate the face of his victim in an image, but Tyler Peele was one of the three other men in the scene.
“I think that it is the killer attempting to conceal his own identity,” Miss Baudette explained, “but there is no way to be sure of the fourth man without finding another copy of the daguerreotype or its glass negative. I wish that I knew the name of the photographer or the identity of one of these two other sailors—then we might have a real lead.”
“Hmm,” I wondered as Jerry collapsed in the nearest armchair. Looking at the image, I hesitated, “I think that I recognize one of these other two faces, Miss Baudette—the clean-shaven commander. Only, I can’t remember where I saw his like before…”
“A big help that is,” Jerry moaned with disgust. “This fellow’s even worse than your last ‘boy,’ Miss Baudette, and at least he wasn’t a damned—”
“I would choose your next word carefully, Mr. O’Toole,” my employer kept the copper in check on my behalf. I was amazed to hear her defend me, “Far be it from you to shoot him down.”
Holding his homburg in his hands, Detective Caldwell broke the uncomfortable silence that followed, “Well, we can take this photograph back to the stationhouse and distribute some facsimiles throughout the city. But, do keep us informed if you remember anything, Mr.—”
The lawman extended his hand to shake mine.
“Took,” I responded, “Jedediah Took.”
He nodded at me before accepting the photograph from Miss Baudette. “Belle, I do not for a single second believe that a hoodoo curse killed Tyler Peele, and if he was murdered, then his murderer must still be at large. I’ll send a man over to Fort Gaines to check on the military connection, but pickings are sure to be slim since the victim wasn’t a Southerner. I’m officially putting you on the case, Belle,” the detective locked eyes with my employer, “but you are not to do any more wild feats of your own volition. Keep me informed, do you hear?”
“There are plenty of folks who would call me wild simply for stepping out of the home,” Miss Baudette rebuked the handsome detective, “but I will do my best to keep you apprised.”
“Good,” he spoke stiffly, trying to hold back a grin. “I wouldn’t want to see something happen to you.”
***
The start of my employment with Miss Belinda “Bill” Baudette of Mobile had been a cyclone of agitation. I had to admit that I was glad to return to her tranquil Italianate home for the evening; I was double glad when I discovered that the house servant, Mary Williams, had spent the day fixing up a hardy dinner of catfish almondine, collards, and honey-butter biscuits; triple glad to learn that I got to share in her creations; and quadruple glad to heave my carpetbags into my spacious new quarters on the top floor of the hall. Yes, indeedy, this was not such a bad life to lead—if you could get over the flattened bodies and hoodoo curses that came with the territory. The evening breeze felt cool and comfortable up in the attic, and I opened up my little window as I unpacked my traps.
“Supper is soon to be ready, Mr. Took,” Miss Williams announced quietly as she arrived at the door of my domicile. “The mistress is already making her way to the table downstairs.”
I looked up from my carpetbags, “You mean we are going to eat with Miss Baudette at the dining table?” This was my first time to work for a fancy lady in Mobile, but I knew instinctually that this was not how things were customarily done.
“Yes sir,” Miss Williams said casually, “there is no separate dining-room for the help here; we can practically walk on equal ground all comfortable-like.”
“Miss Baudette is quite a unique lady,” I sighed as I sat down on the foot of my new bed. “Who ever heard of a woman detective like her, and with such manners to boot? How long have you worked for her, Miss Williams? Has she always been this way?”
“I’ve been here most of my life,” the maid explained, “and I can attest that Miss Baudette has always been just a little bit different from most folks ‘round here. I guess it’s not much of a secret that her daddy bought my daddy from the Williams family down the street and set him free back in ’57. Old Mr. Baudette used to be part of the ‘Railroad, you see, and the mistress too, and they offered to let him travel up North, if he was willing. But he said that he didn’t know a single soul outside of Alabama, so he stayed right here and made pretend to still be the Baudettes’ slave ‘til the Year of ‘Jubilo. I guess my daddy always knew that change would come down here eventually.”
“Things always tend to change… eventually.” I was deeply impressed by Miss Williams’ story, and I longed to serve my new mistress well by helping her as best I could with her mystery.
I knew that I recognized that countenance from the victim’s photograph, but where had I seen him before? Justice could not be achieved for Tyler Peele, and my employer could not collect her reward money until I could remember the owner of that face!
“Anyway,” the maid sighed, “you ought to put your necktie back on before you come down for supper…”
I nodded and reached for my black tie as the girl quit the room. As I located it on the bed, however, I also found the thick cigar I had purchased for Miss Baudette before I knew she was a lady. A phrase crossed my lips as a revelation seemed to flash across my eyes, “The riverboat!” I hurrahed, attracting the maid’s attention. “Oh, Mary, I figured it out! I knew I recognized that man in the picture!”
As I screamed down the stairs, I gave the sweet maid a little peck on the forehead before rushing down to see Miss Baudette. I believed that we were one step closer to tracking down a murderer!
***
In the formal dining-room of Baudette Hall, my employer sat before a lavishly set table. With eveningwear as refined as her day clothes, she was attired in a black sequined gown with elegant muttonchop sleeves and a striking lace cravat, pinned with a dark cameo brooch. She had just finished illuminating a pair of silver candelabras, and she was airing herself with an old French fan as I rushed into the room.
“Why Mr. Took!” my employer exclaimed as I hurried into the dark chamber of sophistication. “I appreciate that you may be famished, but we do dress for dinner in this house.”
“Yes, miss,” I panted as I refastened my separated collar and knotted my necktie, “but I needed to tell you—immediately—that I remembered the identity of the man in that photograph—the one that we found in Mr. Peele’s boardinghouse…”
“Oh?” Miss Baudette questioned with an impressed sense of expectation.
“Yes miss,” I caught my breath, “he sold me a cigar aboard the Wampus Cat, the paddle-wheeler that took me from New Orleans to Mobile after I rode down the river from Natchez. He was a right ornery man, Miss Baudette, and he told me, very pointedly, that he was a Confederate veteran…”
“A Confederate veteran?” my employer calmly raised her eyebrows. “But, Mr. Took, the man in the picture was wearing a Yankee uniform.”
“I know,” I nodded, “that’s what threw me at first, but I’m sure of myself now. His name was…”
“Eustace P. Benjamin,” another voice exclaimed from down the hall, stealing my moment of revelation. As Miss Williams held open the door for him, Detective Caldwell entered the room with a flourish, “That’s what you were going to say, right Mr. Took?”
“Yes sir,” said I, “but how did you know it?”
“Because my message-boy returned from Fort Gaines not one hour ago, and the quartermaster there recognized all three men in the daguerreotype,” the detective announced as he handed Miss Baudette a file folder. “The men with unadulterated faces were three turncoat naval spies during the National Conflict, all from right here in Mobile. Tyler Peele, as we know, was murdered this morning on Commerce Street when someone dropped a heavy saloon sign on him. Thaddeus Merrimack, another warrant officer from the photograph, was found dead last month in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances, and that leaves our friend Eustace P. Benjamin as the commander in the image, whereabouts unknown until right now.”
“Well cut off my legs and call me Shortie!” Miss Baudette spoke half-jestingly. “I thought that I was supposed to be the ace investigator ‘round here, but both of you seem to have wrapped up the matter at a quick march! It would appear that we have a sequential killer on our hands—a man who has bumped off two out of four fellows in a photograph that also included himself. Now this Eustace fellow would reasonably be the murderer’s next—and final—victim. But what we still don’t know is the identity of the criminal and his motivations!”
“Motivations?” asked the detective. “If at least three out of the four men in that photograph were Southern spies, then certainly that has something to do with their assassinations…”
“But why assassinate them now?” Miss Baudette questioned. “The war ended several years ago, gentlemen. Why would the murderer be killing spies now, and leaving around photographs that are more than twenty years old, alongside cursed dolls?”
“Why don’t we just go ask him?” I wondered aloud, catching the attention of both my employer and the detective. “If Mr. Benjamin is the killer’s next target,” I declared, “why should the murderer wait to strike when the Wampus Cat is still docked along Bay Shell Road in the harbor until dawn? What’s to stop us from capturing the culprit in the act of murder, or better yet before it?”
The thought had not yet occurred to the detective, but Miss Baudette immediately stood at attention, “I like the way you think, Mr. Took. That was my sentiment precisely!”
It was only after this exclamation that poor Miss Williams crept into the room morosely, having overheard the conversation. “I guess I’ll just put the catfish in the icebox,” she said with a sigh, “but I swear that this detecting work will reduce you to skin and bones.”
***
As I drove Miss Baudette’s dogcart in the direction of Bay Shell Road, I grew as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Miss Baudette had quickly changed into a more manageable gingham skirt and grey shirtwaist, and she rode on the back of the cart beside Detective Caldwell, who appeared to be loading a revolver. The sun had set out over the water, and now a gibbous moon cast pallid light upon the city’s shoreline. All manner of swamp insects and birds chatted, chirped, and warbled, but few people were around to be seen.
“There she is,” I finally said, indicating the side-wheeled ship I had disembarked so early that morning, “the Wampus Cat.”
The open decks of the whitewashed steamer appeared strange and ethereal in the moonlight, and the great black smokestacks with their coxcomb tops rose menacingly from behind the wheelhouse. The figurehead of some mythical swamp feline made me shrink as I slowed the horses from a quick trot, and finally made them to stand along the pier. Only a few lights shone aboard the riverboat, and these did not dissuade the growing sense of dread that I felt in my chest.
We went aboard.
“Mr. Benjamin?” Detective Caldwell cried as we proceeded along the darkened decks. “Mr. Eustace P. Benjamin, are you aboard?”
The first lighted compartment that we came upon was the ship’s lounge, an elegantly paneled space that had been packed during my overnight crossing from New Orleans. The fact that I had previously seen the lounge filled with passengers made it feel even emptier now.
“Mr. Benjamin?” the detective called again, but my employer urged him to shush.
“He is just as likely to hear us as the murderer,” Miss Baudette explained in whispers, “we ought to keep quiet.”
Just as she said this, a muffled metallic clanging emanated from somewhere behind the ship’s empty bar, and it sounded as though someone was mumbling loudly. Detective Caldwell rushed through the next door but discovered that the noise was passing through the pipes behind a partition, and he could not determine the direction of their source.
Meanwhile, my mistress had found a brown paper envelope on the counter of the bar. Dumping out its contents, she discovered another copy of the La Vengeance photograph from Mr. Peele’s apartment, and beside it landed another doll, this one with no facial hair and a large hatpin driven through it. It was difficult to identify if the doll wore any clothes, because the body had been partially burned.
“Burned? Ah, and the noise in the pipes too!” Miss Baudette exclaimed, her mind racing faster than a thoroughbred on Derby Day. “Good God almighty, where’s the boiler-room? He’s going to be cooked alive!”
Leaping into action, I rushed back onto the open deck and led the way downstairs. Miss Baudette and the detective were at my heels as I showed them the way to the boiler-room, which was discovered to be locked. The door to the boiler-room was a heavy plate of whitewashed steel. It was impassible without a key and could not be broken open, though Detective Caldwell vigorously attempted it, first ramming the door with his shoulder and then striking the padlock with a coal-shovel he found resting nearby.
“Land’s sake!” I exclaimed, “Ain’t there anybody left on this barge?”
Of course, there was—or at least there had been. A loud splash from the darkness below alerted us that something had just gone overboard—or somebody. In an instant, the detective was in the water too, splashing, kicking, and fighting. I could not tell much from the darkened deck of the ship. Why had the lawman not used his gun instead?
A heavy clank resounded from the waterline, and one of the two figures sank into the blackened abyss without consciousness. For a moment, my heart stopped, for I could not discern which party had won the fight! And when a husky, bearded specter began rising back up the ship’s ladder, I knew that the victor had not been the detective.
“Who art thou?” Miss Baudette boomed as the hulking figure climbed on deck, his form dripping like a wet sponge. “Sir, I demand to know!”
“La Vengeance they call me,” came a husky voice that drew nearer, “and my work here is finally complete! Forty good men, my brothers-in-arms from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, died in these waters twenty-two years ago, betrayed by three Southern spies. I was their patsy, blamed for what those traitors had done, and, as such, I was jailed at Camp Douglas amid those scores of bloodthirsty successionists. For more than two decades, I suffered as a guiltless prisoner, without hope of parole,” the villain spat, “but, I also learned things during that torment. From the traitors who surrounded me, I learned the true identities of the men who had wrought me low, and I learned how to seek them out. I also learned, from the poor inmates of Mississippi, how to conjure up a deadly hoodoo curse and ensure that it would come true…”
Miss Baudette had extracted a derringer from her handbag as La Vengeance operatically approached, and now she had it aimed squarely at the murderer’s chest. He came so close to her that he could have touched the muzzle, however my employer still refused to fire.
“Go ahead and pull that trigger, woman!” replied the bearded man. “My task here is complete. The fire is stoked; the chute is full; and the key for the door is lost to the depths of Mobile Bay. If I die now, I do so knowing that my rival dies with me!”
But this was not to be. While my employer held the murderer in check with her derringer, Detective Caldwell silently climbed back up the ladder himself, rattled from his concussion, but still breathing. La Vengeance did not know the detective had survived until the sudden weight of a coal-shovel struck him, brutally, from behind, causing him to fall forward and onto my beautiful boss.
“About time you came back, Clifford!” Miss Baudette caught her breath as she was made to hold the weight of the heavy villain in her arms. “And you, Mr. Took, weren’t you going to do anything?” Her tone was unexpectedly flippant even mere moments after potential disaster.
“What was I supposed to do, miss?” I shrugged, “I’m just the driver, and you had the gun.”
“I… got…” meanwhile, the concussed detective gasped for air as he dropped the shovel. He put a hand on his aching temple as he staggered forward, “…the key. It… around his neck…”
The lawman looked like he was about to collapse on the deck, so I quickly accepted the key from his hand and unlocked the door to the boiler-room. Bound beside the open door of the steamship’s large furnace, I discovered an undressed Eustace P. Benjamin a little smoked, but no worse for wear. One can scarcely comprehend the look on the old Confederate’s face at having been saved by a man of my Persuasion.
***
“Well! I think that that just about wraps up a fine meal, Miss Williams,” Detective Caldwell exclaimed some days later as he sat in the elegant dining-room of Baudette Hall. “I have never tasted crawfish etouffee made quite so divinely, and the oysters, too, were the best I’ve had in all my born days.”
Miss Baudette circled around the table to the convalesced detective as the evening’s cook thanked him for his kindness.
“Cuffs and Buttons, Clifford, or would you prefer a small glass of imported Armagnac?” the hostess questioned as the detective reclined with his hands on his belly.
“Cuffs and Buttons, of course,” he replied as I looked on with a grin, “you know I enjoy my bourbon.”
Glasses of the aromatic liqueur were poured from the decanter by the window, and soon everyone had a crystal snifter in hand. Detective Caldwell immediately tried to lift his glass to his lips, but my employer stopped him.
“Just a moment, now, Clifford,” she said, “I believe that this occasion demands a toast…”
“Not another one to my health, I hope,” the detective grumbled, “they have been keeping my aching head so well toasted at the stationhouse that I fear I may relapse.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Miss Baudette shook her head comically. “I had something else in mind…”
“Well, I hope that we will not be drinking to that Yankee murderer,” the detective interrupted again, “even if this dinner was to celebrate his conviction for double homicide…”
“Actually, I would like to propose a toast to fellows like him…” Miss Baudette surprised us all. “Indeed,” she said in response to our gasps, “I would like to say a toast to vengeful murderers, and secret conspiracies, and hoodoo curses,” she exclaimed with uplifted eyes, “may such criminal follies keep us employed for many years to come!”
Four glasses clinked in unison, and I savored my share of the spirits while “Bill Baudette of Mobile” stared each one of us in the eyes.
This was to become only the first of our many adventures together.
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