31 Bond Street (15 page)

March 16, 1857

C
linton woke up and made his way to the kitchen. With the costs of running the new office, the servants had slowly been let go, and his household was making do on less and less. The cook only came on certain days, and the roof in the attic leaked. Most mornings, Elisabeth prepared him eggs in the skillet, but this morning he had risen earlier than usual. He left Elisabeth wrapped up in the four-poster bed. Maintaining the large house left her bone tired, so he let her sleep.

At this point in a case, the only thing on his mind was the trial. While adjusting a cuff link to his cuff, he would be mentally preparing a speech or a witness examination. At night, sponging himself in his bath, he would call out to Elisabeth, trying out various legal points, and she would reply with counterpoints, all while arranging his clothes in the bedroom. Because of the lack of servants, she hauled his buckets of bathwater upstairs to the water closet, heated on the giant kitchen stove. By the time he got home late at night, the water had cooled to room temperature, but now at least, the air had warmed, for it was nearly spring.

Clinton found some crumpets and bread in the pie safe, and a pot of jam with a fresh lid of wax. The milk cart came down the back alley every morning before dawn and left a bottle of milk in the tin box by the back door. He retrieved the fresh bottle, and as he reentered the pantry he saw two little shoes inside the door of the anteroom that held tools and old furniture. He peered inside, and in the dim light saw a nest of quilts and blankets spread across the floor. In the middle was a tousle of blond hair, and buried underneath, John was fast asleep.

His clothes were folded on the floor with a book and pencil on top. Clinton bent down and examined it. The flyleaf was written upon, in a boy’s scrawl, practicing penmanship with lines from the Book of Matthew. Clinton studied the sleeping boy, dismayed. When the inquest ended, Elisabeth had approached him about letting the boy move into one of the bedrooms upstairs, but Clinton had vehemently objected. It was one thing to have him perform errands at the office and help Elisabeth at home. But taking the boy to live in their house was not a wise idea. “Elisabeth, this child can still be called as a witness. The prosecution can put him on the stand to establish the crime, the
corpus delicti,
which is the finding of the body.”

“But, Henry, he is so young and he needs a good home. I am sure the prosecution won’t use him,” she protested.

“Harboring a witness is tampering. There could be an appearance of conflict, and even having him do errands is risky.” Besides, Clinton lectured, John was not an orphan. He had a mother who lived in a garret downtown. She was arthritic and could no longer work or make money by sewing, so she relied on the coins earned by her son. John appeared to be itinerant, but he had a family and places to sleep.

But now, seeing the boy in the blankets, he realized that Elisabeth’s desire to have him stay was about her own isolation. While
Clinton was working long hours these last months, she was trapped in the house with few funds, no servants, and no children of her own. He should have known how attached she would become to him. He felt suddenly bereft by all the things he was failing to provide for her.

Clinton shook John awake. Startled, John sat upright, his hair sticking straight up on top of his head.

“You can’t sleep here anymore, John,” he said. The boy’s eyes darted back and forth. “Do you have anywhere else to go?”

“I have my mum’s house, but it was Mrs. Clinton’s idea, not mine. I only sleep here now and then,” he said.

“I know she arranged it for you, but it’s not a good idea, and you should stay with your mother. But first, come into the kitchen and eat. I have some crumpets.” The boy got dressed and sat at the table where Clinton set him up with a plate and a glass of milk. Like his wife, he couldn’t help being charmed by the earnest manner with which John approached his food. As for the sleeping arrangements, he would straighten Elisabeth out later.

“John, tell me honestly, do you know where I can find Samuel?” he asked suddenly while the boy was filling up on the sweet bread. A look of concern passed over John’s face, and he swallowed slowly without answering. “You understand that Samuel was the last man to see Dr. Burdell alive? I just need to ask him some questions. Do you know where he might be?”

As Clinton suspected, he took awhile to answer. “I heard he got another job,” John said.

“Where?”

“At a stable. At a big house, on Fifth Avenue near Tenth Street, but I couldn’t say, exactly.”

“Let’s do some detective work. I need your help. Since you know the man by sight, I want you to come with me for a ride. We will go there and see if we can find him.” Now John looked alarmed,
as if he regretted his words. Clinton made sure he’d had his fill of breakfast and downed his tall glass of milk when he ushered him toward the door. Outside, he hailed a cab. “To Fifth Avenue, just above Tenth Street,” he said. They piled in, and the cabbie pulled away at a clip. As they rounded Washington Square, the clusters of older townhouses gave way to larger, newer homes along Fifth Avenue. They passed a row of new mansions, each one springing up as if in a spontaneous procession of growth. Instead of seeming more substantial, Clinton thought, these big homes seemed tentative: the brass was too shiny, the stoops too high, the lots absent of trees, with areas that were still under new construction. New York, a dreamscape of opportunity, often presented a flimsy mirage. Large houses rose around a sudden fortune then disappeared in half a decade, blown away like stage props.

Clinton quizzed John about the house where Samuel was employed. The boy peered out the window and seemed to have difficulty identifying which one. When they reached Twelfth Street they stopped before a large mansion and got out. A carriage-house door was open to the street. It smelled of sawdust and new leather; a row of carriages glowed with fresh lacquer. Clinton walked inside while John waited at the curb.

“I am looking for a groom named Samuel, who is said to work here,” he inquired.

The man brushing the horse’s flank did not look up. “No one here by that name. You must be mistaken,” he muttered. Clinton believed he saw a flicker of fear pass over the eyes of the stable hand, a Negro. Many were ex-slaves, fugitives seeking asylum in New York, and they knew better than to engage in a conversation that could send them back South, in shackles. Clinton asked another question, and after receiving a hostile silence, decided to retreat. Stepping back onto the street, he realized he was getting nowhere, and suddenly regretted being away from the office, with so much to do
while the morning was slipping away. Clinton turned to the boy with a look of reproach.

“This isn’t the place, John.”

“I guess I was wrong. Perhaps I mixed that other fellow up with Samuel,” he said, his voice edging upward. “I remember now! Samuel told me he lives past the reservoir, in the shantytowns. That is what I recollect, for sure!” A few miles to the north, Fifth Avenue turned into a dirt road that blended into a dusty horizon. It passed the reservoir and the remote acres of fields where the city had built a fairgrounds and a Crystal Pavilion. Beyond that were the African shantytowns, constructed of barrel staves, where goats grazed on the granite bluffs. A Negro like Samuel could disappear, protected and hidden in the mazelike dwellings. It would not be easy to find him if he did not want to be found.

Clinton turned to look at the boy, who had the same gaunt look, no matter what the circumstance. “John?”

“Yes, sir?”

“We won’t find Samuel in the shantytowns, will we?”

The boy looked startled.

“Why don’t you tell me where this fellow really is?” said Clinton. John appeared to be struggling, and Clinton continued. “You are his friend, aren’t you, and you know that he is in hiding. And now you are scared for him. You are scared that he will get into trouble—and maybe someone will blame this murder on him. And you don’t want to be a part of that, do you?”

The boy looked up, with frightened eyes.

“Have you ever seen a hanging?” asked Clinton.

John nodded.

“Down at the Tombs? One of the public ones?”

Clinton waited. All boys had seen hangings, but not all enjoyed them as much as they pretended.

“Listen,” continued Clinton. “I am not in the hanging business.
In fact, my job is to keep people off the scaffolds. And that goes for a Negro named Samuel, just the same as for Mrs. Cunningham.” Clinton bent down and pulled his gold watch from the fob on his vest. He cradled the watch in his hand, with its simple roman numbering and soft dents along the filigree, and showed it to John. “Do you see this?” he asked. John nodded obediently. “It was given to me by a man who was sentenced to hang for a murder he didn’t commit. One night, he came upon a dead body, lying in an alley, and he reached down and took the dead man’s coin purse. He didn’t kill anyone, but he got caught with the purse. He went to jail, charged with murder. It wasn’t until the morning he was to hang that I got a judge to set him free. He didn’t have money to pay my fee, so he gave me his watch. I keep it here in my pocket, to remind myself that every man deserves a defense, even if he has done something terribly wrong in his life.”

John finally spoke: “The District Attorney told me Samuel was in trouble, that he should fear for his life.”

“The District Attorney?” asked Clinton.

“The first day, at the house, the Coroner asked me questions about how I found Dr. Burdell’s body, and one of the deputies took me outside, back near the outhouse. The District Attorney and another man came, too. They said they wanted to find Samuel. When they asked me if he lived in the shantytowns, the deputy said they would go and burn him out.”

“Who was the other man?” Clinton asked.

“He spoke like he was from the South. The man said I should tell them quick where Samuel lived, or I would be the next one to worry about my life.”

Clinton, who had been crouched low, now stood up. So Hall had been searching for the missing witness from the beginning. And it confirmed that Hall had worked fast, with the aid of his pawn, Coroner Connery, to purposefully set Emma Cunningham up as
the murder suspect. Her trial would be a spectacle, but not a certain conviction. If the city prosecutor had wanted a speedy conviction, Negroes and ex-slaves were a surer bet to pin a murder on. They were easier to hang, even easier if they were runaways, for few lawyers would take on their cause. If Oakey Hall wanted to resolve the murder quickly for his own political gain, he would have the fastest success by capturing and incriminating Samuel, since the coachman was the last person to see Dr. Burdell alive. But, it now occurred to Clinton that Hall and his minions were not trying to find Samuel, they wanted to silence him. There was something Samuel knew, and the District Attorney wanted it suppressed. They didn’t want him to testify. They wanted him dead.

Clinton stepped back into the carriage and told the boy to get in with him. “Lead me to where Samuel is,” Clinton ordered. “He won’t be out of danger until we find him.”

“There! There!” said the boy as the carriage rounded the south side of Washington Square Park. “That’s where he prays. He helped me get food from the pastor once, when Dr. Burdell didn’t give me my pay.” An iron fence enclosed Washington Square Park, and the homes around it formed an elegant quadrangle, except for the southwest corner, where the dilapidated wooden houses of the Negro quarter still burrowed into crooked lanes. Across the square, this African neighborhood had grown up around an old Indian spring named Minetta Creek. Somewhere, beneath the cobbles and the paving stones, the creek still flowed under the city, buried underground.

Clinton stopped the cab. He dismounted the carriage, and the boy popped out behind him in a jump. They entered a wooden church that was badly in need of paint. The vestry was dim; there
were pegs along the scuffed woodwork. A table held a collection cup, a stack of Bibles, and a cracked copy of the Book of Psalms. Footsteps resonated from within, moving toward them from the recess of the quiet nave. A Negro minister appeared, his clergyman’s skirts rustling, his skin the dusky color of the shadows around the altar. He did not seem surprised to see them in the dead quiet of a weekday morning in his empty house of worship.

“Sir.” The pastor greeted Clinton without embellishment, simply stating the fact that both were gentlemen, equally.

Respect seemed to require that Clinton avoid the obsequiousness of a deep bow, so necessary among his legal peers. “I am Henry Clinton, a lawyer,” he said. “I am here on an important matter.”

“Those who come here, come to address important matters to the Lord,” said the clergyman.

Clinton paused. “With all due respect, this is a matter concerning a member of your congregation. I am looking for a man—his name is Samuel. He is tall and strongly built and he works as a groom and a carriage driver. Do you know where I might find him?”

The Reverend’s lips tensed slightly. He seemed to ponder the request, as if searching for a scriptural response. It was clear he was not at ease with the request. “Forgive me, Reverend,” said Clinton, sensing the man’s reluctance. “I have not introduced this boy. His name is John, and he worked as an errand boy at the same house as Samuel. It was through their friendship that you once aided this boy when he was hungry. Perhaps you remember?” The boy’s serious expression elicited a sympathetic smile from the minister. Clinton eyed the man closely and saw a crease of worry cross the pastor’s brow. He knows Samuel, thought Clinton, and Samuel has been here since the murder to seek his counsel.

“I cannot help you,” the Reverend said simply.

Clinton pressed on, speaking gently. “Reverend, I am sure you have heard much about the murder that took place on Bond Street.
Samuel was present on the night that his employer, Dr. Burdell, was killed, and as such, he is an important witness. If Samuel has the courage to come forward, he may help us solve the crime.” Clinton knew instantly that he had erred by phrasing his request as a challenge.