us with undisguised curiosity. “It’s been a long time, Aunt Tillie, but you don’t seem to have changed much,” said Mr. Cable.
“Well, it’s a wonder I ain’t withered away, worrying so much about poor Leonard being in prison,” she said, fluttering her fan. “But sit down, sit down. Can I get you gen’lemen some lemonade? Charley, get another chair in here. Don’t make them stand up.” After a few moments of bustle and agitation, the three of us were seated, and Mr. Cable had introduced us. Aunt Tillie remembered Mr. Clemens from his previous visit to New Orleans, and was obviously flattered that such a famous man took an interest in her nephew Leonard’s case. In turn, she introduced the two young men: Charley Galloway, Leonard’s younger brother, who had answered the door, and Charles Bolden, the son of her next-door neighbor. “Just call me Buddy,” he said, with a crooked smile, clearly impressed to meet Mr. Clemens. “No reason to get confused with two Charleys in the room.”
I took a moment to look around the little room as the woman went to the back of the building—presumably to the kitchen—to fetch our drinks. While the house was small and unpretentious, with kerosene lamps and bare floors, it was clean and cozy, with bright wallpaper in a geometrical pattern. There were pictures on the wall: a watercolor sketch I recognized as a younger Leonard Galloway, a large photograph of a smiling Negro couple (relatives, I assumed) dressed in slightly old-fashioned clothes, and two or three framed colored pictures of landscapes—chromolithographs, from the look of them. Mr. Cable and Mr. Clemens were seated on a Turkish-style sofa along the side wall, and I sat in a straight-backed chair next to the window. Young Bolden brought a chair in from the kitchen and was shortly followed by Aunt Tillie carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and six glasses.
When we were all seated and had our drinks, Mr. Clemens told of our visit to Leonard Galloway in the Parish Prison. “So far, they seem to be treating him decently,” he concluded. “But jail’s a rotten place, even with good treatment, and Leonard’s taking it pretty hard.” He shook his head, then fixed Aunt Tillie with a sincere gaze. “It’ll take some doing to get him out of there, but if there’s any way to do it, you can count on my help.”
“Praise the Lord, that’s the best news I’ve heard since the police came and took poor Leonard off,” said the woman, raising up her hands in delight. “That boy wouldn’t hurt a fly, Mr. Twain. He’s a good churchgoing boy, and I told the police just that. And Mr. Robinson done took good care of him. He even paid him for the day he sent him home, and said he was sorry for yelling at him; Leonard gave me half the money that same day, bless his heart. Why on Earth would he try to poison a man like that?”
“That settles it,” said Mr. Clemens. “I might have doubted Leonard’s story up to now, but now I know it’s true. Leonard is an innocent man. Cable, Wentworth, we’re going to get him out of jail if it’s the last thing we do in this town.”
“I sure am glad to hear that, Mr. Twain,” said Charley Galloway, smiling for the first time since we’d arrived. “You need any kind of help from me, just say the word.” Young Buddy Bolden added his offer of help as well, and with a broad grin, Mr. Clemens jumped up and shook both their hands with great enthusiasm. “Good, we’ve got a team,” he said.
Then he paused and looked around at the six of us in the room, scratching his chin. “Now, all I have to do is figure out how to get Leonard out of jail. Does anybody here know how we can manage that without using guns or ladders?”
There was a moment of silence, and then Buddy Bolden laughed. “Well, if we was going to try and bust Leonard out of jail with guns and ladders, we wouldn’t need Mr. Mark Twain to help us. Plenty of folks have ladders, and there ain’t no shortage of guns, if it came right down to that. But I reckon you could count me out, if that’s what you was planning, ’cause all you’d end up with is a bunch of colored folks being shot instead of just one being hanged. Still, I do have an idea that might work, if you don’t mind listening.”
“I sure don’t mind listening,” said Mr. Clemens. “There might be plenty of ladders around, but good ideas are in short supply just now.”
“Well,” said the young man, “we all know Leonard didn’t kill this Mr. Robinson. But that don’t seem to hold no water with the police. So what we need to do is prove who did kill him, and then getting Leonard out of prison is no problem at all. That make sense?”
“Makes plenty of sense to me,” said Mr. Clemens, nodding his head. “Keep on talking.”
“I reckon whoever killed Mr. Robinson, it has to be somebody he knew,” said Bolden. “It don’t make no sense any other way. Strangers don’t go around putting poison in each other’s food, ’specially not in big houses down in the Garden District. So whoever killed him, it was somebody he knew and trusted enough to eat or drink with.”
“Yes, we’ve been thinking the same thing ourselves,” said Mr. Cable. “A family member, or close friend, or a trusted servant would be my guess.”
Charley Galloway shook his head. “Maybe family or a friend,” he said, “but unless I miss my guess, it wasn’t no servant.” He paused, looking from Mr. Clemens to Mr. Cable, and finally at me; then, as if satisfied with what he saw in our faces, he continued. “I think the murderer has got to be a white person.”
There was a silence; then, “Charley! Watch what you say!” said Aunt Tillie, clearly apprehensive at her nephew’s statement.
“He doesn’t have to hold his tongue for my sake, Aunt Tillie,” said Mr. Clemens. “I’ve already come to pretty much that same conclusion, and I think George agrees with me. The police talk like they’ve solved the case, but I think they’re going in the face of the facts. The important question is, which one of Robinson’s friends and family is the killer?”
“Well, there’s where my idea comes in,” said Bolden. “One thing you learn pretty early, living this close to all those rich folks’ houses, is that they’ll go talking about anything in the world in front of the butler or cleaning maid, just as if there weren’t nobody listening at all. They may think they’ve got secrets, but every one of them has got a houseful of servants that know more about their secrets than they do. You know that, Miz Galloway.” He looked at the elderly woman who sat in her rocking chair, fanning herself and shaking her head. Outside the single window, the sky was turning darker, but it was still warm inside the little house.
“Well, I suppose it’s true,” said Aunt Tillie, after a pause. “But it’s one thing to hear something, and another to tell about it. One thing for sure, if you work in the white folks’ house, you best know how to keep what you hear to yourself. Maybe somebody in Mr. Robinson’s house does know who killed him, but even if they do, how you goin’ to get them to tell Mr. Twain about it?”
Bolden smiled. “That’s where my plan comes in, Miz Galloway. Maybe they won’t tell Mr. Twain about it, and maybe they won’t even tell you or me, but I reckon I know somebody they will tell. All we got to do is convince her to help us find out what we need to know, and then we can use that to help get Leonard out.”
Aunt Tillie looked at Bolden with a suspicious expression. “Who you talking about, boy? Who’s this her everybody talks to?”
“You know who he means, Aunt Tillie,” said Charley Galloway, his face lighting up with sudden comprehension. “He’s talking about Eulalie Echo.”
Aunt Tillie dropped her fan and clasped her arms over her bosom. “Lord have
