The Boatman and the Traitor by David Luchuk

Author:David Luchuk [Luchuk, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927854761
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Kate Warne, Detective

December, 1861

Nate Drysdale told me a worrisome story. The night he tried to kill me at the bank, he followed me back to my Wilmington apartment and admitted to murdering his best friend, George Gordon. He said it happened in a dream. That is how it seemed to him. The murder took place while he was asleep.

My first impulse was to suspect him of lying. Good liars first convince themselves that their tales are true. After that, convincing other people becomes easy. Nate Drysdale did not give the impression of being a good liar. For one thing, he was barely able to stay awake. For another, he was distraught. Most liars get so caught up in their story that they forget to be upset about its abhorrent details. Drysdale faced the ghastly truth of what he did without trying to gloss it over.

I believed him. I found it plausible that he was sleepwalking when he murdered the bank teller. It was consistent with everything I had witnessed at his estate. Once I accepted that notion, the rest was easier to understand.

I asked Drysdale what could have compelled him to crush his best friend’s skull? His answer was outlandish but, reflecting on my brief time in Wilmington, I found it credible right away.

Drysdale and George Gordon became friends as young men. They were junior members of the Chamber of Commerce. They dined together at the investors’ club. Their ambitions were the same. Both wanted to blend fortune with civic achievement. Drysdale and Gordon dreamed of having boulevards named after them when they died. It was impossible for young men with those kinds of hopes to avoid the politics of the day. Progressives that they were, the topic of slavery became a recurring point of discussion between them.

Drysdale was master of his family estate. He kept a small staff of slaves. They were holdovers from his parents’ lifetime. If he thought they might enjoy a better fate as free blacks in the south, he would have sent them away.

Gordon, on the other hand, lived under his father’s roof and rules. On their property, a large contingent of slaves labored hard. As George grew into his own man, these conditions became intolerable to him.

Before long, the friends became convinced that the practice of slavery was holding southerners back. If they were going to meet the challenges of the modern world, the south had no choice but to abandon slavery. Spreading abolitionist pamphlets was George’s idea. He knew that the material would create a stir. That is what he wanted most. George Gordon believed that, given enough talk, everyone would come to see things the same as him.

The pamphlets made people angry, especially George’s father. That was the point. George hoped that anger would lead to a moral breakthrough. It did not. People were angry. They stayed angry. That was all.

After a time, George Gordon became a social pariah in Wilmington. His father allowed him to work at the bank but the pair barely spoke.

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