“She was. But Mr. Leggett has brought her to Savannah. That is where he met Mr. Foster and gave him a full account of his travels over dinner at the inn where they both passed the night. It is an amazing story.” My aunt threw off her cloak and composed herself on the settee. “Come and sit with me and I will tell you all I know. Really, I think Mr. Leggett has done himself proud.”
Mr. Foster told my aunt that Sarah had boarded the sailing vessel the United States barely a week after my husband’s murder, disguised as a white gentleman, Mr. Maître, and accompanied by a servant girl named Midge who pretended Sarah’s baby was her own. Mr. Maître wore dark glasses and hardly spoke, claiming the illness for which he sought treatment in the North made conversation too taxing. He stayed in his cabin, but Midge was all over the vessel, talking to anyone who would listen. Her subject was her poor master and the nature of his illness, which changed from day to day. The captain thought the girl excitable and ignorant. He told Mr. Leggett he wondered that a gentleman as frail and distinguished as Mr. Maître would tolerate such a giddy piece of baggage, with a screaming baby in tow.
“Distinguished?” I said.
“It seems Sarah makes a presentable gentleman,” my aunt responded. “Everyone Mr. Leggett interviewed remarked on his aristocratic manner.”
Mr. Maître disembarked at Savannah and stayed at a boardinghouse for a few days, waiting for a packet ship that would take him on to Philadelphia. Again he kept to his room and his servant fatigued everyone in the place with descriptions of her master’s illness. One day it was his eyes, the next his heart. The baby screamed unceasingly; the landlady believed it was colicky. She too wondered how the gentleman put up with his companions. When they left, the whole house breathed a sigh of relief.
Mr. Maître boarded the Atlantic Clipper as soon as it docked, but the winds were unfavorable and the ship sat at anchor for three days. The captain took an interest in his passenger, who was, he thought, sick unto death. He had the cook prepare thin gruel, which was the only thing the gentleman said he could hold down. Often he encouraged Mr. Maître to go up on deck to take the fresh air, but he was unsuccessful.
When they reached Philadelphia, though Mr. Maître had booked his passage through to New York, the captain urged him to spend the night onshore while the ship discharged its cargo. He recommended a rooming house nearby. The captain told Mr. Leggett that he feared his passenger would not last the night. When he came on deck and saw the lights of the town, Mr. Maître was so weak he clung to the rail and wept.
He survived the night, and in the morning they set sail for New York. The winds were favorable, the trip without event. Mr. Maître began to eat, his servant ran out of auditors, and the baby stopped crying. When they arrived in New York, Mr. Maître expressed his gratitude to the captain; he told him he had saved his life, and went down the gangway with a steady step. He was met by a gentleman and a lady, who evidently expected him. They entered a cab and drove away.
A good bit of Mr. Leggett’s time and energy went to interviewing the cabdrivers who picked up fares at the dock that day. Eventually he was directed to a house in Brooklyn belonging to a Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. When he learned from the neighbors that the Palmers were Quakers, he knew he had found his quarry.
“What are Quakers?” I asked.
“Some sort of religious society,” my aunt explained, “much opposed to slaveholding of any kind, I gather.”
Mr. Maître had abandoned his disguise at the Palmers’ and become Miss Claudia Palmer, a cousin of the family visiting from the South. Mr. Leggett began a constant surveillance of the house. A few days later Mr. Palmer went out in a cab with the servant Midge and the baby. He came back alone. Mr. Leggett didn’t see either of them again. The next day Mr. Palmer was observed on the docks, inquiring into the availability of passage to England; the next he was at the customs office filling out forms. For several days, nothing happened. Miss Palmer rarely left the house, except to take brief walks with her cousins. Mr. Leggett despaired of capturing her in their company. Any public scene might result in Sarah’s arrest. The free negroes and others like these Quakers were known to protest police actions with such vehemence that the writs could not be served and the prisoner was released. Mr. Leggett watched for his opportunity and hired two strong men to be at the ready when the time came.
Again Mr. Palmer was observed on the docks, and this time he purchased a single berth in the name of Claudia Palmer, on the Commodore, bound for London. Mr. Leggett knew his chance had come, and that it would be his last.