The Murder of Willie Lincoln Read online

  Hay tossed the pile down. He picked up a letter from Julia Taft, the Taft boys’ older sister, about how the gardener had been so kind in showing her the strange plants with the long Latin names. Most curious was a letter in a painfully slanted hand:

  Sept. 13th, 1861

  Executive Mansion

  My dear Mr. Potter:

  I am very much surprised to hear that a letter has been received in the Commissioner’s office—charging Major Watts as a Secessionist. I know him to be a Union man, & have many opportunities of hearing & judging him. The date after the battle of Manassas, I never saw a more troubled man.… There is no better Union man than Watts, & no one who has a greater contempt for Jeff. Davis.

  Yours sincerely,

  Mrs. President Lincoln

  Her case might have been stronger, Hay thought, had she not misspelled Watt’s name. And if her brother, three half brothers, and three brothers-in-law hadn’t enlisted in the Confederate army.

  Hay felt like washing his hands but wiped his palms on his pants and reached for the file labeled:

  THOMAS STACKPOLE, DOORKEEPER

  On top was a biographical sketch: Born in Sandwich, New Hampshire, in 1822. A wife and seven children, ages six to seventeen. At the Executive Mansion since ’fifty-three, first as a night watchman, then as a messenger, then as the keeper of the president’s door. Originally hired because his cousin had married President Pierce’s sister’s son—a random connection, but no more than Hay’s to Lincoln. Still, how had a native of New Hampshire become a secessionist—if, in fact, he had?

  Hay examined what looked like an investigator’s notes. Occasional words were decipherable—cotton, permits, Hammack. No surprise: John Hammack was a restaurateur on the Avenue, near Fifteenth street, known for his oysters, terrapin, and secessionist fire. Seems that Stackpole had dined at Hammack’s on three successive evenings in December, twice with none other than John Watt. Hay was aware of the maneuvering for the government’s coveted permits to trade for Confederate cotton—a license to print money, or greenbacks. Yet, was it suspicious to dine with one’s colleague more than once?

  The next set of notes was more legible. Written at the top: R. May—evidently, the interviewee. Apparently the account of a meeting the previous June or July (the last two letters were smudged).

  R. May has a sister living at Bailey’s Crossroads, Fairfax County, Virginia, who is a secessionist. She frequently comes to Washington, and told witness that she would carry any information to Manassas she could get. While in Washington, witness’s sister stops at the house of one William Brown, a master plasterer. Bill Spaulding and his partner, S. Parker, who are secessionists, congregate together at Brown’s house, and Stackpole is frequently with them. On one occasion, R. May saw Parker and Stackpole in conversation and heard Stackpole say, “When we go down there, and tell them what we know, they will be all right.”

  The committee, Hay was confident, had never bothered to ask Stackpole about this or anything else. Who was this R. May, betraying his own sister? A war of brother against sister. Potter must have told Lincoln of this accusation that Stackpole was a Confederate informant, if not a spy—nothing so juicy would he keep to himself. Did Lincoln not believe it, or did he not care? Hay wanted to trust the president’s trusting judgment. But suppose it was true—that Stackpole had passed information to the rebels, directly or indirectly, military or political. This man who sat outside the president’s door. Down the hallway from the president’s sons.

  Hay leafed through the file and started on the notes of an interview with John W. Haynes, one of the district volunteers who guarded the Executive Mansion.

  On Saturday night, in April, when there was a general apprehension of an attack by the rebels on the city, witness was on guard at the President’s House. Witness noticed many times during that night that Stackpole came out and passed through the little gate on the side into the street, and appeared to be in conversation with some person. The first time he came out was immediately after one of our intelligence men had gone in, and witness then saw that the person Stackpole was conversing with was Bill Spaulding, a noted secessionist, residing in this city. Witness further testifies that Stackpole came out from the President’s House nearly every time that any one passed in, to make report of the situation. Witness thinks Stackpole passed out and in at least eight times during that night. In one instance, witness said to Stackpole, “if Jeff. Davis comes here tonight I will put a pill through you.” Stackpole replied, “you would not do that, would you?”

  Hay sat stunned. What innocent explanation could there be? Again, this Spaulding, a wall painter. Hay half remembered a broad-faced, muscular Irishman with a perpetual smirk, balancing on a ladder in the second-floor hall. Was he also a secessionist—an accused secesh? Why should Stackpole be telling him anything, much less eight anythings?

  The next dirt-streaked document was a military-looking report from the sentries at Long Bridge. On the night of February 6—that was two days after Willie fell ill—Stackpole and William Spaulding had crossed over the Potomac into Virginia, claiming to be on government business, which Hay was reasonably sure they were not.

  The rest of the Stackpole file looked useless. Scrawled notes of two or three interviews with witnesses whose names Hay did not recognize. A limp layer of foolscap, covered with architectural plans—of what, Hay could not tell.

  As he raised the pages from the table, a card slipped out. It was cream-colored with a claret border, of heavy stock, embossed across the top in an elegant script: Elizabeth Keckly. Below, in an overcurlicued hand, the message expressed the undersigned’s regret that she would be unable to testify to the honorable committee as to the character of Thomas Stackpole.

  This was curious. Hay wondered why she would refuse. Because the dressmaker knew too little about him—or too much? And why had she even been asked?

  * * *

  No time like the present. None of Pinkerton’s men were in sight. And damn it, what if they were? Pursuing the president’s business trumped Pinkerton’s decree. Hay descended from the attic of the Capitol.

  Edward Ball was a burly man in his fifties with a bloated face and a sweep of white hair. A former congressman himself, from Ohio, the sergeant at arms for the House of Representatives led Hay down a narrow staircase, then another, into the Capitol subbasement. They had climbed down into the earth; the air was moist and smelled like an ancient tomb. Hay recalled that George Washington was to have been buried here, until Jefferson objected to a monarch’s resting place and Martha wanted her husband at home. Hallowed ground, this remained, with a waft of decay.

  Hay followed the sergeant at arms along a sloped walkway between the unpainted brick walls. Their lanterns flickered, and Hay’s blew out; he reached ahead to the sergeant at arms and relit it. The low arches of the ceiling supported the unimaginable weight above. Everything was solid, enclosed—entrapped. Yet with a layer of muck underneath.

  From muck thou art, and unto muck shalt thou return.

  “So, why is he here?” said Hay. Edward Ball had known where to look. “So no one can find him?”

  “Precisely,” the sergeant at arms said.

  They took two or three turns, and halfway along the corridor, a boyish guard slouched in front of double wooden doors, a musket at his side. He offered a halfhearted salute and opened the unlocked door. Hay stepped through and motioned his companions to stay behind.

  Inside, the swirl of air currents indicated a room of some size. A storeroom for lumber, judging by the scent of pine. In the farthest corner, the flame of a candle shriveled to the wick and, with a sizzling sound, burst higher. Hay’s eyes took a half minute or more to see much of anything. There were no bars; this was not a cell. It was a large room with almost no furniture and the mustiness of a cave. Surely, vermin swarmed the walls and invaded the straw mats that covered the floor. Seated in a hard-backed chair, staring at Hay, was John Watt.

  His face looked even sparer than before. Hi
s sunken cheeks, covered in whiskers, reminded Hay of Lincoln’s, even to the mole. His ears were too big—like Lincoln’s, too. His hair was tousled, as if he had just woken from a broken sleep, which possibly he had. He was lean but had a farmer’s wrists, hairy and thick, protruding from torn-off sleeves. His eyes, closely spaced, were as hard as a snake’s.

  Hay considered what he knew about John Watt. Not enough. A fixture in the Executive Mansion since the flower-loving Fillmores. A talented gardener, by all accounts, proficient with orchids and crêpe myrtle and, yes, with spruce. Skilled also in finding the trapdoors in procedures. How long he had been padding his invoices was unknown, maybe unknowable. Mrs. Lincoln, inadvertently, had given him—and herself—away when she ordered Nicolay to sack the Executive Mansion’s steward, who happened to be John Watt’s wife, so that the salary might be diverted to more decorative pursuits. That, Hay realized, was the gardener’s motive in blackmailing the Hell-cat. It wasn’t only the opportunity for profit from extortion but also something sweeter—vengeance. How perfect, for it had been something in Mrs. Lincoln’s tone, and her insistence that John Watt had no cause to kick, that prompted Nicolay to examine the gardener’s invoices. In the organic fertilizer account, Nicolay noticed a 2 redrawn as a 5; the difference equaled the excess cost of the state dinner for Prince Napoleon. Then the four hundred-plus dollars added to the invoice for seeds, bushes, and fruit trees from a nursery in Philadelphia—this covered twelve extra place settings of the new maroon-edged china. She and the gardener deserved each other (this was Hay’s opinion) in whatever their deathly embrace.

  Hay took the hard-backed chair across from Watt.

  Watt said, “Why in th’ devil’s name you here?”

  “Why are you here?” Instead of in an ordinary jail, Hay meant.

  “Cooked up. Out of hate.”

  “Why should they, whoever they are, hate you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I do need to ask you a question or two.”

  “Has I a choice? Or is this an eastern polite?”

  “You are speaking to an Illinois man, Mister Watt.”

  “So yer sayin’.”

  Hay suspected Watt knew more about Hay’s background than Hay knew about Watt’s. “And where in Kentucky are your people from?”

  “Lexington. Yes, the same.” That was where Mrs. Lincoln was born and raised. “I am honored you are a-messin’ ’bout my birth and breedin’, Mister Hay. A pleasant way to spend an afternoon.”

  “I am not here to ask about the … charges against you … the extortion … the letters.”

  No change in expression.

  “Nor about the invoices that were, shall we say, inaccurate.”

  Silence.

  “This is about Willie.”

  Watt stirred in his chair, betraying a curiosity in spite of himself.

  “Very early on the morning of February fourth,” Hay said, “you were standing by the carriageway on the mansion’s south grounds, while the president’s sons were riding down to the river—well, the canal. You remember this, yes? Tell me, Mister Watt, what were you doing there?”

  A half smile emerged on the gardener’s face—an ugly sight. “You may call me Lieutenant Watt, if you like,” he said.

  “Not Major?”

  “Some do call me that, out of respect.”

  “And have you enjoyed your military service, Lieutenant Watt?”

  “Unlike yerself, you mean? I am proud to be serving my country, Mister Hay.”

  “We are all in your debt. Now, to ask you again, what were you doing on the South Lawn so early that morning?”

  “You say v’ry early on that morning. Mebbe for an educated man such as yerself.” Watt exaggerated his drawl. “Not for a gardener.”

  So, it was Watt on the South Lawn. “You recall the morning I am asking about, then.”

  “Cain’t say that I do. ’Twas more than one.”

  “On this morning in particular, you were standing by a spruce tree just below the carriageway. Does that narrow it down sufficiently?”

  “I s’pose it do. And may I ask you, Mister Hay, why you find my mornin’ routine all so allurin’?”

  “So, why were you there? Was it to”—Lincoln had once told him that, in a courtroom, surprises work—“spy on the boys?”

  “Spy on them?” Watt laughed. “Why would I ever do that? They are not military tar—”

  Watt stopped and looked surprised. Which, unless he was a consummate actor, suggested that the thought of the boys as targets was a new one. Implying Watt’s innocence—of this, at least.

  “A pity, yes,” Watt went on, “what happened to the boy. But God has His ways, has He not? Boys die ever’ day. A body cannot feel sad ’bout each and ever’ one of ’em.”

  Hay wanted to punch the man and felt himself rise from his chair. Halfway up, he stopped—Watt was goading him, and he must not give in. With an effort, he resumed his seat and said, “Your sadness, Mister Watt, is your business. My business is to ask what you were doing on the south grounds early on the morning of February fourth. A Tuesday.”

  “Yer business, Mister Hay?”

  “It is, yes, Lieutenant Watt. Representing the president.”

  “We are mighty, are we not?”

  Hay refused to play. “You were standing by a spruce tree very early on a winter’s morning.”

  “Trimmin’ its branches.”

  “But so early—barely past dawn?”

  “Now, the trees on the grounds are also yer business, Mister Hay? And how and when to tend them?”

  “In this case, they are. Please answer my question, Mister Watt.”

  “Gladly. A cold morning gives a clean cut.”

  Hay sat back. Was that true? He had no idea. It sounded plausible enough. More than plausible—poetry. A cold morning gives a clean cut.

  Hay felt like a dunce. Worse, Pinkerton was right.

  Another tack, then. “Jefferson Davis, would you still describe him as the best and bravest man in America?”

  “In Confederate America,” Watt replied nonchalantly. “Ain’t that America, too?”

  “That seems to be the question at stake. Then tell me, were you elated at the results at Bull Run? Or should I call it Manassas?” Beauregard, the Confederate general, had referred to the Southerners’ triumph by invoking the city, not the creek, and the nomenclature became a shibboleth dividing North from South.

  “You may call it what you like. My sister’s boy was shot in the shoulder there.”

  A new fact. “On which side?”

  No reply.

  “Has he recovered?”

  A glare.

  “And tell me, is the Union army composed of rubbish?” Hay was enjoying this. “Are the Union soldiers cowards, Lieutenant Watt?”

  “Our soldiers ran from Manassas, Mister Hay.”

  “I know this—I saw it myself.”

  “All the way to Washington City. The Great Skedaddle was not a pretty sight. Or am I no longer permitted to speak the truth in your America? Are factual statements now regarded as treason?”

  “You admit these statements, then?”

  “’Twas my understanding, Mister Hay, that this is a free country, still.”

  “A free country at war against itself, Mister Watt.”

  “An unfortunate fact of life.”

  “But a fact nonetheless.”

  What a blackguard, Hay reflected as Hasheesh ambled home. A thief—for what else was padding invoices but thievery?—a liar, a blackmailer, an instigator, a secessionist sympathizer, a mean-tempered man. But was he a murderer? Watt had sounded surprised at the thought of Willie as a target. And Pinkerton was right, about a stupid way to run a plot. Watt would be impulsive; poisoning, if done slowly, took patience. Ordinarily, gardeners had patience; this one did not.

  Unless the gardener was a master at hiding who he was, or if he was working with somebody else.

  Or somebodies else.

  * * *<
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  Inside the entrance to the Executive Mansion, Old Edward hovered like a falcon, his eyes alarmingly bright. He smelled faintly of varnish. From drinking, was Hay’s guess.

  “You have heard, sir,” Old Edward said, “abo’t Nashville?”

  “No. Good news?”

  “’Tis ours, Mister Hay. Requirin’ nary a drop of our boys’ blood. Like a stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Yesterday, it was the capital of Tennessee of the Confederate States of America—if you will pardon the phrase, sir. Now it is the capital of Tennessee, U.S.A.”

  Hay had never heard Old Edward so effusive. Pro-Union sentiment, even fueled by whiskey, should not surprise him in the Executive Mansion. To-day, it did.

  “Wonderful news, Edward.”

  “And thank the good Lord, sir, fer General Grant.”

  “True, true. Have you seen Mister Stackpole of late?”

  “Aye, I have, Mister Hay. Heading”—Old Edward pointed to Hay’s left—“to the conservatory, I should think, sir.”

  Hay marveled at the doorkeeper’s talent, even while squiffed, for keeping track of everyone’s whereabouts without leaving his post. But why on earth was Stackpole in the greenhouse?

  At the western end of the mansion, Hay passed through the double glass doors. Heavy, damp heat slapped his face. Flowerpots and clay planters hung on hooks from the sloped ceiling of the greenhouse; countless others lined the shelves from ankle to shoulder height. Hay felt light-headed from the cloying smell of flowers of every hue—roses, gardenias, jasmine, camellias, orchids. He pressed a clammy palm over the lip of a waist-level pot and became aware of being watched.

  “It is strong, is it not, Mister Hay? In the gardenia family—Gardenia jasminoides, I believe, although Major Watt could tell you for certain. Quite pleasing, once you get used to it.”