The Murder of Willie Lincoln Page 13

  Hay thought that might take a while.

  Stackpole’s musical voice belied the bulk that covered the edges of the stool. Seated by the counter at the conservatory’s northern wall, Stackpole shifted but did not rise at Hay’s approach. His muscle tone looked so slack that if Hay punched him, the skin would only languidly reemerge. His lips stretched into an insincere grin, which Hay supposed was better than no grin at all.

  “I was not aware this was your domain,” Hay said.

  “Major Watt is otherwise engaged. He asked me to attend to certain matters in his absence.”

  “I thought he had assistant gardeners for that.”

  “No one he trusts quite like myself, may I say.”

  Hay thought, If this were a conspiracy, would Stackpole acknowledge it so readily? “To do what?” he said.

  No reply.

  Hay said, “And how did he convey his wishes?”

  “He left me a note.”

  “May I see it?” Hay was not sure why he had asked.

  “No,” Stackpole replied. That chilling grin, again.

  “All right. Then let me ask about this. To-day, I was examining the investigative files at the House committee on the loyalty of … Potter’s committee.”

  “That committee of cowards and charlatans.”

  “The very one. Nevertheless…” Hay described the testimony that Stackpole had met with a secessionist from Fairfax County and had spoken to the painter Spaulding eight times—“in the middle of Seventeenth street, at the Avenue”—the night Washington City feared an attack. “Named witnesses.”

  “Name them.”

  Hay remembered both names, and he knew that the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution assured the right of the accused to confront his accusers. But this was no legal proceeding, and Potter had insisted on secrecy. “I don’t think the names matter. People in a position to know.” Hay wondered if that was true. “The report, with witnesses’ names, will be published soon enough.”

  “If you are asking me to explain, Reginald May is a liar and hypocrite.” So, Stackpole knew one of the names already. “An abolitionist of the most intolerant sort who has been fighting his sister over inheriting their father’s nineteen slaves. I do know the lady in question, and she is from Fairfax County, out in Virginia, and if you saw her, Mister Hay, you, too, would have been present in that parlor if you could. In fact, I am glad that you weren’t.”

  A leer, his face a full moon. Hay could only imagine how a comely young lady would view the attentions of a bloated, married man.

  “And the information she carried back to Manassas?”

  “Nothing I told her. Beyond that, I cannot say.”

  Hay thought, Cannot or will not? “And your conversations with Mister Spaulding on Seventeenth street. A contact of some sort?”

  “To this, I plead guilty. He is my sister’s husband. You remember that night, do you not, Mister Hay? Minute by minute, we waited for the enemy to attack. Inside the president’s house, we heard the cannons. I was worried for my family, and for my sister’s family. My duty was to remain at my post, and so I counted on Mister Spaulding to protect my family as well. I confess to keeping him informed so that he might know whether and when to flee the city.”

  “Even if nobody else knew?”

  “To the charge of protecting my family, I plead guilty, Mister Hay. Perhaps someday you shall understand.”

  Stackpole swiveled on the stool. His profile resembled Nero’s, with bulges.

  “You are a New Hampshire man, are you not?” said Hay.

  “That I am, and proud to say so. Rugged country, rugged people.” Hay could guess why Stackpole had left. “‘Live free or die,’ as we say.’”

  “Does that apply also to slaves?”

  “New Hampshire has no slaves. So, yes.”

  Hay thought, How can you ask a man if he is a secessionist? And get a candid response? Maybe with a direct question. No, Hay decided. In the president’s home, only a fool would say yes, and Stackpole was nobody’s fool.

  “Does it trouble you,” Hay said, “that there are slave pens just a few blocks from here?”

  “I cannot say, Mister Hay. Does it trouble you?”

  The truthful answer (although Hay was not about to say so) was no. Hay did not like to meddle with moral ills, preferring the company of comfortable men, the men who could read, who understood the world as it was, in its glorious grays. He was wary of principle, on principle. Then why did it offend him that Stackpole might feel the same? An amoral doorkeeper, protecting Buchanan and Lincoln alike—what could be the trouble with that? Answer: if he sat a few doors distant from the president’s beloved sons. His explanations for Potter’s charges were plausible, even persuasive. Why, then, did Hay not believe him? A phlegmatic man, slow to act and yet—this was Hay’s impression—merciless whenever he moved.

  * * *

  The exhumation was scheduled for four o’clock, and Hay went to alert the president. Hay found him in Tad’s bedroom, dozing in a chair, a Bible open on his lap. Tad was asleep, a cherub’s face, his hair in chaos.

  The creak of Hay’s step on the floorboards awakened Lincoln. “What time is it?”

  “Past two.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  The day was dark but not that dark.

  Hay mentioned the exhumation, hoping Lincoln would decide not to come.

  “Is Jamie going?” the president said.

  “Yes. And Doc … Doctor Stone.”

  “When do we leave?”

  * * *

  The carriages arrived at the cemetery at half past six. The president had pushed the excursion past dark—public knowledge, he said, would help no one. Hay suspected the president was trying to hide this most intimate of undertakings from himself. Who could blame him?

  The lanterns twisted up the path like drunken soldiers. Hay slipped on the trampled mat of leaves. As he neared the ridge, the rush of Rock Creek grew louder.

  By the quarter moon, Hay distinguished the stovepipe hat from the surrounding silhouettes. Lincoln stood in front of the mausoleum, as still as a tree trunk.

  The wind picked up. Lincoln pulled his gray shawl tight around him and waited. Minutes later, Dr. Stone emerged from the vault, carrying a small wooden box. He nodded to Lincoln, and brushed past him, and started down the hill. Lincoln removed his hat and stepped into the crypt. By the light of a single candle, a father fell to his knees before the best in himself.

  * * *

  Hay’s pocket watch showed twenty minutes before midnight. The front entrance to the Executive Mansion was unguarded and unlocked. Hay was reaching for the door when a man snarled from behind him, “Who goes there?”

  Hay swiveled, his fists cocked. A small, wiry man jumped from the shrubs, and a lanky figure appeared at the corner of Hay’s right eye. Both of them had pistols, aimed at Hay’s chest.

  “Ah, Pinkerton’s men!” Hay exclaimed.

  Papers were furnished; explanations were proffered and accepted.

  Inside the mansion, the gaslights were low; the silence was profound. Hay’s footsteps creaked on the staircase. He was desperate for a bath.

  Hay slowed as he approached the bathroom beyond Tad’s closed door. A cold bath promised pain, but he had no patience to heat the water. He would check on Tad instead.

  That Tad was still here was the Hell-cat’s doing—that, and the Ancient’s willingness to let her have her way. Hay’s uncle Milt thought of Lincoln as a henpecked “poke easy” he had only haltingly come to admire. Hay stood nervously outside the boy’s door, his sense of duty struggling with the memory of twisted bedclothes. The strength of his reluctance to open the door persuaded him that he must. A rule his older brother (and boyhood hero), Leonard, had beaten into his head—literally—after John backed down from a fistfight: Giving in to your fears hurts more than the bruises from facing them.

  The hinges squealed as he leaned on the door. Inside Tad’s room, the air felt dense. A medicinal
smell competed with the sting of kerosene. Tad lay on his back, motionless, his hair matted on his forehead. The boy’s lips curled, as if he were pulling off a prank in his sleep. A rasp, then long breaths of contentment. Light flickered across his face; Tad’s color had improved.

  A cough, not from Tad but from the foot of the bed.

  “Missus Pomroy!” he exclaimed to the silhouette. A woman bent forward, her hands in her lap. It was not Mrs. Pomroy, who was generous in girth, but the thin, buxom nurse with the severely cut hair. To-night, she had a weary smile.

  “He looks better,” Hay said.

  “He is,” she replied. Her drawl straddled the line between silken and abrasive.

  “Out of danger?”

  “If the Lord wills it. A good boy, underneath.” She was aware, then, of Tad’s surface. “I’ve handled tougher.”

  “Only an optimist can work as a nurse,” Hay said with a smile.

  “Eugenia,” she said, extending her hand.

  “John Milton Hay.” Her hand was strong but clammy. He asked if Tad had slept soundly, hoping insomnia was a symptom of mercury poisoning; catatonia, he knew, signified typhoid fever.

  “Off and on,” she said.

  “And his fever?”

  “Up and down.”

  Hay checked his watch and decided to stop off in his office before heading to bed. The draft of a letter to Andrew Johnson lay half-written on his desk, informing the dimwitted, hard-drinking (from Hay’s War Department friend, again) Tennessean of his appointment as the military governor of his newly conquered state. Hay crossed toward his corner desk in the dark. His left hip bumped something hard—he yelped. The felt-topped table had been moved. He felt his way around the edge of it and waved his arms like the antennae of a praying mantis and tiptoed to his desk. The lantern was where he had left it; its concave waist was a comfort in his hand. He struck a match, and the flame burst to life.

  He tried to read the letter to Senator Johnson: martial law … established authorities … brigadier general of volunteers … Words formed into phrases, but sentences seemed beyond reach.

  This was asinine. He needed sleep.

  Lantern in hand, he twirled from his seat. Something caught his eye. Jutting from the outside pocket of his satchel that hung on the wall was a triangle of white.

  Not again!

  He knew what it was before he plucked it out. The envelope was crumpled and smudged. His hand shook.

  Hay sank back into his seat. He returned the lantern to the dust-defined circle on his desk, shoved the letter to Andy Johnson aside, and positioned the envelope in the emptied space. It was oyster white, linen-like, faintly lined, rough to the touch—all, as before. Thick black ink. A raggedy cursive.

  A different addressee, but the same recipient.

  FATHER ABRAHAM

  No postmark. Delivered by hand. Somebody’s hand. Into his satchel.

  Hay’s hands hovered, fingertips poised, as if over a harpsichord. He turned the envelope over. It was unsealed—meant to be read. He lifted the flap and removed a folded sheet of foolscap. He unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the desk. Written in a rough but legible hand, it read:

  And ye are risen up against my father’s house this day, and have slain his sons.

  Sons.

  Plural.

  Chapter Seven

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1862

  Grogginess dampened Hay’s jitters. The president was in the oval study, finishing his breakfast, rocking harder than the coffee would explain. Hay consoled himself with the thought that regarding the war or anything else, the worse the news, the more Lincoln wanted to hear it.

  Lincoln fingered the envelope with an almost feminine care and extracted the message inside. As he read it, his back stiffened like the barrel of a shotgun. At last, he said, “Judges.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Judges. The book of Judges, nine eighteen. The murderous reign of Abimelech.”

  A name that was new to Hay. The things Lincoln knew, he knew. “Which testament?” Hay said.

  “The old.” Without condescension. “He was the son of Gideon, the Israelite commander, by a Canaanite concubine. When Gideon died, Abimelech wanted the kingship for himself, except that his seventy half brothers had a contrary notion. So, for seventy pieces of silver, Abimelech hired local cutthroats and murdered all but one of his half brothers. The youngest one escaped. He prophesied Abimelech’s demise—accurately. The prophecies we remember are the ones that went wrong.”

  “‘Have slain his sons,’” Hay said. “His sons! Not just one.”

  “I know, I know, I know.” Like a chastened child. “This time I shall prevail, no matter what Mother thinks.”

  * * *

  Old Edward’s black suit was, as always, fastidious, and his high collar was starched.

  A master plowman might have parted his snow-white hair. His dignity was intact and, by extension, so was the mansion’s and that of everyone under its roof. Yet something about the doorkeeper looked unkempt. The way he stood—yes, his shoulders slumped. From fatigue, no doubt, or from illness or drink or from the weight of the world on his back.

  Hay asked Old Edward for a moment of his time and was led into the cloakroom. It was like stepping into a remote and primitive place, suffused with the smell of wet fur from parties past. At the back wall, Old Edward pushed aside a row of forgotten overcoats, revealing a pair of slat-backed chairs. The two men sat across from each other, their knees inches apart. Old Edward’s watery blue eyes were alert.

  “I need the same thing as last time, if you could, please,” Hay said.

  “The same what, sir?”

  “Sorry. A list of who was here, on the premises. For last evening between, say, six o’clock and midnight. You were not here past … When did you leave?”

  “Me usual. Around eight.”

  That left four hours after Old Edward’s departure. Maybe Pinkerton’s men had kept track of everyone who came in or left.

  “A list, then, please, of everyone who was in the building between six and eight. Best you can.”

  “How soon do you need this, sir? By yesterday?”

  “If you could, please.”

  * * *

  “Just the man I wanted to see,” Hay said, and for once, he was telling the truth.

  “To be o’ service,” Pinkerton replied, with a deference Hay assumed was a pretense.

  The detective was loitering near the door to the president’s office, as if Jenny Lind was about to emerge, and resisted the invitation into Hay’s office. The compromise was a whispered conversation in Hay’s doorway.

  “Last night, after eight, did your men see anyone leave the mansion?”

  “Me men, why woul’ they—”

  “No games, please. They stopped me outside here, so I know they were here. I found another message last night in my satchel, like the first one. Someone left it there sometime between six o’clock and just before midnight. Maybe one of your men saw—”

  “They were watchin’ for intruders, no’ fer anyone on their way out.”

  “Someone might have come in and then left. Or just left.”

  “I will ask.”

  * * *

  “No, nobody.” Thomas Stackpole showed a wisp of a smile. Hay wondered what amused him. “Not before half past eight, when I returned to the bosom of my family.”

  Parody—that was his source of amusement. Hay brushed it aside. Half past eight. For three and a half hours, anyone might have entered his office unseen.

  “Not even Nicolay?”

  “I am aware of the meaning of words, Mister Hay. When I say nobody, that is what I mean.”

  Hay spent half the afternoon questioning two cooks, three of the chambermaids, a messenger, and a stable boy, each of them on duty the night Willie died; all but the stable boy had also been working last night. Nobody knew anything. No one had seen anyone enter Hay’s office. An Irish chambermaid had entered the Madam’s bedroom just past ei
ght o’clock. “Too many flowers,” she said, holding her nose. Her blond tresses and saucy stance aroused him. “Like a funeral.”

  Hay still knew nothing worth knowing. That whoever had left these messages was well-versed in Scripture, which eliminated precious few people other than himself and probably Nicolay. So, should Hay quiz his interviewees on the Bible and grow suspicious if they passed? All right, then, what else did he know? That no one had been seen entering his office, although somebody had. Not John Watt—he was confined beneath the Capitol. Unless someone had delivered the message on his behalf. Thomas Stackpole, perhaps. The doorkeeper was certainly familiar enough with Watt’s conservatory, and both men stood accused—rightly or wrongly—of hobnobbing or worse with secesh. Both of them had served in the Executive Mansion since … well, since Hay was a boy. Hay was fairly certain that the two were working in cahoots. But in murder? Tad had said specifically that neither John Watt nor Thomas Stackpole had fed him anything, so it was unlikely (assuming Tad told the truth) they would have poisoned Willie. Unless somebody else had, on their behalf—a conspiracy, indeed.

  * * *

  Hay knew full well his destination, although his motivation stumped him. At half past five, Kate Chase would probably be clinking a champagne glass with one or another of her beaux. The last place Hay could expect to find her was at home.

  But he needed to clear his head, and the mere act of visiting, whether she was there to receive him or not, would count as evidence (to himself if not to her) of his affections. So, here he was riding Hasheesh east along E street, ambivalent enough to let the mare nose toward a dog in the roadway. At least her father would be at his desk at the Treasury. Hay loathed Salmon Chase—so did Lincoln, who liked almost everyone—and he was confident the feeling was mutual.

  The rutted street and muddy sidewalks bustled with the expiring workday. A drunken soldier staggered off the sidewalk and into the street. Hasheesh knew enough to steer clear.

  The Chases’ three-story brick mansion stood at the corner of E and Sixth. Hay tied the mare to a post in front, stripped the calfskin glove from his right hand, mounted the porch, and rapped on the cherrywood door. Almost immediately, the door swung open. Hay’s heart sank.