The Murder of Willie Lincoln Read online

  “Has it, do you know?”

  “I know nothin’ about nothin’. Neber have, neber will. Nicer dat way.”

  “Well, your secret is safe with me. Not that I believe you for an instant. Would you happen to know, by the ghost of a chance, where Eva Socrates lives?”

  The cook slid the kettle back onto the fire and satisfied herself that it was balanced. She said, “Why do you need to know?”

  “To ask her some questions. About what happened to the boys.” That was more than he had intended to say. “I am working under the president’s orders.”

  She looked at him, not blinking. “In Georgetown,” she said.

  “Where in Georgetown, do you know?”

  “Yes, suh, I do.” She described a neighborhood called Herring Hill, up the hill from Bridge street, where the freedmen lived, not far from Willie’s resting place. “Montgomery and West streets, the southeast corner.”

  “What do you not know?” said Hay.

  “People tell me things. Cain’t say why.”

  * * *

  The snow stopped as Hay was setting out for Georgetown, but the fluffy white on every branch and roof transformed the ordinary into beauty. Allowing Hasheesh to lounge, Hay flagged down a hack. An easier trip to bear than the last time: A Negress’s shack was an easier destination than a graveyard.

  Hay considered his approach to Eva. The question he wanted answered—did she murder an eleven-year-old boy?—was unlikely to elicit a useful reply. He might ask if Willie had been frightened about his medical care (or anything else) and he could inquire about Doc Stone of someone unafraid to express an opinion. What reason could he offer for asking? Actually, no need to give one. He could simply ask Eva if she had administered calomel to Willie and then watch her response. He could inquire about Old Aunt Mary and the other nurses. And about Mrs. Keckly, Eva’s benefactress—careful, however, not to show more than a casual interest.

  There was an art to this Vidocq stuff.

  By the time he crossed the bridge from Washington City to Georgetown, Hay had pretty much decided to rely (as usual) on instinct. He directed the hack to take an immediate right, north along Montgomery street. The wind whipped past, and Hay pulled his slouch hat low over his forehead. Shanties pressed against the creeks of mud that served as sidewalks. No lights inside, no signs of life, other than the bark of a dog in the distance. At West street, the carriage turned east, back toward the creek. Here, the narrow houses were spaced like cornstalks in a drought; a scream in one might not be heard in the next.

  On the southeastern corner of Montgomery and West, a frame house had visible cracks between the slats of walls that had never seen paint. The ground-floor window lacked shutters or drapes. Hay peered inside. The room was empty of furniture or movement. Hay knocked on the front door. Hay thought he smelled something burning—no, burned—and rapped harder. No response.

  When he punched at the door in frustration, a noise wafted from the porch of the neighboring house, beyond a vacant lot of brambles and stones. The dark-skinned woman was as thin as a river birch. Her voice jiggled, “Gwine.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They gwine. Wit’ ever’thing, best I see.”

  She had looked, no doubt. “Where to?” he said.

  An expressive shrug.

  “When?” said Hay.

  “Yest’day. In the night.”

  “Who left?”

  “All of ’em.”

  “Eva, too?”

  “Dunno. Tell me one from de next.”

  “A young woman, maybe twenty years…”

  But the neighbor had turned away and was heading inside.

  * * *

  A flicker of light inside Lincoln’s office illuminated nothing. Gradually, Hay became aware of a silhouette by the far window, black against iron gray, unmoving.

  Then it moved.

  “Sir,” Hay projected a whisper.

  “I am looking at the stars.” Hay recognized the slump of the shoulders, cradling the tube of the telescope that was pointed toward the southern sky. “When you look at the stars, John, everything on earth seems so small.”

  Hay desperately tried to think of a jest. “How powerful is that telescope?” he said.

  “You are coming with me,” Lincoln replied.

  As they crossed the South Lawn toward the stables, the stars glittered overhead like shattered crystal, reflecting off the snow on the ground. Lincoln saddled up Old Abe, his easygoing gray steed, while Hay apologized to Hasheesh for the lack of a treat. The mare was nonchalant.

  “There is something I need to tell you, sir,” Hay said as they passed through the Seventeenth street gate. “About Missus Lincoln, sir.”

  Lincoln stiffened at the second sir. “There is nothing about that woman I do not know.”

  That woman?

  Hay told him of Pinkerton’s report about the permits to trade with the South that Stackpole had received by way of Mrs. Lincoln’s favor. Lincoln took the news without a flutter. Hay had the impression he was relieved.

  All was silent along the western stretch of New York avenue except the thwap thwap thwap of hoofs pulling out of the mud.

  “And, John, how does this concern Willie?”

  “No reason to think that it does, sir.”

  “Then why is this within the province of your investigation?”

  “I am not saying it is, sir. It is something I learned, sir”—he thought of pinning this on Pinkerton but decided not to—“and I thought you might want to know. Maybe I was … mistaken.”

  “No, John, no. I would rather know than not know. Always.”

  The response Hay had hoped for. “Let me tell you this, then, or maybe you already know. That Missus Keckly used to make dresses for Varina Davis. And that Old Aunt Mary was ol’ Jeff. Davis’s slave. Just a point of interest, nothing more.”

  “Honorable people, the Davises. Ol’ Jeff. was born a few counties away from me, you know, in Kentucky. He is not an evil man. He is a man of his circumstances, as most of us are. I might have been him; he might have been me.”

  They continued west along E street, passing a few dark houses per block, islands of habitation.

  “How is Tad?” Hay said.

  “Better, to-day.”

  “You saw him?”

  “After church. Robert and I.”

  “Bob went to church? I thought he…”

  “He changed his mind. With that boy, who can explain?”

  The Naval Observatory stood on a hill beyond Twenty-third street. Slices of its silvery dome shone through the leafless trees.

  “They say the day I was elected to this godawful job, a bright star was seen in the daytime sky, about sixty degrees south of the sun. In Illinois, so the newspapers said. And you know they are never wrong.”

  As they entered the observatory grounds, a drizzle was rinsing the snow from the gravel roadway. The dome vanished behind the tree trunks until the night riders rounded a curve. Next to the silver hemisphere was a sliver of moon. Lincoln stared at the sky, transfixed.

  The dome vanished from sight as they arrived at the observatory entrance. The two-story brick building was as unprepossessing as a school. Lincoln tried the doorknob. It turned. Inside, gaslights illuminated the arch of a double staircase that spread like a butterfly’s wings across the foyer.

  “Hallo!” Lincoln shouted.

  No reply.

  Lincoln called out again. Upstairs, metal scraped against metal. The president loped toward the left staircase. Hay followed.

  “Hall!” Lincoln shouted into the space that gaped above them.

  Hay wondered if this was another of Lincoln’s stepnephews. Not one he had heard of.

  The switchback staircase opened into a round room with a hemispherical ceiling gashed by the largest telescope Hay had ever seen.

  “The Equatorial, they call it,” Lincoln whispered as if in the presence of something sacred. “A fourteen-foot refractor.” To Hay, it looked like a python
ready to pounce.

  Lincoln called again, “Professor Hall!”

  From somewhere above, a nasal voice replied, “Whoever you are, I am at your service. Begging your patience.”

  Footsteps clopped down a metal ladder from the telescope’s nether reach. Following the legs, the torso, and the shoulders appeared the head of a meek-looking man. His beard was too lush and his forehead too expansive to suit his shortness. Yet his erect posture announced that the only opinion that mattered to him was his own. He betrayed no surprise in finding at his feet the nation’s chief magistrate.

  “Mister Lincoln, what may I do for you, sir?” The astronomer spoke with a patrician New Englander’s lilt. He was no Kentuckian.

  “Just to look into the heavens, if I might, Professor Hall.”

  “I will be glad to assist you in any way I can.”

  “And how is little Asaph?” said Lincoln. “How old is he, now?”

  The astronomer’s smile split his face like an overripe melon. “Two and a half, sir, and into every kind of mischief. He understands everything and ignores what he pleases. A keeper he is, sir.”

  Hay worried that Lincoln would crumple, in grief for Willie, but instead he smiled, probably thinking of Tad. And Willie.

  “And your son,” Asaph Hall went on, “you know he was here last night.”

  “Who? Not Wil…?”

  “Robert. Almost at midnight.”

  “Whatever for?” the president exclaimed.

  “Same as you, sir. Just to look.”

  Chapter Twelve

  MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1862

  “The very idea is absurd,” Nicolay said, sipping his tea. The gentleman’s dining room at Willard’s was empty but for a table of scar-faced men giggling by the opposite wall. “Old Aunt Mary is a kind, kind lady.”

  Hay licked huckleberry jam from his upper lip—his mustache was filling in at last—and continued his assault on the diamond-shaped doughnut. “No argument here.”

  “As much as you would like to give one, you mean.”

  “Well, of course. And I agree only to a point, Nico. Remember who Old Aunt Mary was owned by. The Confederacy’s stick-up-his-arse.”

  “Until when, do you know?”

  “Until they went south, she said. I was hoping you would know, as the repository of all information, useful and otherwise.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Nicolay said. “Are you suggesting that the president of the … you should pardon the expression … Confederate States of America is conspiring to murder our president’s child, or children, using two freed slaves as his conspirators?”

  “Both of them, in Tad’s words, dark ladies,” Hay said. “And do not forget Doctor Stone. A former resident of the unholy capital of that unmentionable geographical entity. Who married a maiden of that unholy capital. And whose former medical colleague is now the personal physician to the president of the aforesaid entity. And let us not forget that the painter Spaulding was recently seen in that unholy capital of that entity. Is all of this a coincidence? Maybe. Or might they all be working together—conspiring, as it were? Improbable, perhaps. But impossible?”

  “And John Watt? And the ever-present Mister Stackpole.”

  “Them, too. These are not stupid men. Presidents come and presidents go, and in the asylum we now call home, they survive.”

  “If this is a conspiracy,” Nicolay said, “it is the least disciplined, least organized, most ramshackle conspiracy one can imagine. They are incapable of buttoning their shoes. Should the fate of the Confederacy rest in their hands, then…”

  “Then maybe there is a God after all,” Hay said.

  * * *

  On occasion, even Mrs. Lincoln’s prim sister was bound to answer the call of nature, and Hay waited so that he could steal into the Hell-cat’s bedroom. He had refrained from seeking Lincoln’s permission for fear of being refused, figuring that no matter how severely he sinned, Lincoln would forgive him. Eventually.

  Mrs. Lincoln’s bedroom, adjoining her husband’s, was larger than his. And darker, day or night. A thick reddish globe shaded the gaslight; the taffeta drapes reminded Hay of a coffin’s lining. The chamber’s occupant lay still, on her back, in the four-poster bed. Her cheeks were puffier than Hay remembered, and the hair that sprawled over the pillow was threaded with gray. The questions he had hoped to ask—about her letter in support of John Watt, about her familiarity with calomel, possibly about Stackpole and his trading permits—melted like a penny candle. Hay felt like an intruder. He was an intruder.

  He was turning to leave when a shrill voice—her voice—chilled him. “He was here again.”

  “Who was?”

  “My darling boy. At the end of the bed.” Her eyes were shut.

  “Just now?” said Hay, exhaling. He had been holding his breath.

  “Every night.”

  And mornings.

  Hay wanted to say, “You were imagining this. Willie was not at the end of your bed.” But who was Hay to jab at a mother who was grappling with a grief he hoped he would never understand?

  * * *

  Dr. Stone was hastening from Tad’s vacant bedroom toward the office staircase when Hay pounced. The good doctor was never not in a rush.

  “Sir!” Hay cried out in his most deferential yet insistent tone as his quarry turned and said, “You, again.”

  “Please, sir. One—”

  “One minute, correct? Your customary exaggeration.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  Candor earned a smile. Hay reached inside his coat and withdrew a folded-over paper and waved it at the doctor. “The president’s say-so.”

  Dr. Stone stuck out his hand. “If you would.”

  Lincoln had taken Hay’s dictation …

  My dear Dr. Stone,

  Please answer Mr. Hay’s questions about the medical condition of my sons Willie and Tad, as far as you are able.

  Obliged,

  A. Lincoln

  … with a single change. Before questions, Lincoln had inserted reasonable.

  The oval study was empty but for the ghost of its usual occupant. Seated in the president’s upholstered rocking chair, Dr. Stone’s feet did not quite reach the floor.

  “What, then, are your reasonable questions?” said Dr. Stone.

  “The first one is: How much calomel did you administer to Willie? Is that reasonable enough?”

  “Not in the least, but I shall answer it. Twelve grains of calomel, twice a day. Now, what else?”

  “How many pills is that?”

  “That would depend on the size of the pills.”

  “Of whatever size you administered to Willie.”

  “The smaller ones. Four of them at a time.”

  “A heroic dose, yes? How much is a toxic amount, would you say?”

  “Three times that. Are you accusing me of something, Mister Hay?”

  “Of course not.” Hay refused to squirm. “And Tad? How much calomel did you prescribe for him?”

  “Eight grains. Commensurate with his size.”

  And his orneriness, Hay guessed. “And he swallowed the pills you gave him?”

  “Tad? Yes.”

  “All of them?

  “I just said so.”

  “Is he not a little too young? I would think a child would need to be ten or eleven before—”

  “Nonsense. Any child Tad’s age can swallow a pill, if he has a mind to.”

  If, Hay thought. He asked to see Willie’s medical chart—“There is one, yes?”

  “No.”

  “No chart?”

  “There is such a chart, yes. But the president asked me to answer all reasonable questions, and I am answering your latest question, which is reasonable—may you examine my patient’s chart? And my answer to your reasonable question is no. You may not examine the chart, not without the express permission of my late patient’s, this minor patient’s, parents.”

  “Parents, plural?” said Hay.

 
; Singular would do.

  Hay was wondering how to inquire about Mrs. Stone’s family in Richmond when the doctor stood and turned toward the door. Hay let him go. He could think of no query that would elicit useful information or leave the doctor in any mind to help.

  * * *

  Hay hoped to find a moment alone with Lincoln, to gain permission to examine Willie’s medical chart. But Stackpole was absent from his post, allowing more than the usual chaos among grovelers and grumblers besieging the president’s door. Hay spent the next three hours answering mail. Soothing a half-witted Republican congressman from Maine who threatened to bolt on the homestead bill. Replying to diatribes from the allegedly honorable mayors of Baltimore and Wilmington about the niggardly rates for compensated emancipation. Offering the president’s endorsement of the constitutional convention in the western counties of Virginia bent on joining the Union as a separate state—in a word, Hay thought, seceding.

  His mind wandered to Dr. Stone, so urbane, so haughty, so handsome, but not a liar. Nor a killer. First, do no harm—especially to a president’s son. Beyond considering, was it not? If Dr. Stone had administered only a third of a lethal dose—there was no proof but no reason to doubt him—somebody else must have administered the rest. A dark lady, by Tad’s unreliable account. Which could mean only Mrs. Keckly or Old Aunt Mary or … Eva.

  Where was Eva? Who was Eva? And who had seen her last before she fled? To that, Hay knew the answer, by Old Edward’s reliable word: Mrs. Keckly.

  Hay retrieved his greatcoat.

  Hasheesh sniffed at the half apple as far beneath her worth, but Hay held the superior bargaining position—it was all he had with him—and the mare, in the end, had to accede.

  New York avenue was empty in the late afternoon, and Hasheesh grazed along the gutter in search of edibles, reminding Hay of Nicolay’s description of the city as a national pigsty. Hay’s patience lasted four or five minutes, then with light kicks to the haunches he wheedled the mare along.

  As Hay crossed K street, an overloaded wagon rushed past, bearing sheaves of winter wheat from the port of Georgetown. Whether from stubbornness or stupidity, Hasheesh refused to yield the right of way, until Hay kicked her.

  “You will get us both killed!” he cried. “Actually, no—you will survive.” He almost kicked her again.