The Murder of Willie Lincoln Read online

Mrs. Keckly’s eyes shone like onyx. Slavery was still legal in the District of Columbia, and the Fugitive Slave Act was in force.

  “Where is she, then?” said Hay.

  Silence. She knew.

  * * *

  Mrs. Keckly had given Hay the address—541 H street, nearer to Sixth than to Seventh—of the nurse he had met at the Executive Mansion a couple of times before. The door opened before Hay’s second knock.

  “May I help you, Mister Hay?” A lithesome drawl.

  Eugenia Jenkins was a handsome, although not a pretty, woman. Not at all delicate. Stern lips and determined eyes promised no nonsense. Her shiny black hair, parted precisely at the center, plunged down both sides of her face. She had a brisk, efficient manner and a demeanor that Hay had found neither friendly nor unfriendly.

  “I hope you can,” Hay replied. He applied his most charming smile. “May I come in?”

  The parlor was sparse in furniture or any air of permanency. Hay wondered if she was moving in or out. The remnants of a fire simmered on the hearth, and Hay took a wicker chair that felt too close to the heat. His hostess continued to stand. He noticed a few black hairs coiled under her chin.

  “Eva Socrates,” Hay began. “What can you tell me about her?”

  “A wicked one.” Eugenia Jenkins scowled, sinking into the mismatched chair.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You needed to look at her once and you knew it.”

  “She is a runaway slave, did you know that?”

  “I am not surprised.”

  Hay took that as a no. “You worked with her, did you not?”

  “I did not.”

  “Both of you were nurses to Willie and Tad.”

  “At different times.”

  “You never overlapped?”

  “Once or twice. We never spoke more than two or three words.”

  “But that was enough to know she was evil?”

  “You could see it in her eyes.”

  “That is preposterous,” Hay said. “Evil isn’t in somebody’s eyes. It’s in what they think and do. What did she do?”

  “You are a naïve young man, for which I offer my congratulations. For remaining so innocent in this city of sin.”

  Hay resented the notion he was innocent of anything. Was he not skeptical to the point of cynicism? Was he not devoted to the low life as well as to the literary salons? Did he not crave experience of every description? Innocent—how dare she!

  “You seem entirely too familiar with our fair city,” Hay said. “You were born here, Miss—Missus?—Jenkins?”

  “A morning’s ride away. My husband is ill, a weak heart, so I come here. Bought this place, for a boardinghouse.” Her drawl had thickened.

  “And so you wound up as a nurse at the Executive Mansion.”

  “I heard there was a need, and I offered myself.”

  “How did you hear this?”

  “Was no secret of it. The newspapers saying the boys got sick. I was in need of work.”

  “You had experience as a nurse?”

  “Enough. As a mother.”

  “And Old Aunt Mary? Is she skilled as a nurse?”

  “Only with affection. Which is usually enough.”

  “But not always?”

  “No, not always.”

  “Did you ever see her give medicine to Willie or Tad?”

  “No, not at all. That sweet old lady, she would never hurt a cockroach.” Mrs. Jenkins glared at Hay, as if to reproach him for thinking her animus toward Eva was simply the result of dark skin. “They are all God’s creatures, she would tell you. Which I suppose they are. But God made higher creatures and lower creatures. Is she skilled? No.”

  “Please tell me, were there other nurses with dark skin?”

  “Missus Keckly.”

  “Is she a nurse, really?”

  “Whoever is willing to nurse is a nurse. You may have noticed, Mister Hay, the considerable need. There is no magic involved. A smattering of knowledge and an ability not to faint at the sight of blood.”

  “Did you see anyone administer medicine to Willie, other than Doctor Stone?”

  She paused and shook her head.

  “Or anyone coming into Willie’s room who had no business there? Or into Tad’s room? Mister Watt, perhaps? Or Mister Stackpole?”

  “I do believe I saw Mister Stackpole in Willie’s room once or twice, looking for the president, so he said.”

  “The president was not there either time?”

  “No. He seemed surprised to see me, but both times he turned and left.”

  * * *

  Hasheesh poked along H street, and Hay let her, caught in a confusion of images that passed for thought. Maybe Hasheesh felt the same—she ignored a turkey’s carcass in the gutter. Whenever Hay tried to follow a strand of conjecture and fact, it seemed to lead back to Mrs. Keckly. Certainly, Eva did. Old Aunt Mary, too. Mrs. Keckly had hired all the nurses. She certainly had the run of the mansion. And the séance, which had nothing to do with anything. Other than death.

  Mrs. Keckly could not possibly be a secessionist—could she? A mulatto? Yet, her relationships with the grandest dames of the Confederacy suggested … what? A willingness to put money before morals? Possibly. But how could he reproach a woman—a former slave, yet—for earning her way? Or maybe Nicolay was right. (Wasn’t he always?) The death of a child—who could tell how a mother might react?

  Hay needed to learn more about Mrs. Keckly. And he knew who could probably tell him whatever he wanted to know. The African.

  * * *

  “I was in Warsaw once, ye know,” Pinkerton said, “me wife and me, yer Warsaw.” Hay had caught him browsing again at his desk—again, unflustered. “We was robbed o’ ever’thing we had.”

  The closemouthed Scot was not one to engage in small talk; a gratuitous insult to Hay’s hometown must be motivation enough.

  “I can guess who did it,” Hay said.

  “From your skills at detection, Mister Hay, or from insight into yer family and friends?”

  “From insight into Warsaw. We have three drunkards, two fancy girls, and one thief. A rather nice old fellow, is Daniel—with a long face and gray, curly hair, correct?”

  Pinkerton was nodding.

  “He would never have harmed you.”

  “You migh’ tell tha’ to me wife.”

  “It would be a pleasure,” Hay said. “In the meantime, do you have something to tell me now?”

  “We found Stackpole.”

  “Excellent. Where?”

  “Almost to Richmond. On the road. Me men, in pursuit.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Travelin’ in a carriage, papers in order, his Confederate tradin’ permits in hand. We shall learn more, I assure you, after he is brought here.”

  Hay shuddered to think what that meant.

  “There is something else you might do, if you would,” Hay said. He stood over the seated detective and rather enjoyed the advantage, except that Pinkerton seemed not to mind.

  Pinkerton agreed right away to search for the fugitive slave. Maybe he was being helpful. Hay wondered if he might need to perform the distasteful though oddly satisfying task of changing his mind about somebody.

  * * *

  Hay and Nicolay left Willard’s, emboldened by an after-dinner brandy—in Hay’s case, two. The Avenue was uncommonly boisterous for a workday night. Past Fifteenth street, they joined a stream of people, many or most of them Negroes. Hay checked his pocket watch—just past nine. At ten o’clock, any Negro caught on the street would be subject to a ten-dollar fine and a jail cell until morning. The prospect seemed not to disturb them, as they flounced through the open gate of the Executive Mansion.

  Then Hay saw the source of attraction. Above the portico, on the second-floor balcony, a tall and windblown figure leaned over the ledge. They had missed the opening words.

  “—day one year ago.” Hay had forgotten this was the anniversary of L
incoln’s inauguration. “All that we had feared has come to pass. Our beloved Union has broken apart. Many young men have died in their country’s service, and many a mother and wife and sweetheart … and father … grieves.” Lincoln’s thin voice had grown husky; his listeners stood transfixed. “A year ago, the future looked perilous. And still, it does—about that, let there be no mistake. And yet … and yet…” A master of timing was at work. “We are so much mightier now than we were a year ago. Our army of six hundred thousand volunteers—volunteers, ready to perish to preserve our blessed Union—is as steadfast and noble as any on earth. In the West, the tide of secession has been reversed. Across these united states, we are stronger in our resolve and in our knowledge of what the task before us will require. Knowing the worst is the first step toward making things right, and we shall. For there is something else we have learned beyond doubt. Whatever the price required, we shall pay it, and with the help of the Almighty, we shall prevail.”

  Lincoln turned away. There was a low, muffled sound that Hay thought was gloved applause, until he recognized the yelps of approval in hundreds of throats, black and white. He glanced over at Nicolay and saw tears trickle down the side of his nose and vanish into his beard.

  * * *

  The corridor upstairs was silent but for the creaks in the floor. Hay had the impression the hall had been vacated only moments before. No light was visible under the president’s door. Nor the Hell-cat’s. Only under Robert’s.

  Lifted and burdened by additional whiskeys, Hay passed through the double doors and crossed the empty waiting room into his office. He skirted the felt-topped table and veered around the uncomfortable chairs meant for the sort of conclaves Hay sought to avoid. He lit the kerosene lantern and sank into his swivel chair. A sheaf of papers crinkled underneath him.

  He found a wad of pages closely covered with scrawl and cleared a place on his desk. Hay leafed through them, deciphering a word or syllable here and there—temp., tongue, gastric, cal. Each page had a date at the top, working back from February 20 to February 4.

  Willie’s medical chart. The president had asked, and Dr. Stone had assented. Now, Hay needed to make sense of it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1862

  Robert Lincoln used the corner room on the right, beyond the one in which Willie had died. The door was closed, and Hay knocked softly and pushed it open. The room was small and, at first glance, empty of life. Then Hay noticed the lumps in the bed, like a boa constrictor that had swallowed a camel. Nine o’clock had passed, the sun was high, and the Prince of Rails—as Robert hated to be called—had a blanket over his head.

  Not for long.

  “Bob! Bob!”

  The blanket retracted, and a face emerged. How cherubic it looked. Innocent.

  “I was dreaming.” Robert slurred the words. “A sunny morning, by a river. Mother was smiling.”

  This felt familiar to Hay. “I can give you everything except the sun”—he drew open the drapes—“and your mother’s smile.”

  Robert’s face crumpled.

  Hay started to apologize, but there was nothing he could say. “But the river,” he rushed on, “I can give you. We need to cross it. We owe the African a visit.”

  * * *

  Hay had thought of Jamie Hall as a pudgy counselor who was wiser than his years, not as a practicing physician. This morning, however, he was busy with a patient, and Hay waited outside. A child’s squeals beyond the door suggested the doctor held the upper hand.

  Patience was not among Hay’s virtues. (That was a virtue he figured could wait until he got old.) He used the time to examine every detail in the modest waiting room—the unraveling rug, the hard-backed chairs, the grayish molding, the faded painting over the hearth of a darkened woods. He peered through the dirt-streaked window, down upon the Avenue. Across Tenth street, a carriage nearly collided with a meandering hog.

  The crack of the door jolted Hay from his reverie of pseudodetection. A hawk-faced woman leaned on a walking stick as she led a boy with a mottled face. Jamie, behind them, saw Hay and beckoned him in.

  As Hay took a seat on a gurney propped between two desks, the doctor smiled and said, “And to what do Ah owe this pleasure?”

  “I need a favor.”

  * * *

  Robert was waiting by the stables at a quarter past noon. The fine drizzle had given way to haze. Hay saddled up Hasheesh, while Robert debated riding Willie’s pony, who needed the exercise, before choosing his father’s easygoing gray. Hay pushed aside the memory of being attacked in Lincoln’s carriage. Maybe inviting Robert was a stupid idea. The danger was to sons. But Robert also needed the exercise, and not only physically. Hay remembered how the African had taken to Robert the last time. This time, he needed the African to open up.

  “Not to scare you,” Hay said, proffering a black hooded cloak. “We shall go incognito.”

  “I spend my life like that,” Robert said.

  Hay led the way, just in case of … of what? Surely, nobody would be looking for men on horseback at the Fifteenth street gate. Hay glanced around and saw nothing nearly as suspicious as two men in black hooded cloaks.

  They turned south on Fourteenth street, toward Long Bridge. “Remember, tell the sentries we are visiting the troops,” Hay said.

  “Which ones?”

  “The New York Seventh, up on Arlington ridge.”

  Their dealings with the constituted authorities would be every ounce as dishonest, Hay reflected, as Thomas Stackpole’s had been.

  The line at the bridge was a snarled procession of sutlers hauling wagons piled with goods for the troops. Hay considered pushing to the front—this was the president’s son, after all—but anticipated the scorn this would draw, and rightfully so. Patience.

  Half an hour brought them to the bridge. The lanky, pale-skinned sentry had a cowlick and a haughty manner. He asked for their passes, which Edwin Stanton had personally signed that morning, splenetic at not knowing why. (“Robert, too?”) The sentry examined Robert’s permit and squinted into his face, then cocked his head and declared, “You is him, him is you. Yer pappy is a monkey stew. Pass through.”

  Beyond the guardhouse, the shabby wooden bridge had slatted sides and roof. The hoofs on the boards echoed—plunk, plunk, plunk—in the misty air. (Every night, the planks were removed across the bottom to prevent Confederate cavalry from crossing in the dark.) The sky was gray, and the far shore was gray. Below, the Potomac was gray.

  “John,” came the grunt from beside him, “what do you want him to tell us?”

  “Whatever he knows. Which I suspect is a lot.”

  “Does he know her—Missus Keckly?”

  “She made dresses for Missus Lee. And besides, he seems to know everyone, certainly everyone born in Virginia—everyone with dark skin, I mean. And many with white skin, I would guess, if they dined at the Lees’ table. And everything about them. A veritable oracle of Delphi, I hear. Or do they admit to such mysteries at Harvard?”

  “Nothing so blasphemous. So, why bring me along?”

  Hay laughed. “Your handsome face.”

  The previous spring, Hay and Robert along with Nicolay had ridden up the long hill to the old mansion, after Union troops forced Mrs. Lee to leave (while her husband was off leading the rebel troops) soon after Fort Sumter. The slaves had stayed behind—the Lees’ property, in effect, watching their property.

  “And why do you want to know more about Missus Keckly?”

  “She has been acting strangely of late. And she is in a position to do harm if she wishes.”

  “Harm to…?”

  “To anyone. Your brother.” Hay was referring to Tad, but he also meant Willie.

  “Why would she…?”

  “I don’t know.” Which was the truth. “I was there, you know, at the Soldiers’ Home.”

  “Actually, I do. I saw you as I was…” Robert trailed off.

  “Leaving,” Hay helped out.
r />   Long Bridge was long, nearly a mile to the Virginia shore. A pair of terns circled overhead, uncomfortably far from the ocean. On the river below, puddles of water had collected where the ice had thinned.

  “My mother should never have gone. It was her idea—Missus Keckly’s, I mean. I figured it could do her no harm. Once Mother has made up her mind, there is no arguing with her. It did get her out of bed.”

  Ten minutes seemed like an hour, before they returned to solid ground. The muscles under Hasheesh’s neck relaxed, while Hay’s back constricted. The Union had captured all of the hillside, but Arlington ridge still felt like enemy land.

  A long, low marsh lay before them; a squad of waterfowl skidded to a stop by the shore. Swaths of oaks and maples had been felled, to protect Washington City from concealed belligerents, leaving the high ridge more desolate than last spring. White tents covered the hillside. Spirals of smoke rose from encampments, and soldiers ambled every which way, like ants in a daze. At the crest of the ridge stood a pillared mansion—stately Arlington House. Their destination.

  Hay led Robert along the shoreline. All was quiet but for the cawing of the crows. To their right was the iced-over river; to the left, a line of fir trees spared from the axe. They turned uphill, past fallow pastures, and reached the iron gate of the Arlington estate.

  From behind the brick pillar, a soldier emerged. “Your papers,” he growled. He was a fussy little man with darting eyes who raised Hay’s Interior Department credentials to within a half foot of his face. Hay marveled at the myopic sentry protecting this army headquarters from attack.

  “We are expected,” Hay said, although they were not.

  “Who by?” the sentry said, squinting at Hay.

  “James Parks.”

  “Mister Parks.” This very white sentry offered a look of surprise—and respect.

  Hay dismounted and led Hasheesh through the gate. Robert followed with Old Abe. Across a rutted road, the hill rose steeply. Beyond the treeless expanse, the mansion stood isolated—splendid. Hay was struck by how much it resembled the Executive Mansion, in its neoclassical symmetry, the Greek pillars lining the front portico, the wings at each end.

  Hay and Robert approached and tied up their mounts, and Hay looked back down the ravaged hill, across the tent tops and the surviving woods, beyond the iced-over river. Off to the left was the Executive Mansion; to the right, the dome-less Capitol. Both of them within a cannonball’s range.