The Murder of Willie Lincoln Page 25

  Except she was not his child. The African had said so, and Hay believed him. Maybe, Burwell had never known that. But Agnes had known the truth, and Hay had to assume that, now, Lizzy did, too.

  Any other reason to overvalue a seven-year-old slave girl, Hay preferred not to know.

  * * *

  “This is even crazier, Johnny, than your usual notions.”

  “Most of which turn out to be right.”

  “Some of them.”

  The concession thrilled Hay. “You told me yourself, Nico—start at the edges and work your way in. I need to know more before I ask her again.”

  Nicolay returned his hog-bristle brush to its place. “Are you sure Missus Keckly sent her?”

  “Who else?”

  “This Eva might have gone on her own. There might be something about her in there. You probably stopped reading it, right?”

  The price of speed, Hay understood, was a lack of thoroughness, which was one of the reasons he and Nicolay complemented each other so well.

  “But Missus Keckly’s name is in there,” Hay said, “Elizabeth. Right under her mother’s. Who else could it be? And Eva is from there and worked here, nursing Willie and maybe Tad. You are saying this is all a coincidence?”

  “No, no. That she worked here is not a coincidence. Missus Keckly hired the nurses. If they knew each other from the Calvert place, it is no coincidence at all. Nor is the fact, the evident fact, that Missus Keckly and her mother are listed in a slave ledger. They were slaves. The African said she lived someplace else. Now we know where. In Maryland, a half day’s ride from Washington City.”

  “You should have been a lawyer,” Hay said. He did not mean it as a compliment. “But let us assume”—a pointed nod—“that it was Missus Keckly who sent Eva to steal this ledger, presumably because Eva would know where the ledger was. How would Missus Keckly herself know, after so many years? She could hardly sneak in and out unnoticed.”

  “And put Eva in such danger? By sending her back to the place she had escaped from once before?” For Nicolay, a look of outrage was even rarer than frivolity. “This Eva was a fugitive, for the Lord’s sake! Anyone might have seen her and turned her in. And there, they knew her. What a risk she took! She must have owed Missus Keckly a lot—a lot. And Missus Keckly, she showed a certain … heartlessness, would you agree? If, in fact”—Nicolay was returning to form—“she sent her there at all.”

  “Well, consider the alternative,” Hay said. “That Eva stole this ledger on her own accord. For her own reasons, whatever they were. Say, to gain leverage over Missus Keckly somehow. Maybe Missus Keckly had learned something incriminating about her, or threatened to turn her in. Because she was a fugitive, perhaps.”

  “But there is nothing incriminating in the ledger. And besides, Missus Keckly is the last person to—”

  “Or Eva was … a murderer. A murderess.”

  “But then, why would Missus Keckly protect her at all? Which she did by not telling you Eva was a nurse.”

  “Because she was the daughter of a friend. Or because Missus Keckly would also look guilty for having hired her. Or maybe she was—or is—part of a plot.”

  “Johnny, this is absurd.”

  “No. Merely unlikely. But so is every other possibility, except for the one that is true. She is, however, a woman of secrets, Missus Keckly. Not even the African knows them all. Making dresses for Varina Davis and Missus Lee and now the Hell-cat, surely she was privy to more than her share. And she knew how to keep them, no doubt about that. There must be something she is trying to hide. Granted, I saw nothing in the ledger that would … Well, let me read it through to the end.” Hay sank down onto the bed. “Tomorrow, on the train.”

  “The train? Leaving me with your work?”

  * * *

  Hay was on the verge of sleep when he thought he heard the president chuckling. He opened his eyes—the gaslight in the bedroom stayed on all night—and saw Lincoln in the doorway, in his stocking feet. The short nightshirt hung over his long bare legs, bunching up in the back; it reminded Hay of an ostrich.

  “Look, look at this!” Lincoln cried. A book rested in one hand, a lantern in the other. Thomas Hood’s Whimsicalities was open to a drawing of a hive and the boy, covered with bees, who had broken it apart. AN UNFORTUNATE BEE-ING—the caption left Lincoln in stitches. Hay and Nicolay—for he, too, had awakened—guffawed out of courtesy, and from the pleasure in hearing Lincoln laugh.

  “John, how are you doing?”

  “I will live, sir.” Hay managed a wry smile, embarrassed at his pride in the glancing wound.

  Lincoln sat on the edge of Hay’s bed. “Yes, but will you live well?”

  “When do I not?”

  “This is why we keep you around here, my boy.”

  “I thought it was for my dashing looks,” Hay said.

  “No,” Lincoln replied, “that is why you keep me here.”

  Hay, fully awake now, was hard-pressed to continue the banter. “Sir,” he said, “there is something we need to discuss.”

  Hay filled in the president on the death of the escaped slave—directly at the hands of Pinkerton’s men, indirectly at Mrs. Keckly’s.

  “Madam Lizzy!” the president exclaimed. “I would trust her with my life. Are you insinuating”—he pronounced it insiniating—“that she had something to do with…?” Lincoln’s displeasure shook the bed.

  “No, no,” Hay said, lying. “But she knows more than she is saying.”

  “Do you know anyone who tells everything they know? If you do, you are friends with a fool.”

  Or are one, Hay thought. Most of the mistakes he had made in his life, and especially in Washington City, had come from telling the truth. “There is something else,” he said.

  Lincoln’s reaction to the report of a pattern—“of sorts,” as Jamie Hall had said—in the spikes in Willie’s fever was not what Hay had expected. Relief, tears, fist-shaking anger—any of these would have made sense. Instead, the furrowed brow, the cold and calculating look, caught Lincoln in the pure act of thought.

  Hay had nearly dropped back to sleep—Nicolay was lightly snoring—when Lincoln said, “So, you do suspect a nurse.”

  “A dark lady,” Hay said.

  “You think the one who is dead?”

  Hay shrugged. “Could be.”

  “We need a schedule,” Lincoln said, “a schedule of Willie’s nurses. Missus Keckly could prepare one, if she doesn’t have one already. Then lay it down on a table, next to the pattern of Willie’s spikes in fever. To see who was on duty when the fever spiked, or just before.”

  Simple, Hay thought. And brilliant.

  Lincoln was turning to leave, then looped back. “I almost forgot,” he said. From the breast pocket of his nightshirt, he pulled out a gold pocket watch with delicate links in the chain. Hay thought for a moment it was his grandfather’s, but it was too shiny.

  “Yours,” Lincoln said. “I was afraid someone might…”

  He had shined it.

  Hay felt tears brimming behind his eyes at this kindness. The man’s troubles extended to his stricken family and a sundered nation and every soldier in the field. Here, Lincoln had made time for a stripling whose shoulder was grazed. The grandest gift any man could give another, Hay thought, is a moment of his finite days on earth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1862

  Hay was awake, and his shoulder was stiff. He twisted his torso to the right and ever so carefully left. An ache, then a stab of pain. Less than he had known in the ring. Pugilistic pain was transitory, however. This was not.

  He could stand it—he would. He needed only to adjust expectations. His buoyancy lasted until he tried to sit up.

  Nicolay was gone—it was past eight o’clock—and Hay shuffled into the basement in hopes of sustenance. The aroma of gingerbread drew him into the kitchen. Cornelia Mitchell was slicing potatoes.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “You on de mend?
”

  It seemed everyone (other than Kate Chase, of course) knew. This embarrassed him a little—it was just a grazing. “I am, thank you.”

  “Mebbe dis will help.” She shifted her scimitar from the overmatched potato to the steaming loaf of gingerbread and sheared off a thick slice. A jar of butter stood nearby, and she slid it toward him, along with a trowel.

  “And tell me, dear, how’s your investigatin’ goin’? Find your man?”

  Cornelia Mitchell obviously knew more than Hay had told her. He broke off a corner of the gingerbread and placed it on his tongue. Warm, it was as luscious as it looked—how often did that happen?

  “What makes you think it’s a man?” Hay said.

  “Ain’t it always?”

  Hay laughed. “Usually.” He considered asking the question that was burning in his mind. Unlike a lawyer in court, a detective had no choice but to ask questions without knowing the answer—how else could he learn anything? “Between you and me, never to be repeated to a living soul”—he waited for an affirmation, which came in a quizzical nod—“what is your opinion of Missus Keckly, may I ask?”

  Hay looked the cook in the eye, and she held his gaze. He could sense the calibrations going on inside her. Neither of them moved until Cornelia Mitchell said, “She is a lady.”

  “That, she is. But she is hard inside, yes?”

  The cook straightened herself to full height, shorter than the ears of a doe. “Think of where she started out and think of where she is. Softness dunt git ya along, Mistuh Hay. Dunt raise ya no twelve hunnerd dollars. Don’t bring ya into the mansion here. Mind ya, hardness do dose things—dat is de way of de world. And de sooner youse unnerstand dat, the smarter a young fella ya’ll be.”

  Hay rather admired the implicit insult. “Was it hardness that got you here?”

  “Naw, dat was my gingerbread. But here’s in de cellar, Mistuh Hay. She upstairs.”

  “Let me ask you this, then.” He was confident the cook was a churchgoer. “Is she capable of evil, do you suppose?”

  Cornelia Mitchell laughed. It was a merry laugh, which succeeded in mocking the question but not the questioner. “D’ya know anyone who ain’t? Anyone who know Scripture”—she gave Hay an appraising look—“know dat each of us is good and evil both. The only question is de proportions.”

  * * *

  The House of Representatives was in desultory session. That lawmakers would labor on a Friday was astonishing in itself; that they would keep ordinary business hours was too much to expect. Thaddeus Stevens, the randy Pennsylvanian—his mulatto housekeeper’s domestic duties were rumored to include the night shift—was explaining in acerbic tones a technical point about his bill authorizing the government to buy back hoarded coins by selling off bonds. “—asks us to allow him to sell these seven-and-three-tenths notes for the purpose of raising the coin required for immediate use…” The few congressmen on hand gathered in clusters or sagged at their desks.

  One congressman seemed to be listening, the one Hay was hoping—and yes, expecting—to find in his second-row seat. Earnest and alert, keeping farmers’ hours, sat Charles Benedict Calvert. To-day would go more smoothly with his say-so.

  Hay took the empty seat across the aisle. The freshman lawmaker was a small man with a confident demeanor. His bulbous forehead, formidable baldness, and the set of his bewhiskered jaw announced a serious man whose service to a nation in peril was the gift of his time. He meant to waste none of it, and thus he listened with diligence to the Ways and Means Committee chairman’s elucidation, paying no notice to the man who was a year and a half too young for a seat in this chamber.

  In a penetrating whisper, Hay said, “I need your help, sir.”

  Calvert’s head swiveled, but his torso kept facing the front. “What may I do for you, young man?”

  Hay introduced himself—Calvert pretended to remember him—and explained what he wanted.

  The congressman’s face and demeanor changed not at all. “And what is your purpose?” he said.

  “You are aware of the escaped slave who was captured leaving your … estate”—plantation, although factual, seemed contentious—“the other night?”

  “Of course.”

  “She was a nurse for the president’s son—sons—and the president has asked me to make inquiries.”

  “As to what, precisely?” Calvert had the self-possession of a man whose bloodline, not his office, assured his influence. The scion of his state’s noblest family—his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was the first Lord Baltimore—was a farmer by trade, an inventor by avocation, and an overlord by profession and self-assessment. And now a national legislator.

  “Her background, her history—her habits, if you will.”

  “Why not ask her?”

  “She is dead. While trying to escape her … pursuers.”

  “Justice, I would call it,” the congressman said.

  “This was the second time she escaped from your … estate. She came back and was leaving again—trying to.”

  “Delayed justice, then. What do you wish to know?”

  “Frankly, whatever I can learn.” Work in from the edges. “May I ask if you know, or knew, a man named Armistead Burwell?”

  “Why you would care, I cannot imagine.” Hay held his breath. “But of him, certainly,” Calvert went on. “He and my father did business together. You might also say they were friends. Went hunting together. Shared their dogs and their duck blinds and other things.”

  Such as slave girls? “And Elizabeth Keckly—originally, Hobbs,” Hay said, “she … lived at Riversdale, as a girl. Sold by your father, I believe, to Armistead Burwell. Did you know her?”

  “I was a boy then.”

  “Or her mother, Agnes Hobbs?”

  Calvert hesitated, then shook his head. “I was a boy.”

  “And this Eva, do you know anything about her?”

  “I own forty-five or fifty slaves, Mister Hay—I cannot know them all. I do know that she escaped. As I trust you are aware, even if the president is not, the escape of a slave still violates the law.”

  “I am aware. And Eva’s mother, she is still … with you, I understand. Her name is Sally. Sally Socrates.”

  “I do know Sally.”

  “Would you have any objection if I speak with her?”

  “Why would I?” Calvert’s gaze rested on Hay as Thad Stevens droned on. “Though I remain puzzled, Mister Hay, as to the necessity.”

  Hay stared up at the stained-glass panels in the ceiling. “There is evidence a crime was committed.” He locked his gaze onto Calvert’s. “A terrible crime. That is all I can say about it. At the president’s request, I am looking into this, and I have reason to believe that Eva might have been involved. And in Eva’s … absence, I am hoping that her mother might be able to help. Please, sir, I am appealing for your cooperation.”

  Calvert said nothing. A congressman was lambasting President Lincoln for relieving General Fremont of command—months earlier—for having emancipated the slaves in Missouri. At last, Calvert said, “You do understand the plight of the farmers, do you not, Mister Hay?”

  The conversation had moved to a negotiation of terms. “My family was a family of farmers,” Hay said. An exaggeration, although not by the capital’s standards. “As was the president’s. You may rest assured he understands their”—he thought of the wartime surge in prices for flour and cornmeal and pushed it aside—“plight.”

  “Does that assurance extend to recognizing the importance of farmers in the cabinet? Is that a step the president would endorse?”

  “He might well,” Hay replied, doubting it. What on earth would come next—a separate department in the cabinet for businessmen, another for workingmen? Ridiculous. Why not a department for spinster teachers?

  Evidently, Hay’s equivocation sufficed, for Calvert pulled a half folio from the desk drawer, dipped a quill pen into the inkwell, and started to write.

  * * *


  Hay regarded the railroad station just north of the Capitol as an embodiment of the city it served. From the outside, the Baltimore & Ohio station was a grand affair, with its elegant tower and arched entrance. Inside, it was dingy and damp.

  The waiting room was nearly empty in a midmorning lull. Hay purchased a ticket for twenty-five cents in postage stamps and descended the iron stairs to the platform. The air was foul. At the farthest track stood the every-other-hour train to Baltimore, four sleek cars with gold and black lettering. Hay walked to the end and climbed in.

  A pair of women wore hats ornamented by vegetables of the cabbage family; businessmen yammered in the middle of the car. Hay took the loneliest seat he could find, at the front. As the train rumbled off, crossing into Maryland, Hay perused the rest of the slave ledger but found nothing of use (further evidence, he figured, for speed over thoroughness). He unfolded the morning’s Intelligencer, which he preferred to the National Republican—what was the fun in reading a rag you agreed with? A report of free Negroes emigrating to Hayti. A letter from Seward disavowing any interest (“drop my name henceforth and forever”) in the presidency, written without any prodding. He was a friend to Lincoln. Lucky thing—Hay would hate choosing between them.

  The railroad car’s wood-paneled ceiling and its well-padded seats bespoke luxury. As the woods rolled by outside, the newspaper became a sea of tiny print, out of which emerged the profile of a face with noble cheekbones and an aquiline nose. He tried to picture Elizabeth Keckly, née Hobbs, as a seven-year-old for sale. A high forehead, braids like shinnying poles, a humorless demeanor—Hay doubted she had changed much since the day of her birth. (Did anyone?) Her life showed she was capable of accomplishing anything she put her mind to. Anything.

  The second station, twenty minutes along, was a three-sided hut, adjacent to the trunk road between Washington and Baltimore. A sign in Gothic script announced: CALVERT. Hay sighed. The family had prevailed on Maryland’s mightiest corporation, the B&O, to provide a station for its private use.

  The conductor pointed beyond the grove of firs to a mansion on the hill. After the train chugged away, spewing its black smoke, Hay set off across the treeless pastureland. The lack of concealment made him feel vulnerable. This was unfriendly territory; in the ’sixty election, all of Prince George’s County had delivered to Abraham Lincoln, the Republican presidential candidate, a total of one vote.