The Murder of Willie Lincoln Page 5

  “Yes, sir, Mister Hay, here you be.” Tom Cross’s dark eyes locked onto Hay’s. This was his lair; he was in charge.

  Hay nodded toward a chair. “May I?”

  His host nodded.

  Hay seated himself and explained the reason for his visit. “This was seventeen days ago. No reason, I suppose, for you to remember. You often took them riding in the morning, did you not?”

  “Ever since he got dat pony.” It had been a birthday gift to Willie, four days before Christmas, from Senator Browning and his wife. “Willie love dat little gray. Ride ’im ever’ chance he get. And wherever Willie went, Tad went too.” The scowl in Tom Cross’s forehead had softened, and his hard eyes had taken on—there was no mistaking it—a sparkle. “But dat morning, I do remember. ’Twarn’t me dat went wit’ the boys.”

  “Oh? You know this?”

  “’Course I do.”

  “How, if I may ask?”

  “I says so, di’n’t I? You ask me a question, and then you go doubtin’ my word?” His eyes had turned stony; he sat picking his nose.

  “I am not doubting your word, Mister Cross. Merely trying to understand why I shouldn’t.”

  Tom Cross broke into a toothy grin. “A good one, sir—yes, sir. Tuesday the fourt’ is what you’re askin’. The fourt’ o’ Feb’ry—my boy’s birt’day. My youngest boy, name o’ John, like you. Turned six. And so I makes him his favorites for breakfast. Dat would be cinnamon porridge and flapjacks. He especially likes it when his daddy flips ’em. Says dey taste better dat way.”

  Hay could not help but smile. “Who took the boys out, then?”

  “That would be Mistah Williamson.”

  “Alexander Williamson—the tutor?”

  “Him’s the one.”

  Hay pictured the frail, redheaded man who could not stand up to a downdraft.

  “Does he usually take your place?”

  “Never had.”

  “Why this time?”

  “Was the Madam’s suggestion.” Tom Cross shrugged. “Why not?”

  * * *

  Alexander Williamson worked mornings as a clerk at the post office, so Hay waited until early afternoon to find him at home. The Lincolns had engaged him as a tutor for the boys, recommended by the commandant at the Soldiers’ Home. The Hell-cat’s insistence that he work without a salary (to free up money for her dresses and drapes) explained his second—actually, his primary—job.

  Hay kept to the muddy sidewalk as he strode east along G street. The day was damp and disagreeable. Beyond Fourteenth street, he passed Foundry Methodist Church and then the Epiphany Church—rivals for God’s favor, Hay imagined. Vacant lots separated the buildings like the gaps in an old man’s teeth. On a moonless night the previous fall, near the livery stable at G and Thirteenth, Nicolay had been jumped and robbed; beneath his goatee, the nick of the knife left a scar. A soldier gone from his post—Nicolay had noticed the uniform. Not only cutthroats and pickpockets threatened the public safety in Washington City. So did the men who were bound by honor and duty to protect it.

  329 G street was just past an overgrown lot, almost to Twelfth street. A hare scuttled under the branches that crossed the sidewalk. The three-story brick row house looked solid enough, though unkempt; on the top floor, the shutters hung askew. Hay mounted the three low steps to the postage stamp of a porch and knocked on the faded red-orange door.

  No response.

  He knocked again. A child shouted inside, and light footsteps approached. The door swung open, and after a long moment, blond ringlets peeked past the edge. Then a vertical pair of saucy blue eyes and, next, a wrinkled nose and, finally, a quarter moon of a grin. A girl of four or five, sideways.

  When Hay asked if Mr. Williamson was at home, she grinned. He wondered if the girl spoke English. Or maybe she was deaf, although she would not have heard his knocking. When he asked again, she giggled and swung the door shut. Footsteps retreated; a minute went by, then another. He raised his fist to knock again when heavier footsteps drew near. The door opened.

  In the dark rectangle of the doorway stood a cipher of a man. Alexander Williamson was all pastels. Of medium height, he slouched and looked shorter than he was. Hay had seen him a hundred times but had never looked closely, for the simple reason there was little to see. The tutor was slight and had a pale, bland, expressionless face, like a daguerreotype plucked from the chemicals before its time. Thin russet hair flopped over his forehead. His frock coat was rumpled and unbuttoned, and his cravat hung untied. Was sterner stuff beneath? Probably not. The thought of Alexander Williamson as a bodyguard made Hay laugh—no, cringe.

  “Please forgive me for disturbing you at home,” Hay said. He waited for an invitation that was not offered. “May I come in?”

  No reply. Was everyone in this household a mute?

  “It is about Willie.”

  Alexander Williamson stepped aside and, without a word, ushered Hay into the front parlor. The shades were drawn, and newspapers covered the center table. There was a faint smell of ammonia. Hay seated himself by the front window, in the least uncomfortable armchair. A rag doll with orange hair leaned on the crack of the cushion.

  “R-room enough for two,” Williamson said with a Scottish burr.

  A pleasantry—Hay began to recalibrate his ankle-high opinion. “I hope I am not interrupting your dinner.”

  The tutor seated himself facing Hay. “’Tis finished, Mister Hay. And what is it you want?”

  Impatience, with a tint of belligerence. In Hay’s experience, timid males were at war with their timidity. Or did the man have a reason to fear this intrusion?

  “You went riding with Willie and Tad along the riverfront,” Hay said. “The morning of February fourth. A Tuesday.”

  “Not the r-river. The canal.”

  “Oh.” Hay wondered if someone had mentioned the river or if he had assumed it. Never assume, Hay could hear Nicolay intone inside his head.

  “A teeny bit of the r-river as well,” Williamson said. “’Til we turned back.”

  “I see. Had you ridden with the boys before?”

  “Nae.”

  “So why that day?”

  “I was asked.”

  “Who asked you?”

  “Mister-r Cr-ross.”

  Hay wanted to say: “Of all people, why you?” Instead: “When did he ask you?”

  “Th’ afternoon just before. Was passing him in the cor-rridor, I was, when he called me name. Hardly had a notion he knew it. Would I r-ride with th’ boys th’ next morning? Odd, it seemed t’ me, but I could no’ think of a r-reason why nauw.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Did it matter?”

  “I suppose not. And you said yes.”

  “I live near-r enough.” The tutor hesitated, appraised Hay’s face, and seemed to make up his mind. “I am not due at the post office ’til half past eight. And I am very fond of those … boys. A young man, almost, Willie is…” Hay noted the tense. “Ne’er have I known such a lad. Nauw a sinful word from the boy, even in fun. And such a hor-rror of acting r-rude. Like his father-r, he is, yes? And what a mind in that boy! McGuffey’s Eclectic R-readers, the first and the fifth—he r-raced through ’em both. He would r-read a page of his speller once, maybe twice, and he could spell ev’ry wor-rd, with nauw a blunder. Many a time he complain I assigned him too lit’le work. And ne’er tire of asking a question, ’til he tired out a tutor like meself. The last time”—Williamson’s voice caught—“it was the Latin word calculus he was wanting to know the meaning of. Means a ‘pebble,’ as surely ye know, Mister-r Hay.” Which Hay, in fact, did. “And wanting to know which words in English ’tis it the source for. So I tell him—‘to calculate.’ He’s a-nodding at this, like he is the tutor and I, his blue-r-ribbon pupil. Nae, but why, he’s wanting to know. And so I tell him, because in these ancient times, schoolboys a-carried a small box of pebbles to calculate with, when their teacher posed a problem of sums.” A pause. “The last qu
estion he e’er-r asked me, it was.”

  The tutor gasped for breath, exhausted at the outpouring of words, perhaps more than he had spoken at a stretch in a month. His eyes were wet.

  Hay said gently, “Did anything unusual happen? On the ride by the … canal.”

  “Such as?”

  “Anything unusual.”

  “Ne’er did this before, Mister-r Hay. How shoul’ I know wha’ is usual and wha’ is nauw?”

  Hay suppressed his exasperation—this would be easier if he knew what he wanted to know. “That morning you arrived at the mansion. At what time, do you recall?”

  “A quar-rter before seven, I woul’ say. In the dark.”

  “The boys were awake?”

  “Boys are.”

  Alexander Williamson described an uneventful outing. They had trotted across the mansion’s back lawn in a smattering of snow and out through the gate onto Fifteenth street, then south to the canal. Willie rode his new pony, and Tad took the younger Taft boy’s pony, his short legs sticking out to the sides. They rode west along the canal until it joined the Potomac at Seventeenth street, by the seawall. A little beyond, the flurries turned into a squall, and Willie complained of a chill. “This is a lad who ne’er complains, and so we came back.” By twenty past eight.

  And by early afternoon, Hay thought, Willie was sniffling and sick in his bed. That was fast—probably too fast.

  “No run-ins with strangers?”

  “Ne’er laid eyes on a blessed soul. Well … there was something a mite … unusual”—a Scotsman’s tubular pronunciation—“I suppose you migh’ call it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Along the path by the canal, just shor’ o’ Seventeenth street. The boys ha’ gone ahead a lit’le. I saw it before they did. I shouted at them to duck, and they did. It missed them, nauw by a lot. A rock, or somethin’ like it. From on high.”

  “Out of the sky?”

  “Such things happen, so Scripture say. I am a God-fearing man, I am, Mister-r Hay. Though I am s’pposing tha’, in this particular instance, the arm of mortal man migh’ ha’ played a role.”

  “This rock, or whatever it was, it was thrown from where?”

  “Hard to say. From the Island, migh’ be. Except nary a soul was across the canal, none I could see. Nor ahead of us on the path, or behind us. So over the fence, must ha’ come. The fence of President’s Park.” Union troops were camping on the square of land between the canal and the Executive Mansion. “Unless it was from God, and what woul’ be the sense in that?”

  “But it missed them, this … it was a rock?”

  “Thanks be to God, it did. A projectile of some sort. Enough to make Willie fall off o’ his pony, face first in the mud. Nauw injury, to speak of. Thanks be to…”

  “No injury—you are sure of this?”

  “None I coul’ see. For three years I studied medicine in Edinburgh, Mister Hay, and someday soon I hope to resume my studies here—been jabbering to Doctor Stone about it. Anyway, I helped Willie up, and he pushed me away and climbed right back on his pony. He was like that, you know—knock him down, and up he pops again. A br-rave lad. ’Twas uninjured, best I could see. When we r-returned I asked Doctor Stone to look at the boy. Said he would.”

  “Doc Stone was there? At twenty past eight?”

  “All nigh’, I understood.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “With Missus Lincoln, so someone said.”

  “And he found nothing the matter with Willie?”

  “Was late for my post at the post office, I was. Can hardly feed these mouths”—he flung his arm toward the rear of the house—“on what I earn from teaching those boys.”

  Hay was starting to like this man.

  Still, something bothered him about the tutor’s recounting, but he could not think of what. He had no reason to doubt its veracity. That Willie took a spill was plausible, even without a rock from the sky. Hay knew that rutted path. Branches and boulders grabbed at the ankles of man and beast; in places, there was hardly a path at all. Why anyone would choose to follow such a path was beyond …

  That was it: Why had they followed that path at all? As Hay understood, the boys usually rode along the Potomac, not the canal. From Fifteenth street to Seventeenth street, the waterway stank, even ignoring the brambly path. A nonsensical route, slippery in the snow.

  “Had you ridden there before?”

  “Walked, once or twice. Not r-ridden.”

  “Then you knew what kind of path it is. Why on earth did you go that way?”

  “Because…” Williamson stared up at the chandelier and its coating of soot. “There is a r-reason, Mister-r Hay, and not a br-rave one.” Hay was charmed by the tutor’s self-deprecation. “I meant to leave the grounds by the Seventeenth street gate, and I started out that way. From the stables down to the car-rriage path, intending to head off to the r-right, but…” The tutor squinted at an image that Hay was unable to see.

  “Yes?”

  “But … he was there. Behind the spruce tree, down to the r-right.”

  “Who was?”

  “Major-r Watt.”

  This was the second reference to-day to the gardener’s inflated rank. Hay had handled the paperwork himself last September that commissioned John Watt as a lieutenant in the Union army—the Hell-cat’s doing—and a lieutenant is what he still was. Not that he actually did anything for the army—not the Union’s, anyway. “What was he doing there?” said Hay.

  “Standing behind the spruce, staring at us.”

  “Staring? Was he doing anything?”

  “Snipping at branches, best I could tell.”

  “He is the gardener.”

  “But at seven o’clock in the morning, with snow in the air-r?”

  “Why did you go at all, given the weather?”

  “It wasn’t r-really snowing when we left, and Willie insisted. His new pony. When it threatened to ge’ ugly, we turned back.”

  “So, why did you change your direction when you saw … Lieutenant Watt?”

  A long sigh. “It was like he was trying to hide from us, behind the spruce. Now, it sounds stupid, I know, when you say it out loud. But there was something about … he seemed to be spying on us—that’s what I thought at the time. Through the branches of the spruce, he was staring at the boys, staring hard.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Nae.”

  “And because of this, you changed direction.”

  The tutor’s freckled face tightened. “They were my r-responsibility, the boys were. So yes, I changed direction. Better to be too careful than not careful enough.”

  The apologia, Hay thought, of cowards through the ages. Though to be fair, Williamson was right: The boys were his responsibility.

  “Why would he want to spy on the boys, do you suppose?” Hay meant to sound incredulous.

  “’Tisn’t so doo-lally as it sounds, Mister Hay. The man hated those boys, tha’ he did. Tad, anyway. Ever since tha’ time with the strawberries.”

  “With the what?”

  The tutor recounted the morning, not many weeks before, when the boys were learning their lessons in the oval study upstairs and Watt barged in. He tore at Tad for eating the strawberries set aside for a state dinner. “And for digging in his gardens and trampling on his plants. There was fury in his eyes. He held a grudge against those boys…”

  Hay found it hard not to laugh. Unauthorized ingestion of strawberries was a novel motive for murder, even for Poe.

  “‘A wildcat,’ Major Watt called ’im. And in truth, he was not far wrong. No force on earth can keep that boy away from something he wants, ’ceptin’ maybe Willie. But the laddie don’t take kindly to being yelled at. That gardener made Tad cry, which to me tipped the boy’s guilt. But it made Willie mad as a rabid raccoon, that a grown man attacked his brother and made him cry. Willie’s voice got low and … I would have to say, a little mean. He said something to Major Watt, about having to learn
to add, that two plus two do not equal five or six. Made no sense to me. But it did to Major Watt. Without a word, he turned on his heel and he left. And Willie went right on with his lesson, about ancient Greece, as I recall, as if nothing had happened. Nothin’ at all.”

  “Nothing sinful or rude from his mouth, so you say.”

  “’T’ain’t sinful if it’s the truth in pursuit of justice. And it must ha’ been, because the man up and left.”

  Hay was well aware that the gardener padded his invoices for seed and shrubs. The president knew, and apparently Willie did, too. Maybe Willie knew something more, or thought he did, or Watt thought he did, which might have been worse.

  Even dangerous.

  * * *

  Hay grimaced at his desk, pawing through the piles of correspondence in search of something cheery. He tried to immerse himself in the text of Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address, to be delivered in Richmond the following day at noon. (A Confederate senator’s daughter had smuggled it in her crinolines out through rebel lines.) The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism … Hay stared at the words so grandly misused and took none of them in. He preferred to peer through the window across the North Lawn. Beyond the iron fence, along the wide Avenue sidewalk, citizens stared back at the mansion in mourning.

  He was almost relieved to hear Thomas Stackpole’s voice out in the waiting room. Hay’s legs ached; it felt good to move.

  “Nobody,” the doorkeeper replied to Hay’s opening question.

  “Between five and nine o’clock—nobody at all entered my office?”

  “Not that I saw. Except for Mister Nicolay.”

  “Oh? When was that?”

  “Around six, I would say. Looking for you, I gathered. In his usual hunched-over way.” Stackpole’s neck sagged into his shoulders. “He went in and came right out. And I did, once.”