The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  “What do you want to know?”

  Tired of the game, I waited.

  Chief Nicholson relented. “He is thirty-nine years old, a family man, a wife, five children, a sixth on the way. Of French Canadian stock, born in Canada, but lived here most of his life. A house out on Alder street, that’s north of here—they rent. Has been with the trolley company for about a year. Before that, he worked for one of the mills out on the river. No trouble with the law. Not in this county, anyway.”

  So the police had investigated, at least a little.

  “Do you know him at all?”

  “One of his girls goes to school with one of ours. If I saw him on the street I would know who he is but probably not say hello.”

  I wasn’t dealing with an undiscerning cop. “You have spoken with him, yes?” I said.

  “I have.”

  “And he was cooperative, would you say?”

  “To a point. His lawyer was there and wouldn’t let him tell me much of anything. Not until after the inquest, he said. William Turtle is the lawyer’s name. Billy. A big man in these parts. Literally and figuratively. A member of the state legislature and the lawyer for the streetcar company. As for Mr. Madden, he seemed mild-mannered enough. You never can tell, though.”

  “Do you know of any reason he might want to harm the president?”

  “Do you think he did?”

  “That is what I am trying to find out,” I said.

  No reply. This was a man who said nothing when he had nothing to say.

  “There were two arrests?” I said.

  “Yes. Mr. Madden and the streetcar’s conductor, James Kelly. James T. Kelly.”

  “On what charges?”

  “Manslaughter, in the death of William Craig. Both of them. They were arraigned yesterday and pleaded not guilty.”

  “So you must have reason to think it was not an accident.”

  “Not necessarily. Manslaughter means there was no premeditation, no intent. In other words, an accident.”

  “Why charge the conductor, too? What was he doing?”

  “He was out on the running board, making change, so he says. I have no reason not to believe him. The charges are not up to me. The district attorney files them, not the chief of police.”

  “Do you think it was an accident?” I said.

  “I have no reason to doubt it. Do you?”

  I told him about the New Yorkers in the Hotel Wendell lobby who wanted to get to the country club ahead of the president. I read him the four names.

  “I know two of them,” he said. “Daniel and Wrenn. New York police officers, Broadway squad, on vacation here. They offered their services for the occasion. Anything to save the taxpayers a few simoleons. They were riding with me.”

  “With you?”

  “Oh yes. I was in the carriage just ahead of the president. We had already crossed the tracks.”

  “Oh! Did you see the, uh, collision?”

  “I did not, I’m afraid.”

  “Or the trolley at all.”

  “I was in conversation at the time with Lieutenant Wrenn. Benjamin Wrenn, a very fine fellow.”

  “They just happened to stop into your office and offer their services. For the occasion, you say.”

  “Yes, and I was glad to have the help. We are pretty well strapped as it is. Then, when the president comes here and I need men to protect him, a gift is a gift, as I see it. I can always use an extra hand.”

  “Did you have any doubts about these men’s credentials?”

  “None. Why should I?”

  “Did you happen to hear where they were staying?”

  “At the Wendell, I believe. Why?”

  * * *

  “Right about here.” Chief Nicholson pointed to a culvert that funneled a bubbling brook underneath South street. We stood at the bottom of the long, languorous hill, skipping to the side for the occasional buggy. Weather-worn farmhouses stood behind low stone walls. Overhead wires hung along poles, carrying electricity out from Pittsfield to the trolleys. The dirt roadway was wide enough for four carriages abreast, two on either side of the streetcar tracks—until right here, where the tracks squeezed to the right.

  “The carriages have to cross here,” Chief Nicholson explained with a deliberativeness I was inclined to trust. “Any motorman would know—should know. Though Mr. Madden was new to the route, as I understand it.”

  “Why do the tracks do that?” I said.

  Chief Nicholson shrugged. “Quickest route to the country club, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s up ahead, just over the rise.”

  “An exposed spot, I would say. I suppose anyone could have shot him. With a gun, not a Kodak.”

  “Nobody did,” Chief Nicholson pointed out.

  We were standing by the tracks, facing south, when there was a low rumbling behind us. I turned and saw a trolley bearing down. The motorman stood like a statue behind the triptych of glass across the front. The streetcar was yellow and green and fast. Man was not meant to go so fast. Railroads, yes. But they belched and bucked and farted—mechanical monsters. This was more like a puma, quiet and deadly.

  I jumped to the roadside. I felt a gust as the trolley whooshed by.

  “How fast would you say it was going?” I said.

  “Approximately eight miles an hour. It’s not supposed to go faster than that.”

  “Seemed faster to me.”

  “You were standing close.”

  Not in front of it, at least. “How fast was the other one traveling, do you know? The one that struck the president’s carriage.”

  “There is a difference of opinion on that.”

  * * *

  The wrecked carriage lay on its side, like a sick dog waiting for a belly rub.

  “How did they move it here?” I said. Surely the country club would never have allowed it on its premises, so close to the first tee, for a president who wasn’t a registered Republican.

  “Oxen righted it,” Chief Nicholson said, “and horses dragged it here. And some fool in New York is buying it, for a hundred dollars. To put it on display. The darnedest thing. People would pay to see this?”

  The carriage was a jumble of smashed woodwork, mangled metal, and wheels with broken spokes. The side toward the sky was staved in. Its twin lanterns were intact, but the high driver’s box, where Craig had sat, was gone.

  “There is something I need to show you,” Chief Nicholson said. I followed him around to the far side of the carriage, closer to the tee. A golfer was taking practice swings, while his companions peered our way. I couldn’t blame them. “This,” Chief Nicholson said.

  The carriage’s back wheel, hanging in the air, looked intact except for a snapped spoke. I must have looked puzzled, because he was quick to explain. “The streetcar’s fender barely grazed this wheel and slammed into the front wheel instead. And the nigh wheel horse. A slanting blow. That is what sent Mr. Craig flying under the trolley.”

  I tried to picture a man flying through the air. Or five men, landing hither and yon, wherever fate and physics decreed. One of them under the sharpened wheels, sliced to death. Virile one moment, dead the next. How capricious. How pointless. How absurd.

  Chief Nicholson was still talking. “Suppose the carriage had been traveling a tiny bit faster. Instead of brushing by the back wheel, it would have hit the hub of the wheel head-on, and—who knows?—it might have been the president who was thrown onto the tracks. And maybe the governor and Mr. Cortelyou as well.”

  My breath caught. “How close?” I managed.

  “How close what?”

  “Between what happened and what … might have happened?” Still vaguely phrased. “Between the hub of the back wheel and where the trolley struck. How far apart?”

  Chief Nicholson rubbed a rough-skinned thumb over the rutted woodwork and studied the carriage door that would never close again. “Two inches,” he said, not looking at me.

  I felt myself getting frantic and willed myself to
calm down. “The president missed being killed—might have missed being killed—by two inches,” I said, surprised that my voice sounded steady.

  He did not reply. I was not asking a question.

  Two inches, I was thinking, and I might now be president. Which I have never, ever—ever—wanted to be. Honest.

  * * *

  “Number twenny-nine, the hoodoo car.” The burly black man with a scar on his cheek flashed a shrewd smile.

  “The what?” I said.

  “Yessuh, the hoodoo car. No end o’ trouble with it. Collided, head-on, in Dalton a whiles back. And just last week, a motorman git burnt when the controller overheated.”

  Chief Nicholson said, “Euclid Madden?”

  “No suh, was Mistuh Reese.”

  “Is he all right?” I said.

  “Doctors say he will be.”

  “Yes, we would like to see it,” Chief Nicholson said. “I believe Mr. Dolan has…”

  “Oh yessuh. Mistuh Dolan ain’t here, but he leave word. Come with me, please.”

  The large man was surprisingly light on his feet as he led us across the trolley repair yard on East street, into a one-story brick building with an aluminum roof.

  “You know, I don’t believe in hoodoo,” Chief Nicholson whispered.

  I was tolerably sure I agreed.

  On the farthest tracks, number twenty-nine looked forlorn, like a racehorse put out to stud and still awaiting a client. The green and yellow paint could use a fresh coat, and the eight rows of seats looked abandoned; the side panels were gone. The terminus sign above the side door said “Country Club.” The three-sided windshield was intact.

  “Ready to run, she is,” our host said.

  “No real damage?” I replied.

  “A scratchin’ on the fender, a scrape here and there, nothing mo’.”

  I examined the front of the trolley and noticed nothing beyond the usual wear and tear.

  “The brakes?” said Chief Nicholson.

  “The old wheel brakes, not the newfangled air brakes. But they work just fine.”

  Chief Nicholson said, “You check them?”

  The streetcar worker raised himself to his full six-foot-four, gazed down upon the police chief, narrowed his eyes, and nodded.

  “But otherwise, the trolley is ready to run, is that correct?” Chief Nicholson said. “Nothing wrong with the engine? Not damaged too much?”

  “Runnin’ fine. A sixty-horsepower Westinghouse engine.” The man waltzed around the front of the streetcar, as proud as a new father. “Can run fourteen and a half mile an hour on flat land with all o’ the seats, forty-eight of ’em, filled to the gills.”

  “And on a hill?” I said.

  “Depend on the hill, I suppose.”

  “Mind if I take a look?” I said. Without waiting for an answer, I continued around number twenty-nine and climbed aboard. I raised myself onto the high leather seat and felt like a king on a throne. Through the high windshield I examined the crushed rear of the streetcar just ahead; number seventeen had seen worse than hoodoo. Our escort stood behind me.

  “Over here the controller, and here the brake”—handles at the motorman’s left and right. A rope hung from a round iron bell near the ceiling.

  “And clean,” I said. I would have expected grease and grime in the crevices of the floor and below the motorman’s seat.

  “Yessuh.” The man beamed. “Spick-and-span.”

  I cursed to myself. “Who told you to clean this up?” I said.

  “Mistuh Dolan did.”

  Yes, I would like to talk to him.

  I tried to swivel to the right—had the motorman seen the trolley coming?—but the padded seat wouldn’t budge. I clutched the front edge and tried again, to no avail. My hand slipped inside, through a gash in the leather, and my fingers touched something that crinkled. Using two fingers as pincers, then my thumb, I pulled out a paper that was folded into fourths. The piece of foolscap, off-white, was unlined and torn along one edge. It was rough in texture; the sharp fold had required a firm thumbnail. I unfolded it once, prying it apart, then a second time. I flattened out the paper across my knees.

  A map, in pencil, was crudely drawn. No mistaking, however, what it was. A road, bisected by tracks, with a dotted line across. Near the top of the map, an oblong was marked “PCC.”

  Pittsfield Country Club.

  Where the dotted line crossed the tracks, William Craig had lost his life, and President Roosevelt had nearly joined him.

  * * *

  “So, what do you think?” I said.

  “About what?” Chief Nicholson replied, quite reasonably. The carriage rocked as we returned along North street.

  “The map that was stuffed in his seat.”

  “Do we know it was his? And from that day in particular?”

  “Good questions. How about if we pose them to the elusive Mr. Madden.”

  “Mr. Turtle won’t let you anywhere near him. Not ’til after the inquest, and probably not ’til his trial.”

  “You can talk to him. I’ll just tag along. Aren’t the police in Pittsfield permitted to question a … suspect?”

  “A suspect in what? Tell me, has a crime been committed?”

  “Precisely what I am trying to figure out. Manslaughter is what he’s charged with. Isn’t that a crime? Possibly something worse.”

  I was gazing out the window, passing churches and a funeral home and the sprawling houses of the city’s industrialists, when another piece of Nicolay’s advice came back to me. Work in from the edges. Don’t start your questioning with the man at the center. Work around him first, and learn whatever you can, before you try to pin him to the wall.

  “Kelly!” I exclaimed.

  “Who?”

  “Kelly, James T. Or is it C.? The streetcar conductor. The other manslaughterer, so alleged.”

  “T. What about him?”

  “Let’s talk to him.”

  “Mr. Turtle will—”

  “I am pleased to go alone,” I said. “If you would kindly ask your driver to drop me off.”

  * * *

  It was half past four. The gray wooden siding looked drab, even in the late afternoon sun. The screen door hung awry. To my right, along the unpainted porch, a rocking chair rocked on its own. Because of the wind, I hoped, though I did not feel any.

  The gabled dwelling at 36 Hamlin street was a boardinghouse. Two knocks on the front door brought no response. I grasped the knob and turned it. To my surprise, the door opened. I stepped back to let Chief Nicholson enter first. Surely the police chief would have more cachet in Pittsfield than a mere secretary of state. Chief Nicholson smiled—he was capable of it—and gestured for me to precede him.

  A hausfrau with lumbering breasts waddled toward us. “Yeah?” she barked.

  I offered my name and introduced Chief Nicholson. “I am looking for James T. Kelly.”

  “Expectin’ ya?”

  “Police business,” Chief Nicholson said, flashing his badge.

  She looked bored. “T’ird floor. Number seven.”

  The stairs were steep and creaky. The first landing smelled of camphor, not quite masking the acrid odors of humans in pain. The banister wobbled on the second stairway, which ended at a closed door, marked in chalk with a seven.

  My knock set off a scurrying inside, like a squirrel in the attic. I deciphered the grunt as “Wait.” The sounds subsided, and I was about to knock again, when a man shouted from inside, “Who is it?”

  I turned a pleading look to Chief Nicholson, who sighed and said, “The police, Mr. Kelly. Please let us in.” The police chief’s right hand rested on his pistol.

  A latch turned and the door inched open.

  The young man in the doorway wore suspenders over an undershirt that left his bony shoulders bare. He had a thin face and sparse, sandy hair. “I’ve already talked to the—”

  “But you haven’t talked to me,” Chief Nicholson said. The heel of his hand hit the d
oor, suggestively close to Kelly’s temple.

  The threat of violence, the thrill of it, hung in the air.

  Kelly backed away from the doorway, creating a vacuum that drew us in. The bed was unmade. Kelly swept a pair of trousers and several dust-colored garments from the two chairs and onto the floor. Chief Nicholson and I remained standing.

  “Whaddya want?” said Kelly, sinking onto the edge of the bed.

  “Just a question or two about the collision,” I said.

  “My lawyer tells me not to talk to nobody.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “But nothing here is on the record. Nothing you tell us will harm you.” I hoped this was true. Chief Nicholson did not correct me. “We know you had nothing to do with the collision.”

  “Then why in the hell am I bein’ charged with manslaughter? Gonna wind up in jail, I am. And I had nothin’ to do with it.”

  I had no response and glanced over at Chief Nicholson, who stared at the floor.

  “I cannot help you, I am sorry to say. It’s between you and your lawyer and the—”

  “He’s the one who keeps telling me to—” Kelly halted.

  I started to prod him, but Chief Nicholson stopped me with a gesture. My detective skills were rusty.

  Or maybe not. Kelly had gone catatonic. Chief Nicholson, at last, did some prodding, though equally without effect. Kelly snapped awake but stared blankly at his interrogator.

  I tried. “My concern is something different. I am here representing the president…” No reaction. “Trying to understand exactly what happened. Not who was at fault.” Strictly speaking, this was a lie. “Exactly where were you when the collision occurred?”

  “Back with the passengers, collecting their fares, making change.”

  Hallelujah, the lie worked! “Out on the running board?”

  “Yeah, sir.”

  “Did you see the carriage coming?”

  “Nope. Was on the opposite side.” Kelly’s eyes had crossed, as if he were viewing a moving picture that was perched on his narrow nose. “Was givin’ two dimes back to a lady with a ’at that ’ad a bullfinch—can you believe? Then suddenly, boom, and everyone went flyin’.”