The Murder of Willie Lincoln Read online

  * * *

  Hay had never seen Pennsylvania avenue so dressed up, even on the Fourth of July. And no wonder: There was no grander public holiday than Washington’s Birthday. From every apothecary and clothier, every restaurant and hotel, from almost every building along the Avenue, hung the Stars and Stripes. Just east of Eleventh street, something else was hanging from a leafless tree: an effigy of Jefferson Davis. Hay admired the workmanship, superior to a bedsheet—the wavy hair, the tacked-on goatee. At this very hour, a hundred miles to the south, the Confederate president was delivering his inaugural address, claiming the Virginia slaveholder who fathered this country as the Confederacy’s own. Oh yes, Hay thought, Father of His Countries.

  The president’s carriage slowed to a crawl. “We will get dere, Mistah John.”

  “The later the better, by my lights, William.”

  “I do aim to please.”

  Lincoln had lent Hay his two-horse barouche and his valet, William Slade, as a driver. The khaki-skinned Negro, of a distinguished Virginian ancestry, was known for jests that could make a Bedouin laugh. His face resembled a pecan with a fringe of white hair.

  Vehicles of all descriptions jammed the Avenue—barouches and hackneys, army wagons and omnibuses. It was the widest roadway in Washington City and the only one other than Seventh street that was paved. Nor would traveling on foot have quickened the pace. The northern sidewalk was the city’s promenade—the Avenu-orama, as Hay thought of it, crowded with ladies in fur caplets, Quakers primly dressed, soldiers in blue, families with balky children, the bootblacks and newsboys, the vendors hawking cutlery, candy, peanuts, patent medicines, and toys. The southern sidewalk was brazen with unrefined commerce—saloons and seedy shops and gambling joints and brothels. Even at midday, the ladies of the evening were taking a stroll. The carriage edged past the Centre Market, which stretched from Ninth street to Seventh, crammed with hominy dealers and sausage makers, all the hucksters with their goods. Not one in a hundred of these people prancing toward the Capitol in their holiday attire would actually gain entry to the House of Representatives chamber to hear a political hack recite George Washington’s Farewell Address. This did nothing to discourage their excitement at celebrating the Union.

  Past Fifth street, a clattering of cavalry rushed up from behind. Hay’s carriage swerved to the curb and allowed the convoy to pass five abreast, their coats a sparkling blue, sabers clacking at their sides. Followed by a general on his white steed, scarf a-flying, a broad smile—George Brinton McClellan himself.

  The man is shameless, Hay thought. According to the particulars of General War Order No. 1, this was the day the general-in-chief of the Union armies was to be marching on Richmond. He was advancing on his own capital instead.

  On the far side of the Capitol, Hay alighted and joined the throngs of pilgrims. He let them rush past; his seat was reserved. He stopped at the seated statue of the man he had come to honor, which commanded the Capitol’s east entrance. The Founding Father was clad in a toga, bare-chested, a muscled arm outstretched. Not even his mother—this was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gibe—had ever seen George Washington naked.

  Inside, the airy Rotunda was mobbed. Above, a tarpaulin took the place of a ceiling, while the new dome was being built; a web of scaffolding covered the high walls. Below, the men wore their Sunday best; the women stepped sideways so that their dresses might survive uncrushed. Jabs of perfume made the unwashed bodies only more malodorous. Ah, the common people. So many of them, yes, but so common.

  Hay shuffled across the Rotunda and exited through the southern doorway. A luridly painted corridor took him to his destination. Hay flashed his pass at the unshaven soldier and got a wink in return.

  As soon as he entered the new chamber of the House of Representatives, he started wondering how soon he might escape.

  * * *

  It was nearly four o’clock before Hay returned to the Gray House—a more accurate description, although the rain had stopped. Mingling with the people’s representatives lent the piles of mute correspondence on his desk a fresh appeal.

  “Oh, William,” Hay said as the carriage turned from Fifteenth street back onto the Avenue, “would you happen to know of a bird that goes north for the winter?”

  “Let me think, Mistuh John. I imagine it might be the magpie, which surely flocks to the talk-talk-talkers of the North.”

  Hay chuckled. “Could be, William, could be. Though I was thinking it might be the crow, which can go due north faster and freer by riding the Underground Railroad.”

  A roar from the front seat. “I needs a good laugh, Mistuh John, in these sad, sad days.”

  A streak of blue in the sky was compressing the gray—Hay thought of jotting a line or two, but the metaphor was too gaggingly obvious even for him.

  The carriage was turning onto the north grounds of the Executive Mansion when the door to the carriage slapped open. A man leapt inside and lunged at Hay.

  He had a knife. Hay noticed the details of the blade—its bevel, the graceful taper to the point, the serrations near the hilt—as it came toward his throat. Hay raised his forearm to knock his assailant’s wrist while he edged his head to the side like he was slipping a punch.

  Then he counterpunched. Hay’s right fist smashed into the devilish goatee of the triangular face, which belonged to a blond young man with an aquiline nose. He looked vaguely surprised—annoyed, rather—at Hay’s subsequent left hook to the jaw. The knife flew out of the young man’s hand. His head rocked back, and he tipped backward out of the carriage and onto the street.

  William Slade stared in horror and brought the carriage to a halt.

  “No!” Hay shouted. “Not here!” He was hoping to seem nonchalant but found he was trembling. It was one thing to step voluntarily into a ring, quite another to be attacked without warning. (As in war, Hay thought.) “Keep going,” he commanded.

  William acceded.

  Hay pulled the door shut. His right hand stung. Out of the carriage’s window, the Avenue looked deserted, peaceful. Hay might have believed the assault had never happened but for his sudden exhaustion and William Slade’s protective glances.

  “Takes a brave man to venture out dese days,” William said. “Robbers ’round de Smithsonian—everywhere. And not just in the night—in the daylight, too, Mistuh John. Whatever is this world a-comin’ to?”

  “Keep going, William.”

  Hay’s voice was steel, but his mind was a cloud, with only one recurring thought: This is the president’s carriage, the president’s carriage, the president’s carriage. Surely this attack was meant for him. Or for no one in particular.

  So, should Hay tell Lincoln and add to his mountain of troubles? Or take a punch for the president? He did not know how to decide.

  * * *

  The front door was unguarded, and as Hay entered, a man called his name. He glanced around the vestibule but saw only dust motes.

  “Mistuh Hay!” It was the pudgy man Hay had seen at the ball, who had rescued him at the embalming. The man bounced across the vestibule, his hand outstretched. “Ah am afraid Ah have you at a disadvantage, suh. The name is Hall, suh, Doctuh James C. Hall. Mistuh Nicolay expected you back before now.”

  “I will be sure to thank him.”

  Despite the flabby jowls and the tea saucer of a chin, the man’s handshake was firm. He had a genial face, guileless and kind. The prematurely receding hairline showed half a scalp as pink as a baby’s, dramatizing the dark curls at his neck. He moved slowly, as if through water, with an expression of unshakable calm.

  Then the man took a longer look at Hay, and his mouth puckered in alarm. “Are you all right, Mistuh Hay?”

  “Oh my, yes,” Hay replied quickly. “A moment’s shock. But no, not at you.”

  Hay reached and touched the man’s elbow, all the while wondering, Who is he? Hall. Hall … Lincoln’s stepsister Matilda had married a Hall—his name was Squire Hall—and they had a son. Who was a doctor, Hay
dimly recalled. Yes, who had moved here from Kentucky (or was it Indiana?) just after Christmas. Hay could not remember why, if he knew.

  “Glad to meet you, Doctor Hall. We have met. Glad to meet you, then, with my wits about me.” The embalming seemed ages ago. “And thank you for your kindness, when I was … in some need of it. I owe you my … well, a great deal.”

  “Ah am most grateful, Mistuh Hay, to have had the oppuhtunity. In that case, might Ah bother you to accompany me, so that we might converse?”

  Hay wanted nothing more than to return to his office or his bedroom for a few moments’ peace, but he saw no way to demur. They passed through the vestibule into the corridor and, to Hay’s relief, headed away from the green parlor and into the crimson room instead.

  “No one will look for us he-ah,” Dr. Hall said.

  Hay wondered who might be looking at all.

  Dr. Hall put Hay in the gaudiest armchair and said, “The only place in this room where you do not need to see it.”

  Hay asked if he was Squire Hall’s son; a toothy smile was the reply. “Do you know him, suh?”

  “Wish I did. I have heard the president’s stories.” Though for the moment, Hay could not remember whether Lincoln’s stepbrother-in-law was the disbarred lawyer in Frankfort or the saloonkeeper with a heart of coal. “What can I do for you, Doctor Hall?”

  “Call me Jamie, please.”

  “John, then.”

  “Cousin Abraham told me of your … suspicions, suh, and he asked if Ah might help.”

  “My suspicions about what?”

  “Forgive me, suh.” Months had passed since anyone in Washington had asked Hay’s forgiveness. “He shared with me the possibility that Willie’s passing was perhaps not entirely the Lord’s work. Ah had mentioned to him what Ah learned at the, uh, procedure this fine day. It was why Ah bid you to stay, so you might witness it yourself, in case it was so.”

  “So instead, I almost fainted. In case what was so, Doc … Jamie?”

  “Again, forgive me, suh. Let me speak directly. The embalming”—Dr. Hall gestured back toward the green room—“was a success.”

  “Well … good … I guess.”

  “No, suh, not good. It went too well. If you will allow me, please, to explain. Typhoid fevuh causes intestinal lesions, so that when … please forgive me, suh, for the canduh of my explanation … that when the embalming fluid is injected into the esophagus and passes through to the intestines, the intestines cannot keep the fluid in. It will leak, precisely because of those lesions. And therefore the embalming will not, in such a case, succeed. You understand what Ah am sayin’, suh?”

  Hay thought he did.

  “But this time, suh, it did succeed. Suh, it did. The intestines held the embalming fluid in. And therefore, suh, it was not…”

  Hay mouthed the next two words along with Dr. Hall: “—typhoid fever…”

  “—that proved fatal for Willie,” the doctor went on. “No, suh, it seems not. He might have contracted the disease, but not seriously enough to cause the lesions. Suggesting he … succumbed, suh, to something else.”

  “To what?”

  “That Ah could not say, suh. Anothuh disease, could be. Th’ bilious fevuh that Doctuh Stone thought at fuhst. Or an infection of Lawd knows what variety. Enough diseases thrive within a mile of this here house for th’ devil’s delight.”

  “But you are not convinced, are you, that it was some other disease? You would not be telling me this.”

  “No, suh, Ah am not. Merely a surmise, let me say, but the wild oscillations in his fever and in his symptoms of other sorts suggest that actions by a mortal were involved.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “An embalming, suh, is not an autopsy. But Ah am aware that the embalming surgeon noticed nothing untoward. No marks of a criminal kind. No sign of a weapon, no strangulation—forgive me again, suh, for my canduh.”

  “Leaving what, then?”

  “Ah would have to suppose”—Dr. Hall’s dark eyes narrowed—“a poison of some sort.”

  A punch to the gut. The matter-of-fact utterance gave it reality. Murder in the insurrection.

  And by the most cowardly of means.

  “Of which sort?” said Hay.

  * * *

  Hay found himself retracing his steps toward the canal. His feet knew their destination, although his brain did not catch on until he crossed Fifteenth street and turned east on Ohio. Whoops and shouts erupted from behind the tent flaps in Hooker’s encampment. A Saturday night for men who had nothing to do.

  Like Hay. Except he needed to get rid of the jitters he felt. He knew of two ways to do that. One was to hit a boxing bag, or a boxer, again and again, as hard as he could. The other was horizontal refreshment. That, he could find a block or two away.

  Hay stepped around a hog sprawled on the sidewalk that was browsing in the gutter, as he ambled toward the cluster of saloons and brothels—“Hooker’s division.” He would have more choices near the Avenue, but here he was less likely to be seen.

  Madam Wilton’s Private Residence for Ladies was past Thirteenth street. The red lantern contorted the reflection from the frosted front windows. A tug at the bell brought a glance through the white gauzy curtain and the sound of the tumblers in the lock.

  “Good evening, sir.” The woman’s blond wig was askew on her head. Her cheeks looked unnaturally red.

  “And the same to you,” Hay said.

  “You have visited us before, sir.” A statement, not a question, requiring no response. She led him into a plush crimson parlor. After some banter about the weather, she said, “Would you have a favorite girl?”

  Hay could not remember her name, but he described her—slender, dimpled, blond, the tattoo of a rose on her breast.

  “Oh, Rose,” she said.

  Not yet a Vidocq, Hay thought.

  The front parlor had overstuffed divans and marble-topped tables with mermaid-shaped lamps. The horsehair under Hay shifted, and he tried not to think of the countless arses that had preceded his. Failure at the attempt did not last a half minute before a woman in a scarlet gown and cherry wig sashayed in. Madam Wilton herself—no mistaking her.

  “To-night, dear sir,” she said, “you are a lucky gent indeed. Rose is here, and also Henrietta. If you would like, sir.”

  “You mean both?”

  “For the price of one and a half.” Madam Wilton’s smile was more of a grimace; this Saturday night must be slow. “If the gentleman should have a mind to.”

  It was not his mind Hay needed to consult. That was lower down—his wallet, which was thin. And Rose, if memory served, which assuredly it did, would quite suffice for one healthy young man.

  She was as lovely as he remembered, her coy smile beyond her smooth yet intricate curves. She stretched out beside him, then beneath him. The tattoo was where he remembered, and she giggled as he rested his cheek against it and she embraced his head. He felt so comforted there, so soothed, as if he would never wish to leave.

  Then, from somewhere deep inside, Hay felt a force began to rise. A familiar one, of course, but it was more than that. It was fused with desperation, with danger—with fear—and would not be denied. He was on her, then in her, pounding his way through her, pinning her wrists to the bed.

  And when the paroxysm came, and lasted, and lasted, he collapsed in her arms, calmed and drained beyond repair.

  Chapter Four

  SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1862

  “They are poison!” Hay exclaimed. “Drugs and poison—the very same stuff. That is what Jamie said, and it makes sense. You take the right amount, they will cure you.” Hay poked into his omelet soufflé. “Take too much, and they kill. That is what all medicines are—poisons, administered in a less-than-poisonous dose.”

  When Nicolay stabbed at a slice of pork with a knife and a fork, juice squirted out. “So,” he replied, “these practitioners of heroic medicine, these Doc Stones of the world, are murderers, more or le
ss. This is what you are saying. Including your dear father, I suppose.”

  “My father never killed anyone—on purpose, at least. Whether he saved anyone, who can say? But no, they are not necessarily … murderers, as you delicately put it. If they can add and multiply, they can give the right amount of a drug and not too much. In theory, anyway. Whether the numbers they add and multiply are correct, that is something else. This is art, Nico, not science.”

  Hay was well aware of the civil war in medicine. The established physicians in the civilized places (including this one) believed in fighting disease heroically, using any available tool—leeches, lancets, scalding, blistering, opium, rhubarb, remedies of exotic description. Try anything and everything, in case something worked—what was more American than that? Yet the ubiquity of heroic medicine, and its grim aggressiveness, had induced a revolt—a secession of sorts. In Eastern cities, in the most sophisticated circles, homeopathy and its creed—less is more—had gained a foothold. Medicines are poison; to cure an illness, administer the slightest dilution of whatever had caused it. Like cures like. Each side had its dogma and viewed the other side as quacks. For Hay’s money, both sides’ assessments were correct.

  “Which remedies—excuse me, poisons—does he think Willie might have…?” As unemotional a man as Nicolay could not finish the sentence.

  Hay came to his aid. “Three possibilities, says Doctor Hall—Jamie. Arsenic, mercury, or antimony. They all work as remedies or, in higher doses, as poisons. Either—both.”

  “So, which of the three might be mistaken for typhoid fever?”

  “Any of them, to a greater or lesser extent. And all of them are common enough, easy to buy.”

  “Arsenic?”

  “My father kept some out by the privy, on the top shelf of the shed. To kill the rats coming up from the river.” And one of the family mutts. “Any gardener would have some on hand.”

  “Gardener?” said Nicolay.