The Murder of Willie Lincoln Read online

  “How about that.”

  “Arsenic is a medicine? What for?”

  “Syphilis, says Jamie.”

  “For Willie? He was precocious, but…”

  “And to whiten women’s skin.”

  “Again…”

  “For us, the advantage of arsenic is that you can test for it. The Marsh test, it’s called. Something with sulfuric acid that turns the arsenic into a gas—Jamie explained it, and I … I skipped my chemistry class whenever I could.”

  “Boasting again, Johnny—what a waste of an education.” Nicolay had known next to none. “A test only for arsenic—not the others?”

  “As far as he knows. He will check.”

  “Can he arrange for this … Marsh test?”

  Hay said, “He already has.”

  * * *

  As they left the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Hay found himself praying for a merciful God, less as a matter of faith or of hope than out of a habit of hedging his bets. Lincoln hurried ahead, east across Thirteenth street, dodging the hacks and carriages that carried the worshipers home, tugging at Hay’s sleeve like a heedless child. Robert trailed a step or two behind. Father and son wore the black armbands Mrs. Keckly had sewn.

  There was no mystery about Lincoln’s destination. The miniature shop, almost to Twelfth street, resembled a dollhouse, with its two dwarf windows upstairs and a balcony with a wrought iron rail. A. Stuntz—written across the awning. Lincoln stood in front of the picture window, inches from the display of bright and beckoning toys—doll babies and pop guns, tin watches and dominoes, railroad engines wound with a key, wooden soldiers clad in red and blue. All, on a Sunday, unreachable, imprisoned behind glass. Hay wondered how many times Lincoln had stood here, clasping Willie with one hand and Tad with the other, before venturing inside and trading the cares of a wartime president for a father’s joys.

  As they headed back to the Executive Mansion, Robert kept several steps behind. Hay wondered if this show of laggardliness was directed at the president or at Hay, for … what? For having accompanied them to church, no doubt. Hay understood the part he played in Robert’s emotional predicament, the threat he posed for the president’s affections. Robert could well misunderstand—or, understand. With his mother’s round face and soft features, the eighteen-year-old was nice looking enough, in a bland sort of way. He was awkward in anyone’s presence—his father’s, most of all—and jittery at receiving too much attention. Maybe because his father had given him so little of it, was Hay’s guess. During Robert’s boyhood, Lincoln was mostly away from home, politicking or traveling the judicial circuit. That, and their vastly different natures, Robert being a Todd through and through, probably explained the distance between father and firstborn. This distance made it all the harder for Robert to watch his father treat Hay like a son. Robert had no way of knowing—and it would hurt him to know—that it was the president who had asked Hay to church and that Hay had suggested inviting Robert. And Robert had come, keeping his distance.

  Hay knew he was making things worse—but surely, duty to Lincoln trumped Robert’s sensitivities—as he sidled alongside the president, crossing Fourteenth street, whispering about … Willie. Hay had decided on the blunt approach. It was kinder, he decided, and simpler. Hay had settled on an opening sentence—Jamie learned something at the embalming—when Lincoln spoke up.

  “I had a visit last evening from ‘Bowie Knife’ Potter.” The chairman of the House Select Committee on the Loyalty of Government Clerks was a radical Republican from Wisconsin who was prone to see treason where others saw a free man’s right to speech. His posse of investigators, Hay knew, was tracking down secret secessionists who allegedly honeycombed the government, including the Executive Mansion. “Mister Watt and Mister Stackpole, he has evidence against both of ’em.”

  “Evidence of what? From whom?”

  “Of their secessionist sentiments. Perhaps you oughta ask him. The man is a fool, but if he says he has evidence, I am never averse to evidence.”

  They resumed the journey in silence, Robert trailing behind. As they entered the grounds of the Executive Mansion, Hay’s courage—and swelling sense of duty—revived.

  “Jamie learned something, sir”—to his own ear, he sounded squeaky—“at the … embalming,”

  “Oh?” the president said mildly. He seemed not to be listening.

  “It was not typhoid fever. More precisely, not only typhoid fever.”

  To Hay’s synopsis of Dr. Hall’s logic and his description of possible poisons, Lincoln showed almost no reaction, as if Hay were reading the minutes of a cabinet meeting. But Hay’s mention of the Marsh test for arsenic brought Lincoln to a halt. Robert nearly walked into his father’s back, then circled around and hurried into the mansion.

  “And so they need something,” Hay said with trepidation, “on which to perform the test.”

  The statue of Thomas Jefferson, in an oval of grass on the North Lawn, looked vaguely Negroid in the late-morning gloom. Holding the Declaration of Independence in one hand and a quill pen in the other, the Founding Father saucily thrust out a hip.

  Lincoln’s face looked carved from stone. “The embalming,” he said at last, “didn’t that ruin a test?”

  “Jamie says no. If the … material is tested, the arsenic will still be there.”

  “As long as Mother and I can take our precious boy home, exactly as he is—as he was. As God made him and then, for His own unfathomable reasons, snatched him away.”

  * * *

  Written in a small, meticulous hand, the names filled the left side of a piece of foolscap. Old Edward had listed everyone who was in the Executive Mansion on Thursday evening from five o’clock until nine.

  Cooks—six names.

  Chambermaids—four.

  Messengers—three.

  Doorkeepers—Thomas Stackpole and Old Edward himself.

  Hay’s name was listed, and Nicolay’s, and the president’s and Mrs. Lincoln’s. And Robert’s and Tad’s. And John Watt’s. But not, he noticed, Mrs. Keckly’s. An oversight, perhaps. He thought he remembered seeing her—possibly, that was some other day.

  He should question all of them, but not to-day. Most of them were at home on a Sunday. He could speak with the few on the premises, but what would he ask them? Had they seen anything suspicious?—whatever he meant by that. Yes, and by any chance, had they left a message in his satchel after murdering the president’s son?

  Oh yes, Mister Hay, I murdered the boy, since you bothered to ask.

  Who was Hay kidding? He had next to no idea about how to proceed. He needed help, but from whom? Nicolay? Nico asked sharp questions, but he was a tad too rational—to Nicolay, two points made a line—and, in his way, too guileless to outthink a devious mind. Hay knew the right person to ask, even if he preferred not to. Lincoln was right: Allan Pinkerton could lend a hand. In framing questions for the mansion’s staff. Possibly, in learning more about the in-house secessionists. Hay recognized it was not embarrassment that explained his reluctance, but rivalry.

  So, where might Hay find the detective on a Sunday afternoon? At his agency’s office, on I street? More likely, at his home, on Sixteenth. Or at the Willard’s bar, nursing a ginger ale, soaking up the gossip. Pinkerton might be arrogant and belligerent, but he was not lazy.

  Hay was hurrying down the office staircase when he nearly collided with Pinkerton, who was climbing up.

  “I was just coming to—” Hay said.

  “You leave him alone,” Pinkerton growled. The detective’s blue-gray eyes were ablaze.

  Hay said, “Leave who alone?”

  “Ye know who I mean.”

  Pinkerton’s fists balled up, and Hay’s did the same. Hay stood one step higher on the staircase, putting him in position for a mean left hook. He edged not quite sideways, his left foot forward—a boxer’s orthodox stance—precariously on the step, and barely resisted raising his fists. Pinkerton, with his heft, might best him in a
bare-knuckled bout, but he would know he had been in a fight.

  “Let me guess,” Hay said. “Horace Greeley? Jeff. Davis? I am sorry, my dear Pinkerton, I haven’t a notion.”

  “We need to talk.” Pinkerton brushed past Hay on the staircase. “Now.”

  Hay had seen the detective once before in a state of high dudgeon—hunched forward, his brows dour, the eyes penetrating, his mouth pursed behind the intimidating beard. That was in Harrisburg, once the plot against Lincoln’s life had come to light (assuming, of course, it existed). Pinkerton brooked no disagreement whenever he was sure of himself, which was all of the time.

  Once they had settled themselves in their rightful places, Pinkerton visibly relaxed and declared, “John Watt. He was arrested this mornin’. I arrested him.”

  “Congratulations. For what? Padding invoices?”

  If so, Hay wondered, was Mrs. Lincoln next?

  “Nothin’ so paltry. Fer extortion—blackmail.”

  Pinkerton waited to see the effect of his words. Hay hated to give him the pleasure, but he was shocked. Pinkerton said nothing, forcing Hay to ask.

  “Who?” said Hay, after a pause he hoped made its point. “Who did he blackmail?”

  “The Madam.”

  Hay felt his jaw drop. At the audacity. The gardener had helped her pad her invoices. He taught her, tutored her. An apt pupil, a woman as conniving as he was. Indeed, it was the epiphany that John Watt could not be disciplined without implicating the Madam that had ruptured Hay’s and Nicolay’s relations with the Hell-cat. And so Watt, in turn, had rewarded her studiousness by … How on earth could he…?

  “Blackmailed her how?”

  “With three o’ her own letters. In which she admits to…” Pinkerton stopped.

  “To?”

  “She asked him in those letters to commit forgery and perjury for the purpose o’ defraudin’ the government.” Pinkerton recited with almost a tangible distaste. “The woman is an imbecile.”

  “Thank you—I was unaware of this until just now. How much does he ask for?”

  Pinkerton paused for dramatic effect. “Twenty thousand dollars. In gold.”

  Hay whistled as he exhaled. He was certain the Lincolns had no such wealth. “And if they refuse?”

  “Then he will deliver them to our enemies in the press.”

  Them being the letters, Hay understood. But also the Lincolns. Reintroducing Madam President to the electorate as not only ostentatious but also conniving and corrupt. Hay could imagine the thrill these letters would occasion in The New York Herald’s appeasing heart. But $20,000 in gold? The initial bid, perhaps.

  “He was arrested, you say?”

  “This mornin’. In the conservatory. I snapped on the shackles meself.”

  Hay was impressed. The arrest must have taken place while the president was at church. Probably as planned.

  “Where is he now?”

  “And why do ye ask?”

  “His name comes up when I make inquiries about Willie.” Hay recounted the tutor’s suspicions about John Watt’s behavior on the South Lawn.

  “And wha’ woul’ ye say was his purpose in standin’ behind this tree o’ yers?”

  “Of mine? Who can say for sure that he had a purpose?”

  “A man does no’ stand ou’ in the cold at seven o’clock in the mornin’ withou’ a purpose,” Pinkerton said.

  “Other than…” Hay explained that John Watt’s presence had prompted the tutor to reverse his course. Before a projectile nearly struck Willie along the canal.

  “From which direction?”

  “The projectile?” Hay shrugged. “From the sky, best the tutor could say. Maybe over the fence, from President’s Park.”

  “’Tis applesauce, this theory o’ yours.”

  “What theory? I wish I had one.”

  “Tha’ the presence o’ Mistah Watt was intended to cause a change o’ direction tha’ brought the boys into danger. From the sky, as ye say.”

  “I did not say—the tutor did. And what makes you so sure?”

  “A plot needs to work, Mistah Hay. It needs to be counted upon. A man hidin’ behind a tree does not assure a change o’ direction. It migh’ work, it migh’ no’. Probably no’. Fer yer plot to work, the boys must change direction and a rock flung from somewhere must land just so. This is madness. What kind o’ plot is tha’?”

  Hay had nothing to say.

  “This man is a dunce, your tutor. He is—”

  “My tutor?”

  “—just the man I woul’ want in charge o’ a boy I was meanin’ to harm. Now who bore the responsibility for tha’?”

  Hay told how Tom Cross, the messenger so beloved by the boys, had stayed home to fix a birthday breakfast for his son. “If,” Hay said, “he was telling the truth about that.”

  Which gave Hay an idea. “Is that something you could check?” he said, almost adding “for me.”

  “Ye are askin’ Allan Pinkerton if he is capable o’ verifyin’ a boy’s birthday? And his preference at breakfast?”

  Hay smiled in spite of himself. “I suppose I am,” he said. “Would you?”

  “And is there any other blessed thing ye wish me to do fer you—is there, Mistah Hay?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is.” Hay told him of the belt buckle stamped with MVM that he had found on the path by the canal. Might Pinkerton make inquiries among the troops in President’s Park?

  “Mistah Hay, you have a simple mind.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Ye heard me well and square. Ye are believin’, are ye, that the belt buckle ye just happened to discover when ye fell on yer face in the mud, that this was the very belt buckle that just happened to drop from the sky, waitin’ to be found by the simpleton who happened to be looking for such … a projectile? And this, flung by a source yet unknown? Is this what ye be believin’?”

  Hay felt himself turning red. “When you put it that way,” he said, “of course.”

  * * *

  The door to the study was shut. Hay knocked. A pause, then an invitation from inside.

  Lincoln was seated in his upholstered rocking chair at the center of the oval sitting room. This was where he would read a chapter from his mother’s worn Bible after dressing in the morning, or a scene from Shakespeare with his lunch of an apple and milk. His volumes of Shakespeare and Burns shared the old bookcases with Mrs. Lincoln’s modern English novels. It was a homey room, with no corners and a blazing fire; its informality, verging on messiness, had managed to resist the Madam’s redecorative command.

  Lincoln gestured Hay into the Madam’s matching chair, opposite his own. “It is about Tad, sir,” Hay said. “And Bob. I am scared that something could happen to them.”

  “Robert can take care of himself,” Lincoln said, iron in his voice. “What is it about Tad?”

  “About both of them, sir. This is not evidence, exactly. We won’t know about any arsenic until … But I can’t shake the thought that … if someone wanted to … harm Willie, why would he stop there?”

  Hay waited for Lincoln to react, but his face was rigid. Hay wondered if he had grasped the implications.

  “Then what would you have me do, John?” the president said.

  * * *

  “Taddie, Taddie—wake up, my boy.”

  A father’s cry roused no movement in the bed. Hay was terrified until he saw the thin lips twitch. Then the sleeping lad sighed. The president tunneled a hand under Tad’s head and lifted it. Tad’s eyes drifted open. Seeing his father, he smiled.

  “Papa-day,” Tad said. “Papa-day.”

  “How do you feel, my boy?”

  “Me hurt, Papa-day.”

  “What hurts, Taddie?”

  The boy started to cry.

  “Shhhh, shhhh.” Lincoln sank onto one knee and held his son’s head to his shoulder. Tad’s striped nightshirt nearly vanished under his father’s huge hand. Only in his oversized ears did the boy resemble his pa.

>   Once the boy calmed, Lincoln said, “John here has some questions to ask you, Taddie. Is that all right?”

  Tad looked up blankly, tears on his face, and nodded.

  Hay stood awkwardly behind the kneeling president. The boy’s forehead glistened with perspiration.

  “Tad, my boy,” Hay began.

  “I am not your boy. I am my boy.”

  “Of course you are,” Hay said.

  “No,” Lincoln said, “you are my boy.”

  Tad’s face glowed.

  “What I want to ask you, Tad,” Hay said, “is whether anyone gave you something that was bitter to eat. That did not taste good.”

  Tad shook his head decisively, almost violently, from side to side.

  “Mister Watt, maybe?” said Hay.

  The boy’s face crumpled. “Mean man. Mean to Taddie.”

  “But did he give you anything to eat, Taddie?” said Hay.

  “Not call me Taddie. Not your Taddie. Papa-day’s Taddie. My faver’s”—the boy’s lisp, aggravated by his second teeth growing in crooked, frustrated the th—“Taddie. Not call me—”

  Hay tried to stifle his irritation. “Did anyone give you something bitter to eat? Mister Stackpole, perhaps?”

  “No, no,” Tad whined. “Taddie good boy.” He hugged his father’s neck like it was a life buoy. “Papa-day, Papa-day, Papa-day…”

  Lincoln rocked his son from side to side and murmured sounds that Hay could not decipher. Tad’s eyes drifted shut, and his head rested on his father’s bristly beard. Tenderly, Lincoln lowered the boy onto the bed, where he could rest.

  * * *

  “I never asked him straight out,” Hay said.

  Nicolay replied, “And why not?”

  “Because he would have said no. Pinkerton would never let me get close to his star prisoner. ‘I shackled him meself.’” Hay’s falsetto made Nicolay laugh.

  They were walking back from supper at Willard’s. Hay had passed up coffee and plum pudding—and brandy—to keep the roast lamb and mint on his tongue. “How would Pinkerton know,” he said, “if Stackpole and Watt were—are—in cahoots? Or if they are both secesh. I want to question John Watt myself. Because I know why I am asking—at least vaguely—and Pinkerton can only guess.”