TEMPLE WAS CARTING the dirty water from Fiona’s bath and dumping it at the side of the house later that afternoon, when Sojourner crossed over from the hospital.
“There’s a sight,” she cried. “Police Chief McFadden.”
“I’m not the chief of police, Sojourner.”
“You are very chief, and I know my chieftains. I’ll call you how I see fit. Now, we seen all you gathering and firing arms for a day and a half and none of us even thought about leaving the hospital until you were done with your ruckus. My concern is that Augustus and that sweet wife of yours ain’t coming into harm, because I am certain nobody came here for the two of them.”
“They’re right as rain, and you should join us inside.”
“Truth told, I’d be awful teary if anything happened to you, too, Chief McFadden, because you’re stand-up. I worry less about you, though—your type maintains in rough moments. Augustus is our scholar and your Fiona has a heart, and I’ll save my worries for them.”
“They’ll both be glad you’re here.”
Augustus had wrapped up the Booth diary in one package and Mrs. Lincoln’s in another. Both were on the table next to an open carpetbag holding his clothes and a few books. The Colt he had retrieved from the floorboards was next to the bag, and when Sojourner entered, he was poring over a small stack of pages he had transcribed from the Booth diaries.
“Will you take this into the alleys for me and make sure it’s safely hidden there?” he asked, handing her the Booth diary.
“Y’all right, son?”
“I am. And I hate to be full of requests, but would you have two spare suitcases in the hospital for Fiona and Temple to borrow for a few days? They’ve been out of their own home for some time and will be vagrants even longer now.”
“Assuredly.”
Fiona, brushing her hair in the bedroom, heard Sojourner’s voice and ran out to meet her. They were embracing when Temple came inside.
“Fast friends,” he said.
“Li’l piece of starlight here,” said Sojourner. “And it looks like we’re gettin’ crowded.”
Nail was at the door with two stacks of clothing and a leather billfold. He put them on the table, pulling his hat from his head and greeting Sojourner.
“Jack Flaherty.”
“Sojourner Truth, and I’m departin’ so I can do my chores for Augustus before the sun hides. Wishin’ all of ya wellness,” she said, holding the diary close to her chest as she began marching out the door.
Temple stopped Sojourner and bent down to whisper in her ear, pressing a note and some money into her hand as he spoke to her. She nodded, patted his arm, and went on her way. Temple then turned to the bundle of clothing Nail had brought him: two pairs of trousers, two shirts, socks, and long johns. Fiona’s pile had two walking dresses, pantalets, a corset, and a corset cover.
“Mr. Flaherty, you are an invention!” Fiona said, delighted. “I find corsets a murderous strangulation and will have to ignore that gift, but these are the first fresh clothes I’ve had in days. My sincerest regards for your courtesies—and your protection.”
“Nothing of it. One of them dresses is fancier than the other. Temple and I were thinkin’ it might make sense for you to have a more fashionable cut, seeing that you’re traveling with Mrs. Lincoln,” Nail said. “We’ll be back up here to fetch all of you in an hour or so, and then we’ll make our way to Swampdoodle.”
Fiona went into the bedroom to pack her clothes, and Temple sorted through the pile that Nail had brought him. Stuck between the shirts and trousers was a fat billfold, stuffed with about $2,000 in greenbacks. He held it up for Augustus to see.
“Cogniacs?” Augustus asked.
“I would never know,” Temple replied. “So I will have to ask our boodler. If they are true, then we are well financed.”
LATER THAT EVENING, a telegram for Allan Pinkerton arrived at the Willard just after supper, and a hotel clerk delivered it to him in the lounge, interrupting his brandy and cigar. He gave the clerk three Indian heads and stepped away from his group to read his message privately, as he did anytime he received a telegram:
Alexandria, May 21, 1865
Meet me at the Marshall House at the corner of King and Pitt tomorrow evening at 6 pm. I have information about the Booth diary and McFadden. Come alone, with funds.
Pinkerton smiled to himself and sat back down to enjoy his brandy, watching the Willard’s lobby swell with visitors arriving to partake in the Grand Review.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE PULLMAN
Nail housed Temple, Fiona, and Augustus in a three-room shack abutting the warehouse where he made his cogniacs. There were two beds in one of the rooms, a single bed in another, and a common washbasin and some chairs in the third. Other than that, the shack was empty, soured by the stench off the Tiber Canal, an odor that crawled across every path and room in Swampdoodle. After spending Sunday night discussing their plans for the following days, they all fell into a deep sleep.
Temple awoke ahead of the other two early the next morning, and when he stepped outside, he found Nail sitting in a chair facing the shack, his Enfield resting on his lap. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and from the look of his eyes and the muss of his hair he had been keeping watch all night. He sat up as Temple walked outside, glad to have the company.
“Some folks are talking about General Sherman, saying Stanton was worried about letting him in the District with all of his troops,” Nail said. “They aren’t letting Sherman sit in the reviewing stand near the President’s House on the first day. It’ll just be Johnson, Grant, and Stanton: two drunks and a bully.”
“President Johnson and Grant may be drunks, but General Grant is a leader. And Mr. Stanton is a complicated man.”
“Well, to get your chance to speak with him tomorrow you’re gonna have to get close to him. Have you thought on that?”
“I have. Still thinking. But until I arrive at the solution, I have something else for you. We’ve made more sense of some of the pages from the Booth diary, and I’d like you to look at them.”
Temple first gave Nail a copy of the Vigenère table and the slip of paper with MARKOFCAIN on it. Nail eyed the cipher and smiled.
“Booth was rather taken with his own drama, was he not? Makin’ his shatty little deed biblical.”
Temple gave him four telegrams and Nail spread them out on the ground, putting rocks on each of them to hold them down. He read through all of them several times, murmuring as he did so and letting his finger slide along under each name, stopping at names that, while decoded, were still a mystery:
March 4, 1865
From: Patriot
To: Avenger
There is a room for you at National. I am for Elmira and Montreal. Horses to Richmond when you have Tyrant.
April 5, 1865
From: Patriot
To: Avenger
Maestro sends funds. Goliath and others will join you. Wise Man and Drinker should be taken with Tyrant.
April 11, 1865
From: Patriot
To: Avenger
You will be allowed to pass at Navy Yard Bridge. Refuge at Tavern.
April 14, 1865
From: Patriot
To: Avenger
It is Ford’s. Praetorians send a Parker to guard Tyrant. He will abandon the door or let you pass.
Nail read the notes several times and became so enmeshed that he didn’t notice that Augustus had awoken and walked out of his shack to join him and Temple outside. When Nail was done parsing the notes he looked up and nodded a hello to Augustus.
“It looks like they wanted to pack off with Lincoln originally—kidnap him to Richmond, maybe?” he asked. “They probably realized they could never get out of the District alive with Abe in tow.”
“There could have been other reasons they decided against kidnapping him,” Augustus said. “Perhaps they needed President Lincoln out of the way entirely.”
�
�So we assume that ‘Avenger’ is Booth and ‘Tyrant’ is Lincoln?” Nail asked.
“Assuredly they are.”
“ ‘Patriot’?”
“Not a notion,” said Augustus.
“ ‘Goliath’?”
“Lewis Powell,” said Temple.
“How do you know?”
“Alexander Gardner told me that Baker and others referred to him that way, because of his size,” Temple said. “And Powell attacked Seward the night Lincoln was assassinated, so—”
“So ‘Wise Man’ is the secretary of state.”
“Yes. And I imagine ‘Drinker’ is Andrew Johnson.”
“So the night of the assassination they targeted the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state.”
“But they don’t appear to have Edwin Stanton, the war secretary, on their list,” said Temple. “Why not?”
“Is he ‘Maestro’?”
“Perhaps. Though elsewhere in the diary Booth mentions ‘Lord War,’ which may be Stanton. I’m unsure.”
“Some of the rest of this is clear. On the night of the murder, Booth escaped from the District and into Maryland on the Navy Yard Bridge; the papers said the Union soldiers guarding the bridge didn’t stop him. The papers also said that the Surratt family had a tavern in Maryland that Booth may have been aiming for, so the April eleventh telegram isn’t too difficult.”
“The April fourteenth telegram I understand, too. The Metropolitan Police Department is, I’m sure, the ‘Praetorians,’ ” Temple said. “They sent one of ours, John Parker, to guard the door outside Lincoln’s box at Ford’s. I know Parker. He’s a drinker, loose with his gun. He left the president unprotected at Ford’s so he could go find a damn drink. Booth got into the box through Parker’s door, and the MPD brought Parker up on charges of neglect of duty. Someone got the case dismissed.”
Augustus stared at his stove, which was secured with thick coils of rope in the back of a wagon. Then he squatted down next to Temple and Nail and tapped his finger on the March 4 telegram.
“Someone sent Booth money so he could stay at the National Hotel. And look, it doesn’t say ‘kill Tyrant.’ It says ‘when you have Tyrant,’ ” Augustus said. “In March it looks like they weren’t contemplating an assassination. It looks as if they wanted to kidnap Mr. Lincoln and hide him in Richmond. Something changed their minds between March fourth and April fourteenth.”
“Reality probably changed their minds,” Nail said. “Stealing the president like a sack of potatoes is a mite bit of a chore.”
“That could be true.”
“Out of the way of what?”
“I don’t know.”
The three men sat back down on the ground, and Temple handed the pile of telegrams back to Augustus.
“We need to know who ‘Patriot’ and ‘Maestro’ are,” said Temple. “We find them, we find everything. There are more telegrams for Augustus to unlock, but that will have to wait because he has an appointment.”
“And you?” Nail asked. “Where are you bound for?”
“You mean ‘we,’ ” Temple replied. “This evening, you and I are going to escort Fiona to the B&O so she can join Mrs. Lincoln on her six p.m. train to Chicago.”
FIONA ARRIVED AT the B&O at five-thirty. Though the station wasn’t far from Swampdoodle, Temple had put her in a carriage that traced a circular route across G Street and up Massachusetts, then on K back over to New Jersey and down to the B&O. No use anyone knowing where she was coming from, he told her before he kissed her, placed a wad of greenbacks in her bag, and helped her into the carriage.
The B&O was as busy as Fiona had ever seen it, even during the height of the war. Travelers were arriving from all points for the Grand Review, and each of the station’s three tracks had a train on it. For all of the commotion, Mrs. Lincoln waited almost unnoticed with her two sons—a tiny, fidgeting woman slipping the bonds of a city about to celebrate the end of a war that had martyred her husband and left her isolated, adrift, and no longer tolerated.
Lizzy spotted Fiona and waved, walking forward to help her with her bag.
“Mr. Robert is angry with his mother for letting you join us,” she said to Fiona. “He said our traveling party is big enough as it is. But Mrs. Lincoln hushed him and told him there was plenty of room on their train and that you and I were the closest of friends.”
“I’m grateful, Lizzy, and our train is undeniably magnificent.”
Abutting the platform were Mrs. Lincoln’s private cars, a pair of long, black, gleaming boxes atop sixteen iron wheels. Gold lettering on each of the cars’ sides announced them as the Pullman Pioneer, and black bunting hung from the rows of rectangular windows that wrapped the upper third of the cars. The bunting was a remnant from the Pioneer’s only previous run, ferrying President Lincoln and his casket from Chicago to Springfield after his funeral train arrived from Washington. Now, at Mrs. Lincoln’s request, and keen for the publicity that would accompany her journey, George Pullman had sent the Pioneer across the country from Chicago to bring the president’s widow back home, too.
Fiona, like everyone else in the District, had followed Mr. Pullman’s new company with interest. He was said to be building a fleet of elegant sleeper cars that would make rail travel the most modern of modern contrivances. The Pioneer alone cost $20,000 to build, almost seven times more than competitors’ sleepers; it had plush lounge chairs, high ceilings with ventilation, crystal chandeliers, beveled mirrors, etched glass, and dining service in its parlor car, while washrooms, linen closets, and wide, soft beds carved from cherry-wood graced the sleeper car.
A twenty-five-ton steam engine was separated from the Pioneer’s cars by a wide tender piled high with chunks of firewood. A sweeping triangular cowcatcher turned the front of the engine into a massive, imperious arrow, and the locomotive’s boiler was topped off with a two-foot oil-fueled headlight and a five-foot metal smokestack leaking a hazy stream of white vapor from its bonnet as the stoker opened his blower to keep the idling train’s fire hot. At peak speed, the Pioneer could travel faster than twenty miles an hour. Even with stops to refuel or take on new passengers, it could sprint to Chicago from Washington in only fifty-four hours—a pace that boggled the imagination.
As the baggage masters loaded Mrs. Lincoln’s trunks onto the train, she waved Fiona over with a series of quick flaps of her hand.
“Mrs. McFadden, these are my sons, Robert and Tad.”
Robert Lincoln held out his hand, barely acknowledging Fiona’s presence. Taking after his mother in stature and looks, he was slight and had fine features and eyes. A light sheen of macassar kept his hair pressed against his head, in the European fashion, and he had a delicate, neatly trimmed moustache. Like his mother, he was aloof.
“Mother, Mr. Pinkerton was to be here this evening to see us off,” Robert said. “Have you seen him?”
Mrs. Lincoln simply shook her head in response, and Robert, after bowing slightly to Fiona, climbed aboard the train. For his part, Tad, the twelve-year-old, held out a bag full of apples to Fiona, and she reached in and took one.
“Thank you so much, Tad,” Fiona said. “Can you tell me how you got your wonderful name?”
“My father gave it to me when I was a baby. He said that my head was so large atop my little body that I looked like a tadpole! My real name is Thomas.”
“Which name do you prefer?”
“I prefer Tad because it came from my father and he made me laugh.”
Mrs. Lincoln was looking on blankly, barely aware of the conversation or any of the people around her. Lizzy helped Tad onto the train and then turned back to help Mrs. Lincoln with a small bag she was carrying herself.
“I am traveling efficiently today,” the widow said. “I sent fifty-five boxes ahead to Chicago to T. B. Bryan’s residence on Twenty-second Street. American Express handled the shipment for me, without a charge. Mr. Pullman is letting us journey to Illinois at his expense as well. You see, vendors are hon
ored to make a sale with me, and I make it my practice never to impose upon their good wishes by paying.”
The train’s engineer rang the Pioneer’s bell and one of the baggage men approached Mrs. Lincoln.
“All aboard, Madame President.”
“It is the night before a commemoration of a war my husband prosecuted, and there is no one here to see me off but my family and a baggage man,” the widow said. “I will not miss Washington.”
Fiona pulled Mrs. Lincoln’s diary from her bag and gave it to her before they boarded. The widow smoothed the brown wrapping paper covering the diary and then took Lizzy’s hand to board the Pioneer. Fiona followed them up, and several minutes later the whistle blew as the train pulled away, its wheels and pistons starting to turn in rushed, breathy whooshes. Temple and Nail stepped forward from the shadows beneath one of the overhangs at the end of the platform and watched it slip past. Temple lifted his cane to Fiona, who gave him a small, surreptitious wave from her window.
“Nail,” said Temple, “the greenbacks you gave me. They’re authentic?”
“Some is and some isn’t. I mixed it up.”
“How can I tell the difference?”
“If you can’t sort them out, Temple, then why fill your head with ruminations?”
“You jumbled them on purpose so I wouldn’t give them back to you.”
“Perish the thought.”
AFTER SOJOURNER HAD taken Augustus’s package to Tiber Island, she delivered the messages that Temple had given her. The first went to the furry, bad-tempered photographer who always, always cursed a storm, heaven forgive him. He met her in front of his studio and also asked her to convey a note of his own to Temple. The second message Sojourner had to pass on was for Mary Ann Hall at her “dirty li’l establishment” on Maryland Avenue—and Sojourner intended to have a word with Temple later about him asking her to tote notes to a cathouse. Lordy.
PINKERTON HAD TO cross the Long Bridge from Washington into Virginia in order to get to the Marshall House in Alexandria, and the journey was a powerful test of his patience. The bridge itself was a mile long and three carriages wide, and on the Virginia side the Army of the Tennessee had pitched camp to await its triumphant march into the District on Wednesday.
The Lincoln Conspiracy Page 18