The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  When the door swung outward from the waiting room, well before Fiona had gotten near enough to open it herself, she knew she was caught. She knew it because she knew the navy sleeve on the arm opening the door belonged to a Union soldier; she knew it because that same soldier was visibly pleased with himself and smiled at her with the satisfaction of someone who had been waiting patiently—hours and hours—to fulfill his duty and had, as a reward for his patience, just fulfilled it; she knew it again when two other soldiers crowded out from behind him through the doorway, making room for a short, mustachioed man fingering the top of his sword and wearing a uniform embroidered with gold braid at the shoulders that conveyed his rank over the three men in front of him; and she knew it with certainty when he smiled at her with the same satisfaction that had brightened the face of the first soldier, the one who had opened the door.

  “Mrs. McFadden?” the officer purred.

  “I am,” she said, having decided in the milliseconds available to her that lying was pointless. There were several horses—six if her count was right—tethered to a rail in the yard beyond the waiting room, but they offered no hope of escape.

  “Mr. Stanton, at Mr. Baker’s behest, dispatched men to every station along this line, and it does appear that we are the lucky ones to have encountered you, ma’am. The war secretary is a forward-thinking man.”

  “I have heard as much of him. Are we to wait here together?”

  “Yes, and we shall escort you on the train to Washington—after we have a moment to examine your luggage, ma’am.”

  “Examine for what, pray tell?” Fiona asked.

  “For a leather-bound diary penned in Mrs. Lincoln’s hand. Mr. Stanton would much like to have it.”

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Major Bufus Ragland.”

  He reached for Fiona’s luggage, but she stepped back. He reached again, but she swung the bag away from him, so he stepped forward and smacked her across the cheek with the back of his hand. The blow staggered her and drew a welt out on her cheek. She dropped her luggage but held her medical bag close. The pair of travelers who had been sitting at the side of the station now stood up to stare, but neither spoke up. A woman traveling alone had questionable morals, and if four members of the Union army also found something amiss with her, then it was not up to anyone in Defiance to interfere.

  The major grabbed Fiona’s arm and pulled her into the station. He slammed the door behind him and gestured to one of his men to close the shutter on a window that looked onto the opposite side of the station and yet another row of buckeyes. Yes, Fiona decided, the buckeyes had been snickering. She rubbed her cheek and examined her surroundings. Even at midday, the sealed shutters plunged the station’s bare interior into murk accented with the lingering, stinging odor of cheap cigars. One of Ragland’s men struck a match and lit a small, squat candle sitting on a table next to a bottle of liquor and several glasses. Fiona stared at the liquor, gathering her thoughts and feeling her breath begin to quicken.

  “It’s whiskey,” Ragland said. “Pour us all a glass, Mrs. McFadden. We’ve been waiting for more than half a day in this shithole and we’re in need of … diversion.”

  Ragland laughed, and the other men in the room joined him. Fiona placed her medical bag on the table. She pressed her fingers to her eyes to avoid thinking about the pain in her cheek while Ragland strolled across the room and picked up her luggage, the heels of his black boots knocking against the floorboards before he sat down.

  “We have been told—”

  “By whom?” Fiona snapped, interrupting him.

  “By the war secretary, Mr. Stanton, himself.”

  “And he told you what? I have nothing to do with the war secretary.”

  “He told us that you were riding on the widow’s train, madam. We have no time for you to be an intemperate bitch. I’m sure you know what we’ve come for.”

  Fiona kept her back to the room, arranging the glasses and uncapping the whiskey. She shook her head. No, in fact, she didn’t know.

  “Well, say what you will. I imagine what we want is right in here,” Ragland said, unclasping her luggage and rummaging around inside. The other three men gathered close to him, peering into her luggage as well. Ragland pulled out a pair of blouses, a hairbrush, two books, some hairpins, a pair of socks, a Bible, and a Chinese fan, dropping all of it on the floor as he picked his way along. He began plucking things from the bag faster and faster, swearing under his breath until he cast the luggage aside.

  “Put her on the wall,” he snapped at one of his men. “There’s no diary in here.”

  A short, stocky soldier with a red beard spun Fiona away from the table and slammed her into the wall, pressing his hand to her breast. He circled his other hand around her neck and squeezed until her face flushed red and she gagged, a small stream of spittle leaking from the corner of her mouth. He squeezed harder and she thought she would faint.

  “Wait,” Ragland said. “Look in the small bag on the table first.”

  The soldier yanked his hand from Fiona’s throat and she doubled over at her waist, coughing and sweating. He turned back to the table and opened her bag.

  “It’s all bottles and vials,” the soldier said, confused. “Medical supplies.”

  “Mrs. McFadden,” Ragland asked, amused, “are you a conjurer?”

  “I am a trained medical professional,” she rasped, forcing herself up and staring at Ragland with as much confidence as she could muster.

  “There is no diary in this bag, either,” the soldier roared, and he pounced on Fiona in a fury, forcing a hand between her legs and latching the other to her throat. She sputtered as the air rushed out of her mouth, both of her hands reflexively but uselessly grabbing hold of the soldier’s arms as her pressed her back into the wall again.

  “Wait!” Ragland shouted.

  The soldier released her.

  “She does not have the diary on her person, and we need to ask her some things before you feel her up any more, goddammit.”

  Ragland stood up and pulled his jacket down at his sides, composing himself.

  “Bring us our whiskey and we will interview Mrs. McFadden properly.”

  The soldier, still hovering over Fiona, pressed both of his hands back against his chest and arched his eyebrows.

  “Yes, you arsehole. Get the whiskey,” Ragland said. “You’ve left the woman gagging, and she’s in no position to serve whiskey to the four of us. So serve it.”

  The other two soldiers chuckled and sat down at the far end of the waiting room, near a wall with a blank surface except for the faint rectilinear slats of sunlight creeping in around the edges and straight down the middle of the shutter framed in its center. They stretched out their legs and waited for their drinks.

  Four glasses were poured and brought over. Each of the men tipped his head and shot back the whiskey.

  “It’s bitter,” one of the men complained.

  “I bought it,” Ragland replied. “You’ll drink it.”

  After a second and third pour went around, Ragland stood up and walked slowly over to Fiona, whose hands were clasped in front of her waist. A yellow tongue of candlelight played across her cheeks, giving her eyes a wider and deeper cast.

  “You are a fine-looking woman, Mrs. McFadden,” Ragland said, fingering her cheek. “Under different circumstances I do believe we would enjoy sharing each other’s company more intimately.”

  “Major Ragland, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I’d take pleasure in your company,” Fiona said, batting his hand away from her face.

  Ragland stepped away, slipped his hand inside his belt, and withdrew a small silver knife with an ivory handle and a short blade. The edges of the knife picked up the light from the candle, and Fiona could see a locomotive etched in fine black lines across the length of its blade.

  “You’re a spirited woman, but I’m afraid I don’t have the time to amuse myself with your banter,” Ragland said, steppin
g forward and pressing the tip of his knife into Fiona’s throat, drawing a tiny burst of blood. She tried to back away from him, but the wall behind her stopped her.

  “You are wanted by the government of these United States for theft of its property, and I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that you tell me where that property is located,” he said, drawing closer and whispering into her ear.

  She could smell the whiskey, thick on his breath. He, too, fondled her breast, before slapping her again with the back of his hand and knocking her to the ground. Tears burned in her eyes, but she blinked them back and stood up. The air in the waiting room felt dense now and pressed down upon her from the rafters. Cigar smoke, whiskey, probing hands, questions.

  O Almighty God, who art a strong tower of defense to those who put their trust in thee, whose power no creature is able to resist, we make our humble cry to thee.

  “I have no diary upon my person,” Fiona said. “Mrs. Lincoln is now in possession of a diary that rightly belongs to her and to which no one else has claim.”

  “There’s a second diary.”

  “I’m not aware of it.”

  He hit her again, harder, and she fell to the ground, nearly fainting from the pain that drew tiny pinpoints across her skull. Ragland dropped to one knee, took Fiona’s skirt in his left hand and pulled it taut, then cut straight through it with his knife, until the blade was inches from her nether areas.

  “I will slice your pudenda, Mrs. McFadden, unless you give me the information I need.”

  He was close to her face again. Cigar smoke, whiskey, probing hands, questions: this is all you smell and hear when you die away from home, Fiona thought. Maybe I’ll simply close my eyes as it happens.

  Fiona braced for the cut, pressing her back into the wall as firmly as she could, but Ragland’s head snapped away from her, his lips pursing in rubbery circles that gave his mouth the cast of a palsied bass beached at the edge of Black Lake. No sooner had Ragland’s lips started dancing than his throat began pulsing in thick spasms and he gasped more furiously for breath, his eyes caught between surprise and horror as he tried to focus on Fiona, a wall, the ceiling, whatever he might stare at as he wrestled fruitlessly with his own body. A moment later his arms began twitching and his hands shook violently enough that he dropped his knife into Fiona’s lap, scuttling backward from her on legs moving so rapidly and randomly that she no longer thought of him as a stranded fish but as an oversized, panicked crab. His grimace hardening, Ragland repeatedly chopped at his swelling throat in scattered, violent swipes. As the furies cascaded across his body, Ragland’s sword and scabbard clattered repeatedly against the waiting room’s floor, swinging off his hip in ever longer slices as his body began a final permutation: with his head nearly touching the floor and his face forced upward, Ragland gagged loudly and plaintively as his back bowed and his torso arched toward the ceiling, gold officer’s braid dangling down from his shoulders.

  And Ragland was not dying alone. His three men were seized with conniptions of their own—choking, straining, and caterwauling about the room in crazes that left them bouncing from corners and rounding off one another in crooked, frenetic cartwheels, their shadows intertwined and thrown into relief on a ceiling highlighted by the dull yellow glow of the single candle still lighting the room.

  Fiona had covered her eyes and stopped watching the soldiers’ final moments when the last of them finally fell, choking and fidgeting, into the table. The candle and the whiskey bottle flipped off the table, leaving Fiona’s medical bag teetering on the edge. As it had been shortly after the soldiers and Fiona entered, the waiting room was now illuminated only by thin lines of sunlight splitting the borders of the shutters covering the windows. There was a soft moan coming from one of the men on the floor, but in the darkness Fiona couldn’t tell which one it was. She resisted the urge to vomit and began to slide across the floor, away from Ragland’s corpse and toward her medical bag. She was just beginning to stand when the door to the waiting room opened.

  The chestnut-haired woman who had been knitting on the platform stood in the doorway, light pouring in around her. The faro dealer peered in behind her, wide-eyed. She turned to him and pulled several greenbacks from her bag, pressing them into his hand.

  “The men on the floor in here are all drunkards and they have tried to violate the honor of this poor woman,” the woman said to him. “Please respect her privacy as I attend to her.”

  “What was all the banging and shouting, then?” the faro dealer asked. “And none of them look ripped up to me. They’re all smiling the monkey smile. I ’spect they’re conversing with their Maker right about now.”

  “As I said, they are clearly a rambunctious lot,” she reiterated, and gave him two more bills. “If you return to the platform, there will be more money for you when we depart.”

  The faro dealer turned back toward the platform, and the woman closed the door, then pulled on a lever along the doorjamb to prop open the transom above it, allowing her to leave the shutters in place on the windows while illuminating the slaughter on the floor in front of her. The four men all lay akimbo, their limbs splayed at odd angles from their bodies, frozen in rigor mortis.

  She surveyed the room and then walked to the corpse nearest her, crouching down to examine whatever aromas still lingered around his mouth.

  Fiona thought: Cigars, whiskey, death.

  “They were all drinking whiskey,” she told the woman.

  “And the whiskey did this to them?”

  “I’m at a loss as to what prompted their passages,” Fiona said, standing and walking to her bag. She still felt dizzy, and her cheeks were throbbing. One of the men on the floor wheezed, still struggling, however faintly, for breath.

  The woman walked to him and crouched down. She pulled the ball of yarn from her bag and pressed it over his mouth and nose to block any more air from entering. The soldier’s heels rattled briefly against the floor before he expired.

  “Who are you?” Fiona asked, leaning on the table for support.

  “Kate Warne of the Pinkertons, Mrs. McFadden. At your service.”

  TWO OF THE horses in the yard were Kate Warne’s; the rest belonged to the dead soldiers. Warne and Fiona were on their way in minutes, their bags strapped behind their saddles and hanging from their pommels. As they circled the yard, the faro dealer tipped his hat to them and smiled.

  “He will give us over to the first curious person who comes to the station, so we have little time to waste,” Warne said. “But I have a query of you first: strychnine?”

  “They were drinking whiskey, which was fortuitous. It masked part of the strychnine’s bitterness. I had a moment to taint the entire bottle, and I did.”

  “Because you routinely carry poisons in your bag.”

  “I don’t know if I would have left that room alive had I not done what I did. I am a healer first and foremost,” Fiona said. “Along with my God, my medical bag is my armor and my cause, Miss Warne, and in all of my adult years I haven’t traveled without it. Now I have a question of you.”

  “And I will listen and respond, but only after we have put considerable distance between us and Defiance. Until then we don’t have the luxury of extended chatter.”

  Warne snapped the reins, and her horse broke into a gallop. Bruised and still numb, Fiona followed suit, and the pair rode at speed away from Defiance, southeast along a post road that Warne clearly knew from memory.

  Five hours later, their horses in a lather, Fiona and Warne arrived at a trim, well-maintained farmhouse where two fresh horses were waiting. Fiona hoped they would stop there, but when a lanky old man in coveralls marched out of the house with a bag of apples and a large pail of water, she knew they were simply exchanging horses.

  “The Pinkerton network,” Warne said, giving the man an envelope she pulled from her bag.

  “The Pinkerton network,” the old man replied, swatting at several flies that circled his head and giving Warne an envelo
pe of his own.

  They drank and ate, and within minutes they were off again, Warne nodding in gratitude but saying nothing more to the old man as they left.

  Two hours later, with dusk pressing in, they arrived at yet another farmhouse just outside Columbus.

  “We can stay here tonight,” Warne said. “In the morning we will find our train back to Washington.”

  The same exchange occurred again. Warne identified herself as a Pinkerton, and the owner of the house—a middle-aged woman with two children who sat and stared from a corner of the kitchen—replied in kind and showed them inside. The owner had laid out two nightdresses for them in her bedroom, and Warne and Fiona went there to change and freshen themselves from a shallow basin of water set on a chair by the bed.

  Warne peeled her petticoat away, revealing several pouches sewn into her corset. Two derringers were tucked into a pair of the pouches, the handles of the pistols curling out like commas. Three other pouches harbored knives.

  “How do you bear a single day in a corset, much less a corset ornamented with weaponry?” Fiona asked.

  “My breaths get squeezed,” Warne said. “But it is all part of my work, and I enjoy my work. I have seen things in my work. My work defines me. I am a Pinkerton, and the only woman Mr. Pinkerton has hired. I helped him get Mr. Lincoln safely through Baltimore and into Washington after he was first elected, you know.”

  “Then I should be honored that you have escorted me to safety as well, but I don’t know how you found me or why.”

  “Your husband managed to force Mr. Pinkerton to leave Washington, but his contacts are vast and he didn’t see fit to end his intersections with you and your husband just yet. He knew you to be on the train with Mrs. Lincoln, and he ordered agents to wait along the line to Chicago. I hadn’t expected to see Mr. Stanton’s soldiers in Defiance, however.”

  “I had not expected them, either,” Fiona said, stroking her cheeks.

  “You’ll be deeply bruised about your face for a few more days,” Warne said, slipping into her nightdress.