Murder at the Capitol

by C. M. Gleason

  “I reckon that the man was standing here and he turned slightly, on his toes, and that scraped his heel mark, making it just a little bit wider. Do you see how it’s just a trifle wider?”

  “Gor. I do now, but I wouldn’t-a never seen that, Mr. Quinn. Never in my whole life.”

  “As I said, it takes a lot of practice.” Adam realized he needed a piece of string or something with which to measure the size of the marks. “Brian, go down below and ask the privates for a measuring tape or a stick. Or Mr. Fowler—his crew might have something.”

  As the boy clambered down, the lantern’s light swaying with his movements, Adam checked the front of the beam again where the rope and its burden had passed by on its way below. Tiny threads of rope had caught along its sharp, unfinished edge, confirming that the length had scraped back and forth along it for some distance.

  While he waited for Brian to return, Adam manipulated himself along the beam to examine the rope itself without disturbing the footprints he wanted to measure. There was nothing notable about the line, but he did discover a small cluster of hair caught in a splinter of the rough wood. Whoever had tied up the rope—and since the hair was very pale blond, perhaps even white, it had not been Piney Tufts—had not been wearing a hat and scraped his head against the beam above.

  Adam had taken to carrying a pencil, along with small envelopes and scraps of paper on his person—he’d have to add a small measuring tape to his pockets as well—so he used the tip of his penknife to remove the tuft of hair and drop it into the protective crease of a packet. By now, Brian was pounding back up the steps. The crane was so well-made that it didn’t shiver in the least with this activity, but the noise of his feet rang out in the round, marble-walled chamber.

  “Here you are, Mr. Quinn. What are you going to be doing with this measuring tape?”

  Adam explained as he set about measuring the length and width of the footprints—more than one of them just to make certain he had the right measurements and that there really only had been one person up here—and then he noted the way the front of the boot narrowed, and the width of the toe. With a pencil, he drew it roughly on one of his papers and thought briefly of Miss Lemagne and her sketchbook and how handy it would be if he could draw.

  “All right, Brian. I reckon we’re done here.” Once on the ground, Adam approached Mr. Fowler. “I’ll need to speak with whichever of your men arrived first this morning, but in the meanwhile, you can get back to work with the crane.”

  The other man nodded. “It was Alexander Provest—he’s the marble finisher—who got here earliest today, and then my man Hamlin Jenkins right after him. I’ve told them to wait for you.”

  “Much obliged. I’ll return in a short while. I’ve got one more thing to look at.” Without waiting for a reply, Adam started off down the corridor toward the wing where Miss Gates had found the hat. He was fairly certain it was the hall that led to the House’s new chamber, but wouldn’t attest to it. Miss Gates had described the location she’d found the hat and Adam crouched with his lantern to see what tracks he could find.

  As it had been dry for the last few days, only some faint smudges of dirt marred the marble floor. He was used to looking for the smallest of disturbances or marks, so he spotted a minuscule streak of blood. Then, in the corner behind one of the half-columns that lined the walls, he noticed a walking stick.

  It was topped with a heavy brass knob, but there was no sign of blood or hair on the end which might have been used to strike the blow on the back of Tufts’s head. Yet a walking stick simply lying against the wall of the corridor was strange.

  Adam examined it closely, but there were no personal stamps on the stick nor any distinguishing marks that might help identify its owner. Still, he’d keep it.

  With Brian dogging his footsteps, Adam went back to the Rotunda where the crew had wasted no time getting back to work under Charles Fowler’s watchful eye. A man in scrubby work clothes approached him and introduced himself as Hamlin Jenkins.

  “Fowler said you wanted to talk to me,” he said, scratching a grizzled chin while holding a long metal tool. He was sucking on a plug of tobacco in his mouth.

  “Yes, much obliged. You’re aware that a man was found hanged here this morning. Did you see anyone or anything unusual when you arrived? Did you go inside?”

  “No, sir. I can’t get inside until someone lets us in—either Provest or Bassett or Cluskey. I sat there on the West Front steps and had my meat pie from Cory’s while I was waiting, watching out over the Mall. It’s quieter than the Avenue side, even with all the cows down there on the grass, mooing. It’d be a nice view if there wasn’t so much marble and iron pieces all over. The grass is growing all around them, they’ve been sitting there so long. The smells from the chimneys though—from the bakeries down in the cellar—that’s pretty nasty and kind of takes away from the scene.” He gave that long speech while managing the chaw of tobacco in his mouth with nary a drip or splatter.

  “Who let you in today? Was it Mr. Provest?”

  “Yassir. He’s usually here early—he does the marble finishing, he and his men, and anyway, it’s nice of Mr. Fowler to put us back to work even while he’s not getting paid. Mr. Walter, he’s going in front of Congress tomorrow to ask them to give the money to keep the work going.” Jenkins shrugged. “It’s either we keep working, or we start up soldiering for the army. Me, I’d rather keep working.” He scratched his chest and shifted the plug of tobacco in his mouth as if he were ready to expel it.

  Adam automatically looked for a spittoon, didn’t see one, then back at Jenkins, who’d tucked the chaw into his cheek. “All right, then, thank you.” As the ironworker ambled off, Adam pulled out the envelope with the hair tuft in it. “Brian, I need you to take this to Dr. Hilton and tell him I found it near the scene. And bring back word from him when I should come—and on your way back here, stop at Cortland’s Bakehouse on the Avenue and get us a pair of meat pies.” He handed the boy a dime. “If I’m not here, I’ll leave word with Mr. Bassett—that’s the doorkeeper there—where I’ve gone.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Quinn. I’m glad I am that you wanted a meat pie too. Hearing that man talk about them made me hungry. But my mam says I’m always about being hungry—like my legs are hollowed out or something, and I have to keep eating to be filling them up.” He started to go, then spun back and looked up at Adam. “Thank you for letting me come inside here, Mr. Quinn,” he said in a whisper. “I never thought I’d see a place like this ever in my life. It’s just like I thought America would be when we were coming over on that ship—big and grand and new. And important.”

  Adam nodded and felt his throat burn a little. “Go off with you now, Brian. I’m hungry for that meat pie too.”

  Big and grand and new. Important.

  And still under construction.

  Yes, the United States was all of that . . . or had been. Whether it would remain a big, grand, important Union—and whether it would be finished—was yet to be seen. Adam prayed that Mr. Lincoln would succeed in keeping it that way.

  CHAPTER 4

  George Hilton was about as blessed as a black man in America could be, he thought—and reminded himself of it regularly.

  He had an occupation that he had loved since he was thirteen, had money to live on—which was helpful, as most of his patients paid him in pennies or half loaves of bread or bartered labor in exchange for his services—and had recently embarked on a new and fascinating tangent to his medical career by helping Adam Quinn, a man he considered a friend, seek justice in the cases of murder.

  And that was all due to the fact that he was a free man who’d been smart enough to cling to his mama’s womb for a full nine and a half months.

  His mama had always told him being slow and steady—and even stubbornly so—had thus served him well. Somehow he’d known to wait for the day she got her freedom papers and then to decide to be born—to a free woman. Either that, or God had just kept him there until
it was safe.

  And then, when he was twelve, Dr. Theodore Raitz had come along.

  The Quaker man was a neighbor of the Methodist minister for whom George’s mama worked, up in Philadelphia after she got her freedom. At first, George had simply assisted the physician with keeping his office clean, the stoop swept, and the woodstove going. But then Dr. Raitz began to ask him to help with other tasks, including medical work. Meanwhile, the minister taught George how to read and do his numbers. And before he knew it, George was apprenticing—as Dr. Raitz called it—with him in his office. The unmarried, lonely doctor said he was “gifted”—though George didn’t understand what that meant until he was much older, and even now he was skeptical—and eagerly taught him what he could.

  The kind, practical Quaker had had no family. When he died from cancer at forty-six, he left his house and money to George—along with something even more precious: a letter of recommendation to his own mentor, Dr. Caldwell, at the Toronto School of Medicine.

  And that had sealed George’s fate—in the best way possible.

  Not that it had been easy, being the only black man studying medicine in Toronto. And not that he hadn’t had more than a few beatings in his life because of the color of his skin and his “up-pitiness” in wanting to be a doctor. But he was still alive, still healthy, and was doing what he believed God wanted him to do, right here in Washington City, seeing to his people in a number of ways.

  Because who else was there to do it?

  Today, he wasn’t expecting any patients in his partly-subterranean office beneath Great Eternity Church—but that didn’t mean none would show up. Therefore, he hung up the heavy blankets he used to separate what he thought of as his morgue with the rest of the office and examining area so that he could lay Pinebar Tufts out on the table.

  He knew his work was dangerous—considering that it was illegal for even free blacks to have any sort of occupation as educated professionals—and particularly since he was cutting open a dead white man to discover what secrets his body held. Yet he’d found it fascinating and rewarding to be trusted with such a task the two previous times Adam Quinn had asked it of him. And for the President of the United States.

  He rolled up his sleeves and slung on the butcher’s apron he’d acquired to use during surgeries, and now postmortems, then lit the ten kerosene lanterns he’d strung up over the table. They were expensive but necessary, and though George hated feeling as though he was profiting for doing an unpleasant yet important job, he had no choice but to allow Adam or the president to pay for these supplies.

  George pulled back the blanket that had been used to wrap the body and looked down once again at the unfortunate who’d been hanged in such a public place.

  Pinebar Tufts was a forty-three-year-old man of approximately five feet seven and a half inches, and one hundred fifty pounds. He had brown hair, pale skin, a trimmed beard and mustache, and an old scar near his right eye. The noose was still around his neck, and George took care when he cut it free so that he didn’t nick the flesh swelling around it. After that, he methodically removed Tufts’s gloves, boots, and stockings, all the while carefully examining every bit of skin that was revealed. Trousers were next, then the man’s coat, waistcoat, neckcloth, shirt. He’d let Adam dig through the pockets and examine the clothing when he arrived. All the while, George looked for signs of injury as well as watching for anything that might tumble or scatter from the clothing.

  He’d learned that even a smattering of hair or a slightly different shade of black fabric could be an important clue to the investigation, and so, as always, he took his time: with painstaking care. Next were the undergarments, which George rolled up carefully and placed on the rest of the clothing he’d folded and put aside.

  The body was rigid due to rigor mortis, and the muscles of Tufts’s arms and legs were still very firm.

  So that meant Tufts had been dead for approximately eight to eleven hours—which put his death after midnight and well before dawn.

  Now, with his ear half-cocked toward the door of his office in case anyone came in, he looked over the entire naked body of the pasty white man. As he’d told Adam, the cause of death seemed obvious—the thick red mark from the rope around his neck was gruesome—but there could be other bits of information that might tell them where he’d been before going to the Capitol, or any other injuries—

  Ah. Here we are.

  George paused, for he’d tipped the body up onto its side and discovered a soft, sticky mass at the back of the head. He probed and examined the split scalp and chunk of damaged hair that nearly covered it. The contusion was from a single blow that had been enough to stun or knock out the man, but not enough to kill him. The strike would have happened before the hanging, but how long before he couldn’t say for certain; the blood had congealed and there wasn’t all that much of it. The man might have been wearing a hat, which helped to soften the assault.

  George looked closely at the broken skin, bringing near the one lantern he kept handy for such close work. The contusion wasn’t a narrow slit, as if from an edge or corner—like a marble wall, for example—but was smashed as if whatever had struck the blow had a curved or rounded shape.

  He finished his thorough study of the exterior of the body but found no other recent injuries. George was just getting ready to make the incisions that would open the chest cavity when he noticed bruising on one side of the neck, just below where the noose had cut into the skin.

  What’s that?

  He set down the scalpel he’d been about to use and brought his lantern closer once more, fumbling for the magnifying glass he’d recently acquired. Well, that’s odd. He angled around to get a better look and reached for a small pair of forceps.

  Just then, the door to his office slammed open.

  “Doc! Doctor!”

  George nearly dropped the lantern. He spun around as he heard feet thudding toward the dividing blanket. He whipped a covering onto Pinebar Tufts as he called back, “I’m coming. Wait there please!”

  But it was too late—the dividing blanket was flung aside and a white man with blood streaming down his face stood there, gasping for breath, eyes wide, face flushed alarmingly. “Doctor! Can you come? There’s been a . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked at the table.

  Damn. George moved quickly to shift the sheet that hadn’t quite covered up Pinebar Tufts from the prying eyes. The stark white of the corpse’s naked skin seemed to shine like a beacon of guilt.

  Still staring at the table, the new arrival found his voice. “What—”

  “This way,” George said firmly, trying to batter back the flicker of fear. “What’s happened?” He began to blow out the lanterns, cursing silently over his clumsiness at not getting the sheet completely over Tufts. Next time, he’d have to lock the office door. He couldn’t take the chance.

  “It’s Frederick Smuts,” said the man, ignoring the dark smear of blood dripping from his face. “He was doing the brickwork over to the—”

  George took him by the arm and directed him back to the main area of his office. The blanket swung back into place behind them, but not before the newcomer’s eyes trailed toward the backroom once more. “Let me get you something for your face,” he said, trying to keep focused on the moment instead of what damage might have been done by this unexpected interruption. “What’s your name? And tell me what happened to Mr. Smuts.”

  “I’m—I’m Bartle. Fred—he fell. He fell down from up top the chimney we was building, and he landed on a pile of bricks. He wasn’t breathing too well when I left,” said the man, becoming frantic again. “He warn’t moving either. I come to you—they said you can put people back together, Doc.”

  “All right, let’s go,” George said, gathering up his satchel. He slammed a hat on at the last minute and swung a coat around his shoulders—not that anyone here in Ballard’s Alley cared whether he was in shirtsleeves or not, but it was habit. “What happened to you?”

  “
Fell down the brick wall myself. Just got my face, slid against it on the way. Hurry, Doc, hurry!”

  George took the precious time to lock the door of his office, but even as he did so, he knew it didn’t really matter.

  Now that someone—a white man—had seen that he had the corpse of another white man back in there, a lock wouldn’t make much of a difference.

  Clearing his mind of the nauseating worry, George started off after Bartle. He had a man to put back together.

  He hoped.

  * * *

  Adam found Alexander Provest, the marble finisher, with his crew working on setting the steps near the East Portico. The mason was an energetic man with a small, wiry figure that seemed at odds with an occupation dealing with massive blocks of stone. His clothes were covered with a fine glittery dust that clung to and scattered from every wrinkle or crease when he moved. Even his thick brown mustache and beard were sprinkled with the grit.

  Three men were working with a block of stunning white marble that shone in the midmorning sun, carefully easing it into position as Provest supervised with a running commentary. “Ease her in, now—careful there! Yes, in like a dream . . . ahh, yes, there she goes . . . right into her spot . . . slick as a whore and twice as pretty . . . and . . . there she is. Snug and tight as a virgin.”

  Relieved that Brian wasn’t around to hear and ask questions about such talk, Adam caught Provest’s attention when he dragged off his cap to swipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Adam Quinn,” he said, offering his hand to shake the other’s gloved one. “I need a moment of your time.”

  “You’re the one Fowler told me about,” Provest grumbled, then turned to his crew. “Miller, finish cutting that piece there. Reston, you and Pultney polish up the next piece for the steps there. And find Garrick. Tell him to get his arse back to work—how long does it take a man to piss? There’s a tree over there, for pity’s sake.”

  “I only have a few questions,” Adam said, looking around at the blocks of marble in various stages of cutting, polishing, and lining up to be set. The grounds of the Capitol looked like a disaster had struck.