Murder in the Lincoln White House

by C. M. Gleason

  “What do you think . . . you’re doing . . . ?” Adam puffed, spinning the reporter around as he shoved him up against the wall. “This is a murder . . . investiga—Mother of God,” he gasped.

  The mustache was hanging lopsidedly from the man’s face, whatever had adhered it to his upper lip no longer in play, and the same was true for one of his sideburns.

  But it wasn’t that that had Adam dropping his hand and stepping back in shock. It was the soft curves he’d felt when he grabbed him—no, her—by the front of his shirt.

  Henry Altman was a woman.

  CHAPTER 3

  “RELEASE ME AT ONCE,” DEMANDED THE SO-CALLED HENRY ALTMAN, no longer attempting to disguise her gender with a false voice. She was still panting, but her demeanor was one of outrage instead of distress.

  Adam had already stepped back, horrified by the way he’d manhandled the woman—grabbing her by the shirt and practically flinging her against the wall. Nevertheless, he stood such that she couldn’t dart past without giving him the chance to stop her with his good arm. “Why were you hiding in the closet?”

  “I-I heard people coming and I didn’t want to—” She grimaced and gave a little shake of her head like she was exasperated. “There was a dead body lying there and it’s news. I wanted . . .”

  “So you wanted the story? But you can’t really be a reporter,” Adam said. Women didn’t write for newspapers—at least other than about female topics like fashion and housekeeping. “And why are you dressed like a man?”

  “I most certainly am a journalist. And the answer to why I’m dressed as I am should be obvious: because, according to you—and every other man—I can’t really be a reporter. And yes, of course I wanted the story.” Altman underscored her rapid-fire words by ripping off the drooping mustache and sideburns. “I was the first—well, the second—person on the scene of a crime, and it was my chance to get a real scoop.”

  The gaslight street lamp gave off enough light for Adam to see determination blazing in her expression. “You were the second person to find him? How do you know that?” He’d seen her in the dance hall just before Mr. Fremark arrived with his awful news, so Adam knew Altman hadn’t had enough time to sneak out and stab Custer Billings herself—even if she’d had the strength and proximity to do so.

  “Because I passed the man in the hall—the man who found him. He nearly bowled me over, running back toward the ball, exclaiming that he’d found a dead man.”

  “And so you reckoned you’d hide in the closet?”

  She sighed. “I told you, I didn’t want to be noticed.”

  Adam didn’t point out that she hadn’t actually told him that. Instead, he stepped back a little. “You didn’t want to be recognized, you mean. A murder would attract a lot of people, and someone might notice you weren’t who you appeared to be.” When she opened her mouth—to argue, he suspected—he continued quickly, “Did you see anyone else? Why did you take the coat and knife into the closet with you—so you could get the scoop, as you say? Keeping the evidence for your own story?”

  “I told you, I didn’t know the coat and knife were in there with me. And you don’t even know whether the coat belongs to the dead man!” Now she was mad as a doused hen. “I’m not a liar.”

  “Except you lied about being a man,” he reminded her. “And I reckon you could be lying about being a reporter too. Who do you report for anyway?”

  “Never you mind.” She shoved past him, stumbling a little over the uneven, muddy ground.

  He didn’t try to stop her, though he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her go off alone in the night. But his conscience warred with the fact that he had to get back to the pressing problem of Custer Billings—namely removing him before the news of a dead body got around.

  And then somehow he had to find out who’d killed him—in a town Adam didn’t know, filled with people he wasn’t certain he wanted to know.

  “If you would wait only a minute, I’ll get someone to see you home, Miss . . . ?”

  “Never you mind about that,” she said again. “I’m perfectly fine walking home. I haven’t far to go.” She jammed the mustache back on. Though she took a little more time replacing the sideburns, even in the dim light he could see that none of the hairpieces were convincing in their placement or stability.

  “Or you could come back inside with me and maybe you could get more information for your story. And then someone could see you home.”

  She looked at him with bald distrust. “I don’t think so. I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing—it’s obvious you aren’t a Pinkerton—but I’m not going anywhere with you. I’ll take my chances walking across the mall.”

  “Washington City is filled with soused-up men either very happy or terribly angry over the new president—and neither group is well behaved. I can’t in good conscience allow a woman to wander the streets at night alone, Miss . . . uh . . . Altman.”

  “Well, Mr. . . . whoever you are—”

  “Adam Quinn—”

  “Thank you for your concern on my behalf, but I assure you, I’ll be fine. I haven’t far to go. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  Despite his responsibility to the president, Adam turned to follow her—he simply couldn’t allow a woman to go off alone, especially at midnight—but he’d taken only a few steps when a noise from behind drew his attention.

  “Mr. Quinn? Are you out here?” Hobey Pierce, the resourceful Pinkerton with strawberry-blond hair, came into view.

  “Yes, I’m here. I’ll be right—damn.”

  The minute he was distracted, the woman who called herself Henry Altman had taken off at a run. She was quick, and Adam’s prosthetic hand didn’t work well enough to grab her in that flash of a moment, and so it was with great misgivings he let her go. He was needed inside, and she was clearly the stubborn sort, as his mother used to say. Often about him.

  “You,” he said, “Agent Pierce?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Follow that wo—that man. The reporter. He ran toward the square—did you see him? Make sure he gets where he’s going without incident.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I want to know where he goes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  His conscience thus relieved—hopefully soon to be followed by his curiosity—Adam hurried back to the anteroom of the dance hall, apprehensive about what he might find.

  However, the only people in the room were Dr. Hilton and Mrs. Keckley, as well as poor Custer Billings.

  “He’s standing guard at the door,” Mrs. Keckley said. “The other Pinkerton man. He won’t let no one in, but he says he can’t keep them off for long without them knowing there’s a problem.”

  Adam hesitated. He wanted more time—more time to look at everything, to think about what had happened, to imagine it—to figure out how the hell he was going to complete a task for which he was hardly qualified.

  He picked up the dress coat that had been found in the closet with the knife. Why had the murderer taken the time to drag the coat off Billings and throw it in the closet? To hide the knife? There was no blood on the front of it, but that wasn’t surprising, as the two wounds on the dead man’s torso hadn’t bled much, and the coat was in the fashionable style: worn unbuttoned and “cut away” to fully expose the waistcoat and shirt worn beneath it. Its shallow pockets were empty, and the blue and white Union cockade was crumpled and saggy. There was some blood on the sleeve, probably from when he hugged his abdomen after being stabbed.

  “Sir, if I may . . . ?” The low voice of Dr. Hilton drew his attention.

  “Yes?”

  “You offered to allow me to look more closely at the body. With your permission, I’ll have it taken to my office, and I can do my examination there. And then you can allow the people to come through here.”

  “Yes, of course. But how will you get it there?”

  “My wagon is outside. I use it for transporting pati
ents.”

  Adam didn’t hesitate. He didn’t know any other physicians in town to ask or trust for such a task, and instinct told him the body should be looked at carefully—and as soon as possible—before it was prepared for burial. Just as finding a mauled rabbit in the woods could tell the tale of what predator had had its way—and when and how—so, perhaps, could a close examination of a human body. “Yes, I think that would be best, and quickly. Shall I help you?”

  The two men carefully wrapped Custer Billings back in the tablecloth. Elizabeth Keckley opened the exterior door, holding it as they easily carried the body out into the night.

  “Thank you,” Adam said, offering his good, right hand to Hilton. The man hesitated a fraction before taking it in a firm handshake, but looked him in the eye as he did so. “I’ll visit tomorrow to see if you’ve found anything in the examination.”

  Once again, Hilton seemed surprised, but just as quickly masked it. “I’m in the First Ward. Ballard’s Alley. Go around Great Eternity Church to the door in the back.” He hesitated, then added, “It’s all right if I—well, I’ll have to cut him to do a thorough examination.”

  “Do whatever you need to do,” Adam replied, quelling a pang of apprehension. The president of the United States had put him in charge of the investigation. A man had been murdered only yards away from him. Adam wouldn’t dance around sensitivities. He had a job to do.

  “I’ll be careful as I can,” Hilton said. “Come early tomorrow. I’ll be up all night. Body’s not going to get any fresher.” There might have been a slight twitch of humor behind the neat mustache, or it might have been a grimace.

  “I’ll be there soon as I can,” Adam said, glancing toward the east, which was still dark with night. “Might be dawn.”

  Hilton and Mrs. Keckley drove off in the wagon and left Adam to go back inside, where, as promised, the less helpful Pinkerton agent was just about to open the door to the room.

  A few stragglers from the ball wandered through, but no one seemed to be aware that the room had been closed off. Instead, they were far too engaged in excited conversation about the ball to do more than chatter as they passed through, obviously en route to City Hall, where there were lounges in which to freshen up.

  Adam was staring at the floor where Billings’s body had been, reimagining it and its position, when he noticed a faint dark smudge.

  He knelt, swiped a finger over the small black stain. No. It wasn’t dirt, mud, or horse dung—all of which were plentiful in the square behind City Hall. At first he thought it was shoe black, but when he rubbed it between his fingers, he discovered it was greasy. He sniffed it. Oil.

  He looked around and noticed two more traces of oil, closer to the exterior door. And there was a third one, slightly darker than the others, right next to the wall by the door.

  Someone had walked into the anteroom with a trace of oil on his or her shoe. It had happened recently, for there weren’t any shoe prints on top of any of the smudges except near the doorway.

  He stood and looked around the room, noticing the faint trail of dusty footprints, the clumps of muddy ones near the door, and the hardly noticeable oily smudges. The swath of dusty footprints—made by the majority of traffic—were a distinct path from exterior entrance across the room at the shortest distance to the door to the dance hall corridor. Easy to tell where most people had gone.

  There were traces of mud near the outside door and a few crumbles near where Billings had been found. The body had not been in the direct pathway across the room, however. It had been slightly off to one side, where there were few footprints and the regular traffic didn’t pass. Where the closet was. There were some muddy traces mingling with the dusty prints, but there were also some small crumbles near the site of the body.

  But it was the oily smudges that really snagged his attention. They were recent, and unmarred by overstepping prints except the one nearest the door, and the three stains made a direct path from the outside to where the body had been. Off the beaten path.

  Whether the oil had anything to do with the stabbing of Custer Billings, he didn’t know. But it was curious. How and why would someone have oil on the bottom of his or her shoe?

  Adam frowned, closing his eyes to picture the scene and the activity around it. Just as Ishkode had taught him to do when reading natural signs in the woods, he watched the tracks being made, seeing the activity in his mind, being there.

  He was deep in his imagination when the door slammed. Adam’s eyes flew open.

  “Agent Pierce. What happened?”

  The young man was slightly out of breath. “Mr. Quinn . . . I’m sorry, but he gave me the slip. The reporter. He was walking past the Smithsonian building, and then suddenly he was gone.”

  Adam stifled a sigh. So his conscience had been eased, but his curiosity had not. “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything else I can do?” asked Pierce. “Since I’m not working on any case right now, Mr. Pinkerton told me I was to help you with anything you wanted.”

  “I don’t know.” Adam resisted the urge to rub his forehead. He needed to think. He needed to get away from people and think. “Maybe, to start, you can ask around discreetly to see when was the last time anyone saw Custer Billings. And if anyone saw him leave the dance hall with anyone else.”

  Pierce nodded eagerly, but they both knew it was an insurmountable task to try to speak to hundreds of people—some of whom might already have left the ball.

  “And where can I reach you tomorrow if I think of anything else?” Adam asked.

  Pierce gave him his address, which seemed to be at one of the boardinghouses in town.

  The door from the dance hall opened and Adam’s uncle walked in. “The president has gone home,” he said without prelude, speaking to the room at large. “We thought it best, under the circumstances, that he cut his time here short.”

  “I’m surprised he agreed to that,” Adam commented, knowing how difficult it had been to get Lincoln to agree to change his travel plans through Baltimore, despite all of the evidence of a plan to assassinate him.

  Joshua pursed his lips. “Pinkerton and Scott didn’t give him much choice, but I think he acquiesced mainly because he’s exhausted—and he has an enormous amount of work to do. Mrs. Lincoln remains, however. I expect she’ll dance till dawn. She’s been waiting for this night for years.” He gave a small smile that in no way indicated a sour feeling, even if there was one. He, along with Adam, was well acquainted with Mary Lincoln’s longtime political aspirations for her husband. “Abe wants to meet with you first thing in the morning, Adam.”

  “Yes. All right.” Adam swiftly corralled his scattered thoughts.

  He knew his honorary uncle well enough to know that first thing meant seven o’clock, and that he would expect a well-organized, thorough report.

  He just wished he knew on what he was going to make his report.

  Oil on the bottom of someone’s shoes wasn’t quite enough to satisfy.

  * * *

  As the inaugural ball raged on only a short distance away, Adam reviewed what he knew about the murder from the crime scene, then set about to gather more information regarding the victim. That seemed the best place to start: What sort of man was Custer Billings, and who would want to kill him?

  Fortunately, Mr. Pinkerton—who, along with General Scott and a tight contingent of soldiers, had left to escort the president back home—had already determined Billings’s address and identified one of his companions at the ball. Agent Pierce hadn’t returned with the results of his interviews, but Joshua Speed had some information.

  “So Mrs. Billings isn’t here tonight?” Adam asked. From what he’d gleaned, no woman in Washington City would voluntarily miss the celebration—especially if her husband was invited.

  “She is not,” Joshua told him. “But the news of her husband’s death will have to be delivered to her.” He looked at Adam meaningfully.

  Unfortunately, Adam had had more exper
ience with that sort of task than he liked, having brought similar news to many family members of those who’d lost their lives fighting in the Bloody Kansas wars.

  It was bad enough, the battles that had raged in a single state between the pro-slavery men and the Free-Staters like himself and the soon-to-be Senator Jim Lane.... What would happen if—no, unfortunately, when—the entire nation went to war?

  The battles on the frontier over whether to allow slavery to extend into Kansas had been brutal and ugly, violent and vitriolic. How much worse would it be when states that already allowed slavery felt their way of life threatened? Since December, seven had announced secession from the Union, and created the capital of the Confederate States of America.

  The battle lines were already drawn. War would come. No one doubted, though all dreaded it, for Lincoln would do whatever must be done to preserve the Union. And when the battles began, the entire nation would surely be as brutalized as Adam’s adopted home state. Kansas was only a taste of what would happen to the whole country.

  “I’ll pay Mrs. Billings a visit tomorrow morning, then. After I meet with the president,” he told his uncle. “No need to awaken her with bad news over something that cannot be changed. Perhaps she’ll get one last good night’s sleep.”

  Josh gripped his arm with fatherly affection, unerringly choosing the limb that was actually sensate. “I take that to mean you aren’t yet sleeping yourself.”

  “In a city like this, filled with noise at all hours of the night?” Adam joked. “Not at all. Which is why I don’t expect to seek my bed until near dawn this morning.”

  Perhaps by then he’d be so exhausted he would be able to sleep. Maybe it was a good thing his honorary uncle had given him this task. It would keep his mind and body busy.

  “Good luck, Adam. I know you can handle this. Abe trusts you implicitly, which is more than can be said for ninety-five percent of the people in this town.” His expression turned grim. “By God, if he lives out the year, it’ll be a miracle.”