Murder in the Lincoln White House

by C. M. Gleason

  Adam, whose tongue was slightly loosened by the whisky, and whose niggling mind had been picking at him to get back to work, settled in his chair and said, “A man was murdered at the Union Ball last night.”

  All five of them stared at him, suddenly flat and sober: Stimpson, Newberry, Richardson, Kennicott, and, of course, Henry Altman.

  “What did you say?” asked Kennicott, swiping a hank of long, dark hair away from his eye. “Murdered? At the ball?”

  “I didn’t hear anything about it,” Stimpson said, sitting up straight.

  “That’s because you had your nose in a microscope all night,” Richardson jested. “As usual.”

  “My nose doesn’t go in a microscope,” Stimpson retorted. “It goes beneath it—beneath the viewing hole. It fits right in there.” He demonstrated.

  “A microscope.” Adam straightened up as a thought struck him.

  He still had that envelope in his pocket with the hairs that had been stuck to Billings’s glove . . . and Henry Altman was here, wearing the same damned mustache and beard she’d been wearing that night. If he could determine whether those hairs were hers, or whether they possibly belonged to the murderer, that might go a long way in helping him solve the crime.

  He stood. “How about another challenge this evening, gentlemen?”

  Of course, they were all for it, sloshed and exuberant as they were.

  “The freshman has a challenge for us!” cried Richardson, staggering on his feet. “I wager I’ll win.”

  “I challenge everyone here to snip this much”—Adam demonstrated a measurement with his fingers—“of his beard. I will collect them all, then offer a sixth sample of hair. This is what you must match. I won’t say whose it is or where it came from, but you must determine whether it belongs to someone here.” He purposely did not glance at Henry Altman. “I suggest the microscopes, gentlemen.”

  There was a scramble as they all moved about to snip their beards. He placed the samples on slides—including the one he covertly extracted from the envelope in his pocket while pretending to take it from the samples collected. When Henry Altman tried to slip toward the door, Adam called her on it.

  “Altman, you’re in this too,” he said with a firm, steely smile. He blocked the door and met her eyes. “I believe Stimpson has the scissors.”

  “Fine,” she muttered, then turned back to the group.

  Adam watched to make certain she participated properly and snipped a piece of her false beard. Then he sat back and enjoyed the show as the five of them pushed and shoved at the microscopes, drank and ate, discussed, debated, and argued, and at last came up with the conclusion.

  “Your sample don’t match anyone here,” Stimpson said. There was a red ring around one of his eyes from the eyepiece of the microscope. “We all agree. It ain’t the same.”

  “You would be correct, then,” Adam told him with a grin. “A toast all around—this time it’s on me.”

  They all laughed uproariously, since, of course, Adam hadn’t brought any libation with him to the club. However, he would certainly send a bottle of good Irish whisky over as a thank-you.

  He was gratified that his plan had worked. Five different sets of eyes, and minds, had all agreed that the tiny hairs attached to Billings’s gloves weren’t Altman’s. Which meant they must belong to the murderer, for they were the wrong color to be Billings’s hair. He pocketed the slide with the original sample and smiled, then sobered.

  “Was there really a murder at the ball Monday night? Who was it?” Kennicott said suddenly. His joviality had disappeared, and his eyes no longer held the glassiness of whisky mirth.

  “Yes, there was. I saw the body myself.”

  Apparently, Henry Altman had found her voice—and a topic on which she could speak.

  The others swiveled to look at her, and Adam noticed her cheeks pinkening slightly under this sudden weight of attention.

  “His name was Custer Billings—of the bank. He was stabbed.”

  “Right there? At the Union Ball? I knew we should have gone,” Stimpson moaned. Then he sobered. “Poor sot. There was no chance to save him?”

  “He was dead. Very dead.” Henry Altman’s voice held nothing but sorrow.

  “Do they know who did it?” asked Kennicott. “I didn’t see anything in the paper.”

  “There was only one story,” said the journalist. “In the District Herald.”

  “Never heard of it.” Stimpson picked at an empty oyster shell. “Why’d someone want to kill a man—and at the ball?”

  “Probably a sesh—seshess—sheshess—” Richardson couldn’t get the word out, so he rerouted. “Southern sympathizer. Wanted to make a scene at the ball. Make Lincoln look bad.”

  “Maybe.” Adam spoke up thoughtfully. “But killing someone in such a public place—where you could be found so easily . . . I don’t know. Why does a man—or woman—murder?”

  “For love, of course,” said Kennicott, and the others chimed in with their own thoughts, and the words became a jumble.

  “Or revenge.”

  “Definitely money. It’s always money. ”

  “Or power.”

  “Power and money and greed—they all go together.”

  “Hate. People would even kill the president if they could.”

  “Hell, they tried to in Baltimore, Kenny. Coulda.”

  “Anger.”

  “Anger and hate—well, they’re the same thing, Stim,” Newberry interjected.

  “Protection or self-defense.”

  Silence fell, and Adam found he couldn’t discount any of their suggestions. Feeling suddenly morbid and heavy, and a little bit drunk, he mused, “It’s always about love, though, at the core. Love of oneself. I reckon every one of those ties back to love—of self. Money, power, and greed—that’s all for love of self. Hatred and anger—ridding yourself of someone who makes you unhappy, which is a reflection of the love of self. Revenge—winning over or besting someone who hurt you. Love of self once again. Self-defense speaks for itself, and I reckon love for a woman—or man—is also obvious. It’s all related to self. Selfishness, self-centeredness.”

  His words hung there for a moment, and when he looked up from studying the table, Adam found Henry Altman looking at him. Above the brown beard and mustache, her gray eyes were sober.

  He wondered how any of the men in the room—so used to looking at every minute detail of an organism—couldn’t recognize that it was a woman sitting there, hiding behind patently false facial hair and beneath a wig that looked like horsehair. People see what they expect to see.

  A clock struck eleven somewhere in the building, shocking Adam that he’d spent almost three hours with these men.

  “There’s the warning bell,” said Richardson, groaning a little as he pulled to his feet. “Time to crawl up the steps to the tower and slumber till dawn, when Baird cracks his whip to get us up.”

  The others laughed and stood, replacing chairs and picking up the whisky bottles, peanut shells, and dishes.

  Adam was in the thick of it, sweeping up a pile of crumbs, when he realized Henry Altman had slipped away.

  He bolted out of the laboratory and shot down the hall, only to find it silent and empty. Going back the route on which they’d come, he made his way outside to where a piece of moon and a swath of stars glowed, only to find no sight of her. No moving shadows, no sounds of humanity, no indication of which way she’d gone.

  Irked at being dislodged so easily—but more than that, concerned that she would be making her way home alone, at night—Adam stood there for a minute, listening and waiting.

  But she’d done it—disappeared again.

  He went back inside to bid good night to his new acquaintances. They’d somehow forgotten about cleaning up and were sitting around on chairs and tables singing “Buffalo Gals” in loud voices.

  He joined them, and by the end, they were all ready for another round of whisky.

  “Not that bottle,” St
impson said when Adam reached for one on the counter. “That’s the bad stuff—we use it for preserving specimens.”

  “It’s got copper sulfate in it,” Kennicott told him in the earnest manner of a man trying not to look drunk.

  “Always got to check around here,” warned Newberry. “Lots of whisky, but most of it ain’t gonna go down too well. Stim keeps a stash in his room—when he can afford it. We all help him drink it.”

  They all laughed and Adam found the right bottle, then poured. “You all live here, then?” he asked, trying to imagine how that would be, bunking in this huge, stone castle.

  “In the cold North Towers,” Stimpson replied. “We get our bed and board and little more, working for Baird.”

  “But wouldn’t have it any other way,” Newberry said. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes glinted happily.

  “Like brothers—to the Megatherium Club!” Richardson lifted his glass for a toast, and they all clinked.

  “One more question,” Adam asked. “Why Megatherium?”

  “It’s a sloth,” Newberry said wetly. “An extinct sloth.”

  “To the sloth!” cried Stimpson, and they smashed their glasses together so violently two of them broke.

  “To the extinct sloth—and our extinct glasses!” Kennicott shouted as they all sagged into helpless laughter, sending shattered glass all over the floor.

  * * *

  Adam woke with a minor headache, but also with a pained grin when he remembered why. The members of the Megatherium Club were certainly unique.

  The smile faded, though, when he recalled how Henry Altman had given him the slip once again. The only clue he’d really obtained about her identity was the newspaper called the District Herald—which apparently published at least one of her stories. Perhaps he could track down the elusive reporter that way.

  Not that he would allow it to take his attention from the murder investigation, but he reckoned he had several questions to ask her.

  Joshua had already left the hotel room, and when Adam realized it was nearly eight o’clock, he fairly bolted from the bed.

  Ten minutes later, he was downstairs in the lobby enjoying a cup of coffee and a honey-drenched biscuit, waiting for the hotel barber to have an empty seat. Fifteen minutes after that, newly shaven, belly full, he walked out the front door.

  Birch was there, of course, standing tall and straight in his pristine uniform.

  “Morning, Mr. Quinn,” he said. “Looks like you’ve missed half the day already.” He smiled and the corners of his eyes crinkled.

  “Sure feels like it.”

  “Did that Mr. Fremark find you?” asked the doorman.

  Adam halted. “Lyman Fremark was looking for me?” Something prickled down his spine.

  “Sure was. Come here yesterday, mebbe half past six. I was just getting my things together to leave, and he was talking to George, asking about you. Said he needed to talk to you—real important. I told him I hadn’t seen you for a while, and he asked if I knew where you might be. I tole him I didn’t know, but you was working with Mr. Lincoln and mebbe you were up there.” He thumbed toward the Executive Mansion.

  Adam nodded. “Thank you. He didn’t leave any word about where to find him or what he wanted to see me about?”

  “No, sir. He just looked like he needed to talk to someone real bad. Kinda nervous.”

  Maybe he’d remembered something else important about the men he’d seen in their “secret meeting.” Adam looked across the avenue toward the President’s House.

  “He was walking that way when he left,” Birch said helpfully.

  “Thank you.”

  Adam warred with indecision for a minute, then started down the block to the big white house. If Fremark had gone there trying to find him, maybe he’d left word or other information with Nicolay or Hay.

  As he strode up the walk past the elliptical-shaped horse corral, Adam saw the long line of office seekers snaking out the front door. It was perhaps even longer than the one from yesterday. Adam stifled a groan at the thought of Mr. Lincoln having to meet with each one of them, along with doing the rest of his thankless job. He wondered if either of the president’s secretaries were able to help cull that line down at all.

  But, no. He reckoned not. It wasn’t Mr. Lincoln’s way.

  McManus was at his station at the front door, and he remembered Adam immediately. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, Mr. Quinn. Though it’s getting well past mornin’-tide by now.”

  Adam shook his head. Couldn’t a man have a bit of a tie-on, then sleep a little late in the morning without it being pointed out to him every minute what a sloth he was? Then he realized what he’d thought—sloth—and had a good grin over that.

  “Good morning, Mr. McManus. I reckon it’s a good thing I’ve been up and about my business since dawn, then,” he said with no qualm about the lie. He paused before walking into the foyer, where the sounds of conversation from the crowd waiting to see the president echoed and bounced and filled the chamber like a dull roar. Along with the noise was an aromatic stew of everything from cigar smoke to stale body odor to fresh hair pomade. “I don’t reckon you met up with a man named Lyman Fremark, who was looking for me?”

  “Aye, lad, I sure did. He was here last evening, just as the sun was setting. He was about asking if you were here, and when I said I hadn’t seen you since the morning, he said how it was real important he talk to you or Mr. Lincoln.”

  “Did he leave word where he was going, or where I could meet up with him?”

  “No, sir, he didn’t, because I sent him up to the second floor to see Mr. Lincoln himself. It was a real worry I was a-seeing, there in his eyes, and so I thought to myself he should get to see the president if he needed to. Anyone’s got that much somberness ought to be a-laying it down as quick as he could. So I told him about how there was a back hallway—different than the one I showed you, even—hardly never used by anyone, and how he could miss the line if he went there, and maybe get to the president that way.”

  Adam had a moment of terror, thinking about the possibility of Mr. Fremark being an assassin himself, and slipping up to the private quarters of the president and his family without anyone seeing him.

  But McManus must have read his mind, for he said, “Don’t you be furrowing your brow there, lad. That back way ain’t well traveled, but it’s only dropping you at the west end of the hall from where Mr. Lincoln’s office is, and where the family apartments are. And you’re still about having to walk past all the other rooms and even the main staircase to get to him. And there’s even a guard there now, at the top of the stairs, just in case. Mr. Pinkerton insisted.”

  Praise God for small favors, Adam thought. “When he came back down, did you see Fremark? Did he talk to Mr. Lincoln?” He didn’t want to bother the president if he hadn’t met the man.

  “Come to think of it, did I see him coming back down? His friend come looking for him not very long after—maybe they left together in the crowd of people that was sent out when Mr. Lincoln closed up for the day. Whole loud pack of ’em, crowding through the door here. Either way, Mr. Quinn, he didn’t stop here to talk to me again.”

  “His friend?” Adam straightened. “A friend of Mr. Fremark’s came looking for him?”

  “Aye. He surely did. Sick as a dog, he was, coughing into his handkerchief and leaning on his walking stick the whole time. I’ll be honest, Mr. Quinn, I didn’t want to get too close to him. Sounded like he was dying. But he said he hadda be finding Mr. Fremark straightaway, and so I sent him up the way I told him and put as much distance between us as I could, as fast as I could. I ain’t lived to be eighty-five by taking any chances, lad.”

  Adam tamped down a sense of growing alarm. “I’ll just go on up and find out if Mr. Lincoln spoke to Fremark,” he said. “Where exactly is this back way?”

  McManus told him, and Adam went off down what could only be described as a bedraggled hallway, past the Blue Room and the Green Room, arou
nd the corner and along the side of the house. In one of the largest rooms, Mrs. Lincoln was fussing around, taking measurements and giving orders to a group of servants.

  Taking the narrow steps two at a time, Adam bolted up, around a bend, then up a second flight to the next floor. The door at the top stuck a little, and when he opened it, he found himself in a short, empty corridor with a small door on each side and a larger one directly in front. Cobwebs, peeling paint, and water stains decorated the small alcove, and the single small window was coated with dust. McManus was correct—it seemed no one ever came this way.

  He paused for a moment to consider again what a travesty it was that the President’s House should be in such disrepair, then continued toward the door in front of him. He judged it would open into the main hallway that led across the entire floor where he’d been yesterday morning. But just as he was about to turn the knob, he noticed a dark stain on the floor.

  It was leaking out from beneath one of the other smaller doors. Already knowing what he would find, he said a quick prayer and pulled the door open.

  Lyman Fremark’s body tumbled out, sprawling over the floor in a pool of blood.

  CHAPTER 10

  “A MURDER IN MY GREAT WHITE HOUSE,” SAID LINCOLN, LOOKING soberly at Adam. “If it was to happen, I’d have thought it would have been me—”

  “No,” Adam said fiercely as his uncle surged to his feet, equally as furious, and the others erupted as well. “Don’t say that, Mr. President. Don’t even say that.”

  “Abe.” Joshua’s voice was sharp and hard, and lined with horror. Because they all knew—every one of them in the room: Adam and Joshua, Nicolay and Hay, Pinkerton, his young agent Hobey Pierce, and Lincoln—that it was far too close to home. Far too possible that it might yet happen.

  How easily it had already happened. And how easily it could again—this time, with even more dire consequences.

  “You think it was this friend of Fremark’s. The one who was ill,” said Lincoln, who looked slightly chastened by the fury and concern directed at him.