by Linda Wolfe
This time Lucretia’s face turned ashen. There was no mistaking her distress. In all his years of interviewing witnesses and suspects, McIlvaine had never seen a face drain so completely and suddenly of color. Yet although clearly the woman had been affected by his statements, she didn’t seem surprised by them. He’d hoped she would be, hoped she’d ask what reasons he had for making such a dire allegation about her boarder. But she said nothing, just put her face down on her arm.
He could no longer see her expression, but he pushed on. “Did anything occur,” he said to her bowed head, “to make you suspect the same thing that I suspected?”
Lucretia took a long time before answering, so long that McIlvaine began to worry that she might have gone into shock. But after an interval she straightened up, her eyes focused firmly on his, and seemed to have mastered the feeling—what feeling it was, McIlvaine couldn’t be sure—that had previously overcome her. “No,” she said, her voice controlled, “No, I saw nothing of the kind. Lino was Mr. Chapman’s kind nurse during his illness.”
Afterward she went into detail about that illness. She went into detail, too, about why Lino had come to be in the house in the first place, and described at length his asking for charity, his revealing he was wealthy, and her and her husband’s decision to let him live with them. McIlvaine heard her out with a certain amount of cynicism, thinking she was taking great pains to try to convince him that any attentions she’d paid to the man had been paid with her husband’s full approbation. He made a mental note of this reaction of his, then once again urged her to give him any information she could about Lino’s whereabouts. “He is a swindler,” he pronounced, “and it is your duty to give me that information.”
Lucretia denied having any information other than what she’d already provided. “I have no knowledge further than that he went to the north,” she repeated dully.
Bidding her goodbye, McIlvaine swore, “If it is possible by any effort of the police, this man shall be taken and punished for his crimes,” and once out of the house he directed Blayney to alert the police in Boston and New York to keep an eye out for Mina and arrest him at once if he turned up. But he was dissatisfied with how his talk with Lucretia had gone. It had left, he would say later, “a mystery upon my mind.”
Up at the Cape, Lino had set his sights higher than on recouping false losses. He had made the acquaintance of an unmarried Winslow woman, a niece of Lucretia’s whose looks were modest but whose means were sizable, and decided to try to persuade her to marry him. If she consented, he would be able to obtain her property, just as he’d obtained Lucretia’s.
He was staying at Cobb’s, but he busied himself with Lucretia’s niece, not the old sea captain. He took the young woman for walks down romantic country paths and along the water’s pearlescent froth. He sang to her. He told her she was the prettiest woman he’d ever met. And one late summer’s evening, when the air was tinged with a hint of autumn and the fading light foreshadowed the loneliness of winter, he asked her to marry him.
Lucretia’s niece was flattered, and admitted she was drawn to him. But she anticipated, she cautioned him, that her family would oppose her marrying him, given that he was not just a stranger but a foreigner.
Lino told her not to worry about the family. He and she could simply elope and have a secret wedding in Boston.
His ardor was captivating. Lucretia’s niece agreed to elope with him and accepted his suggestion that in order to escape detection, they travel separately to Boston, he setting out in a day or two, she coming down a few days later.
He had not communicated with Lucretia since he’d left Pennsylvania. But after her niece said she’d marry him, he decided, perhaps partly out of some unaccustomed twinge of guilt, to write to her again. He addressed her coolly, calling her “Dear Madam,” and said nothing of his forthcoming marriage. But he told her he had opened an account with a Philadelphia banker named Juan Bitonia and suggested that if she needed any money, she ask Bitonia to give her some from his account. Additionally, he enclosed a bank draft for one thousand dollars and asked her to redeem it at Bitonia’s and send him the cash in care of Elijah Cobb’s mercantile establishment in Boston. He would be leaving for Boston, he informed her, in two days.
The letter was intercepted by Blayney and McIlvaine.
Lino arrived in Boston sometime during the first week of September. Avoiding the Sun Tavern, from which he had so ignominiously fled two years earlier, he took a room at a fashionable hotel and at once began trying to make friends with the wealthy businessmen who frequented the hotel’s public rooms. He was successful. In short order he met one such man, a prominent Boston merchant, and charmed him so thoroughly that when the merchant learned Lino was single, he invited him to a masquerade ball he was hosting on the weekend. His fete would be attended, he told Lino, by “nearly a hundred ladies of the first families.”
Lucretia’s niece had not yet come down from the Cape, and immediately Lino began to weigh the possibility of making an even grander match than the one with her had promised to be. Perhaps, he schemed, he could woo and wed not another provincial Winslow but a daughter of one of those first Boston families. The ballroom etiquette of the day required a host to see to it that every lady danced. Surely his host would press Lino into service. More, since etiquette also decreed that guests ought to assume that those introduced to them by respectable hosts were of a social standing equal to their own, surely his dance partners would view him as a fit suitor.
Exhilarated by his new possibilities, on the day of the ball Lino went shopping. He’d already spent most of the money that had been lent to him at the Cape. But he’d forged himself a few letters of credit and convinced a Boston bank of their authenticity. He’d even gotten the bank to give him a letter promising a cash advance the very next day, an advance of nine thousand dollars. Armed with the letter, he began looking for a proper outfit, something that would set him off handsomely as he swayed to waltz music and performed the intricate figures of the cotillions. What would look best? A military costume, he decided. It would suit the son of General Mina, and besides, he’d always fancied himself a military officer.
In a store that specialized in uniforms, he found just what he wanted—a Spanish officer’s dress jacket; it had gold epaulets with fringes thick as mops. He bought the jacket on credit and then, spying a dashing hat bedecked with six velvety ostrich plumes, he bought that, too.
Back in his hotel room, he laid out his costume on the bed, bathed, and was about to get dressed when three Boston policemen burst into the room, pinioned his arms behind his back, and told him he was under arrest.
Lucretia didn’t know yet that Lino was in jail, but on the day after he was arrested, she appeared in McIlvaine’s office. She’d been to see a lawyer, John Campbell, a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature who’d handled a few matters for her and William in the past, and she’d told him that the police had been asking her about her erstwhile boarder. She’d also confessed to the lawyer that she was married to the man. With her consent, Campbell had passed this information on to McIlvaine, who’d demanded she come in for further questioning, and the politic lawyer had advised her to do so promptly. You have nothing to fear, he’d counseled, you’re as much Mina’s victim as any businessman he’s said to have swindled.
Campbell wasn’t with her on the day that, following his advice, she appeared at McIlvaine’s. But taking her cue from what her attorney had said, she told the magistrate, “I have been deceived and injured by Lino Espos y Mina.” Then she begged him to tell her how to protect herself and her character from any consequences she might face as a result of Lino’s deceptions.
McIlvaine heard her out coldly. He’d been thinking ever since learning of her imprudent marriage that she was a trollop and her marriage the product of gross infatuation. “I cannot promise that any step you take will relieve you from the consequences of your rash conduct,” he said to her stiffly. “But if you choose to be candid in your
communications to me, if you show your sincerity by giving me all the means in your power to bring Mina to justice, I will do all I can, consistent with my duty, to rescue you from those consequences.”
Lucretia nodded, and to show him she now no longer doubted what he’d told her about Lino’s being a swindler, she handed him the letter Lino had sent her from Cape Cod. She had tried, she explained, to find Bitonia, the banker Lino mentioned in the letter. Tried and failed. “There is no man named Bitonia,” she said bitterly.
McIlvaine had already seen the letter and its enclosed bank draft, seen it and afterward let it be delivered to the unsuspecting Lucretia. “Fictitious,” he declared, glancing cursorily at the bank draft. Then, “Did Mina palm upon you any other documents or papers?”
Lucretia had come prepared. She showed him a will Lino had written two weeks after coming to stay at her house, a will promising her fifteen thousand dollars for having looked after him when he was sick, the money to be delivered to her in Mexico City in the event of his death. She also showed him a certificate from Don Tomas Montolla, the minister of Mexico in Washington, certifying that she and Lino were lawfully married.
McIlvaine knew why she’d brought him the will. Clearly she’d wanted him to understand why she and William Chapman had paid such extraordinary attention to their boarder. But the certificate from the Mexican minister? “For what purpose was this paper obtained?” he asked.
“Señor Mina’s health is fragile,” Lucretia said. “After we were married I repeatedly told him that in case of accident or death to him, I would have no means of claiming my rights to his properties.”
McIlvaine studied the certificate and snorted, “It is in Lino’s handwriting. And that seal on it is a forgery.”
Lucretia had known all along that Lino had filled out the blanks on the certificate himself. He’d done so, he’d told her, because Montolla, being overly busy, had directed him to. But he’d also told her that the seal and the minister’s signature were authentic. Now she knew that everything was false, the writing in the blanks, the loopy letters of the minister’s signature, even the crested Mexican seal. And the promise of money from Bitonia’s bank. And the bequest of fifteen thousand dollars. “I want to obtain a divorce from Mina,” she said to McIlvaine.
“I can offer you no opinion on this,” the magistrate replied in his chilly tone, and gesturing at the dubious certificate, said, “You must give me that paper. It will enable me to detain Mina on a charge of forgery committed in Pennsylvania.”
Lucretia got up to go and deposited Montoya’s certificate on McIlvaine’s desk. Then she added the will, the letter, and the bank draft from Cape Cod. That done, she walked to the door of the magistrate’s office. But at the door she turned, came back to the desk, and laid a gloved hand down on the papers. “Will these communications get me into trouble?” she asked.
“You have come to me voluntarily,” McIlvaine said. “And I have pledged myself to you. I have nothing to add. It is for you to decide whether the papers should be left or not.” He did not tell Lucretia that throughout their conversation he had purposely abstained, out of legal scruples, from asking her a single question about the death of William Chapman. Had he done so, McIlvaine thought, it might have been the end of their voluntary conversation.
Lucretia, her gloved fingers still on the documents, hesitated. She’s agitated, McIlvaine surmised. But at last she left the papers on the desk and departed.
Two days later, as soon as McIlvaine received word from Boston that Mina was in custody, he sat down at his desk and wrote a letter to Lucretia, informing her of this fact. He also wrote to Thomas Ross, the deputy attorney general of Bucks County. He had a case to turn over to him, he wrote. A case of forgery. And possibly of murder.
On September 17, 1831, a week after Lucretia’s visit to McIlvaine, the Philadelphia National Gazette printed an article that read, “We understand that a most consummate villain, who passes by the name of Lino Amalio Espos y Mina, has been arrested at Boston.… Since the arrest of Mina, circumstances have been developed which leave no doubt that he is a villain of no ordinary character. Mr. Blayney has been put in possession of facts which show that he married a respectable lady in the vicinity of Philadelphia, ten days after the decease of her husband, having induced her to believe that he was the son of the celebrated General Mina, and a foreigner of high distinction. He dispossessed the lady of all her valuable jewelry, plate, and personal property which it appears he converted into cash in Baltimore. There are circumstances almost amounting to positive evidence, which warrant the belief that the husband of the lady was poisoned. A forged draft for $1000, drawn by Mina on a merchant in Philadelphia, has been intercepted through the mail.… A demand having been made for Mina by the Governor of Pennsylvania, he will of course be conveyed thither for trial.”
Lucretia heard about the article before she saw it. She was expecting the imminent arrival of her two new students when her friend Sophia Hitchbourn knocked on the door and, fairly bursting with news of the story, cried, “I hear Lino’s been arrested in Boston! On suspicion of poisoning William!”
“Is it possible?” Lucretia replied, sounding incredulous.
“I hear you married him!” Sophia exclaimed. “Ten days after William died. Did you have any idea he poisoned William?”
“Of course not,” Lucretia said. Then, “Was my name in the paper?”
It wasn’t, but Sophia, like most of Lucretia’s neighbors, had met Lino, knew he styled himself the son of General Mina, and had easily figured out who the “respectable lady in the vicinity of Philadelphia” was. “Oh, Lucretia,” Sophia demanded. “How could you have been so imprudent as to marry that man?”
She didn’t answer, and Sophia said, “It must be a fact. Or they wouldn’t dare to publish it.”
“I thought he was very rich,” Lucretia mumbled. “I thought it was best for me—and for the children.”
As soon as she could, she got Sophia out of the house and ran to tell Mercy what had happened. Mercy collapsed. She fell on the floor, tears gushing down her cheeks, and Lucretia had to escort her to bed. Just then, the new students arrived, accompanied by their mother, who was planning to spend a few days at the school to see that the children settled in properly. Lucretia tried to collect herself and show the newcomers around. But her mind was aswirl. What would happen now? Would the police want to arrest her, too? She had to see that newspaper story—see it with her own eyes. She sent one of the new girls to fetch the newspaper from Sophia’s house and then felt a terrible longing to talk to someone, to unburden herself. But to whom? Mercy was still sobbing away in her room. The mother of the new girls? Yes, she seemed a most sympathetic person. She’d talk to her, she decided, and asking the woman, a Mrs. Ann Smith, to step into her bedroom, she began chattering away like a demented person, her words pouring unstoppably out of her mouth.
She told Mrs. Smith how Lino had come to her house. She told her how she and her husband had thought he was rich. She told her how William had taken sick and died. She even told her how, just a handful of days later, she’d married the stranger.
Mrs. Smith listened to her with her mouth agape. “Mrs. Chapman, I shouldn’t be surprised if this fellow had poisoned your husband!”
“Do you think so, my dear?” Lucretia sighed. “The police have intimated the same thing.”
Mrs. Smith got thoroughly upset when she heard this final detail. Instead of comforting Lucretia, she told her she’d like to withdraw her girls from the school. Dismayed, Lucretia begged her to let them remain. “Hearsay is not proof,” she reminded the woman.
Her axiom, and perhaps a refusal to refund tuition, proved persuasive. Mrs. Smith agreed to keep her girls at the school and to stay there with them for the weekend as planned. But Lucretia confided in her new acquaintance no more. It had dawned upon her that after hearing her story, most people, not just Mrs. Smith, would assume that Lino had poisoned William, and that many might assume she herself had
played a role in the poisoning. That weekend she began pulling clothes out of her drawers—the clothes she had once hoped to wear in Mexico. She heaped them on her bed and bureaus, and on Monday morning, she directed the laundress to brush up her boots and braid-trimmed traveling dress.
She was putting on the traveling outfit when Mrs. Smith stopped by her bedroom. “Are you going somewhere?” she pried.
“On a short trip,” Lucretia lied. “I’m going to town to sell some books.”
Mrs. Smith didn’t believe her. “Don’t you think you are wrong to go off at a time like this?” she chided. “It looks like running off.”
“I’m not running off,” Lucretia insisted. “I’m just going a short way to sell some books and get some money. I’m badly off for money.”
But it was not a short trip she had in mind. It was a long trip, a great long trip that would take her far from Pennsylvania, far from Constable Blayney and Magistrate McIlvaine. Mercy could handle the school, just as Lucretia had meant for her to do if she went to Mexico. Mercy could mother her children. At least until she figured out a plan. For now, she had none. For now, she wasn’t even sure just where she’d go. Only that she’d best get away as soon as she could.
That afternoon she fled Andalusia. She was wearing her traveling dress, but in her bags she had secreted a man’s frock coat, trousers, and a tall hat. She would don them, she had decided, if she went somewhere she was likely to be recognized.
Eight
Friends and Foes
Late September–Early December 1831
HANDSOME, THIRTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD David Paul Brown, with his broad forehead, empathic eyes, and playful Cupid’s bow lips, was one of the most famous men in Philadelphia—in his own opinion, the most famous. He was a lawyer and, as he would one day point out in an autobiographical work, not just a lawyer but an orator, a distinction he considered vital. “Hortensius,” he wrote, “was a lawyer—Cicero an orator, the one is forgotten, the other immortalized.” Brown had reason to be proud of his oratorical skills. In 1824 when the Marquis de Lafayette returned on a triumphal tour to the country he had helped free itself from British rule, Philadelphia had selected Brown to deliver the city’s welcoming speech.