by Jim Lehrer
Here he would begin his serious work on those twelve pieces of paper. They were in the briefcase he had picked up from his hotel room on the way over.
Here now he would honor Wally’s last request.
He laid the papers out on Wally’s large desk as he had with Braxton at the Eastville museum. Next to each, he put a piece of blank white copy paper that he took from a stack next to the printer attached to a computer.
What he had noticed in Eastville, almost with his first glance, as Wally must have too, was that common Revolutionary War spy techniques had been used by whoever did the writing on these sheets. Ben in Paris, and also as part of his official duties in Philadelphia, was one of several Founding Fathers who used them, both as senders and recipients.
In this case, there appeared to be a variety of simple numbers-for-words cypher systems involved, plus an early form of invisible ink, known as a stain. Some of it had worn off, so the end result was writing of various forms between the lines and in the margins all around the paper. There was a jumble of seemingly disconnected and often incoherent words, numbers, and symbols.
R began the first important step: bringing forward everything possible to full readable form. He knew the most common of the invisible inks used back then was made by mixing cobalt chloride, glycerine, and water. To make the writing visible required only a heating of the paper.
R took the papers to Wally’s kitchen for the tricky part. He knew candles were employed during the Revolution to accomplish what he was now going to do—put heat to the paper—but R wasn’t about to use candles. A few false steps could result in damage or even destruction of the pages, with their contents lost forever.
He would use modern technology—after a fashion. First, a precautionary experiment. He heated the oven on Wally’s stove to just 150 degrees. Then he placed a piece of the blank white computer paper on a cookie sheet and stuck it in the oven. Through the window on the oven door, he watched; after fifteen seconds he retrieved it. The paper was warm but not damaged in any way. He could only hope that the paper from the eighteenth century would react the same way.
Page one of the real thing: onto the cookie sheet, into the oven. R watched through the window. Words were appearing. He waited a full minute before removing the sheet. He set it on the kitchen counter. There were now words and numbers literally all over the piece of paper.
Page two—again, and again, and again—he repeated the process for each of the twelve sheets of paper.
After waiting until the pages were completely cooled to room temperature, he carried them carefully—one at a time—back to the top of Wally’s desk. And then, with the occasional help of Wally’s high-powered magnifying glass, he read each and every word, number, and mark.
He read quickly, not for detailed content but for an overview, to get a cursory feeling for authenticity and for what these papers were really all about.
His first conclusion was that everything had been written by the same person. Both the visible and the once invisible words were in the same handwriting. Although certainly no expert, he had read enough eighteenth-century letters to be pretty sure.
The second conclusion: the writer was somebody who had been active in spying during the Revolution or, at least, was a serious student of the spycraft of the time. There was the patterned separation of what appeared to be a confusing chaos of words but which, when put together, formed the intended phrase or sentence. There was also the most common numbers game. He saw 120 several times. That, as R and all Franklin scholars knew, was the code number for Ben in some of the dispatches he sent and received while in Paris during the war. Adams’s 68 was also there, as were the known numbers for Washington, Hamilton, and Madison. That was in addition to the more straightforward references to them by their initials, which Braxton had picked up from his reading, as well as to their code names. Ben’s was Light.
So—conclusion number three—these twelve pages definitely had to do with the leading Founding Fathers.
Number four: There was no reference, in numbers or initials, to Jefferson. Why not? There were two sets of numbers that appeared to be dates in 1788. Jefferson, R knew, was in France in 1788 as the first official ambassador of the United States of America. That might explain his absence from these papers.
Number five: Ben was the main focus. R counted twenty-four mentions of his code numbers, name, and initials in the twelve pages. Adams was a remote second with ten. The others had fewer than half a dozen mentions; there were only two for Washington.
Number six: A crime had been committed—or at least alleged. That crime, as Wes Braxton had said, involved a woman.
R set down the magnifying glass and got up from the desk.
He needed a break. He needed to stop.
Wally always kept a bottle of calvados, the French brandy made from apples, in the house. With a wink to let you know he knew better, Wally claimed it was Ben’s favorite drink when in Paris. Ben was not known as a consumer of any alcohol but wine. Wine merchants have long made hay with Ben’s quote: “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.” On the other hand, Ben often claimed his relative abstinence was a key reason for his long life.
Whatever the truth about Ben’s drinking habits, R poured an inch of calvados into a brandy glass and began an aimless pace around the room. He paid no attention to any of the books or any of the Ben stuff. His eyes were not functioning, only his brain, his conscience.
Why go on? Why know any more? Why, why, why?
R took two small sips from the glass and made three complete trips around the room before returning to the desk.
The break was over. It was either go on with these twelve pages or head for the river or the train station. There was no other choice.
He started again with page one, this time for detailed content.
With the magnifying glass, his knowledge of language patterns during the American Revolution and its spy techniques, plus some logic and educated guesswork, he painstakingly began to piece together what was being said on the twelve pages, writing out his notes in longhand with a pen on white copy paper as he went.
He had paid no attention to the time since he left Elbow Clymer’s party. All he knew was that it was close to two in the afternoon when he entered Wally’s house.
Now, as he laid down the magnifying glass and the pen, he knew without having to look toward the window that it was dark outside.
Without stopping for more than a few seconds to take a deep breath and delay some even darker thoughts, he read back through his notes.
→The meeting was clearly Adams’s idea. He essentially summoned the others.
→Ben came. So did Washington, Hamilton, and Madison.
→Adams said he wanted “extraordinary charges of heinous criminal acts” to be considered against Ben.
→They met at a private location, near but apparently not in Philadelphia.
→Adams functioned as a kind of prosecutor. Washington, Hamilton, and Madison served as judge and jury.
→Ben, no question, was the defendant.
→Adams: “Evidence of an overwhelming nature” that Ben made a deal with a man named Button Nelson to “wantonly and with inexplicable malice” murder Melissa Anne Wolcott.
→Wolcott, “aged 45 or thereabouts”: widow of a Captain Wolcott of the Continental Army, daughter of Arthur [could be MacArthur, hard to tell for sure] Harrison—Quaker, merchant, Loyalist.
→Adams offered a written confession. Said it was Nelson’s. Nelson was a ship loader, down on his luck. Poor. “Had killed before.” Contacted by a man about killing the Wolcott woman. Agreed to do it for fifty British pounds—ten pounds now, forty when deed done.
→Nelson’s confession: Took large knife, heavy rope, and gunnysack to woman’s home on Second Street. House in ill repair and “full of filth.” Found the woman abed in a second-floor room, smelling, sweating, and moaning from some kind of distemper. He raised knife above her to s
tab her. She said, “Ben Franklin sent you, didn’t he?” Her weak voice and thin face reminded him of “starving mangy dog.” She said, “I am the mother of William, Dr. Franklin’s only living son. I had never once before made a demand on him, and only now do I request funds for sustenance and medical care. He sends in its stead a man with a knife to take my life.” Nelson plunged knife hard and fast down into the woman’s chest. She moaned but did not scream. He pulled the knife free and repeated the action several times, striking as many as a dozen blows. He wrapped the corpse up in her dirty and now bloody bedclothes and stuffed her and the knife in a sack, which he then tied tight with his rope. He took the sack to a boat with oars docked at the river nearby. Said the sack was “a load no heaver than a bundle of snow-flakes.” Used rope to attached a large rock to the sack. Rowed downriver for nearly half an hour “past all civilization” and dropped sack with the dead woman into the Delaware.
→The next evening, Nelson said he met “the originator of the deed” at Seven Seas Tavern on South Street. Man gave him the forty pounds owed. Nelson recounted what the woman said about Ben and William Franklin. Man, “in the dress of a gentleman of means,” raged. Told Nelson he must never repeat what the woman said. Otherwise, he would join her at the bottom of the Delaware.
→More Nelson: Scared, he left tavern and went straight to the home of his brother, Roger Nelson. Repeated story of his crime and the threat against his own life. The brother, able to write as Nelson himself was not, put into writing Nelson’s statement. That was what Adams offered into evidence.
→Adams: Next day Nelson was found dead hanging from a tree on Market Street. No note. Believed a suicide.
→More Adams: Roger Nelson came forward to somebody [couldn’t make out name] with his brother’s confession. Claimed his brother was murdered. Written statement turned over to an official [name also not clear] of our new national government. Official declared it a fraud but made it available to Adams [just in case?].
→“My solemn oaths and duties” required him—said Adams, of course!—to pursue. Did so in complete secrecy. [Thank you so much, John.]
→Adams offered another written statement, this from Roger Nelson. Said other one from brother valid. Also, repeated what brother’s acquaintances said. They knew Button Nelson recently acquired a knife, a sack, and some rope—and a lot of money.
→Adams: Discreet inquiries at “proper places of endeavor and record” showed a Melissa Anne Wolcott, “a woman once of means but no longer same,” was missing. Her house had the appearance of blood in one of the main rooms. Two women acquaintances said Melissa Anne Wolcott had “born a male child out of wedlock” when a very young woman. Whereabouts of the baby unknown. Woman’s father was friendly with Ben, who was a frequent visitor to the Harrison home when Melissa was an “innocent and unspoiled girl” at the time she gave birth to the male child.
→Adams, prosecutor, rested case by stating that he, Adams, believed the evidence, circumstancially if not directly, showed that Ben, “though a man of much achievement in his public life, had committed two of the most heinous personal crimes known to civilized society.” First, he had “violated the essence of a young woman,” speculating that the “act of consummation” could well have occurred when Melissa Anne Wolcott was “a mere child.” Second, he had been “a principal perpetrator” of that woman’s brutal murder and possibly the demise of an accomplice as well.
→Ben, in his defense, spoke briefly. Said he was “an old and dying man who had lived a life that he was pleased to say had resonance within large and appreciative societies of many levels both in America and in Europe.” Said he made no claim to perfection or even to attempting perfection, but he did believe he had made contributions that would have life beyond his own.
→More Ben: “I have nothing to say to the charges made just now with such conviction and effectiveness” by Adams, whom he called “a knight of freedom for whom all Americans now and forevermore will owe debts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
→Hamilton asked Adams what kind of decision or verdict he was requesting, noting they had no legal authority to do anything. [Amen, Alex!]
→Adams said he was “not wise enough to even presume he knew what a proper course” would be.
→Madison asked, “Are you suggesting we be parties to bringing formal charges against Ben with the expectation of an appropriate punishment of hanging or imprisonment to follow?”
→Adams did not respond. [Can’t make it out if he did, at least.]
→Solution offered. [Can’t tell by whom.] By secret ballot, each man to indicate whether to refer the case against Ben to the proper authorities. If vote goes against such action, each man would be bound by a most sacred word [oath] of honor never to tell of this meeting or its subject, even under the prospect of pain or death.
→Somebody [can’t tell who] said, “We act together or we remain silent forever together.”
→The vote—three to one against action. [You were the yea, weren’t you, John?]
→Meeting adjourned.
EIGHT
He heard a female voice, felt warm hands on both cheeks, and smelled perfume.
“Doctor R,” said the voice, which was soothing, soft. “Good morning, dear boss of mine.”
R opened his eyes to see Clara Hopkins leaning down toward him. Where was he? Oh, my God! On the couch in Wally’s library.
The twelve sheets from Eastview! The notes! The summary. . . .
The briefcase. There it was, still resting on his stomach. He clutched it to him.
“What’s in there, the proceeds of something terribly illicit?” Clara asked. When she got no answer she said, “All right, then, how about some coffee? Wally always had some of those instant filter things around in the kitchen. . . . I’ll be right back. How do you take it?”
R sat up. “Yes, thanks, that would be great. Black—no cream, no sugar. Good morning, Clara.”
He knew exactly where he was now. He remembered what happened last night. It was late—how late exactly, he had no idea—and he had finished his writing. He had put everything in his briefcase, sat down on the couch, closed his eyes, and stretched out with the idea of resting for just a minute. . . .
“Did you spend the night on that couch?” Clara asked, as she returned with two cups of coffee.
R set the briefcase down beside him and took his cup in both hands. It was a heavy white porcelain figurine mug, made in the shape of Ben’s head. He was careful to hold it so he wouldn’t have to look at Ben’s face, either as he drank the coffee or just held the cup. The back of Ben’s head was bad enough. Did you have that woman killed, Ben? Ben! Ben! What kind of man were you?
Clara sat down in a chair off to the left.
“I hadn’t intended to sleep here, really,” R said, his mind having raced onward to a crucial immediate question of a much more practical nature. How much, if anything, should he tell Clara?
“What were you doing here in the first place?” she asked, trying her best, it seemed, to sit on what must have been a raging curiosity about what in the world was happening—particularly with that briefcase.
“Going over some papers,” said R.
“What papers?” Clara’s manner was pleasant, nonconfrontational. But she shifted her gaze from R’s face to the briefcase. “What have you got in there?”
R made his decision: He would tell Clara nothing. Wally had chosen not to share the Eastville story with her, so neither would he. Wally certainly knew her a lot better than he did. The sole reason R had offered her a job was to keep her from going to Eastville, not because he really knew her or the quality of her work.
“Some personal stuff between Wally and me,” he said, placing the coffee cup on a table to his left. “What time is it anyhow?” He looked at his wristwatch. “My God. It’s after nine o’clock. . . . No telling how long I was asleep.”
He was on his feet, the briefcase firmly held by its handle in his right hand. “
Maybe we can talk later today—or tomorrow. I have a great deal to work out with Clymer about the new job. Meanwhile, I’m sure the current arrangement you had with Wally and the university will continue. No loss in health insurance, pension, parking place, football tickets, student union privileges, bookstore discounts. . . .”
He was trying to be funny. Clara was not smiling.
“Something’s going on, and it’s in that briefcase,” she said. “If I’m going to work with you, you must feel you can trust me, you really must.” This was not the come-on girl of the Brasserie Perrier. This was a woman on a serious mission.
R did not wish to lie any more than was absolutely necessary. Lies cast on calm waters tend to come back as waves. Poor Richard probably said that; if he didn’t, he should have.
R said, “You’re right on both counts,” but he started walking toward the front hallway.
She was right behind him. “So that’s it?”
“For now, yes. I have to get back to Washington.”
Then he had an idea. He really did need some help if he was going to run down the validity of the Ben murder story quickly. He would do it in the need-to-know way of the CIA. He would compartmentalize.
“There is something you could do for me,” he said, stopping at the front door.
A notebook and pen suddenly appeared from a pocket in her skirt, which—he noticed for the first time—fell well below her knees. So she didn’t dress for work the same way she did for play.
“Check every colonial and city record at the Franklin Institute and everywhere else for the following names: Melissa Anne Harrison, later Wolcott; Roger Nelson; Button Nelson. All three may have lived in Philadelphia during the Revolution. If so, I want birth and death records and everything else you can come up with about them. I’m sure you know the drill.”
Ignoring R’s last line, Clara said, “Button Nelson? Button as on a blouse—or shirt?”
“That may not have been his given name, but that’s all I have.”
He opened the door.