The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (19 page)

Frustration.

She stepped back. Perhaps it would be best to re-join the party.

Suddenly the door jerked open, and Abigail leaped away. She dashed into the room across the way—as it happened, the library. She closed the library door and peered through the crack. The unknown woman stood in the threshold of the opposite room, her back to Abigail. Grafton’s voice was as clear as a bell.

“Then we are in agreement? Your doubts are assuaged?”

The young woman whispered something Abigail did not catch.

“You might imagine, my dear, that, because of who your father is, you cannot be reached. That would be a grave error.”

Wiping tears from rosy cheeks, the young woman turned toward the light.

“You are a monster,” said Bessie Hale, and swept off down the hall.

IV

“Please tell me it went well,” said Jonathan as a servant helped Abigail into her coat. “Your conversation with Sumner. You had half the room watching.”

“He said he has not made up his mind. He said he will give the matter careful consideration.”

“So much we knew already.”

“Then we are no worse off,” she said, more coldly than either expected, but the evening’s events had left her nervy and fraught.

The line of guests awaiting their rigs created a delay at the door. With the crowd now close around them, Jonathan changed the subject, talking airily, as though the event of greatest importance tonight had been meeting the guest of honor. “In any event, Miss Canner, you
missed a most fascinating exhibition. Mr. Morphy, the chess champion, played three of us without sight of the board. He won all the games, and it took him only fifteen minutes! Afterward there was a bit of a scene. Mrs. Sprague—do you know Kate Sprague?

“I believe that Mrs. Sprague and I were briefly introduced earlier this evening.”

“Ah. Good, then. A useful woman to know. Mrs. Sprague is the daughter of the Chief Justice and the wife of the junior senator from Rhode Island. She is but twenty-seven, and already the most eminent woman in the city. Well. Mrs. Sprague took one of the boards against him. She lost, of course, but that was hardly the end of the matter. Mr. Eames proposed a toast to Mr. Morphy, followed by three huzzahs. Afterward, Mrs. Sprague walked right up to Mr. Morphy and accused him of having fought in the rebel army. She said he was attached to General Beauregard’s staff at Bull Run.” They were out on the front portico, where he signaled to Abigail’s carriage man. “She also said that his family fortune came from slaves. Not using them in the fields but selling them. That his grandfather was a slave importer and auctioneer in New Orleans. The very lowest of human activities, she said.” He shook his head ruefully. “I am afraid Mrs. Sprague showed little tact. She disrupted the evening. Hence, the present crush.”

“I think she did the right thing,” murmured Abigail, impressed.

The group ahead of them climbed aboard their rig. The Berryhill barouche was next in line. With nobody in earshot, Jonathan leaned close to her. “Abigail, listen. Forget all that. Fessenden says there is an offer on the table.”

“Oh?”

“He says that the Radicals are willing to make a deal with Mr. Lincoln. Perhaps they are not as confident as everyone thinks. We must go to Mr. Dennard’s house.”

Abigail considered. “You go,” she said. “I am exhausted.” Her breath curled whitely in the frigid night air. A gray mist softened the streetlamps to distant gauzy globes. “It is well that tomorrow is the Sabbath.”

Handing her up into the carriage, Jonathan asked, “By the way, where did you vanish to? Mr. Sumner was present for the champion’s exhibition. You were not.”

Abigail looked down, eyes unreadable. She seemed about to explain herself, then thought better of it. “Good night, Mr. Hilliman.”

The driver closed the door, and the barouche headed off. As soon as
they were out of the driveway, Abigail moved to the opposite seat, up behind the driver. “I have changed my plans, Mr. Cutler. Rather than taking me home directly, I wonder whether you would mind making a stop along the way.”

V

The Metzerott Hotel was located on Pennsylvania Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets West, just four blocks from the offices of Dennard & McShane. It stood two stories, with a fancy balustrade along the second level, and was one of the few leading hotels in Washington City where it was possible—not easy, but possible—for a negro to find a room. Even at ten-thirty in the evening, the porter answered the door, because it was not unusual for a train to run late, and guests to need to register. The porter roused the night clerk, a softly rounded man, bald and egglike, who pursed thick lips in disappointment upon learning that she was not planning to stay.

“The kitchen is closed,” he whispered, tone funereal, eyes downcast. “As is the bar. And I would not like to disturb our guests at this hour.”

“I am not looking for refreshment,” said Abigail. “I am not looking for a guest.”

“Oh?”

She had never quite played the deceiver, and was not sure how precisely it was done. But she could think of only one way Inspector Varak could possibly have been led to believe that she and Rebecca Deveaux had been in this hotel at the same time, and was determined to check her arithmetic. “In truth, I myself was a guest here, oh, two weeks ago. And I am afraid that I lost the receipt for my stay.” She cast her eyes demurely downward. “Without the receipt, I fear I shall not be able to obtain reimbursement from my employer.”

The night clerk was a friendly man. He had a daughter her age, he said, and she, too, had unfortunately been required to earn for a short period, until a suitable husband had been found. He opened the hotel register happily, but when Abigail told him her name, his round face grew distressed. He started to speak, hesitated.

“Yes, well, there is a bit of a problem.” He eyed her fancy clothes, glanced through the shadowed lobby at the expensive carriage waiting outside.

She understood.

“I shall be right back,” she said.

Her handbag was in the barouche. She did not carry much money—she did not possess much—but she found a couple of coins. Back inside, she dropped them into the night clerk’s sweaty palm.

The money vanished; the ledger appeared; and as the clerk wrote out her receipt by the wavery glow of a single gas lamp, Abigail read upside-down. Her name, as a guest, for one night: Saturday, the sixteenth, five days before the murder of Arthur McShane.

Even though she had never been inside the hotel in her life.

Abigail inquired about Rebecca Deveaux. The answer cost her another half-dollar: Rebecca’s name, too, was in the ledger, and on the same date.

“You’ve been right popular,” said the clerk, leering. “A couple of men have been in, asking the same. Maybe one of them from your employer.”

“Perhaps,” Abigail said, unable to keep from blushing. But at least now she understood the clerk’s reticence upon hearing her name. Perhaps Inspector Varak, discovering these entries, had sworn him to secrecy.

In her head echoed Varak’s words from a seeming lifetime ago, but really just a few hours:
You do know David Grafton, do you not?… I do.… And you would no doubt be astonished to learn that he, too, knew your friend Miss Rebecca Deveaux?

No, Inspector. I am not astonished at all.

Riding home in the fine Berryhill carriage, Abigail pondered. Inspector Varak was trying to solve one mystery. Now Abigail was confronted by another. Someone had taken a great deal of trouble to make it appear that she was acquainted with the murdered Rebecca Deveaux. She had to find out who; more important, she had to find out why.

I

“
THAT IS NO
deal at all,” said Stanton. He glanced around the room as if daring the other members of the lawyers’ coterie to contradict him. His eyes were wet and swollen from his seemingly perpetual cold. “No deal at all. The Senate dare not dictate to the President of the United States who will and will not be allowed in his Cabinet!”

Lincoln stood at the window, looking down on the park. It was early Sunday afternoon, and rainy, and the President was still dressed for church. He had attended services more often since his wife died—usually at Saint John’s, right across Lafayette Square. “Well, now, Mars, let’s not be too hasty. I am quite sure our Radical friends would like
you
to remain in office. They just want to subtract everybody else.”

Stanton remained unmollified. “If it were up to me, I would have them all in shackles.”

A moment of embarrassed silence in the room, the freezing rain like gunshots against the window.

“This might be an argument against interest,” said Speed, “but I think, if we are being offered a deal, we are duty-bound to explore it.”

“I agree,” said Dennard, cautiously.

“Duty,” said the President. “Duty.
Duty
,” he repeated, playing with the word in a way that Jonathan, head down, scribbling notes, thought conveyed a growing distaste, perhaps even disgust: a man tired of explaining himself. The deal was a simple one. If Lincoln would allow the congressional leadership to decide who would serve in his Cabinet,
they would “consider” dropping the impeachment effort. “They want to control me,” said the President, now visibly angry. “They want to dictate to the Executive. But my
duty
is not to the Congress. My
duty
is to the nation. To the Constitution, which I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend. An oath registered in Heaven!”

In the face of this presidential fury, the other men in the room traded uneasy glances. To Jonathan’s untutored eye, the look that passed between the Secretary of War and the attorney general seemed one of exasperation. Then, as perhaps they expected all along, the anger faded, and the old Lincoln returned.

“You know, this situation reminds me of a story I heard someone tell in Iowa. He was trying to enforce upon his hearers the truth of the old adage that ‘three removes are worse than a fire.’ As an illustration, he gave an account of a family who started from western Pennsylvania, pretty well off in this world’s goods. But they moved and moved, having less and less every time they moved, till after a while they could carry everything in one wagon. He said that the chickens of the family got so used to being moved, that whenever they saw the wagon sheets brought they laid themselves on their backs and crossed their legs, ready to be tied. Now, gentlemen, if I were to be guided by every committee that comes in at that door, I might just as well cross my hands and let them tie my legs together.”

He laughed, as did the entire meeting, all except Rufus Dennard, who looked not so much unamused as disapproving. He was a man of few words, and had difficulty with a client who was much the other way.

Lincoln was not done. “You know, a friend of mine was here visiting not long ago, and he told me that poor McShane getting killed like that probably lost me half a million votes, just through guilt by association. I told him about this old woman I knew back in Kentucky who had a house by the riverbank. There was a terrible storm, and the river overflowed its banks, and the water came in through the door. The old woman picked up her broom and started sweeping the water out. But the flood just kept rising and rising. And she kept sweeping and sweeping. When the water was up to her neck, she shrugged, still sweeping, and said to herself, ‘Let’s see which lasts longer, the flood or the broom.’ ”

More laughter. Lincoln had crossed the room to retrieve a paper from his desk. “I have here a communication from Horace Greeley, who is, as usual, being helpful. He advises me that if I leave office now, and avoid the bitter battle to come, I will depart with the thanks of a grateful
nation.” He adjusted his glasses. “Mr. Greeley says I will have won the war and freed the slaves, and that will be my epitaph. If I stay on, however, history will write of me that I allowed my own ambitions to tear the Union asunder once more. Now, it seems to me it’s a mite early to worry about what they might carve on my tombstone, but I suppose Mr. Greeley can see the future more clearly than I can.” He put the paper down, looked hard at the others. “Still, even if we cannot see the future, we will do our best to influence it.”

He took a moment to consider. Everyone in the room understood when the President’s silence meant that he was plotting. “We will respond to our friends on the Hill via the same means they used to send us the message. Jonathan here can go see Fessenden and tell him we aren’t much interested in anything but having the Radicals respect the proper separation of powers in the federal government. It is up to me and not up to them who my advisers are. That is the constitutional system, and we could not change it if we wanted to. Which we don’t.” His face softened. “On the other hand, I am not saying that we would turn down a more reasonable proposition.”

Jonathan was alarmed to be thrust so suddenly into the middle of things. Unlike Arthur McShane, Rufus Dennard brought him into nearly every White House meeting; until now, Jonathan had been grateful. “Mr. President, I don’t really know if I am the right person—”