The Lincoln Conspiracy (12 page)

Fiona kept on a forward path along Pennsylvania. The Willard wasn’t far away, but that was where Pinkerton kept his rooms. An easy solution wasn’t at hand. About twenty yards ahead, a carriage pulled out of an alley near the Willard and stopped. A driver began loading bags onto the back of it; probably a hotel guest. Fiona stepped off the narrow sidewalk onto Pennsylvania’s cobblestones and walked around the horses. As she turned back to the sidewalk, she glanced over her shoulder. Her man was no longer behind her. A conundrum.

She entered the Willard, which was buzzing, as always, with activity. Only men, though, walked freely around the lobby. There were
other women there, but they were accompanied by men, most likely their husbands. Fiona looked carefully at two or three of them, wondering if in fact they were adventuresses rather than wives, and decided that they most certainly must be wives—the Willard wouldn’t allow women of ill repute to parade in its lobby lest its reputation become sullied. There were no other unescorted women there, and as she continued to scan the room, Fiona realized that she, too, must be drawing attention, and not only from the hotel’s patrons and visitors. Her eyes moved across the faces in the room and the tendrils of cigar smoke lacing the air until she found the concierge’s desk. A lean, bald man with extravagant whiskers on either side of his jaw stared at her, assessing.

She nodded in his direction, refusing to show any unease. He slipped out from behind his desk and approached her.

“Madam.”

“Sir.”

“May I be of service in any way?”

“None whatsoever, thank you. I’m awaiting my husband.”

“I trust he’s on his way or a guest, ma’am?”

“On his way. I’m most grateful for your courtesies.”

The concierge returned to his post behind an ornate desk the size of a wagon. He sorted through letters and telegrams but didn’t sit down, alternately gazing at the envelopes in his hands and keeping Fiona in sight. She kept her eyes on the front doors, waiting for her pursuer to push through them. The pendulum in an ornate wooden clock hanging on the wall above her head swung back and forth as the seconds passed. Expensive German clocks were appearing in all of the District’s finest homes and public places, but the Gustav Becker in the Willard was the most talked about. Cherubs were carved into the casing around its face, and its pendulum was a departure—instead of a brass sphere hanging from a wooden rail, the pendulum’s bottom featured two more cherubs, one riding a lion and another playing a flute. “Mother and Child” was inscribed on a porcelain insert across the front of the pendulum. Fiona found herself
wondering again about when she and Temple would have a child of their own. She spoke of the topic more freely and easily than he, and they simply never spoke about it quite enough. That would have to change, she thought.

“Madam?”

The concierge had returned.

“Your husband will be arriving soon?”

“Oh, yes. Any minute,” Fiona responded, trying to consider what she might do when she returned to the street. “Sir, may I ask for an indulgence, please?”

“That will surely depend on its nature, ma’am.”

“The heat today bears down upon me. Might you spare two kerchiefs for me? I’d be much obliged.”

He shuffled wearily back to his desk, sliding open various drawers until he found some handkerchiefs. Fiona pulled one of the glass vials from her bag and transferred it into the small purse hanging from her left wrist, nodding in gratitude at the concierge when he returned. She put one of the kerchiefs into her bag and mopped her forehead with the other.

“My thanks.”

“Of course, madam.”

Fiona left the lobby and returned to the street, the concierge on her heels.

“Your husband has not arrived?”

“He has not.”

“Unfortunate. Then I trust we won’t enjoy your company again in our lobby.”

“Sir, do you consider me an adventuress?”

The concierge went pale.

“Madam?”

“A hooker? Do you?”

“No, ma’am, I only—”

“Fine, then,” Fiona said. “Call me a carriage. My husband is obviously misplaced and I must run to collect him. And we will return
to the Willard together, I assure you. My husband will be pleased to make your acquaintance.”

A yellow splash of sunlight beamed off her pursuer’s hat, lighting the corner of Fiona’s eye. A patient man. She made a show of slipping her hand into the crook of the concierge’s arm.

“I believe the heat is taking command of me, sir,” Fiona said. “Please secure a carriage for me with due haste.”

F
IONA ASSUMED THAT
the man in the hat was behind her somewhere as her carriage rumbled down North B Street behind Reservation No. 1. She took the extra handkerchief from her shoulder bag, bunched it up, and stuffed it into her purse. She murmured a brief prayer to herself, wondering how long it would take for Temple to meet her at the Castle.

The grounds of the Smithsonian Castle were wreathed in late afternoon shadow, and the building’s nine towers rose like red sandstone circus tents above the Mall. Dr. Springer held that Renwick had designed the Castle to look like the finest British universities, but Fiona maintained that the effect was closer to a carnival. Stepping down from the carriage and giving the driver his pay, Fiona noticed that even here the stench of the Tiber snared the air around her. Its odor wasn’t as thick as it had been when her carriage crossed the canal from B Street to the Mall, but it remained powerful fierce.

She anticipated seeing another carriage or a horse behind her when she stepped down to the Castle’s parklike grounds, but other than a few couples strolling nearby there was nobody. Her pursuer had disappeared again.

A fire had churned through the upper story of the Castle months earlier, and its windows were boarded while workmen made repairs inside. A maze of small rooms were scattered about the Castle’s first floor, containing an art gallery, a lecture hall, a library, and a chemical laboratory.

Even on warm days, the Castle’s architecture kept the building relatively cool. Fiona and Temple came here at least once a month
for a walk and the exhibits; they had decided that it would always be their place to rendezvous if they became separated. And when they hatched the humbug to divert Mr. Pinkerton, they agreed that this would be the best place to meet at the end of the day.

Fiona stepped inside, pirouetting in a slow circle as she scanned the rooms. Again, completely empty other than an employee by the front door. Washingtonians still preferred drink, music, and theater to their only museum. Leaving the main hallway to view the other rooms, she kept an eye on the windows as she passed them. Coming around a shelf of books in the back of the library, she waited by yet another window; moments later, the man in the white hat stepped into the window’s frame outside, just feet away from her, separated by glass and the Castle’s heavy walls. He was shaded now, and for the first time she could clearly see his face: he had a single thick eyebrow forming a line below his forehead, angular cheekbones, a scar across his jaw, and a plump bottom lip. He stared at her blankly and then stepped away from the window again, disappearing. Her breath quickened and she gripped her bag more tightly, trying to stave off panic.

She left the library and entered the lecture hall at the far end of the Castle, leaving her shoulder bag by the doorway. There was a single gaslight burning on one of the walls; she extinguished it, then crossed back past the doorway and pressed herself against a wall. She assumed she would have just one chance and that the opportunity would last only seconds. She pulled the extra kerchief from the Willard and the vial of chloroform from her purse and waited. Several minutes later her pursuer entered the lecture hall and picked up her bag, standing just inside the doorway as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

A sweet smell wafted from the bottle as she uncorked it. She doused the handkerchief and held it away at arm’s length, stepping toward her pursuer.

“A strong tower of defense,” she said, and the man spun around to face her, looming above her and holding her shoulder bag with
both of his hands. She pressed the kerchief into his face, covering his nose and mouth. He shoved her hand away and knocked her to the floor, the planks slapping Fiona’s back and shoulders as she dropped.

“What are you aiming to do with that?” he asked, grabbing her wrist and tearing the kerchief out of her hand, tossing it onto the floor behind him. “I’m no harm to you. I’m just meant to be following you.”

“I don’t like to be followed.”

“I’m also obliged to examine your bag.”

He began rummaging through it.

“Please do not shatter any of the bottles that I carry. They’re valuable,” Fiona said.

“Don’t give a shat about your bottles, missy,” he said.

He crouched down next to the bag and pulled out its contents, standing the vials on the floor and patting the inside of the bag.

“I’m told you might have a book or a journal of some sort in here,” he said. “Where is it?”

“I don’t have a journal in my bag.”

He fished around inside the bag again until he was satisfied it was empty. Scooping up her bottles and other belongings, he poured them back into the bag and stood up.

“I’m taking this with me,” he said. “You stay right there.”

He turned to the door but had only taken a step before his knees wobbled. He leaned against the wall.

“My mouth,” he said, pawing at his lips and jaw. “It’s burning.”

“I’m afraid the chloroform scorched your skin. You’re a large man and I had to douse my kerchief. You’ll heal.”

“Form-a-clore?”

He tried to pull at his jaw with both hands, his arms so rubbery that his aim betrayed him and his arms crisscrossed on separate journeys. Fiona retrieved her kerchief from behind him and the chloroform bottle from her bag and prepared another dose. She held it over her pursuer’s nose and mouth again, this time pressing it into his face for several seconds.

“The vapors won’t hurt you—they’ll just put you to sleep,” she said to him as his head began to flop. He slumped back into her arms, and she let him slip to the floor. She looked out the entrance; the hallway was still empty, and nothing that had happened in the abandoned lecture hall had stirred the guard’s interest. She returned to her pursuer, grabbing his ankles and straining to slide him across the wooden planking and into the dark gap between two rows of seats.

I
t was good to be free of the diaries, Temple thought. A weight lifted. Augustus was looking after the journals’ transit into the alleys, and all that was left for the day was to check in at police headquarters and then meet Fiona at the Castle.

Temple had walked the entire way from Tiber Island, and by the time he reached City Center, between Louisiana and E, he was thirsty and sweating. He could stop in for a drink at a saloon, but there was always beer in the precinct house. There were always drunks in there, too. Banning drink was Sergeant Miller’s monthly cause on E Street, but few of the officers had given it up.

Two policemen were stationed outside the precinct house facing Louisiana and, doing as they were told, stood rigid and in the full uniform adopted when the force had been organized four years earlier: blue cavalry hats adorned with cap plates that read
POLICE
; navy blue waistcoats and, despite the heat, overcoats with brass buttons; gray or navy trousers; fat leather belts with buckles that read
DC
; Colt Navy 6’s tucked inside their belts and under their coats; billy clubs in the left or right hand but never tucked away; and badges pinned to their left breast pockets and secured with a small chain linked to a button on their overcoats.

They were municipal toughs proud of their station and on patrol, really, to keep the District in order in a way that Stanton and the other federals found comfortable and reassuring. Insurrection and dissent had already split the Union. No reason to tolerate it in the District itself.

Temple never wore the uniform and carried his badge inside his
trouser pocket. Instead of a billy club he had his cane; he never carried a gun. Sergeant Miller let him follow his own course because Temple was one of the few who wasn’t a drunk and who kept regular hours. And because, when Temple first arrived in the District from New York, Tommy Driscoll, the greatest detective of them all, had vouched for him.

Outside the City Center precinct, and not far from where the two policemen stood, was a tall, thick whipping post where slaves were once shackled and disciplined, either for trying to escape or for merely looking to the sky when they should have been staring at the ground. Now riders used the post to hitch their horses.

Temple would have marched right past the whipping post and into the precinct, but even at two blocks he recognized the saddle strapped atop an enormous, muscled stallion tied there. It was a rich brown saddle ornamented in silver with long stirrups meant to hoist a very large man. It was the same saddle he had sat upon when he raced away from the B&O mornings ago, but now atop a new horse equally as impressive and majestic as the one that had been shot out from beneath him.

Lafayette Baker was visiting the precinct.

A block away from City Center rose the First Presbyterian Church. Temple went inside, pulling himself along on a banister and hip-hopping—good leg, bad leg, good leg, bad leg—up the stairs to its cupola so that he could look down on the precinct. About an hour later, Baker emerged with Sergeant Miller in tow. The two men talked amiably, their heads nodding. Baker slipped an envelope into a pocket of Miller’s coat, patting it gently. Well, the sergeant might rail against drink, but he cared not a jot about hard-earned graft. Temple watched Baker mount his horse, and then he descended from the cupola.

The precinct was no longer safe.

M
ARY
A
NN
H
ALL
sat in a high-backed leather chair in a corner office, her left arm entwined in the arm of a lovely Negro girl in her
twenties perched on the edge of the chair and naked except for a small diamond bracelet dangling from one of her ankles. Mary Ann tipped the glass of champagne in her hand toward Temple, offering him a sip. He smiled and shook his head.