The Lincoln Conspiracy (17 page)

Temple nodded to him and turned to leave, slipping the piece of paper he had lifted from Pint’s shirt into his own pocket.

L
IZZY
K
ECKLY, AS
Fiona discovered, took a stroll to be something more grand and lively than a tour around a park, or even a lengthy walk down Pennsylvania. She meant it to be an outing, and by the time she and Fiona had crossed onto Bridge Street in Georgetown, dusk was approaching. The streets were quieter here than in the District, and they could hear the grinding wheel of Bomford’s flour mill being turned by water running off the C&O canal as it streamed down to the Potomac.

As they crossed Fishing Lane and neared the High Street, Lizzy slipped her arm into Fiona’s.

“I have thought to move here to Georgetown when we leave the President’s House. I have friends in Herring Hill who would take me in, and my popularity as a modiste offers me independence. I could open a shop next to Emma Brown’s school on Third Street,” Lizzy said. “But Mrs. Lincoln leaves for Chicago in days. She says
the city’s superior attractions recommend it. And while there are many of us here, I don’t know how well Georgetown takes to its Negroes.”

“Georgetown doesn’t take well to the District,” Fiona said. “Washington’s stewards want to make it a part of Washington so that our city can continue its expansion, but the tobacco merchants are resisting.”

“I always told Mrs. Lincoln that I felt Georgetown to be more South than North,” Lizzy said. “That’s why I also told her it was right just that President Lincoln had troops occupy the town, because it was teeming with rebels.”

Several large livery stables were on the High Street, near the slave markets that had closed a few years earlier, and the stench of horse manure held the air, prompting Lizzy and Fiona to press kerchiefs to their faces as they continued along. When they reached 21 First Street, at the corner of Frederick, Lizzy suggested they stop. They were in front of a handsome redbrick townhouse with black shutters and a steep, eight-step stoop bordered by an iron banister.

“This is the home of Cranstoun Laurie,” Lizzy said.

“And he is?”

“He is the chief statistician for the Post Office. More important, he, his wife, Margaret, and their daughter, Belle, are all the most gifted of clairvoyants.”

“I am in a state of complete confusion,” Fiona said.

“They are spiritualists. They can commune with the dead.”

Fiona was still at a loss. She looked into Lizzy’s face for something further, but Lizzy just stared back at her, offering nothing but a serene smile. Before she could ask another question, Fiona spotted curtains parting in one of the tall windows on the townhouse’s façade. An old woman with high cheekbones, dark eyes, and a tightly wound bun of ice-white hair atop her head peered out silently.

“A woman is at the window,” Fiona said, a small shudder running up her spine.

Lizzy turned, looked up, and nodded. The woman nodded back and the curtains closed.

“We are here to meet with her?” Fiona asked.

“No, she is the Lauries’ housekeeper. She would never let me into their home unaccompanied. She resents me.”

“Are we not to go in, then?”

“Of course, we will. But with Mrs. Lincoln, when she arrives.”

“Mrs. Lincoln is coming here?”

“She comes here regularly. The Lauries are her friends. They help her speak to her dead sons, and it is a rare and generous comfort the Lauries provide her. When Willie appears, he speaks of the pony the Lincolns gave him on his birthday and how even in heaven the weather is changeable. He was their favorite child, but he couldn’t resist the inroads of disease, and his loss still grieves Mrs. Lincoln’s heart sorely. Now she wants to speak to her dead husband.”

Fiona merely nodded, and Lizzy responded to her silence.

“I see in your face that you don’t place faith in the Lauries’ work or Mrs. Lincoln’s travels to the other side. But you weren’t in the President’s House when Mr. Lincoln’s body was brought to the East Room. Mrs. Lincoln screamed and wailed in her bedroom, and Robert tried to calm her. Tad was at the foot of her bed with a world of agony in his little face. I shall never forget the scene—the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outburst of grief.”

“If it gives Mrs. Lincoln comfort, then she is more than entitled to visit with spirits or with the dead president,” Fiona said.

As it grew darker, the evening cooled from the heat of the day and a fog crept onto Georgetown’s streets. The gas lamps on First Street were lit and the fog curled in a light mustard swirl around the lampposts before turning gray as it spread across the cobblestone streets.

Horses passing on Georgetown’s cobblestones made a distinctive clip-clop, but the sound that drew Lizzy’s attention was more involved than that, and more imperial. Fiona turned to look in the
same direction as a handsome black barouche, pulled by four large carriage horses, emerged from the fog onto First Street.

“Mrs. Lincoln has come for a séance,” Lizzy said.

“She won’t find my presence alarming?” Fiona asked.

“I will make the introduction. She has faith in my judgment.”

The barouche stopped at the Lauries’ house, and the driver climbed down. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in layers of black—black silk dress, black cap, black shawl, black gloves—and she sat on the edge of her white leather seat staring at Lizzy and Fiona for several moments before she extended her hand to her driver. As she stepped to the curb, she cleared her throat and fixed Fiona with a pair of alert but careworn eyes that, in the fog and the darkness, also appeared to be black, save for fine pinpoints of light in their very middle. She was small, barely over five feet tall, and rotund, and she clutched a small black handbag close to her bosom, gripping its handles so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. She let go long enough to offer her hand to Fiona, who took it and curtsied.

“I am Mary Todd Lincoln,” she said softly, barely above a whisper.

“I am Fiona McFadden. And I am honored.”

“You are a friend of Lizabeth’s?”

“If she considers me such, yes, ma’am.”

“She is a friend, Mrs. Lincoln,” Lizzy said.

“Are you here to participate, Mrs. McFadden?”

“Well, ma’am, I—”

“Yes, she will participate, Mrs. Lincoln,” Lizzy said.

“Lizzy, I must tell Mrs. Lincoln my reason for being here,” Fiona said, cutting her off.

Mrs. Lincoln gripped her bag again tightly and stepped away from Fiona, closer to Lizzy.

“I have had more unknown people come into my life this year to tell me things that have been all but devastating,” she said. “I must ask you to bear that in mind, child, whatever you are here to say.”

“I mean to cause you no fresh burden,” Fiona said.

“I am my own burden,” Mrs. Lincoln whispered. “I wish I could forget myself.”

“Ma’am, I have your diary.”

Mrs. Lincoln’s hands dropped to her side and her bag fell to the pavement. She turned her head to the side, and the gaslight limned the dark pools beneath her eyes. She crept closer to Fiona.

“My diary went missing after my husband was murdered. It was—it is—a private possession.”

“I know, Mrs. Lincoln, and that is why I seek to return it to you. I have it. Not here with me now, but I have it. Had I known I was to meet you today, I would have brought it with me. My sincerest apologies.”

“How did you come upon it?”

“It came into my husband’s possession, ma’am. I’m not at liberty to explain all of that to you, but I most certainly would like to safeguard its return.”

“Have you read it?”

“I have not, ma’am. But I confess that my husband has.”

“Your husband? What kind of a man is this, so lacking in chivalry?” Mrs. Lincoln asked, her voice regaining the authority and Southern cadences of a Kentucky Todd.

“My husband is an honorable man. He was uncertain of what he had until he read it. And he listened to me when I told him it was proper and decent to return it to you.”

“I leave the President’s House and am bound for Chicago on the twenty-second of May, two days hence. Could you be so kind as to return it to me then?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“How do you know my Lizabeth?”

“We have a common acquaintance,” Fiona said.

“Who might that be, Lizabeth?”

“A man who was once a close and trusted friend of my son, George,” Lizzy said.

“Is this the same man who convinced George to join the Union forces?”

“He is, ma’am.”

“Yet you told me that you considered that man a murderer for convincing your boy to go to war.”

“At one time I believed that for certain, Mrs. Lincoln. I most assuredly did,” Lizzy said. “Augustus convinced my George to march, and now he is dead. But you know what death does to us mothers, Mrs. Lincoln. It turns our hearts and our minds around. I think I have found a different resolution for my grief, and I do believe that Mrs. McFadden comes here, today and to you, with goodwill.”

“Certainly she comes with goodwill, yes, yes, yes, yes. With malice toward none, with charity for all. Of course she does,” the widow said with a long, forlorn sigh, tipping her head back and closing her eyes to the night sky. “I do know what death does. Death rends one, utterly.”

Mrs. Lincoln stood still, her face still raised to the moon, her arms at her side, her chest rising and falling slowly. Silent.

Fiona and Lizzy watched the widow and awaited her next word. When Fiona began to speak, Lizzy held her finger to her lips to warn her off. There was no movement on the street, just the three of them bound in the moment by Mrs. Lincoln’s wanderings.

She broke from her reverie with a start, addressing Fiona.

“Have you spent time with spiritualists and mediums, Mrs. McFadden?”

“No, ma’am, I haven’t.”

“They are the ones—other than the good Lord—who weaken death’s grip upon us. The Lauries have given me back my Eddie and my Willie, and I intend to see my Abraham again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Lincoln sank into silence once more, shaking her head, and then engaged Fiona again.

“Queen Victoria lost her Albert at almost the same time that my
Willie passed. There are so many losses. Many, many, many. My sister Emilie knows that Willie’s spirit has visited us in the mansion. On occasion he has come to me at the foot of my bed with the same sweet adorable smile he always had. Sometimes Eddie is with him, and once he came with my late brother Alec. They all love me so.” “Yes, ma’am.”

“Willie was so small. He didn’t damage me the way Tad did at birth,” Mrs. Lincoln continued. “We did all in our power to save him. We gave him Peruvian bark, Miss Leslie’s puddings, and beef tea, but still he left us. So we laid him out, properly embalmed, in the Green Room of the mansion with a laurel sprig upon his chest. And then we buried him in a little metal casket worked to appear like rosewood. It was gentle in its way. Not like my poor husband, no, no, no. Mrs. McFadden?”

“Ma’am?”

“Did you know that the blood that streamed from the bullet hole in my husband’s head stained the cape I wore to Ford’s?”

“No, Mrs. Lincoln, I did not.”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“I am truly sorry for all of your losses, Mrs. Lincoln.”

“I still have my Tad. I fear, however, that my Robert is not true. My son Robert covets my money and tells me that my emotions unravel. He says he is frightened to leave me alone, because I am … because he says I am … unwell. Tad doesn’t say these things. But Robert is not truly at odds with me for my mind, Mrs. McFadden. I know his devices. He hires Mr. Pinkerton’s agents to follow me, and he is in league with the railroad men and the New York bankers. His father had lost faith in him before he died. Those men all tortured the president so …,” she said, her voice trailing off.

Lizzy put her arm around Mrs. Lincoln’s waist and guided her toward the stairs of the Lauries’ house.

“Mrs. McFadden, will you join our séance this evening?” Mrs. Lincoln asked. “Invisible beings surround us like a great cloud, and
the Lauries can summon them from across the river Styx. Séances can be the gayest of pleasure parties, even in a darkened room.”

“I would be honored to join you, but the hour is late; I want to fetch your diary, and I need to find my husband lest he worry. I would be most grateful if we could converse but one time more. My husband has an unquenchable thirst for information about the president. He admired him so.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Be on your way, then,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “I will tell Mr. Lincoln this evening that you have recovered my prized journal. The news will comfort him. How will you get my diary to me?”

“You could join us on the train to Chicago, Fiona,” Lizzy interjected. “If Mrs. Lincoln approves, of course. We could get it from you then, and you could have the longer conversation with Mrs. Lincoln that you have sought.”

Fiona nodded.

“Yes, yes, yes, join us for Chicago, Mrs. McFadden. Mr. George Pullman is sending a private rail car for me. I insisted on such, and Mr. Stanton and the others cannot contest and complain about such courtesies now that I am no longer a captive of the President’s House or Washington. I do expect my husband to scold me inside, however. He has always been wary of my extravagances.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Allow me to steer you properly to your home,” Mrs. Lincoln said, as she began laboring to scale the Lauries’ imposing staircase. “My driver will see you to your husband in my barouche, and I will see you on the twenty-second.”

“I am deeply obliged.”

“You are without children?”

“Lizzy inquired of the same earlier, Mrs. Lincoln. Yes, I am, but I am also hopeful for the future.”

Fiona had to strain now to hear the widow, who, intent upon her ascent, had her back to Fiona and was speaking directly to the Lauries’ townhouse. When Mrs. Lincoln finally reached the top of the
staircase, she was out of breath and pulled a fan from her handbag to cool herself. Her bosom heaving, she looked down at Fiona as the door to the Lauries’ house swung open.

“Lear had it exactly so, my child. Yes, yes, yes,” Mrs. Lincoln said to Fiona. “Our young ones can unwind us most deeply. My Robert is the serpent’s tooth. I wish you daughters when motherhood arrives for you.”