The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (11 page)

“I have to know what happened,” he said, surprising himself with his resolve, although the statement was, in fact, the simple truth. “To Mr. McShane.”

Meg pursed her lips, then took him firmly by the upper arm and drew him back to the common room. She lifted the top newspaper from the unruly stack, thrust it into his hand, and pointed to the headline:
Fatal Stabbing Outside Bawdy House. Lincoln’s Lawyer Dead
.

“That’s what happened,” she said.

I

ABIGAIL ARRIVED FOR
work on Saturday morning an hour earlier than usual, for she still felt guilty about having gone home the afternoon before. A frigid wind came off the Potomac. Outside the building, the policeman was stamping his feet to keep warm. Yesterday, the Senate had grudgingly granted the President’s counsel an additional week and a half to answer the charges. Trial would now begin on Monday, March 18, and run for two to three weeks. And Abigail, until formally told otherwise, intended to continue her research.

She hurried upstairs and opened the door. But as soon as she stepped inside, she noticed two oddities. First, the gas lamp was on in the main room. Second, there were heavy sounds emanating from the private office of the late Arthur McShane.

She froze. McShane’s door was closed. She could go down to the street and summon the policeman, but then she would likely risk embarrassment before the white race, which she feared above all things. Most likely Jonathan had simply arrived early; or Little was cleaning. She forced herself to move. No miscreant could possibly be inside. The policeman would have stopped him.

She did not ask herself why, as she crossed the anteroom, she stooped to grab the poker from the fireplace, or why she tiptoed over the floor. She shoved the door open. Peering inside, she was stunned to see a stranger, a slender man with clever moustaches, seated at McShane’s desk, prying at an open drawer with a knife.

“What are you doing?” she cried. Her fingers tightened on the weapon. “Who are you?”

The stranger glanced up. He looked to be close to fifty. He had a broad, magnetic face and dark, ingenuous eyes. He wore an expensive suit, and was smoking what appeared to be one of Mr. McShane’s cigars. He seemed quite unbothered to have been caught. He had evidently dumped the contents of the desk all over the floor. He nodded toward her hand. “Planning a criminal assault? Grievous bodily harm?”

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“Because, if you are planning to strike me with that thing, I would clean up the mess first if I were you.” The stranger glanced around the room, bushy eyebrows moving, his distaste evident. His face was narrow and disciplined, a soldier’s face, but the luxurious black moustaches softened the hard edges, and an infectious hint of smile danced between pinched cheeks. “Or you could just lend me a hand.”

Abigail needed a moment; as, in the future, she would often need a moment around this man.

“You are breaking into Mr. McShane’s desk,” she said, a bit stupidly. She stepped back. “I am going to summon the police.”

The stranger shook a shaggy head.

“I’m not breaking in. Somebody did that already.” He was back to his prying. When he saw that Abigail continued to brandish the poker, he sighed, and straightened, and that was when she noticed for the first time his wooden leg. “Put the poker down. I’m not the man who did this.”

“That is not precisely as it appears to me,” she said, nervousness making her syntax over-perfect.

“And how, precisely, does it appear to you?”

“That you have been searching for something. That I have surprised you. That you have assumed this pose of innocence hoping to fool me.”

The stranger puffed on his cigar. “Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Canner, but I’m afraid I arrived and found it this way.”

“How do you know my name?” she asked, astonished.

“The President sent me. I am to assist in his defense.” With an easy, languid sweep, he swung his stump from atop the chair. He had a long, fancy walking stick, something between a cane and a crutch, the support of a man who was clever and confident, who wanted you to know he could beat anything on two legs in a duel. He had even done it. Before
the visitor identified himself, Abigail already knew whom she was facing. “I’m Dan Sickles.”

II

Abigail stared. For once, she had no idea what to say. So this was Daniel Sickles, lawyer and rake, the most elegant scoundrel of the age. Dan Sickles, who eight years ago had shot to death his wife’s lover in broad daylight, quite close to the White House, in front of innumerable witnesses, and was acquitted. Dan Sickles, who had served the Union with honor as a major general, had lost a leg to a cannonball at Gettysburg, and somehow arrived back in the capital as a hero, although in truth he had disobeyed orders and nearly lost the battle for the North.

Dan Sickles, one of Mr. Lincoln’s most trusted friends.

Dan Sickles, the famous villain whom many of the young men of Abigail’s circle secretly envied for his daring, and his success. Abigail herself considered the man a murderer, but saw no point in saying so. Indeed, so great was her continuing surprise that the next words out of her mouth sounded, even to her own ear, bizarre.

“You should put the cigar out.”

Sickles was standing at the window, looking down into Fourteenth Street. He balanced rather well on the wooden leg; it was the getting to his feet that was difficult. He took the cigar from his mouth, examined it, put it back, puffed. “Why?” he finally asked.

“The cigars belong to Mr. McShane,” she said. But she lowered the poker.

The general considered this. He picked up a book from the shelf—a Bible, as it happened. Biblical quotes worked well with the young nation’s judges, especially with a man like Salmon P. Chase serving as Chief Justice. Chase quoted Scripture constantly. As Treasury secretary a few years ago, he had placed the motto
IN GOD WE TRUST
on the coinage. “Will the cigars be buried with him?” asked Sickles.

“I would expect not.”

“Does the widow smoke?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Then I doubt I’m doing any harm.” He took the cigar out of his mouth, examined the broad end, flicked a bit of ash onto the worn blue carpet, then began puffing again. “Unless you plan to preserve the cigars for the monument to be constructed in your employer’s honor.” Another
glance at the window, perhaps indicating the ugly uncompleted obelisk south of the White House, intended as a monument to the nation’s first President. “Your employer had very good taste,” said Sickles. A pause. “Except in women.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Abigail, stiffly.

“I most certainly was not referring to you, Miss Canner.” His contagious smile was a bright surprise. “That would change my evaluation, I assure you.”

While Abigail struggled to work through all the implications of his impertinence, Sickles, not without difficulty, sat down once more. “I suppose you heard that Speed got us more time. With Lincoln’s lawyer dead, I don’t see that the Senators had much of a choice. Not that they care about whether they’re fair or not, but to say no just wouldn’t look good back home.” He patted his pockets. “Now, Miss Canner. Are you going to help me or not?”

“Help you what?”

“Break into McShane’s desk.”

She blinked. She felt oddly dull. “You said you didn’t do that.”

“I lied. You were holding a poker, and I didn’t particularly want to get hit.” He was pressing his knife into the drawer again. His charm had caused her to forget for a moment that he had killed a man in cold blood. “There’s some kind of false bottom. We need to see what’s underneath it.”

“Mr. Sickles, I hardly think—”

“Ouch,” he said, having stubbed his finger.

Abigail managed to rouse herself from her torpor. “Please tell me what you are looking for.”

Sickles looked at her. “They say you’re the smart one.”

“I beg your pardon.”

The general twirled his moustache. “I am looking for an item that Mr. Lincoln delivered to his lawyer for safekeeping. I would need Mr. Lincoln’s permission to tell you more than that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help me find it.” He pointed. “I assume you have the combination to that safe.”

“Only Jonathan—Mr. Hilliman has it.”

“Well, then, I hope you’re better at burglary than I am.”

“Mr. Sickles!”

“A joke, Miss Canner. A poor one. I apologize.” He bent to the desk, motioned her over. “Where I grew up, everybody knew how to burgle.”

Abigail hesitated, but only for a moment. Her mind worked with a speed that was sometimes frightening. Sickles she sized up at a glance: never trust him, except to protect his friends. The best sort of friend to have in a fight. Dinah Berryhill was like that, too—she had spent her life lying her way out of one mess, then lying her way into another, but Abigail knew that Dinah would never abandon her. If that was what Sickles was to Lincoln, then, however distasteful she might find the man, she was prepared to help him in any way she could.

“Tell me what to do,” she said.

III

After they broke two knife blades trying to pry open the secret compartment, Abigail suggested that they look instead for a knob or toggle. Sickles eyed her. “That’s a little obvious, don’t you think?”

Nevertheless, they swiftly found the switch, mounted beneath the drawer, and, when they pulled it, the panel snapped back.

Inside was a sheaf of papers and a brown envelope. Sickles glanced at the papers and shoved them aside, then peeked into the envelope, and stuffed it in his breast pocket.

“Excellent,” he said.

“What is it?”

“What Mr. Lincoln sent me to find.” Again he toyed with the moustache. “Don’t give me that look, Miss Canner. We are down to the last few votes, and the trial hasn’t even started yet. I assume you heard that Nebraska became a state yesterday? So that’s where we are. Not a single piece of evidence has been placed forward, and there are thirty-one Senators ready to convict. They only need three more votes.”

“We have been … keeping track.”

“And do you wish Mr. Lincoln to be convicted?”

“Of course not!”

“Good. Because I understand that you want to be a lawyer. Well, you are going to have to learn that nothing is more important than protecting your clients.”

She nodded toward a book on the shelf. Jonathan had recommended it, but Abigail had found time to read only ten or twelve pages. “In the introduction to his treatise on ethics, Mr. Curran De Bruler says that a lawyer’s highest duty is not to his client but to the public whom the bar serves.”

“Then Mr. Curran De Bruler is a fool. If you decide that a lawyer’s highest duty isn’t to his clients, pretty soon you’ll lose your clients to somebody who decides it is.” Heading for the door, he eyed the mess. “As I said, I really think you should clean the place. Tell Dennard I’ll be by later.”

“Mr. Dennard is in California.”

“No, he’s here. He arrived in town yesterday. Didn’t anybody tell you?” A laugh, low and affectionate. “Well, don’t worry about it. Nobody tells anybody anything in this town. If they did, everybody would be in jail.”

He was gone.

Abigail looked around the room, then stopped and, as Sickles had suggested, began to clear the papers he had strewn about the floor. She studied them closely, trying not to wonder what was in the envelope he had taken from the drawer. Her admiration of Mr. Lincoln was too great for her to take seriously the possibility that he might be concealing evidence. And it occurred to her, as she fetched the broom to begin sweeping up the chips of wood thrown off by all the prying, that the entire episode was too obvious. Precisely because she did not know what might have been in the envelope, she did not know for sure that it was important. It was peculiar indeed that she should have happened on Dan Sickles at precisely the right moment to catch him in the act of jimmying the drawer. She wondered what he was really looking for, and why he was so interested in the safe. And she reminded herself that Lincoln’s own reputation as “Honest Abe” said nothing about the veracity of his friends.