The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (56 page)

“You asked only for a ride home,” said Jonathan nervously.

Abigail laughed. “Well, not
only
.”

Jonathan could not quite work Abigail Canner out. One day she seemed prepared to forget her investigation of the death of poor Rebecca Deveaux and focus instead on the trial; the next she was dragging him halfway across the city to look at what was left of Madame Sophie’s establishment. An hour ago, in the office, they had been discussing the day’s events. Now she had drawn him once more into her … well, into whatever it was that she called herself doing.

The wind picked up. The horses whined. “Have you seen what you came to see?”

“Not quite.” She was looking at the tenements across the way. “The fire was in the middle of the night. Still, the firehouse is less than a mile away. The building should not have burned to the ground.”

Jonathan looked at her. “Very well. The fire brigade obviously dawdled. They, too, must be part of the conspiracy.”

“I very much doubt that,” she said, continuing to study the windows. “But I do wonder why the house burned so fast.” She began to climb down.

“Abigail—”

“You may wait in the trap or you may come along.”

He hastily tied the horses and followed her across the street. The firemen had thrown down some sandbags as a barrier in front of what
remained of the house, but the makeshift wall had not kept the neighborhood out. Peering through the windows, they saw signs of looting. The smell of burnt wood permeated the rubble.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“I am not sure.”

“Then how will you know when you find it?”

Abigail ignored this. She stepped through the front entrance—the door had burned up, or been taken—and made her way to the stairs.

“You can’t go up there,” he said. He had seen a house in this condition at Petersburg; watched it collapse on the Confederate defenders; been sent inside afterward to count the dead. “Half the risers are gone, and there is very little flooring left.”

“I am not going up.” She crouched, and pointed at what had been a closet beneath the stairs. Outside, the wind blew harder. “See here? All the boards have burst outward.”

“From which you conclude?”

“That this is where the fire started. Inside the closet.” She stood. The floor nearly gave, and she grabbed his hand for support. Did not let go again. “Then it went along the carpet—see the burn marks? In a straight line, more or less.”

Something above them creaked heavily. Jonathan tugged her toward the door. “We have to get out of here.”

“One minute more.”

“Abigail, the building is going to collapse.”

“Look how the fire went up the walls.” He followed her eye. “The middle of the night,” she continued, “so Madame Sophie and her girls were asleep. I wonder which was her bedroom.” She stopped once more, peered into the shadowy closet. “Light,” she announced. “The light comes through. There is a room on the other side.”

“Probably where clients were entertained.” A loud crack, and a piece of the stair rail crumpled before their eyes. “Come on. There is no more time.”

“I suspect that it was Madame Sophie’s room. That is why the fire began in the closet.”

“You think the fire was set.”

“Isn’t it obvious that it was?” The closet floor had fallen into the basement. She tried to find another path to the bedroom. “The fire began in her closet to be sure that she would not survive it.”

Jonathan gave her wrist another tug. “I am skeptical that we can
reach that conclusion on so little evidence.” An uneasy glance at what remained of the ceiling. “We are neither of us trained engineers.”

“I agree. I could be wrong.”

“I am glad to hear you say that.”

“On the other hand, I could be right.”

A fresh gust of wind shook the structure. Dust pelted down from charred rafters.

“We have to go now,” said Jonathan, with vigor.

“I just need to see—”

“The whole place is swaying, Abigail. Look!”

She did; and it was. A window frame fell in.

“Almost done,” she whispered, squatting on the floor of the closet, trying to work it out. Burnt tatters of clothing were on hooks. She sniffed the air. Embers, and now something else: kerosene. Someone had crouched where she was crouching, poured kerosene over Madame Sophie’s dresses and robes, and set the fire.

Then she saw it, glittering in the corner: covered with soot, but very much out of place. She crawled over a broken beam to pick it up. The groaning above was sharper and faster.

“Jonathan.”

“Yes?”

“I think you are right. We should go. Very fast.”

They almost made the door. But a section of floor directly ahead fell into the basement, and would have carried them with it had they been running just a little faster. As they looked around for an escape, a weakened beam came down with a great crash, and bits of the second story with it. Abigail and Jonathan both fell hard and nearly slid into the hole, only to be yanked to their feet by a pair of strong arms. From what Jonathan could tell, a red-haired giant had pulled them from the rubble and was dragging them into the street.

Abigail turned to look, but the giant shouted at them to get down. Jonathan threw her to the ground, shielding her with his body as what remained of the building folded in on itself with a colossal roar. Burnt wood flew everywhere, the explosion possibly louder than the initial collapse. Windows were thrown open up and down the street. Lamps were lit.

They picked themselves up from the frozen mud. The giant had to be six foot six at least, probably more. Abigail made the introduction.

“Mr. Hilliman, this is Corporal Waverly, late of the Army of Northern Virginia.”

The giant grinned shyly. “Just ‘Mr. Waverly,’ I guess. I mean, we did lose the war, I guess, didn’t we?”

“You must be the gentleman Miss Canner was telling me about,” said Jonathan, breathing hard, his hand vanishing in the huge fist as they shook. “The one who looks after Miss Berryhill.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Abigail, “is what you are doing here.”

Waverly blushed. “Ma’am, Miss Berryhill asked me to look in on you from time to time.”

“Well, you certainly picked a good time to look in,” she said.

Jonathan offered Corporal Waverly a ride to wherever he had to be, but the giant declined nervously, saying a man of his station should not be riding in so fine a carriage. When Jonathan tried to insist, the corporal shook his head, backed away, and, then, quite suddenly for a man of his size, vanished into the shadows.

Jonathan turned to Abigail, who was brushing off her coat. “Thank you for that little adventure,” he said.

Abigail held out her hands. Her sleeves and skin were covered with soot.

“Nanny is not going to like this,” she said.

“It was your idea.”

“And well worth it.” She was brushing dust from her find.

“What is that?” said Jonathan.

Abigail held the object up into the spill of a streetlamp, twisting and turning it as the metal glittered brightly. “A pipe tool, imported from Europe.” She pronounced the next words with an air of finality. “It belongs to Mr. Grafton.”

IV

This time they skipped Dennard and went straight to Dan Sickles. In the past, when visiting Washington City, Sickles had always stayed with his old friends the Stantons. Since his arrival to help with the impeachment trial, he had taken a suite of rooms at the Willard Hotel, the finest in the city. Now he sat at the dining table in his dressing gown, looking tired and drawn, the pain obvious in the lines of his face. Abigail and Jonathan were across from him. The pipe tool sat on the damask.

The double doors to the bedroom were closed, and Abigail, suspecting that they had disturbed Sickles at his revels, felt herself withdrawing just a bit.

“Let’s think about this,” said Sickles when they had told the story. “Let’s assume that this contraption belongs to Grafton, although I’ll bet there are fifty of them in the city. A hundred. But assume you’re right. Do you have any way of knowing when Grafton lost it?” Looking from one exhausted face to the other. “Maybe he was a client of Madame Sophie’s. Did you consider that? Or maybe he did the same thing you did, skulking around looking for clues. You have no way to know, do you?”

“Surely you will concede,” Jonathan objected, “that Grafton is at the center of the conspiracy.”

“Only in the sense that lawyers are at the heart of every truly terrible decision that truly powerful people make. Me, I prefer to judge the client rather than the lawyer—” He stopped suddenly, and laughed, as if embarrassed by his own thesis. It occurred to Abigail that he was probably drunk.

To their surprise, Sickles hopped rather nimbly to his feet. He was not wearing his wooden leg, but hobbled around instead on a crutch. The stump was hidden beneath the robe.

“Do you know where I was when Booth shot Lincoln?” he said. “I was in South America on a mission. If I had been in Washington that night, it probably would have been me in the box with Lincoln. Maybe I could have made a difference. He almost died.” He was at the window. He plucked the curtain away, looked down at the city. “That’s why I’m here. Oh, I might have said yes anyway, but once they killed McShane—” Again he stopped. Swinging back into the room, he settled himself on the couch, waving at them to remain where they were. “I suppose we should arrest him. Grafton. I wonder who we could have do it. Stanton? Baker?”

“Sherman and Grant are a train ride away,” said Jonathan. “They would never betray Mr. Lincoln.”

“True. They wouldn’t.” He seemed amused. “We could send a wire, they could march in and snatch Grafton and lock him up—I don’t know—in Fort Lafayette or someplace. Far away from Washington, you see.”

“But we won’t,” said Abigail, as usual a step ahead.

“No, Miss Canner. We won’t. Know why?”

“Because, if Mr. Lincoln starts arresting people, claiming that they are part of a conspiracy, he will be convicted.” She rubbed aching eyes. “Especially if he has the army do it for him.”

“With this evidence—” Jonathan began.

Sickles snorted. “What evidence? A pipe tool that you and Miss Canner here found at the scene of the fire. That you
say
you found. We can’t prove it belongs to Grafton, and we can’t prove you found it where you say you did.” Again he smiled. “Don’t look so despondent. You did well.”

“We were almost killed!”

“That is what happens in war.”

Back in the carriage, Jonathan fulminated about Sickles’s nonchalance. Abigail let him run for a bit, then drew him gently to heel.

“I have an idea.”

V

At eight-fifteen the following morning, they met in the lobby of the building at Fourteenth and G. They were not due at the firm until nine-thirty. Together they trooped up the stairs, but only to the first floor, where, as expected, they found the lights on in Grafton’s offices.

“Ready?” asked Jonathan.

Abigail nodded.

“Maybe I should do this alone.”

“Open the door.”

So they knocked, and walked in, and found Mr. Plum sitting at his desk, one hand washing the other atop the blotter.

“Oh dear,” he was saying. He appeared to have been saying it for some time. He took in his visitors with a quick sweep of those huge eyes and then removed the thick glasses to look at them again. “Oh dear,” he said again.

“We would like to see Mr. Grafton,” said Jonathan, with the peremptory emphases of his class. “Immediately, please.”

Plum was already shaking his head. “Oh, no, sir, that would not be possible. My apologies. It isn’t possible.”

“The matter is urgent. I am afraid we will have to insist.”

“But he isn’t here. He’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Away,” said Plum. “He left a note. He said he had a wire last night. A crisis in his personal affairs. He did not say where he was going, only that he had no idea how long he would be away, and that I should see about assigning his cases to other counsel. This is most irregular, you see. Oh dear. Most irregular.”

He was still muttering to himself as, stunned, they left.

I

THE MANAGERS DID
not call Reverend Beecher. For two days, they brought in a parade of lesser witnesses. Two swore to erratic behavior on the part of the President, behavior that turned out to be not so erratic upon Sickles’s ardent cross-examination; another was an employee of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who testified that he had been told by his superior not to process certain reimbursement claims filed by colored families whose possessions had been destroyed by the night riders, but Dennard was able to show that the boss had been cashiered for diverting funds to his own use. The Managers did record a small success with a pair of witnesses who had heard the President make the most dreadful offhand remarks about the Congress, thereby—said the Managers—indicating his contempt for the body. But everybody was waiting for Henry Ward Beecher, and Henry Ward Beecher did not appear.

Rumors swirled. One story had it that the initial contact with the good reverend had been through Stanton, and that Beecher, outraged at Stanton’s betrayal of Lincoln, had decided not to testify. Another, easier for many to credit, held that Beecher was not prepared to testify anywhere under oath until the litigation over the scandal with Mrs. Tilton was resolved. The anti-Lincoln papers insisted that the President was holding some sort of threat over Beecher’s head, but nobody could come up with a plausible reason for the most famous preacher in America to fear a Chief Executive whose term looked about to end. The pro-Lincoln papers contended that Beecher had never intended to testify
against the President, that the Managers had floated his name without consulting him, and that, upon discovering what he would actually say if called, had decided to dispense with him.