Murder at the Capitol

by C. M. Gleason

  “I’m not certain Miss Lemagne is prepared to have visitors right now, but suppose I go inside and see what the situation is.” Sophie thought that either Constance would be unwilling to part from her father’s side, or that she might need to step away as the doctor and his assistant tried once more to set the bones of his leg. She shuddered at the thought.

  “Oh, thank you, Miss Gates,” replied the young woman. The fact that she didn’t attempt to wheedle her way inside made Sophie think she truly was concerned and not so much interested in gossip. “I’ll wait right here.”

  When Sophie walked in, she heard a shriek and knew it was time for Constance to give the physician space to do his difficult job. She took her friend—she supposed Constance was now her friend, of sorts—by the arm and said, “Felicity Monroe is outside. She’s very concerned about you. Perhaps you’d like to step out and speak with her for a moment while Dr. Forthruth is seeing to your father.”

  Constance didn’t argue, but she did stumble as she looked back over her shoulder as the men gathered around her parent once more. “Daddy,” she whispered, and clung tighter to Sophie.

  Once out in the sunshine, Constance seemed to collect her bearings—and, unexpectedly, her southern manners. “Miss Monroe,” Constance said with a nearly perfect hospitable inflection. “How kind of you to call.”

  And people said the British had stiff upper lips.

  “Miss Lemagne, I’m so, so terribly sorry to hear about your father,” said her visitor, clasping Constance’s hand.

  Sophie drifted toward the house as the two young women exchanged hand squeezes and leaned toward the other in intense conversation. She wondered if it would be possible for her to leave, now that Miss Monroe had arrived and Mr. Lemagne had been settled. There wasn’t much else she could do, and she’d abandoned Clara Barton, leaving her to manage the two large sacks of bandage and blanket donations for the Union soldiers at the infirmary.

  She’d not had the chance to ask her friend about Pinebar Tufts, her coworker at the Patent Office, and so she hoped to intercept Clara leaving the hospital before she went home for the afternoon. A quick check of the watch pinned to her shirtwaist told Sophie that it was nearly four o’clock, and she ventured toward the two other young women, who seemed to be chattering along with less emotion and angst.

  “Constance, I hope you’ll excuse me, but I must leave to meet up with Miss Barton,” Sophie said. “Perhaps Miss Monroe will stay with you for a while until Dr. Forthruth is finished.”

  “I certainly will,” replied the lovely and agreeable Miss Monroe, still clasping Constance’s hand. “I can send Bitty home, and wait until Carson—er, Mr. Townsend I mean—can come to fetch me.” Her cheeks turned slightly pink.

  Sophie remembered that Mr. Townsend was the fiancé of Miss Monroe, for whose wedding she’d had a dress sewn in New York that required a specific trunk to be made to accommodate its size when sending it back (the actual size and design of such an extravagant dress Sophie found impossible to imagine). “That would be very kind of you, Miss Monroe.”

  “Oh, would you, Miss Monroe?” said Constance, glancing worriedly toward the house.

  “Of course. Miss Gates, could I have Vancy drive you somewhere?” She indicated the barouche, with its waiting driver and the woman inside—presumably the aforementioned Bitty. “There’s no sense in you walking about with all of those soldiers everywhere, crowding the streets and making all sorts of ruckus. Why, my papa won’t even let me walk to the market anymore.”

  Surprised at her kindness, Sophie accepted with enthusiasm. “I very much appreciate it, Miss Monroe. Constance, I hope things will go well with the doctor, and your father won’t be in too much pain. I’ll call tomorrow to see how he—and you—are doing.”

  “Thank you for everything, Sophie.” To her surprise, Constance enfolded her in a heartfelt embrace. “Such a terrible day it’s been—what with finding Mr. Tufts hanging at the Capitol, and then poor Daddy . . . and poor, sweet Midnight . . . well, at least she’s going to be all right.” Her words choked off and she dabbed at her nose with the lace-edged handkerchief she clutched.

  “Mr. Tufts?” said Miss Monroe. “Did you say hanging? At the Capitol? Was that who it was?” Her expression was stricken.

  “Yes. His name was Pinebar Tufts. He worked at the Patent Office,” Sophie said, watching her curiously. “Did you know him?”

  “My papa does. If it’s the same Mr. Tufts,” she added, giving a short laugh. Then she sobered. “How absolutely horrible. Just horrible to do something like that.”

  Sophie opened her mouth, then closed it. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to mention her belief that Mr. Tufts had been murdered. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t do some subtle interrogating. “Was he a friend of your father’s?”

  Miss Monroe tilted her head. “I’m not quite certain. My papa is a lobbyist for the mining companies, and he knows so many people I can’t keep count of all of them, or why, or how. I don’t really pay much attention. We’re always having important dinners at our house—the congressmen come, and some of the senators too—though there are fewer now with the secessionists having gone south. Other business people too—like the men who cast the iron for the new Capitol dome. I don’t remember whether Mr. Tufts was at one of papa’s dinners because of business, or if he knows him some other way. I just know Papa has spoken of him—his name is so unusual, I remembered it.”

  Sophie decided that was all she was going to learn from Miss Monroe, at least for now. But she’d mention it to Mr. Quinn the next time she saw him . . . which she would make certain was soon. She wanted to find out what he’d learned, if anything, so far.

  Perhaps it wasn’t exactly justifiable, but Sophie had already begun to think of the investigation as “hers”—this personal attachment due to her having determined almost immediately that Mr. Tufts had been murdered.

  CHAPTER 5

  Since Ballard’s Alley was in the First Ward—the area of the city which butted up to the north side of Lafayette Square and the President’s House—Adam decided a visit to George’s office would be the next stop in his day. Surely the doctor would have some news for him by now, because it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Adam had just finished a lengthy meeting with Stoddard about Mr. Lincoln’s concerns regarding Union military guns being stolen and sold to Washington residents and possibly even being shipped south to the Rebels. The president wanted Adam to look into a particular regiment commander who could be spearheading some of the illegal sales. It wasn’t urgent that he do so immediately, so Adam decided he could take the time to speak with George Hilton.

  As always, when he walked along the neat street lined with comfortable houses, Adam found it unappetizing to know that behind the row of pretty, well-kept homes was a sort of inner mews, a hidden alley, where the poor and indigent scraped out a living. One could walk up Fifteenth Street, and then turn on L Street and then onto M Street and never realize that between the two strips of houses was an unseen neighborhood filled with rickety structures and muddy, refuse-strewn walkways with the occasional scrawny chicken or goat. Both enslaved and free blacks lived in the shacks clustered in these blind alleys, as well as immigrants—mostly from Ireland and Germany.

  Tucked into one of these subset neighborhoods of the capital city was a tiny, whitewashed church called Great Eternity. The only thing that indicated its role as a place of worship was the small cross perched on the peak of its roof and another one hanging on the main entrance. Adam didn’t climb the four steps to the front door, but instead walked around the sparse, muddy lawn to a set of stairs on the side, which descended to a subterranean entrance.

  When he tried the door, Adam found it bolted tight from the inside. He frowned. That had never happened before.

  Slightly unsettled, he looked around, then climbed back up the stairs. What if George hadn’t made it back to his office with the body? What if he’d been intercepted on the way—while in
possession of a white man’s corpse? He set his jaw grimly.

  There were two small windows on the back of the half-buried wall, only inches above the ground—which was a godsend, considering that the type of work George Hilton did required some ventilation. The subterranean room also helped to keep the space cool.

  He was crouched on the ground trying to look through one of the skinny windows when he heard the metallic clunking sound of a bolt being thrown open.

  “Adam,” said the doctor, standing in the doorway to the cellar. He sounded strangely relieved. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Adam lifted his brows. “Really? You’re locked up tighter than a drum in here.”

  George shook his head and stepped back for Adam to enter. His mouth was in a flat line. “Didn’t want anyone to walk in on me—again.”

  Adam didn’t need the details; it wasn’t difficult to realize what had happened. He made a quick decision. “I’m going to ask Mr. Lincoln for a letter for you to have—to show people in case someone asks.” When George began to shake his head, he continued. “I reckon it’ll be better than nothing.”

  The other man just turned and walked to the back of the space, flinging aside a heavy blanket that separated the room as he passed through. “I haven’t done as much as I’d hoped—got called away to an injury on The Island. Man fell off a chimney, landed on his back on the pile of bricks below. Nothing I could do for him—by the time I got there, he was dead.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Doc. There was a big accident down in front of the Capitol too. Hurst Lemagne was injured pretty badly. I don’t think he’s going to walk again.”

  “Miss Lemagne’s father? The southern woman who draws? She came here with her maid.”

  “Yes. The doctor who came to the scene says Hurst broke his leg—thigh bone.”

  “Femur.”

  Adam shrugged. “I reckon. Anyhow, they tried to reset the bone there on the street, and they couldn’t do it. I don’t know whether they got it in place once they got him home or not.” He was going to have to call on Miss Lemagne to find out.

  “A femur fracture is serious,” George said soberly. “You’re likely right—he won’t walk again.”

  “Doesn’t look that way. Never seen anything like that before—the leg’s just kind of turning inward, but it looks strange and it won’t straighten out at all. Doctor said the break is right at the hip, but every time we tried to pull it to realign the bone, it just shifted back the way it was. Poor sot.”

  George sucked in a breath between his teeth. “I hope they gave him chloroform or laudanum.”

  “After the first try, yes. The doctor was going to when they got him back to his house.” Discouraged by that and so many other things, Adam shook his head, then looked at Pinebar Tufts’s pale body. Although unclothed, it was covered from the waist down. George had sliced into the body’s throat and abdomen, leaving dark red lines where the incisions had been made. Adam didn’t look at that part too closely, for he still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of a man’s insides being exposed or extracted—even in the name of science and justice. The smell was bad enough—and as it was July, he expected it to get a lot worse pretty damned quickly.

  “I left his clothing over there,” the doctor said. “I didn’t look at it closely—nor dug through his pockets. Thought I’d leave that to you. There was a note pinned to his coat?”

  “Yes. I’ve got it here.” Adam showed George, who looked at it closely, then turned back to his work. “I know you’ve just started, but have you found anything I should know?”

  “Yes, I have.” There was a hint of excitement in his voice—which was saying something, for George was usually very even-keeled in tone and action. Only rarely did he make a jest, and even then it was dry and subtle. “This man didn’t hang himself. He was murdered.”

  “I thought so,” Adam replied, and was amused to see the enthusiasm in the other man’s eyes deflate.

  “You already knew.”

  “I suspected as much—thanks in part to Miss Gates, who pointed out to me that a man doesn’t generally hang himself while wearing gloves and a coat.”

  “I have proof, not merely conjecture,” the doctor replied, a bit stiffly.

  Adam smothered a grin. “And I reckon that proof is exactly why I pay for your kerosene lanterns.”

  George shot him a dark look, but his lips twitched from behind the cropped beard and mustache. “I’ve been going through lots of oil lately, here, Adam. You keep anticipating me, and I might be buying more lanterns need to be filled.”

  Adam chuckled. He not only admired the doctor’s skills, but he liked him as a man as well. And it was a testament to George’s trust in him that he would make such a jest—him being a black man and Adam being a white one. Even free blacks generally showed extraordinary deference to whites, rarely letting down their guard, for there was always the chance that the wrong word to the wrong person could send them off for a whipping by one of the constables, to jail, or, worse, sold illegally into slavery.

  “So, what sort of proof do you have? A blow to the back of the head maybe? Something that might have left blood on a hat like this?” Adam gestured with the bowler Miss Gates had found and showed the doctor the bloodstain.

  “That, and more.” George carefully lifted Tufts’s head and shoulder, rolling the body onto its side. “As you seem to already know, here’s where he was struck. Notice the shape and type of contusion—it looks like he used something rounded or blunt. Not very large, though. Even with the hat on, a sharp edge would have split the skin in a line. Here you can see it crushed it open more than sliced it.”

  Adam nodded. “Like the head of a walking stick.”

  “Coulda been.”

  “But that alone doesn’t prove Piney Tufts was murdered,” Adam mused. “You said there was more.”

  “Oh yes. Look at this.” George let the body roll onto its back once again. “You’ve got the thick, rounded mark of the rope dug into his throat from where he hung. It goes around the neck at an angle, along under the chin and then up in the back, as one would expect from a hanging rope and the body’s weight pulling down. It’s cylindrical-shaped contusion. But do you see that dark mark on the side of the neck?”

  “It’s not angled. As if the rope went straight back instead of up, at least part of the way on the side of his neck.” Adam looked at him. “As if the rope moved?” He didn’t understand.

  “That’s what I wondered. So I took a closer look, and I found this.” To Adam’s horror, George used two large fingers from each hand to pull apart the skin at the incision that ran down the front of the throat. Adam automatically reached up to touch his own neck. He couldn’t—nor did he care to try—identify any part of the red, pink, and white insides exposed by the doctor’s hands.

  “The larynx is crushed,” said George. Though his stomach was turning a little at the grisly sight of mincemeat where the throat was, Adam watched as George used the tip of a pair of pincers—forceps, he thought they were called—to probe into the open skin.

  “Wouldn’t that happen from the rope?”

  “No. The larynx might be bruised or even damaged, but not in this manner, and not in this location. The neck would break, the and windpipe squeezed off, but the larynx wouldn’t be demolished like this, not here. It’s as if a great weight pressed into it, or onto it. That’s not from a hanging rope.”

  Adam raised his eyes to find George watching, as if waiting for him to catch up. It didn’t take him long—he was so used to reading markings and interpreting them. “So you reckon he was killed first, then? With something . . .” His voice trailed off as he tried to picture how it had happened. “Something pressed across his windpipe.”

  “That’s the only explanation I have for that sort of damage,” George replied. “The shape of the breakage and the marks on the skin indicate something long and hard, pressed against his throat, like you said. Asphyxiated him. Tufts was dead before that noose went around his
neck—do you notice how pale his face is? Not purple or red like it usually is when a man dies at the noose. Whoever did it killed him first, then strung him up to make it look like he hanged himself.”

  “Something across his throat.” Adam tried to imagine it, how it would have to happen. It came to him. “Like a stick—a walking stick or a cane. The same thing they hit him with, maybe. Whoever it was pushed the stick against Tufts’s throat—held him on the ground, or up against a wall—until he suffocated. The force was so hard it made a straight mark across his throat instead of a rounded one like a rope. But the position of the rope hid most of the evidence.”

  “Except for the smashed larynx,” George said quietly.

  There was no doubt that Pinebar Tufts hadn’t crushed his own windpipe, then climbed up the derrick and thrown himself over with a noose around his neck. If the body had simply been taken away without such a close examination, no one would have been the wiser and Piney Tufts would have wrongly been accused of suicide.

  “And so murder it is,” Adam said, drawing in a deep breath. That meant he’d be continuing this investigation for certain. And Miss Gates would be more than gratified to know that her suspicions were correct.

  “Now to determine who—and why.” He looked at the doctor. “Can you narrow down the time of death any further?”

  “After midnight, likely in the early hours of the morning. He was completely stiff when I first saw him—that was at half eight—so time of death would have been not long after midnight.”

  “Whoever wrote the note killed him. That’s almost certain. Did you find anything on Tufts that might help identify the murderer? Hair? Threads?” Adam went on, musing more to himself than aloud, “Since Tufts was unconscious, whoever suffocated him probably did it when he was lying on the ground, instead of while he was standing, so we can’t reckon how tall the killer was by the position of the stick across his throat. But he bumped his head on the beam above him on the crane, so he must have been at least tall enough to do that. Which would put him at . . . at least five feet and nine inches. And he had very light hair. Blond or white. Straight.”