The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen L Carter

  And the only other thing he needed was—

  “Woolgathering?”

  Abigail.

  III

  “I was not woolgathering,” he said, hiding his delight. “I was trying to be sure that I had completed all my tasks before going to dinner.”

  Abigail shut the door behind her. “Dinner,” she repeated, as if she had discovered a new vice. “I see.”

  “I am dining with the Jay Cookes.”

  “Very impressive. At what time?”

  “Eight.” He glanced at the grandfather clock. “It is half past six. I must be going, or I shall be late.” An expression crinkled her face, an emotion Jonathan was afraid to identify. An instant later it was gone. His next words were blurted, unthinking; and it was some while before he could explain the impulse, even to himself. “I am not escorting Miss Felix. She has left the city and returned to Philadelphia.”

  The gray eyes widened slightly. “So I am given to understand.”

  “She had urgent family matters to attend to,” he gabbled.

  “I am sorry to hear that. But let me tell you why I am here—”

  “Wait. That was a lie.” His face burned; he felt a fool; yet could not stop. “The reason Margaret left is that we had a disagreement. It became obvious to both of us that another—”

  Abigail held up a palm. “Please, Jonathan,” she said, voice a little faint. “Not now.”

  “We have to talk about this.”

  “I said, not now. I, too, am here on urgent matters.”

  “Not Mr. McShane’s diary again. I told you, it is missing.”

  “I was mistaken about the diary.” She opened the door to McShane’s office. “The diary could not in any case have contained the key to the cipher, because Rebecca Deveaux would have had no means of consulting its pages.”

  Abigail tugged a slim volume from the shelf. As Jonathan watched, she turned a page, then another, then a third, until she evidently found what she wanted. She ran her finger down the text, nodded to herself, replaced the book.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Come with me, please. I need you to drive me in your carriage.”

  “Where are we going?” He pointed to the clock. “I really do have to meet the Jay Cookes.” Those gray eyes, as always, weakened his resolve. “Everyone is taking the night off,” he muttered in exasperation.

  “Not everyone.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Possibility

  I

  “WHY ARE WE here?” asked Jonathan, not for the first time. “Surely it would represent a conflict of interest for me to go inside.”

  Abigail sat grimly, no whisper of fun on her smooth countenance. Bits of paper and brush swirled in the gentle night wind. They were on Sixth Street, very near the train depot. “You may wait in the carriage if you like,” she said.

  Bewildered, Jonathan stared at the three-story brick mansion of the Chief Justice. It was well lit, yet forbidding rather than welcoming in its stolidity. To arrive at such a place, at such an hour, was of a piece with the entire mad course of this maddening relationship. Dennard had instructed all of them, but Jonathan in particular, to have no more contact with Abigail Canner until the trial reached its end. But here he was again, charging around the city with her.

  “Please tell me what we are doing,” he said.

  “Only what I told you. Solving the murders of Rebecca Deveaux and Arthur McShane.”

  “My priority is the impeachment trial—”

  “The solution is inside, Jonathan.” She glanced at him, eyes cool. “To your dilemma and mine.”

  II

  They were admitted without difficulty: this was Abigail’s third or fourth visit to the house, and Jonathan knew, whether he approved or not, that she had become close to Mrs. Sprague. The butler bade them wait in the library rather than the parlor: a mark, under the rules governing such matters, of a business rather than a social visit.

  Somehow the domestic staff always knew.

  “Are we here to see Mr. Chase?” Jonathan whispered. “I thought your friend was Mrs. Sprague.”

  “We are here to see whoever will see us, Jonathan. Rebecca’s deposit is in this house. We are known to be searching for it. Let us therefore wait patiently to see who greets us.”

  “Are you suggesting that the Chief Justice might—”

  “Let us wait.”

  The room was redolent of cigar smoke: Salmon P. Chase did not use tobacco, but most of his associates who came calling did. Bookshelves reached to the ceiling. The silver-blue carpet was new, and absurdly expensive: they could sense its quality by merely standing on it. The heavy damask curtains and furniture belonged to a larger house. Chase was building a second home on his estate, Edgewood, a few miles away. In that great expanse, the furnishings no doubt would seem less overwhelming.

  “I understand that General Baker has recovered from his illness,” said Jonathan.

  “Indeed.”

  “Do you credit the rumor that he was poisoned?”

  Abigail’s voice was bleak. “In this dreary city, there is little that I would not credit.”

  The doors opened, and Kate Sprague stepped inside.

  “I knew you would be back here sooner or later,” she said, her eyes more on Abigail than on Jonathan.

  “Then you know why we are here.” When Kate said nothing, she continued, softly. “I think it is time to tell the truth. You have the missing list, don’t you? A hundred different people searching, and you’ve had it all along.”

  Kate licked her lips: a most unladylike gesture. She was dressed, radiantly, in an evening gown and tiara, but whether she was on her way out or had just returned was unclear. Jonathan wondered where the family was: her father, her husband, her two children.

  “Yes,” Kate finally said.

  “The list is here?” Jonathan began, still not believing any of this, but Abigail shushed him.

  “May I ask how long you have had the names?” she asked.

  “Almost a year.”

  Abigail now looked less angry than sorrowful. “And yet you never told me. All those days sitting in the gallery, and you never told me.”

  Kate lifted her narrow chin. “I was sworn to secrecy. I was in a dilemma. It is not that I wanted to hide them, it was that I had no choice. And so I decided that if you worked it out for yourself I would give them to you. Not otherwise.” She read the disbelief in the eyes of her guests. “Please, Abigail. I was quite certain that you would, in time, correctly interpret Rebecca’s clues.”

  The two women watched each other, and Jonathan caught some, not all, of the facets of their visual duel: intelligence, admiration, ambition, envy, and much more. He sensed, even now, that the two of them were privy to a secret knowledge that he lacked; a knowledge not only of the documents themselves, but of the significance of their existence, all this time, under this roof.

  “That is why you befriended me,” said Abigail, and Jonathan sensed the anguish beneath the surface chill. “You wanted to see how close I was to uncovering the secret.”

  “But you are wrong, Abigail. I genuinely like you.” Kate seemed to expect a response in kind; hearing none, she pressed awkwardly on. “I never asked you about what progress you were making in your search. The reason I spent time with you is that you are the most fascinating woman in Washington City.”

  But Abigail refused to be diverted. “How did you come into possession of the missing papers?”

  Kate sighed, hesitated, glanced uneasily at Jonathan as if to say that this was a matter only a woman would understand. “Rebecca Deveaux gave them to me,” she finally said.

  “To hold for her.”

  “Yes. In case something happened. She called them her deposit. I was to hold the papers until … until I was asked. Until someone broke the code, she said. She had left a coded message for Mr. McShane, who was a signals officer and understood ciphers.”

  Abigail skipped what seemed to Jonathan the next logic
al question—indeed, the next logical series of questions—and instead asked, with no warmth in her tone: “Will you give me the deposit?”

  “You must promise to keep Father and me out of it. You must tell no one how you obtained them.”

  Jonathan, perhaps unwisely, spoke up. “But that is not possible, Mrs. Sprague. You have been conspiring against the—”

  Abigail’s hand over his mouth surprised him into silence. “We will tell no one,” she said. When Kate still seemed reluctant, she added, gently, “We will use the papers as Rebecca would have wanted.”

  Kate hesitated. “Father knows nothing of this matter. And he is not to learn anything of this matter.”

  “Of course,” said Abigail.

  “Wait here, please,” said Kate, and left.

  “I don’t understand,” said Jonathan when they were once more alone in the library. “Mrs. Sprague is obviously a conspirator. Why are you being so kind? No, I will not shush. Why is she turning over the deposit so readily? What do the two of you know that I don’t?”

  Abigail rounded on him, and for the first time tonight, he understood that her anger, whatever its source, did not exempt him. “Please be so good as to let me handle this my own way,” she hissed. “I suggested that you wait in the carriage. You did not. But you are not going to ruin this, Jonathan. You are not. I know what I am doing, and I am asking you to trust me. Now, hush.”

  So intense was her fury that Jonathan actually stepped back two paces, thereby nearly colliding with Kate as she marched back into the room.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and actually smiled, if weakly. She had removed the tiara, and most of her jewelry. She was holding two envelopes, both battered. “I have your word,” said Kate.

  “You do,” said Abigail solemnly.

  “Everything that I did, I did for Rebecca.” She hesitated. “And for Father, of course.”

  “I understand.”

  “And I … I truly do like you, Abigail. You have been a good friend.”

  “As have you.”

  “But I suppose that is over now,” said Kate sadly, handing over the letters.

  For an instant, Abigail wrestled with an unexpected emotion: despite her anger, she was unable to hide the clouds of sorrow and pain. It occurred to Jonathan that she really did like Kate; and that their time together had been, for Abigail Canner, a taste of what might have been … if only …

  “I suppose,” Abigail finally said.

  Although etiquette demanded that the butler see guests to the door, Mrs. Sprague conducted them herself. In the front hall, Abigail had a last question. “Why didn’t you destroy the papers?”

  Kate seemed surprised. “Goodness, dear. Why on earth would I do that?”

  “To protect yourself.”

  “But I am unimportant. I care little for my own future. If I destroyed those pages, I could never put them to use.”

  III

  “Where are we headed now?” asked Jonathan when they were in the carriage once more. He had started north because the horses happened to be pointing north. “Shall I take you home?” A thought. “And how did you know?”

  Abigail spoke from an exhaustion so deep she could barely form words. “Oh. Rebecca told us. She’d been trying to tell us. That code. It was so simple. So simple.”

  “So Octavius was right?”

  “Octavius is a genius. Of course he was right.” A brittle laugh, immediately swallowed in the frosty, foggy April night. “It was number thirteen, just as he worked out. It’s just that it wasn’t Mr. McShane’s favorite book. It was his favorite document.”

  “Document?” Jonathan saw. “You don’t mean it was the Constitution?”

  “Of course it was, and I am a dunderhead not to have guessed earlier. You remember his eloquence on the perfection of the Constitution. And his words, as you quoted them to me: the mightiest achievement in the history of the Republic.”

  “He was referring to the Thirteenth Amendment.”

  “Precisely. The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.” She leaned into the pitted leather, closed her eyes. Jonathan turned west, through the railroad yard. “It all works out. The number groups. The first was 1-6-3. The first section of the amendment, the sixth word, the third letter. That’s a ‘C.’ Take the others, one at a time, and the letters spell ‘C-H-A-S-E.’ ”

  Jonathan actually slapped his forehead. “It seems so obvious.”

  “Octavius says that every great idea is obvious, once someone has thought of it.”

  He slowed to cross a line of track. Although no trains were moving at this hour, some of the boilers had steam up, and would simmer all night. “But why are there two envelopes?” he asked. “Surely the list of conspirators cannot be that long.”

  “I am not certain.”

  “We should open the envelopes.”

  “No.”

  “Abigail—”

  She shook her head. “Jonathan, no. We have to think this through. We need a plan. We need to know what we are going to do before we look at the names.” She saw his face. “Oh, yes. We know what’s inside. Kate as good as told us. It’s a list of the names of the men—women, too, maybe—who participated in the conspiracy.”

  “Then we need to turn it over to—to—” He groped for the rest.

  “To whom, Jonathan? Mr. Stanton? General Baker?”

  “We can’t just keep it to ourselves! We know who the conspirators are! We know that Mrs. Sprague is the young woman who was carrying messages for them!”

  “I promised to keep her out of this, and I will keep my word.” Her tone brooked no disagreement. “And, besides, Jonathan. I am quite certain that Kate Sprague is not the young woman in question.”

  Jonathan’s head snapped around. “What?”

  “Mrs. Sprague has no need to join a conspiracy against Lincoln. He will be leaving office within a year in any case. Her only goal is to make her father President. She might have been on the track of the deposit, as others were. She simply tracked them better. I suspect, however, that her only intention was to use those names to garner support for her father. Kate might have used the list for blackmail, but that is the worst she would have done.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “I am quite serious.” She turned the envelopes over and over. “I do not believe that Kate would take such a chance. The risk to her father would be too great.” A shake of her head. “Besides, she is too fine a lady. She would never stoop to conspiracy.”

  “But a little blackmail isn’t beneath her?” He laughed, surprised at how, in his relief that the search was over, he felt almost inebriated. “I think you are allowing your friendship to run away with you.” He snapped the reins. “And, look here. If the young woman who carried messages for the conspirators was not Mrs. Sprague, then who is it? You have established that it cannot be Bessie Hale.” Jonathan had another thought. “And if Mrs. Sprague is not the young lady of the conspiracy, then how was Rebecca Deveaux able to know that she possessed the missing notes?”

  “Because Kate’s story was true. Rebecca gave them to her.” Abigail was sunk in thought. “Think, Jonathan. It all hangs together. Rebecca was frightened for her life. The only person in Washington City she trusted was my sister Judith. And Judith said to hide the letters where not even Judith would know where they were, so that if she were … taken … and asked where they were hidden, she would have nothing to confess.”

  “But why Kate Sprague?”

  “Because Rebecca knew her, from having worked in the household. Remember what Judith said? Rebecca worked in several of the great houses. She must have worked for the Chases before she worked for the Stantons. It hangs together. She would have needed a reference to work in the household of the Secretary of War, and what better reference than the Chief Justice, his friend?”

  Jonathan considered. “But if Rebecca worked for Mrs. Sprague, whom you insist was not a conspirator, and then for Mr. Stanton, who merely pretended to be one, then where did
she come across the documents that sent her to your sister and set all of these dreadful events in motion?”

  They emerged from the train yard, turned south on Eighth Street. “I am not all the way there yet, Jonathan. I am overlooking something. But the rest of it hangs together. Consider. Dr. Chastain said that Chanticleer took his deposit from him, remember? The list of conspirators was lost in Virginia. Is it too much to assume that it made its way into Dr. Chastain’s hands? And that he put it aside for his own protection, until my sister stole it or coerced it from him? After that, no doubt it was meant to be Judith’s deposit. But Judith saw Rebecca—young, frightened, and very much in danger—and gave it to her instead, then told her to hide them as security, not only against the conspirators, but even against Stanton himself.”

  “But why would the list of conspirators provide security against Stanton? He was only feigning membership in the conspiracy.”

  “I believe,” said Abigail, “that we now know why there are two envelopes.” She smiled at Jonathan’s mystification. “There is the list of conspirators, taken from Dr. Chastain. That was Rebecca’s deposit against the conspirators. The other envelope, I suspect, holds papers that she took, under my sister’s advice, during her time in service at Mr. Stanton’s house. That was her deposit against Mr. Stanton and General Baker.”

  “Surely you do not mean to suggest”—he stopped, then started again, as a look of painful comprehension crossed his face—“Abigail, we have to know what is in that second envelope!”

  “Not yet. Not until we have decided how to—”

  Both of them looked up at the same sound. Rushing out of the gray, misty darkness was a wagon, huge and massive, designed more for battle than for these grimy streets. It flew across the frozen meadow, the steeds pulling it directly toward their own carriage. Jonathan automatically snapped the reins and called to his own horses, but it was too late.

  The battlewagon struck the carriage midships, and then they were tumbling, Abigail and Jonathan, flying through the air and onto the verge of the railroad track, where they lay, dizzy and bruised.