Murder in the Lincoln White House

by C. M. Gleason

  He put the clothing back on the table slowly. “So I reckon that means the killer might have switched coats with Billings. Why would a man move a body, then switch coats with him?” He turned away, clearly talking to himself. “He didn’t put the coat back on Billings. He just took the dead man’s coat—to wear it, I suppose—and threw his own coat into the broom closet, along with the knife. One thing it does tell us, though,” he continued, appearing not to notice that he’d somehow included her in his use of the word us, “is that the murderer was dressed in formal clothing. So he was an attendee of the ball—not a server, or a reporter,” he added, “or even a curiosity seeker. He was at the ball. And most likely needed to return—which is why I reckon he had to exchange coats. Couldn’t walk back in with blood on his sleeve.”

  “And regarding these belongings”—Constance gestured to the pile—“could any of them belong to the murderer and not Mr. Billings? Were any of them found in the pockets of the coat?”

  “No. The pockets of the dress coat were empty,” Mr. Quinn replied. “Those items were in his waistcoat or trouser pockets.”

  “Well, then. It’s very simple to prove that my father came home wearing his own dress coat, Mr. Quinn. In fact, Mr. Billings’s coat wouldn’t fit my father, and this one wouldn’t fit him either. As you’ve surely noticed, he’s a bit portly. This is proof my father didn’t stab Mr. Billings. Even though his knife was used to kill—”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Lemagne, but that’s not true,” Dr. Hilton said in a low but firm voice, drawing their attention to where he still stood near the body.

  “What are you talking about?” She spun on him, her cheeks hot with contempt that he should insert himself in the conversation. “My father did not kill Mr. Billings.”

  “Yes, of course, miss—I believe you.” The doctor held up his hands. “But what I do know is—what I wanted to tell you, Quinn—is that Custer Billings wasn’t killed by that dagger

  CHAPTER 15

  “THE DAGGER DIDN’T KILL BILLINGS?” ADAM SAID, WONDERING if he’d heard the man correctly. First coats and now daggers—and everything was not what it had seemed. What on earth was going on?

  Hilton met his eyes with clear understanding for the predicament. “I think you’ll find what I discovered very interesting. I know I did. I’d like to show you something if you’ll come closer.” He looked hesitantly at Miss Lemagne, who, fortunately, seemed to have little intention of accepting his invitation and was still standing over the two different articles of clothing. Both of which still looked black to Adam.

  Curious, he went to stand on the opposite side of the long table from Hilton. With a dubious glance toward Miss Lemagne, Hilton slid the sheet away from the torso to reveal a pair of triangular flaps of skin that had been pulled away to expose two white ribs and a mass of red-purple insides. Adam couldn’t identify anything but the ribs himself, but assumed the heart was behind there somewhere, and maybe a lung.

  “Well?” he asked, a little stridently as he felt the attention of their unwanted female guest on them, followed by the thought of the pale, weak Althea Billings in her frilly bed. There was something almost blasphemous about treating the dead so callously, especially when a loved one was only a few blocks away, mourning the loss.

  Hilton flipped the triangular pieces of skin back into place, covering Billings’s insides. “You see he was stabbed twice. Here, just below the ribs in the gut, and again here, at the base of the sternum. But what bothered me was the amount of blood—or, to be more specific, the lack of blood. Someone stabbed there should have bled quite a lot. But there wasn’t much at all.”

  “And so . . . ?”

  “I kept telling myself it’s not right. There’s something not right here, and that’s why I wanted to cut him open.” His voice dropped as he glanced at Miss Lemagne. “And when I did, I understood why he hadn’t bled out so much.”

  “Why?”

  “That knife.” Hilton said soberly. “That knife you showed me on Tuesday . . . it’s not what killed him.”

  “But Fremark saw it sticking out of the body. And it had blood on it.”

  “That wasn’t it that killed him, Quinn. It was something much longer than the knife blade. And more slender.”

  Adam took in these words with a wave of dismay. Maybe he hadn’t done the right thing giving this job over to George Hilton. He spoke carefully, trying not to sound as frustrated as he was. “A man saw the knife sticking out of his chest. It had blood on it. How could it not have killed him?”

  “Look here. Not too close or you’ll block the light. See this?” Hilton pointed to the gash at the base of the corpse’s sternum.

  “Looks like he got stabbed with a dagger,” Adam said stubbornly. Good God. What was he going to tell Lincoln—and Mrs. Billings—about what this lunatic doctor had done to the body? Not to mention the fact that Miss Lemagne was witness to this debacle.

  “Billings did get stabbed with the dagger. I ain’t arguing that. But that isn’t what actually killed him.” Hilton was still pointing at the lower gash. “Remember when you asked about the middle of this cut? About why it’s wider than the other laceration, just here in the middle? I told you I was gonna cut him open to look and see what happened inside. And this is what I found.”

  Once more, Hilton hesitated as he glanced over at their feminine audience. She was now watching with interest, but from a safe distance.

  With an audible grinding of his teeth, Hilton flipped open the large flap of skin that contained the gash in question. “Now look here, Quinn. This is where the dagger blade went into the body—right into the soft part below the sternum. Into the diaphragm—that’s that thin muscle right there, looks like a plate holding up the rib cage. But look here. Just above the lung, to the center more.”

  To Adam’s shock, Hilton pulled apart the ribs and pointed with an index finger into the glistening red mess. Miss Lemagne gasped behind them, and Adam turned to see her drop straight down, into a chair, as if her knees had given way. She was dead-white and her eyes looked liable to pop out of her face above the handkerchief pressed to her nose and mouth.

  Adam refrained from saying anything. He reckoned she’d made her decision to come and now had to make do. However, he did shift his body so as to block her view as much as possible as he leaned closer. His mouth was open now so he could breathe through it during this close proximity to death, and tried to forget that it was a man who was being disgraced—albeit gently—in front of him.

  And then he saw it: what Hilton’s dark, wet hand was pointing to. And with a rush of illumination, he understood.

  “That’s not a cut from a blade,” he said, straightening up. “It’s more like a—a puncture.”

  “That’s right. He was stabbed up through the diaphragm, directly into the heart. Then, you can see, he jammed the weapon—whatever it was—around in there. Pretty much destroyed the organ. Woulda killed the poor sot instantly; he’d’ve slumped in his arms. Probably got some blood on his killer’s coat sleeve that way,” Hilton said meaningfully. “But the important thing is, the diaphragm would’ve caught most of the blood from spilling out, with the hole kind of closing up from the pressure above.”

  “You mean all the blood from the . . . the sliced-up heart would have just been trapped inside the rib cage?” Adam was feeling a little queasy, especially now that he realized the shiny mass of purplish red organ between the white bones of the rib cage was a pulverized heart. He looked away.

  “Yes, sir. There was nowhere else for it to go, so it stayed trapped inside the torso. The other stab, the one in the gut, didn’t go deep enough to let much bleeding out there. And the heart had already stopped. I figure it was just for show, just to confuse us—that stab in the gut. Because soon as I opened him up, all the blood came out.” Hilton made a sound of satisfaction, then jolted when he obviously remembered a lady was present. “What the hell were you thinking, bringing the likes of her here?” he muttered.

  Ad
am merely shook his head, for he had no response other than, “There are many shades of black fabric, Hilton.”

  The doctor snorted a surprised laugh, then continued, moving around to stand next to Adam in order to further block her view—and possibly even obstruct what she could hear.

  “Seems to me someone tried to make it look like he died from the knife blade by stabbing him with a dagger right where he’d been punctured. But he was really killed by something long and pointed. And that’s why the cut you noticed is thicker in the middle—because the dagger went in through the same laceration, but that blade is flat, not triangular. He was killed with something shaped like a fireplace poker, but longer and more slender even. Long enough to go deep—up through the diaphragm in one sharp thrust. You can see evidence of that shape of puncture-like cut here . . . and here.”

  Adam didn’t bother to look that closely; he believed the doctor. “Someone skewered him. Like a damned rabbit.” He kept his voice down due to the lady present but he met Hilton’s clear dark eyes over the corpse.

  “Right. But then someone stabbed him afterward with the dagger.”

  It was like someone brushing away tracks in the snow, then using a branch to skitter over the top of it and make a different pattern.

  “The killer wanted to make it look like Billings died from the dagger wound.” Adam stepped back from the table. “Why? To either throw off suspicion—because the way he was killed is important or incriminating?—or to make it look like someone else killed him.”

  It really did appear that someone was trying to frame Hurst Lemagne. Or was the Southerner simply a random choice—a convenient one, because the killer had found Lemagne’s dagger and decided to use it to throw off suspicion?

  Either way, one thing was certain: if George Hilton hadn’t done such a thorough job of examining the body, no one would ever have known.

  “And then there’s Fremark,” Hilton said in a low voice. He glanced over toward the dividing sheet, giving Adam to understand the other man was similarly displayed on that side.

  “Oh, yes, you received the package.”

  “To the dismay of my patient at the time. That’s why I’ve been closing up the office part of the time since Wednesday. If I’m not careful, there’ll be rumors that Doc Hilton’s opening a human butchery down here.” He was joking, but Adam also reckoned there was a bit of truth—and wariness—in his tone.

  “Well, did you find anything of interest?”

  “Far as I can reckon, Fremark was stabbed by the same triangular-shaped ice pick–like weapon that did in Billings. But the killer wasn’t as careful about hiding his tracks; he just wanted the man dead. Seven wounds, all in his back. Probably killed him with the one to the heart from behind, which was one of the earlier ones, far as I can tell. But he wanted to make sure the man was dead, and he didn’t want to waste time.”

  “So there would have been blood everywhere, unlike with Billings.”

  “Wasn’t there?” Hilton looked at him curiously.

  “Yes, yes, there was. But it should be on the killer’s clothing too, right? With all that stabbing?”

  “Yes. Would have been impossible to hide it.”

  “What about Billings? I understand he was stabbed quickly up through the center of the torso, and that contained the blood—but how much blood would there have been?”

  “Enough that he had to switch coats, I reckon. Probably realized he got it on his sleeve. Billings didn’t bleed that much, and with the cutaway style, the only blood would have got on his waistcoat and shirt. Man was smart to switch coats.”

  “He just didn’t reckon on two different shades of black.”

  Hilton barked a laugh. “I guess not.”

  Adam was about to take his leave, figuring Miss Lemagne might have had enough of her visit to the makeshift morgue, when he thought of another question. “Have you found any trace or smudge of oil on either of them? Their clothing, bodies, anything?”

  The doc shook his head. “No. Why?”

  Adam explained, “I reckon it might have something to do with the murder weapon, or how he killed them. But I’m not sure how it fits.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. The killer is right-handed. Both men were stabbed by a man with his right hand.”

  “Right-handed? How do you know that?”

  “The way the weapon was shoved up inside Billings—its blow leans slightly to the left, as it would if a right-hander was doing it.” He demonstrated with a thrust of his right hand. “It’s not going to angle to the right if he’s right-handed.”

  Adam nodded. That made sense.

  “And for Mr. Fremark, he struck down from above, behind him. Must’ve been holding it in his fist, pointing straight down, because that’s the angle of the blows. Again, the angle bears this out—but he was attacking more recklessly and wildly the second time. And . . . based on where the highest blow is, and its angle, I can also tell that the killer was taller than Fremark. Maybe three, four inches. I could do some calculations and try to get more specific, if you want.”

  “A right-handed man who is slightly taller than the below-average Fremark . . . well, that does narrow it a bit, then, doesn’t it?” Adam said dryly.

  “Well, you do have the color of his dress coat to go by,” Hilton replied with a quick grin. “Just find the right shade of black trousers.”

  * * *

  Adam took all of Custer Billings’s belongings with him when he and Miss Lemagne left Hilton’s cellar office.

  One thing he did not have with him, to Adam’s great disgruntlement, was his prosthetic arm.

  When he asked after it, the doctor replied, “My friend Marcus can repair it, he says, but he’ll need a little more time.”

  Adam had to bite his tongue to keep from commenting on the fact that he hadn’t even been able to assess the damage to his wooden and mechanical arm—and that it would have been better to at least have something strapped to him, broken or not, rather than a stump that wasn’t even useful enough to offer a young lady for escort.

  Having to pin up his sleeve took him back to those early, ugly days after the attack near Lawrence, and all the pain, loss, and strangeness that had come with it.

  “Very well. I hope this Marcus can make it work properly again.” Otherwise, he’d not only have to buy a new prosthetic for more than a hundred dollars, but he’d have to wait weeks for it to be made.

  To Adam’s relief, Miss Lemagne seemed unusually subdued as they walked back along to the avenue. She hardly spoke at all, and he appreciated the fact, for that gave him the opportunity to think about what he’d learned from George Hilton, as well as from his female companion.

  Yet it seemed that although he’d determined several interesting facts, the answer to the problem of who’d killed Custer Billings and Lyman Fremark felt as elusive as ever. As they passed by, he glanced toward Lafayette Square and beyond, where the President’s House sat like a taunting reminder of Adam’s task.

  Tonight was the levee being given by the Lincolns, and Adam would need to attend. He’d likely be expected to give the president a report then as well. He sure as shooting hoped he had something to tell him.

  One thing he intended to do as soon as possible was to speak to Billings’s manservant, and possibly his wife, in order to determine whether the dress coat belonged to him or not. If it didn’t, then Adam had a definite lead to follow. Tracking down the owner of the coat could be a direct path to identifying the murderer. Unfortunately, he wasn’t familiar enough with the tailors in Washington to identify who’d sewn the coat. And being an out-of-towner, Miss Lemagne likely wasn’t either.

  He escorted Miss Lemagne to the St. Charles, then walked back another four blocks to the Willard. He was still achy and weak from his injuries, and he wanted some time to think before he took his next step.

  He found solace in his hotel room, empty now of his uncle’s belongings. That brought to bear another question: How much longer could he afford to live here,
now that Joshua was gone and no longer shared the expense?

  Not very long. Which gave Adam an even greater inducement to solve this crime and leave Washington forever.

  After a brief rest, Adam departed the Willard once again. This time, he took the trousers and dress coat found by Custer Billings’s body. He nodded to Birch as he exited the hotel, feeling both relieved and mildly disappointed not to find Brian Mulcahey waiting for him.

  Although he meant to take the clothing to the Billings household, Adam first made a detour back to the scene of the crime. He needed to see it once more in light of the new information he’d received.

  It was well past noon, and although people were going in and out of City Hall from both the Judiciary Square entrance and the street-facing one, no one was near the temporary building that had been erected for the ball. Now that its purpose had been fulfilled, the building would be torn down sometime within the next month or so, and its lumber used for some other purpose.

  Now, as he stood there near the entrance to the hall, he reimagined the murderer’s actions once again.

  Mr. Billings standing there. He must have known the murderer well enough to step off the wooden walkway, to move out of the way of any foot traffic going from City Hall to the dance hall, to speak with him. They stood right next to the freshly painted wall. The murderer steps toward him and shoves his pike-like weapon up into Billings’s diaphragm and rib cage.

  One smooth, quick, perfect blow.

  Adam frowned. But the tool with which the man had skewered Billings . . . it had to have been several inches long. Seven or eight at least—definitely longer than the dagger belonging to Lemagne. It was not the sort of instrument easily hidden, and certainly not readily withdrawn from some hiding place and then plunged into a man’s torso without him noticing or reacting....

  Billings had been stabbed from the front, and yet there were no defensive wounds on his hands—no blood on his gloves, no cuts. If he’d been threatened, surely there would be deep heel marks here, and a twist and step to the side, too . . . but there was no evidence of it.