Girl in Disguise

by Greer Macallister

  Rose Greenhow was dead.

  I wanted to be glad of it; I wanted to shriek in joy. Instead, I sat on my bed and examined the wallpaper, faded ever so slightly near the window, as the sun set outside and the room fell dark. My enemy’s passing, which I’d once prayed and wished for, brought me no happiness. It only meant another motherless child, Little Rose, as I was now motherless. There was nothing to celebrate in that.

  She’d almost made it home. On her way back from England, Greenhow’s ship had sunk just off the coast of the Carolinas, blasted by a Union defender. It was not a direct hit, and from the story I heard, the ship sunk slowly. Nearly everyone else survived the sinking. She leapt into the water and might have made it to shore, but she was weighed down by gold bars sewn into the hem and sleeves of her dress. Against my will, I often pictured her as I fell asleep, the lace of her collar rising up around her face like seaweed as the hoarded gold dragged the rest of her down, down, down.

  Chasing money was a fool’s pursuit. Some women might leave a family as their legacy, but others had an effect in completely different ways. I paused, thinking about what her life had left and what my life might leave. I thought of Pinkerton’s offer. I thought of what Tim would have suggested, had he been sitting there next to me. I thought of the line from Lincoln’s inaugural speech—the better angels of our nature.

  After that, it was only waiting.

  Chapter Thirty

  The End and the Beginning

  When the day came, I misunderstood it at first.

  It was only a few days short of the fourth anniversary of Fort Sumter, and when I first heard a boom from outside my window, I thought perhaps I’d missed a few days and that it was a salute being fired in commemoration. But no, it was the ninth of April, not the twelfth, and the boom was followed by other sounds, more difficult to identify.

  The noise from the street was tremendous. It started as a roar, far off, and resolved itself over time into a chorus of cheers and shouts. As I listened, the voices came clearer.

  And once I knew that it was the day I’d waited for—the day the war ended—then I knew it was time to follow through on the promise I’d made myself. Allan Pinkerton had offered me a position as an operative when the war was over, and this was the day I’d answer him.

  I couldn’t get to the office fast enough. I wasn’t even sure he would be there or whether DeForest or Hattie or anyone else I knew might be, and in a sense, it didn’t matter. I just wanted to walk through the door again. I just wanted to be among my fellow Pinkertons.

  I could barely contain my excitement, and as I walked, it indeed spilled out of me, and the smile on my face became a laugh and then a yelp of joy. I must have seemed insane, but on this day of all days, I knew I would be pardoned; the whole city, the whole nation, was going mad with happiness, and we had good reason. The streets were crowded for the early hour, and it took much longer than it usually would to make my way to Clark Street, but I wasn’t impatient. I was in motion. All was as it should be.

  No one else was at the office yet. It was barely past six in the morning. They would all come later, I told myself, but for the moment, I was alone. The door stood silent, closed, but behind it lay promise.

  Did I still have a key? I wasn’t even sure, and it didn’t matter. I desperately wanted to be back in that office, behind a desk, ready to throw myself into the work. I imagined the rows of shoulders of empty clothing in the costume closet, Pinkerton’s immense, scarred wooden desk, the drawers full of manila folders, each keeping a case file’s secrets. I had been away too long. Now I was early, but it was right and good. At last, I was just where I needed to be.

  I tried to turn the knob. It resisted. The packet of lock picks was in my hand in a flash, and I worked quickly. I couldn’t hear the click of the tumblers, of course, but I felt them yield.

  “Someone has to be first,” I told myself ruefully, joyfully, and swung open the door.

  For more Greer Macallister

  check out her debut novel

  The Magician’s Lie

  On sale now

  Author’s Note

  Kate Warne is one of the most interesting people we know almost nothing about.

  The real Kate Warne was indeed hired as the first female Pinkerton agent by Allan Pinkerton himself in 1856 after answering a newspaper ad. That much we know. Multiple accounts say she was a widow, though what happened to her husband is not clear, nor why she took the extremely drastic step of applying for a position that had never previously been open to women.

  We’re not even sure what Kate looked like. There are no confirmed images of her. Two photographs show up from time to time in discussions of her. Both date from the Civil War, and both show a person in men’s clothing, so it’s far from certain that we’re really looking at Kate. For such an influential and pioneering figure, precious little information about her has been recorded and passed down. Then again, as a detective and a spy, that’s probably how she liked it.

  Everywhere we turn for information on Kate’s life, there are blank spaces. Many of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s files are kept in the Library of Congress, and those files are extensive; however, much of the material previous to 1871 was wiped out by the Great Chicago Fire, and Kate’s entire career was previous to 1871. From those files, we know a few things: We know she was the first female detective, because Pinkerton wrote about hiring her. We know her work included befriending suspect Nathan Maroney’s wife to gather evidence on the Adams Express theft case. We know she disguised herself as a medium to investigate a poisoning case at the behest of a Captain Thayer (whose sister and her lover were, in fact, trying to poison him, as the investigation proved). And we know she was instrumental in saving Lincoln’s life on his way through Baltimore to his 1861 inauguration by pretending to be the sister of the disguised “invalid” Lincoln in his shawl and soft cap. Not a bad résumé, but there must have been so much more we don’t know about. In a way, that makes her the perfect subject for historical fiction. I’ve had the freedom to imagine her, for which I’m intensely grateful.

  As for the world I’ve drawn around her in these pages, I can say this: if truth isn’t always stranger than fiction, it is at least a great deal more complicated. I have streamlined, combined, and edited many people and events from the historical record to serve my own purposes here.

  Historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, George McClellan, and Ward Hill Lamon appear here in positions they held in real life, though, of course, I have put words in their mouths. (It’s my job.) As for the Pinkertons, Hattie Lawton and, obviously, Allan Pinkerton worked for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency during the years this book is set. Tim Bellamy is based on Timothy Webster, Pinkerton agent and highly skilled undercover spy for the Union, who was apprehended behind enemy lines in Richmond and hanged in April 1862. Many sources take it for granted that Allan Pinkerton and Kate Warne had a long-term affair, but there is no real proof of this. I’ve taken her romance in a different direction. This novel is really a love story between a woman and her work.

  Students of history will realize that I took considerable license with the assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln in Baltimore and the apprehension of the Southern spy Rose Greenhow; readers interested in more factual accounts can find them in the excellent nonfiction books The Hour of Peril by Daniel Stashower (Lincoln) and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott (Greenhow). Abbott’s book also gives a more complete picture of the fascinating real-life Elizabeth Van Lew and Belle Boyd, whose appearances in these pages are brief.

  Kate’s amazing career with the Pinkertons, which included supervising the agency’s Female Bureau of Detectives for many years, was cut short by her death from a sudden illness in 1868. She is buried in the Pinkerton family plot. Perhaps fittingly for a woman whose life is so shrouded in mystery, her name is misspelled on her tombstone: Kate Warn.

  Rea
ding Group Guide

  1. Widowed and without job prospects, Kate answers a newspaper advertisement for a job as a Pinkerton operative. What do you think she would have done if Pinkerton hadn’t agreed to hire her?

  2. Kate is unsentimental about the death of her husband, Charlie. Did you find this surprising? What did you suspect was the reason for her unusual detachment?

  3. When Graham DeForest meets Kate, he is flirtatious and solicitous, and Kate believes he is a ladies’ man. When she follows him to practice her surveillance skills, she finds this is definitely not the case. Did you suspect his secret?

  4. Kate has many good qualities that make her an excellent operative, but she is also impulsive and judgmental. What do you think her strengths and weaknesses are? Is there some overlap between the two?

  5. Although the accountant, Vincent, is the one who has been embezzling money from the railroad, Kate considers his mistress “more guilty” because she initially suggested the idea and also threatened to blackmail Vincent when he wanted to stop. Do you agree?

  6. Kate draws a parallel between the roles she saw her father and other actors play when she was a child and the roles she’s asked to play as a Union spy. What are the similarities between the two? The differences?

  7. Allan Pinkerton’s wife, Joan, is highly suspicious of Kate, warning her, “You keep your grubby mitts off my husband. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to with your late nights and your cases and your work.” In truth, there was a widespread assumption that the two were having an affair. Do you think this was influenced by the fact that Kate was the only woman working among so many men? Would a woman in the same position today still be suspected?

  8. When her friend and fellow Pinkerton agent Graham DeForest proposes marriage, Kate is seriously tempted to accept. She thinks, “We could protect each other. Keep each other safe from what we both feared.” Do you think this is true? As a gay man who had to keep his orientation secret, would Graham had been better off if she had married him? Would Kate?

  9. At Lincoln’s inauguration, Kate reflects on what she and her colleagues have done to fight crime. “Deceived, lied, disguised, misled, threatened, entrapped, captured, hurt… Were we devils, even on the angels’ side?” Do you believe it’s okay to do bad things for good reasons? Did you feel Kate’s actions ever went too far?

  10. Kate’s relationship with Tim Bellamy evolves from mutual dislike to grudging respect and eventually into love, which is revealed when the two assume the identities of husband and wife as part of an undercover operation. Do you think they would have discovered and admitted their feelings without this forced proximity? In some cases, can pretending something help make it true?

  11. Two of the women Kate is asked to befriend under false pretenses, Catherine Maroney and Rose Greenhow, have young daughters. In both cases, Kate questions the actions she is taking to punish the women for their criminal behavior. Did you feel this was appropriate? Should their status as mothers have figured into their pursuit and punishment?

  12. The real-life Kate Warne was among those who foiled the 1861 assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln in Baltimore. How do you think things would have been different had the assassination succeeded? Did knowing this assassination was not successful affect how you felt while reading the scene?

  13. Kate’s parents threaten her with exposure and demand money to keep silent. Did you feel one was more dangerous than the other? Did Kate deal with them fairly? How did you feel when their fates were revealed?

  14. In her final showdown with Mortenson, rather than let him escape, Kate rolls them both into the path of an oncoming carriage out of desperation. Do you think she expected to die? Was her revenge that important to her?

  15. Kate’s mother tells her “a woman’s family is her legacy,” and Kate thinks of this often as she considers what her own legacy will be. What legacies do you think are left by other women in the story, such as Mrs. Borowski, Hattie, Kate’s mother, and Rose Greenhow?

  16. In the author’s note, Macallister calls this novel “a love story between a woman and her work.” Did you find Kate’s excitement about the end of the war and resuming her life as a Pinkerton a satisfying conclusion to the book? Did it feel like a “happy ending”?

  Acknowledgments

  I can’t even count, let alone name, all of the people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for helping get this beautiful book into your hands.

  Thanks to my guiding star, Elisabeth Weed, the best agent I can imagine having, as well as Dana Murphy and the partners of The Book Group. I’m thrilled to have some of the savviest agents in the business on my team, including Michelle Weiner of CAA for film rights and Jenny Meyer for foreign rights.

  Thanks to the amazing Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks, whose keen editorial guidance and commitment to publishing the best possible book are equally impressive and appreciated. Sourcebooks has managed to pull together a huge team of brilliant, committed, hardworking individuals who also happen to be warm, fun people and are a pleasure to spend time with. Just a few of those I’m thrilled to work with include Dominique Raccah, Lathea Williams, Heidi Weiland, Stephanie Graham, Heather Hall, Sabrina Baskey, Carolyn Lesnick, Valerie Pierce, Sara Hartman-Seeskin, and Adrienne Krogh.

  Thanks to the many amazing writers whose friendship, insight, feedback, and enthusiasm keep me going in the tough times and share in the celebration when news is good. There are too many to name, but I’m fortunate to walk this road with gems like Robb Cadigan, Stephanie Feuer, Pam Jenoff, Tracey Kelley, Kenneth Kraus, Allie Larkin, Ariel Lawhon, Sarah McCoy, Shelley Nolden, Camille Pagán, Rick Spilman, Erika Robuck, Michelle Von Euw, Therese Walsh, and Heather Webb, as well as the Fiction Writers’ Co-op and the Tall Poppy Writers.

  Thanks to the indie booksellers who play such an important role in getting books they love into the hands of readers who need them. Your excitement and dedication is absolutely inspiring to see.

  Thanks to my family, especially my husband, Jonathan, whose unflagging support of my writing is essential, not only to my career, but also my happiness. Because of you, I’m lucky enough to have both.

  Last but not least, I want to express my boundless gratitude to all the readers out there. This wouldn’t be worth it without you.

  About the Author

  USA Today bestselling author Greer Macallister is a poet, short story writer, playwright, and novelist with an MFA in creative writing from American University. Raised in the Midwest, she currently lives with her family on the East Coast. Her debut novel, The Magician’s Lie, an Indie Next and Target Book Club Pick, was chosen by guest judge Whoopi Goldberg as a Book of the Month Club main selection and optioned for film by Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films.

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