The woman looked up from the paper for a second, and at last, Grant caught a hint of emotion in her eyes. “That cursed Harriet Brown. She brought too much notice to the matter.”
“How so?” Grant couldn’t understand how a woman who was almost took the blame for the crimes could have botched someone else’s attempts to get away with the killings.
Clarissa Halley took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. “I certainly don’t have to explain your thought processes to you, do I?”
Grant could barely explain them to himself, much less someone else. He did know that Brown’s crimes were brash and open, where the widow Halley had been subtle. The theft was bungled, as was the attempt on Newman. Clarissa Halley’s crimes were perfectly executed. Perhaps she was right that the brazen nature of Harriet Brown had brought an unwelcome attention to the other deaths. “So why did you tell us that you suspected your husband had been murdered? Why bring attention to your own crimes like that?”
Clarissa took the time to dip her pen in the inkwell again and write another line before answering. “Isn’t that obvious? People had begun to talk. You spoke with the doctor. Even though he and the coroner called it natural causes, these stupid people wanted to attribute it to me. You know that several people had mentioned the killing to him. I’d heard rumors of an exhumation. If I made the same claims about the suspicions, then I looked less guilty. Otherwise, I was the one who cooked my husband dinner and served him poisoned foods.”
Grant nodded. Once a rumor was started, it took on a life of its own. His own aide, Rawlins, took great pains to battle the constant prattle of Grant’s drinking problem, but the rumors were a Hydra that could never be vanquished. Every time that someone didn’t like one of Grant’s decisions, they blamed it on hooch. “So it was poison?”
She nodded as she continued to write. “Definitely. I had some arsenic left from some wasps I destroyed. It just took a bit in his food to do him in.”
“And Woerner?”
“Adam Woerner got no better than he deserved. That man tried to coerce me into having knowledge of him in return for his silence. He’d noticed the poison missing from the root cellar. He’d gone in there to look at moving the money to our land and saw that the poison wasn’t where it had been. Then he knew what had happened. I tried to offer him money, but he said that he had more than plenty of that. He wanted flesh.” Her hands trembled slightly as she spoke. Grant was glad to finally see some emotion out of her. The woman had seemed too in control of the situation, based on the most likely outcomes.
“So you tied a piece of linen across the top of the stairs and let him fall to his death.” Grant didn’t think that Woerner had shown exemplary logic when he decided to blackmail a murderer. It’s like sleeping with a cottonmouth.
She smiled. “That’s right. After his latest demands, I determined to be quit of him. I took a piece of linen from Harriet’s collection, and tied it across the stairs. I’ve never been as glad to hear news of someone’s passing, as I was his. Then I went back later to put a linen thread on the stairs. Harriet had become a thorn in my side.”
Grant looked at her, but she seemed not to take in the gravity of what she’d done. She’d murdered two veterans without losing her composure. “That was a mistake. There had been half a dozen men in that room, looking for something to tie the crime to someone. We didn’t find a thing that day, but two days later, a piece of string is there that points to one person only. Impossible.”
She paused to think. “Perhaps you’re right. But she had become a nuisance with all her shooting up town and such.”
“Well, you were the most likely person to be in contact with linen thread after Harriet Brown. So that made me start to consider you more seriously as a suspect.”
She put the pen back to the page and continued writing. Her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she formed words. “Be that as it may, she laid waste to my carefully made plans with her gun. So I tried to blame her for the deeds.”
Grant watched the woman, but she seemed to make no attempt to leave or attack. She was content to sit at the desk and write out a confession. “So you’re saying that she’s the one who tried to kill Newman? Not you.”
“Of course, she did. There was no finesse in shooting out someone’s living room window. None at all. No one had connected me with those deaths. They were considered to be accidents or illness. Until she came along.”
“Then people started to consider the possibility that all three men had been murdered. Young, Halley, and Woerner.”
“She started those rumors as well. The maid to Mrs. Bly told me as much. She wanted the money for herself and wanted to see me hang for her crimes.”
Grant watched the woman’s eyes blaze as she spoke about her nemesis. Harriet Brown didn’t know how close she had come to facing a similar fate to the Union soldiers. “But you didn’t do it for the money, did you?”
Clarissa Halley punched the nib of her pen in the paper and clenched her teeth. “Of course not. Though I doubt anyone will believe me. They’ll think I wanted more for myself. They always think that men want more money.”
“Money is the root of all evil.” Grant knew the quote. His mother had repeated it so many times to him, though his father treated him as a failure for not making it.
Clarissa gave him a smile that never even attempted to reach her eyes. The blue orbs were as cold as an ice floe on the Ohio River. “Actually, General, it’s the want of money that is the root of all evil. Christopher was a changed man when he came back to Bethel. The money did that to him. The prison camp might have made him humble, but the money made him hard. He wanted to show everyone that he was a success. We had to move into this – monstrosity. We bought furniture -- possessions. It consumed him, the feeling that he had to be better than the people here, our friends, and our family. He began to see people as possessions as well, things that could be controlled with a carrot and stick of gold.”
Grant nodded. He thought of all the times that Jesse had tried to make him dance with his money. He’d even gone so far as to suggest that Julia and the children stay with he and Hannah in Kentucky while Ulysses worked in Illinois. Grant had turned down that less than magnanimous offer. “You can’t kill people.”
“I know that it’s wrong, but I feel the Lord would understand and provide for my family. It’s not like I took a gun to them and shot them face-to-face. I wasn’t even present when they met their Maker. Theirs were peaceful deaths. It was almost artistic.”
Grant thought that they might have been for the widow, but he doubted that Halley and Woerner would agree with that assessment. They were dead, no matter what the cause of termination.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of living the rest of my life under the stigma of that money. I wanted to give it to the Lord to redeem myself.”
“So you knew about the tontine? And the fact that if your husband died, the money would go to someone else? You’d get nothing.”
Clarissa signed her name to the document with a flourish and blotted the ink. “Of course, I wanted none of that money. The Rebs killed two of my brothers at Antietam. Their gold could not make that up to me. Money will never replace love and family. Don’t you know that?”
“So by killing your husband you got away from the gold.” Grant accepted the paper and folded it. He slid it into the pocket of his worn overcoat. He hadn’t even bothered to take it off since coming in. He was shocked by how open and frank she was being with him.
“Yes, I did. Or at least I thought I did, but Zeke Newman insisted on making a gift of more of it to me. I didn’t want that. I didn’t ask for it, so I gave it to the church. It could do good there. Perhaps that money would save someone’s soul. Mine was.”
“Reverend Evans will be adding more rooms to the church with all that money. Besides you killed again after your husband.”
“Adam Woerner died because he insisted on knowing me.”
Grant nodded. “People didn’t thin
k that. They thought that Newman or Micah Brown were killing people to get more money.”
“That’s where Harriet Brown got her idea. Once it was down to two people, why not kill the other and take the entire fortune?”
Grant nodded. It was all clear to him now. Harriet Brown had capitalized on Clarissa Halley’s crimes for her own ends. Unfortunately, the tatting housewife was not as methodical in her means as Mrs. Halley. He was still contemplating the murders of the men he had known when he looked up and saw Clarissa pull a Derringer from the bustle of her dress. Grant was shocked. He never considered that she might have a weapon concealed on her person. But in women’s fashions, a bustled dress and petticoats could hide an entire regiment and their arms.
Grant didn’t pause to reflect any further. As she pulled out the weapon, he dove behind the sofa, and scrambled to look for a means to defend himself. The room seemed to be cluttered in china and porcelain, but nothing seemed suited to defend himself from gunfire.
No wonder she had been so frank. She had no intention of letting him get out of the room alive. She could sign any number of papers and confessions, because she would take them back after she had slaughtered him like the others. He cursed his stupidity. No other soul knew that he was here.
Grant waited for the sound of her dress shuffling on the floor. While her garments might make an ideal hiding place for armaments, they made for terrible gear for silent maneuvers. The rustle of her petticoats and stiff dress fabric would at least alert Grant to her movements.
He didn’t hear the sound of anything for a nearly a minute. The time passed as hours, each second a lifetime. His body reacted as it had in battle so many times. His hearing became sharp enough to hear the sounds of cattle lowing outside, and the scream of a child in the distance. Each noise made his muscles clench tighter.
Still, she had to make some sound. It was impossible to move without it. Grant studied the terrain of the room while he waited. The door was about ten feet to his left. He could probably make it to the door without being hit, if there hadn’t been two chairs in the way. He didn’t know how he could move faster than her aim and still stay upright through the obstacles. Much as he hated to admit it, he was trapped in a well-decorated coffin with the woman.
He continued to wait. The tension was almost unbearable by this point. He kept expecting the click of the trigger and the whiz of a bullet through the horsehair and fabric that made up his only armor at this point. Not much consolation. His would not be an artistic death though. Blood and body tissue would be hard to disguise from visitors. Unless she closed up the house before she had any more guests. Grant remembered that she was going to Maysville this week. It might be months before someone noticed that the house carried dark stains on the floor and walls.
Julia, of course, would miss him immediately. She was expecting to leave for Cincinnati tomorrow. She’d put out a call for him and would contact the sheriff about his disappearance. The one nice thing about celebrity was that it meant people were willing to expend resources to accommodate you. Grant would expect the entire town would be out searching for him, but it would be too late for assistance.
He heard the unmistakable clack of the trigger, the first sound he’d heard come from Clarissa’s direction. She must be planning a move. Still he heard no rustle of fabric.
Suddenly the gun roared and Grant flattened himself on the hardwood floor, waiting for the puncture of a bullet through his flesh. At this range, she would be hard pressed to miss him. Still, after a few second, he felt no pain. The roar of the gun rang in his ears and the thick acrid smoke filled his nose. He debated that he was in shock and incapable of pain, but he couldn’t see any rising red stains on his clothing. Had she missed him at such close range? Perhaps she was unskilled in arms.
The sounds and smells brought him back to the battles of the war. Had it only been six months? He felt like it had been over forever except for the parades. Had he survived all that, just to be felled by a woman who didn’t want her share of a fortune? He hoped not.
Grant climbed up to a crouching position and looked over the sofa. Clarissa Halley hadn’t missed her target. A dark patch on the wall had begun to trickle down the plaster, running red rivulets. What remained of her body was on the floor, gun still in her hand.
Chapter 22
Julia stepped up into the coach and settled herself in. The daily stage to Cincinnati was about to leave, and the family had all decided to take the same coach. Grant wasn’t sure about the thirty some miles to Cincinnati with his father and his son vying for conversational supremacy, but he didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Newman and Patsy had come out to see them off. At 5 a.m., when the “Night Hawk” left, the street was nearly deserted. Grant was glad for the quiet and peaceful country sounds, a natural cacophony that he wouldn’t hear in Washington or even Cincinnati. He would be in big cities for some time to come.
The driver stowed the last of the luggage on board and hopped up to his station. Julia climbed on board and sat across from Jesse. Grant took the seat next to his father. He gave a long last look to the town. He wasn’t sure when he would be back through this way again. He couldn’t know what the next few years would bring in terms of his ever-increasingly busy schedule. The presidency looked more and more likely as his next occupation and the White House as his next home.
He shook Newman’s hand and gave Patsy a peck on the cheek, as he would the wife of any friend. At this hour, he could afford to be more generous with Newman’s choice of companion.
“Thanks, Sam. I appreciate what you’ve done for us.” Newman smiled and gave a nod of his head towards Patsy.
Grant mumbled a few words. He would be expected to give speeches and shake more hands in Cincinnati, and he dreaded the thought of all the politicking, though he enjoyed the accolades of the crowd.
He still hadn’t truly recovered from the shock of Clarissa Halley’s death. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen. She would have been arrested and tried for the murders, but so few juries believed that a woman, who couldn’t vote or do so many things, could be capable of committing any number of hideous crimes. The same fair sex that brought life into the world could remove it just as easily.
Still he hadn’t expected to have her take her own life in front of him. For a woman who had preached to him about greed and salvation, he hadn’t expected her to commit suicide. The church was having problems deciding what to do with the largest donor in their congregation. The money she had given was evening the scales of justice with her crimes and sins. Grant was sure that the reverend would find a way to slip Mrs. Halley into the cemetery in some manner. Her children were going off to Maysville to stay with relatives. The sale of the house and contents would provide them with enough money to get a good start in life. Grant was glad to know that they would be well taken care of. Halley had promised to check in with the family from time to time to make sure that nothing was wanted. He was still able to feel some compassion for the children of his fighting friend, even after the crimes Halley’s wife had committed. With all that money and the padding against life that it afford him, Newman could be generous. And he knew what it was like to be an outcast in society.
Grant climbed into the carriage and closed the door. He leaned back in the seat and settled in for the long ride to the next town.
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin! Joseph Addison
Chapter 1
If Julia Grant shone any brighter tonight, thought Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, they wouldn’t need any tallows in their hotel room later. His wife was in her element; men bowed to her, waiters refilled her glass without asking, and women curried her favor. The cream of Cincinnati society courted her tonight, knowing that Julia would likely be the nation’s next first lady.
They had not always lived in luxury; she had been equally comfortable as a
farmer’s wife, army wife, and now politician’s lady, and she’d handled all of these roles with ease, even though they both knew where her druthers lay.
As for Grant, he regretted the loss of their recent bucolic days as they’d bounced along the coach road from Bethel to Cincinnati; the farms had slowly begun to intrude upon one another. A new city meant more speeches and more politicians, yet cities, with their thousands of voters, won elections, not farming communities. Nearly a quarter of a million people resided in Cincinnati, making it the nation’s sixth largest city, a fact belied by its proximity to Grant’s hometown. The sheer importance of such a city and its elite made tonight at the Belmont feel even more confining. The Queen City of the West would not be denied its contribution in getting Grant elected as the next President of the United States.
Grant abhorred trying to make small talk, and his speeches were often painfully brief—less than a minute if he could get away with it. Leave the kowtows to Julia. The elite of Cincinnati society had all turned out tonight to meet the hero of 1865. , The Belmont, the familial home of the Longworths, had been opened to greet them. Since the passing of Longworth’s wife the previous year, the house had stood empty while the heirs tried to decide what to do with the pretentiously named “Belmont Estate.” The Longworths had kindly allowed the businessmen of Cincinnati to use their one-time home as a reception hall for Grant and Julia, so the reception wasn’t disturbing a living soul.
Of course, a grand home like Longworth’s would certainly need a name like Belmont. The double-arched doorway and elegant walkway had cried wealth before Grant had even entered the Pike Street home. He and Julia had seen the house on previous trips to the city, but as their carriage pulled up in front of the Belmont, Julia had let out a gasp realizing that she had now gained admission into these parties. The home vaguely resembled many in the nation’s capital; what Grant believed was called the “Federal” style.
US Grant Mysteries Boxed Set Page 33
