The First Assassin

EPILOGUE

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1861

Langston Bennett was surprised to hear the sound of gravel crunching beneath the wheels of a carriage. He had not expected visitors. Hughes remained confined to his bed, though after three weeks at the Stark farm he finally had moved back to his own plantation. Bennett had paid him a couple of visits but still had not given the young man the excoriation that he thought he deserved for letting Portia slip away.

Perhaps it was a man seeking employment. Ever since Tate had quit-abruptly, and immediately following the burial of that runaway Big Joe-he had let it be known that he wished to hire an experienced overseer. So far, nobody had come to him for the job. Many of the men in the region were gripped with war fever. They were signing up to fight the North.

A minute ticked by as Bennett waited for Lucius to walk through the door and announce a guest. Then he remembered that the old slave would not appear again. Bennett was still unaccustomed to his absence. He had made no attempt to replace him.

Bennett rose from his desk and hobbled to the front door. He opened it and looked upon one of the people he least expected to see: Violet Grenier.

“Hello,” he said, somehow making the greeting sound more like a question.

“Good afternoon, Langston,” said Grenier. “It has been an exceedingly long journey. Are you going to invite me in?”

He did, and they settled into chairs in Bennett’s office.

“This is certainly a surprise, Violet,” said Bennett. “I anticipated a letter, not a visit. It has been quite some time since you wrote. I feared that something had happened.”

“You wouldn’t believe how much has happened-everything and nothing, all at once.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mazorca is dead.” She handed him a Brady’s reproduction of the photograph. Bennett stared at it and sighed.

Grenier told her story: Mazorca’s arrival, his pursuit, and his disappearance. She neglected to say that she had been arrested or that she had escaped during the tumult on April 26-she simply said that life in Washington had become too difficult for someone of her views. Bennett did not probe her on this point.

“How do you know Mazorca is dead?” he asked.

“I suspect strongly that Rook and his men killed him and then covered it up. The entire episode has been kept out of the papers. It’s just rumors, really-about a lunatic who was shot in the Capitol and then given a pauper’s burial. Nothing is confirmed, but it hardly matters. The bottom line is that Lincoln is still alive.”

“How unfortunate,” said Bennett. “It is such a shame to have failed.”

Grenier narrowed her eyes and put her hand on Bennett’s knee-the one above the false leg. “Mazorca failed,” she said. “We have not.”

Bennett looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

She smiled wickedly. “The war is young.”