“It is my usual signature. Sometimes I’ll sign A. Adams, but not as a common thing.”
Revere held out both papers to the senior constable. “See how the line widens at the tail of the g,” he said, “where the forger tries to imitate the curve of Mrs. Adams’s hand, and where the g in great stands isolated from the r? Mrs. Adams’s hand connects it there, and there. The shape of the tail is completely different, too, as you will notice.”
While trying to recall whether she habitually connected her g’s to their parent words or not—or whether these so-called proofs were in fact just slips of a badly cut pen—Abigail reflected that had that difference not existed, the sharp-eyed silversmith would have found any of a dozen others. He was a man used to looking for details, but it was a lawyer’s riposte, one that she—and Revere—had seen John use any number of times to parry an enemy’s attack by throwing doubt upon the evidence. By the constable’s frown of concentration—and his slow nod—she could see that it worked.
“Might we go to the Watchhouse?” she asked. “Lieutenant Coldstone is my friend . . .” She bit back the words, And I trust there are enough of you gentlemen to prevent me from murdering him on sight. Knowing the constables, they would undoubtedly take her seriously and arrest her on the spot.
The Watchhouse that stood at the foot of the Powder-Store hill was barely larger than Abigail’s bedroom, a single whitewashed chamber with stone walls and a fireplace that wouldn’t have kept a bowl of gruel warm. The Common, a quarter mile north to south and twice that end to end, was a bleak and desolate place once the sun went down, and the open fields beyond it, over the slopes of Beacon Hill, largely deserted. The Hancocks and Olivers and Apthorps who held the great houses along Beacon Street wanted to make sure that in the event of trouble that their own servants couldn’t deal with, there would be constables within call.
As if the winds had whirled away Thursday’s strolling ladies and kite-flying children, the town pasture lay nearly empty under the scudding morning sky. The town cows, left in charge of the youngest and lowest-ranked herd-boy, were being slowly brought up from the other side of the meadow, and all the older herd-boys had already joined what amounted to a scattered crowd that milled about the Watchhouse. It was the usual Boston Mob, Abigail noted: prentice-boys and dock-laborers, and men who looked like tavern-servants. The eyes and ears of the Sons of Liberty . . . and of the smuggling-bands operated by half the merchants in Boston.
A number of these individuals were shouting insults and throwing stones and frozen cow-dung at the stolid red-clothed form of Sergeant Muldoon, who stood before the Watchhouse door with his musket at his side. One or two hooligans broke off at the sight of the artillery officer who had accompanied the constables to Abigail’s door, but the presence of a woman with them seemed to act as a deterrent to anything but shouts of “Fucking lobsterback!” and “Murdering pigs!”
“Excuse me a moment, m’am, gentlemen.” Revere strolled over to them. The shouting ceased at once, and the little knots of men and boys retreated. Some moved off around the hill, or into the brushy copse at the hill’s foot, but Abigail could feel their presence, like a tension in the air.
Muldoon kept his eyes very properly on the copse but spared a glance at Abigail as she came to his side; blue eyes troubled at the sight of her. “I shall want to speak with you later, Sergeant. Is that permitted, Constable?”
Rather than coming anywhere near the Watchhouse, Revere moved off, pacing the distance between the infamous copse and the Great Tree. Abigail knew why but considered the caution unnecessary. Did he really think the artillery major, unsupported by troops, would be such a fool as to attempt to arrest him in the teeth of the mob?
Lieutenant Coldstone had been laid on the table before the fire in the little building, with a third constable beside him on one of the room’s battered benches. This man jumped to his feet as Abigail and her party entered. “He’s still breathin’, sir—” He was an elderly man, with an accent of Ireland and a palsied quiver to his hands. Abigail couldn’t imagine what help he’d have been had the layabouts—or the murderer himself for that matter—decided to rush the place and finish what the unknown assassin had begun. “I can’t wake him.” The room stank of blood, rum, and the burned hair that presumably the old man had used as makeshift vinaigrette. Someone—Muldoon?—had covered Coldstone with the young officer’s military cloak, to which had been added one of the constables’ greatcoats.
Abigail said, “Open the shutters,” which had been closed, presumably out of fear that the crowd would break the grimy glass. Compliance by the constables with this request didn’t help matters much. The windows were small and set high. Given the general dimness of the morning, not a great deal was visible in the gloom. Every lantern the Watchhouse possessed had already been lighted and pressed into service around Coldstone on the table, giving his body the curious appearance of some arcane sacrifice laid on an altar. His wig, smeared with mud, lay on one end of the bench. In the frame of his short-cropped pale hair his face seemed white as bleached wax, his brows—which normally appeared rather mouse-colored—now almost black by contrast. Under the cloak his coat had been pulled off his left shoulder and arm, and his shirt cut away and torn up to make a dressing.
“Bullet’s lodged, sir—m’am—” The elderly constable divided a doubtful glance between his commander, the artillery officer, and Abigail. “Bled somethin’ horrible, he has—”
Thaxter bent over to look, and said, “Damn,” and Abigail put in, “I hope some of that rum that I smell was used to cleanse the wound?”
“’ Twas, m’am,” affirmed the elderly constable. “I did a trifle of work with the surgeons, back durin’ the war.”
“Who knew about the message that you sent Lieutenant Coldstone, m’am?” asked the officer, speaking for the first time.
“No one,” insisted Abigail. “That is, the message I sent was not the one that he received last night. I sent mine first thing this morning and doubt that it has reached Castle Island even yet. And in it I asked merely that he might name a place and time for our interview, in some public place, as my husband is from—Lieutenant!” As she had spoken, her hand had been on Coldstone’s wrist, feeling for the swift, thready pulse; so it was she felt his arm move, even as she heard the agonized intake of his breath. “Give me that rum.”
The elderly man pressed it into her hand. Coldstone coughed on the sip she gave him, and turned his face aside, a sentiment for which she could scarcely blame him. “Can you hear me, Lieutenant?”
His eyelids flickered, and he nodded. The Watchhouse door opened and yet another constable entered, carrying—Abigail was delighted that someone had shown this much sense—a couple of blankets, obviously fetched from the town Almshouse at the end of the Mall—and a number of billets of firewood.
“Did you see anything of the man who shot you?” Abigail asked, and the artillery officer stepped up beside her, with the air of one who would have put her bodily out of his way, if he could have.
“One of the damn Bostonians learnt Mrs. Adams had sent for you,” he said, leaning over Coldstone, “and lay in wait.”
Abigail opened her mouth to protest yet again, then shut it. The man clearly had his own ideas of what had happened, and it would be useless to argue.