“There, there,” she said soothingly, enfolding me in her arms, and though I wanted to resist, there was something compelling and comforting about her embrace. Ironic, that a woman I was now sure was one of my nation’s deadliest enemies was the closest thing I had in this town to a friend.
And for the next three weeks, I spent as much time as possible in Mrs. Greenhow’s company, for the most complex reasons. Emotionally, she soothed me, and I felt better near her, even though I told her nothing of what truly troubled me. She would have been appalled, to say the least, to know my secrets. I also remained close to her because there was still no absolute proof that she was communicating Union secrets to the Secesh side.
Until there was.
Three weeks after Tim was torn from me and sent to Richmond, I attended yet another party, this one a small affair conducted by the wife of the senator from Kansas. I remembered nothing of the conversation at dinner, which was the usual mix of banal inanities, everyone so scared of saying the wrong thing, they wound up saying nothing at all, myself included.
But afterward, as the women retired to the front parlor for gossip and the men to the rear parlor for cards and cigars, I saw two things. First, a man I didn’t recognize appeared next to Mrs. Greenhow. They did not seem to know each other, nor did they speak, but I saw that he held his hand down at his side in a stiff way, without moving it. First, I thought he might be a soldier, but he did not bear the rest of his body in a military style, only the arm. In a motion so slight I almost didn’t believe I saw it, Mrs. Greenhow let her arm fall to her side too, pressed it against his, and then lifted it away. They then moved away from each other without speaking.
It looked exactly to me like a way of passing intelligence that I had learned in my early Pinkerton training days. I’d learned it from Paretsky. I’d taught it to Hattie. I was sure no one else in the room had spotted it. They were good. That they had not escaped my notice was more testament to my hawklike attention than it was to their degree of skill.
No more than a minute later, I watched the guest of honor, a Union corporal, draw near to Mrs. Greenhow. She failed to hide the expression of annoyance that flashed across her face at his approach. She recovered quickly and cozied up to him, but she’d drawn my attention once more.
I saw her stroking the arm of the corporal with her delicate fingers, as she’d done a thousand times before. Other arms, other generals, but the same motion. This time, I noticed something new. She kept her thumb firmly against her palm, using only the tips of her four other fingers to stroke.
She was holding something in her hand. Something small.
Something she didn’t want the corporal to see.
Now convinced that the unknown man had put a small note into Mrs. Greenhow’s hand, I hovered only feet away from her, watching as closely as I could without giving myself away. She might just tuck the note away in her bosom or do something else to secret it, but I didn’t think so. If that were the case, she would have hidden it away before the Union corporal had gotten so close to her. No, she must need to have it readily to hand, which meant she was going to pass it to someone else in the room, which meant I might see who it was.
The senator’s wife’s maid came into the room and began to clear away empty glasses. It was unusual to have the help intrude in this way; usually, they waited until everyone had gone or at least moved into the next room. So either the senator’s wife was showing off the fact that her servants were white, which was a bold statement, or there was another reason the girl appeared.
Sure enough, a minute later, I saw Mrs. Greenhow draw near to her and grasp the girl’s wrist. I was close enough that I could tell what she was doing, though it would have been easy to miss. She laid the palm of her hand over the girl’s wrist and, with a single, smooth motion of one finger, tucked the note into the sleeve of the servant’s dress. And then it was done. The note had been received and then passed, all smoothly, all done by an expert.
Mrs. Greenhow was most certainly a Confederate spy. I’d seen it firsthand.
Now, I had to decide what to do about it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mrs. Van Lew
A day passed, then another, then another. Three days after I had seen Mrs. Greenhow passing notes at the ball, I still had said nothing to anyone. If it had happened a month before, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment—I would have put it in a report to Pinkerton, marked urgent, before night fell. Now, I stewed. If Tim were here, I was sure he’d counsel me to disclose everything. But he wasn’t here, and that was Pinkerton’s fault. I had not forgiven him.
The other part of the equation was Little Rose. If her mother went to prison, what would happen to her? Shuttled around between relatives? Despite the terrible things her mother was doing, it would hurt the girl to be taken from her. I thought of Cath and Violet Maroney, who were likely still separated from one another, years later. Was it my business to tear apart families when the war was already ripping us limb from limb on a nationwide scale?
When I came home from the latest party, I had just vowed to myself that it was time to put aside my fury at Pinkerton, at least temporarily, to report the news. Then the desk clerk signaled to me.
“Telegram for you, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said.