Murder on the Potomac Read Online Free Page A

speculation. But Monty Jamison considered himself astute in picking up on subtleties. He’d never expressed such thoughts to anyone, even to close friends. But these and other observations would be dutifully recorded each night in one of many diaries he hoped to publish one day in the tradition of his literary idol, Edmund Wilson.
    “Can we go?” Terri said to Chip. She was a pretty little thing with breasts and hips better fitted to a larger woman. Jamison had noted in his diary that she represented this generation’s brooder, pondering anything and everything but, in reality, lacking spark.
She appeals to those young men who savor sour sucking candies rather than sweet chocolate
, he’d written, pleased with his metaphor.
    “In a minute,” Chip replied. Terri pouted and sighed, something at which she was thoroughly rehearsed.
    Director Seymour Fletcher returned to the stage, clapped his hands, and resumed the dramatization of the murder of Philip Barton Key by Congressman Daniel Sickles on February 3, 1859.
    “Before we begin,” Clarence, the actor depicting Sam Butterworth, said, “could we discuss my motivation in this scene?”
    “What about it?” Fletcher said.
    “Well, I’m not quite certain what my motivation is. I mean, there I was with Sickles when he looked out the window and saw Key waving his handkerchief as a signalto Teresa. Was I dispatched by Sickles to detain Key long enough for Sickles to get his revolver and confront him? Or was it purely chance?”
    “What difference does it make?” Fletcher asked.
    “It makes a great deal of difference to me,” Clarence said. “You told me to act apprehensive, nervous when speaking with Key.
Why
would I act that way unless I knew Sickles was about to kill him? If I know that, it certainly will color the way I speak, hold my body, everything about my performance.”
    “We’ll discuss it later,” Fletcher said. “Places, everyone. Let’s go over the murder scene again.” He pointed to Carl, who played Key. “Please don’t act as though Sickles has gunned you down with a machine gun. He grazes your shoulder, then shoots you in the ribs. Grimace all you wish, but stop flailing your arms like an insect in its death throes.” He turned to Stuart. “Remember, you say when you approach him, ‘Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my bed—you must die.’ ”
    “House!” the assistant director yelled, her face buried in the script.
    “House. Yes, house. Can we p-l-e-a-s-e get on with it?”
    They rehearsed the murder scene twice more. Then Fletcher decided to go over the trial scene in which Teresa, forced to testify, was ripped apart by eight prominent defense attorneys retained by Sickles. In order to keep the cast numbers down, only one attorney was represented in the production. He was played by an older man, Brent Norris, an accomplished Shakespearean actor who’d had a modicum of success on Broadway and returned to Washington to bask in that glory.The rest of the cast watched as Norris attacked the young Teresa, played by Suzanne Tierney, with assurance and professional bearing. But Suzanne constantly flubbed her lines and seemed capable of only two emotions—tearful hand-wringing and comic indignation.
    “God, she’s awful,” a cast member whispered.
    “Yeah, but look at the way Fletcher coddles her, then gets on Brent’s case. Sy sure as hell knows where his bread is buttered.”
    The final scene was one in which Sickles met briefly with President James “Old Buck” Buchanan. Their close friendship was an open secret in Washington. Buchanan promised Sickles to do what he could to squash the case, offered him traveling money to get out of town, and gave him a razor as a gift.
    “Great. Terrific,” Fletcher proclaimed when it was over. He took aside the actor playing Buchanan, who was also the church’s pastor, and said, “Maybe you could tone down your voice a little, Reverend. You and your friend Sickles are alone in a