Hanging Mary

by Susan Higginbotham

  “I still don’t like this.”

  Did Mr. Weichmann expect me to march upstairs and demand that these grown men put their guns away? Even if I had not been suffering from female problems that day, it was not a task I relished. “I see no harm in it as long as they confine them to the attic. But I will take your advice in the kind spirit in which I am sure it is meant, Mr. Weichmann, and will be on my guard. But you must understand that Johnny is a grown man, and one who has been acting as the man of the house for several years. I cannot treat him like a small boy. Now it is time for us to eat.”

  • • •

  Mr. Weichmann was right, I feared. Something was going on.

  I began to have my doubts when Johnny and Mr. Payne escorted Nora and Miss Dean to the theater and then, having seen the ladies safely home, grabbed a pack of cards from Johnny’s room and headed out again into the night. They were not yet home at five in the morning when Mr. Weichmann kindly took it upon himself to accompany Nora to the railroad station. He had just left on this chivalrous mission when Johnny and Mr. Payne at last arrived. They were not precisely drunk, but not precisely sober either, and neither appeared to be in good spirits. They gave me only a few words before heading upstairs to their beds.

  It was the first time I had known Johnny to stay out all night, at least when he was under my own roof. What had he done? Gambled, perhaps—but he had hardly anything of value to wager. Consorted with loose women? But surely he would not look so grim if he did so. Perhaps one of them robbed him of the little he had. This seemed to be such a likely possibility that I almost asked Mr. Weichmann, now returned home, to check his trouser pockets before I thought better of it.

  And why was Mr. Payne, a Baptist preacher, keeping such late hours? And why did he remind me of someone I had encountered earlier?

  I meant to question Johnny when he awakened, but he managed to find a moment when I was distracted and slipped out the door.

  I did not get a chance to speak to him over the next day and a half. Father Wiget, who used to teach my sons, called, and there was the usual business of running a boardinghouse to attend to. When Johnny and Mr. Payne left that afternoon, shouting a hasty good-bye, I was busy going through the monthly bills and hardly thought anything of it.

  The clock struck four, and Mrs. Holohan came downstairs, a peculiar look on her face. “Mrs. Surratt, your son asked me to give this to you.” She handed me a letter.

  “I do not understand. He saw me just an hour ago.”

  “Yes. He told me not to deliver the letter until four.”

  “Why, for heavens’ sake?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps I should have delivered it sooner, but I assumed he had his reasons, and he specifically asked me not to do so.”

  I opened the letter. Johnny’s graceful handwriting read:

  Ma,

  I find it necessary to leave town for a while. Mr. Payne is with me. Don’t know when we will be back. It’s all for the good.

  Your loving son,

  John

  I stared at this curt letter, then at Mrs. Holohan. “He told you nothing about where he was headed? What his plans were?”

  “No, Mrs. Surratt. He said nothing, and I did not press him. I—I assumed you might have quarreled for some reason, and it was none of my business.”

  “Of course.” I stared at the letter, as if doing so would bring some meaning to light. Johnny’s absences for a week or so at a time were nothing out of the ordinary, so this absence must be for a longer period. Where was he going? What did Mr. Payne have to do with this? And why had he told me almost nothing about his plans?

  Had he left for Europe, as he had threatened to from time to time? Had he enlisted in the Confederate army?

  I ran upstairs to the room Johnny and Mr. Weichmann shared and began rummaging in Johnny’s table. I found some writing paper (all of it blank), a pen and ink, a bundle of letters from Johnny’s cousin Miss Seaman and several other relations, some railway timetables, a couple of cigars, some photographs, and a box where shaving things, a motley collection of cuff links, and a handful of stray buttons (so this was where Johnny’s buttons went!) were jumbled together. Nothing provided a clue to where Johnny might be.

  Anna, who had come home from giving a piano lesson and was still holding a portfolio of sheet music, came into the room. “What is the matter, Ma?”

  “Your brother has gone away.”

  “Gone away? Where?”

  “I don’t know! There was a letter, but it told me nothing, and he told Mrs. Holohan nothing.” I knew I was beginning to babble, and terrifying Anna, so I took a breath. “It is time for supper. Go downstairs and see to it. Perhaps your brother is just trying to be amusing. You know what an odd sense of humor he has.”

  “But, Ma—”

  “Go. Now.”

  Anna obeyed, and I turned my attention to Johnny’s trunk, but it was even less revealing than the table, containing nothing more than a few articles of clothing. Save for Mr. Weichmann’s possessions, there was nothing else in the room to search. Defeated, I slowly made my way downstairs and nearly collided with Mr. Weichmann as he came in from work.

  “Mrs. Surratt? Is something wrong?

  “No—yes. Make the best of dinner that you can. Anna is getting it. Johnny’s gone away.”

  Mr. Weichmann began to say something, but I pushed past him and into the back parlor that served as my bedroom. Only a set of folding doors separated it from the parlor, but the boarders, even those who shared the room with me, knew it was inviolate when those doors were folded shut. No one was to disturb me.

  After I spent a while praying—and fighting back tears—I composed myself and entered the parlor. No one was there except Anna and Miss Dean, Nora being on a visit to friends in Baltimore. I told them Johnny had gone away for a while, probably to look for work, and I was upset because I’d had so little notice, and my companions nodded. Whether they, especially Anna, believed a word of what I said was another matter.

  At about half past six, the door banged open, and someone ran upstairs. It could be no one’s step but Johnny’s, and the voices I heard next—his and Mr. Weichmann’s, both agitated—confirmed this. I rose and was just about to enter the hall when another bang of the door revealed Mr. Payne. He barely tipped his hat to me before hurrying upstairs to Johnny’s room.

  And then the bell rang. Mr. Booth, carrying a riding whip, stood outside. He looked almost disheveled, and for once he had barely a pleasantry for me. “Ah, Mrs. Surratt. I believe Mr. Surratt just came home. May I see him?” And without waiting for an answer, he too mounted the stairs.

  I stood staring upward. Should I follow them? But just as my bedroom was my private preserve, the men’s rooms were their own. Besides, if Mr. Booth kept to his usual habits after visiting Johnny, he would join us in the parlor and chat before setting off.

  But a half hour later, I heard the footsteps of the three men coming down the stairs. They did not turn into the parlor but went directly down the hall and outside.

  I called upstairs. “Mr. Weichmann!”

  Mr. Weichmann responded immediately. Having waved Miss Dean out of the parlor and into my room, I asked, “What on earth is going on?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I knew, Mrs. Surratt. I was reading when John came upstairs, waving a pistol. He told me his prospects were ruined and he needed me to find him a clerkship immediately. I told him he had thrown away a perfectly good job in the past and he needed to settle down. Then Mr. Payne came in and threw himself into a chair without a word to me. I saw a revolver on his hip when he pulled up his waistcoat. Next, Mr. Booth came in. He just paced about, and he was so agitated he did not even notice I was in the room with the others until I called myself to his attention. Finally, all three of them stormed up to the attic. They had no further conversation with me, but I noticed when they left just now that Mr. Payne had his carpetbag with him.” Mr. Weichmann smiled sardonically. “I suppose we will never hear him preach no
w.”

  “No.”

  “There is something very strange going on here, Mrs. Surratt. I have tried to tell you.”

  “Yes, you have. I will heed what you say more carefully. Good night, Mr. Weichmann.”

  Mr. Weichmann drifted back upstairs.

  Whether Johnny would come home that night I did not know, but if he did, I made sure by chaining the door that he would not evade me. Sure enough, after about an hour, I heard the key turn, then the sound of Johnny pushing at the door. “Ma? It’s only me. Open up, please.”

  I walked to the door and unfastened the chain. “Johnny, we must talk. Now. In the kitchen, please, where we can have privacy.”

  He followed me downstairs into the kitchen. “Ma, I’m beat, and I think I’m getting ill.”

  “I don’t care how tired you are. I don’t care if you are half-dead with consumption. You will talk to me tonight, and you will tell me what is going on. What is the meaning of this letter? Why did you say you were going away, and why are you here now? Why did you and Mr. Payne and Mr. Booth act so strange tonight? Who is Mr. Payne? Why did he leave tonight, without paying rent?”

  “He’s good for the rent, Ma.”

  “I don’t care about the rent! I will have no more of this. You are living under my roof—and paying nothing for it, I might add. Even your sister helps! If you do not tell me what went on today, I will have you thrown out into the street. No. I will do better than that. I will denounce you as a spy, and you can rot in Old Capitol Prison.”

  Johnny’s face did not change. Was he going to call my bluff? I would have the greatest of difficulty throwing him out of the house, much less having him thrown into prison, and he must have known this.

  A moment passed, and he gave a sharp sigh. “You might as well know, I suppose. It’s all fallen apart anyway. We were going to kidnap the president.”

  I sank onto the table bench. This was my kind, cheerful Johnny, telling me, without so much as a blink of an eye, like a common criminal, that he planned to kidnap the head of the nation.

  “Don’t look at me so, Ma! We never intended to harm the man, just to hold him hostage. There would be no point at all in our plan if he were dead.”

  “What was the point?”

  “To force an exchange of prisoners—at least, that was the plan at first. Now that things have become so desperate, to dictate better terms for the South. To destabilize the Union. All sorts of good could have come from having Old Abe in our hands.”

  “And all sorts of bad, such as you hanging.”

  “Well, we would have done our best to avoid that. If the government wouldn’t come to terms, we were prepared to flee the country. Hence the note I gave you.”

  “I still don’t understand this. What if you failed?”

  “It was a chance worth taking. Ma, you haven’t been to the South since the war started. It’s a wretched sight. You should see Richmond. Women with faces pinched by hunger, children walking around in rags, starving animals. People have rioted over bread, just as in France before the Revolution.”

  I gazed around at our kitchen, freshly stocked from my last trip to the grocer. From the street, I heard some men laughing together, no doubt coming home from a night on the town. A town that was thriving while the South was in its death throes.

  “There’s so much misery there, and I wanted to do my part to end it. More than I can do by carrying letters back and forth.”

  “So this was your idea?”

  “No. It was Booth’s. I thought it crazy at first, and I told him so. But he convinced me that it could work. It could have—we had the men, the brains, and the equipment. The only thing we didn’t have today was the guest of honor. Lincoln was supposed to be attending a play at the Soldiers’ Home. We were going to catch him as he rode home. You know that he never has an armed guard if he can help it. Unfortunately, he changed his plans.”

  “Will you try again?”

  “I don’t know. Booth’s original plan was to kidnap him at the theater—hence our visit to Ford’s the other night, to get the lay of the land—but the rest of us thought it too risky. Anyway, I think the government has gotten wind of what we’re up to.” He glared at me. “And now my own mother is threatening to turn me in.”

  “You know I would not do that,” I said wearily. “And besides…”

  “Besides what, Ma?”

  “I can see the point in this scheme. It is—not unreasonable.”

  “Exactly!” Johnny began to pace around the room. “Think of that failed raid by Dahlgren last year. Do you remember reading about the papers found on his body? Papers ordering the killing of Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet. General Meade claimed that Dahlgren was a rash young fool who had come up with the scheme himself, but who believes that? Not me.”

  I thought about Urlic Dahlgren: young, personable, and handsome, even after he lost a leg in the war, and from an upstanding family in Washington. Mrs. Davis, Johnny told me once, knew him when he was a fair-haired little boy in knee pants. Yet he thought nothing of ordering his men to destroy Richmond and then kill President Davis and his cabinet, a plan that only his own death kept him from carrying out. For months, his old father had been claiming that his darling boy could not have come up with such a plan, that the papers found on him were a forgery by the South. But the rest of the world knew better, and so did I. “Nor I.”

  “Our plan is nothing like that. It’s an honorable one. We seize the president, bring him to Virginia, and force the government to negotiate. What else can they do? No one’s forgotten Johnson’s performance at the inauguration. They’ll have to come to terms.” He snorts. “Unless Old Abe decides to drive us mad with his storytelling, in which case we may be begging the government to take him off our hands.”

  “Who else is involved?”

  “Payne, of course. Not a Baptist preacher, by the way, but an ex-Confederate soldier. He’s staying at some third-rate hotel tonight before heading to Baltimore tomorrow—thought it was best he get out of town. Port Tobacco—no one calls the poor man by his right name now. Some others who have never been here, and perhaps it’s best you don’t know who they are, in case someone should ever try to force you to tell.”

  “Mrs. Slater?”

  Johnny grinned at me. “Sorry, Ma, no. She’s a fine woman, but she can’t ride or shoot or pilot a boat, and those are necessary attributes.”

  “Does Mr. Weichmann know?”

  “Not as much as he would like to. I’ve kept him in the dark as much as I can, but he’s so damn inquisitive. I think he halfway guesses what we’re about and would like to be included, but he has the precise disability as Mrs. Slater. He can’t ride or shoot—at least, not well enough for us—and he’s not at all an attractive figure in crinoline. He’s been helpful to us before this, though. Brought home some very useful statistics from his job at the War Department.” My son shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this, Ma. You’re not angry?”

  “I don’t know what to think. You and the others are taking an enormous risk. But I cannot condemn you for your part in a scheme that could be the South’s last hope.” I fingered the rosary in my skirt pocket. “If you do pursue this plan further—and I do not give my approval, only my caution—you must be more careful. The boarders here are no fools. Neither is your sister.”

  Johnny grimaced. “Tell me about it. Miss Fitzpatrick already recognized Mr. Payne as Mr. Wood; he told me. Fortunately, she took it in stride, it appears.”

  “So that is why he looked familiar to me. Why did he change his name?”

  “Neither Wood nor Payne is his real name. He gave the government a false name when he was taken prisoner once, and the habit stuck. I suppose he felt more at home visiting us the second time as Mr. Payne, the preacher, than as Mr. Wood, the china store clerk. His father’s a preacher, I think.”

  “Son, you must treat Mr. Weichmann more kindly. He is genuinely fond of you, and he is hurt and jealous, as well a
s suspicious. That is when a man can be his most dangerous.”

  “I’ll sweeten him up.” Johnny stretched. “I’m going to bed, Ma. I need to go to the country tomorrow to tie up some loose ends, but I’ll be back by evening. Booth is acting tomorrow, and he’s given me tickets. I’ll take Weichmann.”

  Johnny kissed me on the forehead and went upstairs to his room. I wondered what he would say to Mr. Weichmann.

  Anna was waiting for me in the parlor. “Did Johnny explain what was happening?”

  “Yes. A quarrel the men got into with some strangers when they were out the other night. There was talk of a duel, but cooler heads prevailed. It is all mended now, it seems.”

  I was shocked and more than a little ashamed at how easily the lie came to my lips, but these were dangerous secrets, and I wanted my girl to know nothing of them.

  “Oh.” Anna yawned. “Men.”

  • • •

  The next afternoon, Mr. Booth paid a call. This time, he looked his normal immaculate self, and the house was empty: Miss Dean and the Holohan girl were at school, Mrs. Holohan was visiting her mother, Anna was giving a lesson, and Mr. Holohan and Mr. Weichmann were at work. “My dear lady, please forgive my hasty behavior last night. I was very much agitated.”

  “Sir—”

  “I know what you wish to say. Johnny was with me early this morning—unconscionably early, I must say, for I am a late riser—and told me that he had talked with you.”

  “Mr. Booth, you must not blame Johnny. He would not have told me, but I threatened to turn him in to the government.”

  “I do not blame you at all, madam. Indeed, I wish I could make a clean breast of it to my own mother. But she is completely out of sympathy with me on that score, and my dear sister will not allow me to make a confidante of her as to any matter connected with the South—not that I blame her, poor girl, for she is expecting, and married to a fool who does not care for her comfort and happiness in her delicate condition as he should. But I do run on, don’t I? If it had been anyone else’s mother, I might have been vexed indeed, but I know I can trust you. Johnny speaks so highly of you.”