Hanging Mary

by Susan Higginbotham

  Only if I measured my words in the shortest quantities could I keep from blurting out that I had never agreed to help Mr. Booth do murder; I had never dreamed he would do murder.

  “It appears to be so.”

  Anna sank into a chair, her hand over her eyes, and moaned.

  Nora faltered. “Where was he shot? When?”

  Detective Clarvoe must have known the answer to this, but he said nothing, and none of us dared to speculate in his presence. The clock struck three, and soon thereafter Susan was brought upstairs by one of the detectives. So now the entire household, white and black, was assembled in the parlor.

  One cannot negotiate over a corpse. Had he been deceiving me all along? Or had some devilry caused him to change his plan from kidnapping to killing?

  The four detectives conferred in the hall. Then Detective Clarvoe said, “We’ve found nothing, but we’re going to be keeping an eye on this place. If John Wilkes Booth should come here, or John Surratt, you are to notify the police immediately, or the consequences won’t be pretty. Understood?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Mr. Weichmann, Mr. Holohan, as the men in this house, I’ll expect both of you at the station at nine sharp. No later.”

  The detectives filed out of the house. When they were gone, Mr. Holohan said, “Clarvoe let drop up there that the president was shot at a theater, but he didn’t say which one. I daresay it wasn’t the Canterbury, though.” He looked sheepish. “Sorry, not a time for a joke.”

  Nora turned her tear-streaked face toward Mr. Holohan. “A theater! Father was at the theater! I have to go look for him.”

  “You’ll look for no one, Miss Fitzpatrick,” Mr. Holohan said. “It’s the middle of the night, and from what else the police let drop, the mood out there is ugly. Besides, the police are looking at this place very closely. Bolt out of here, and you’ll bring yourself under suspicion.”

  “We’re under suspicion already,” Anna said, “with Mr. Booth being here on the very day of the assassination.” She turned a terrified face to me. “Ma, they were looking for Johnny too. Why?”

  Mr. Weichmann stared at his hands. “I believe he is suspected of attacking Secretary Seward.”

  Anna managed to glare at Mr. Weichmann. “But he’s not even in Washington! How dare they accuse him of this crime! Why are you saying such nonsense?”

  “Now, now,” Mr. Holohan said soothingly. “We’ll all know better what’s being said tomorrow. We just need to go to bed and get what sleep we can. Mr. Weichmann and I will have to get an early start.”

  He took his wife and daughter by the hands and led them away calmly. Susan followed his example, after I nodded permission for her to do so. Mr. Weichmann rose slowly and made his way toward the stairs, and I said to Anna and Olivia, “Go. Mr. Holohan is right. In the morning, all will become clearer.” I hesitated. “Nora, be a dear and lie down upstairs with Anna and Olivia. I need to be by myself at the moment. These suspicions about Johnny are upsetting to me.”

  Nora did not protest. Her head drooping, she trudged out of the parlor.

  Alone, I entered my bedroom. It was a shambles, with any space large enough to hide a man having been ransacked. The bedding lay in a heap on the floor, and my gowns had been taken out of the wardrobe and tossed aside. But I was grateful for the disorder; it gave me something to do as I contemplated the unspeakable: the president was dying, Mr. Booth had shot him and gone the Lord knows where, and Johnny—my dear Johnny!—was under suspicion as well.

  And with a word to the right people, I could have stopped it all. Why didn’t I?

  28

  NORA

  APRIL 15, 1865

  You know—everyone knows—what happened on the night of April 14, 1865. You have even perhaps grown hardened to such things, having lived through, or heard of, the shooting of President Garfield as well. Nothing, you might say, can really surprise you anymore.

  So how to make you realize how it was to wake that morning of April 15 to learn that the president had been shot? It was as if the world had slipped off its axis, and no one knew whether it could be put back on again.

  It was, simply speaking, the bleakest day in American history. And for those of us in Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse, hearing the crime had been committed by a man we all knew and liked—or loved—it was all the bleaker.

  • • •

  For a solid hour after the doorbell rang in the small hours of the morning, four detectives roamed around the boardinghouse, looking for Mr. Booth and Mr. Surratt, and in general, making us feel, in the words of Dickens, that we had committed all of the crimes in the Newgate calendar. Finally they departed, leaving us in the parlor to wonder what was going to happen next. At last, Mr. Holohan said we should all go back to bed. I was following Mrs. Surratt to our bedroom when she said, “Nora, be a dear and lie down upstairs with Anna and Olivia. I need to be by myself at the moment. These suspicions about Johnny are upsetting to me.”

  I nodded, for what mother wouldn’t feel the same, knowing all of Washington was searching for her son? I shuffled upstairs to the room Anna and Miss Jenkins shared and knocked. “May I sleep here tonight?”

  There were whispers, and Miss Jenkins opened the door. “Anna’s too upset, Miss Fitzpatrick, to be with anyone now. If you don’t mind—”

  “No,” I muttered. This was getting ridiculous. I trudged back down to the second floor. Mr. Weichmann’s room was clearly out of the question, but perhaps I could share a bed with the Holohan girl, who had a little room to herself.

  Then I heard the not-at-all-unfamiliar sound of Mr. and Mrs. Holohan quarreling. Mrs. Holohan’s voice, soft but clear, came through the door. “I demand that we leave here immediately! Else we could wake up dead in our beds.”

  I sourly wondered how a person could manage that.

  It was clear there would be no hospitality for me there either. Sighing, I descended to the parlor. I pulled someone’s shawl from a peg in the hall and, to his no small disgust, rearranged Mr. Rochester on the sofa before curling up on it, wrapping the shawl around me. After some pacing about, Mr. Rochester finally settled himself around my feet.

  It wasn’t as if I stood much of a chance of getting any more sleep that night anyway.

  • • •

  At half past six, we all filed downstairs for breakfast—all except Mr. Holohan and Mr. Weichmann, who had left the house quietly before dawn in search of news, and Anna, whom Miss Jenkins said was feeling ill and would lie abed a little longer. By the time we had gathered around the table, the men came in, bearing the Daily Morning Chronicle, and we sat and listened to Mr. Weichmann read the account of the assassination aloud.

  At half past ten o’clock last night, in the front upper left-hand private box in Ford’s Theatre, while the second scene of the third act of “Our American Cousin” was being played, a pistol was fired, and Abraham Lincoln shot through the neck and lower part of the head. A second after the shot was fired, a man vaulted over the baluster of the box, saying, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and, adding another sentence, which closed with the words “revenge for the South,” ran across the stage with a gleaming knife, double-edged and straight, in his right hand. The man was of middle stature, well-built, white-faced, and beardless, save that he wore a black mustache. His hair and eyes were black.

  The crowd ascended the stage; the actresses, pale beneath their rouge, ran wildly about. Miss Keene, whose benefit night it was, came forward, endeavoring to quiet the audience. Several gentlemen climbed to the box, and finally the audience was ordered out by some gentlemen.

  Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Harris, and Major Rathbone were in the box with the President.

  The report of an assassination attempted upon Secretary Seward having reached this office, we set out for the Secretary’s house, and there found that he too had been assaulted. We learned also that at ten o’clock, just as the man in charge of Lafayette Square called out that the gates were closed, a man made his way into Secretary Seward�
�s house, representing that he was the bearer of a medicine prescribed by Surgeon General Barnes, and which he was ordered to deliver to Secretary Seward in person.

  Pushing into the Secretary’s room, he seized the old, suffering statesman with one hand and cut him with a dagger knife on both jaws, then turned and forced his way into the hall, where, meeting with Frederick Seward, the Secretary’s son, he attacked him and inflicted three wounds with a dagger knife (probably the same) on the young man’s head, breast, and hand. He also attacked Major Clarence Seward, another son of the Secretary of State, and inflicted upon him several serious wounds.

  The assassin then rushed out, mounted a bay horse with light mane, and rode off, not at a gallop, but at what is called a “pace.”

  Doctors Barnes, Norris, and Nutson were soon in attendance and did all in their power for the sufferers.

  Secretary Seward was able to speak and swallow, but both caused him much pain, though none of the arteries of the throat were cut. The doctors all agreed that the Secretary was in no immediate danger of losing his life.

  Secretaries Stanton and Welles, as soon as they learned the solemn news, repaired to the residence of Mr. Seward, and also to the bedside of the President.

  Anna walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Go on,” she said tonelessly.

  “Shall I read ahead a little?”

  “Do what you like.”

  Several persons were called upon to testify, and the evidence, as elicited before an informal tribunal, and not under oath, was conclusive to this point: the murderer of President Lincoln was John Wilkes Booth. His hat was found in the private box and identified by several persons who had seen him within the last two days, and the spur he dropped by accident, after he jumped to the stage, was identified as one of those he obtained from the stable where he hired his horse.

  This man Booth has played more than once at Ford’s Theatre and is, of course, acquainted with its exits and entrances, and the facility with which he escaped behind the scenes is easily understood. He is the son of Junius Brutus Booth, the renowned actor, and has, like one of his brothers, in vain attempted to gain a reputation on the stage. His father was an Englishman, and he was born in Baltimore. He has long been a man of intemperate habits and subject to temporary fits of great excitement. His capture is certain, but if he is true to his nature, he will commit suicide and thus appropriately end his career.

  “That’s quite enough,” Anna said. She shoved her toast away.

  “May I, Mr. Weichmann?” I took the newspaper he handed to me. After scanning it, I patted Mrs. Surratt’s hand. “There’s nothing about Mr. Surratt here, ma’am. Perhaps they’ve given up on that idea.”

  “Perhaps,” Mrs. Surratt said in nearly as toneless a voice as Anna’s.

  At about half past seven, we heard shouting coming from the street. It was like no shout I have ever heard before or since; it was as if all of Washington had let out a collective cry of anguish. “Dead!”

  I threw down the knife with which I had been making a show of buttering my bread and ran out the kitchen door. There on the street, people were standing in the dripping rain with bowed heads, weeping. “The president is dead?” I asked a man.

  “Yes, miss. He died at seven twenty-two.”

  I leaned my head against the door and, for about the fifth time in so many hours, sobbed my heart out.

  • • •

  I have always taken great comfort in newspapers. No matter how horrid an event, there is something in seeing it described in black and white that makes it somehow bearable. So as soon as I calmed myself, I ran upstairs, grabbed some coins, and went outside to buy all of the Washington papers, which I was studying intently as Mr. Holohan and Mr. Weichmann started out the door to go to the police. “What will you tell them, Mr. Weichmann?” Anna asked.

  “The truth, Miss Surratt.”

  The men had been gone for about an hour when the doorbell rang. Before anyone could answer it, in strode my father. Usually the embodiment of courtesy, he did not even say good morning, but he grabbed me by the arm as we all rose. “Mrs. Surratt. Is it true that your son is a suspect in this vile act?”

  “I have been told that, sir. But he is innocent.”

  “And I have no need to ask whether that creature Booth was received here. What have you done, woman, by harboring this serpent? Wasn’t it enough to compromise your own reputation and that of your innocent daughter without dragging my own girl’s name into the mire as well? What have you done?”

  Mrs. Surratt’s lips barely moved. “Nothing, sir, gave me any indication that Mr. Booth was capable of such an act. If I had had any inkling, I assure you, he would have never entered this house. I am a parent no less than you.”

  “It matters not. The damage is done. My daughter shall not stay another moment in this place. Come along, Nora!” When I did not move, he wrenched at my arm so hard I squealed in pain. “Come along! I will send a man for your things later.”

  “No!” I tore myself from my father’s grasp. “It is a mistake, Father. John Surratt is in Canada. He had nothing to do with this.” I ran to Mrs. Surratt’s side and put my arms about her. “Father, Mrs. Surratt has been like a mother to me. I will not desert her when she most needs friends. You will have to drag me from her house. Bodily! By my hair!”

  Father’s face turned red, and for a moment, I thought he was going to seize me by my hair. But he dropped to a chair, put his head in his hands, and wept—something I had seen him do only once before, on the day my mother and baby sister died.

  I crouched by his side. “Father, please don’t cry.”

  My father raised his head. “I was at the play last night, you know. I didn’t know until I arrived there that the president would be coming. I shall never forget when he came in, how delighted the audience was to see him. The play had already started, and the actors stopped it long enough for him and his party to be welcomed, and then it resumed. I couldn’t see his box well from where I was sitting, but I could feel his presence—all of us could.

  “We all thought the shot, the man jumping to the stage, were part of the show at first. Until we heard a woman’s screams—Mrs. Lincoln’s screams. I shall never forget those screams. They will haunt me forever.

  “All during this cursed war, I have kept silent. It is a necessity, when one’s business brings one in contact with people from different sides. But there is no man I have admired more than the president; for me, he embodied all that I came to America for. Of all of the great men in Washington I have encountered, and there have been many, his is the one hand I have always wanted to shake, but I never quite got the courage to do so. Just yesterday morning, I was thinking that perhaps I could at last seize the chance to do so the next time the White House was open. Instead, ever since I saw the Misses Donovan safely to their house, I have been standing outside that miserable boardinghouse by Ford’s, keeping vigil with the rest, and this morning I watched as they carried him out. Dead.”

  He stood slowly, looking every bit his age. “I should have told him that I honored and loved him while I had a chance. I should not have let expedience get in the way of my loyalty. Because of that, I will not force my daughter to go against her own loyalties. She can remain here—unless it should prove that your son was indeed complicit in this crime. Then she must go.”

  “I promise you, sir, with all my heart, he is innocent. But should every instinct of a mother prove wrong, then I will send her to you.”

  “Very well.” He put on his hat.

  I touched his arm. “Won’t you stay, Father, for a little while, and take some tea? You look exhausted, and your clothes are wet.”

  “No. I am going to church to pray for our nation.”

  “Then I will come with you.”

  My father and I walked the short distance to St. Patrick’s. It was as if we were walking in a different city than the Washington of the day before. Every so often, some late riser would saunter out of his house,
clearly anticipating picking up the celebration from the previous night, and would ask a somber-looking passerby what had happened or would buy a paper from one of the grim-faced newsboys, and we would watch as his countenance changed entirely. Each time that happened, it was as if the horrid news had arrived anew.

  My father and I said nothing along the way. Even if we had tried to speak, our words would have been blotted out by the sounds of hundreds of church bells ringing a death knell. Already St. Patrick’s was packed with the bereaved and the despairing. We squeezed into a pew and knelt for an hour, praying and weeping, before my father finally raised me up and walked slowly back out into the dreary day and to Mrs. Surratt’s. In the short time we had been indoors, Washington had transformed itself. Houses that had been gaily bedecked in bunting were now draped in mourning, and people were streaming out of shops bearing black crepe and mourning ribbons. Even Mrs. Surratt’s house had crepe on the lowest windows.

  “You remember what I told you, my child. If John Surratt should prove to be Mr. Seward’s assassin—”

  “I will come to you.” I kissed him on the cheek. “Father, please eat and go to bed. You look terrible, and you are at the age where you must take more care.”

  My father managed just a glimmer of a glare and walked slowly off.

  In the parlor, Anna and Miss Jenkins sat side by side, sewing. “Is your father gone? Mercy, I thought he was going to attack us with his shillelagh.”

  I struck Anna as hard in the face as I could and ran into the bedroom. I must have been there a good half hour, sobbing, when someone knocked. Mrs. Surratt, I surmised, come to kick me out of the house, which would be ironic after I had made such a show of staying just a short time before. “Come in,” I said dully.