The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  “We’ll miss you if you go west,” Temple said. “You’d better hurry there if that’s what suits you, because the railroads are aiming to get there first.”

  “The locomotives are going to change everything. They’re the future and they’re progress and they’ll make the country smaller, and I think for all of that, for all of their fuming and churning, I loathe them. Which means, I fear, that I’ll end up being duty bound to photograph the trains as well.”

  Gardner pressed his cheroot into his mouth and inhaled.

  “Thank you for going with Fiona to the cemetery,” Temple said. “It was a helpful diversion.”

  “Why is Pinkerton so interested in you?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “No, I mean I can’t say. There’s another one after me as well.”

  “One of Pinkerton’s?”

  “No. His name is Lafayette Baker.”

  Gardner sucked the air back in through his teeth and shook his head, gazing at Temple with a mixture of pity and fear.

  “Ah, you as well,” Temple said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “It seems so many people know of or are familiar with Mr. Baker except for me.”

  “Anyone who was around the war or Edwin Stanton knew of Baker. ’Tisn’t so rare.”

  “I wasn’t around the war,” Temple said. “Nor have I ever been around Mr. Stanton.”

  Gardner went to a cabinet and pulled down a bottle of whiskey, along with two heavy glass tumblers. He filled them high and gave one to Temple. And then he explained how Baker was likely to be well known very soon, even celebrated, perhaps. Although there wasn’t anything about him in the newspapers yet, not even in the National Intelligencer.

  “Lafayette Baker led the group that tracked down Booth. People are now all jabberin’ how that lad Corbett shot Booth in the barn in Port Royal—but it was Baker who tracked the assassin, and Baker who rounded up the other boys who conspired with Booth. Baker had always been Stanton’s man, and when Stanton needed someone with leather on his shoes to hunt Booth, he asked Baker. And I’ll tell you this: Pinkerton and Baker aren’t together. They hate each other.”

  “Then why are they after me together?”

  “I dunno.”

  “How do you know Baker led the group that hunted down Booth?”

  “Because Stanton and the army ordered me to photograph the murderer’s corpse, and when I went down to the river after they brought the body back, Baker was there telling everyone what to do. It was his show, through and through.”

  Temple tipped his drink, finding himself worried again about Fiona and Augustus, regretting that he had drawn them into this peril. For a moment his mouth went dry.

  “Alexander, tell me about the night they brought Booth back,” Temple said, putting his drink down.

  Gardner told him it hadn’t been night, really, but early in the morning. After Booth was killed in Virginia, they wrapped his body in a horse blanket and tied it to a wooden plank, then loaded it onto a farmer’s wagon. From there they rode to the water and loaded the body onto a steamboat, the John S. Ide, which carried the corpse to Alexandria. Then they put Booth’s body on a tugboat and ferried it across the Potomac to the Washington Navy Yard.

  “It was around one forty-five in the morning on April twenty-seventh,” Alexander said. “I’ll never forget that date, or the day that Lincoln died.”

  “And that’s when you first saw Booth’s body? And first saw Baker?”

  “I didn’t arrive at the Navy Yard until just after sunrise, several hours after they brought the body ashore. Soldiers came here to the studio—a full military escort—and pounded on the door even louder than you did earlier, Temple, you rude sod. They woke me up and read the command from Stanton ordering me down to the Potomac to photograph a corpse. I couldn’t have gone any earlier anyway because I wouldn’t have had enough light. I brought Timmy O’Sullivan with me to help with the equipment. I didn’t know until I got to the Navy Yard that it was Booth, and they told me the body had been lying there since about one forty-five in the morning.”

  Gardner said that by the time he reached the Navy Yard, they had moved Booth’s body off the tug and onto the deck of one of the ironclads, the Montauk. Booth was still fully clothed, and the left leg of the corpse was wrapped in a makeshift splint and bandages. Stanton had ordered an entire parade of specialists to identify the body, and Baker had said that the war secretary wanted to ensure that they had indeed captured and shot Booth and not some imposter.

  Booth’s doctor, John May, had been one of the first to arrive, and he examined Booth’s neck, where he had removed a large growth a few months before the assassination. Dr. May had been quite pleased with himself (“I most ably operated on a fibroid tumor clinging to the patient’s neck and I find upon him now a scar marking the location on his neck in the exact position where I performed my work”). They’d also brought up Booth’s dentist, Bill Merrill, who had put new fillings in the murderer’s mouth a few weeks before the assassination, and the dentist found his work good and true—though Booth had been dead about a day by then, and his body had grown so stiff that they needed two soldiers to help pry open his mouth so they could look inside.

  Baker had been striding back and forth on the Montauk like a titan and told Gardner to photograph Booth’s mouth, neck, and legs, as well as his entire face and body and all of the possessions he had with him.

  Two other doctors had also come aboard the Montauk, and they performed an autopsy that took some time. One of them was the surgeon general, Joseph Barnes, and he probed a bullet hole a couple of inches above Booth’s collarbone around the base of his neck, noting that the bullet that killed him passed above the collarbone. After Barnes cut into Booth’s back with a scalpel, he discovered that the bullet had smashed some of the vertebrae in the assassin’s spine. He plucked the vertebrae out of his back like a farmer pulling up carrots. The entire time, he was dictating his findings to an assistant who wrote them down, and Barnes promised Baker that the report would be sent to the war secretary as soon as they were finished looking at the corpse. Barnes made sure to note in his report that Booth, though paralyzed, must have been in great pain during the two hours it took him to die, “probably from asphy … asphy …”

  “Asphyxiation?” Temple asked.

  “Aye!” said Gardner.

  Baker, Gardner continued, had been satisfied to hear that Booth died in pain, and said that Stanton would be enormously gratified to hear that fact, too. Barnes also had pointed out that the bullet found its way back out of Booth’s body on the left side of his neck, almost exactly opposite the point where it entered—probably because it bounced right off the spine after it snapped it.

  The last outsiders brought on board the Montauk had been Seaton Munroe, a lawyer who was Booth’s close friend, and Charlie Dawson, a clerk who worked at the National Hotel, where Booth had been living. Both of them said the body was Booth’s, but Dawson offered the most singular identification: he pointed to the initials J.W.B. tattooed on the back of Booth’s left hand, near his thumb. Dawson said he always remembered that the actor had his initials there and that Booth had told him that he’d stamped the letters on himself with India ink when he was a lad.

  “Who knew to fetch a clerk from the National to identify the body?” Temple asked. “Who corralled all those people?”

  “Stanton, with Baker’s help. As I said, they wanted to make sure that it was Booth’s body because they were afraid of scandal if they had the wrong man. But Stanton certainly didn’t want anyone to find the body later—after we were all through with what we had to do, Stanton ordered the body carted away and buried anonymously.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea.”

  “And you have a collection of pictures of Booth?”

  “Stanton ordered them confiscated.”

  “Then that is that.”

  “No, Temple, it isn’t. We c
ame back here to develop the photographs and they had two soldiers up here with us. They didn’t know a thing about photography, and O’Sullivan and I were able to make extra copies of three photos of Booth. We never gave those to Baker or Stanton.”

  “Which are they?” Temple asked.

  “A photo of his face and two others of all that he had been carrying with him that day.”

  “Alexander?”

  “Yes, of course I can show them to you.”

  “I want to keep them.”

  Gardner paused, then walked over to a closet at the far end of the studio. There was a small woolen rug inside, and he pulled it out. Beneath that there was a trap door in the floor, and he took a key from his pocket and bent down to unlock it. After he yanked it open, he reached down inside and pulled out a long metal box with another lock on it. Gardner slid a different key into that lock, opened the box, and then took it to a table and spilled out its contents. There were several envelopes inside, including one dated April 27. He tore it open and pulled three pictures out.

  The first was of Booth’s face, so pale and waxen it nearly glowed. His black moustache dripped off his upper lip and tendriled down the sides of his mouth, which was partially open in a rigid, pained grimace.

  “The exposure on this wasn’t quite right,” Gardner said. “His face wasn’t nearly that white. Because he suffocated to death, there was lots of blue in his face. But this is the way this one came out, and maybe it suits him, the ghoul.”

  Booth’s eyelids had been pressed shut, and his hair was matted and mussed against his forehead. He had a white shirt on, torn about the shoulders and neck, and it was unbuttoned down to his sternum. The bullet wound above Booth’s right collarbone was almost clean, like a tiny black orchid burrowed into his skin. Nothing more than a perforation. On the other side of Booth’s neck, where the bullet had exited, the wound was larger, the flesh was torn open, and a dark, winding rivulet of blood ran to his chest. Spots of blood also flecked the left side of his neck.

  “Alexander, can you remember what color the skin was around the spot where the bullet went in? Was it reddish brown or was it closer to yellow?”

  “No idea. Why?”

  “Just curious. If the bullet went in while Booth was still alive, the skin would be closer to an auburn color. If it went in after he was already dead, the skin would look more yellow.”

  “What are you gettin’ at?”

  “I’m not sure. Questions help me get a clearer view of matters. How old was he?”

  “I’m not certain, but Baker said he was twenty-seven. A celebrated actor, of twenty-seven years. The esteemed and handsome Mr. Booth.”

  “He was still young.”

  Gardner gave Temple the two other pictures, showing the contents of Booth’s pockets and other things he was carrying with him when he died. The first photo showed a pair of revolvers, a metal file, a knife, a map of the Confederate states, an ivory pipe, a candle nearly melted away, a signal whistle, and a single spur.

  The second photo showed a belt and holster, several cartridges, a compass protruding from a leather case, a wad of Canadian currency, and pictures of five women.

  “He kept busy with the ladies,” Alexander said.

  “Do you know who any of them are?”

  “Only one. Lucy Hale. She was his fiancée and the daughter of a former senator from New Hampshire. Her father sat for me once for a portrait. She brought Booth as a guest to Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration. I always thought that they were an odd coupling because the senator was an abolitionist. And Booth, well, Booth loved Dixie.”

  “I wonder if Miss Hale knew about the other four women,” Temple said. “This is the entirety of what Booth was carrying?”

  “It’s everything that they had spread out on the deck of the Montauk and asked me to photograph.”

  Temple lingered over the two pictures of Booth’s possessions and then put them back into the envelope, sliding it inside his jacket next to the note he’d lifted from Pint at Scanlon’s.

  “I don’t expect I’ll see those again, will I?” Alexander asked.

  “Probably not. You understand?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re involved with, but the pictures are yours. And here’s another thing for you: Lafayette Baker worked as a spy in Richmond for the Union before Stanton put him in charge of the intelligence services. He presented himself in Richmond as a photographer named Sam Munson—and McClellan called upon me to train him so that he could pass as a photographer.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll say it again: Lafayette Baker is the most dangerous and frightening person I think I have ever encountered. He was abusive, short-tempered, and quick with his fists.”

  “It must have been a fright to encounter a temper as lickety-split as yours. Was he a good photographer?”

  Gardner laughed and grabbed the whiskey bottle to pour them another drink. Temple waved the bottle away and announced that it was time to get home to Fiona. He looked down at his boots to assess their condition: no mud, and just enough dust to make them look appropriately used. Spared for the evening from Fiona’s wrath. He leaned on his cane and asked Gardner another question.

  “Where did they bury Booth’s body after all of you were done with it?”

  “No one knows for certain. Stanton and Baker were in charge of that. People on the Montauk said that Stanton wanted it buried in an unmarked grave in Baltimore so Confederate sympathizers couldn’t turn it into a memorial.”

  “What did you do for the rest of the day after you photographed Booth?”

  “I almost set out for Memphis. The same day that they brought Booth’s body to the Navy Yard, word came on the telegraph that a steamboat called the Sultana had exploded and sunk on the Mississippi. They said that more than fifteen hundred passengers had drowned and that most of them were Union soldiers who had been imprisoned at Andersonville. I wanted to get there, I tell you. But Stanton told the army that I had to remain in Washington because he wanted me available for other photographs.”

  “Such as?”

  “The other people who the government says worked the assassination conspiracy with Booth: the boardinghouse owner, Mary Surratt; the one that Baker and others on the Montauk called Goliath, Lewis Powell—”

  “Lewis Powell?” Temple asked. “They called him Goliath?”

  Like Booth, Powell was an object of fascination in Washington; even among those revolted by the assassination, both men’s audacity invited gossip and speculation. Powell had slashed Secretary of State Seward’s face with a dagger in an attempt to kill him the same night Booth shot Mr. Lincoln. After pummeling the Seward children, Powell fled from the house and disappeared for three days before Stanton and Baker’s investigators found him at the Surratts’.

  “He’s apparently a very big lad,” Gardner said. “Thick-armed, thick-necked, with a dark mop of hair, and tall. Bigger, even, than Baker, I’m told.”

  “What others were on your agenda for photographs?”

  “Two of the other conspirators—Herold and Atzerodt—and a doctor they picked up in Virginia who treated Booth. His name is Samuel Mudd.”

  Temple pondered all of the names spilling out of Gardner’s mouth, committing each of them to memory.

  “Baker and the others can’t know that I’ve been here or that you and I are even in contact,” Temple said. “It would be safer for both of us that way.”

  “I haven’t seen Baker since the Montauk and I get my directions from Stanton.”

  “Can you get me to Stanton at some point? Indirectly, so you’re not harmed?”

  Gardner was silent, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together and stroking his beard with his other hand. He began to speak two or three times, stopping himself before he could get a word out.

  “I’ve given you the pictures, Temple. I don’t think I can arrange anything with Stanton. It unnerves me.”

  “Then I won’t press you.”

  “What are you
after here?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t say,” Temple said. “But I have one last request. Fiona said you have a splendid photograph of the president.”

  “Your wife did me a favor with that. She smashed the negative to wee pieces. You’re married to an angel of mercy.”

  Gardner found the picture of Lincoln and placed it on a table, moving one of his lanterns closer so Temple could see the photograph better. Lincoln appeared just as Fiona had described him: the mild, playful smile, the deep, dark, kind eyes, and the L-shaped slash from the negative that slanted downward like a bolt in the print, cutting across the top of his head. Looking at the photograph of Booth had been a gruesome chore, Temple thought. Looking at this, looking at Lincoln, was a pleasure—and a mournful, wasteful thing.

  Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,

  Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail;

  And I knew Death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.

  Temple pivoted off his cane and offered Gardner his hand as he moved toward the door.

  “I also have photographs of the president’s funeral,” Gardner said.

  “Not those, thanks,” Temple said. “But can I borrow your horse?”

  “Tied up on E, to the right when you go out downstairs. I’ll need him back tomorrow afternoon.”

  They shook hands.

  “Sic as ye gie, sic wull ye get,” Gardner said.

  “I’m Irish, friend.”

  “ ‘You’ll get out of life as much as you put in.’ One of my dearest Scottish phrases.”

  “Maireann croi éadrom i bhfad,” Temple said.

  “Eh?”

  “ ‘A light heart lives longest.’ A good Irish phrase.”

  “Then we’ve made a fair exchange this evening,” Gardner said as Temple passed through the door.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE TORCHES

  Augustus sat by his window in the Shaw, watching the night deepen and following plumes of fog slinking across the yard around his house. Fiona and Temple would be returning through that fog, and he hoped it wouldn’t thicken. There was little light as it was, and no moon out at all. But stars were painted across the purple sky in winding strokes, and Augustus looked up at them, satisfied—the Little Bear charged along, the Dipper on his flank, pinned to the heavens forever by Polaris.