Hanging Mary: A Novel

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Well, we knew that,” Anna said.

  “I then asked where he was employed. He told me he worked for Mr. Parr, who owned a china shop there.”

  “He looks like a bull in a china shop,” Miss Fitzpatrick said. “What else did you find out?”

  “Nothing. He’s not very forthcoming at all.”

  “Well,” Anna said, “I just hope he doesn’t murder us in our beds.”

  • • •

  Mr. Wood did not murder us in our beds but left to catch the early train to Baltimore, his exit observed only by the servant girl. Except for his not being a paying guest, he was an ideal one, for his room was left immaculate.

  This was a month for Johnny’s friends, for no sooner had Mr. Wood vanished than another appeared in his place. This man, a swarthy gentleman of about thirty named Mr. Howell, was not a stranger, for he had passed through the tavern at Surrattsville on a number of occasions. I had always assumed, without knowing for certain, that he ran the blockade, but his present business, he informed me, was to await the arrival of a young lady whom he planned to escort to New York. She would be here in a few days.

  It was no simple matter to elicit this information from Mr. Howell, for while not unfriendly, he was the most evasive of men. In the few years I had known him, he had used no fewer than three first names—Spencer, Augustus, and Gustavus—and I had never succeeded in learning anything about his family. It was all I could do to learn how he liked his eggs prepared. I found myself offering him a second helping of those eggs, for he was rail-thin and coughed a great deal, although of course he said nothing about his state of health. Perhaps he needed to conserve his strength, for once he arrived at the boardinghouse, he never ventured out but spent his days reading and coughing in the parlor and his evenings upstairs with Mr. Weichmann, who seemed rather taken with him.

  Late one afternoon as Mr. Howell sat reading in the parlor—he even held the book so as to obscure the title—Miss Fitzpatrick, hearing a horse whinny outside the parlor window, said, “There’s Mr. Surratt! In a carriage, and with a lady. Is that your friend, Mr. Howell?”

  Mr. Howell looked out the window furtively. “Yes, that’s her,” he said, as if giving the answer under duress. He opened the window. “Coming! Just let me get my things.”

  “I would be happy to offer the lady some refreshment before you set out.”

  “Thank you, but there’s no time.” He scurried upstairs.

  Miss Fitzpatrick looked harder. “Why is she wearing a veil?”

  I glanced out the window myself. The lady’s spruce gown, smart bonnet, and slender figure suggested youth, but it was impossible to say for sure with the heavy veil, in such strange contrast to her bright clothing. Even odder, and more disturbing, was how close to Johnny she was sitting, even though there was plenty of room in the ample carriage for a couple to leave a decorous space between them. As I chided myself for being too judgmental, for it was a crisp day and the lady might merely be chilly, she drew her arm through his.

  Mr. Howell, carpetbag in hand, settled his bill and bade us all farewell. At least he was a paying guest, unlike Mr. Wood. He and Johnny changed places, and as the lady waved good-bye, the buggy rattled off, and Johnny bounded up the stairs to the parlor. “The prodigal son returns yet again,” he said, pecking me on the cheek.

  “Who is that young woman?”

  “Mrs. Slater.”

  “Mrs. Slater? Where is her husband?”

  “Dead, perhaps, or alive, perhaps.”

  “She is not acting like a woman with a living husband, Son. Nor is she acting like a respectable widow.” I remembered Miss Fitzpatrick and Miss Dean. “Nora, could you tell the girl to get some supper for John? Miss Dean, your mother would like very much to have a letter from you.”

  “You’re going to miss a fine lecture,” Johnny called out to them as they left the room.

  I lowered my voice. “That woman is a hussy, John.”

  “You’ve never even met her. You haven’t even seen her face.”

  “And that is another thing. Why does she wear that veil? Is she pockmarked?”

  “Assuredly not.”

  “So you have seen beneath it?”

  “She does have to eat occasionally, you know. Ma, simmer down. I’m not her lover.”

  “I hope you will continue not to be, for she looks exactly the sort of woman who would foist another man’s bastard upon you.”

  “But you haven’t even looked at her, Ma. We’ve established that.”

  “Women can sense this sort of thing. But who is she? Needless to say, Mr. Howell would say nothing about her, other than that she was female, which I can certainly see for myself.”

  “Mrs. Slater is a courier, one of the best. Trouble is, it’s too dangerous for her to travel alone at some points, so she needs a male companion. She’s on her way down to Richmond from our people in Montreal. I met her in New York. Howell will be taking her across the Potomac, courtesy of our friend Port Tobacco.”

  “I still think she looks like trouble. Where is her husband in all this?”

  “Serving in the army—the Confederate army—assuming he hasn’t been killed or captured. They’re not a happy couple.”

  “I can’t imagine why. Where is she from?”

  “Ma, I’m not proposing to marry her! Connecticut, actually, but her family moved to North Carolina, and that’s where she met her husband.”

  Having gone to school in Virginia, I sniffed at the mention of North Carolina, but at the same time felt a sense of relief. A Maryland boy like Johnny would never marry a little chit from North Carolina, should Mrs. Slater lose her apparently inconvenient husband.

  “She speaks perfect French and can pass for a native should she ever get caught. Or at least a French Canadian.”

  “And the veil?”

  “You’d wear one too, Ma, if you were carrying the secrets she carries.”

  12

  NORA

  MARCH 1865

  Private Flanagan, who was expecting to be released from the hospital within the month if all went well, had been whiling the hours away by considering professions a one-armed man might enter. “I’ve been thinking of keeping a grocery,” he said a couple of weeks after Valentine’s Day.

  “Oh, that might do very well.”

  “I would need to get my stock in trade, though, and rent a place. I suppose I’d have to get a loan.”

  “You have an honest face and have served your country bravely. Someone will give you a loan. Why, my father often travels to New York on business and knows a number of men there. I’m sure you could use his name.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. I was wondering, Miss Fitzpatrick…”

  “What, sir?”

  “Nothing.”

  This was the third time in our conversation this afternoon that Private Flanagan had seemed to be on the verge of asking me something. This was the most progress he had made. “Sir, I know you wish to tell me something. What is it? Is there something I can bring you? You know I will be happy to get you anything that can be had in Washington—that the doctors will allow, of course.”

  Private Flanagan muttered something.

  “I did not understand you.”

  “I said I would like your picture,” Private Flanagan repeated, so quickly that the sentence came out pretty much as one word. “If it’s not too bold of me.”

  It was rather bold in those days, but how could I say no to a sick man? And besides, I did not really want to say no—except I had no recent photographs of myself, save for a very severe picture of myself and the other young ladies of the Georgetown Visitation class of 1864, posed around a harp that towered over all of us. “I’ll have to get one taken,” I said. “But I will bring it to you straightaway.”

  So the next day, I put on my best gown, the dusty pink wool wi
th the braided trim, and walked to Gardner’s Photographic Gallery on Seventh and D Streets. I wasn’t getting the photograph made only for Private Flanagan, I reasoned. My family would like one, as would Anna and my other friends. Really, Private Flanagan asking me for a photograph was simply fortuitous. I’d been planning to get one made all along.

  To underscore the respectability of this enterprise, I brought a book to use as a prop—not a prayer book, as in the photograph of Mrs. Surratt that sat on the mantelpiece, for I didn’t want Private Flanagan to think of me as a matron counting my beads—but a nicely bound copy of Jane Eyre. This earned me a bit of teasing from the photographer, who said I must be quite the little bluestocking, but at least he didn’t ask if I was posing for my sweetheart.

  When I got home, I found I had missed Mr. Booth. This should have pleased Anna, who I had discovered preferred not to have another young lady in the parlor during his visits, but instead I found her scowling. “He talked of that creature,” she said.

  I had no need to ask who “that creature” might be. She was Miss Hale, whom Anna had come to hate more than the entire Yankee army combined. “What did he say?”

  “Their romance is still going on. He sends her fresh flowers every other day. Even when he’s not in town. He has an arrangement with the florist.”

  “A floral arrangement. How apt.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Well, you must admit that it is very romantic. Does he choose different flowers each day? Or does the florist decide, I wonder?”

  “Who on earth cares? I was hoping that they would have had a falling-out by now. Maybe about politics. But no, she’s even procured him a ticket for the inauguration.”

  Mr. Booth’s political sympathies, of which he never spoke in the parlor, had been the subject of great speculation between Anna and myself. As he was friendly with Mr. Surratt, who everyone knew was no friend of the Union, we assumed Mr. Booth inclined in the same direction. Our opinions from that point diverged: I thought Mr. Booth would take the expected Northern victory in stride. “After all, his brother Edwin is loyal to the Union,” I had pointed out. “And he is in love with Miss Hale.”

  “A man like Mr. Booth cannot be lukewarm about such an important subject,” Anna had countered. “If he is a man of Southern feeling, he must be a passionate one.”

  Following Father’s advice, and also knowing the question would be shockingly unladylike, I had never considered taking the simple expedient of simply asking Mr. Booth his opinion. Anna, who had certainly never restrained herself from interrogating poor Mr. Weichmann about his beliefs, was not as daring in the case of Mr. Booth. So the matter had remained unsettled, although upon hearing that Mr. Booth would be attending the inauguration, I was inclined to think I had the better of the argument.

  “I hear she is positively bovine,” Anna said.

  “No, she’s not. A little plump.”

  “Maybe she put on some weight during the winter.” Anna ran her hands along the piano keyboard. We were alone in the parlor, everyone else in the boardinghouse being engaged in some activity or the other. “I want to see her.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “To get the lay of the land. To see what he sees in her that he sees in no one else.”

  “Anna, love is very strange.”

  “What would you know of it?”

  Probably as much as she did, and perhaps even more, if one counted Private Flanagan asking for my picture. I decided not to point any of this out. “How are you going to see her? It’s not as if you can knock at her family’s door and ask for her social calendar.”

  “Silly, her family stays at the National. I looked in the city directory. So she must dine there. We will spy on her while she dines.”

  “We?”

  “Of course. You don’t expect me to go there and eat by myself, do you?”

  I could not find any adequate fault with this logic.

  We decided that breakfast would be the best time to spot—I refused to use the word spy—Miss Hale, as at any other time she might be shopping or doing charitable work or riding her horse or kissing Mr. Booth. So two days later, having concocted a story of going to meet one of Anna’s friends, we took ourselves to the cavernous dining room of the National Hotel.

  I had a bit of a sentimental attachment to the National Hotel, as my father had worked there for a short time after coming to Washington, before he was hired away by the bank. It was not the finest hotel in Washington—that would be the Willard—but it had its share of distinguished guests, some of whom, like Senator Hale and his family, lived there while in Washington rather than going to the trouble of keeping their own house. Thanks to Father, who had old friends on the staff there, I could walk into the dining room without feeling too much abashed, as I had often eaten there with my family during my school vacations. I could have even probably asked one of the waiters to point out Miss Hale, but I was hardly prepared to explain what a bank messenger’s daughter might want with a senator’s daughter.

  “I might not even recognize Miss Hale,” I warned Anna as we settled into our seats, which were fortunately close enough to the door for us to see anyone who came in. It was early, and only a few people had arrived. “I saw her for only a few moments, and I wasn’t trying to engrave her features upon my memory.”

  “You’ll know her,” Anna said. “She’ll be the heftiest woman in the room. Unless Mrs. Lincoln joins us.”

  I was wrong, though: it wasn’t hard to spot Miss Hale at all. Not for the rude reason that Anna assigned, but because she was with her parents and her sister, just as she had been the night of the play. Moreover, although she was in a simpler gown, of course, as befit the time of day, she wore the same coral necklace, which stood out prettily against the gray silk dress.

  I kicked Anna to inform of her my sighting. Anna duly glanced at Miss Hale but fortunately had better manners than to stare as the girl and her family made their way to their table, not too far off from ours. “Well?” I asked after the Hales were out of earshot. “What next?”

  “We wait for Mr. Booth. Besides, we have a breakfast to eat.”

  I have neglected to say that the National was not famed for the quality of its breakfasts.

  Anna and I plodded on through our meal, making stilted conversation as Miss Hale and her family dined, oblivious to all of the inconvenience they were causing us. Then, just as we had ordered more coffee, Mr. Booth sauntered into the room and headed straight toward the Hales’ table. As he bowed to the ladies, I could feel the chill from Mr. and Mrs. Hale emanating through the dining room, but Mr. Booth seemed to take all of this in stride. Leaving the Hales, he roamed about and greeted half a dozen other diners before a look of surprise settled upon his face. He headed straight to our table.

  “Why, Miss Surratt, Miss Fitzpatrick! What brings you here?”

  I decided Anna could deal with that question. She managed admirably. “I have been in Washington all these months and have never once eaten here,” she said. “It is such a Washington institution, I thought I should try it.”

  “Well, they do a better dinner than breakfast, if truth be told, but who’s awake enough to care? Not me, I fear. I have never been an early riser, despite all my dear mother’s efforts. May I join you?”

  “Why, of course you may.”

  Anna was so busy attending to Mr. Booth, she could not witness the fine sight of Miss Hale glancing at our table curiously. I would have to gratify her with that information later. In fact, quite a few people were glancing at our table, clearly wondering what Mr. Booth’s business was with a tall blond lady and a short dark lady, dressed nicely but hardly in the height of fashion. For their benefit, I tried to look sultry and mysterious, but I probably just looked cross.

  Mr. Booth had picked up yesterday’s discarded newspaper and, after chatting for a while, began to amuse us
by reading the notices from it in his best Shakespearean manner. “‘Serious proposals are invited by the undersigned for supplying the United States Quartermaster’s Department with hay,’” he intoned grandly. “‘Corn. Oats. And straw. The price must be written out in’”—he lifted his arm dramatically and looked skyward—“‘words on the bids.’ Now, you try it, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

  “‘Corn to be put up in good stout sacks of about two bushels each,’” I said in my most dire manner. “‘The hay and straw to be securely baled.’”

  “Excellent! Now, you, Miss Surratt.”

  Anna scanned the front page. “‘Item,’” she read. “‘The chief engineer of the Hartford Fire Company keeps his hydrants thawed out by occasionally throwing steam into them from the steam fire engines.’”

  By the time we had worked through the newspaper, the Hales had departed, unnoticed by even Anna. “I must go,” Mr. Booth said, rising. “It has been delightful seeing you. No doubt I will be finding some excuse to call within the next few days. After all, I always do. Waiter! Put the ladies’ charges on my account, please.”

  We walked out to Pennsylvania Avenue—or, in Anna’s case, floated. “He sat with us and not her,” she chortled.

  “Her parents weren’t very welcoming,” I reminded Anna gently.

  “But he could have sat with anyone—any lady there—and he chose to sit with us! Even you can’t shrug that off, Nora.”

  “Fair enough,” I acknowledged.

  As this was the day my photograph was to be ready, we walked to the photographer’s instead of back to H Street. I studied my picture with considerable relief. I did not look severe, as I had feared, but serious, and my hair, my best feature, had stayed in place. I could present this to Private Flanagan without shame.

  Anna, meanwhile, was admiring the array of pictures for sale—President Lincoln, General Grant, Queen Victoria, and some actors and actresses and opera singers. Overshadowing all of them was Mr. Booth’s photograph. “I must buy this for my collection,” Anna said, opening her purse. “Nora, why don’t you buy one too?”