Hanging Mary: A Novel

by Susan Higginbotham

  —George Alfred Townsend, The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth

  27

  MARY

  APRIL 15, 1865

  I was wide-awake when the doorbell shattered the silence of the house. A couple of times since we had moved here, someone had rung our doorbell in the middle of the night—the first time by someone playing a boyish prank, the other time by an inebriate for whom one door on H Street was as good as another—and it had become the unspoken understanding that in such cases, one of the male boarders, in the absence of Johnny, would answer the summons. Sure enough, I heard footsteps come down the stairs and to the door.

  Nora emerged from the covers. “What on earth…?”

  “The doorbell. Someone has gone to answer it.”

  Nora sighed. “I am thoroughly tired of drunkards,” she announced.

  A knock sounded on the bedroom door, and Mr. Weichmann called, “Mrs. Surratt? Are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are detectives at the door who want to search the house—and your room.”

  Nora gasped. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Ask them to wait a few moments, and I will open the door for them. Nora, help me get dressed.”

  Her hands shaking, Nora obeyed. “What on earth are they searching this house for?”

  “We shall find out.”

  The parlor was already awash with gaslight when I opened the folding doors. Four men were standing there. The one closest to me said, “Ma’am? My name is Detective John Clarvoe. Metropolitan Police Force. Are you Mrs. Mary Surratt?”

  “I am.”

  “Answer me one question, for all the world depends on it. When is the last time you saw John Wilkes Booth?”

  So something had happened. Mr. Booth had kidnapped the president—or he had failed and was fleeing. “I saw him at around two this afternoon. I mean, yesterday afternoon.”

  “And when did you see your son John Surratt?”

  “I saw him about two weeks ago, on the day Richmond fell.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I believe he is in Canada. I received a letter from him on Friday dated from Montreal.”

  “But you do not know for certain where he is?”

  “I told you, the last I heard he was in Canada. This is wartime. There are many mothers who do not know where their sons are. What is the meaning of all this?”

  Detective Clarvoe ignored my question and turned to confer with his companions.

  Mr. Weichmann, dressed in a half-open nightshirt and pantaloons, pushed his way forward. “They have not told you?”

  “No. They have not told me anything, only peppered me with questions about Johnny. What has happened?”

  “President Lincoln has been murdered by John Wilkes Booth, and Secretary of State Seward has been attacked in his bed.”

  Murdered. Not kidnapped. “My God, Mr. Weichmann! You do not tell me so.”

  Beside me, Nora swayed, and Mr. Weichmann quickly helped her to the sofa. “It can’t be true,” she whispered.

  “It is true, except that I should not have used the word murdered just yet. He has been shot, but he still lives. There is no hope of recovery.”

  A second detective pushed his way past Mr. Weichmann. “Detective James McDevitt. Is this your room, ma’am?”

  I nodded.

  “I am going to search it.”

  I stood in my doorway as Detective McDevitt rifled through the wardrobe and Nora’s trunk, pulled out the trundle bed, shone his lantern under the big bed, and stepped out onto the sleeping porch. Nora had roused herself enough to stand beside me and watch, tears streaming down her face. There was no Mr. Booth in our room, no Johnny, and his search was soon finished. Detective McDevitt turned to me. “You said your son wrote you a letter from Canada. Where is the letter?”

  I would be foolish to say I burned it. “I do not know. I tossed it aside.”

  “You tossed aside your son’s letter?”

  “It was a short letter with nothing of consequence. He complained about his lodgings being too expensive and said that he would be moving to a boardinghouse, or even to Toronto.” I nodded to Nora. “Child, can you look for the letter?”

  Nora started aimlessly searching through the secretary. “I can’t find it!” she wailed.

  “It is all right, Nora. You did your best.”

  Mrs. Holohan and Miss Holohan came into the parlor. Miss Holohan was barely awake, but Mrs. Holohan asked, “What in the world is going on here? I heard the doorbell ring and looked out the window and saw all of these men standing on the stairs. What is this I hear about the president being shot? Surely it is a wild rumor?”

  Mr. Weichmann shook his head. “Detective Clarvoe showed me the cravat he was wearing when he was shot. It is covered with blood.”

  Nora shakily made the sign of the cross and began to weep anew. Mr. Weichmann put his arm around her shoulder and stared into space, his face thoughtful.

  We heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and Mr. Holohan, Anna, and Olivia, followed by Detective Clarvoe, entered the parlor. If Nora looked ghastly, Anna looked like the face of death itself. She was leaning heavily on Mr. Holohan, but she broke free and ran into my arms. “Is it true what Mr. Holohan said? These men are saying that Mr. Booth shot the president!”

  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 hav
e 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 q
uite 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?”