Hanging Mary: A Novel

by Susan Higginbotham

  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.

  Anna came in and sat beside me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “And I shouldn’t have slapped you.”

  “Mrs. Holohan just gave notice that she is leaving. She’s taking her daughter and moving in with her mother. But you chose to stay.”

  I shrugged. “Your mother’s been like a mother to me. How could I run out on her? I like her.”

  “And you used to like me. I’m sorry we fell out, Nora.”

  “Over an assassin, no less.”

  “Is there any way they could be wrong, do you think? Maybe it was someone who looked like Mr. Booth. Some jealous rival trying to ruin his career.”

  This was an immensely appealing theory, but I had to shake my head. “I doubt it.”

  “Me too.” Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “I just can’t believe he would do such a thing. God knows I hated Lincoln, but to murder him… How could we have loved such a man?”

  I forbore from pointing out it was she, not me, who had been in love with Mr. Booth, although I supposed the kissing on my part could make someone rather suspicious. “It could be worse,” I said philosophically. “We could be Miss Hale today.”

  “Everyone knows he came here. I boasted of it—you boasted of it. We’ll be shunned. There is no future for us in this city.”

  I put an arm around her waist.

  “No one will want to board here,” Anna continued. “The Holohans are going, and even Mr. Weichmann will go in September for the seminary, if he doesn’t leave before that. Mrs. Dean certainly isn’t going to let her little girl come back here as long as Johnny is under suspicion. How will we replace them? We’ll have to rent the place out, just as we did before. I’ll die if we have to move back to that tavern, with all of those crude country bumpkins coming and going. I’ll enter a convent first. I swear it!”

  “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think,” I said. “Mr. Booth knew a lot of people. It’s not just us.”

  “But they’re looking for Johnny.” Anna shook her head. “Even your father had heard they were. They have to be wrong about him. Johnny couldn’t have been involved with this. He’s simply not capable of murder.”

  “Of course he’s not,” I said. Then I remembered Mr. Booth comforting me after Private Flanagan’s death, and putting a bullet into the president’s head as Mrs. Lincoln sat next to him, and I decided perhaps it was best to reserve judgment about who was capable of what.

  Anna started. “Someone’s coming inside the house.”

  We hurried into the parlor, where Mrs. Surratt and Miss Jenkins were sitting. My mind was racing with optimistic and purely unwarranted thoughts: that John Surratt had come
home to explain everything, that Mr. Booth would be standing in the parlor, shaking his handsome head incredulously and chuckling at the bizarre notion that he had killed the president. In my youthful optimism, I even briefly managed to resurrect the president himself; perhaps his death was a false rumor laid as bait to catch his would-be assassin. But it was only Mr. Weichmann and Mr. Holohan, with Detective McDevitt.

  Mr. Weichmann looked distinctly unhappy. He said, “Mrs. Surratt, we are going to Maryland to search for Booth. And—and for Mr. Surratt.”

  Mrs. Surratt nodded. “You won’t find my son there. He is in Canada.”

  “Be that as it may, the officers would like to have a photograph of Mr. Surratt to aid them.” Mr. Weichmann gazed at the mantel. “Like that one.”

  I looked at the photograph as if seeing it for the first time. It had been taken several years back, before Mr. Surratt was capable of growing his present goatee, and was not, I thought, the most flattering image of him. Often, though, I had seen Mrs. Surratt’s eyes travel to it wistfully on the many occasions when her son was away from home. “Take it,” she said. “Perhaps it will show these people that my boy is not an assassin.”

  “Precisely what I was thinking,” Mr. Weichmann said and tucked the photograph inside his coat.

  • • •

  After the detective and his reluctant companions left, I went out again in search of yet another newspaper. Instead of confining myself to H Street, I walked in the pouring rain to Ford’s Theatre. Yesterday evening, this place had been ablaze with light. Now, like the rest of Washington, it was awash with black crepe. Guards stood at every doorway, keeping out the curious and the seekers of souvenirs—and worse. Last night, the crowd outside the theater had threatened to burn it to the ground, and even today, I saw a few men shaking their fists at the place. “I wonder if it will ever reopen,” a woman next to me said.

  Her companion shook his head. “They will never act a play in there again,” he said. “Bad luck.”

  Across the street was the boardinghouse to which they’d taken the dying president. The family who owned it had been opening the room in which the president died to the curious—it was either do that or be hounded to death—and after hesitating, I followed a group of people inside. There, inside a tiny bedroom barely large enough to hold a bed and a bureau, the president had died in a bed that was too short for him, his body covered by a patchwork quilt that was already missing a few patches. In front of me, a lady used the tip of her umbrella to peel off a bit of wallpaper and slipped it into her purse.

  I wasn’t so brazen. Instead, when I left the house, I plucked a flower growing out front to press in my album.

  Someone had begun hawking mourning badges in the street, and I bought one and pinned it to my bodice before heading home. As I turned a corner, I screamed.

  Two men were beating the life out of a third man as a crowd looked on, some cheering, some indifferent. As I watched, two policemen, wielding clubs, shoved their way through the crowd and managed to rescue the wretch from his attackers. As they dragged him away, using language I had not had occasion to hear before, I saw that his features were barely recognizable.

  A man turned me around. “Get away from here, little missy. This isn’t a sight for you.”

  “But what happened?”

  “Fool made a joke about the president’s murder. He’s lucky he got away alive. As it is, he’ll be waking up in Old Capitol Prison, I’ll wager.” The man glanced indifferently at the unconscious man, whose blood was mingling with the mud as the police hauled him along. “And if you think he’s an ugly sight, just picture what John Wilkes Booth’s handsome mug is going to look like if a crowd can get hold of him.”

  29

  MARY

  APRIL 15, 1865

  Nora’s face had been hidden behind a newspaper almost continually that day since we’d learned the president died. When she was not reading newspapers, she was out buying them, and it was after one of these excursions that she gasped.

  “What is it, Nora?”

  In a trembling voice, she read: “John Surratt, of Prince George’s County, Maryland, is said to be the man who cut Mr. Seward, but as yet no clue to the direction he took, unless he went with Booth, has been obtained.”

  So it was confirmed; my boy was a suspect in this, the most horrid crime this nation had ever known. I went to my bedroom and prayed: first, that the detectives were wrong about my Johnny, and second, that they would never find him.

  • • •

  Soon after the Evening Star appeared, I had a visitor: Father Wiget. He came on his horse, Jackson, who was a favorite of the local boys, which would ordinarily set off a friendly competition on H Street over who got to hold him but on this day resulted in only one volunteer. After Father Wiget and Nora exchanged some pleasantries about her brother, whom Father Wiget knew as both a pupil and a teacher, and about the upcoming fair to benefit Gonzaga College, she considerately left us alone together.

  In a voice that still told of his native Switzerland, Father Wiget said, “Mrs. Surratt, I read the news, and I have come to offer what comfort I can.”

  “My son did not commit this crime, Father.”

  Father Wiget fingered the cross he wore around his neck. “Do you know that for certain, Mrs. Surratt?”

  I stared out the window. I longed to tell him what Johnny and Mr. Booth did plan—and of my own role in the affair. But this good man might give the advice I most feared, which was to go to the authorities and tell them what I knew. Coming from a man of the church, it was not advice I would dare to ignore, and yet I dreaded what use my information might be put to against my son. Instead, I said, “It is a mother’s instinct, no more. But I do know that he wrote me from Canada just a few days before, and I have no reason to believe that he would mislead me.”

  Father Wiget nodded, though I could not help but see the doubt in his eyes. Whether it was doubt of me or of Johnny, I could not say.

  Still, he offered me what help he could. For an hour we prayed and talked together, and when he rose to leave, I felt a little more at peace. “One thing, Mrs. Surratt, and it is a trivial one. The wheelbarrow we at the college lent you some time ago: May we have it back? We have a need for it at present.”

  “Certainly. I should have returned it long ago. It slipped my mind.”

  “I will send a boy for it later, then.”

  The wheelbarrow had the word Gonzaga painted on it in large, bright letters. Clearly, it would not do for the school to have it sitting by the house of Mr. Booth’s accomplice. The fact that Father Wiget was reluctant to tell me so made me feel a little less guilty about my much greater omission. “I will leave it where he can easily find it.”

  Father Wiget nodded, and I saw him to the door. He put on his shawl very slowly. “Mr. Booth attended a concert at the church with your son not that long ago,” he finally said. “He was quite pleased with the music and gave a generous donation afterward—so very generous that I had been hoping that Mr. Surratt would bring him to our fair. They were laughing and joking together when they left the concert. They appeared to be the best of friends.”

  “They were close.”

  “So close, one must wonder if they had any secrets from each other.” Father Wiget sighed. “Mrs. Surratt, I have known your son since he was a youngster. I would not like to see his immortal soul in peril. If he puts himself in contact with you, or if you have means of contacting him, tell him to make his confession.”

  • • •

  Mr. William Kirby, an officer in the courts who was loosely related to me through his wife, called not long after Father Wiget took his leave. He had always been kind to me, and tonight was no exception, yet even he felt it necessary to advise me to tell the detectives of my son’s whereabouts.

  “I have told them: he is in Canada. How many times must I say that? He was not in Washingt
on assaulting the secretary of state or helping Mr. Booth kill the president.”

  “I know. But if there is anything you are keeping back, you should tell them. It might be something you think is entirely unimportant, after all.” He gave me a winning smile, to which I did not respond, and said, “I did come out of concern for you, Mrs. Surratt. Has anyone threatened you or made you fearful for yourself?”

  “No. It is only people not speaking to us who used to.” I sighed, knowing how much this had hurt Anna. “And people thinking the worst of poor Johnny,” I could not help but add pointedly.

  Mr. Kirby nodded but stood his ground. “If he comes home, Mrs. Surratt,” he said smoothly, “he can clear his name.”

  • • •

  Mr. Weichmann and Mr. Holohan did not return for supper. We had taken our meal and retreated upstairs when a weary-looking Mr. Holohan entered the parlor. “Back from chasing wild geese,” he informed us with unusual volubility for him.

  “Where did you go?”

  “First to the Navy Yard. The police had a lead about a young man named Davy Herold who might have been one of Booth’s accomplices. No trace of him, but they talked to his mother and sisters, poor ladies.”

  Davy Herold. A faint memory of a monkey-faced young man who stopped at our tavern from time to time came to mind. He had a job at a pharmacy in town, I recalled, but seemed to spend most of his time hunting in the Maryland countryside.

  “Afterward, they went to your tavern, ma’am. They’ve learned that Booth passed into Maryland, and they think he might have stopped there. Mr. Lloyd said he never saw the man, though. After that it was in and around south Maryland. No trace.” Mr. Holohan yawned. “Pardon me. Anyway, I’m off. Another long day tomorrow with the detectives. They’re not through with me yet.”

  Fleetingly, I wondered if Mr. Lloyd was telling the truth about not having seen Mr. Booth at the tavern—but this was not something about which I could speculate before Mr. Holohan. “Wait. Where is Mr. Weichmann? Is he coming home tonight?”