The Lincoln Deception (18 page)

“Why didn't you leave that in the luggage?”

“Had it in my pocket to study.”

Fraser handed it over to Cook, who tried to thumb the pages apart. “Hell, we couldn't make any sense out of it before. No chance now. Might as well dump it, I guess.”

“I don't know. It may be more important than we thought. Barstow and those Sons of Liberty knew we were on to the Booth and Lincoln business, but they didn't actually try to kill us. They only got really rough, with the bridge and the steamboat, after we got this frog book. I wish I knew what it was about.”

Cook handed the book back to him and he put it back in his jacket pocket.

“You just be sure you get to Washington.”

“Don't you worry. The Clarke theater company's going to be there, and I'm hoping to attend a performance or two.”

E
mploying a new level of caution, Fraser spent much of the day watching the Arnold farm from a grove about 200 yards downwind of it. The white-haired gentleman, wearing a battered hat, moved stiffly through his chores in a fenced yard. He finished them by the time the sun was in Fraser's eyes, about midafternoon. Small of stature, with a yellow-white beard that drifted well down his shirt, Sam Arnold had an elfin quality that belied his involvement in the crime of the century. His only company was a half-dozen dogs and a like number of cats. They seemed to regard Arnold as a peer.

The old man settled in a rocking chair on the front porch, a book in his hand and a jug next to him on the floor. One cat sat in his lap and another on the arm of his chair. The dogs arranged themselves at varying distances, rising to investigate the few passersby with unhurried curiosity and occasional woofs. No one stopped, and Arnold hailed no one.

Fraser slipped down to the road and walked to the village store three miles away. The storeowner led him to the back, where he produced a gallon jug of apple liquor. On his way back to the Arnold farm, the pink sunset streaked the sky. Fraser tried the liquor. It burned, then warmed, then began to dizzy. He should have bought something to eat. His plan for approaching Arnold was close to no plan at all. Perhaps the liquor would produce one.

The gate latch taxed him. It looked like a simple wire looped over the fence post, but a mechanism held it shut. It didn't spring free when Fraser lifted the lever. He took a step back. He looked at it. The gate hung at an angle. Fraser wedged his foot under the gate and lifted it, then freed the lever. The gate swung open. His sense of pride was way out of proportion to the accomplishment.

Some of the dogs greeted him, sniffing and circling. A brown mutt of medium size thrust her snout into his private parts. Fraser waited. She snorted and moved aside.

“Evening,” Fraser called up to the porch. Arnold regarded him with a level gaze, then took a swallow from his jug and set it back down. Fraser walked slowly toward him. “Mind some company? I'm new around here.” He stopped at the porch steps.

The old man seemed to lack the need to blink. “Anyone drinking Hansen's liquor is new around here.”

Fraser grinned affably. “A mite rough, but it gets the job done.”

“You weren't invited.” It wasn't a question.

“No, sir, that's right. Just—”

“Dogs watched you in those trees all day. So you're either a thief or someone wants to pester me about John Wilkes Booth.” Tilting his head slightly, Arnold added, “You look soft for thieving.”

Pointing to the step to the porch, Fraser said, “Mind if I set down?”

“Some, but go ahead. You're welcome to waste your evening. I don't talk about the past.”

Fraser took a swallow from his jug. The brown dog came back and settled near him. Arnold's gaze returned to his book. Fraser took another swallow and started describing his investigation. He realized he was scrambling things and started over, beginning with Mr. Bingham on his deathbed. Arnold looked up sharply at the sound of Bingham's name.

“Tell me that man's still dead. I read that he died.”

“Yes, sir. He's dead.”

Arnold shook his head. “That was the best news I'd had in many a year. That man ruined my life. Why, he presented nothing but lies in that trial. Once a lie is on the pages of history, you can't erase it. When I heard he'd passed, the world felt cleaner.”

“He was my friend.”

“He was my enemy. I was no part of any scheme to kill anyone. I told Booth the kidnapping idea was crazy. I was a hundred miles away when it happened. I wasn't there.”

Fraser used his jug to stifle his response. It would do no good to remind this old man that he spent months smuggling weapons for Booth, planning Lincoln's abduction, and actually laid in ambush for the president. Or to mention the letter Arnold wrote to Booth two weeks before the assassination, the one where he urged Booth to consult with “R——d,” linking the Confederacy and Booth. Arnold knew all that, and an argument wasn't going to help anything.

A new dog, a big bluetick with a solemn visage, limped up to the gate. Fraser went to let him in. The hound whimpered slightly and licked a front paw, looking sad. Fraser bent down to look him over. A nail on a front paw was torn, an angry-looking splinter wedged in his pad.

“Probably running after something, not looking where he was going,” Arnold said, hovering over Fraser's shoulder. “Old Jasper, he's game, but not the smartest.”

“I'm a doctor. Mind if I take a hand?”

“Go ahead. Seems he trusts you.” Arnold produced tweezers and scissors, which Fraser heated to avoid infection. Arnold held the dog while he worked. The paw spurted blood when the splinter came out, but Fraser got it stopped and wrapped it tight in a bandage that wouldn't last more than sixty minutes. When he was done, Jasper lay down and started chewing off the dressing.

Arnold offered Fraser some supper, boiled eggs and dark bread. They sipped liquor and talked dogs until Arnold rose to turn in. He said Fraser could sleep in the barn. In the night, Jasper and two of the cats joined him.

 

Arnold was at his chores before Fraser awoke, somewhat the worse for the liquor. He decided he had to try two subjects with Arnold. He would start with the connections between Booth and the Confederacy. Arnold's letter to Booth was too important not to ask about. Also, he would ask about Michael O'Laughlen, another conspirator from Baltimore who was an old friend of Booth's. Arnold and O'Laughlen had lived together for weeks in early 1865, preparing to kidnap Lincoln. Unlike Arnold, O'Laughlen was in Washington City on the night before the assassination. That night he attended a party at Secretary of War Stanton's house, a party that included General Grant. Next day, the day of the assassination, O'Laughlen was with Booth close to Ford's Theatre. Yet, O'Laughlen seemed to play no role in the attacks that night and then took his secrets to the grave, dying of fever in prison. Maybe Arnold knew those secrets.

When Fraser entered the house, the old man was setting out a bachelor's breakfast of cold biscuits and coffee. They ate in silence.

“Mr. Arnold,” Fraser started, “I don't want to bother you about Booth and most of what went on with all that.”

“No need to talk about it. I've written down everything that matters. Left a full record. When I'm called before the Lord's tribunal, which is the only place where I still might receive justice, my account will be released. It has been my sad misfortune to draw a black destiny, but I am not resentful. It is all God's will.”

“I'm sure it will be many years before the world will have a chance to read that document.”

“Doc, I don't tell myself those lies, so you don't need to either. I'm about played out, reaching my three score and ten. Lucky to get this far.”

“Sir, a couple of small things.” Arnold regarded Fraser without expression. “That letter that you wrote to Booth, before the night at Ford's Theatre—”

“Won't talk about that letter, Doc. I wrote to stop a madman from doing something crazy. Nothing more to it.” Arnold spoke with little inflection, but he was talking.

“But the reference to Richmond—what did it mean?”

“It meant I was telling him anything I could to stop him. I couldn't believe any sensible person would approve his scheme. But Booth, he was part sorcerer, part serpent. He could talk the birds out of the trees, but no one ever talked him out of anything.”

“But why Richmond? Had he been talking to men in Richmond, with the Confederacy?

“If he did, I knew nothing about it. I was writing whatever came into my head.”

Although Arnold's tone remained even, his eye had a defiant look that discouraged further inquiry. This was the point on which Arnold was most vulnerable. Those two letters separated by blanks—not even an actual word, just “R——d”—had earned him four years of prison misery. It had been foolish to think Arnold would suddenly unburden himself of all guilty knowledge. Arnold stood to leave the room.

“The other thing,” Fraser said quickly, “was Michael O'Laughlen.”

“Yes, Mike. He was a gay companion.”

“You must have gotten to know him pretty well when you lived together.”

“The way men know each other when they're young, their blood's high, and their thinking's cloudy. We saw one vast sea of pleasure before us, and we swam in it happily.”

“And you were together at the prison, down at Fort Jefferson.”

“That place wore him out. Mike wasn't as strong as he seemed.”

“Here's what I'm wondering. Mike comes back to Washington City just before that night, the night at Ford's Theatre, and he's seeing Booth, but he doesn't seem to
do
anything for Booth that night. If he wasn't going to be part of what they were doing, why did he go to Washington?”

“I wasn't there.”

“I know, Mr. Arnold. But I wondered if maybe Mike said anything about it, while you were in prison, maybe when he got the fever. You and Dr. Mudd were right there with him, you'd known him from before, it just seemed he might talk about it. Like a regret that he came back to Washington at all.”

“He did regret that. He regretted that, for sure.”

Arnold stopped talking and looked down at the rough wooden table in the kitchen. Fraser watched the old man. Small emotions flitted across his face like swallows at dusk, disappearing as quickly as they arrived. His eyes looked to grow heavy.

“Mr. Arnold?” The old man looked up at Fraser. “Was Mike supposed to attack Stanton that night, or General Grant? I can't figure out any other reason for him to be there.”

“I wasn't there.”

“I know, sir. But did he say anything like that?”

“Nope, never said that.”

“What did he say?”

Arnold gripped the back of a chair. “Mike said it was lucky General Grant left town that day, lucky for both of them. But it didn't turn out that lucky for Mike.”

“That's what he said?”

“Half crazy with fever when he said it, but yes, sir, that's what he said.”

“So that means he was supposed to kill Grant, but then had nothing to do when Grant left Washington that afternoon, right?” Arnold didn't answer. “What do you think?”

“I think you'd better leave.”

F
or almost an hour, Fraser idled against a building that faced the Surratt house on H Street. He thought he was inconspicuous, looking like any city man who preferred loafing to working. He had acquired a four-button suit from Zimmerman's haberdashery. It featured a checked pattern that Fraser wouldn't wear in Cadiz. A hot bath and a shave at the National Hotel had left him feeling sleek and smart, finally shed of the terrors of the
Georgia,
no longer sleeping outdoors or in barns.

The sky was overcast, but the clouds weren't serious about rain. In front of the house, carriages flowed back and forth. Gaudy yellow streetcars rocked by. The traffic paid no heed to the evil that had been hatched behind the walls of that house. Washington was placid. It lacked the urgency and self-confidence of New York, and also lacked the swagger and sweat of Baltimore. Like a middle-aged matron, it was unhurried, secure in the tax revenues that poured in from the rest of the country. It might never be great, but it would never want.

To Fraser, the Surratt house looked oddly normal, squatting on an ordinary street. Painted white with dark shutters. A flight of stairs led sideways up to the formal entrance; a low door granted entry on the level below. A mansard roof with two gabled windows crowned three levels of double windows. How could those conspirators have fit into that plain house? John Surratt, his mother, Mary, and sister, Anna. Louis Weichmann, young and flighty, fresh from seminary. Two other female boarders. The magnificent Booth, radiant with destiny. The terrifying Lewis Paine, huge and blandly malevolent, stood at that door after mutilating William Henry Seward. The sniveling Atzerodt, who could not even face his target, Vice President Johnson, lurked in those shadows. They had all been there.

He walked east to the end of the block, crossed and walked back in front of the house. He wanted to rap on the door, lift his new homburg, and begin scouring the premises for clues. He scanned every brick and window pane but kept moving. Detectives and souvenir seekers, not to mention later owners, had long since grabbed or trampled anything that might be evidence. He kept walking, then turned down Seventh Street. He was supposed to meet Cook.

 

When Cook arrived in Washington, he moved into a boarding house up near New York Avenue. It was safer for them to be apart, and Cook also valued some privacy after weeks of being together on the road. He could think better with a space of his own.

He had wired for their luggage to be shipped from Baltimore, but he received a jolt when he rummaged through his trunk for Barstow's memorandum book. He wanted to reexamine some of the entries from early 1865, but the book wasn't there. After more frantic searching, he had to face the fact. The memo book was gone, as was the dictionary for cracking the cipher. The Sons of Liberty rifled through their belongings. Fraser still had the frog book, but its condition meant that it, too, was yielding up no secrets.

Fraser stopped by Cook's room in a state of high excitement over what Sam Arnold said, but his spirits deflated quickly when he learned that Barstow's memo book was gone.

“That means they watched us in Baltimore,” Cook said, “and after that business on the ship, they're looking hard for us now. And now our proof's gone. What Sam Arnold told you ain't proof either. All we got is what's stored up in our heads. Say, for example, I print in my newspaper that O'Laughlen was going to kill Grant. That man Arnold's just going to say it's all a lie, and then where are we?”

“Of course,” Fraser agreed. “He's going to say that no matter what. That doesn't mean we shouldn't get the truth out. What he told me is important. They meant to kill Grant, too. Lincoln, Johnson, Seward,
and
Grant. A clean sweep. Is that something dreamed up by some hysterical actor in love with the romance of the Old South?” Cook was working a toothpick on the lower left side of his mouth. “Someone wanted Lafayette Foster to be president,” Fraser continued. “No doubt about that. But the goal wasn't conquering Canada and Mexico, like Barstow was talking about. He said that to send us off on a wild goose chase, make us look like fools.”

Cook grunted in agreement.

“One funny thing,” Fraser said, “is how they sent only one killer to each target. Booth to kill Lincoln. Atzerodt to kill Johnson. Paine to kill Seward. And O'Laughlen to murder Grant. But when Grant leaves town, they don't switch O'Laugh-len over to help Atzerodt even though Atzerodt sure needed some help, which even Booth should've realized.”

Cook threw his toothpick at the wastebasket, but missed. “They weren't your top-notch squad of killers.”

“Talking to Arnold's got me wondering what Booth and O'Laughlen talked about that morning, you know, April 14th.” Fraser stood up and walked to the window. “They talked right over on Seventh Street.” He shook his head. “Maybe Booth was trying to give O'Laughlen some other assignment, but he wouldn't do it. Maybe O'Laughlen was proposing an alternative and Booth rejected it. Damn, what I would give to know.”

“Wishing ain't going to make it so.” When Fraser made no reply, Cook stretched his long arms and arched his back. “Let's go over what we're supposed to get from your old ladies.”

“You know about Lucy Hale Chandler, you know, Bessie Hale,” Fraser began.

“Booth's fiancée.”

“Right. And then there's Mrs. Lafayette Foster. Her connection's pretty obvious.”

“I already have a line on her.”

“Really? That fast?”

“The
National Tribune
had a piece just today, she was at some society party. It's incredible what's news when white folks do it. Drinking tea, that's news.”

“Did it give any clues how to find her?”

“Rich white lady, a bit long in the tooth—not that many places for her kind to be. I'll find her.”

“And then there's Mrs. Grant, the general's widow. I think she lives with her daughter, or travels with her.”

“She'll be easy. She's somebody, someone people talk about after they see her. If I met her, I'd probably talk about it.” Cook tilted his head to one side. “So, while I'm nosing around the city, you're going off sparking with your lady friend?”

“Just patronizing the theatrical arts.” Fraser smiled.

“Give my regards to Miss Eliza.”

They agreed to meet for breakfast in the morning.

 

The marquee above the entrance to the Columbia Theatre proclaimed that the Creston Clarke company would be appearing for three weeks, into early October. Wall posters exclaimed over their featured productions and invited the public to attend them all.

Entering the dark lobby, Fraser's heart rose at the sight of Eliza speaking with two men in workmen's garb. Standing at a distance so he wouldn't overhear the conversation, which was animated, he tried not to betray his anticipation. He had thought of her often since New York, remembering her as lovely in every respect. Memory, however, had been a cheat. She was far lovelier. Her beauty unnerved him; her hazel eyes conveyed an intelligence and sympathy he longed to share.

She greeted him as “Dr. Fraser,” a formality that sank his feelings momentarily, but they revived with her smile. She had much to do, she explained, but invited him to watch the current rehearsal. She could dine with him. He should call for her at 7:30 at her hotel. He recognized this storm of emotions. He was in her grip. With an inner squirm, he knew that meant he was no longer in Ginny's. But he wasn't.

The actors were mounting a scene from
Macbeth.
It began with a hungover servant whose cavorting was downright comical. Fraser, who thought of Shakespeare as serious business, was delighted. Sitting in the back of the theater, he laughed at the servant's speech on the influence of liquor on lechery—that liquor provokes it and unprovokes it, makes it stand to and not stand to. It was a lot funnier on the stage than when he read it.

Armored lords stomped onstage. At their center stood Creston Clarke with a brooding countenance. The murdered king was discovered in the wings. “Horror, horror, horror,” an actor howled. Drawn into the drama, Fraser's mood swung to dread. He could not stop looking at Clarke. Portraying Macbeth the murderer, his face contained both guilt and a suppressed gloating.

“Enough!” Clarke called out. Clearing his face of emotion, he began to chide an actor for a clumsy entrance. Fraser found Clarke's transformation unsettling. Moments before, the actor's face had shown the heart of murder. Now its expression was peevish. Did this hopelessly vain actor have such an intimate yet blithe knowledge of murder? Had his uncle, John Wilkes Booth, enjoyed the same easy familiarity with assassination—first acquired through pretense, then implemented in brutal reality?

What, Fraser found himself thinking, did it do to a man to kill another? Cook had killed just a few days ago, then said those men needed killing. That was Cook's way of thinking. How many men walking the streets of Washington had killed someone? Many of the old soldiers, to be sure. Thousands, maybe. Hundreds, at least. He was surrounded by killers. Could he be one?

Fraser left the theater and bought an
Evening Times
from a newsboy. He felt an uncharacteristic desire for whiskey but remembered the servant's homily about standing to and not standing to. Whiskey was not the way to prepare for his evening with Eliza. After skimming the headlines, he ambled along the streets with a detached regard.

Fraser paused in front of the White House. According to the headlines, McKinley had just arrived from Ohio, but the president wasn't visible from the sidewalk. A lone policeman nodded to Fraser from the end of the semicircular drive. Two carriages stood near the mansion's entrance, their drivers chatting away the time.

Fraser wondered how McKinley's reelection campaign was going. In pursuit of Booth's ghost, he had lost track of events in his own time. Settling at a tavern on G Street, Fraser drank a beer while the newspaper informed him of recent catastrophes. A hurricane had devastated the Texas coast. Pennsylvania coal miners were striking. Fraser thought of one-legged Lew Evans in Adena. If he were a coal miner, Fraser thought, he surely would be tempted to strike.

Then his eye fell on a story from New York. The presidential campaign there was growing spirited. The Democrats were relying on the Tammany Hall machine to roll up a big margin that would carry the state for William Jennings Bryan, but the Tammany Tiger was struggling that year. Then he read the name of the Tammany boss: Boss Croker. The connection jumped into his mind. Croker. Croaker. The frog book.

Fraser uttered an oath under his breath. He and Cook were such rubes, a couple of dopes from Ohio. Barstow was paying off the Tammany boss. That was how you built a giant bridge across the East River. And that's what Barstow had meticulously recorded in the frog book. Which was why, after Cook burglarized the office of Spencer, Barstow, the Sons of Liberty graduated from merely dangerous to outright murderous. Cook and Fraser had posed some kind of threat as they excavated around the Booth conspiracy, but how much real evidence could they come upon thirty-five years later? But this bridge payoff scheme could tilt the outcome of this year's presidential election—now, that was worth spilling some blood over.

But they never had made any sense of the entries in the frog book, and the book itself now was a ruin. Fraser tore out the newspaper article and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He had to talk to Cook about it.

When Eliza swept into the hotel lobby to meet him, Fraser decided Boss Croker could wait. She was winsome in a pale blue dress. He thrilled at the thought that every male eye in the room was trained upon her.

The restaurant, less than a block from the Willard, was quiet and refined. After oysters—a disgusting food that Fraser learned to tolerate while hiding in Chestertown—he could not contain himself. “I have,” he said, “been unable to get you out of my mind.”

“Dr. Fraser,” she said with a quizzical look, “what exactly are you saying?”

“I seem to have fallen in love with you.” Terror surged through his brain. What had he done? Even one beer had been too much. But then came a rush of elation, a surge of energy released by the plain fact that there was no turning back, nothing to do but charge upon the citadel at full speed and devil take the hindmost. He had lost his head entirely, and wasn't sorry for it. “I hope that doesn't seem hasty. I assure you I'm not a hasty man. I've made that declaration to only one other woman in my life, and I married her. And I hope to marry you.”

Eliza's eyes were alight. She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. At least she wasn't angry or offended. “I confess,” she said with rather a merry smile, “that some might think this conversation a bit premature, and most would think this a public location for it. But I do give you free license to return to it on some occasion that seems more fitting.” She softened her smile and looked directly into his eyes. Fraser felt like he had scaled the Matterhorn in his bare feet.

Before his inability to speak became too embarrassing, Eliza shifted her utensils on the table and asked if he had noticed how quiet the city seemed. “Congress isn't in session, you know,” she said, “so the city grows a bit dull. I have feared that our attendance will suffer as a result, but this was the best time for us to pass through on this southern tour. It's difficult to balance everything when making up our schedule.”

Fraser could form no response. He was still agog over his temerity in professing love and proposing marriage, not to mention the warmth with which she received it. After awarding him another smile and an unguarded view into those bewitching eyes, she surprised him by asking if they had made any progress on the Lincoln assassination.