The Lincoln Deception (6 page)

“Are you, indeed?” Townsend said. “That's quite remarkable. For what organ of the press do you write?”

“My own,” Cook said. “The
Ohio Eagle,
it's a colored paper.”

Townsend's answering grin seemed genuine. “Good for you, young man. Good for you. I don't know the
Ohio Eagle,
I regret to admit, but I shall expect great things of it.” After gazing thoughtfully at the smoke rising from his pipe, he began a critical review of Mr. Bingham's prosecution of the Lincoln conspirators. “Even a child should have known certain testimony was perjured,” he sighed. “Your friend Bingham, he was too pure a sort to bring forth false evidence intentionally, but he was, as I say, a zealot. Zealots are not terribly good at winkling out the truth. Otherwise, they couldn't be zealots, could they?”

After reciting other complaints about Bingham's performance, Townsend said, “It wasn't a good effort, not at all, not what history required—nay, deserved—of that moment in time.”

With an effort, Fraser ignored Townsend's aspersions against Mr. Bingham. He pressed the burning question in his mind: whether the Confederacy was behind the assassination. When Townsend rejected the idea out of hand, Fraser began to argue. “What of all the Confederate spies buzzing around Booth?” he asked. “You yourself wrote in
Leslie's Illustrated
that the Surratts were spies, and so were Thomas Harbin and Augustus Howell and Mrs. Slater. And both Booth and John Surratt went to Montreal to see the Confederates scheming up there.”

Townsend admitted every fact that Fraser threw at him, but he did not budge on the basic proposition. “There was no Confederate involvement in the plot,” Townsend proclaimed in a patronizing tone that rankled. “You will have to accept,” Townsend said with some finality, “that the conspiracy was the spawn of one talented, charismatic, very likely insane young actor who happened to be an extraordinary athlete as well.”

With that pronouncement, their host called for his man to refill their glasses. Though the evening was upon them, he said nothing of supper.

Exasperated but fortified with a fresh lemonade, Fraser deployed his most powerful weapon, Mr. Bingham's deathbed description of Mrs. Surratt's confession and how Mr. Bingham and Edwin Stanton took her secret to their graves. As he spoke, Fraser kept his eyes on Townsend, who was scraping out the bowl of his pipe. He hoped that Cook wouldn't betray that he had never heard of this episode before.

Townsend's demeanor began to change. After tapping his pipe into the ashtray, he looked up sharply. “Who else knows about this?”

“No one,” Fraser said, still not looking at Cook.

“Now, if I were still working as a reporter,” Townsend said, nodding over at Cook, “I might pursue that question. But as I'm a poet and a novelist now, I can only respond that, yes, I now understand your interest in this subject.”

Townsend pressed for any other hint from Bingham of what Mrs. Surratt said, but Fraser could add nothing. “All right, gentlemen,” Townsend said, grimacing with apparent thought, “where does this take us? What could that woman have learned in the weeks before the assassination? She ran a boarding house and regularly went to church to confess her sins. She wasn't rushing down to Richmond or up to Montreal, like Booth or her son did. So she could only know what Booth or her son told her. Or one of the priests.”

“Sir,” Cook said quietly, “who wanted President Lincoln dead? Who would you list?”

Townsend shook his head. “That's a fine question, but one with far too many answers. Rebels? Of course. The Copperhead Democrats in the North? Yes. Right there you've got about half the country. Crazy people? That takes you well over half.”

Townsend began to pace in front of the massive stone fireplace at the end of the room. “Let's think about Mr. Bingham, shall we? After Mrs. Surratt told him this secret, he did not change how he prosecuted the case or what he thought about the conspiracy, right? He just went right on saying it was Jeff Davis and the Rebs, right?”

“So,” Fraser tried, “she must have confirmed that, right?”

“Not so fast. Maybe she told him something completely opposite, and maybe he and Stanton decided to hide it so no one would know how wrong they had been. Nobody likes being wrong, least of all zealots.”

“Maybe,” Fraser ventured, “she confirmed that the Confederates were behind Booth, but Stanton and Bingham decided to keep it secret so they didn't stir up old wounds.”

“No,” Townsend said quickly. “Those wounds weren't old in July of 1865. They were quite fresh.”

“They didn't want to stir up something,” Fraser insisted. “Maybe people who would be angry to be investigated, people who could be dangerous.”

Townsend continued to pace. The floor creaked under his tread. Fraser finally asked the question he had come to ask. “If you were going to investigate this, where would you go?”

“Ah,” Townsend stopped, pointing his index finger to the ceiling. “Louis Weichmann. There's really nowhere else to start.”

“He was the star witness.”

“At the conspiracy trial and at John Surratt's trial. And by now he's completely loony on the subject.” Townsend shrugged. “He has spent his entire life on it. Last I saw him he was assembling an archive, a veritable shrine of papers about the assassination and the conspiracy. If you're looking for a fanatic to talk to about the case, Weichmann's your man. He's in Indiana, a town called Anderson.”

“Would he talk to us?”

“Who knows?” Townsend said. “It might depend on how unbalanced he has become.”

“I'll send him a wire, so he'll expect us.”

“No,” Townsend objected, shaking his head at the floor. “I wouldn't do that. He's easy to spook. He's had a good deal of trouble because of his testimony. Threats and such. He's persuaded there are people out to do him ill. He may, of course, be right.” Townsend looked up. “I'll write you a letter of introduction that you can deliver in person.”

“What else,” Cook asked, “what else would you do to investigate?”

“I say,” Townsend mused, “perhaps we should arrange for a small repast. I will think better if my stomach is not snarling from hunger.”

Over a Spartan meal of cold ham, dark bread, and pickles, Townsend regaled them with stories of the conspiracy trial, the hoods and shackles that the prisoners were forced to wear, and the degenerate quality of the prisoners themselves. “I suppose one should expect that with assassins, but we who had read our Shakespeare hoped for something finer. Compared with that fool who shot President Garfield, of course, John Wilkes Booth was a great soul.”

Fraser steered the conversation back to the unanswered questions about the Lincoln conspiracy. “What parts of the conspiracy do you think were never really looked into?”

“Bessie Hale!” Townsend almost shouted the name. “That young woman was the fiancée of John Wilkes Booth. She was with him in the week before the assassination, and even on the morning of it. But she was a senator's daughter—Senator Hale was, of all things, an abolitionist from New Hampshire—so she never testified anywhere. I got run off that part of the story myself. Bessie Hale, she's always stuck in my craw. How could she not know something? She's still around, you know, in Washington.” Townsend smiled. “She married a man who also became senator from New Hampshire. What, sir, are the odds on that? The daughter of a senator and the wife of another, and the former fiancée of Lincoln's assassin?”

Fraser had never read that Booth had a fiancée. He needed to learn more about her. “What else,” he asked, “were you dissatisfied with?”

Townsend looked up at the ceiling and let a smile play at the corners of his mouth. “Booth and his money.” The writer explained that Booth made no paid appearances as an actor for almost a full year before the assassination, yet lived in high style and supported Lewis Paine and Atzerodt, plus Arnold and O'Laughlen.

“So”—he leaned forward on his elbows—“how does this twenty-six-year-old unemployed actor, who never achieved the popularity of his brothers, have enough money to support this entire operation for months and months? Someone else was paying those bills. There was testimony that Booth boasted he would go to Richmond to get money.”

“Isn't that what a Confederate agent would do?” Fraser asked. “Earlier, you were saying that Booth acted on his own, but this money question points the other way.”

Waving away the question, Townsend seemed in the grip of a new thought. “Another thing,” he said, “I heard talk, not right away but after a few months, that might explain what old Bingham told you. Though you didn't hear it everywhere, the smart ones, the ones who know the inside of everything, they started saying it.”

“Yes?”

“The talk was that the conspiracy came from inside Mr. Lincoln's official family, that it was some of his friends who arranged the killing.”

“Who?”

“Mostly the talk was about Stanton, but I never could figure that out. Why would he do it? He was closer to Lincoln than anyone, and no one except Lincoln could tolerate his company. I assumed that talk came from all the people who disliked Stanton, which was pretty much everyone except your friend Bingham.”

Cook, slowly stirring his coffee, spoke for the first time since dinner had begun. “What reasons did they give for saying that it was someone in the government?”

“A lot of it was that the pursuit of Booth was so incompetent—a hundred thousand Union soldiers couldn't find the scoundrel for ten days. That made people wonder if someone in the government was protecting Booth. Stanton was in charge of that pursuit.”

“What reason,” Fraser asked, “would Stanton have to kill Lincoln?”

“I'm not saying it makes any sense,” Townsend said quickly. “But the talk was that Lincoln wanted to go easy on the South, while Stanton, who was the most radical of Republicans, was hotted up to punish the Southerners.”

Cook stopped stirring his coffee. “If Mrs. Surratt was accusing Stanton of being behind the killing, would Bingham go straight to Stanton with her story? Maybe he would naturally demand an explanation from Stanton.”

“But,” Fraser said, “Stanton persuaded Mr. Bingham not to reveal whatever she told him.”

They fell silent for several moments. Townsend slapped the table. “God must love mysteries, my friends, since he has given us so many. I sincerely hope you boys solve this one.” He looked earnestly at Fraser. “I'd be pleased to offer whatever advice and help you might need as you go along. If you want to get in touch with people from back then, I know most of the ones who aren't dead yet. I'd be glad to send a letter or wire to smooth your way.”

As he showed them to the door, Townsend suggested they communicate in a confidential fashion since the subject was so delicate. Fraser should send his wires to Mr. Jenkins in Brunswick; he explained that Mrs. Surratt had been born Mary Jenkins. Fraser, he added, could sign his name Armour, which Townsend would use for his replies. Armour, they both knew, was John Bingham's middle name.

T
he sun was down when Fraser and Cook set off for Brunswick, the closest town where they might find beds. A three-quarters moon lit the road. They met no one else, passing farmhouses where lights glowed softly behind white curtains. Fraser felt like his mind was on fire.

“That financial question,” he burst out when they started out, “how Booth had so much money? That's interesting. I haven't seen any testimony or anything else about that. Booth had some oil investments, but they didn't seem to pay off, not ever. We should think about how to figure that out.”

For once, Cook didn't answer. Fraser kept talking. “But the Stanton story, that he was behind the assassination? Whoo-ee, what a humbug! Makes no sense at all. Don't you agree?”

“What do you care what I think?” Cook's voice sounded tired.

“You heard everything I heard tonight. You've read what I've read, most of it. If you're not going to say what you think, why'd you come all this way?”

“I've been asking myself that question.” Cook stopped his horse. His face wore an angry scowl, though his voice was steady. “To have you shush me on the train because colored men ain't supposed to talk out? To have that conductor eye me like week-old meat? To have that strange man back there not show us the courtesy you'd show a dog? He wasn't going to give us a crust of bread, after we come two hundred miles and more, until you told him about that Mrs. Surratt business. And then he don't offer a bed for the night, knowing we're riding back in the dark, him with that tremendous house echoing all around his ears?”

“Hang on just a minute.”

“And then you”—Cook jabbed his finger toward Fraser, his voice increasing in volume while lowering in pitch—“you up and start talking about that secret Mr. Bingham tells when he's dying. First time
I
ever hear of it. I've been studying and talking to you for weeks, but it never comes up. When were you going to get around to that? Then you spill it to that arrogant, swishy writer five minutes after we walk in the door? I do not appreciate that. I'm not just the boy along to run errands, not to be seen or heard or talked to. I ain't doing that.”

“Dammit, Speed, it was a secret.”

“Not for white men it wasn't a secret. That man, Townsend, didn't even ask about it. Didn't ask something
near
to it. You just told him, couldn't wait to do it. I know what that is. Don't tell me different.”

“Okay, okay. I should've told you. When you started on this thing, I wasn't sure you were going to stay with it, so I didn't mention it. Then I was planning to, but I just didn't get around to it.”

“Don't give it no never mind. This is good. This is real good. Now I know where I stand. Let myself get fooled. Never too old to get fooled. Now I know, and I ain't lost anything more than a day on the railroad and some time in these hills. You go ahead and try to solve this business. You just try. I got plenty of things need doing.”

“Speed, what are you talking about? We need to get out to Indiana, to see this man Weichmann. You should come.”

“You go on. I'm pressed for time.”

Cook kicked his horse into a trot toward Brunswick. Fraser couldn't think of anything to call after him, not anything that would change his mind. It probably wasn't worth it, anyway. That man, he thought, was smart enough, but he was prickly, real prickly, which had probably got him in trouble before and it was sure going to get him in trouble again. It might be better for Fraser not to be around when it did.

Looking up at the moon, Fraser found he agreed with one of the man's points. He, too, had expected to spend the night at Townsend's house, talking through the problems of the Booth conspiracy. Townsend had been patronizing at first. Then when he heard about Mrs. Surratt and Mr. Bingham, he seemed to get friendly, even expansive. And then he showed them the door. Cold, then hot, then cold. Could Townsend still be writing about the Booth conspiracy? Townsend, though, was a minor puzzle. Right now, Fraser had to find a bed. It might be easier without Cook. He wondered how Cook would fare on his own, then remembered that the man had played baseball all over the country. He had more experience traveling than Fraser did. He'd do fine.

Fraser started toward Brunswick.

 

By the time he reached Brunswick, Fraser had resolved to go straight on to see Weichmann in Indiana. Townsend was right. Writing ahead would only give the man a chance to duck him. Fraser's bag held two clean collars. He wasn't due in Cadiz until Sunday night. After an extended consultation with the agent at the Brunswick train depot, Fraser charted a marathon journey that should get him to Weichmann's town in twenty-two hours. Track repairs cost him one connection, so it was midafternoon Friday when Fraser stepped onto the platform in Anderson, weary and dirty from more than a day of bouncing over a troubled track bed. Meals gobbled at depot restaurants left a haze of queasiness.

After washing up in his stuffy hotel room, Fraser set out for the Weichmann Business School, founded by the former star witness against the Booth conspirators. According to the hotel clerk, the school was less than two miles away. The walk would do him good. Fraser drew energy from the early-summer sun, from the pleasure of moving under his own musclepower. Through the endless train ride, his head had swum with facts and theories as he drifted between dozing and a dazed wakefulness. He wasn't sure what he had reasoned and what he had dreamt. He should have thought about Booth's financial situation before. Through the last months of the conspiracy, almost no one in Booth's gang had a job. Someone else was paying their bills. And then there was Booth's fiancée! Why would a man with a fiancée, on the brink of a life of marital happiness, assassinate the president, a scheme that was bound to get him killed? Unless Booth never meant to marry. Could she have been part of his plot?

Anderson was so flat that it discomfited Fraser. The expanses of level ground seemed somehow sinister, implying concealed purposes and hidden hazards. Hill country felt more honest, affording distant views. He stopped for a moment to gaze at the slow-moving White River, not much more than a stream. He shook his head. If he was finding evil in the topography, his mind must still be clouded from the train ride.

The Weichmann school was in a white clapboard house. Outcroppings from the main building reflected alterations to accommodate the instruction offered within. When he entered the front vestibule, Fraser could hear the drone of a lecture to his left. He turned the other way into an office that had been a dining room. A small, gray-bearded man sat behind a large desk. He wore a formal suit with vest. He adjusted his pince-nez to focus on Fraser.

“Mr. Weichmann?” Fraser asked.

“Who wishes to know?”

“A friend of George Townsend?” The man gave no flicker of response. “I'm terribly sorry to interrupt, but if you have a moment I can explain.” The man stood and walked past Fraser, into the next room. He closed the door firmly behind him.

After standing awkwardly for a minute, Fraser remembered Townsend's warning about Weichmann's odd qualities. He knocked on the door to the next room and called, “Might we speak?” Hearing no reply, he pushed the door in on a private study. Weichmann sat in an armchair with a book open before him.

“Sir, I don't mean to be rude—”

“You're failing rather badly at that. I thought I made it clear I have no wish to speak with you.”

“Sir, I've come a long way to see you.”

“That's hardly any affair of mine.”

“No, you're right, sir, but—”

“My time is precious to me, even if it has no value to you, and I do not wish to squander it on any associate of that charlatan Townsend, a man to whom truth and falsehood are largely indistinguishable.”

“Mr. Weichmann—”

Rising to his full though modest height, the older man asked, “Must I summon my staff to expel you?”

“Sir, my mission was triggered not by Townsend but by John Bingham, who was a neighbor and patient of mine.”

“Bingham? Where are you from? Who are you?”

“I am Dr. James Fraser of Cadiz, Ohio. I attended Mr. Bingham in his late illness, as I had attended him for many years before.”

“Yes, I read of his death. I hope it was not a hard one.”

“He was staunch in his faith and suffered relatively little.”

Weichmann licked his lips. “Bingham did me a kindness when not many people would. He knew the trials to which I have been subjected. I have been shot at, dismissed from employment, chased from town to town, all for telling the truth about a terrible crime. Do you think that fair, Dr. . . .”

“Fraser. James Fraser. And, no, it's most unfair, Mr. Weichmann. And I'm sure Mr. Bingham deemed it the same.”

“Indeed, he did. Indeed, he did. Are you Catholic?”

“Excuse me?

“The question's plain enough? Are you a member of a Roman Catholic congregation? Do you confess to Catholic priests? Did priests send you? Monsignors? Bishops? Archbishops? Cardinals? They're all the same to me, no matter how tall their hats or glorious their robes.”

“No, sir, I was raised Presbyterian.”

“Oh, dear. That must not have been any picnic.” Weichmann gestured to an armchair that faced his. “Perhaps you can describe your mission, as you put it, more fully. I warn you, though, if I suspect for a moment that you are in league with Townsend, this interview will immediately end.”

Despite his peculiarities, Weichmann proved a gracious host, happily detailing his travails following the conspiracy trial, and the John Surratt trial after that. When Fraser disclosed Mr. Bingham's secret, Weichmann grew thoughtful. Mrs. Surratt, he said, was an honorable and pious woman, but a bitter rebel.

“The Confederacy had no more active friend than she,” he said. “She was a woman of character and sociable in the best ways of her sex. But she was devoted, body and soul, to the cause of the South.” In his trial testimony, Weichmann insisted, he had said little to incriminate her. Another witness did that job. He had been surprised, he added, by her lawyers.

“She had three, you know, but at times I wondered if she would have been better off with none.” Fraser recalled Cook's opinion that her lawyers made her situation worse, not better. “Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland appeared for her, which seemed like a great coup. He was a wonderful lawyer, respected across the country. Yet he abandoned her after one week, an act that implied he thought her guilty. That left her with two young men with little experience of the courts. They scored few hits, at least so far as I could tell. They were no match for John Bingham, that's sure.”

“What happened to those lawyers?”

“The young ones? They both got patronage jobs from President Andy Johnson. Isn't
that
peculiar? Why would he hire Mrs. Surratt's lawyers, after he approved her execution?”

“Why?”

“Dr. Fraser, if you find that question interesting, then you are, as you say, no friend of the ghastly George Townsend. We should dine. Come home with me. I live with my sisters and brother-in-law, and they are forever after me to go about in society. They fear I become more strange as the years pass, while I merely fear more and more, which they do not comprehend, or claim not to. In any event, tonight you can be my rejoinder to them.”

 

Fraser was unprepared for the theological tone of the Weichmann dinner table. Louis Weichmann, it turned out, was a seeker of a particularly persistent stripe. He trained as a Catholic seminarian but grew disenchanted with that church and sampled the doctrinal wares of the full range of Christian denominations. He was settled for the moment in an Anglican parish, to the dismay of his very Catholic sisters, each of whom cautioned him through the meal of the error of his path.

“Louis,” scolded the unmarried sister, Tillie, who seemed to care more about ecclesiastical matters. “You can no longer risk your immortal soul over a bureaucratic disagreement over who manages your church.”

“Tillie, that's a hideously false statement of my views,” Weichmann snapped. “The day the American Catholic Church steps forward to acknowledge its involvement in the Booth conspiracy is the day I will consider rejoining that flock.”

“Balderdash,” Tillie answered. “You don't believe the Pope was involved in killing Lincoln any more than I do. Father Chiniqui writes utter nonsense about that.”

“Ah”—her brother answered, one finger pointing portentously skyward—“perhaps not the hierarchy, the bishops and such, and I quite agree that the Pope cared little whether President Lincoln lived or died. But those priests out in southern Maryland and in Washington, those were dangerous men.” He ticked off the points on his fingers: Booth met Dr. Mudd at a Catholic service in Charles County. Michael O'Laughlen was Catholic, as was John Surratt, and it was the priests who hustled Surratt out of the country, then out of Canada, and then on to the Vatican in Rome.

“What better way to conceal poisonous secrets,” he asked, “than in the robes of a priest? Mrs. Surratt, you will remember, was forever at church. Where better to pass secrets than the confessional, which, after all, is designed for secrets?”

Certain priests, according to Weichmann, had sworn eternal hostility to him because of his testimony. “They have hounded me for decades, sir, and they hound me still. I will never be comfortable in a Roman Catholic congregation.” He added that he faced ostracism by unnamed others sympathetic to the Booth conspirators. Fraser alternated between thinking Weichmann a lunatic or a man who was paying a high price for being in the wrong place at a very wrong time.