The Lincoln Deception (9 page)

C
ook's father had always marveled at how his neighbors talked about the weather. “Gets hot in the summer,” he liked to say. “Gets cold in the winter. The wind blows, and sometimes it rains. So why we got to talk like the Lord's brought us some curse, never been heard nor seen nor even suspicioned before?”

For Jamie Fraser, Cook realized as they rode along the edge of Lake Erie, the weather was a daily revelation.

It
was
hot, even for early August, and it had been hot for weeks. The farms they saw from their train window, and now from their buggy, were dappled with brown, not the rich green they should be showing. Truth was, the sun and the drought were burning up the crops. That phenomenon, which could be crisply described in a single sentence, had occupied Fraser's conversation for the last day and half, slackening slightly now that they were approaching Fairview, a dozen miles west of Erie.

Their departure from Cadiz took longer than they intended. Fraser couldn't sell his land right off, so he had to borrow against it. The bankers kept asking what he wanted the money for, and Fraser chose not to say he was investigating the Lincoln assassination. Cook agreed that damned few bankers would consider that a sound purpose for a loan. Finally, Fraser borrowed the money from a farmer whose fields butted up against Fraser's land. The farmer probably figured he'd get his hooks into Fraser, then grab the land for less than it was worth. Cook wasn't impressed with Fraser's business sense, but that wasn't his lookout. Fraser said he'd come up with the money for their trip and he did it. That was all Cook needed to know.

A hot wind was blowing waves onto the pebbled shore. Cook had low expectations for this leg of the trip. Through Townsend, that slippery writer, they had located the summer home of John Wilkes Booth's nephew, Creston Clarke, who was a big-shot actor himself. Cook couldn't think of a reason why someone who was kin to Booth would help them out, but Fraser insisted. The man had an optimistic streak that could prove dangerous. Cook went along with him this time. What could it hurt? He'd been thrown out of lots better places than the home of John Wilkes Booth's nephew.

“Will you look at that,” Fraser said, pulling up the horses. “A castle fit for young Lochinvar, out of the West.” Before them loomed a three-story stone mansion that bristled with turrets, roof gables, and a widow's walk at its peak. The effect was monumental and ugly.

“Some folks don't deserve to have money,” Cook said, “the stupid things they do with it.”

“Must be chilly in the winter, with the wind coming off the lake.”

Yup, Cook thought. Cold in the winter.

Fraser climbed down to approach the entrance. When a colored servant answered, Fraser said he represented an Ohio theater chain and asked for Clarke. The servant said Mr. Clarke was away and wasn't expected that day. Fraser left no message.

They drove past a grove of majestic sycamores and stopped at the side of the road. Fraser pulled out a volume of Shakespeare's plays. He had said he was reading them to understand John Wilkes Booth, who portrayed most of the murderers and assassins in Shakespearean tragedy.

“Which is this one?” Cook asked.

“They kill the king there, too?”

Fraser shook his head. “I'll let you know.” Fraser opened the book while Cook set off on foot toward the back of the mansion. When Cook returned ninety minutes later, Fraser was asleep.

“Well?” Cook asked as he climbed into the buggy.

Shrugging off his nap, Fraser said, “Didn't kill him off, just made him old and crazy.”

Cook nodded back at the mansion. “First-class grub there. I got to say, having your uncle shoot the president don't seem to hold a body back much.”

“What'd you find out?”

“The man's fishing, way out in the middle of the lake. S'posed to be back by end of the day.”

“So he is expected.”

Cook smiled. “The answer you get depends on who's doing the asking.”

They returned as the fiery afternoon faded into evening. This time both men climbed the four stone steps to the front door. Fraser presented his card as an officer of the Chillicothe Theater Company, along with a letter of introduction from Townsend. The entrance hall was at least fifteen degrees cooler than the front stoop. Those stone walls might be cold in the winter, Fraser whispered, but they were a blessing in early August.

The servant gestured for Cook to wait while he showed Fraser to the parlor. “Mr. Cook is with me,” Fraser said. They both followed the servant.

A booming voice, more like a shout, bounced around the immense room as they entered. “Creston Clarke here.” The echo seemed to exaggerate the man's British accent. Cook wondered if it was genuine. A handsome man of middle size and middle years greeted Fraser with a firm handshake. He nodded at Cook. Sunburned cheeks confirmed his time on the lake. His long hair, cunningly shaped to curl over his collar, announced his high opinion of himself.

Clarke presented his dark-haired wife, though she went by another last name, Adelaide Prince. She was not a pretty woman to Cook's eye, but she radiated energy. Then Clarke introduced his business manager, a Miss Eliza, no last name provided. Now she was a looker, with thick brown hair and large hazel eyes. Her blue dress was not as stylish as Miss Prince's lavender, but it suited her better. Clarke offered brandy and they accepted, dropping into massive leather chairs that were arranged in a semicircle before a baronial hearth.

Fraser began with the contrived explanation for their visit. He was the agent for three theaters that would like to book Clarke's company when it next toured Ohio. He placed the imaginary theaters in small towns, hoping that Clarke wouldn't know they didn't exist.

As Fraser spoke, Cook's attention strayed to the mementoes in the chamber. Posters from Shakespearean tragedies and comedies lined the walls. A brooding portrait of Edwin Booth, the most successful brother of John Wilkes, hung over the fireplace. Instruments of mayhem, enough to arm a platoon, cluttered the room. Daggers sat on the mantel near a skull. Swords spilled out of a marble umbrella stand. With an effort, Cook focused on Fraser's words.

“Mr. Clarke,” Fraser was saying, “I can understand that performers of your distinction can command such terms, but we're just a couple of Buckeyes, and I fear we couldn't meet them.”

As Clarke leaned forward to stand, ready to put a speedy end to the encounter, Fraser raised a hand and plunged on. He had received a new play, he said, from a playwright who claimed that the truth never came out about the Booth conspiracy, that John Wilkes Booth was the fall guy for other men who planned the assassination. As Clarke's sunburn seemed to glow more brightly, Fraser added that Clarke's company could make a pretty penny with the drama.

“Are we to have no rest from you bone-pickers?” Leaping to his feet, Clarke advanced on Fraser. “Do you not realize how my mother's life was blighted by the association with Wilkes Booth, as mine has been? Have you no shame? If dueling were still legal, I would insist on immediate satisfaction, and you may be sure that I am skilled with all personal weapons!”

Fraser attempted to calm the man, explaining again that the play contended that Booth was not the villain of myth, but rather was the dupe of others.

Clarke's indignation only grew. The business manager, Miss Eliza, intervened. They should go, she said in an unruffled manner, herding Cook and Fraser out of the room while Clarke continued to spout outrage. In the vestibule, she spoke softly to Fraser. He should return at eleven in the morning and ask for her.

“That was about what I expected,” Cook said as he took the reins of their buggy, “until that last bit.”

“Let's see what she says in the morning.”

“Oh, no, not
we.
You keep that appointment by yourself. That particular filly, you may have noticed, is one fine piece of horseflesh.” Cook took Fraser's silence for agreement. “And she might just have eyes for a fine strapping white man like yourself.”

Fraser continued his silence. He might not pick things up right off, but he could learn.

The morning was growing warm when Eliza Scott met Fraser at the front door. He was glad to step into the cool of the mansion and equally glad to view her in a pale green dress. A businesslike flutter of white at her throat was contradicted by the snug bodice and flare of the skirt. Fraser, he reminded himself, was there for information.

She led him to a patio overlooking a lawn that sloped to the water's edge. A trellis of grape vines shielded them from the sun, but the heat still pressed down.

After offering lemonade, which he accepted, Miss Eliza apologized for Clarke's outburst the night before. “He is in an ill humor from some recent reverses,” she explained, “though they have nothing to do with his connection with Wilkes Booth. Indeed”—she flashed a mischievous smile—“the association with Wilkes is the pillar of Mr. Clarke's theatrical career.”

“I understood that Creston Clarke was much acclaimed,” Fraser said. “That was the basis for our approach on behalf of my theater chain.”

“Mr. Fraser, if you will stop pretending that you represent a nonexistent theater chain, I will share with you perhaps the most telling review Mr. Clarke received in his recent tour out West, a tour that can only be described as calamitous.”

Though her smile was several degrees beyond winsome, Fraser felt a hot shame that she penetrated his ruse so easily. He decided that a silent nod was the safest course.

She leaned forward. “A critic in Denver—in Denver, mind you!—wrote that in
King Lear,
Mr. Clarke played the king as though in the immediate apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace!”

Fraser chuckled at the bon mot, though he found it obscure. Did it mean that Mr. Clarke had been tentative in his portrayal? Never adept at repartee, Fraser feared that this fetching woman could lead him far beyond his depth. He was undecided whether it was her eyes, which had glints of yellow and brown and green, or that sweet yet daring smile. The smile disappeared as she seemed resolved to raise a more serious matter.

Describing herself as a member of Mr. Clarke's household and friend of the Booth family, she said she must ask his true reason for coming there, since it was not to book theatrical performances. When she added that even an Ohio theater agent would not have dressed as he had the night before, Fraser thought she might have a tendency to the waspish.

He saw no course but to tell the truth, or some of it. Fraser explained that he and his colleague were pursuing a historical inquiry concerning the Lincoln assassination. They believed that the accepted version of events was substantially untrue and assigned to Booth an unfair share of the opprobrium for the crime. Other forces, he added, may have been behind the assassination, forces that hatched the plan and pulled the strings.

Her mischievous look returned. “The Pope?”

“Alas, no. But we had hoped, perhaps presumptuously, that the Booth family would consider cooperating with us. I am sure it's a painful subject for them, and for you, but it will not go away. Not ever.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Fraser. When you speak of an investigation or inquiry, I grow confused. Are you and your colleague part of some official body?”

He shook his head, trying to look pleasant.

“Or perhaps you are scholars?”

Another shake of the head, his cheery expression weakening.

“Who, exactly, are you?”

He drummed the fingers of his right hand on the table at which they sat. “We are, I admit, the rankest amateurs. I am a physician from Cadiz, Ohio. My associate is a . . . a journalist of a sort. Through our association in Cadiz with John Bingham, who prosecuted the conspirators”—Miss Eliza tilted her head in recognition of the name—“we have reviewed archival material about that conspiracy and have devoted ourselves to unraveling this devilish knot. Now, I apologize for our presumption in coming here and—”

She held out a hand to stop Fraser.

“Your actual identity, then, is Dr. Fraser of Cadiz?” she inquired.

“Yes.” The day had grown very warm.

“That, at least, matches your costume.” This time she drummed the fingers of one hand, first in one direction, then in the other. “What, exactly, did you imagine you could learn here? Mr. Clarke was barely born at the time of the assassination.”

“We thought there might be family papers, particularly financial records of Booth's activities. It's a painstaking process, putting together something like this, and you never know what might turn out to be helpful.”