Fates and Traitors (48 page)

“Burn it,” said Asia, reaching for the letter, which her husband quickly pulled out of her reach. “Put it on the fire.”

“That would be imprudent, I think,” said Clarke, returning it to its envelope. “But the letter to you, Mrs. Booth, that may yet save us. If the world learns what he wrote there—”

“The world must never know.” Mary Ann held out her hand. “That was intended as a private letter to me, and I would like it back now, if you please.”

Clarke shook his head and tucked both letters into his breast pocket. “I can't do that. You might burn the only evidence I have to prove that I had no part in John's scheme.”

“It is mine,” said Mary Ann sharply. “I would thank you to return it.”

“Can't do that,” he said again, gathering up the other papers and bonds and returning them to the envelope inscribed with Asia's name. Clasping it tightly to his side, he bowed curtly and left the room, leaving them to watch and fear and wonder what he intended.

•   •   •

T
he furious pounding on the front door Mary had dreaded and prepared for since the detectives left the boardinghouse in the early morning hours of Holy Saturday came nearly three days later at eleven o'clock on the night of Monday, April 17.

It had been a long, fraught, exhausting day, but Anna, Nora, and Olivia had declared themselves too anxious to sleep, so Mary prepared a pot of tea and cut slices of a lemon cake left over from Easter supper. She had just finished pouring and had settled into her favorite armchair in the parlor when they heard a loud, insistent knock upon the front door. Perplexed, Mary went to answer, wondering if it was William Wallace Kirby, her good friend's husband and the brother-in-law of Eliza Holohan. The Holohans had left the boardinghouse the previous day—Mary and Anna had discovered the family packing up and moving out when they returned from Easter Mass at St. Patrick's—but the family had inadvertently left a box of their belongings behind, and Mr. Kirby had promised to fetch it for them. He had said that he might call that day or the next, although she would not have expected him so late.

The visitor pounded again just as Mary reached the front door, so loud and demanding that she hesitated to open it. “Is that you, Mr. Kirby?” she called.

“No, madam,” a man replied gruffly, “but open the door at once, if this is Mrs. Surratt's house.”

Steeling herself, Mary fumbled with the latch, opened the door, and discovered six officers standing on the staircase, grim-faced and steely-eyed.

“Are you Mrs. Surratt?” said the one nearest the door.

“I am.”

“The widow of John H. Surratt Sr. and mother of John H. Surratt Jr.?”

She nodded, heart pounding, hand trembling on the doorknob.

“I am Major Henry Smith.” He gestured to the two officers
immediately behind him. “Detective Devore, Captain Wermerskirch. May we come in?”

She nodded again and stepped back to allow all six men to enter. She led them down the hallway and into the parlor, startling the young ladies, who abruptly fell silent. While the other men dispersed throughout the house, Major Smith regarded the ladies solemnly. “We're here to bring you to General Augur's office for interrogation,” he said. “You'll be treated kindly as long as you're in my charge.”

The younger ladies gasped, terrified. “And who is General Augur?” asked Mary coolly.

“Commander of the Department of Washington.” Major Smith glanced over his shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps, and he nodded to an officer escorting the newly hired colored servant, Susan, and her fiancé, Dan, into the room and ordered them to sit. The servants never sat in the formal parlor, and they glanced uneasily at Mary, who nodded her approval as they edged toward two unoccupied chairs.

“Are there any other lodgers unaccounted for?” asked Major Smith.

“Our tenant Louis Weichmann is out for the evening, I know not where,” Mary replied. “My son is traveling in Canada on business.”

Detective Devore entered in time to hear the last, and Mary bristled to see the two men exchange significant glances. “We're here to arrest you all,” Detective Devore said with practiced nonchalance, perhaps unaware that his companion had already informed them, perhaps knowing but taking pleasure in their distress.

As the officers continued to search the house, Mary fought to remain calm, but Anna and the other young ladies became more upset the longer they sat and whispered frantically to one another. “Oh, Mother,” Anna suddenly exclaimed. “Think of being taken down there for such a crime!”

“Anna, calm yourself,” Mary warned, mindful of the young detective called Clarvoe standing in the doorway, taking notes on everything he heard and saw. She went to her daughter, embraced her, and murmured, “Don't carry on so, darling. You're already worn out with anxiety. You'll make yourself ill.”

She continued to murmur soothingly into her ear, and soon Anna grew less agitated, though she still trembled and sighed.

Major Smith instructed Detective Devore to arrange for a carriage
to take the ladies to headquarters for questioning. “Given the foul weather tonight,” he added to Mary, “you might want warmer wraps for the ride, something to keep the rain off.”

Mary inclined her head in thanks, but as she went to go fetch shawls and hats for them all, Major Smith ordered her to stop. “Remember, this house is under suspicion,” he said, joining her at the foot of the stairs. “Wherever you go, I must accompany you.”

She inclined her head again, and while Detective Clarvoe guarded the young ladies to see that, as he put it, no papers were destroyed and no secretive communication passed between them, Mary went from one bedroom to another gathering wraps and sturdier shoes, for good measure. Then she joined the others in the parlor, waiting and listening while the officers meticulously searched every room in the house from kitchen to attic, making observations and collecting evidence. Mary knew from the thickness of the packets three of the officers carried that they had found some items of interest, but she knew not what they had taken or from which rooms.

Then a young policeman called Dempsey bolted into the parlor carrying a framed picture that Louis Weichmann had given Anna for her birthday, a small colored lithograph titled
Morning Noon and Night
. Lieutenant Dempsey turned over the frame and showed it to Major Smith, and Anna gasped and went sickly pale as the officers removed something hidden behind the lithograph. Mary went cold as she recognized one of the photos of John Wilkes Booth Anna and Nora had arranged throughout the house. She had told Anna to destroy them all, and Anna promised that she had.

“May I kneel and pray?” Mary asked Major Smith shakily.

He considered for a moment. “Go ahead, but don't leave this room.”

As Mary got up from her chair to kneel on the floor, she froze at the sound of boots on the outside staircase. Major Smith gestured sharply and two officers crept down the hallway toward the door with their pistols drawn. Through the open doorway Mary heard a knock, heard the door quickly swinging open, and men's voices, low and demanding, and the door banging shut. The women exchanged apprehensive glances as the interrogation went on, until Major Smith suddenly appeared in the parlor doorway.

“Mrs. Surratt,” he ordered. “Come here.”

She rose and followed him into the hallway, where she discovered a tall, strapping man with a pickax on his shoulder standing in front of the closed door. He wore a dark gray coat, dark pants soiled with mud up to the knees, and a strange skullcap fashioned out of what appeared to be a shirtsleeve.

Mary muffled a gasp. The man was Mr. Powell, or Mr. Payne, as he was better known to her tenants.

Major Smith beckoned her closer, and she reluctantly obeyed. “Do you know this man,” Major Smith demanded, “and did you hire him to come and dig a gutter for you?”

Raising her right hand, she said, “Before God, sir, I do not know this man, and have never seen him, and I did not hire him to dig a gutter for me.”

“Lewis Payne,” said the major, “you are under arrest.”

A slight smile played on Mr. Payne's face, but he did not so much as glance at Mary as Lieutenant Dempsey escorted her back to the parlor.

Soon thereafter, the carriage arrived and the ladies were shown aboard, some quietly sobbing, others murmuring prayers as they were driven to police headquarters. Mary was immediately taken in for questioning—and such bewildering questions they were, coming at such a pace and from so many directions that she felt as if she were surrounded by a flock of wild, panicking birds, scraping her with their wings and beaks and talons as she struggled in vain to fend them off. Colonel Henry Wells asked her repeatedly about Junior, and about Mr. Booth, and Mr. Atzerodt, and three men who the colonel seemed to believe had called at the boardinghouse late Saturday night although Mary had no idea whom he meant, and bizarrely, about how long it would take to cross the Potomac or travel to Fredericksburg and Richmond. Eventually she realized that someone must have informed on her, but the details had become garbled and jumbled and misunderstood. She tried to answer as simply and as honestly as she could without harming Junior, but the questions were so convoluted and confusing and the colonel so harshly insistent that Mary was seized by the dreadful fear that she was doing her son and herself more harm than good.

The interrogation finally ended at three o'clock, rendering Mary exhausted, afraid, and despondent. Eventually she was escorted to another room, where the other women were being held while they awaited
their turns to be questioned by other members of Colonel Wells's staff. The young ladies were tearful and frightened, and Anna nearly hysterical, and it was all Mary could do to calm and comfort them.

Fighting to keep her own terror constrained, Mary was struck by sharp, unexpected misgivings that she had ever welcomed Mr. Booth into her parlor. It was his fault she and the young ladies were suffering and afraid, that Junior was in grave danger. After Richmond had fallen, she had tried to persuade Mr. Booth that it was futile to persist in his plan to abduct Mr. Lincoln. What on earth had possessed him to resort to such drastic, irrevocable measures instead? What had compelled him to murder? What good had he thought could possibly come of it?

As the hours passed, Mary felt a small flame of anger and indignation flare up deep within her. She and Junior had agreed to abduction, not assassination, but now they were mired up to their necks in Mr. Booth's crime, and if she were not very, very careful, she might find herself unable to extricate them from it. She would never deliberately betray Mr. Booth, but neither would she sacrifice herself or her children to save him.

They were held at headquarters throughout the long, harrowing night, and early the next morning, they were put into a carriage and driven to the Carroll Annex at the Old Capitol Prison. There three officers read the charges against them as Mary stood stoically, squeezing Anna's hand tightly, and the younger women wept and pleaded. The officers brusquely queried them—names, ages, addresses, occupations—and filled out forms, and led them off to separate rooms on the second floor.

“May my daughter and I stay together?” Mary asked as Anna was pulled from her side.

“No,” came the officer's curt reply as he took Anna by the elbow, put her into a room, and shut the door.

“How long will we be held here?” Mary demanded shakily as he seized her by the upper arm and put her into the room next door.

“Indefinitely,” he said, and slammed the door shut and turned the key.

•   •   •

O
n Tuesday evening after supper, while Asia rested in bed upstairs and the nurse tidied the children's rooms, Mary Ann was in the
parlor reading fairy tales to the youngsters when she heard footsteps in the hall and glanced up to discover Clarke putting on his coat and striding to the door. He did not pause to bid them farewell, and as he passed she glimpsed two envelopes jutting out of his pocket.

“Clarke, wait,” she called, scooping up baby Adrienne, settling toddler Edwin more securely on the sofa, and giving Dottie's head one quick pat before she hurried after her son-in-law. “Where are you going?”

He paused with his hand on the door. “I'm going out to meet a friend.”

“What friend?” Shifting the baby to her shoulder, she freed one hand and gestured to his pocket. “Is that my letter? Where are you taking it?”

Heaving a sigh, he turned away from the door to face her squarely. “I'm meeting my friend John Stockton, an editor at the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. He's going to introduce me to William Millward, the United States marshal for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. I'm going to submit these letters to him to prove our innocence.”

“You mustn't,” she exclaimed. “No one is questioning our innocence. You'll only stir up trouble and make things worse for John Wilkes!”

“Things are already as bad for him as they could possibly be,” he retorted. “Even so, I'd sacrifice him a thousand times before I'd let the rest of us go down with him. This letter proves that he knew none of us sympathized with the rebels, that he couldn't trust us with his plot. It must be made public before it's too late.”

“That letter is mine,” Mary Ann said tightly. “You mustn't take it from this house or show it to anyone. I forbid it.”

He gave her one long, wordless, incredulous look before he tore the door open and strode from the house, carrying the incriminating papers beyond her reach.

•   •   •

F
urious, Asia flung the quilt aside, climbed unsteadily from the divan, and made her way downstairs to send Clarke's valet running after her husband, knowing even as she did that Clarke was unlikely to heed her demands.

“I'm sorry I couldn't prevent him from going out,” her mother apologized, patting little Adrienne and kissing her brow soothingly, though
she seemed more in need of comfort than the babe in her arms. “I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen.”