The Lincoln Deception Read online

  Fraser had no time to puzzle over the remark, for that very Mrs. Scott was bearing down on him with a round-faced woman in tow. Introduced to Mrs. Ulysses Grant, Fraser was momentarily speechless, a response that seemed to give Mrs. Grant satisfaction. He gestured for her to enter the side room. It felt like escorting a patient into his examination room.

  When seated, Fraser surprised himself. “My father,” he began, “served under your husband in the Vicksburg campaign. He was a captain in the Ohio volunteers. It’s a matter of pride in my family.”

  “Is your father still with us?” she asked.

  “No, he died a few years after the war. I was still small.”

  Mrs. Grant sighed and reached for his hand. “So many sad stories.” Her sympathy seemed genuine, but her eyes didn’t look directly at him. They focused somewhere to his left. He began to wonder if the absence of direct eye contact was a condition brought on by the Washington climate.

  When he asked her about the day of the assassination, he needed only to sit back and listen. From the avalanche of information that tumbled from her, two incidents stood out. The first was vivid in her mind thirty-five years later.

  “I was lunching with a friend,” she said, “and we each had a child with us. It was all quite domestic. During the meal, I became convinced that a man at a nearby table was attempting to overhear us. The general, of course, was recognized everywhere, but I was not yet used to being watched in public. The man was dark, yet pale of complexion, handsome yet peculiar. He pretended to eat his soup, raising a spoon to his lips but never tasting it. Very peculiar. He sat with three other men but paid them no mind, listening only to us.

  “Well, in the afternoon, the general and I left by carriage for the depot. We were going to the New Jersey shore. And this very same man rode by us at a pounding gallop, then stopped, wheeled his horse with a great show, and rode back past us again. Each time he swept by, he glared at the general. Let me tell you, the general immediately marked him out as a dangerous man and observed that he did not care for his looks.

  “And, of course, we learned very soon that that man”—she nodded her head with finality—“was John Wilkes Booth.”

  “He didn’t speak with you or General Grant?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Did the men with him at lunch prove to be part of his conspiracy?”

  “I don’t know. He was the one I noticed. Those moments, my dear doctor, are seared upon my soul.”

  “So you are convinced that Booth intended to attack General Grant as well.”

  “I have no doubt of it. The newspapers had reported that the general and I would view the play at Ford’s Theatre that evening with the Lincolns. When Booth saw us leaving for the depot, he had to know his plan was disrupted.”

  Yet Mrs. Grant’s second incident suggested that Booth adjusted his scheme to the Grants’ plans. On the morning after the assassination, General Grant left to take a special train from New Jersey back to Washington. After he left, Mrs. Grant opened a letter addressed to the general. Though unsigned, it stated—she recited this breathlessly, with her vibrating eyes fixed on the ceiling—“I thank God you still live. Your life fell to my lot and I was on the cars following you. You escaped me only because your car door was locked. Thank God!”

  “So, someone followed you on the train?”

  “So the letter said.”

  “And intended to kill the general.”

  “So the letter said.”

  “And desisted because the door was locked?”

  “I suppose he feared that breaking down the door would alert my husband and others. The general was a fighting man.”

  Fraser decided to try one other line of questions. What, he asked, was the general’s attitude toward those who wished to import Southern cotton for northern mills?

  Mrs. Grant made a face. “That’s quite simple. He thought they should be hung, starting with his own father. That was the one thing, at least the one thing I knew about, where he disagreed with Mr. Lincoln, but the general never trimmed his view on it. Why, you know”—she dropped her voice, though no one else was with them—“he refused to honor licenses to ship cotton that the president himself had signed. It was war! ‘In war,’ he always said, ‘you do not do business with the enemy.’ ”

  Returning to the party, Fraser felt pleased with his evening. A figure at the entrance, leaving the party, caught his eye. From the back, it looked like Townsend. But that wasn’t possible. Fraser heard Eliza’s voice.

  “Jamie,” she said, drawing close to him. How dear she seemed, her face alive with feeling. “I fear you just missed Mrs. Foster. She’s gone down to her carriage. Perhaps you could catch her? She’s small, white-haired, in a silver gown.”

  Fraser left quickly. He took the steps two at a time to the hotel lobby. At the curb, he strained to pick out a figure matching the description of Mrs. Foster. There, at the corner, a small woman wearing a mantilla over her hair was reaching for a carriage door. He trotted to her side.

  “Mrs. Foster?” he asked, cupping her elbow. Two bright blue eyes looked up at him and caught the glow from the streetlight. “Forgive me for intruding,” Fraser rushed on, “but Mrs. Scott suggested I make sure you get home safely, and I failed to see you leave until this very moment.”

  “That’s very kind of Mrs. Scott,” the lady said, “but I will be quite all right, thank you very much.”

  Fraser kept his grip on her elbow and guided her up to the carriage seat. “Truly, Mrs. Foster, I would value the opportunity to spend a moment in conversation, and if it’s not too late, perhaps we could talk as you ride.”

  “Oh, I suppose that would be all right.”

  Fraser hurried to the other side and climbed in. When the driver pulled away from the curb, he introduced himself. He had worried about this conversation. The widow of Lafayette Foster could hardly welcome the suggestion that Abraham Lincoln was killed in order to place her husband in the White House.

  “Mrs. Foster,” he began, “I have recently been in New York and visited with a quite impressive gentleman there, Samuel Barstow. Do you know him?”

  “I don’t believe so.” Her expression was mild, her manner decorous. Fraser was not eager to distress Mrs. Foster.

  “I believe his former business partner, Julius Spencer, may have had business connections in Connecticut. Perhaps you or your husband encountered him? The firm name is Spencer, Barstow and Company.”

  “Julius?” The old lady smiled as the carriage swayed through quiet streets. “Dear Julius. My husband’s cousin. Something of a black sheep.”

  “He was a cotton broker? It’s the same man?”

  “Oh, certainly. A very charming man, as only a rogue can be.”

  Fraser saw a way to press the matter. “Mr. Barstow,” he said, “was boasting that this Spencer fellow used his connections with your husband to get licenses to ship cotton from the South. I doubted him very much, but he was adamant.”

  “That’s not something I could know about, could I—what this other man might say about what Julius Spencer said? But you should know that Senator Foster was quite wary of his cousin, although he believed that the Union war effort was actually strengthened by supplying our New England mills with Southern cotton. How else were we to clothe ourselves? President Lincoln entirely agreed with Senator Foster on that point, despite”—she whispered in a conspiratorial manner—“the views of the great Ulysses.”

  “I resented the remarks of this Barstow,” Fraser volunteered, “implying some . . . I don’t know, collaboration between your husband and these Southern cotton types.”

  “Senator Foster stood by the Union always, though his type of Republican—wishing only brotherly relations with the South—did not fare well after the war.”

  “Did he and his cousin, this Mr. Spencer, patch things up then, after the war?”

  “Why, yes, of course. They had never really broken off, I think. Lafayette just was very careful about being seen w
ith Julius. Julius was a bit bullheaded about political matters, if you know what I mean.”

  “I shall certainly put Barstow straight about Senator Foster next time I see him.”

  After depositing Mrs. Foster at her home, Fraser walked back to the hotel, his mind overflowing with new information. He found Eliza bidding farewell to the final guests of the evening. When they were gone, he took her hand. “The night is almost as lovely as you,” he said. “Will you look at it with me?”

  “Just for a short time,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

  When they began to walk up Fourteenth Street, Fraser said he had heard a good deal that surprised him that night. “For example, I had no idea you were an actress.” He feared his tone was more chiding than he intended. He had accepted the idea that she was part of the racy world of the theater, but to have been an actress—that carried further implications.

  “Oh, that was ages ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Years and years.”

  “Still and all, that’s rather a rich life to imagine for a man from Cadiz. What else,” he asked, “might I expect to find out about you?”

  She did not answer right away, then sighed. “Oh, Jamie, I have omitted much of my history from our relations. It’s not a splendid history, but you’ve been kind to me, and I have—not intentionally, mind you—placed you in an awkward position, so I suppose I must tell you. I have waited far too long to do so. And then we will part.”

  “We will have no conversation that ends with parting.” He placed his free hand over hers.

  “You will say different when I’ve finished.” They had reached a stretch of large homes. She paused and perched on a low wall at the corner of H Street and Fifteenth Street. He chose to stand facing her. The moonlight fell lightly on her fine features. “You may recall the name Ella Turner, or Nelly Starr.”

  “Of course. She was Booth’s . . . companion. She tried to kill herself after the assassination.”

  “My mother. And Wilkes was my father.” Fraser inclined his head forward to conceal his features. “My mother was overcome with despair when she learned what he had done, but she soon regained her balance and set off on a difficult path. My Aunt Asia, Creston’s mother, learned of my existence some years after and sent funds to help us. A former . . . companion . . . to a great villain does not have very excellent prospects. And those prospects are not enhanced by having a child out of wedlock.”

  Eliza’s voice had become soft. Fraser felt his face go slack with disbelief. Could this be true? He sat heavily next to her.

  “She claimed,” Eliza said, “to be the widow of a soldier, which was a common thing then. Still, my mother was always afraid of being exposed. We moved often. She instructed me that this was a secret few people would be grateful to know. I was twelve when Mother died of a fever. Before she died, she gave me Aunt Asia’s address and told me she was a kind woman who might help. Aunt Asia took me into her home as a sort of servant, but soon I was one of the family. Creston and his brother became my brothers. And in that family, my family, everyone takes a turn on stage. I was not a bad actress, or so some said. Perhaps I did inherit that from my father. My husband, though, preferred that I abandon the stage, so I did.”

  When she fell silent, he groped for words. “I do understand why this was difficult to talk about.” His hands felt glued to the insides of his pockets. “It is, though, a good bit to digest.”

  “My husband and I—he knew all this—we had a quiet, happy life until I lost him, too, to a streetcar accident. A preposterous way to lose a husband. Creston tried to bring me back to the stage, but I had no more passion for it. To be truthful, I became subject to a paralyzing stage fright. So I’ve been the company’s business manager.”

  “And then I came along.”

  “Yes, a dear, earnest man came to me from Ohio and seemed determined to prove my father not quite so black a monster, perhaps the dupe of blacker ones. Someday I hope you’ll forgive me, and I hope I’ve not compromised your effort.” She turned her head and looked up at him with glistening eyes. “I meant you no harm. I didn’t expect for us to become such good friends.”

  “Eliza, for me it is so much more than that!”

  “I know, Jamie. And I’m to blame for that, too.” She placed a hand on his arm. “Please, walk me back to the hotel.”

  They passed down Fifteenth Street in silence, glimpsing the White House to the west as they neared the classical immensity of the Treasury building. In the quiet hotel lobby, Eliza said a quick good-bye. He stood for at least a minute, perhaps more, unable to order his thoughts.

  What in heaven’s name had he gotten himself into? How could he be in love with the bastard child of John Wilkes Booth? It would be like marrying into the Borgias or the family of Jack the Ripper. She had deceived him entirely, never breathing a word of it—like any experienced actress, wise to the debauched ways of the theater. Was she just feigning that she cared for him so he would persist in this investigation and somehow rehabilitate her unforgivable father? And yet how could he be thinking this way about her? He had taken the measure of her character and looked deep into her eyes. He knew in his heart that she was true. She couldn’t counterfeit the feelings she showed for him. It couldn’t all be the artifice of the trained performer.

  Could it?

  He was in far over his depth.

  When he reached the sidewalk, he shrugged out of the rented dinner jacket and flexed his shoulders. Somewhere in this rotten town he should be able to find some whiskey. He set off to do so.

  Chapter 26

  “So, are you going to curl up and die on me?” Cook placed his face a few inches from Fraser’s. “We don’t have time for this mooncalf business.”

  Fraser, unshaven, was in his underwear. He’d spent the night in an armchair before the window, staring into the alley behind the hotel. He cradled an empty bourbon bottle. He had drunk it all without ever feeling drunk. The hammering in his head felt like a hangover, or just fatigue. He might have slept part of the night, but he couldn’t remember it.

  Cook shook his head. “I figured you for someone who’d back out when things got rugged. This isn’t even the rugged part, and there you go.”

  Fraser could not sort through his stew of feelings—a carousel of betrayal, longing, outrage, and simple shock. He wished Cook would stop yammering. Finish their investigation of Booth? Wasn’t he quite the investigator—falling in love with John Wilkes Booth’s daughter? Correction: Booth’s illegitimate daughter. Merely thinking it felt like treason. He was supposed to solve historical puzzles, not become part of one. He should never have left Cadiz.

  All through the night, as his mind cycled through his problems, he felt certain about only one thing. He loved Eliza Scott, or whatever her name should be. He had no idea, however, what to do about it. He was aware of Cook pacing behind him, the man’s suppressed rage penetrated even Fraser’s miasmic mood. Fraser cleared his throat.

  “You actually going to talk?” Cook continued to pace.

  “Simmer down. Sit there on the bed. I’ll tell you.”

  He started with Eliza. No point talking about anything else. Even if it was Eliza’s secret, Cook was entitled to know. Fraser drew a perverse satisfaction from Cook’s stunned silence. But it didn’t last long.

  “C’mon, Jamie. Who knows whose daddy is whose in this world? ’Specially when your mother, well, knows a lot of men.”

  Fraser lunged at Cook, grabbing him around the shoulders and jamming him back on the bed. He reared back and cocked a fist. Before he could throw a punch, Cook gripped his hand. Even lying on his back, the man was powerful. Fraser lunged again, leaning all his weight on Cook’s uplifted arm, driving it down, but he couldn’t free his hand. Cook hugged him close with his other arm. Fraser twisted and pushed with all his strength. His legs pawed the floor for traction, then pushed off a chair, tipping it over with a crash.

  “Whoa, whoa, big man,” Cook said, his voice
strained by effort, not anger. “Dumb thing to say. Didn’t mean anything. Miss Eliza’s a fine woman.”

  Suddenly, Fraser was exhausted. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to remember where he was or what he knew. He went limp, then rolled off the bed.

  “You need some sleep, son,” Cook said. Fraser lay down on his own bed with a whump.

  “Rise and shine.” Cook put some melody into the greeting. He had waited as long as he could, but it was noon. He had to get Fraser sobered up, fed, cleaned, and halfway making sense by four o’clock, when he was supposed to meet Townsend. That meeting could be dangerous. Those Sons of Liberty were bound to be close by. Fraser had to cover some ground before he’d be fit to deal with Barstow’s thugs.

  With cajoling, threats, sympathy, and ridicule, Cook stirred Fraser to a mostly functional condition. When Fraser’s hands began to shake, Cook took over shaving him, leaning over from behind so the strokes would be like the ones he used to shave himself. By the end of an hour, Cook was unwrapping two large sandwiches he had purchased at a nearby shop. He set one before Fraser. Fraser ate only the bread and drank glass after glass of water. Cook decided that was good enough, under the circumstances.

  Fraser scowled. “Speed, that stuff before—”

  “We need to stay on the problem before us. Tell me about your old ladies’ party. And about what you’re going to do with Townsend.”

  “Right.” Fraser bit off some bread and chewed it deliberately. He swallowed with equal care. He sipped water and cleared his throat.

  When he finished relating his conversations with the old ladies, he said that he considered two points to be established. First, General Grant definitely was a target of the conspiracy, though they couldn’t be sure how the conspirators intended. They might have meant to kill him but gave up when he left Washington. Or perhaps one of them—O’Laughlen or even John Surratt—followed him on his train and meant to kill him there but lost heart.

  “Don’t see how that was what Mrs. Surratt told John Bingham,” Cook said. “Trying to kill Grant wasn’t any secret; Bingham accused O’Laughlen of it during the trial. And news of a failed attempt to kill Grant wouldn’t have hurt the republic. Would’ve made Grant more popular.”