Lincoln's Assassin Read online

  Booth had in his possession a diary, in which he had noted the events of each day since the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. This diary is in possession of the War Department. He also had a Spencer carbine, a seven-shooter, a revolver, a pocket pistol and a knife. The latter is supposed to be the one with which he stabbed Major Rathburne [sic]. His clothing was of dark blue, not confederate gray, as has been stated.

  … Booth’s leg was not broken by falling from his horse, but the bone was injured by the fall upon the stage at the theater.

  —New York Times, Thursday, April 27

  Booth and Harrold reached Garrett’s some days ago, Booth walking on crutches. A party of four or five accompanied them, who spoke of Booth as a wounded Marylander on his way home, and that they wished to leave him there a short time, and would take him away by the 26th (yesterday). Booth limped somewhat, and walked on crutches about the place, complaining of his ankle. He and Harrold regularly took their meals at the house, and both kept up appearances well.

  Booth and Harrold were dressed in confederate gray new uniforms. Harrold was, otherwise, not disguised much. Booth’s moustache had been cut off, apparently with a scissors, and his beard allowed to grow, changing his appearance considerable. His hair had been cut somewhat shorter than he usually wore it.

  —The Star, Late Edition, Washington, Thursday, April 27

  The body of Booth has just been formally identified by prominent surgeons. From long exposure it has changed very much.

  A surgical operation performed upon him several weeks ago rendered identification easy.

  The left leg was broken, and appearances indicate that his injury was sustained when Booth jumped from the president’s box to the stage at Ford’s Theatre.

  —Evening Post, Thursday, April 27, 3:30 P.M.

  The statement heretofore published that Booth had injured one of his legs by the falling of his horse has proved correct.

  —The Star, Washington, Thursday, April 27

  The fourth edition of The Star has the following additional details…. No clue could be obtained of the other two men.

  —New York Times, Thursday, April 27

  New York Times, Friday, April 28, 1865—Price Four Cents

  BOOTH KILLED

  Full Account of the Pursuit and its Result

  ***

  He is Traced into St. Mary’s County, Maryland

  ***

  Harrold and Booth Discovered In a Barn

  ***

  Booth Declares He will not be Taken Alive

  ***

  The Barn Set on Fire to Force Them Out

  ***

  Sgt. Boston Corbett Fires at Booth He is Shot through the Neck and Dies in Three Hours

  His Body and Harrold Brought to Washington

  Scene I

  Chasing,

  Laughing,

  Hurrying by,

  It lights up the face and sparkles the eye;

  And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound,

  Snap at the crystals that eddy around.

  New York had changed. Some of the changes were subtle, some not. There were new styles and new buildings and new newspapers with new stories, like Pulitzer’s World, whose new offices were being constructed and would soar to twenty floors above ground, thereby replacing Greeley’s Tribune in both circulation and height.

  The men seemed taller too, the women larger, the children less young. The omnibuses louder and more frequent. And there were blacks—men and women—everywhere. Not merely at the lobby doors of the great hotels—of course, they were there too. And those hotels also were taller, bigger, more sophisticated, busier.

  And the myriad lines of wire webwork for streetcars, telegraphs—and telephones, hanging like Spanish moss above the avenues, buzzing and snapping, playing at life. The annual flurry of post-paschal snow blessed the lively currents of air with an anointing crispness as I walked a long time around the area of Central Park and was pleasantly faced by the conclusion that I too had changed. No one gave me a second look. Nor did I need them to see me. I who had been one of the most recognizable of the city’s visitors, even before my infamy and surely thereafter one of the most sought. I, who had now lived almost half my life in cautious secrecy and seclusion, I could very nearly have lived right in the heart of Manhattan itself, I thought. But I knew this was not so. It had no bearing whether the multitude could identify me. It had only to be a single person, of any station, of this sex or that, of my race or the other.

  And I had the sense that it might not even be their recognition, but mine of them, as with so many things. It would not be their call, but the look in my own eyes that would prove my undoing. Like a child gleefully exposing the secret he wishes to keep forever, for the sheer joy, and with no thought of his own betrayal. How could I allow a moment with an old friend or acquaintance to go unheralded, if only with a look?

  Where once I had taken cabs to go everywhere this day I walked to where I meant to be, being sure to maintain the limp I had affected, while occasionally changing sides as I turned corners, just to amuse myself. I made my way downtown to that fashionable area of Manhattan Island known as Greenwich Village, curious if my friend Samuel Knapp Chester still lived there. The house bequeathed him on Grove Street was a stately one with high-arched windows and a tall staircase leading up from the street to its large double-door entry, scarcely the expected scene of a board-balancer or bit-trouper.

  And Chester was more than a passing acquaintance, more even than a familiar player, for we had been fellows since the 1858 season in Richmond. And was he not also there, so close to the end, the very night, mere weeks before, though truly it was some few months when the three famed Booth brothers played their first—and last—tribute to the legacy of a father and his dream perhaps to found a dynasty: Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden?

  Many times Chester and I had used his house as a departure point for our excursions to the House of Lords on Houston Street—as we did that last, when I spoke too freely and invited him to take part in my cabal. And he found himself unable to commit to a friend the way he had always yielded without hesitation to a fellow player—brandy after brandy there, or a feast of oysters and beer at the Revere House down Broadway. This time, there would be no such outing. Instead of the hub of some great and colorful spinning wheel, Chester would be the small brass ring whose cold hard perimeter girt almost too tightly my movements.

  But what was I thinking? Was not an anonymous hotel all the better? Was I safe at all, or, as much as I longed company, would any in my confidence be? And what was I thinking? I had trusted Chester once not to reveal my identity—and I was reasonably certain he had not—but how would I think to compromise him, or myself, again? Whatever might have been, the idea was soon dispelled as I approached a dilapidated ruin, long boarded-up and vacant. Oh, there were changes, if I might only see them.

  ***

  Uptown, just across from the Gramercy Park, Edwin had recently opened his Player’s Club on New Year’s Eve, but one year before. Most of the members, as the name implies, were actors, but there were some notable exceptions such as the unionist general William Tecumseh Sherman and the satirist Samuel Clemens, neither of whom would I be pleased to meet under any circumstances, if my boldness drew me there.

  And Henry Johnson was surprised as he opened the back parlor door to my gentle, but steady raps.

  “Master—”

  “Good evening, Henry. Will you not invite me in?”

  I tried to be as genial as possible before telling him of his cousin’s death and the loyal service he had given me up until the end. Johnson seemed only slightly disturbed by the news. His entire mien was singularly concentrated upon my return.

  “By jingo! It was a long time comin’, says I,” he managed as he turned into the cookroom. “Something to eat, Master Johnnie? I was just fixin’ up a hash for myself. Course, I suppose you’ll want somethin’ finer. Poor little Antaeus. By jingo, says I!”

  He turned towar
d me reflexively and stopped with a smile as I replied.

  “That sounds perfect to me.”

  ***

  Just off the chamber wherein I awaited my long-forgotten if self-estranged brother was a small balcony with hardly place to sit, but from where one could master a wonderful view of the fenced and private park and this corner of the city. The idea of it could not help but remind me of the same-sized ledge outside Edwin’s room at Tudor Hall. The view there was, of course, not of wagons and carts and the endless bustlings of countless people throughout the day and night, but of our small woods and ivory lake with its several swans’ graceful, feathered yawns the only noticeable activity of an afternoon.

  It was Thursday and my brother’s entrance well past midnight fairly startled me. I had fallen asleep in the chair next to the window. The cheval glass in the corner of the room yielded a second, truer image of his actions. From where I sat in the shadows I could sense his slight start as well. He stood still a moment, silhouetted by the hallway light, before closing the door and fastening the latch.

  I watched silently as he relieved himself of a kind of scapula or pendant suspended from around his neck and laid it neatly in a bureau drawer before setting about to light the lamp. The object hanging from this choker glinted angularly for just an instant before finding repose in what sounded a fast-lidded box somewhere deep inside a top-most drawer. I was reminded for a moment of Corbett.

  He felt in the pocket of his vest and casually struck a match to light the lamp on the low secretary, then shaking out the match with cool indifference, his back still to me. He was, if nothing else, always a quick study.

  Without turning said, “Who is there?”

  “Your brother, Wilkes.”

  He froze, before intoning evenly, “I have no brother, Wilkes.”

  “Is that how you justify it?”

  “What?” he spun defensively.

  If he had seemed indifferent before, even the consummate actor could no longer shield his surprise.

  “My God—”

  “Your brother, only,” I quipped.

  “If you mean my brother, John Wilkes, whom I accede you do resemble—if a great deal older and scarcely as hardy, he’s dead. Else how could I have had his body exhumed full twenty years ago to have it laid rest in the family plot?”

  “He lives!”

  “Not for me. Not for any of those who once had hope for his success or admiration for the ability of the youngest member of America’s greatest acting family. A single deed of bravado and indiscretion has ended it all forever.”

  “Yes, I heard you announced your retirement the day after the incident. But then you were never one for long-term commitments.”

  “What is that to mean?”

  “As bold as my action may have seemed, it was planned. The northern president’s box was primed for my entry and security. My flight from the stage assured. My crossing of the Navy Yard Bridge? I had the evening’s password. My escape south was lined with friends and fresh horses.”

  “But then?”

  “My allies in Washington were all arrested within twenty-four hours and my own route intercepted by some of the most inept detectives imaginable. One of them shot the man he supposed to be me—though, from all accounts, he had already surrendered.”

  “And?”

  “Someone wanted me dead, despite all the efforts to usher me to sanctuary and even the North’s insistence I be captured alive.”

  “You think I would do that?”

  “Men will do many things for the love of a woman.”

  “If you believed what the society columns had to say about your Camilla and me—”

  “Is she my Camilla again?”

  “She is no one’s. Nor will she be. She left Washington shortly after the event. I had escorted her on a couple of occasions to help bring her spirits up, but I could do nothing. She wept at the thought of you and what you had done.”

  “How fraternal of you. A familiar plot. Bury the brother, marry his queen.”

  “Richard is your play.”

  “I was thinking of Hamlet.”

  “You presume to play my seasoned part of the young prince?”

  “I play at parts no more. Nor do I know who or how or why, but I intend to find out. Unless there is a reason you should not, I think you might help.”

  Dawn was sensed, even in the constant dark, and a milk truck was making her rounds in the Gramercy Court below, the steady hoofing of her faithful draft sounding every stop. A strange silence preceded the sound of a strumming instrument wafting down the halls.

  “There comes poor Lester,” whispered Edwin.

  “Wallack?” I wondered. “I read he died some three years past.”

  “Not even two. But his automatic harp hangs from the door of the room that was to have been his and vibrates occasionally to the rhythms of the early morning.”

  He bowed his head meditatively and turned toward the fireplace as if to warm himself by a fire that wasn’t there.

  “You are not the only one who comes back to haunt me, dear John,” he portended. “We never truly part with the dead. Our mother, our sister, our brother, even those we never truly had the chance to know. Sometimes Mollie visits me in the form of a lark on my windowsill. How else would a lark have gotten into the city?

  “But until this evening I had never felt your presence so strongly. I must have guessed it was your time to return. Oh, you have been ever with me, like the shadow that phantom follows—just out of reach, especially as I walk the course of the park after dawn or late at night on my way back from the theater.”

  “Brooding again, brother? You’re too mature to still affect the Danish pretender to satisfaction. Your season of a hundred performances is long past. But mould your melancholy madness into rage and let us have a Lear, or a passionate Macbeth at the very least!”

  “You question my right to be pensive? You had everything! Still, that was not enough. How I envied you. You had the home and childhood I never had. Papa was always dragging me about like some carnival attraction. His little puppet he liked to call me. How I hated that. So much that when it came my time to bail him out after some besotted evening, I actually enjoyed the sense of independence it gave me—ignoring the bitter hurt all the while as people sniggered and spoke in whispers about ‘the drunken thespian.’

  “And our mother scarcely recognized me each time we would return from St. Louis or Chicago. Or, if she did, it was only as some strange reminder of the man she thought she had married. I was the red-headed stepchild. I honestly don’t remember her ever kissing me. But you! How she would dote on her dear little Jack.”

  His temper brought him sudden silence. Tears do not measure time as sands in the glass, or moons months, or rains the seasons and the years. When next I looked at Edwin, his gaze was far away, trapped it seemed within the persistent flames of his imagined fire. He looked that moment just like our father. It was a similarity I had not remembered. And suddenly I felt very much the image of our mother. It was her blood that coursed now through my body. Her fears and doubts, her faith and devotion. Yet my father’s dark humors could manage to overpower all else, and everything my black eyes saw or would see was shaded by that.

  Edwin spoke again.

  “None of us believed that it was you they had shot and killed at Garrett’s Farm. Not mother, not Asia, not June. Of course Sleepy must have prayed it was, and did his best to tell us all that it had been. But why else would they not let us near the body?

  “And then, they told us of your dying words, ‘Tell mother I love her.’ How like you that was. And, ‘Useless!’ We never understood what that might have meant, but again, it was so like you—so dramatic!”

  “But that’s it! Don’t you see? Someone knew exactly what needed to be done—and said—to convince the world of my death. And what could I do about it? Deny it? Come forward only to then be killed for certain? But who, who!?”

  “Who, you ask? Who was responsib
le for my forced retirement? My struggled return? The torching of the Winter Garden and my entire wardrobe? The attempt upon my life? Poor Vickie’s insanity? My ruin? You can ask who?”

  “Am I to blame for all of that?”

  “For that and more. Here. I have something for you, John. A letter.”

  He reached into that same drawer where what seemed an eternity before he had placed the token of his late evening, and handed me the red-waxed envelope.

  “But it is addressed to you, ‘Mr. Edwin Booth and family.’” “She knew better than to address it otherwise. And I knew better than to think it was mine. Open it.”

  I knew what it was, but could not truly guess what it meant. Only that I returned the purity of her love with recklessness and uncertainty. What was her dream, her prayer, but to be with me? And what was mine, but so much ether? What could I have truly hoped the outcome might have been? My urgers wagered that for all my cunning, I would not be able to see clearly from one end of the scheme to the other—and an eternal inability to ever again look anyone, including myself, in the face. They staked their entire plan upon that. And they won fitfully.

  Do we ever understand ourselves? Can we know at any moment that we are making the right decision?

  How much I longed to see her then I cannot say, but somewhere in my soul I knew that I must not, could not. Wilkes Booth was dead. It was time for him to let the living live. At least those blameless souls who had suffered more at his hands than he by the designs of the one whose death alone would cool my passion.

  I left Edwin there without a word of parting and walked back to the Chelsea, then carelessly upstairs to my room without replacing my eye-patch or guarding once my glance, or thinking for an instant to avert my face from any passers-by. Still, I had met no one the entire way except that same milkman and his honoured steed. Even the denizens of the night, those local rowdies who call themselves Pug-Uglies were noticeably absent, and all the hotel was still in bed at the time of my return. It was as if I had truly entered a world in which I was nothing more than a shade. How appropriate, I laughed to myself, I should room across the way from the new Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.