The Lincoln Deception by David O. Stewart Read Free Book Online

How’d you know about that?”

Chapter 5
    C ook broke into the conversation. “You’ve got no call to ask that of this woman, still with a broken arm. This some kind of a trick to catch her out?”
    â€œ You came to fetch me, ” Fraser answered. “Do you think I tricked you into coming to get me? Maybe I made Rachel take her fall?”
    â€œAll right, all right. It’s just I don’t believe in coincidences. Why’re you asking Miz Lemus about the Surratts? That’s all a long time ago.”
    Fraser put on a smile and drew a slow breath. He reminded Cook that they had both been at the funeral for Mr. Bingham. The dead man’s family, he explained, had asked him to help sort through the man’s papers, including some about the Lincoln case. Fraser had read about the case and recognized Rachel’s name. “A coincidence,” he concluded. “Really.”
    Rachel asked what Mr. Bingham looked like. When Fraser described him, she shook her head. “Can’t say I remember him. Them generals and colonels was everywhere. I swear I was waist-deep in them.” She broke into a throaty laugh. “I don’t rightly remember who all was there.”
    â€œWhat interests me,” Fraser said, “isn’t the trial so much. What was it like there in Surrattsville? What was the tavern like? Were there Confederates around?”
    Rachel looked at Cook first. When he shrugged, she said, “Doc, wasn’t nobody there but Confederates, except for us colored. We was loyal to the union, loyal to Mr. Lincoln. You got to understand, ’cause we was in Maryland, people stayed slaves longer than even in the South. That emancipation didn’t take effect right away in Maryland. I was free right along, though. My daddy bought his way out, then bought my momma out, too.”
    â€œWhat I meant was,” Fraser said, “were there Confederate spies, you know, spying.”
    â€œYou mean like young John?” She shook her head. “I never seen such a group of people for talking in low voices. Young John, though, he couldn’t keep quiet, he’d just brag and brag on how he was meeting with the big men in Richmond and in Canada. Real proud, he was. Couldn’t hardly not know what he was doing.”
    â€œWhat was Mrs. Surratt like?”
    â€œMiss Mary? She was a fine woman, for a Confederate. She prayed to her savior, believed in her religion. Smart, too. Way smarter than that no-good drunk of a husband. That saloon of theirs didn’t make no money till he died and Miss Mary took it over.”
    â€œDid she ever travel from Surrattsville?”
    â€œNo, someone had to run that place. Her and me, we really run it together. She said as much once.”
    â€œBut you didn’t move to Washington with her?”
    â€œMe? In the city? No, I’m a country woman. I know where I belong.”
    Fraser shifted in his chair, choosing his words carefully. “Did you see anything, in those weeks toward the end of the war, that made you think the Surratts were planning something big? I don’t mean that they said that Lincoln would be killed, but something out of the usual, something extra going on?” He hadn’t chosen his words well, but the old lady nodded, raising his hopes.
    â€œNo,” she said. “Nothing like that. But something unusual did happen.”
    â€œYes?”
    Rachel closed her eyes in the effort to remember. “Was this one man, named Harper, Harmon, something like that?”
    â€œHarbin? Thomas Harbin?”
    She opened her eyes. “That could be. Yeah, Harbin could be it. You been studying on this. He come in one night when young John was there; then the two of them met some rich man from New York. Seemed like they was cooking up something.”
    â€œHow’d you know he was a rich man from New York?”
    â€œThey talked about New York a lot, I could hear that. And I knew he