Previously: Booth shoots Lincoln and breaks leg in escape. Stanton’s henchman Lafayette Baker takes Christy’s body to an embalmer. Booth and Herold join across the river in Maryland.Booth remembers Dr. Mudd lives nearby. Johnson takes the oath of office.
The conductor nudged Ward Lamon who slumped deeper into his train car bench. “Washington City, sir. This is your stop.”
Lamon jumped and looked up, his eyes and mind in a blur. “What? Oh. Yes. Thank you.”
His memories of the last twenty-four hours were vague. The man and woman who had been living in the Executive Mansion admitted to him they were imposters, but they would not say anything beyond that. The man lied to him and said Lincoln was being held at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Lamon thought he lied so the woman could be transported away from Washington. But the woman refused to go, in a fit of loyalty to Tad Lincoln.
Then late last night—or was it early this morning—Lamon heard the news the President was dead. Was it the real President who was assassinated or was it the imposter? Where were the Lincolns while the imposters were in the White House? Where were the Lincolns now? Why was he misdirected to Baltimore? It was all so confusing.
A dull headache kept him from thinking clearly. He had seen too much, heard too much, drunk too much.
From the train station, Lamon hailed a carriage to his hotel. Crowds filled the streets, milling about seemingly without purpose. He watched men hang black bunting from windows and doorways. No one spoke. Only the rolling wheels crunching on cobblestones and the occasional neighing of horses broke the silence. Lamon’s intention was to wash up, change clothes and go immediately to the Executive Mansion; instead, once he was inside his room, Lamon collapsed on the bed. When he awoke, he looked at his pocket watch. It was 3:00 in the afternoon.
By the time he reached the Executive Mansion and walked up the steps, Lamon’s mind cleared. He knew the questions to ask, but he did not know who to ask. Thomas Pendel met him at the door.
“It’s so good to see you, sir.” Pendel shook his hand. “Mrs. Lincoln needs you.”
“So it’s true, Thomas? The President is dead? The real President is dead?”
Pendel hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Lamon. There is only one Mr. Lincoln.” He began walking up the stairs.
“Are you telling me you didn’t realize the man and woman in the White House for the past two and a half years were imposters?” Lamon stepped quickly to catch up with Pendel.
“Mrs. Lincoln is in her parlor.” On the second floor he turned down the hall toward the Lincolns’ private rooms. “She’s inconsolable.”
Lamon grabbed Pendel by his elbow. “Are you that frightened?”
“I am an old man, sir.” He firmly removed Lamon’s hand. “I fear very little. But I know, above all else, a man cannot rage against a storm.” Pendel opened a door. “Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. Lamon is here to see you.”
She rushed toward him and took Lamon by the hand to lead him to the settee as Pendel stepped back and closed the door. She sat and patted the cushion next to her. Lamon observed her moist cheeks and loose hairs around her face.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Lamon. I know you must be as devastated as I am. I will never forget the nights you slept outside Mr. Lincoln’s bedroom door.” She leaned into him to whisper, “It was that devil Stanton, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. I believe you.”
“Thank, God, someone believes me.” Her hands went to her face. “Mr. Johnson was here this morning.” She shook her head. “I told him we were held in the basement all that time. He doesn’t believe me. I can tell.” Mrs. Lincoln looked him straight in the eyes. “I was beginning to doubt my own sanity.”
“Do you know when the imposters left?”
“Sometime last night, probably after we went to the theater.”
“I blame myself, Mrs. Lincoln,” Lamon blurted. “The imposter told me the President was being held at Fort McHenry. I left immediately for Baltimore. I felt so foolish when I realized he wasn’t there.”
She leaned back and looked at him as though she were seeing him for the first time and did not like what she saw.
“That’s right. You weren’t here. Why weren’t you here?”
“Mr. Stanton said you and the President were being held in a safe place because of assassination threats. He said it was for your own good.”
“And you believed that devil? I thought you would know better than that.”
“I should have.”
“You should have torn the White House down stone by stone until you found us.”
“But I didn’t know for sure you were even still in the mansion.” Lamon was at a loss for words. He could not believe she doubted him. “I was told you were in Baltimore!” he interjected, defending his inexplicable absence to the grieving widow.
“Are you are in league with that devil at this very moment? Did he send you here to spy on me?”
Lamon paused to consider her face. Mrs. Lincoln’s full cheeks flushed and her little mouth alternately pinched shut and blew out heated breath. She glared at him and then looked around the room, as though searching for another person lurking in the shadows. Her hands shook and her feet shuffled. She was insane, he decided. She knew the truth, and it had driven her insane. Lamon stood and bowed.
“I apologize for my shortcomings, Mrs. Lincoln,” he mumbled and turned toward the door.
“How dare you think you could fool me? I am not a fool! You go tell that devil I am not a fool!”
What was Lamon to do? The one person who could substantiate his suspicions was stark raving mad. By association, he possibly could be considered mad also. What was it Pendel said? He knew better than to rage against a storm. But that was all Lamon knew to do—rage on and on until the storm subsided and justice was done.
At the bottom of the stairs, he remembered she said they had been in the basement. That’s where the manservant and the cook lived. They should know what happened. Lamon took the backstairs down. He saw the manservant walk into a room with a bucket and a mop. Lamon followed him and saw a billiards table and boxes stacked around the walls.
“What are you mopping?” Lamon asked.
“Nothing, sir. Just mopping.”
Lamon extended his hand. “I’m Ward Lamon. But, of course, you know that. I’m the president’s personal bodyguard. And your name?”
“Cleotis.”
“The floor looks clean, Cleotis.”
“I know, sir. I just feel like mopping.”
“Leave my husband alone,” a woman’s firm voice called out from the doorway. “You white folks have taken everything away. So just leave us alone.”
Lamon walked to her, looked at her swollen belly and smiled. “When is the baby due?”
“None of your business.”
“Phebe, I think we all got to learn to be polite to each other,” Cleotis said. “Is that too much to ask, to be polite?”
Lamon walked back to him. “Didn’t there used to be another butler here? What was his name?”
“Mr. Pendel is the only butler I know of, sir.”
“He’s the head butler. You’re a butler too. I seem to remember a younger man than you, oh say, in 1862.”
“I’ve been here the whole time, Mr. Lamon, sir.”
“Whole what time?” His instincts as a lawyer were coming to the surface.
“The whole time Mr. Lincoln has been President, sir.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Can you prove he hasn’t?” Phebe stepped in between Lamon and Cleotis. “People who ask questions don’t live long, least ways not around here.”
“Woman, I warned you. You’re saying too much.” Cleotis sounded more anxious than angry, Lamon thought.
“Saying too much about what?” he persisted.
“Nothing, sir.” Cleotis bent over to pick up the bucket. “Excuse me, sir, I’ve got to get some clean water.”
Phebe pursed her lips as she looked at Lamon. “Yes sir, people can get mighty dead asking too many questions.”
Deciding not to pursue the interrogation, Lamon went back upstairs, the straw mats crunching beneath his feet. As he entered the main hall, he saw Stanton coming down the stairs. Lamon presumed he had been to the autopsy room to oversee any discoveries made by the surgeons. Their eyes met briefly. Stanton stopped and then hurried to the front door. Lamon followed down the steps to the revolving gate between the Executive Mansion and the Department of War building.
“Mr. Secretary!” he called out. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. Please pause a moment so we can speak.”
Stanton frowned. “Well, make it quick. Can’t you see I am in a hurry? We have a conspiracy to solve!”
“Do you have any information to lead you to the assassins?” Lamon asked, trying to sound friendly.
“Yes,” Stanton replied. “We think it was some actor and his rabble-rousing friends.”
“Is it the same man whom you suspected two and a half years ago? You remember, when you placed the president and his wife in a secret location?”
“What?” Stanton’s eyebrows went up.
“You told me in 1862 that Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had been removed from the Executive Mansion to a secret location to protect them from an assassination attempt. You had found two people who looked like the Lincolns to take their place. Why did you let them return unless you thought the danger had passed and obviously it had not?”
“The intelligence we had at hand suggested otherwise. The nation needed its leader back where he belonged,” Stanton explained, his lips pinching together when he was finished.
“Why would you allow him to go to the theater when you knew danger existed?” Lamon pursued his questioning.
“I told you we thought it was safe.”
“But it wasn’t safe. The president is dead.”
“I won’t subject myself to such an interrogation,” Stanton said in a huff.
“By the way, what happened to the man and woman who impersonated the Lincolns?”
“They went home.”
“And where was that?”
“I don’t remember.” Flustered, Stanton paused to compose himself. He then wagged a fat finger at the earnest questioner. “Listen here. You had better keep that story to yourself. People will think you are crazy if you insist on repeating it. Like people think Mrs. Lincoln is crazy.”