Hanging Mary by Susan Higginbotham

Author:Susan Higginbotham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781492613626
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2016-03-15T07:00:00+00:00

28

NORA

APRIL 15, 1865

You know—everyone knows—what happened on the night of April 14, 1865. You have even perhaps grown hardened to such things, having lived through, or heard of, the shooting of President Garfield as well. Nothing, you might say, can really surprise you anymore.

So how to make you realize how it was to wake that morning of April 15 to learn that the president had been shot? It was as if the world had slipped off its axis, and no one knew whether it could be put back on again.

It was, simply speaking, the bleakest day in American history. And for those of us in Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse, hearing the crime had been committed by a man we all knew and liked—or loved—it was all the bleaker.

• • •

For a solid hour after the doorbell rang in the small hours of the morning, four detectives roamed around the boardinghouse, looking for Mr. Booth and Mr. Surratt, and in general, making us feel, in the words of Dickens, that we had committed all of the crimes in the Newgate calendar. Finally they departed, leaving us in the parlor to wonder what was going to happen next. At last, Mr. Holohan said we should all go back to bed. I was following Mrs. Surratt to our bedroom when she said, “Nora, be a dear and lie down upstairs with Anna and Olivia. I need to be by myself at the moment. These suspicions about Johnny are upsetting to me.”

I nodded, for what mother wouldn’t feel the same, knowing all of Washington was searching for her son? I shuffled upstairs to the room Anna and Miss Jenkins shared and knocked. “May I sleep here tonight?”

There were whispers, and Miss Jenkins opened the door. “Anna’s too upset, Miss Fitzpatrick, to be with anyone now. If you don’t mind—”

“No,” I muttered. This was getting ridiculous. I trudged back down to the second floor. Mr. Weichmann’s room was clearly out of the question, but perhaps I could share a bed with the Holohan girl, who had a little room to herself.

Then I heard the not-at-all-unfamiliar sound of Mr. and Mrs. Holohan quarreling. Mrs. Holohan’s voice, soft but clear, came through the door. “I demand that we leave here immediately! Else we could wake up dead in our beds.”

I sourly wondered how a person could manage that.

It was clear there would be no hospitality for me there either. Sighing, I descended to the parlor. I pulled someone’s shawl from a peg in the hall and, to his no small disgust, rearranged Mr. Rochester on the sofa before curling up on it, wrapping the shawl around me. After some pacing about, Mr. Rochester finally settled himself around my feet.

It wasn’t as if I stood much of a chance of getting any more sleep that night anyway.

• • •

At half past six, we all filed downstairs for breakfast—all except Mr. Holohan and Mr. Weichmann, who had left the house quietly before dawn in search of news, and Anna, whom Miss Jenkins said was feeling ill and would lie abed a little longer.

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