The Judges of the Secret Court: A Novel About John Wilkes Booth by David Stacton

Author:David Stacton [Stacton, David]
Language: swe
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9781590174715
Google: jcH1wrkUlh8C
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 2011-06-07T04:27:59+00:00

It was not abstract to Atzerodt.

That miserable troll knew perfectly well what the world had in store for him. The night of the assassination he had not even been able to find a friend to put him up. That showed him what the world was. He had stayed at a glorified flophouse instead, and then, sure he would be caught in any case, had fled to enjoy his last few days of freedom. America had always frightened him. It was too large. It had no corners to hide in. He pawned his revolvers, and with the ten dollars he got for them, went on a spree. For five days he lived life as he had always wanted to live it. He went to Germantown, in Maryland. He ate in taverns and talked to the other guests, like a normal man. He was accepted by them. He called himself Attwood. That was the name he always took on his drinking expeditions, when he impersonated a normal man. It was wonderful. He stayed in the house of a Mr. Richter. He ate meals in the dining-room, and slept upstairs in a room with two other men, instead of the six that slept in the same room at his flophouse. Not since Mrs. Surratt’s, where he had boarded until she had flung him out, had he been treated so well. He got drunk every night. He was terrified.

When they came to arrest him, which was done before dawn on the morning of the 20th, he was ready to tell them anything and everything, pellmell, just so they would let him go. Who they were he did not know, but clearly they were persons in authority. He told them everything.

But they did not let him go.

In Philadelphia the arrest of Sleeper Clarke and Junius Brutus Booth was conducted with more decorum. They were men of property.

Asia was under house arrest. Her brother Junius had arrived the night before. Edwina was still upstairs, with Junius’s own daughter, Marion. Junius was no help. He was too stolid. And he and Clarke got on each other’s nerves.

Clarke was bad enough to begin with. He was furious about the house arrest, when Edwin went scot free. He could not denounce Edwin. He denounced his wife instead. It was she who had brought all this upon him. Only she.

She did not bother to answer. Did he expect her to repudiate her whole family, just because he had made the mistake of marrying her? After all, she had made the mistake of marrying him. She did try to keep out of his way. She blushed for shame enough, without having the detective hear what Clarke had to say. Why should she not be loyal to her family, for certainly Sleeper Clarke was not loyal to her.

It was almost a relief when at last the Federal Marshal took Clarke and Junius into custody. She was not pleased with June. He knew how she felt about Wilkes, and yet all he could say was that he wished John had been killed before the assassination, for their family’s sake.

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