The Lincoln Deception by David O. Stewart

for many years before.”
    â€œYes, I read of his death. I hope it was not a hard one.”
    â€œHe was staunch in his faith and suffered relatively little.”
    Weichmann licked his lips. “Bingham did me a kindness when not many people would. He knew the trials to which I have been subjected. I have been shot at, dismissed from employment, chased from town to town, all for telling the truth about a terrible crime. Do you think that fair, Dr. . . .”
    â€œFraser. James Fraser. And, no, it’s most unfair, Mr. Weichmann. And I’m sure Mr. Bingham deemed it the same.”
    â€œIndeed, he did. Indeed, he did. Are you Catholic?”
    â€œExcuse me?
    â€œThe question’s plain enough? Are you a member of a Roman Catholic congregation? Do you confess to Catholic priests? Did priests send you? Monsignors? Bishops? Archbishops? Cardinals? They’re all the same to me, no matter how tall their hats or glorious their robes.”
    â€œNo, sir, I was raised Presbyterian.”
    â€œOh, dear. That must not have been any picnic.” Weichmann gestured to an armchair that faced his. “Perhaps you can describe your mission, as you put it, more fully. I warn you, though, if I suspect for a moment that you are in league with Townsend, this interview will immediately end.”
    Despite his peculiarities, Weichmann proved a gracious host, happily detailing his travails following the conspiracy trial, and the John Surratt trial after that. When Fraser disclosed Mr. Bingham’s secret, Weichmann grew thoughtful. Mrs. Surratt, he said, was an honorable and pious woman, but a bitter rebel.
    â€œThe Confederacy had no more active friend than she,” he said. “She was a woman of character and sociable in the best ways of her sex. But she was devoted, body and soul, to the cause of the South.” In his trial testimony, Weichmann insisted, he had said little to incriminate her. Another witness did that job. He had been surprised, he added, by her lawyers.
    â€œShe had three, you know, but at times I wondered if she would have been better off with none.” Fraser recalled Cook’s opinion that her lawyers made her situation worse, not better. “Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland appeared for her, which seemed like a great coup. He was a wonderful lawyer, respected across the country. Yet he abandoned her after one week, an act that implied he thought her guilty. That left her with two young men with little experience of the courts. They scored few hits, at least so far as I could tell. They were no match for John Bingham, that’s sure.”
    â€œWhat happened to those lawyers?”
    â€œThe young ones? They both got patronage jobs from President Andy Johnson. Isn’t that peculiar? Why would he hire Mrs. Surratt’s lawyers, after he approved her execution?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œDr. Fraser, if you find that question interesting, then you are, as you say, no friend of the ghastly George Townsend. We should dine. Come home with me. I live with my sisters and brother-in-law, and they are forever after me to go about in society. They fear I become more strange as the years pass, while I merely fear more and more, which they do not comprehend, or claim not to. In any event, tonight you can be my rejoinder to them.”
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    Fraser was unprepared for the theological tone of the Weichmann dinner table. Louis Weichmann, it turned out, was a seeker of a particularly persistent stripe. He trained as a Catholic seminarian but grew disenchanted with that church and sampled the doctrinal wares of the full range of Christian denominations. He was settled for the moment in an Anglican parish, to the dismay of his very Catholic sisters, each of whom cautioned him through the meal of the error of his path.
    â€œLouis,” scolded the unmarried sister, Tillie, who seemed to care more about ecclesiastical matters. “You can no longer risk your immortal soul