2. Suspicion immediately fell on known associates of Booth
Lincoln lay dying in the Petersen boarding house through the night of April 14-15, surrounded by a growing group of onlookers. From an adjacent room, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton took charge of the federal government. By midnight, orders to detain and question known associates of John Wilkes Booth had been sent to military police, Pinkerton agents, and the District Metropolitan Police Force. The latter had long suspected John Surratt of acting as a Confederate agent. Surratt, a frequent companion of Booth’s when the actor came to Washington, lived in a boarding house operated by his mother, Mary Surratt. Mrs. Surratt also owned a tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland (now Clinton) which she leased to an innkeeper. By two in the morning of April 15, Metropolitan Police detectives arrived at the boarding house, seeking to question John Surratt. He was not there, and the police left empty-handed.
Surratt immediately fled, arriving in Canada two days later. The same day he arrived, military police returned to the boarding house to question Mary Surratt. While they were there, a man appeared, disheveled but wearing quality clothes, who claimed to be a ditch digger by the name of Lewis Payne. He stated he had been hired by Mrs. Surratt to dig a drainage ditch on the property. His arrival at the boarding house at 11:45 PM, his state of dress, and the fact that Mrs. Surratt denied knowing him led the police to take him into custody. An eyewitness to the assault on Secretary Seward identified the man as the attacker. Payne and Mrs. Surratt were held, the latter under suspicion of conspiring with the attacker. Stanton, through arrests and questioning, found an extensive conspiracy had existed to kidnap the President. Its extent remained unknown.