He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. The laudanum had started to take the sharp edges off the pain for now but he knew he didn't have much time to act before it took over again. He'd gone through that for the last time.
Josiah was dying, a fact he'd known for weeks now. He didn't know exactly what had taken over his body, but it was crystal clear that it had been invaded by a disease that had no intention of letting him go. But Josiah also knew he wasn't helpless against the invader. He still had one way of maintaining control and refusing to allow the pain to have its way with him any longer. He knew his death was inevitable. But he could still decide when that death would come.
And he could decide whether or not his unfaithful hussy of a wife could live out the rest of her days with her lover. Perhaps if he'd been a more forgiving man, Josiah would have allowed Stella to find the happiness he knew she'd never found with him, nor he with her. But he wasn't a forgiving man. And when it came to Stella, any care he had once felt for the girl had turned to a burning hatred.
He'd spent years trying to swallow the resentment he felt towards her when she couldn't even bear him a son to carry on his name. Had that been so much to ask? A son to mentor and teach his trade, so that one day the boy could take over his medical practice? He hadn't thought so. And now he'd be damned if he'd give Stella the opportunity to try to have another man's child.
He could have killed her when he was beating her and, for a brief moment, he had thought that was what he was going to do. But he had regained his senses in time. Dying would have been too easy for her. He wanted her to suffer, just as he had suffered through the agonizing torment of his illness and slow death.
Josiah knew that it wouldn't be long before his wife was in the arms of her lover. She would imagine herself running away with him and leaving Josiah behind to be whispered about and pitied. She had no idea.
He opened his desk drawer and removed his gun, an 1875 Schofield revolver. He set it on the desk in front of him and grabbed his prescription notepad. He dipped his pen in the inkwell next to the pad and held it with his left hand. He wanted his writing to look as messy as possible and, as a natural right-hander, this would do the trick.
Josiah smiled grimly as he grasped the pen and wrote out “Christopher Casey shot me” in a shaky, barely legible penmanship. The writing looked like it had been done by a man in terrible distress and pain. Just as he wanted it to look. He pulled the note off the pad, purposely tearing the edge of the paper, and let it fall to the floor next to his desk.
He knew Zebediah Johnson and Jon Coffin would be at his door early tomorrow morning to purchase medicines from him. Those two fools could be counted on to be here every Wednesday, like clockwork. He imagined the two of them knocking on his door and calling out for both him and Stella. When no one answered, they'd fret a bit about whether to go inside, finally deciding it would be for the best. Josiah only wished he could be here to see the events that would unfold after the two idiots found his dead body.
“Oh, Stella,” he whispered. “I did warn you I wasn't finished, didn't I?”
Josiah could already feel the laudanum wearing off and he had no intention of letting another wave of pain overtake him. He stood up from his chair and picked up his revolver.
“I'll be with you soon, Lillian,” he said, as he brought the gun up to his chest.
Josiah pressed the barrel of the revolver under his ribcage and angled it towards his heart. He glanced down at the note next to his feet and smiled as he curled his finger around the trigger.
Josiah pulled the trigger and fired the gun, sending the bullet blasting into his chest. He lost consciousness as he toppled onto the floor. His blood sprayed across the note beside him.
****
2013
Hannah had never been so grateful for the popularity of genealogy research online. In the past, she would have spent hours going to county clerks' offices and state libraries for vital records and census information from the 19th century. Now all she had to do was sign up for one of the big genealogy sites and more information than she would have believed possible was suddenly at her fingertips from the comfort of her own bedroom.
After realizing that she knew nothing about Stella before she became the wife of Josiah Winslow, Hannah set out to find marriage records from the time. Considering how young Stella looked in the 1884 photo, Hannah doubted she had been married to Josiah long before the photo was taken. She browsed through the Dukes County, Massachusetts marriage licenses from a few years before the time of the photo, finally stumbling on a Winslow license. Josiah Winslow had married Stella Hammett in 1879 on the Hammett family farm in Chilmark.
Hannah stopped browsing and leaned back in her chair. The Hammett farm. Could this be the same land where the Hammett House resided today? She knew land surrounding the bed & breakfast had once been farmland, and that the house itself was a restored farm house. Could this be the same Stella Hammett?
Hannah knew that Hammett was a common surname historically on Martha's Vineyard. But how many Hammett families lived on farms in Chilmark? She couldn't believe it was a coincidence. And she felt a shiver down her spine as she remembered how she had decided to stay at the Hammett House out of the blue while making her trip plans. Had Stella been leading her then, too? It seemed likely now. No wonder Stella had been able to leave the newspaper articles in her room. Had the room she slept in once been Stella's?
Switching to birth records and census documents, Hannah tried to find information on the Hammett family. After a considerable amount of digging, she came upon a birth certificate for Stella Anne Hammett, daughter of Charles and Alma. She couldn't find any other children for the couple, and wondered if Stella had been an only child. Digging through more records, she found death certificates for both Charles and Alma. Both had died of consumption in 1879, no more than a few months before Stella married Josiah.
Hannah thought of the ghost she had seen on the webcam and tried to imagine what it would have been like for a 15 year old girl to lose her parents and have no choice but to marry a man old enough to be her father. Clearly Josiah had taken ownership of the farm upon marrying the Hammett's only daughter.
Once again, Hannah felt an inexorable tie to Stella. She knew exactly how it felt to lose both parents at the same time. She was just glad she had been old enough to take care of herself when her loss had happened. And that she lived in an era where an independent woman was not a rarity and a woman living on her own was considered acceptable. Stella had had no such luxury.
Hannah returned to the marriage records and tried to find a later marriage for Stella. She would have been so young when Josiah died and Christopher was murdered, barely more than 20, and it would have been understandable if she had married again. But Hannah could find no trace of Stella Winslow at all in later records.
She got up from her chair and paced the room, wishing she could simply ask Stella's ghost what had happened to her next. She sat back down and brought up the webcam again, finding a crowd of tourists just getting off a tour bus and climbing the steps to the overlook. It was a sunny summer day on the island now, and the Aquinnah shops and restaurants would be counting on the tourists to keep their businesses successful. Hannah couldn't imagine the ghost returning to the overlook in the midst of a crowd like this. And she knew she couldn't ask for any answers from Stella even if she could see her.
It dawned on Hannah that perhaps the answer had been under her nose twice already, but she simply hadn't realized it. She knew that the owner of the Hammett House B&B had lived on the island for her entire life before purchasing and restoring the old house. Hannah checked her memory for the articles she had read about the B&B before staying there, and remembered the owner had been a lover of history which was one of the things that had drawn her to the old house. Perhaps Grace Pease knew about the original owners of the property. Hannah had never thought to ask her.
There was no time like the present to change that. Hannah
grabbed her phone from her desk and brought up the number for the Hammett House. Grace Pease answered the call after just two rings.
“Hammett House. How can I help you?”
“Ms. Pease? This is Hannah Forrester.” Hannah knew Pease would remember her, as it was unlikely that she had guests make two trips to her place in such a short time frame.
“Ms. Forrester, hello. How are you today?”
“Fine, thank you. Ms. Pease, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”
Hannah briefly explained her purpose to the B&B caretaker, telling her about her plans for a book and the research she had been doing on the wreck of The City of Columbus, which had led her to Stella Hammett.
“Do you know anything about the original owners of the house, the Hammett family?”
“I know that Charles Hammett and his wife Alma died of consumption, and the farm was passed on to their only daughter and her husband, the town doctor.”
“That would be Stella. Their daughter, I mean.”
“Right.”
“What happened to the farm after that?”
“It gets fuzzy then. Apparently the doctor sold off most of the land to a neighbor and the house fell to the town when he was murdered some years later. Have you read about that murder in your research? It was quite sensational. Murder was nearly unheard of on the island in those days.”
“I have read about it, yes. But why did the town take ownership of the house? Stella Hammett was alive when her husband was murdered.”
“Yes, but apparently she disappeared not long after the murder. The records on what happened to her aren't clear. All I know is the town of Chilmark owned the house and ultimately sold it to another family in the late 1880s.”
Hannah sighed. Another dead end.
“I'm sorry I can't be of more help, Ms. Forrester.”
“Oh, no, you have been helpful, thank you. Tell me, do you happen to know when the property was turned over to the town?”
“Not exactly. I only know it was shortly after the doctor was murdered.”
“Thank you again, Ms. Pease. I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.”
“My pleasure. I hope we see you again here soon.”
“You just might,” Hannah said, ending the call.
Hannah set her phone back on her desk and chewed her lip as she pondered the latest bit of information. What on earth had happened to Stella after Christopher's murder? Had she ever even returned to her house?
She browsed through more records online but knew her research wasn't going to get anywhere. The only way she might find out what happened to Stella was by reviewing the old newspapers. If there had been a missing person's case, the papers might have covered it. Remembering the Boston Globe reporter Chesham, Hannah wondered if he had continued to follow up on island events after his disgust over the resolution to Christopher's murder.
There was really only one way to find out, and Hannah knew it wasn't online. She'd have to return to the old newspaper reels. But she might not have to return to the island itself. Now that she knew who and what she was looking for, she could probably find the information she needed much closer to home. Hannah picked up her phone and grabbed her purse from the coat rack near her closet. She didn't have to go far to find old New England newspapers. She left her apartment and headed for Cambridge and the Harvard University library.
****
It felt strange to be back in the Harvard library where Hannah had spent so much time as an undergraduate. While she was only 32, she now felt ancient as she looked around at the fresh-faced students sitting at the nearby tables. Had her face ever looked that young?
She forced herself to cut her pity party short and focus on the newspapers in front of her. She searched the Boston Globe for any further articles on Stella and the Christopher Casey murder, but found nothing from Arthur Chesham. He had apparently moved on and stuck to writing about the mainland.
Hannah returned to the newspaper desk and asked for the films of the Vineyard Gazette from the latter half of 1884. She took the bundle of microfilm and wearily returned to the reader. She was definitely going to need reading glasses before this was all over. She felt sure overexposure to microfilm could bring on blindness to anyone unfortunate enough to have to read it regularly.
She browsed through the Gazette articles, yawning as she skimmed stories on church dinners, sewing circles, and the abundance of strawberries available that year at the Tisbury Farmer's Market. Just when she was about to give up, she came upon a small article about Stella and another name she recognized, the lighthouse keeper William Mayhew. Hannah remembered that the keeper and his wife had tried to come to Christopher's aid and were seemingly the only people on the island who believed in his innocence.
Hannah rubbed her eyes and sat back to read. She knew she had finally found what she was looking for.
****
1884
Stella rolled over in the bed and stared with bloodshot eyes at the sun shining through the window. She squinted in the light and pulled the thin blanket over her face to cover her eyes. She had no interest in seeing the dawn of another hopeless day.
She loved being in the bed, anyway. It was the same bed Christopher had lain in while she had cared for him after the shipwreck. Stella felt as if she was somehow still close to him here in this bed. While she knew Mrs. Mayhew had long since washed the bed linens, she still imagined they carried the faint scent of Christopher in their folds.
It was ironic to realize now that Christopher would have been much better off if the sea had simply swept him away from the wreck of The City of Columbus and he hadn't survived to find himself on the shores of Martha's Vineyard. It would have been far kinder to the man in the end had he never come to this place. Or more pointedly, never come to her. She had cared for him and dressed his wounds only to bring him right to his death, as surely as if she had held the gun that killed him herself.
Stella rolled over again and faced the wall. She didn't want to think of all that anymore. She couldn't bear to see the torches burning in the night sky or to hear the screams and the deafening blast of the rifle. She longed to banish the stench of blood and gunpowder from her nose.
Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew had been kind enough to allow her to stay with them after the rest of the island had turned on her and branded her a whore and a strumpet. She still flinched when she recalled the looks her neighbors had given her when she had told the truth about Christopher's murder and the vigilante actions of Zebediah Johnson and his gang of monsters. If Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew hadn't intervened, she had no doubt that she would have been sent to the mainland and locked up in a psychiatric asylum after she had screamed and collapsed on the courtroom floor in hysteria when Johnson had been set free.
She was grateful to the Mayhews, but she knew she couldn't stay in their home much longer. She couldn't abuse their hospitality and kindness, although she knew they would never ask her to leave. Regardless, she knew it was time for her to go.
Stella finally sat up and forced her legs off the bed and her feet onto the floor. She stood up and shuffled forward, feeling as if each small step sapped her energy and threatened to pull her down into a heap on the floor. She finally made it to the bureau across from the bed and dressed in her white cotton dress. She tied her bonnet around her neck and let it hang down her back. She would want to put that on later when she was out in the wind, but there was no need to fasten it around her head now. Feeling a chill, she pulled her navy blue cape across her shoulders before heading out of the room and towards the Mayhew kitchen.
Stella hoped to find the kitchen empty when she entered, but instead saw Mrs. Mayhew standing at her stove. She was stirring something in a pot, with her back to Stella. She turned around when she heard Stella's footsteps behind her.
“Good morning, Stella. Would you like some oatmeal?”
Stella felt sure that she would vomit if she ate anything, but she couldn't let that show. “That would be lovely, Mrs. Mayh
ew. Thank you.”
“Take a seat, child. I'll get you some coffee too. You can feel autumn coming in the air today.”
“Where's Mr. Mayhew this morning?”
“He's up in the lighthouse cleaning the windows. Got an early start today.”
Mrs. Mayhew brought a cup of steaming hot coffee and a bowl of oatmeal to the table and set both down in front of Stella. She took the seat next to her and sat down herself.
“Please eat something, Stella.”
Stella nodded. “Of course. I can't resist your cooking, you know that.”
Mrs. Mayhew knew the girl was lying. She had done nothing but push food around on her plate or in her bowl for days now. Her cheeks were gaunt and the bones of her arms were turning into sticks.
“I'm worried about you, you know that. You've lost too much weight.”
Stella couldn't help but think that she'd lost much more than weight. She'd actually lost everything. And everyone. But she managed a feeble smile.
“I don't want to worry you,” she said. “I'm fine, I promise.”
Stella took comfort in the fact that she wasn't actually lying to the only woman who had shown her kindness since this whole ordeal had begun. She would be fine soon. She was going to make sure of that.
“Have you thought about what you're going to do next, child? Not that you're not welcome here, of course. You know you have a home here with us as long as you need it.”
“I know that, and I'm grateful. But I'll be moving on soon. I don't want to be a burden to you.”
The Ghosts of Aquinnah Page 19