As soon as the kitchen chores were finished, Sally directed the twins to say good night to Thaddeus.
“Good night, Mr. Lewis,” they chorused, and one of them smiled shyly at him.
Morgan stood to follow Sally out of the room. “If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll just go and hear the children’s prayers.”
Soon Thaddeus heard childish voices reciting familiar words:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
His Love to guard me through the night.
And wake me in the morning’s light.
It was the first prayer his own children said, and one of the tasks he always looked forward to when he was at home was the hearing of prayers and the tucking in of children. He had been at home far too seldom, he realized now. Betsy had been left to raise the family and he had missed too many bedtimes.
“Do you really think something might happen tonight?” Morgan asked when he reappeared in the kitchen.
Thaddeus was no longer sure that it would. The rain had subsided to an intermittent drizzle, but the cloud bank that covered the moon had not dispersed and there was every likelihood of more rain to come.
“I don’t know. It may be too dark. We’ll see. But a grave was opened at St. James-the-Lesser a few days ago, and it may have something to do with what’s been happening here. At the very least I think we should go and talk to the sexton.”
“St. James isn’t that far. I’d have time to go in the morning.”
Sally bustled back downstairs and filled the teapot, then said goodnight to them and disappeared again. Yawning, Morgan rose to follow.
“Call me if you see anything,” he said.
“I might, if I can’t handle it myself. Otherwise I’ll leave you to your bed. You look like you need all the sleep you can get.”
Morgan nodded and stumbled after Sally. Thaddeus gave them a few minutes to settle themselves, then he doused the lamp. It would be easier to see the graveyard if his eyes were already accustomed to the darkness. He pulled the hard wooden chair closer to the window and settled in as well as he could for the long watch ahead.
He had expected to be uncomfortable in this position, but he found that he could still see through the window if he tipped the chair against the wall and rested his feet against the edge of the sink. Even this would have set his old bones creaking a few weeks ago, but there was no protest from his knee as he balanced his weight with it. He must be growing hardier with his return to the old travelling life, he thought. The extra activity was loosening him up, making him stronger.
Even as he thought it, he knew it was nonsense. He had been no less active at the hotel where there was a constant climbing of stairs and lugging of baggage. He had limped through his duties longing for an opportunity to sit down as soon as possible. Even the first weeks of riding the Yonge Street Circuit had made him, at times, acutely uncomfortable from the constant jarring ride over rutted roads.
The discomfort continued even when he returned to Christie’s house and sank gratefully into his bed. Nothing had changed, he realized, until he visited Holy Ann’s well. One drink of water from it and he began feeling better by the time he reached the next village. But that couldn’t be. That would be a miracle, just like Holy Ann’s admirers claimed. God was capable of many wondrous things, but Thaddeus’s Methodist soul had difficulty believing that He would use so papal a thing as a holy well to accomplish them. Shrines and saints and splinters of the true cross were not acceptable to a reasoned faith.
More likely that it was a return to the challenge of saving souls that invigorated him, even though his efforts were being so poorly rewarded. Or perhaps it was the thrill of once again solving a perplexing mystery. Of being useful. He was willing to credit any of these agencies before he would start believing in the miracles of Holy Ann.
He was suddenly startled out of his absorption by a faint rattling at the door. Slowly he tilted the front legs of his chair back to the floor and lowered his feet, tensed to spring in case it was an intruder. He fixed his gaze on the door and held his breath to listen for a repetition of the sound he had heard. Nothing. It must have been the wind picking up, he decided, or the scratching of a small animal.
Then, as he watched, the bolt slowly rose out of the iron cleat and the door opened just a crack. He willed the gap to widen, just a few inches more, so that he could reach it in time to see who it was.
The prowler must have been listening as carefully as he. Either that or Thaddeus was more visible than he thought, for suddenly he heard a gasp. He leapt to his feet and flung the door open, but there was no one there. Then he heard the sound of running footsteps. He gave chase around the corner of the cottage, but by the time he reached the front walk, the would-be trespasser had disappeared.
He stood peering up and down the street for a few minutes, but he could see no evidence to indicate which way the intruder had run. He walked first in one direction, then in the other, listening and watching for anything out of the ordinary, but he could hear no more footsteps, no creaking from the wheels of a wagon or cart, no clip of a horse’s hoof striking the hard-packed surface of the road. There was nothing to see but a small sleepy village bedded down for a rainy summer’s night.
Slowly he turned around and went back to the cottage. He resumed his watchful position by the window, but he was sure that there would be no further disturbance that night. Whoever it was had been trying to get into the cottage, not the graves, and having been surprised in the act, it was unlikely he would return. With that decided, Thaddeus settled down in his chair and prepared to get whatever sleep he could.
The next morning Morgan became extremely upset when Thaddeus told him what had transpired during the night.
“Someone tried to break into the cottage itself? We could all have been attacked in our beds!”
“I don’t think so. He was being very cautious, and as soon as he realized I was there, he abandoned the effort.”
“He? One person, then?”
“I’m reasonably sure there was just one. I heard only one set of footsteps running away.” But even as he said it he realized that he could be mistaken. Sounds echoed strangely when the clouds were low. “I suppose it might have been a burglar, although that seems unlikely.” There was little in the Keeper’s Lodge that would be worth the effort of stealing, although Thaddeus supposed that a burglar would have no way of knowing that until he got inside.
“Do you think it has anything to do with the graves?” Morgan asked.
“I don’t know. But if it does, there’s only one thing he could have been after.”
“The ledger. But why?”
“Maybe our culprit wasn’t sure where to dig next and hoped to find a clue that would point him in the right direction. Let’s look at it again. We must have missed something.”
Morgan fetched the leather-bound book from the shelf in the corner. Together he and Thaddeus leafed through the columned pages, but no more information offered itself up.
“I don’t understand,” Morgan said. “Whoever opened those two graves knew exactly where they wanted to dig. Why would they need to look at the records? There’s nothing here but names and dates of death.”
Thaddeus was just as perplexed. He was sure that Phillip Van Hansel was responsible for the double occupancy of the coffin at St. James-the-Lesser. He would be willing to believe that it was Van Hansel who had dug it up for some reason. But he couldn’t make any connection between Hands and the graves at the Burying Ground. And why would Hands want the ledger, if that was indeed what the intruder had been after. Maybe the attempted break-in was completely unrelated. Maybe it was a burglar, as Morgan had first assumed.
It was a short walk to Parliament Street where St. James-the-Lesser Cemetery had been established to provide a pleasant vista over the valley carved by the Don River. The grounds had opened less than ten years previously, and its designers followed the newly fashionable plan of makin
g graveyards pleasant and park-like. Mature trees were left in place all along the walkways, with grassy stretches of lawn between the plots. It was a far more welcoming place than the Strangers’ Burying Ground, where the graves were laid out in regimented rows as close together as it was possible to arrange them.
Morgan was visibly impressed. “This is a lovely place. Much nicer than my cemetery.” And then the import of his own words struck him. “I guess that’s why they want to move all my poor strangers,” he said with a wistful tone to his voice.
“No, that’s not why,” Thaddeus said. “It’s because the village wants the land, not because it would be a nicer place for the bodies of the departed. And even if the surroundings are better, I doubt anyone looks after the residents as well as you do.”
“Do you think they know?”
“That anybody cares? Yes, I think they do. I think they like it, that someone is looking after their bones.” Morgan looked a little more cheerful then.
The more prominent Anglicans among the departed occupied resting places in the highest sections of the cemetery, under shady trees close to the entrance, their marble monuments intersected by snaking walkways.
As they walked through the grounds Thaddeus realized why it had taken the St. James sexton so long to discover the opened grave — the site they were looking for was tucked into a neglected-looking part of the cemetery, hidden by the slope of land above it: easy pickings for a resurrectionist, hidden from the main gates and the more established section of the graveyard.
There was little to see when they finally found the grave, just fresh mounds of earth over two adjacent plots. One mound covered the newly moved coffin from St. James Cathedral. It had no marker as yet — the cathedral records would have to be searched in order to discover who it was, Thaddeus supposed. After all, it had lain forgotten for some time.
The second grave was marked by a plain square stone set into the ground at the head of the mound: William Miller b. 1824 d. August 13, 1847.
He might have been a fever victim, given the date. A Protestant and a member of the Church of Ireland, otherwise the local Anglicans would not have buried him in their ground. Poor William, only twenty-three years of age, buried with a stranger in a strange land. And what of his coffin-mate? There was not even a name on a plain marker to indicate who he or she had been.
“Do you think this has anything to do with our graves?” Morgan asked.
“I find the date provocative,” Thaddeus said. “It fits with our timeframe. And I think I know how two bodies ended up in the same grave, but I don’t know much beyond that.”
Morgan looked at him speculatively, knowing there was more to the story. When no more came, he said, “You know, you couldn’t find Isaac Simms until you told me what was going on.”
Years previously Isaac Simms had murdered five young girls, and Thaddeus had been at a loss to track him down until he confided in Morgan. Then they had chased him down together and Thaddeus had to admit that he couldn’t have done it without Morgan’s help.
“You’re right. I should tell you,” Thaddeus said. “But it’s a very long story and it concerns not only me, but Luke as well. Let’s talk to the sexton to see if he knows anything more. Then we’ll decide whether or not it has anything to do with our puzzle. If it does, I’ll fill you in.”
They walked back to the main gates and knocked at a cottage that seemed to be connected with the cemetery. The door was opened by a man who wore a surly look on his face.
“If you’re here to gawk at the coffin with the extra body, you can just turn around and go home again,” he said. “It’s been all covered up and there’s nothing to see.”
“No, we don’t need to see the coffin,” Thaddeus replied. “We just need to know whether or not there have been any other graves tampered with.”
The question took the man by surprise. “Others?” he said. “Why would there be others? One was bad enough.”
Morgan stepped forward. “I’m the Keeper over at the Burying Ground. We’ve had some troubles there, as well. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“Oh. Sorry,” the man said, “I’ve been plagued by ghouls ever since that article appeared in The Patriot. You’d think people would have better things to do.”
“Do you have any idea when it happened?” Thaddeus asked.
“It must have been a night or two before we moved the coffin from the cathedral. I’d have noticed it sooner otherwise. They didn’t even bother trying to hide what they’d done. Just dug it up and left it.”
“It’s not likely that it was bodysnatchers, then?”
“Well, no — they didn’t take the body, did they?”
“And who, exactly, was William Miller? Do you know?”
The sexton shrugged. “Fever victim, according to the record, but there’s not much information besides that. I don’t know anything about the second one in the coffin. Took me aback, that one did.”
“I can just imagine,” Thaddeus said. “If there are any more disturbances, I wonder if you could let Mr. Spicer know?”
“Of course.”
Thaddeus thanked the man for the information and he and Morgan walked back through the cemetery gates. Once out on the street again, he stopped, lost in thought, while Morgan hovered impatiently beside him.
Thaddeus knew that it was Hands who was, at least indirectly, responsible for burying extra bodies in coffins in 1847, although he hadn’t expected to find one of these double-occupancies in an Anglican cemetery. William Miller had certainly not been given a very desirable plot. But that would stand to reason, if he was an immigrant. Not really part of the local establishment, but not so foreign that burial could be denied.
On the other hand, it was possible, Thaddeus supposed, that Miller wasn’t an immigrant at all, but a local citizen. Many of them volunteered in the fever sheds in 1847. Many of them were stricken with typhus and died as a result. Their deaths occurred in their own homes, though, and they had no doubt been surrounded by concerned relatives and comfortable surroundings. A funeral cortege with a crowd of mourners would have accompanied them to their final destinations. How could an extra body be slipped into a coffin when so much attention was focused on the official occupant?
No, the subterfuge would be far easier to pull off if the Anglican William Miller was an immigrant. But even if he was, there was still no apparent explanation for his having been dug up again.
Thaddeus knew that the majority of the bodies carted away from the fever hospitals and sheds had been poor Irish Catholics and that they were buried at their own churches. Not the new cathedral, St. Michael’s, which had not yet been completed in 1847. They would have been taken to the old church, St. Paul’s. If he was to make any connection between Hands’s old tricks and the current strange occurrences at the Burying Ground, he should start by asking questions at the Catholic church.
“Well?” Morgan asked. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure. But at some point I’d like to visit St. Paul’s Cemetery to ask a few questions there.”
“Why?”
“Because I know for a fact that at St. Paul’s there are more occupants in coffins than there ought to be. I want to know if they’re being dug up as well.”
“How do you know all this?”
Thaddeus eyed Morgan as he weighed the risks of telling him about the encounter with Hands Van Hansel. The last thing he wanted was to put any of the Spicers in danger. On the other hand, Morgan had a point. The young man had proved himself in the Simms case. Thaddeus was sure he could trust him now.
“You must keep this to yourself,” he said. “And I won’t tell you the name of the man involved. Not because I lack confidence in you, but because it’s safer that way.”
When Morgan nodded, Thaddeus related the bare details of the story — the double coffins; the skirmish in the yard that resulted in two men dead over the corpse of an Irish girl; the wounding of a man who had since become a very power
ful figure in Toronto.
“I still don’t know whether or not it has anything to do with what has been happening at the Strangers’ Ground, but it seems an odd coincidence that four bodies that were all buried at more or less the same time have now been disinterred.”
“I would agree,” Morgan said, “except that both of my burials were singles. And if this man was in the business of stuffing coffins, why would he want to have them opened again? The whole point of putting things in the earth is so they don’t see the light of day again.”
It was a valid point, and one that Thaddeus had no answer for. “I don’t really know, Morgan,” he said finally. “To tell the truth, I’m grasping at straws.” But he wasn’t. Not really. He felt as though he had found an entry into a maze, and now all that remained was to follow the twists and turns that would lead him to the end.
As soon as they reached the Keeper’s Lodge, Morgan ducked inside to fetch a tie and to clean the mud from his boots in preparation for the afternoon burial. Thaddeus was debating whether or not he should carry on to St. Paul’s alone when he saw a familiar figure coming along the street toward him.
“I thought I should come for the committal,” Luke said when he reached his father. “It’s the young man who died from typhoid. It’s a funny thing, you know, when you think about being a doctor, you always think in terms of saving patients, not losing them.”
“I’m sure you did everything you could.”
“I did. But there wasn’t enough that I could do.”
Thaddeus fell in beside his son. They weren’t so different, he and Luke. They both felt their failures too keenly. St. Paul’s could wait.
They walked to the back of the cemetery where the gaping hole that Morgan had dug was waiting to be filled.
“Where have you been?” Luke asked while they waited. “I half-expected you at breakfast.”
“Asking questions. We went to St. James-the-Lesser this morning, but the grave was filled in and the sexton didn’t have much to tell us.”
The Burying Ground Page 17