Sowing Poison

by Janet Kellough

  After dinner, they had returned to their rooms and waited. She rechecked her packing a dozen times and wept a little over the articles she would have to leave behind. The only other thing she could do was pace up and down the room. She had told her son what she wanted him to do as soon as he had a chance, and he waited with her. She knew he was bored, but she wanted him close in case an opportunity presented itself. He played incessantly with the jig doll he had been given, the jointed wooden feet making a constant clatter that grated on her already taut nerves.

  Finally, it was suppertime, and again she forced herself to go to the dining room; this time she could eat nothing at all, but she did take a glass of wine, which helped soothe her nerves a bit. The preacher and his family were noticeably absent.

  “They all went for a nap.” The innkeeper chuckled. “My guess is that they’re out for the count. They’ll wake up tomorrow morning and wonder what happened to the day.”

  This was welcome news. Fewer people to dodge. She knew that the cook went home after the supper dishes were cleared up. The innkeeper’s wife was still in bed. That left only the innkeeper himself and the son-in-law. She would wait a while more, until the hotel was locked and shuttered for the night; then with any luck, she and the boy could slip out the front door unnoticed.

  Luck did not favour her, however. The cook did not go home. She, too, waited until the innkeeper had gone to sit with his invalid wife and then she and the son-in-law tiptoed into the front parlour.

  Clementine had been mildly amused by the budding romance, but now she cursed it. There was no way they could slide past without being seen — as befitted a gentleman with honourable intentions, Renwell had not closed the door to the small room.

  The couple remained there for an hour or more. She could hear the low murmur of their voices if she went to the top of the stairs, and she did this every five minutes or so. Would they never leave? Finally, she heard footsteps. The cook had moved into the hall.

  “Goodnight then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

  Whatever her suitor replied was indistinct, but she heard the front door open and close again, and then more footsteps as Renwell walked to his small room at the back of the hotel. She was about to set her plan in motion when she heard what sounded like a gunshot. She ran down the stairs, reaching the bottom just as the innkeeper entered the hall.

  “There’s a bit of a disturbance on the back street,” he told her. I don’t know what it’s all about, but Mr. Renwell has gone to find out. I can’t imagine there’s any real danger.”

  “My goodness,” she said. “Is someone being robbed?”

  “No, nothing like that. Likely just a few people who’ve had a little too much drink. Nothing to worry about. If it would make you feel safer, you and the boy could come and sit with us in our room. My wife, of course, is rather anchored there, and anxious for company.”

  Perfect.

  “I think we’ll be all right on our own,” she said, “but thank you for asking. I’ll make sure my door is securely locked. You go and be with your wife. She needs you more than we do, I’m sure.”

  He nodded and went back down the hall. She waited until she heard his door close and then ran up the stairs.

  “Now,” she hissed. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Far less likely that they would be seen if they went separately. Clementine stepped out onto the second floor verandah and watched as the boy slipped down the street. She would give him time to reach the stable and then she would follow.

  She had to wait longer than she had intended, for people were pouring out of the nearby houses to see — or join in — the fight, she couldn’t really tell which. Finally, it appeared that the excitement was over as groups of men emerged from the side street. She waited until she saw the constable go by with an armload of guns, then crept down the stairs. Horatio had left the door unlocked for her. She silenced the bell with her hand and slid out into the night.

  Clementine hoped that everyone would now be back in their houses, recounting the details of what had happened. Wives and children would all be sitting in their kitchens, no doubt, while tales of derring-do were spun.

  She decided to keep to the shadows as much as she could and hoped that the boy had managed to harness a horse without alerting the stable-keeper. She had concocted a story about being called away suddenly, just in case, but it would be far better if they were neither seen nor heard.

  “Out for a stroll? It’s a dangerous night for a midnight walk.”

  Clementine jumped when she heard the voice.

  The damned preacher! She considered bolting, but thought better of it. She could never outrun him, not even if she dropped the bag she was carrying. Better to stick to the story and hope it would hold water.

  “Oh, Mr. Lewis,” she said. She didn’t bother affecting the southern drawl. “I’m so happy to see you. I wanted to say goodbye but I couldn’t find you. I’ve been called away rather suddenly, I’m afraid.”

  “So suddenly that you couldn’t pay your bill? My, my, that’s an emergency indeed.”

  She hesitated. Did he know for sure that she was skipping out, or was he just guessing? The one thing she had learned in all the years in the game, though, was to keep the story going until you were sure it was lost.

  “My mother has been taken ill suddenly,” she said. “I didn’t want to disturb the innkeeper. Please let him know that I’ll settle up with him when I return.”

  “I expected a better story from one so accomplished in the fraudulent arts,” Lewis said. “You seem to be losing your touch. What happened today when Reuben came visiting? You seemed pretty rattled.”

  She regarded him warily. How much did he know? Too much, it seemed.

  “I had all the moaning and groaning and ghosts up on the second floor pegged as nonsense right from the start,” he went on. “I’ve known for some time that you went by the name of LeClair while you were in New York and that Mr. Gilmour was following you in the hopes that he might collect the reward that was offered. Just a little while ago I figured out that Nate’s return was a scheme hatched so that he could get away cleanly and Reuben could inherit the farm. Do you want to fill me in on the rest of it? Something else has gone sadly amiss, I would guess, otherwise you wouldn’t be scuttling away in the dead of night. I take it Horatio, or should I say Joe — that’s his real name isn’t it? — is waiting with the horse and cart a little farther up the road?”

  Did any of it even matter now? She decided it didn’t. “Nathan Elliott just came home.”

  It was the last thing Lewis had expected to hear and he struggled to make sense of this statement. “But Nate is dead.”

  So he hadn’t put all the pieces together yet. Too late to backtrack now. Carry on and hope he can be diverted somehow.

  “No,” she hissed. “My husband is dead. And now Nate is back.”

  She looked around, but there was no one else on the street. There was little likelihood that anyone could hear.

  “We were trying to cover our tracks, so we booked a squalid little room in a poor neighbourhood in New York. The previous occupant had been unable to pay his rent and had disappeared abruptly. He left some things behind — a few pieces of clothing. They were little more than rags, but there were some letters in a jacket pocket. They belonged to a Nathan Elliott. We didn’t think anything of them until Reuben showed up, looking for his brother.”

  Lewis nodded. Reuben must have been desperate. He thought he had located the long-lost Nate, only to find that he had once again disappeared like a wisp of smoke.

  “We knew that Van Sylen had offered a reward and that sooner or later someone would catch up with us. Jack offered Reuben a deal that was supposed to have taken care of both problems. Jack would pretend to be Nate, and Reuben would help Jack disappear.”

  “Jack?”

  “My husband.” Her voice broke a little as she said this.

  “So it was Jack we buried?”

  She
nodded. “He was supposed to have met me in Niagara Falls. He would sign the agreement, and I was to bring it here to collect the money. When he didn’t show up, I came here anyway. I didn’t know what else to do. I wondered for a time if I’d been double-crossed, if Jack had taken the money and run. Then I discovered that he truly had disappeared. Reuben claimed that everything had been going as planned and that he had no idea what had really happened. When you found all those bodies, I finally realized what was going on. It wasn’t Jack who was doing the double-crossing.”

  “And Reuben wouldn’t give you the money he’d promised in the original agreement?”

  “No. And I couldn’t expose him without exposing myself. I thought I could rattle him if I threatened to go to the courts. That was also my insurance policy. I made sure everyone knew about it. That way it would be far too suspicious if a second Elliott disappeared mysteriously.”

  “And now the real Nate Elliott has returned, and the game is up.”

  She sighed. “It’s all been for nothing. I wish we’d never heard of Nate Elliott.”

  “So the question is,” Lewis said. “What do you think really happened to Jack?”

  She looked at him squarely, trying to judge what he would do. “I think Reuben murdered him and left his body in the marsh. I think Reuben would murder me if he thought he could get away with it. I don’t have any proof of this. All I know for sure is that it’s time for me to be on my way.”

  “Where is Nate Elliott now?”

  “At the farm, as far as I know. At least that’s what Reuben told me this morning.”

  They could hear the sound of an approaching horse. Lewis turned and Clementine slipped back into the shadows. It was now or never. Go to the farm; please decide to go to the farm. Go save the brother. Let me leave.

  “Just tell me one more thing,” she heard Lewis call out softly. “What’s your real name?”

  It was the last thing she expected him to ask, and she took a moment to answer. “It doesn’t matter. Just remember me as Clementine.” And then she ran.

  The man on horseback was McFaul, patrolling the street to be sure that everyone had returned to their homes and that there would be no further trouble.

  Lewis thought furiously in the few seconds he had before McFaul greeted him. Just how desperate would Reuben be? If he had committed one murder, would he see a second as an equally convenient solution to his problem? No one besides himself, Clementine, and Reuben knew that the real Nate Elliott had returned, and Reuben would be unaware that Lewis knew. Reuben would assume that if Nate went missing now, no one would ever go looking for him.

  “Ah, Preacher.” McFaul had reached him. “All seems quiet now.”

  “I don’t think you’ll hear any more from the Orangemen tonight,” Lewis replied. “But there may be trouble brewing somewhere else. Do you suppose I could borrow your horse?”

  There must have been an urgency in his voice, because McFaul looked at him coolly and said, “Hop up behind me and I’ll take you to wherever you’re going. You can tell me about it on the way.”

  It was not far to the Elliott farm. Despite the fact that the horse was carrying two men, it took only a few minutes to reach the house. Lewis gave a barebones account of what he had discovered as they rode. He knew that McFaul had many questions, but the man seemed to realize that these could be answered later. They leapt from the horse and ran into the Elliott kitchen. There was no one there, although the stove was hot and the remains of a meal were on the table. Whatever Reuben had planned to do, he had waited until he had the cover of darkness to do it.

  “I don’t think they’ve been gone long,” McFaul said, looking around the kitchen. “And they had quite a feast before they left.” He laid his hand against a pot at one end of the table. “This is still warm.”

  Lewis stood in the doorway, surveying the scene. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe, and like C. Auguste Dupin, observation had become of late a species of necessity with him. A man’s life might well depend on what he could observe in this untidy kitchen.

  It had occurred to him that Clementine’s claim that the real Nathan Elliott had returned might be a feint designed to distract him while she fled, but he could see that the table had been set for two, and two glasses had been used, although only one had been drained. Reuben’s guest could have been anyone, however — a neighbour, a relative, a friend.

  He went to the sideboard and inspected the many bottles that were there — whisky and rum, mostly, along with several decanters and a number of unwashed glasses. But tucked away, just behind a jug of cider, was a small brown bottle.

  It was a container of the sort used for tonics and elixirs. It was uncorked. Lewis sniffed at the open neck. There was a distinctive smell that he recognized immediately: the tang of herbs in a laudanum mixture. Betsy took something similar at times, when the pain was bad and they could afford it. When he tipped the bottle upside-down, not a drop came out.

  Lewis strode to the table and picked up one of the dirty glasses. Nothing but the odour of rum from it. But when he sniffed at the second glass, he thought he could detect the same flowery smell of the laudanum.

  As he put the glass back on the table he realized that there were a series of clothes pegs beside the door, but that only one coat was hung there. It could easily have been Reuben’s, he supposed, but when he thrust his hands into the pockets he discovered a small purse. Inside were two notes and a handful of coins. All of them were American. It appeared that Reuben’s Boxing Day guest might indeed be his long-lost brother, Nathan.

  Had Reuben rendered the first Nate — Jack — helpless with the laudanum? Had he taken his victim to the marsh, where the Holey Man had found him? And had he been dead already or still alive and too insensible to save himself? Having had such success with his first crime, had Reuben decided to use the same method for his second?

  But the Holey Man is gone. No one can lay the blame there if another body is found in the marsh.

  Suddenly, Lewis knew where they had gone. “The woods. He’s taken him to the woodlot.”

  What better place? Reuben had maintained that his brother had disappeared there in the first place, and the coroner’s jury had expressed doubts about the identity of the bones found at the Holey Man’s shack. If something went wrong, and this body was found, Reuben could always claim that it was the missing Nate, and that he had been there all the time.

  McFaul had been watching in silence as Lewis examined the kitchen, but now he sprang into action. “Let’s go.” He rushed to the door.

  They went on foot. The trees grew thick in places, and a horse would make too much noise. They crossed the cleared fields and pastures close to the barn and soon reached the wooded area. Lewis led them to the clearing where Reuben claimed Nate’s accident had occurred. He motioned McFaul to be as silent as possible. There was no one in the clearing, although there was evidence of continued logging. Several felled trees lay on the ground waiting to be chopped into smaller lengths. Lewis tripped on one of these, but managed to stifle a groan as his weight shifted to his bad knee.

  McFaul grabbed his arm to prevent him falling. “Listen,” he whispered.

  Lewis could hear something off to their right. He and McFaul crept through the clearing as silently as they could. It was harder to see here, tree branches forming a dark web over their heads. Here and there widow-makers dangled in the arms of their neighbours, ready to come crashing down when least expected.

  There, in the part of the woodlot where the trees grew thickest, Reuben Elliott was cutting brush. As they watched, he slashed at the branches of trees, both fallen and standing, and threw them onto an enormous pile. Had it been daytime, he could have been merely chopping, throwing the unusable brush into a mound to be burned later — a commonplace chore on a farm. Except that a shaft of moonlight broke through a gap in the overhanging branches and Lewis could see the toe of a brown boot at one edge of the brush pile. Reuben muttered and cursed as he worked.


  There was a shovel leaning on a tree nearby, with a small pile of disturbed earth at the foot of it. He had intended to dig a grave, Lewis thought, but no one could dig far in the frozen earth. So he had settled for a less effective concealment perhaps.

  Lewis signalled McFaul and they crept up around the back of the mound of brush.

  As Reuben reached up to chop another branch, his back to them, he must have heard them as they rushed forward, for he turned, and in one smooth overhand motion, threw his axe. Lewis shouted and rolled sideways, knocking McFaul out of the way. The axe flew over his head and bounced off the ground, landing against the piled branches.

  When Lewis looked up, Reuben was disappearing into the trees. McFaul signalled that he was going to the left and that Lewis should swing around to the right. Lewis could hear the man crashing through the undergrowth ahead of him and he tried to follow the noise. Suddenly, there was silence. Lewis stopped, hesitating. The trees had closed in around him again and he could see nothing but shadows. He caught a slight movement just at the periphery of his vision, but turned too late. The branch slammed into the side of his head and he went down heavily.

  He had just time to shout “Here!” before he was struck a second time. He could hear McFaul shouting, but he sounded so far away — he would never arrive in time to prevent Reuben from delivering a rain of blows.

  Lewis instinctively put his hands up over his head. He felt intense pain shoot through his left arm as the heavy oak branch crashed down again. In spite of the pain, he rolled to the right and kicked his feet out as he rolled. One of his boots slammed into Reuben’s leg and the blow sent the man sprawling sideways. Then, unexpectedly, something arrested this motion and Reuben tumbled forward in a heap. As Lewis scrambled to get out of the way, he was astonished to see an axe embedded in Reuben Elliott’s back. And there behind him, swaying, stood a man who could be none other than Nathan Elliott.