The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  —Here if needed.

  Regards,

  Walt

  “Man with a wooden leg?” Lean glanced up at Grey with a dubious grin.

  “The inquiry was for wounds to the throat or abdomen and severed body parts. Apparently I should have been more specific as to the age of the wounds.”

  Lean perused the options once more. “Maybe this Scituate one.”

  “I thought the same and sent another query.” Grey pulled a second telegram from his pocket and read aloud. “‘Scituate—Hannah Easler young woman not prostitute—good family churchgoers. Found in woods. No weapon at scene. Great violence to the body but nothing missing. Police mum just rumors. Spurned man? No known suitors. No arrest or suspects. Rail not far—possible vagrant. Walt.’”

  Lean read the telegram a second time, again pausing over the words that sent the message veering off on a new course. “Scituate’s a small town. They’d know if she had a fellow at all. So what makes them think a spurned lover?”

  “Too soon to say. But if her character and background don’t suggest some manner of sexual speculation …” Grey let the inference hang in the air.

  “The nature of the killing must. Still, no pitchfork mentioned. No missing body parts.”

  “He could have taken the fork with him,” Grey said. “We don’t know for certain that our man meant to leave it stuck in Maggie Keene. He was startled away by the watchman.”

  “If there was serious damage to the body, it’s possible that slim, piercing wounds from a pitchfork could have been missed on examination,” noted Dr. Steig.

  “So, Lean?” Grey was peering at him like a hawk. “The first train for Boston leaves at half past five in the morning.”

  Lean bobbed his head slightly from side to side as if he were actually weighing scales in his mind. “I can ask my wife’s sister to come help her out for a day.” He nodded, trying to rally himself to the cause. “Yeah, fair enough. Scituate it is.”

  23

  The next morning, Helen took a detour on her way to the historical society and made an unannounced visit to her uncle’s house. She sipped her tea and looked across the table in the sunlit dining room of his home. Dr. Steig was finishing off his breakfast of eggs and sausage. He made some comment about plans later that summer for them to take Delia farther up the coast for a vacation, but he seemed distracted. Helen just smiled and said the idea sounded nice. Her thoughts were elsewhere as well.

  On the ride to her uncle’s that morning, she had once again studied the telegraph paper she’d taken while tailing Perceval Grey a week earlier. A pencil back-and-forth across the page revealed a partial impression of the note Grey had sent to a man named McCutcheon at the Boston office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. No matter how intently she had stared at the page, she could make out only a few of the words: “months … cases in Mass. … death … mutilation … stab or pierce … neck. Urgent.” She didn’t know what to make of the gruesome message, and her efforts to learn more about its author had been equally frustrating.

  “Has Deputy Lean said anything further to you about his investigation?”

  Dr. Steig looked at her in surprise.

  “The strange man at the library,” she explained.

  “Oh.” Dr. Steig’s face relaxed. “No, nothing further, I’m afraid.”

  “Deputy Lean, he was in the paper last week for that murder at the Portland Company.”

  “Yes. A horrible business.”

  Helen noticed that her uncle’s eating had ceased. She took another sip of tea and asked, as casually as she could, “And who’s Perceval Grey? Haven’t I heard you mention him before? Some sort of detective, isn’t he?”

  Dr. Steig looked at her for a long moment, and she knew he was trying to guess her intent.

  “A former student of mine, yes. Why do you ask?”

  “He came to the library last week. I think he’s investigating our intruder with Deputy Lean. I passed the two of them talking on the street.”

  Helen saw her uncle smile; he looked relieved. That meant he did know what Deputy Lean and Perceval Grey were investigating, and she had guessed wrong. It was something much more serious than the man at the library. Her thoughts returned to the words in Grey’s telegram. They certainly could be related to the recent murder of Maggie Keene.

  “Grey is a detective, actually, but I don’t think he’d have any interest in your mysterious library man. Probably just a coincidence. They must have been discussing some other matter.”

  “Something like that murder at the Portland Company,” Helen suggested.

  Dr. Steig wiped his lips and set his napkin on the table. “Perhaps.” He stood and walked over to collect his jacket.

  “I wonder what in the world that murder has to do with witchcraft.”

  Her uncle turned toward her, his expression like stone. “What are you getting at?”

  “I want you to tell me what’s going on. Why are the police consulting with Grey, and what does it have to do with that man who chased me? Why were he and this Grey fellow both looking for books on witchcraft? I think I have the right to know what this is all about.”

  “It’s not about anything. It has nothing to do with you. There’s no need for you to worry about any other incidents at the library.”

  “I don’t need to worry? That man could have killed me.”

  Dr. Steig came over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Deputy Lean assures me you are not in any danger. So I must insist that you put all this aside. No good can come of your being foolish and sticking your nose in where it ought not to be. Leave the detectives to their work. You have a daughter to worry about. You can’t be rushing off, leaping into things. That’s how you get into trouble.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her mouth slightly open as she struggled for a response.

  “That’s what you really think, isn’t it? That I’m some foolish woman who can’t take care of herself. That Delia is just some trouble that I got into.”

  Dr. Steig straightened up, looking embarrassed. “That is not at all what I said.” He cleared his throat. “I adore the child, and you know it. Not at all what I said.”

  He walked toward the hall and picked up his hat from a side table. “I have to go; I’m already late for an appointment.”

  After her uncle left, Helen finished her tea in silence, then sat thinking for several more minutes before making her way toward the front hall. One of the servants was there, holding her coat ready. She glanced at the closed door to her uncle’s study, then back at the servant. Helen smiled and mentioned how her uncle had meant to lend her a book. She was in rather a hurry, so surely he wouldn’t mind if she found it in his study, since he was out and she wouldn’t be disturbing his work.

  Once alone in the study, Helen made straight for her uncle’s work desk. She knew he always kept his pressing files in the top right-hand drawer, and within a minute she held a black leather writing journal that contained anatomical sketches of Maggie Keene in its front pages. The details of that poor woman’s demise turned her stomach, so Helen flipped through the pages until the notes moved to other matters. She stopped at the sight of the names of Perceval Grey and Deputy Archie Lean.

  The notes were jumbled, but as she scanned over them, the picture began to emerge as to the theories of the manner, location, and motive related to Maggie Keene’s murder. Helen’s attention lingered on the final note addressing someone named Boxcar Annie. “Has vital knowledge of a recent male client—a person of great interest. Gorham’s Corner, basement at the rear of the Portland Fenian League. Reticent—suspicious of our motive. Belligerent when drinking. Need second interview: new approach required.”

  Helen heard movement in the hallway. She tore a blank page from the end of the journal and scribbled a note, which she slipped into a fold in her dress. She returned the journal and closed the drawer. After pulling a random text from a bookshelf, she composed herself and left the room, striding to the front door. She made her w
ay to Congress Street and waited for the next passing horse car. She got on and found a seat. Her heart raced as she retrieved the note. Her hand shook, and only partly due to the trolley’s bumpy ride. She stared at the page as she passed beneath the long shadow of the Portland Observatory and committed to memory the address where she could find Boxcar Annie.

  24

  Lean stared out the small rail car window, watching the trees slip by. He squinted and let the scene melt into a pale green blur. Soon the woods gave way to scattered farmhouses and fields aglow in the morning light. He glanced at Grey, who sat across from him taking notes from some dusty old tome.

  Lean tipped his hat down over his eyes and tried to clear his mind so he could catch up on some sleep. It was useless, the same as the night before, when everything he knew about this case kept racing through his mind. He tried to organize the facts to see if there was any sense to all this. The whole thing seemed a maze with no beginning and no end, and him standing there playing Theseus but with no ball of thread. He didn’t know what to expect from this trip to Scituate; the report had been so vague. He decided that the odds of finding any proof, over a month after the fact, to conclusively tie their killer to Scituate weren’t good. The resulting uncertainty would be the worst possible scenario. They’d be forced to wait, dreading the news of another murder, maybe in another town where no one had the slightest inkling that a devil walked among them.

  He tried to force his mind from the subject and focused instead on his pregnant wife, but even that image turned sour for him. He saw her standing in their cramped kitchen that morning, a doubtful look in her eye as Lean assured her that his travel expenses were being paid by the city. Furthermore, if he solved this case, it would go a long way toward ensuring his continued higher salary as a deputy marshal. Portland’s mayor made those appointments, and there was no guarantee that Ingraham, the only Democrat to hold the post since the Civil War, would win reelection next year. Even if he did, Lean couldn’t be sure his position was safe. After all, it was something of a mystery as to why Mayor Ingraham had appointed him as one of Portland’s three deputies in the first place.

  Emma was growing more concerned about their situation with every passing week. Lean couldn’t believe that July was just two days away. She hadn’t yet reminded him of his promise that they would buy a house soon, a few months after the baby was born at the latest. Then they could get out of their small apartment and have a separate nursery and more room for the kids. Despite their best efforts, they had not saved as much as they’d hoped. He tipped his hat back and stared out the window as they passed through some small Massachusetts town he couldn’t name. His mind felt drained by his various worries, and soon his eyes began to flutter.

  From the connection in Boston, Lean and Grey had taken the Green-bush Line south along its winding coastal route, through Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham. They exited at Egypt Station in Scituate to be met by Grey’s old colleague Walt McCutcheon. He was of average height, with a new bowler set atop his dark, wavy hair. A full handlebar mustache sat above a wide grin as he greeted them. He had a hearty handshake but seemed unwilling to meet Lean eye to eye. For a brief moment, Lean was suspicious, until he realized that McCutcheon was simply stealing glances behind him at a fine-drawn blonde who was waiting with her baggage.

  Lean guessed that McCutcheon had been a fit enough fellow in his younger days, but he was now red in the face and a bit thick through the midsection. He wore a stylish cutaway suit of blue wide-wale diagonals with ivory buttons, a crimson silk vest, and a dark checked bow tie. There was a gleam in his eye that Lean read as the sign of a man who thoroughly savored life and did not suffer much guilt about enjoying whatever pleasures the world had to offer.

  McCutcheon gave Grey a friendly slap on the shoulder. He welcomed them to Scituate, a town that, after having spent twenty-four hours there, he could declare to be about as entertaining and useful as the small end of nothing. “Though not without the occasional bit of savory to recommend it, eh?”

  Following McCutcheon’s wandering gaze, Lean’s eyes landed on the attractive young woman who had exited the train and was greeting family members nearby.

  “Wouldn’t mind turning a short stroll into a long walk with her,” McCutcheon said.

  He then suggested they go to the hotel to refresh themselves, which Lean thought was a brilliant idea. Grey was adamant, however, that they proceed to the scene of Hannah Easler’s murder while there was still some good daylight. McCutcheon had their bags sent ahead to the Gannett House, where they had rooms reserved, then led them to the carriage he’d rented. The young driver looked skeptically at the newcomers.

  “On, boy. I’m not paying you so well to gawk at my friends,” McCutcheon boomed.

  As they moved through town, McCutcheon apprised them of the situation as he had found it in the past day. He’d asked around at the hotel but was met only with embarrassed looks or mumbled claims of ignorance. Eventually he’d located an older boy hanging around in the street who was happy to earn fifty cents by showing McCutcheon exactly where the girl’s body was discovered. The boy hadn’t actually seen the corpse, but he’d been to the site the day after the discovery, when blood was still visible upon the path through the woods where Hannah Easler had met her fate. McCutcheon had then tried gathering information from some fellows at a dockside pub, but with no more luck than at the hotel.

  “No one’s talking. They won’t even listen to my questions. The whole lot of ’em won’t even meet your eye once you mention the girl’s name.”

  McCutcheon’s questions were not entirely in vain. They gained him an escorted trip down to the sheriff’s station, where he had to explain himself as a stranger asking untoward questions about a murdered woman. The sheriff made it clear he was handling the matter and didn’t need any city detective sticking his nose in. As far as he was concerned, the killer was from outside the town, likely passing through on the train to or from Boston.

  “And, as the sheriff was all too happy to point out,” McCutcheon said with a grin, “we all know the type of vermin that can arrive on the train out of Boston. After he got done puffing himself up in front of his pals, this other old-timer hands me back my piece and shows me the door. He says not to waste my breath around here. And I tell him, ‘I get it—no one in this town wants to answer my questions.’ He just looks me clear in the eye and shakes his head, all sorry like. And he says, ‘No one in this town even wants to ask your questions, let alone answer them.’

  “So I wait around outside until dinner and tail him to a place a few blocks away. I let him have a couple of stiff ones before I amble over. At first he wants none of it, but soon enough he’s talking.”

  The carriage arrived at the start of a wooded trail, where the three men disembarked. McCutcheon ordered the driver to wait, then led the way along the narrow footpath.

  “The girl, Easler, worked as a seamstress at a dressmaker’s closer to the harbor. Lived on the southwestern side of town, Greenbush area. So her way home shouldn’t have taken her anywhere near that path through the woods. No one knows what she was doing up north of the town center. Her parents went out looking just before nightfall. Pretty soon half the town was at it. Found her just after dawn.

  “It wasn’t pretty. Her throat was slit. Some other cuts on her, but mostly the guy had split her open. Sliced her from Cupid’s alley right up to her ribs.” McCutcheon thrust out a thumb and mocked gutting himself. “The parents went out of their heads, as much over people in town seeing her that way as about the fact that someone had done this to her in the first place. They raised such a stink over the whole bit—her being looked on like that—that the doctor never did get a chance for a postmortem. They wouldn’t allow it. No photographs, either.”

  “We’ll need to talk to them,” Grey said. “Convince them to change their minds.”

  “You’ll get as skinny as an almshouse dog waiting for that.” McCutcheon stopped on the path and took a deep pull on
his cigarette while they waited for an explanation.

  “They were so mortified by the whole affair, they couldn’t bear to show their faces. Packed up and moved. Took the girl’s remains with them. Wouldn’t let her be put in the ground here, where people would see her stone and talk about the way she’d been found.” He had another drag. “That’s just about the end of it all. And now here we are.”

  They entered a small clearing. This was the murder site, little more than a widening in the dirt path. The ground was littered with leaves. Lean’s heart had been slowly sinking throughout the story, though he desperately clung to the hope that McCutcheon was merely spinning out his tale and waiting to reveal some lead at the end. It never came. What Lean had feared now seemed painfully obvious: They were not going to find any conclusive proof here one way or another as to whether Hannah Easler had been killed by their man.

  “They didn’t bring anyone in? They must have questioned someone. How the hell else does the sheriff spend his days around here?” Lean asked.

  “They made the rounds down by the harbor. No one had been seen acting suspicious or with a drop of blood on him. They reckoned the fellow must have gotten plenty bloody in all this. Besides, we’re not far from the tracks. They think maybe some tramp skipped off the train, then hopped back on later that night and was gone.”

  Grey gave a crooked smile. “Local people simply don’t do this kind of thing.”

  Lean glanced up through the treetops to the dimming sky. “This is giving me a headache.”

  “Well, that’s one matter I can solve,” McCutcheon said, “as soon as we get back to the hotel bar.”