“—so I can oil the hinges first.” Grey fixed an unimpressed stare on Lean. “The idea was to sneak into the tomb.”
“Night like this, the neighbors will just think it was a banshee,” Lean said.
Grey stepped to the doorway with a dropper in hand and squeezed a bit of oil onto the hinges. Lean moved into the vault. Grey followed with the lamp held high, illuminating the brick-lined interior of the tomb. The whole space was no more than twelve feet wide by eighteen feet long. Lean quickly took in the scene, counting nine coffins stacked in columns. The late-July days had been hot, and the air inside the brick tomb was thick with the unmistakable stench of death.
“I think she’s still here,” Lean said. “Could be hidden behind the coffins.”
Grey aimed the light to peer along the side of the stacked boxes. “Not behind. She’s inside one of them.” He moved alongside the coffins with the lamp held close. “Here. This one. The nail heads aren’t fully set; it’s been opened recently.”
The two of them placed the suspect coffin down on the floor of the tomb, closer to the door. Grey took a short crowbar from a deep pocket in the interior of his long coat. He pried open the lid and slid it halfway aside. Grey paused for a moment at what he saw and then let the cover fall open the rest of the way.
Lean took up the lamp for a better look. “I think we’ve found Lizzie Madson.” The putrid smell hit him like a wave, and he gasped. His stomach muscles clenched, and he put the back of his hand over his mouth and nose. His eyes watered as hot bile came up in his throat.
Grey pressed a handkerchief into Lean’s hand. “It’s been treated.”
Lean clamped the cloth to his face and breathed deeply. A strong medicinal smell filled his nostrils, and after several breaths he was able to turn back and face the coffin once more. Each man tied his handkerchief about his lower face in order to free his hands.
“Good, now we definitely look like grave robbers,” Lean said.
Inside was a body wrapped in a white sheet. It had been dumped into the casket on top of the skeletal remains of the original occupant. The mud-caked tips of a woman’s shoes poked out from the bottom of the sheet.
They lifted the shroud at either end and placed the body alongside the coffin. Lean couldn’t resist a glance inside at the casket’s original tenant. He saw a man dressed in a light gray wool suit, his bone-thin hands crossed on his chest. A ring of scraggly white hair stretched around the head connecting the temples. Dark, vacant sockets gazed up from a face of dried, leathery-looking skin that had gone terribly yellow and was stretched taut over the bones. It looked as fragile as some ancient papyrus scroll.
By the time Lean returned his attention to the more recent corpse, Grey had managed to unfold the sheet to reveal the body of a woman in a long white dress. Her wiry brown hair, tinged with flecks of gray, was matted down over her forehead. The face was blanched, the flesh hollow and sunken against the skull. Lean thought the drooping features gave the sense that the corpse was singularly unimpressed with both her current situation and the answers to whatever mysteries she had discovered upon her departure from this world. Her neck was hidden by the high-collared white dress. The material appeared undisturbed: no cuts, tears, stains, or marks of any kind.
Grey tugged the collar as he bent forward to peek down at the skin. “No visible marks on the neck.” He rolled the body up on its side. “Dirt on her back, but no bloodstains.”
“Maybe she’s not our third victim. Maybe this Lizzie Madson simply died at Marsh’s place and they wanted to hide the body. She drank something wrong. Or just up and died for no good reason.”
“There’s always a reason—good or not.” Grey moved away from the woman’s head and bent down to peer at her hands, the only other exposed part of her body.
“Suppose there’s no need to bother with searching the clothing for hairs and whatnot.”
Grey looked like someone had just stolen his Christmas goose. “We can rest assured that any relevant evidence has long since been thoroughly compromised by all the post-death manhandling. No, we shall need to rely solely on the corpse itself to reveal any evidence.” He finished looking into the woman’s ears and turned his attention to the inside of her mouth. “We’ll need to get her undressed and examine the entire body.”
“Of course,” Lean said, though his jaw clenched at the idea.
After some awkward maneuvering, they managed to get Lizzie Madson’s multiple layers off, leaving the body naked except for her panties and knee-high stockings. Once laid out, the body was something of a disappointment. An old scar marred the left arm, but otherwise she had suffered no injuries worth mention. She simply didn’t fit with the pattern of the two prior victims. Lean was struck by the sense of the body’s frailty. The woman was thin, remarkably so, though he thought that it was in part due to her being dead. People always seemed to him to be perceptibly smaller, entirely less substantial, after dying.
“There just isn’t much to her, is there?”
Grey was gently pressing the meatier parts of the palm just at the base of her wrist. “True enough. There is something rather … ethereal to the body.” He took her by the shoulders and rolled her onto her side again. “And most peculiar is the complete lack of discoloration anywhere on the body.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve seen when a dead person lies in one position, how the blood naturally pools at the low point and the skin there becomes discolored, bruised-looking. If left in that position for long enough, the discoloration will remain even if the body’s position is subsequently altered. Yet her skin is absolutely blanched all over.”
“The man who saw the body at Witchtrot Hill said she was very red in the face.”
Grey peered close at Lizzie Madson’s ashen face. Then he lurched toward her feet and yanked off her stockings.
“What are you doing?”
Grey didn’t answer. “The lamp, Lean.”
Lean picked up the lamp and held it near the corpse’s feet. Grey was holding up one ankle for close inspection. The deep imprint of rope marks was visible, circling around the lower calf several times.
“How did you know?”
“She was red in the face because her blood had rushed to her head. She’d been hung upside down, and the witness at Witchtrot Hill saw her shortly after.” Grey paused, his eyes running over the corpse once more. “That explains why no discoloration.”
Lean arched an eyebrow in puzzlement as he waited for further explanation.
“She’s suffered no injury of the extent that it would take. But if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was near wholly exsanguinated. Drained of blood.”
“I know what it means,” Lean said. “But how?”
“That is the mystery.”
Lean watched the progress as Grey began at the toes, searching between them for any cuts, bruising, discoloration, or even traces of needle marks. He continued upward, checking closely all the creases and wrinkles in the skin around the backs of the knees and elbows. When Grey reached the shoulder area, he let out a quick gasp. “What have we here?”
Lean moved in for a clearer view at her left underarm, where Grey pointed toward what looked like a sizable yellow spot.
“What is that?” asked Lean.
“Sealing wax.” Grey pried and scraped away the dried, puttylike substance. Beneath it was a jagged tear in the flesh, the edges of which were crusted with blood gone black. “He hung her upside down, then must have managed to puncture the heart or the subclavian artery. Dr. Steig can tell us more after a postmortem.”
They set about dressing the body again.
“Now we just need to explain how and where we found the body. Any mention of these tombs and we’ll both be jailed,” Lean said.
“I’ll claim to have discovered her at some hidden location, away from here. An anonymous tip. The mayor will have nothing to complain about.”
Lean opened his mouth to comment but stopped at the sound o
f a dog’s bark, not too far off. He hurried to the door and stepped outside. Vague, dark shapes of tall grave markers were visible for a short distance before all was lost in the thick, misty air. Normally Lean would have looked out and seen a smattering of distant lights peeking from the thick, forested shores of Cape Elizabeth in the distance, across the Fore River. Tonight, however, there was only the gray shroud of fog and mist. A slight movement to his side caught Lean’s eye. He looked left and homed in on the gas lamps that dotted Vaughan Street. There, at the edge of a misty cone of light beneath one of the lampposts, he saw a figure in white, standing deathly still and seeming to stare back in his direction. In another second the figure slipped away, vanishing into the dark.
“Grey!” He glanced into the tomb and saw Grey examining Lizzie Madson’s fingernails.
There was another bark. Lean was sure it was close enough that the hound had to be within the cemetery. He hurried back to the coffin.
“Shutter the lamp. Someone’s out there in the light—watching us.”
Grey was peering at some smudges on the fingertips of his gloves. He glanced up at Lean’s news, weighed it for a moment, then frowned. “Are you sure?”
“No. But in either case, we’ve lingered too long.”
Grey wrapped the sheet over her again, and the two men hefted her up at either end. Once outside, Lean pushed on the tomb door a touch harder than he meant to. It closed like a cannon shot, reverberating against the cavernous walls of fog that surrounded them. A dog answered in the distance, three angry barks echoing through the misty air of the burial ground.
“Damn!” Lean managed to get the key into the lock and secured the door.
“Over the hill.” Grey motioned up the rise at the back of the row of tombs. “If there’s a night watchman with that dog, he’ll be coming from the gate.”
With the wrapped body of Lizzie Madson stretched out between them, the detectives struggled up to the top of the rise that encased the tombs, then fought their way through a stretch of gnarled, scraggly brush. Several more angry barks sounded out behind them. They rushed across the open ground to where the black wrought-iron fence separated the cemetery from the rear of several houses lining Bowdoin Street. Lean saw no one in the backyards or on the street beyond, which was unlit and scarcely populated.
“Heave her over,” Lean said.
Grey shook his head. “Leave her here. The watchman will find her in the next few minutes and save us the problem of reporting the body.”
Lean was unsure of the plan, but Grey had already dropped his end of the winding sheet and was in the process of rolling the corpse out onto the ground. Grey then bundled up the shroud to take with him. Both men took hold between the metal spikes that decorated the top of the fence and heaved themselves over.
Once they were past the houses and out to the street, the only thing visible nearby was Bramhall, the sprawling mansion built by the sugar magnate John Brown. The grand edifice was lit up like a fairground, sitting alone in the midst of sweeping lawns that were roughly the size of the entire Western Cemetery. They continued to where Bowdoin Street crossed Vaughan and turned right, heading back toward the front gate.
“She was right up ahead,” Lean said. He saw Grey’s dubious look and added, “The woman that I saw looking down toward us.”
“It was a woman?”
Lean nodded. “Yes, a woman in a long white dress. Right under this lamp. She was staring right toward me.”
Grey stopped near the stone archway of the entrance and regarded Lean. “And this mystery woman, in the long white dress, just vanished into the mist. You saw her right after we had discovered the body of our murdered woman, also wearing a long white dress.”
“I know what I saw.”
“I have no doubt that you are sure of that.”
A low growl rose through the fog. It was coming from inside the cemetery. Lean peered toward the fence but could see nothing. They crossed the street and walked along. Rasmus would be waiting for them two blocks ahead. Lean looked back toward the cemetery and squinted, making out a low, black form prowling back and forth inside the fence. A high whistle sounded in the distance, and the shape disappeared back into the darkness and fog.
Once they reached the carriage, Rasmus Hansen flicked his switch and the cab started forward, clattering over the pavement stones. The sound was lonely and angry among the quiet streets of the West End.
44
Lizzie Madson’s body lay upon the examination table in the morgue. Dr. Steig used a thin metal probe to indicate the wound in the underarm. “Obviously, the puncture to the subclavian is what killed her. It wasn’t a surgically precise wound. I’d guess the killer knew enough anatomy to accomplish his task, but he’s not highly skilled. The wound’s somewhat ragged, and that’s what your colleague, Deputy LeGage, seized on.”
“He’s definitely calling it accidental?” Grey asked.
Lean nodded. “He’s chalking it up to the woman’s being drunk and foolishly trying to climb over the spiked fence. She slipped and suffered the wound on one of the sharp iron tops. Bled to death there, just inside the cemetery grounds.”
“He’s not troubled by the total absence of blood at the scene?”
Lean shook his head. “He’s not the type to let the smaller details worry him. Rain washed away the blood.”
“We haven’t had the kind of prolonged torrent that would be required to rinse all visible traces of blood from her white dress after so violent an end.”
“True enough,” Lean said, “but he has his explanation and considers the case solved. Doctor, I saw you checking her fingernails. Did she scratch him?”
“No flesh under her fingernails,” Dr. Steig said. “Some plaster, actually.”
Grey peered at the right hand. “She was likely attacked indoors and didn’t have a chance to fight him off.”
Dr. Steig nodded. “There’s a clean slit on one fingertip. Enough to bleed, but not at all serious. Otherwise, only some mild premortem bruising to the face and on her right wrist.”
Lean said, “He could have taken her by surprise.”
“Perhaps,” Grey replied.
“Or do you wager she knew the man, trusted him?” Lean said.
“I won’t wager.”
Lean waited for him to elaborate, but Grey showed no signs of cooperating.
“Because it’s a sin?” Lean ventured with a smirk.
“In the intellectual sense anyway. Guessing or gambling is the last resort of the desperate and the foolish. Why trust blindly to chance when a valid solution is perfectly discernible?” Grey drummed his fingers on the examination table. “We just need to know more about this woman. And, more important, who her associates were.”
“Once news of the body reaches the papers, someone will come forward,” Lean said. “Then I can charge Marsh and his cronies.”
“I don’t think that’s a realistic option,” Grey said.
“He meddled with a murder investigation and disturbed that poor woman’s body.”
“How would you ever explain everything? Due to your secret knowledge of other unreported murders, you had reason to suspect that a new murder victim had appeared behind Marsh’s property. Two of his society members, rather than calling the police, had covertly moved the body to Marsh’s tomb. And you knew this because you employed a pickpocket to steal the key ring from the superintendent of burials. Then you broke into a city office to get the tomb keys so you could illegally enter a family’s burial tomb to discover a mutilated body.”
Frustration began to mount in Lean as Grey continued.
“And when you somehow manage to convince Mayor Ingraham not to fire you, then what? There’s no evidence that Marsh was involved in the actual murder, only that his people moved an already dead body and interred it illegally. A crime, certainly, but no worse than our own actions.”
“So we do nothing about victim three,” Lean said.
“On the contrary, we do everything we c
an about her. Same as the first two. We find our man and stop the next one.”
“That plan hasn’t worked so well yet.” Lean knew that it made sense, but knowing it did little to take the sting out of the situation. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut, then told he couldn’t hit back.
“No, it hasn’t.”
They all turned at the voice and saw Mayor Ingraham standing in the doorway.
“I suspected I might find the two of you here. I’m not a fool, Deputy. A dead woman just outside the tombs you wanted to open. And now I have your confession. It’s enough to discharge you”—the mayor pointed an accusing finger—“and see the both of you before a judge.”
“Where I, for one, will gladly testify as to what we found in the Marsh tomb,” Grey said. “Exactly what your deputy told you we would find. A murdered woman, whom you refused to search for, out of fear of outraging the city’s most prominent families. I’ll also mention this is the work of the same man who killed Maggie Keene. A man whose description we’ve had for over a month, resulting from an investigation which you demanded we keep secret from the public—out of fear of causing a panic, and being ridiculed for involving an Indian in the matter.”
“You’re twisting the facts!”
“Not nearly as much as the papers will,” Grey countered, “once they get a whiff of you placing your political standing ahead of finding a murderer who is stalking Portland’s streets.”
“There’s no firm proof of any of that,” Mayor Ingraham said.
Lean took a step forward, his palms out, pleading for reasonable minds to agree. “But you’ve heard what we found. You know we’re right about this.”
“I know no such thing.”
“You know the man who came to your door and left that tongue is still out there.” Lean said with quiet urgency. “Ready to kill again if he’s not found.”
The fervent look on Ingraham’s face wavered for the first time since entering the morgue.
Dr. Steig set down his probe and approached the mayor. “You risk a debacle if he strikes again and the truth comes out. What will you lose by letting the investigation continue?”
The Salem Witch Society Page 24