The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  “You’re finished!” Lean called out. “There’s nowhere to turn. Toss your gun out.”

  If the killer answered, Lean didn’t hear him. There was a sudden blast of the train whistle as the arriving engine drew within a few hundred yards. Grey was circling, drawing closer while improving his angle on the killer. The black-coated man noticed this and took more slow steps backward, trying to keep distance between himself and his pursuers. He quickly ran out of space, coming to within feet of the platform’s edge, where it dropped away several feet to the tracks. The killer raised his arm and swung it back and forth, pointing his gun alternately at Lean and Grey like a wild clock pendulum.

  “Drop your gun!” repeated Lean. He raised his left hand to the base of the pistol, steadying his right hand to fire. The approaching train was no more than thirty yards away, and Lean had no intention of letting the standoff last long enough for any passengers on that train to exit and risk getting shot. The killer threw a quick glance over his shoulder. When his head spun back around, Lean saw a look of sheer madness in the man’s eyes. The man grinned, whirled, and jumped down onto the tracks.

  Lean dashed forward. He saw the black figure on all fours in the middle of the tracks, the train barreling down on him—ten feet away. The man was scrambling to gain his footing, desperately trying to force his body forward, out of the way of the oncoming engine. There was the piercing squeal of the train’s brakes. Lean swung his arm around, his gun coming level with the killer. Before he could pull the trigger, the killer’s feet left the ground. Lean heard the sickening sound, audible even above the grinding metal brakes: the wet thud of a body giving way completely before the mass of the engine.

  66

  Several moments passed before the train slowed enough for Lean to jump aboard and commandeer a new lantern from a conductor who was floundering through an endless morass of half questions. Lean leaped off on the far side of the train and began to scour the ground. Grey appeared farther down alongside the train and called Lean over.

  The bloodied mass on the ground was twisted about so that it took Lean a moment to make full sense of what he was seeing. Half of one leg had been ripped away, and what remained of the lower body was almost completely twisted about by the force of the blow, facing the wrong direction.

  “He almost made it. Looked like he stumbled. Maybe McCutcheon’s shot to the leg the other night kept him from escaping.” Lean glanced at the mangled mass of bloody flesh and exposed bones that had once been the man’s legs.

  “It will cheer McCutcheon’s heart to know he’s already gotten revenge on the man who shot him.” Grey knelt and shone his light directly onto the man’s face. It was bloodied and bruised from having struck the ground several times. He took a cloth and small flask of water from his equipment pack and wiped the dirt and gore from the dead man’s face. Lean recognized the features, made even more homely in the agony of death.

  “The man who called himself Peter Chapman,” Grey said.

  “Father Coyne’s assistant?” Lean had been so focused on the man’s injuries that he hadn’t even noticed the color of the man’s hair, his hat having been knocked away by the blow. “He’s not black-haired at all. As blond as a—”

  “As blond as an undersize boy, smart and quiet. The kind who was barely worth noticing, but given to acts of vengeance. A boy familiar with Old Stitch, who also had access to the Black Book while he was at the cathedral’s orphanage. Jack Whitten.”

  Lean tried to process the announcement, fit it in with everything he’d learned and considered over the past three months of the investigation. But at that moment it was all too much, and his mind stubbornly returned to the dead body before him.

  “But he’s blond. Boxcar Annie said he was dark. And the hairs on Maggie Keene’s body were black too.”

  “Could have been dyed. I was a fool not to test them. Or Maggie Keene’s killer could have been dark-haired after all.” Grey drew a small glass vial from his kit.

  “A second killer? You mean Geoffrey Blanchard? The two of them working together?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.” Grey drew a pair of scissors from his pouch and snipped a pinch of hair from the dead man. He placed the hairs into the vial and secured the stopper. He then produced a small tin that contained papers and a dark ink pad and proceeded to take imprints of the dead man’s thumbs. “The local police are coming. I’ll leave it to you to explain the bare facts and take care of McCutcheon. That should give me ample time to head back up the hill to secure certain evidence from that body.” Grey slipped away before two Salem police officers approached from around the front of the train.

  The next day Lean sank into the seat in their private compartment on the 1:25 northbound train and watched Grey reorganize all the equipment in his satchel. “Jack Whitten. I really thought it would turn out to be Geoffrey Blanchard. He was obviously disturbed, fascinated by the occult. Figured he had a grudge against Old Stitch that he carried over to other witches or sinners.”

  “I wasn’t sure which of the two was the strongest suspect,” Grey said. “Of course, now it’s easy to see that Whitten had to be involved all along.”

  “Why’s that?” Lean asked.

  “The killer had a knowledge of witchcraft generally and specific knowledge as to the location and contents of the Black Book. Jack Whitten spent time at the cathedral twenty years ago. It was during that time that the Harvard men came and copied the book. And around that time when Whitten was expelled for breaking in to the church office where the book was kept.”

  “Ah, but Blanchard could well have been the other boy who was with Whitten during that incident.”

  Grey held one finger up in the air and then unfurled a second. “But our killer was also proficient with the abrus seeds kept by Old Stitch and probably used to poison her. Whitten would have been intimately familiar with his mother’s ingredients.”

  Lean weighed this argument before picking his counterattack. “Perhaps the abrus seeds were the poison that killed Blanchard’s mother and he knew it. Poetic justice for him to use it in exacting his revenge on Old Stitch. And Blanchard is likely the one who attacked Simon Gould and then was chased by McCutcheon. He’d have recognized Gould as one of his father’s men spying on him in Danvers. What would Whitten’s motive be for attacking Gould?”

  Grey didn’t need any time, his own riposte already waiting. “I checked Geoffrey Blanchard’s body when I returned to Gallows Hill. There was no bullet wound on either leg. Besides, Gould wasn’t spying on Geoffrey Blanchard. He was trying to protect him. Whitten needed Blanchard for the Gallows Hill sacrifice. Gould was in the way.”

  “Well, in any event, a case could have been made for either man as the likely killer,” Lean said, happy to fight to a draw.

  “Except for one thing,” Grey said. “The first and most obvious clue that was left for us.”

  Lean gave him a puzzled look.

  “The pitchfork in Maggie Keene’s neck and the billhook used to cut her chest.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Lean said.

  “Neither of us knew what those wounds signified until I located that book on English folklore and superstitions. Strange Tales of Warwickshire, it was called. Only then did we realize that sticking a witch with a pitchfork and slashing the cross with a billhook was a custom for guarding against the dead witch’s evil.” Grey paused, waiting for the information to sink in. “The custom was foreign to us.”

  “So?”

  “Foreign to us because it isn’t an American custom. It’s British.”

  “But Blanchard and Whitten are both as American as you or I.”

  “True, but Whitten’s mother wasn’t. Remember his orphanage records? Old Stitch’s real name was Lucy Whitten. Her birthplace was listed as some town in England. Whitechurch or something.”

  “That’s right. I wonder if that’s anywhere near where that other woman was reported as getting the pitchfork and billhook.”

  “Possibly,” Gr
ey said. “The village of Long Compton, 1875. That particular case would have been after Old Stitch emigrated here. But still, it shows the knowledge of that old local practice. She must have passed that useful bit of wisdom on to her sons.”

  “There’s a bedtime story for you,” Lean said.

  “Of course, we’ll know the truth soon enough.” Grey reached into his kit and held up his tin that contained the ink pad and paper. “I have thumbprints from both Blanchard and Whitten to match against the bloody one the killer left on Maggie Keene’s shoe. When we get back to Portland, we’ll know for certain whether we had one killer or two.”

  “Not that it matters now. They’re both dead anyway.”

  Grey bent forward in his seat, closer to Lean, as if they were conspirators in danger of being overheard. “True, but after all we’ve discovered, the months spent on this inquiry, can you honestly say you don’t need to know the whole truth of what happened here? For yourself?”

  “At the moment I’m not sure what I can honestly say, or what I honestly think of all this.” Lean couldn’t recall if he’d slept more than six hours in the past two days. He tried to shut his eyes, but his mind wouldn’t yet allow him to close the book on this. “You really think Whitten and Geoffrey Blanchard may have been working in concert these past few months?”

  “Well, there was certainly some connection. They were both on Gallows Hill on the two hundredth anniversary of Reverend Burroughs’s hanging. They both shared a knowledge of the occult. Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lean answered, “maybe because Whitten’s mother poisoned Blanchard’s. And the Blanchard family mob hanged Whitten’s brother.”

  “Blanchard probably had no reason to recognize Whitten. The scene at Old Stitch’s hovel would have been chaos. Flames, smoke, and whatnot. She didn’t even go by the name of Whitten in her work. Jack Whitten had the advantage of anonymity when they crossed paths again. Geoffrey was the boy who got into trouble with Whitten when they broke in to the church library a year or two later. But Jack Whitten learned who Blanchard was, and time passed. When the bicentennial of Salem and Burroughs’s hanging approached, Whitten tracked him down again. He needed to complete his ritual and saw an opportunity to secure his final revenge against the Blanchards for his brother’s death all those years ago.”

  Lean stretched his legs and stuck his hand into his coat pocket. He drew out a telegraph he’d received in response to his own earlier that day and held it up as evidence.

  “But if Peter Chapman really was Jack Whitten, then Father Coyne would have recognized him as the same young man he’d helped all those years ago.”

  Grey shrugged. “Almost two decades had passed. Hard years can make a young man look very different. Besides, Father Coyne’s eyes were going. He couldn’t see clearly enough to make the connection. A sudden onset of digestive and eye trouble about six months ago. The same time Whitten murdered Old Stitch and stole her supply of abrus seeds. Remember, the poison can cause internal problems as well as damage the eyes.”

  The train’s shrill whistle sounded two short blasts, and then Grey continued. “Whitten somehow managed to poison Father Coyne. Then, not having to worry about being recognized, he ingratiated himself as some sort of handyman inside the cathedral. He worked his way into

  the confidence of the deteriorating Father Coyne. He wanted access to the Black Book that he’d once tried to steal from the church library twenty years earlier. The very incident that got him kicked out. But he must have been thwarted and had to get a hold of Harvard’s copy instead. Took the pages he needed and covered his tracks by destroying the rest.”

  “Just wish we’d have caught him alive,” Lean said. “Could’ve gotten a confession.”

  “Perhaps he was thinking the same thing. Jumping in front of that train was his choice—as was all this. Besides, other than ourselves, who would have taken much joy in hearing that confession, having to wrestle with the realization of all that has happened here?”

  “People want to know the truth,” Lean said.

  The train began to move forward in lurching bursts.

  “The truth?” Grey said. “For most people the truth is more a matter of opinion than fact. No, they only want the sordid details. Preferably spun into some terrible, fascinating story they can repeat. A grisly account of sin and death, vengeance and madness is always popular. But the whole truth of it all? Good citizens hanging children. Human sacrifices going undetected by the police. War heroes paying off smugglers to keep murders quiet. No one would believe it all.”

  Lean’s eyelids began to sag. He opened his mouth to speak but then noticed that Grey, seated across from him in the compartment, was absolutely still, eyes shut, his breathing low and regular. Images of the past twelve hours floated through Lean’s mind. After the incident at the station, the remainder of the night and the morning were all a blur of movement and questions from the Salem police. He only vaguely remembered locating McCutcheon and dealing with his medical needs. Then he’d led the Salem police up Gallows Hill and was surprised to find the body of Geoffrey Blanchard lying flat, with no evidence of the primitive cross he’d been tied to. After a moment he realized his gratitude to Grey for altering the scene. There were enough questions to answer about a dead body, even without the indications of a ritual murder.

  A few hours of sleep at the police station had been followed by a trip to the telegraph office this morning, where he’d sent a note to Officer Bushey in Portland to check on Father Coyne’s well-being. Another round of discussions with the police and several high-ranking administrators from Danvers Lunatic Hospital followed. They were clearly none too happy about the news, and Lean quickly figured that their displeasure had as much to do with their inability to explain how Blanchard had obtained his freedom as it did with the fact that he’d gotten his throat cut. They were gnashing their teeth over what the newspapers, Colonel Blanchard, and a potential flock of lawyers might say about the insufficient security at the asylum.

  The Salem police were at something of a loss as to how to explain the entire situation any other way than how Lean had laid it out for them. He had followed Peter Chapman there from Portland in connection with the disappearance of Lizzie Madson earlier that summer. Chapman had a violent streak, and it was suspected that he and Geoffrey Blanchard had known each other in Portland years earlier. The exact nature of their relationship, and why Chapman would want to slash the man’s throat, was unknown to Lean. In any event, the man was clearly deranged. McCutcheon confirmed that he was in Salem to help Lean apprehend Chapman, who had shot him during the pursuit. The statements of the other witnesses from the station confirmed that Chapman had jumped to his death before the train. In the end, the Salem police were quite happy to chalk it up to a lunatic committing suicide at the station.

  As for Geoffrey Blanchard, the Danvers Lunatic Hospital officials were quite adamant in establishing that Lean had not actually seen Chapman kill Colonel Blanchard’s son. So there was no actual proof of a murder. A knife had been found on the ground near Blanchard’s body. It could easily have been dropped by Blanchard after he’d killed himself. And, if so, it provided a much less compelling news item. By the time Lean had been able to extract himself from the police station, it seemed in all likelihood that the police and the hospital administrators were reaching a consensus that it would be for the best if the whole event was rendered down to no story at all. It was not necessary, and could even be publicly demoralizing, to disclose the manner of Blanchard’s reported suicide and the exact location. It would certainly be less problematic, and there would be fewer questions asked, if it was publicly assumed that Geoffrey Blanchard had simply died while still located properly in his cell.

  After finally finishing up with the police, Lean had found Grey in attendance at the hospital bedside of Walt McCutcheon, who was looking surprisingly rosy-cheeked for a man who’d been shot the night before. As it turned out, the bullet had passed right through the ample flesh at th
e side of McCutcheon’s midsection, striking no vital organs. While he would remain at the hospital for the next few days, there was no indication that he could expect anything other than a full recovery. Grey apologized that he would not be able to stay and look after his friend, but McCutcheon would not hear of it. In fact, he seemed quite eager for the Portland men to be on their way. He had an eye on one of the nurses and didn’t need a couple of haggard, smelly detective types lurking about and interfering with whatever series of lies he intended to tell the young woman.

  The thought of Walt McCutcheon’s injured body failing to restrain his overly amorous sense of optimism brought a faint smile to Lean’s face as his eyelids closed. His right hand slipped from his lap, landing with a soft thud on the seat. The telegraph response, which had been waiting for him at the train station, dropped from his fingers. Anyone passing by who happened to pick up the paper would have read Officer Bushey’s reply to Lean’s inquiry: “Fire yesterday. Father Coyne’s house destroyed. His body pulled out this morning.”

  67

  “Well, Grey, I’m in the awkward position of being extremely grateful for all your help in this matter, yet hoping to God I never have to see you again. Professionally, I mean.”

  Grey turned away from the hackney’s window and the sights of the Portland streets. The faintest of smiles threatened his face. “It will likely be some while before we cross paths again; I still plan to return to Boston next month. I should thank you as well, though. This has certainly been an interesting summer, one of the most intriguing inquiries I’ve ever conducted.”