by Oak, B. B.
“That’s certainly to Rusty’s credit,” Adam said. “If he’s been active in the Railroad for so long, he must be older than he looks. I reckon his freckles make him look younger.”
The image of Rusty’s freckled face flashed in my mind. And then it flashed again. Each image was slightly different. “His freckles changed position!” I said.
“Freckles cannot change position,” Adam said.
“Well, his did,” I insisted. “I am a portraitist and notice such things. Upon first meeting Rusty, I observed that a pattern of freckles on his right cheek reminded me of the shape of the Big Dipper. But when I saw him a second time, the freckles on that cheek had a different arrangement. In fact, I think all his freckles were askew. I paid little attention to it at the time. I just thought he looked slightly different.”
“Freckles don’t rearrange themselves around someone’s face,” Adam reiterated.
“Real ones don’t,” I said. “Rusty’s, however, are fake. He paints them on.”
“That’s hard to believe, Julia. I could understand a man wearing fake whiskers if he’s unable to grow his own. But fake freckles? A freckled visage is hardly considered an attribute. In fact, I’ve treated young ladies who have near ruined their complexions by trying to bleach them away.”
“I agree that it makes no sense,” I said. “But I am pretty certain his freckles are fake.”
Shaking his head over the absurdity of such a notion, Adam turned back to the window. “I see Rusty heading for the Sun stable. To paint fake white patches on his piebald horse perhaps?”
I ignored that. “Didn’t Henry say he was going to bring Rusty back here to talk with us?”
“Henry must still be in the wagon. I didn’t see him come out.”
“I wonder if he let Rusty take his likeness. If so, I would very much like to see it.”
“I would very much like to see yours,” Adam said.
“It’s dreadful! I haven’t looked at it myself since I stuck it in my reticule.”
“Pray show it to me.”
“Oh, very well. But you’d better not laugh.” I went searching for my reticule, which as often as not I misplace, and found it under the drawing table. I withdrew from it the daguerreotype, and when I unfolded the gloves I had wrapped around it for protection, I saw green stains smeared on the white cotton and cried out.
“Come now, my love. If it’s an image of you, it cannot be that bad.”
“Look at my gloves, Adam.” I threw them on the drawing table. “They were spotless before I went inside Rusty’s wagon.”
“The stains on them are the same green color as the powder stain on the assassin’s letter,” Adam said.
“It’s henna powder,” I told him. “Made from the ground leaves of the henna plant and so fine it floats in the air and lands on everything. Mixed with lemon and oil it becomes a reddish brown paste. I knew an Indian artist in Paris who applied it as a temporary skin decoration. And I knew a woman who used henna paste to dye her hair red. Just as the imposter who calls himself Rusty does!”
“You believe Rusty is actually the assassin in disguise?” Adam’s voice was low and calm.
I, on the other hand, was near ready to start screeching like Roos the parrot. “Yes! What more proof do we need?”
“We need to get a sample of his handwriting to see if it matches the handwriting in the assassin’s letter.”
“We have one,” I said, turning over the daguerreotype. Written upon the pasteboard backing was Rusty’s initial and the date. “Look how the capital R matches the ones in the letter. And see how the word May is formed identically in both the letter and the date Rusty wrote on the board.”
“Yes, I do see,” Adam said and hurried to the window. “The daguerreotype wagon is gone, Julia!”
We rushed out the front door together and looked up and down the Green. There was no sign of Henry or the wagon. A group of boys were standing by the pump, and we asked them if they saw which direction the wagon went. They all pointed north up the post road.
ADAM
Thursday, May 25
I told Julia to go to my office to fetch my shotgun, and I ran to the barn to saddle my horse. I mounted Napoleon, and Julia handed me up the gun. Her eyes implored me to be careful, but she said not a word. She knew trying to stop me would be futile. If Henry had not yet been assassinated, it was up to me to save him from such a fate.
On the post road I discerned the deeper ruts of Rusty’s heavy wagon wheels amongst the confusion of other tracks. I followed them as they turned off the main road and onto Drover’s Lane. That Rusty had taken this secluded route did not bode well, and I rode down the rough and rooted lane with an anxious heart. Rounding the curve I saw Rusty’s red wagon sitting by the bog. There was no one on the driving seat, and the rear door was flung open. I dismounted, and, shotgun at the ready, I charged into the wagon. Rusty wasn’t there. Nor was Henry, but I recognized his sturdy boots on the floor. They were tied together with heavy rope. Puzzled, I stepped out of the wagon and heard shouting on the bog.
I could see no one from the road and ran out onto the sphagnum. My foot poked through the surface, and I pitched forward with such violence my gun flew from my grip and sank into the water. I did not waste time trying to retrieve it. A wet gun wouldn’t fire and was of no use to me. My only weapons now were my fists and my wits. I kept my body low as I scuttled through the undergrowth and over the moss and soon came on a desperate scene that brought my heart up into my throat.
Fifty yards ahead I saw Henry, a gag in his mouth and his hands bound behind his back, being pursued by Rusty, who was gripping a bowie knife. The long blade gleamed in the sun. Henry knew how to traverse the quaking sphagnum far better than Rusty, but he was greatly impaired without the use of his arms to give him balance. Rusty caught up with him and shoved him down off his feet. He leaned over Henry, knife raised, and I let out as great and terrifying a bellow as I could manage. Rusty looked my way to assess what sort of danger was approaching, and, seeing I had no weapon in hand, he turned back to Henry. Henry had taken advantage of the distraction to roll onto his back and as Rusty bent over him, knife poised to stab, Henry gave him a powerful kick in the face. Rusty reeled back. Henry jerked himself upright and took off.
I kept pushing across the bog as fast as I could. Although I was not eager to deal with a knife-wielding assassin whilst I myself was unarmed, I was determined to come to Henry’s aid. Searching desperately around me for some kind of weapon, I found a water-logged length of wood that felt solid enough to inflict harm. It also helped me better keep my balance as I lurched along.
Rusty recovered from the kick and started after his quarry again. Henry glanced backwards and stumbled, catching his foot on a root. He pitched forward and fell hard. He sat up immediately and tried to stand, but his bare foot was entangled in the tenacious roots. Rusty laughed when he saw Henry’s predicament. He was no more than five strides away from reaching his prey now and raised his knife for the kill. With his next step his right foot broke through the sphagnum. He swayed to keep his balance and took another step. His left leg plunged into the bog to his knee. As he tried yanking it free he sank waist deep into the mire.
“Let go!” he cried, stabbing down into the water with his knife. He started to scream. The scream became a gargle, and then his head went under.
Henry managed to pull free his foot, and he crawled to the edge of the sphagnum where Rusty had disappeared. When I reached him he was still gazing down into the water. I yanked off his gag.
“Any sign of Rusty?” I said.
“No,” Henry said. “He was pulled under the sphagnum.”
“Pulled by what?’
“The phantom,” Henry said. He has a wry sense of humor even during times of duress.
I untied his hands, and we each found a long branch to use as a search pole. We crouched down and probed through rents in the moss as far as we could reach. My branch hit against something solid, and I went
to a spot ten feet away and broke through the surface with my boot heel, widened the opening, and began to search down with my arm. My fingers passed through what felt like hair.
“Henry, I have him.”
I entwined my fingers in Rusty’s thick head of hair and slowly pulled his body to the surface. His face emerged. His features were contorted in a frozen expression of horror, eyes bulging out as wide as their sockets would allow. Henry helped me ease him up onto the sphagnum. I checked for any signs of life. There were none. We lay the body across a fallen tree trunk so it would not sink back into the bog.
“How did he manage to get the better of you, Henry?” I could not help but ask.
“He clubbed me from behind as soon as I entered the wagon. I came to with a gag in my mouth as he was tying me up. He took great pleasure telling me how he’d killed the real Rusty and had taken his place in order to infiltrate the Underground Railroad. He thought himself very clever.”
“What was he going to do with you?” I said.
“He took great delight in telling me that too,” Henry said. “He was going to behead me as he had Mr. Vogel. But he didn’t want my blood all over his wagon. He planned to execute me in the woods and send my head in a box to the Vigilant Committee. He said he intended to behead all his victims so there would be no doubt it was the work of the Hand of Justice, as he’d signed his warning letter.”
We reached the wagon and went inside. First thing Henry did was untie his boots and put them on. “Good thing I wasn’t wearing heavy stockings today or I would have never been able to slip out of these boots,” he said. “After I did, I kicked open the door and jumped out of the wagon. I saw I was by the bog and ran onto it. Rusty must have heard the commotion, for he stopped immediately and set off after me.”
We searched the wagon thoroughly. Amidst the clutter of developing chemicals we found a pot of green henna powder and a vial of chaulmoogra oil to mix with it. I told Henry how Julia had figured out Rusty was an imposter. We also found a box of stationery that matched that of the letter from the Hand of Justice.
“Now to find the murder weapon he used on Vogel,” I said.
“You don’t think it was the bowie knife he was going to use on me?” Henry said.
“Oh, I am sure he could have cut off your head with it,” I said. “But not so neatly as he sliced off poor Vogel’s head.”
Henry turned over a small table. On the underside of it, held there by small nails, was a spiral of wire with a wooden handle attached to each end. He detached and unwound it and, gripping the handles, held it taut. “The garrote used on Vogel,” he said.
I cast a glance around the wagon and saw the guitar in the corner. I picked it up. The string was still missing. Now I understood why.
“But where’s the rifle he used to shoot Tripp?” I said.
“I don’t think Rusty shot him,” Henry said. “When he was bragging to me about eliminating Conductors, he didn’t mention that he’d killed Tripp along with Vogel. And Tripp wasn’t beheaded.”
“Well, if the imposter Rusty didn’t kill Tripp, who did?”
“Whoever it was,” Henry said, “has had plenty of time to either hide his tracks or make tracks.”
When we left the wagon I put my hand on Henry’s shoulder and said, “Rusty drowned. I was riding past, heard him shout for help from the bog, arrived too late to save him, and pulled his body from the water. That is what I intend to report to Constable Beers and the Coroner’s Jury, for there is no need to bring you or the Underground Railroad into this.”
Henry nodded. “Thank you. The publicity would destroy our secret network completely.”
I rode off in one direction, and he walked off in the other.
JULIA
Friday, May 26
Late yesterday afternoon Adam and Henry took the cars to Boston to inform Mr. Coburn that the assassin who killed Mr. Vogel is dead. They also planned to meet with other members of the Vigilant Committee that evening and would spend the night in Boston, since there are no night trains back to Concord.
No doubt the facts of the case will never be made public because of the secret nature of the Underground Railroad. The Plumford Coroner’s Jury has declared the daguerreotypist’s death an accidental drowning, and there will be no further investigation into the matter. Rusty’s body will be buried in the new cemetery with a blank stone to mark it, for no one knows his true name, and his wagon, equipment, and horse will be sold to pay for the burial and his outstanding tab at the Sun Tavern. Any money left over will be donated to the township’s fund to help the needy.
“It’s enough to make you give up trust in humankind,” Tansy said after I told her that the man who had transported her from Boston to Plumford had been the Conductor assassin in disguise.
“The real Rusty was as noble a human being as God makes,” I reminded her.
Tansy smiled at me. “I’ve met more than a few such beings of late. And when I finally get to Canada I will treasure the memory of each and every one of you.”
She turned her eyes back to her sewing. She was making me a linen mantelet, and I was sketching her doing so as she sat cross-legged on my bed.
“The assassin admitted to Henry that he killed Mr. Vogel in Waltham,” I told her. “Yet he insisted that he did not kill Mr. Tripp.” I watched her closely for a reaction.
Tansy’s expression remained impassive. She is good at hiding her thoughts and feelings, as I suppose most people born into slavery are. “He could have been lying,” she said.
“He had no reason to lie.”
“Well, I guess it was somebody else then.” Tansy pulled her needle smoothly through the cloth. “Whoever it was, I never saw him.”
“Will you tell me again what happened? Try to imagine it from the beginning.”
Tansy sighed, put aside her work, and closed her eyes. “It was the middle of the night. Mr. Tripp hitched the horse to the wagon, and I came out of my hiding place in the barn to climb in back. Mr. Tripp got up on the seat and whistled for Ripper. The dog jumped up beside him, I pulled the blanket over me, and off we went.”
“You never mentioned before that the dog came along,” I said.
Tansy opened her eyes and squinted at me. “Does it matter? Ripper sure isn’t going to tell you anything about what happened.”
“Never mind. Pray continue.”
Tansy closed her eyes again. “So off we went, rolling along on a bumpy road for about ten minutes or so. Then Mr. Tripp stopped the wagon. I reckon the killer had stepped out on the road in front of the wagon. After just a second or two of silence, I heard a rifle go off and Tripp’s body thump to the ground. I leaped out of the wagon and started running. I did not look back!” Tansy’s eyes flew open, and she glared at me. “I have never been so affrighted in my life, and I wish you would stop making me recall it, Julia.”
She went back to her sewing, and I went back to my drawing, and later we both read aloud from Jane Eyre. No further mention of Tripp’s murder was made.
Upon awakening this morning, however, I went up to the attic to ask Tansy one more question. Her answer was no. I hurriedly dressed and awaited Adam’s return from Boston. But then I grew too impatient to wait a moment longer and left him a note. I have gone to see Mrs. Tripp. I know who killed her husband.
When I got to the Tripp house I found Ripper dozing in a patch of sunlight on the porch, but good old sentry that he is, he sleepily pushed himself up and began barking at me. I ignored him and knocked on the door. When Mrs. Tripp opened it she looked rather surprised to see me. But she did not look displeased. Since our first meeting ten days ago we had come to like each other. She invited me inside. Billy was in the kitchen packing a straw-filled crate with crockery.
“We’re goin’ back to Ohio!” he told me.
“I reckon you’ll be happy to see Jared again,” I said.
“It will be the happiest day of my life,” he replied earnestly.
“Mine too,” Mrs. Tripp said, wi
ping a tear from her eye.
“May we talk in private,” I whispered to her.
“Go out to the barn and start packing up the tools like a good boy,” she told Billy. When he left she asked me to sit down at the table. “I’d offer tea, but the china is all packed up.”
“No matter,” I said. “I am here to talk to you about Jared.”
Her face closed shut. “What about him?”
“He didn’t go off to Ohio weeks ago, did he? He left the day your husband was shot.”
“Who told you that?”
“It wasn’t Tansy. She has done as you asked her to and denies she ever met Jared. But he must have been at the farm the day Rusty delivered Tansy to you because his likeness was taken that day.”
“What likeness?”
I glanced around for the daguerreotype of Jared and Billy but did not see it displayed. It was either packed or destroyed. “I have good reason to believe it was Jared who shot your husband, Mrs. Tripp.”
She paled. “And what reason would that be?”
“The dog didn’t bark.”
“What?”
“Ripper always barks at strangers,” I said. “And according to Tansy, Mr. Tripp took Ripper along with him on the trip to Carlisle. But when I asked Tansy this morning if the dog barked when Mr. Tripp stopped the wagon, she said no. Therefore Ripper knew who was standing on the road pointing a gun. Not a stranger, but one of the family. It was Jared.”
For a moment Mrs. Tripp stared at me open-mouthed, and then she began to laugh hysterically. “The dog didn’t bark?” she gasped. “Is that all you have against Jared? The dog didn’t bark?” She began laughing again. Or sobbing.
She was right, of course. My evidence against her son amounted to little more than supposition. I saw no point in questioning her further, so when she ordered me out of her house I complied. As I was being escorted down the drive by Ripper, snapping at the hem of my frock, Adam arrived in his gig with Henry. He stopped beside me.