The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  His reverie was interrupted by a brusque, “What do you want?”

  The slave flung the picket gate open as if to bat Joseph away. Her dark eyes ranged over his shabby clothes and shoes, marked him for a mechanic or beggar, and a diseased one at that.

  But Joseph introduced himself as a divinity student to see the parson. “Please. Maroca thought I should pay him a visit.”

  “You know Maroca?” No trace of African or Caribbean accent here: a blind man would think her an English housewife born in Sussex.

  “Yes. I’m a guest in her house.”

  That raised an eyebrow. “How’s her son faring?”

  “You mean Zingo, with the cast in one eye? He’s been croupey all week, but dosings of sweet-fern tea have tamed it.”

  “That’s good.” Warming, the woman started over. “Reverend and Mistress Treat attend a gentleman who only takes callers in the morning.” From four to eight. “They’ll return soon. You’re welcome to await them. I can feed you.”

  “That’s most gracious of you.” Ten minutes later Joseph was seated at the kitchen table, and heaped before him was ham, hasty pudding with maple syrup, pickled cabbage, baked beans, cranberry tarts. Identified as an upright member of the lowest class, the slave gossiped as if they were old friends. Her name was Jin, “like an old she-mule”. Inevitably she came to the morbid death of Master Francis Pearson from swallowing a snake. Although her talk circled around blame, Joseph understood Master Pearson had been a cruel and callous man, and it was high time someone murdered him. But to see poor Cuffy, the kindest coloured man in Newport, hanging as crowbait, and to think of “poor suffering Hazel” going into flames at midday was a shame. Even as she talked, the woman packed a basket: a picnic for a burning.

  Time slipping away made Joseph fidgety. He interjected, “I’ve heard it said time and again that poor Hazel was misused, but –”

  A voice carolled from the front of the house. Wiping his mouth, Jin hustled Joseph through a closed door into a house smelling of book leather and ink. It gave him a flutter of nostalgia, and a wish to be somewhere else, if only he knew where.

  The parson was a dark-browed, thick-haired man not much older than Joseph, his wife a plain thing in a gown and bodice of burgundy and a sunbonnet with a matching ribbon: clothes considered scandalous in Boston were demure in free-and-easy Newport. Both frowned at the shabby guest.

  “A divinity student, eh? Belike.” The young parson still aped the pedantic speech of his teachers. In Latin he quoted, “ ‘Of making many books there is no end: much study is a weariness of the flesh.’ ”

  Joseph completed the passage in the same language. “ ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.’ ”

  The young man’s face lit up, banishing his feigned dotage as if throwing off a heavy cloak. Plunking his fellow scholar in his study, Reverend Treat called for wine and water. As Jin delivered and left, the reverend said, “I don’t hold with slavery, myself, but, uh, Jin came with the house.” Out in the hall, the slave woman snorted.

  The reverend poured Joseph madeira, red wine from Portugal, then offered well water after local custom. Joseph took more water than wine: he needed a clear head. Coming out of the heat and a dusty road, the minister gulped his portion and poured more. “So, Joseph, what brings you to ‘Rogue’s Island’? Have you lost your faith? Reverend Doctor Mather tells us, ‘If a man were to lose his religion, he’d be sure to find it in Newport.’ ” He chuckled.

  Joseph did not. Time flew. “Reverend, I’ve come about this burning.”

  The man’s enthusiasm slipped. “Ah, yes, a dolorous business. I’m opposed to burning, myself. An invention of Catholics and Episcopalians. Hanging is quicker and less messy. But the gentry are set on a gruesome punishment to deter other slaves from considering assassination. There’s no way I can intervene. It wouldn’t be, uh, prudent.” Not for an upstart paid by the congregation.

  “But suppose she’s innocent, and Cuffy were too? You could intercede then, surely.”

  “Well, uh, surely there’s no way to prove her innocence. Cuffy was found, uh, administering a snake to the, uh, deceased.”

  To the reverend’s amazement, Joseph pulled a headless snake from his pocket. “I found this. A garter snake, entirely harmless. They don’t even have teeth, but crunch crickets and spiders. Cuffy was half-Indian, I’ve learned. Half Wampanoag. He spoke the words of Passaconaway, an Indian powahee, a prophet of the last century, who made snow burn and trees dance. Passaconaway said that a snake can read your heart, and see the future, and know if an enemy conspires to kill you.”

  “God cursed the snake,” interrupted the parson. “Genesis 3:14.”

  “Nonetheless, Indians revere snakes. Mohawks consider At-o-sis the mother of their race. Snake blood is a nostrum for women in childbirth: even a spoonful will deliver a healthy baby in a trice. Cuffy learned the cure from his mother, and tried to administer the potion to Master Pearson. He’d tried to cure himself of a stomach ailment just the week before. But the woman of the house saw the snake and concluded Pearson died of snake poisoning, or ingesting a snake even.”

  “He died in agony, screaming. The venom –”

  Joseph shook his head, made his brown hair ripple. “Only pit vipers have venom, only timber rattlers around here. Garter snakes have none.”

  “Then what killed him?”

  “Some other poison, I suspect. I don’t know which. There are so many.”

  “An Indian root? One Cuffy might know?”

  Joseph shrugged like a Frenchmen. “There are roots will sicken a man, but few that kill. Snakeroot from the Carolinas is so potent that should a cow even eat it, children can die drinking her milk. But Master Pearson might have had a crab in his stomach, too. Whatever the cause, a physician should have found it. And given that Cuffy tried to cure his master, we must err with mercy.”

  “Negroes are notorious poisoners,” Treat insisted. “Everyone here in Newport is careful. They make the slaves eat from the pot first. Masters hold the cellar keys and open their own bottles.”

  For answer, Joseph held up his goblet. Treat reached to pour more wine, then got the message. “Oh. Yes, I see . . . But Jin has served this parsonage since she was a girl, and . . .” He set down his goblet carefully. “I suppose we better talk to the sheriff. He oversees the execution, but the Pearsons pay the piper, so they call the tune. Yes, I suppose we best see the Pearsons.” He sighed at the prospect of disrupting his parishioners – and employers.

  The Pearson family, friends, and parlour were draped in black for mourning. Joseph thought they looked more like Quakers than the normally-gay citizens of sinful Newport, yet an incongruous festive air permeated the crowd, for outside Negroes waited with carriages to ferry them to the field where Hazel would be burned.

  Reverend Treat was welcomed quietly, shaking hands all around. People peered at moth-eaten Joseph, “a travelling divinity student”. The white Indian glimpsed a black face at the kitchen door: Prosper, wide-eyed and appalled that someone who associated with servants should be received cordially in the parlour.

  Joseph accepted more madeira with water while the Pearsons took theirs straight from deep goblets. Mistress Pearson – so far not “Widow” – bore finery and a plumpness that bespoke a rich merchant’s wife. Pearson brothers George and Chad matched a black-draped portrait of the late Francis: a curly head, lips like a mink trap. John Williams was Pearson’s business partner. Despite open windows and high ceilings, the room was roasting.

  The Reverend Treat, having again donned his elderly persona, made consoling noises. “Gone to God . . . In the bosom of the Lord . . .” Joseph fidgeted. In an hour Hazel would be tied to a stake and committed to flames while all of Newport bore witness. The student had come to beg a stay of execution, but was unsure how to begin – especially since he’d need to accuse someone else of murder.

  Wine-sodden talk buzzed angrily
. All present were slave owners. “Burning’s the best thing we can do! Put the fear of God into ’em!” “We’ve been too sparin’ of the whip hand and now Francis’s paid for it!” “Too familiar, that’s what they’re getting!”

  “But what if Hazel’s not guilty?”

  Joseph’s mild outburst stunned the room. Wine sloshed in goblets as all eyes turned. Reverend Treat sidled away as if from contagion.

  “Why,” blistered Mistress Pearson, “would you think her innocent? She’s a slut! A filthy lying trollop who deserves to die!”

  “You must be mad to come here and insult us so!” chorused a brother. “Treat, who is this dimwit?”

  “Negroes are notorious poisoners!” added another brother. “There’s none we trust with our lives!”

  “Even if she were innocent, it’s time we burned a nigger to teach the others a lesson!”

  Amidst a hail of angry remarks, a heavy hand clamped around Joseph’s elbow. The sheriff hoicked the student from the room as if gigging a frog, towed him across the kitchen, and pitched him down the back stairs. Joseph clambered up, shedding dirt and clam shell crumbs, only to receive a jab in the belly from an iron-shod baton that doubled him over, set him coughing.

  “I’m warning you out, rascal! Hie back to Massachusetts and your tight-arse Puritans! Now get!” A rap on Joseph’s elbow sent electric pain rippling up and down his arm. Joseph was dragged to the street, obviously to be frogmarched clear to the town limits and flung over the line.

  Yet rounding the corner, they almost collided with Reverend Treat, who stumbled down the front steps, apologies spilling from his lips. Prosper slammed the front doors. The stunned Treat whirled as Joseph gasped, “I’m a guest – of the reverend.”

  The sheriff halted at Joseph’s rapid rise in status. “Is ’at true, sir?”

  “No!” snapped Treat. “Oh, dash it all, yes. I brought him. I’ll be responsible.” The sheriff reluctantly ceded control of the miscreant, but added his orders still applied.

  Joseph stumbled after Treat, who flipped his hand as if to banish the Devil. “Why, why, why did you say that? Why intimate that Cuffy and Hazel don’t deserve to die? You can’t imagine the ruckus you’ve stirred up! You dandisprat! You hog-rubber! Those people trusted me, and there you jabber like a Barbary ape! How dare you –”

  “I dare,” Joseph rubbed his stomach, “because Cuffy was innocent of any crime and Hazel is still! Yet these mugwumps will see her burned to death, shrieking to Almighty God, because it’s convenient to punish her! ‘The judge is condemned when the criminal is absolved!’ ” The last in Latin.

  “There’s your downfall!” retorted the reverend. “Steeping your mind in classics, clouding your judgment with pagan passions when you should study Holy Writ instead!”

  “ ‘Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee’ then!’ ‘They sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes!’ ‘The faces of all of them gather blackness!’ ‘Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men!’ ” He had to stop, out of breath.

  “ ‘Judge not according to appearance!’ ” Then a sneer. “ ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’ ”

  “ ‘For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings!’ ”

  Treat merely stamped harder down the dusty road. Joseph stumped alongside, alternately rubbing his stomach and elbow. After they’d gone a hundred yards, the student asked quietly, “ ‘Can two walk together, except they are agreed?’ ”

  “I don’t know what you expect of me!” rapped the preacher. “Or God either! You should be gone hence! You’re not wanted!”

  “I’ll go an hour after midday. I’ll go then as did Lot. Nor shall I look back.”

  Treat stopped dead in the middle of the road and glared at Joseph. But the student’s pale, hollow-eyed stare was like something dead, and the parson looked away. In the silence came a foot-slapping, a man half-trotting to catch up. Chad Pearson, the dead man’s brother. “Hold up! Reverend, you!”

  The two clergymen waited in the hot dusty street while Chad Pearson clopped to a stop. Yet having caught up, the man only hemmed and loosened his stock. “I, uh, wanted to say. This, uh, whole affair. It’s deuced bad.”

  Joseph waited, staring, as did Treat.

  Reddening, and not from heat, Pearson went on. “Um, I’m sorry you were ejected that way. We don’t, uh, usually have the sheriff in –”

  “Why does Mistress Pearson hate Hazel so?” shot Joseph.

  “Oh, uh. You can’t believe everything she says. You know how women are . . .”

  “Why?”

  Treat cleared his throat. “There’s no need to be rude.”

  Chad Pearson looked up and down the street. “It’s damned difficult to explain. It’s easier if you’re drunk. It’s just that, well, Sister didn’t like having Hazel around – Hey!”

  Joseph grabbed the man by the lapels, and only Treat’s imploring hands kept Chad Pearson from being rattled like a dice cup. The student rapped, “Tell me and be quick!”

  “All right!” Chad backstepped, smoothed his coat. “Francis would – we’d be drinking and he’d – spice up the betting. George and I don’t have any nigger women, you see. No good-looking ones, anyway. So he’d, uh, bet her –”

  Joseph chopped off his maundering. “You’d hand her around the table. Whoever trumped slept with her.”

  Chad turned redder. Joseph whirled to Reverend Treat. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “I didn’t know! That’s not the sort of thing they’d tell a minister! Sometimes I don’t know anything my parishioners are doing!”

  “ ‘Haste thee, escape thither,’ ” quoted Joseph. “Sodom and Gomorrah are rebuilt in the new Israel, and not even Lot’s family shall escape this time . . . This news wounds our cause. What could Cuffy think seeing his wife steered to bed at the behest of his master? It’s enough to kill for. How know his child is even of his blood?”

  “He couldn’t complain much,” insisted Chad Pearson. “Francis gave Hazel to him for a wife, bought her special. Cuffy should have been grateful . . .” His voice trailed off at Joseph’s black look.

  Growling, the student went on. “Worse yet. Hazel herself might have poisoned her master. But so could any of you Pearsons be guilty.”

  “What?”

  “All of you stand to inherit, and anyone could have poisoned his food or spirits! And his partner too! Wait. You import slaves from the Sugar Islands, yes? And own ships, and warehouses? Ships in tropical waters suffer from toredo worms, do they not? The warehouse, have you the keys? Good!”

  Bedazzled by this babble, Pearson and Treat were taken in tow as Joseph plowed like a frigate under full sail for the docks.

  Chad Pearson fumbled to unlock the side door of the warehouse. Seagulls banked and keened, hungry for scraps, but the wharfs were oddly deserted, for most everyone had trekked to the burning field. As Joseph waited, he noticed tucked behind a narrow two-storey building of stone with iron-barred windows: the slave hut into which “black gold” was herded by midnight moons. He shook his head, tried to ignore the sun striking his shoulders, the ache in his skull.

  It was no relief to step into the stifling warehouse. Among crates and bolts of cloth stood pyramids of small casks, called butts, branded in Portugese. The hot air reeked of wine and spices and tar and cedar and turpentine.

  Joseph stopped short. “Wine. The best way to introduce the stuff. Yes . . . We know the wine was adulterated because Cuffy fell victim also.”

  “We do?” asked Pearson and Treat. “He did?”

  “Yes. A week before Francis Pearson died, Cuffy suffered a stomach ailment that he tried to treat with his own snake potion, then Maroca’s potions. Nothing worked – a potion can’t undo poison – but he recovered. From this we infer that one of those times when Master Pearson had been dosed, Cuffy, in clearing the table, drained Pearson’s glass: all servants will when they can.
He got the poison intended for Pearson: the stuff is heavy and it sinks.”

  “But Francis didn’t drink that much madeira because of his gout,” insisted Chad. “He took it with water always.”

  “Wait. What stuff?” asked Reverend Treat.

  “I’ll show you. Where is your paint locker?”

  The paint locker jutted under the eaves of an addition, with a boarded wall and door that could shut and lock, though no lock was in sight. Joseph stepped into the sharp stink of turpentine. By the light of a tiny window he hunted, under a table found a small cask with a wooden cover. Lifting the cover showed a grey-white powder and a wooden scoop.

  “This stuff. Arsenic.” Joseph took down a dry paint pot and scooped. “It’s used to kill pigs and rats, but is also mixed into red-lead bottom paint to kill toredo worms that riddle hulls so fiercely in the Caribbean, even white oak. There’s enough arsenic here to kill half of Newport.”

  “What?” Brushed by death, Chad Pearson touched his breast.

  Treat shook his dark head. “It makes no sense. Only Master Pearson was poisoned, but everyone drank madeira and other wines. You haven’t been troubled by stomach cramps, have you, Chad?”

  “What? No, never!” The man felt his throat now.

  “Perhaps it was meant the whole family to succumb, and something went wrong. Perhaps everyone else was immune.” Joseph mused, not believing it himself.

  Abruptly he turned to a pyramid of casks, grabbed up a cracked one that had leaked its contents. Joseph rapped a knuckle on the oak bung, peered inside at the wider end. “These bungs are hammered from the inside, then the casks are filled and sealed in the Canary Islands. When broached, the bung falls inside the cask. I see no way a man could remove a bung, poison the wine, then replace it. It would be impossible to tamper with these casks and not have someone notice.”