by Oak, B. B.
“We have not come to dispense pieces of paste board for Mrs. Trescot’s perusal,” Henry told the maid, “but to meet with the lady herself.”
“Madam is not receiving callers,” the maid said.
“What day is she At Home then?” I said.
“Madam has not been At Home for years.”
“Mrs. Trescot does not live here anymore?” Henry said.
“I think she means Mrs. Trescot has stopped entertaining guests,” I told him.
“We are not guests,” Henry told the maid. “We are messengers.”
“Do you have a message from Madam’s attorney?”
I was about to say yes, but before I could lie Henry said no. “Just tell Mrs. Trescot we bring her important tidings.”
“Tidings?” a gruff female voice called from above. An Amazon of a woman slowly descended the curving stairway, her felt slippers making not a sound upon the marble stairs. Over her simple gray gown she wore a crisp white apron, and her neat chignon was topped with a starched white cap. She approached us with a most severe scowl creasing her low forehead. “I trust you have nothing disturbing to impart to Mrs. Trescot. She is most unwell.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” I said. “Are you her nurse?”
“Yes, I am Miss Dibble. And who might you be?”
I introduced Henry and myself. “But Mrs. Trescot does not know us.”
“Then why have you come to bother her?” Miss Dibble said.
Her question was most impertinent, but I allowed that she had become protective toward her patient. “We will only impose ourselves upon her for a very short time,” I said.
“But that is just it. The poor lady has but a short time left on earth, and it would not do for her to fritter it on strangers. She is having a difficult day and should not be disturbed. But if you would care to leave your cards, I shall be sure to give them to her.”
“Better yet, I will leave her a note,” I said. Henry tore a leaf from the notebook he always carries and handed me a pencil. I wrote but one short sentence: Noah is in need of his mother. I added my name and address and folded the paper four times before handing it over to the nurse. “It is of a most private nature,” I told her.
She nodded, tucked the note in her apron, and slowly made her way back up the stairs from whence she’d come as the maid ushered us out the door. Despite the festive Yuletide spirit ringing through the streets, Henry and I had no desire to linger in the city and went directly to the station. The cars were crowded, but we managed to find two seats together, and as we rattled back to Concord, I could barely contain my joy that we had found Noah’s mother.
Henry cautioned me to keep my hopes for a happy outcome in check. “Mrs. Trescot did not want Noah a dozen years ago and might not want him now,” he said. “She may not even respond to your note.”
“Then I shall write her another and another, until she does respond. Or if I have to, I shall camp out on her doorstep.”
“And there you will be when they carry her out in a coffin,” Henry said.
“Well, aren’t you the cheery one.”
“I am merely pointing out that time is of the essence. Miss Dibble made it clear Mrs. Trescot is not expected to live much longer.”
“Noah’s mother will answer my note, Henry, and all will end well for the dear boy.”
Henry did not contradict me again. Indeed, he stopped talking altogether, and knowing how little he appreciates idle chit-chat, I did too. We each, in a most companionable way, ignored the other’s company to find entertainment in our own private thoughts. But as I reviewed our interview with Mrs. Perry, an image kept disturbing my mind until I could not help but disturb Henry with it, too.
“That key you showed Mrs. Perry,” I said to him. “Let me take a closer look at it, if you please. There is something about it that nags at my memory.”
“I surmise a female gave it to Bidwell because of the black silk cord attached to its base,” Henry said as he handed the key over to me.
“The cord is what caught my attention. I have recently observed the Phyfe sisters engage in such handiwork as this. Two favored bright colors, but one plaited black ribbons only.”
“Is it a common sort of feminine craft to practice?” Henry said.
“Not all that common, for it takes a great deal of practice and dexterity. These young ladies I speak of seemed quite proud of their skill. The eldest, Arabel, died of the Consumption only a few days ago. She was the one who favored black. Even before she was taken ill, she seemed most despondent, as if she had recently lost someone near and dear to her. Her sisters told me she fainted upon hearing of Bidwell’s murder.”
“She knew him?”
“She never professed to, but she could not bear to hear his name mentioned in her presence. And I have heard gossip that Bidwell had a lover in Plumford.”
“Where did you hear this?” Henry said.
“In the very house you presently reside at, Henry.”
He seemed to take offence. “Lidian Emerson does not gossip.”
“Indeed she does not. But her housekeeper, Lisette, does. She told me Bidwell was having his way with a girl from Plumford.”
“Did she name the girl?”
“No. Nor did she describe her. But I am sure she would be happy to supply you with more details if you asked her.”
“That I cannot do,” Henry said. “Lisette and her husband have gone back to Canada. Tell me more about this girl who braided black silk.”
“She was no more than eighteen and very pretty. But she is gone now and so is Bidwell, so what does it matter if she was his lover?”
“What matters,” Henry said, “is discovering who Bidwell’s murderer was.”
“Surely you do not think his Plumford paramour, whoever she might have been, killed him?”
“Anything is possible in this world,” Henry said, “although it does not seem probable that a young woman committed such a brutal murder as that, no matter how badly Bidwell used her.”
“He mistreated her?”
Henry nodded. “In every way a man can mistreat a naïve female.”
“And how do you know this?”
“There is gossip in the male sphere too, Julia. Of a coarse, crude kind that would shock you.”
Since my marriage to Jacques Pelletier, I doubt anything can shock me, but I did not press Henry to repeat what he had heard. I could tell he found the topic most distasteful.
“I would just as soon never learn who the poor girl I heard so maligned was,” Henry continued, “but I think she could be connected to Bidwell’s murderer. And I also think that key you are holding is to the door of the place where they held their trysts. Where else might he have been going to or coming from the night he was murdered?”
I fingered the black cord. “The Phyfe sisters once mentioned an empty cottage the family owned at the base of Wolf Hill, about half a mile from the path where Bidwell’s body was found. I am loath to show them or their father this key, though. They are in deep mourning for their sister, and implicating her in Bidwell’s murder would only distress them more.”
“Tell me more about the cottage then. Perhaps I can find it on my own,” Henry said.
“All I know is that a spinster named Augusta Phyfe resided in it until her death last year, and it is located by a spring-fed pond.”
“That is more than enough to go on,” Henry said. “There is no need to trouble the girl’s family, especially since there may be no connection between her and Bidwell. You may trust my discretion, Julia.”
“I always have,” I replied.
And that was how we left it.
When I returned home Mrs. Swann informed me that Noah was at Tuttle Farm, where Adam had taken him to spend the day with Granny. Mrs. Swann seemed most curious to know why I had gone to Boston. Tempted to tell her the great news that I had discovered Noah’s birth mother, I thought better of it. Henry had been right to caution me about being overly optimistic. Mrs. Trescot
did, after all, reject Noah once. But surely she will not do so again!
ADAM’S JOURNAL
Tuesday, December 21
Since becoming a doctor I have seen blood and gore aplenty, but never the horror of what I witnessed today. And all because I brought Henry to the pond where I used to capture frogs as a boy to hide in Julia’s pinafore pocket. Henry wanted to find the cottage wherein Spinster Phyfe once resided, which was easy enough to do, for I recalled that it sat not too far from water’s edge on the north bank of the pond.
Our mission was to see if the brass key we’d found on Bidwell’s body fit the lock on the door of this cottage, and so it did. But the lock itself was of little use for it had been pulled from its securing screws when the door had been kicked open. By a passing tramp? Or someone far more dangerous?
We entered cautiously. No signs of occupancy in the two empty front rooms, but in the kitchen wood and kindling sat in a ready pile by the fireplace, and blankets lay in a heap in front of the ash-filled hearth. The pale winter light streamed through a large bare window, and a faint but discernible scent of poppy smoke infused the atmosphere.
Henry noticed that one of the kitchen floor boards had no nails securing it. He pried it open with his pocketknife and found, nestled between two joists, a canvas bag that contained a yard-long pipe and other opium paraphernalia—a small brazier, a few metal and clay pots, and several pans and brass needles.
“So this must be the love nest Orton so crassly made mention of at Chandoo Gate,” I said. As I glanced down at the rumpled blankets, I could not help but recall his very words: Just poppy smoking and rutting. “It is hard for me to credit that the young lady I treated for Consumption was the same one described so scornfully by Orton. What is the truth of it? Is it not possible that Arabel was quite in love and here passed blissful hours with a man she adored? Why damn her actions as abhorrent degeneracy?”
“Those who cannot love are often the most scornful of it,” Henry said. He picked up the blankets and subjected them to a vigorous shaking. Out floated a woman’s lone pink silk stocking. “Where’s its mate?” he said.
“I believe Hyram Jackson has it tucked in his pillowcase,” I said and explained to Henry the circumstances that had led me to see the stocking there.
“That Hyram attempted to take his own life on the very day Arabel Phyfe was buried,” Henry said, “makes me wonder if he too had been her lover.”
“It does not seem likely that Arabel would find such a callow, awkward fellow a suitable swain,” I said. “Hyram’s father told me Hyram had no sweetheart and had been behaving strangely for weeks.”
“He certainly behaved so over Bidwell’s body,” Henry said. “He claimed the dead man looked up and spoke to him. Was that a delusion of a guilt-ridden mind?”
“Are you suggesting that Hyram killed Bidwell?” I said.
“Yes, but admittedly on evidence so thin it is near transparent,” Henry said, plucking up the silk stocking and tucking it into his pocket.
We found nothing more of note inside, but before we departed Henry insisted on carefully examining the grounds surrounding the cabin. He paused at a sycamore tree standing not twenty feet from the kitchen window. Long gouges sliced through the bark and deeply into the wood. I ran my hand along them.
“There was scoring similar to this on the tree near Bidwell’s body,” I said.
“I believe the same weapon was used to slash both trees,” Henry said.
“And Bidwell’s neck as well?”
Henry nodded. “His killer lurked in this very spot.”
Looking through the window from the outside, I could clearly see the blankets on the kitchen floor. “He must have stood here to watch the lovers!”
“Let us go talk to Hyram,” Henry said.
We proceeded to the mill. Have always found it a pleasant place, filled with the fresh smell of sawn timber and the sound of water rushing through the flume to drive the mill-wheel. The walls and floor vibrated as the ponderous gears of the wheel powered the heavy blade of the saw. A half-dozen burly workers went about the arduous business of heaving and jostling heavy wet logs up off the ramp from the mill pond and onto the saw-carriage, then moving them along to the saw. The teeth of the saw blade sliced through those massive logs as easily as Gran slices a knife through a pumpkin pie, and a few of the workers, like their boss, Mr. Jackson, had fingers missing, the penalty paid for a moment’s careless lack of attention in such close vicinity to the sharp, spinning blade.
Mr. Jackson was nowhere to be seen at the moment, but Hyram was working alongside the other men at the saw-carriage. He swung a hand tool with a long hook and a sharp point with practiced ease, embedding it into the end of a log to lift it into position in front of the saw. His hair, eyebrows, and shoulders were coated with a thin layer of sawdust thrown up by the blade as it screamed through the wood. He never looked up from his concentrated labor.
And Henry never looked away from him. “See how Hyram’s hook gouges the log as he positions it,” he said to me. “Have we not seen such gashes in wood before?”
I nodded, for of course we had—on the trunk of the tree near Bidwell’s body and on the tree behind the cottage.
“And could not the laceration in Bidwell’s neck have been made by the same tool?” Henry said.
I nodded again. “We might well be looking at both the murderer and his weapon.”
“Easier said than proven, however. You know Hyram better than I do, Adam. Best that you be the one to ask him if he will meet with us.”
Went up to the saw-carriage and gently laid my hand upon Hyram’s shoulder to get his attention. He turned and did not look surprised to see me. When I asked if he could spare a few minutes to talk to Henry and me, he shouted to one of the men to take his place and led us to his father’s office at the far end of the mill. As we followed I noticed that he still kept hold of his lift hook. It dangled from his hand like a curving claw. We stepped inside the office, and Hyram shut the door to the noise, then just stood there and looked at us with a blank expression until Henry brought forth the silk stocking. Then Hyram’s eyes blazed with anger. “You stole that from my bedchamber!”
“No, we found it at the cottage,” Henry said. “Where did you find the stocking you have?”
Hyram shrugged. “Same place, I guess.”
“Do you know who it belonged to?” Henry asked.
“No.”
“Did it not belong to Arabel Phyfe?” Henry said.
Hyram turned livid. “Why think you it was hers?”
“She had trysts with Chauncey Bidwell at that cottage, did she not?”
“Lie! Lie! Lie! Arabel was an angel. No man was good enough to touch her.”
“Even so, Bidwell did. You watched him do so through the window,” Henry quietly said.
Hyram’s rage dissipated, and he lowered his head. “Yes, I watched. I could not help myself. The first time I saw them was by accident one summer eve. I was just passing by the cottage on my way to the pond for a swim. After that I would go there every evening and wait for them. Sometimes they would come and sometimes they would not, but I was always there waiting.” He began to sob. Tears spattered on his dusty boots like raindrops. “I watched that devil treat my angel like a whore. Even so, I still loved her. She never so much as looked my way, but I knew one day she would. But first I would have to free her from Bidwell’s evil spell.”
“By killing him,” Henry said.
He stopped sobbing and looked at us. “No! I only meant to scare him away from her. That’s why I brought this along.” He raised the hook clutched in his hand. His eyes, still damp with tears, turned hard. “I waited for him a good ways up the path from where he and Arabel always parted, and in the stillness I could hear a wolf howling on the hilltop. I suppose it was just the wind. When Bidwell finally came along I stepped out of the shadows to halt him. He tried to get past me, but I grabbed his shoulder and twisted him around to face me like a man. And then, loo
king at that goddam handsome face of his, I could not help myself. I raised my other hand, the one that held this hook, and took a swipe at him. The tip went into his neck, and when I yanked it free blood shot out of the wound like a geyser. He fell down and started crawling away from me, and then he stopped moving. It began to rain, and I remember hoping Arabel had gotten home safe and dry before the downpour. I left him lying there facedown in the dirt and went home, too. The next morning I thought maybe I had dreamed the whole thing, as I had dreamed of killing him before. But then I had to go with Pa to pick up his body. It was then I knew for sure he was a devil, for dead though he was, he spoke to me. ‘See you in hell,’ he said.” The sobbing resumed. “Yes, I am doomed for hell. And I shall never see my angel, who is surely in heaven, again.”
“You will have to pay for Bidwell’s murder, Hyram,” Henry said. “But a good lawyer might save you from hanging.”
“Oh, I would not mind hanging for it,” Hyram said wearily. “I would go straight to the gallows right now if I could. But I will not go to trial and hear Arabel’s name dragged through the mud. I could not tolerate that.”
“Come,” I said. “We will go to the constable.”
“No! If you had been merciful, doctor, you would have let the poison kill me.” He swung the hook at us in a slow arc. We both ducked. And he used that second to bolt out the door.
He did not run out of the mill, however. Instead he raced toward the whirring saw, shoved his neck against it, and suddenly the air was filled with blood instead of sawdust. In the next instant his severed head fell to one side of the saw-carriage, and his torso to the other, gouts of blood erupting from all the severed veins and arteries.
All of us stood dumbfounded. One of the workers pulled back the handle of the saw to disengage it, but the free-spinning blade continued to whirl round and round for some seconds. It sprayed out a mist of blood and bits of skin and bone from its flesh-clogged teeth until it slowed to a stop.