Maplecroft

by Cherie Priest

  She put her arm around me and gave me a long squeeze. “Nothing’s in the cellar, darling. Nothing but cans, preserves, and a few jars. No true laboratory of any sort, regardless of what I might have blurted while drunk. There’s some wine, obviously, but most of it’s not any good, not anymore. It’s all gone to vinegar by now.” She emptied the kettle and refilled it from the pump at the sink. “I’ll just throw a new batch of water on the stove, and we can settle in with sandwiches. Would you like some? I can make some . . .”

  I knew what she was doing. She was babbling, distracting me, even as she moved with great deliberation—like the deception was something that forced her to concentrate, and to perform. I still felt off my balance, like the room might have tilted while I wasn’t looking, and I hadn’t felt the shift.

  “Sandwiches would be nice,” I told her. For all I knew, it was only hunger that made me so scattered. “But I still want you to show me the cellar.”

  “Not now, Nance.” She said it firmly, but she didn’t turn around so she could lie to my face, when she added, “Later, maybe.” From the box on the counter, she withdrew some bread—and in the drawer beside her hip, she found a knife.

  “Maybe tonight?”

  “Oh, not tonight. It’ll be cold down there, and damp. But if it’s dry and warm, we could do it tomorrow.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  She shrugged. “Then some other time. The day after next, or after that. Or your next visit. You’ll come again one day, won’t you?” She faced me then, quickly—and with worry all over her lovely face.

  I forced myself to smile. “Always. Whenever.”

  “That’s a relief,” she replied. “I should hope that something as small as a tour of the cellar wouldn’t be enough to chase you off.”

  “Oh, it’s not,” I promised. “You’ll never get rid of me that way.”

  • • •

  After tea I took the tray downstairs so that Lizbeth could spend a few minutes getting Emma ready for work time at her desk. This is quite an undertaking, wherein Lizbeth moves books, journals, a week’s worth of mail, and her sister into an office at the end of the hall. Why Emma won’t just write in bed, I don’t know. If I were feeling ungenerous, I’d suggest that she does it on purpose, to interrupt my visit in as many small ways as she can possibly contrive.

  I’m rather frequently ungenerous, these days.

  But this particular interruption gave me another opportunity to spend time alone in the kitchen, where the cellar door was still calling me. Did it call? Or did it only sing such a siren song because Lizbeth wanted me to stay away from it?

  No, I think I said it right the first time. It was calling me.

  I’m forced to assume she keeps something dangerous or embarrassing down there, but how dangerous could it be? How embarrassing? She’s renowned throughout the world as a murderess who escaped justice, and she’s taken up with a flamboyant young actress in a more or less public, and suspiciously romantic fashion; you’d think she’d be well past embarrassment by now.

  Regardless, she doesn’t need to protect me—from herself, or anyone else. So I approached the door once again, though this time I didn’t hear the ocean-swell sound rising and falling behind it. I pressed the side of my face against it, and I closed my eyes, and I listened for all I was worth.

  I heard nothing at all.

  CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW

  Owen Seabury, M.D.

  APRIL 18, 1894

  Shepherd Duffy rapped on my door before the sun came up—a hard, insistent knock of the kind I know all too well. Someone was in labor; someone was injured. Some surprise catastrophe had befallen somebody, someplace. I knew it as I gathered my wits and stumbled down the stairs; and I knew it was likely worse than I’d thought when I saw Shepherd’s hat through the glass pane in the door. He was dressed smartly, as always: in a crisp brown suit that identified him on sight more quickly than the badge upon his chest. Only a slight rumpling of his collar betrayed that he too had been roused from bed and thrust into action at such an inconvenient hour.

  I opened the door and adjusted my spectacles.

  Without preamble, and before I could ask how I could be of service, he said, “You’d better come down to the courthouse. Ebenezer Hamilton is asking for you.”

  “I’ll get my bag.”

  “You won’t need it. He isn’t hurt.”

  “Oh dear . . .” Then the matter was grave indeed. “Has something happened to Matthew?”

  “Yes, but it’s nothing you can fix. Please, come along. I have a cart waiting, if you would be so kind.”

  “Give me one moment to grab my coat, and I’ll be right there.”

  I didn’t mean to close him out of the house, but he was already on his way back to the cart anyway, and I needed another moment or two to collect myself. I was dressed decently, if not well—having pulled a pair of pants over my sleep shirt before I’d come downstairs; but the clock against the wall informed me that it was just before four in the morning. The world could forgive me a lack of presentability.

  I more thoroughly tucked in my sleep shirt, tied my shoes, and threw on an overcoat. The spring evening (or morning, depending) was chilly enough that I could see my breath when I stepped onto the porch, though it’d likely be warm enough come midday that I’d regret the coat. But for that moment, that long, stiff-legged walk to the sheriff’s apparently borrowed transportation, I was glad for it. I was shivering, and it wasn’t entirely the weather.

  I climbed up onto the seat beside Duffy, who apologized again, this time for the accommodations. “I would’ve ridden over in the official carriage, but it’s in use just now. This was all I could muster on short notice.” He snapped the reins and the big brown horse pulled us forward.

  “Not to worry. This is better than walking, by far. I used to keep a horse for such occasions, but in my old age I find that riding disagrees with my bones.” He didn’t reply, and I felt a peculiar urgency about the silence, so I prattled on. “Besides, it won’t be long before we’re all rolling around in electrical carriages, if the periodicals can be believed. But won’t you tell me what this is about? Without my bag, I’m at a loss. Am I being called as some kind of witness? What’s become of Matthew?”

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “He’s been shot dead.”

  “By Ebenezer?” I guessed.

  “He’s confessed to it, yes. Says it was a matter of self-defense.”

  “And what of Felicity?” I asked after Mrs. Hamilton. “Is she all right?”

  “No. Matthew has . . . done something to her,” he said vaguely. “Ebenezer tried to stop him, tried to . . . I’m sorry, it’s all a bit unclear right now. We’re still sorting out the facts. Ebenezer swears he’ll talk to you, and no one else . . . but I’m not so sure. The man’s so shaken he can scarcely breathe, much less explain himself, to you or anybody.”

  “But Felicity . . . is she dead?”

  “Very, yes.”

  It was a strange answer, and I didn’t like it. I felt like it implied something more awful than it stated outright, and I was on the verge of demanding answers when we drew up to the courthouse. The sheriff told me he’d tend to the horse and cart, and meet me inside.

  “Go to the consultation room on the first floor. They’re waiting for you there.”

  The night was still and very, very dark—despite the gas lamps that burned softly on the town’s square. They cast shadows too sharp to be pretty, and if the moon was out, I couldn’t see it. The air was thick with frost and something else: a peculiar odor. I caught the barest whiff of something rotting. Something that came from the sea, and ought to have stayed there.

  I stamped my feet and went up the steps, letting myself inside.

  Inside the courthouse was warmer and brighter, but it bustled with young men in hastily donned uniforms, and a pair of narrow old men in cadaverous black suits. I recognized them as the brothers who own the funeral parlor—last name of Wann
, which is so appropriate as to be almost inappropriate, or so I’ve always thought. They nodded at me, with their usual grim expressions of sorrow and fortitude. They are good men, and good professionals, but they always remind me of crows on a laundry line. Vultures atop a gate. It’s the job, and what their presence implies, that’s all. It can’t be helped, and my morbid fancies should not reflect upon them.

  I nodded back at them, and carried onward to the consultation room at the end of the hall. A heavyset woman with a large bag begged my pardon, and turned sideways to pass me; I leaned against the wall to let her proceed, wondering at all this commotion, and what it meant. Knowing that it could not be good.

  Matthew was dead, and Felicity was “very” dead. That was all I knew, and it wasn’t enough to explain the nervousness that permeated the building. The hall was clogged with it, the unhappy vibrations of fear, confusion, and doubt.

  The consultation room was on my left. Inside it, I found Ebenezer Hamilton seated between two sturdy men who were either guarding him or comforting him, or performing a bit of both as necessary. Ebenezer was covered in gore, his hands quivering, his eyes red. He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve—which belonged to a thick-knit sweater like the old mariners often wore. In this little gesture, he managed to smear blood across his face. More of it, I should say.

  He looked up when I entered.

  “Doctor Seabury,” he said, his voice choked with tears and phlegm. “I thank you for coming, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry about . . . about . . . the hour . . .”

  “Never mind the clock, Mr. Hamilton. I’m happy to help. But please, wouldn’t you . . . or wouldn’t someone tell me what’s happened?”

  He released a wretched, racked sob and once more wiped at his nose. “I don’t know how to tell it,” he said, looking down, then up at me with a pleading, pitiful gaze. It was an entreaty, I knew—a silent petition that I should please, for the love of God, believe whatever he said next.

  Gently, I told him, “You must try. And I will listen, and you can tell me the story however you think is best.”

  He nodded wildly, and it didn’t mean “yes.” It only meant that he was glad for permission to sound entirely outrageous, if the circumstances called for it. “Doctor, I asked for you to come on out, because you’d seen Matty a time or two. And . . . and you knew, better than anyone but us, how strange the whole thing’d got.”

  “I only wish I’d been able to help.”

  “No one could’ve helped, no one but the Lord above. No one.” He repeated himself, alternating now between nodding his head and shaking it. “You couldn’t have known. Nobody could. Nobody could explain it, neither. Nobody. I can’t. I don’t. I just . . .”

  Again, very gently—as if I were speaking to a child distracted by a broken arm, I tried to direct his focus. “No one is asking you to explain the matter. The world is full of nonsensical events and bizarre occurrences, understood only to God Himself. But you must tell us simply what happened. Start only at the beginning, and share only what you can. Begin with Matthew,” I prompted. “Last I saw him, he was desperately unwell, if you’ll recall.”

  I made a point of meeting his eyes.

  He and I were now the only two men living who knew exactly how bad Matthew’s condition had become. They’d been right to hide him away. At the time, I’d had doubts . . . but those doubts were withering, the longer I sat in that small, damp, cold room. I wish they’d done more than hide him; I wish they’d sent him away, somewhere far from the ocean—far from Fall River . . . for all the good that wishing did me.

  “The poor lad was confined to his bedroom,” he said cautiously. He did not mention that they’d bound him to the bed, or say that they’d covered all the windows with black cloth because of the way he used to scream when the sunlight touched him, as I’d learned in one of my subsequent visits. “And he was in there still, this evening. Late this evening, a bit after midnight, I’d say.”

  He stalled. I prodded him further. “Very good. You and your wife were home, alive and well, and Matthew was in his bedroom, having taken to his bed. Then something changed. What was it?”

  He swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

  “We . . . we heard something, in his room.”

  “He cried out?”

  “No, it wasn’t a cry. It wasn’t . . . it didn’t sound like him. It wasn’t a sound a boy could make, or I wouldn’t’ve thought so.” He shuddered, and clutched at his own arms, hugging himself and smearing more blood from the spattered, soaked-in pools that marred the sweater. I wondered why no one had brought him something else to wear, but maybe they had. Maybe he’d refused. He was so unbalanced, he might’ve demanded or rejected anything.

  “What did it sound like, then—if it wasn’t a cry?”

  He released his arms, and his hands settled atop the table, where they shook, leaving short streaks of bloody fingerprints dampening the wood beneath them. “It sounded like . . . a wet machine,” he said at last.

  The officer to his right said, “I beg your pardon?” before I had a chance to say it myself.

  Ebenezer tossed his hands in the air in a broad shrug, and let them flop back down atop the table once more. “It weren’t a sound like any animal I ever heard! Or any person, that’s for damn sure!” To emphasize his point, he pounded his fist against the wood. “It weren’t a sound like a living thing makes!”

  “Ebenezer, please, remain calm. I believe you; I just don’t understand you.”

  “It sounded like a grinding thing, all right? Like . . . like . . . a big millstone, underwater—with its wheel clanking right along, muffled and soggy-like. And it came from Matty’s room!” he insisted with all his might. “Neither me or Lissy could figure out what it might be, so we went to go look—you understand?”

  “The pair of you? Together?” I asked, hoping to bring him back to the tale, away from the speculation.

  “That’s right, both of us. We opened the door and . . . and . . . and . . .” His eyes grew frantic, and his hands fluttered. I was afraid I was about to lose his attention—and he was on the cusp of losing his sanity.

  I said to the two officers seated beside him, “Gentlemen, could you possibly give us a moment alone? I’m afraid the audience is a bit much for him. Please, if you could be so kind?”

  They exchanged glances, and I knew they were considering their jobs, and the correct procedures in a case like this. But I had a very firm suspicion that there was no such thing as a “case like this,” and I was furthermore confident that Ebenezer would speak more openly to me, and me alone.

  “He’s not been charged with a crime, has he?”

  “No,” one of them confirmed. “Not yet, and maybe not at all. But that ain’t up to us.”

  But leaving us alone . . . that was an act within their authority, or so they concluded. They were kind enough to see themselves out, and I rose to quietly shut the door behind them. “They’ll stay out there,” I said to Ebenezer, as I joined him again at the table. “Watching the door, I’m sure—but if you’re quiet enough, they’ll never hear you speak.”

  He agreed, and leaned forward. His large, chapped hands were still pressed to the table between us. In the cracks of his knuckles, blood was drying to the color of rust.

  Quickly, he spit out the rest: “We went to the door together, and I told her we should wait, we should call for you, or for the police, because dear God in Heaven, we was in over our heads, you see?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “But my wife, she said it was nonsense, and he was only a boy, and she pushed me aside. She was crying, so I think she was foolin’ herself, and she knew it good and well, but what could I do? What could I say? And if I sent for help, how could I explain there’s some . . . some machine holed up in the bedroom with the boy?”

  He caught his breath, wiped his brow with the other sleeve. The cleaner one.

  “So we didn’t do none of them things, and she opened the door . . . and then there was
this stench, you hear? Something so awful, like nothing I’d ever smelled—or I’d never smelled something half so strong.” His attention snapped, and he was clear-eyed for a moment. “And I’ll have ye to know that I was one of the men who helped carve up that dead whale last summer, the one what beached up on the rocks. It’d been cooking in the sun, rotting in the water, and the smell was so bad, I thought I’d die—but I didn’t.” Then he said, “The smell in Matty’s room, it was worse than that.”

  He paused, and for a moment he stared into space, at some indistinct spot just behind me. Then he found my eyes again, and corrected himself slightly. “When we opened that door, I thought of that whale’s innards, when Abe Scanton’s shovel pierced its stomach and everything the whale’d eaten for a week came splashing out, and it smelled like rot and belly acid, and Abe fainted dead away on the spot. Yeah,” he said with a nod. “The smell wasn’t quite the same, but it wasn’t quite different, neither.”

  “Very good,” I said, filing this away with no small measure of distaste. But you couldn’t fault the man for his lack of precision, or his sense of understatement. “You’ve established the smell—now can you tell me what you saw?”

  “I saw . . . ,” he started, and then he tried again, closing his eyes as if trying to remember the scene better—or maybe to block it out. “Water,” he breathed. “On the walls, on the windows. Pouring off the edge of the bed, pouring down the dresser drawers, and along the floor in little streams, little lines. Draining away between the floorboards. And I saw Matty, but he weren’t . . . he wasn’t . . .”

  Quieter now, his voice dropped low, to a horrified whisper. “He was swimming. Not in the water, but the air, above his bed. Treading water in the middle of the room, his eyes rolled back in his head, nothing showing but the whites, and they weren’t very white anymore. They were blue and brown. Marbled, like a dirty old egg. And his mouth . . .” Ebenezer licked at his lower lip, and swallowed again. “It moved like he was talking, but he wasn’t . . . he was making that noise, that grinding underwater noise. Like a machine with wheels and chains, and soaked-wet wood, pulling against some kind of weight. Dredging something up. Hauling something out of the ocean.”