Simply Dead

by Eleanor Kuhns

  ‘This wasn’t natural,’ Rees said angrily. ‘Look closer. Look at the baby.’

  The midwife leaned over to examine the small head. With a heavy sigh, she drew a finger over the tiny skull. ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘The constable will have to be told,’ Rees said.

  ‘Yes. When he arrives.’ The midwife raised her head and gazed into Rees’s eyes. ‘But you can’t do anything more for these poor souls now. And Josiah and his sons are trying to rip down the cabin to rescue Sally. She might still be alive. They need the help of a strong man like you.’

  He met her eyes and then nodded, ashamed. ‘Of course,’ he said, starting for the door.

  Granny Rose flipped the canvas over the pale face and the pathetic bundle clasped to the chest and followed.

  ‘What is your daughter doing here anyway?’ Granny Rose asked.

  ‘Wootten abducted her,’ Rees said, clenching his hands into fists. ‘I came after her.’

  ‘She wasn’t hurt?’ Granny Rose said, clutching at his arm in alarm.

  ‘No. Apparently he made a habit of taking girls to care for his wife. So Jerusha spent all her time with Sally. And she saved my daughter, by pushing her through the window.’

  Granny Rose nodded as if a great many things made sense. ‘I see. I knew she was sick. Of course he needed help with her. Especially with him away at the lumbering camp and the boys working and hunting.’

  As they exited the barn, a party of horsemen scaled the knob on the track and rode into the hollow. It was Rouge, with three or four men accompanying him. Thomas rode pillion behind the constable. Rees turned to Granny Rose. ‘The constable. I must speak with him about …’ He jerked his head toward the barn and the bodies in the basement.

  Nodding, she fell into step with him as he crossed the crowded yard.

  The constable dismounted, looking at Rees with suspicion. ‘Was this your doing?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, his voice sharp with anger and exhaustion. ‘The fire was already burning when I arrived. And Sally Wootten saved my daughter’s life.’ He turned away from the constable, under the guise of looking for his daughter. The tangle of emotions inside him – anger, fear, relief – was so powerful it left him prey to easy tears. He would not allow Rouge to see them.

  ‘Where’s Wootten now?’ Rouge looked around. Not a sensitive fellow, he seemed oblivious to Rees’s emotions.

  ‘Over there,’ Rees said, pointing with his chin. Rouge stared at the three men: Josiah, Jake and Jem Wootten gathered together at the side of the cabin. The senior Wootten seemed shrunken somehow and he was weeping. Rees remembered his anger with his sons and how he had struck out at Jake. Now the boys were supporting their father who appeared too weak to stand.

  Rouge tossed the reins of his horse to Thomas and started across the snow.

  ‘Wait,’ Rees said. ‘There’s something you should see – in the barn.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘The bodies of Wootten’s daughter and her child. They were murdered,’ he said.

  Rouge spun around. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Granny Rose will tell you.’ Rees gestured at the woman standing by his side.

  Rouge spared the midwife scarcely a glance before saying, ‘They’ll keep. I’ll deal with Wootten and his sons first.’

  ‘I’ll want to speak with them,’ Rees said.

  ‘You can do that through the bars of the jail,’ Rouge said.

  ‘I don’t think the boys had anything to do with it.’ Rees met the constable’s eyes defiantly.

  ‘Huh. They must’ve known about his activities,’ he said without sympathy. ‘I want them all in one place until we’ve gotten to the bottom of this. Besides, they have no home now.’

  Rees glanced at the smoking ruin. Only the small room added on for Sally Wootten remained.

  Although neither Rees nor Rouge expected the Wootten men to go to prison quietly, taking them into custody proved to be more difficult than anyone expected. And it was not for the reason – wanting to keep their freedom – that Rees would have guessed either. No, Josiah Wootten wanted – was determined – to see what had become of his wife. He fought like a savage to free himself from Rouge’s grasp while Rees and some of the other men sought to control the boys. Finally, nursing a bloody nose that was his prize from the scuffle, Rees said, ‘Let them help bring Mrs Wootten out from the house. They won’t be satisfied until then.’

  The constable hesitated before finally nodding. At once all of the Woottens calmed down. The group, with Rouge and his newly sworn-in deputies following close behind the hill family so they would not run, walked over to the ice-covered wall. ‘It looks pretty solid,’ Rouge said at last.

  ‘Maybe she lived,’ Wootten said in such a hopeful tone Rees turned a look of sympathy upon the other man. A brute he might be but he clearly loved his wife. Rees did not think there was any chance at all that Sally Wootten had survived.

  ‘We don’t hear anything,’ Rouge said, turning a meaningful glance upon the other men.

  ‘She might have fainted,’ Wootten said, glaring at the constable. ‘She does that sometimes.’

  Rees walked around to the back of the cabin. The fir tree that towered over the building still smoldered and every now and then a spark stung his neck. He tipped his head back to examine the pine; a black skeleton reaching into the sky.

  Turning, he inspected the cabin. A sizeable chunk of the back had been reduced to a mess of charred logs. He could see through the openings into the interior. Most of the furniture had been reduced to ash, and flames continued to smolder.

  He peered through the opening, focusing his attention upon the wall that had once separated Sally Wootten’s room from the rest of the cabin. Although scorched, the blackened wood ridged by the heat, the wall seemed largely intact. He heard no sign of movement.

  How could they reach Sally Wootten?

  Rees looked around one final time. With the fire still burning in the main room, they could not go through to the door. Could they chop down this back wall? Most of the logs forming this side had been burned completely through. He ran his eyes over the entire wall, top to bottom.

  Underneath this section, where the wall was completely destroyed, lay a small hollow. Dug down all the way to the dirt, the hole was surrounded by a ridge of blackened snow. Someone had set a fire here and a pile of wood ash and a few charred pieces of wood were all that remained. He stared at the scraps, not realizing for a few seconds exactly what this meant. Why would anyone build a fire here?

  Then he knew. The blaze in the cabin had not been an accident. If Sally Wootten had died here, her death was murder.

  The only question was: which of the Wootten men had murdered her?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘We’re going to have to pull this wall down,’ Rees said, hurrying around the last standing wall to the crowd of men on the other side. ‘We must. Mrs Wootten’s room is intact.’

  ‘She might still be alive,’ said Mr Wootten, looking around. ‘I tole you. She’s alive.’

  As Jake and Jem led several men into the barn for hemp rope and whatever other cords they could find, Rees crossed the trampled ground to Jerusha. ‘Would you mind waiting a few minutes longer?’ he asked her. ‘Before we go home, I mean. I want to help …’ He gestured backwards, at the men loudly discussing the best ways in which to attach the ropes.

  ‘N-no,’ Jerusha said. ‘I suppose not. Is Miss Sally still inside?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘We are hoping she is just unconscious.’

  ‘She was kind to me,’ Jerusha said, her gaze returning to the cabin.

  He looked around until he saw Granny Rose. She was watching him and moved toward him at his gesture. ‘Would you—?’

  ‘Stay with your daughter? Of course.’ Granny Rose smiled at Jerusha.

  ‘We’ll be pulling the wall down,’ Rees said.

  Granny Rose nodded. ‘Sally still inside?’ she asked.

  He nodded.
‘She is.’ He could not say anything more, especially with Jerusha listening.

  Granny Rose nodded. ‘How did the fire start? Sally’s bedchamber was closest to the fireplace. If the cabin caught from a coal or something like, her room would have burned first.’

  ‘Not sure,’ Rees lied, his gaze going to his daughter. Jerusha, her attention focused on the men fixing the ropes to the cabin wall, did not seem to be listening but he didn’t want to take that chance. Granny Rose fixed her sharp blue eyes upon his face. He nodded at her.

  ‘God have mercy,’ she said, so softly he could almost not hear the words.

  She put an arm around Jerusha and drew her close.

  Rees hurried over to the gang of men. They had tied the ropes to the roof beam and to the logs surrounding the small window. He joined Jake, taking hold of the end of the rope and, at Rouge’s signal, they all pulled with all their strength. The wall came away from the roof with such ease Rees almost went sprawling in the snow. The bottom, still pegged to the posts, had to be dragged away; the fire had not reached this wall or these posts and the logs were still securely fastened. Wootten was first there, his meaty hands grabbing the wall so tightly the knuckles went white. Rees could see the strain in the other man’s back and shoulders even through his ragged coat and rushed to help.

  The logs began popping away from the posts. When the opening split almost to the ground and Wootten could make it through he scrambled over the remaining pieces of log and into the bedchamber. ‘Sally, Sally,’ he began to shout.

  Jake and Jem followed their father and then Rees, who muscled his way to the front of the group and pushed his way through to the inside.

  The door was burned almost all the way through and the wall adjoining the main room of the cabin was charred by the intensity of the fire on the other side. But the flames had not consumed this room. Sally Wootten had made sure of that; the barrel of water by the bed was almost empty. She lay on the floor, her head toward the back wall, a jug clasped in her hands. Although one foot and the lower part of the leg were blistered – now Rees knew why he had smelled cooking meat – Sally had not burned to death. Smoke had overtaken her. Gagging, he pushed his way through the cluster of men and threw up in the snow. He had nothing left in his stomach so he only vomited bile. He did not think he would be able to eat meat for a long time.

  Wootten dropped to the floor and cradled Sally’s head in his lap. ‘Wake up, Sally girl,’ he said. ‘Wake up.’ Wiping his mouth, Rees turned and stared through the demolished wall. He knew the woman was not breathing but did not want to say so, not in the presence of a man so obviously overcome with grief.

  Jake knelt by his father and put his hand gently on his mother’s face. ‘She’s gone,’ he said, his voice thick. He wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘She’s not alive.’

  ‘She has to be,’ Wootten said. ‘The fire barely touched her. Come on, Sally. Wake up. Please wake up.’

  Rees began to back up so he could leave the Woottens with their grief. As he turned to look for Jerusha, an anguished cry like the howl of a wounded animal sounded behind him. He shook his head at the crowd gathered there, the men who’d ridden up from town and some of the inhabitants of nearby cabins. ‘She didn’t live,’ he said. A low mutter of sorrow rumbled through the crowd.

  Rees tipped his head back and looked up. The last pink of daylight streaked the sky but it was already completely dark here. Some of the men had gathered a huge pile of sticks and dry wood in the middle of the clearing and lit it with a coal from the fire. People were gathering, stretching out their hands to the blaze. Rees joined Rouge.

  ‘What do we do now?’ the constable asked.

  ‘We’ll have to take the body out,’ Rees said. Turning to look over his shoulder he added, ‘In a few minutes. Allow them this time to grieve.’ Rouge nodded. Like most of the men, and Rees himself, the constable was marked by soot. ‘A word,’ Rees said, touching the other man’s arm and drawing him back. He looked at Rees curiously but followed him away from the fire, to a spot a distance from any other person. ‘This wasn’t an accident,’ Rees said.

  ‘What?’ Rouge stared. In the gloom, the ash streaks looked like war paint against his white face.

  ‘The fire was deliberately set,’ Rees said. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’

  He started across the snow but quickly realized that in the back of the cabin, under the trees, Rouge would not be able to see anything, Rees grabbed a long stick and plunged it into the heart of the fire. The tip began to glow and after a moment a small flame burst into being. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  He picked his way cautiously underneath the still smoldering tree. With the upper branches consumed, some of the last light from the sky reached the ground.

  The black stain on the snow was clearly visible. ‘Look,’ he said, shoving his makeshift torch at it.

  ‘What?’ Rouge asked.

  ‘Don’t you see? Someone set the fire.’

  Rouge turned his gaze to the area. ‘Someone dug down to the dirt,’ he said, ‘and built a fire?’

  ‘Yes. It is almost the only place this could be done.’ Rees gestured with his torch at the large rocks on either side of the hollow. ‘The cabin was built over rock. Sally Wootten’s death was murder.’

  As another wild cry erupted from inside the cabin Rouge said. ‘But I thought … didn’t Wootten?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rees said. ‘Or one of the boys?’ He did not want the murderer to be one of them so he added, ‘But I don’t think so.’

  Rouge swore in French. ‘I’ll put all of them behind bars,’ he said. ‘For all we know, they’re all in it together.’ He turned and blundered through the gloom, toward the fire-lit hollow.

  But Rees did not follow the constable. Instead he held the torch to the lower edge of the cabin once again and stared at the charred pit. Doubt about the Wootten men’s guilt was beginning to creep in. Why would they risk destroying their home? Now they had nowhere to go. Besides, Wootten could have smothered his wife in the same manner as his daughter and her babe. Did that mean one of the boys was the murderer? But they had even more to lose than their father. Something did not make sense.

  When he finally returned to the hollow he found Wootten and his sons tearing down the last of the cabin wall. ‘They’re getting ready to take Mrs Wootten out,’ Rouge said in reply to Rees’s question. ‘They couldn’t lift her over; she’s too big of a woman. So the entire wall had to come down.’

  In the reddish flickering light from the bonfire, the movement of the Wootten men looked to him like a scene from Hell.

  Although Wootten and his sons shoved the bed aside and bent to their task, they couldn’t lift Sally. As several other men from the mountain community ran to help, Rouge turned to Rees. ‘I don’t suppose you have your wagon? I want to bring the body down to town and let Doc look at it. Before they hide her in the ground,’ he added grimly.

  ‘I do have my wagon,’ he said in a reluctant tone. He was not eager to collect the body and transport it to town, especially not with Jerusha beside him. But he supposed he could do it. There were the other bodies – those of the girl and her baby – as well. And he had to travel through town on his way home anyway.

  Rouge nodded his thanks and both men turned to watch the crowd struggling to lift the body. After several minutes – time that were filled with grunting and cursing – Granny Rose climbed through the collapsed wall and pulled the quilt from the bed. ‘Roll her on to this,’ she said, ‘and then you can pull her out.’

  ‘She spent years working on that thing,’ Wootten objected.

  ‘It was something she loved doing,’ Granny Rose said. ‘What better end for it than that she should be wrapped in it and put to her rest.’

  After a minute or two more of discussion, with no better idea put forth, Wootten took the quilt. As they struggled to roll Sally’s body onto the covering, Rees turned to Rouge. ‘We aren’t needed here now. Come into the barn with me. I want to show you the dead
girl and the baby that I told you about earlier.’ Rouge took a flaming brand from the fire and followed him into the barn and the attached cold cellar.

  At first the constable, casting a brief glance at the pale round face revealed when Rees thrust aside the canvas, seemed indifferent. ‘Mothers and babies die all the time,’ he said, repeating Granny Rose almost word for word. ‘And you can see something is wrong with the girl. Look at her face.’

  ‘There are red dots in her eyes,’ Rees said. ‘I have seen that before, in victims of hanging and suffocation. And the baby’s nose is broken.’

  Rouge uttered a heavy sigh. ‘We don’t know what happened. Maybe an accident?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be so calm if this was Hortense lying here,’ Rees snapped. ‘After all, she was taken to this house.’

  Rouge stared at the other man for a moment before his gaze returned unwillingly to the body on the table. ‘All right, if you insist.’ he said at last. ‘We’ll take them into town to the Coroner also.’

  ‘I’ll fetch my wagon,’ Rees said.

  When they stepped outside once again, they found that the Woottens and the other men had succeeded in dragging Sally’s body from the cabin. Rouge discarded the stick he’d been carrying. By now flames were beginning to run down its length to his hand. He picked up another, a thicker one this time, from the fire. Together they crossed the snowy yard to the track that led down the mountain.

  Wolves howled nearby. Rees, his neck prickling, was glad of the constable’s company and of the fire. It was difficult not to feel targeted by those intelligent hunters. As the two men approached Hannibal, the trampled snow around him bore mute witness to the number of times he had tried to flee down the mountain. His eyes rolling, he danced at the end of the leather strap. Rees was glad it hadn’t broken under the stress.

  By the time they returned to the hollow, the bodies had been dragged to the top of the road. Rees turned the wagon slightly so that when he stopped the corpses could be lifted directly into the wagon bed. Raising Sally took five or six men on the ground and Rouge and Rees in the wagon bed but the body was finally in place. He turned the corners of the quilt over her, covering her face. Then, as Rouge lifted the body of the young girl, Rees turned and knelt to take the sad cargo. He placed the daughter and baby on top of Sally.