Simply Dead

by Eleanor Kuhns

  ‘That will be Monday,’ Lydia said.

  Although Mrs Francine didn’t smile at Jerusha, Rees sensed the widow’s sympathy. ‘We will say no more about it. Now, why don’t you go inside? I prepared a small packet of assignments for you. You can take it home and begin working on them.’

  Jerusha nodded and quickly disappeared through the door.

  ‘I apologize for my daughter’s behavior,’ Lydia said once Jerusha had disappeared inside.

  Mrs Francine smiled slightly. ‘I confess to feeling a certain sympathy with your daughter. Babette has learned to please those around her. She is already accomplished at influencing others to do her bidding and then they catch the blame. After several years teaching I am less susceptible to those pretty ways. Of course,’ she added, ‘none of that excuses Jerusha’s behavior.’

  ‘She lied,’ Lydia said. ‘To you and to us.’

  ‘Of course she did. Almost all young girls lie. But I expected better of Jerusha and I was more disturbed by the lies than the slap. If she had told the truth, I would have punished her and that would have been the end to it.’

  Drawing her shawl around her shoulders, the widow Francine turned and entered the house.

  ‘I wonder who else is lying to us,’ Rees said in a meditative tone after the woman had disappeared.

  ‘That is precisely what I was thinking,’ Lydia replied with a smile. ‘Everyone? I daresay the real question is who has told us the truth?’

  ‘Is there anyone we can exclude?’ Rees wondered. He drew his wife toward the wagon.

  ‘Hortense,’ said Lydia. ‘She lied to us several times but we know she could not have set the fire that murdered Sally Wootten. Hortense was gone by then.’

  ‘We know why she lied as well,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want her mother to know her abduction was a screen to cover her plans to run away with Jake.’

  ‘True,’ Lydia said. ‘Hmmm. I think we should begin with Pearl.’ She shot a quick glance at her husband. ‘I can’t help but feel that, if we had discovered the murderer of the Shaker Sister, we might have prevented Sally Wootten’s death.’

  He pictured Pearl. ‘So, what do we know about her? She is Wootten’s daughter Bathsheba. And she was one of the girls who saw her father strangle the Sister.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lydia said. ‘I’ve been thinking about her. Remember, Pearl makes up stories and, in this case, she would have a good reason for doing so.’

  ‘Yes. But Glory corroborated her tale,’ he objected.

  Lydia nodded slowly. ‘Yes. But I wonder – Glory seems a lonely girl. She might agree with anything Pearl said.’

  ‘They described Josiah Wootten,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That’s true,’ Lydia said, her face falling. But Rees, as he began walking toward his wagon, pondered his wife’s suggestion.

  ‘Neither girl mentioned the wound on Wootten’s face. We both know how obvious it was – we saw it. It would have been easily seen, even from a distance.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she agreed, her eyes sparking with renewed excitement. ‘And Pearl is the leader. What if Glory supported the story because Pearl is her friend?’

  Rees considered that. ‘I see. They found the body but didn’t see Wootten strangling the Sister.’

  ‘Seeing the murder occur made a better story than just stumbling upon the body,’ Lydia agreed. ‘Much more satisfying for Pearl.’

  Nodding slowly, Rees said, ‘They probably saw Wootten running away. Except for the wound, the girls described him exactly.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lydia agreed. ‘Besides, if Pearl is the Wootten daughter, she would know what her father looks like. Even from the back.’

  ‘Of course she would. And she’d recognize her brother as well. So when she saw Jake she feared he would compel her to go home,’ Rees said.

  ‘That explains why she ran away,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Of course,’ Rees agreed. ‘But we still don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Or who the murderer is,’ Lydia said, her brow creasing with frustration. ‘Josiah Wootten?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rees admitted glumly. He wanted it to be Wootten but wasn’t convinced that was so. ‘It could just as easily be one of the boys,’ he said after a moment of thought. ‘But which?’

  Lydia offered him a sympathetic smile as Jerusha came out of the school and ran towards them. ‘We’ll see you at home,’ she said.

  When Rees arrived at the jail he found Granny Rose there before him. She had a basket of ragged coverings that she was pushing one by one through the small barred window and a pail of soup. From the few drops remaining in it, he deduced that the Woottens had already eaten their breakfast. A moment later proof arrived in the form of dirty wooden bowls turned sideways and squeezed through the bars.

  He pulled up beside her mule. When he climbed down from the wagon seat and approached the jail, the midwife turned with a slight smile. ‘Will Rees,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here? Came to check on the prisoners?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re feeding them,’ he said. ‘I was worried.’ He didn’t want to answer her since his motives for visiting were far less altruistic.

  She nodded. ‘When the constable is finished with them, send the boys to me. I’ll care for them until a new cabin is built.’

  Rees noticed the obvious exclusion of Josiah Wootten; even Granny Rose’s kindness did not extend so far. Rees didn’t blame her. ‘How are they doing?’ he asked, tilting his head to the jail.

  ‘Better now, I’d guess. But you can ask them,’ Granny said. She put the bowls into the basket and picked up the almost empty pail.

  ‘Will you be feeding them regular?’ Rees called after her as she began walking toward her mule.

  She turned. ‘Probably. Although, by the grace of God, they won’t be here long.’

  Rees approached the barred door. ‘What do you want?’ Wootten asked belligerently.

  ‘We didn’t hurt your daughter,’ Jake said quickly. He was huddled under a blanket with only his face showing.

  ‘I know,’ Rees said. ‘She said Sally was kind to her.’ Jem uttered a sob and Jake turned so Rees could not see his face. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

  ‘Then why?’ Wootten asked angrily. His hair stood out in spikes around his head and sticks and leaves clung to his beard. He seemed even more a wild man than before, but Rees found himself pitying the other man whose red-rimmed eyes spoke of a night of grief.

  ‘I have a few questions,’ he said, gentling his tone.

  ‘Come to lord it over us, huh?’ Wootten said.

  Rees sighed. Wootten’s combativeness was both frustrating and exhausting. ‘No. I just want to ask some questions,’ he said.

  ‘And why should we answer any of them?’ Wootten asked.

  ‘No one else cares that you’re in here,’ Rees said, his own temper fraying. ‘You can rot in here as far as most people are concerned. But I want to know the truth. I want to know what happened. I’m your only hope of release.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Wootten, flinging out a dismissive hand, ‘you don’t care about us.’ He turned and went to the stone ledge at the back.

  ‘I care about Sally,’ Rees said. ‘She was murdered. That fire was purposely set. And, if you are not the guilty ones, maybe you can go free.’ Even Josiah Wootten had no response. After a few seconds of silence Jake approached the barred door.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Jerusha said she was abducted to care for Sally,’ Rees said.

  ‘That’s true,’ Jake said. ‘Jem and I – with our chores – we couldn’t manage. And someone has – had to be with M-Mother—’ his voice broke and steadied – ‘almost all the time.’

  Rees’s gaze traveled to Wootten. He grunted. ‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I had to hunt so we could eat. Anyway, in two or three months I’ll be leaving for the lumber camp. Cutting trees for the spring drive. Besides, it’s woman’s work.’

  Rees turned his gaze back to Jake. ‘So yo
u took Hortense,’ he said.

  ‘I already tole you,’ Jake said.

  ‘And he were sweet on her,’ Jem said. ‘And she were sweet on him.’

  ‘Puppy love,’ Josiah Wootten said from his position on the stone bench.

  Jake turned a look of such virulent anger on his father Rees wondered that Wootten hadn’t been found dead.

  ‘Tell me, Jake,’ Rees said in a conversational tone, ‘does your father know Hortense is carrying your child?’ It was a guess but he saw by the flush that colored Jake’s cheeks that he’d surmised correctly.

  ‘She what?’ Wootten said from the back. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘How far gone?’ Rees asked the boy.

  ‘She said coming on to two months,’ Jake admitted in a low voice. Rees spared a glance for the father. Wootten, blinking rapidly, looked as though he couldn’t believe his ears.

  Rees wondered if Bernadette suspected her daughter was pregnant. Of course she did; that explained her rush to spirit Hortense away to Quebec and marry her off to someone more suitable.

  ‘So Hortense and then Jerusha,’ Rees continued aloud. ‘Who cared for your mother before then?’

  ‘Our sister,’ Jem said.

  ‘Pearl?’ Rees asked.

  ‘Is that what she’s calling herself now?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Selfish biddy ran off,’ said Wootten.

  Jake’s face contorted and Rees knew there was more to this story.

  ‘Before or after the birth of the baby?’ Rees asked.

  ‘After. Bathsheba was supposed to care for them too,’ Wootten said. ‘But when they died she run off.’

  ‘Did you father your daughter’s baby?’ Rees asked, staring hard at Josiah Wootten. ‘And then kill her and her baby to hide your shame?’

  Wootten rushed forward, his face red with rage, and although he couldn’t reach through the bars between them Rees involuntarily stepped back.

  ‘You been listening to gossip?’ Spittle flew from Wootten’s mouth as he leaned forward, clutching the bars. ‘I never touched my daughter. And nobody killed them. I looked at them one morning and they was simply dead.’ He glared at Rees. ‘That old woman on the mountain has nothing better to do than tell tales.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything from Granny Rose,’ Rees said, not entirely truthfully.

  Wooten grunted dubiously. ‘Huh. Well, the ground was already frozen so we put ’em in the cold cellar till spring.’

  Rees considered that for a moment while the cold seeped through his boots and coat. Did he believe Wootten? No, he did not. Wootten was lying about something. But it was more important now to find Pearl. ‘Did your daughter Bathsheba flee to the shopkeeper Mr Morton?’ he asked.

  ‘Not this time,’ Wootten said. ‘I made sure of that when she run off with him last winter. Morton will never look cross-eyed at the girl again, not if he knows what’s good for him.’

  ‘First place I checked,’ Jake said to Rees. ‘But he said he hadn’t seen her.’

  ‘We watched him,’ Jem added. ‘For weeks. He didn’t go nowhere.’

  ‘And we never saw her,’ Jake agreed.

  ‘So you went to Zion to look for her,’ Rees said, turning to Jake.

  He nodded. ‘Looked for her,’ he said. ‘Never saw her. Couldn’t find her anyway.’ His voice rose in annoyance. ‘All of those women look the same.’

  ‘But your father had already gone to Zion,’ Rees said, puzzled.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Wootten almost spat out the words. ‘I never went near there. Never guessed she’d run somewhere with such unnatural folk.’

  Rees wasn’t sure he believed that. Turning back to Jake, he asked, ‘Would you have brought her home?’ He wanted to say dragged her home but guessed Jake would take offense.

  ‘Maybe,’ the boy replied. ‘Probably. To care for Mother. We couldn’t do it, you see.’

  Rees did see and for a moment he experienced a sharp sympathy for Pearl. What kind of life was this for a young girl, trapped in that cabin with not even the hope of a home and family of her own someday.

  And poor Sally. She must have known what a burden she’d become for her family.

  ‘Where were you when the fire in the cabin started?’ Rees asked.

  ‘Hunting,’ said Wootten.

  ‘All of you?’ Rees asked.

  ‘All of us,’ Jake said.

  ‘Together?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Wootten as though Rees was stupid. ‘Scare the game away.’

  ‘We saw the smoke,’ Jem said. ‘Started running.’

  ‘But you just said you weren’t with your father or brother,’ Rees said.

  ‘No,’ Jem said.

  ‘Jem caught up to me when we started coming up the mountain,’ Jake said.

  ‘And your father?’ Rees persisted, staring at the older man.

  ‘What difference does that make?’ he shouted.

  ‘He were already there,’ Jake said.

  Rees looked through the bars to the three men inside. They’d separated and gone their own way into the woods. Any one of them could have returned to build the fire under the cabin and lit it. It would have caught and burned slowly. By the time the fire began in earnest the Wootten men would have been far away. And when they returned – seeing the smoke – Sally Wootten would be dead. And so would Jerusha.

  ‘My daughter could have died in that fire,’ he said, his voice trembling.

  For a second or two the men inside the jail were silent. And then Jake said, ‘We’re right sorry about that.’

  ‘She lived,’ Wootten said. ‘Sally saved your daughter’s life.’

  ‘Sally saved your life,’ Rees said to Wootten. If she hadn’t pushed Jerusha through the window and the girl had perished, Rees would probably have killed Josiah Wootten with his bare hands.

  He stepped back from the jail. He wanted to believe Josiah Wootten was the murderer but reminded himself that Sally’s care weighed heavily on the boys too. They’d said as much. And there was still the fact that Wootten and the boys could have murdered his wife in a way that would not have destroyed their home.

  It all came back to Pearl.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘Just because Josiah Wootten sobbed and carried on when you saw him at his burning cabin,’ Lydia said when Rees described his talk with the Wootten men, ‘that doesn’t mean he is innocent of setting the fire.’ She put a heel of bread and a block of cheese in front of him. ‘Supper won’t be ready for another half hour or so.’ Rees nodded. As he cut a piece of cheese and put it on the bread, Lydia continued, ‘After all, Wootten has the lumber camp to go to. Maybe he didn’t care about the cabin. Or what happened to his sons.’ She returned to the fire and stirred it up. She had put a ham into the oven to bake and the aroma was almost more than Rees could take. He felt like taking the meat out now and devouring it. Lydia had brought a bunch of beets up from the cold cellar. The greens had been eaten when the vegetable was first picked and now the dark red globes waited to be peeled and sliced.

  For the moment they had the kitchen to themselves as the children were engaged in their evening chores. Jerusha had been sent for water. Nancy was collecting eggs and Judah was supposed to be gathering wood. Joseph had insisted on tagging along. Rees was not sure how many eggs or how much kindling would make it inside the house; through the stout walls he could hear childish laughter. Even Jerusha had abandoned her pretensions to adulthood and was running around shrieking with the other children. From what he could hear, Rees suspected a wild snowball fight was in progress.

  ‘It will be dark soon,’ Lydia said, staring at the back door. ‘The children should come in. We have to rise early for church.’

  ‘Oh, let them play a few more minutes,’ he said. He was enjoying the peace.

  ‘And they’ll be wet and cold.’

  ‘Dinner will warm them up.’

  Lydia did not speak for a few seconds. She lifted a beet and carefully began paring the skin from the burgundy
flesh below. ‘I think Mr Wootten tired of caring for his ill wife,’ she said at last.

  ‘That’s true,’ Rees agreed. He had seen men behave with apparently genuine grief at the death of a loved one – even when the murder had occurred at their hands. He added reluctantly, ‘I suppose I could say the same about Jake and Jem.’

  ‘I hope neither one of them is guilty of murder,’ she said, speaking his thoughts. The beets had stained her fingers and the palms of her hands a deep red and she took a rag to wipe away some of the color.

  ‘What do we know for certain?’ he asked his wife.

  ‘Wootten and his sons were abducting girls to care for Sally,’ she replied.

  ‘Once Pearl ran away,’ Rees said.

  ‘And then Hortense, despite her feelings for Jake, ran away,’

  ‘Because Wootten attempted to interfere with her,’ he said.

  ‘Josiah Wootten bears the blame for that,’ Lydia said in a sharp voice.

  Rees did not say anything for several seconds. He understood. Wootten’s wife was seriously ill. Then a young and pretty girl came into the house. Although he hoped he was a better man, he understood the temptation Wootten faced.

  ‘I see you excuse his behavior,’ Lydia said in a stern voice.

  ‘No,’ Rees said. ‘I neither excuse nor condone. But I understand it.’

  ‘A man and his base nature,’ she said in such a judgmental tone he had to pause before he spoke. He did not want to argue with his wife over Wootten.

  ‘The fight between Jake and his father makes perfect sense,’ Rees said instead. ‘Desire and jealousy are a potent combination. Now I know why, when Hortense ran away, both Jake and his father went searching for her.’

  Lydia nodded, lifting her eyes from the beets. ‘Then Mr Wootten saw the Shaker Sister and thought she was Hortense,’ she said; almost, Rees thought, with relief. ‘He rushed up and tried to strangle her.’

  ‘He said he never went to Zion,’ Rees said. Lydia sniffed disbelievingly. ‘And he would have known he had the wrong woman when he saw her face. He should have left her alive.’

  ‘Unless he didn’t want her to tell anyone he’d been there.’

  Rees considered the defiant man in jail with his damn-your-eyes attitude. ‘Would he care?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Wootten has no reputation to protect.’