Читать книгу Thaddeus Lewis Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Janet Kellough - Страница 32

Brighton Circuit had been a good choice for Lewis, both in terms of the number of new converts and the number of weddings, baptisms, and — less appealing — funerals he was called to. Fortunately, the settlements on this round had a high proportion of younger people, so marriages and baptisms formed the bulk of the work that brought him extra money. It sounded callous, even to his own ears. After all, his mission was to preach the Word, not to make a profit. Nevertheless, his £100 debt preyed heavily on his mind and the remuneration he received for presiding at special occasions was allowing him to slowly peck away at his monetary millstone. Even when, as was all too often, there was no cash to give him, he received eggs or cheese or joints of beef for his services. These he would carry to the nearest store where, in exchange, he could chivvy a coin or two from the storekeeper. Good sense dictated that he shouldn’t allow any of these opportunities to slip away. His return to Demorestville would have to wait.

The heavy rains continued into June, causing the creeks and small rivers to swell and flood and rendering the back roads even more boggy and unpleasant than usual. Lewis was finding it difficult to reach the more remote areas of his circuit, and once there, found few to preach to. The families who normally would have congregated in the nearest village for a meeting found it almost impossible to fight their way through the water and mud to get there. He would have been willing to travel from house to house to worship with them — he had done it before — but even he found many trails impassable.

It seemed to him an excellent opportunity to leave his meetings in the hands of the local preachers. He could use the time not only to carry out his investigations, but to check on his family in Bath as well. As long as he stayed on the better-maintained main thoroughfares, it should only take him a day or two.

Although it had only been a few weeks since he had seen her, it appeared to him that Martha had grown several inches and had lost that babyish look. Both she and her grandmother seemed happy and well, and although Betsy was walking with a slight limp — the result of an aggravation of her fever during the damp spring — her colour was good and there was no sign of the pinched look that marred her face when she was in great pain.

When he announced that he was on his way to Demorestville next, Betsy insisted that she and Martha join him. It would be a change of pace, a holiday, and a chance to meet with old friends.

“That’s one of the hardest things about this life,” she said. “You make friends, then you move, and it’s years before you get to see them again. I’m quite interested in seeing Minta Jessup’s baby, and I’ll never get a better chance than this.”

Lewis would have preferred to go alone. Taking his family meant he would have to take them back to Bath when the visit was over whereas if he were on his own, he could transact his business and continue westward, back to his circuit. Besides, he had intended to mull over his suspicions and formulate his approach on the way. On the other hand, Betsy’s insights could well be an asset, if she could manage to articulate them over Martha’s chatter. He would, however, have to borrow a horse. Three of them together on one horse was fine for a short ride, but Martha was too big and his horse too old to carry them many miles. He wondered if Betsy was well enough to ride that far, but he knew of no one from whom he could borrow a carriage or even a cart for more than a few hours.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “The only thing I’ll ask of you is that we stop once in a while. I know you. You’ll ride for hours just to say you made good time.”

He prevailed upon Luke to ask for a horse from the livery.

“He’s not much to look at, but I think he’ll get you there,” Luke said when he trotted out a swayback bay. “Mr. Trager says he’s sorry, but this is all he’s got at the moment. No charge for him, though.”

The horse looked steady enough, placid even, and if they didn’t push too fast it should carry them through.

As a result, good time was the one thing they didn’t make. Lewis’s horse was every bit as old as the bay, but it was used to long hours on the trail. The poor horse they had borrowed had difficulty maintaining even what Lewis thought was a sedate pace, and in spite of its lethargic appearance it was spooked by the presence of Martha, who squirmed in the saddle constantly and pulled at the reins on occasion. The bay disliked picking its way around the huge puddles in the road and sometimes rode straight through, splashing water and mud on Betsy and the little girl. To add to their discomfort, a cold drizzle sneaked down the back of their collars and soaked their cloaks.

They had to wait for the horse ferry at Green Point. It was on the Prince Edward side picking up a farmer with a wagon and took what seemed to Lewis an interminable time to come back across. Betsy, however, appreciated the chance to dismount and stretch her legs, and she and Martha spent the time looking for wildflowers and frogs along the shore and throwing stones into the water. They were both delighted by the ferry, measuring its progress as it churned toward them, and he chuckled at Martha’s delight when she realized that she was going to be given a ride on it. The bay was not nearly so happy, and Lewis had to tug and pull at its reins to get it to board at all.

The horse remained skittish as they rode on. They had just reached the stretch of road that wound along past the marsh to the north of Demorestville when one of the mangy brown dogs that were a feature of most farmyards came racing out to the road to warn them away from the property. As the animal nipped at the bay’s legs, Martha squealed and the horse reared, throwing both Martha and Betsy to the ground. One of the horse’s hooves connected squarely with the dog’s head, and it, too, was thrown into the air, to land in a huddle beside the humans.

Lewis leapt off his horse and ran first to the little girl, but she had fallen into a quite thick clump of grass, and in the way of youngsters, seemed unhurt, although she was caterwauling at the top of her lungs. Betsy had fallen near the same clump, but had landed heavily, and now she moaned as her already sore hip protested against this further insult. The dog, when Lewis checked, was quite dead.

Martha’s cries brought the farmer running. He cursed at the loss of his dog, but softened when he saw the child, and he became quite apologetic when he realized that the woman was injured, and that she was, moreover, a preacher’s wife.

“Dang dog never did have no sense,” he said. “Good for watching the place, but not much else.”

He offered Betsy a bed to rest on, but Lewis didn’t like the looks of the farmer, or the state of his dilapidated house. When he mentioned that their destination was Demorestville, and that they had friends with whom they could stay, the man looked relieved and offered to hitch up his wagon and take them to the village.

Lewis retrieved the wayward horse and tied both mounts to the back of the wagon, then attempted to make Betsy as comfortable as he could for the short drive. Every time the wagon hit a bump in the road, which was often, she involuntarily let out a little groan. To make matters worse, the drizzle turned into a downpour and, even though Lewis tried to shelter her with his cloak, she was soaked.

He hesitated for only a moment when the farmer asked him which house he should go to. He knew that the Varneys would gladly take them in, but that Mrs. Varney’s incessant gossiping would grate on the nerves in a very short period of time. He directed the farmer to take the wagon to the double house behind the smithy.

Minta looked surprised when she answered the knock at the door, but after hearing of their troubles, she quickly offered to take them in. Lewis had to admire her quiet authority as she helped him get Betsy down out of the wagon.

“Can you do something for me?” she asked Martha, who was trying to help but was mostly just getting in the way. “Could you go into the house and look after my little boy? You have to be very, very careful that he doesn’t get too near the stove. I’m trusting you, all right?” With that, Martha ran into the house, bursting with the importance of her task.

Lewis offered the farmer some money in return for his pains, but was relieved when the man declined.

“Oh, no. It was my beast that knocked you over,” he said. “And what with you being a preacher an’ all, I expect you could find some other use for it.”

Lewis thanked him and went inside to discover that Minta had made Betsy comfortable on the day bed and was busy making tea. Martha was playing a clapping game with a little boy who looked very much like his mother.

He glanced around the kitchen with approval — it was tidy and well-organized, and had been brightened with some woven curtains on the windows and a strip of drugget on the floor. There was no ghost of Rachel here —the Jessups had left the taint of death behind when they assumed the business and a new house with it.

“I hope you don’t mind us imposing on you, Minta,” he said. “We could have gone to Varney, but I thought Betsy would find it easier here until she gets a chance to catch her breath.”

Minta turned and smiled at him. “I don’t mind a bit. In fact, I’m delighted to see you, and you’re welcome to stay for as long as you need to. It’s the least I can do — you were such a comfort to us when Rachel died.”

“I appreciate that. You’re sure Seth won’t mind?”

She looked surprised. “Not at all. Why should he?”

“I had the impression that he didn’t think too much of you attending our meetings. And I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but Rachel once implied that he was pretty canny with his money.”

She threw back her head and laughed — a lovely tinkling laugh that filled the room. “Oh, but he was, he was! And trust Rachel to have said so. Seth’s turned over a new leaf, though, and now he goes to meeting himself.”

“I hear that he’s doing quite well.”

“Yes. Seth’s frugality has paid off. We had enough saved to convince Mr. Chrysler that we were serious about buying the smithy and Seth works so hard that there’s no problem with making the payments. We would be happier if we could rent the other side of the house — that would help — but it has no yard and it’s so close to the house next door that it’s always dark, so nobody wants it.”

“Well, congratulations. And by the way, congratulations on such a fine boy as well.”

“He’s a gem. He’s so good, and never gives me any trouble.”

“Thank the Lord for that, Minta. You’ve truly been blessed.”

“Aye, that I have.” Her face darkened for a moment. “I only wish Rachel could be here to share it. I miss her that much, I’ll tell you.”

With great reluctance, Lewis left the cheerful Jessup kitchen and made his way down the Broadway to the general store, where he met with a pleasant, if voluble, reception.

“Mr. Lewis!” the storekeeper exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to see you. Have they posted you back here?”

“No, I’m afraid they haven’t,” Lewis replied. “Sad to say, but I’m not far — just over on the Brighton Circuit — though I seldom get down this way. How are you? And your good wife?”

Varney insisted that Lewis follow him through to the back of the store and take tea in the sitting room. That was fine as far as Lewis was concerned, for it suited his purposes.

“Elsie! Elsie! You’ll never guess who just wandered into our store!”

Mrs. Varney bustled out of the kitchen. “Oh, my goodness, my goodness. Sit down, Mr. Lewis, sit down. You’ll take some refreshment?”

When Mrs. Varney had piled the table high with tea and johnnycake just out of the oven, she settled down in a chair and beamed at him.

“What brings you here, Mr. Lewis?”

He had had little chance to decide how he was going to broach the subject, but given that Mrs. Varney was apt to cheerfully fill him in on more than he wanted to know anyway, he took a breath and jumped in.

“I’m here to make inquiries regarding Morgan Spicer,” he said. “He has applied to be licensed as an itinerant minister, and of course, part of that process includes an investigation into his character and activities. I thought that perhaps you could enlighten me a little as to his background.”

It wasn’t really the truth, not taken in its entirety, although each part of what he said was fact, and Lewis realized that he was getting far too adept at these little prevarications. One could argue that finding the truth of a great sin was worth the commission of a small one, except that he was only too well aware that it was but the first step on a path that led only downward. He would have to watch himself from now on, but for the moment it served his purpose.

“Oh, Morgan Spicer,” Mrs. Varney said, and settled back in her chair to give full vent to her knowledge. “Well, I can’t really think of any particular black mark against the boy in terms of his character. It’s not like he’s a criminal or a drunkard or, heaven help us, a womanizer. It’s just that, really, nobody has ever liked him much. It’s not a case of character, it’s more a case of … personality, I suppose.”

Lewis nodded. “He does seem to be a difficult person to warm up to, but I don’t believe that should be held against him.”

“I do know that he seemed very smitten with the Jessup girl who died, but then all the young men were. Why, they were just like flies around a saucer of honey, and honestly, you do have to wonder about what sort of girl she was, to attract so much attention, don’t you?”

“She was a very pretty girl,” Mr. Varney said mildly.

“Oh, you. You always did have an eye for a pretty girl. Why, some of them come into the store and you practically fall over yourself to wait on them.”

“Ah, yes, that may be true, but truth to tell, I married the best of the lot.”

Mrs. Varney simpered a little at that, and Lewis decided it was time to steer the conversation into more informative areas. “Tell me,” he said, “did Spicer grow up here?”

“Oh, yes, although he had a most unfortunate start in life. His mother died when he was born, his father disappeared to who knows where, and he was raised by an uncle who already had more children than he knew what to do with. Young Spicer didn’t have much of a life there.”

“And did he go to school here, as well?”

Mrs. Varney furrowed her brow as she tried to recall the details of what she knew about Morgan Spicer. “Yes … Well, yes and no. He may have gone to the school for a couple of years, but I don’t think he was any more than eight or nine when he was put to work sweeping out the livery stable. I seem to remember him being there when he was a very small boy. Of course, old Conrad Spicer put all of his own children to work as well, so I don’t suppose you can say he was particularly unfair to Morgan.”

That would explain Spicer’s inability to read very well.

“Did Spicer continue working at the livery stable?

“Oh, no. He had a number of jobs.”

“He worked at the distillery for a while,” Mr. Varney prompted.

“Yes, that’s right, at the distillery, and at the mill … and where else?”

“Why so many places?” Lewis wanted to know.

“Oh, he just couldn’t get along with anybody. Nobody liked him. And he always tried to seem important, no matter what he did. Puffed it up and put on airs, tried to make out that he had been given some sort of important job, when usually all he was allowed to do were the most menial tasks. I know the men at the tannery made dreadful fun of him. The Caddick boys called him Major Morgan. He was always the first man to be let go whenever there was any slack in business.”

“I think he was a good enough worker, though,” Mr. Varney ventured.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t, dear. I just said that nobody liked him.”

“So …” Lewis said. He tried to keep his voice even, to not give away the fact that his next questions were crucial ones. “Where was he working when I was here?”

“Oh, eventually he settled into working for old Mr. Kemp, the tombstone maker,” Mrs. Varney said. “It was a good job for him — chiselling away at the granite all day. He didn’t have to work with anyone else, you see, other than Mr. Kemp, who is so deaf that he wouldn’t be able to hear anything much of Morgan’s nonsense. He was there for three, four years I believe, until just after you left. He just disappeared one day, and to tell the truth, I never gave him a second thought until you brought his name up just now. And now you’re telling us that he’s decided to be a preacher.” She would tuck this information away until the first moment that she could flourish it for anyone who would listen. “You know, he might be just fine at that. He certainly likes the sound of his own voice. He might better use it for something good.”

“And prior to this last disappearance he never left Demorestville? Never decided to try his luck somewhere else?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “In fact, he probably never even got as far as Picton. It’s a long walk unless you have good reason and he didn’t own a horse. I suppose if he’d really wanted to go sometime he could have caught a ride with someone else, but as I said, nobody liked him, so that’s unlikely.”

And with those words Morgan Spicer was in the clear. The Varneys had placed him firmly in Demorestville at the time of Sarah’s death, and it wouldn’t be hard to confirm that fact, provided of course that he could make Mr. Kemp understand what he was asking him.

His strategy of milking information from the town gossip had worked so well that he decided to push his luck. “I hear the Caddick boys are both married now?”

“Oh, yes, and both working at the tannery. Those girls have settled them right down. There’s no more of this painting nonsense, although I expect there will be a lot of people who miss those little pins. They were surely popular, all right.”

“They’re not making them at all?”

“Oh, no. Their wives have them far too busy for that. Benjamin’s taken over the running of the tannery and he’s building a new house as well. Willet, I think, is just as busy. He told me they unloaded their entire stock to Isaac Simms. You remember Simms, the peddler? ”

Lewis nodded. “When did they stop making them?”

“As soon as they got serious about settling down. I’d say a number of months ago, maybe even a year or more, wouldn’t you, dear?”

Mr. Varney nodded his agreement.

Lewis thanked the Varneys for their hospitality and left the store, grateful that the one thing a gossip never questions is the motivation behind an inquiry.

As he walked along, he was once again conscious of his own guilt, and this time his sin was not anger and hate, but a casual acceptance of a harsh judgment: he had been willing to believe that Morgan Spicer might be a murderer simply because he was an unpleasant man. Nobody liked him — in fact Lewis didn’t like him — but that was no reason to assume the worst of him. He supposed he might make the excuse that he hadn’t known about Spicer’s early life and the obstacles that had been put in his path so unfairly, but he rejected this as soon as he thought it. He was supposed to be a Christian, and charity was a cornerstone of his creed. He had been uncharitable, and it was wrong. He vowed to find some way to help Spicer realize his ambitions; if he could finally attain a respectable position in life, perhaps he would stop being so unpleasant and could achieve some of the importance he craved, and in so doing, realize how unimportant it was. There’s more than one way to bring a person to humility of soul, he ruminated. He had certainly learned that.

He wandered toward the tannery, hopeful that he might find the Caddicks there. He was rewarded when Willett appeared in the doorway of the storehouse. As Lewis watched, he and two other men began loading hides into a wagon that had drawn up to the big double door.

“Mr. Lewis! Good to see you again, sir.”

“And you, Willett. How goes it with you?”

A grin split his face. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve been married this twelvemonth. It goes very well, indeed. We’re expecting a little gift from heaven in a few weeks.”

“Congratulations! And your brother?”

“Oh, he’s married as well. We married the two Tobey sisters. Ben and Fanny have no children yet, though, nor any sign of one.”

For once Willett had bested his brother, then.

“Are you still painting?”

“Oh, no. This place is too busy for that anymore, and I’ve a household to support. No, I’m afraid Ben and I are homebodies now. Father has more or less retired now that we’ve “settled down” as he would put it. We don’t even have time to paint those little pins that everybody liked. It’s too bad. We made a little money from them. But this business comes first.”

This confirmed what Mrs. Varney had said.

“I thought you might still be at it. I keep seeing them everywhere I go.”

“That must be Simms. We actually stopped making them a couple of years ago, but he kept pestering us to paint him one last batch and he took them all. He’ll be running out again soon, I expect, and want us to do some more, but I don’t think we will.”

Everything Willet said squared up with what others had told him and he seemed unconcerned about any of the questions he was being asked. Lewis decided to push the inquiry a little further. “Do you remember Rachel Jessup?”

The young man’s face clouded. “Oh, aye, how could you forget Rachel?”

“I thought, at one time, that you might have had feelings for her.”

“I did. We all did. Any one of us would have married her in a minute, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with any of us except for Levi White. I don’t know that you’d know him. He’s a Quaker lad.”

He had forgotten about the Quaker boy who had mooched around the church looking as though he didn’t belong. Was this who Rachel had been meeting on the sly? Why she had ducked around the corner of the barn that day after the meeting?

“Poor Levi’s heart was broken when she died,” Willett went on, “although there would have been an almighty uproar if they’d gone ahead and wed like they’d planned. Levi would have been disowned. That’s what the Quakers do when one of them marries out. And he had no money of his own. I don’t know what he and Rachel thought they were going to do.”

So Betsy had it right from the first. She’d said that Rachel had already made her choice and just wasn’t ready to admit it yet. As it turned out, she had good reason for staying mum, and now he was beginning to understand his last conversation with her. She had said that she needed to be quite certain in her mind, that she knew she must settle soon. She realized then the enormity of what she was asking of the Quaker boy; he would have to leave behind his faith and his family in order to be with her. It was no decision to make on an impulse, and she must have thought long and hard on the consequences.

So the question was this: What had she decided? Had she backed out of the arrangement at the last moment and been killed by her spurned suitor? If that was the case, then her death was unrelated to the other murders, all evidence to the contrary. Or was the Quaker boy the madman he was looking for? It seemed unlikely, but then he had no experience with what, exactly, a mad murderer was supposed to look like, did he? Or had Seth Jessup learned of the relationship and intervened? Was that the explanation for his absence on the night of his son’s birth? Was he a suspect after all?

“Where is Levi now? What did he do after Rachel died?”

“Oh, he moped around for a few months, but then he settled down and took over most of the work on his father’s farm. He married Phoebe Parker last year. She’s a good Quaker girl and they’re in fine standing with the Society. His father even added a wing onto the farmhouse for them.”

So, Levi White could not have been in Prescott or Millcreek, nor, probably, anywhere near Sarah’s cabin. If the murders were related then the Quaker boy was suspected and summarily dismissed as a suspect within a few sentences. If they weren’t, the information he had gleaned took him no farther along the path of inquiry. He asked Willett to convey his best wishes to his brother and their families and set off to return to the Jessup’s.

He walked slowly while he collected his thoughts. Francis Renwell, of course, had been exonerated long since. The Caddick brothers had been on hand for really only one of the murders, the one in Demorestville. One of them might have had the opportunity to kill Sarah — they had been travelling during that time —but it appeared that they were indisputably accounted for at the time of the subsequent deaths. Morgan Spicer could have been present for three of them, but had been chiselling away at granite tombstones when the first had taken place. He had seen him with a Book of Proverbs in his hand, but there was nothing to connect him to the prayer pins. Seth Jessup could be suspected in Rachel’s death, maybe even Sarah’s at a stretch, but certainly none of the others, although Lewis vowed to discover where he had disappeared to on the night of the second murder.

There was only one man left who had the opportunity to kill in all four cases, and who had an ample supply of pins and miniature bible books: Isaac Simms. It was either Simms, or Lewis was seeing a pattern that didn’t exist. He truly wanted to believe that the murders were the work of some villain who had not yet come to his attention, some desperate and depraved soul who travelled for the sole purpose of wrenching the life from young women. But it would have made more sense for someone like that to wander the newly settled areas to the west. There were many isolated cabins there, the clearings were full of young women left alone while their men worked in the woods or went to market. It would have been easy pickings for someone with the intent to kill.

Again he came back to Isaac Simms. But how could he prove it? There seemed to be no authority he could conveniently defer to, no enforcement he could call upon. It was up to him.

From now on, he vowed, he would keep a very close eye on Simms.