These Honored Dead

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “And Jesse would be whom?”

  “Lilly’s younger brother. My nephew. They both came to live with me a few months ago. He’s inside the cabin just now.” She nodded toward the house. When the sheriff opened his mouth again she added, “If you have more questions, can we move outside? I’d like to leave Lilly’s memory in peace.”

  “I think that’s a wise course,” I said, hoping to give Rebecca a respite. “Are you finished with your examination, Sheriff?”

  Hutchason straightened up from the corpse, clearing his throat as he did. “For the time being,” he said. He took a deep sniff of the still air inside the barn, which was about ten feet square and lit only by small openings high up on each wall. “Do any of you smell anything unusual?” he asked.

  Each of us breathed in. “Hay . . . manure . . . sawdust,” said Francis, ticking off on his stubby fingers. “And . . .” He sniffed again.

  “Whiskey,” said Prickett emphatically, staring down the beak of his sharp nose. Francis pointed at him and said, “Exactly.” And he made a note in his book.

  As we began to file out of the barn, Rebecca gestured toward her niece’s body and asked, “Do you mind?” I understood her meaning at once and grabbed Lincoln’s arm. Together we gently arranged the blanket to cover the corpse once more.

  As we followed the others back into the bright sunlight, I turned to Lincoln and said quietly, “Look out for her if you can. I don’t want her to be tripped up by the sheriff’s questioning. Or Prickett’s.” He nodded.

  When we rejoined the group, congregated in the side yard between the house and barn, Prickett was stepping forward. The prosecutor was wearing a high-collared, stiff-necked white shirt beneath his frockcoat, rather in the manner of an English lord—which, behind his back, many citizens of Springfield whispered he had pretensions to be. His eyes glinted and his tongue darted out to moisten his lips. Both actions, I knew at once, boded ill for Rebecca.

  “Widow Harriman,” he began in a dangerous voice, “perhaps you can enlighten us about how long your nephew was out in the barn, lying in his sister’s blood, before you noticed your two wards were missing.”

  “I was away on Saturday night,” she said, her face ashen. “I returned yesterday afternoon. Sunday afternoon. When I got home, I couldn’t find either of the children. Eventually I looked out here. Jesse was lying beside Lilly’s body, holding her tight.” She put her hand to her mouth.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” demanded Prickett.

  “You didn’t ask,” said Rebecca. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, which was rising and falling faster than normal.

  Prickett gave a glare and said, “In that event, Widow Harriman, let me ask unmistakably now—where were you Saturday evening, at the time someone was evidently putting a knife through your niece’s neck?”

  “You needn’t be hostile, Prickett,” Lincoln said, putting a hand on his arm. “I imagine she wants, more than anyone, to find out who committed this terrible crime.”

  Prickett shook free and said, “This doesn’t concern you, Lincoln. Don’t interfere.” To Rebecca, he added, “Well?”

  “I left early Saturday morning to attend a market fair at Buffalo Heart,” she said. “I’m trying to make sales wherever I can these days. That’s the last time I saw Lilly alive. She was asleep in her bed when I rode off. After the market I—I slept that night on the trail, on the seat of the carriage I’d hired, then made the journey the rest of the way back home on Sunday.”

  “Slept in your coach along the trail,” Prickett repeated skeptically. “Why didn’t you stay at an inn?”

  “I’m not sure that’s any of your concern,” Rebecca said. Her eyes were alive with anger now. “I imagine you don’t have the first idea of what it’s like to lodge as a woman, by yourself, at a public house. Besides, I’d already paid for the carriage. There was no need for additional expense.”

  “You don’t happen to recognize the knife, do you, Widow Harriman?” asked the sheriff.

  Rebecca looked at the sheriff without blinking. “Never seen one like it,” she said. Prickett scowled.

  Hoping it would put her in a better light than the questions thus far, I asked, “Where did your niece and nephew come from?”

  “Lilly and Jesse Walker are my older sister’s children. The ones that survived infancy. My sister and her husband lived over near Decatur, trying to grow enough food to survive on a scrap of farmland. I didn’t see much of them. My brother-in-law was a brute. I couldn’t stand to be in his company, and I’m quite sure the feeling was reciprocated.”

  “How did they come to live with you?” asked Lincoln.

  Rebecca reached up with a calloused hand and settled her mourning bonnet. “A long string of misfortunes brought them to my door,” she said. “My sister passed on at the end of her next confinement, the one after Jesse. The baby was stillborn. Later that same year, my brother-in-law was trampled by an ox in the field and had his leg mangled. Then, a few years ago, he got ejected from the land he was farming. He’d never managed to scrape together any cash to buy it for himself, and a new landlord came along and had other uses in mind for the plot. They had no place to go, and even if I’d wanted to help him, I couldn’t very well take all of them in, not the whole family. They ended up—” Rebecca paused, evidently weighing whether to admit the truth—“in the county poorhouse.”

  I understood at once why Rebecca had never mentioned these poor relations to me. There was, unavoidably, much shame attached to a man who depended on the public’s charity for his family’s sustenance.

  “What became of your brother-in-law?” Francis asked. He had been scribbling notes constantly since we’d arrived.

  “Worked to death by a blacksmith without a conscience,” Rebecca said. “The poorhouse warden had hired him out to the lowest bidder.”

  “The lowest bidder?”

  “Since the county pays for the indigent, whoever offers to charge the county the least for superintending them wins the right to their labor. My brother-in-law’s labor was purchased by a smithy near Elkhart Grove. Lilly and Jesse were confined to the poorhouse. They saw their father one Sunday a month. Lilly told me Jesse ended up in bed beside her every night, whimpering into her shoulder until he finally fell asleep. Earlier this year, my brother-in-law dropped dead of exhaustion.” She paused.

  “He was a brute, but he didn’t deserve that fate. And the children certainly didn’t. Lilly wrote to me this spring, after their father passed, asking if I could take them on. I felt I hadn’t any other choice, under the circumstances.”

  “It’s a great credit to you that you did,” I said. I glanced at Prickett, but from the sour expression on his face, it did not appear he’d been swayed by Rebecca’s story.

  “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your niece?” asked Lincoln.

  Rebecca frowned. “I suspect there are any number of young men about who think she promised them her heart. Or something else even more desirable. She hadn’t had a mother for a very long time, and that became obvious the more I came to know her. I expect one of them came to take and she wouldn’t give.”

  “You expect us to believe some common boy, a frustrated suitor, did that?” Prickett said, nodding toward the now-closed barn door.

  “I don’t much care what you believe,” Rebecca said. “It won’t do anything to bring Lilly back.”

  “Can you give us the names of these young men?” asked Prickett.

  “Let me ask you—do you have a daughter who’s reached that age?” Rebecca said. When the prosecutor shook his head, she continued, “I didn’t think so. If you did, you’d know the last thing a young woman wants to do is to share such intimacies with their parent, or aunt for that matter.”

  Both Prickett and the sheriff looked unsatisfied with Rebecca’s answers. Standing beside them, I couldn’t say I blamed them. Her independent character had always been one of her most attractive qualities to me. But in
the present situation, it was plain her lack of interest in pleasing others did her no favors.

  “We need to talk to the boy,” Prickett said. “Now,” he added, when he saw Rebecca frowning.

  “Surely not,” I protested. “Not after what he’s gone through. Wouldn’t it be better to wait—”

  Sheriff Hutchason held up his hand. “We’ve a job to do, Speed. Can you bring him out, please, Widow Harriman? I’ll be gentle.”

  She nodded, her lips pursed, and went inside her cabin. A minute later she returned, her hand on the narrow shoulder of a small boy with straight dark hair. He appeared to be somewhere shy of eight years of age. As Rebecca guided him toward us, I saw his pinched face was covered with freckles and his little teeth were unusually crooked.

  The sheriff lowered himself to one knee and gestured toward the boy. “Come here, son,” he said quietly. Rebecca embraced Jesse and gave him a little push. He wandered hesitantly toward the sheriff.

  “My name’s Humble,” Hutchason said. “What’s yours?”

  “Jesse.” Even standing five feet away, I had to strain to hear the boy’s voice.

  “I need to ask you some questions about your sister.”

  “My sister’s sleeping,” Jesse whispered. “She’s gone to visit the doctor.”

  “Has she now. Who told you that?”

  “Auntie. Auntie says the doctor’s gonna help Lill wake up.” The sheriff looked up at Rebecca, who nodded.

  “Do you know who made your sister tired?” the sheriff asked.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Two nights ago, when your Auntie had gone to the fair, did you see anyone, any stranger?” The boy shook his head again. “Or hear anything unusual?” Another shake.

  “When’s the last time you saw your sister on the night your Auntie was gone?”

  Jesse wrinkled his nose. “When she touched out my candle,” he said.

  “And the next day . . .”

  “The next day I was protecting her, waiting for Auntie to come home.” Jesse squinted at the sheriff. “When’s Lill gonna wake up, Mister?”

  The sheriff sighed and got to his feet. “I’m not too sure, young fellow,” he said. “I’m not too sure.”

  The boy looked on the brink of tears, and this time Lincoln knelt down beside him. He rested his hands on either side of the boy’s shoulders. Lincoln’s large hands and long frame almost seemed to swallow up the slight boy.

  “Can you do us all a favor, son, and take good care of your Auntie in the meantime?” Lincoln said with a kindly smile. “She’s going to need all the help you can give her.”

  Jesse nodded solemnly. Prickett looked as if he wanted to continue the interrogation, but the sheriff said to him, as an aside, “It’s best to leave it there for now. We can always come back later if we have more questions.”

  A few minutes later, the five of us were back in Francis’s carriage. As we bounced along the rough track through the rolling prairie, Prickett said, “Don’t print this, Francis, but she’s guilty. I’m certain of it. We’ll find the proof, one way or another.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The prosecutor’s words echoed in my mind as I lay in bed that night unable to find sleep. Rebecca’s answers had sounded evasive, to be sure, but she was obviously suffering from strain and shock. She was the one who’d taken her relations in out of the kindness of her heart. How could Prickett possibly believe she’d had something to do with her own niece’s murder?

  “What?” said Lincoln from next to me in our bed.

  “Sorry, did I say something aloud?” I said. I looked over and saw through the dim refracted light of the moon that he was lying on his stomach, his head turned toward me on his pillow.

  “You’ve been muttering for a few moments now,” he replied. “About the terrible scene in the barn, I think. And the widow.”

  “I’m awfully sorry if I’ve woken you,” I said, whispering so as to avoid disturbing Hurst and Herndon sleeping in the next bed over. I shifted my frame under our bedsheet, and my foot grazed against Lincoln’s bare ankle before finding a new place of repose. “It was terrible, wasn’t it? And I can’t figure out why Prickett’s convinced the Widow Harriman was responsible for the girl’s murder.”

  “She didn’t exactly help her own cause by the way she answered their questions,” Lincoln said. “Or didn’t answer them.”

  “I know she didn’t. But it’s obvious she’s innocent. Though I can’t imagine who could have done such a horrible deed.”

  “Nor can I,” said Lincoln. “There are several mysteries about this afternoon.” He blinked his eyes and said with a yawn, “Though one should be easy enough for you to clear up.”

  I glanced over at him in surprise. “What’s that?”

  “The basis for your unusual interest in the Widow Harriman.”

  I looked away and up to the ceiling, determinedly avoiding his gaze for fear that mine would give away the truth. “I don’t think it’s unusual at all. A fellow storekeeper has suffered a grave loss. Trying to do what I can for her is a simple matter of trade courtesy. Besides . . . that girl . . . she was about the same age as my younger sister Martha.”

  Suddenly I sat bolt upright in bed and shouted out, “Good God—Martha!”

  “What is it?” asked Lincoln, looking alarmed. In the other bed, Hurst sat up, looked over through blank eyes, and collapsed back onto his pillow.

  Once I collected myself, I explained quietly to Lincoln. My father had written at the outset of the summer to say he had finally given permission for Martha to visit Springfield. Martha had been clamoring for such a trip for years to see not only me but also her close friend Molly, who had emigrated from Louisville to Springfield as well and had recently married Sheriff Hutchason. But the Springfield area now appeared to harbor a rapacious murderer, a mortal peril to young women. I had to prevent Martha’s visit. Apologizing again to Lincoln for waking him, I struck a candle and hurried down the stairs to my storeroom.

  It was still to be many years before the railroad or the telegraph reached Springfield. Thus there was no faster means of discourse with my parents in Louisville than the stagecoaches of the Post Office Department. A letter entrusted to the Department in one place could reach the other in ten days, if Fortune was on your side, or as long as three weeks, if she was not.

  I spent the night hunched over the counter, composing a suitable letter to my father by candlelight. I did not want to alarm him or my mother, who I knew would search every word of my letter for hidden clues about my well-being. So I decided to keep the letter short and nondescript. It was a busy time at my store, I wrote, and I feared I could not give Martha the necessary attention. Perhaps the following spring would be a propitious time for a visit, but they should delay sending her until then.

  When morning came, I was at the doors to the Department’s offices the moment Clark opened. While the recipient would, of course, pay for the postage due, I pressed a silver quarter dollar into Clark’s palm as I handed over the letter. In turn, he assured me it would be aboard the Terre Haute stage when it departed within the hour. I prayed Fortune would travel with it.

  The new edition of the Sangamo Journal was resting on my counter when I returned to the store. Simeon’s lurid report of Lilly’s murder filled the right-hand columns at the top of the front page and spared no detail about the awful condition of the dead girl’s body.

  In the days that followed, the townspeople coming into my store could talk about little else. Rumors flew wildly with different theories to explain the shocking event. Many citizens sought to blame a member of one of the immigrant groups that had lately been flooding into Illinois, either the Irish drawn to the canal work up north by Lake Michigan or the mysterious “Mormon” people who had recently established a colony along the Mississippi. Others speculated it was the result of a dangerous religious fervor and that Lilly had somehow brought on her own murder.

  Simeon reported on these rumors and fanned their flames in his
sheet the following week. While I disliked the constant stream of gossip about Rebecca’s niece, it was undeniably good for business. I sold more guns and fighting knives in those two weeks than I had in the prior six months combined. And I sold more patent medicines too. Several anxious mothers came in asking for Hooper’s Female Pills, a compound said to be able to break the hold of even the most tenacious bout of religious zealotry among young women. Though I harbored my own doubts about its efficacy, I gladly sold out my entire lot.

  On Friday afternoon, Simeon Francis himself tramped into the store.

  “I imagine your sales figures are up as well,” I said.

  “I take no pleasure in that, I assure you,” he said. When he saw my skeptical look he added, “You sell your goods, I sell the news. When the news is in demand, I sell more of it. You can hardly blame me for the laws of the market.”

  “I do applaud your discretion in keeping Jesse out of your story,” I said. “As well as in refraining from any support for Prickett’s wild notion that the Widow Harriman was involved in some way.”

  Simeon looked around to make sure we were alone. “There’s no discretion involved, Speed. Only calculation. I think it likely that those details will emerge over time. After all, I have papers to sell next week, and the week after that as well.”

  “But the notion she killed her own niece—it’s preposterous,” I said, feeling the color rise in my face.

  The newspaperman contemplated me and rubbed his unshaven chin. “If that’s true, help me prove it,” he said. “You said you’re familiar with the Widow Harriman through the trade. I imagine you’re familiar with the other merchants in Menard as well. I’m riding up tomorrow morning hoping to talk to some of them. Come with me and let’s see what we find out together.”

  After breakfast the next morning, I climbed astride Hickory while Francis perched his immense frame awkwardly atop a sturdy black nag, who seemed used to the burden.

  We set off in companionable silence through the ripe prairie vibrant with summer wildflowers. About an hour into the journey, the quiet was pierced by an approaching high-pitched whine. The horses surmounted a hillock and we looked down on an enormous flock of prairie chickens, partridges, and blackbirds, all screaming into the morning breeze. There was a sudden fluttering and a vast black-brown carpet flecked with white took off in flight, obscuring the sun as it flew over our heads. And then, mercifully, it was silent again.