These Honored Dead

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “Two young people whom no one in Sangamon County had heard of up until a few months ago have been murdered in close succession. One in Springfield, one in Menard. One by a blow from a paving stone, one by a knife. Why? Why would somebody have wanted to kill two orphans, and penniless ones at that? Before you—or the sheriff and Prickett, for that matter—can start to answer the who, you need a good hypothesis as to the why.”

  “Have you any guess at the why?” I asked.

  Lincoln chewed and shook his head.

  “Maybe there is no why,” said Martha.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe there’s a madman on the loose. No sane, rational person could possibly want to murder two innocent souls.” She turned to Lincoln and said, “Madmen are often confined in the poorhouse here, isn’t that right? We know Lilly and Jesse were lodged inside one for several years. Perhaps they encountered some raver there and now he’s gotten away and come after them.”

  “That’s brilliant,” I said.

  “It’s certainly worth investigating,” agreed Lincoln. “How is it, Miss Speed, you’ve become an expert on poorhouses in addition to nutgall ink?”

  Martha blushed.

  “Patterson mentioned them to us at dinner the other night,” I said.

  “Were you talking about his legal action?” asked Lincoln. I nodded. “Figures. The good doctor’s been fixated on the issue from the start, this idea that the major’s insane. He thinks it’s the key to prevailing.”

  “Isn’t it?” I asked. “If Major Richmond’s mad, surely he can’t get an order from the judge enforcing their agreement.”

  “If the court adjudges him insane or a lunatic, you’re correct.”

  “But what makes someone insane?” asked Martha.

  “It’s a person who’s deranged, who doesn’t speak or act with any sense,” I said. “I’m not at all sure it applies to Richmond, though Patterson certainly thinks so.”

  “I’ve known lots of men, and women too, who don’t make any rational sense when you talk to them,” Martha persisted. “Not to me, anyway.” She turned toward Lincoln. “Does that make them insane? It could be nearly the whole population of the country, more or less, depending on how you look at it.”

  Lincoln laughed. A bell sounded in the distance. “I’m going to be late again,” he muttered. He took a final bite of sausage and stood up as he chewed, straightening his frockcoat and then reaching to the floor for his stovepipe hat.

  Lincoln had taken two steps away from the table when he looked over his shoulder at Martha. “I’m not ignoring your question, Miss Speed, about what makes someone insane in the eyes of the law. It’s a good one. I’ll see if I can give you a satisfactory answer the next time we’re together.”

  After Lincoln had departed, Saunders put plates of food in front of us and we began to eat in silence. I found my thoughts fixated on Rebecca. I saw again in my mind’s eye her weary, heartbroken face as she drove out of town after Jesse’s funeral with the boy’s small coffin at her side.

  “How do people end up in the poorhouse?” asked Martha suddenly. “I don’t mean the insane but normal people, like Lilly and Jesse. How do they end up there?”

  “The county decided it was spending too much supporting paupers,” I said. “It figured it would be cheaper to house all of them together. The idea is they can contribute to their own maintenance by being hired out or working in the fields. There’s a master who has the contract to operate the place. He gets to sell for his own account the crops the residents produce, so the county doesn’t even have to provide him much in the way of a salary. It works out well for everyone.”

  “Except the wretched families who are confined inside,” Martha cried. She paused, then asked, “Can we visit one?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “Your idea that a madman might be the villain is a good one. I need to mind the counter today, but I’ll ride out tomorrow morning. The nearest one, the one where Lilly and Jesse lived, is near Decatur. That’s several hours ride to the east.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Martha. “I cannot bear to contemplate what happened to those children, to imagine their final moments, their fear . . .”

  “I’m not sure a poorhouse is a proper place for a young lady like yourself.”

  My sister punched me in the shoulder, hard enough to sting. “I’m coming too,” she insisted. “That phrase, ‘not proper for a young lady,’ that’s an excuse men use when they don’t want women to know something important.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Looking at Martha’s face, creased with determination, I knew further argument was futile. So I detoured by van Hoff’s carriage yard—the Globe stables were closed until further notice, and van Hoff had agreed to stable the displaced horses in the meantime—and asked one of the boys there to ready a two-seater for our journey.

  The next morning, once Hickory’s hitch was set and Martha and I were seated beside each other on the padded cushion of the chaise, we set off. Martha held two bulging saddlebags on her lap. When I asked about their contents, she merely shrugged.

  It was an arid August day, and the summer sun beat down in ferocious glory. Even with the heat, there was a great deal of flourishing about in fine hats on the hard-packed streets surrounding the courthouse square. We weaved through an assortment of carriages and buggies and pedestrians out for a stroll. Harvesttime would be here soon enough, at which point man, woman, and beast alike would be consigned to labor in the fields.

  “Do you know what I like about Springfield?” Martha asked as I cursed loudly and swerved to avoid a rider who had dismounted his horse suddenly in the middle of the road. “Other than being with you, of course. It’s that people take me seriously here.”

  “People take you seriously at Farmington,” I protested. “I know James does. Father, too, most of the time.”

  Martha shook her head fiercely. “It’s not the same,” she said. “Both of them still treat me like a child—an intelligent child, maybe, but a child nonetheless. I had to practically beg Father to get him to send me back to school for one more year last fall. And this year, it’s out of the question. I’m supposed to sit around and do needlework and go to cotillions and wait for some dim-witted boy with pimples all over his face to ask me to walk with him. It’s positively horrid.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating,” I said. “It’s a pretty position to be an eligible young woman, and an attractive one from a wealthy family at that, in Louisville society.”

  Martha gave me a searching stare. At length she said, “Joshua, you have no idea.”

  We bounced along the hard-packed path. Even though we were on the principal east–west carriage route through the prairie, the rude road was pockmarked by deep, rocky holes we had to steer around to avoid getting swallowed up.

  After we’d been driving for about two hours, we encountered a long train of wagons and horses heading in the opposite direction. I pulled Hickory into the tall grasses to let them pass and the lead rider, a sunburnt man astride an underfed chestnut horse, nodded a greeting.

  “Morning,” I called. “Where you folks heading?”

  “St. Louis,” he said. “We’re on the move from Kentucky. We’ve heard there’s plenty of first-rate land there. And heaps of money for the taking.”

  After I’d wished him well, he added, “Be careful on your way. There’s a huge slough in the road a few miles ahead of you. Three of our carts got stuck. Took us all night to drag ’em free from the muck.”

  I thanked the man, and Martha and I watched as the long train rumbled by. We counted seven wagons in total, each pulled by a massive, slovenly ox. The wagons had originally been Conestogas, but the canvas coverings had been reduced to shreds hanging limply from the sidewalls, and the red running gear had been stained rust-brown by the dust.

  The first three wagons held an assortment of women and children, looking dirty and tired and almost out of hope. Two wagons behind them were piled
high with household belongings, with trunks and furniture jumbled about. And then there were two wagons packed with dark-skinned slaves, seventeen in all, I counted, who looked out on the passing landscape with expressionless eyes. Several men on horseback rode back and forth along the train, keeping the slow-moving oxen apace.

  “It’s sad,” Martha murmured as the travelers passed. “Who’d have thought people would flee Kentucky in search for a better life?”

  “People go where the opportunities are, or at least where they think they are. West, more often than not. Worked for me. Maybe they’ll have similar fortune.”

  “I’m not too sure,” Martha said as I pulled back onto the road. We soon came upon the slough, crisscrossed with the muddy tracks of cart wheels and desperate hooves, and I carefully steered a wide berth around it through the grasses. A little while later, the farms surrounding Decatur began to come into view.

  “There’s the poorhouse now,” I said, pointing to a two-story house shaped like an L that was situated in a shallow valley a few hundred yards below central Decatur. There was a large church with a white steeple located directly uphill from the house. A middle-aged man wearing a straw hat and with a corncob pipe protruding from his mouth was standing on the steps of the poorhouse. As we pulled up at the front gate, he came striding toward us.

  “I expect that’s the master,” I said. “Keep your opinions to yourself, if you please.”

  “Joshua—”

  “I mean it. If you have something to say—and I imagine you’ll have lots—save it for the ride home. I promise I’ll listen the whole way back if you like.”

  When the master was five paces from our chaise, I straightened my traveling coat and called out importantly, “I’m looking for the man who owes me money.”

  “Ain’t we all?” he returned, breaking into a jagged, discolored smile.

  “Watch your impertinence, sir,” I thundered. “I’m out collecting my accounts, and I was told one of my debtors was lately in your care. I demand to see him at once.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know his name. I know him by his lousy, no-good expression. I’ll have a look around to see if I can find him.” I started to dismount from the chaise.

  “And what makes you think,” asked the master, “I’m going to let you walk right into my house?” He had taken up position in front of the gate, his arms folded across his chest, his teeth gripping his pipe defiantly.

  “We both know it’s not your house,” I said, nodding at the dwelling. “That’s county property. And I’ll enter it if I please.” I reached up and helped Martha down from the carriage and led her toward the house.

  “Who’s the lass?” the man sneered as he reluctantly moved aside to let us pass. “Brought your wench out collecting with you?”

  It was his misfortune he said this as I was directly abreast of him, and I slammed the back of my hand into his jaw. The man cried out in pain as he fell to the ground, the corncob pipe flying from his mouth.

  “Say anything like that again,” I said, “and they’ll be your last words.” Without giving the man another look, I took Martha’s arm and proceeded up the walk. I could feel her trembling beside me.

  The inside of the house was foul. The walls of the narrow, dim hallway were streaked with grime, and trash lined the passageway. The smell of decay and human suffering was nearly overpowering.

  A series of doors led from the long hall, and I walked up to a few, knocking quickly and pushing them open without waiting for a response. The rooms were dark inside, and several sets of anxious eyes peered back at me in each one.

  “Joshua,” my sister whispered urgently from beside me, “these are people’s homes we’re invading. We’ve got to allow them some decency.”

  “In a moment,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. “I need to complete the effect first.”

  The poorhouse master had been following us at a wary distance, as I figured he would. If there was, in fact, any man under his roof who possessed the funds to pay off a debt to me, the master certainly wanted to know so he could extract his own measure of satisfaction.

  I pushed open two or three more doors, seeming to get more impatient by the moment. Then I turned and pretended to spot the master for the first time since we had entered the house. I took a menacing step toward him and he took two steps back.

  “You there,” I shouted. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Hathaway.”

  “I can’t find my man, Hathaway.”

  “Can’t say I’m at all surprised,” he returned. “There’s not a soul with a dime to his name under my care.”

  “I’ve heard it said this man I’m looking for has gone stark, staring mad. A candidate for Bedlam, even. All since I advanced him credit, of course. Now where in this cesspool of yours would such a man reside?”

  Hathaway cackled. “You should have said so at the outset,” he said. “Though you’ll sooner get blood from a stone than shake any money loose from my lunatic.

  “You want the man-cage. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Hathaway slid past us in the dank hallway—taking pains to stay as far away from my right hand as possible—and led the way through a closed door and down a narrow flight of stairs. At the bottom of these rested a long room that was apparently some type of infirmary. There were a half-dozen persons lying on the floor, partially covered by threadbare blankets. Each seemed to be suffering from some malady—fever, consumption, broken limbs—and some from more than one. All of them called out to Hathaway when he entered, but he ignored their piteous cries and led us toward a door at the far end of this room.

  “You go ahead, Joshua,” Martha murmured from behind me. “I’ll rejoin you later.”

  I hesitated, about to argue with her, but Hathaway was plunging ahead and I didn’t want to lose him in the labyrinthine building. Hathaway used a key from his pocket to open the door at the end of the infirmary and he and I entered a small, windowless room. Slivers of light filtered in through cracks in the wallboards. A faint trace of fresh air in this room suggested we were in an attached outbuilding.

  The master lit a candle. There seemed no exit from the room other than the door we’d entered by. But Hathaway dropped to his knees and pulled on a lever hidden in the floor. He swung a panel open, revealing a pit. The top of a ladder was the only thing visible.

  “Lost your nerve yet?” he asked, cackling.

  “Lead the way.”

  As I followed him down the ladder, I was hit by a strong stench of human waste. I held my breath. We were in some sort of dirt cellar. The ceiling was only six feet high at its highest and sloped severely on each side. Hathaway’s candle provided the only illumination, and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I saw a tiny cell had been constructed on one side of the pit, where the inclined ceiling meant there were only a few feet between floor and ceiling. Strong perpendicular bars enclosed a space some five feet by three feet. At first I thought the cage was empty, filled only by a few discarded rags. But then the rags moved, and a filthy, heavily bearded head with bloodshot yellow eyes turned and stared, blinking rapidly.

  I gasped.

  The poorhouse master cackled again. “Is that your man?” he asked.

  I knelt beside the man-cage, which stank of a vile mixture of sweat and urine and waste. My eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting by now and I could make out the creature lying inside. He was naked, save for a soiled cloth secured around his midsection, and on the point of emaciation, with his ribs protruding visibly from his chest. When he saw me staring, he dragged himself into a half-sitting position, which is all he could manage within the tiny confines of his cage. The man pulled back his lips and bared his teeth, like a wild animal threatening a predator.

  “What happened to his feet?” I asked in horror. I had just seen that the man’s legs ended in shapeless stumps.

  “Froze off last winter,” said Hathaway. “He was under his
sister’s care, and I gather he managed to unlock his room and wander off. It took ’em three days to find him, lost in the woods and curled around a tree trunk for the warmth. His feet had shriveled away.

  “The sister told me that’s when she decided she couldn’t care for him any longer. So she dumped him on my doorstep on the basis that he was a pauper, and I had no choice but to house him. He’s a complete loss for me—no way I can get any work out of him in the fields.”

  “Has he been locked away down here the whole time he’s been in your charge?” I asked.

  “Just about. Once a week, I get my two strongest men to pull him out of there and bind him with ropes while one of the women changes his cloth and cleans the filth out of his cage. Then he’s thrown back inside.”

  I straightened up, taking care to avoid hitting my head on the low ceiling and feeling queasy. “That’s not my debtor,” I said.

  “Didn’t think so,” said Hathaway. “You don’t owe this man money, do you, Fanning?” he continued loudly. Instead of looking at the Idiot he was staring a foot above his head, as if there was some phantasmagoria in the air above him.

  “Can he understand you?” I asked.

  “You can’t communicate with the furiously insane directly,” he said. “But sometimes they’ve got these invisible vapors floating over their heads that can receive messages.”

  I looked above the Idiot’s head and said, doubtfully, “How do you do, Fanning?”

  Fanning grabbed the bars of his cage with filthy, gnarled hands and bared his teeth again.

  “You said he’s been here for several months,” I said. “Have you had other madmen here in the last three years or so?”

  Hathaway faced me squarely. “What, do they all owe you money?” he sneered. “What’s the real reason you’ve barged in?”

  “Let’s go up and talk,” I said. As we climbed the ladder, leaving Fanning to his cage, I decided I had no choice but to reveal my interest directly. Once I reached the room above, I took several deep breaths, trying to expel the fetid air of the pit from my lungs.