Billy’s scissors continued to fly around my head, but the whistling stopped. He put down the scissors and said, “Do you consider yourself a religious man, Mr. Speed?”
The question took me aback. “I’m a God-fearing man,” I said, “the same as any other good Christian.” In truth, it had been many years since I’d attended divine service, but I was not about to admit this to the Negro barber.
“I don’t know about yours,” Billy continued, “but at the church I attend on Sundays, anything said to the minister is said in private. It’s between you and him and the Almighty. The minister’d be run out of town before the sun rose on Monday if he started sharing them secrets around.”
“That’s true at my church also,” I replied with a smile. “Though I’m not sure barbers are held to quite the same standard.”
Billy took a step back, squinted at me, and held up his hands. “Do you think,” he said in a bold tone I had never heard him use before, “these hands could cut and scape with such skill if the Almighty himself hadn’t breathed life into them?”
“I don’t imagine they could.”
This answer seemed to satisfy Billy, and he picked up his scissors again and resumed his tune. “Besides,” he said a few moments later, “you’re asking about something that, if I ever knew it, I knew long ago. My mind’s not what it used to be.” He paused. “Used to be golden.”
At $2.50 it was a steep price, but with the trial starting tomorrow morning, there was no time to haggle. I felt through the coins in my pocket, located a single gold quarter-eagle, and placed it on the table holding Billy’s cutting implements.
Billy made a few last snips and put down his scissors on the table. The gold coin had disappeared. “You’re all set now, Mr. Speed,” Billy said. “You ever been to Athens?”
“Yes,” I said, assuming he meant Illinois, not Greece.
“Ever get wet on the way?”
“Every single time. At least I would if it wasn’t for the rope pull ferry at the Salt Creek crossing, the one operated by the keeper of that sorry tavern on the riverbank.”
“It’s a funny thing,” Billy said. “Doc Patterson once said the very same thing to me. You tell me if your feet get wet the next time you’re there.”
I thanked Billy and hurried out into the elements. The rain had relented, but a light mist was still falling as I made my way through town. Here and there I passed townspeople venturing out onto the soaking streets. Soon I was standing at Patterson’s imposing front door. I let myself in.
Gustorf was lying face down on his couch in the parlor, snoring loudly. I tapped his shoulder and he groaned, turned over, and breathed out into my face. The experience was like thrusting my head into a distilling vat. I gagged.
“How can you be drunk at this hour?” I exclaimed.
“How can you be sober at any hour?” Gustorf muttered. “Leave me be.”
“I’ve got a favor to ask,” I said. Gustorf groaned again and turned away from me. “It involves a trip outdoors,” I continued. “And, unless I’m much mistaken, a woman.”
He turned his head toward me again. “Your sister?”
“Better than that for your purposes.” When he squinted at me through questioning eyes, I crouched down and told him my plan. The longer I spoke, the broader his smile became. When I had finished explaining, I straightened up and asked, “Will you do it?”
Herr Gustorf pulled himself into a sitting position. “My good friend,” he said with a clap of his hands, “it’s as if you’ve been heaven-sent to relieve my tedium. Let’s leave at once.”
I pulled Gustorf to his feet. Hay was waiting outside, holding Hickory’s lead. I helped Gustorf hoist himself up into the light, open-sided carriage. Once he’d positioned his cast to balance himself against toppling out of the conveyance, I gave Hickory a tap.
“How does that damned thing feel?” I asked as we lurched into motion.
“Like I’ve shoved my leg down the throat of a boar. Or up its arse, more likely. Worse, it’s starting to itch.”
“Patterson truly thinks you’ll be good as new when it’s removed?”
“That’s what he told me. But I understand the doctor’s been saying a lot of fantastical things recently.” Gustorf shouted with laughter at his own joke and slapped the cast. It resounded like a hollow log.
The great prairie glistened like an overripe fruit as we drove through it that morning, the sun coming in and out of the clouds. The colors were a little too vivid; the greens even greener than usual, the yellows looking liquid in intensity. Here and there were faint, rusty hints of the reds to come. The grasses were improbably high, and they stood straight at attention in the still, sultry air.
Herr Gustorf shouted out his approval of the setting several times, and he eagerly scribbled down impressions and sketches in his notebook. But I took in the familiar scene with a kind of sadness. When the prairie reached this state, it was a sure sign the end was near, that the decline and death of the fall and winter would arrive before we knew it. The wild beauty would not last. It never did.
The sun was directly overhead when we came upon the lonely tavern beside Salt Creek. As far as I knew, it did not have a name, in part because it had rapidly gone through a series of owners, each having even less good fortune than the last. When I had stayed there a few years earlier, in the middle of a circuit around the county to get to know my new territory, an unsavory drunkard named Esterly had run the place. I’d heard he’d been replaced as proprietor by his spinster daughter, she in turn by a fellow named Dickey, and then he by one Rugg.
An old man bent over on a walking stick hobbled out of the front door as soon as our cart lurched to a stop. He was taking no chances on letting two prospective customers get away, I supposed.
“Can you tend to my horse while we slake our thirst?” I called as the man approached. “It’s Rugg, isn’t it?”
“Rugg abandoned the place months ago,” the man rasped as he took Hickory’s reins with a gnarled hand. “My son, Sconce the Younger, took over management. Spruced it up quite nicely, he has.” The man looked at the ramshackle one-story inn with pride.
Herr Gustorf and I followed his gaze doubtfully. The inn’s dingy white paint was peeling and several of the shutters were off their hinges and hanging at odd angles. Boards had been nailed onto the roof at uneven diagonals, apparently to cover over leaks. Two scrawny milk cows grazed in the unpenned front yard. Just beyond the inn, Salt Creek trickled by unhappily.
“I can’t thank you enough for this expedition,” Gustorf murmured with genuine enthusiasm.
The Prussian slid to the ground and limped toward the front door. Meanwhile, I untethered Hickory from the two-wheeled chaise, which we let lean forward onto the ground, and Sconce the Older led the horse into a rickety stable, which stank of moldering manure. Hickory whinnied unhappily, but I scratched her white stripe and whispered assurances she wasn’t going to be here for long. Then I followed Gustorf’s path into the tavern.
Sconce the Younger, middle-aged and officious, stood behind a reception desk just inside the door, quill pen poised above a bound hotel register. “Will that be two rooms for this evening, sir?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Just a few restorative glasses and then we’re back on the trail,” I said, my eyes tightly focused on the ledger. Sconce’s shoulders sagged as he closed the weathered register and placed it into a bottom drawer of the desk.
I continued past him into the dissolute public room. Discolored shades were drawn over the windows, and the place was lit by a single, foul-smelling whale-oil lamp. Two men, looking like they hadn’t moved in weeks, sprawled in chairs next to a decrepit table littered with empty glasses. In the far end of the room, next to the barman’s stand, Gustorf was already engaged in animated conversation with a woman.
The Prussian’s new companion turned as she heard me approaching and gave me a look of composed sadness. She was middle-aged, dressed in frills and ruffles, and heavily painted.
Her hair was pulled back by a band of colored beads. In her younger years, I imagined she would have been very pretty.
“May I introduce Madam Grace Darling,” Gustorf said with a grand gesture. I bowed politely.
After a quick glance, Madam Darling returned her attentions to Gustorf, who was already close to the bottom of his glass. I took a nearby chair, which shuddered as I settled into it, and listened without pretense.
“Why’d you say you were in these parts?” Madam Darling asked Gustorf.
“I’m on a grand tour of your country,” he said, speaking with a more pronounced accent than usual. “I’m writing a book, for my homeland.”
“Oh, a writer,” she replied. She stepped back to squint at him, and I guessed she was assessing the quality of the threads in his jacket. “I like writers—successful ones at least. What country are you from?”
“Prussia.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit Russia,” she replied with mustered enthusiasm.
“I’ve heard that’s very nice too,” he said. Madam Darling gave Gustorf a confused look while he glanced over her shoulder at me and winked. I rotated my hand like a wagon wheel as if to say, Get on with it.
Gustorf drained the remainder of his glass and asked Sconce for two replacements. “The hard stuff, this time,” he specified. The Prussian launched into a long disquisition on the Germanic states and their once and future greatness in world affairs. Madam Darling bravely tried to follow the discussion, although once or twice her eyes flicked toward the entrance of the tavern to see if any less long-winded prospects had entered. But no one else came through the door and so Gustorf retained the field unchallenged.
When Gustorf finally finished his lecture, he muttered that he needed to relieve himself, and Madam Darling pointed him through a narrow door at the rear. As he disappeared, she gave a sigh and turned her attention to me.
“What’s your tale?” she asked.
“I’m showing my foreign friend around the county,” I replied, rising from my chair. “With his leg like it is, he’s in need of a driver.”
She thrust her shoulders back and her chest forward to accentuate her breasts, which I now realized were readily discernable through her gauzy, lavender dress. “Don’t you like women?” she asked.
“Very much so,” I replied, trying to avoid staring too baldly.
“Well, then . . .”
“It’s my friend who’s out exploring today, I’m afraid. I have other plans.”
At that moment, the rear door banged open and Gustorf tottered back into the room. He was carrying a newly filled glass in each hand as he shuffled along on his cast.
Madam Darling plainly decided the time for alacrity had arrived. “So, my Russian friend,” she said, putting her hand boldly on Gustorf’s shoulder, “do you want to experience the exotic pleasures of Salt Creek? I think it would make very good reading for that little travel book of yours.”
“I’d like that,” Gustorf replied with a loose leer. “And so would my readers, I daresay.”
“Follow me.” Madam Darling turned and Gustorf made as if to go with her. I cleared my throat. Gustorf nodded slightly.
I left Gustorf and his companion and walked quickly toward the reception desk. When I was ten feet from the desk, there was a crash behind me and then a scream. “Help me! My leg!”
Sconce the Younger looked up from his desk. “His father’s the Russian Consul in Washington,” I said urgently. “A close friend of the Czar himself. If he hears his son was injured in your establishment—”
Sconce rose and hurried toward Gustorf. The Prussian was making a prodigious commotion, carrying on and flailing about on the floor, pulling chairs down on top of himself from all sides. Meanwhile, I pulled open the bottom drawer of the reception desk and grabbed the register, an inch thick with heavily thumbed pages. I slipped it inside my traveling cloak and returned to the scene of Gustorf’s performance.
“Too much to drink, Herr Gustorf?” I asked, looking down on him.
“Never,” he said, suddenly recollecting his wits. “Too much excitement at Madam Darling’s charms. My apologies. Will you help me up?” He reached out his arms. I took one and the bewildered Sconce the Younger the other, and together we pulled Gustorf to his feet.
“Well, it’s time to be leaving,” I said. “I think we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.”
“Most certainly not,” Gustorf replied. He turned to Madam Darling and said, “Now where were we?”
As they walked from the room together, I said to Sconce, “I think I’ll take some air. Will you make sure my friend finds his way out safely, after they’ve completed their business?” I handed Sconce a silver half-dollar and he nodded gratefully.
Outside, I hitched up Hickory with the help of Sconce the Older and drove fifty yards away from the inn. Making sure the old man couldn’t see, I took the register out of my cloak and started paging through it. The entries for overnight guests were few and far between, so the one I was looking for was easy to spot. A couple who had registered as “Dr. & Mrs. Patterson” had indeed stayed at the inn the evening of Lilly’s death. Leafing backward through the book, I saw another such entry from May of this year. Rebecca’s desire to shield this arrangement presumably explained the lie she told Prickett about the day of Lilly’s murder.
My breath caught as I realized the full implication of the register, especially when combined with Rebecca’s letter to Patterson. Shortly after Rebecca had ended our relations at the turn of the year, two new events had taken place in her life: she assumed custody of her niece and nephew, and she took up with the doctor. And, somehow, the combination had gotten her killed. I was still numb with this thought when Sconce the Younger helped Gustorf into the carriage an hour later.
“Much better,” Gustorf said, giving me an exuberant slap on the back. “Do you want to hear all about it?”
“Not particularly.” I gave the reins a shake and Hickory dutifully began pulling us toward Springfield.
“It was an experience the likes of which I’ve never had,” Gustorf continued as if I had not spoken. “What did she call them—the exotic pleasures of Salt Creek? The crumbling inn, the reeking taproom, the exotic pleasures. It was all so perfect. A delicious witch’s brew. You must sample it yourself sometime.”
“Perhaps,” I returned doubtfully.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked after we’d bumped along the trail for a few minutes.
“I did.” I tapped the ledger, which I balanced in my lap.
“Then why the long face? It’s a glorious day to be alive.” He swept his arms toward the horizon, taking in the florid prairie.
“My thoughts are on someone who’s not alive to enjoy the day.”
“But life is for the living, my friend,” he said. “Look at the beauty of God’s creation all around us. Do you think the dead want us to dwell on them, when we could dwell instead on this? I don’t.”
A few miles along, Gustorf added: “You truly don’t have any curiosity about how we managed things, with my lower half imprisoned in Dr. Patterson’s contraption?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Aha!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “It’s an amazing tale, a stupendous feat of dexterity.”
But when I leaned back toward him to hear he added, “And to learn of it you’ll have to buy my book.”
Gustorf shouted with laughter. I focused on the trail. A little later, I turned back and saw him slumped against the side of the jangling carriage, a wide grin spread on his face. He was snoring loudly.
CHAPTER 28
I awoke the next morning to bright sunlight streaming into our bedroom through the small window. I lay there for a minute without moving until a church bell began to strike the hour. Eight bells, if I counted them correctly in my somnolent state. Eight o’clock: I was late. We were late, I corrected myself, as I felt Lincoln’s inert leg jutting out toward me.
I thrust myself up onto my elbo
ws and moved to rouse Lincoln when I saw he was already awake and lying on his back. His forehead was wrinkled, his jaw clenched, and his eyes were wide and expressionless. I’d seen him like this once or twice before, and I knew it would require serious effort to get him moving.
“Lincoln, you’ve got to rise,” I shouted, shaking him with both arms. “Court’s starting within the hour. The doctor’s case is first on the docket. Don’t you remember?”
My friend did not move, nor did his countenance register that he had heard me. His eyelids fluttered once; but for this movement, I would have feared he had turned to stone.
“Lincoln. Now. Get up!” I tried again, shaking him still more vigorously. “Don’t tell me your hypos have returned. You don’t have time for them, not today you don’t.”
At last he spoke, although nothing but his lips moved, the words coming out of his mouth with an agonizing slowness. “I am awake, Joshua. You can see that perfectly well.”
“You need to get out of bed. Patterson’s in the dock. And it won’t reflect well on you if poor little Hay is the one who stands up to defend him.”
“Yes, I think I will,” he replied, still speaking with an unnatural cadence. “I have been contemplating, these past few hours, whether it wouldn’t be better to spend the whole day lying in bed. I think it would be better, most probably. But I think you may be right as well and I should get up and go to court.”
I sprang into action, with great effort dragging Lincoln out of the bed and starting to feed his hands and legs through his clothes, which I picked up off the floor. His body remained limp at first, but gradually he began animating his limbs. When he was encased in his courtroom attire, and I had quickly thrown on clothes of my own, I turned to look at him.
“Is it safe to take you out into the company of society?”
He smiled, the first display of emotion I’d seen that morning, and when he spoke his voice was almost back to normal. “Good old Speed. I’m not sure how I’d manage without you. Yes, let’s be off.”
These Honored Dead Page 18
