MacDougall saw the amused glint in Marsden’s eyes and settled, of a sudden, sensing the uselessness of defending himself, or of opening old wounds.
“An’ now ye’ve none t’blame for Mr Harry’s murther, sae ye seek a likely scapegoat, ‘fore th’ other folk come after ye!” Eachan MacDougall almost sing-songed in weary derision. “I ‘spect no less … from an Englishman! Truth bedamned,justice bedamned, for thayr’s not a drop of either in ye!”
“Ye make it sound too convenient, MacDougall.” Marsden chuckled as if the Scot’s outburst was an amusing Punch &Judy show. “‘Twere it that easy, why’d we not come after ye weeks ago? We have evidence of it, now, though. I know why ye killed him, an’ I have proof!”
“Och, ye do not!” MacDougall sneered. “Murther Tresmayne? Why, I’d’ve voted for th’ man, did ye skelpin’, purse-proud bastards e’er let a puir, honest man such as me hae th’ right t’vote! Why would I kill him?”
“Your daughter, Biddy, made a dress for Mistress Anne Moore,” the magistrate stated, changing tack suddenly. “A pearly gray gown, with lots of royal-blue satin ribbon flounces and such?”
“Aye, I s’pose,” MacDougall answered, confused by such a question. “She sews for lots o’ th’ Quality th’ last year or sae.”
“You recall it?” Marsden pressed.
“Can’t say that I do, she does sae many. Why? What’s that… ?”
“There’s some say there’s a likely lass, lives down the Belville Trace,” Marsden went on, leaning back at ease, one leg crossed over the opposite knee, “a very obligin lassie. Got th’ round heels …” He smirked, shifting his quid. “Obligin’ to Quality men like Harry …”
“Damn ye!” MacDougall screeched, bursting from his chair in a leap for Marsden’s throat. The chair, round which his chains had been wound, and both soldiers, followed him to drag him down. “’tis nae ma Biddy, that slutty girl! Say nae more, or I’ll rip yair lyin’ tongue out. I’ll hae yair heart’s blood, ye … get off me!” he wailed as he was swamped under to the floor, one soldier striking him on the skull with his brass-footed musket butt. “Nae ma Biddy, nae ma girl … !” he cried, muffled, from beneath the pile. “’tis a lie, I tell ye!”
“I say she is,” Mr Marsden continued as if nothing could shift him from his comfortable chair, as if nothing had happened. “An’ I say that Harry Tresmayne was one of her … customers. Met Biddy when she came to town with Anne Moore’s new gown, an’ started puttin’ th’ leg over her, an’ that sent ye daft. Ye saw how they sent nosegays, an’ such, wrapped in that ribbon whene’er they wanted more o’ th’ blanket-hornpipe, an’ ye finally sent him one, yourself, lured him out to th’ Masonborough Road an’ shot him down like a dog.”
“Nae!” MacDougall whuffled past a split lip as the guards slung him back onto his uprighted chair.
“Sent him oleander blooms, night o’ Quarterly Assizes,” Marsden further accused, “bound in a hank o’ blue ribbon ye filched from your girl’s sewin’ box, so he’d know it…”
“Ne’er!” MacDougall cried. “I dinna ken what yair sayin’, ma Biddy’s pure as snow! “lis nae ma girl a’whorin’, that’s that tenant Perry girl, on Belleville Plantation… !”
“You’d murder to protect her, though, MacDougall. We just got proof o’ that!” Marsden snapped austerely. “Ye’ve killed before … in Scotland, so th’ tale goes. A murder or two up-river’s what drove ye t’Wilmington, too, I’d guess. Any missin’ neighbors, MacDougall?”
“Thayr’s ne’er!” MacDougall snapped. “In Scotland, ah …”
“There ye see him, Livesey,” Marsden sneered, turning his head to spit. “There’s yer friend’s murderer, sure as Fate.”
But it was Mr Marsden who received Matthew Livesey’s queasy stare, for the way he’d gone after MacDougall so brutally. He sensed that MacDougall had a point, about the urgent need for a convenient scapegoat.
“Livesey,” MacDougall croaked, dry-throated, glowering at him with hatred. “I heard better of ye, man. When yair lass come t’see Biddy, ‘twoz t’spy for ye, woz eet?”
“I did nothing of the kind, Mr MacDougall,” Livesey rushed to declare, feeling greasy to be associated with this sort of questioning, to be tied, somehow, to a rush tojustice, and with the accusation that he’d been a willing participant in a framing. “’twas Bess, well … Harry Tresmayne was her adoptive uncle, and his death tried her sore, so she, on her own, d’ye see…
“Och, save yair wind,” MacDougall spat. “I can see yair shame as plain as anythin’, an’ bedamn t’ye.”
“Why not confess, an’ spare us bags o’ trouble?” Marsden asked.
“I canna confess t’somethin’ I dinna do,” MacDougall said as a trickle of blood escaped his nose from his pounding. “An’ I won’t!”
“The gown, the ribbon, the rumors …” Livesey said. “Surely you must see, with your intemperance into the bargain, how it looks, Mr MacDougall. Your daughter made the gown for Anne Moore. We’ve found it, and there’s ribbon and lace trim missing from it, ribbon and lace of the very sort used to bind a bouquet found near where Harry was killed! Biddy still had some of that ribbon in her sewing box. What else must the magistrate think?”
“He’ll think what he likes, damn his blood,” MacDougall sniffed, raising one hand with a clank to wipe his nose. “His mind’s made up, a’ready, that I’m t’hang, nae matter what I say.”
“Mr MacDougall … do you own a pair of riding boots? Or a saddle horse?” Livesey asked, of a sudden. “A coaching gun?”
“What? Boots?” MacDougall scoffed, trying to raise a foot despite his chains. “Thayr’s ma best shoes, man, an’ puir work they be, I tell ye. Boots’re for folk wi’ horses, an’ I’ve nought but ain plowin’ mule, Cumberland. I work—I work an’ walk—barefooted, as anyone’d tell ye, did ye e’er bother t’ask feerst!”
“And you never ride your mule to town?” Livesey continued.
“Cumberland, he’s a guid worker, but he’ll hae naebody on his back, not e’en Biddy, sweet as she is with him,” MacDougall answered, his confused look back on his face—a match to Marsden’s. “I ne’er learned t’ride. ‘Twoz but th’ high folk back in Scotland could afford t’feed a horse, an’ we woz puir crofters. Why, some years, twa sheep woulda starved tat death on th’ braes we farmed!”
“And what firearms or weapons do you own?” Livesey went on.
“I’ve an auld musket frae th’ militia arsenal, ma granddad’s claymore … a skean dubh for ma stockin’ top, an auld dagger come down frae ma fam’ly,” MacDougall slowly itemized, still dazed by the blow to his head, most-like. “No fowlin’ gun, nor coachin’ gun, neither.”
“Why ‘Cumberland’?” Mr Marsden demanded, his head cocked over to one side in puzzlement. “Wasn’t the Duke o’ Cumberland th’ one who beat ye Scots so bad at Culloden?”
“‘Coz, now an’ ageen, I hae t’beat Cumberland tae make him work!” MacDougall shot back, slyly amused. “He’s English, ye know.”
“Ah, Culloden!” Mr Marsden drawled, almost happy-sounding. “I s’pose ye slew English soldiers by th’ score, did ye, MacDougall? Or did ye run like a rabbit? Heard-tell ye’re rumored to’ve slain yer own clan lord’s son. What was th’ matter, did he get in yer way when ye all skedaddled?”
Surprisingly, MacDougall didn’t fire back defiance, but lowered his head and turned red as a ripe cherry, gulping down anger, or indignation. He strained against his bindings for a second, then slumped with a defeated clanking sound.
“Slew yer own wife into the bargain, hey?” Marsden intimated. “She get in yer way, too, hey?”
“Now, that’s a damned lie!” MacDougall roared, stung to wrath again, held down from a new attack by the soldiers’ hands atop his shoulders. “I dinna kill ma Rosie; she woz dead, a’ready, a’fore we marched awa’ tae Culloden, that sonofa … !” And, incredibly, tears began to flow from that hard-handed man’s eyes, making Livesey squirm with embarrassment again.
“Really, Mr Marsden, why … ?” he asked, but was cut off by an angry glare from the magistrate, and a finger against that worthy’s lips to sign him to keep mum a bit longer.
“Ye did kill yer lord’s son?” Marsden demanded. “A man who’d kill once’d kill again. Th’ son o’ th’ man ye swore Bible-oath to … it doesn’t get more shameful for a Scot than that, does it, hey?”
“Aye,” MacDougall barely was able to say. “I killed him. But I hae guid reason t’kill him! Donald MacDougall. Youngest son o’ The MacDougall, ol’ Bruce Hammerhand, his ain self. Aye, I killed Donald. But I ne’er slew ma wife, for that woz Donald’s doin’. An’ I ne’er slew Mr Harry Tresmayne, neither.”
“Why?” Livesey had to ask, distastefully fascinated by being in the same room for the first time in his life with one who’d actually committed a murder.
“‘Coz Donald forced ma Rosie, an’ hae his way with her ‘gainst her will,” MacDougall snarled, angry even after all the years since.
“So you say,” Mr Marsden goaded, though it didn’t sound as if his heart was in it—unlike the goading and taunting that Livesey now understood as a way to row the short-tempered MacDougall beyond all temperance, and get him to blurt out his sins.
“Donald woz a bonny lad, coulda had any lass. Did, Gawd help his black soul,” Eachan MacDougall snuffled in weary recollection of the old times. “E’en Edinborough’s colleges weren’t guid enoo for him, nae, he woz sent tae Oxford … an English school,” he scoffed. “Flick o’ his cloak, a smile or twa, an’ ev’ry lass in th’ country’d lift her skirts. Then, though … he clap eyes on ma Rosie. Hae ye seen ma Biddy, Mr Livesey?”
“I must confess that I have not, sir,” Matthew replied.
“Yair girl can tell ye, Biddy’s th’ very spittin’ image of ma Rosie,” MacDougall said with a certain air of wistfulness. “Biddy’s e’en ‘bout th’ same age as Rosie woz, then, too. We were puir folk, like I said. Ne’er gae t’gatherin’s much, nor gae t’town, ‘cept for tradin’ what little wool or barley we raised. Th’ Risin’, though … th’ gatherin’ o’ th’ clan afore Culloden. I had to gae t’that, ‘twoz ma duty to Th’ MacDougall, d’ye see.
“Rosie’s mother was a widow-woman, year o’ th’ ’45, nearby th’ gatherin’ glen, sae we went t’her croft, an’ drove our sheep an’ cow thayr fer safekeepin’. Rosie an’ I, we went tae th’ camps just so she could see eet,” MacDougall muttered, with his head thrown back to one side, as if bemused, or seeing it all over again. “She woz t’bide with her mother, did things get rough, but … Donald saw us, an’ Gawd, but what a fash he made over me, like I woz a newborn Willie Wallace, when he dinna ken me from Adam, b’fore! Made me a sergeant, bade me eat at his elbow with th’ high folk, an’ ev’nin’s, when they woz music an’ dancin’, Donald made sure he danced th’ once each night wi’ Rosie, praisin’ me to th’ skies. Presented us both tae Th’ MacDougall, guid as any in th’ Highlands. Biddy woz a’ready born, d’ye see, nursin’ still. Left her at Rosie’s mother’s most ev’nin’s. Th’ last night, ‘fore we marched awa’ t’war, though …”
MacDougall’s ancient rage resurfaced, as the old scabs on his heart were ripped off.
“Posts me sentinel, he did, th’ lyin’ bastard! ‘Eachan, lad, I ken that I can count on ye t’keep th’ camp safe,’ he says! An’ like a fool, I stood ma post. Och, but it come over me somethin’ hellish t’be wi’ Rosiejust ain mair time, so I slunk awa’, nae matter I woz a trusted sergeant, nae matter if they flayed me on a cartwheel for’t!
“I got tae her mother’s croft…” He shuddered as he recalled the worst, raising Livesey’s hackles in dread of what the man had yet to say. “Donald’s been an’ gone, wi’ a tale o’ me bein’ hurt sinful-bad in camp, an’ rode Rosie off on his horse. Her mother’s a’wailin’ banshee-like, like I woz a’ready dead.
I’d not gaed by road, lest I woz spotted, but I run th’ road back t’camp. An’ ‘twoz on th’ roadside I found her, all busted up inside ‘coz she’d fechted him guid as she could, but it weren’t guid enough, an’ he’d beaten her down so he could hae her. Said he couldna ride off without he had her. An’ so he did.”
“Dear Lord,” Mr Livesey whispered in horror.
“Dumped her near th’ roadway,” MacDougall told them, rocking back and forth on his chair, his hands clasped white together. “Got her lifted up, t’carry her tae her mother’s, but halfway thayr, she … she passed over an’ went limp in mah arms, sirs. Time I got her home, she woz turnin’ cold a’ready. Raped an’ killed th’ wife of an oath-sworn man, ain o’ them he woz bairn tae, sworn tae protect, hisself! A bastard Donald woz, nae matter he was t’be th’ laird I woz sworn t’follow. An’ he done eet with nae muir feelin’ than crackin’ a louse!”
“So, ye killed him that very night?” Marsden asked. Gently.
“Och, nae!” MacDougall said in a rasp. “I went back tae camp an’ took up ma post, ‘coz I couldna catch him alone, not without a mount o’ ma own. Twa days … twa days an’ nights, I bided ma time. An’ all those twa days, Donald’s twittin’ me,japin’ how bonny it’d be tae come home t’such a fine lass as Rosie, such a fine fam’ly, all victorious, an’ how gladsome they’d be for me t’be a hero, th’ damned hound!”
Officers! Livesey thought one of the soldiers guarding Eachan MacDougall mouthed quietly to himself, in disgust.
“Nicht afore th’ battle o’ Culloden, I crept in his tent when he woz sleepin’,” MacDougall confessed in a harsh whisper which held everyone hanging on his every sibilance. “Och, how I wished tae wake th’ dog an’ ‘front him, wanted tae make him suffer just a wee bit … ! Know why he woz dyin’, an’ who done eet, but… I had Biddy t’fash about, so … I cut his throat as he slept, an’ took his … what th’ sailors call his ‘weddin’ tackle,’ an’ left ’em on his breast, sae The MacDougall’d know why eet woz done. An’ then I scarpered.”
“So, you weren’t really at the battle of Culloden?” Livesey asked in amazement over such a fell deed, no matter thejustification.
“Nae, I wozn’t,” MacDougall said, finding that fact more shameful than slaying a rapist and murderer, “an’ thank Gawd I wasn’t, for I heard about it later. Wouldna mattered tae th’ English soldiers if I woz or nae, for they were slayin’ any puir Scot, caught under arms or not. Th’ slaughter they did at Culloden ainly whetted thayr appetite, like. I went home an’ fetched Biddy an’ her gran, saw Rosie to th’ ground proper, then snuck down tae Loch Linnhe an’ Fort William. ‘Twoz thayr I give me Bible-oath t’King George. Took a boat down tae Glasgow, then th’ feerst ship tae th’ Colonies, it dinna matter which. Ended here,” he tiredly concluded.
“If someone raped yer daughter then, MacDougall,” Mr Marsden mused after a long, uneasy silence. “If a rich, powerful manjust took advantage o her, turned her head to have his way with her … wouldn’t ye kill that man, too?”
MacDougall cocked his head to puzzle on it, sucking on a tooth for a moment, then answered him direct. “Ye brought me here t’hear th’ truth, sae here eet is, yer honor. Gawd save me, but I probably would. But thayr’s nae man messed with Biddy, I tell ye. She’s pure, nae matter she’s a puir girl. I raised her right, an’ kept ma eyes on her an’ ev’ry man who come around. Fer s&ixt&m-sure Harry Tresmayne ne’er laid a finger on her, so I’d nae reason tae murder him. And so I dinna!”
“Ye came into Wilmington durin’ Assizes?” Marsden puzzled.
“I did not! Too busy ferryin’ others who did. Kept th’ boat workin’ ‘til lang after dark. T’other ferry hands’ll tell ye that … tavern keeper t’other side o’ th’ Brunswick’ll tell ye th’ same. I’ve ne’er cared for towns, ‘specially when thayr sae mobbed. Ask me that b’fore, ye’d ken I’m not yair murderer.”
Squit! was Mr Marsden’s reply to that, as he leaned over his spitkid to release ajuicy dollop.
“We’re gonna keep ye a while longer, MacDougall,” Mr Marsden announced, unable to look the man in the eyes, and fiddling with th
e desk’s inkwell and pen tray for a moment. “We let ye out now, with the townfolk thinkin’ that ye did it, they’d lynch ye in a trice, so… think of it as fer yer own good, hey? Got others to question … see if yer tale hangs together. Mind now, my man … I catch ye in a lie an’ there’ll be Hell to pay. Noose’d be too good fer th’ man who killed Harry Tresmayne. Corporal, put this feller in cells.”
“Sir!” the soldier said, snapping to attention before hefting MacDougall to his feet and steering him roughly out.
“Poor man,” Livesey sighed once the door was shut. “He never remarried, after. Lest someone rich and powerful take the next wife away from him. To avoid losing a second woman to another, even in …”
“That why ye haven’t remarried, Livesey?” Marsden asked with a wry chuckle as he shot his cuffs, fiddled with his lacy shirt front. “Or … is it because ye cherished th’ first’un so much, ye can’t imagine a replacement?”
“Ahum, I,ah…!” Liveseyblushed, stammering to silence.
“My wife is a dumplin’, Livesey,” Marsden said with a sly grin. “An’ a chirpy ol’ hen, vexsome as she can be sometimes. But I can’t imagine tradin’ her in, for a shipload o’ silver. An’ I do expect our MacDougall still feels th’ same way about his long-dead Rosie. An’ … with his daughter, Biddy, so much her mother’s spittin’ image, well … it’d seem logical t’think he’d kill to protect her from th’ same fate. Rumor is, someone was courtin’ her. Doesn’t mean it was Harry.”
“So, you don’t think he’s guilty?” Livesey marveled, all asea. “Then why did you go at him so…!”
“In the first place, no I don’t,” Marsden confessed, cackling at Livesey’s stricken astonishment. “But I had to question him, fer he’s th’ likeliest, at first glance. An’… ponder this for a bit, Mr Livesey,” Marsden said, tapping the side of his nose, winking as if amusing his grandchildren. “Wouldn’t th’ real killer be over th’ moon t’think that a very plausible suspect had already been slung in cells an’ hard-questioned? Hmmm?”
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 24
