“But the way you went at him, sir, wasn’t thatjust a…?”
“Lord, Livesey!” Marsden hooted as he rose from his chair and paced about, all but prancing. “Lookee here, man. We got ourselves a crime o’ passion, an’ most times, th’ hot blood that led to it’s not quenched yet. A murder ain’t like a bucket o’ well water! Nine times outta ten, ye rowel ’em with spurs on, ye stir up that unslaked passion an’ shake ’em to their very bones. Takes a clever, cold-blooded sort t’play th’ game back. MacDougall, he ain’t clever.”
“But what if the real murderer is, sir!” Livesey demanded of him. “We’ll have stirred up the whole town, and be no closer to solving this. MacDougall might go on trial for lack of a better, and we would never know who did it?”
“Oh, we’ll crack this nut, Livesey; we’ll get to th’ meat, ye mark my words,” the wiry old magistrate said with a smirk. “So. We got Osgoode an’ Anne Moore coolin’ their heels outside. I’ll confess th’ evidence ye found points closer t’their stoop than MacDougall’s. Which first, d’ye reckon? He or she? Could ve been a woman done it, ye know, sir. Or had it done to cover her whorin’ tracks.”
“Osgoode,” Livesey announced, then thought deeper, chewing on his thumbnail for a second. “No. Anne, first. Set the scene with her, so when we do question Osgoode, we might have proof of her and Harry having an affair with which to confront him—if affair there was, though I can not fathom a reason why she was so eager to dispose of this gown,” he said, waving a hand at the wrapped bundle residing on a large side table, “unless there was,” he concluded. “And you intend to ah … shake her to her very bones, Mr Marsden?”
“Damme, but yer a quick’un, no error, Mr Livesey,” the magistrate cackled again, returning to his desk and his spitkid.
Squit!
Chapter 28
MRS ANNE MOORE required no manacles, nor escorting soldiers, either. She was shown into the magistrate’s office with dignity and decorum—almost primly dressed in a sky-blue and white morning gown, sprigged with embroidered pink roses, highlighted with maroon ribbons. Her color, and her nose, were high, though.
“Pray, do be seated, Miz Moore,” Mr Marsden bade, indicating the ladderback chair, onto which she gracefully swished, though with an impatient flounce or two.
“Mr Marsden!” Mrs Moore snapped. “I wish to lodge a most vehement complaint of your high-handed actions. The very idea of you suspending civil law, arresting innocent Crown subjects upon unfounded charges, exposing them to public ridicule. To frog-march people from their homes, to invade their private residences … As if Osgoode or I could have had anything to do with …!”
“Soundsjust like Osgoode when he’s on a righteous tear, don’t she, Mr Livesey?” Marsden asked with a wry wink. “Humors high, feathers ruffed out, an’ flappin’ like a cock-partridge. Ye do that some better than Osgoode, though, Miz Moore, I must avow.”
“Sir!” she cried at his easy contempt. “I reiterate that—”
“Osgoode tutor ye t’spout all that? Guess he would, him bein’ a lawyer, an’ all.” Marsden all but cackled in snide amusement.
“I need no lessons from my husband to express my outrage over being … ravished by that crude Captain Buckles and his low brutes. They practically smashed into my home, my bedchamber, and dragooned me … nearly man-handled me. Ogled, as I was ordered to dress, then marched here ‘twixt armed men …”
“Shouldn’t think that’s anythin’ new to ye,” Marsden smirked. “What? Oh, how dare you!” Mrs Moore screeched in disgust. “So many men besides Harry Tresmayne ye were tuppin’, there’s sure t’been some danced ye round rough before, an’ saw ye undressed.”
Anne Moore reeled back in her chair, her high color paling for a second to blanched white. “Mr Marsden!” she shot back, though. “Never have I been subjected to such vile calumny. I thought you to be a gentleman, above such filthy speech and low behavior, but you reveal yourself as being as low and common as … him!” she accused, casting a brief, furious glance at Livesey. “A magistrate cannot—”
Dirty tradesman, am I,you… ! Livesey angrily thought.
“First of all, Miz Moore,” Marsden confided, after he leaned over to spit, “a magistrate can do pretty-much whatever he wants. We ain’t in a law court. Call it an inquest, if ye must. English Common Law lets me conduct my bus’ness any way I see fit… arrest anybody I suspect, hold ’em ‘til Hell freezes over, put th’ screws to ’em ‘til I get th’ truth. Prisoners only got th’ rights I say they’ve got. If I d’termine ye’re t’stand trial, I don’t even have t’show ye witness lists nor evidence, even let ye have a barrister ‘til trial day.”
Marsden chewed for a moment, spat into his kid, and let all of that sink in for a second or two, before continuing.
“Bein a lawyer’s wife, I’da thought ye’d know that,” he said. “Ah, Osgoode must’ve got ye confused, rantin’ how he’d like things to be, did him and his Levellers ever get charge o’ th’ courts … but that ain’t th’ way things work round here, now! Ye’re here to answer questions ‘bout a murder, woman. And ye’d best answer straight, or it might be a woman hanged!”
Mrs Anne Moore compressed her lips, and pinched her high-nosed nostrils so snug it was a wonder she could breathe; but they could hear her do so in deep, angry surges, watch her chest heave. Blushy spots of color appeared on her cheeks and brow.
“Now, here’s what I say happened, Miz Moore,” the magistrate almost blandly began to lay out. “We say pore ol’ dead Harry was your lover … yeah, yeah we do! Can’t think why ye wished t’put cuckold’s horns on a feller like Osgoode. Vexsome as he is, he’s a good, decent man. We got th’ evidence, we got ye dead to rights, so ye might save us th’ trouble an’ come clean about it.”
“I do not know what you mean … sir!” Mrs Moore retorted, her initial shock over, and her anger becoming the slow, simmering variety. “You use me as ill as so many … bears! I will not sit here and—”
“Yeah, ye will, if it takes chains an’ a couple o’ soldiers to hold ye down,” Marsden informed her, unimpressed by her arch attitude. “Damme!” he said, scratching under his periwig for a moment. “Here it is nigh on eleven, an’ Captain Buckles fetched ye th’ better part of an hour ago. Rousted ye from yer bed, did they? What’s a homemaker woman doin, lollin’ round in her bed that late in th’ mornin’ anyhow? Yer womenfolk ever lollygag a’bed so late, Mr Livesey?”
“Never, your honor,” Livesey told him with genuine surprise, and the slightest sense of … revulsion. Perhaps it was envy, Livesey could imagine—or general disgust for Anne Moore. Such idleness perturbed his rock-ribbed Presbyterian soul.
“Mine, neither,” Marsden said with a mystified shake of his head and all but a clucking tsk-tsk. “It is yer custom to lollygag, ma’am?”
“If you must know, Mr Marsden, gentlefolk of means do not have to rise at the first cock’s crow,” Mrs Moore replied, sneering a little. “One takes tea or chocolate a’bed, with toast or rusks. In cultured Society, one may even receive in one’s private chambers.”
“Other hens of yer acquaintance come callin’ whilst ye’re still horizontal? “ Marsden pretended to goggle with wonder. “Never heard th’ like. Ye did such back in Williamsburg, down to Charleston, New Bern?”
“As one would in London or Paris.” Mrs Moore all but simpered over their lack of true culture. “And in all innocence.”
“Gotta understand, Livesey,” Marsden said, turning to look at him for a second, “Miz Moore’s been schooled an’ bred in Virginia an’ South Carolina, then fated t’reside between, in th’ last-settled, raw piney woods. Compared t’them two places, North Carolina’s a dark vale o’ humility, set down ‘twixt two towerin’ mountains o’ conceit! So … Miz Moore. Might a lady even receive men callers like that?”
“With proper circumspection, yes, of course,” she cooed back.
“Hmmf!” was Livesey’s comment.
“Or, with a power o circumspection … a
n’ care as t’when yer husband’s away, I s’pose a lady could do a lot o’ receivin’, hmm?” Mr Marsden sneered.
“Ever receive HarryTresmayne in yer bedchamber, did ye?”
“I most certainly—”
“I can have yer servants in an’ put ’em to a Bible-oath in th’ Slave Court if I have to,” Marsden cautioned her. “Fear of a master’s beatin’ is nothin’ compared t’hangin’ for false witness. Was Harry a caller in yer bedchamber, Miz Moore?”
“Yes,” Anne Moore angrily had to confess with a spiteful hiss. “But he called on both Osgoode and me, many times, and—”
“Ever call on ye, alone, when Osgoode was out an’ about? With yer door shut?” Marsden pressed.
“I… he might have, I cannot recall, he was a frequent—”
“Stay long, did he?” Marsden probed, looking off at the bookcases as if he already knew the answer.
“Occasionally,” she finally allowed. “But it was only to chat, to gossip, nothing more, and I resent—”
“Yeah yeah, we know.” Marsden waved off with a weary tone. “So when Osgoode rode away on faction or law bus’ness—Brunswick, New Bern or Duplin—when Osgoode was away fer th’ night … did Harry ever come callin’? Say on a night when he slept in town, too, ‘stead o’ ridin’ back to Tuscarora and his wife, Georgina?”
“Harry Tresmayne, sir, was a dear friend, that was all, I tell you!” Mrs Moore spat. “He might have supped with me, but he slept in his own bed. Really, sir, to accuse me of…!I cannot bear it!”
And, quite fetchingly and piteously, Anne Moore dug a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes, lowering her face and gaze, her shoulders beginning to heave.
“Let’s have it out, Livesey, ifye’dbe so kind?” Mr Marsden bade, pointing to the bundle on the side table, still wrapped enigmatically in its sailcloth.
Livesey fetched the bundle and laid it on the desk, eyeing Mrs Moore as he did so, noting how she shifted her head and peeked ‘twixt her fingers, taking a furtive, wary look despite her “tears.”
“We’d admire did ye take a squint at this, Miz Moore,” Marsden said.
“A moment, please, sir!” she moaned, as if wracked by grief or insult beyond all civilized custom.
“Now, woman! Look at it!” Marsden bellowed, flicking the sailcloth open to reveal the light-gray gown.
Mrs Moore raised her head and sat up, glaring utter scorn at them, before lowering her eyes to the bundle.
If they expected a gasp or a cry, they were disappointed, for Mrs Moore merely lifted a corner of her mouth in a wry grin, as if it didn’t really signify anything to her—though her outraged “tears” had evaporated too quickly for credence.
“Your gown, Miz Moore,” Marsden accused.
“Why, yes it is,” she archly replied. “I cast it out, just last evening.” A cleverer smile crept over her features as she lazily cooed on, “I do believe someone’s pored over my trash. What ofit, sir?”
“Tell her, Livesey,” Marsden snapped.
“Uhm, of course, sir,” Livesey agreed, though his mind went as blank as new stationery, and he wished he could damn Marsden for putting the onus on him, without the slightest warning or fore-planning. “It is your gown, you admit, Mistress Moore.”
“Have I not said it, Mr Livesey?” she drawled back.
“Odd, that,” Livesey said, pacing clumsily whilst striving for words, a thread of cogent probing. “This gown had been in your possession for nigh a year, or so? Recall, do you, ma’am, when you had it made and who did the making?”
“A year or so, yes, Mr Livesey.” Anne Moore seemed to dither and pore over her memories. “The exact date I cannot recall. Nor can I bring to mind the seamstress. Someone ‘cross the river, I think.”
“BiddyMacDougall, was it not?” Livesey asked.
“Perhaps,” Mrs Moore allowed, with a wary, helpless shrug.
“And when was the last time you wore it?” Livesey further asked.
“Dear me … nearly a year ago, I’d think,” she answered, with a flutter of her lashes and her hands, as if such specificity could not be demanded of a “mere woman” like her. “That quite escapes me, too.”
Flirtatious with me? Livesey silently fumed; Hussy!
“‘Cause my wife showed up in church in a new gown similar,” Mr Marsden growled, supplying thankful aid to Livesey’s pursuits. “‘Bout a year ago, aye. We could see yer face flamin’, Miz Moore, soon as ye clapped eyes on her.”
“As you say, Mr Marsden.” Mrs Moore actually had the nerve to chuckle in agreement. “Much too similar.”
“So it’s spent the last year entire in the back of your chifforobe, the bottom of a chest, and you only thought to discard it last night, Mistress Moore?” Livesey demanded.
“I’d quite forgotten its presence ‘til then, sir,” she replied.
“Biddy MacDougall surely did make it for you,” Livesey told her. “Four or five trips ‘cross the river she made, each time you demanding more flounces and fripperies, a matching hat, before you thought it was grand enough … and then you cheated her. I fear the young lady wasn’t the least bit complimentary of you, ma’am. Mistress MacDougall thinks herself ill-used.”
“What hired help of low estate thinks doesn’t signify,” Mistress Moore archly sniffed. “Does she wish half a crown more for her shoddy handiwork, then let her demand it herself.”
“How odd, though, ma’am,” Livesey pointed out, his temper awake and his blood hot, “that we see so few of the fripperies you demanded she add … lots of this pale gray lace gone, most of this ribbon … a particularly costly royal-blue satin ribbon!”
“One trims invitations … one adorns wrapped gifts, sir,” Mrs Moore rejoined, crossing her legs and shifting on the hard chair, as if bored. “Surely, the way I manage my housewifery—”
“Binds bouquets of flowers, too, ma’am?” Livesey shrewdly coaxed. And was elated to see her stiffen her spine and lift her brows in seeming puzzlement, at last!
“Constable Swann and I speculated whether ’twas the color of the ribbon, or the variety of flowers sent, that conveyed your secret messages to Harry,” Livesey finally dared to pose, rankled by her calm and derisive shams. “Was it the number of bows you tied, the choice of a lace binding or ribbon, that denoted when or where, ma’am?”
No response, merely a taut and wary glint; pent breath, but…
“We’d also like you to look at this, Mistress Moore,” Livesey snapped, feeling as ifhe was playing his last, poor, hole-card, with the fingers of one hand almost crossed to make it claim the trick, as he went back to the sailcloth bundle and fetched out the rotting, wilted bouquet.
Gotyou, by… Ihe crowed to himself, to see her start.
Anne Moore’s cool demeanor shattered in a single inrushed gasp of air and sudden blotches of red on her cheeks. She could not have acted more frightened at the production of a copperhead snake!
“This was found near where Harry was murdered,” Livesey roared, actually bellowed, deciding it was time to take a page from the magistrate’s book and go all-in. “Note the blue satin ribbon, the same as came off your gown, ma’am! The same as Biddy MacDougall used when she made the gown—her remaining snippets, your gown, and this bouquet all of a perfect piece, not found anywhere else in the Cape Fear. We looked, Mistress Moore! You threaded it off, to send bouquets which conveyed your and Harry’s private code. This bouquet lured Harry to his death … to that private forest glade of yours beside the Masonborough Road! Under that tall pine in the center of the glade we’ve found tufts of blanket wool, your shoe prints, the scuff marks of … your exuberance. Did you bring the blanket, too, Mistress Moore? Or was that Harry’s duty? Your entrance to the glade was off the Wrightsville Road, his off the Masonborough, hmm? So that no one would ever guess that you and Harry engaged in… congress?”
He’d extemporized a little, but whichever of his stretches had gotten to her, something had broken down her facade. Anne Moore was
now visibly quaking.
“I note this gown is torn, ma’am,” Livesey went on as his prey went even paler, her expressive mouth hanging slackly open. “A button or two missing in back, too. Look like thorn or bramble snags, to me. Or … was that more of your and Harry’s … eagerness?”
“An’ ain’t it int’restin’, Miz Moore,” Mr Marsden evilly muttered in her right ear, after ambling about the offices so casually and seemingly indifferent to Livesey’s questioning—a closeness and harshness that made herjump as he laid a hand on her shoulder, “that th’ very afternoon Bess Livesey asks ye ‘bout this gown, ye go home in a huff an’ toss it out as soon as it’s dark. ‘Fraid th’ hunt was comin’ too close, did ye, woman? Figured ye’d keep it as a memento of Harry, ‘til somebody come near learnin’ yer secret? Tarnation, ye high-nose whore! Did ye think ye’d hide for-ni-catin on th’ sly in a place as small as Wilmington forever? Shamin’ Osgoode … shamin’ Georgina! Yer own fam’ly’s good name an’ honor? Ye think yerself too elevated t’get caught? Well, ye’re caught now, woman. Your a-dul-tery … your fuckin … got HarryTresmayne D-E-A-D, dead!”
“No!” Anne Moore screamed, drawing up her legs, shying down in her chair with her hands over her ears. “I didn’t! I didn’t send him any … not that night! I… !” She gulped, on the edge of swooning, and almost thrashing in terror. “I loved Harry. He …! Wasn’t me!”
“Th’ Hell it wasn’t!” the magistrate barked, so close that his quid left tiny splatter marks on her morning gown. “He get tired of ye? Feared Georgina’d found ye both out? Did ye hire someone t’kill him that night, told ’em right where he’d be, for spite?”
Anne Moore’s only answer was a fevered whine.
“The ribbon, the lace …” Livesey snapped, close to her left ear, dissatisfied and puzzled. “The ribbon meant the glade off the Masonborough Road?”
“It did, but I didn’t send it, not that night, no no no!”
“The lace meant…?” Livesey pressed.
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 25
