by Merry Farmer
His deep-seated belief that something else had to be going on could only be ignored for so long. As soon as he’d finished the initial work he promised to Jason for the hotel, he shut the forge down for the day and marched off to the center of the mystery.
For all the secrets it held, Grasmere was like any other small town. Its residents were comfortable in themselves and their world, but not particularly likely to stop a stranger on the street to tell him every bit of the latest gossip. If he was going to solve this riddle, he needed to start with the source of the scant knowledge he had.
Curt Albright owned a modest garden store at the opposite end of town. It was as unassuming as the man himself. The storefront was open and cheery, with window-boxes full of blossoms out front to advertise the products and expertise inside. The front of the store was crowded with farming men and middle-class ladies searching for just the bloom to round out their gardens or the latest fertilizers or concoctions to kill bugs. The back and much larger section of the store was a greenhouse. The rows of raised beds in the greenhouse contained pallets of freshly blooming flowers and verdant greenery of ever kind. It was also where Lawrence found Albright.
“Lawrence Smith?” Albright exclaimed in surprise, looking up from where he was consulting with an elderly woman over violets. “As I live and breathe. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I thought I’d come for a visit,” Lawrence said, smiling and nodding at the customer.
The woman took one look at him and blushed, a level of appreciation that only a feisty older woman who no longer cared what others thought of her could manage.
“Mrs. Walston, this is a young protégé of mine, Mr. Lawrence Smith. He is a blacksmith in Brynthwaite,” Albright introduced him.
“What a pity Brynthwaite is so far away,” she answered, then moved on to look at plants, chuckling to herself.
“She’s a firebrand, that one,” Albright said with a smile. “What brings you here so unexpectedly?”
Lawrence checked to be sure none of the customers were within hearing. “To be honest, sir, I haven’t been able to forget what you told me at Jason’s hotel opening.”
“Ah,” Albright nodded in understanding. “About Mathilda Wright?”
“Exactly.” He stepped closer. “I need to know more. The things you told me don’t fit with what I know about my Matty, but the coincidences are too strong to dismiss the story outright.”
“I see.”
Across the row of plants, a middle-aged man eyed Lawrence with a little too much curiosity. He had come close enough to overhear whatever was said. Lawrence cleared his throat and made a show of looking at a display of potted geraniums further down the row. Albright followed him.
“I wish I had time to discuss it with you in depth,” Albright began, “but as you can see, the shop is quite busy today. Grasmere’s annual June garden display is only a few weeks away, and there is some urgency on the part of the townspeople to purchase plants to get the edge.”
“Must be good for you.” Lawrence grinned, thumping his friend and mentor’s back.
“It keeps me in woolens through the winter,” Albright confirmed. He shifted, peeking around Lawrence to be sure the middle-aged man wasn’t listening. “I can’t visit with you right this minute, but I will be taking a break for tea in an hour or so. In the meantime, if it means that much to you, you may want to investigate Hoag’s store, down the road.”
“Hoag?” Lawrence asked.
Albright nodded. “Trevor Hoag. He was Mathilda Wright’s mother’s husband.”
“Not her father, though?”
“No, though the deceased woman and Hoag do have a set of children of their own. Hoag owns a general supply store. He has been indisposed for several weeks, since the unfortunate events, but he has returned to work this past week.”
Albright paused. A noisy trio of young women had entered the greenhouse. One of them made mention of Albright, and the group were already pushing their way down the rows of plants and customers on their way to seeking him out.
“Be careful of what you say around Hoag,” Albright gave him one last bit of advice. “Mysteries aside, I never did like or trust him. Folks say the unfortunate events have left him a might touched.”
“Duly noted.” Lawrence nodded.
“Oh, Mr. Albright, you simply must help me win the garden competition,” one of the trio bounded down on Albright.
With a wry grin, Lawrence left his friend to his work. If anyone could handle a gaggle of overexcited young women, it was Albright. He had made a living herding exuberant and often naughty boys and girls with no parents and therefore nothing to lose. The man was one of the few that could control him, Jason, and Marshall, which proved his powers of authority.
By the time Lawrence wound his way through the shop and back out into the street, the smile he’d worn for his fond memories of childhood had gone. Trevor Hoag. The name itself inspired a feeling of foreboding in the pit of Lawrence’s stomach. He searched up and down the main street, unwilling to ask directions, but not wanting to waste time. He chose to walk back toward the train station, and was rewarded when he crossed in front of a store with a large placard over its door bearing the single, possessive word “Hoag’s.”
The store was similar to every other general goods store Lawrence had been in. Items of all description were packed into narrow shelves with barely a semblance of order. The shop itself was dim, as displays of gardening implements and hats cluttered the windows. A handful of people perused the store’s aisles. Lawrence glanced casually at everything from buttons to soap, working his way around to the center of the store where the counter stood against one wall.
“I am so glad to see you back where you belong, Mr. Hoag,” an older woman said before Lawrence caught sight of the speaker or Mr. Hoag himself. “Such a dreadful business.”
“It was.” The answer was deep and curt.
“And your poor children,” the woman went on. “How they must have suffered.”
“They have.” Again, short, gruff, and unwelcoming.
Lawrence rounded the corner of an aisle and turned his head to the counter with as much of an appearance of casualness as he could muster. He did a double-take at the sight that met him.
The man behind the counter was in his middle years, average height, but brawny and thick-set. He was dressed like any other shopkeeper. What set him apart was the raw, ugly mess that was half his face. The man had been burned. Severely. His left eye was permanently half-shut, and his ear was little more than an angry mess of melted flesh. More than that, the man favored his left arm in such a way that Lawrence guessed that too had been burned. A hint of a bandage at his wrist confirmed the assessment. He’d seen enough burns in his forge to know that the man must have had his entire left side consumed in flames.
“And Dr. Ansel says you will make a full recovery?” the woman continued her questioning.
“Yes. The worst of it is over, though it still pains me.”
Lawrence turned away, continuing his show of browsing the store. He could see what Albright meant. Trevor Hoag wasn’t the most personable man he’d met.
“Four shillings and five,” he told the woman.
She paid, then gathered her things with a quick, “I do hope they find that wicked girl and bring her to justice.”
Lawrence caught his breath, hoping no one noticed the hitch in his shoulders.
“Any sign of her at all?” the next customer in line, a younger man, asked.
“No,” Hoag answered.
“Bloody witch,” the young man muttered.
Lawrence fought the wave of fury that washed through him. He moved along the shelf, past sacks of flower and tins of sardines to a display of bolts of fabric.
“She can’t hide forever,” Hoag said behind him.
The hair on the back of Lawrence’s neck stood up.
“Coppers seem to think she disappeared into thin air,” the young man went on.
“She must be a witch,” a much younger, female voice said.
Lawrence longed to look back over his shoulder to see how many people were involved in the conversation, but he’d retreated too far into the back of the store to look around without attracting notice.
“She don’t have no family or nuthin’ around here?” a third voice, another man, asked.
“None,” Hoag replied.
Lawrence shifted to the side, hoping to position himself at the end of a row of shelves where he could still listen without being seen. As he moved, he nearly trod on a tiny child. She couldn’t have been older than Martha Pycroft, but was on her hands and knees, rubbing weakly at the floor with a rag that was as dirty as she was. One look at Lawrence and she scrambled back, shying away as if he would strike her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lawrence assured her, but speaking to her only frightened the poor thing more. That fact boiled Lawrence’s blood. Between the poor thing’s reaction and the dirt on her face, it was clear the child was neglected and abused. He’d seen children like that come through the orphanage far too often from the time he was that age himself.
“Emily!” Hoag barked.
The tiny girl squeaked and scrambled away up the aisle.
“Stupid girl, I told you to scrub the floors. Mind yourself or you’ll see the back of my hand,” Hoag raged at her. “Go off and get your sister to help you.”
The girl scrambled away, sending Lawrence the fastest of looks before disappearing behind a curtain at the corner of the shelf beside him.
Lawrence did a poor job of hiding his anger over seeing a child mistreated. When he walked around the corner, putting him in direct sight of the counter and Hoag, Hoag spotted him and scowled.
“What are you looking at?” he asked. The burnt half of his face gave him all the appearance of a demon out of hell.
“Nothing,” Lawrence answered.
“Then buy something and be done with it.”
“I hope they catch her soon so there will be a trial,” the woman at the counter said as she paid for her purchases.
“I want to see her hang,” the third person said.
Lawrence slipped between two aisles, out of sight of the others, where he could catch his breath and compose himself. Whatever the truth was, this place, this shop, had a foul feeling to it. There was darkness in the floorboards, misery in the walls. He could feel it. And as he did, he pictured Matty the way she had looked when she had first come to him.
The took a box of matches from one of the shelves, then headed around the corner to the counter. The man who had first been talking to Hoag had left, and the woman was marching toward the door too, leaving only the other man and Hoag. Lawrence approached them with caution. It was odd that townspeople would come in to buy things and gossip with Hoag, but that they would leave so swiftly.
“Three and ten,” Hoag told the man, handing him his purchase in a paper bag.
The man paid, then said, “You’ll get your justice yet,” then turned and fled.
As Lawrence stepped up to the counter, he instantly knew what drove people away. Hoag’s burns not only gave him the appearance of melting where he stood, they smelled sharp enough to gag someone with a weak stomach.
“What is everyone talking about?” he asked, regardless of the instinct to flee that the man inspired.
Hoag stared at him. “You don’t know?”
“I’m just passing through town.”
“Then keep yourself to yourself,” Hoag snapped.
Lawrence shifted the box of matches across the table. Hoag’s good eye twitched at the sight of it and he sneered. Of course he would. Matches. Fire.
“I heard there was a murder,” Lawrence ventured, hoping he had the man at a disadvantage.
“My wife,” Hoag answered in a tone so menacing Lawrence debated leaving things where they were.
He couldn’t. Not if Matty was involved.
“Do you know who did it?”
Hoag writhed on the stool where he sat, sending a fresh wave of burning, putrefying smell into the air. “My wife’s daughter,” he said. “Tried to kill me too. Pushed me into the fire.”
Lawrence couldn’t blame Matty for that. He could easily imagine doing whatever it took to hurt the man. If there had been a confrontation, if Hoag had laid hands on Matty….
“Why would a girl kill her mother?” he asked. He’d been asking himself the same question for weeks.
Hoag was slow to answer. “What’s it to you?”
Lawrence shrugged, reaching into his pocket to pull out a few coins to pay for the matches. “Just trying to figure out why people do what they do.”
“Because she’s a selfish, vicious bitch,” Hoag snapped.
Lawrence’s temper flared hot. Nothing about Matty was selfish or vicious. The more pieces of the puzzle he was given, the less things added up.
“Did you have any indication that she was capable of murder before…before the incident?” he asked.
“She was always bickering with her ma.” Hoag moved as though he would cross his arms and glare, but stopped with a groan in mid-motion, his face going red with pain. “She would have done her ma in sooner, but I kept the bitch in her place,” he answered with a wince.
Another bolt of rage struck Lawrence. “You beat her?”
“None of your concern.”
Like hell it wasn’t. “Then no wonder she acted out against you.”
Hoag’s one good eye flared wide. “What’s it to you?”
“I hate to see women mistreated, especially innocent, kind-hearted ones,” Lawrence snapped, barely stopping himself from shouting.
Rather than exploding in fury, Hoag grew very quiet in an instant. “What do you know?” he growled.
Too late, Lawrence saw that he should have ended the conversation and left. “I know that women are precious and should be treated with care.”
Hoag was silent. Lawrence felt the pull of the front door calling him to get out.
“Where is she?” Hoag hissed at length.
Alarm pumped through Lawrence’s blood. “Who?”
“You know,” Hoag lowered his voice to a rumble.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Just passing through? Interested in gossip?” He shifted forward, leaning against the counter with his good arm. “Most folks run at the sight of me, or the smell. Gossip or no gossip. Why are you still here?”
“Believe me, sir, I’m not.” Lawrence snatched up his matches and turned to go. He marched as fast as he could through the store, drawing a curious stare from the one patron left shopping.
Once he was out on the street, he took a deep breath and let it out on a curse. Trevor Hoag was too suspicious of a total stranger to have nothing to hide. Normal men who had been the victims of scandal did not attack and assume that passing customers knew something of the whereabouts of a girl. Nothing about the encounter they’d just had sat right.
The hour Albright had told him remained until his tea was only fifteen minutes gone. Part of Lawrence wanted to flee right there, ignoring the train schedule and walking home if he had to. He couldn’t let it go without checking in on his friend one more time, though. For another forty-five minutes, he walked around Grasmere, searching for anything, listening for any bits of gossip, that would give him more of an idea of what exactly had happened the night Matty’s mother had died. His restless search turned up nothing.
“His reaction doesn’t surprise me,” Albright told him an hour later, when they were finally able to retreat to the front parlor of Albright’s house behind his shop. “His suspicion over Mathilda’s absence has reached the point of paranoia.”
“But if Mathilda is guilty, why would Hoag be so paranoid? Wouldn’t he be eager to find her and bring her to justice?” Lawrence asked.
“Isn’t he?” Albright replied.
“No.” Lawrence shook his head. “This was a different kind of paranoia. There was fear in the man’s
eyes, not a hunger for justice. It might just be fear over the injuries that were inflicted on him, but I believe it’s more than that. Something else is going on that has yet to be uncovered.”
Albright sighed. “Then it is as I feared. If your Matty does turn out to be one in the same as Mathilda Wright, she may be in grave danger.”
It was a conclusion Lawrence had already come to. Seeing the wretched child in the back of Hoag’s store had only confirmed what he’d been worrying about for more than a week. The train wasn’t due to arrive to take him home for another three hours, so rather than wait, as soon as Lawrence said his goodbyes to Albright, he headed out of town along the road that would take him south to Brynthwaite on foot. It would take him until late in the night to walk the distance, but it was worth it if he could escape the unsettling feeling Grasmere gave him.
A thought occurred to him as he walked. If Matty was Mathilda, she had walked all this way, injured and without her memory, the night of the murder. Perhaps there would be clues along the path. He picked up his pace and searched the sides of the road as he went. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. The only unusual thing he noticed was that he wasn’t alone on the path.
Several yards behind him but within sight, another, shadowy man followed. He kept his distance, even when Lawrence slowed down in the hope that he would catch up and the two of the would fall into conversation about the murder. He stayed within sight when Lawrence sped up to a near jog. For a moment, Lawrence thought he’d lost the man as they passed through a tiny cluster of houses with a pub that marked a roadside hamlet, but within ten minutes of continuing on the other side, the man was there again.
Lawrence cursed under his breath and sped up as fast as he dared. He’d gone to Grasmere looking for answers, but instead it seemed as though he had invited trouble to come home with him.
