The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  “We’ll roust Farrell’s joint,” Lean said. “See if the other girls will talk. She’s dressed rather fancy for the work; maybe her friends will know who she was getting so dudded up for.”

  “You don’t sound hopeful,” Dr. Steig said.

  Lean crushed his cigarette beneath his heel. “Never seen anything quite so …” He failed to finish the thought before being interrupted by the sound of a carriage approaching.

  “Now what?” the mayor said. “The photographer?”

  “Can’t be,” Lean said. “I only sent for him twenty minutes ago.”

  Dr. Steig cleared his throat. “I know who it is. A thought occurred to me after I saw the body, and I telephoned for someone. Now, it’s a rather unusual step I’m suggesting.”

  “Why not?” said the mayor, his voice leaden with disappointment. “Desperate times and all that rot.”

  “There’s a man recently returned to Portland. The grandson of my old commander, Major Grey. The young man was a student in some of my anatomy classes. Would’ve made a great surgeon, actually—”

  “Cyrus Grey? Wait a minute—that scrawny red-Indian boy of his?” A look of puzzled doubt landed on the mayor’s face.

  “Only on his father’s side. Anyway, knowing the family and all, I followed his career, the odd bit of news and whatnot. He joined the Pinkertons, gained a bit of notoriety there.”

  Lean snorted. Ever since Allan Pinkerton had famously uncovered a plot against President Lincoln during the war, the private detective and security force of the Pinkertons—with their pompous symbol of the all-seeing eye—had been held to be a notch above all other police forces. But since that success thirty years earlier, Lean considered that the Pinkertons’ true talent, exposed in their operations infiltrating unions as strikebreakers, was for cracking skulls rather than using their own.

  “Deputy, do you recall, about a year ago, news of Jacob Rutland, the Boston shipping magnate whose young daughter went missing?” Dr. Steig asked.

  “Heard something. Pinkertons got her back, didn’t they?”

  “Their men were brought in but made no further headway than the city police. Another week went by, and still no trace of the girl. Nothing at all. In desperation they called in this fellow.”

  “Desperation?” Mayor Ingraham’s eyebrow arched.

  “His methods are a bit unorthodox.”

  This did nothing to smooth the mayor’s forehead. “Smoke signals and spirit visions?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Dr. Steig said. “He’s known to employ a rather modern, scientific approach. Where the other detectives couldn’t find a hair of the girl after two weeks, this fellow brought her home alive within forty-eight hours.”

  “I don’t recall hearing anything about that,” Mayor Ingraham said.

  “He was also involved in the Athenaeum burglaries,” Dr. Steig said, “and the Bunker Hill murders.”

  “That was him?” Mayor Ingraham exchanged a long look with Lean.

  “Can’t say I care much for involving some Pinkerton with half-cooked ideas about police work.” Lean imagined much time being wasted by some fool using uncertain techniques such as taking fingerprint samples and rambling on about the Frenchman Bertillon’s system of identifying criminals by their precise body measurements. “But I suppose there’s no harm in talking to him,” Lean said. “We’re already rounding up derelicts, and I can take some men over to Farrell’s after sunup.”

  “Agreed, then,” the mayor said. “Though not a word of this to anyone. I don’t want it known about town that we’re consulting, in desperation, with this Indian fellow. Has a name, does he? Chief Something-or-Other?”

  “Just Grey. Perceval Grey.”

  The three of them stood, waiting for the machine-shop door to open and this Perceval Grey to reveal himself.

  “Where is he already?” Mayor Ingraham said.

  “Perhaps that wasn’t him after all,” Dr. Steig said.

  “Could be a reporter. Better have a look. Cover the body, just in case.” The mayor reached out and took Lean by the arm. “I don’t want any newspapermen stealing a look at that … that travesty.”

  3

  The doctor’s newly arrived hansom sat twenty yards away, the driver still atop the cab. There was no sign of anyone else until the driver nodded his head to the side. Lean saw the dark outline of a tallish man standing near the watchman’s shack, staring down the alley that ran between the long machine and erecting shops of the Portland Company. Dr. Steig wandered forward to his carriage, the mayor and Lean following behind.

  “What’s he doing?” asked the doctor.

  The driver shrugged. “Whatever it is, he’s been at it since we got here.”

  “Grey?” the doctor called out. The man answered by holding up a hand, one finger extended skyward. Then he turned and stared at the small outbuilding that served as the watchman’s shack.

  Lean was only thirty years old and fit enough, but this night was unusually cold and wet for mid-June. A driving storm of the type usually reserved for September or October in New England had ripped through during the prior afternoon, and the dampness was making his knees stiffen. He stomped his feet on the stones underfoot, forcing the blood to move along. After several more moments, Perceval Grey finished whatever he was doing and approached the others.

  “Dr. Steig, I was pleasantly surprised to receive your message.” Grey took the doctor’s hand in both of his own. Lean noticed a caution in the movement, then recalled the doctor’s mention that Grey had been a student. Of course he would know of the doctor’s weakness in his right arm, the Civil War wound that had ended his career as a surgeon and still caused tremors in that hand.

  Grey stepped back and regarded the other two guests. “Mayor Ingraham and Detective Sergeant …”

  “Deputy Marshal Lean.” Lean glanced down at his front, looking to see if his badge or pistol was somehow visible. Neither was.

  “Deputy Marshal?” Grey cocked an eyebrow. “Rather an odd title for an investigating officer. Barring a stagecoach robbery, that is.”

  Lean studied Perceval Grey as the man talked. Grey’s eyes were dark and focused, giving no hint of the late hour. He was only slightly taller than his guests, though his height was accentuated by his thin, angular frame. His complexion was tan, but not as dark as Lean expected. His face held sharp features topped by short black hair parted on the right and slicked back under a fine beaver-felt derby. Lean wasn’t exactly sure of what he expected to see of this half-blood Pinkerton, but it wasn’t the man before them, dressed in a black dinner coat, charcoal waistcoat, and black tie, the four-in-hand still tightly knotted. The suit was so well tailored that the man could be taking in a concert at Kotzschmar Hall with the mayor rather than responding to a murder investigation in the dead hours of the morning.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly. You see, something’s happened and … well …” Dr. Steig cleared his throat. “Grey, the thing is, we were hoping you might be able to assist us in a matter.”

  “Actually, I’m not planning on taking on any full inquiries at this time; I’m here in Maine on a sabbatical from practical work. But for you, Doctor, I am willing to provide a quick overview of the prostitute’s murder.” Grey’s face was perfectly reserved as he made the announcement. “Peculiar for the killer to enter through the front door, in plain view of the night watchman’s shack—and possible other witnesses passing at a distance,” Grey said.

  “Well, the watchman admits he was asleep inside the shack. And, in any event, our man entered a side door.” Lean nodded in that direction. “Busted a pane of glass to reach the lock.”

  “Interesting.” Grey headed for the door to the machine shop.

  “Wait. My note made no mention of a murder, let alone a prostitute. Rasmus?” The doctor looked to his driver, who held up his hands in a display of innocence.

  Lean’s entire body tensed.

  “What’s this?” The mayor stepped back from the others. “I de
mand an explanation!”

  “It’s hardly reasonable to expect a complete explanation of the case until I’ve examined the murder site. Through here, is it?”

  “I mean the murder, a prostitute—how did you know?”

  Grey ignored the mayor and disappeared inside the doorway.

  There was a brief silence as each of the men contemplated Perceval Grey’s remarks. A crooked smile settled itself within the confines of Dr. Steig’s neatly trimmed beard. “You see, gentlemen—Grey can be of considerable assistance in pursuing this matter, if we can just overcome his reluctance.”

  “I don’t trust him,” said the mayor. “Don’t see how he could possibly know those details unless he’s had some involvement in the crime. What do you say, Lean?”

  “Perhaps we should head inside and see what this Grey makes of the scene.”

  Lean led the way inside, where they found Grey standing just a short distance into the shop, not yet in sight of the body.

  He turned to them. “Who has set foot at the scene?”

  Dr. Steig answered, since he was standing closest. “Present company, the first officer, and the watchman. Additional officers have examined the rest of the compound.”

  “That’s right,” said Lean. “You see, what I find most peculiar about the body is that the killer must have intended—”

  Grey held up a hand. “I must insist on silence as to all opinions, particularly those addressing the killer’s methods or motives, until I’ve finished examining the evidence.”

  “Oh, come now, time is against us in this,” said the mayor. “The quicker you understand the nature of this, the better.”

  Grey tilted his head with the air of a music teacher suffering the haphazard notes of an untrained child. “If you learn nothing else tonight, remember this: One of the greatest threats to a successful inquiry is letting yourself be led afield by a preconceived theory. The absurdly concocted theories of others can irreparably taint one’s objectivity. Even casual statements will conjure up familiar notions and memories of similar crimes, causing unwarranted importance to attach to irrelevant facts. The mind becomes set on finding what it now expects to see and fails to perceive that which is actually present.”

  Lean could see the mayor bristling at the very idea of being lectured to. “Is that what they teach you in the Pinkertons?”

  “No. One of the things I tried, unsuccessfully, to teach them in my brief tenure there.”

  “All the same, Grey, believe me when I say you’ve never seen a case similar to this one, I mean to have a—”

  Grey halted Lean again with a raised hand.

  “Suit yourself,” Lean said. “Right this way.” The tarp, which Lean had set atop the upright hay fork earlier, remained in place. It reminded him of a soldier’s field tent from a long-abandoned battlefield, the canvas hanging limp and uneven from a single pole. Lean had only ever seen pictures of such sights, the Civil War having ended twenty-seven years earlier, before his first memories. It also reminded him of other images from that time, photographs of Portland.

  Grey stopped beside him and announced the very same thought. “Like one of the old tents they set out after the Great Fire.”

  Even though Lean had been a toddler at the time, he had seen so many photographs and engraved images and heard so many tales that the event was seared into his mind almost as clearly as if it had happened only a month ago. A boy’s mishap with matches near stored fireworks on the Fourth of July, 1866, had quickly turned into a disaster. The resulting flames had ignited Brown’s sugar factory, and the fire then cut a swath through two hundred acres of Portland Neck, destroying two thousand buildings in the heart of the city. Ten thousand people were left homeless, with many forced to live temporarily in a makeshift village of canvas tents along the emptied grounds at the base of Munjoy Hill. The city rose up from the ashes within three years, refashioning itself more grandly in brick-fronted Victorian splendor.

  “Let’s hope this scene isn’t quite so disastrous as that great inferno,” Grey said. “Maybe we can salvage some few clues after all the inexcusable trampling of the evidence.”

  “I didn’t want anyone nosing around, stealing a glimpse of the scene,” Mayor Ingraham said.

  Seeing Grey’s dubious stare, Lean added, “I was careful not to disturb the body.”

  He helped Grey remove and dispose of the canvas. Grey stared at the body for a full minute, almost perfectly still. Finally he pulled a pencil and a thin notepad from his side pack and began to sketch and scribble as his head turned in all directions, his eyes shooting back and forth.

  “You’re planning to photograph the body?”

  Lean nodded. “Our man should be here shortly.”

  Several minutes later Grey’s notepad disappeared into his bag. He took up a lamp, and he began to circle the body, pausing briefly where Maggie Keene’s clothes had been neatly stacked. He proceeded to kneel down on the wooden flooring near the bloody stump of the right wrist. With his pencil he reached forward and poked at a small lump sitting on the blood-soaked ground. He traced a very small circle in the air around the end of the right arm. “One candle burned down by the right foot, another here. She was on the ground when her hand was removed. The blade cut into the earth.” He stood again and pondered the area around the severed wrist. “Significant bleeding here, Dr. Steig, yet less of a stream than I would have expected from a sudden amputation.”

  “Likely dead before the hand was severed,” answered Dr. Steig. “No pressure. The blood simply pooled.”

  “The cuts on the chest were also inflicted posthumously?” asked Grey.

  The doctor shrugged. “I’ll know more when we get the body to the hospital.”

  Perceval Grey continued to circle the corpse. “Lean, this pitchfork—you’ll need to confirm whether this is factory property. Did the workers leave it close by, or did our man bring it himself just for this purpose?” Grey moved a few more steps before pausing again at the young woman’s head, where he held his lamp close to examine her features. After studying the ground, Grey knelt and stretched forward until his own face was within inches of hers. He turned to Dr. Steig.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, the tongue’s been cut out.”

  Lean stared in near shock as he watched Grey move close enough so that his lips were almost touching the dead woman’s. Grey gave several hearty sniffs before pulling away.

  “Takes the tongue to stop her talking. But then why her right hand, too? Does he mean to keep her from …” Lean was mostly thinking aloud but noticed Grey and Dr. Steig waiting on him to finish the thought. “Maybe to keep her from writing as well. To keep her from revealing something. But why bother to cut the hand off after she’s already dead? Makes no bloody sense.”

  “Interesting observation,” mumbled Grey. He regained his footing and moved along, careful not to tread on the damp earth surrounding the body. Upon reaching her left foot, he stooped and peered at the ground. His stare moved in a line away from the body’s left side, and he inched along in that direction.

  “Two bloody marks, faint partial curves of the heel.” Grey pulled out his tape measure and noted the length of a dim reddish outline just visible on the floor. “Matches the footprints he left in the earth by her body.”

  Lean moved closer and saw the traces of blood. He set his own foot down parallel to the faint bloody outline of the killer’s heel. “Small feet.”

  Grey was now measuring the distance between the prints.

  “Based on his stride, our man is rather short—five foot two, more or less. And these are not hesitant steps. He was going somewhere.” Grey moved in the direction of the bloody footprints. Several yards ahead he stopped and held his lamp low as he gazed about.

  “Ha! Here we are.” He pointed to a sheet of metal leaning against a workbench.

  Lean and Dr. Steig moved closer to see what looked like traces of blood, smeared in a thin horizontal line, then back again at a downward angle.

  �
��Almost looks like a seven,” noted Dr. Steig.

  Grey shook his head. “No, he’s made the angle too severe.”

  “Angle?” Lean blew his nose and shoved the balled-up handkerchief back into his coat pocket. “He’s just wiping the blood off his fingers.”

  “If you bother to look closely, you’ll see a larger spot here. His thumb was planted, then drawn across. Then a second smudge, smaller. A new finger planted where the first line ended. Separate actions. Deliberately placed. He’s not wiping; more like he’s drawing.”

  Lean turned his frown from the bloody lines to Grey. “What on earth is he drawing?”

  “And why?” added the doctor.

  “An interesting question, Doctor, and one, I believe, that you may be the most suited to answer as we pursue this inquiry. But in answer to the deputy, I believe that our man is fashioning some sort of diagram. What it represents I cannot yet say.” Grey lifted up the sheet of metal to get a better look.

  “That’s not the only puzzle he’s left for us.” Lean took several steps back toward the body and waved at the gear hanging from the overhead crane. “You’ve ignored these chalk letters. Could be some sort of cipher. Or else Greek or some such.”

  “Or nonsense,” Dr. Steig said. “It’s no foreign language I’ve ever seen.”

  “I haven’t ignored it at all. And no, it’s not foreign. Quite the contrary—an indigenous tongue.”

  Lean felt his face wrinkle. “A what, now?”

  “A native tongue. The language of the Abenaki tribes of Maine and New Hampshire.”

  Dr. Steig grinned. “Well then, a wonderful coincidence that I called you here.”

  “Coincidence?” Grey appeared almost offended by the word. “No. More likely your mind held some faint memory of having seen the language. An inkling that made you think to summon me in the first place.”