The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  “Just a moment, ma’am, I’ll check.” As the clerk turned away to retrieve Grey’s message, Helen reached through the service window for the pad of paper and quietly tore off the top sheet.

  The clerk returned to the window. “No, ma’am, sent to a Mr. Walter McCutcheon.”

  “Oh, thank heavens. He’ll be so relieved. That could have been quite embarrassing.” She gave a broad smile of relief, and the clerk nodded at her. With the sheet of paper tucked into her handbag, she hurried back onto the sidewalk. Helen made her way down the block, under the stately elms that lined the front of the Preble House. She had to walk just past where Grey had entered, one door farther down to the ladies’ entrance to the hotel.

  Inside, she circled around to the main lobby, looking over the bustle of guests, porters, and the lunchtime crowd mingling near the doors of the hotel restaurant. She focused on taller men in dark suits, but it was no use; Grey had disappeared. She stood for a moment planning her next step. As she prepared to head for the front desk, a loud squeak from the door to a public telephone booth drew her attention. She was startled to recognize Grey’s sharp features as he exited from the cramped space. Helen took a roundabout route to the booth, allowing Grey time to exit the hotel. She pressed the call button twice, turned the lever and latched it before picking up the receiver. When the operator came on, Helen read the four numbers printed below the phone.

  “Requested number?” asked the tinny voice through the receiver.

  “Could you please place the last call again?”

  Helen waited anxiously until the operator came back on the line. “Yes, ma’am. It will be just a minute while we ring through to the Harvard switchboard.”

  Helen hung up the receiver and glanced out the glass of the phone booth. Through the large front windows, she could still see Perceval Grey lingering on the sidewalk. She guessed he was waiting for the next horse car. Helen stared at the receiver, willing it to ring. Eventually her mental efforts were rewarded with a loud clanging. She snatched the receiver off its hook.

  “Hello.”

  “Go ahead, sir,” said the operator.

  “Professor Newell Scribner speaking.”

  Helen suddenly realized that she had not thought of what to say if her plan to reconnect Grey’s call actually succeeded. She managed nothing better than a few confused stammers along the lines of an apology before hanging up. She fumbled her way out of the booth’s folding door and scanned the windows for any sign of Grey. He was gone. Helen strode to the exit, where the white-gloved attendant in his gray coat with burnished brass buttons held the door for her.

  The commotion of Monument Square washed over her. The scene was not as active as it had been when the area had been accurately titled Market Square. While most of the stalls and vendors had vanished since the square was reconfigured a year prior and the massive war monument erected, the space was still home to all manner of commercial endeavors. She scanned the square to see if Grey was heading into any of the businesses. Apart from the Preble House, the square was also home to the grand United States Hotel, as well as dozens of restaurants, halls, shops, and offices for such disparate enterprises as the Evening Express newspaper and the Portland Theatre, as well as the Portland Plasterers’ Union, the Phoenix Crayon Company, and the Imperial Banjo, Guitar and Mandolin Club. But for sheer motion, none could compare with the offices of the Portland Rail Road Company as well as its streetcar depot. The ebb and flow of activity surrounding that hub of the city’s horse rail lines caused pedestrians to alternately stroll or dash to safety across the triangular square and the various streets that emptied into the plaza.

  All this movement, like a series of massive brick-fronted anthills, was set under the watchful gaze of a towering bronze Athena-like figure. Our Lady of Victories stood atop an ornate twenty-foot-tall pedestal bearing bronze reliefs of Civil War sailors and soldiers and this inscription: TO HER SONS WHO DIED FOR THE UNION. Helen stared up at the helmeted and laurel-crowned goddess, so sure and regal in her contemplative gaze. If you’re so wise, she thought, then tell me where he’s gone. As if by divine intervention, a horse car pulled past her. At the rear, in plain view, stood Perceval Grey.

  Helen hailed a hansom cab and followed Grey the length of Congress Street past City Hall, Lincoln Park, and the Eastern Cemetery. Per her instructions, the driver momentarily delayed the pursuit of the trolley car when it stopped at the base of Munjoy Hill. A second horse was hitched to haul the car up the steady quarter-mile slope. She kept her eyes locked on Grey as people hurried aboard and settled themselves. After a minute the car lurched forward on its slow ascent. Helen let her mind wander, and her eyes landed on the Portland Observatory ahead on the right. The brown wooden tower was domed and octagonal, giving it the appearance of a hilltop lighthouse. The observatory was actually a maritime signal tower, built eighty-five years earlier, when Munjoy Hill was nothing more than an empty cow pasture.

  As the car approached the summit, it slowed in preparation for detaching one of the draft horses. Grey dismounted at the base of the observatory. A man waited for him at the bottom of the staircase leading to the second-floor entrance. Helen stared for several seconds before realizing she knew the man. Her carriage pulled close, and he glanced in her direction. Helen whipped her head around to avoid making eye contact with Deputy Archie Lean.

  20

  Lean waited at the bottom of the wooden staircase leading to the front door of the observatory. At his left was a large fenced-in yard. To his right, at the peak of the hill, was the Fire Department Engine No. 2. “So just what is it you wanted to see?”

  Grey pointed past Lean, his finger angled into the air. Lean looked up, his eyes following the line of the structure’s octagonal sides. The tower slanted inward, starting from a base diameter of thirty-two feet and narrowing to less than half that six stories up at the observation deck. The observatory was capped by a white, canvas-covered dome that was topped with a metal ball. It was a striking building, visible from most of the city and all of Portland Harbor.

  Grey was already on the stairs, and Lean took the steps two at a time to catch up. The front door was a full story above the street, since the bottom level of the observatory held 120 tons of rubble that served as ballast for the structure. The building’s plan, designed by a sea captain, had allowed it to stand firm against a dozen hurricanes and countless winter northeasters. The first floor was a large, empty octagonal room with exposed beams, including the eight colossal white pine support timbers that ran the entire height of the tower. A circular staircase hugged the outside wall. Each side held several narrow windows on alternating levels, so that every floor had enough daylight to allow people to see the way along the stairs.

  The next-to-last floor housed large shelves that stored the various flags and pennants used on the observatory’s three flagpoles to relay messages to the waterfront and signal the approach of specific vessels so owners and dockhands could prepare for the arrivals. The two men moved up the last of the 102 steps from the street to the top of the tower. The stairs were capped with a trapdoor that formed part of a small raised platform inside the top level, called the lantern. Inside, they were greeted by the young man on duty, who informed them that all visible ships had already been signaled. At the sight of Lean’s badge, the young man gladly agreed to give them a few minutes’ privacy by stretching his legs and going down to the market across the street.

  The lantern was a window-encased room eight feet across. Immediately to the side of the trapdoor was the narrow exit out to the open-air walkway that encircled the lantern. A painted black bench ran along the remainder of the interior wall. Hanging from an iron rod in the center of the ceiling was a London-made, five-foot-long achromatic refracting telescope. The scope could swivel 360 degrees from Casco Bay to the White Mountains of New Hampshire seventy miles to the west. On clear days the telescope’s sixty-five-times magnification was enough to spot ships as far as thirty miles out. Closer to home, the city�
�s rooftops were spread out below, interrupted by occasional spaces of green growth and a maze of narrow, twisting streets intersecting at irregular angles, like a web of paving stones spun by a gigantic, crazed spider.

  “My father used to bring me up here when I was a boy,” Lean said as he caught his breath. “He thought it was a nice little mix of navigation, history, and geography. Of course, the old man could never resist a bit of the fanciful.”

  “So that’s where you get it,” Grey replied.

  “He’d always comment on the number of steeples and tell me of the old English folktale about how when a young boy and his sister climb a hilltop searching for lost sheep but instead see seven church spires in the setting sun, then would King Arthur rise again to save England once more.”

  “Touching. Of course, I prefer the tale of the grown man with an annoying habit of waxing poetic about childhood fables when he should be concentrating on a murder inquiry. Father never mentioned anything along those lines, did he? No?”

  Lean grinned. “Doesn’t ring any bells, I’m afraid.” He stepped up to the telescope eyepiece and turned his sights on the immediate harbor. There was Portland Head Light, commissioned 101 years earlier by George Washington, jutting out at the edge of Cape Elizabeth, near the main harbor entrance. Halfway Rock Light was close to that, a stone tower lighthouse on a short stretch of exposed ledge rising out of the bay. Standing more than two hundred feet above sea level, Lean could see the dozens of islands in Casco Bay and all the channels and passages.

  “Certainly is a whole new perspective,” he said as he stepped away from the telescope. “Quite a magnificent tool. This scope, and Polaris to steer by. That’s all you would need.”

  “North’s that way.” Grey pointed a bit to Lean’s left.

  “Are you sure?”

  Grey motioned upward, where a compass rose was painted on the ceiling.

  “Forgot about that,” said Lean as he reoriented himself. “Well, who needs Polaris anyhow? Your good cheer is as constant as the North Star.”

  Grey smirked in response as he stepped out the narrow door, down onto the railed-in walk that encircled the lantern. The walkway was three feet wide and slanted just a bit down and away from the tower. Lean followed and rested against the waist-high railing as he stared out past the Eastern Cemetery, toward the waterfront where the Portland Company stood.

  “We know that the killer was observing the watchman on multiple past occasions. Even if the killer hadn’t been interrupted, he would have been quite a sight after the murder. He likely planned to clean himself or hide his appearance. In either case it would have been prudent for him to have shelter nearby,” Grey said.

  “That fits with the watchman’s report that he never heard any carriage fleeing the area,” Lean said.

  “In his drug-induced stupor and the panic of the moment, he probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. The ears are surpassed only by the eyes for unreliability in times of duress.” Grey continued to scan the buildings visible on the hillside. “But I agree that the killer likely escaped on foot to some nearby refuge. He can’t go south into the Atlantic. He would have been seen if he fled west into the open space before reaching the Grand Trunk Station.”

  “Plenty of moonlight that night. Just a few days past full.”

  “So he came uphill, north or east. Somewhat sparse that way.” Grey motioned to the open grassy ground leading east up Munjoy Hill that dominated the eastern end of Portland. “A man who spent so much time in planning surely contemplated a quick and easy departure. More cover straight ahead north. And plenty of tenements and boarding-houses within a quick dash uphill here.”

  Lean sighed and rubbed his neck. “There’s a fair piece of ground that will have to be canvassed.”

  “From Freeman Lane to Munjoy Street, one block deep from the waterfront, the city directory lists seventeen boarding rooms,” Grey said, “though there’s probably twice that number when you include those who let rooms on the side, whenever the space is available. If necessary, we can expand our search to include Mountfort to the Eastern Promenade.”

  21

  On June 21, a full week after the murder, Lean sat at the table in Dr. Steig’s study, his notebook open before him. “There are thirty-one rooms to let in the four blocks immediately fronting the Portland Company. Nineteen were occupied by single male boarders at points during the week before the murder. We were able to see or get reasonable descriptions of all but three.”

  Grey smiled. “Excellent.”

  “One of our patrolmen, McDonough, boards on Waterville himself and knows most of the folks. No real trouble getting most of them to talk. Of those sixteen boarders, six were described as short. Four have dark hair. One was questioned already, and his alibi for June fourteenth was confirmed—out of town that night. The three others have left their rooms and are not available. Their names are: Harvey Farr, a mariner; James Alexander, whose trade was unknown; and John Willard, a traveling salesman.”

  Lean flipped the page. “Now, get this. Alexander wasn’t there long but quickly earned a reputation for quarreling. On multiple occasions he denounced people in the street, making all sorts of accusations as to sinful conduct of his neighbors. It’s got to be him. A religious zealot. He fits perfectly.”

  Grey held up a cautioning finger. “He warrants further interest, to be sure. But again, I must warn you. A preconceived theory is an even greater liability in those cases involving the most extraordinary circumstances.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s an unfortunate facet of human nature that a man’s mind will seize on any element of a story that hints at the unusual or strange while utterly neglecting those aspects most familiar to us in our everyday lives. Yet experience proves that it is most likely to be those commonplace, overlooked details that reveal the identity of the criminal. A quick survey of the lurid stories screaming from the front pages confirms that mankind has a natural inclination toward discovering sensational or fantastical features where they do not exist.”

  Lean answered, “And thank God for that. If there were no natural desire for the spectacular and the grand, then we’d still be in the Dark Ages. No art, or music, or poetry.”

  “Well and good for the poet. But for the criminalist, everything bearing the least mark of exaggeration must be purged, and he must guard against it with the strictest discipline. That being said …” Grey drew a thin book from an interior pocket of his frock coat.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Steig asked.

  “This, gentlemen, compliments of a professor friend at Harvard, is a rare little volume that proves, despite everything I’ve just said, there are occasions where a case does indeed seem to hinge on the most sensational and fantastic of circumstances.”

  He handed the book to Lean, who glanced at the cover and read aloud, “‘Strange Tales of Warwickshire, by F. Bertram Clapp, 1889.’”

  “Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised that your own theory of a religious zealot was actually flawed by virtue of not being fanciful enough. Go on—there where I’ve marked it.”

  Lean let the text fall open to a bookmarked page. His eyes settled on the heading of a new chapter: “Meon Hill.”

  “‘Close by the Rollright Stones, overlooking the villages of Upper and Lower Quinton, lies Meon Hill. This is yet another ancient site reputed to have long associations with dark forces. Legend has it that in Anglo-Saxon times pagan rituals were performed atop Meon Hill, and even in recent years many townsfolk have heard whispers that the hill remains a meeting place for covens of witches. An eerie howling is said to be common about the hill on foggy nights, and more than one frightened soul has reported encounters with a black dog said to haunt the hill. As is often the case in villages throughout the country, superstitions abound of such spectral black hounds as harbingers of death.

  “‘About 1869, a farmer named Donald Whitten reported seeing the dog on his way home past the hill. Although he was a hale and hearty fellow, two nights l
ater he died in his sleep. In 1885, it is told that a young plough boy named Charlie Walton met a great black dog on Meon Hill three nights in a row. On the final night, the dog was followed after by the shape of a headless woman in a white dress. Within a week, the boy’s sister took ill and died.’

  “Grey, this makes for some wonderful ghost stories, but—”

  “Please,” Grey said with mock plaintiveness. “Indulge me just one paragraph further.”

  Lean sighed and returned his attention to the page. “‘By far the most chilling episode thereabouts happened several years earlier, in 1875, when the body of a woman named Ann Turner was found murdered in the village of Long Compton. John Haywood, who was described as being a rather feeble-minded young man, was soon after found guilty and hanged. Haywood confessed that he had pinned Ann Turner to the ground with a hay fork before using a billhook to slash her throat and carve the shape of a cross into her neck and body.’”

  “My God, this is uncanny.” Dr. Steig’s eyes had grown wide.

  “Is this true?” Lean asked Grey, who responded by rolling his hand forward in a circle, motioning Lean to read on.

  “‘At his trial, Haywood repeatedly asserted his earnest defense that he had done the act to save not just himself but the whole village. He swore that Ann Turner had not only bewitched him but had also put a curse on the land of many of the locals farmers, fouling several wells and springs to poison the cattle. This manner of death, the “sticking” of the body with a hay fork, was an ancient and traditional way to kill a witch, according to folklore dating back hundreds of years. John Haywood confirmed this superstitious belief in his own testimony, stating that the carving of the cross and pinning her to the ground was the only way to stop a witch from once more rising from her grave.’” Lean closed the book. “Maggie Keene was killed over witchcraft?”