The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  “Your Excellency,” Grey said, “I do not mean any disrespect, but can we be assured that what we speak of here will not pass beyond these walls?”

  “Mr. Grey, I do know a thing or two about honoring confidential discussions.”

  “Of course.” Grey acknowledged his faux pas with a nod. “There was a certain act of violence against the Whitten family that precipitated Jack’s arrival at the orphanage. We have reason to believe that the boy’s mother may have recently been murdered, for reasons which remain unclear but which may be linked to the events of twenty years ago. We believe that Jack Whitten is the sole witness to those earlier events and, as such, the same party who had reason to kill his mother might have it in mind to seek out Jack. We need to find him before anybody else does.”

  Bishop Healy’s eyebrows had arched up during the explanation, and he now shot an incredulous glance at Lean, who nodded in agreement. “I see. This sounds most serious. I must say that, despite what the doctors think, given the circumstances, I’m sure Father Coyne would wish to speak to you. I know you’re anxious, but I must insist that you let me write to him and ask when he might meet with you, so as to spare him any undue surprises. I could send you a note when I get his response.”

  They took their leave of the bishop and exited the cathedral. Lean glanced at the sky. It had rained earlier, and now thunderheads were visible off to the southwest.

  “Pinning down this Jack Whitten is turning into quite an assignment,” Lean said.

  “Speaking of assignments.” Grey drew a telegram from his coat pocket and handed it to Lean. “McCutcheon’s watch on Geoffrey Blanchard.”

  Lean saw that it was dated August 12, that morning. He paused at the bottom of the steps and read in a low voice, “‘Grey—G.B. left hospital. Didn’t go very far. Just into Danvers proper. Room at Greenbriar Inn. Collected one letter on arrival. Ate alone. Strolled through town, bought nothing. No contacts. Note—you’re not the only one interested in our man’s movements. Another fellow shadowing G.B. At inn before us. Never spoke to Blanchard, but clearly marking him. Will continue observation—Walt.’”

  56

  With a certain reluctance, Mrs. Porter released Helen’s hands. She leaned forward, across her kitchen table, and gave the younger woman a reassuring smile.

  “I’m sorry, dear. Don’t take it to mean he doesn’t want to reach out to you. My abilities are not what they were. And sometimes the barriers are just too great.”

  “No need to apologize. Thank you for trying,” Helen said.

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  As they waited for the kettle to boil, Helen broke the silence.

  “When you were active as a medium—years ago and all—did you know a woman who they called Old Stitches? She died this past year.”

  “Old Stitch,” Mrs. Porter corrected her. “Yes, I knew her, years ago. Not well, mind you, but I’d hear things from customers and whatnot. Bits of news and gossip.”

  “We’ve heard there was a fire at her house. Set on purpose, actually, maybe on account of one of her customers dying. A well-to-do customer at that.”

  “Yes, plenty of the richer ladies in town would go to her in those days.”

  “Must have been a peculiar sight. All those well-fixed ladies trudging down to some dank little shack by the cove.”

  Mrs. Porter smiled. “Later, when she was Old Stitch. But before that, at first, she was just Lucy, the servant girl, who was able to know things.”

  “A servant for whom?”

  “I don’t recall. But yes, when she came over, she was a domestic for some family on the West End. Soon enough all the ladies in those circles were coming round to see her. She moved on later, fell out of favor with her employers over something. But still, plenty of the women kept on going to her. You’d be surprised how attached they can get. People get so turned about in their lives, they think you’ll have the answers for them. Some folks so desperately need to make sense of it all.”

  “And did you ever happen to hear what happened to her after the fire? What happened to her sons?”

  “Sorry, I’ve no idea.”

  “You went there to ask her about Old Stitch?” Grey said.

  “No, actually … something different.” Helen diverted her attention to the makeshift laboratory set up on the corner table in Grey’s study.

  “I see. And did you make contact with the other side?”

  “No.” Helen blushed in mild embarrassment but obscured the fact by focusing on the chemistry equipment.

  “Perhaps the spirit was otherwise occupied. Or not actually dead yet.”

  Helen froze. After a long silence, she readied her voice and answered, “He’s dead to me.”

  “And yet you—”

  “I was curious for Delia’s sake. Only for Delia.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? You think me foolish, that all of this is absurd. Don’t you ever wonder in the slightest? Surely there is somebody—a loved one, perhaps—you’d wish to speak with again. If it were possible?

  “That’s your answer,” Grey said. “It’s not possible.”

  Helen moved back toward the center of the room. “But if it were. If there was the slightest chance to say something. Or to hear something, words that a departed soul might wish to tell you now.”

  “People live as they will, and they have their whole lifetime to say what they will. To hope you will receive from someone, once dead, more than he or she managed to give you while alive—it defies all reason. You may as well wish on stars.”

  She took another step closer and studied Grey’s face, looking for some small fissure in his cool demeanor. “But surely you feel something for them. All the time you spend with dead bodies, thinking about them, the work you do on behalf of murder victims. Avenging their deaths. You must feel something.”

  “The work I do is not for the dead. I can’t give them vengeance. Perhaps it feels like that for their loved ones, when a criminal is brought to justice. But rest assured there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I can do to help the dead. The dead are the dead, and life is left only to the living.”

  57

  Aloud thump stirred McCutcheon from his stupor. It took a moment for him to gain his bearings; he was still dressed, shoes on, sitting up in his hotel bed. The gas lamp was lit. He had no idea what time it was. He swung his legs over the side and then reached out for the nightstand to retrieve, and finish off, a tumbler of whiskey. There was movement overhead in the room above his: third floor, Geoffrey Blanchard’s room. He glanced toward the ceiling after another thud, and then something crashed to the floor. McCutcheon grabbed his coat, then snatched his gun from the nightstand and slipped it into his pocket as he headed out the door.

  There were sets of stairs at either end of the hallway, and McCutcheon moved to his right, hurrying while trying not to make too much of a commotion. He took the stairs two at a time, right hand gripping the gun in his pocket, while he steadied himself against the wall with his left. The third-floor hallway was dimly lit. A man in dark clothing stepped out from a door halfway down the hall. It was about the same location as McCutcheon’s room on the floor below.

  “You there!”

  The man threw a glance at him, but it was too dark for McCutcheon to make out his face. The shadowy figure turned and fled toward the stairwell at the other end of the hall. McCutcheon sped after him but stopped at the open doorway and looked into Geoffrey Blanchard’s room. A man was lying facedown just inside the doorway. A glance was enough to see that it wasn’t Blanchard himself, but the blond man who’d been tailing Blanchard. There was a nasty bump on the back of the man’s skull and a trickle of blood flowing from it.

  McCutcheon dashed away, chasing the fleeing man, who had already disappeared down the stairs. He followed the sounds ahead of him, making his way to the ground floor and out through a side door of the Greenbriar Inn. McCutcheon saw a swatch of black streaking ac
ross the hotel’s back lawn, and he started to reach for his gun, but the man was already heading into an alleyway between two neighboring buildings. He leaped down the three steps to the ground and broke into a run, threading through a labyrinth of back passages that zigzagged between shops and houses. McCutcheon dashed through murky puddles and over one drunken body sprawled on the ground as he dodged and twisted past trash bins and discarded boxes. He thrust himself over the short fence, then through more alleys and across several avenues. There were only a few souls left on the streets at that late hour, though at one intersection McCutcheon almost collided with a couple who staggered aside, cursing at him as he rushed past.

  His leg muscles burned and his breath came harder as he followed after the man. Entering a wide-open street, McCutcheon saw the man’s long coat flapping behind as he disappeared into a lumberyard. McCutcheon chased him past a heaping stack of logs and sawed planks, then in and out of two rows of long, open-sided sheds where huge quantities of boards were stacked in varying heights. Off to his left, and over the sounds of his own gasping breaths, McCutcheon heard a loud rumbling sound. As he scaled a smaller pile to get out the far side of the shed, a shot rang out and a piece of wood exploded, showering him with splinters. He jumped down, took cover behind a small pile of planks, and peeked around the corner. Behind the lumberyard was a field of grass with some woods looming in the distance.

  There was movement ahead and a bright light, and then McCutcheon heard the whistle. The low rumbling sound he’d heard moments earlier was a cargo train coming in from the left at fifteen miles per hour. The headlight revealed the man standing still in the field, right next to the tracks. In just seconds he would meet the train, hop aboard, and make his escape.

  McCutcheon stepped clear of the lumber stacks, dropped to one knee, and steadied his pistol. He fired three times. The man grabbed his leg and stumbled ahead onto the tracks. McCutcheon watched as the train reached the man, who at the last possible second vaulted out of the engine’s path.

  McCutcheon bolted up and ran into the field, keeping his eyes glued to the spot where the man had disappeared. Once he reached the tracks, he crouched and peered under as the wheels rumbled by. He couldn’t see anyone on the far side. The last of the rail cars passed him, and McCutcheon hurried across the tracks. His eyes swept over the wide expanse of fields on the other side. There was no sign of the man.

  “Beat the devil,” McCutcheon muttered as he struggled to catch his breath. He bent close to the ground again and struck a wooden match. Within a few feet, he found blood splatters. He followed alongside the tracks, lighting two more matches before the trail of blood drops ended. McCutcheon stepped onto the tracks, watching the lamp at the rear of the train recede into the night.

  58

  The next afternoon, Lean held on to Owen’s hand as they moved through the confines of the alley below Fore Street. He guided the boy around puddles of rainwater and the city’s other runoff that pooled among the uneven paving stones. They passed windows covered with steel shutters, remnants from half a century earlier, when Fore Street had snaked along the waterfront and the buildings facing the wharves were protected with steel shutters against the prows of ships docked too close. That was before the massive filling-in of the waterfront to create Commercial Street and link the railroad terminals at the western and eastern ends of town.

  Father and son went around a corner and slid past the few outside tables of Ruby’s Café. The large front windows were open, and Lean saw Grey seated inside, far enough back so the sun reached his tabletop but left him shaded. Lean steered Owen over to Grey’s table. The boy’s eyes moved from Grey to the untouched slice of blueberry pie on the table, apprehension turning to curiosity.

  “Hope you don’t mind.” Lean nodded toward his son. “Emma needed a rest.”

  Grey shook his head. “Not at all.”

  Lean ordered coffee for himself, milk and a ginger cookie for Owen. “Why the change of scenery?”

  “My charming landlady, Mrs. Philbrick, insisted I leave so she could clean the premises.”

  “There must have been threats of bodily harm.”

  “On both sides,” Grey said.

  Next to Grey’s coffee, Lean saw a thin volume opened to an article entitled “Properties of the Proteids of Abrus Precaratorius Seeds.” “What’s that book?”

  Grey held it up so that Lean could see the cover of the May 1889 New England Pharmacological Journal.

  “How long until she allows you back in?”

  “Three o’clock,” Grey said. “Though I doubt she’ll need even half that time. Just kept yammering on about me getting some fresh air and sunlight.”

  “You do look pale.”

  “You probably consider that a compliment.”

  “Have you been sleeping at all?” Lean asked.

  “Enough.”

  “Well, I hope your deprivations are at least proving worthwhile.”

  “They are indeed.” Grey held up his hand, from which dangled the red-and-black seed necklace he’d purchased from the little girl outside the cathedral.

  “Is that a magic necklace?” Owen asked, his eyes fixated on the shiny seeds.

  “Perhaps,” Grey answered, “if you consider poisoning someone to be magic.”

  Owen’s expression turned to a dubious glare. “Are you going to poison someone?”

  “Of course not, Owen. Mr. Grey is just teasing,” Lean said. “So what is that?”

  “Abrus precatorius. Also known as Indian licorice, the rosary pea, or jequirity bean. Native to India, where it is used in decorative necklaces. It’s also boiled and eaten—cooking destroys the toxins. It’s poisonous only if the seeds are broken and ingested raw. They’re used medicinally for everything from a contraceptive to an aphrodisiac, emetic to laxative. Also said to cure snakebites, gonorrhea, malaria, and night blindness. The root is used to induce abortion, while the juice from a paste of the leaves and seeds can treat the graying of your hair.”

  “The original Indian cure-all. Explains why Old Stitch kept it around,” Lean said.

  “And why someone else bothered to collect her seeds.”

  Owen finished his cookie, then dug two wooden soldiers from his pocket. “Agghh! Poison necklace, I’m dying.”

  “Not at the table, Owen.” Lean turned his attention back to Grey. “Do you suppose those seeds are what killed Stitch herself?”

  “Possibly. The effects are evident within hours to days. Abdominal pain, nausea, burning of the throat, lesions of the mouth and esophagus. The worst dangers are severe vomiting and diarrhea, which lead to dehydration, convulsions, and shock that can be fatal. The toxin, abrin, can also have a direct toxic effect on the kidneys and liver. An infusion of the seeds can cause conjunctivitis by contact. Ingestion of just one or two seeds can be fatal.”

  “Mom said I could have pie,” Owen informed the table.

  “No she didn’t. You had a cookie. You don’t need pie, too.”

  Grey slid the plate toward Owen.

  The boy reached for it, but Lean’s hand landed atop Owen’s before the pudgy fingers could seize the edge of the plate.

  “But he said I could have it,” the boy whined.

  “Yes he did. But I’m your father. You get permission from me.” The two of them stared at each other until Owen looked away, resentment clear upon his face.

  “All this over pie,” Lean said. “Why’d you even order the blasted thing?”

  “Mrs. Philbrick seems to think I’m rather sickly. Made me swear on her Bible I would get some fresh air and order something to eat.”

  “And you actually stuck to your oath and ordered, even though you have no intention of eating the pie. Never figured you for a Bible pounder. Pegged you as an atheist.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Owen knocked one of his soldiers off the table. The boy slipped out of his chair and disappeared under the table.

  “Owen, come out from under there. Owen, do you hear me?�
�� Lean glanced about to see if anyone was watching. He cast his eyes skyward. “A girl. Please let the next one be a girl. Two boys will be the death of me.”

  Lean noticed Grey smirking at him and decided to ignore the boy under the table. “Let’s return to the business at hand.”

  “Of course,” said Grey. He reached into a coat pocket and retrieved a letter. “Arrived by courier this morning from Boston.”

  Lean glanced at the opened envelope. “McCutcheon. More news of the colonel’s son—what’s he say?” He glanced about to make sure no one would overhear as Grey read the summary of the struggle in Geoffrey Blanchard’s hotel room and McCutcheon’s pursuit to the railroad tracks.

  “On my return to hotel, Blanchard’s room empty. Never returned, never checked out. No sign of the blond man either until I boarded the train for Boston after lunch. He was aboard and only left his compartment once—didn’t look well. I tailed him after we pulled in. He took the 2:15 B&M north. He’s yours to worry about now. Take care with that one.

  Happy Hunting,

  Walt”

  “A blond-haired man following the colonel’s son. Simon Gould?” Lean said.

  “Quite possible. First he’s ransacking the library in search of an old tome on witchcraft. Intent enough to find it that he was ready to employ violence against our intrepid Mrs. Prescott. Now he’s monitoring our favorite lunatic inmate’s whereabouts.”

  “Geoffrey Blanchard is the connection between our investigation and Helen’s incident at the library after all.”

  “We’re guilty of being so focused on our own inquiry we ignored the obvious clue as to someone else’s curiosity in the same subject that now confounds us.”

  “But what exactly was Gould searching for in the library that has any connection to Geoffrey Blanchard?” Lean asked.

  “I’m hopeful that we’ll have an answer soon. I received a note from Mrs. Prescott this morning. Her boss, Meserve, has information on that mysterious page from the stove at Lizzie Madson’s. He says it’s from some fabled book on black magic.”