“Were the shutters barred or unbarred?”
“Unbarred, I think they must have been at that point. If Rebecca had sewing to do, or correcting proofs of the Hand of the Lord’s wretched sermons, she would still have been awake when the rain began. He tied the bedroom door shut, then waited downstairs for Mrs. Pentyre to arrive. Rebecca came to her senses, managed to get the scissors from her sewing basket, cut her bonds if she was tied, and got the door open sufficiently to allow her to saw through the rope that held it shut. The murder must have been taking place in the kitchen when Rebecca slipped downstairs. She fled to the Tillet house, quite possibly only semiconscious from her head wound. Queenie let her in, and Rebecca may very well have muttered something about ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ because she remembered that she hadn’t concealed her book of contacts. Queenie got her up to the south attic where she lost consciousness.”
“And this wretch of a cook wouldn’t have spoken even to you, whom she knows to be Rebecca’s closest friend, when she saw you at Rebecca’s door next morning?”
“At all events she didn’t,” said Abigail. “If Rebecca were groggy she may very well have begged Queenie to tell no one, and Queenie took her at her word. Then, too, Queenie may have made up her mind to have a look through the place herself before telling anyone anything.”
“Was there any evidence she’d done so before you, Sam, and Sam’s jolly henchmen returned to completely obfuscate any sign of who the killer might have been?”
“I saw none, but then, I was so shaken by what I’d seen that I may well have missed something. Then, too, the family was due back that day. If I know Queenie, the Tillet house hadn’t been properly cleaned since they’d left for Medford, and it was market day into the bargain. She could well have gone to the market while we four were at the house, and returned just in time to have Sam and the others ‘call on Rebecca’ so that they all went in and ‘discov ered’ the corpse in the bed where Sam had left it.”
“And still didn’t tell Sam or the Watch.”
“That all depends on what Rebecca said to her,” said Abigail. “And what she thought she could make out of the matter. The fact remains that when the Tillets returned to find the Watch and the Provost Marshal’s men going over Rebecca’s house and questioning the servants, Queenie did confide in her mistress, who sent Mr. Tillet upstairs at once to investigate. She herself—Mrs. Tillet, I mean—strode in and claimed to Coldstone that she had just arrived with the luggage, and Mr. Tillet would be along shortly.”
“And Mr. Tillet—or more likely Mrs. Tillet—decided that as long as Rebecca Malvern had disappeared without a trace, now might be an excellent time to acquire a permanent sewing woman who had no family and very few friends to inquire as to her whereabouts?”
Something in his voice made Abigail ask flatly, “You think it’s absurd, don’t you?”
“Actually,” said John, “I don’t.” He shifted her weight on his lap, dug in his pocket for pipe and tobacco. “Your father’s parish at Weymouth is in a long-settled and peaceable town—”
“Hmph. You weren’t there for the last uproar by those who don’t approve of his views on Arminianism.”
“Well, at least your neighbors are a fairly civilized crew. I’ve been trying cases for years in the backwoods circuit courts, in Essex and Worcester and on up into Maine. And you do find men—mostly in isolated settlements, isolated farms—who consider themselves perfectly justified in all kinds of outrageous behavior, that somehow always redounds to their material benefit: keeping sons and daughters as virtual indentured servants; robbing and killing Indians and kidnapping their children to raise in kennels like dogs . . . sometimes taking multiple wives, like your friend the Hand of the Lord, because God told them they might.”
He leaned around Abigail to reach the tongs, brought up a coal from the fire to light his pipe. The sweet-cured scent of the tobacco mingled with the smell of the bread slowly baking in the oven. “God knows, with sufficient justification on their side, even men of accredited sanity, in Virginia, will have girls of twelve and fourteen whipped for stealing food from the kitchens, or locked up for weeks in conditions one wouldn’t make a dog endure, only because those girls happen to be Negroes, and not one of their neighbors thinks twice of it. Rebecca Malvern had left her husband—branding herself a Daughter of Eve in no uncertain terms. She ‘owed’ Mrs. Tillet sewing work, she had been ‘slack’ and ‘not doing her share,’ in an effort that Mrs. Tillet obviously sees as necessary to the material welfare of her family. And, as you say, with the murder she would be presumed dead: She would be officially accounted for. Therefore, no one was likely to search the Tillet house. Is the boy sure?”
“I am sure.” She told him of the attic window, unshuttered now after years closed, and of the dim shape she had seen behind it; of the basket of sewing, the jug of water, the bread on the plate, the extra chamber pot beside the door. “Hap says that he’s seen his mistress carrying bread, water, and sewing up to the attic two or three times in the past week, and once he sneaked up the attic stair, and thought he heard a woman weeping.”
“Hmn.” John knocked the ember from his pipe. “Well, we shall both look nohow if we go bursting in there with full military escort only to find the room being readied to rent—not to mention what Sam will say.”
“You tell Sam,” retorted Abigail, “to come and talk to me.”
John took the precaution of being absent from home the following morning.
When Abigail went to the front door at the sound of a military knock—it was barely nine; Shim Walton must have flown down to the harbor and taken one of the first boats across—the first person she saw past Lieutenant Coldstone’s square crimson shoulder was Paul Revere, lounging in the opposite doorway wrapped in his sorry old gray greatcoat (with a red scarf, drat him!). The second person she saw—and third, fourth, fifth, and on through at least twenty—were various neighbors, patriots, idlers, smugglers, and countrymen who’d come to town on account of the tea, also loitering here and there along Queen Street.
How wise of John, she reflected, to make sure the Sons of Liberty had been alerted to the Lieutenant’s visit so that they could form a cordon sanitaire around him and his men.
She waved to Revere, nodded to Sergeant Muldoon and his red-coated companion posted outside her door, and led the way to the parlor: “Lieutenant Coldstone, would your men care to go around to the kitchen for some hot cider on this dreadful cold morning? I’m sure they’d be more comfortable. The local children do make such pests of themselves.”
“Thank you, m’am.” As usual, the young officer gave the impression of having swallowed his own ramrod. “I’m sure the children do their best to obey their parents’ wishes.”
“To be sure they do.” She smiled dazzlingly, and went back out to send Muldoon and the other man—the same short and disgruntled private who had accompanied him here on the last occasion—around to the back, then reentered the parlor and sat beside the crackling fire. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“Are you certain of your accusation, m’am?”
“How certain do I need to be, Lieutenant?” she asked quietly. “Was the figure I saw in the window pounding the glass to get out? No. Have I seen baskets of sewing, and a little bread and water, waiting to be taken up—baskets similar to what one of the prentice-boys in the house has seen being taken up to the attic? Yes.”
“So you’re going on the accusation of a prentice-boy against a mistress he hates?” Coldstone didn’t speak the words scornfully, or with any kind of irony. He sounded rather like John had last night, or when John was testing out a client’s arguments with how they might sound to a jury. “You realize you’re risking a lawsuit.”
“ ’Tis a risk I’m willing to take. A woman disappeared on Wednesday night, and Thursday morning we have the sudden mysterious appearance of a locked attic, an extra chamber pot, food and sewing being taken up, and no one not of the household permitted anywhere near the house. The civi
lian magistrate of the ward is a close relative of the kidnapper, and the victim, a woman who through no fault of her own is considered beneath the notice of most of its respectable citizens. I’ve asked you to help me because you are able to move swiftly and independently, and to take the perpetrators of this—this mad scheme—by surprise, before they can cover their tracks. And I’ve asked you because I judge you to be a humane man.”
“Fair enough.” Coldstone inclined his head, and picked up his hat.
And if Rebecca has Sam’s precious “Household Expenses” book on or about her person, thought Abigail, Sam will eat me alive.
When the party reached Fish Street—still surrounded by a loose ring of Revere’s North End boys, to keep off unscheduled demonstrations of disapproval against Royal power and red uniforms—Lieutenant Coldstone signed the grim-faced little private to watch the yard gate, while he, Muldoon, and Abigail entered the shop. Nehemiah Tillet came around the counter smiling. “What can I do—?” before it dawned on him how extraordinary the presence of any British officer must be in Boston at this particular time.
The next moment he saw Abigail behind the Lieutenant, and his face blenched a little in the gray light of the shop.
“An allegation has been laid against you that you are unlawfully keeping a woman—who is herself wanted for questioning in the murder that took place here on the night of the twenty-fourth—prisoner under lock and key in this house.” Coldstone laid a paper on the counter. “Here is a warrant from the Provost Marshal, to search your house and ascertain the truth.”
“It isn’t true!” gasped Tillet. “She’s my daughter—my niece, I mean—she isn’t right in the head! We keep her locked up for her own protection—”
“Shut up, Tillet!” His wife appeared in the doorway, face even less attractive than usual due to its mottled flush of rage. She stabbed a furious finger at Abigail. “That slattern would say anything to disgrace us, before our church and before our friends! Bringing soldiers here, in broad daylight, to turn all our neighbors against us! She has always been jealous of this household, and worked as a go-between to ruin the marriage of an honest woman! Her accusation is ridiculous!”
“The question is not about her relations with your family,” responded Coldstone evenly, “nor whether her accusation is ridiculous, but whether it is true.” The two prentice-boys, Queenie, and the scullery maid had assembled in the doorway behind her, and Abigail saw the glance that went among the three youngsters. Queenie was staring at her, her big hands working and unmantled hatred in her eyes.
“Hap,” snapped Mrs. Tillet to the younger boy, “you go now, at once, to Mr. Goss the magistrate over at Went-worth’s Wharf and bring him here.” She turned furiously back to Coldstone. “My sister-in-law’s husband is the magistrate of this ward, sir! We’ll see if your warrant stands up to his authority!”
“By all means send for him, m’am.” Coldstone stepped aside from the doorway. “Yet this warrant has the King’s authority, and save for your messenger boy, none of the household shall stir from my presence until I have seen that attic.”
Nevertheless, Mrs. Tillet refused to budge until the magistrate—a man of Mr. Tillet’s age, bluff and red-faced from his profession as a ship’s carpenter—appeared, grumbling and snorting at being called from his work and glaring at his red-faced sister-in-law. In the interim, Mr. Tillet repeatedly began his long train of explanations: “—my niece, sir, and subject to violent fits; ’tis only out of the goodness of my wife’s heart that we took her in at all—” which invariably ended in his wife telling him to hold his tongue. For her part, Mrs. Tillet spent the half hour or so that the wait occupied in railing against Abigail’s morals, personal habits, marriage, family, housekeeping, and sanity, despite Lieutenant Coldstone’s reiterated warnings that her words were being taken note of, and would lay her open to action for slander.
“Let her sue me!” shouted Mrs. Tillet, pounding her chest with one massive fist. “I’ll repeat every word I’ve said to the whole of the General Court, and then they will all know her for the slut and unbeliever she is!”
Abigail listened in stony silence, only praying that Sam wouldn’t get word of all this and show up to further complicate matters.
And that, once in Coldstone’s hands, Rebecca would not reveal that the killer was, in fact, Abednego Sellars or some other member of the Sons.
Sam didn’t come. With the magistrate’s appearance, the whole of the party filed upstairs, to find that the door of the attic stair was indeed locked. This ultimately debouched into the wide, freezingly cold space at the top of the house—not even Queenie’s chamber at the west end, above that of her master and mistress, gleaned any warmth, for obviously no fires were kept up on the second floor at all.
The door of the small room called the south attic was also locked. The bolts on the outside of its door looked new. Beside the door stood a water pitcher, a plate innocent even of crumbs, a basket filled with newly sewed shirts, and beside them, a short, braided-leather whip, of the kind hunters used for beating dogs away from a kill.
“The woman’s got to earn her keep,” stated Mrs. Tillet fiercely. “She’d eat us out of house and home if left to herself, a glutton and a wittol. ’Tis only Christian charity that we took her in, and she refuses to turn a hand to help us or support herself. She should be put out into the road—”
“Why then do you lock the door on her instead?” Coldstone took the key, and opened the door. “Strange charity, m’am.”
The woman seated on the bed had already staggered to her feet—probably at the sound of footsteps and strange voices—and dropped the chemise she was sewing, flung herself on her knees in front of Coldstone, and threw her arms around his legs. “Please, sir, please, tell her it wasn’t my fault I didn’t get them done!” she babbled. Her long blonde hair, pale as flax, hid her face, and the marks the dog-whip had left stood out purple on her cold-reddened arms. “I couldn’t help! ’Tis I couldn’t hold a needle right with the cold, and I did try! Please tell her!”
The room was like an icehouse. Coldstone reached down and grasped the woman’s arm—she wore only a chemise, with the bed’s single blanket wrapped over it—and brought her to her feet. Tears poured down from her eyes, and snot from her nose, and her fingers left little traces of blood on the officer’s white gloves as she clutched at his hands.
“Make her let me go, sir! I promise I’ll do whatever she asks, but tell her to let me out!”
Coldstone turned to Abigail. “Is this Mrs. Malvern?” With a gentle hand he brushed back the greasy strings of graying blonde hair from a face square, broad, and slightly animal-looking, with its level bar of dark brow and its sloping forehead.
Abigail had already come forward with her handkerchief, gently wiping at the tears, stroking the woman’s shoulder in a way that she hoped was reassuring. “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
Twenty-eight
It was well past dinnertime by the time it was agreed that Gomer Faulk—that was the woman’s name—would be taken to Abigail’s house for the next few days, until it could be decided what to do with her. Hester Tillet had a great deal to say, at the top of her lungs, about her “niece’s” inborn inability to tell the truth on any subject whatsoever, and bawled that Abigail would hear from her lawyers for taking from her household one of its members, though as Gomer was a good thirty-five years of age and, according to the disgusted Magistrate Goss, no relation whatsoever to the Tillets, it was hard to discover on what grounds Hester thought she had jurisdiction over her.
“Faulk? Nobody named Faulk in the family. There was a Faulk out in Medford—a drunk good-for-nothing who abandoned his family, as I recall it—but they were no connection of ours, thank God . . .”
Gomer herself clung alternately to Abigail and Lieutenant Coldstone, shivering and wiping her nose with her fingers. “Just don’t let her lock me up again. There’s rats at night, sir, m’am, big ’uns, and they talks to me. I’ll sew for you
all you want m’am, sir, just don’t let her whip me again.” She was clearly, as Orion Hazlitt had said of his servant girl Damnation, “lacking.” She couldn’t recall the names of her parents other than Ma and Pa, but said that she’d lived with one family and another in the farms around Medford, the most recent being that of Nehemiah Tillet’s sister and brother-in-law. “They hit me now and now, but they didn’t lock me up. Let me sleep in the cowshed. I like cows, m’am. I takes good care of ’em . . .
“She and that man”—she pointed to Tillet—“come to my uncle Reb’s wedding, and Uncle Reb and Miss Eliza, they said they had to go away, and I couldn’t come with ’em—”
“Someone had to look after the girl,” protested Tillet. “My wife was unsatisfied with the woman then helping her with sewing for the shop—”
Like the crippled boy turning the spinning wheel at Moore’s Farm out in Essex County, reflected Abigail sadly. Handed off, to provide labor to whoever would support him. At least Kemiah Moore and his wife appeared to be willing to feed that boy the same rations they gave their own family, and let him sit among the kitchen’s distractions. But maybe, her darker soul whispered, that was only because he was incapable of wandering away.
“An unfortunate story,” said Coldstone, as they walked back along Fish Street in the gathering dusk. “But not a new one.”
“A letter to Medford will yield more information on the subject,” said Abigail. Her head ached—she prayed Pattie had made some kind of dinner for John and the children, and had thought to save some for her—and she felt infinitely tired. Though she knew Mrs. Tillet’s spew of invective had been simply that—the vomiting forth of a poisoned mind—she felt as if she were physically smeared with filth every time the young Lieutenant turned his eyes upon her. “I do beg your pardon, Lieutenant.”
The Ninth Daughter Page 27
