Weak Flesh

by Jo Robertson

  The white picket fence looked benignly harmless as it surrounded the neatly clipped lawn and blue delphinium and white larkspur flowering in beds near the windows. Meghan left her cycle outside the fence and walked up the narrow path. She rapped on the front door and waited, wishing she'd thought to bring a peace offering with her, a jar of apricot preserves from last year's crop, perhaps.

  The Jolly house was situated at the end of Riverside Street, set apart from the other residences in the area by a grove of fruit trees, now looking naked in the winter afternoon.

  Standing on the porch landing, Meghan sensed the extreme isolation of the street. No horses or cows moved about in the stable to the right. Not even a household cat or dog prowled around. Where had their little maid gone, she wondered?

  She raised her hand to knock more loudly when she heard a loud crash from behind the house, to the left, she thought, nearer to the trees. She hesitated, knowing she'd interfered enough with the Jollys' private life, but propelled by the certainty that husband and wife both kept dark secrets that could shed light on Nell's murder.

  Strolling casually around the left side of the house, she heard the muffled sounds of arguing voices. She paused. The Reverend's deeper voice lacked its normal blustering, sounding strangely timid and unsure for such a dynamic man.

  Mrs. Jolly's high tones fairly screeched like an injured cat, so that Meghan could make out only an occasional word.

  "Dare – why would I – cannot tolerate – and – "

  Reverend Jolly's lower tones carried more clearly. "Only once, I swear. It won't happen again. I've apologized. What more can I do?" he pled, sounding so unlike what Meghan was accustomed to that she wondered briefly if it were Mr. Jolly at all. "It was a long time ago."

  Meghan crept forward to hear more clearly.

  Chapter 30

  Gage raised his voice over the brouhaha as he limped into the reception area. "What in hell is going on?"

  Then he saw Michael Hayes in the jail cell, haggard, jacketless, and wearing a torn shirt. The smell of spirits permeated the air. "Ah, shit," he mumbled, "not again."

  "Sorry, Marshal," Pruitt said.

  "Where'd you find him?"

  "Getting shit-faced at Sam's Tavern," Henderson accused from behind the oak barrier. "Likely been there all day."

  "He's in bad shape, Gage." Pruitt lowered his voice and stepped away from the cell where Hayes sprawled on the cot. "Looks like he's been drinking steadily for a couple days. Got in a brawl with another patron. I didn't figure him for that kind of fellow."

  "Let him sleep it off, then." Gage sighed deeply and turned away, tossing the warning over his shoulder. "But he'd better not mess up the Station House again. Bring Wade into my office, Will. I have some questions to ask him."

  As he passed Henderson on the way to his office, Gage paused. "Would you like to help with the interrogation, Sergeant?"

  Henderson looked startled, but a moment later a huge grin spread across his broad face. "Hell, yes, Marshal!"

  Minutes later James Wade slouched in the guest chair while Gage stared hard at him and Henderson leaned against the wall, his meaty arms folded over his barrel chest. He would prove a good foil to Gage's milder manner.

  The Sergeant kicked at Wade's chair, nearly toppling him. "Sit up, you little runt. Show the Marshal some respect."

  Wade looked as if he'd protest, took in Henderson's ruddy face, and straightened up in his chair.

  "I don't know what more I can tell the Marshal," he complained, never taking his eyes off the Sergeant. "I ain't had nothing to do with what happened to Nell."

  "Maybe," Gage conceded slowly, "but you know something you're not telling us."

  While Wade tried to look innocent and injured, Gage merely narrowed his eyes and stared at him.

  Wade shrugged. "Like what?"

  Gage fiddled with a pencil on his desk, let the silence in the room grow while Wade shifted uneasily, glancing ever so often at the huge presence of the Sergeant at his right shoulder.

  "Like what?" he repeated.

  Gage let the accusation drop into the well of silence. "Like the ruby ring you gave Nell to commemorate your – what? – engagement? Relationship? Sexual encounters?"

  Wade jumped like someone had prodded him with a sharp stick. "Don't know what you mean," he mumbled, but his startled eyes told Gage otherwise.

  "We found the ring, Jim." Gage leaned forward and put a sympathetic look on his face. "It has her initials inside the band, and Nell's sister told us where she got it. We know you gave her the ruby ring."

  Gage stood and walked around the desk to lean his hip against the top, holding back a wince at the tug of pain in his thigh. He'd changed into the spare trousers and shirt he kept in the office, but could feel the heat of the wound through the bandage and his pants.

  "Don't be stupid, Wade," Henderson snarled. "It'll go easier on you if you come clean without the Marshal havin' to beat it outta you."

  Wade's brow beaded with sweat and his narrow face shone with apprehension. His fingers jumped on his thighs.

  "Now, Sergeant, I hardly ever get physical," Gage reproved mildly, "but I'd like to explain to the solicitor how Mr. Wade cooperated with us. After all, maybe it was just an accident."

  He paused and stared down at Wade. "Was that it, Jim? It was an accident?"

  "I didn't kill her," Wade mumbled, "but – but – "

  "But what?" Henderson interrupted and Wade flinched. Gage leveled a warning at the Sergeant. Don't stop an imminent confession, the look said.

  Gage thought about the messages he'd gotten, the Biblical references to unnatural behavior. He'd assumed the writer referred to Carver, the unnatural father, but maybe ...

  He switched tactics.

  "Come on, Jim. We all know what Nell was like. She was a sensual, passionate young woman." Gage glanced up to see the startled and embarrassed look on Henderson's face, but he'd also seen the flicker of confirmation in Wade's eyes.

  Gage lowered his voice confidentially. "Nell probably had different – inclinations from what your usual girls like."

  Henderson was a clever man and caught on quickly. He joined Gage and leaned against the desk, his feet crossed at the ankles. "Yeah, that's right, Marshal. I heard some talk about the Carver girl."

  Gage nodded, continuing the charade even though the truth of Wade's perversities sickened him, and he hated besmirching Nell's name any further. "She liked the men in her life to get rough, isn't that right, Jim? It's not your fault if there were bruises on her flesh. It's what she wanted."

  "I heard tell there are women like that," Henderson added. "Not just whores either."

  The ugly inferences permeated the air like the foul smell that sometimes came from the Dismal Swamp.

  "You can't be blamed if things got out of hand because Nell egged you on," Gage said gently.

  "She did! Goddamn right she did!" Wade burst out. He jumped up as if he couldn't contain himself. "She liked it, Nell did. She wasn't the perfect little lady her father thought she was."

  "Apparently not," Gage said dryly.

  "What was it that Nell liked?" Henderson asked, his beefy hands clenched across his chest.

  Wade seemed not to notice the disgust on the other men's faces, seemed glad to unburden himself. Gage heard the suppressed excitement in his voice.

  "Nell liked me to choke her," Wade said, faltering a bit, then hurrying on. "She said, she said the excitement was what she wanted, made it more thrilling."

  That could account for the bruises on Nell's neck, Gage thought. Bruises that looked like they'd come from a single hand, the thumb and fingers pressing around the neck.

  Gage dropped his mild manner while Henderson flanked Wade on the other side. "Did it ever go too far, Jim? Did Nell complain that you were hurting her? Did she threaten to tell someone, maybe accuse you of assault?"

  He hurled the questions like stones while Wade sank under the weight of them. He doubled over in his chair. "No,
no, no! That didn't happen. I didn't kill her. She drowned, for God's sake!"

  That admission had the ring of truth. Gage looked at the pitiful form of James Wade and realized the man was a letch, but probably didn't have the stomach for murder.

  "Put this poor excuse for a man in his cell," he told Henderson, "until I can figure out what to charge him with."

  #

  The Reverend jerked as he saw Meghan step around the corner of the house. "What are you doing here?" he blustered.

  Mrs. Jolly sat on a wooden bench, facing the patch of land that served as the vegetable garden during the growing season. A heavy blanket covered her legs. Mr. Jolly stood beside her like a hungry crow, all angles and sparseness.

  "You've got no business here," he accused. "Spying on us, listening in on private conversations."

  Meghan kept her eyes on Mrs. Jolly. While the woman's voice had sounded angry a moment ago, her face now looked calm, almost serene, as if she'd just discovered something greatly to her benefit. What was going on between these two odd people?

  Mrs. Jolly waved a hand. "Help me inside," she commanded her husband. "I wish to speak to Miss Bailey alone."

  "But – but Madeline," he objected. "You should rest, m'dear. Don't exert yourself."

  "I'm fine," she snapped. "Take me inside and prepare tea for us."

  When they'd settled into the parlor and Mr. Jolly had served tea and thick slices of bread with butter and jam – much like a servant, Meghan observed in astonishment – Mrs. Jolly dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

  "Leave us. I want privacy," she commanded regally.

  Meghan sat in bewildered silence for a long time, sipping her tea and pondering the extraordinary change between the Reverend and his wife. Gone was the frail, timid woman. Gone the domineering, overbearing man.

  Their roles appeared to be reversed. What in the world could account for such a strange transformation?

  "Mrs. Jolly," she began at last, picking her way through her thoughts like thorny patch, "I – I was hoping that you'd – that you would – "

  "Nonsense, Miss Bailey, don't grovel." She broke off a slice of bread and popped it calmly into her mouth. "I'm ready to tell you the whole sordid story."

  She leaned forward and pierced Meghan with a look of ferocity she couldn't have imagined coming from the older woman. "But you must tell no one. No. One. Do you understand? Not a single person. I will not have my personal business bandied about in common gossip."

  "I – I may have to tell the Marshal if it relates to the case."

  "It doesn't," Mrs. Jolly pronounced. "It's about the ridiculous behavior of an arrogant old man, and while I'm happy to know the truth, I won't be the object either of tattle tales or of pity."

  She clutched Meghan's hand fiercely. "You must promise me or I won't reveal anything."

  "All right, I promise."

  "Good. The Reverend Mr. Jolly is a – a strict man, but I'd always thought him a good man." Her face hardened. "I was gravely mistaken. He is not a good man. It was he I saw quarreling with the woman at the Swamp."

  She hurried on when she saw the alarm in Meghan's features. "Don't worry. The woman wasn't Ellen Carver."

  "Then – "

  "I know the Carver girl. It wasn't she." A look of pain crossed over Mrs. Jolly's thin face before she quickly replaced it with pure hatred. "The woman was his daughter. His daughter by another woman."

  She paused, took a deep breath, and continued. "I think I'd much rather live with the knowledge of his betrayal than have the entire community abuzz with his disgusting behavior."

  An expression of calm serenity settled over her features. "I imagine I'll rather enjoy keeping the Reverend's little secret," she confessed with a sly smile of victory.

  Meghan left the Jolly house as soon as decorum allowed, eager to explain to Gage the reason for the Reverend's drinking and odd behavior. She had no intention of keeping the promise she'd made to Mrs. Jolly.

  What a strange couple, she thought. She'd been naïve to suppose a man of God would be unfaithful to his wife, but that was preferable to murder.

  As she reached her bicycle, the western sky had darkened like a portent of ill winds, and she became aware that she needed to hurry not to miss dinner with her father.

  Chapter 31

  Drained of energy after the interrogation with Wade, Gage felt a fever edging upwards. Still, he couldn't stop now. Regardless of how ill his body or how addled his brain, the ugly elements of the case niggled his mind and gave him no peace.

  He hauled himself up from his desk and lumbered into the reception room to check on Michael Hayes. The man still slept heavily and a light snoring emanated from his jail cell.

  That decided it for Gage. Whatever Hayes had to explain about his behavior would have to wait until morning, along with Gage's questions about the secret marriage. "I'm going home, Henderson." Gage retrieved his hat and headed down the stairs.

  "You look a mite flushed, Marshal," the Sergeant observed. "Are you all right? Snake bites ain't nothing to fool with."

  "Doc says it's nothing that rest won't cure. Mind the prisoners closely, would you? I don't want a riotous crowd getting ideas about one or both of those boys."

  "Humph, not boys either one of them," Henderson muttered, just loud enough for Gage to hear as he gingerly made his way down to the first floor.

  He unhitched his buggy and mounted his horse rather clumsily, letting the mare find her way down Main Street to Church's Boarding House. Sliding off her back, he tethered her and dragged himself through the front doors.

  Off to the parlor on the right two elderly gentlemen played a card game while another read a newspaper by a dim lamp. No one paid Gage a bit of attention as he limped up the stairs to his room at the end of the hall.

  #

  Sergeant Henderson's ruddy complexion flushed with surprise when Meghan stopped at the Station House on her way home from the Jolly residence. "Oh, I say, Miss Bailey. The Marshal's gone home already, looking feverish and plumb tuckered, I'd say."

  At Meghan's frown of disapproval he added, "Came straightaway here instead of going home to change. You know the Marshal."

  "That I do," she grumbled. "I wonder if Papa should pay him a house call?"

  "Don't think so, Miss Meghan. The Marshal just needs rest. He ought to have gone home, but put in near a full day's work, instead." He looked stymied by the foolishness of young folks.

  Meghan's shoulders slumped. She'd have to tell Gage her news in the morning, she supposed, feeling decidedly dejected at not being able to share the striking tale of the Reverend and his wife. Then she recalled that she was still annoyed with Gage and felt even more dispirited.

  Henderson looked meaningfully toward the jail cells on his left. "Got two fellas in there now."

  Meghan lifted her brow. "Really? Who?"

  "Michael Hayes and that Jim Wade." The Sergeant sniffed in distain. "Protecting the one – that'd be Wade – and the other got hisself soused at the Tavern."

  She peeked around the corner to the jails, but both cells were now dark and she could make out nothing but shadowy outlines. She started to leave, but at the top of the stairs, Henderson spoke again.

  "Don't be wandering the streets in the dark, Miss Bailey."

  "Oh, don't worry, I have my bicycle. I'll be home in a jiffy." As she descended the steps to the lower lobby, she shouted goodnight and walked out into the cold night air to retrieve her machine.

  She remembered Henderson's warning when the errant thought that she might stop by Gage's room to check on him flitted through her mind. She knew she couldn't worry her father any more than she already had, so she cycled home as fast as her aching legs allowed only to find Papa had already dined and was now reading in his favorite chair by the parlor fire.

  Meghan had Abby serve her a dinner tray in the parlor so she could visit with her father before he retired for the night. Long after he'd gone upstairs to his own bedroom, she stared into the smold
ering embers and finally allowed herself to relive the last two days.

  Permitted herself to think of Gage in anything more than practical terms, a girlhood crush gone sour. An experiment in her growing sexuality.

  She nearly convinced herself.

  Her arms and legs tingled when she thought of him. Her body ached again for the release he'd given her in the shanty. Was that normal? She thought so, but did it also make her a wanton? No, she was shrewd enough to recognize the power of mating, the primal necessity of physical attraction.

  Was it only that between her and Gage?

  She'd never been in love before. At least she didn't think so. Was love the emotion he'd aroused in her? If so, it was damned miserable. Painful, but wonderful, she admitted.

  She felt vaguely annoyed that Gage's clever hands and mouth knew exactly how to set her heart tripping and her blood boiling. How many women had he practiced on to gain such experience, she wondered peevishly?

  Recognizing the faint stirring of jealousy, she shoved it aside. Gage was a man! Of course, he'd had sexual encounters, probably dozens of them. Still the thought gnawed at her, stoking her restlessness.

  Humming beneath the surface and adding to her frustration was the desperate knowledge that Gage didn't intend to demonstrate all that experience with her again. At least not for now.

  As she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, an inexplicable sadness weighed on her, almost as if she'd suffered a great loss. Though it was scarcely nine o'clock, she bathed and dressed for bed, sure she'd fall asleep at once, considering the harrowing events of the past few days.

  She emptied her mind of all her suspicions about her neighbors, of all the details of the case, of the murder weapon and the loss of her friend Nell.

  She felt the sweet relief of sleep finally take over.

  #

  Gage scouted Mrs. Church's linen cabinet for extra blankets and dumped them on his bed. Fully dressed, he crawled weakly under the covers, his body aching to his very bones with the mounting fever. His teeth chattered and his body shivered while he burrowed deeply in.