A Study in Revenge (28 page)

“Nicks and bumps.” Grey flapped his left arm a bit. “But it happened shortly after midnight—hours ahead of these advertisements. Despite your opinion of my appearance this morning, the man failed. I suspect that these dire threats were then created in order to confuse the issue of the would-be assassin’s motive and identity.”

“Just a moment. Let me see if I’m understanding you correctly. My fears for your safety are unfounded … because somebody already tried to kill you before these threats were posted?”

“In a manner of speaking. That is, I’m in no more danger now than I was this time yesterday, before these ridiculous paintings appeared.”

“You have the oddest way of looking at life,” Lean said.

“You’d have little use for me otherwise,” Grey said.

“Well, thank heavens you were able to escape real injury and evade the man.”

“On the contrary, my assailant was able to avoid me. Apparently by drowning.”

“I haven’t heard anything about a body!” Lean declared.

“That’s why I said ‘apparently.’ No sign of him this morning either. But a body in the water will surface, sooner or later.”

Lean waited to see if Grey would add any further details, but the man suddenly seemed caught up in some new thought.

“Run you down. So he was in a hansom? Anything in there to say who he was? Grey?”

It took Grey several seconds to realize he was being addressed and needed to respond. “Belonged to Soule’s Hack Stables. Stolen from one of their drivers at gunpoint an hour before my encounter.”

“Where’d this all happen?”

“Started at the Seamen’s Bethel. I had a note promising information.”

“The Bethel, that’s close to Darragh’s boardinghouse. The same old locations keep popping their noses up.”

“Old locations,” Grey repeated. “That reminds me—whatever became of your efforts to identify the use of the former building at the tailor shop’s location? Anything of interest turn up?”

“I’ve gone to the historical society and asked our old friend Meserve to lend his researching expertise,” Lean said.

“Excellent.”

“Underground passages, unexplained drilling holes, stolen rocks, dead thieves. This case seems to keep circling around back onto itself in the strangest fashion. And now death threats against you. Are you at least carrying a gun?”

“Since our return from Boston,” Grey answered. “Whoever put a bullet in Frank Cosgrove is still active. Chester Sears was plainly in fear for his own life. So whatever as-yet-unseen hand is in play here is perfectly willing to commit murder to further his own ends.”

“I’ll put a man on you, in street clothes. In case there’s another attempt on your life.”

Grey waved off the suggestion. “I don’t think that’s necessary. If someone is already watching me, I’d prefer not to frighten off whoever it is. I’d rather have the chance to flush him out on my own, see who’s behind this.”

Lean paced across the dingy alleyway, kicking at loose bits of rock as he turned and wandered back. “I don’t like your cavalier attitude. You
act as if this is all just some private challenge of yours that doesn’t affect anyone else.”

“Well, it is a grand old game after all, isn’t it? But I do take your point about the recent raising of the stakes. Which is why I suggest that the two of us limit our future collaborations. Openly, I mean. We can meet covertly to exchange information as needed.”

“What are you driving at?” Lean asked.

Grey motioned toward the now-concealed threat painted on the ramshackle door. “Someone objects to the pursuit of this inquiry, and he seems to have singled me out. If I can keep his attention focused on me, there’ll be no need to make yourself a target as well.”

The color rose in Lean’s face as he absorbed Grey’s meaning. “You seem set on overlooking that I’m the one wearing the badge. I’m not about to leave off finding Cosgrove’s killer.”

“I was suggesting no such thing. But if our unseen villain’s watchful eye is focused on me while you conduct your investigation unimpeded, so much the better.” Grey stepped a pace closer and spoke in a lower tone. “Yes, you are the one with the badge. But I shouldn’t have to remind you that you are also the one with the wife and two young children.”

“Ah, that’s it, is it? You’re thinking about last year and the murder of Dr. Steig. The kidnapping of Helen Prescott and her daughter. All the more reason not to try going about this on your own.” Lean fought to keep his voice free of the urgency he felt. “If there’s danger here, then we’ll beat the bastards by watching each other’s back. We’re in this together, eh?”

“A fine sentiment, Lean, and I appreciate the intent. But if Dr. Steig’s death taught me anything, it’s that the unavoidable truth of the matter, whether you care to admit it or not, is that each of us is in this very much alone.”

Grey reached out his right hand. A look of annoyed uncertainty grew on Lean’s face, but he shook the offered hand.

“Send word to me if necessary. I shall do the same.” Grey nodded, turned, and walked off across the uneven alleyway.

G
REY WATCHED THE MAN APPROACH DOWN
Q
UEBEC
S
TREET
, where modest inquiries had revealed he was staying with friends during his time in Portland. Though Chief Jefferson clearly outfitted himself with an air of rough living, it was a relief to Grey to see the man dressed in appropriate street clothing. He’d been prepared for an ostentatious costume designed to highlight this white man’s claim to his adopted Indian heritage. That wasn’t the case at all. Chief Jefferson even sported a long mustache such as would have looked foreign upon a full-blooded Indian.

“Chief Jefferson, thank you for agreeing to meet me.”

The chief tipped his tall, broad-brimmed hat. “Perceval Grey. Always willing to help one of our kind, even if he is doing the bidding of a wealthy white man whose greatest pleasure in life seems to be pissing in my porridge.”

“My client is Miss Phebe Webster. My services have in no way been engaged by Euripides Webster.”

“Well, that puts a better shine on things. Explains why you were sent instead of some ruffian. The young lady did seem less intent on seeing me dead.”

The two men headed toward the midpoint of the Eastern Promenade, strolling slowly to accommodate Grey’s lingering limp.

“Yet you were still willing to talk, even when you believed that Euripides had hired me. Explains your choice of a public venue,” Grey said with a wave toward the passing wagons and carriages.

“I was a bit worried. But curious, too,” the chief added. “Heard the rumors about you all those years back, the Abenaki boy taken and raised by rich Portlanders. Besides, you aren’t the only one looking for information.”

“I’ll provide what answers I’m able,” Grey said.

“I came to Portland soon as I heard old Horace Webster finally slipped off the boat. He was never willing to give a thought to selling what he calls his thunderstone. I was foolishly hoping the son might be open to reason. Though I knew from before that he’s as stubborn as a deaf mule. With a temper on him, too. When I saw him the other day, ’Ripides said the stone had been stolen. He telling the truth for once?”

“Do you mean to say you don’t trust such a fine, upstanding citizen?” Grey asked.

“Hah! The whole family’s so damn crooked the neighbors bring their stone walls indoors at night. When did it get stolen?”

“The last two weeks, maybe three.”

“Any idea where it is now?” Chief Jefferson asked.

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“He said the same. That I only came round at all so I’d look innocent. I hear you got more sense than the average fool on the street. You truly reckon me as the thief?”

Grey shrugged. “The matter remains unclear at this point. But the Websters certainly view you with suspicion.”

“I suppose that figures easy enough to them.”

“You’re the only one who has ever shown an overt interest in possessing the stone.”

“The only one apart from them, that is.” The chief spit on the ground, then regarded Grey with an earnest look. “I give you my word: I do not have the Stone of Pamola. I’ve never had the honor of holding it in my hands. And you can bet, if I was lying now and had the stone, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”

“You could merely be keeping up your charade of innocence.”

“I wouldn’t bother doing a dance about it for the benefit of that lot. And I wouldn’t care if you thought me guilty neither. I’d be gone already.”

“And where, for the sake of argument, would you be gone to?” Grey asked.

“Back to its home, where it belongs. Pamola.”

Grey scrutinized the older man, like a sort of palm reader trying to
glean hidden meaning from the crisscrossing lines and wrinkles of the chief’s weathered face.

Chief Jefferson cracked a smile. “There’s more than a little something to be said for finding your way home. You ought to think a long while on that.”

“Sorry? I don’t follow,” Grey said.

“Your spirit has wandered far from the paths it was meant to travel. Soon perhaps you will come to know that your time has arrived. The time for you to go home as well.”

“I’m as home as I choose to be. And I suspect that your comments are meant to take me down a path other than the one I’m interested in.”

“A man’s free to choose as he may, of course”—Chief Jefferson tapped the side of his head first, then his breast—“but a man’s true home is where his heart tells him he belongs.”

Grey recognized this as mere distraction but was unable to ignore the hypocrisy in the chief’s position. “Odd words coming from a man who’s spent his life other than where he belongs.”

“The blood and the heart can sometimes be of two minds. I weren’t long off my mother’s pap when I went missing from my white home. I suppose I must have known I was lost at first, but at that age it didn’t take long for memories of my first family to fade. I spent five or six years with that Abenaki couple that first found me. Makes them about as close as I can ever remember of having parents. How old were you when you left the Abenaki?”

“Seven,” Grey said curtly. He was slightly irritated at the man’s digression but held his tongue, hoping the dialogue might come around to something more relevant to his inquiry.

“Ha, aren’t we just heads and tails on a strange old coin? So you were old enough to recall going from our people to a fancy house, being raised among Portland’s tippybobs. You must have missed it.”

“After a manner, I suppose.” Grey kept a straight face and clear eyes, not wanting to reveal any hint of the strain of those early years that might encourage the chief in his verbal meandering.

“Oh, ‘after a manner,’ he says. How could you not? Going from that life—freedom, movement, living in the round of the year. And trading it
in for a white childhood. Barely a childhood at all. Nothing but primers and teachers’ rules. Keeping your knees clean and your ears scrubbed. You missed out on something precious.”

Grey looked out over the open, sloping expanse of green park. It was nearly half a mile wide and five hundred feet deep. A short, level space by the Promenade gave way to a sharp slope that dropped down to where it leveled again at the rocky shoreline of Casco Bay. A train chugged slowly along the Portland & Rochester line, the tracks laid out along the outer rim of the Neck. For a moment the engine’s smoke mingled with that of the Portland Smelting Works, the sole commercial endeavor located along the base of the eastern end of the city’s neck. The wafting smoke dissipated in the air before it could ruin the pristine sight of the bay dotted with its dozens of islands and hundreds of boats of various sizes and purposes.

“There was nothing left for me in that life,” Grey said.

“You’re wrong. Take it from me, one who’s lived long enough to know.”

“I’ll judge for myself. Don’t mistake me for one of those who lazily assume that age brings wisdom to every man. Years bring experience but also give a man time to stake out a spot and dig himself in so deep he can no longer see five feet past where he’s standing.”

“I tell you, Grey. Once it’s inside you … well, the pull of that life stays with you, always. I was seventeen when I came traveling back south with some Penobscot families. Some fellow in Arundel caught sight of me and recognized something.” Chief Jefferson lifted his left hand. The top knuckle of his little finger was missing, and an old scar still showed across his other three fingers.

“Childhood accident. It wasn’t long before the police had a hold of me. The next day an elderly white fellow and two younger women came to the jail. They stood there gawking at me for a good ten minutes, comparing me to an old photo, before they decided I was the little boy they’d known as John Jefferson. I thought they were all mad. Weren’t until what turned out to be my elder sister hummed an old bedtime ditty—one my mother used to sing me—that the memories began to stir.”

“That’s touching,” Grey said, “but what I’d like to hear about—”

“I was glad to know the truth,” Jefferson blurted out, ignoring Grey’s
attempt to divert the conversation to the present once more. “There was a queer sort of joy in coming back to a home I’d forgotten. But still, finding out I’d been meant to live another life could never erase the one I’d actually lived. They wanted me to put my past behind me, pretend it never happened. That’s what this whole country wants the Indians to do. But I could never shake it out of me. Whenever I heard that a group of Abenakis had come within ten miles, I’d run off to join them.”

A faraway look had settled into Chief Jefferson’s eyes, and he chuckled. “It got to the point my father hired armed men. They’d stash me away at a hotel in Biddeford. Sometimes it worked, other times I still got loose. Eventually my father learned he had to let me be who my heart said I was.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Grey asked.

“You want to know why I’m so interested in this thunderstone? That’s why. Learning I was born a white man, that I didn’t truly have Abenaki blood … well, it was like a piece of me got hollowed out. Never could quite fill it up all the way again after that.”