Death of a Dyer (13 page)

She turned from the keyboard to look at him. “Do you enjoy music, Mr. Rees?” He shrugged. “I imported this pianoforte from Europe; it is the latest thing.”

Rees looked at the instrument. Gold leaf decorated the sage green body, and it appeared both delicate and heavy. He could not even hazard a guess at the expense necessary for transporting this instrument but knew it must be significant.

“Oh, I am so pleased with you,” Molly said. After jumping to her feet, she crossed the room to a delicate writing desk and extracted a small sack that jingled enticingly. “Dr. Wrothman brought me the good news. You’ve already caught the villain who murdered my dear husband.” She held out the leather bag.

Rees regarded her in surprise. “He is mistaken. I haven’t.”

“Augustus is in jail, is he not?”

“Yes, he is. But not for—”

“Of course he’s guilty. Now Richard can come home.”

“I’m not certain Augustus is,” Rees said. “Why would he murder Nate?”

“You must know the boy was raised here,” she said, regarding him from blue eyes as piercing as rapier points and about as warm.

“Treated as a son,” Rees said.

Sudden humiliated tears filled her eyes. “He is Nate’s son,” she cried. “By that … that woman downstairs. So you see, Mr. Rees, that Augustus could desire Nate’s death for all of the reasons ascribed to Richard.”

“Except that Augustus wasn’t seen running away with blood on his shirt,” Rees said, his voice cold. “And, by all accounts, he hasn’t come home in years.”

“He could have been sneaking into that weaver’s cottage, with none of us knowing,” Molly retorted.

She’s talking about the lay-by, Rees realized.

“Anyway, I know Nate visited that boy in town. We can’t know what arguments occurred.” She thrust the bag at him. “Take your payment, Mr. Rees. Your investigation is over.”

Rees put his hands behind his back. “The killer is still not identified.” She stared at him. “Look, the murderer may not be either Richard or Augustus. Nate had another life, other than the one you witnessed on this farm. Customers and friends…”

He watched the anger run out of her, leaving her pale and tired. “He did little weaving anymore,” she said, subsiding upon her couch. She sounded bone weary and Rees felt a flash of unexpected sympathy for her. “He preferred playing with his powders and roots. He was looking for the perfect red, the perfect green, or something like.”

“Did he buy someone’s farm and cause bitter feelings?”

“No. He acquired land from the Carletons, that’s all I know. Quite a bit from King Carleton. But Nate rented a lot of it. He said he had enough.” She uttered a humorless bark of laughter. “I was a widow, Mr. Rees, long before my husband died.”

Rees nodded. “Was there anyone you know of that visited Nate regularly?” She shook her head. He rubbed his nose, contemplating the secluded cottage and the card players who met there in private. Maybe she didn’t know about them; Rees wasn’t the only one who didn’t know Nate very well.

“I just want my son home,” Molly said suddenly, her eyes brimming with tears. She tried to wipe them away with the lacy scrap of a handkerchief, and Rees, although he knew she was manipulative and not always kind, felt sorry for her. “Everyone blames my boy.…”

“We’ll find the murderer,” he promised. “I’ll expand my search. Nate’s office, maybe there’s something in there.”

“I looked. I found nothing.” She sighed in defeat.

“Correspondence?” Rees asked.

“Nothing useful. Come and I’ll show you. Maybe your eyes will find something.…” She rose to her feet, her filmy lawn gown swirling around her. Rees rose as well and together they walked down the hall to Nate’s office.

As soon as Molly opened the door, Rees understood why they had not met in here; the results of her searching were obvious. Nate’s ledgers covered every surface, and the desk drawers hung open. He involuntarily glanced at Molly.

“I thought I might find a will,” she said in a small voice. “George says he doesn’t have it. Of course, Richard will inherit as the eldest son. But I thought Nate would set aside a portion for Grace at the very least.…” Rees moved toward the desk and picked up the top ledger. A large
D
marked the front in Nate’s fine copperplate hand. When Rees skimmed through the pages, he saw entries for indigo and cochineal as well as for items he did not recognize; copper-based chemicals with sulfate and arsenite and carbonate in the names. A letter from a Mr. Scheele offering directions on the use of these products fell from between the leaves of the ledger.

Another book listed sales and purchases of farm items: corn to Mr. Pennington and hay from Mr. Jensen. Every line bore a small but definite
M
. Rees pointed it out to Molly.

“That is Marsh’s mark,” she said. She added in response to Rees’s interrogative expression, “Nate trusted Marsh completely.”

“He’s literate?” Rees’s voice squeaked in surprise. He’d wager that more than half the white farmers’ daughters hereabouts could not read.

“I believe he worked as someone’s secretary once…,” Molly said vaguely. “He knew how to read and write when he came to work here.”

Rees picked up a third ledger, this one marked with an
H
. It included the people employed upon the farm, and their rate of pay. “Are all the ledgers like these?”

“Yes. Everything to do with the running of the farm. Nothing personal.” She looked around the room, exhaling with frustration.

Rees sat down at the desk and began pulling out drawers at random: ink blocks, quills, and a penknife. A short letter relating to the sale of a colt. And then, tucked into the back of the central drawer, a scrap of paper torn from a larger sheet with a name:
Cornelius Lattimore, New Winstead.
“Do you know who this might be?” Rees asked.

Molly glanced at it and shook her head. “I’ve never seen or heard that name before. And look, it’s not in Nate’s hand.”

Rees reexamined the note. No, the careful hand did not belong to Nate. After studying the signature, he dropped the paper back into the drawer and stared around, mirroring Molly’s frustration. Nate must have a will; he was too responsible to shirk that task. So where was it?

Rees’s stomach growled, suddenly and embarrassingly loud. “I’ll think on this,” he promised.

Molly, who’d politely affected not to notice the belly rumble, said, “Would you like to stay for dinner?” She did not sound enthusiastic.

“Thank you, no,” he said. He wanted to spend no more time in Molly’s company. “I have other errands…,” he said, a sop to her feelings. “I’ll show myself out.”

She nodded, brushing ineffectually at the dirt streaks on her gown.

He left the room wondering why Nate had wed Molly, a fashion plate and social butterfly: exactly the sort of woman he had always professed to despise. Rees would have thought his old friend would prefer a farmer’s wife, a woman well used to hard work and not above milking her own cows. But then Nate had grown into a very different man than Rees would have expected. And he and Molly had succeeded in producing three children together, so Rees wanted to believe they’d been happy together.

Chapter Ten

The road into Dugard passed close by the jail, and Rees, with Augustus already on his mind, decided to stop and look in on the boy. When he entered the jail, the sweet scent of bacon reminded him of his hunger.

The constable looked up from his own plate. “Ah, Rees, your friend Mrs. Anderson just left. She brought some dinner for me and Augustus.”

“My next stop will be the Contented Rooster,” Rees said. His stomach rumbled, demanding sustenance, and Caldwell held out a strip of bacon. Rees looked at the dirty fingers holding the meat and said, “Thank you, no. I’ll have my own dinner soon.” He walked the few steps to the cell and stared in at the lad sitting inside. His dinner looked untouched. “How are you?” Rees asked Augustus. No answer. “Don’t worry, lad. We’ll get you out of here.” The young man looked up, his expression agonized, but he still said nothing. “I am helping you,” Rees said. Still no response. “I’ll return soon.” Feeling helpless, he walked back into the main room. Caldwell was scrubbing his plate with a thick slice of freshly baked bread.

“You done?” He jerked his head at the cell. Rees nodded. “Good. I’ve got something to show you.” He rose to his feet in a billow of stink and gestured Rees to the door. They crossed the dirt street toward Dolan’s furniture shop. The sound of running water intensified and Rees could smell freshly cut wood. But Caldwell did not enter the shop; he gestured instead to a cluster of thick shrubbery. In the dust underneath, partly obliterated by heavy boots, lay a small cigar. Rees looked at Caldwell in dismay. “I saw the light last night,” the constable said.

“The slave catchers?”

“I think so, yes. Unless your friend Judge Hansen was lurking here under the shrubbery. So I asked at the Bull. Stupid fools been hanging around. But not where I can find them.”

“I suppose they don’t want to take their case to Piggy,” Rees said.

“Huh. They don’t know him. He’d turn the boy over in a heartbeat, just because he could. You have to get Augustus out of here, Rees. And soon. He’s not guilty of anything that we know of, and now we need to protect him until I can find those catchers and get them out of town.”

“And take Augustus where? I can’t let him go back to the smithy; they’ll snatch him right out of there.”

Caldwell nodded. “I know. But you’ve got to think of something. I’ll stand guard tonight, but we need a more permanent solution.”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” Rees promised, throwing a final searching glance at the tracks underneath the shrubs. He started across the road but turned back. “Would the men at the Bull tell you if Wrothman hired them to kill Nate?”

“You still think the doctor killed him?” Caldwell asked in surprise. Rees shrugged. “Course those scum wouldn’t tell me. But I’ll keep my ears open. If there’s anything to find, I’ll find it.”

Rees nodded his thanks and returned to his wagon. He drove north to Water Street and the Contented Rooster. A snapping breeze blew off Dugard Pond, and all the windows in the coffeehouse were open to catch the gusts. Although it was warm today, Rees, and everyone else in town, knew this unseasonable summery weather could not last.

Inside the coffeehouse, the air smelled enticingly of coffee and cinnamon cake and roast beef. On a Monday, and still early, there were only a few tables occupied. Rees headed for the back table between the fireplace, the decorative screen hiding the empty interior, and the window from which he could watch the road outside. Jack Jr. brought fresh bread and suggested the beef. But it was Susannah who brought out the plate. The sight of the beef swimming in its pool of gravy and the mound of potatoes flooded Rees’s mouth with water again. He wanted to fall upon his plate like the starving man he was, but it would be impolite to eat in front of Susannah. He forced a smile and tried not to wish her away.

“Rumor has it that you arrested Augie,” she said. Rees nodded. “He didn’t do it.”

“I—we, Caldwell and I, put Augustus into the jail for his own safety,” Rees said. “We caught two slave catchers trying to wrestle him away, presumably to sell him down South.”

Susannah sat down in the chair opposite. “I hope the constable is trying to expel them from the village. It seems to me they should be in jail, not Augie.”

“You know him, then? And well?”

“Of course. He lives and works just across Water Street. He comes in sometimes for a meal or two.”

Rees put down his fork. “What was his relationship with his father?”

“Nate? Fine, I suppose. Somewhat constrained. Augustus didn’t like being a bastard. But Nate visited his son from time to time when he came to town.” She leaned across the table. “Few people in town will believe that lad guilty of murder. We all know him too well.”

Rees thought of the scutching knife. Augustus could easily lift the wooden blade and batter his father and certainly had the strength to hold Nate’s nose closed. But was the constraint between father and son enough of a reason? Rees saw this murder as one of rage, and Augie’s feelings didn’t seem strong enough. Still, he knew better than to dismiss the boy on that account.

“And Richard?” Rees asked.

“He went to school in Boston, so we don’t know him as well.” Susannah chose to misunderstand the question. Rees frowned at her. “He was always a tearaway, even as a little boy. Like Nate. Remember when he turned Johnson’s pigs loose and herded them down Main Street?”

Rees nodded. He’d helped recapture the pigs. Nate’s idea had seemed funny in the beginning, but scraping up pig excrement had cured Rees’s laughter. “Do you remember when Nate collected all the church candles into one pile and lit them all?”

Susannah nodded. “It took days to clean up the wax.”

“He hated Father Easton,” Rees said. After a particularly bad beating at his father’s hands, Nate had run to the church for refuge. Easton had instructed the boy to be obedient to his father, and reminded him of his father’s right to correct him with the rod, before returning Nate to Mr. Bowditch.

“Maybe some of the farmers who don’t know Augie as well will assume he’s guilty, just because he’s the son of a slave, but ask anyone here in Dugard. We won’t believe it.”

“But Richard might be guilty?”

“Doubtful,” she replied, her voice curt.

“And Molly, what do you think of her?” He knew Susannah didn’t like the other woman and wondered what she would say.

Some of the fire went out from Susannah’s eyes and she hesitated. “Well, I certainly don’t believe she killed her husband,” she said. “But I don’t know her very well.”

Rees directed a skeptical frown at her. “She’s almost exactly your age, Suze.”

“But we were never friendly. She acted like a boy when she was little. A dirty little urchin in dirty britches. And then, when she turned thirteen or fourteen, she became a flirtatious minx.” Realizing her voice had risen, she stopped talking and bit her lip. “But here I am, chattering and keeping you from your dinner.” She jumped to her feet and fled back to the kitchen.