Death of a Dyer (14 page)

Rees gaped after her, startled. A very outspoken woman, Suze didn’t usually exercise such restraint over her tongue. And she must know that Rees, a friend since childhood, would guess her true feelings. So why then not admit what she felt? Suze must be embarrassed about something to do with Molly; Rees could think of no other reason. He spared a few moments pondering that conundrum and then he pushed all thoughts of Nate and his wife and family from his mind and fell to his dinner.

A thick slab of bread made short work of the gravy remaining on his plate and Rees sat back with a satisfied sigh. The cook for the Contented Rooster cooked like an angel.

The door opened and Potter entered. He looked around and then, spotting Rees, hurried over. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said.

Rees sipped his coffee without speaking. After some of his discoveries regarding Potter, Rees felt a certain amount of skittishness about his old friend.

“I need to speak to you. I had a visit from an old friend of yours a while ago.”

“Who is that?” Rees asked without interest.

“James Carleton. What did you say to him that frightened him so much?”

“Frightened him?” Rees’s voice rose into a shout. “I didn’t say anything.… I barely managed two words.”

Potter pulled out a chair and sat down. “He claims you exhibited an inappropriate interest in his daughters.”

“Did he?” Rees sipped his coffee, using the time to think. “Now, that is interesting. I mentioned Elizabeth and her connection to Richard. Why would that unnerve James?” Potter shrugged. “And I asked him about Nate. He boasted of their friendship.”

Potter leaned across the table. “Be careful, Will. Although James is a much gentler soul than his father, he is still a powerful man. I don’t need to remind you that the Carleton family is the closest thing we have to local aristocracy.”

Rees scowled. “I thought this new country was supposed to move beyond that,” he said. But of course it hadn’t. He recalled his time on the frontier, where the small distillers battled the forces of money and power and, ultimately, the federal government. “He’s hiding something,” he said, knowing it was true as soon as he vocalized it.

“Something about Nate?” Potter asked.

Rees deliberated, reluctant to confide too much. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m still trying to accept this odd friendship. They loathed each other as boys.” That was common knowledge.

“We all grew up, Will. James and Nate found they had more in common than not.”

“Found when they were in England together,” Rees said sourly. “Why did King Carleton send Nate after James?” Spotting Jack Jr., Rees gestured for more coffee and some of that fragrant cinnamon cake.

“I don’t know. Not for certain. But Nate bought land from King Carleton and they were involved in a few business deals. Nate was one of the few willing to stand up to Mr. Carleton. And of course Nate and James are—were of an age. So, when James refused to return home, his father asked Nate to go after him. Nate always did. Not once but several times. James kept running back to London. Somewhere along the line, James and Nate became friends.”

“I wonder what happened in London,” Rees said, rubbing his nose thoughtfully. Something bonded James and Nate together, that was clear.

“No one knows. They never spoke of it. But many things have changed since you first joined the Army. When we were boys, Nate would have bullied me but for you, but he and I became good friends. You just missed it all.”

Rees stared at him. “I’ve come home since several times.”

“Yes, but for how long? A few months here and there? When Dolly was still alive you stayed on the farm, and when she passed on, you barely came home at all.” Rees could not protest; Potter spoke only the truth. “You and Nate were alike in that, although he at least remained physically in the area. But he mostly kept himself to himself. I don’t know what Molly would have done without Marsh.”

Rees thought about Marsh. “He behaves like a mother hen. How long ago did Nate hire him? He did hire him, yes?”

“Yes, from Rhode Island, I believe. Nate hired him about twelve, thirteen years ago, when Grace was about two I think, and then quickly relinquished all the care of the farm to him.”

Rees knew Nate had not wanted to be a farmer; they’d been united in that. But Nate hadn’t wanted to be a weaver either. His dream had been to attend Harvard, a dream his father would have denied him even if they’d had the money. “Well, I still plan to speak to James, whether he likes it or no. If he’s guilty of Nate’s death, I’ll discover it.” Potter threw him a glance in which skepticism and anxious warning were mingled. “And somehow I’ll talk to Elizabeth Carleton,” Rees added. “She surely knows more about Richard than anyone.”

“I wouldn’t give a farthing for your chance of succeeding in that,” Potter said. “Those girls are carefully protected, not only by James but by Mrs. Carleton as well. Have you met Charlotte?” Rees shook his head. “She seems as delicate as a Dresden shepherdess but is blessed with a core of steel. My Nell has felt the rough edge of her tongue once or twice. That aristocratic sneering snobbery, you know.”

“I’m duly warned,” Rees said. He disliked the woman already, just on the strength of Potter’s description.

“She’s really the reason the Carleton and the Bowditch families didn’t socialize; Mrs. Carleton despised Molly as a ‘jumped-up bootmaker’s daughter.’”

“She’s living in the wrong country,” Rees said.

“Most of what passes as ‘society’ in Dugard is more tolerant,” Potter agreed with a nod. “According to Nell, Mrs. Hansen, Piggy’s wife, and Molly are great friends. But then, most of them are from farming stock. Charlotte doesn’t think much of them either.” Potter stood up, turning his fine tall hat in his hands. “Just be careful, Will,” he said, and turned to leave.

Chapter Eleven

With his belly full, and somewhat more in charity with his old friend Potter, Rees sat for a few more minutes before quitting the coffeehouse. He climbed into his wagon and, within the hour, was pulling up the drive to his farm. He unhitched Bessie and fed and watered her and released her into the paddock. David was tending to the cattle in the meadow at the paddock’s back, and when he took off his hat to wave, his hair blazed fiery bright as a new penny. Rees waved back.

When he went inside, he found the kitchen empty but very hot and steamy. It was laundry day and water bubbled noisily in the copper kettle over the flames. The remains of a pickup dinner, just bread and cheese, littered the table. Hearing voices out back, Rees poked his head through the open door. While Abigail scrubbed ferociously at a linen garment on a washboard, Lydia spread body linen across the shrubbery to dry. Her rolled sleeves bared slender arms, and exertion had loosened the pins in her hair so that her dark red hair uncoiled down her back. Rees thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful. He sat down upon the top step to watch her.

She didn’t realize he was there until she turned. “I didn’t expect you home for dinner,” she said. “Have you eaten?” She started toward him.

As she ran up the back steps, Rees put out an arm to stop her. “You look tired and hot,” he said. “Sit down and rest.”

Lydia sat down beside him but jumped to her feet almost immediately and ran to help Abigail with the heavy basket of wet linen. For several minutes the two women draped the clothing over the bushes in a companionable silence. Abby dealt with the last two shirts while Lydia rejoined Rees. “Are you home for the afternoon?”

“Yes.” He nodded at the girl arranging a wet shirt upon a tree branch. “The laundry on her first day?”

“I thought I should begin as I mean to continue. How was your morning?”

“Puzzling. Disturbing.” Rees shook his head. “The town seems the same, but it is so different. The people are different. Nate bullied both James Carleton and George Potter when we were boys. But they became great friends. And Molly is not at all the kind of wife I would have expected Nate to choose. And then there’s Rachel.…”

“It sounds like Nate became someone other than your boyhood friend,” Lydia said. “Do you believe either of those men killed Nate?”

“I have no reason now. James sounded surprisingly sorrowful. Anyway, Nate’s murder appears to have been committed out of fury. That speaks of passion, and I didn’t see that in James. Not this time, anyway. And although Dr. Wrothman certainly had good reason to want his rival dead, it appears he was elsewhere at the time.” Rees turned to Lydia. “Augustus was estranged from his father, but I’m not sure he could slip onto the farm without
someone
seeing him. The only person who had the passion and the physical strength and was also witnessed in the cottage at the proper time is Richard.”

She slanted a glance at him. “You don’t want Richard to be guilty, do you?”

Rees considered her statement and then admitted in a rush, “Nate suffered enough at the hands of his father. He shouldn’t have been murdered by his son.”

Lydia, looking at him quizzically, waited to see if Rees would say anything further. When he didn’t break his glum silence, she said, “Will, I had a thought, if Richard struck his father and stained his shirt with blood, where’s the shirt?” Rees turned to look at her. “I’m thinking it might be in the laundry.” He stared at her, his morose expression lightening into excitement.

“Along with Nate’s apron,” he said. Lydia nodded. Rees wanted to hug her but settled for a smile. “Thank you. Thank you.”

She beamed. “You’re welcome.”

“Lydia…” Taking a deep breath, he spoke quickly. “I told you Augustus is in jail? Caldwell wants me to move him. I thought I’d bring him here. For a little while.”

“You what?’ She leaned toward him and folded her arms across her indigo-skirted knees. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

Rees shrugged. “I doubt he’s a murderer.” He turned to look her in the eyes. “I can’t abandon him in Dugard, where the slave catchers might take him.”

“Of course not.” An expression of shame crossed her face. “No, I don’t want that either.”

“He and David know one another, so I expect that will help.” He paused. Her frozen expression conveyed her uncertainty, but she did not speak. After a brief pause, Rees said, “There is something very wrong at Nate’s farm.”

“What do you mean?”

“Secrets. Too many secrets. Everyone has secrets.” When Lydia looked at him questioningly, he gathered his thoughts together. “The weaver’s cottage is secluded from the rest of the farm, and the farmhand told me there’s a secret entrance. Well, not secret since a number of people know about it. But Nate didn’t want anyone to use it. And there’s nothing in his office except ledgers: no correspondence or anything personal. And no will.”

“Not everyone sees the need for a will,” Lydia said. “Besides, Mr. Potter—”

“No,” he interrupted, “George Potter doesn’t have it. At least that’s what Molly told me. I’ll ask him myself, of course. But Nate was too careful to ignore that responsibility.”

“Molly,” she repeated in an odd voice.

“I don’t care for her overmuch,” Rees said, missing her expression, “and I don’t understand why Nate married her. She seems so unlike the type of wife he would choose.”

“You don’t really know Nate either, though, do you?” Lydia said. “You’ve said, more times than I can count, that the man was not the boy you remembered.” Rees said nothing, stung by the truth of that. “And I think you should not dismiss Molly as a possible murderer. She had more reason than anyone to kill your friend. She was jealous of Rachel and she has a new romance with Dr. Wrothman.…”

“Maybe not that new,” Rees said, thinking of the three-year-old Ben. “Well, I doubt she has the strength to lift the scutching knife and hammer at Nate with it, even if she was the person Mr. Salley heard arguing with Nate. But perhaps a more compelling argument against her involvement is financial: How will she live as a widow? This is why seeing Nate’s will is critical. Did he leave her a pension? Did he leave everything to Richard, who will now be responsible for his mother until, or if, she remarries? Nate’s death leaves Molly without an English penny to her name.” Lydia nodded in reluctant agreement. “But I do agree Molly has the passion for murder. If it were Rachel’s body discovered…”

“Well, then,” Lydia said, “Nate put his private information somewhere else. And although Mrs. Bowditch may not know where that is, I’m certain she knows more than she is telling you.”

Rees nodded. With that, he must agree. “I’m returning to the Bowditch farm tomorrow. Nate spent most of his time in that weaver’s cottage. If he concealed his papers anywhere on that farm, it would be in that shed.” He exhaled in frustration. “And I still haven’t had the chance for a thorough search. Marsh is determined to prevent me from visiting the cottage alone.” He smiled at her. “But I’ll speak to the laundress tomorrow.”

She did not return his smile this time and plucked at her skirt nervously. “I’d like to go with you.” He stared at her in dismay. “Mary Martha told Abby Marsh is taking on some temporary help. Mrs. Bowditch is planning a memorial service for Nate on Sunday, and I—”

“No.”

“I can help you, as I did in Zion by listening to the women.…”

“No,” he said more emphatically. “I don’t want your help.” She glared at him in furious disappointment. He added more gently, “It’s not that I don’t need you, but it’s too dangerous. Someone murdered Nate, and right now the most likely person is Richard Bowditch. You’ll be walking into the lion’s den.”

“There was a killer at Zion, too,” she said, keeping her voice low with an effort. “I can help.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Let me understand,” Lydia said, struggling to maintain a low and even pitch. “You’ll bring Augustus, a possible murderer, here. But I am not to work in the kitchen at the Bowditch farm because his brother might be guilty?”

Rees turned his irritated gaze upon her. Of course, his reasoning was far more complicated, involving his pride and his desire to prevent anyone from knowing of the connection between himself and Lydia, at least for now. With a quick angry frown, she jumped to her feet and went inside. When Rees looked up, he found Abby staring at him. She immediately turned her gaze away from him. Scowling, he followed Lydia into the kitchen. But she turned her face away from him, and after a hesitation he went upstairs. He sat down to finish threading the heddles. If he made an unnecessary amount of noise, no one seemed to notice.