Death of a Dyer (4 page)

Mrs. Bowditch shuddered delicately. “No one has gone in there since…” She turned her face away, her dainty handkerchief fluttering.

Dr. Wrothman, gently touching her wrist, leaned across the table. “Please, Mr. Rees. Let’s not discuss this horrible event at dinner.”

“Very well.” Rees nodded at Molly. “Where are Grace and Ben?”

“With Kate, eating dinner in the nursery.” She made a face seemingly even less willing to discuss this topic.

“Molly strives to maintain a high level of culture, even on the frontier,” Dr. Wrothman said.

“I hardly consider Dugard, Maine, the frontier,” Rees said. “And won’t your wife be missing you at dinner?”

Mrs. Bowditch glared at him, but the doctor replied easily. “I am a widower, Mr. Rees, and my children are long since married, so my time is my own. I respect Molly’s attempt to achieve a more graceful style of living.” He bared his teeth at Rees, pretending to smile.

Rees nodded but couldn’t resist firing a quick glance at Mrs. Bowditch. She was gazing at Dr. Wrothman and didn’t notice.

Rees sat back, allowing the conversation of domestic matters, children and patients, to swirl about him. Despite Nate’s death, this was not a house of mourning.
I’m sorry, Nate,
Rees thought.

As soon as dinner concluded and Rachel appeared to clear the table, Rees made his excuses and escaped to the kitchen. Marsh glanced at him and, rolling down his sleeves, gestured to the kitchen door. “Shall we?”

As they trudged down the dusty road, Munch joined them, pushing his head under Marsh’s hand for a pat. Although the cottage lay merely a short distance away, the steep downhill grade of the property meant only the roof was visible from the road. As they descended the hill, the wide lane itself changed to two wagon tracks outlined by weeds. It ended abruptly at the cottage. Nate had planted several small fields: one of flax and at least three of madder at different ages. One seemed ready to harvest; several plants had been torn up by the roots and lay waiting for the dyer’s attention. Mostly wildflowers dominated this small valley, and Rees wondered if Nate had been trying to extract dyes from them. The flax was already cut and bundled, the seeds removed, and the stalks ready to be retted. Rees saw the glitter of moving water behind the cottage and heard it chattering down the spillway; the cottage fronted a large pond. No doubt Nate had a special stream or trough in which to soak the flax stems until the outer sheath rotted.

The cottage itself was a simple box with a peaked roof. The door sat squarely in the middle. Two windows, one on each side, permitted light into the cottage. Although the right-hand window was the typical small size, the window in the left wall was large, a three-feet square of small panes. Rees wondered how expensive that much glass had been. He knew it must illuminate the weaving room.

He walked up the slate path to the front step, a massive slab of granite. Marsh did not follow him. When Rees looked back over his shoulder, he saw Marsh staring at the cottage with a mixture of grief and horror.

“I can’t go inside,” he said, moisture glittering in the dark brown eyes. “The master welcomed no one here, not even his wife.” He shook his head. “I carried his body out.…” He stopped, unable to continue.

Rees turned to look at Marsh in surprise. “You and Nate were friends?”

“We worked together for many years,” Marsh said, choosing his words carefully. “He trusted me.” He stood in silence, struggling to compose himself. “Mrs. Bowditch asked me to clean this place, but I just can’t, not yet.”

“Has anyone been inside since Nate’s body—?”

“No one has gone in since Mary Martha entered with his breakfast tray.” Seeing Rees’s question, Marsh added, “Only Mary Martha and the other maids were permitted inside, and only to the front kitchen. If Master Nate was still working inside at dinnertime, one of us would stand out here and call him. Sometimes he would join the family for dinner, but most often not, and then I would send one of the maids down from the kitchen with a tray.”

“How long has Nate been so reclusive?” Rees asked. This was not the boy he remembered.

Marsh shrugged. “Since I’ve known him.”

Rees shook his head disbelievingly. Marsh did not break the silence and finally Rees said, “I’d like to talk to Mary Martha.”

“She was much distressed, and her parents are keeping her home for now. I’m sure you understand. But she’ll return in a day or two.” Rees sighed in frustration and turned toward the house. Marsh said to his back, “I’ll wait out here.”

“Of course.” Rees went up the boulder that served as a step and into the house.

The stench of sour milk and old blood assailed him. He pushed the door as far back as he could and fresh air swept in. Gradually, the terrible smell lessened. The midday sun poured across the floor and fetched up in a bright splash against the opposite wall. Two doors led off this tiny hall—one to the left, through which Rees could see two looms and bags of yarn, and one to the right. He stepped through the one on the right. Two windows—one that opened to the front and one on the side, directly across from the large fireplace—allowed light to flood inside. A strange green plant dusted white sat on the windowsill, and scraps of dyed cloth hung from a rope nailed to the ceiling. Upon the long oak table that stood between him and the fireplace sat a tray, still covered by a white linen napkin. But the ceramic pitcher lay smashed upon the floor and a long spray of sour milk fanned across the floor. Large fat black flies buzzed over the remains. Munch shoved past Rees and sniffed it with great interest.

“Go home,” Rees commanded. “Go home. I don’t need you here.” Head hanging low, Munch dragged himself reluctantly outside and settled down to wait next to Marsh.

Holding his breath against the stink, Rees stepped over the spoiled milk and went around the table. An enormous fireplace dominated the central wall, no doubt sharing the chimney with the fireplace in the weaving room and providing some heat to the loft upstairs. And in front of the fireplace was the bloodstain, a brown pool of it. Rees knelt, tracing the gap made by Nate’s head with one finger. Splashes of carmine and indigo as well as green glowed bright as jester diamonds against the exposed flooring. Green dye overlay some of the blood as though the dye pot had tipped over.

“But there’s not enough blood,” Rees said to himself. “Nate lay here, there is no doubt of that. But he didn’t bleed to death.…”

A large copper pot hung on a hook over the dead fire. Rees peeked inside; cloth was soaking in the green dye. A piece of rough canvas protruded from the liquid. Was that Nate’s apron? And why would Nate dye his apron?

Rees stepped over the bloodstain, pausing in the narrow hall at the back, right in front of the back door. To his left he could see the weaving room and a flight of stairs up to the second level. He flung open the back door. It did not lead to the outside, as he’d expected, but into a small workroom with another door at the back. Indigo-dyed fiber, wool he thought, hung on a cord along the wall, dyed in shades from the palest sky blue to a navy so dark, it was almost black. More dye samples in linen and cotton hung from suspended cords, but this room seemed to be devoted to the dyes themselves. Whole plants hung upside down from the ceiling, and knobby roots lay upon a table to dry. He thought he recognized madder, but there were others he didn’t know. Leaves—were those rhubarb leaves wilting in a drifted pile upon a tow linen square? The reddish spears of the staghorn sumac filled a flat basket. Another basket held berries—berries he recognized as the dark reddish purple of pokeberries. Jars of all shapes and sizes contained a variety of powders and liquids and other things—coffee beans in one—and jostled for space upon the shelves. Mingled with the scents of drying vegetation and the stink of mold was a peculiar metallic odor.

Nate must have built this room himself,
Rees thought, eyeing the fresh new wood. Water stains already darkened the walls and edged the floor. He leaned over and picked up the scutching knife lying on the floor. Commonly used to beat away the flax husks, the heavy wooden blade was stained a dark brown with blood. Nate’s blood. Gasping, Rees flung it from him. He fled through the back door to the little courtyard outside and retched into the grass.

When his stomach was empty, he leaned weakly against the wall and looked around.

A path led off to his left, and when he followed it for a few steps he spotted a rope strung from tree to tree. Hung with wet dyed fibers for many years, the rope and the vegetation beneath it were spattered with every color, from bright imported reds and greens to the muted browns and tans of onionskins and tea leaves. He turned back to the cottage and paused at the top of the slope, staring down toward the pond. Behind the thick, lush brush, he could hear water lapping at the bank. The red barn on the other side of the water was just visible, but not the summer kitchen or the laundry. The location of the weaver’s house and the thicket of vegetation enclosing it effectively blocked all views from the barnyard.

Rees returned to the cottage, passing through the dye room and closing the door behind him when he entered the kitchen. He saw Marsh standing in the weaving room and looking blindly around. Rees quietly walked down the hall. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

Marsh jumped and quickly shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “I just haven’t been here since…” He turned around again, staring.

“Hum. Well, I’m going upstairs,” Rees said.

Marsh shook his head firmly. “Don’t bother. Nothing happened up there.”

“Even the smallest detail will help me,” Rees said. Marsh’s expression remained obstinately opposed but he did not dare argue with a white man. “I’ll just walk through,” Rees added. He was very conscious of the other man’s eyes following him as he trotted up the stairs.

The staircase gave out in a loft bedroom. Two windows, one in the front wall, one overlooking the field of flax, illuminated a rope bed and a bedside table. The chimney from the double fireplaces below formed the center wall. When Rees walked through the narrow opening by the chimney, he found himself in an empty room over the kitchen. A grate in the floor, intended to allow heat to rise in the winter, now allowed the pungent stink of the dyes to fill the room. Although Rees heard no scrabbling in the walls, he could smell mice.

He returned to the main room. As he looked around, he wondered how often Nate used this bed. Was he so devoted to his craft, he abandoned the comforts of home and family? One long strand of graying hair lay upon the pillow. The sight of it brought moisture to Rees’s eyes and he had to turn away. Usually the sight of death did not affect him so deeply, but the stew of grief, regret, and anger left him edgy and vulnerable. Rees wished—oh, how he wished—he had made the effort to drive over and say hello to his boyhood friend. They might never have been friends again but could at least have strived for acquaintances.

“Mr. Rees?” Marsh’s voice floated up the stair.

Rees called down, “Coming.” He glanced around once more and started for the stairs. But as he put his foot upon the top step, he saw something protruding from underneath the bed. A chamber pot? He turned back. But when he drew out the object, he realized it was not a chamber pot but a basin filled with vomit. Rees recalled the rash upon Nate’s hands and wondered what illness had afflicted his old friend.

“Mr. Rees,” Marsh called.

Rees shoved the basin underneath the bed and hurried down the stairs, determined to return and examine the cottage again, without Marsh’s looming presence. Anyway, it was getting late. It must already be after three, and it would be suppertime before he reached home.

“Have you finished?” Marsh asked.

“For now, but I’ll return. I want to look at the cottage again and talk to you and Rachel and the girl. Mary Martha, is it?”

“I know nothing,” Marsh said, his words clipped. “I was away. And Mary Martha won’t be back, at least until tomorrow. Maybe after that.”

“I understand,” Rees said, following Marsh out of the cottage and up the hill. “Until tomorrow, then.”

He did not allow his grieving tears to flow until he was driving home.

Chapter Three

By the time Rees unhitched Bessie, rubbed her down, and released her into the field, Lydia had supper on the table. As he walked to the house, he met David plodding up from the lower meadow with two full buckets of fresh milk in his hands. Rees took a pail.

“Milking is done,” David said as they carried the brimming pails into the mudroom.

“The cows are producing well,” Rees said in approval.

“Between six and eight gallons a day,” David said. “I learned much at Zion.” He sounded proud.

While David shucked his boots, Rees lay linen cloths over the pails and left them there for Lydia. He could not help thinking of Dolly; she would have been making cheese by now.

“Mother would want this milk,” David said, just as if he’d heard Rees’s thoughts.

“I know,” Rees said, and clapped his son gently on the shoulder as they passed into the kitchen.

The results of Lydia’s industry filled the room: jars of applesauce and pickles. Her face burned with a scarlet flush, and red hair darkened to sable strings by perspiration dropped out from under her cap. She looked both hot and harried. Chicken sliced from the roast served at dinner already sat upon the table, and as Rees entered she put a plate of sliced cucumbers beside them. David looked around and returned outside to wash his hands and face in the trough.

“So,” Lydia said to Rees, “what happened? Do you believe Richard killed his father?”

“I don’t know,” Rees said. “I spoke to Molly, but Richard has disappeared.”

“And what did you think of ‘Molly’?” Lydia asked. Disconcerted by the sourness in her voice—such attitude was unlike her—Rees turned to look at her.

“All right, I guess,” he said. “George Potter and Mrs. Bowditch were in school together. I just met her today.”

“Still, you must have some opinion?” she persisted.

Rees paused, thinking. “She is attractive,” he said at last, “but unhappy, I suspect.”