Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (8 page)

Sophie
shuddered.
 
Being stationed in frontier
Georgia offered an ambitious junior officer little opportunity for advancement.
 
Fairfax must have jumped at the chance to
perform early investigative work.
 
Now
that Stoddard was going to take all the credit for solving the crimes, he was
fuming.

Edward turned
to her, the gravity in his expression ringing sincere for an officer who dealt
with murder, and lowered his voice.
 
"I wish I could shield you.
 
Not one, but three men lie slain here."

Compassion
tugged at her heart at the thought of Mathias.
 
"Who?"

"Jonah
Hale, his throat slit.
 
A Spaniard,
flayed alive —"

"A Spaniard?"
 
Flayed alive.
 
Her stomach protested.

"The
murderer left his face untouched.
 
I ask
you to verify whether he was one who threatened you last night."

She nodded,
lightheaded of a sudden.
 
"I shall
do my best.
 
And what —"
 
She gulped.
 
"What of my father?"

"Burned at
the stake."

No, this was
unreal.
 
She gaped at him,
horrified.
 
Will St. James burned at the
stake.
 
Jonah Hale's throat slit.
 
A Spaniard flayed alive.
 
The Indians were well known for such
gruesome executions.
 
Disbelief and
betrayal rattled her, and she clenched her jaw to keep from mentioning
Mathias's meeting with four Creek warriors the night before.
 
She'd experienced firsthand the power of
circumstantial evidence and refused to implicate the Creek when many were quick
to blame them for anything that went wrong.
 
Besides it was quite possible the murderers
intended
to implicate
the Creek.
 
"Show me the Spaniard
while I still have my mettle."

Edward led her
to the body guarded by Fairfax, which lay twenty-five feet from the other two bodies.
 
At a gesture from Edward, Stoddard stepped
back from the corpse.
 
Edward nodded to
Fairfax.
 
"His face."
 
Fairfax knelt, fanned away an arabesque of
flies, and uncovered the head.

The dead man
had been the one who labeled her "Daughter of the Wolf."
 
Sophie's skin crawled at the torment
twisting his expression.
 
Surely a
corpse's face shouldn't retain such agony.
 
It was unnatural, diabolical.
 
"Yes.
 
He was at my house
last night."
 
Who could be so
barbaric as to kill another human being meticulously, with such torture?
 
She wished she'd done the Spaniard a favor
by blowing his brains out with her pistol.

Edward studied
her.
 
"What time did he come to
your house?"

"One in
the morning.
 
Where's his
partner?"
 
She realized her hands
were shaking and pressed them together to still them.
 
"And is — was — this man El Serpiente?"

"His
partner is El Serpiente, and we don't know where he is.
 
Let's finish this business so we can bury
the bodies."
 
Edward walked off,
his boots crunching leaves and twigs.

Her attention
shifted from the dead Spaniard to Fairfax, and her stomach torqued.
 
Tenderness wreathed the lieutenant's face as
he draped the sheet back over the corpse's head — the kind of fondness one
reserves for an object of devotion.
 
He
noticed her observing him then, regained his familiar non-emotion, and
rose.
 
She backed away in revulsion and
hurried to Edward, who had paused beside the second body, leaving it covered.

The third
sheet-covered body drew her attention, and a mechanical part of her brain registered
details.
 
A scorched post nearby about
five feet tall.
 
A zone cleared of grass
and leaves around the post. Six buckets of dirt.
 
Someone had planned it well enough to take precautions against
the fire getting out of control.

Edward shook
his head over the second body.
 
"We
all know Jonah Hale was a rebel.
 
St.
James might have betrayed them, and they took his life.
 
Perhaps he and Hale betrayed the group.
 
Or perhaps the Spaniards killed St. James,
and Hale, seeing the blaze, hastened over and met his death at their
hands.
 
Ah, but who killed the
Spaniard?"

Her neck
tingled, and she resisted an urge to gape at Fairfax.
 
She really didn't want to know what was going on inside his
head.
 
Fortunately, Fairfax had untied
and mounted his horse.
 
"I've
picked over the area well in the last hour," he snapped to Stoddard from
the saddle.
 
"Do let us know
whether you find evidence.
 
And, by the
by, there is a cure for pimples.
 
You
find yourself a lusty wench and plough her every day and night for a month straight
— but I don't suppose you'd know about the plough, having spent so long with
your own shovel buried in guano."

Stoddard held
Fairfax's gaze, and even through Sophie's personal jumble of emotion, she
couldn't help but admire the dark-haired lieutenant's professionalism at
expressing only detachment.
 
"My
benefactor raised peregrines, not seafowl."

Edward's mouth
tightened, and steel infused his tone.
 
"Mr. Fairfax, you may fetch the surgeon now."
 
He then guided her to the third body, where
the stench of incinerated flesh dangled her on the edge of retching.
 
Still, her nose tried to identify another
stench that the fire almost obscured.
 
Edward lifted the sheet.

The thing
beneath it looked like a sketch she'd seen of a pharaoh's mummy, shriveled and
blackened.
 
The mechanical part of her
brain took control again, sweeping her scrutiny the length of the body, past
charred clothing, up along the withered face and familiar shape of the nose and
brow, back to the incinerated waistcoat and crispy remnant of trim she'd
promised to repair.
 
No, this wasn't
real!

She
gagged.
 
Tears cresting her eyes, she
bolted from the stench to the edge of the copse, dragged her apron over her
mouth, and half-sobbed, half-gagged several times.
 
Her tears dried up, yet she kept shaking.
 
That burned thing had looked demonic, not
human.
 
It wasn't Will.
 
He couldn't be dead.
 
She'd just talked with her living, breathing
father last night.
 
The cremated
abomination wasn't Will, no, no, no!

Desperate for
the release of tears, she squinted toward the sun and blinked, but tears didn't
come.
 
Mathias still stood beside his
horse.
 
She didn't blame him for not
rushing home to tell his stepfather.
 
Old Jacob Hale adored his son, Jonah.

Edward joined
her, his face haggard.
 
"We found this
on the body."
 
He showed her a
blackened ring.
 
"His wedding
band?"

Her heart
wrenched again.
 
"We never
understood why he kept wearing it.
 
He
could have remarried."

"Do you
want it back?"

She extended
her hand and closed fingers over the ring when he dropped it onto her
palm.
 
She imagined feeling her father's
heartbeat trapped within the ring, pulsing a whisper: "Not dead."

Her chin jerked
up.
 
"It appears you no longer need
my assistance with the cipher."

"To the
contrary, we need you to decode it more than ever.
 
In return, we shall place as much priority as possible on
bringing your father's murderer to the gallows."

The cipher's
decoded message might hold a clue to Will's murder, but it was more certain to
provide information of rebel espionage.
 
Heartsick, she envisioned the Crown's idea of justice as contingent upon
first trussing up a spy ring.
 
"I'm
unable to work on it today.
 
Please tell
Captain Sheffield I shan't have the translation ready —"

"Sophie."
 
He rubbed his neck.
 
"Promise that we shall have your
cooperation.
 
Promise you'll stay in
your house."

"I've
already given you my word on the matter."
 
Grief and outrage plunged her ahead.
 
"Folk will want to pass along condolences to me.
 
Am I still denied visitors?"
 
He hesitated, and she ground her teeth in
desperation.
 
"I've sworn to you
I'm innocent of dealings with the rebels!
 
Allow me to come to terms with my father's — with this catastrophe.
 
Allow me visitors."

"Very
well.
 
You may have one visitor at a
time for five minutes, and a soldier must be present during each
visitation."

Such a decision
wouldn't go over well with the garrison.
 
Edward would have to soothe Fairfax, that watchdog of regulations, and
minimize the wildfire of gossip through the ranks about the colonial frill who'd
enchanted their commanding officer.
 
Perhaps Edward did love her.
 
"Thank you."

"I shall
visit you this evening."

She wished he
needn't bother.
 
She didn't covet the
company of someone who'd burglarized her house, and she wasn't in the mood to
hear Edward retract his offer from the previous night.
 
But he'd allowed her extravagant
privileges.
 
"Don't bring Mr.
Fairfax."

A dry chuckle
escaped him.
 
"I shan't."

Her father's
ring tucked in her pocket, she walked over to the horses, where she paused
behind the blacksmith before resting her hand on his shoulder.
 
"I'm sorry.
 
I shall miss Jonah."
 
Her throat shuddered.
 
A
childhood friend murdered.
 
Tears
gathered in her eyes, only to be dammed up again.
 
She squeezed her lips together and sniffed.

Mathias swiveled
and embraced her, his voice a whisper.
 
"My condolences for the loss of your father, a friend to all who
—"
 
He broke off.
 
She felt tension in his body soar, as though
at any second he would dissolve into lamentation, but he maintained
control.
 
"I shall find who
murdered him and avenge his death."

Did he speak of
avenging Jonah or Will?
 
"Stay
clear of the soldiers," she whispered.

He coughed with
derision before grasping her hand and walking with her a few feet from the
horses.
 
"Three enemies of the
Crown are dead," he said, low.
 
"Don't expect the redcoats to trouble themselves solving the
murders.
 
As far as they're concerned,
justice has been served."
 
Determination fired his expression.
 
"If we want answers, we shall have to find them ourselves.
 
But you've been arrested."

"House
arrest.
 
A cipher supposedly intended
for my father fell into Major Hunt's hands.
 
In exchange for decoding it, I exonerate myself from involvement with
the rebels."

"Ah."
 
He glanced over her shoulder.
 
"Mr. Stoddard draws near.
 
You and I must speak again."

"I'm
allowed no privacy with my visitors."

He wrapped an
arm about her shoulder and raised his voice for Stoddard to hear.
 
"Take heart.
 
You aren't as isolated as you believe."
 
After releasing her, he retrieved his rifle
and reins and hoisted himself into the saddle.
 
With a nudge, he sent the horse eastward, back to town and the Hale
smithy.

Stoddard
brought her the horse she'd ridden.
 
In
the seconds that she watched the diminishing figure of the blacksmith on horseback,
she concurred with Mathias.
 
The
redcoats wouldn't exert special effort to solve the murders.
 
That meant it was the responsibility of the
St. Jameses and the Hales to bring the killers of their loved ones to
justice.
 
Plagued by doubts of her father's
love in his final months, she resolved that moment to find his murderer and
show herself a worthy daughter.

Chapter Six

RANKLED OVER
BEING implicated for the broadsides, stunned by her father's death, Sophie
clung to composure while receiving condolences in her dining room.
 
Who killed Will St. James?
 
The redcoats had motive to arrest and
imprison him, but burning him at the stake just wasn't their style.
 
Indeed, the manner of his murder, hallmark
of someone hell-bent on revenge, made his rebel cohorts, the mysterious El
Serpiente, and the Indians suspects.
 
So, suspects she had aplenty, but as for their motives —?