Razing the Dead (18 page)

“I've read a little, and I can see your point.” I didn't mention that the timing of the discovery seemed a bit odd. “In any case, we aren't planning a scholarly study. More likely we'll give Mr. Wakeman something that he can use to help promote his development to prospective buyers. You know, ‘live in the midst of history,' and so on. I hope he'll share it with you.”

Scott bounced to his feet. “Well, gentlemen, I'll let you review the handouts when you have time, but I think it's safe to say there are no surprises. We hope to break ground in the fall, as planned. Please call me if you have any questions or concerns.”

I seemed to have no option but to follow Scott's lead, but I couldn't think of any more questions myself. “Thank you for seeing me. May I get in touch with you if I have any questions about the history of the town?” I handed each man one of my business cards.

“Sure, no problem,” Marvin said. “But Janet Butler over in West Chester probably knows as much as we do.”

I laughed. “And I'm meeting her for lunch today.”

“Thanks again, guys,” Scott said, shaking hands and all but pushing me out the door.

I followed meekly, but once in the parking lot, I asked, “Are you in a hurry?”

“What? No. But this was mainly a courtesy call—there really wasn't much new. Did you get what you needed?”

“I think so,” I said, although I wasn't sure what I had hoped for. I'd confirmed that everybody had liked George, but that wasn't a surprise. Nobody seemed to want to stop the project from going forward. So why was George dead? Maybe he'd found something more than a few old buttons when he was snooping around. Maybe the bodies had been buried with a carefully wrapped diary written by George Washington, or General Wayne's battle plan, and George Bowen's killer had snatched it from him. “You're headed back to the city now?”

“Yup. You said you were meeting Janet Butler at the historical society?”

“Yes.” I stopped short of telling him that Janet thought she had found something I needed to see. It could be nothing or it could be important, but Scott didn't need to know about it. “I assume I'll be talking with you later in the week, when the Society puts that report together for you.”

“Great, thanks, Nell. See you!”

I watched him pull away, and then I got into my car and headed in the opposite direction, toward West Chester—a route that took me by the Garrett farm yet again. It still looked green and peaceful; there were a few ducks bobbing on the small pond by the road. It seemed an unlikely place for a murder. Or two, or three.

I arrived at the Chester County Historical Society a few
minutes early, but Janet was free, and came down from her office to meet me. She looked excited.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice, Nell. I know you must be busy.”

“I'm happy to be here, especially since this Wakeman thing has leapfrogged to the top of my priority list—not by my own choosing, may I add.”

Janet's eyes twinkled. “The man can be a bit, uh, peremptory, can't he?”

I laughed. “That's putting it kindly! Did you want to show me what you've found, or should we get something to eat first?”

“Are you hungry?”

“I'm always hungry. Is there someplace nearby we could walk to?”

“Sure—right around the corner. Follow me.”

I didn't need much encouragement. It was a lovely day, and I liked West Chester—it felt about the right size, and it had a real center, not just shops flanking a too-busy local highway. High trees arched over the street, keeping the downtown cool. We strolled without hurrying, arriving at a corner brewpub on the nearest corner in a few minutes. Once seated inside, we each ordered the brew of the day and sandwiches, and settled in to talk.

“I am so glad you brought me in on this,” Janet began. “This is really exciting, especially since I think I can help.”

“I'm glad to hear it. And I'll do my best to make sure your participation is recognized somewhere, and not just in a footnote. After all, you're putting a lot of time into this. Do you have any staff who can help?”

Janet waved her hand dismissively. “Sure there's staff, but I knew George, and I find this whole thing with the old bodies fascinating. Why should I hand the research off and miss all the fun?”

We talked about professional matters through our sandwiches, and I noted that we shared a lot of the same problems, setting aside the difference in the respective sizes of our institutions. The sandwiches were generously sized and tasty, and the local brew was good. If I hadn't had to go into the city later, I might have been tempted to play hooky and get to know West Chester a little better. But now was not the time.

“Let me pick up the tab,” I volunteered. “I'm pretty sure I can pass it on to the Wakeman Trust, or whoever he decides is paying the bills.”

“I'm not going to argue with you.”

With the bill settled, Janet and I emerged from the restaurant and walked the few blocks back to her society. “You know,” I began tentatively, “I feel like I'm here on false pretenses. I'm not really a historian—I started out as an English major and then ended up as a fundraiser. I'm president of the Society kind of by default. So I'm willing to bet you know a whole lot more about the history of this area than I do.”

“I suppose I do,” Janet replied. “I've lived here most of my life. I started out as a docent at the society, leading tours, which kind of shifted into researching the collections, and things kind of happened from there. As I'm sure you know quite well.”

“I do. It's been a strange trip, and nothing that I'd planned.”

“Are you enjoying it?”

“I am. I won't say it's always a pleasure to be an administrator, but I do believe in the institution and what we're doing, and if I can keep it moving forward in this increasingly digital world, I'll be satisfied.”
I'd like it even better if I could concentrate on the job and stop finding crimes under my nose
, I reflected silently.

“There's still nothing like the real thing,” Janet said firmly. “I love being able to handle the original documents.”

“Amen to that!” We'd reached her building, and she held open the door for me to enter. “So, what've you got to show me?”

“Follow me.” Instead of leading me to her office, we went back to the shabby working area at the rear of the building, where several archival boxes sat on the long table, along with a few pairs of white cotton gloves lying beside them.

I looked at Janet and waited for her to explain.

“Have a seat,” she said, waving at one of the folding chairs next to the table. I sat, and she took another chair opposite and pulled on a pair of the gloves. “When Ezra Garrett reached ninety years old—still in full possession of his faculties, let me add—he decided to go through all the family documents. That must have been about the same time he started talking to the Wakeman people. Since the Garretts had been living on the farm for over two hundred years, and since they seem to have had a gene for hoarding, if there is such a thing, you can imagine the scope of what Ezra and the family had assembled over the years. Well, maybe that's not overstating it: his ancestors hadn't gone in much for papers. They were farmers from the beginning, and Ezra and his son Eddie were the last of them, once William washed his hands of the place. Let's say that what was preserved was very succinct, but valuable to any social historian. And to anyone interested in the history of Chester County, like me.”

“Believe me, I understand. What did you find?”

“I'm getting there. Ezra got started, but his energy wasn't what it used to be, so after a bit he turned it all over to us.”

“As a gift, or only for processing?”

“He gave it all to us, with the provision that we make it accessible to any of his family members who wanted to see it, and eventually to the public, once we'd cataloged and conserved it. And, yes—I can see you thinking—he left money to cover that work. But as you might guess, we don't have a lot of staff, and there was no apparent rush to get the processing done. Ezra had made a first pass and seen whatever he wanted to see, so he wasn't pressuring us to hurry. And then he died, and since nobody had requested access to the documents, we've been taking our time with the cataloging, kind of dipping into it a little at a time whenever somebody was interested. We've had a couple of interns from the university here, but most of them don't know anything about local history, so they're just going through the mechanics of cataloging.”

I understood what she was telling me, but I wondered when she was going to get to the point. Here we were sitting in front of Ezra Garrett's family's historical collection of documents. I guessed that she had found something that she wanted to share with me, and I hated to begrudge her the pleasure of telling her tale, but I still had to get into the city sometime today. “Did the Wakeman deal prompt you to work any faster?”

“To be honest, no. You've got to remember that a lot of the discussion about the disposition of the land went on behind the scenes, and nobody came to us for anything. It was really only when you were called in that I sat up and took notice. That's when I hauled out these boxes and took stock of where we were in the cataloging.”

“And?”

“I know, you're getting impatient.” Janet grinned at me. “Okay, I checked our rough list, and then I focused on the Revolutionary War period, say, 1770 to 1790. There wasn't a lot, as you might guess, but I was lucky to find that Edward Garrett, the owner back then, had kept sort of a daybook. He mainly kept notes about farm issues, like the weather and which cows had calved, and major expenses, like replacing the roof or adding on to the house. But he did mention the battle.”

Aha, now we had finally gotten down to it. “What did he say?”

“Not as much as I'm sure you'd like. He was a Quaker, which was a difficult thing to be during the Revolution because nobody really trusted a group of people who refused to fight, or even to pick sides. I'd guess the family kept pretty quiet about it, but that's only by inference, since they held on to their land and there were no public complaints about them.”

“I assume that means they didn't take part in the local militia?” I asked.

“Not officially, at least. Anyway, as you must know by now, the Battle of Paoli took place just up the road from the farm, so it would have been hard to ignore it entirely. Then these two bodies turn up now, and evidence suggests that they died somewhere around the same time, and at least one of them must have been wearing a British uniform, because of the buttons that George found. Anyway, long story short, Edward makes a rather cryptic mention of the event. Here, it's easier to show you. But please, put on gloves first!”

I had already reached for the cotton gloves. I took the small volume Janet offered me from her hand and studied it briefly: worn leather binding, pages in surprisingly good condition, ink browned by age but still legible. I leafed through it carefully, noting the intermingling of financial notations, comments on planting cycles, even the occasional note of someone's death.

“I marked the pages,” Janet said, watching me.

I turned to the place she had marked, and read. Edward, if he was indeed the writer, had summed up the battle in two lines, but had given a little more space to the chaos of the retreat. There must have been people milling around all over the roads that dawn, the American soldiers torn between rallying to defend themselves and retreating as fast as possible to regroup and assess what they had left. And Garrett's farm had been smack in the middle of the path. I looked up at Janet. “This is fascinating from a historical point of view, but what's it got to do with the bodies?”

“Look at the next page.”

I turned the page, and read, “‘We laid the two dead men to rest where they fell. God grant them peace.'” The handwriting was the same, but shakier, as if the writer were upset; it returned to normal by the next page, where the entry was about shoeing a horse.

“So you're assuming that those are the two bodies that George Bowen found?”

“Wouldn't you? It's not a burial ground—all the Garretts are buried behind the meeting house nearby. But the conditions at that moment must have been awful, and I've read that most of the casualties during that war were buried where they fell. But there's another possibility—and this is pure speculation on my part, mind you: What if the two dead men were indeed from different sides? How were the Garretts supposed to return them to the right people? Think about it—no matter which way they turned, somebody would have been angry at them, and might possibly have taken it out on good Quaker Edward. Maybe it wasn't right to simply bury them and say nothing, but in the heat of the moment it was the easiest thing to do, and safest for the Garretts. And things in the region stayed pretty unsettled for a while—maybe there never was a good opportunity to fix things. Does that make sense to you?”

I nodded slowly. “I think it does. Tell me, did George Bowen ever look at the Garrett papers?”

Janet tilted her head. “He may have. He's someone who would've had an interest, out of sheer curiosity. He was in and out over the past few years, not that he always stopped to chat with anyone. We probably don't keep track as scrupulously as you do, and he may not have filled out a request. He had kind of free rein with the collections, because everyone knew him and trusted him.”

“I was wondering if he knew he was looking for bodies, or if he just happened to stumble on them. I don't suppose it matters, since it's pretty clear that he found them. Who would George have talked to first?”

“I'm still not sure. I think he would have told us, sooner rather than later, but he might have gone to the township first.”

“Somebody on the historical commission, maybe?”

Janet considered that. “Like Joe Dilworth? I . . . don't know. I'd like to say that George's commitment to history outweighed his sense of duty to the township, but he was a conscientious man, and it could have gone either way. I really can't say. Poor George. He must have been torn.”

And now he was dead. Had he picked the wrong person to tell?

“Does this help anything?” Janet asked.

I sighed. “Janet, I don't know. I think there could be a great story in there to give to Wakeman, and I'll tell Lissa about it, because I'm sure she'll want to see the book. Whether it tells us anything about who killed George, it's not clear. I need to think about this, maybe share it with someone.” Like James, for instance. “Take good care of this book, though. Is there anything else in there that you think I should see? Or anything else about the farm in that era that may tie in?”

“I'll go through it more carefully, particularly the part that comes right after the war. I can't believe they just left those poor men in the field there, but I guess I can understand their thinking. Where are the bodies now?”

“The FBI took custody of them—they have the best forensics lab around. I'm not sure what they can tell us, but at least they're looking at them carefully. Listen, I've got to get into the city this afternoon, but thank you for sharing this. Wakeman wants a short report by the end of the week, and if we find anything that either corroborates or contradicts your theory, I'll let you know.”

“Thank you—I'd appreciate it.” She stood up. “Let me see you out.”

Stepping out into the bright sunshine after being closeted in a dim room with documents from another century was a bit of a shock. “I'll be in touch,” I told Janet, then walked over to the parking garage where I'd left my car. It was early enough in the day that I didn't have to contend with traffic as I drove toward Philadelphia, but I still had time to think about what Janet had shown me. Had Edward Garrett had mixed loyalties? Shouldn't he have told either the patriots or the redcoats, or both, about the two dead men, if in fact they had fought on different sides? Telling no one sounded politically expedient but not exactly honorable. I decided that I needed to know more about Edward Garrett before I made a final judgment.

And I wondered if the FBI forensic team could tell me any more about the bodies. I would have to ask James, over dinner. Another romantic conversation:
What's new with those skeletal corpses we found?