Scarlet Widow (34 page)

She bent forward, took hold of the edge of the sheet, and drew it back. Francis was staring up at her blindly. His eyes were open but as white as poached eggs. His hair was stuck flat to his head and there were scratches on his forehead where the crown of roses had been removed, although there was no blood.

A nail had made a hole through the palm of his right hand, too, and when she lifted the sheet away from his feet she could see that he had stigmata in both of his arches. This certainly looked like the work of Satan, or one of his demons – but then it was obviously meant to.

Beatrice looked down at Francis for a long time. When he was alive he had looked serious most of the time, even when she knew that he was very happy, but now he looked melancholy rather than serious, as if he had come to accept that his life was over but was saddened that there were so many days that he was never going to see.

She drew the sheet down further, down to his waist. It took all of her nerve to reach down and touch his chest, and when she did she gave a little reactive sniff. Major General Holyoke had been right: although he was still flesh-coloured, his body was as hard as oak.

She slowly stroked his chest. Even the hair between his nipples was crisp and it crackled when she touched it. She tapped his breastbone with her knuckle and it made a sound like a hollow wooden keg.

She knelt down beside him and held her face very close to his and inhaled. There was no question at all. He smelled strongly of linseed. His body must have been treated in the same way as the rat that her father had turned into a wooden toy all those years ago.

She could hear him now, as he sharpened his carving-knife for their Christmas dinner.
I wonder if it would ever be possible to preserve your loved ones when they passed away, exactly as they were when they were alive?

She stood up. She couldn’t decide if this was a coincidence, Francis’s body being hardened like this, or if somebody somehow had discovered what her father had done and used it to mock her. But whatever the reason, she couldn’t even begin to understand why.

Of one thing, though, she was certain. Whoever had done this was neither witch nor demon. Francis’s solidified body had finally convinced her of that. A witch or a demon would have used magic to do it, some spell or incantation, not days of painstaking simmering in linseed oil.

She was also convinced that all the terrible events that had been happening in and around Sutton over the past two weeks had been caused by the same malevolent person. But they were more than simply malevolent. They were well acquainted with the elements, and with chemical compounds, and with what extraordinary reactions those compounds could produce. They also had a comprehensive knowledge of poisonous herbs and other plants, and perhaps of their antidotes, too. Ebenezer Rowlandson’s trout had recovered almost miraculously, and so had Henry Mendum’s Devon cattle.

The Widow Belknap undoubtedly knew all about toxic herbs and was probably well versed in chymistry. But how, without assistance, could she have bound and set fire to George Gilman’s slaves and hoisted them up to the rafters of his barn, and how could she have lifted Francis up to the roof of the meeting house and fastened him there?

Jonathan Shooks claimed to be dealing with a demon, and he blamed this demon for every misfortune, including the death of Nicholas Buckley. But if there
were
no demon, if Satan were not involved at all, in whatever guise, the only person responsible must be Jonathan Shooks.

She thought of the Chinese fire inch-sticks that he had doused in water and given to the Buckley twins. There was no doubt that the infusion had helped them to recover, although Beatrice didn’t understand how. It had shown, though, that Jonathan Shooks knew his chymistry, too.

‘Oh, Francis,’ she said. She thought of how he had stared at her every Sunday morning in Birmingham when she was walking home from church, and how he had pushed over cousin Jeremy when he had been bothering her. She thought of their wedding night, and of their journey across the Atlantic, when she had been seasick for days.

She thought of the day they had first come to Sutton and reached the village green. The sun had been shining through the clouds so that the day brightened and faded, brightened and faded, and she thought they had arrived in paradise.

She covered Francis with the sheet. She would have to call on Peter Duston tomorrow and ask him to make a coffin. She would also have to ask him to sever Francis’s arms.

She left the parlour and closed the door behind her. She didn’t want little Noah toddling in there and discovering his dead father on the floor. Not only that, the smell of linseed was making her feel queasy.

She went to the front door and opened it so that she could breathe some fresh air. It was almost dark now and the insects seemed to be singing louder and more insistently than ever. As she stood there, she thought she saw a movement at the end of the driveway. She peered harder, and as she did so the brown-cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows and stood in the middle of the driveway, holding its staff.

Maybe you are the Angel of Death, she thought. If so, you certainly know when to pay us a visit.

‘You!’ she called out, although her voice was weak from strain and tiredness. ‘You – who are you? What do you want?’

The figure didn’t answer. Beatrice didn’t know if she should be frightened of it or not. After two or three minutes it turned around and walked back into the darkness and was gone.

She knelt beside her bed that night and said a prayer for Francis. She hoped so much that he was in heaven, walking with Jesus, and that he was happy. More than anything else, she wanted him to be happy.

She knew that Francis would have disapproved of her trying to take revenge on his murderer.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord
. But she was determined that the Lord should know who to punish, and then punish them with the utmost severity.

*

The next day she took the shay and drove to the village. The morning was warm but strangely foggy, so that Beatrice felt as if she were driving through some kind of ghostly dream. She called on Rodney Bartlett first, because he tended to so many horses and probably used more linseed oil than anybody else in the village. Linseed oil kept horses calm and made their coats and manes glossy and relieved them of the sweet itch, especially at this time of the year when the air was filled with midges.

‘I still find it hard to believe what happened yesterday, Goody Scarlet,’ said Rodney Bartlett. ‘You know that the whole of Sutton is mourning, and feels for you.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bartlett, you’re very kind,’ Beatrice told him. She looked around the gloomy, smoke-filled smithy. The furnace had just been lit and there were five or six horses tethered in the lean-to at the back, who were beginning to grow restless, as if they knew they were soon to be shoed. ‘Has anybody bought any linseed oil from you lately?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ frowned Rodney Bartlett, as if she had asked him a question in a foreign language.

‘Linseed oil, Mr Bartlett. I’m looking for somebody who might have purchased quite a large quantity of it – about a week ago, possibly, I’m not exactly sure. Or they might have taken it without you knowing.’

Rodney Bartlett slowly shook his head. ‘I’ve sold none of mine, Goody Scarlet, and there’s none missing that I’m aware of. You might ask Matthew Blackett. He uses linseed oil on his gunstocks. Or James Fuller, he uses it, too, when he’s making his furniture. But, of course, I get all of mine from Robert Norton, over at Billington’s Corners.’

‘Robert Norton, the paint-maker?’

‘That’s right. We do an exchange. He brings over forty gallons of linseed oil to feed my horses and I give him forty gallons of horse piss to make his paint.’

‘He makes his paint with—?’

‘Horse piss, that’s right. White lead and horse piss. The green paint anyhow, that’s what goes into it. God knows what he uses for his Spanish brown.’

‘All right,’ said Beatrice. ‘Thank you.’

*

She drove out to Billington’s Corners, which was more of a small scruffy crossroads ‘in back of no place at all’, as Caleb would have put it, rather than a village. It was here, however, that Robert Norton and his brother Abel ran their paint shop, which mixed and supplied paints for most of the county. Their factory was a large grey barn set back from the Bedford road, with several wagons outside, and stacks of wooden barrels, as well as countless glass carboys with wickerwork casings.

The morning was growing hotter now and out of the paint shop’s open doors came a pungent smell of linseed oil and a sour metallic tang of colouring mixtures. Beatrice tied up Uriel to a ring at the side of the building and walked inside. Several young men and girls in long aprons were grinding and sieving soil or scraping metal flakes from tall earthenware jars.

She found Abel Norton sitting at a desk in a small office on the left-hand side, in his shirt-sleeves, filling in account books. He was a plump little man, like a character out of a nursery rhyme. His pate was bald, but the rest of his hair was almost shoulder-length, and very white. He was wearing tiny eyeglasses, which he took off his nose as Beatrice came in.

‘Goody Scarlet!’ he greeted her, and stood up to clasp her hand. ‘What brings you here? Are you thinking of painting the parsonage? I have a new taupe mixture which has just arrived from Europe, very
fashionable
if I may say so, but discreet, and uplifting at the same time. Just right for a minister’s house!’

‘You clearly haven’t heard,’ said Beatrice. Although the Nortons were members of their congregation they rarely came into the village on any day except Sundays for communion. She told him how Francis had been murdered and turned rigid and displayed on the roof of the meeting house, and he listened in shocked silence, chewing his lip.

‘I don’t know what to say to you, Goody Scarlet, except to give you my heartfelt condolences. What terrible, terrible news! But... you haven’t come here only to tell me that?’

‘No, Mr Norton, I haven’t. I’ve come here to ask you if you happen to have sold a large quantity of linseed oil in the past few days. It would have been an unusually large quantity.’

Abel Norton looked at her oddly and clipped his eyeglasses back on to the bridge of his nose.

‘Linseed oil? A large quantity, you say? An
unusually
large quantity?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Ah... well, the problem is that my business transactions are always strictly confidential. I have to keep them that way for many reasons, but mostly because my customers wouldn’t be at all happy if I were to divulge their financial affairs to others.’

‘You
have
, though, haven’t you?’

Abel Norton gave her an almost imperceptible nod, as if he were afraid that somebody might see him or overhear him.

‘Please, Mr Norton, you
must
tell me to whom.’

‘Goody Scarlet, I’m really not sure – well, to be honest with you, I’m really not sure what the consequences might be.’

‘It’s a matter of life and death, Mr Norton. I can put it no plainer than that.’

Abel Norton looked around. He even leaned sideways a little so that he could see over Beatrice’s shoulder to the yard outside. Then he said, in a very low voice, ‘I was out of my office when you first arrived. By chance I had left on my desk a bill of trade that referred to a certain unusual quantity of linseed oil. If by chance you happened to see it, then it was certainly not with my knowledge or permission.’

With that, he sat down and opened his left-hand desk drawer. He took out a bill of sale and laid it on top of his ledger. Then he turned his head away and stared up at the little window high above his desk, as if he had developed a sudden fascination for cloud formations.

Beatrice went over and picked up the bill of sale. It was for two hundred gallons of best-quality linseed oil, to be delivered to Rutger’s Farm near Penacook. The price was twopence halfpenny the gallon, making a total of two pounds ought and eightpence, with a carriage cost of fourpence.

The bill was addressed to ‘J. Shooks, Esq.’

‘I thank you, Mr Norton,’ said Beatrice. Her hand was shaking as she put the bill back on his ledger. ‘I have seen all I need to. You have been most accommodating.’

Abel Norton folded the bill and returned it to his desk drawer. ‘I’m sorry, Goody Scarlet?’

As she left his office, however, he said, ‘Was
he
responsible for what happened to your husband? That fellow Shooks? I thought him queer, I have to admit, him and that coachman of his.’

‘I’m not entirely sure yet, Mr Norton. But I believe him to be implicated at the very least.’

‘But what use would he have for such a quantity of linseed oil?’

‘What is the principal quality of linseed oil, Mr Norton? Why do you mix into paint and into putty?’

‘Oh, my dear Lord, Goody Scarlet. You don’t mean—? Dear Lord, and I was the provider of it! Oh, I am mortified, I really am! If my knees were not so stiff I would get down on them and beg for your forgiveness!’

Beatrice went back home first to make sure that Noah was fed and changed, and that Mary was coping with all of her chores. After she had helped Mary fold some sheets she sat in the kitchen with a plate of cold roasted pork with bread and pickled cucumbers. She chewed her food slowly and deliberately, and drank frequent mouthfuls of cider to help her swallow it, even though she had no appetite and the meat seemed tasteless. She was grieving so much that it gave her a pain in her stomach, but she was filled with determination and she knew that she would need strength and stamina to do what she had to do next. Uriel had needed a rest, too, and water and a feed.

The parlour door was closed and she didn’t open it. As far as she was concerned, the wooden man lying on the floor beneath a sheet was only a replica of Francis, not Francis himself. Francis was alive, and gentle, and loving – still alive inside her heart.

Peter Duston would be calling on her later to take measurements for a coffin and she had already talked to Benjamin Lynch about a funeral service.