Sowing Poison (24 page)

Lewis strode to the table and picked up one of the dirty glasses. Nothing but the odour of rum from it. But when he sniffed at the second glass, he thought he could detect the same flowery smell of the laudanum.

As he put the glass back on the table he realized that there were a series of clothes pegs beside the door, but that only one coat was hung there. It could easily have been Reuben's, he supposed, but when he thrust his hands into the pockets he discovered a small purse. Inside were two notes and a handful of coins. All of them were American. It appeared that Reuben's Boxing Day guest might indeed be his long-lost brother, Nathan.

Had Reuben rendered the first Nate —
Jack
— helpless with the laudanum? Had he taken his victim to the marsh, where the Holey Man had found him? And had he been dead already or still alive and too insensible to save himself? Having had such success with his first crime, had Reuben decided to use the same method for his second?

But the Holey Man is gone. No one can lay the blame there if another body is found in the marsh.

Suddenly, Lewis knew where they had gone. “The woods. He's taken him to the woodlot.”

What better place? Reuben had maintained that his brother had disappeared there in the first place, and the coroner's jury had expressed doubts about the identity of the bones found at the Holey Man's shack. If something went wrong, and this body was found, Reuben could always claim that it was the missing Nate, and that he had been there all the time.

McFaul had been watching in silence as Lewis examined the kitchen, but now he sprang into action. “Let's go.” He rushed to the door.

They went on foot. The trees grew thick in places, and a horse would make too much noise. They crossed the cleared fields and pastures close to the barn and soon reached the wooded area. Lewis led them to the clearing where Reuben claimed Nate's accident had occurred. He motioned McFaul to be as silent as possible. There was no one in the clearing, although there was evidence of continued logging. Several felled trees lay on the ground waiting to be chopped into smaller lengths. Lewis tripped on one of these, but managed to stifle a groan as his weight shifted to his bad knee.

McFaul grabbed his arm to prevent him falling. “Listen,” he whispered.

Lewis could hear something off to their right. He and McFaul crept through the clearing as silently as they could. It was harder to see here, tree branches forming a dark web over their heads. Here and there widow-makers dangled in the arms of their neighbours, ready to come crashing down when least expected.

There, in the part of the woodlot where the trees grew thickest, Reuben Elliott was cutting brush. As they watched, he slashed at the branches of trees, both fallen and standing, and threw them onto an enormous pile. Had it been daytime, he could have been merely chopping, throwing the unusable brush into a mound to be burned later — a commonplace chore on a farm. Except that a shaft of moonlight broke through a gap in the overhanging branches and Lewis could see the toe of a brown boot at one edge of the brush pile. Reuben muttered and cursed as he worked.

There was a shovel leaning on a tree nearby, with a small pile of disturbed earth at the foot of it. He had intended to dig a grave, Lewis thought, but no one could dig far in the frozen earth. So he had settled for a less effective concealment perhaps.

Lewis signalled McFaul and they crept up around the back of the mound of brush.

As Reuben reached up to chop another branch, his back to them, he must have heard them as they rushed forward, for he turned, and in one smooth overhand motion, threw his axe. Lewis shouted and rolled sideways, knocking McFaul out of the way. The axe flew over his head and bounced off the ground, landing against the piled branches.

When Lewis looked up, Reuben was disappearing into the trees. McFaul signalled that he was going to the left and that Lewis should swing around to the right. Lewis could hear the man crashing through the undergrowth ahead of him and he tried to follow the noise. Suddenly, there was silence. Lewis stopped, hesitating. The trees had closed in around him again and he could see nothing but shadows. He caught a slight movement just at the periphery of his vision, but turned too late. The branch slammed into the side of his head and he went down heavily.

He had just time to shout “Here!” before he was struck a second time. He could hear McFaul shouting, but he sounded so far away — he would never arrive in time to prevent Reuben from delivering a rain of blows.

Lewis instinctively put his hands up over his head. He felt intense pain shoot through his left arm as the heavy oak branch crashed down again. In spite of the pain, he rolled to the right and kicked his feet out as he rolled. One of his boots slammed into Reuben's leg and the blow sent the man sprawling sideways. Then, unexpectedly, something arrested this motion and Reuben tumbled forward in a heap. As Lewis scrambled to get out of the way, he was astonished to see an axe embedded in Reuben Elliott's back. And there behind him, swaying, stood a man who could be none other than Nathan Elliott.

McFaul reached them just as Nate's knees buckled and he slumped to the ground beside the convulsing body of his brother.

“Holy Mary Mother of God!” McFaul said as he took in the scene. “Are you all right, Lewis?”

“I think my arm's broken, but I'm fine for the moment. What about Reuben?”

“He's still breathing, but I fear it won't be for long.”

“Then go and get help. Maybe we can save him yet.”

McFaul didn't argue. He nodded and ran back the way he had come.

Lewis pulled his scarf from around his neck and made a makeshift sling for his injured arm. His head was throbbing from the blows he had taken, but he hauled himself to his knees and managed to crawl away from Reuben and toward the other man. Nate was breathing, deep irregular breaths that sounded as though they might cease at any moment. Lewis leaned over him, flinching as he did so. The smell of rum was strong, but underneath this odour was the flowery stink of laudanum. Nate's eyes were open, the pupils nothing more than pinpoints. Reuben must have slipped the drug into his drink, drop by drop, until he became insensible. How had he ever managed to haul himself out from under the pile of branches, never mind locate the axe and find his brother in the dark? It was nothing short of a miracle.
I would be dead but for this man
, Lewis thought, for there was no doubt in his mind that Reuben had intended to kill him.
Please Lord, don't let him die now
.

He tried to shake the stuporous form, an action that caused a jolting pain in his arm. No response. He tried again, and Nate stirred a little. Lewis took a firm hold on him and with an effort that caused him to cry out with the pain, managed to haul the limp form to a sitting position and drag him far enough to lean his back against a tree. He slumped down beside the drugged man, closed his eyes, and waited for help to arrive.

“Reuben Elliott was probably as good as dead as soon as the axe went into him,” Dr. Keough said the next day when he came around to the Temperance House to check on Lewis's head, which he seemed far more concerned about than the broken arm.

Lewis was aware that he must have blacked out several times the night before — at least once before McFaul had returned with the doctor, the grumbling constable, and five strong men, Francis among them, and at least twice while he was being carried home. He had been fully conscious, however, of Betsy scolding him after he had been deposited in bed and she had been assured that his injuries were not life-threatening.

“Thaddeus Lewis, every time I let you out the door you fall through the ice or get hit in the head or break an arm. My word, Martha takes better care of herself than you do.”

She had continued muttering while she applied a poultice to his head and Francis rushed to the hotel for some extra pillows to cushion his arm until the doctor could see to it.

Nate Elliott — for he had recovered sufficiently to confirm his identity — had been in far worse shape and had taken priority as far as the doctor was concerned. No one had been quite sure what to do with him when they had taken him out of the woods. They could scarcely dump him back at the Elliott house and leave him to recover by himself. Then Martin Carr had stepped forward.

“Take him to our house,” he said. “Ma will look after him. She's an old friend.”

According to Sophie, her mother sat by Nate's bedside while he recovered from his near-overdose of laudanum, soothing him when he tossed and turned, sponging his face when his eyes and nose ran, helping him sip the soothing posset she had brewed to alleviate the cramping abdominal pain.

“It was a very close thing indeed,” the doctor said. “One or two more drops and I'm not sure he'd have come back from it.

“There was nothing more left in the bottle to give him,” Lewis said. “It was completely empty. Of course, I don't know how much of it Hiram used, so there's no way of telling how much there was to begin with.”

The doctor looked at him with astonishment. “Hiram Elliott didn't use laudanum. He was in no pain; in fact, he was largely insensible for the last months of his life. I would never have recommended laudanum in those circumstances. Reuben must have bought it.”

Clementine had no proof that Reuben had killed her husband, but it was clear, to Lewis at any rate, that he had had murder in mind. He must have drugged the first Nate in the same way he had drugged the second. Had he thrown him in the marsh, hoping to dispose of the body later? Or had the first Nate realized what was happening and managed to temporarily shrug off the effects of the laudanum in the same way that the second one had? Could he have escaped the Elliott farmhouse and made it as far as the marsh, only to have the drug render him helpless once he was there? It was mere coincidence that the Holey Man had discovered him, whether dead or alive there was no way of knowing, but “coincidences ten times as remarkable happen to all of us every hour of our lives without attracting even momentary notice.” M. Dupin was quite correct about that, Lewis realized.

He didn't bother to inform the doctor that the drug had been used in an evil way not once, but twice. He knew there had to be an inquiry into Reuben's death and the events leading to it, and that he would be called to testify. But he had decided he would stick strictly to the facts of what he knew and leave conjecture to the gossips.

Francis reported that there was little practical business being accomplished in the town of Wellington over the Christmas week. There was too much to talk about. The Boxing Day brawl, which everyone — even some of those who had instigated it — agreed was shameful, and the astounding news that Nate Elliott wasn't Nate Elliott at all, nor was his wife who she said she was, and that Reuben Elliott had died in a grisly fashion out in the woods.

Several of the handful of people who had met the first Nate Elliott now claimed to have known all along that he was an imposter.

“I didn't think he looked right,” the postmaster said. “Nate was always a lot taller.”

“Weren't Nate's eyes blue?” the cooper said. “The first one was too dark to be Nate.”

“Now why wouldn't his wife have known who he was?” Bella MacDonald asked, until it was pointed out to her that she wasn't the real Nate Elliott's wife at all, and even if she had been, the first Nate Elliott had been chopped up and stuffed into barrels, making identification difficult, to say the least. Not to mention the fact that she could hardly be questioned about her knowledge now, given the fact that she was nowhere to be found.

Daniel had been beside himself when he realized that yet another guest had neglected to pay.

“Two rooms it was, two rooms, and at top rate! First Gilmour, now Mrs. Elliott. I swear, never again do I rent my rooms without asking for the money ahead of time. This hotel business just isn't what it's cracked up to be, is it?” He sighed. “I don't suppose you know where she's gone, do you Thaddeus? Is there any way we could track her down?”

Everybody seemed to think that Lewis would have answers to all of their questions, and over the next few days Betsy shooed away numerous visitors who appeared to be nothing more than curious about the details of the strange incident.

There were few people other than family that she allowed into their little house, but one who was granted entrance was Clara Sprung, who came only once, and stayed for only five minutes.

“I just want to hear from your own lips that it was all a contrivance,” she said. “I think if I hear you say it, I'll believe that Amelia is really gone and that I won't see her again.”

Lewis reached out with his uninjured hand to pat her shoulder. “I'm sorry. What you saw in that room wasn't real, but rest assured you will see your daughter again. I'm sure she's in heaven and will be there at the gates to meet you when your time comes.”

She nodded. “I knew that. I knew it all along, but I guess I just wanted to believe otherwise. Thank you.”

Archibald McFaul was allowed in the door, as well.

“As the only person in the woods that night to come out unscathed, I thought I'd better drop around to gloat,” he said. “Seriously, though, I thought you were done for. One more blow to the head and you'd have been in real trouble. I tried, but couldn't get there fast enough.”

“A hard-headed Methodist like me?” Lewis said. “I might have survived one more.” And McFaul chuckled. Lewis liked this man immensely, and he had certainly solidified his reputation as a village leader, both in disrupting the riot and in helping to chase down Reuben Elliott.

“I was going to ask you this anyway,” McFaul said, growing more serious, “but now I'm convinced that it's the right course. You told me once that you're an educated man.”

Lewis nodded.

“If you've listened to the village grapevine at all, you're probably aware that I have diverse business interests. I'm finding that the routine administration of many of these is taking up far too much of my time. I need someone to see to some of it for me. Someone I can trust.”

“Do you mean like a clerk?” Lewis said, but his spirits fell as he said it. He would take whatever McFaul offered. He was in desperate need of income, but the thought of being shut up in a poky little office every day was depressing.

“No, not as a clerk. Men who can add up a column of figures or check off a shipping list are easy enough to find. I need someone who can handle a certain amount of my correspondence for me, and who can be trusted to correctly file legal documents of various sorts. It wouldn't be full time, mind you, and it would require you to travel to the courthouse in Picton on a fairly regular basis, but if you're interested, you seem like the ideal candidate.”

Lewis needed no time to consider this offer. “Agreed!” he said immediately. “But I can't start until I have a little more use of my left arm.”

It was perfect, he pointed out to Betsy after McFaul had left. It would give them some money, yet leave him free to tend to her on her bad days. He would be settled in one place, but asked to travel a bit. He would once more have an open road unwinding before him. He would travel no farther than Picton, it was true, but he had missed the steady drumming of a horse's hooves and the feel of a hot sun or a winter wind striking his face. He would be able to breathe again.

“Best of all, it will give us time to collect up a little nest egg, in case we have to trail after Martha some day.”

On the fifth day of his convalescence, just when Lewis had had enough of lying around the kitchen and was about to ignore Betsy's protests and go out, he had another visitor. It was Nate Elliott, recovered from the more unpleasant effects of his overdose, but still pale and a little shaky.

“I thought I should come and talk to you,” he said. “There's still so much I don't understand. Apparently, I had a wife and son at one point?”

“That's what they claimed, anyway.”

Lewis had questions for Nate, as well. “What made you come back?”

“I finally found a few weeks' work and could pay my back rent. It bothered me that I'd skipped out in such a hurry, and I wanted my letters back — more than anything to remind myself why I'd left. I had no sentimentality about the old homestead or my family either, I assure you. When I went back to the room, the landlady told me that my brother had been there and had taken the letters. I knew there was only one reason Reuben would have come looking for me — the old man was dead or dying and had somehow tied everything up in knots.”

“Did you know that Reuben had found a substitute for you?”

Nate shook his head. “No. The landlady said nothing about it, and I'm not sure it would have made any difference to me anyway. I truly debated just going on my way. I didn't really care what happened to the farm.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I know you're a preacher and probably won't approve, but I'll be honest with you — I wanted to see that miserable old bastard dead in his grave.”

It was a stark admission. Lewis had heard Hiram Elliott described in various unflattering ways, but he had wondered how a father could engender so much hate from a son. And then he realized that he had come perilously close to doing the same to his own son, not in degree, perhaps, but in spirit. At least he had realized it in time, and had repaired much of the rift that had developed between him and his eldest boy.

“I didn't count on seeing Reuben dead, as well,” Nate went on. “We never got along, but I realize now that it was the old man who was responsible for that. I would have liked to know him better, to see if we could have been friends without my father there to sow poison between us.”

“Reuben made his choices,” Lewis said. “One might argue that it was all your father's doing, but Reuben was chained by nothing but his own greed. He could have left at any time, just as you did.”

“I suppose that's true,” Nate said. “But I certainly didn't expect him to try to kill me.”

“He'd set himself on a path that was full of pitfalls. When you arrived, he must have convinced himself that there was no other way out. He'd have murdered me, as well, if it hadn't been for you. I'm still trying to figure out how you got yourself out from under that pile of branches to stop him.”

“I have no idea,” Nate said. “I have absolutely no recollection of any of it. One minute I was sitting in the kitchen drinking with Reuben and the next thing I knew Eliza Carr was dabbing at my forehead with a cold rag, bless her heart. The constable came around and wanted all the details, but I could tell him nothing.”

“That will stand you in good stead at the inquest, I expect.”

Nate nodded. “According to the constable, it will almost certainly be ruled self-defence. I just wish I could remember that it was so.”

“Oh, don't worry,” Lewis replied. “That's exactly what it was.”

The verdict at the inquest was exactly as the constable predicted, and Nate Elliott was exonerated from any guilt in the death of his brother. The hearing was very short, the coroner seeing no need to belabour the details of a train of events that seemed so straightforward. The jury consisted of some of the same men who had ruled in the previous inquest, and afterward they couldn't help but point out how prescient they had been.

“Everybody gave us a hard time over our findings,” one of them said, “but now you know we were right — it wasn't Nate Elliott after all. Was it?”

“What are you going to do about the farm?” Lewis asked Nate as they stood outside the courthouse.

“I don't want it. It's got nothing but bad memories for me. I'll just sell it, I think. But I don't really want the money either. As far as I'm concerned, it's tainted. In any event, some of it will be needed to clear up a few of the messes Reuben made. I'd like to put up some sort of gravestone for my imposter, although I don't have a name to go on it, other than ‘Jack.' That will do, I suppose.”

“There were a number of other names he used,” Lewis said, “but I don't think any of them were the name he was born with.”

“I don't suppose you've heard from my erstwhile wife?”

Lewis shook his head. “Not a word. I didn't really expect to though.”

“If you ever do,” Nate said, “please let me know. I'd like to pay her what Reuben promised.”

“And the rest?”

“Oh, I'll take enough to give me a stake somewhere else, but I can't think of anything better to do with the rest of it than give it to Eliza Carr. She's always been a real friend to me.”

“And it will make a great deal of difference to her,” Lewis said, although he privately hoped that it wouldn't mean the departure of Sophie from the Temperance House kitchen.