Simply Dead Page 11

  Rees, who could barely contain his excitement, could feel Lydia trembling.

  ‘And where does this family live?’ he asked.

  Granny Rose sighed. ‘Go back to the main road and follow it all the way up to the top. When you reach the stream – it’ll be on your left – follow it. Turn left at the waterfall.’

  Rees nodded and stood up. But Lydia remained seated. ‘Why would Hortense be called to a birth that high in the mountains when you are so much closer?’ she asked.

  Granny Rose shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m sure the family had its reasons.’ Rees was tempted to break in and ask the midwife what she thought those reasons were. ‘I heard tell both mother and babe died,’ the midwife continued after a brief silence. ‘A mercy really although I doubt that would have happened if I’d been present at the birth.’ She shook her head and Rees felt a chill sweep over him. Did she really believe that God had punished that poor woman for not calling on Granny Rose? ‘But then who knows what happened there?’ she went on. Rees held the old woman’s gaze. He was certain she knew more than she had said. Or was willing to say. But the dark-blue eyes that met his were unyielding and he knew she would tell him nothing more. Not today anyway.

  He held out his hand to Lydia. ‘We should go. I know Mrs Rose must have much to do.’

  ‘Just call me Granny Rose, everyone does,’ said the midwife. She preceded them to the cabin door and threw it open. She stood there, in the cold, watching Rees and Lydia climb into the wagon and begin the journey down from this side of the mountain. When Rees turned to look back, just before they went around the curve and the cabin disappeared from sight, Granny Rose was still standing in her doorway watching them.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘She knows something more,’ Rees said.

  Lydia smiled knowingly. ‘Something shameful I’ll be bound,’ she said.

  Rees nodded in agreement. People always held back information, evaded questions, or told out and out lies. The trick lay in discovering which secrets were private sins and shames and which were important to the resolution of the mystery.

  ‘What do you think?’ Rees asked Lydia. He respected her ability to decode the nuances of female conversation.

  ‘Perhaps an out-of-wedlock baby?’ Lydia said. ‘But suggesting the deaths of both mother and child was a mercy seems – I don’t know – a peculiar response to such a tragedy.’

  ‘We have to speak to the Woottens,’ Rees said with a definitive jerk of his head.

  ‘I believe we still have time before the children are released from school,’ Lydia said. Rees turned to look at her. Although she seemed calm, he saw the excitement in her sparkling eyes.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can find the Woottens.’

  Once they reached the fork in the road they turned left. The narrow track began climbing once more. They had not gone very far before they reached the stream, frozen into rough ice. A short distance away they passed the waterfall. Although ice coated the rocks, the fall itself was not frozen and the water rushed over with a tremendous roar. They crossed over a bridge, the rough-hewn boards worn gray with weather and splintering from heavy traffic. Now the water went rushing down a deep gully on the right. Visible on the other side of the cleft were the signs of logging, open patches where both hardwoods and tall pines had been chopped down. The forest was silent now, save for the sound of Hannibal’s hooves and the creak of the wagon wheels. The lumber camps had moved to the other side of the hill.

  They ate the dry pone from Lydia’s bag. Rees longed for coffee but they had only a jug of stale tasting water. A series of grunts sounded from the woods to their left and two fat bears ran across the road twenty feet in front of the wagon. Although the animals did not pause, or even glance at the wagon, Rees began wishing he’d brought his rifle. What were they doing awake? Shouldn’t they be hibernating? When Hannibal caught the bears’ scent he snorted and stopped short, dancing at the end of the reins. As soon as the bears disappeared into the brown, frost-stiffened underbrush on the other side, the gelding pulled forward, eager to be gone from this place.

  As they ascended the mountain, the hardwoods thinned, leaving primarily evergreens. Tracts of open land filled with low bush blueberries, crusted with frost, scrub and sometimes bodies of water began to appear. Ice coated the shallower tarns but the larger, deeper ponds were only partially frozen. As Rees and Lydia trundled past one such lake, a moose, up to his belly in the water, turned his dripping snout to stare at them.

  Rees began to see open sky ahead. The road, which was little more than a narrow lane, dead-ended in front of a small shabby cabin. Hannibal stopped, head hung low, and panted. Rees climbed down into the snow and looked around.

  To the left of the cabin was a small barn. Through the missing boards on the door Rees could see the wall of an empty stall. He wondered if this was where the horse stolen from Hortense lived but without going into the barn he couldn’t be sure. He saw no sign of cattle or even goats. If the family who lived here owned pigs, and it would be uncommon if they did not, the swine must live wild. There was no sty, not even for the sows and the piglets.

  But a tall stack of firewood piled against the cabin wall and the plume of wood smoke coming from the chimney betrayed human habitation. Rees started walking toward the cabin door. He had taken no more than a few steps when the door opened and a woman cradling a musket stepped outside. She was the largest woman Rees had ever seen, round as a ball of butter but nowhere near as appealing. Her feet were bare, the flesh rolling over her ankles in pendulous folds. He could barely see her eyes over her round cheeks. An untidy black braid snaked down her back.

  ‘Git off my property,’ she said, her words slurred. She had lost her teeth so long ago her cheeks fell, in deep creases, over her empty mouth. Rees held up his hands to show they were empty.

  ‘We’re just looking for two boys, a Jem and a Jake,’ Lydia said.

  ‘They ain’t here.’ Her tongue pushed out of her mouth in a vaguely reptilian motion. ‘No one’s here. Git going now.’ As she spoke, she hobbled down the steps and stood in the snow in her bare feet. Rees stared at the woman’s grimy toes, the long yellow nails chipped and broken and wondered why she didn’t feel the cold. ‘I said git.’ She attempted to fire over Rees’s head but, although a muffled pop sounded, the ball did not eject. He guessed the powder was wet, a common problem.

  Still he backed up in a hurry. She might reload and next time, with the gun’s notorious inaccuracy and the woman’s apparent drunkenness, she might hit Lydia.

  ‘Now Mother,’ said a man coming around the back of the cabin and climbing the slope. ‘Go back to bed.’ Gray sprinkled his black hair and a healing crimson scar branded the left side of his face, running from eye to mouth. Recalling Hortense’s description of the fight, Rees stared at the wound. This then must be Mr Wootten.

  Although dressed in several layers of ragged homespun shirts and a battered straw hat, he wore buckskin boots upon his feet and carried a rifle in his left hand. ‘What are you doing here, pulling a sick woman from her bed?’ he added, turning on Rees as Mrs Wootten retreated to the porch.

  ‘We were looking for someone,’ Rees said. ‘Two boys, Jem and Jake.’

  ‘No one here by that name,’ said Mr Wootten. ‘You’re in the wrong place.’

  But Mrs Wootten had already admitted the boys lived in this cabin, although they were not here now. Rees eyed the other man thoughtfully, wondering why he lied.

  Wootten was just a little shorter than Rees and the arms protruding from his sleeves were solid and sinewy with muscle. He smiled but his eyes were watchful and Rees, who’d been something of a fighter in his younger days, recognized a fellow brawler. He suspected Wootten was the kind, though, who would beat an unconscious partner to death just because he could. ‘We’re sorry to trouble you,’ he said, turning back to the wagon. He would return, of that he was certain, but next time he would come with Rouge instead of Lydia.

  It
took a minute or two to turn the wagon and start down the slope once again. All the while Rees was conscious of Mr and Mrs Wootten watching him.

  He did not speak until they were a distance away. ‘He was lying of course.’

  ‘They both were, I fancy,’ Lydia agreed. She sighed. ‘But while the Woottens may be guilty of abducting Hortense, Mr Wootten cannot be the man the Shaker Sisters saw standing over the dead body.’

  ‘Why not?’ Rees asked. ‘He might have strangled that poor Shaker Sister because his musket would not fire.’

  Lydia shook her head. ‘Pearl would not have missed the wound on Mr Wootten’s face. It is too obvious and would have been visible from a good distance away. And she wouldn’t be able to help commenting upon it.’

  ‘Maybe it just happened?’ Rees asked hopefully. He had taken against Mr Wootten, although he couldn’t have explained his violent antipathy even to himself, and he wanted the other man to be guilty.

  Lydia shook her head again. ‘No. That wound occurred four, maybe five days ago.’

  ‘About the time Hortense fled,’ Rees said, turning to look at his wife.

  She returned his gaze, her eyes widening. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘There was blood, Hortense said,’ he murmured. ‘That cut would explain the blood.’

  ‘Indeed. The wound is healing, although I believe Mr Wootten will carry a scar for the remainder of his days.’

  ‘It looks as though it was made by a shovel or a poker,’ Rees said, recalling Hortense’s story. The part about the fight and Jem striking his father was true. But Rees had known something was off about the tale and now he knew what it was. Although he could believe one of Wootten’s sons had struck out with a handy weapon, he did not believe Hortense’s explanation for the reason behind the fight. Wootten was tough, a fighter, and a man used to getting his own way; that Rees had seen. Would his sons have engaged in a physical brawl with their father over something trivial? Rees doubted it. So what, he wondered, had Hortense kept back?

  ‘I’ll have to question Hortense again,’ he said aloud. ‘That girl has told so many lies I don’t know what to believe anymore.’

  Lydia sighed. ‘I feel for her mother,’ she said. After a moment of silence she continued, ‘I want to speak with Granny Rose again. Why did she tell us anything? Loyalty runs deep here in the mountains.’ She flicked a glance at her husband. ‘I don’t believe Granny broke her own code – allegiance to her community – because of our charm.’

  ‘Maybe she told us because it was the right thing to do,’ Rees suggested.

  Lydia shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t have been the right thing for her. Or if it was I suspect she would have tried to protect her own, even if it meant lying or evading our questions.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because she doesn’t like the Woottens.’ Lydia considered the statement she’d just made and nodded. ‘Yes, I believe that’s it. In fact, I would guess that Granny Rose doesn’t just dislike them, she detests them. The question is why?’

  Rees studied his wife for a moment. ‘After meeting Mr and Mrs Wootten,’ he said with feeling, ‘I not only understand Granny Rose’s feelings, I fully concur. Especially with Mr Wootten. He’s dangerous. The next time I come up here, I’ll dragoon Rouge into accompanying me. And I’ll bring my own rifle.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Descending the mountain took a long time, almost two hours by Rees’s estimation. And reaching the foothills, with North Road almost in sight, felt like reaching civilization. Hannibal, although he was panting with fatigue, broke into a ragged trot as they drove toward town. ‘I guess he’s glad to be home too,’ Rees said to Lydia.

  They drove immediately to Rouge’s tavern. Lydia hesitated, worried about going inside, but Rees assured her the stagecoach passengers, including women, always stopped for a meal here. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I’m famished.’ Breakfast seemed very far away. So Lydia allowed herself to be persuaded, probably because she too was peckish, and they went inside.

  Therese was behind the bar. ‘Where’s Rouge?’ Rees asked.

  ‘Gone.’ Seeing Rees’s expression Therese clarified her reply. ‘He went with Madame Bernadette and Mademoiselle Hortense to Quebec.’

  Only Therese’s presence prevented the epithet on Rees’s lips from springing into speech. ‘Well. I daresay this is the end of my plan to question Hortense once again,’ he said, turning to Lydia.

  She nodded, grimacing. ‘You know Bernadette will not ask anything either,’ Lydia said as they turned toward the tables. ‘She’ll be afraid of the answers.’

  Therese hurried out from behind the bar and scrubbed down a table not too distant from the fireplace. ‘What do you have today?’ Rees asked her. She looked at him with her pale-blue eyes and he wondered for a moment if she understood him. Then she went to the back and spoke in a flood of French to her brother. When she returned to the table, she offered them a ragout, a dish that turned out to be a kind of stew made with venison and carrots. But it was surprisingly flavorful and the bread served with it was hot from the oven.

  Although Rees felt disloyal for even judging, he thought the brother and sister were far better cooks than Rouge or any of his other employees.

  Rees and Lydia ate quickly. She had begun to worry about Sharon and Joseph, still in Jerusha’s care.

  They stopped by Widow Francine’s school to collect Nancy and Judah even though she had not yet dismissed school for the day. As the children put on their cloaks and mittens, the Widow said, ‘Today was a very pleasant day. Nancy and Judah worked hard. And there were no upsets.’

  It was only when they climbed into the wagon and began driving home that Rees began wondering what the dame had actually meant by those statements. Was she implying that Jerusha was a difficult child to have? He glanced at Lydia. She was chewing her lower lip in thought. When she felt him looking at her she offered him a faint smile but did not share her thoughts.

  On Tuesday morning Rees drove his children to school, even Jerusha, albeit reluctantly. He had begun wondering if it was safe enough for them to walk once again, especially now that Hortense had left the area. The constant trips were beginning to wear on him and he knew Hannibal was tired, especially after the long journey up Gray Hill the previous day. Besides, Rees had farm chores to catch up on. They were low on water – Jerusha had been afraid to fetch it the previous day – and he wanted to walk around his fence. Neither the split rail nor the stone wall would prevent wolves – or men – from crossing it if they were determined, but he hoped to discourage them.

  But when he drove through the gate he saw a wagon tied up in front of the house. He thought it might be the Shakers. With his heart sinking, Rees unhitched Hannibal, loosed him into the paddock, and went inside.

  Jonathan was standing uncomfortably by the door. He turned when Rees entered and said in a gust of relief, ‘You’re home.’ It sounded as though he would follow up his exclamation with the word ‘finally’, but he didn’t.

  ‘What happened?’ Rees said in resignation.

  ‘Some man has been creeping around Zion,’ Jonathan said. He sounded accusatory and Rees couldn’t blame him. ‘Pearl saw him.’

  Rees’s initial concern faded a little. That girl would always try to keep herself in the center of attention. ‘Are you certain she actually saw something?’ he said.

  ‘No. But she was alarmed. I think you should come and speak with her.’

  Rees glanced at his wife and she nodded. ‘I think you should go,’ she said. ‘After all, one of the Sisters was murdered.’

  ‘I’ll hitch Hannibal to the wagon again,’ he said, heaving a sigh.

  ‘Join me in my cart,’ Jonathan suggested. Rees hesitated, reluctant to tie his transportation to the other man, but finally nodded.

  ‘Very well,’ he agreed and followed the Elder from the house.

  Jonathan maintained his silence for the entire journey and Rees was, for once, glad of the Shake
r prohibition on unnecessary speech. He needed to think. He was convinced the answer to Hortense’s abduction and the murder of the Shaker Sister lay on Gray Hill. But was the Wootten family involved? Rees thought so but he knew he was basing his suspicion on the slimmest of evidence – Granny Rose’s statement – and his own dislike of Wootten senior. He needed to go up the mountain once again. Somehow he had to press the Wootten family for information. Rees exhaled in frustration. That meant waiting for Rouge’s return and how long would that take?

  But maybe Pearl was lying, Rees thought hopefully, trying to find a silver lining. Perhaps she was telling stories? He wished Lydia and her skill at reading people were with him.

  When Jonathan pulled up at the Children’s Dwelling he spoke for the first time. ‘Esther is inside. She’ll remain with you while you speak to Sister Pearl.’

  Rees nodded and jumped down. As he started up the steps Esther opened the door and motioned him inside.

  Rees followed Esther into the large room on the right. Usually this chamber was crowded with the youngest of the children but right now only Pearl was inside. She jumped to her feet. Rees stared at her, realizing he might have to revise his opinion. Her cap was twisted on her fair hair and her apron was crumpled from nervous twisting of the linen.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked, more gently than he’d planned.

  ‘I saw the man,’ she said. She swallowed and licked her lips. ‘I think he was the one who murdered Sister … Sister …’ She broke down into sobs.

  Esther moved quickly to the girl’s side. ‘I daresay he was not,’ she said soothingly. ‘Tell Mr Rees what happened.’

  When the girl continued weeping, Rees said, ‘Did he approach you?’ Pearl shook her head. ‘But you saw him?’ She nodded. ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘R-running.’

  ‘Running where?’ Rees heard the increasing sharpness in his voice and took a deep breath. Despite Pearl’s tendency toward drama, she was genuinely trembling.