An Untimely Frost (20 page)

And they never should.
Needing some time and quiet to think through these newest developments, Lilly felt she must first restore some small measure of contentment to the families of those who'd been used so poorly.

She took Helen's shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “Helen, look at me.”

Helen raised her tear-filled gaze. Lilly smoothed her hands up and down the girl's arms in a reassuring manner, hoping to ease her misery. “Helen, David Holbrook's actions are a true testimony of his love for your mother and for you.”

Fresh tears flowed. Lilly's hands slid downward to grip Helen's. “I'm sorrier than I can express for any grief I may have caused you and your family. That was not my intent. I will apologize to your mother, if I'm given the chance, but in the meantime, please relay to her that Harold Purcell is dead, and that it is my sincere belief that God's eternal punishment will be far superior and infinitely more satisfying than what any court in this world might have given him.”

For long moments, the young woman stared into Lilly's eyes. Then, as if she'd seen some sort of answer there, a glimmer of hope began to glow in her own. “I believe you're right, Miss Long,” she said, giving Lilly's hands a squeeze. “I believe Mama will feel the same someday.”

With her eyes dried and her composure somewhat intact, Helen went back to work while Lilly retraced her footsteps and headed to her room. At last, she understood the town's reticence to speak of the past. She would make it a point to talk to the sheriff and tell him she understood the hard feelings between him and his daughter. Or should she open that can of worms, since he had made no mention of his daughter's plight? No, there was no reason to say anything more than that she'd completed her assignment and would be leaving town. Leaving them with their secrets intact.

What about the others? Should she tell them about Purcell? No. When Helen told her mother about the preacher, Virginia was bound to tell her father, so there was no reason to contact the banker. A letter to Mr. Townsend advising him that the false shepherd was dead should suffice to put his mind at ease.

Lilly's mind was not at all at ease. In fact, now that she was in possession of the facts, a new possibility was making inroads into her thoughts. Over time, the scandal had been allowed to die, and those involved had reclaimed and rebuilt their lives, yet Rachel Townsend had made no attempt to return to Vandalia or her family. Was her refusal to return home based on the fact that she wanted no reminders of what had happened here, or could there be something more sinister at play?

The evening she and Pierce had discussed the bloody bed proving that a murder had been committed there, they'd also speculated on who might have been the killer and the victim. Pierce had asked if anyone had come up missing around that time. She'd had no idea. Now, Helen's statement that Rachel had left town a day or two before the Purcells vanished presented a new and troubling scenario: Rachel Townsend had not visited her family once in the past twenty years and hadn't been seen by anyone since she “left town to start a new life.” Was it possible that
she
was the one killed in the bed at Heaven's Gate? Might she have gone to confront the preacher about her condition and been murdered for her trouble?

It made perfect sense. Helen told a harrowing tale of lies, seduction, and shame. If a man who was in the business of saving souls could consciously set out to harm the most innocent and tender of his flock, he was capable of anything.

Lilly let her mind wander further down this new path of speculation. Could the innocent-acting Prudence, who'd made the statement about women doing anything for the men they loved, have known what her husband was up to? Had she lied to protect him? Had she been there when he'd done it?

Lilly sucked in a sharp breath as an even more outrageous notion slipped into her mind. Dear sweet heaven! Was it possible that the grave with the crumbling wooden cross did
not
hold the body of Sarah Purcell, but the remains of Rachel Townsend and her unborn baby? Prudence had been a bit discombobulated when Lilly asked her about the grave. Was her uncertainty about who was buried there tied to guilt?

Theories were one thing; proving them was something else. She needed to find out if there was any truth to her wild conjecture. Or perhaps she should just let things stay as they were. Was there any sound reason she should try to prove Harold Purcell guilty? Courts could not punish the dead, and despite her reservations about some biblical teachings, Lilly did believe the preacher and his ilk would burn in a fiery hell.

Her job was finished; but for her own peace of mind, she needed to find out what had happened. Would knowing the truth bring peace to the town, or would it just resurrect old hurts and shames? After much waffling, she decided that it
was
worth the effort to try to bring justice to the innocent. She would telegraph William and tell him Purcell was dead, but that she was looking into some evil scheme connected to him. By the time William received the message and got back to her with his thoughts on the matter, she would already be searching for the truth.

She was going back to Heaven's Gate one last time, but this time she would take her derringer and a spade. Too many people had seen the bloody bed within days of the Purcell family's departure to doubt that
someone
had been killed there, and Rachel Townsend was Lilly's guess.

Still, the Pinkertons did not deal in speculation. She needed to prove the stains were blood, and to do that, she would test them as Pierce had suggested. She would check with the pharmacy to see if they had peroxide and guaiac, and if not, she would use the benzidine he'd mentioned. Then, with proof at her fingertips, she intended to dig up the bodies and notify the sheriff of her find, thus bringing decades of shame and loss into the healing brightness of sunshine.

C
HAPTER
35

T
he next morning, dressed in her sensible olive-hued skirt and with her boots laced tightly around her ankles, Lilly readied herself for what she hoped would be her last trip to Heaven's Gate. She tucked her purchase from the apothecary into her pocket where it rested next to her derringer. She hadn't told Helen of her plans for fear she would mention it to the sheriff or her grandfather and someone might try to stop her.

Finally ready, she went to the livery, rented a buggy, and asked to borrow a shovel from Billy Bishop. Though his face took on a curious expression at her request, he asked no questions and offered no opposition, placing the shovel beneath the seat of the buggy. He'd learned that when the lady Pinkerton had a mission, she was dead set on carrying it out.

Spring was more in evidence than ever as the bay gelding trotted down the road toward Mulberry Grove. Though it had poured rain for two days previous, and the road was a muddy quagmire in places, a profusion of lavender and white wildflowers carpeted the open spaces as far as the eye could see. It was a perfect day, not at all the kind of day in keeping with the dark task at hand.

At last, she rounded the bend in the road and saw the house sitting amidst the gardens and lawn of decay. It looked just as she remembered from her previous trips, except for a few hardy crocuses that had struggled through the layers of decaying leaves and created splashes of color here and there. Like people, they fought to survive, no matter what the conditions.

She wasted no time going through things inside again, determined to get to the task at hand. Hoping against hope, she unwrapped the bottle of benzidine, unscrewed the top, and poured a bit of the contents over the stained dish towel—no doubt where Purcell had washed up after doing the terrible deed. Almost immediately, the stain began to turn blue.

Fighting back a feeling of exultation that mingled with a certain dread, she forced herself to go to the bedroom where the killing had taken place and repeated the process on the sheets. The results were the same. Though Pierce claimed other things could cause the chemical reaction and that the test didn't prove the blood was human, in her heart, Lilly knew. There was no reason for anyone to kill an animal in a bed.

Satisfied that she was on the right track, she took the shovel from the buggy and made her way through the overgrown garden to the family burial plot. Fortunately, the tallest weeds were nothing but brown sticks from the winter freeze, and the new ones were no higher than her ankles. In another month, she'd have had to hack her way through the grasses with a machete.

Since the fallen cross was near the back of the fenced-in area, there was only one way the grave would fit. A few feet from the base of the fallen cross, Lilly pushed the shovel's head into the ground and stomped on it with her booted foot. The recent rains had left the earth soft and the digging easy . . . for the first half hour. By then, the hem of her skirt was heavy with moisture and the shovel had rubbed blisters on her palms. The sun had climbed higher in the sky, and the fledgling sprouts of green leaves provided little shade.

Perspiration dripped from her face, and her labored breathing was harsh against the woodland sounds around her. Cursing the skirt that got in her way with every shovelful of dirt, she vowed that as soon as she got back to civilization, she would show her support to the Rational Dress Society. For practical reasons, the group wanted to change the number of undergarments a woman needed to wear. Better than that, she would take herself to the nearest dry goods establishment and buy herself a pair of men's breeches for such work. Using her arm to wipe the perspiration from her face, she considered the possibility of purchasing some of those denim trousers with the rivets that were so popular with men. Levi's.

She wanted to quit the thankless job, go back to town, and get on the first train to Chicago, but a compelling urge to know the whole truth drove her on.

By the time the sun was high in the sky, Lilly had excavated a hole approximately four feet long and more than thigh deep. Wearier than she ever recalled being, she decided she needed sustenance if she were to dig any farther.

She clutched huge handfuls of grass to help hoist herself upward and tried to swing her knee to the solid ground but found her skirt hindering her once more. Muttering beneath her breath, she unbuttoned it and her petticoat and stepped out of them, flinging the mud-encrusted garments onto the grass. After a moment's hesitation, she began to unbutton her blouse. What did it matter? There was no one to see her, and this was not a job that lent itself to women's garments. She tossed her shirt onto the pile. There! That was much better. Her chemise and bloomers offered much more freedom of movement.

Reaching out, she once more grabbed great handfuls of weeds. Flinging her knee upward, she dug the toe of the opposite boot into the soft side of the cavity, pushing and pulling her way out of the hole. Halfway there, the grass came up by the roots, and she slipped back down, almost falling on her backside.

Muttering a curse, she tried again. On the third try, she found success and lay on the damp ground, breathing heavily. When she was somewhat revived, she left her skirt and blouse behind and struggled through the overgrown garden to the risqué fountain, where she eased her sore, filthy hands into the comparatively clean rain water. Its coldness stung as she gently scrubbed at her hands.

She washed away the worst of the grime and carried her lunch to the front steps of the mansion. With one elbow resting on the step behind her, she reveled in the freedom afforded her by her undergarments while devouring the sandwich she'd brought. She ate with the same gusto as a starving longshoreman, washing down the butter, ham, and fresh lettuce with great gulps of water from a jug, turning to wipe her mouth on the shoulder of her blouse. She smiled, thinking of Rose's reaction to both her mode of dress and her manners. Or lack of them.

Somewhat refreshed from the rest and the food, Lilly took stock of her raw, seeping hands with their broken nails. They hurt like the very devil. She couldn't continue without some sort of relief, and she couldn't dig any deeper without finding something to help her get out of the hole. The last thing she needed was to be stuck down there with a decaying body.

She went back to the grave and picked up her dirt-stained petticoat. She caught the bottom of the garment with her teeth and tore several long strips. Wishing for some bag balm or some other ointment to salve the wounds, she wrapped the fabric around her hands, ripping the ends and tying them in place. There! That should help.

That done, she set about looking for a board she could place at an angle in the opening so that she would have an incline to crawl out on. A thorough search of the barn revealed nothing. She was about to go to the house for a chair when she saw a small ladder leaned against the chicken house, so the fowl could get into their raised nests at night. She carried it to the gravesite and prayed that the wood-shingled roof had kept it from rotting too badly. Dropping it down into the hole, she jumped in and went back to work.

An hour passed. Another. Her mind became numb to everything but the thud of her boot on the shovel, the scrape as it cut through the ground, the sucking sound of the wet earth as she shoveled it up, and the soft plop as she tossed it onto the growing pile at the side of the hole.

She was unaware of the black, brooding clouds that had moved in from the west and obscured the brightness of the sun. She paid no notice that the joyful singing of the birds had quieted and been replaced by the mournful song of a rain crow, or that the soft sigh of the wind rustling through the trees had been replaced by blustery gusts. The only scent she smelled was that of leaf mold and wet soil. She didn't feel the tears that tracked through the dirt on her face.

Finally, when her quivering arms were unable to lift another shovelful, she fell to her knees and began to sob. By her estimation, she'd dug to a depth of at least four feet without any sign of a casket, or skeleton. There was not so much as a ragged piece of rotting cloth to indicate a body had been buried there. She faced the truth. There
was
no body buried in this spot. No Rachel. No baby.

Lifting her tear-glazed eyes toward the bruised sky, she let out a loud scream of frustration, weariness, and disappointment. Fury. She hoped Harold Purcell was in a fiery hell.
I know you killed her, Harold. But where did you put the body?

* * *

The unearthly cry echoed through the trees, blown there by a gust of wind that caused the horse tethered there to shift nervously. The man in the forest, who'd just dismounted, jumped and turned toward the sound. An involuntary shiver shuddered through him. There was pain akin to anguish in that cry. Anger and soul-deep sorrow. He'd heard a scream like that before. It had come from his own throat. The wind whipped the undergrowth around him. Giving a firm push to the bowler on his head, he made his way through the trees toward the house. The woman was borderline cracked, no doubt about it.