The Caged Graves (21 page)

There were exceptions, of course. Nate's nephews were playing tag with some Poole boys, and Verity spotted Mrs. McClure buying several jars of a purplish concoction she suspected was cabbage beet relish from a woman who must be Daniel Poole's mother. Daniel himself and his sweetheart, Daisy Brant, sat under a shade tree with Ransloe Boone, eating fried chicken. The mixed-race Indians of the township didn't all have the same surname, Verity had learned. There were Brants and Montours and Kerrs among them, but the townspeople insisted on referring to them all collectively as Pooles.

“I don't know why the Pooles insist on coming every year,” Verity overheard a woman say to a friend. “It takes a lot of nerve for them to celebrate
our
independence.”

“It's like a regiment of British regulars turning up,” the second woman agreed.

Verity turned to face them, holding some embroidered pillows she was considering buying for the front parlor. “The Pooles and their kin served our country in the last war,” she pointed out.

“Only when paid to,” muttered the first woman.

“No, Miss Boone is right,” her companion said with false brightness. “The Pooles are better than some.” The woman's name was Harper, Verity recalled, recognizing her from church. According to Mrs. Eggars, Mrs. Harper's infant child had died of whooping cough after being delivered by Verity's mother and Asenath.

“The Pooles didn't hide in the hills from the conscription officers,” Mrs. Harper went on, “clutching hexes and spells and cursing the men who gave their lives for this nation. That would be
your
kin, am I right, Miss Boone?”

Verity assumed she meant Eli Clayton. Instead of pointing out that the Claytons were no kin of hers, even if one of them had married her uncle, Verity set down the embroidered pillows and walked away before her tongue got the better of her. Arguing with those who'd renounced the use of reason, according to Thomas Paine, was like administering medicine to the dead.

The afternoon culminated in dancing on a makeshift wooden floor. Nate took Verity's first dance and many of those that followed, but he also danced with his mother and each of his sisters. Verity danced with the husbands of Carrie and Annie and sat out once with Hattie's husband, William, who gripped his cane and watched the dancers sadly. It took a bit of trouble, but she even coaxed Ransloe Boone onto the floor. He led his daughter in a waltz with surprising grace and confidence. Her father could indeed dance.

As he swept her across the boards, Verity looked up at him in amazement. “Do you play the fiddle, Father?”

“Where did you hear that?” he grumbled.

“Well, do you?”

They made half a turn around the floor before he admitted, “I did.”

“I'd like to hear it,” Verity declared.

Ransloe Boone looked down at her face and smiled. “For you, I'd take it up again.”

 

When the sky darkened, the fireworks began. Verity was not surprised to discover Nate was in charge of the display. He and some of the other young men set up their rockets in Water Street, and the crowd gathered on the common to watch. Flowery fireballs ignited in brilliant blues, vibrant greens, and blinding white over their heads.

In between the displays, Verity surveyed the crowd. Her father had gone home already. The Thomas boys were present and underfoot, and so were Nate's nephews and nieces. She noticed Hadley Jones, standing on the front porch of Dr. Robbins's house, watching the men light fireworks with a disapproving expression.

And then, in the light from the pyrotechnics, her eyes fell upon a man standing apart from the crowd, between Dyers General Goods and the Catawissa Land and Building Company. At first Verity didn't know why he'd attracted her attention. When a spectacular shower of white sparks lit the sky, she saw that the left side of his face was drawn down and misshapen.

This fellow had one side of his face all puckered.
That's how Piper had described the man who'd grabbed him in the woods.

Verity realized she was probably looking at the man who'd dug up her mother's grave.

And in that moment she also realized he was looking right at her.

She took a step backward, into the crowd, and moved sideways around a group of people before peering across the common again. The man still stood there, although now he appeared to be watching the fireworks.

Verity's first thought was to tell Nate, but she'd have to walk out to the street in front of the entire crowd to get his attention. The suspect would see her point him out; he might flee. She turned toward the doctor's house, just down the street from where the man stood, but Hadley Jones was no longer on the porch. In fact, she couldn't see anybody familiar in the mass of faces, all of them shadowed one second, then lit up in strange colors the next.

Verity moved toward the general store, threading her way through the crowd and looking for someone who would believe her and help her. She kept an eye on the figure standing in the shadows, turning her head away only for brief moments, hoping to spot John Thomas, Daniel Poole, Nate's brothers-in-law, or even the sheriff. She scanned scores of unfamiliar faces, and when at last she stood in front of the store, the man was gone.

Had he joined the crowd? Or retreated into the narrow alley between the buildings? She peered into the dark passageway. At that moment a barrage of fireworks lit the sky, illuminating an empty alley. No one was there.

Emboldened by the firelight and the merrymaking only a few yards away, Verity ventured into the alley, thinking to make her way down to the end and see where the fellow might have gone from there. She'd crossed half the distance when the light faded and darkness fell around her again. She paused as her eyes tried to adjust . . . and a hand touched hers.

She cried out and skittered backward. Somebody was there, between her and the crowd. His dark shape blotted out the light from the town square.

“Lost, pretty lady?”

“No.” She tried to move toward the open street, but he blocked her, crowding her toward the alley wall. She could smell his sweat as he towered over her.

Something brushed at her curls, and she shuddered, trying to back away. The brick wall of the dry goods store connected painfully with the back of her head.

“I think you enjoyed the fireworks.” He laughed shortly. “You like shiny things? Fiery lights? Gold coins?”

“Move out of my way.” She meant to be forceful, but her command sounded weak to her own ears.

“Where's the gold?” A hand groped at her. She flung it off, shrieking out loud. Her cries were lost in a cacophony of whistles, blasts, and explosions.

“She doesn't know anything. She's only lived here a month.”

This was a new voice, a softer one, from the end of the alley. Verity turned her head, trying to see the speaker. A dim figure stood at the far end of the passageway. “You've got the wrong girl. Let her go.”

The other, the one who was pressing her into the brick wall, growled with displeasure. “This one's under protection, is she?
Don't bother the Boone girl.
Is that what
he
told you?”

Verity flattened her body against the wall and held very still, listening. “
I'm
telling you now. Let's get out of here.” The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it.

The man in front of her laughed. “Another time, pretty lady.” When the next round of rockets shot into the sky, the dark, looming body retreated. And Verity bolted.

Stumbling into the street, her throat dry with panic and her heart pounding, Verity discovered that the world had not noticed her absence. Nate crouched in the middle of the street, arranging the next sequence of fireworks; people clapped and laughed and milled around. What had felt like a long ordeal had lasted mere seconds. Trembling, she walked briskly away from the alley and collided with Hadley Jones.

“Oh!” She grabbed hold of him and clung desperately.

“Miss Boone!” he exclaimed in surprise. “What's the matter?”

“A man—he—” She shuddered, and Jones, looking alarmed, pulled her toward the doctor's house. “In the alley! He—”

“What happened in the alley?” He had her by the elbow now, directing her onto the porch and in the front door, to a parlor dimly lit by gas lamps. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

“His face was burned.” Verity cupped her hand over her left cheek. “And he was asking me questions about gold coins . . .”

Jones led her to a large cushioned armchair and gently urged her to sit down. “A lot of men are in their cups tonight,” he said. “They've been drinking since noon, and there's already been a brawl at the tavern.”

Verity glanced around the doctor's parlor and found it to be the sort of cluttered, unfashionable room one might expect from two men living alone. A half-eaten piece of chicken lay on a plate on an end table, and someone had left a waistcoat draped over the back of a settee. Casting her eyes down, she folded her hands in her lap and tried to control their trembling. “He frightened me. He wasn't drunk. He was asking about the Revolutionary War treasure.”

“Then he
was
drunk,” Jones assured her. “You can wait here until McClure is finished trying to blow off the hand he offered you in marriage.”

Verity raised her head to stare at Hadley Jones in horror, but he was already waving his arms as if trying to erase his words. “Sorry. I'm sorry. But after two years in the war, I'm not fond of explosions of any type, nor of patching up what's left of men afterward. I'll never enjoy fireworks again.” He cast a worried look at the curtained windows, lit up in bright colors. “I need to talk to you anyway.”

He crossed the room to a secretary's desk and lowered the front panel. Verity turned to watch him, opening her mouth to say what she suspected about the man with the scarred face. Then she saw Jones remove her mother's notebooks from the desk and stopped with the words unspoken.

“I'll ask you again,” he said, turning to face her, “to drop the matter and tell me you don't need to know.”

Verity shook her head.

With a sigh, he sat down in a chair opposite her, opened the diaries, and began to thumb through the pages. “The key to the mystery was the salivation.” He glanced up. Verity was staring at him without understanding. “It was one of the more startling symptoms.” Jones read aloud from the notebook. “
She waters from the eyes, nose, and mouth. Chokes if we lay her down.
That's Asenath. And then here—” He turned to the other notebook. “In your mother's final hours, she wrote:
Watering like dog.
I take that to mean she was drooling, just like her sister-in-law.”

“I didn't understand what she meant,” Verity whispered. “I thought she was delirious.”

“I don't think so.” Jones met her eyes. “You see, excessive salivation is not usually a symptom of gastric illness or infectious diseases.”

“Then what . . . ?”

“It's most often a sign of poisoning.”

“POISONING?” VERITY gasped. “You think they were poisoned?”

“Accidentally, yes.” Jones eyed her grimly. “Just as you nearly were, in the Shades.” Verity shook her head in disbelief. “In each case, the onset was sudden—gastric distress, followed by salivation, diminished heart rate, and stupor. The victims all recovered—or died—within a day or so.”

Verity put one hand over her mouth.

“She was suffering from nausea during her pregnancy, and so was your aunt,” Jones went on. “The diary says Mrs. Cahill brought cabbage juice, which is supposed to calm the stomach. Later, there's mention of someone else visiting with ‘a remedy.' It looks like half the town brought these women homemade concoctions that were supposed to ease their trouble. And I suspect one of them contained an unintended ingredient.” He sighed. “It's why I always insist on gathering my own herbs. People make mistakes.”

Verity lowered her hand. “A mistake?”

“Sometimes people mistake water hemlock for parsnips, but I think the simplest answer is the same thing that almost got you. Mountain laurel would have caused those symptoms—and so would rhododendron, which grows all over this area.”

“Are you saying someone mistook mountain laurel for something else?” Verity hadn't known the flowers were poisonous, but she thought the people who grew up here must know it.

Jones shook his head. “Probably not. I've never heard of anyone except small children—and very nearly you—eating nectar from mountain laurel. But in a very dry summer, bees sometimes make honey from mountain laurel and rhododendron, if there's nothing else available.”

Verity stared at him incredulously. “Honey?”

“It can be very dangerous. In the first century B.C., an entire Roman legion was poisoned by honey made from rhododendron,” Jones told her. “It led to a rather famous Roman defeat. Careful beekeepers know the signs to watch out for, but the Claytons aren't careful people. You remember your mother thought Rebecca Clayton had been stung by bees? Well, August was honey-gathering season.”

“You think Rebecca ate poisoned honey?”

“Or baked it into something. I spoke to Eli Clayton just yesterday. He doesn't remember if Rebecca was baking the day she fell ill, but he admits she used to gather wild honey, and she had a real sweet tooth.” Jones shook his head regretfully. “From what I read in your mother's diary, I suspect Rebecca baked honey cakes, which were served the day of her funeral—poisoning the rest of the family, including your aunt Asenath.”

Verity shuddered. Her parents had been offered those cakes, but Eli Clayton had behaved so unpleasantly, they'd left without eating any. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked furiously, trying to hold them back.

Jones stood up, plucked a handkerchief from his coat, and offered it to her. She buried her face in it gratefully, and he laid a hand on her shoulder.