The Devil's Cold Dish (30 page)

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By the time he awoke the sun had been up for hours and he could hear birds chirruping all around him. Although he was painfully stiff and every movement hurt somewhere, for the first time in many days he felt safe. He had shelter, some food that he could supplement with Winthrop's ripening apples, and, once he found the well, water. Rees pushed himself into a sitting position, his back protesting with every movement, and looked around.

The cabin was just as Winthrop had left it although in much better shape than Rees expected, at least from what he could see of the main room. A table, accompanied by a bench and chairs, sat between the sink and the fireplace. There were no obvious signs of animal activity. There was still wood stacked on one side of the hearth and only a small heap of ashes in the grate. Winthrop had been a neater man than Rees would have expected.

Rees's gaze returned to the fireplace. Did he dare light a fire and cook his food or would the smoke betray him? A fire would offer him the possibility of cooked food, oatmeal and cornmeal and possibly even meat if Rees could recapture his boyhood skills with a slingshot. He levered himself to his feet. He wasn't sure. Winthrop had been something of a hermit so his cabin was set far back into the woods; maybe no one would notice, especially with the smoke from Rees's farmhouse close by. But he didn't want to be forced to run again.

His thoughts conflicted, Rees pushed open the door and went outside. He paused on the battered porch and stared into the trees. No one knew where he was and for the first time since he'd fled from the Caldwell home he felt relatively safe. He was struggling to wrap his mind around Sam's death. Rees had begun to feel quite certain Sam was the villain behind both the murders. He owned a rifle and knew how to use it. He was well able to climb Bald Knob, frequented the mill on a regular basis so no one would even notice him, and had enough access to Rees's house to steal Lydia's candles.

But now he himself had been murdered. So who was left? Caroline? Mrs. Caldwell's suggestion about Caroline and Piggy Hanson popped into Rees's head. Was it possible? Rees tried to imagine the foppish magistrate climbing a mountain and failed. But Farley could do it. That would mean Caroline and Farley were working together. For several seconds Rees considered the possibility. On the surface, this seemed not only conceivable but likely. Caroline and Farley shared sufficient malice. If Rees did not know them, he would look more closely at that solution. But he did know them and he couldn't imagine such an alliance. Farley disliked women for one thing, and Caroline, who fancied herself as a cut above the regular run of humanity, thought Farley was beneath her.

Still, Rees found he could not completely dismiss this as an option.

“Damn,” he said aloud in frustration and set off to find the well.

 

Chapter Twenty-eight

After spending several fruitless minutes searching, Rees concluded that old man Winthrop had been too stingy to dig one. Rees looked around him. He knew the river lay to the east but he suspected a brook lay much closer to the cabin. Very faintly he could hear rushing water. When he followed the sound, drawing Augustus's old horse behind him, he discovered the indistinct remnants of a path down to the rocky banks of a fast-moving stream. Rees brought the mare to the edge so she could drink her fill. Winthrop had clearly expected his family to haul all the water they used. Shaking his head at such miserliness, Rees looped the reins around a shrub and knelt on a smooth granite boulder. Cupping his hands, he scooped up the chilly water to his mouth. It tasted of leaves and stone. As Rees drank his fill he pondered the problem of water and decided he would have to return with the old kettle now hanging from the fireplace hook. He would not want to walk here every time he wanted a drink of water and battle the swarms of black flies and mosquitoes.

He quickly washed in the cold water. As he turned and reached for his shirt, he spotted something tucked under the shrubbery lining the banks. An old broken bucket. He turned it over and over in his hands. No doubt one of the Winthrop children had stashed it here. Rees thought it could be repaired.

He walked back to the cabin swinging the bucket. Now that he had found a safe shelter, food, and water, he wondered again whether he might light a fire. Once he'd eaten, he could extinguish the blaze and set to his investigation. If it were winter he would have to but now? Rees sighed. He didn't dare light the fire. If someone saw the smoke, he would be on the run once again.

Sam's body had been dumped scarcely an hour's walk from the cabin. Seeing the corpse with Caldwell seemed more like a year than two days ago. Rees wondered how Caldwell was doing. Was he still imprisoned in Wheeler's Livery? Was he being fed? Rees pulled his wandering thoughts to a stop. How he missed his loom right now. Somehow it always helped him think. And Rees needed to focus. The sooner he discovered the intelligence behind this web, the sooner Caldwell would be set free. And since Sam was the most recent victim, and had been murdered close by, Rees would begin there, by reexamining the location where Sam had been placed.

But first Rees spent some time sweeping the ashes from the hearth and scrubbing out the old black kettle. He fetched water from the stream and made oatmeal. While it was soaking, he inspected the wooden dishes stacked upon the few shelves that passed as a kitchen. To his surprise, they appeared clean and intact. He climbed the ladder to the loft. Everything seemed just as it had been when Winthrop died. Although the loft was empty, the room at the back of the cabin included a bed and a cedar chest full of linen sheets and blankets. The straw mattress and the bedding covering it had been thoroughly chewed but all the bed coverings in the chest were whole although a little musty. Unlike the kitchen, which was relatively free of dust, in here all the surfaces were filmed with gray.

His spirits rising, Rees returned to his breakfast. He found a spoon and ate standing up over the hearth. The cereal was glutinous, the uncooked grains chewy, and it was bland without salt or flavorings but it was filling. Rees ate until he could eat no more, scraping the bottom of the kettle with the spoon. He refilled the kettle—he would have to repair the water bucket as soon as possible, the walk to the stream was already becoming burdensome—and set off for the edge of Winthrop's property and the Dugard road.

Even if the location of Sam's body had not been permanently fixed in Rees's head, he would have found the place easily. Dried blood coated the ground where Sam's head had lain. The dark reddish brown of old blood coated both the rocks protruding from the soil and the vegetation around them and the number of flies hovering over that patch filled the air with a steady hum.

Rees closed his eyes and called the scene to mind. Sam had been sprawled on his side, head toward the road. Rees opened his eyes and glanced around him. Why here? It was not so far into the forest that Sam and his killer could not be seen from the road, if a slow-moving passerby cared to look. Rees glanced at the road. Although he couldn't see it, and was in fact hidden by the trees and thick vegetation beneath them, the road was too close if the killer wanted to hide the body. “He wanted Sam's body found,” Rees muttered, certain now. “He wasn't trying to hide it. Not for long anyway.”

And the pistol shot would be audible for some distance. For the first time, Rees wondered how the farmer had come upon Sam's body so soon after his death. Had he been within earshot, traveling? Or had he been warned? Rees stared blindly at the vegetation at his feet, the imprint of the body still visible in the crushed stems. And why a pistol? These smaller guns carried only one bullet and did not have the accuracy of a rifle. So why hadn't the killer used his rifle, as he had on Ward, who had never even seen his killer and had been left where he fell? McIntyre—well, Rees did not want to think about his death. But like the miller's death, Sam's murder had been intimate. Rees shut his eyes once again. Sam had been kneeling when he was shot. Close range too; the wound on his temple had been black with gunpowder. Rees's eyes popped open in horror. The killer might have felt some hesitation at the murder of Zadoc Ward but he had quickly lost his reluctance. The murders of both Mac and Sam had been up close and personal and these men would have known exactly who the killer was. Sam, in fact, had knelt and waited for the shot to come.

“Dear Lord,” Rees muttered, trying to understand why Sam would so tamely go to his death. Had he been drunk? Or dosed with laudanum? Had he not understood what was happening? Rees shook his head. He couldn't believe that Sam, as touched as he'd been, would willingly kneel down and wait to be shot, like a lamb to slaughter. And yet that appeared to be exactly what had happened.

Unless … Rees stared unseeingly at the green around him. He'd begun to suspect two people were involved in Mac's death. Perhaps there were two here as well? Of course, Rees had wondered if Sam were one of those two, but that no longer seemed possible. He was back to Caroline. And Farley?

The clatter of wagon wheels approaching on the road broke into Rees's reverie. He stepped back, deeper into the woods, and held himself still until the wagon was past. When all was quiet once again, Rees returned to the bloody ground that bore witness to the recent murder. Now that he knew in what position Sam had been in, Rees could clearly see the prints left by his knees. He moved around, trying to step lightly so as not to corrupt any of the marks. He quickly distinguished the place where the killer had stood, but there were no identifying traces that Rees could see. Rees stood just behind the crushed grass that marked the killer's position and pretended to raise a pistol. The killer had been shorter than he was. For Rees the angle would have been awkward. But he couldn't tell by how much. He did not think the murderer had been as short as Caroline. Perhaps a bit taller. Unwillingly Rees's thought returned to first Piggy Hanson and then to Zedediah Farley. Rees lowered his arm. Although he couldn't blame her for wanting Sam out of the way, he still didn't want to believe her guilty of murder. Could he believe Piggy was guilty? Or Farley? Reluctantly, yes.

Frustrated with more questions than answers, Rees retreated into the woods and headed back to the cabin. He walked as quickly as his painful feet allowed, barely noting the strip of forest around him as he considered Sam's murder. He did not want to suspect his sister but his thoughts returned to her over and over. Rees could think of no one else who could easily persuade Sam to kneel and wait while a pistol was put to his head. But he would almost certainly obey Caroline.

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The cabin and the overgrown clearing looked exactly as it had earlier that morning. Rees peeked through the door. There was no sign that anyone had been here. Rees walked to the stream where he'd tied up the nag that morning. She was still there. Rees felt a lift of his spirits at this further proof of his safety.

He untied the horse and led her back to the cabin from the stream. He'd hidden the saddle and bridle under a haystack inside the deteriorating barn. Once he'd unearthed the tack, he saddled the old cob. Then he picked a few of the hard green apples and ate them. They were so sour his mouth puckered, but he was too hungry to care. He ate a handful of oatmeal with a cup of cold water. He did not want to speak to Caroline again. Besides the difficulty of questioning his sister, leaving his refuge would be dangerous. But it had to be done. And he had to speak to Molly Bowditch as well. He saddled the old mare, mounted, and set off.

He did not reach the road by way of the drive, choosing instead to ride over Winthrop's overgrown fields. The land sloped upward. Once Rees crested the hill, he looked down upon the east-west road and decided he would visit Molly Bowditch first instead of Caroline. Molly had driven him away during his first attempt, but Rees felt he must at least make a second effort. Believing that he had destroyed her life, and taking no responsibility for her own part in it, she had every reason to hate Rees enough to kill him. And he would much rather believe Molly was guilty of the three recent murders than Caroline.

Rees pushed his queue up under his straw hat so that his bright red hair was no longer visible. He would have to hope that everyone still believed he was on foot and that from a distance he looked like every other farmer.

There was not much traffic, most of the farmers were in their fields at this time of the day, and Rees avoided all that he saw. His journey was a series of gallops interspersed with leisurely walks to maintain a good distance from all who might recognize him. At last he reached the lay-by at the entrance to Molly's cottage. Most of the trees had been cut down to make a lane wide enough for a carriage, but Rees stayed in the shadow of the remaining foliage until he reached the field that stretched up to the door. He paused under an oak and inspected the cottage. He saw no movement at all and wondered if her carriage was in the stable at the back or if she had gone out. After several moments of hesitation, he stepped out from under cover and started across the yard. He walked slowly, cautiously, prepared to fling himself to the ground at the slightest hint of trouble. Somewhere nearby a dog began barking. And when Rees circled the cottage and looked at the stable at the back, he saw that the door was open and the carriage was gone. With a sigh of both relief and disappointment, Rees walked around the cottage. Marsh, with Munch beside him, was standing on the front walk waiting for him.

“I saw you.” Marsh gestured over his shoulder at the large farmhouse at the top of the hill. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to Molly.”

“Last time you got chased off like a dog,” Marsh said. “That wasn't enough for you?”

“Did you hear about Sam Prentiss?” Rees asked, looking straight at the other man.

Marsh nodded. “I heard you shot him.” Although as a black man and a servant Marsh was not accustomed to meeting a white man's eyes, he raised his head and looked straight at Rees. “Did you?”