The Evening Spider (27 page)

I looked up at Wallace. “So Matthew got to be part of the show.”

“Yes. And right before the prosecution rested its case.”

“And then he went and saw the hanging. What date was that again? I wonder if he told Frances about it in detail. I wonder if he knew how delicious she found such dark topics.”

“Let's see.” Wallace checked the article. “The hanging was on November 16. She was pregnant at the time, right? Interesting.
It's hard to tell how much he told her. It seems in her journal that her internal life was very much her own. Shared it with her brother but not so much Matthew. Maybe Matthew didn't confide much in her, either.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Can you hand me your journal copy?”

Wallace slid it over to me.

“
November 16,
” I read. “
What should a young wife think about, when her husband is so engaged?
So, engaged in watching a man hang. Nice. Either she took it very lightly, or she was trying to distract herself by thinking about her Christmas baking.”

I looked through the next few entries. “If she addressed it specifically, I would think I'd remember.”

I stopped at December 19.
We haven't so very much pumpkin now that that Frederick fellow does not come to the house anymore.

“I wonder if this Frederick is the same Frederick in that article? Frederick Baines?”

Wallace sat up. “Which?”

I pointed to the name in the journal. “There.”

“Oh. Well, Frederick was a common enough name in those days. But I suppose it's possible. It was a small town.”

I considered Frederick Baines for a moment. “You know what's weird about this McFarlene thing?”

“What?” Wallace said.

“Isn't wood, like, some of the easiest evidence to get rid of? Just burn that shit in your fireplace. What gives?”

Wallace smiled at me patiently. “I think the idea is that John McFarlene didn't know there was blood on it.”

“Even though he bludgeoned the guy with it? Bludgeon your brother-in-law with a log, then give the log to your neighbor?”

“First of all, I don't think anyone ever said McFarlene
bludgeoned Beck
with
a piece of firewood. More likely a shovel or something else that was
near
the woodpile—though the prosecution never located the actual weapon. Maybe he just beat the hell out of him. In any case, he probably was not even aware of the blood on the wood. There were several bloodstained pieces. It was the cut end of the logs—like some had splattered against the whole side of the woodpile. Maybe he just needed the money or the food his neighbor was paying him for the wood. And aside from all of that . . . we can't hold up the standards of evidence collection and police work to what it is today. People were hanged on a lot less. That's one thing that makes the Herbert Hayden acquittal, by contrast, rather shocking.
They
actually had some decent evidence. Now
that
was a man who deserved to hang. But—alas.”

“Right,” I said. I wondered if Frances Barnett ever got to hear that the verdict in the Hayden case was not guilty. She'd been dragged off to the loony bin before the trial had ended.

“In any case,” Wallace continued, “it's obvious that McFarlene wasn't the sharpest tack. That's clear in some of the trial details. There were several character witnesses that made him sound like a sweet old oaf. A sort of teddy bear who was perhaps avenging some wrong done to his sister. Again, made him seem sympathetic—but also very guilty. I've never envied the jury in that case. A murder was a hanging offense. The defense never had much clarity about his strategy, I'm afraid.”

Wallace handed me another article. “This story covers Frederick Baines's testimony. Here the main prosecutor's questioning him.”

I skimmed through the article until I got to Frederick Baines's actual testimony—which was relatively short:

I skipped down the cross-examination.

I stopped reading.

“It seems like the defense attorney had a decent point here,” I said, pointing to that portion of the article. “This idea that the firewood was stained with Walter Beck's blood is kind of . . . flimsy.”

Wallace read it and considered it for a moment. “Well, sure. He got Baines a bit befuddled. But it didn't amount to much. Because the prized evidence was the blood on the
existing
woodpile and shirt hidden inside it. Frederick Baines's wood was simply what
led
the constable to that. They hadn't investigated that part of McFarlene's property before that, I don't believe.”

I put down the article. “It kind of reminds me of the ‘barn arsenic' business in the Herbert Hayden case.”

“How so?”

“Something that was conveniently found later. In that case, convenient for the defense—although it seems like the octahedron testimony kind of exposed it for the fraud it probably was. In this case, convenient for the prosecutor.”

Wallace nodded. “Again, evidence collection wasn't anything like it is today. Things like this happened
all
the time.”

“I understand that,” I said softly.

But I was distracted by the similarity. The late-in-the-game nature of the discovery of evidence. I wondered if Frances—so familiar with the Stannard case, and presumably quite familiar with the McFarlene case—noticed the similarity as well.

“Can we find out more about Frederick Baines?” I asked.

Wallace steepled his hands and pressed the tips of his middle fingers against his lips. “What do you want to know about him?”

“Wouldn't you be curious if he was a personal friend of Matthew Barnett's? Wouldn't that be . . . interesting?”

Wallace sat back in his chair. “Well . . . Sure. I don't think any of our basic sources—out-of-town newspapers and town records—are going to be able to tell us who was friends with whom. Frederick Baines—like most of the witnesses in the McFarlene trial—lived all the way up on the hill, where the poorer folks like the McFarlenes lived. Matthew came from one of the most moneyed families in town and lived down in the village in a nice little house. Maybe they were civil. But they probably weren't friends.”

I glanced down at Frances's journal, reading the Frederick mention again.

“Both the Frederick who testified and the Frederick in Frances's journal traded or sold squashes,” I said. “So can't we be pretty confident it's the same guy?”

Wallace raised his eyebrows and took the journal copy from me, rereading again. Lucy let out a frustrated whimper. I bent down and rubbed her back.

“Huh,” Wallace murmured.

“Do you think McFarlene was guilty?” I asked.

“Almost certainly. It seems a shame, though, that he was
hanged. Beck was probably not a nice man. Just tragic all around, really.”

Lucy's elbows gave out underneath her, and she began to cry. I picked her up.

“John McFarlene's last words don't sound unintelligent to me.”

Wallace nodded. “I've often wondered if someone helped him prepare them.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

Wallace wrinkled his nose. “Well . . . why not?”

“I really need to feed her,” I said. “Maybe I should go back to the motel so she can nap, too. She didn't get enough sleep last night.”

Lucy's pitch rose as I said it.

“All right,” Wallace said, raising his voice to speak over Lucy. “Later on, then . . . We are certainly free to go looking for this Frederick Baines's birth and death and marriage certificates at the town clerk's if you think that would tell you something. I doubt it will. Maybe we should do a search in the available Connecticut papers.”

“Yes, maybe,” I shouted, rubbing Lucy's back. “My laptop's at home, though, and I don't even know if the Candlelight has Wi-Fi. We'll see.”

I opened the cranberry door, and Wallace stood up. He touched the arm of my coat to stop me from stepping outside.

“Are you going to be needing anything else today? Do you need help with your window?”

Lucy wailed at him and then hid her face in my chest.

“Thanks, Wallace. I'll be okay,” I assured him and slammed the door harder than I meant to.

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 21, 1885

F
rederick Baines's place was a small cabin. I'd heard his cousin sometimes lived there with him. Perhaps when in a different mindset, I'd have hesitated to knock at the door of two bachelors.

But knock I did, and Frederick appeared. He was taller than I remembered him—but thin in the face, with a boyish dewiness to his eyes. His hair was long, slick, and gathered at the back—but his bushy beard was incongruously unkempt.

“Mrs. . . . Barnett?” he said.

“That's correct, Mr. Baines.”

Frederick shrugged one shoulder. “Are you wanting some squashes?”

“Well . . .” I hadn't thought of trying to cover the purpose of my visit, but now that I'd been given an opportunity, it seemed a sensible idea. “Yes, if you have any. Two or three. That's what I can fit in the carriage with my girl.”

“I have two acorn squashes I can sell you. Don't have a lot to spare. Sold most of what I grew and need to eat myself.”

He slipped back into the house and reappeared with two small squashes—the size of baby's heads.

I paid him generously and tucked them at Martha's feet. “Why don't you ever visit our home anymore?”

Frederick's eyelids twitched at the question. “I never came
into
your home, ma'am. I don't recall that I was ever invited.”

“True . . . yes. But you would stop by.”

“When your husband wanted some of my squashes or cabbages, I remember. Mentioned it in town and I came by with them. Those were the only times I was near your house.”

“The last time you ever came was just before McFarlene's hanging.”

Frederick stared at me. “Was it?”

“You seemed upset when you spoke to my husband.”

Frederick took a step backward into his house. “Ma'am?”

“There's something more to it, isn't there?”

“I don't know what you mean, ma'am. With all due respect.”

The next question simply jumped out of my mouth, much as that goblet had sprung out of my hand that time with Matthew: “Are you afraid of me?”

“No, ma'am.” Frederick took a deep breath before forcing his mouth into a stiff smile. “I'm not afraid of you.”

“What if I told you I knew your secret? Would you be afraid of me in that instance?”

His smile disappeared as his mouth fell open, and his gaze shifted from me to the treetops above our heads. A strong gust blew through us, billowing the bottom of his untucked shirt.

“Your little girl, ma'am. She looks cold. You ought to get her home.”

“My girl is hardier than you would think.”

“I heard she has to be.”

I felt a stab at that response. It occurred to me that his aim was to have me rush off in a paroxysm of indignation. I
was
shocked.
What did he know about me? What did
everyone
know?
And yet I stood my ground. I gripped the handle of the carriage tighter. His words and his expression confirmed nothing of the specifics I'd come here to sniff out—but confirmed something more general. He was far more sly a man up on the hill than the beseeching figure he presented down in town.

“Did my husband convince you to do something you regretted later?” I asked.

The silence that followed my question lasted several moments. A strong gust swept over us. Martha cried in protest. I believe her little fist even emerged from beneath the blankets, punching defiantly at the air.

“I'm afraid we might both know a good deal about regrets soon, ma'am.”

Perhaps it was the cold wind that had just blown through me, but in that moment I had a grim sensation that he was correct. Frederick had not said yes or no. It was possible he had not fully understood my question. Maybe it didn't matter.

All three of us were powerless against this chill sweeping through us. There was something malevolent in the coming winter air. I could feel it more keenly up here—far from the comforts and aromas of my home. I had tried for so long to hold it off. Why had I then come up here to meet it?

I stared down at Martha's pink fist. How cold it would grow, and how quickly. I wrapped my palm around it. I began to push the carriage with one hand—as awkward as that arrangement was.

I must bring her home and keep her warm for as long as I can. However long that might be.

“You have a Merry Christmas,” I muttered over my shoulder.

He seemed to stare through me as he replied—not threateningly, but with a lost and vapid expression.

“You, too, ma'am,” he said.