These Honored Dead (11 page)

“Joshua,” my sister whispered urgently from beside me, “these are people’s
homes
we’re invading. We’ve got to allow them some decency.”

“In a moment,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. “I need to complete the effect first.”

The poorhouse master had been following us at a wary distance, as I figured he would. If there was, in fact, any man under his roof who possessed the funds to pay off a debt to me, the master certainly wanted to know so he could extract his own measure of satisfaction.

I pushed open two or three more doors, seeming to get more impatient by the moment. Then I turned and pretended to spot the master for the first time since we had entered the house. I took a menacing step toward him and he took two steps back.

“You there,” I shouted. “What did you say your name was?”

“Hathaway.”

“I can’t find my man, Hathaway.”

“Can’t say I’m at all surprised,” he returned. “There’s not a soul with a dime to his name under my care.”

“I’ve heard it said this man I’m looking for has gone stark, staring mad. A candidate for Bedlam, even. All since I advanced him credit, of course. Now where in this cesspool of yours would such a man reside?”

Hathaway cackled. “You should have said so at the outset,” he said. “Though you’ll sooner get blood from a stone than shake any money loose from my lunatic.

“You want the
man-cage
. Follow me.”

H
athaway slid past us in the dank hallway—taking pains to stay as far away from my right hand as possible—and led the way through a closed door and down a narrow flight of stairs. At the bottom of these rested a long room that was apparently some type of infirmary. There were a half-dozen persons lying on the floor, partially covered by threadbare blankets. Each seemed to be suffering from some malady—fever, consumption, broken limbs—and some from more than one. All of them called out to Hathaway when he entered, but he ignored their piteous cries and led us toward a door at the far end of this room.

“You go ahead, Joshua,” Martha murmured from behind me. “I’ll rejoin you later.”

I hesitated, about to argue with her, but Hathaway was plunging ahead and I didn’t want to lose him in the labyrinthine building. Hathaway used a key from his pocket to open the door at the end of the infirmary and he and I entered a small, windowless room. Slivers of light filtered in through cracks in the wallboards. A faint trace of fresh air in this room suggested we were in an attached outbuilding.

The master lit a candle. There seemed no exit from the room other than the door we’d entered by. But Hathaway dropped to his knees and pulled on a lever hidden in the floor. He swung
a panel open, revealing a pit. The top of a ladder was the only thing visible.

“Lost your nerve yet?” he asked, cackling.

“Lead the way.”

As I followed him down the ladder, I was hit by a strong stench of human waste. I held my breath. We were in some sort of dirt cellar. The ceiling was only six feet high at its highest and sloped severely on each side. Hathaway’s candle provided the only illumination, and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I saw a tiny cell had been constructed on one side of the pit, where the inclined ceiling meant there were only a few feet between floor and ceiling. Strong perpendicular bars enclosed a space some five feet by three feet. At first I thought the cage was empty, filled only by a few discarded rags. But then the rags moved, and a filthy, heavily bearded head with bloodshot yellow eyes turned and stared, blinking rapidly.

I gasped.

The poorhouse master cackled again. “Is that your man?” he asked.

I knelt beside the man-cage, which stank of a vile mixture of sweat and urine and waste. My eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting by now and I could make out the creature lying inside. He was naked, save for a soiled cloth secured around his midsection, and on the point of emaciation, with his ribs protruding visibly from his chest. When he saw me staring, he dragged himself into a half-sitting position, which is all he could manage within the tiny confines of his cage. The man pulled back his lips and bared his teeth, like a wild animal threatening a predator.

“What happened to his feet?” I asked in horror. I had just seen that the man’s legs ended in shapeless stumps.

“Froze off last winter,” said Hathaway. “He was under his sister’s care, and I gather he managed to unlock his room and wander off. It took ’em three days to find him, lost in the woods and curled around a tree trunk for the warmth. His feet had shriveled away.

“The sister told me that’s when she decided she couldn’t care for him any longer. So she dumped him on my doorstep on the basis that he was a pauper, and I had no choice but to house him. He’s a complete loss for me—no way I can get any work out of him in the fields.”

“Has he been locked away down here the whole time he’s been in your charge?” I asked.

“Just about. Once a week, I get my two strongest men to pull him out of there and bind him with ropes while one of the women changes his cloth and cleans the filth out of his cage. Then he’s thrown back inside.”

I straightened up, taking care to avoid hitting my head on the low ceiling and feeling queasy. “That’s not my debtor,” I said.

“Didn’t think so,” said Hathaway. “You don’t owe this man money, do you, Fanning?” he continued loudly. Instead of looking at the Idiot he was staring a foot above his head, as if there was some phantasmagoria in the air above him.

“Can he understand you?” I asked.

“You can’t communicate with the furiously insane directly,” he said. “But sometimes they’ve got these invisible vapors floating over their heads that can receive messages.”

I looked above the Idiot’s head and said, doubtfully, “How do you do, Fanning?”

Fanning grabbed the bars of his cage with filthy, gnarled hands and bared his teeth again.

“You said he’s been here for several months,” I said. “Have you had other madmen here in the last three years or so?”

Hathaway faced me squarely. “What, do they all owe you money?” he sneered. “What’s the real reason you’ve barged in?”

“Let’s go up and talk,” I said. As we climbed the ladder, leaving Fanning to his cage, I decided I had no choice but to reveal my interest directly. Once I reached the room above, I took several deep breaths, trying to expel the fetid air of the pit from my lungs.

“You had a brother and sister residing in your house until a few months ago named Lilly and Jesse Walker. What can you tell me about them?”

A quick look of surprise flashed through Hathaway’s eyes, where it was replaced immediately by one of calculation. “Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t,” he said.

I felt out two silver half-dollars from my pocket and dropped them into his waiting palm, trying my best to avoid making contact with his skin.

“They were here,” he said. “Insufferable, both of them. Trouble-makers. The girl most especially. Then it turned out they had some rich relation all along, and one day she shows up and pays off their debts. Good riddance, I said.”

“They’ve both been murdered in the last month.”

Hathaway looked taken aback but only for an instant. Then he said: “I’ve got enough of my own problems. Twenty-five paupers to feed and house, and the state allots me almost nothing for all my efforts. You can’t expect me to give two bits about what happens to people once they leave my charge.”

“Can you think of anyone they might have come into contact with here who bore them ill?”

“Are you accusing me?” Hathaway said, clenching his fists, although he still took care to remain out of range of my right hand. “Just because you wear a fancy coat don’t give you the right to come into my house and spout libel against me.”

“I’m hoping to identify the scoundrel who’s done mortal harm to two innocent persons,” I said, struggling to control my distaste for the man. “I would have thought you’d share that interest. Another madman you housed, perhaps, or someone who quarreled with them during their residency.”

“I haven’t the first idea,” he said. “We haven’t had another madman in Fanning’s man-cage in years. As for the men who live upstairs, each of them is unbalanced, one way or the other. If they could govern their own affairs, they wouldn’t have ended up here.”

He paused, then added: “Can’t say I’m surprised in the least that wench Lilly met her fate.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She could be a hellcat. Made trouble with a few of the married men. Not that she ever did what
I
asked of her, mind you.”

“That makes her an even braver and more sensible girl than I’d realized.”

“Get out!” he shouted.

“Gladly.” I went through the door to the infirmary where I found Martha kneeling and in earnest conversation with a young woman who was lying on the floor, wrapped in a thin shawl. I took my sister by the arm. As we hurried from the room, I had the vague impression of brightly colored clothing and blankets that hadn’t been present earlier. Both of us breathed deeply when we finally burst through the front door, grateful to be out of the squalid house at last.

“I’m afraid we didn’t learn much of use,” I said after we were both seated on our chaise and I prodded Hickory to head back toward Springfield. I relayed what Hathaway had told me.

“Maybe you didn’t,” Martha returned, a pleased smile on her face, “but I discovered a great deal.”

“You? What could you have learned?”

“There’s more than one way to gather information, Joshua. It doesn’t have to be all battery or bribery. Sometimes kindness goes a long way.”

“I suppose.”

“There was a girl in the sickroom about my own age. Her name’s Abigail. I had a long, interesting talk with her. She came down with fever and ague in the spring, and even though she’s all better now, the master won’t let her back into her family’s apartment upstairs. Abigail told me she knew Lilly and Jesse well. She and Lilly were the only two young women who resided in the house, so naturally they became friends. She was devastated when I told her both of them were gone.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “Did she have anything useful to say that might help us figure out who killed them, or at least why?”

“Abigail said Lilly was very bitter about the circumstances that had landed them in the poorhouse. Apparently their father farmed land belonging to a speculator who lived next door to them. A few years ago, the speculator moved and sold the land and the new owner ejected them. Their father couldn’t find a new situation. They’d always managed to scrape by in the past, but when they lost their farm, they had nothing to eat, nowhere to live. That’s what led them to the poorhouse.”

“What was the name of the speculator?”

“I asked Abigail and she didn’t know. Would there be ownership records somewhere?”

“There might be in one of the land offices. The Edwardsville one is probably the one with jurisdiction. That’s a long way south, near St. Louis. Or maybe the one in Vandalia would have them. The land offices sprung up patchwork with the land boom, so it’s often hard to figure out which has jurisdiction where.” I steered the chaise around a particularly large hole in the road. “Did Abigail tell you anything else?”

“Only that that repulsive man, the master, doesn’t keep his hands to himself.” Martha made a face.

“I gathered as much,” I said. “From the sound of it, though, Lilly was able to defend herself.”

“Abigail said she was a fighter, every day of her life.”

“Which raises the question, again,” I said. “Why didn’t she fight on her last one?”

Martha was fidgeting with the canvas saddlebags in her lap, and I suddenly realized they were empty. I thought back to the scene in the sickroom as we’d left the poorhouse. “What was in those when we set off this morning?” I asked.

“Smocks, shirts, underclothes. A few blankets. I’d chosen pretty well. I think Abigail and her family and the other families there will make excellent use of them.”

“But where had you gotten all those goods?” I asked.

“From your shelves, of course.”

“Martha!”

“What? Don’t tell me you’re opposed to doing charity for your fellow man and woman. Besides, you yourself told me the other day your goods weren’t moving as quickly as before with the economic situation. Well, I moved some goods for you.”

“But I want to move the goods
and
get paid for them.”

She shrugged as if to say that was my concern, not hers.

A little later she exclaimed, “Look how dark it is.”

I cast my eyes skyward and saw she was right. A giant dark purple thunderhead rose in the western skies in front of us like a coiled sea monster. I realized the sun had been obscured for the entire trip homeward. After the dim confines of the poorhouse, the cloud cover had not registered. But now the air around us was getting perceptibly heavier and darker by the moment.

“Where do we shelter, in case there’s a thunderstorm?” my sister asked, trying hard to keep any worry out of her voice.

Together we surveyed the rolling prairie. The tall grasses waved as a sudden gust blew through from our faces. Hickory whinnied. As far as the eye could see in any direction, there were no signs of human habitation. Indeed, there was not a single tree nor a bush taller than a man’s shoulder anywhere within five miles of us.

“There’s not going to be a thunderstorm,” I said. “It was dark the other afternoon as well and no rain fell. We’ve been in a drought all summer.”

I looked skyward again. A giant drop of rain landed in my eye.

T
hree fierce thunderbolts arced out of the thunderhead in front of us in quick succession. The first two shot to earth, setting off explosions that reverberated along the darkened prairie. The third seemed to come into contact with a dense cloud, for it smashed into a number of smaller streams, the electric fluid scattering to the ground like dew racing down a spider’s web.

Enormous drops of warm rainwater pelted down. The sound of the rain hitting the prairie grasses filled our ears, a constant high-pitched hiss accompanied now and then by deeper expectorations of rolling thunder.

My traveling cloak was soaked through. Martha’s long locks were plastered to her cheeks and the back of her neck. A violent wind whipped in our faces. Water streamed off Hickory’s coat and down her tail.

“We’ve no choice but to push ahead,” I yelled into Martha’s ear. “Perhaps there’ll be a farmhouse. I think I remember one from our outward journey.”

“Should we lie down in the grasses to avoid the lightning?” Martha shouted back.

“I don’t think so. It usually strikes in the woods.” My words were punctuated by another lightning strike, closer this time, and accompanied by an urgent growl of thunder.

Hickory put down her head and willingly struggled onward. But the hard-packed path we’d been traversing only minutes earlier was quickly turning liquid. As we went up a gradual rise, rivulets of water coursed down the hill against us. For a moment, the wheels of our carriage seemed to become waterborne, floating away from Hickory until she regained her footing and continued her trudge.

“Hold on to me tight,” I shouted to Martha as another blast of wind hurled past.

Hickory came to a halt. It was all she could do to maintain her position against the whipping wind and drenching rain. Martha and I embraced each other, the warmth of her skin providing some comfort against the heartless elements. I began to fear the tempest might outlast us.

And then, just as quickly as the storm had come on, it was over. Concentric circles of yellow and orange appeared on the horizon. Pockets of sunlight, unnaturally bright against the dark clouds, emerged and began muscling the thunderheads out of the way. The rain sputtered and stopped, its constant monotone drumming replaced on the suddenly still prairie by the rhythmic chirping of crickets and the exuberant singing of wrens and vireos and yellow-breasted chats. It was as if the angel of desolation, having amply proven his power and awe-inspiring fury, had abruptly decided to do his terrible bidding elsewhere.

“Are you hurt?” I asked Martha, trying to wipe the water from my eyes so I could see properly again.

“Nothing a warm bath can’t heal.”

“You may have to wait for that,” I said with a laugh. “But let’s see if we can’t find a farmhouse hearth to warm up by. The Buffalo Heart settlement can’t be too far distant.”

An hour later, Martha and I sat in borrowed gowns beside a roaring fire while our clothes dried nearby on a rack. Upon reaching Buffalo Heart, nestled on the southern tier of the crescent-shaped Lake Buffalo, I’d made for the cabin of a merchant I knew from the circuit. We were in luck; not only was
Peters, a lively little man with apple cheeks and a cherubic smile, home when we called, but his wife had just placed a large pot of chicken broth into the fire. Peters’ liberal hospitality even extended to uncorking a bottle of sparkling catawba wine from Cincinnati. In recognition of Martha’s good cheer during the storm, I let Peters pour her half a glass.

As I settled back into my chair, Peters asked what we had been doing caught out in the middle of the prairie.

“Returning to Springfield from Decatur,” I said.

“Decatur? I would have thought Knotts has that market pretty well covered.”

“He does. We weren’t traveling for commercial purposes.”

“On a weekday? Do you mean to tell me, Speed, your sales are so firm you can afford to become a man of leisure?”

“Joshua was showing me around the county,” Martha said brightly, before I could think of a lie to tell Peters. “I asked him to, as this is my first visit to Illinois.”

“That makes more sense,” said Peters, as I smiled at my sister gratefully. “My figures are a disaster. They have been ever since springtime.”

“Mine as well,” I replied.

“We had a market fair a few weekends back—we’ve organized one for the last Sunday in July for as long as I can remember—and I made a total of eighty-three cents worth of sales. Eighty-three cents. You better enjoy the catawba, because at this rate it’s the last I’ll ever buy.” He raised his glass toward us and gulped it down.

“Things will turn around soon,” I said.

“We should drink to that,” he said, refilling his glass.

With the suddenness of a thunderclap on a clear day, I realized this was the second reference I’d heard recently to the Buffalo Heart market fair. That same fair was where Rebecca had been on the day Lilly was murdered. Peters should be able to confirm for the sheriff and Prickett, if they still harbored suspicions, that
Rebecca had been miles away from her home at the time of the murder.

“Do you know the Widow Harriman, Peters?” I asked. Martha shot me a look that I ignored. “Harriman & Co., up in Menard.”

“Of course.”

“Do you recall what she was selling at your July market fair?”

“Nothing.”

I looked at the man in surprise. “You mean her sales were even less than yours?”

“No, I mean she didn’t show up,” Peters returned. “She’d written to say she’d be there, and as a courtesy I’d saved a prime spot on the green for her booth, but she never arrived. Tibbets, that old beast from Jacksonville, moved right into the space, and I could hardly stop him, as I couldn’t let the space go to waste. Not that the spot did him any good, mind you.”

Peters drank some more catawba, and so did I.

I was still brooding about Peters’ revelation as Martha and I drove the final miles back to Springfield the following morning. The merchant seemingly had no reason to lie about Rebecca’s failure to appear at the market fair. But what could it mean that she hadn’t been there? It made no sense she had engaged in an elaborate ruse merely in order to kill her niece in her own barn. Still, why had she tried to deceive the sheriff and Prickett?

In the wake of the storm, the morning air was crisp and cool, carrying the first faint portent that summer might not last forever. After we’d ridden in silence for a half hour, Martha suddenly turned to me. “Remember I said yesterday how pleased I am people here have been taking me seriously?”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s one person who hasn’t been. You.”

I looked at her in surprise. “Whatever do you mean?”

“It’s not like you to take off a whole day from your own work to go chasing down someone else’s problem, like we did yesterday. And then there were those questions you asked the
merchant last night. It’s obvious, to me anyway, that you have a special interest in those wretched children you’re not telling me about. And in the Widow Harriman.”

She wrinkled her nose with thought. “How well do you truly know the widow, Joshua?”

I shook my head in wonder. “All right, then,” I said, drawing in a deep breath, and I proceeded to tell her the whole story.

“If you’re certain the widow had nothing to do with the murders,” Martha said when I had finished, “you’ve got to help prove her innocence.”

“I’ve been trying. So far, I seem to be finding more reasons to hold her in suspicion.”

“In that case, you’re going to have to do a better job,” my sister said. “Quickly.”