John’s face, which had been smiling, turned suddenly sober as he loosened the arm which he’d put around her waist: “What’s this?”
Abigail felt her side where his hand had been, just beneath her lowest rib. There was a short, straight gash in her bodice where Mrs. Sandhayes’s bullet had passed, the edges of the cloth, and the sturdy corset beneath, charred with powder.
Charley turned to Johnny with reprehensible smugness and announced, “We had ’n adventure!”
Quietly, Abigail agreed, “To be sure we did.”
Morning brought a note from Lieutenant Coldstone, by the hand of Sergeant Muldoon, begging her pardon for the inconvenience and requesting that the sealed teapot be turned over to the bearer, along with the contents of each teacup, placed in separate clean jars and labeled, as well as she could recall, as to which cup had been Mrs. Sandhayes’s and which Abigail’s guest had poured out for her.
I fear I cannot call myself, as I will spend the great part of the day dragging the marshes for the bodies of Palmer and Bathsheba, as you suggested. Be assured that I will wait upon you at my earliest convenience.
Abigail—who knew quite well which teacup was her own because it had for years been slightly discolored—obeyed the instructions with care, and sealed up the clean herb-jars, with labels signed by herself, John, and Sergeant Muldoon as witnesses. John remarked, “’ Tis the act of a man who knows he has a case.”
Calling that afternoon on Lucy Fluckner, she was greeted by Mr. Barnaby’s stilted assurance that, Miss Fluckner is unable to receive callers, m’am, and was intercepted in half a block by Philomela, wrapped hastily in her mistress’s red cloak. “I doubt you’ll ever be welcome in the house again, m’am, begging your pardon,” panted the servant. “Mr. Fluckner is in a fearful taking, to the point that I’m actually worried—I’ve never seen a white man turn that color! Mr. Knox has asked for Miss Lucy’s hand in marriage, and Miss Lucy says she’ll have him or none.”
“Hardly the best time to make the request, of course.”
Philomela half smiled. “M’am, meaning no disrespect, there will be no best time for that, not if everyone were to wait ’til Judgment Day. Miss Lucy said to tell you that we went through Mrs. Sandhayes’s luggage and room last night, and found her trunk had a false bottom. Beneath it were a man’s things—boots, coat, waistcoat, wig—and nearly five hundred pounds in sovereigns, all of it British, such as we found in Sheba’s room. There were bottles and packets there, too, of what Miss Lucy said was probably poison. And there was this.”
She held out a slim roll of drawing-paper, which, unfastened, displayed the image of an extremely pretty girl of about Lucy Fluckner’s age. The sketch was a rough one, only shadowy suggestions marking the cloud of hair and the lace of her chemise, but the vividness of her smile was captured there for all time, the dancing light in her eyes. Around her throat was Margaret Sandhayes’s Medusa cameo. On another part of the page the artist—whoever it had been—had sketched a blocky little church-spire and part of a churchyard, labeled St. Onesimus’s. A scribbled note in one corner marked the date: June 1765.
Margaret’s only weakness, Coldstone had said. For one instant, Abigail seemed to hear the giggles of two irrepressible sisters, over the parson’s mispronunciation of concupiscence.
And a little of her rage at the woman turned to sadness, as she understood.
If Mrs. Sandhayes followed Sir Jonathan across the whole of the ocean on purpose to kill him,” asked Pattie later, as she was clearing up after dinner, “why did she come here to do it? Could she not have done so just as easy in Barbados?”
Abigail, gathering up the remains of the pork pie, glanced across at John and raised her eyebrows. She guessed what the answer might be but was curious as to how he would see the matter.
“Bridgetown isn’t much of a place,” said John. “I suspect she thought society too small on the island, and herself too noticeable. Perhaps the opportunity simply did not present itself. By the time she reached the island, Cottrell may have already had orders to go on to Boston, and Margaret Seaford thought her chances for not only killing him, but getting clean away, were better in a larger city, with all the continent to flee to if need be. Does that sound right to you, Portia?”
“It does,” said Abigail. “But I had thought also, that while she was forming plans to accomplish her vengeance in Bridgetown, word reached them both of the dumping of the tea. She had acquired Palmer as a tool by that time—a means of duplicating Cottrell’s appearance so as to tamper with the apparent time of her victim’s death—but whether she knew at that time that New England winters get cold enough to preserve a man’s body, I don’t know. She certainly could have,” she added thoughtfully. “Heaven knows we’re known for it. And while she couldn’t have known she would find a house with a well in its cellar, that isn’t the only fashion in which a body could be frozen, by any means.”
“Yes.” Pattie frowned, and spread towels on the table to do the dishes. “But she couldn’t have known Sir Jonathan was going to Maine, or that he’d get engaged to Miss Fluckner.”
“She didn’t,” Abigail agreed. “Thank you, John—” She stepped back as he settled the basin, then drew near the rag and the gourd of soft-soap. “But even a moderately intelligent woman could have figured out that given Cottrell’s mission here—and the fact that Boston is known to be crawling with men who hate the King—’twould be surprising if the man weren’t murdered, and the Sons of Liberty could take the blame. As indeed one did.”
“And she’d have let an innocent man die.” Pattie shook her head wonderingly. She was, Abigail reflected, really very young.
“That is the Mark of the Beast, Pattie,” said John, “that the Reverend Cooper spoke of: the conviction that one’s own cause is sufficiently righteous to justify crimes against the innocent. Once a man, or a woman, takes that mark on the forehead—their thought—and their right hand with which a person acts, their hearts are altered, and it becomes very hard for them to go back to what they were. As I think our friend Mrs. Sandhayes will learn.”
Abigail had not thought to see the Lieutenant—nor hear the results of his search of the Mill-Pond and the river—for several days, but as she and Nabby were drying the last of the dishes, a knock sounded on the front door. As Pattie hurried out into the hall, John said, only half in jest, “And if that’s a squad from Colonel Leslie come to arrest you after all—”
“Lieutenant Coldstone, m’am.”
“You may let Mr. Knox know,” he told her, “that he need have no further concern for his position vis-à-vis the law, in the matter of Sir Jonathan Cottrell’s death. Thurlow Apthorp has identified the coat and waistcoat that Miss Fluckner found hidden in Margaret Sandhayes’s luggage as belonging to the so-called Toby Elkins, and in the pocket of the coat we found Sir Jonathan’s missing memorandum-book. The final entry was dated the twenty-first of February, the day before his intended departure for Maine. Moreover, when we brought up the body of Androcles Palmer from the Mill-Pond, Sir Jonathan’s signet ring was in his waistcoat pocket.” In the chilly pallor of the spring evening—lingering bright in the parlor window—he looked tired to death, and haggard, as if his strapped and bandaged arm was paining him. Though it was clear to Abigail he’d cleaned his boots (or had Sergeant Muldoon clean them) before appearing on her doorstep, flecks of marsh-mud clung to his snow-white trousers in places, and to the sleeve of his crimson coat.