“I’m watchin’ o’re her,” said the old woman, who was so black she was nearly made invisible in the gloom. “While I’m watchin’, no one touches Miss Sarah.”
She was wearing a gray dress with a stiff white collar. She had a dark brown scarf wrapped around her head and knotted at the front. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, her eyes deep-set and glinting in the age-weathered visage. Her white hair appeared to be almost gone but for a few fine wisps. Even so, her chin looked as sharp as a carving knife, and one might cut his fingers on the blades of her cheekbones. She stared impassively at the two men, her expression resolute no matter the difference in the color of their skins; she had been left in charge here, and in charge she was.
Matthew knew who she must be. “You’re Granny Pegg?”
“Called that, yes’suh,” she answered.
“I’ve heard of you,” Magnus told her. “I’m Magnus Muldoon. Was a friend of Miss Sarah’s.”
“Ohhhhh.” She nodded. “The bottle-man.”
“And I met Sarah just today,” Matthew said. “I was riding past, and—”
“The reader,” said Granny Pegg. “Supposed to come by for a visit. She tol’ me. Well…here you are.”
“What happened?” Magnus asked. “I mean…how did it happen?”
“Knife goes in the hollow of the throat. Knife goes in the back six times…a person’s gonna bleed to death.” The ancient eyes moved from Magnus and Matthew to fix upon the body. “Miss Sarah was a slip of a girl. Must not have took her long to pass.”
“A slave did this? Named Abram?” Magnus persisted. “Why?”
The old woman sighed. It sounded like the wind of doom moving through the headstones of a cemetery, and Matthew thought that behind it was just as much of a hidden world.
“I take it that’s some kind of response?” Matthew asked.
Granny Pegg didn’t speak for awhile. She looked down at her hands, knotted like pieces of dry bark in her lap. “Things happen here,” she said at last, in a quiet and solemn voice. “Things go on. Like on any plantation, up any river. Not to speak of is the best thing.” She lifted her gaze to Matthew’s. “The best thing,” she repeated.
Matthew turned his attention to the face of the dead girl. He had seen violence and withstood it; he had seen terrible things in his young life, but to think that this girl had been among the living today and then her flame snuffed out so suddenly…and so violently and bloodily. He could smell the blood and feel the pain of the untimely grave in this place. If the squirrels and hard liquor had not made his stomach churn, this surely did. “Do you know why Abram did it?” he had to ask.
Silence from the elderly slave.
“Surely you must,” Matthew prodded, now staring directly at her. “I would think you know everything here. Nothing would get past you, would it?”
“Hm,” she replied, her eyes half-lidded like those of a lizard lying in the hot sun. “Silver on your tongue don’t make me cough up lead.”
“Well, lead is going to be delivered to three men tonight. They ought to be brought back for a trial, but—”
Granny Pegg suddenly blinked and looked at Matthew as if seeing him anew and afresh. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, yes! Now I recall what Miss Sarah said about you. Said you seemed official. Said you were…” She paused, drawing it up from her well. “The law,” she remembered.
Matthew recalled it, saying perhaps I do represent the law. It occurred to him that maybe he did, and just as much as what he had done to champion Rachel Howarth he should now do to see that the killer of Sarah Kincannon was properly brought to justice. But this wasn’t his country anymore, he knew nothing of this plantation and the people on it, and anyway the slaves would be killed out there on the river or in the swamp once the mob caught up with them. So he ought to be quit with this, head home and mind his own business.
Granny Pegg stood up. She was barely as tall as Matthew’s shoulders, and as slim as a shadow. “You’re the law?” she asked him. “Got that power to you?”
“What power do you mean?”
“The power to do the right thing, and see it through.”
“All men have that power.”
“But all men don’t use it,” she said. “Do you?”
“All I want to know is,” Magnus said, with an air of desperation, “how did this happen? Why would a slave kill Miss Sarah?”
“Why would anybody kill Miss Sarah?” Granny Pegg came forward from her pew to stand before them. “Not meanin’ no disrespect to either of you fine gen’lmen…but things you hear said…ain’t always how things are.”
“I’m listening,” said Matthew.
“But I cain’t tell, suh, ’cause what I might say would be agin’ the law…and you bein’ the law…well suh, I cain’t speak it.”
Matthew was confounded by this, but he realized what Granny Pegg was telling him. Something had happened here in accordance with Sarah Kincannon’s murder that was also a violation of the law, and therefore the elderly woman believed herself to be walking on dangerous ground by going any further. Still…she had something important to convey, and he had to find a way to allow it.
“Do you know why Abram murdered Sarah?” he asked.
“Don’t know that Abram did murder Miss Sarah,” was the reply. “Know Cap’n Gunn say he saw Abram standin’ over Miss Sarah holdin’ a knife, out back of the barn, and her lyin’ still on the ground.”
“Who is this Captain Gunn?” Matthew asked.
“Joel Gunn, the second overseer,” Magnus supplied.
“Two overseers here? Joel Gunn and Griffin Royce?”
Granny Pegg nodded. “Peas in a pod,” she said.
“This happened when? A little more than an hour ago, I’m guessing?”
“Happened after dark, yes’suh. Happened after the time we’s forbid to leave our houses, down in the quarter. Ain’t supposed to be no slaves nowhere near that barn or so close to the big house after that time.”
“Yet Abram was there? Why?”
Granny Pegg simply stared impassively at him, and Matthew thought she knew why but could not tell.
At last she seemed to reconsider her silence, and she drew a long breath before she spoke. “Mars is my grandson. Abram and Tobey my great-grandsons. My son and daughter…long sold off, to another plantation in Virginia. They’s old now…like their momma. Well, I wish I could die but I just keep on livin’. They tease me…say when I die they gonna roll me up like a piece of parchment, I’ll be so thin. But I keep on livin’.” She offered the faintest and most tormented of smiles. Her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “If I can ask…what is your name?”
“Matthew Corbett.”
“Oh yes, I remember Miss Sarah sayin’ so. Matt’ew,” she pronounced it. She came forward two steps more, now only a few feet away from him and Magnus. “If I told you that Abram did not kill Miss Sarah, would you believe me?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew said truthfully.
“Fair enough, suh,” she answered, with a lifting of her sharp little chin. “If I told you them men the bell called are gonna go out there and hunt and kill three innocent slaves…and let the real killer hide behind more killin’…what would you say back to me?”
“I’d say…I need proof of that.”
“Ain’t no proof to be got. That’s the trick of it. That’s what he’s hidin’ behind.”
“Who?” Magnus was confused and far beyond his depth. “The slave?”
“The killer,” said Granny Pegg, still staring into Matthew’s eyes. “Not my Abram.”
Matthew asked, “And then, in your opinion, who did kill Sarah?”