“As you wish,” Matthew answered calmly. “But as I’ve said, I have experience in situations like this.” He glanced quickly at Granny Pegg and then back to Mrs. Kincannon. “I have one request, and it’s very important.” He paused for a few seconds, to let that sink in if it would. “I know this is a difficult and terrible time. I know I’ve come in here—blundered in here, might be more accurate—in what seems to you to be the end of the world. I do have some…skills in this area—”
“What do we need you for?” Gunn growled. “Abram did it, pure and simple! When Griff ran up to the big house to tell ’em, I went down to the quarters and found out Abram and the others were gone. Then I got to the wharf and saw they’d broken into the boathouse! I seen ’em in their boat paddlin’ up the Solstice! They had a torch lit, I could see ’em all! So you just step aside—and you too, Muldoon—and let justice be done!”
There was a moment of silence, in which Matthew thought he had lost the cause.
But then the quiet but determined voice said, “Thass why we does need this man, Cap’n Gunn. So justice will be done.”
Gunn looked as if he’d been struck across the face. So too did Mrs. Kincannon. Matthew figured it was unheard-of for a slave—even a woman as elderly as Granny Pegg—to contradict a white man, and especially an overseer. He realized she had decided that it was time to speak up, if ever she was going to, no matter what the consequences might be.
“Say my great-grandson stabbed Miss Sarah to death?” she went on, both commanding the floor and tempting fate. “Say you saw him with a knife in his hand? But you didn’t see him use that knife, did you? Couldn’t he have just found it, and picked it up? And for the why of Abram bein’ there, and Miss Sarah too…I’ll tell you that it was agin’ the law, as set down by Massa Kincannon.” Granny Pegg stared fixedly at Matthew. “For some time…a month or more…Miss Sarah and my great-grandson been meetin’ in that barn at night, after the forbidden hour. He say she always kind to him, and he say she always brought two things with her: a lantern and a book. She was teachin’ Abram how to read. So why under the eyes of God would he kill her?”
“Because he’s an animal like all the rest of ’em!” Joel Gunn sounded nearly choked with rage. “Because he wanted Miss Sarah for himself and couldn’t have her! Who knows why? I just know she’s dead and he killed her! And teachin’ a slave to read? That’s a damned lie!” He trembled, and for a moment Matthew thought the musket was going to come up to finish Granny Pegg’s last day on earth. “Mrs. Kincannon’s told you to get out! Now get!”
The lady of the plantation had been staring at the floor, supporting herself with both hands gripping the back of the pew before her. She spoke, in a ragged voice. “It’s not a lie. Sarah was teaching Abram to read. She told me, two weeks ago. I said I didn’t approve of it…that if her father found out, he would punish the entire quarter. Donovant does not like the whip, but he would’ve had a man from every house lashed for that crime. And punished Sarah too, in some way. At first I forbade it…but Sarah was going to do it anyway. I know her.” She looked, anguished and red-eyed, at her daughter’s corpse. “Sarah had talked to Abram before. Said she thought he was very smart, and could learn to read. She so loved her books…she wanted to share them. I didn’t wish anyone to be lashed or Sarah to be punished…so I helped her sneak in and out of the house after dark without breaking her neck climbing out an upstairs window. I gave her one hour, from leaving to return. I told her to be very careful that she wasn’t seen by anyone. That would cause problems. Tonight…when she didn’t come back…I knew….I knew something terrible had happened.” Dazedly, she shook her head from side to side. “I’m to blame for this. And for what’s happened to Donovant too. Yes. I’m to blame.” A sob came up from her throat, and she clenched a hand around her mouth as if to catch it before it was born ugly upon the world. “But why?” she gasped. “Why would he have killed her?”
“He didn’t do it, Mizz Kincannon,” said Granny Pegg resolutely. “No’m. Not Abram. He was too happy in her glow. She gave him somethin’ to look forward to, ma’am. It was somebody else killed her, likely saw her one night and tracked her. Left that knife for him to find, and then—”
“I’m not listenin’ to this!” Gunn exploded. “Listenin’ to a damn slave? An old woman who hardly knows what’s real? No! God help me, I’m goin’ outside to get some air…hardly believe what I’m hearin’!” He turned away from Matthew and Magnus, stalked up the center aisle and then out the chapel door, which he closed behind him.
Mrs. Kincannon sat down again. She stared blankly ahead. “You gentlemen need to leave,” she said listlessly. “Please. There’s nothing more you can do.”
“You haven’t heard my request,” Matthew reminded her, and he waited until she could focus on him. “I’d like your permission to look at the wounds on Sarah’s body.” He held up a hand to still her protest if it came, but it did not. “It will only take a few minutes. Wounds can tell a very interesting story…and sometimes much can be learned from them.” He lowered his hand. “May I?”
There was a long moment in which Mrs. Kincannon simply sat staring at the tapestry of Jesus on the Cross. Tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks, dripping from her chin, and at last she whispered, “Yes.”
Eight
The dead young woman was still wearing her yellow dress of the afternoon, now stained with dark red blood across the front from the vicious wound in the hollow of her throat. Matthew had lifted the fouled linens carefully and gingerly, braced for what he might find beneath. A brief look at the throat wound told him Sarah couldn’t have called out if she’d tried; likely she’d been strangling on blood at the very first thrust of the blade.
Mrs. Kincannon shuddered and looked away. She drew a hard-earned breath and kept her head lowered.
“Has the knife been recovered?” Matthew asked.
The woman found a shred of a voice. “It’s in the house. An ordinary knife, nothing more.”
“Who brought it to you?”
“Griffin Royce.”
Matthew nodded. He reasoned from the wound that the knife had about a six-inch-long blade. Ordinary enough, but he’d still like to examine it if he could push Mrs. Kincannon that far. He noted the thick red dampness of the linens beneath Sarah’s body. He didn’t wish to take it upon himself or Magnus to turn the corpse; that would certainly be going too far. “Are the stab wounds on the upper or lower back?” he asked.
“The upper,” she said, with difficulty.
“Six wounds there?”
“I don’t know. Yes…six…I think so.”
The blade had pierced the lungs several times, Matthew thought. At least Sarah had not lingered very long. With all this blood loss, she had passed quickly. “I’d like to question Griffin Royce, if that would be possible.”
“He was heading to the wharf the last I saw him.”
“I’d be curious to know more particulars from Joel Gunn, as well.” Matthew leaned over to examine the throat wound more carefully. Just one brutal stab here, face-to-face with her killer, and then she’d likely turned to run and taken the others in the back. It gnawed at his guts that Sarah had been so alive and bright this afternoon, and already the process of decay would have begun. He saw that her arms were crossed over her body, as she would be resting in her coffin.