Song of the Spirits (92 page)

William stood up.

“She doesn’t bark at every man,” Elaine whispered.

O
n his long-legged mare, Jay Hankins, the smith, was the first to reach Elaine and William. The constable, the justice of the peace, Ernie, and Matt were not far behind.

“Good heavens, Mr. Martyn! How did you stop the wagon here?” Jay asked, looking at the sharply sloping path. “And where’s the fellow who—”

William pointed at the blanket, which had soaked through with blood.

“It was an accident. After he fell, Lainie stopped the wagon.”

Elaine looked at him in amazement. Where was the boastful William who had nearly single-handedly freed Ireland from its English oppressors?

“Nevertheless, you were really very brave, Mr. Martyn. The man must have had a weapon. Are you all right, Lainie?” Matt helped the trembling girl to her feet. Callie did not bark this time.

“I think there are still a few things that need to be cleared up,” said the constable, lifting one corner of the blanket and making a face. “But first we need to clear away this… everything here. Do we have two men with strong stomachs? And how are we getting the girl home?”

Elaine leaned on Matt Gawain. “How’s Tim?” she asked.

Matt shrugged. “I don’t know, Lainie. The doctor is tending to him. But he was awake and responsive and he told us what happened. We’ll send Hankins back with that racehorse of his. He’ll fetch a coach, and then you’ll be back with Tim again soon. Maybe Jay will be able to learn some new details.”

Elaine shook her head firmly. She was cold and miserably scared, but waiting by the side of the road for an hour would hardly improve her condition.

“I have a racehorse myself,” she said, pointing to Fellow. “He’ll manage the road one more time.”

“You mean to ride, Miss Keefer?” the constable asked. “In your condition?”

Elaine looked down at herself. Her dress was dirty and torn, her wrists raw from the restraints, and given the way her head felt, she knew she that her face must be scraped and bruised. But she wanted to get to Timothy.

Then she thought of her grandmother. Though Elaine tried to smile, her words came out sounding serious: “The day I can’t ride anymore is the day I die.”

Elaine would have liked to gallop, but showing consideration for Fellow, she limited herself to a light trot. Matt and Jay, who were accompanying her, nonetheless shook their heads at her pace as she set forth.

“You can’t do anything for him, Lainie,” Jay said.

Elaine gave him a murderous look but did not say anything. She was too tired and frozen to talk. Really, she just wanted to cry. However, she kept an iron grip on herself. She was even prepared to put Fellow in the stables when she finally reached the Lamberts’ house, but Matt took the horse from her.

“Get going now.”

Elaine stumbled through the salon. Though there were still guests there chattering away in a state of agitated confusion, she hardly noticed them. She finally made it into the corridor and then Timothy’s rooms.

Elaine burst into tears when she saw Timothy lying in his bed as still and pale as the first day after the accident. It couldn’t be, not when he’d come so far! She began sobbing hysterically, unable to hold herself upright any longer.

Berta Leroy caught her.

“There, there, Lainie, now, don’t want to exhaust yourself. Roly, is there any whiskey here?”

“Lainie.” Timothy’s voice.

Elaine pushed Berta away and dragged herself over to Timothy’s bed. He sat up as she sank onto her knees beside him. “That hopeless case William actually pulled it off? My God, I thought I was going to have to beat him with my crutches to get him on the horse. And then he wanted to argue about which way to go!”

“Tim, you…” Elaine rubbed her face against his hands, then looked over his body. There were no bandages, though he started a bit when she touched his left side.

“Pretty bad contusions,” Berta said, handing Elaine a glass. “But nothing’s broken, don’t worry.”

Elaine began to cry again, but this time with relief. She sipped at her drink and shook herself.

“That’s not whiskey.”

“No, that’s laudanum.” Berta said, forcing her to finish the glass. “I changed my mind about the booze. You two would just get chatty—not to mention touchy. But you need some sleep. You too, Tim. Otherwise, I’ll take my husband at his word and prohibit you from going to the hearing.”

Still, the group that met in the constable’s office the next morning had gotten little sleep.

Despite the laudanum, Elaine had awoken early, well before dawn, and stumbled directly out of her nightmares into Timothy’s bed. Timothy, who, in spite of the morphine, had lain awake brooding, scooted willingly aside and held her in his arms while she told him, through stammers and sobs, a rather confused version of the events surrounding John Sideblossom’s death. When she finally fell asleep on his shoulder, he dared not stir. But he could not get comfortable for the rest of the night and looked correspondingly drawn in the morning.

Elaine still had a headache when she woke up and kept bursting into one fit of tears after another. The composure she had managed to maintain immediately after her kidnapping had given way to the total opposite. She cried at the sight of her ruined dress and then burst into fresh tears, of gratitude, when Charlene appeared with a change of clothes.

“Now, don’t cry! Mrs. O’Brien will make you a new dress,” Charlene promised. “If she hurries, she’ll even manage it before your concert in Blenheim. That’s the other place you wanted to wear it, right?”

“If I’m not in prison by then,” Elaine sobbed.

Charlene tried to persuade her to have something to eat. But she could not be calmed and did not get ahold of herself until it was time for them to leave. Timothy followed the girls, limping through the salon past his mother, who sat in steely silence. His father did not appear at all. Either he was already at work in the mine, or he was drunk—still drunk from the night before or drunk anew.

William had spent the entire night celebrating the simple fact of being alive. After his daring ride and his subsequent efforts to prove his vitality to Kura in every position he could think of, he shuffled along almost as gingerly as Timothy.

Nor had the constable gotten a good night’s sleep. Along with his assistants, he had spent half the night managing the recovery and return of the corpse and corroborating the first testimonies.

After examining John Sideblossom’s mortal remains, Dr. Leroy looked haggard as well. Still, he had not found anything to contradict William’s representation of what had transpired.

“So we have ascertained,” the justice of the peace said, concluding the inquiry into the fatality, “that John Sideblossom, standing on the box of his wagon at a full gallop, attempted, in a sort of tug of war, to wrest the riding crop from the hand of William Martyn, who was riding alongside him. An unexpected jerk to the side caused him to lose his balance. When he fell, his coat remained stuck to the crop’s handle, and the man was dragged to death. Does anyone have anything else to add?”

The listeners shook their heads.

“Not a very pleasant way to die,” the constable remarked, “but nor was he a very pleasant chap. Which brings us to you, Miss Lainie Keefer. Or Elaine Sideblossom, if I understood you correctly last night. What’s all this about a shooting? Why were you living here under a fake name? Why was Greymouth the only ‘safe’ place for you, and why couldn’t Sideblossom have a talk with you instead of kidnapping you like he did?”

Elaine took a deep breath. Then she told her entire story in a quiet, uninflected voice, her eyes fixed on the ground.

“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked once she had finished. The prison was attached to the constable’s office. It was empty at the moment but relatively spacious. On weekends, every corner of it was used as a place for men to sober up.

The constable smiled. “I don’t think so. If you’d wanted to run off, you’d already be gone. Besides, I need to corroborate all this first. It’s all still a little confusing to me. More than anything, I find it strange that I never heard so much as a whisper about any of it. Sure, Lionel Station is remote, but I think that a young woman on a wanted list, and what’s more, due to such a spectacular crime, would have caught my attention. But you shouldn’t plan on leaving the country just yet, Mrs. Sideblossom.”

“Miss Keefer,” Elaine whispered.

“So you don’t want to continue to be called Sideblossom, no matter what,” inferred the justice of the peace. He was a kind and sober-minded man whose civil occupation was running the town’s telegraph station. “Wholly understandable if your story proves true. And considering that you’ve just engaged yourself to someone else. I hope that you are not seriously considering simply going ahead and getting married a second time, Miss Keefer! You should get your divorce proceedings under way right away.”

Timothy nodded. “I believe there’s a lawyer in Westport. Perhaps we could telegraph him.” The constable handed the transcript of their proceedings across the table for Elaine to sign.

“But we still need to talk about Blenheim,” William said. “I understand, of course, that you have other concerns at the moment, Lainie—”

“You don’t really believe that after all that, she’d still go to Blenheim,” Timothy yelled. His left side hurt like hell, and he just wanted to put this turmoil behind him. Elaine laid her hand soothingly on his.

“Of course I’ll go to Blenheim,” she said, tired. “If I may.” She looked at the constable anxiously. Timothy awaited what he hoped would be an answer in the negative.

The lawman looked from one to the other. “What’s all this about Blenheim?”

As William enlightened him, he talked up Elaine and Kura’s performance so much that it sounded as important as, say, rescuing the South Island from barbarian invaders.

Timothy rolled his eyes. “My God, William, it’s just a concert.”

“For Kura, it’s a great deal more than that,” Elaine contradicted. “And I’m not going to run away, constable.”

The constable shook his head and chewed on his upper lip, a habit he shared with Elaine. She smiled at him.

“I’m not much afraid of that, Miss Keefer,” he said finally. “I’m more worried about your personal safety. Thomas Sideblossom will learn about the death of his father no later than tomorrow. Are you sure he won’t plan some act of revenge? Is he capable of that?”

Elaine flushed and turned pale by turns. “Thomas is capable of anything,” she whispered.

“He might have been,” William objected. “But after the incident with the pistol…”

In spite of himself, Timothy was impressed with how carefully William expressed his thoughts. He may have been timid on a horse, but he would have made a fantastic attorney.

“He rarely leaves his house and is entirely dependent on assistance. He’s as good as blind, constable.”

“But he would not be beyond planning an attack,” the constable insisted.

“We just won’t let Lainie out of our sight,” William said.

The constable gave his visitors a skeptical look. Timothy, exhausted on his crutches, and William, the sight of whom would have made a corpse feel sick—he wouldn’t have hired either one as a bodyguard.

“You must already know it, Miss Keefer,” he said finally, “but remember that the spirits of the Maori won’t protect you if you leave Greymouth.” He smiled wearily.

“They weren’t all that helpful yesterday either,” Elaine replied.