The Salem Witch Society (12 page)

“A competitor?”

“Possibly. Or our man could even be some type of Luddite. The Portland Company is at the forefront of building steam locomotives. Not everyone is thrilled about such developments. The railroads signify change; that frightens some people.”

“I could see arson or some such,” Lean said, “but cutting up a prostitute?”

“I only mention the possibility in light of our man’s choice of weapon.”

“The pitchfork.” The oddity of that detail had struck Lean before, but it was easy to lose sight of it amid all the bizarre details of the crime scene. He realized that he hadn’t fully considered the symbolism of that weapon. “Stuck right in the ground like that. Peeling back the boards, to expose the soil underneath. It does have a primitive, rustic quality.”

“And finally,” Grey said, “the first murder.”

Lean held
up a finger. “Assuming there was such a murder. You said yourself it was queer that we’ve heard nothing of it. Perhaps there was no other murder. If our man’s a lunatic, he could have left those two candles and two bloody lines for no reason at all.”

“Unlikely. Everything at our scene was calculated. There was a first murder; and now he’s practically boasting of a third to come.” Grey thought for a moment. “If we remain ignorant, it is because the victim has not yet been found or the body was not thought suspicious. A third possibility is that we are simply too far removed to have word of the event.”

“He certainly meant for Maggie Keene’s body to be found right off. And if his note means he committed the first murder last month, I’d guess enough time has passed for the first one to be discovered,” Lean said.

Dr. Steig nodded his agreement. “And if the first victim was left in any condition like Maggie, the discovery would have raised an outcry.”

“It stands to reason,” Grey said. “So let us assume that a body, probably dismembered, has been discovered, more or less one month ago. But it was far enough away that we’ve heard not a whisper of it.”

“Could be anywhere,” Lean said.

“So we actively pursue the first three areas of inquiry while we cast our net for the last. If the earlier murder was anything like Maggie Keene’s, it was investigated by a detective or sheriff somewhere. I have contacts in most of the larger cities between here and Manhattan. North of Portland is a different story.”

“I know every county sheriff and town police chief within a hundred miles,” Lean said.

Grey began to
pace, his first outward display of excitement since the discussion started. “Then we telephone or telegraph them. Nothing specific, since we can’t be sure if the details will be the same for the first victim. But we ask about murders: peculiar circumstances, mutilations, possible dismemberments. We start close by. I’ll contact Portsmouth, Concord, Worcester, and Boston.”

“I’ll check Bangor, Lewiston, Augusta, and Bath,” Lean said. “And if we come up empty-handed?”

“There is the possibility that we won’t solve this matter until we learn more about our killer’s methods.”

Lean stared at him, grasping the dire meaning of Grey’s plan. “You mean wait until there’s another murder.”

H
elen returned the last of the lecture chairs to its rightful place. She glanced up at the clock on the far wall. Mr. Meserve had gotten long-winded, as she feared he might. When she let the lecture guests out, it was raining. Finding a cab would be difficult, meaning she wasn’t going to keep her promise of getting home before Delia was asleep. She paused a moment by the front desk. The rain beating on the windows made it hard to be sure whether she had heard a faint noise overhead.

Then she heard the sound again and recognized it. One of the small second-floor windows had a loose clasp that often came unhitched and would rattle in the wind. She hoped not too much rain had come in. Helen switched on the electric lights by the stairs and walked up to the landing. Moving down the dim hallway, she caught sight of a light under the door to the special-collections room. The librarian was notorious for forgetting to extinguish the lights when she left for the evening. Helen moved forward, turned the handle, and stepped into the room.

She flinched as
if she’d been slapped. A dark figure stood near the far end of the room. He was visible in profile, facing a bookshelf that also held a half-shuttered lamp. Helen tried to force her throat shut and strangle the scream, but it was too late. Her cry splintered the silence, and the figure darted around the corner. A second later he stepped forward again.

Helen bolted back the way she’d come, down the stairs, one hand clutching up her skirt. The panicked rush kept her from hearing any sounds of pursuit, but she knew he was coming. Her feet thudded down onto the first-floor landing, and she began to turn for the exit but then forced herself to veer off down the hall. She would never outrace him to the front door. The head librarian’s office had a lock. Helen’s hand shot out and grabbed the knob. It slipped under her sweaty palm but turned. She pushed the door open. Her eyes dashed back to her left. The man reached the landing and came toward her.

Helen threw herself into the room and slammed the solid oak door behind her. The key was in the lock, and she turned it, letting herself breathe only after she heard the click, then clutched the key to her chest. The knob rattled. The door shook in its frame as the man abused the handle. Helen looked around and seized a heavy candlestick from a side table. The door went silent. She held her breath and was rewarded with the faint sound of footsteps moving away. The wood of the door felt cool as she pressed her ear against it. The front door of the library banged shut. Helen hurried to the window overlooking the front exit on Congress Street. A dark shadow splashed away across the wide avenue.

She unlocked the office door and, with the candlestick still lodged in her grip, ran across the lobby to bolt the front door. She dashed to the telephone at the front desk and picked up the receiver. What would she say? She hadn’t actually seen the man’s face upstairs. She couldn’t swear he was the same man she had confronted earlier in the lobby. She’d be there for hours while the police asked questions she couldn’t answer. Her thoughts flashed to Delia—she had to get home. Helen hung up the phone. Uncle Virgil would know what to do. She would ask him in the morning.

Helen let her
neighbor out and locked the door behind her. She went back through the kitchen to make sure the rear door was also locked, then hurried upstairs. She peeked into Delia’s room. The curtain was open, and a sliver of rain-soaked moonlight fell through the window to reveal the girl’s sleeping face. Helen went to her own room and worked her way through the process of removing her several layers. She pulled on a muslin robe with a bosom of fine tucks and box pleats, trimmed with embroidery, then returned to her daughter.

When she lifted the covers to climb into bed, Helen saw that Delia was clutching a picture frame. She eased the girl’s grip and slid the picture away. It showed a handsome man with a bushy mustache standing behind a chair. A seated Helen Prescott, younger and smiling, looked out at the world. “Bastard,” she said, then grimaced at the sound of her voice in the still room.

“Mother?” Delia’s head turned, but her eyes remained shut.

“Shhh. Go back to sleep.” Helen set the picture down and slid under the covers. She wrapped her arm around Delia and held her close. She felt the girl’s gentle breathing, close enough that Helen could let her own heart slow, falling into rhythm with that of the dreaming child.

T
om Doran stared straight ahead, his eyes focusing on the ragged rectangle carved into the earth. Nearby, someone in the cluster of Farrell’s girls was crying. Next to the mound of dark earth, the priest was reading a psalm. Doran recognized it, but the words simply swirled around him, then moved on unhindered.

“‘Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor.’”

The box that
held Maggie was nothing fancy. It hadn’t cost much, and Doran felt a twinge of guilt over that, but then again, it was no worse than the coffin for his own wife two decades earlier. Besides which, Maggie was in a better place, and she wouldn’t begrudge him that pine box. The other girls might complain, but Doran knew the loud grief coming from that group would dwindle and die over the next couple of weeks. After that, Maggie Keene might get remembered in a drunken toast on some night when the girls got together for a cup of cheer after a good bit of business. And that would be the whole of it.

The priest’s voice rattled on. “‘His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity. He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places does he murder the innocent; his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den.’”

Doran’s gaze wavered and fell upon the box itself. She was in there, lifeless and still. Whatever made her who she was had gone out of the face he’d seen in the morgue. Doran closed his eyes and tried to picture her as she’d looked while alive. The image soon blurred and twisted until he was instead seeing his own Mary, staring back at him with soft eyes.

“‘Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless. Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his wickedness till thou find none.’”

Tom Doran clenched his fists hard enough that his ragged fingernails dug into his palms. When that didn’t work, he raised his left hand to his mouth and bit into a knuckle. Soon the pain and the faint taste of blood were enough to banish the thoughts.

“You don’t think she’s in any further danger?” Dr. Steig asked.

“Well, I told them they should have more than a lone woman locking up the place at night,” Lean said, recalling that morning’s meeting with the doctor’s rattled niece and the head librarian. “But from this same fellow? I don’t think so. He wasn’t a regular visitor, unfamiliar with the library. Strikes me as an isolated occurrence. Troubling, but not likely to be repeated.”

“Thank you again,
Lean. After all this, the idea of a madman on the loose, then my own niece being threatened. You don’t suppose there’s any chance?”

“The thought struck me, but her man was of average height and blond.”

“In the lobby, yes, but she never saw the face of the one who chased her,” said the doctor.

“Probably the same man.” Lean shifted his feet on the grass, not yet wanting to interrupt the scene below even though the ceremony was clearly finished. “Ready?”

“Let’s give him a minute,” Dr. Steig said.

Lean glanced over his shoulder at the doctor’s hansom cab, which had brought them across the river to the Catholic cemetery in Cape Elizabeth. Through the window he could make out Grey, sitting in the shade with his telescope in hand, perusing the scenery with his back to the cemetery.

“Doran’s this way,” noted Lean.

“You think Doran’s our man, then?”

“Of course not.”

“Good,” Grey said, “then it’s agreed we shouldn’t both be wasting our time staring at him.”

“Oh, and you think the killer is lurking about behind some tree, come to see his girl off.” Lean rolled his eyes.

The doctor gave a shrug. “He obviously attached a great degree of significance to her death and to her body after death. Not implausible to think he still feels some perverse sense of union with her.”

“Fine.” Lean turned back to Grey. “Any luck, then?”

Grey held his telescope aimed along the tree-lined sidewalk, looking toward where Vaughan’s Bridge led back across the Fore River to the West End of Portland. “Not unless our man is successfully disguised as an old woman walking a constipated mutt.”

“Here he comes,” said Dr. Steig.

Lean turned to see
a massive, rusty-haired man trudging toward them. Grey secured his telescope inside the carriage, then climbed down to join the others.

“There’s something I can help you with, Doc?” Doran asked, tipping his hat.

“Perhaps, Tom. We need some information about Margaret Keene.”

Doran’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced at Lean, then Grey.

“It’s all right, Tom. You can talk freely in front of my colleagues,” Dr. Steig said.

“I’m not in the habit of talking to the police.”

“Just a few questions,” Lean said.

Doran glanced back and forth among their faces. “Right. What do you need to know?”

“You picked her up from the morgue. So she was one of Farrell’s girls?” Lean said.

Doran nodded.

“Farrell paid the morgue fees?”

“I did.”

“Why?” Lean asked. “Were you friendly with her?”

Anger flashed in Doran’s eyes but subsided after Dr. Steig cleared his throat.

“Not like that. Just because she deserved better. She was a good kid. Could get a little mean when she’d had a few drinks. But mostly she was a nice girl. Just wanted to have things a little better. Always talked about getting off of Munjoy Hill. Said she’d wind up with a big place looking over the river.”

“She was half right,” Grey said.

“So you have any thoughts on who might have done this?” Lean asked.

Doran shook his head. “If it ain’t some madman like the papers say, then I don’t know.”

“Gotten herself up a bit fancy. New hat, gloves. She have something special working?”

“Nothing much.
Just some guy passing through. Big talker, I heard, promising her a better life and all. Nothing new. She was a dreamer, though. Mighta fallen for that whole bit.”

“Hear anything about him being rough with her?” Lean asked.

“If I’d heard any such, the man would’ve been in the ground himself, afore he could do this to Maggie.” Doran nodded back toward where the gravediggers were shoveling in the dirt.

“Those other girls that were here. They know any more about this new guy?”

“Don’t think those girls really know much,” Doran said.

“‘Those’ girls?” Grey said. “There’s someone else who might?”