The Salem Witch Society (24 page)

“What’s that, then?” Lean said.

“Phosphorous,” Grey said. “Dissolved match heads. It was a bit tedious preparing the concoction, but I hope the effect was worth-while.”

“What effect is that?”

“To demonstrate that whatever displays you think you witnessed at your séance are easily explained and replicated. It’s all common knowledge.” Grey handed over a book to Lean, who glanced at the title:
Revelations of a Spirit Medium,
by A. Medium.

“For your information, there were no such displays
at all. Simply Mrs. Porter going into a trance and making some rather uncanny statements.” Seeing the doubt in Grey’s eyes, Lean added, “And I completely vouch for the validity of the woman’s abilities.”

Helen nodded. “She was thoroughly credible. Gave me shivers down my spine, in fact.”

“It certainly appeared to be an authentic trance.” Dr. Steig’s head tilted slightly, as if his mind were a scale actually weighing the evidence. “Though I didn’t physically examine her.”

Grey sat back with fingers folded in front of him and said, “Fine. Let’s have it; the identity of the murderer has been unveiled from the beyond. And here we were wasting all our time with an actual investigation. What a fool I’ve been.”

“She didn’t actually reveal a suspect. Although she did call him by his Christian name.”

Grey arched an eyebrow. “From the beginning. What information did you give her?”

“I did say we were searching for a killer,” Lean said.

“Of young women,” added Dr. Steig.

Grey slapped his own forehead in disbelief. “And you had already identified yourself as a police deputy?”

“No. But I
had
given her my name,” Lean said.

“Then it’s no large feat for her to determine where your interests lie. And how many murders of young women have been in the newspapers in the past few months? Easy enough for this Porter woman to sniff out the trail. Continue.”

Lean sat down while he read his notes aloud, then announced, “I don’t know what the whole business is with the dark tower and blood and a fire.”

“Meaningless imagery to set the mood and capture your imagination,” Grey said.

“Maybe. But the rest of it—I think she’s describing Maggie Keene’s last minutes alive.”

“Interesting. Your analysis.”

“First she’s floating, in darkness. It’s tight, and the stones were rough, but
then she can’t feel them. We know that the killer led Maggie Keene to the site through a dark, narrow alley, where cobblestones gave way to earth.”

“That could describe a hundred places in this city. But go on.”

“Then she calls him by name: John. Our man was using the alias John Proctor at the boardinghouse on St. Lawrence Street.”

“Also the most common male name in the English language, and the one most likely to be offered by a client who doesn’t wish to reveal his true name to a prostitute,” Grey answered.

“She notices lights, like halos. Not a light up close, because the streetlamp near the door to the machine shop had been busted. She only sees the gaslights in the distance. Little halos.”

“An imaginative stretch, but I’m following you.”

“Next she implied difficulty talking; her mouth or lips seemed affected. She touched them like so.” Lean repeated the gestures.

“That could well be a sign of having been drugged. The entire narrative had that tone to it. An affect of the voice similar to one who was heavily sedated,” said Dr. Steig.

Lean nodded. “Then there’s a breaking sound. Like starlight or icicles falling. Our man punched in the glass to unlock the door. They’re inside now. It’s dark, she sees twisted metal shapes, and this man John has a candle. Then she stops, she looks down and is surprised to be standing on dirt. After all, she’s inside the building now. Then she gasps, suddenly, like she’s been struck.”

“Yes. That is how it sounded.” Helen’s wide eyes showed that her mind was still afire with the memory of the bizarre encounter.

“Next, she was trying to pull something away from her face. You yourself suspected that Maggie had been chloroformed. He must have held a cloth to her lips. At this point, Mrs. Porter’s body was violently struggling. Then went deathly still. When she spoke again, she says she’s floating, and then it’s like she’s looking down on Maggie Keene.”

“Chloroform has been known to produce an effect in some of a sensation of floating outside one’s own body,” said Dr. Steig.

Grey shrugged. “An external perspective would also be naturally adopted by a complete stranger trying
to describe an event as she imagined it to have happened.”

Lean continued. “Then she asks what the man is holding. Mrs. Porter’s head turned away, not wanting to look, and she starts talking about a metal circle above her. It has little teeth pointing out from the center. The description fits: that giant gear that was suspended above Maggie Keene’s body on the crane in the machine shop. Then her body shook, and it was like she was dead. It’s the very portrait we’ve constructed of Maggie Keene’s death.”

“Yes, and it’s all explainable—Amelia Porter could have learned or guessed all this from newspaper accounts, a visit to the Portland Company, and a few well-placed questions,” Grey said.

“Tell him what she said at the end,” prompted Helen.

“Right. Before Mrs. Porter came to, she said, ‘I know the truth of all things.’”

“The same comment that Boxcar Annie reported from Maggie Keene,” Helen explained. “This man said he would show her the truth of all things.”

“And the same comment that Boxcar Annie, or another of Maggie Keene’s business associates, could have repeated to Amelia Porter. An explanation wholly more plausible than the belief that Mrs. Porter actually channeled the spirit of our murder victim from beyond the grave.”

Helen stared at Grey. “Do you simply refuse to even consider the possibility that someone like Amelia Porter has powers that you or I cannot explain?”

“Oh, I can explain her powers rather easily. Her power lies in the need of others to believe in something inexplicable. People pay good money to have that belief confirmed, that there really is something more out there.”

Helen peered at Grey again, a deeply perplexed look on her face. “I for one refuse to believe that everything we experience in this life can be observed and measured and explained. That’s not life at all. Don’t you agree, Mr. Grey?”

Grey responded with a weary smile.

“You weren’t there,” Lean said. “We all felt something extraordinary
while in Mrs. Porter’s presence. And I do choose to believe it, whether or not there’s any earthly explanation.”

“Believe what you will, but tell me, what have you learned? Are you any closer to the killer?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a piece of information. Another view of the killing. Something we didn’t have before.”

O
n the evening of July 14, Grey pushed through the wrought-iron gate on Danforth Street and climbed the steps to Cyrus Grey’s house. His grandfather’s middle-aged butler, Herrick, greeted him with a look of surprise before allowing himself a smile.

“Is the old man at home?” Grey asked.

“I’m afraid not.” Inside the grand entrance hall, with its electric-light chandelier hanging from the ornately paneled ceiling, the paunchy man took Grey’s stick and hat. “Would you care to wait in the living room?”

“The attic, actually.”

“Of course, sir. How foolish of me to ask.”

The pair made their way up two flights of stairs with dark handrails over gleaming white balusters, the treads laid with thick carpet. Portraits of stern-faced men and dour-looking women stared down on them from within large gilded frames.

“Tell me, Herrick, are my mother’s old boxes still up there?”

“I believe they’ve been left as they were.”

Grey took the last flight alone and stooped as he entered the cramped space. Fifteen years had passed since Grey had been in there; it was even smaller and more cluttered than he remembered it. The air was still and twenty degrees hotter than outside, so he hung his coat on a nail and loosened his tie.

The unfinished room, with its exposed wood beams, slanting walls, and rough floorboards cluttered with
boxes and junk, was the opposite of every other immaculate, manicured room in the building. It had been Grey’s boyhood sanctuary in the first unfamiliar months that he’d lived in the Grey house, the one room that felt like home. It was the only spot where he could hear raindrops on the roof above him rather than the footsteps of some servant milling about, something he’d never experienced when living among his father’s people.

Grey inched his way through the room, peeking into boxes of clothes, old place settings, and household records. The attic could never lay claim to being the heart of the house, but in a way it was the soul. The dining room and parlors held portraits and decorations meant to greet the outside world. It was the dusty corners of the attic, however, that harbored the unimportant paper records, mementos, and tokens of small moments that held meaning for only a person or two in the entire world.

After ten minutes, Grey found a box set aside after his mother’s death. There were pieces of jewelry, a few letters from friends, and several small advertisements for various stage shows, performances by his mother after she’d first left home to pursue a theatrical life. There was a picture of his father that Grey stared at for a long moment. Beside it was a pipe with a long stem of sumac and a bowl carved from a reddish soapstone. Grey slipped it into his pocket and turned his attention to some books at the bottom of the box. One well-thumbed text caught his eye and he flipped through the pages as he moved to the pale light by the window.

The voices of two boys passing in the street caused him to gaze out through the dingy glass. A faint memory of other boys came to him, accompanied by the echoes of mocked war whoops. Those boys patted their fingers against their howling lips and waved imaginary tomahawks in the air, their war dance directed toward Grey’s usual perch, high above in the window.

Grey looked at the frontispiece of the book in his hands. His name was written there in his mother’s graceful hand. Violent pencil marks had slashed through the name, and he recalled the incident with a flicker of shame at his childhood rage.

“That’s not my name!”

“It’s your new name,” his mother
said. “It’s a good name. Sir Perceval.”

“A good name? You mean an English one.”

“Things change in life, you know that. This is where we live now, and we have to make do. Things will get better. Soon it will be as if you’ve been here all your life.”

He could see the sadness at the edge of her eyes, lingering there as it always did in those days, some predator just beyond the campfire, wary but desperate with hunger. “No matter what my name is, they’ll still look at me funny, like I don’t belong here. I’ll never be the same as them.”

“That’s true,” said his mother. “You will always be different. And that frightens people. But don’t let it frighten you. I don’t ever want you to be the same as all of them. But you will need to understand their ways to get along in life. It’s just something new for you to learn. Why they act the way they do and what they really mean when they speak. So study them, but that doesn’t mean you have to be like them. Who you are inside will never change, so long as you live.”

The memory faded, drummed away by a heavy tread on the attic stairs.

“Your grandfather has returned and requests your company,” Herrick said.

Grey handed the box to Herrick. “Please have this brought around to High Street.”

He started down the stairs. “By any chance, Herrick, do you recall when my mother and I first arrived here?”

“Of course, sir.” Herrick had been employed by Grey’s grandfather all his adult life, working his way up to his present position.

“I mean specifically,” Grey said. “The time of year, the circumstances?”

“It was early spring. A Sunday morning.”

“Really? A rather impressive memory, Herrick.”

“It was Easter Sunday. You were expected, and there was much discussion down below as to whether your grandfather would let the household go off to
church or whether we’d all stay and wait. In the end I stayed home, and, sure enough, you arrived while everyone else was at the service.”

“Was there much work required before our arrival?”

“A couple of days’ worth of work, I suppose.”

“Interesting. Thank you, Herrick.” Grey moved on to meet his grandfather.

Cyrus Grey sat stiffly in a tall-backed chair at the far end of the massive living room. Near him was a brick-faced fireplace topped with a broad landscape oil painting. Large Oriental rugs filled the floor between him and Grey. Tall windows with floral-printed curtains faced south, while glass-fronted bookcases lined the opposite wall. The old man checked his pocketwatch against a nearby clock, then rose in slow, wooden movements. A strip of white hair circled from one temple to the other, laying siege to Cyrus’s bald dome. Long sideburns framed a parched face that looked to have never tolerated a drop of perspiration in its eighty years of life.

“And what have I done to warrant the honor of a visit by my only grandson?”

“Just come to pay my respects.”

“To the dead, as always, not the living. Rummaging around up there, stirring up dust and memories. Find what you were looking for?”

“Yes, actually.” Grey took a seat at the grand piano.

“Damn thing’s out of tune,” said his grandfather.

Grey lifted the fallboard and let his fingers hover over the keys. They began to slide back and forth, darting here and there in a silent performance.

Cyrus Grey poured himself a glass of brandy from a crystal decanter. “The only things up there that would interest you are your mother’s old belongings and that old Indian stuff. Things from before.” He waved his arm as if dismissing some unruly child. “So it’s this business with the Indian killing that woman, isn’t it? I should have known you’d be involved. Suppose I ought to be grateful I haven’t seen your name in the local newspapers yet.”

“I didn’t realize you followed my work so closely.”