The Salem Witch Society (28 page)

Set out in small hills, forming a defensive perimeter around Lean’s research, were stacks of recent newspapers. One pile was dedicated to each of the city’s four dailies: the
Eastern Argus,
the
Portland Daily Press,
the
Evening Express,
and the
Daily Advertiser.
A final stack encompassed the latest editions of each of a dozen different weeklies. He was working his
way forward in time, toward today’s editions. He’d been through nearly all of them and found nothing. From Hannah Easler’s murder to Maggie Keene’s had been just over a month: Wednesday, May 11, to Tuesday, June 14. It wasn’t much, certainly not enough to show a pattern of behavior by the killer. Still, if the killer stuck to this schedule, another body would be discovered any day now. He stared at the calendar pages, willing them one last time to divulge what they knew.

“Where’s the body?” He hadn’t meant to speak aloud and earned a quizzical look from Officer Bushey.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Just something I’m thinking on.” Lean stood and walked past the front desk.

“Oh,” said Bushey, not even trying to fake an air of understanding. “Well, if it’s any comfort, you’re not the only one looking for a body.”

Lean glanced over to see Bushey holding a newspaper in his hand. Lean shook his head. “What’ve you got?”

“Morning edition, just arrived. Someone saw a dead woman on the side of the road, out in Berwick two nights ago. But by the time he got back with the sheriff, the woman’s body was gone.” Bushey shrugged. “She ain’t turned up yet.”

“Let’s have the details,” Lean said. Then he listened as Bushey repeated the story’s salient points.

A man riding the Berwick Road saw a woman laid out just off the side. She looked so peaceful that he thought she was just asleep or passed out. Her face had a strange reddish color, but there were no signs of injury. Her skin was chilled, and he couldn’t wake her. He didn’t get a chance to do anything more before he heard a gunshot and saw a man coming toward him out of the woods. He hopped aboard his wagon and didn’t look back until he reached town. When questioned further, the man confirmed he didn’t recognize the woman. He described her as in her mid-thirties, dark hair, with a plain face, and wearing a fancy white dress.

“Odd,” Lean said.

“York County
sheriff’s stumped. Putting it down to some kind of hoax.”

She wasn’t the next one. The killer never would have left intact the peaceful-looking face and left no sign of injury. A more likely explanation would be that the man with the gun was traveling through when the woman died. Natural causes or otherwise. Too poor to afford a proper burial, or else afraid of being blamed, he found a spot by the side of the road and dug a grave in the woods. Panicking when he saw the good Samaritan stop by the road, he fired a shot to scare the man off. Lean felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.

“Just in case, do you know of any other reports of women gone missing lately?”

“Let’s see,” Bushey said. He proceeded to spend a minute looking through a stack of papers. “Two teenage girls gone and one Chinaman’s wife. Our mystery woman’s too old for them first two and too pale for the other.”

Lean started away, then paused. “This was in Berwick, right?”

Bushey glanced at the paper. “Not quite to town, but on the Berwick Road.” The officer glanced at the paper once more. “Right on top of Witchtrot Hill.”

Lean gave a slight tip of his hat to Mrs. Philbrick, then bounded up the stairs, knocking on Grey’s door even as he turned the handle. At the sight of Grey sitting behind his desk reviewing a stack of papers, Lean smiled. He’d found it first. Lean held up the morning newspaper clipping.

“I think I’ve got her. Two nights ago, on the road just outside of Berwick. And here’s the good part, the spot where she was found is called—”

“Witchtrot Hill,” Grey stated. He held up his own newspaper. “I’ve already sent word to Mrs. Prescott to research the origin of that name.”

Lean’s arm dropped to his side, the clipping crumpled in his left hand. “I assume you’ve made travel arrangements.”

Grey shook
his head. “No need. We’ll learn nothing at Witchtrot Hill.”

“You don’t think this is our victim?”

“On the contrary, I’m sure the mysterious woman in white is our number three.”

“And she was found at Witchtrot Hill,” Lean said.

“Correction,” said Grey as he stood and put on his coat, “she was
seen
at Witchtrot Hill. She was not
found.
The article is quite clear on that point. No body was discovered there, despite a thorough search of the area all around. Which means, of course, that whatever clues might have been left behind have been ground into the dirt by the party of bumbling searchers.”

“Then where are you going?”

“The woman in white was seen at ten o’clock on Witchtrot Hill; then she vanished. It appears this same woman was spotted again, just before sunrise yesterday, less than a mile from here.” Grey handed a second newspaper clipping to Lean, who read it aloud.

Lean set the clipping back on the desk. “What’s a thaumaturgic society?”

“The formal name. Known to its members as the O.S.L.—the Order of the Silver Lance.”

“Which is what?”

“Reportedly it’s your standard, run-of-the-mill magical society,” Grey said. “Sort of a poor man’s Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.”

Lean shook his head.

“Spiritualists and would-be magicians tapping into the mystical wisdom of the ancients and all that. And the head of the order is one Dr. Jotham Marsh.”

“Never heard of him,” Lean said.

“I’ve heard a few vague rumblings. At some point, I may have to devote some further research to the man.”

Lean rubbed his jaw. “What makes you so certain these two incidents are related? White dresses are not so rare.”

“An unconscious, possibly dead, woman in a white dress is spotted on Witchtrot Hill, attended by an unknown man so desperate to avoid investigation that he starts shooting. Her body then disappears into the night, shepherded away by the unseen man. Several hours later an unconscious, possibly dead, woman in a white dress is spirited away, by unknown men, from the property of a magical society. If it’s not the same woman, then you’re proposing what?”

“It could
be a coincidence,” Lean said.

“Coincidences are only the observations of those too lazy to puzzle out the connections and consequences hidden from casual view.”

Lean and Grey moved down the front walk and left Celia Darton standing in her doorway, her voice creeping up in volume with each step they took away from her.

“There’s goings-on next door. And whatever it is, it’s against God. I know it.”

Glancing back over his shoulder, Lean gave the woman a brief smile, just enough to assure her that he would treat her fevered ranting with the utmost seriousness.

Lean muttered, “That woman is—”

“Enthusiastic in her many opinions,” Grey said.

“To say the least.” Lean glanced at his notebook one last time. There, among the details provided in the interview, was the name Lizzie. Mrs. Darton was sure she recognized the young woman who used to frequent Dr. Marsh’s society but whom she hadn’t seen come around recently. “In any event, we now have a possible name.”

They went around the side of the house, up a narrow paved walkway, into a fenced-in courtyard infested with weeds. There was a gate at the back, which opened up into another alleyway. Grey proceeded to make a detailed study of the ground by the fence. After several minutes he stood and brushed himself off.

“There’s too much foot traffic to be certain of exactly what transpired. However, it does appear some heavy load lay here along the fencing. The ground all around is damp. The area was washed down. The fencing just above there has been scrubbed. The paint is damaged, and the wood is still wet.”

Lean considered the implications. His mind flashed back to the Portland Company and the message written there. “It could have been another message. Another line from the Lord’s Prayer that someone felt the need to dispose of.”

Grey nodded,
then pointed at the ground. “Leading away toward the front gate, there are numerous tracks. But look here: two straight lines. She was held up and her shoe tips scraped along when she was removed from the courtyard. She was not stumbling, being helped along in a drunken stupor. Her feet were not moving at all. She was unconscious or dead. This yard will tell us no more.”

Lean glanced around at the small, enclosed piece of land. “Maybe Jotham Marsh will.”

T
he library of the Order of the Silver Lance was a hexagonal room with a floor of black and white tiles. A tall, red-curtained window faced the door, the inside of which was decorated with an embroidered silk scroll. The other walls held broad sets of shelves. The top levels were devoted to various figurines of mythical entities. The Egyptian pantheon was well represented, interspersed with a variety of East Asian gods or demons carved in jade. Above the shelves the white walls extended up two stories to a skylight.

“There was a report filed by one of your neighbors.” Lean reached across the circular table, inlaid with a five-pointed silver star, offering the newspaper clipping with its allegations of a woman spirited away in the night. Dr. Jotham Marsh did not move to accept it.

“I never read the newspapers. Nothing but canned bleating. People read the papers to learn what is happening in the world. You couldn’t find a lazier and more misdirected guide if you tried. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the accounts either wildly exaggerate or else completely underestimate the actual importance of the events described. No event can be accurately judged unless it is considered with adequate background and perspective, both of which newspapers ignore and the reading public disdains.”

“There is an element of truth to your observation, Doctor,” Grey said, “especially
when it comes to efforts by newspapermen to interpret facts. But as to the simple facts themselves: Mrs. Darton witnessed a distressed woman being taken away down the alley.”

“It’s not the first time she’s complained,” Lean added as he studied the man.

Dr. Jotham Marsh was in his middle forties. His dark hair had gone gray at the temples and had started to recede, leaving a sharp widow’s peak. His mouth hinted at a bemused smile, but his eyes did not agree. Lean found the man’s gaze to be uncomfortable, and after a moment he noticed that Marsh rarely blinked.

“Of course Mrs. Darton cries wolf at me. She is an ignorant, uneducated woman. I, on the other hand, am an independent thinker. I do not act in accordance with those beliefs that others cling to, not because they are wise or beneficial to humanity but because they are merely customary. I offer something new and unheard of, and so I am despised, cursed at, declared a rebel. And when I offer these new ideas, and a few others are seen to agree … well then, to the unthinking herd, I become something akin to the devil.”

“The devil?” Lean sat up straighter. “Do your ideas involve the devil?”

“I’ve encountered few meaningful ideas in my life that didn’t.” Dr. Marsh grinned, then shook his head. “Not in the manner you mean, Deputy. The Christian ideas of the devil and hell hold no meaning for me; they are utterly false moral concepts, created by man as a means of deifying his own fears and weaknesses.”

“So you’re not a Christian, then?”

“Don’t take me the wrong way; Christianity certainly incorporates some valid ancient wisdoms and universal truths, which I acknowledge. But as a religion—no. Like all religions, it teaches that my beliefs are right and yours are wrong; think as I do, speak as I do, act as I do, or you should be struck down and your soul be damned.”

Marsh removed a small penknife from his pocket and, without glancing down, began to scrape and clean his untrimmed nails. Lean noticed that the man had strong-looking hands. Overall, he had the appearance of
one who had led a vigorous, active life as a younger man, although the skin had since started to sag a bit on his face.

“Are there many who are active here at your Thaumaturgic Society?” Grey asked.

“Numbers vary and are irrelevant. I would rather have two devoted students than a hundred dilettantes.”

“Speaking of your followers”—Lean fixed Marsh’s eyes with his own—“you had one recently by the name of Lizzie.”

“So we come to the heart of the matter at last. Lizzie … Madson. I wouldn’t really call her one of my followers. She never progressed beyond Adept, Second Degree, before she left us a few months ago.”

“And why did she leave?” Lean asked.

“Students leave for many reasons.” Marsh shrugged. “Unrealistic expectations are one reason. People think they can simply walk through the door, learn an incantation, and that’s that. They do not understand that the key to attaining magical power is in the training of the psyche, freeing and perfecting the will and the imagination. To master both these components of the mind is an extremely daunting challenge. And when these students realize that they prefer to daydream rather than work to develop their abilities, they quickly become disenchanted.”