The Salem Witch Society (30 page)

“How do you know Guen?” Lean asked.

“I get my supplies at his uncle’s Chinese tea shop on Congress. Top quality. On my first visit, Sam tried to pick my pocket on the way out. I paid him to teach me how he operates. Also top quality.”

Sam Guen raised his left hand and tipped his hat. Lean noticed that the man’s right arm was at his side, the bottom half of his coat sleeve folded up and pinned to the upper arm to give the appearance of one who has lost a limb.

“There’s our man. Don’t follow me too close,” whispered Grey as he started off at a casual stride across the street. He fell in ten paces behind Stackpole. Lean followed farther back. He was surprised to hear Grey call out to the man they were trailing.

“I say, good fellow, here now, that won’t do at all.”

Stackpole glanced back and saw that Grey was motioning toward him. He stopped in his tracks and took an unsure step backward as Grey closed the distance to him.

“I fear you’ve stepped in a bit of filth. All them trolley-car horses about and such. That won’t do at all if you’re heading to meet with anyone. I’ve been behind you for two blocks and smelled the offending matter the whole way.”

“What? Oh, shit.” Stackpole staggered a bit as he picked up his right foot and glanced at the clean sole. He was lifting his left foot when Grey took hold of his elbow.

“Steady,
now,” Grey cautioned. “You were about to tumble over.”

At that instant, Lean saw Guen brush up against Stackpole, breaking stride for the briefest of moments, and then he walked on toward where Lean had stopped to watch the whole proceeding. The superintendent of burials completed his check of his left sole, then proudly announced that he hadn’t stepped in anything after all.

“Well then.” Grey released the man’s elbow and lifted his own sole, which was heavily soiled. “For heaven’s sake! There I was heaping it on you, when all along it was me who’d stepped in it. Please forgive my mistake.”

Stackpole smirked, tipped his hat, and admonished Grey to watch his step, then turned and went on his way. Guen approached Lean, brushing past with a smile. Lean’s brow wrinkled. He slipped his hand into his own coat pocket and felt a metal key ring there.

L
ean’s eyes settled on the high stone archway of the Western Cemetery gate. From there, his eyes shot left, then right, tracing the four-foot-high wrought-iron fence that ran along Vaughan Street. Cooler air had swept into the area during the day, prompting a dreary evening. While it hadn’t properly rained, a thick mist persisted, forming halos around the gas lamps that dotted the sidewalk. He could see no one moving along the street. Lean crossed over and walked along the fence.

“Psst.” Grey stood up from his concealment near the bushes on the inside of the cemetery fence.

Lean carried a shuttered bull’s-eye lamp, which he handed over to Grey. Then he stepped onto the lower crossbar of the iron fence, planted his hands between pairs of the ornate wrought-iron spikes, and heaved himself up and over. Grey caught him as he came down on the inside of the cemetery. The pair of them hurried along to the right, toward
the tombs and away from the gaslights on Vaughan Street.

“Any problem getting the tomb key?” Grey asked.

It had been no problem at all, since one of the keys stolen from the superintendent of burials unlocked a drawer in the city clerk’s office just two floors up from the police headquarters. Like all the surrounding offices, that section of City Hall was empty by half past five. The drawer in question held a variety of labeled keys from the various city cemeteries. Lean had lifted the Marsh tomb key and placed Stackpole’s personal key ring under his desk, as if the man had dropped it there himself. Lean held up a large metal key, and Grey gave the smallest of nods.

“See anybody poking about tonight?” Lean asked.

Grey shook his head. “It’s been four days since the last murder. If victim number three is still in there, they’re probably never planning to move her.”

Lean threw several glances back toward the street, although there was no need. It would be almost impossible for any unsuspecting pedestrians to catch sight of the detectives as they passed through the dark grounds of the cemetery. They moved ahead with a thin layer of ground fog swirling about their shins. Before them, through the mist, a row of dark shapes appeared. Lean counted to himself as they passed by the tombs. When they reached the ninth structure, both men stopped. Out behind the tombs was a small rise of land that stretched along the northern side of the Western Cemetery. Further above this tangled mass of brush and trees was Bowdoin Street. The houses there announced their presence through a few distant flickers of their interior lights. Otherwise, the cemetery was black. Lean opened the shutter on his lamp for just a second to read the name of Marsh above the tomb’s door. He glanced back one last time in the direction of their approach. He could see the small receiving house silhouetted against the faint glow of Vaughan Street’s gas lamps.

“Hear something?”

Lean shook his head, and Grey motioned him forward to unlock the Marsh
tomb. Lean struggled with the key in the darkness. Grey opened the lamp a sliver, angling the light toward Lean’s hands. The key slipped into the lock. There was some initial resistance, but Lean doubled his effort and the tumblers clicked. He glanced over and saw Grey searching for something in his kit.

“Here goes.”

“One moment, Lean. Open it just a touch—”

Lean had already put his weight into it, and the door began to move, slowly at first until its own weight took over. It swung in on its rusty hinges, the loud screech reverberating inside the tomb.

“—so I can oil the hinges first.” Grey fixed an unimpressed stare on Lean. “The idea was to sneak into the tomb.”

“Night like this, the neighbors will just think it was a banshee,” Lean said.

Grey stepped to the doorway with a dropper in hand and squeezed a bit of oil onto the hinges. Lean moved into the vault. Grey followed with the lamp held high, illuminating the brick-lined interior of the tomb. The whole space was no more than twelve feet wide by eighteen feet long. Lean quickly took in the scene, counting nine coffins stacked in columns. The late-July days had been hot, and the air inside the brick tomb was thick with the unmistakable stench of death.

“I think she’s still here,” Lean said. “Could be hidden behind the coffins.”

Grey aimed the light to peer along the side of the stacked boxes. “Not behind. She’s inside one of them.” He moved alongside the coffins with the lamp held close. “Here. This one. The nail heads aren’t fully set; it’s been opened recently.”

The two of them placed the suspect coffin down on the floor of the tomb, closer to the door. Grey took a short crowbar from a deep pocket in the interior of his long coat. He pried open the lid and slid it halfway aside. Grey paused for a moment at what he saw and then let the cover fall open the rest of the way.

Lean took up the lamp for a better look. “I think we’ve found Lizzie
Madson.” The putrid smell hit him like a wave, and he gasped. His stomach muscles clenched, and he put the back of his hand over his mouth and nose. His eyes watered as hot bile came up in his throat.

Grey pressed a handkerchief into Lean’s hand. “It’s been treated.”

Lean clamped the cloth to his face and breathed deeply. A strong medicinal smell filled his nostrils, and after several breaths he was able to turn back and face the coffin once more. Each man tied his handkerchief about his lower face in order to free his hands.

“Good, now we definitely look like grave robbers,” Lean said.

Inside was a body wrapped in a white sheet. It had been dumped into the casket on top of the skeletal remains of the original occupant. The mud-caked tips of a woman’s shoes poked out from the bottom of the sheet.

They lifted the shroud at either end and placed the body alongside the coffin. Lean couldn’t resist a glance inside at the casket’s original tenant. He saw a man dressed in a light gray wool suit, his bone-thin hands crossed on his chest. A ring of scraggly white hair stretched around the head connecting the temples. Dark, vacant sockets gazed up from a face of dried, leathery-looking skin that had gone terribly yellow and was stretched taut over the bones. It looked as fragile as some ancient papyrus scroll.

By the time Lean returned his attention to the more recent corpse, Grey had managed to unfold the sheet to reveal the body of a woman in a long white dress. Her wiry brown hair, tinged with flecks of gray, was matted down over her forehead. The face was blanched, the flesh hollow and sunken against the skull. Lean thought the drooping features gave the sense that the corpse was singularly unimpressed with both her current situation and the answers to whatever mysteries she had discovered upon her departure from this world. Her neck was hidden by the high-collared white dress. The material appeared undisturbed: no cuts, tears, stains, or marks of any kind.

Grey tugged the collar as he bent forward to peek down at the skin. “No visible marks on the neck.” He rolled the body up on its side. “Dirt on her back, but no bloodstains.”

“Maybe
she’s not our third victim. Maybe this Lizzie Madson simply died at Marsh’s place and they wanted to hide the body. She drank something wrong. Or just up and died for no good reason.”

“There’s always a reason—good or not.” Grey moved away from the woman’s head and bent down to peer at her hands, the only other exposed part of her body.

“Suppose there’s no need to bother with searching the clothing for hairs and whatnot.”

Grey looked like someone had just stolen his Christmas goose. “We can rest assured that any relevant evidence has long since been thoroughly compromised by all the post-death manhandling. No, we shall need to rely solely on the corpse itself to reveal any evidence.” He finished looking into the woman’s ears and turned his attention to the inside of her mouth. “We’ll need to get her undressed and examine the entire body.”

“Of course,” Lean said, though his jaw clenched at the idea.

After some awkward maneuvering, they managed to get Lizzie Madson’s multiple layers off, leaving the body naked except for her panties and knee-high stockings. Once laid out, the body was something of a disappointment. An old scar marred the left arm, but otherwise she had suffered no injuries worth mention. She simply didn’t fit with the pattern of the two prior victims. Lean was struck by the sense of the body’s frailty. The woman was thin, remarkably so, though he thought that it was in part due to her being dead. People always seemed to him to be perceptibly smaller, entirely less substantial, after dying.

“There just isn’t much to her, is there?”

Grey was gently pressing the meatier parts of the palm just at the base of her wrist. “True enough. There is something rather … ethereal to the body.” He took her by the shoulders and rolled her onto her side again. “And most peculiar is the complete lack of discoloration anywhere on the body.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve seen when a dead person lies in one position, how the blood naturally pools at the low point and the skin there becomes discolored, bruised-looking. If left in that position for long enough, the discoloration
will remain even if the body’s position is subsequently altered. Yet her skin is absolutely blanched all over.”

“The man who saw the body at Witchtrot Hill said she was very red in the face.”

Grey peered close at Lizzie Madson’s ashen face. Then he lurched toward her feet and yanked off her stockings.

“What are you doing?”

Grey didn’t answer. “The lamp, Lean.”

Lean picked up the lamp and held it near the corpse’s feet. Grey was holding up one ankle for close inspection. The deep imprint of rope marks was visible, circling around the lower calf several times.

“How did you know?”

“She was red in the face because her blood had rushed to her head. She’d been hung upside down, and the witness at Witchtrot Hill saw her shortly after.” Grey paused, his eyes running over the corpse once more. “That explains why no discoloration.”

Lean arched an eyebrow in puzzlement as he waited for further explanation.

“She’s suffered no injury of the extent that it would take. But if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was near wholly exsanguinated. Drained of blood.”

“I know what it means,” Lean said. “But how?”

“That is the mystery.”

Lean watched the progress as Grey began at the toes, searching between them for any cuts, bruising, discoloration, or even traces of needle marks. He continued upward, checking closely all the creases and wrinkles in the skin around the backs of the knees and elbows. When Grey reached the shoulder area, he let out a quick gasp. “What have we here?”

Lean moved in for a clearer view at her left underarm, where Grey pointed toward what looked like a sizable yellow spot.

“What is that?” asked Lean.

“Sealing wax.” Grey pried and scraped away the dried, puttylike substance. Beneath it was a jagged tear in the flesh, the edges of which were crusted with blood gone black. “He hung her upside down, then must have
managed to puncture the heart or the subclavian artery. Dr. Steig can tell us more after a postmortem.”

They set about dressing the body again.

“Now we just need to explain how and where we found the body. Any mention of these tombs and we’ll both be jailed,” Lean said.

“I’ll claim to have discovered her at some hidden location, away from here. An anonymous tip. The mayor will have nothing to complain about.”

Lean opened his mouth to comment but stopped at the sound of a dog’s bark, not too far off. He hurried to the door and stepped outside. Vague, dark shapes of tall grave markers were visible for a short distance before all was lost in the thick, misty air. Normally Lean would have looked out and seen a smattering of distant lights peeking from the thick, forested shores of Cape Elizabeth in the distance, across the Fore River. Tonight, however, there was only the gray shroud of fog and mist. A slight movement to his side caught Lean’s eye. He looked left and homed in on the gas lamps that dotted Vaughan Street. There, at the edge of a misty cone of light beneath one of the lampposts, he saw a figure in white, standing deathly still and seeming to stare back in his direction. In another second the figure slipped away, vanishing into the dark.