The Salem Witch Society (45 page)

N
ine hours later, Lean sat pressed up against a granite outcropping. The rumble of his stomach made him regret the way he’d forced down his supper of bangers and mash at the station when they met Walt McCutcheon to go over the plan once more. The sun was well gone, and a thin sliver of moon was just visible on the horizon. After half a minute of peering at his pocketwatch, he made out that it was almost ten o’clock. His knees ached from sitting motionless for so long, and he slowly set about stretching each leg several times. He held his revolver eight inches from his nose and checked for the third time that each round was loaded, then slipped the piece back into his coat pocket and glanced at the craggy summit of Gallows Hill. From this distance it would be almost impossible to see anyone up there. But if their theory was correct, a murder attempted there tonight would involve fire, and any flame would be visible to him the moment it was lit.

He listened in the darkness to the occasional noises that carried up from the town. In the lulls, only the sounds of night breezes and crickets reached him. Grey was somewhere off to his right, maybe a hundred yards away, also watching the hilltop. McCutcheon was posted near the bottom of the northern side of the hill, the point of easiest access or escape from the higher ground.

As he crouched, waiting for the unknown, Lean’s mind began to wander, carried along on the ebb and flow of dark minutes stretching into one another, indistinguishable and endless. He thought of his wife and the little life she carried inside her.

Scrape.

His head bolted
up. A definite noise on top of the hill. He squinted into the blackness. The weak crescent moon was half hidden by clouds. Lean slid his hand into his pocket and felt the cool wooden grip of his pistol. He got his feet firmly under him and listened like a robber with his ear against a safe.

Creak. A wooden noise—movement.

It was hard to judge the distance to the summit, maybe sixty yards, but it was over rocks and crags in utter darkness. Moving quickly would be dangerous, but opening his lamp would make himself a blazing target. There was still no sign of any definite motion. No light on the hill, no flame or even a spark. A loud thwack broke the stillness with no hint of regret. It was followed by three more identical sounds: something heavy striking home on wood or rock. Lean dashed forward, pistol drawn. The shuttered lamp dangled awkwardly from his left wrist as he fought to keep his balance while scrambling up the rocky slope. He tried to listen as he went, but the sounds of his own efforts made it hard to discern what was transpiring in front of him.

There was definite activity, a burst of frantic movement. He could make out at least one dark shape moving ahead. A few more strides and he came to within twenty yards of his goal. He paused, pistol aimed into the blackness. The moon came free of the clouds, and in the faint light he saw a figure before him, upright, arms outstretched.

“Move an inch and I’ll scatter your brains all over this hill,” Lean warned. The figure remained still, and Lean began to move closer. “Grey? You there?”

There was no answer.

Lean stepped to within ten yards of the figure. “You’ve got it, mister. Nice and still.” He slid the lantern down off his wrist so that he could hold the loop handle in his left hand. With his right, still aiming the pistol, he reached forward and flicked the shutter open. In the beam of light, he could finally see that the person before him was a dark-haired man. His arms were straight out at his sides, but the hands were empty and hanging limp. The man’s head was tilted slightly to one side, as if he were awaiting further instructions.

Lean moved forward,
and by the time he was ten feet away, he recognized the man: Geoffrey Blanchard.

“Grey? Where are you? I’ve got him. Grey!”

Lean stared at the man as the seconds passed with no answer. It dawned on him how very still his prisoner was. He moved closer, then reached forward and gave Blanchard a little shove. The man’s head slipped backward and farther to the side, revealing a deep red gash that stretched full across his neck.

“Bloody hell.” Lean stepped to one side and craned his own neck, now noticing the short post to which Blanchard had been lashed and the thin crossbeam that supported the dead man’s outstretched arms.

“Grey?” A burgeoning panic raised his voice to a shout.

A gunshot answered him from the bottom of the hill.

Lean bounded down the rocky slope, barely noticing how uneven the ground was. Over the sound of his own gasps, he could hear nothing other than a train whistle, still distant but drawing closer. The thought that the killer was fleeing into a populated town and that he might now manage an escape spurred Lean on. Halfway down, he found something of a path and barreled headlong the rest of the way. Once at the bottom, he dashed across a narrow field of scraggy, overgrown grass to reach the edge of the town. He passed by some small workshops and storehouses and soon had cobblestones under his feet.

He slowed his pace in order to get his bearings when another shot rang out, then a second following hard after. They were in front of him, slightly to his left. He ran forward again for a few blocks, passing into a residential neighborhood. He rounded a corner and saw two figures huddled not far from a streetlamp. With his gun lowered to his side, Lean hurried forward.

Perceval Grey glanced up at Lean’s approach. Grey was supporting Walt McCutcheon’s head with one arm. McCutcheon was breathing hard, almost hissing. As he moved closer, Lean saw that McCutcheon’s coat was open, and the handkerchief pressed to his side didn’t fully hide the dark stain on his shirt.

“How bad?”

“I don’t think it’s too serious,” answered
Grey.

“Easy for you to say.” McCutcheon managed a smile that instantly gave way to a pained grimace. Large beads of sweat had risen on his forehead.

“We should—” Lean’s suggestion was interrupted by the approaching train’s whistle.

“Go after the dirty little prick? You damn well should!” Spittle flew from McCutcheon’s lips. “I’ll be well enough.”

Faces had appeared in windows and doors. Lean called out, identifying himself as a police officer. He ordered one man to come attend McCutcheon while another was sent for a doctor. Then he and Grey hurried on through the streets in pursuit. Two blocks on, a voice called out to them from a second-story window.

“That way!” said a man, pointing. “He was headed toward the station.”

They hailed a passing hansom cab. Grey thrust several dollars into the driver’s hand and ordered him on to the train station with all possible speed. At that hour, the depot was well lit in comparison to the surrounding neighborhood. Lean abandoned his lamp and made for the front doors while Grey headed around the building.

As he stepped inside, Lean shot looks into every corner, taking in the entire waiting area. There was a lone ticket agent at the counter and half a dozen souls scattered about inside the small terminal, some seated on benches, others looking out the windows that faced the tracks. The killer was not there. Lean glanced about for other doors, saw only the exit to the boarding platform, and hurried out. A dozen people loitered on the hundred-foot-long platform, some with baggage, others with eyes aimed down one track. The lights of an approaching train could be seen a half mile away.

Before Lean could finish his visual sweep of the area, he heard a loud slap and a woman’s shrill voice call out, “You’re a disgrace!”

He looked to his right and saw a red-haired woman in a dark coat. Most of the other people were also looking, and the woman appeared startled to be the center of attention. Her body swayed for a moment, as if she were uncertain of whether to move. Embarrassed, she raised a hand to cover her face
and strode toward the doors to the terminal. As she moved away, Lean saw a small figure in black standing there.

Lean tightened his grip on his pistol. His eyes shot to the corner of the station, where Grey waited in the shadows. Lean walked toward the black-coated man. He could feel the killer’s eyes burning into him from beneath the wide rim of his black hat. The man thrust his right hand into his own pocket. Lean saw the bulge there and continued to move closer, thirty feet away now. The man took several steps back and slid behind a column. Grey ascended onto the far end of the platform. Lean noticed that Grey’s arm hung inconspicuously at his side, a revolver in his hand, as he too moved toward the killer, who was now surrounded.

“You’re finished!” Lean called out. “There’s nowhere to turn. Toss your gun out.”

If the killer answered, Lean didn’t hear him. There was a sudden blast of the train whistle as the arriving engine drew within a few hundred yards. Grey was circling, drawing closer while improving his angle on the killer. The black-coated man noticed this and took more slow steps backward, trying to keep distance between himself and his pursuers. He quickly ran out of space, coming to within feet of the platform’s edge, where it dropped away several feet to the tracks. The killer raised his arm and swung it back and forth, pointing his gun alternately at Lean and Grey like a wild clock pendulum.

“Drop your gun!” repeated Lean. He raised his left hand to the base of the pistol, steadying his right hand to fire. The approaching train was no more than thirty yards away, and Lean had no intention of letting the standoff last long enough for any passengers on that train to exit and risk getting shot. The killer threw a quick glance over his shoulder. When his head spun back around, Lean saw a look of sheer madness in the man’s eyes. The man grinned, whirled, and jumped down onto the tracks.

Lean dashed forward. He saw the black figure on all fours in the middle of the tracks, the train barreling down on him—ten feet away. The man was scrambling to gain his footing, desperately trying to force his body forward, out of the way of the oncoming engine. There was the piercing squeal
of the train’s brakes. Lean swung his arm around, his gun coming level with the killer. Before he could pull the trigger, the killer’s feet left the ground. Lean heard the sickening sound, audible even above the grinding metal brakes: the wet thud of a body giving way completely before the mass of the engine.

S
everal moments passed before the train slowed enough for Lean to jump aboard and commandeer a new lantern from a conductor who was floundering through an endless morass of half questions. Lean leaped off on the far side of the train and began to scour the ground. Grey appeared farther down alongside the train and called Lean over.

The bloodied mass on the ground was twisted about so that it took Lean a moment to make full sense of what he was seeing. Half of one leg had been ripped away, and what remained of the lower body was almost completely twisted about by the force of the blow, facing the wrong direction.

“He almost made it. Looked like he stumbled. Maybe McCutcheon’s shot to the leg the other night kept him from escaping.” Lean glanced at the mangled mass of bloody flesh and exposed bones that had once been the man’s legs.

“It will cheer McCutcheon’s heart to know he’s already gotten revenge on the man who shot him.” Grey knelt and shone his light directly onto the man’s face. It was bloodied and bruised from having struck the ground several times. He took a cloth and small flask of water from his equipment pack and wiped the dirt and gore from the dead man’s face. Lean recognized the features, made even more homely in the agony of death.

“The man who called himself Peter Chapman,” Grey said.

“Father Coyne’s assistant?” Lean had been so focused on the man’s injuries that he hadn’t even noticed the color of the man’s hair, his hat having been knocked away by the blow. “He’s not black-haired at all. As blond as a—”

“As blond as an undersize boy, smart and quiet. The kind who was barely worth noticing, but given to acts of vengeance. A boy familiar with Old Stitch, who also had access to the Black Book
while he was at the cathedral’s orphanage. Jack Whitten.”

Lean tried to process the announcement, fit it in with everything he’d learned and considered over the past three months of the investigation. But at that moment it was all too much, and his mind stubbornly returned to the dead body before him.

“But he’s blond. Boxcar Annie said he was dark. And the hairs on Maggie Keene’s body were black too.”

“Could have been dyed. I was a fool not to test them. Or Maggie Keene’s killer could have been dark-haired after all.” Grey drew a small glass vial from his kit.

“A second killer? You mean Geoffrey Blanchard? The two of them working together?”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Grey drew a pair of scissors from his pouch and snipped a pinch of hair from the dead man. He placed the hairs into the vial and secured the stopper. He then produced a small tin that contained papers and a dark ink pad and proceeded to take imprints of the dead man’s thumbs. “The local police are coming. I’ll leave it to you to explain the bare facts and take care of McCutcheon. That should give me ample time to head back up the hill to secure certain evidence from that body.” Grey slipped away before two Salem police officers approached from around the front of the train.

The next day Lean sank into the seat in their private compartment on the 1:25 northbound train and watched Grey reorganize all the equipment in his satchel. “Jack Whitten. I really thought it would turn out to be Geoffrey Blanchard. He was obviously disturbed, fascinated by the occult. Figured he had a grudge against Old Stitch that he carried over to other witches or sinners.”

“I wasn’t sure which of the two was the strongest suspect,” Grey said. “Of course, now it’s easy to see that Whitten
had to be involved all along.”

“Why’s that?” Lean asked.

“The killer had a knowledge of witchcraft generally and specific knowledge as to the location and contents of the Black Book. Jack Whitten spent time at the cathedral twenty years ago. It was during that time that the Harvard men came and copied the book. And around that time when Whitten was expelled for breaking in to the church office where the book was kept.”