The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (16 page)

BOOK: The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin
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“Mr. Cole!” his wife, who had been growing increasingly distraught, said. “We've had quite enough.”

“Yes, of course, you are right, my dear.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked in mock helplessness at Browne. “Let me say only that Henry is alive today owing to his simplicity and inability to speak for himself. Some have propounded castration, others banishment, still others that he be locked away until his death. But nothing has come of such proposals. Some say Jacob restrains him, but one's as bad as the other. And more's the blame to Jacob since he's not a simpleton, merely a dizzard.”

“And the connection with Coffin?” Browne asked.

“I was coming to that. I understand Coffin hired them once or twice for labor. It seems the brothers and Higgins are the only ones he ever hired, excepting the original carpenters who built his house back in . . . wasn't it forty-four, dear?”

“I believe so,” Mrs. Cole said. She was shaking her head, a pained look on her face. “Mr. Browne,” she said, changing the subject, “would you not come to our merriment Thursday evening next? Thomas Andros will be here with his music.”

“That would be delightful, Mrs. Cole.” He asked what hour but barely heard her reply. He had so little time, he felt, to conduct what other investigations he might that he pushed ahead, saying to Cole: “There are no others, then, Mr. Cole?”

“I am sorry to say no. Or none that I have been able to discover. You may of course inquire of anyone, but all seem equally in the dark on this matter. These are Coffin's recent associates.”

“A small but wondrous strange collection.”

“A menagerie,” Cole said and laughed. “They will be difficult to question. It seems Dr. Sedley may be away on some expedition. But due back soon. The brothers Fletcher are closer by, cast in two actions to the value of about six pounds, subsequent to a hearing to be held tomorrow. You might join us then to see what you make of these two before you question them on this other matter. The widow Hussey you may handle as you wish, or not at all, ask me. She has not talked sense for ten years.”

“I thank you for the information, Mr. Cole. My time, as you know, is not so free as it was. Yet I'll pursue these people you mention. I believe Mr. Coffin can be found.”

“Good, Richard. All you can do is pursue him. And I understand that you are a man of many responsibilities to your family and associates now.” Cole stopped and rose from the table. They all rose and Cole, excusing them from his wife for a few minutes and refilling their winecups, brought Browne aside into the next room.

“I can't but think that this private journal you spoke of may be more productive of witnesses,” Cole said once they stood alone in the room. “If there was some adultery or other evil doings come to light.”

“So there seems to have been, Mr. Cole. But by her own account, and everything I've seen, there is no clear cause for that woman's death, and the brutalities she suffered.”

“Such is often the case, or so it seems.” He mused a moment. “Ah yes, adultery is that common evil which produces a whole race of kindred evils.”

“We are looking at much more than adultery here,” Browne said, “from the start.”

“Just so,” Cole replied. “And with attendant evils. And perhaps even with things separate and darker still.”

“The whole matter may be more murky now than when I began.”

“Not so, Richard! Not so. You have been a tremendous help since your arrival.”

“But you, Sir, seem to have guessed nearly as much as I know by all my researches.”

“Well, experience must count for something,” Cole said and laughed. “And I hear many things about town. Moreover, need I remind you that history is replete with the debris of those who have believed that love excuses all.”

“Or rather that lust excuses all.”

“People mean what they believe, and do not make such distinctions. They believe only what they believe, so to speak. What is real, the case or circumstances or even the feeling, is not the issue, is it?”

“Perhaps not,” Browne answered. He thought about it. Love excuses all. Yes, so we believe by our acts. It was simply human nature again. And by the other face of the coin, hate would excuse all, or vengeance as hatred. Yet there was no use in such speculations at this point. He was thinking, as he excused himself to be returning home, that already his self-imposed deadline was disintegrating. One month! He himself could be such a fool. It would have to be, somehow, a matter of balancing several projects, not a series of deadlines.

Suppose he were able to free Higgins of suspicion in Mistress Coffin's death, at least? Would not that be a worthy service to his friend Elizabeth Higgins? And if Higgins were guilty, especially of such a terrible murder, he, Browne, would be able to lay to rest the question of Higgins' whereabouts, guilt, and true relations to his own family. The last, of course, did not bode well. Perhaps Higgins would have learned his lesson; perhaps they could be reconciled after the truth, Jared and Elizabeth. That would be in any case no longer any of his personal concern.

XVI

When Richard Browne walked into the inquest concerning the Fletcher brothers—held in the hall of Cole's house—the testimony had already begun. A young woman was testifying that upon returning from a quilting party, before her parents returned from a neighbor's harvest, she found that someone had forced his way into her house.

The empty house had been ransacked, she said, but at that time she could not have said what might be missing. Searching among the debris of the keeping room with a mind to run over to her neighbor Adams, she heard a stirring from an adjacent storage room. She was so frightened that she could not run to the neighbor's house. But hearing a sort of grunting noise from the storage room, she believed one of her family to be hurt and rushed in. She stumbled upon the accused, Henry Fletcher, lying amongst her and her mother's clothes with his breeches pulled down.

What, Cole asked, was the man doing?

The young woman blushed. Cole asked her again.

“He were jiggering his yard, Sir,” she blurted. Her face turned bewildered and then red. She looked suddenly at her shoes.

There was a silence in the room. The older Fletcher brother, a man of twenty-two or three, began to giggle uncontrollably.

“Silence!” Cole commanded. “Now tell us what it was you saw.”

She failed to speak up, so Cole, growing impatient, insisted, his voice reverberating over the heads of the assembly.

“Well, he had a stocking in one hand, my mother's I believe.” She stopped. “And his yard in t'other. Against the stocking.”

Jacob Fletcher began to snicker uncontrollably again. Henry slouched, his mouth open and his eyes half closed, as if he were unaware of the proceedings. His great body was muscular but already tending toward fat. His posture on the bench was marked by utter indolence and unconcern.

“And what did he then?” Cole's voice boomed.

“He lay there till it were all finished, Sir. His eyes were closed and he did not see me till he sort of wakes up. Then he sees me watching him, too surprised to move.” She suddenly looked up and around the room. “He jumps up, makes like a growling, pulled up his breeches, and run fast as he could right past me and out of the house. Fast as he could. He must've believed my family returned. That was my luck, Sir.”

She completed her testimony by detailing her clothing among the pile—stockings, a shirt, petticoats, et cetera.

Then the mother testified and detailed which clothes had been hers. Later, the father listed all the articles missing from the house—two firearms, a sword, three knives, an Indian tomahawk, some foodstuff (mostly dried corn) that had been stored in an upstairs room, and a loaf of bread from the hearth.

Standing in the back of the room, Richard Browne had a momentary vision of the brothers stalking about the empty house, gratifying any impulse that might take them, seeking any loot, boasting to one another of their finds and fantasies. He saw too the simpleton lying in the pile of women's clothing.

He despaired at the prospect of talking to these two men. What possible profit to him could there be in it? Yet how could he not try?

Now two neighbors of the family, men, were making their statements. They had both joined the young woman's father
and gone after the Fletchers. Both Fletchers were discovered in a wigwam they had built well into the forest beyond town. In this wigwam was a cooking pot, foodstuffs, women's clothing, and a large cache of weapons. All of the clothes and weapons had been identified through depositions now before the magistrate. The discovery of precisely the weapons and some plate missing from the maid's house, they said, suggested that the elder Fletcher had left his younger brother behind to take his pleasures in the ladies' clothing while he made off with his booty.

A succession of witnesses followed, each one revealing similar facts. Browne left well before the testimony ended.

Early the following day Cole led Browne into the reconstructed barn that served as a town pound and jail. Shackled in their corner, the Fletchers assumed Richard Browne to be some high magistrate to take their statements or direct their removal elsewhere, perhaps the county jail. It was only after realizing that Browne wanted to question them about an entirely different matter that Jacob began to talk.

Yes, he said, they had on a few occasions worked for Mr. Coffin. The pay was good. What business, Jacob wanted to know, had Mr. Browne with Coffin and the brothers?

“We are trying to find Mr. Coffin,” Browne said.

“We?”

“Mr. Cole and I.”

“Well we don't know because we wasn't never told where he's going,” Jacob said.

“Never told you? When?”

“Before he moved, I mean.”

“Moved?” Browne asked. He was surprised, but saw they knew something after all. Yet he did not relish dragging every hidden detail from simpletons and rogues. The odors of unwashed men, of confined animals and offal, nauseated him.

“Come, Fletcher!” Cole said. “If you speak to us, and the truth, we may find you some mercy in your present troubles. You know you are both in for many stripes at the very least. Had this simpleton touched the daughter he would be in for a hanging. Better you were in England, ask me, for blinding and castration. We just might make an example of you as it is.” He stared at Fletcher in disgust. “Now, what services had you performed for Coffin relative to his removal?”

“We'd done a job for him long time ago that was the last one.”

“When?”

“Two years ago, wasn't it?” He looked down at his brother, who had remained slouched in his corner. Henry said nothing and gave no indication of having followed the questioning. “Maybe last year?”

“What kind of job?” Browne asked.

“Some shipping. And finding some people.”

“Who? What shipping?”

“It were just toting lots of old boxes to a ship bound for Salisbury, Gloucester, and Boston.”

“What people?”

“Oh, just some people owed him money. Not from around here, Sir. He paid us well not to give no names, and promised to curse us if we ever told a soul. He would too, that one. So we haven't.” He swelled out his chest like a bad actor. “And we won't. Not if they torture us even!” He looked back at the straw-covered floor. “It's just collecting money owed, like I say. And nothing to do with where he might of gone to.” He paused to look at Browne. “You might ask Black Ned, the Negro truckman. He finds boats for anyone wants goods or persons shipped upriver. Or other parts. Mr. Coffin's hired him out.”

“And you have,” Cole interrupted, speaking slowly, “on your souls, no knowledge of his whereabouts?”

“None, hope to die, Sir. That's all the truth, just as I told.
You'll get us mercy, Sir, like you promised?” He jerked his brother up to stand beside him.

Cole looked at them in disgust. “Mercy?” he said. “What business have such long-shanked rogues with mercy? Count yourselves lucky if you are not hanged as the issue of this.” He glanced again at Browne, then back to the brothers, nodding particularly toward Henry. “See that this offal eats his waterlily roots each day. As to mercy, we shall see, according to your current merit, whether you be hanged or no.” He motioned Browne to leave with him. As they turned, Jacob called after them: “We'd be most thankful, Sirs. Hire us out sometime, and see if we don't do a job for you!”

Browne looked at Cole as they left. “Henry, the dumb one,” he said,
“non compos mentis?”

“I should think not, Richard. He is neither a natural fool, nor a lunatic. And as for his memory, well there is hardly a question of his gaining or losing it.” He shook his head and murmured: “Bots that crawl on the beast's tail.”

“‘The ravens,'” Browne quoted, “‘shall pick out the eyes of such in the valley.'”

BOOK: The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin
4.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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