Cradle to Grave (34 page)

Rees exhaled his breath very slowly.

“Do you think he murdered Maggie Whitney?” Maartje asked.

When Rees didn't answer, Lydia said, “It is one possibility.”

Maartje was silent a moment and then she said, “I can't blame him for it. She was a wicked, wicked woman.”

“I know you grieve still over the death of your baby girl,” Lydia said with warm sympathy.

“Not just that.” Maartje tossed her head. “Maggie was a harlot and a thief. I told you about the silver dollar.” She nodded vehemently in emphasis. “I daresay she was not able to steal enough money for her taxes. She tried to extort money from my uncle.”

“Your uncle?” Lydia repeated.

“Why would she apply to your uncle?” Rees asked.

“I don't know.” The flush in her cheeks darkened. “But I heard her. I distinctly heard her telling him he owed her.”

“When was this?” Rees asked, trying to fit this new fact into his head. Could Mr. Gray be Judah's father? Couldn't be. Mr. Gray was sixty at least and Judah barely two. Maggie would have been twenty-three or -four, no more.

“What did he say?” Lydia asked.

“No.” Maartje looked at her in surprise. “No, of course. I'll wager Maggie went around to many men asking for money. She … she…” Tears filled her eyes. Rees watched her in consternation. Lydia put her hand upon Maartje's wrist. Rees withdrew to the door to wait out the emotional scene.

Maartje quickly mastered herself and Lydia, with a quick glance at Rees, said, “I'll come again, I promise, to see how you and Jacob are faring.” Rees helped her into her cloak. She linked her arm with his, and they went through the door into the cold outside.

“So Maartje did see the pastor and Maggie together,” Rees said as they descended the stairs. That was the answer he had been anticipating.

“Is that enough proof?”

“Maybe,” Rees said. Mrs. Griffin's account was just what he'd expected, so why wasn't he happier about it? “I must speak to the constable.”

Lydia nodded, her gaze snared by the buds upon the trees and shrubs. The melting snow and mud were harbingers of spring. “My bees will be waking soon,” she said. “They'll need me. I want to go home.”

Rees nodded. “I miss my loom. I have trouble thinking without it.”

She unfolded his hand and looked at the calluses on his palms: calluses from holding the reins and chopping wood. “You've been working hard anyway,” she said.

*   *   *

On the way home, Rees took a detour to the log meetinghouse. He hadn't been sure Vermette was in town, but he noticed as he went past that the front door was unlocked and flung wide to the air. He pulled into the yard. He asked Lydia to remain in the buggy while he went inside to investigate. Sunlight streamed through the windows and glowed upon the cross under the central window over the altar.

Rees paused inside the lobby, listening. He knew someone was here, a vibration in the air betrayed another presence, but he saw no one. He began walking down the central aisle, his footsteps echoing in the silence.

Reverend Vermette popped abruptly through the door to the stairs. Rees wondered what had attracted the pastor upstairs, to the gallery. When he saw Rees walking down the aisle the pastor stopped short. “Back from circuit?” Rees asked.

“Preparing for services on Sunday,” the pastor replied brusquely. Rees interpreted Vermette's belligerence as a guilty conscience.

“I'm glad to see you. I have a question. Did Maggie Whitney approach you for money?”

“Why would you think so?” Vermette's eyes twitched away from Rees, looking everywhere but at his visitor.

“Did you give her any?”

“Of course not.” Realizing he'd been trapped into telling the truth, Vermette glared.

Rees glowered back. “You know, don't you, that you are Judah's father?”

“I'm not … we…” A mottled flush rose into his neck.

“You were seen coming into this meetinghouse with Maggie many times.”

“I never brought her here,” he declared.

“Miss Pike isn't here, so at least tell the truth to me,” Rees said. “You and Maggie formed a bond when you were counseling her aunt. You maybe even made plans to marry.”

“How do you know that?” Vermette collapsed into the front pew.

“And then you met Miss Pike, the affluent Miss Pike. By then Maggie was pregnant again. Is that why you strangled her and threw her into the grave?”

Vermette stared at Rees for a moment and then leaped over the few feet separating them, his arms flailing. Taken completely by surprise, Rees took several blows before the simmering beast within him rose and he reacted with a strike of his own. Taller and heavier, and well used to fist fighting, Rees's punch struck home and Vermette went down.

Rees flashed back to his battle with his brother-in-law, Sam Prentiss. For a moment Rees smelled blood and his heart began to pound. He couldn't catch his breath. Then, with a shudder, he returned to the present.

That brief hesitation gave Vermette enough time to jump to his feet and run. Rees heard the back door slam and, a few minutes later, the sound of horse hooves. He realized then that his nose was bleeding, dripping onto his unbuttoned greatcoat to the linen vest and shirt below. He pinched his nostrils together to stem the flow and headed toward the staircase. He wanted to know what Vermette had been doing upstairs.

He traversed the narrow tower to the loft above. But although he searched every inch of the loft and the nave below it again, remembering with every moment the touch of Vermette's hands on his shoulders when he'd almost fallen, he found nothing. Finally he gave up and returned to his buggy.

“What happened?” Lydia breathed when she saw his swollen nose and the blood on his shirt and vest.

“Reverend Vermette hit me.”

“He's smaller and weaker than you are.” He saw the fear in her eyes, that he might have hurt Reverend Vermette as he had Sam Prentiss.

“I didn't attack him,” he said, his tone sharp with impatience. “He hit me first.”

“Oh Will,” she said, laying her hand upon his face, “you must learn to turn the other cheek. Your temper gets you into trouble.” Rees had never found that doctrine a successful one, but he didn't want to worry her.

“I know I must learn to tame the beast,” he admitted, taking up the reins and urging Ares into motion.

“I need to lay a cold compress on your nose,” Lydia said, shaking her head at him.

“My nose isn't bleeding anymore.” His words came out slurred.

“Your nose is swollen.” Lydia leaned forward to examine the injury. “Why did Reverend Vermette hit you?”

“I asked him if Judah was his child, and he came at me. I hit him only once and he ran.”

“Do you think he murdered Maggie?” Lydia asked.

Rees sighed. “Probably.”

“What a pity,” Lydia said.

They soon arrived in front of the cabin. Rees threw the horse blanket over the gelding and followed his wife inside. She had already put a roll of linen in a basin of cold water.

“Take off your coat,” she said. As Rees hung his coat upon a peg by the door, he thought again of Maggie's cloak. Where was it? “Change to a clean shirt and I'll soak this one, otherwise the blood will stain.” Rees nodded and did as he was told. When he returned to the main room, Lydia put his stained shirt in a basin of cold water and pressed Rees into a seat at the table. A cold damp rag went on his bruised nose and another pad upon the back of his neck.

Forced into inactivity, Rees's thoughts darted from Reverend Vermette to Owen Randall to Silas Tucker. Silas's unexpected generosity in paying Maggie's taxes remained surprising. How Rees missed his loom! In previous such situations, he would sit down to weave and the turbulence in his mind would smooth out. Without it, his thoughts moved like lightning, fast and uncontrolled. He rose to circle the tiny cabin. Lydia scolded him and ordered him back to his chair. He obeyed but stood up again so many times Lydia finally lost patience and told him to stop.

“I'll chop some wood,” he said and left the cabin for the back of the lean-to. His previous chopping had left a good supply, but Rees needed to think. He picked up the axe in his right hand and, holding a log with his left hand, swung. The log split in half. He swung again and the half split into quarters. He fell into a rhythm, swinging the axe into the logs, the crack of impact punctuating every stroke. He knew people had lied to him. What was Mary Pettit keeping back?

And suddenly he understood something completely unrelated. Throwing down the axe, he ran into the cabin. Lydia looked up, alarmed. “What's the matter?” she asked.

“If Silas had evidence indicating who Maggie's killer was, he must have hidden his proof here,” Rees said. “And then paid the taxes on this house. He knew as long as the children lived here, no one would be able to come in and search.”

“That's why he put the children out, for privacy?”

“Yes. Oh, I have no doubt he would have ejected them later, when it suited him.” Rees's words trailed away as he glanced around him. There were so few hiding places here, and Silas had had very little time.

“It must be in the bedroom,” Lydia said, dropping Rees's shirt into the basin. “I would have found something hidden in this room.”

“But I searched the bedroom,” Rees protested weakly, dropping into step behind his wife.

“But not for this,” she pointed out. Four pairs of eyes stared at Rees and Lydia as the children turned to watch.

Working in silence, Rees and Lydia went over everything in the fusty room. Rees lifted the corncob mattress while Lydia took down the clothing from the pegs. She turned out every pocket, finally coming upon a small Bible. “Will,” she said, her voice trembling with excitement. “Look at this.”

He glanced at the little Bible. “I saw that before.” It was not the large family Bible, but the most common sort of cheap Bible, sized to fit in a pocket and often given out by preachers so the members of their flock could pray anywhere.

“Look at the inscription,” she urged him.

Rees took the Bible and flipped open the front cover. Dark brown stains, both mud and blood, occluded the dedication and the signature, but when Rees held the book up to the light he could read it. “To M, the companion of my soul. Abner Vermette.”

“He must have given this to Maggie,” Rees said. “I know he and Miss Pike have been handing out these Bibles to likely congregants.”

“So Silas knew Reverend Vermette had motive to murder Maggie,” Lydia said with a nod. “But how did he find the Bible?”

“I'll wager he found it in the grave,” Rees said. He thought back to his arrival in the churchyard the day he examined Maggie's body. “Silas had left by the time I arrived. The Bible probably fell in the grave when Vermette threw her body down.” Rees clenched the Bible tightly, angry at Silas once again. “And instead of saying anything, Silas took the Bible, no doubt intending to use it as leverage against the minister.” He looked down at Lydia. “I must take this to the constable right away.”

Chapter Thirty

By the time he reached town, Rees's nose was swollen and sore, but the bleeding had stopped completely. He did not remember that today was Friday until he found the square congested with wagons and horses. Although not the type of market held on Saturdays during the summer, the local farmers came into town at week's end to pick up supplies. And also socialize. When he went into the tavern he saw it was crowded as well.

Cooper waved him over and pointed to the seat across the table. “What happened to your nose? Did that fiery redheaded wife of yours lose patience with you at last?”

“Vermette hit me.”

“Vermette?” Cooper couldn't hide his surprise. “He's the most peaceful man I know.”

“I asked him if Maggie had approached him for money. He admitted she had. Then I accused him of fathering Judah and strangling Maggie because of it.”

“You didn't.” Leaning forward, Cooper thumped the table. “Have you lost your wits?”

“Mrs. Griffin said she saw Maggie and Vermette together.”

Cooper jerked, startled. “She did? What did he say?”

“That's when he punched me.”

“Some men would say you deserved it,” Cooper said with a chuckle.

Rees brushed away the comment. “Look at this,” he said, tossing the Bible onto the table. “This is important. Silas hid it in Maggie's cottage.” Cooper looked up at Rees and then at the book. He picked it up and examined it.

“I'll wager that's Maggie's blood. Look at the inscription,” Rees urged him.

Cooper did as he was told. His eyes widened but he shook his head. “This isn't enough to even cause suspicion,” he said. “We have no proof this is Maggie's blood.”

“Mud and blood?” Rees leaned forward. “It was taken from the grave, Cooper, and Silas was murdered for it.”

“We have no proof of that either,” Cooper said. Disappointment silenced Rees and he collapsed into the seat next to the constable.

Cooper eyed Rees's expression. “Oh, all right. The Bible does tie everything together, but remember, fathering a bastard or two does not make a man a murderer.”

Rees sighed, wondering if Cooper saw any difference between the treatment of Reverend Vermette and of Maggie. Dover Springs had pilloried her over her out-of-wedlock children and she'd been given no chance at all to defend herself. But no one would blame the pastor. “So he escapes justice,” Rees said in a bitter tone.

“I'll talk to Reverend Vermette and Miss Pike,” the constable said at last. “That's the most I can do. I can't arrest a minister on this, especially when he is engaged to wed the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in town. Not without a credible eyewitness or a confession. That's the law.”