Death in Salem (33 page)

“She wanted to come,” he said.

Without replying, Xenobia fetched Lydia a glass of cold tea. Rees waved away her offer of ale. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“Master William doesn't quite know what to do with me,” she replied with the ghost of a grin. “His father's will left everything to him, but I was always Peggy's, and now that she prepared a Letter of Manumission…” Her usual smile faded. “Any news of Peggy?”

“I saw her,” Rees said. Lydia glanced at him in surprise and he realized he'd sounded angry. Taking a deep breath, he went on. “She was dressed in men's clothing. Do you know anything about that? And she was in the company of Philippe Benoit.” He hesitated, wondering if he should question her about John Hull. Xenobia spoke into the silence.

“Miss Peggy kept her own secrets.”

“But?” Lydia encouraged her. “Tell us the truth, Xenobia.”

“She didn't want to remain her father's secretary forever,” the servant blurted. “A curiosity. You know?”

Lydia nodded. “I do.”

Rees looked at his wife in wonder.

“Especially since, in the last few years, she ran her father's company. Kept the books, paid the crews, arranged for cargo, everything. But it was all under her father's name.” Xenobia looked at Lydia, who nodded again in understanding.

“She did all the work but her father took the credit. And Peggy owned none of it. And I'll guess she earned no money from her labors either.”

“Of course not. And Peggy wanted something of her own.”

“Then, when William returned, he began stepping into the realm that had once been solely hers,” Rees said.

Xenobia nodded. “She'd already begun her own company when her brother came home. I guessed what she was up to when I found breeches in her room, and a blond mustache and the starch for putting it on.”

“Did you know about the house in Hulls Cove?” Rees asked.

Xenobia's eyes widened and she shook her head. “No. But it makes sense. Especially after William returned. He began checking all the bills and making a list of everything in the cellar. Peggy is clever. She must have known she couldn't run her business out of their house forever. Besides, things kept going missing—not just those items she took because they belonged to her—and she didn't want to be accused of theft.”

“No one noticed until William came home?” Lydia asked, sounding surprised.

“Well, Jacob Boothe began to notice,” Xenobia said. “A lot of little things disappeared. Peggy was worried, too.”

“And Philippe Benoit? How did she meet him?” Rees asked.

Xenobia lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “She met many sailors and ship captains through her father. That Mr. Benoit never came to the Boothes's house, though, so I don't know.”

“So, Peggy knew the tunnels well,” Rees said. “As John Hull, she would have traveled them often. She knew sailors, and probably a number of ruffians among them.” Rees sighed. Xenobia stared at him.

“You think she murdered her father? No, that can't be true. No. Peggy loved her father.” Her eyes blinked convulsively. “No, I won't believe it.”

“She would have been very angry with him when he transferred her tasks to William,” Rees said. “She knew the tunnels. She knew many sailors and I'm sure some of them would take a man's life without a pause.”

“No,” Xenobia repeated, shaking her head. “I won't believe it. I won't.”

Rees thought Xenobia must have believed it; she was trembling all over.

“What do you know that inspires such fear in you?” Lydia asked, her voice soothing and gentle. “What do you know about Peggy? Or is it one of the others, William or Matthew?” Xenobia shook her head again. “What did Peggy and her father argue about? The whole truth.” An involuntary shudder rippled through Xenobia's body. Rees turned his gaze upon Lydia. All of her attention was wholly focused upon Xenobia. “Did Mr. Boothe find out about Peggy's activities?” Xenobia offered the merest shake of her head.

“He didn't know about the—the men's clothing or her business as a ship owner,” Xenobia said. “And he wouldn't believe it, if anyone had told him.”

“So, what was the argument about? Philippe Benoit?”

“No. None of us ever heard about him. The argument was something personal. Nothing to do with anything else.”

Lydia nodded as though she understood everything now. “Not about Peggy's inappropriate behavior then. Not entirely anyway. What was the argument about?”

Xenobia's eyes rounded and her brown irises moved rapidly from side to side but she pressed her lips together as though afraid to say anything.

Now we are to the crux of it, Rees thought, eyeing Xenobia's hunted expression with interest. “Come on, Xenobia,” he said in a low voice, “if the quarrel had nothing to do with Mr. Boothe's death, you have no reason to keep the secret.” She stared at her dark hands, clenched tightly together in her lap. Dear Lord, Rees thought, she does think Peggy had something to do with her father's murder.

“Xenobia,” Lydia said in a soft and understanding tone, “Jacob Boothe is dead. Murdered. And we've already discovered Peggy's secrets. Maybe the reason for that quarrel is something that should be told now.”

No one spoke. The silence was becoming unbearable even for Rees when Xenobia burst into speech. “Miss Anstiss was in such pain, always such pain. She drank straw tea every day. All times of the day. It was the only thing that gave her relief. Poor lady. Well, Master Jacob decided she should have no more tea. She should overcome her pain without help. He took away the opium. Miss Peggy didn't agree. She argued with him but his mind was made up. He wouldn't listen. Oh my, how Miss Anstiss suffered. Tossing in her bed and screaming, diarrhea so terrible she was soon too weak to stand.” She paused, shaking her head at the memory.

“And Peggy didn't agree?” Lydia murmured.

“No. I— Sometimes I got some straw and made her a little tea. Just to ease the pain for a little while. But Peggy, well, one day she slipped into her mother's room with a sack. The best opium from Turkey, she said. But her mother had to keep it secret.”

“And were they able to keep Jacob Boothe from knowing about it?” Rees asked.

A furrow appeared in Xenobia's brow. “I'm not sure. Certainly my lady's pain eased and she spent a more restful night. But two days later she died in her sleep.”

Rees, who hadn't expected such an abrupt and tragic end to the story, started. Raising his eyes, he met Lydia's gaze. He saw his own confusion mirrored in her expression. “But why did you feel this needed to be kept a secret?” he asked Xenobia. “The poor lady died.”

She heaved a sigh. “Perhaps because that was the first time I knew Peggy was into something she shouldn't be. She had so little money of her own and yet she appeared in her mother's bedroom with an expensive amount of that medicine. And, when I put that together with the starch and the breeches in her room … well, I knew Miss Peggy was consorting with the devil.”

“You thought she was planning to kill her mother?” Lydia's voice rose and broke with surprise.

“I know, I know.” Xenobia nodded. “It seems silly now. But I wondered if Peggy had decided to end her mother's suffering with a pillow.”

“Not very likely,” Lydia said. “Not after acquiring the opium. If she were going to murder her mother, Peggy would have done so before supplying the medicine that relieved her mother's pain. Purchasing a large quantity of medicine and then murdering the patient doesn't make sense.”

“I think you should put your mind at rest,” Rees said.

“But you should have heard Miss Peggy and her father,” Xenobia said, the line between her brows deepening. “Screaming at one another. The two people who loved each other best in all the world. It was terrible. Why, Mr. Boothe told Peggy she would never marry if she didn't study to become more womanly, like her sister.”

“You were afraid the murderer was Peggy,” Lydia murmured. “All along that's what you suspected.”

“But Peggy actively encouraged her brother to employ me,” objected Rees, although he knew sometimes the people most eager for his services were the guiltiest. He hoped Xenobia would lose that frightened expression.

“She is fond of me,” said Xenobia. “She didn't want me to hang.”

“And you of her. So you were afraid that, because Peggy and her father quarreled,” said Lydia briskly, “she must have killed her father.” Xenobia turned anguished eyes to Lydia and nodded.

“If she murdered her mother and he guessed, well, she would have had to. Yes?”

“But if she did not murder her mother, she had no reason to kill her father,” Rees said, wishing he had more comfort to offer her. For a moment they sat in an unhappy silence. Then Xenobia jumped to her feet.

“But I am forgetting my manners.” She pulled a crock from the back of the cupboard and put a number of small biscuits upon a plate. She made coffee for Rees, and, while it perked cheerfully over the fire, she sat down beside Lydia. Rees sat in silence at the table, his thoughts entirely occupied with Xenobia's disclosure. He did not listen to the women and could not have said what they discussed. The memory that kept recurring to him concerned his first visit to the Boothe home, for the averil, after Mrs. Boothe's funeral and interment. After Dickie's little scene, Jacob had approached his daughter. Surely, if he'd known Peggy's secret, he would have been angry and upset. But she had been the angry one, not her father. Maybe Peggy blamed her father for her mother's death.

Rees knew he was still missing something, and it nagged at him like a sore tooth.

When they left the house an hour later, Lydia said, “I saw that look on your face. Despite what you said to reassure Xenobia, you really do suspect Peggy. Don't you?”

Rees hesitated but admitted the truth. “This looks bad for her,” he said. “She had reason, or thought she had anyway, and opportunity. I still don't know what she might have used for a weapon, but she knows the tunnels as well as any man. And then there is Isabella Porter. We know none of the Boothe children wanted to see their father with another woman.”

“But Georgianne assured us that neither she nor her cousin served as Jacob Boothe's mistress,” Lydia objected.

“Yes,” Rees agreed, looking down at his wife with affection. “But none of the Boothes heard that assurance. And they probably wouldn't believe it anyway. You remember, I told you Matthew and Betsy were terrified that their father's liaison would bring shame upon the family. And might cost them their inheritance besides. And that urchin Al said he saw a woman entering the house not too long before the fire began.”

“I don't want to believe it of Peggy,” Lydia said in a small voice. “She always seemed so honest, so straight.”

“Yes,” Rees agreed. He felt his mouth twist. “I don't like even considering such a possibility. But she has the passion and the strength of will. Certainly more than Matthew,” he added. “That boy came near to fainting at the sight of blood. But Peggy, well, she didn't like seeing it, but she did not weaken. And she brought me down into the tunnel and watched me examine the floor. She could give Matthew lessons in character.” Despite himself, he admired her.

“I hope you're wrong,” Lydia said. Rees heard the grief and regret in her voice, as well as the fear that he wasn't. “But if you're right, well, Peggy is beyond the reach of Salem's law now. Any punishment meted out to her must come from God and her own conscience.”

“She'll never be able to come home now,” Rees said regretfully. Maybe she would prefer that, but he doubted it.

*   *   *

When they approached Mrs. Baldwin's Emporium, Rees saw an unusual number of people, mostly men but with a few women scattered among them, congregating around the front of the store. “Something's happened,” he said, increasing his pace. Panting, Lydia tried to keep up. As they neared the store, they saw that the front door was closed. Rees tried the knob. The door was locked. Realizing that the crowd was even thicker in the lane, by the back fence, although some of the onlookers were beginning to drift away, Rees broke into a run.

He pushed his way through the throng, right up to the back gate. This too was locked. “Mrs. Baldwin,” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Mrs. Baldwin.” In the pause that followed, he turned around and bellowed at the people behind him. “Go away. Nothing to see here. Get out of here, now.” Folding his arms, he stood sentinel right in front of the gate.

Lydia panted up to stand by his side.

Rees heard the bar across the inside of the gate being removed. He turned and pushed the gate open, urging Lydia inside before he whipped in after her. He shut the gate behind him and, taking the bar from Mrs. Baldwin, threw it across the hooks.

Then he inspected Mrs. Baldwin. She was weeping. “What happened?” Lydia asked, putting a hand upon the other woman's arm.

“I tried to stop them,” Mrs. Baldwin said. “I really did. But they took Annie.”

 

Chapter Thirty-one

The clamor of the crowd outside the gate, almost unnoticed before, suddenly seemed very loud. Rees stared at Mrs. Baldwin.

“Who took Annie?” he asked. “Who?”

Lydia shook her head at him. “Let's get you into the kitchen,” she said to Mrs. Baldwin.

“You've got to go after them,” Mrs. Baldwin cried. Putting an arm around the woman's shoulders, Lydia drew her toward the house.

“You must tell us the whole story first.”

They crossed the yard and went in through the back door. While Lydia pressed Mrs. Baldwin into a chair, Rees, who could not sit still, filled the teakettle with water from the jug and put it over the fire.

“Who took Annie?” Lydia asked.