In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (24 page)

And so to bed.

Good evening, Jaimy. I hope you are safe and well. You probably haven’t got word yet on what has happened to us, and that’s just as well, but I am fine, or as well as can be expected. We are in a nice routine now and the girls are gaining in confidence with this hunger strike. I got us some wash water this morning and just how I got it I may tell you about sometime after we’ve been married for fifty years or so, or I may not. This morning, after everyone had washed, we had Dance Instruction and then French and then Chorus—Hepzibah led us in Mr. Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum,” and it was lovely—you should have heard it. Then we held a meeting and told the girls what we’re going to do tomorrow with the strike, and they are ready to go. We had a game and then we had Storytime. Jaimy, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve been telling them of our adventures of late, knowing how proper you are, having been brought up right as you were, but the girls seem to enjoy it so…so I know you’ll forgive me. I’m up to the part where I threw my ring down at your feet and ran off. When I think how different my life would have been had I not done that…Ah, well. We had “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” as the evening’s hymn and that was nice—I’ve always liked that one. When we all stretched out to sleep, that Connie Howell said we should all recite one prayer together and I said she could pray out loud if she wanted, and if she kept it short, but that I would pray to myself And this right here is my prayer.

G’night, luv.

John Higgins

The Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls

Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts,
USA

May 28, 1806

Lieutenant James Fletcher Bartleby’s Inn

West Street

London, England

My Dear Mister Fletcher,

It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you some disquieting news.
Our[_ Miss Faber has gone missing and is presumed dead._]
p. A boating party carrying the young ladies of the Lawson Peabody School on an outing apparently foundered on the rocks of an island shore. The presumption here is that the boat was swamped and the girls drowned. Personal articles have washed up and one body has been found.

Now that I have given you the worst of the news, I will tell you of some events that I feel might give you some hope.

Upon my receiving the dreadful news of the accident, I went directly down to the courthouse, where I had been told evidence of the disaster was being collected. Many soaked bonnets, shawls, purses were spread out on a bench in an anteroom and the body of Dobbs, the school handyman who went on the excursion, ostensibly to act as guardian to the girls, was laid out on a table in a side room. I must say I breathed a sigh of relief to find that the one body that had so far been found had been his and was not the corporeal remains of one of the girls. This anteroom had been set up as a morgue to receive the bodies of the girls as they are found, but none, in fact, had as yet been discovered. I found that passing strange, but said nothing. Some others present in the room in their official capacities were of the opinion that the young ladies’ lighter forms simply had been carried out to sea, but I was not of that mind. At least one or two should have been found out of the thirty-two girls missing—twenty-nine of the young ladies of the school and three of the servant girls. Miss Amy Trevelyne, Miss Faber’s dearest friend, elected not to go on the ill-fated excursion, choosing to stay behind to tend to Mistress Pimm, who had suddenly fallen ill. I met Miss Trevelyne at the courthouse in the company of Ezra Pickering, Miss Faber’s American lawyer and very dear friend. Stricken with grief as he was, he was attempting to give comfort to Miss Trevelyne, who, though clearly in great anguish, still demanded to see the evidence of her dearest friend’s demise.

We looked over the collection of sodden clothing, and I asked permission to view the body of Mr. Dobbs, which permission was granted, I believe, mainly because of the presence of Lawyer Pickering. He and I entered the makeshift morgue and went to the body. The deceased was lying face up with his hands crossed on his chest, wearing an expression of what seemed to be mild surprise, but then, I suppose many of us exit this world with just such a look on our faces. I asked if an autopsy was going to be performed and was told that none was planned since it was plain that the man had drowned.

I asked that the body be stripped, and at Mr. Pickering’s insistence, it was done. Clumsily and churlishly done, to be sure, by two disgruntled courthouse workers, but done, nonetheless. I then commenced my examination.

There were, of course, many contusions on the man’s arms, legs, and body, entirely consistent with the body being tossed about in the surf and against the rocks of the shore. Still, to me, it seemed peculiar that the contusions did not have the purplish hue that occurs with bruises to a person who still has blood flowing in his veins. Putting on my gloves and raising the corpse’s head as the body lay supine on the table, I felt a curious softness in the back of the skull and I drew Mr. Pickering’s attention to it.

“I believe the man was hit on the back of the head before entering the water,” I stated, and Mr. Pickering, upon making his own examination, concurred. “Hit very hard,” he said, nodding, obviously thinking of the implications of this fact.

We then went back out into the hall with the intention of finding the attending physician. We sent one of the men off to look for him, and as he hurried off, we saw that Mistress Pimm had entered the building. She was plainly still shaky from her recent illness, but yet she stood erect, and, upon seeing Miss Trevelyne, nodded. Miss Trevelyne nodded back. There were no tears, no wails of grief and despair. Even in my own distress, I could not help but admire the stoical nature of these New England Yankee women, one of whom was sure she had lost her beloved classmates and her dearest friend, and the other who had lost virtually her entire school and all the girls who had been entrusted to her care.

I will now digress to the subject of Mistress Pimm’s illness and a very important fact that pertains to it: The school mistress was not the only one suddenly stricken by sickness on that fateful day. You see, the plan for the outing was to include both me and Mistress Pimm, as well as Mr. Sackett, the Science and Math teacher. Mistress Pimm and myself were to instruct the girls on how to set out a proper picnic on the grass, and Mr. Sackett would instruct them, before and after the luncheon, on the nature of the flora and fauna of the seashore and help them collect specimens for future study. Such was not to be.

On the morning of the excursion, Miss Faber, bouncing up and down and off the walls in her usual enthusiasm over an outing or, for that matter, anything out of the ordinary, left me downstairs to continue packing the provisions as she returned to her friends upstairs. While I did so, assisted ably by the girls Annie and Sylvie, Mr. Dobbs did come upon me and insist that I try a cup of a new brew of coffee lately brought up from South America and said to be the finest thing of its kind. Although I had never particularly liked the company of handyman Dobbs, I could not, as Head of Staff decently refuse. I took the cup and Dobbs hurried off with another cup for Mr. Sackett. It was, actually, quite good and I drank it down gratefully…a tinge of bitterness in it, though…and twenty minutes later I was in bed, barely conscious, with the worst case of the grippe I had ever experienced. I have never been of a sickly nature and this came as a complete surprise to me. I assumed, in my near delirium, that the outing would be called off with me unable to attend and lend my protection, but such was not to be. Neither Mistress Pimm nor I knew of the other’s distress and incapacity, and so the day went on as planned, but not as planned by us, oh no, but as planned by the kidnappers, as kidnappers I now believe them to be.

Upon seeing me there in the courthouse, Mistress Pimm approached and demanded what I knew. I informed her that, aside from the articles of clothing and other personal items, nothing of the girls has been found. I told her of my examination of Dobbs and the following conversation ensued:

“Where is he?” she asked, looking about.

“In this room here, Mistress,” said Mr. Pickering, “but he is…”

She brushed by him and opened the door and entered the room. She did not shrink from the sight of the naked body, but went right up to it and waited for me to lift the head to show her the concussion.

“So you surmise he was dead before he went into the water?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I said. It was then that the physician, a bald and fussy little man, entered the room, muttering, “My, my, what a thing, what a thing…”

“How can we know for sure?” she asked.

“We should look to see if there is water in his lungs,” I replied. “That will tell us.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “This man obviously drowned and this is certainly no place for a lady, Madame, no place…”

Mistress Pimm turned to regard the little man and brought the full force of her steely gaze upon him.

“Open him up,” she said, calmly and levelly, and the doctor tut-tutted and fussed, but he did go get his bag of tools, and the autopsy was performed.

There was no water in the corpse’s lungs. Mistress Pimm was in attendance the entire time and she viewed the results, with, I believe, some satisfaction.

It has now been several days since the girls’ disappearance and the following facts stand:

No bodies have yet been found.

No demand for ransom has been received.

A larger ship was seen in the area on that day. An old, long-since retired sea captain, who spends his lonely days in his room looking out through the window with his telescope at the ships entering and leaving the harbor, reported spying a two-masted ship lying off behind Lovell Island for a short time. Although he could not read her name, he was sure, because of his knowledge of ship configuration and rigging, that the craft did not come into Boston Harbor, either before or after the day of the tragedy, a fact he found rather strange. Strange enough, indeed, that he felt compelled to hobble down to the courthouse to report it.

Taking the preceding facts into account, we could only come to the conclusion that the ship was a slaver and that the girls are being taken to the slave markets, most likely in North Africa, to be sold.

After we convinced the local authorities and the bereaved families of our conclusion, several small, fast cutters were dispatched from Boston to search for the mystery ship, and word was sent down to Virginia to General Howe, father of one of the missing girls, so that search ships can be sent out from there, too. He is a man of great means and can bear the cost of doing so. But it is a very large ocean…

So, there is plenty of room for hope, Sir. For even discounting the other evidence, I cannot believe that Miss Jacky Faber would be capable of drowning on a clear, calm day in smooth waters close to land. I have seen her in action—Sir, I was on the
Wolverine[_ on that very day when she jumped overboard and swam for the shore, very nearly making it before she was recaptured. The girl who could swim like that did not drown on a warm day in the calm waters of Massachusetts Bay, I assure you. As for being captured, well, she has been in worse predicaments, and she is a very clever and resourceful girl, as I am sure you know quite well._]

I hope I have not been tedious, as I wanted only to lay the facts before you in as plain a manner as I could. I will end with the following: I cannot believe that such a spirit as hers has been quenched, or that her light, a light that has shone so brightly, has been so cruelly snuffed.

I will wait for further developments before informing the Reverend Alsop and Jacky’s other friends at the Home, as I do not want to cause them needless distress just yet.

Wishing that this letter brought you better news, and trusting that you know we are doing all we can from here, I am your most obedient servant,

John Higgins

The next morning, we are ready. Everyone is up and in their dresses and crouched at even intervals all around the Balcony, holding their cups and facing the lowered flaps. When the first one is lifted, I clap three times and…

More water!

Better food!

Flaps open till dark!

“Wot the hell?” The outburst startles some of the men so much that they drop the flaps back down, but they recover and the shutters are raised and we continue our assault on their ears.

More water!

Better food!

Flaps open till dark!

We are relentless. Over and over we chant it. We hit the bars with our cups on[_ more, better,
] and[
flaps_] and it sets up a nice rhythm and a grand clatter. Looking out across the deck, we see the Captain burst out of his cabin, followed quickly by a yawning Nettles. A few of the men we can see out there act puzzled, but most are amused—they know what’s good for them, however, so they look away and hide their faces from their captain’s anger.

“Sin-Kay! Get up here!” bellows the Captain, and Sin-Kay comes up through the forward hatch, smoothing his deep purple jacket. Immediately upon gaining the deck, Sin-Kay is buttonholed by the Captain, who is pointing at us there pounding and chanting at the bars. We cannot hear the Captain’s earnest words, but we can imagine what they are.

Sin-Kay makes mollifying gestures, like he’ll take care of everything.[_ Don’t worry, just wait, they are only hysterical females, they will tire, you will see…_]

The Captain turns from him abruptly and goes up on his quarterdeck, crosses his arms, and glares at the set of the sails. Sin-Kay, with murder in his eyes, heads for us.

He comes down the hatchway, just as Hughie is bringing down the pot of burgoo.

“I do not know what you hope to accomplish with this, but…

More water!

Better food!

Flaps open till dark!

“...but
you cannot possibly win. And when I find out who’s behind this,” and here he glares at Clarissa, “it will go[_ very_] hard for them.”