No Mortal Reason (32 page)

“What are you afraid of, Mercy?”

“He’s got a terrible temper.”

“Surely you don’t think Uncle Myron would lash out at me?”

“He throttled Mr. Saugus. Maybe he even—”

“You can’t believe he killed him.”

“I don’t want to, but Sebastian . . . well, right after you found the body, Sebastian said Uncle Myron must have done it. He seemed certain he was right, and that we must be prepared for the worst.” She frowned, reassessing this statement in light of Sebastian’s perfidy.

“I expect he was quite pleased by the prospect, but that doesn’t mean he was right. Let’s go talk to Sebastian, shall we?” More than ever, Diana wanted a word with her bounder of a cousin.

But Sebastian was no longer locked in his room. A glance inside told them he was long gone. 

Sebastian’s room was no more than eight by ten feet with a narrow bed, a wardrobe, and a commode. The wardrobe doors hung open, revealing an interior empty of personal possessions. Only the wash basin and pitcher remained on the commode—no razor or soap, no tooth powder or hair oil. Mercy lifted the counterpane to peer under the bed. There was no sign of gripsack or Gladstone bag, only an accumulation of dust.

“It looks as if he took himself off, before he could be sent home in disgrace. What have you got there?” Diana asked when Mercy stooped to pick something up from the floor.

It was the corner of a telegram. The color and texture of the paper were too distinctive to be anything else.

“He couldn’t have gone out the window,” Mercy said. “It’s too high up to jump.”

“No, but someone handy at picking locks might have released him. During the night, I think. Late. After Ben and I returned and everyone was asleep.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Belle Saugus is gone, too.”

“You think she left with Sebastian?”

“She’d have wanted someone to help with her luggage, and to drive the hotel wagon into Liberty to catch the first train out of town. And she knew something of Sebastian’s disgrace from Mrs. Curran.”

Diana was about to say more when a commotion outside drew her to Sebastian’s window. A small drama was being played out on the expanse of lawn below. Myron, backing away from Coroner Buckley, had both hands raised as if to ward off blows. Flanking him were two other men, strangers to Diana, who seemed intent upon seizing him. As she watched, they grabbed his arms. Myron grappled with them for a moment, then subsided, allowing them to lead him away.

Closely followed by her cousin, Diana sped down the back stairs and through the lobby, reaching the veranda in time to see her uncle being loaded into a wagon. “What’s going on here?” she cried, although she could see perfectly well that Mr. Buckley had arrested Myron.

“Mrs. Northcote,” Buckley said, tipping his hat. “New evidence has come to light.”

“What evidence? Something Belle Saugus said? If so, there are things you should know about her.” She proceeded to tell him, and had just finished when Mrs. Curran came puffing up behind her, carrying the heavy book that contained Belle’s photograph. Mercy had taken one look at the restraints being put on her uncle and had fled back into the hotel for reinforcements.

“It isn’t evidence from Mrs. Saugus,” Coroner Buckley said, handing the book back to her unopened. “I have incriminating statements from Pastor Riker and Mrs. Lyseth. Each of them came forward, separately, to say they saw Myron Grant behaving suspiciously between the time Norman Saugus was killed and the time you discovered his body.”

Howd Grant, accompanied by Mrs. Ellington and Mercy, had by now joined Mrs. Curran and Diana beside the coroner’s wagon. The Lyseths were nowhere in sight but the painters were watching the goings on with great interest from their ladders.

 “What statements?” Diana demanded.

For a moment she didn’t think Mr. Buckley would answer. Then he shrugged. “Mr. Riker saw the hotel buckboard after midnight. It was stopped by the field. A man he identifies as Myron Grant was standing beside it. At that point, the scarecrow was still a scarecrow. The preacher was on his way back from an emergency visit to a parishioner at the time. He was tired and disinclined to stop.”

“What parishioner?”

“He didn’t say.” Buckley held up a hand to forestall her protest. “As he reminded me, what a man says to a lawyer or a priest must be treated as confidential. Individuals have a right to privacy, especially when matters of a sensitive nature are involved. Mr. Riker cannot in good conscience bandy names about.”

“He regularly exhorts his parishioners to air their dirty laundry in public,” she reminded the coroner. “In church, at any rate.”

“I will press for a name if I must. At the moment I’m willing to accept the word of a man of God.”

“And Mrs. Lyseth? What kind of claim is she making?”

“Mrs. Lyseth saw Mr. Grant at the crack of dawn, coming from the direction of the field where the body was found. She was on her way to work at the time. She was still half-asleep and didn’t pay any attention to the scarecrow when she passed it, but she followed Grant up the drive leading to the hotel. She is certain of her identification.”

“Sunrise is around 4:30 in the morning at this time of year. Surely even the farmers don’t go to work that early. And don’t you think it odd that Mr. Grant took so long to dispose of the body? If Mr. Riker saw him just past midnight and he was only just returning to the hotel at dawn, that’s some four hours spent replacing the scarecrow with the body. It is not a task one would ordinarily linger over. They’re lying, Mr. Buckley,” Diana said with all the conviction she could muster. “Both of them. Myron Grant never even left the building that night.”

“So he says, but his brother wasn’t with him after midnight.” He glanced at Howd for confirmation but received only a tight-lipped glower in response. “No one can verify that he stayed put. That means it will be up to a jury to decide who’s telling the truth. In the meantime, I’ve no choice but to arrest Mr. Grant.”

He climbed into the wagon with his prisoner and the two constables. Myron sat with head bowed in defeat, shackled and broken. If he’d heard her passionate defense or was aware of his family gathered around, he gave no sign of it.

As the wagon started to move, Diana reached out and touched his arm. “Don’t despair,” she said. “You have been unjustly accused and I will prove it.”

He looked up then, meeting Diana’s eyes. He must have recognized her sincerity, because he nodded his head and almost managed a smile.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly. 

* * * *

Ben made the trip by road from Lenape Springs to Monticello in good time. He stopped in Liberty only long enough to send a telegram.

Once he reached the county seat, he went directly to the jail. It was part of the courthouse, a substantial stone edifice with a bell tower. Together with a one-story clerk’s office and the Presbyterian church, the three buildings formed one side of a pleasant park.

Sheriff Walter Vail Irvine received Ben warmly enough. He’d heard his name from Arthur Buckley.

“I hope you’ll excuse the presumption, but I’ve asked that the reply to a telegram I sent earlier be delivered to me here.”

“That depends on what the telegram says.” The sheriff kept a straight face, but Ben caught the glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

“I won’t know until it gets here,” Ben replied. “In the meantime, you might be interested in this.” He handed over the blank but signed and sealed document Diana had liberated from Norman Saugus’s suite.

Irvine’s bushy brows lifted in surprise. “Where did you get this?”

Ben explained, and waited while the sheriff sent a deputy for the county clerk. It was his signature, as registrar of deeds, on the blank right of way, a paper with the power to transfer land along a road between the parties whose names were yet to be filled in. It would look legal. By the time lawsuits were filed by the property owners who’d been defrauded, Saugus would have been long gone. The plan, Ben was certain, had been to sell the right of ways to some unsuspecting entrepreneur who’d think he was about to make a fortune by putting in a telegraph line for which the groundwork had already been laid. Ben wasn’t sure exactly how the confidence game would have worked, but he knew it was one.

“I’m sending someone to confiscate the rest of these forms,” Irvine announced when he finished talking to the clerk.

“You may want to send someone for Mrs. Saugus, as well.” And he told Irvine about Belle’s criminal record. And the arson. And the possibility that she might have murdered both Elly Lyseth and her own husband. “If you have her in custody for fraud, it will prevent her from absconding before more serious charges can be brought.”

“I always thought Lenape Springs was just a nice quiet little town. Anything else going on there I should know about?”

“I’ll answer that after I get the reply to my telegram.”

A knock interrupted them. “Dr. Dickinson is here again, sheriff,” a deputy announced. “Wants to see Jack.”

Irvine grimaced. He thought about the request for a moment, drumming his fingers on the top of his desk. “Let him in, but keep an eye on them. Don’t let Jack persuade the good reverend to take any written messages out.”

“That would be Sailor Jack?” Ben asked.

Irvine nodded. “Dickinson is rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church here in Monticello. He offers spiritual aid and comfort to prisoners. After one such visit, middle of last month, Jack Allen wrote him a letter. Somehow it ended up printed in the local paper. Then it got picked up by the New York City scandal sheets. Allen’s trying to convince people he’s found religion. Before he came up with that ploy, he made several tries at escape. Caught him digging a tunnel one time. Then he tried acting crazy. Trying to get sent to a lunatic asylum instead of the gallows.”

Irvine grinned. Ben did not.

“Your prisoner attracts a great deal of attention,” Ben remarked.

“Confounded newspapers are responsible for that. They keep printing stories about him.”

“From what your deputy just said, I take it that more information than you like gets out to the public.”

“Seems to.”

“Could be you have someone on your staff who’s earning a bit of extra income.”

“You know something about this, Doc, or are you just guessing?”

“An . . . acquaintance of mine is the editor of a newspaper. I have reason to believe he has a contact here in Monticello. Someone who’s been sending him information about Jack Allen.”

The sheriff’s feet hit the floor with a resounding thump. A thunderous expression on his face, he glared at Ben. “Who?”

“Sorry. I’ve no idea.”

“I don’t like information getting out through unofficial channels. All kinds of crazy rumors get started that way. And Jack Allen . . . .” He shook his head. “The man’s got respectable women writing to him. One even proposed marriage! Can you believe that? Man’s good looking, I’ll grant you, but he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

Ben gave the sheriff a considering look. “Ever think a sympathetic reporter might show you and your deputies in a positive light? Could be good public relations to grant an interview.”

“No interviews. Not with me. Not with Jack Allen.”

“It might stop some of the wilder stories.”

Irvine scratched his chin and gave it some thought. “What newspaper?”

“The
Independent Intelligencer
.”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before a newspaperman employed by that scandal sheet sets foot in my jail.”

Ben’s response was cut short by a knock on the door. The telegram he’d been expecting had arrived. He read it eagerly. Horatio Foxe’s resources had not failed him.

It seemed that Mrs. Castine had been mistaken about seeing Racy Darden at a camp meeting. The fellow still worked for the same employer, but he’d transferred to another part of the state . . . and married the boss’s daughter. One loose end cleared up, Ben thought.

The rest of the information in the telegram was even more helpful.

“You asked if there was anything else going on in Lenape Springs that you should know about, Sheriff. Looks like there may be another case of fraud.”

“Connected to Saugus?”

“Not that I can see from this. No, this confidence man is Jonas Riker, the pastor. Seems he ran into a little trouble with the law a few years back. He was making a name for himself at camp meetings by healing folks who weren’t really sick. Spent time in jail for it. He’d just gone back on the camp meeting circuit when he met his future wife.”

It might not have been Darden Mrs. Castine saw at a camp meeting, working as a helper, but the reminder that there were such men had made Ben wonder about the scandal in Riker’s past. It hadn’t taken Foxe long to come up with details. Fake healers were hardly new or original. The helpers made sure the right people were selected for the cure. Thus were the lame able to walk and the blind to see.

Ben supposed it was possible Riker had been rehabilitated by his time in jail and the love of a good woman, but it seemed more likely that he’d taken advantage of Lida Rose Leeves and her inheritance to settle down in one place for awhile. What else had he been up to? Ben had to wonder now why Riker had been quarreling with Sebastian Ellington. Had Riker found out about Sebastian’s connection to Ed Leeves? Not necessarily, he decided. From what he’d seen, Riker quarreled with everyone associated with Hotel Grant.

Ben glanced at the telegram again. “Jonas Riker’s not listed as a graduate of any theological seminary.” Those lists were published and Foxe had access to them. “If he’s not ordained, any marriages he’s performed aren’t valid.”

“Don’t have to be ordained to perform wedding ceremonies, but you do need the civil authority. I’ll pursue the matter, Dr. Northcote. If he’s been breaking the law, I’ll deal with him.” After he’d sent an underling to check county records, he gave Ben a hard look. “What else does that telegram of yours say? And who is it from? Your friend the editor?”

“Good guess, though I’d hardly call him a friend. In fact, there is more. It seems his contact here has been busy. My . . . acquaintance asks me to confirm that Sailor Jack’s been keeping a diary. He says it contains some pretty serious accusations. Jack claims you’ve framed him for murder in an effort to garner votes for your re-election.”