Too Soon for Flowers (38 page)

Surely the poor devil had been drunk—he could smell that, and it appeared the sot had even lost some of his liquor down the front of his old black coat. A sad thing, very sad. One hated to see a man enjoy himself and then choke for it! Unless, now, unless he’d been thrown? That
might account for the liquor coming up again, for a knock on the head sometimes did affect the stomach, he recalled. Maybe the poor fellow had directed his horse down from the road, intending to give them both a rest, and maybe it shied at a viper—that was quite possible! He only hoped the snake, if there was one, had taken itself away. Or it could be the horse had stumbled into a hole, for there were always plenty about. Though the animal hardly looked injured. But if the man had some form of drink with him, where was it now? Not by the body, that was sure. But might there be something else of interest nearby?

Caleb Knox soon came upon a few pieces of Spanish silver in a pocket, along with some coppers and even some brass, all of which he returned. Better to leave them for burial, he thought. For he sensed that the curious man who lay there was far from home and might never be missed at all. Besides, it wouldn’t do to rob the dead—although right there, next to him, was something that had a pretty shine to it and even a small gem or two! Did it belong to the stranger? Though it lay close, the answer might be … maybe, and maybe not. Wouldn’t it be something sweet to give to the old dame, as long as he never told her where he’d got it? She’d long forgiven him a great deal—and would forget even more, he imagined, if he were to offer her such a gift one day soon, telling her he’d bought and paid for it on market day.

At last decided, Caleb Knox put the small, glittering object into his pocket. After that, he walked around a clump of yellow stalks full of bees. As he approached the riderless horse, it raised its head with a whinny. Clucking to keep it calm, the farmer crept the last few feet, then grasped at its bridle. Before long he had the mount tied to the back of his wagon, to the intense interest of Judy. Then, leaving the two to become acquainted, he returned for the corpse.

He felt a little foolish picking up the man’s dark hat
and setting it on top of his own. He lifted the pair of legs and hauled as he walked backward, causing the other’s coat to drag over a new furrow left in the vegetation. At the ditch Knox lifted up the dead weight, grunting fiercely as he carried it down and back up, and at last rolled it into his wagon. He took another few moments to arrange the man decently before climbing forward to his seat. Finally he turned Judy around on the road, heading the wagon back to Bracebridge.

Looking both ways, he still saw no one ahead or behind him. But soon there would be many clamoring to hear his story, for a reward of a tankard or two. The farmer felt for the object in the pocket of his coat on the wagon’s seat, to make sure his secreted prize was still there. At least he would amuse them by telling most of what he’d discovered, if not exactly all.

But first he would do his duty and go and unburden himself to someone who held a position of authority, who would surely know what else needed to be done.

“
NOT A PLEASANT
picture you paint for us,” said Richard Longfellow, smoothing his gathered hair further with a callused hand. They had all, he suspected, become increasingly aware of the heat and stillness of the afternoon since Caleb Knox had brought Death to intrude upon them. “And you believe he met his end only an hour or two ago?”

“Aye,” the farmer replied, his eyes drifting to reexamine a man unknown to him standing at the edge of the arbor.

Longfellow turned abruptly to Gian Carlo Lahte, who adjusted his coat sleeves over lace cuffs. “You saw nothing, I would imagine, on your way here?”

“Nothing of that sort.”

“Where again was he, Caleb?”

“Some two miles east of here, by a hedge of hawthorn.”

“You recovered his horse, as well. A good animal, is he?”

“Not for working fields. For walking, maybe—though he may well have bloat by now.”

“Spirited?”

The farmer considered, rubbing at the stubble on his neck where sweat continued to trickle down. “Not as I could tell,” he decided.

“Hired in Boston, probably. They often have their own tricks to get rid of a rider.” Caleb Knox snorted his agreement, though he had never hired a stable horse in his life. “So,” Longfellow continued, “he went off the road, was thrown and landed hard on his head, and stayed where he was until you picked him up and brought him in to us. You’re sure you haven’t seen him here before?”

“Nor anywhere else, I’d say. Though at first I thought I recognized him for a drummer. His clothes are like that of a gentleman, but too old for one, you see. Castoffs, maybe, but still queer somehow. And he had no tin box of goods, nor even saddlebags.”

“No wallet, I presume?”

“A little silver was nearly the sum of his pockets.” Caleb Knox shifted uneasily before he went on. “When I looked into them, it was to see if he might have a letter on him or a note of credit—so we might learn where to send him. Then when I found little, and knowing he shouldn’t be left to lie there, I hauled him into my wagon, tied his horse on behind, and turned round to bring both to the meetinghouse. He’s in the village cellar now.”

“A tragic tale, but one hardly surprising among riders both poor or proud who find it advisable to race from here to there.”

“Amen to that,” exclaimed the farmer, whose plodding Judy had feet the size of firkins.

“You found Reverend Rowe?” Longfellow asked after a sigh.

“Heard he went over to Brewster’s, so I sent a boy running for him.”

“I will guess, then, that our unknown man came out to visit someone and planned to return to his lodgings by nightfall. A small mystery, but one we’ll understand shortly, I’m sure. My thanks to you, Caleb.”

The man nodded as he put his hat back on, then lifted it again briefly to Mrs. Willett. But still he did not go. Instead he gave a shy bow to the man he did not know, hoping to have one stranger’s presence, at least, explained that day.

“Oh, I see,” said Longfellow. “Well, since we may all soon be neighbors—Mr. Caleb Knox, farmer and native son of Bracebridge, I would like to present Signore Gian Carlo Lahte, a gentleman of Milan.”

Though it seemed Lahte jumped, he graciously offered a salute that was returned with pleasure. At that, anxious to tell a yeasty story that had now risen into a nice, substantial loaf, Caleb Knox disappeared around the corner of the large house.

“Will you come with me, Lahte, and offer your opinion?” asked his host. “This thing will be likely to have one or two scientific points of interest, I am sure. Cicero? I thought not, on those feet. Mrs. Willett? Will you wait here, or will you return to your own duties?”

“Richard, if we are to suppose this unfortunate man traveled to meet someone, as you say, then might it not be wise for me to go with you, as well? For what if he came to see me?”

“To buy a pound of butter? Unlikely, but as good a reason as any, I suppose, to view a corpse. Come along, then, Mrs. Willett. But wait a moment …” Longfellow strode past Cicero into the kitchen and came back carrying a small box of coals. “Now I believe we are ready,” he said, and with that the small party walked off on a path across
the dry fields, leaving Cicero sitting silhouetted under the cool green vines, finishing a plate of pears.

“
IT IS A
thing we made this spring,” Longfellow explained as they approached the cellar behind the meetinghouse, walking along a mossy path between the headstones in a shaded burial ground.

An underground chamber had seemed a useful idea when suggested by a pair of men in need of work, and so the selectmen gladly approved the digging of a temporary site in which to deposit the dead, when weather or other circumstances kept them from being immediately put into the churchyard above. Everyone knew it was no easy thing to take a pick to frozen ground, nor did anyone want to worry about the possible spread of putrid fever in warmer weather.

“Just down these steps. Leave the door open, while I touch a scrap of paper to these coals and light the pair of candles down here. No, I don’t know this man. Mrs. Willett?”

Charlotte, too, climbed down into the close, timbered space, where the good smell of damp earth was a background for an odor of mold. She looked instinctively to the closed eyelids, then at the waxy face. The state of its features suggested a man of perhaps forty years and certainly something other than a farmer who spent his days toiling in the open. His oily hair had a reddish hue, as did the short curls on the knuckles of relatively smooth, unbruised, and unadorned hands, whose nails were clean as a benefit of being long gnawed and sucked at by their owner. She quickly speculated this had been a person whose fortunes had moved up and down, for though his apparel was quite worn, it appeared to be made of thin-stranded and tightly woven fabric, surely not home loomed. It also
looked to her as if the cut of the coat was original and the stitchwork good; there was also something unfamiliar about the proportions of the garments, as well as their finishing details. And over much of them there was a dark stain, which accounted for the smell.

Looking up, she shook her head to Longfellow’s question and noted that Signore Lahte, too, must have been staring hard and long into the stranger’s face. She saw him pull himself together with a shudder.

“Can it be,” Longfellow asked in surprise, “that
you
know this gentleman, Gian Carlo?” A wave of the other’s hand dismissed the idea, but Longfellow persisted in his concern.

“You appear unwell. The stagnation of the air seems to have made it lose its potency—er—so perhaps we should move on.”

Lahte then attempted an explanation. “A man of art, of strong feeling, is sometimes overcome …” His handkerchief appeared, and he wiped it over features that had begun to quiver, though he still tried to contain his distress.

“Something of a shock, I agree. I, too, have little stomach for viewing death—though I would guess that Mrs. Willett might like to linger awhile longer.”

Charlotte looked up from examining a hat, largely intact, which she had found on the floor. “I think a brief prayer would do no harm.”

“Hmmm,” Longfellow responded, as he led Signore Lahte up the wooden steps set into the soil, rising toward warmth and light.

When she was alone, Charlotte closed her eyes, while the two tallow candles continued to smoke and sputter. A few seconds later she slid behind the trestle table that supported the body, and carefully lifted up the head with her hands. His neck was undamaged, she thought, yet the top of the skull was obviously indented. That was odd. And the affected area was not swollen. This told her he must
have died suddenly, very soon after the injury had occurred. Though he may, of course, have died of inhaling what he could not swallow. Nearly overcome by the horrible thought, and the odor, she looked away, then forced herself to examine a patch of the matter on the coat more closely. It was unusually dark … but it most probably had little to do with whatever final misfortune had overcome this man out on the road. Why, then, did she have a nagging suspicion?

Charlotte seemed suddenly to hear the echo of a familiar voice in the close chamber. Again she heard the angelic song of Gian Carlo Lahte, and felt a sudden rush of warmth as she realized that this death affected her somewhat less than had the recent discomforts of
Il Colombo
. But could
he
know this stranger? Or had her imagination, too, become feverish? Longfellow had asked the same question—but if it was true, why would Lahte not say so? Well, if he would not or could not enlighten them, the dead man might yet tell them something, after a bit of wheedling and teasing—perhaps even enough to satisfy her own suspicious spirit.

Blowing out both candles, Mrs. Willett hurriedly pulled the door closed behind her, to join the two men waiting above. At her appearance Longfellow walked forward. His guest continued to pace slowly among the village stones, some distance away.

“Mrs. Willett! Are you satisfied? He
was
thrown, it would seem to me.”

“Well …”

“Of course you question, too, where he has come from. But we may know more when I have made a sketch of him and sent it off to Montagu in Boston. Though I believe all signs point to a trader from abroad. I might even guess, from his physiognomy, that he is of a European race which I have observed near the eastern Mediterranean and up toward the Slavic lands. The reddish hair and pale
skin are similar to those of many Scots and Irishmen, yet there is something else about the face which reminds me of the residents of Prague. The clothing seems inconclusive. His Spanish silver, of course, could have come from anywhere. Have you an idea of your own?”

“He seems to have lost some of the wine I presume he drank while on the road earlier today—”

“No doubt of that, by the aroma.”

“But when?”

“When?”

“He could hardly have vomited the wine up, I think, after his fall—if death was due to the injury to his head. For that must have come only moments before his heart ceased to beat …”

“You refer to the lack of swelling in the depression over the brain. Not unlike the difference between a deer killed outright and one whose wounds fill with blood when he must be chased down. Well, perhaps the man’s stomach rebelled first, then. He may have gotten off his horse, had another drink, vomited it up, then stumbled. And having fallen back upon a rock—”

“But then how do we explain the great force of the blow? For I can hardly believe—”

“All right, then—he was thrown
after
he regurgitated, which he did while still on his horse. In either case his death would have been an accident and thus should cause us no further concern.”

“Yet if he died because he choked on what he tried to expel, one could not blame the horse, which might otherwise be destroyed for killing a man. And would the village not rest more easily if he were examined by a physician, so that we might learn exactly how he came to his end?”

“I suppose it might. But nothing points to anything more worrisome, you will agree?”