Charles Pettie, bass fiddle, proprietor of the Battenkill creamery, a modest man of forty-eight years renowned for his way with fresh cheese and a knowledge of music theory second only to Andrew Pendergast, could not contain his agitation.
“That’s too damned bombastic for a finale,” he said to Robert Earle, first fiddle, who had risen from his seat.
“What would you prefer?”
“‘I Will Bow and Be Simple,’ a cappella,” Pettie said.
“We do that early in the set.”
“I’m saying move it to last.”
“It’s kind of austere for a Christmas finale.”
“It’s sobering. And the tone’s right,” Charles said. “Times being how they are.”
Robert was about to argue when a commotion erupted at the far end of the big room. There were screams and shouts of “murder” and “come quickly,” and it turned out that Don Burkhardt, a farm worker on Deaver’s place and a Mill Hollow denizen, had responded to Mandy Stokes’s wailing. He and several neighbors had discovered a scene of bloody mayhem upon entering the house and, being twenty-four years old and a swift runner, Don was sent by the others to fetch help. The musicians now put their instruments down, grabbed their coats and hats stashed in every corner, and moved as a mob out the door. The Reverend Loren Holder prevailed on several of the older women to stay behind and mind the lighted candles and the woodstove so the Congregational Church would not burn down.
Robert and Loren followed the mob out to Van Buren Street, then downtown, on Main Street. The new Union Tavern had already emptied out and that crowd had also moved down to the scene of the tragedy. The music circle crowd finally passed under the ancient railroad overpass that led into Mill Hollow, the site of Union Grove’s first industrial establishment, a flax braking works, built in the 1820s. Several dozen men and not a few women stood grimly outside the Stokes cottage. Candles flickered within and dark shapes moved around. Robert Earle had to fight his way up front through the combined mobs before he climbed four steps to the front door. Loren Holder, who held the so far largely ceremonial office of village constable and was the sole police presence in Union Grove, joined Robert on the deck to the entrance portico. The crowd appeared to them as more than the sum of the individuals in it—a threatening organism of uncertain appetites.
“What do I say,” Robert asked Loren who, as a minister, had much more experience speaking before groups of people. Robert had been elected the village mayor by happenstance in June and was not a natural politician.
“Thank them for showing concern,” Loren said leaning close to Robert’s ear.
About a hundred faces looked up at Robert and Loren, dim in the meager light that came only through the windows from the rooms within.
“Thank you for showing concern,” Robert said. “I don’t know as it’s necessary for all of you to stay around here.”
“We want to know what happened,” said Eric Laudermilk.
“What if there’s a killer on the loose?” said Petey Widgeon.
The whole mixed crowd of musicians and tavern patrons rumbled anxiously.
“If you show a little patience, we’ll try to find out what went on here and fill you in as soon as we have some information,” Loren said.
“We may need some help carrying messages around town,” Robert added.
“We already sent for the doc,” said Ian Hindley, a Schmidt farmhand who had been enjoying himself at the new bar some minutes earlier and was now shivering under a crude blanket poncho with no hat.
“When he gets here, tell him to come right in,” Robert said. “The rest of you, please stay outside. We’ll let you know what’s up as soon as possible.”
Robert and Loren entered the cottage. Three candles guttered around the first-floor rooms. Deeper inside, in the sitting room turned bedroom, Mandy Stokes sat on the bed staring into the rug, being quietly comforted by a neighbor woman on each side. Loren and Robert turned their attention to the figure of Rick Stokes splayed atop a heap of splintered cherrywood. The handle of a cook’s knife protruded conspicuously from the vivid dark splotch in the center of his wool coat. His eyes were fixed wide open and his mouth frozen in a morbid rictus of stupefaction. A dark viscous pool of liquid spread out on the floor beyond the splintered wood he lay upon. A much smaller bundle lay near him on the floor. Loren fetched a candle stub closer. He and Robert got down on their hands and knees to look.
“Aw, jeezus,” Loren muttered, discerning that the bundle contained a baby and that the baby was motionless, its face gray.
“What do you think?” Robert said.
“Both dead,” Loren said.
They lingered near the floor watching closely a good minute.
“Do you suppose she killed him?” Robert whispered.
“That might be one theory,” Loren said. He got up off his hands and knees and Robert did likewise.
Of the several Mill Hollow men inside the house, Loren was slightly acquainted with Brad Kimmel, who ran one of the town’s few going cash businesses: a “fix-it” shop. In the old times he’d sold power tools at the Lowe’s big box store in Glens Falls.
“Is that the husband and their child there on the floor?” Loren asked.
“Yes it is,” Kimmel said. “Name of Rick. A decent fellow.”
“You live down here, right?” Loren asked.
“Yes I do.”
“Did you hear any quarreling tonight?”
“Not a thing, until . . . this. There was yelling. I figure he killed the baby and she killed him?” Kimmel said in a low whisper.
“That may or may not be,” Loren said. “I wouldn’t go spreading that story.”
“I’m just saying,” Kimmel said.
“Was there some other party around here tonight?” Robert said.
“Party?” Kimmel said. “I don’t know. That tavern opened up today—”
“No, some other person,” Robert said. “Someone who doesn’t belong down here that you might have noticed.”
“Oh,” Kimmel said. “No. I didn’t see anyone.”
“How about you others,” Loren asked the men with Kimmel: Ralph Horsley, a laborer on the Deaver farm, and Bob Bouchard, a woodcutter.
“No, sir,” Bouchard said while Horsley shook his head.
“I hope nobody touched anything,” Loren said. He knew next to nothing about the correct procedure. It occurred to him that forensics were now a thing of the past. There were no labs to send things to. The legal system of the old times was defunct: the courts, professional police, all of it. The truth of this tragedy would have to be determined by other means, and Loren was not sure it would be the truth.
“We didn’t touch nothing,” Kimmel said. The other neighbor men nodded.
“Thanks,” Robert said. “We’ll take it from here.”
They didn’t seem to understand.
“You guys can go now,” Loren said. Irritation was creeping into his voice.
When they had left, footsteps resounded overhead, and soon a familiar boxy figure resolved out of the shadows where the stairway opened into the dim hall. Brother Jobe wore a knee-length gray blanket greatcoat with a wool muffler draped about his neck. He carried his broad-brimmed hat in his hands.
“You fellows figure it out yet?” he asked Loren and Robert.
“No,” Loren said. “How about you?”
“Working on it.”
“Did you find anything upstairs?”
“Appears to me they don’t use it in the winter.”
Loren held his candle stub aloft and poked around the kitchen. Part of a round skillet–made corn bread sat on a cutting board with crumbs all around. It struck Loren as odd in a time when food was dear and manufactured mousetraps and chemical poisons were hard to come by. Mice were everywhere. Most people were careful about food. They put leftover food away in tins, old plastic storage tubs, and cabinets. There was some odd dark thing next to the corn bread. Loren looked closer with the candle. It was a fish head, from a smoked trout, he surmised, all desiccated, with a fragment of spine still attached. It was very cold in the cottage. Loren carefully touched the cookstove surface. It was barely warm. He opened the firebox and looked in. A few embers glowed.
“You better might have to take the girl into custody,” Brother Jobe said.
Loren digested the idea. “She’s not a suspect yet.”
“No?” Brother Jobe said. He stepped around Loren and gazed down at Rick’s body. “Got any other idears?”
“An intruder, maybe,” Robert said. “Someone who did this and fled the scene. A secret boyfriend maybe. I dunno . . .”
“You try to talk to her yet?” Brother Jobe said.
Loren stepped carefully around the body and the splintered crib and went into the room where the women sat on the bed. The woman and her dead husband were among the few people in town who did not attend the Congregational Church or belong to any of its social organizations. Loren had never spoken to Mandy though he had seen her occasionally around town. He stood before her for a full minute. The neighbor woman on her right stroked Mandy’s arm. Everyone’s breath was visible in the dim light. Mandy did not look up at him so Loren squatted down on the rug before her.
“Tell me your name?” he said.
Mandy did not respond.
“It’s Mandy,” said the neighbor woman on her right side, Anna Klum.
“Mandy, I’m Loren Holder. I’m minister of the Congregational Church and I’m the town constable as well. It’s up to me to find out what happened here.”
Mandy didn’t respond. She just stared through Loren.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
She would not. Mandy’s mind was a vast cavern of roaring reverberating voices, none of them making any sense. It left her numb and mute.
“Has she been like this all along?” Loren asked the other women.
“Yes,” said Tracy Tolleson on Mandy’s left. “Since we got here.”
Just then, Dr. Jerry Copeland entered the cottage. He nodded a greeting to the others. He saw the bodies on the floor and stooped down to take Rick’s pulse at the carotid artery. He lifted the baby off the floor, undid the baby’s swaddling on the kitchen table, and searched for a pulse. He palpated Julian’s little arms and jaw. The muscles were still flaccid; rigor mortis had not set in. The baby’s exposed pale skin and lifeless face made Robert shudder.
Loren quit his spot in the back bedroom and strode back to the kitchen. He, too, took a long hard look at the baby on the kitchen counter. All the men spoke lowly, in whispers.
“Not a mark on him,” Loren said.
“He’s sufficiently dead,” the doctor said.
“What do you think?”
“I’ll have to perform an autopsy.”
“How about Mandy,” Loren whispered.
“You need to find a place for her,” the doctor said. “Some place secure, where she’ll stay put.” The doctor paused a moment. “Some place she won’t hurt anybody.”
“My sentiment too,” Brother Jobe weighed in.
“Is there something wrong with her?” Robert said.
“She was a patient of mine last summer,” the doctor said. “She had some kind of meningitis. Of course, I didn’t have any antibiotics or antiviral drugs. People can get over it. I thought she mostly had. Her physical symptoms resolved. But she showed some apparent thinking problems afterward.”
“Is she psychotic?”
The doctor looked abashed. “Actually, I haven’t seen her since maybe back in October,” he said. “But she appeared capable of functioning. I certainly didn’t think she was a danger to herself or others.” He turned his glance down to Rick’s body on the floor with the handle of a cook’s knife protruding from his chest. “Now I’d have to assume she could be,” the doctor said.
“We don’t have any place to put her,” Robert said. “The town jail is unheated. She should be in a mental health facility.”
“Well, that’s not an option,” the doctor said. Along with the legal system, the hospitals in Bennington and Glens Falls had ceased operating.
“Yeah,” Robert said, puffing out his cheeks. “Not an option.”
“What about your infirmary?” Loren said.
The doctor ruminated awhile. “The windows don’t lock,” he said.
“We have a place for her,” Brother Jobe said.
The others turned to him.
“Warm, secure, and plenty of men to keep watch out in the hall. It’s heated and she could get meals and all. We’ll even pray for her.”
The four men swapped glances. They understood their mutual assent without having to express it out loud.
“I’ll send for a cart,” Brother Jobe said. “You’ll also have to get a message over to Bullock. It’s high time that sumbitch took his magistrate duties seriously.”
While they waited for the cart, Loren found some paper and an old ballpoint pen and drew a diagram of the first floor of the house and where the bodies had been found. When the cart came, the women attempted to help Mandy off the bed and out of the house. They got her to her feet but, as they attempted to steer her out of the back room, Mandy became hysterical, shrieked, scratched at and struck the women with her fists, even tried to bite them. Loren, the doctor, and Robert had to step in. They seized her and brought her back over to the bed where she continued to carry on wildly, even while Loren and the doctor held her down. She screamed at them in words that were not from a language any of them recognized. Meanwhile, Robert went outside. The crowd had dwindled now to about twenty persons, mostly men, stamping their feet in the cold and dark. He asked for someone to fetch a length of rope.