Coffins (7 page)

Beside me Jeb seemed to freeze in place, his eyes gone large and owlish, as if he could not believe what he was seeing. “The vault was shut as of yesterday. I locked the hasp myself.”

“One of your brothers, perhaps?”

To which he snapped a curt, “No, impossible.”

He stepped forward, braced his cane against the iron door, and pushed it all the way open. Daylight did not seem to relieve the shadows, but the stench was suddenly overpowering, and brought a flood of tears to my eyes. Coughing into his handkerchief, Jeb cursed and then muttered, “Light. We need a light.”

I volunteered to fetch a lantern from the church. “But you must promise not to enter until I return,” I added, quite firmly.

“A promise easily kept,” was Jeb's weak reply. He retreated from the open doorway and, catching another whiff of the horrible stench, uttered, “What can it be?” in such a way it was obvious he didn't expect me to answer. Instead I hurried into the vestry of the church, found an old candle lantern with an inch or two of beeswax left to burn, and hastily returned to the family crypt.

Jebediah was nowhere to be seen.

Fearing that he had entered alone, into that foul darkness, I cried out his name, only to have him step out from behind a stout oak tree. His face was ashen and his hands, as he reached for the lantern, trembled.

“Allow me,” I insisted, lighting the candle with a sulfur match. I was determined to enter the crypt first, and try to save my friend from the distress of whatever was causing the ungodly stench.

Holding the lantern out, I held my breath, stooped, and entered the pall of darkness.

At first I could see nothing, the light from the small candle was so faint. It seemed impossible that daylight did not penetrate, at least a little, but the sun was more or less directly overhead, which must have accounted for the unnatural darkness. The only sound was my own boots scratching crablike upon the stone. Turning very slowly, I was barely able to make out the walls and the low ceiling—as if the darkness had a kind of substance that absorbed the candlelight. It did not help that the noxious fumes made my eyes water.

Behind me, his small silhouette sharply defined in the doorway, Jeb called out, “Hullo!”

“There's no one here,” I said, without much confidence.

“No one alive,” Jeb replied softly. “My brothers lie in their caskets, do you see?”

Eventually I did see, when I had gone far enough into the interior to bump up against something solid. That “something” was revealed to be a stone tier. A kind of low platform meant to keep a casket above water should the crypt be flooded by the spring rains. It wasn't the local practice to inter the remains within the mausoleum itself; once spring had come, and the frost had safely dissipated from the ground, a waiting casket was buried beneath the grass close by, and marked with a modest stone.

A disruption had somehow occurred. The two fresh caskets were not upon the tier, but lay toppled on the floor. I was greatly relieved to see that the casket lids remained fastened in place, but one pass of the candle revealed the source of the horrible stench.

Both caskets had been fouled with excrement.

It was as if some large animal had forced entry into the crypt, shoved the wooden boxes from the tier, and then squatted over them to do its business. I say a large animal, because the excrement was copious—much more than, say, a dog or even a bear could have supplied. And then came a thought nearly as odious as the stench: that this was the action of human agents. Vandals who had forced their way into the Coffin tomb and purposefully debased it in as wretched a way as possible.

“What do you find?” Jeb asked, calling in a clenched voice from the open door.

And so I returned to the light of day and guided him some distance away, so we could both breathe a bit of fresh air. Jeb waited for my reply, anticipating the worst, and in this he was not disappointed. There was nothing for it but to describe, in plain words, what I had discovered.

“Vandals?” he said doubtfully. “And you say they used it as a privy? But that isn't human shit, I know that smell.”

He was right, not even the foulest privy smelled so rank. “Then they collected the filth and brought it with them for that purpose,” I suggested.

“But who would do such a thing?” my friend asked plaintively.

There was only one possible answer. Someone consumed with righteous loathing for the deceased, and for the living who shared their name. Someone who hated Coffins, alive or dead.

6. The Creature with Yellow Eyes

On the way back home Jeb swore me to secrecy. “No one in the family must know. It will only add to their distress.”

“Let me be your agent in this matter,” I said. “The church sexton will know someone willing to clean up the mess, and be quiet about it, if the price is right.”

“I'll pay, of course.”

I stopped my friend with a hand upon his shoulder, and turned him to face me. “You will do nothing of the kind. You will leave everything to me, and you will banish this whole affair from your mind, exactly as if it had never happened.” There must have been something in my manner that prevented further argument, because Jebediah acquiesced with a kind of shrug, his eyes downcast.

When home was at last in sight he stopped and took off his stovepipe hat. “I must ask another favor of you,” he began, and then faltered. Finally he blurted out, “Will you see the Captain now?”

“Of course,” I responded without hesitation. “Though I doubt it will do much good, if he's as disturbed as you describe.”

Jeb's smile was grim. “My dear Davis, you underestimate your powers of persuasion, and the comfort of your rational mind. But I hasten to add, this is no small favor. The Captain, my father, he's … he's quite reasonable much of the time. But there have been spells—that is, he's suffered from spells of … some sort of brain fever or dementia. A kind of madness that comes and goes, although it never leaves him entirely. While in this, ah, ‘feverish' state he can be quite dangerous. He's an old man, but still fearsomely strong. So you must exercise caution. Whatever you do, don't tell him you're a doctor.”

When we reached the house, Jeb asked me to wait in the parlor while he made sure the old man was “amenable to visitors,” as if I was about to undertake a social call. I wasn't sure the word “amenable” applied to an apparently dangerous madman, but kept my reservations to myself. Poor Jebediah was having a terrible time trying to cope with the ravages of death and madness in his family, and it was understandable that he hadn't yet fully accepted his father's condition, even as he warned me against him.

The parlor had the feel of a ship's salon, long and narrow and dark with mahogany. Heavy black velvet mourning drapes made it dim, despite the hour. No fire had been lit, and the air was cool and sea-damp. I sat upon a hard-bottomed chair in the gloom, awaiting my summons, and could not help but doubt the situation. My friend was convinced that I could, by mere conversation, ferret out the cause of his father's illness, but the whole enterprise seemed doomed to failure.

After a few minutes I looked up, startled, as a shadow entered the parlor.

“So you are still here,” said a familiar voice.

“Miss Wattle! Yes, well, so I am,” I stammered, rising, as the young cousin glided close enough so that her exquisite face was visible, pale and perfect over the satiny blackness of her mourning attire. “Why—why would I not be here?”

She laughed softly before sitting primly upon a chair a few yards from me, spreading out her full black skirt, her pale hands folded upon her lap. Her lustrous hair, I could not help noticing, was held in place with a black ribbon, and her porcelain complexion required no powder to achieve an exquisite paleness. “I thought perhaps the events of last night might have driven you from our company,” she said. “You were disturbed, were you not? I certainly was. That horrible screaming, and the pistol shot. I'm obliged to stay—indeed, I have nowhere else to go—but you are not.”

“But I am,” I said resolutely, settling back into the chair. “Jebediah is my friend.”

“Ah,” she said. “Your friend. And in the name of friendship you're willing to brave the fiends of the night?”

“Fiends of the night? Surely you're joking!” I exclaimed.

But she relieved my anxiety with the warmth of her laughter. “A bad habit of mine, making jokes at a time like this.”

“Not at all.”

She shook her head. “You're being polite. I'm well aware of my deficiencies.”

No deficiency was visible. Hers was a lovely head, with a long neck, large expressive eyes set wide, full lips, that flawless complexion, and fine thick hair. A delicately crocheted black shawl covered her shoulders, and served to accent the startling blue paleness of her eyes. A black satin dress, tightly corseted, showed off a slim waist, and the skirts were full and of a length to conceal her ankles and even her shoes. Her crinoline, which in fashionable belles can make the width of the skirt a full six feet, was much more modest. Boston is known for its jeweled beauties—it is the Hub of society, after all—but I'd seen none there to rival this young woman. Not that she wore jewelry, of course—to do so while in mourning would have been inappropriate.

I knew little about her, beyond her connection to the Coffins, and the vague and possibly erroneous suggestion that she was a suffragist. If so, she was an uncommonly lovely suffragist, but then Jeb and Nathaniel could have been pulling my leg in that regard. That matter aside, I had gotten the impression she was something of a poor relation, or anyhow had need of shelter, being alone and unmarried, and I longed to be better informed, but could not think of a way to ask without sounding presumptuous.

“You and Jeb were college chums, do I have that right?” she asked brightly. “No doubt like most college boys you frequented gambling halls, and dens of iniquity, and the like.”

“I do not gamble,” I replied, rather stiffly. “To my knowledge, neither does Jebediah.”

Lucy's eyes sparkled with amusement. “What a shame! All that naughty fun in the big city, and you didn't partake. I suppose that means you're a serious young man. Were you at the divinity school, then?”

I understood that she was teasing me, and did my best to respond in kind. “The Reverend Bentwood at your service,” I said, effecting a seated curtsy. “But no, I'm sorry to disappoint you. My interest was more science than religion. I've a conceit that Emerson's teachings about the mind and spirit can somehow be tied to modern medicine. So far I've failed to find the connection.”

That brought another kind of smile to her face. “Emerson, yes, yes. The Sage of Concord, isn't that what he calls himself?”

“Others do. Emerson himself is a modest man, despite his genius.”

“I know him as a friend to the cause of women's suffrage, and of course as a poet.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And what?”

“What do you think of his poetry?” I asked, wanting to steer clear of the whole delicate matter of women's suffrage, as it was not an easy topic for first meetings.

Lucy sighed. “Poetry. Ah. No doubt Mr. Emerson is, as you say, a genius of some kind. But I find him rather dry. I'm more partial to the English poets. Byron, Shelley, Keats. Though I don't care a fig for that man Tennyson,” she added.

I was not startled to discover she was a woman of strongly held opinions—her confident poise suggested as much, and her mention of suffrage had indicated a certain fervor for the cause—but to dismiss Tennyson with a slight wave of her hand, it was somehow breathtaking, and made me admire her all the more, though I myself held Tennyson in high esteem. “Did you not appreciate ‘The Princess'?” I asked tentatively.

“Why? Because it speaks of women's emancipation? Do you fancy me an emancipator, Dr. Bentwood? One of those modern harridans? The keening suffragist?”

There it was, the subject I'd thought best avoided, until we were more thoroughly acquainted. And clearly she expected a reaction from me. “I would describe you as a modern sort of woman,” I said tactfully. “Never a harridan. And if you are a suffragist, you do not keen.”

She liked that, and rewarded me with a smile. “If I admitted to a previous interest in suffrage, Dr. Bentwood, would you flee the room?”

“Certainly not. But why do you say a ‘previous' interest?”

She shrugged prettily. “Before my father's illness I did support the cause. Since that sad event I've retired from it, although still believing that I and all my sisters should have the vote.”

“And so you would, were it mine to give,” I offered gallantly, but without the slightest confidence that such a thing would ever truly come to pass.

“I think you are jesting with me, Dr. Bentwood.”

“Oh? I didn't mean to offend.” I was glad of the gloom, or she might have noticed the blush upon my face. To cover my embarrassment I decided to change the subject from suffragists and poets to something more prosaic.

“I understand you have a fondness for pinochle.”

That earned me a lift of her lovely eyebrows. “Apparently my reputation precedes me,” she said. “Which leaves us with the question, does a ‘modern woman' play pinochle? For all I know, emancipation and games of chance may be mutually exclusive.”

“Surely pinochle involves skill.”

“Not much. It's all in the cards, as they say. Are you suggesting we play a hand? And what stakes do you have in mind, if you're not, as you claim, a gambling man?”

I was trying to think of a witty reply, something worthy of this intoxicating young woman, when Jebediah returned with the news that the Captain was “amenable.”

“Ah!” I turned to make my apologies and could not help but notice the look that passed between Jebediah and his cousin, as if they were both privy to a discomforting secret that could not be revealed in my presence.