The Devil's Cold Dish (13 page)

“What's that?” Caldwell said, catching the sound of Rees's voice if not the words.

“Where are we going?” Rees shouted instead of repeating his involuntary comment. They had traveled through town and turned down the road by the carpenter's shop. This road paralleled the western branch of the Dugard River and connected the mill and, farther south, went past the tannery for the village.

“You'll see,” Caldwell shouted in reply. He touched his mount's flanks and moved ahead.

Most of the land to the east of the road was farmland and despite the rocky soil the fields were thick with corn and wheat. It had been a good year so far. Fortunately. The previous winter had been unusually harsh. To the west, on Rees's right behind the screen of trees, was the river. He couldn't see it but could hear the water rushing over the rocks in the riverbed. The road made a bend, following the river's line, and some of the houses that comprised a small settlement around the mill came into view. A number of women and children were outside the houses, staring at the mill across the road.

Had one of the millers been killed? A fight over money maybe. Or had it been a brawl?

He followed Caldwell a few more yards, until the mill appeared. Painted red, it was set back just slightly from the road so that the mill wheel could drop down into the rushing stream. A cluster of men congregated outside, kept back by McIntyre's sons. Caldwell pulled up and eyed the crowd. “Damn,” he said. “I'd hoped to keep this quiet.”

Rees examined the faces of the men. Besides the mill workers, he spotted Sam standing among a number of tavern regulars. Everyone looked shocked and although there were a few muttered comments here and there, there was little conversation. Caldwell kneed his mount into a walk.

Rees took up the reins and followed the constable to the mill. Rees must have been here a thousand times during his lifetime. His parents had sent him here with rye and corn to be ground as a boy and now he did it for his own harvests. But today it felt strange to pull the wagon up to the side of the mill. Especially since he heard low mutters from the men standing along the road.

Caldwell dismounted and tied his cob to a post. Rees doubted the horse would run; the gelding moved slowly, head down, with exhaustion. Caldwell had been using him hard the last few days. As Rees tied up Hannibal beside the constable's nag, he realized something was different. Something was wrong. The enormous mill wheel was still. The grinding had stopped. Rees could hear the water in the river and the wind soughing through the trees, sounds usually completely submerged in the thrum of the turning millstone. During the summer, from July on, the stone turned almost every day until nightfall, grinding the bounty from the fields into meal and flour. The big wheel did not stop until after the first killing frost. Except for winter, when the frozen river held the waterwheel in place, the only time Rees could recall a pause in the mill's work was at the death of Mac's father.

Rees began to run toward the door.

“Wait. Rees, wait,” Caldwell shouted as Rees went around him and through the door.

At first he saw nothing amiss. He ran up the ramp to the grain floor. A wall separated the millstone and the hopper above it from view; not a complete wall either. Rees could see some of the stone and the hopper above it through gaps between the boards. It didn't seem at first that anything was wrong. He turned left and went down the short narrow hall, out into the large interior of the mill. The dust that covered every surface puffed up from his feet and thickened the air around him with a faint white haze.

There were only two small windows high up in the back wall so the rear of the mill was in shadow. But a shaft of sunlight came in over the great wheel, shining upon the middle of the mill and illuminating Tom McIntyre.

His naked body had been tied upside down to one of the support posts. The flesh of his chest and legs was a startling white in comparison to his tanned face and forearms. Rees shuddered but forced himself to look at the body and notice everything. His ankles were tied securely at the top and the crown of his head rested upon the mill floor. Blood had pooled around his head, so much blood it was still not completely dry. The buzz of the swarming flies created a steady background hum.

A shovel, its blade darkened by blood and hair, had been tossed to one side. Rees gagged and had to stare over the mill wheel to the blue sky beyond for a few moments before turning back to the body.

McIntyre's arms had been stretched out and tied to the posts on either side of him. Someone, probably one of the miller's sons, had tied a strip of sacking around his waist to cover him. A pocketknife lay near his right hand, laying limply upon the floor. Although footprints marked the slurry of blood and flour on the wooden floor, the knife itself was clean of blood.

“Oh no, oh Mac,” Rees said, his voice breaking.

“Good friend?” Caldwell asked, panting up behind Rees. Rees didn't know how to answer. No, he and Mac were not good friends, but Rees had known the miller all his life. Although they disagreed over politics, McIntyre did not deserve this end to his life. Nobody did. Rees stared at the body, almost too shocked to think. And to be posed in such a humiliating position; it was almost worse than the murder.

“Who found him?” Rees asked.

“Mac's sons. When they came in this morning. They said he stayed late to do some cleaning.”

Rees went down on one knee to inspect Mac's head. He did not look peaceful. His wide-open eyes stared at nothing. “He was beaten,” Rees said. “Did you see that?” He pointed to Mac's deformed head. The blood on the floor here was thick with brain matter. In this July heat the blood was already taking on the stink of rotting meat. Rees rose hurriedly to his feet and ran to the side, where he threw up the contents of his stomach.

The wheel occupied most of this wall. Breathing deeply to settle his rebellious stomach, Rees peered through the gaps between the spokes. He could see the trees on the other side of the river. A bird, a hawk by the width of the wings, took off from a branch and rose into the air, disappearing from Rees's sight into the glare of the sun. The peaceful bucolic scene was so at odds with the death inside the mill. Rees closed his eyes a moment, finally opening them and turning to face the constable. “Whoever killed him hit him over and over, long after he was dead.”

“McIntyre wouldn't have stood still and let a stranger approach this closely,” Caldwell murmured.

Rees nodded in agreement. “It was someone he knew, all right. And the killer was very angry.”

“Must have been; he attacked Mac and then took his time staging this little scene. He came prepared to work after dark.” Caldwell gestured to the row of white pillar candles lined up upon the grindstone. “Then the question becomes, why bother? Why not just shoot the poor fellow and be done?”

“I wish I knew,” Rees said. “But I promise you, I'll find out.” First Zadoc Ward and now Thomas McIntyre; what was going on?

For a moment Rees considered the possibility of two different murderers.

Ward had been shot from a distance, his murder almost anonymous, detached. But Mac's death was intimate, the bludgeoning and posing of the body personal and full of rage. The two victims were also very different. Zadoc Ward was a bully and not well liked, Mac was a pillar of the community and popular. His family had been here for generations. Why, Mac's great grandfather had built the mill.

“Why would anyone kill Mac?” Rees wondered aloud. “And do this to him?”

He gestured to the scene before him.

“I may have part of the answer. This is what I wanted to show you.” Caldwell pointed to a patch of floor. “You have to be close to see it.” So Rees crossed the wide planks back to the spread-eagled body tied to the posts. He stood behind them this time; he just couldn't look at Mac's face again. The blood had combined with flour dust to make a dark paste that had dried upon the floor. When Rees peered at the marks he saw a pattern: a crooked L and a deformed 7.

“What does that mean?” Rees wondered aloud. The marks were close to Mac's right hand. Caldwell squatted and turned over the limp fingers so that Rees could see the brown stain on the forefinger.

“This is why Elijah kept his brothers from cutting down the body. He thought his father might have left a clue to the killer.”

“But it makes no sense,” Rees said, his bellow echoing through the mill. “Seven? What does that mean? That there were seven killers?”

“You're standing on the wrong side,” Caldwell said in exasperation.

“Anyway, Mac couldn't have written this,” Rees said. “He was dying when he was tied up. He wouldn't have had the time to write a message. And his wrists were tied to the posts on either side. And the angle is wrong.”

“Exactly what I thought,” Caldwell said. “Come around and look at it from this side.”

Reluctantly Rees circled the post. He did not look at the body but kept his gaze pinned to the floor. Caldwell put his hand down and bracketed the letters with his thumb and forefinger. “LY…” Rees began. Then his throat closed up and he couldn't continue. Caldwell straightened up.

“Someone wants everyone to believe that Lydia did this,” he said.

Rees stared at the constable in horror. “Why accuse Lydia? She couldn't … And why would she…?” Rees felt so light-headed he could barely talk. Farley would now feel he had clear proof of Lydia's guilt. “She never even met Mac.”

“Of course she didn't do this,” Caldwell said, waving away the suggestion. “Mac was a small man but no woman could lift him, tie him to the posts, and pose him. Especially not if she were in a delicate condition, as Lydia is. Besides,” he added with a mirthless smile, “out of the entire town, I can be sure of only your and Lydia's innocence. Since I stayed at your house last night, I know exactly where you were.”

Rees nodded. “That's true. But whoever did this did not know that.” He looked at the candles on the flat round stone. There were six, all pure beeswax, and only partially burned. They looked exactly like the candles Lydia made and saved for special occasions. She would want to reuse these candles; any frugal housewife would, but the killer had left them here. “Lydia's candles were stolen and placed here to further implicate her,” Rees said. While this staged scene might be an effort to deflect suspicion away from the real killer, Rees did not think that was so.

Beginning with Zadoc Ward's murder, no, before that, with the theft of the cow and the release of the pigs, and then Ward's murder and the attack upon Lydia's beehives, and now this, Rees and his family had been targeted. It was all part of the same malicious scheme. Rees shuddered. Despite the differences between the murders of Zadoc Ward and Tom McIntyre, both had been arranged to destroy Rees. Throwing suspicion on him for Ward's death had not done sufficient damage. But attacking Rees through Lydia—that had a powerful effect. Seeing Rees's reaction to the assault upon Lydia in the market had given the murderer a formidable weapon—and Mac had paid the price.

“Are you about finished?” McIntyre's eldest son, Elijah, paused at the end of the wall. “We want to…” A suppressed sob interrupted him.

“Was anyone here with your father last night?” Rees asked. Elijah glared at him and shook his head. “Of course not. No one. Just my father.” A sob escaped him. “Who would do this?” He stared at Rees, and Rees felt the accusation almost like a physical blow.

“Do you have a bit of sacking?” Caldwell cut in before Elijah could continue his thought. Turning to Rees, he said, “Will you help me cut him down?”

Rees nodded. Although Susannah's information combined with Mac's death and the effort to incriminate Lydia had filled Rees with a desperate urge to see his wife, he didn't want Mac's sons to have to cut down their father. It was terrible enough to imagine this scene lingering in their memories for the rest of their lives. “Of course,” he agreed.

Elijah, who could be no more than three or four years older than David, ran down the hall to the stairs. A few seconds later Rees heard footsteps thudding up to the top floor where the sacked grain was brought in and poured into the hopper. An empty sack with flecks of rye still clinging to it floated down from the upper floor. Rees took out his pocketknife and cut the sack's seams. The rough cloth opened into a sheet. He glanced at Caldwell. The constable nodded and knelt to begin sawing at the ropes around Mac's right wrist. Rees applied himself to the left wrist, keeping his face averted from the body. Usually he was not so squeamish, but he kept imagining Mac laughing and, during their final argument, calling Rees a silly fool for believing in President Washington. Dealing with the corpse of someone he knew was so much harder than with a stranger.

They got Mac down and stretched him out upon the floor. Caldwell knelt for one last look before covering the body with the hairy hessian cloth. Rees was breathing hard, not because Mac was so heavy but from the twin emotions of horror and fear. Poor Mac. And was Lydia all right? Had she been attacked during his absence? “I have to go home,” he said, his teeth chattering so much he garbled the words.

Caldwell looked up at him. “I'm sure she's fine,” he said. “But go on. I'll come by later and we'll talk.”

Rees ran outside, barely noticing the glances directed his way or hearing the whispered comments. His entire being was focused on Lydia, on reaching her and assuring himself of her and his unborn child's safety.

 

Chapter Twelve

When Rees pulled up to the front porch, he didn't even unhitch Hannibal before running inside. Lydia and David looked up in surprise as Rees crossed the kitchen floor in two bounds and gathered Lydia in his arms. He held her tightly, resting his cheek against the cap covering her red hair.

“What happened?” David asked, shocked.