The Devil's Cold Dish (7 page)

Rees forced a smile. “Well, I've been told this morning that I am arrogant, and besides, that some people suspect me of murdering Zadoc Ward. And Lydia is also the subject of malicious gossip.”

Susannah leaned forward to pat Lydia's arm as she said to Rees, “It is true I've heard you described as arrogant.”

“And I'm certain less kind words were used,” Rees said. Susannah laughed and Rees knew he was right.

“I suppose I would describe you as self-confident. You carry yourself with an air.” She stopped and thought. “It's not that you think you know everything or even that you scorn the rest of us, but you wear your experiences from the wider world like a cloak. It's clear you've seen and experienced things most of us will never know. That bothers some of the men. It makes them feel…” She searched for the correct word. “Provincial. Lesser somehow. Don't worry. It's nothing important.” The slam of the front door drew her attention to the two women who were entering. “I must attend my customers but I will return,” she promised before hurrying away. Rees sat down across from Lydia and examined her countenance. When she noticed his regard she forced a smile.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'm fine.” To prove it, she buttered the scone and took a bite. But Rees saw that she had some trouble swallowing. She clearly was not so calm as she claimed.

He turned and watched Susannah as she smiled at the two women and gestured to an empty table. But the elder of the women, her mouth pursed, turned to stare at Rees and Lydia. Rees could not hear what she said to her companion but they both turned and left. Susannah's smile faded but then, with a little shrug, she walked back to Rees and Lydia.

“I suppose they feared taking a dish of coffee with a suspected murderer in the room,” Rees said. He gripped the coffee cup so tightly the handle broke off and the porcelain fell to the table and broke in half.

“Oh, Will,” Susannah said. “Now look what you've done.” She snatched up Lydia's napkin and pressed it to the spilled coffee. “Their leaving had nothing to do with you, nothing at all.” She stopped short. But it was too late. Rees turned a surprised glance upon Susannah and then looked at his wife.

“Are you saying—Lydia?”

Susannah did not reply. Instead she pressed the napkin to the table long after the wood was dry.

“You mean they left because of me?” Lydia's voice broke.

Susannah stared at the wooden tabletop and the linen square crumpled in her hands without speaking. “There seems to be some … bad feeling against Lydia.”

Rees said, staring at Susannah, “What have you heard?”

She hesitated, her eyes staring blindly through the window behind Rees as though the answer might be there. “I know there's been gossip.”

“Mrs. Ward refused to accept help from me,” Lydia said. Her voice trembled with hurt and when Rees looked at her he saw tears glistening on her lashes.

Susannah stared at Lydia's tears and sighed. “There's been a lot of talk. I mean, most people don't believe it but…” She stopped again, one finger tracing a faint line carved into the wood.

“What do they say?” Rees asked. And when she did not immediately reply, he persisted. “That Lydia practices witchcraft?”

Susannah nodded.

“There can't be many who believe that? Now? In this age?” Rees stopped and took a breath.

“More than a few. Many don't, but it's something to talk about. And Lydia
was
a member of that strange church.”

“Not ten years ago,” Lydia said in a peculiar voice, “Mother Ann Lee was suspected of witchcraft.”

“And what happened to her?” Susannah asked in a hushed voice as though afraid of the answer.

“Nothing. She was eventually released,” Lydia said.

Susannah nodded and began twirling a lock of her hair around one finger.

Rees remembered that nervous gesture from childhood. She knew something else she didn't want to confide. He reached across the table and put his hand on hers to still the motion.

“Tell me,” he said.

“While the gossip about Lydia is serious,” Susannah said, “I think it is more a nine-day wonder. It is Zadoc Ward's murder that is the more dangerous problem for you.” Susannah raised her eyes and said anxiously, “Promise me you had nothing to do with his death.”

Rees inhaled sharply, caught by surprise. “Of course I didn't,” he said. “How can you even think that?” Although he thought she might mention his temper, she didn't. But she did not immediately assure him of her trust either. Rees stared at his old friend for several seconds. He was so hurt that one of his oldest and dearest friends thought he might be a murderer that he couldn't speak. He felt as though the ground underneath his feet had dropped away and he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. “There has been some discussion about your relationship with Mrs. Ward,” she said at last, choosing each word with care.

“I met her for the first time when Constable Caldwell and I went to tell her of her husband's death,” Rees said. He struggled to force the words through his trembling lips; it was as though he were communicating in a foreign language.

Susannah nodded. “I believe you. But you see how the story is growing.”

“Who is spreading these rumors?” Rees asked. “Who?” And why? Gossip about Lydia, and Rees as the primary suspect in Ward's murder. What was going on? He wondered again, this time with a sick feeling in his gut, if Ward's murder had been arranged specifically to implicate Rees. He didn't want to think so, but it was beginning to seem likely.

“I don't know who started the one about you killing Mr. Ward,” Susannah said. “It was just everywhere, all at once.”

“Did Ward brawl with anyone else lately?” Rees asked hopefully. Ward was a bully and picked on anyone he thought was weaker than he was. Rees had stepped in several times to defend Sam.

“Not more than usual,” Susannah said. She touched his hand sympathetically. “I'm sorry.”

“Was there anyone—have you heard of anyone with a particular grievance against him?”

“I'm sorry, no,” Susannah said.

“A stranger maybe? That Mr. Drummond?” Rees knew he sounded desperate. Susannah shook her head.

Rees had hoped for another suspect. He dropped his head into his hand and tried to think. His thoughts were so full of concern for Lydia he could hardly focus on anything else.

“And the rumors about my husband's relationship with Mrs. Ward?” Lydia asked.

A faint pink tinted Susannah's cheeks. “I don't know.”

“As though I would ever hurt Lydia in such a way,” Rees said, turning to look at her and taking her hand in his. Lydia did not look at him but leaned forward a little.

“Do you know who's spreading those lies about us?” she asked insistently.

“No,” Susannah said, her eyes shifting away from Lydia's gaze.

“And about Lydia?” Rees asked. “Who's spreading that gossip about her?” Susannah shook her head, and her fingers began playing with the flounce at her waist.

“Who, Suze?” Rees demanded. “Tell me.”

“It was Caroline,” Susannah said. “She started the rumors that Lydia was a witch.”

 

Chapter Six

“I swear I'll kill my sister,” Rees said to Lydia for the tenth time as he helped her into the wagon. He wished he had not eaten the scone. It felt like a lead ingot in his stomach. “How could she do this to me?”

“I know,” Lydia said. She reached out and grasped his wrist when he climbed into the seat beside her. “I know. But you must master your anger. Rash action will not help resolve this.”

He nodded, knowing she was recalling the blow that had hurled Sam to the mounting block. He took a deep breath but it did not calm him. Exhaling loudly, he picked up the reins and slapped them down upon Hannibal's back.

They rode home in silence. Rees did not trust himself to speak. He was furious with his sister and it took all his energy to keep himself from exploding all over again. But he was determined to speak to Caroline and demand an explanation this very day when he went over to help with the haying.

He deposited Lydia at his farm and unloaded the barrels of flour into the pantry. Then he climbed back into the wagon seat. His heartbeat began to speed up as he anticipated his conversation with Caroline.

*   *   *

It was already noon when he arrived and time for dinner. Of Caroline there was no sign but David, Simon, Sam, and Charlie were seated under a tree near the dilapidated house. Knowing Caroline's lack of domestic abilities, Lydia had packed a large basket for her menfolk this morning and David had just begun unpacking the freshly baked bread, a roasted chicken, hard-boiled eggs, and a wheel of cheese when his father pulled up. Charlie leaned with assumed nonchalance against the oak's trunk. But as Rees crossed the downtrodden weeds he noticed how his nephew eyed the food hungrily. David offered him a chicken leg and a hunk of cheese. Sam sat down without an invitation and grabbed a loaf of bread, tearing off a hunk with his dirty hands and stuffing it into his mouth. Rees shook his head. It was fortunate Lydia had packed enough for all of them.

“Where's my sister?” he asked.

“Inside,” Charlie said.

Rising to his feet, Rees crossed the trash-strewn yard toward the house. He paused, foot on the lowest porch step, and listened. He could hear chickens clucking. He walked around the house to a fence made of stacked tree branches and peered over it. A small flock of chickens scratched in the dirt. Were these his missing poultry? All chickens looked alike to him. “David?” He called his son over, and when David approached Rees tipped his head at the flock on the other side of the fence.

“They're our chickens,” David agreed. “See the hen with the torn comb? I saw that happen. Hawk tried to grab her. That's ours.”

Rees swore and smacked his fist into the fence. Compared to the gossip that was distressing Lydia so, the theft of a few chickens was a small thing. But it was one more example of his sister's entitled behavior. Realizing that David had stepped back and was eyeing his father in concern, Rees forced a smile. “Caroline's behavior has become unsupportable. I will talk to her this very minute.”

Turning, he stamped around the house. It was really little more than a shack. The front door hung askew from one hinge. The glass in one window had been broken and someone had tacked up a few boards across it. If it were not for the clucking of chickens in their enclosure, a passerby would think this place abandoned. Rees jumped over the rotting steps and banged on the door frame. He didn't dare touch the door itself, it might fall off completely. Then, although no one called out to him, he went in.

The smell, a combination of rotting garbage and unwashed bodies, hit him first. He tried to breathe in quick shallow breaths. When his nose had adjusted somewhat, he took a few steps farther in.

This was his first time inside and as he looked around he frowned with consternation. A wooden bench and a chair with a broken seat served as the sole furniture in the front part of the room. In the back, the kitchen half, Caroline sat at a wooden table with a carved oak cup before her. Even from the door Rees could see the faint sheen of greasy grime that covered the table. Dirty dishes littered almost every surface. Georgina, the youngest child, was eating an egg with her hands and yellow yolk smeared her face and the hair that hung unbrushed from her cap. Gwennie, the eight-year-old, bent over the spider, cooking another mess of eggs. “I'm sorry, Mama,” she was saying. “All the yolks broke.” Like her sister, Gwennie's clothing was ragged and dirty. The grayish tint to Caroline's apron and cap betrayed too long a span without laundering. Rees stared at his sister in shock. Caroline had always been the fastidious sister.

Gwennie bent precariously close to the flames as she poked at the eggs. But Caroline seemed not to notice. She stared blankly into her cup as though trying to read the future. “Caroline,” Rees said. What was wrong with her? He crossed the floor in two strides and snatched up the little girl. “I think the eggs are done,” he said to her as he moved her away from the fire. He wrapped a towel around the spider's handle and pushed it to the front of the hearth.

Caroline did not even turn her head to look at him.

He looked down at the little girl. “Have you eaten yet?” She gulped and shook her head.

“These are for my mother. She hasn't been eating.”

Rees looked at his sister, really noticing her scrawny arms and angular, bony face for the first time. How had he not seen this before?

“Take Georgina out to the trough and wash her face and hands,” he told Gwennie, lifting her younger sister to the floor. Both children could do with a bath. They smelled. “Then go out front and ask David to give you some food. He brought over a basket.”

“Really?” asked Gwennie. He nodded and they ran out eagerly.

Rees sat down in the rickety chair across the table from Caroline. She slowly raised her eyes. “I want to talk to you about something,” Rees said. She released her cup and looked at him, a faint light beginning to glow in their depths. She smiled slightly.

“It's a good time to move,” she murmured. Rees ignored her comment, rushing forward with his question and eager to have this conversation finished.

“Besides the chickens you've stolen from me—”

“They're mine,” she interrupted.

“No, they aren't. But forget that for now. I want to know why you've been spreading rumors about Lydia.”

“Rumors?” Caroline said as though she didn't understand the word.

“Claiming she's a witch.”

“I—well, it was only once or twice. And how does it feel to have your spouse badly treated?” For the first time since his arrival, Caroline spoke with some animation. “Are all the old tabbies ostracizing her? Well, good.”