The Truth of All Things (29 page)

Grey returned the smile.

“As a gangrenous foot must be taken to save a leg, so must degenerates be removed from society. And so it is true of the political body—the cancer of slavery, that moral blight that so tormented our nation’s very soul. There was no alternative to war if our country was to be saved. And thus it is now with liquor, the greatest threat our society has ever faced.”

Grey selected a text from the shelf. “Then you agree with Mr. Darwin’s cousin as well. Galton’s ideas about the inherent deficiencies of certain peoples. Some have argued in favor of the forced sterilization of habitual drunkards, imbeciles, and the like. I’ve even heard the argument advanced in the case of certain races—say, American Indians.”

“The developments out west over the past fifteen years lend credence to Mr. Galton’s theory on the ultimate fate of the Indian. Of course, that destiny need not apply to every individual. Take you, Mr. Grey. You obviously have been blessed to inherit the stronger traits of your white ancestry and would clearly fall within that class of Indians who are properly integrated into the civilized population.”

“How kind of you to say.”

“Colonel?” Simon Gould held his pocketwatch in his hand.

“Yes, thank you, Gould.” Blanchard turned his attention back to the detectives. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. I have important matters to attend to. And an hour’s idleness is as bad as an hour’s drunkenness.”

As they went downstairs to the exit, Lean asked, “What was all that about Indians?”

Grey waved his walking stick in the air. “Just a sample of the unchecked idiocy common to parlor philosophers. Those who have trouble distinguishing between windows and mirrors.”

“Ahh,” said Lean with a nod that gave no hint of understanding but indicated an agreement to move on. “What do you make of the colonel’s explanations?”

“For such a sober man, he can lie as well as any drinker I’ve ever questioned.”

“You know, Grey, it’s just that sort of keen perception that warrants your inclusion in the civilized population.”

Grey chuckled. “Do
I
have a say in the matter?”

L
ean sat with his son on the parlor floor. He could hear his wife talking to someone at the front door, but any details were lost in the explosions issuing from Owen as his troop of blue-coated wooden soldiers proceeded to massacre Lean’s line of red-coated ruffians.

“Archie”—Emma leaned in through the doorway—“there’s a woman here to see you. She won’t come in.” Then she added in a whisper, “Amelia Porter.”

Lean threw on a waistcoat and buttoned up as he made his way to the door.

“Mrs. Porter. What a surprise,” he said with complete honesty. He hadn’t expected to see the medium again so soon after the séance. “Would you like to come in?”

The woman shook her head, though by the way she glanced about, Lean could tell she was not altogether comfortable outside the door either.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked.

“Yes. That matter you came to see me about.”

“We’re still investigating.”

“I know. You see, I … I haven’t been sleeping well since you came. There are”—she gave a little shrug—“things that remain unresolved, that have not been allowed to rest.”

“Have you seen anything else? Anything you think might help us?”

“Nothing specific. Just a feeling, a sort of dread.” Her gaze dropped to the floor, and Lean suspected she was holding something back. “It’s like … have you ever knocked on a door and no one comes to answer? But you stand there because you know they’re just inside, waiting for you to go away. That’s sort of how it is for me. Only in reverse. I’m the one inside the door, waiting for the person outside to knock. And afraid of opening the door when they do.”

“Mrs. Porter, are you sure you won’t come inside? Have a cup of tea or something?”

“No. I’ve only come to give you this.” She pulled a folded paper from her coat pocket but did not yet hand it over. “I was at my kitchen table this afternoon, had just put the kettle on and was making my shopping list. The next thing, the kettle’s steamed itself dry and I’d written this. Maybe it will mean something to you.” She forced the note into his hand, then turned away. She made it five steps before he called to her. He saw her shoulders hunch together slightly, tensing for his question.

“Yes, Mr. Lean?”

“I know you’re not active as a medium. But in the past year or so, have you been visited by a man, maybe smallish with dark hair, wanting to learn about occult matters, witchcraft? Maybe the Salem witches in particular?”

Mrs. Porter thought a moment. “No, I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite all right. Thank you anyway. You’ve been most helpful.”

Mrs. Porter retreated several more steps, then stopped again, not turning back to face Lean.

“I’m sorry. I lied earlier.”

Lean said nothing, and the night stretched out between them, silent and empty.

“I
have
seen something else. I’ve seen
you
, Mr. Lean. And there’s death all around you. Promise me to God you’ll be careful.”

Lean set Mrs. Porter’s paper on a table in Dr. Steig’s study, and the others gathered around.

“ ‘The darkness rising beware the Good woman and her child,’ ” read the doctor. “What do you suppose it means?”

“I don’t know,” answered Helen, “but it certainly is disturbing.”

“I’ll say,” added Grey as he pointed above the cryptic message to where Amelia Porter had begun to write her shopping list. “ ‘Five pounds of parsnips.’ I mean, honestly, how many parsnips can two people eat?”

Helen’s head sagged toward her shoulder. “They could be having people for dinner. People do that sometimes—socialize, talk about things other than murder and dismemberment.”

“Ghastly business,” said Grey.

“Returning to the note,” Dr. Steig said. “She was unaware what she had written?”

“Automatic writing. Some mediums do it while in a trance,” Helen said.

“Still doesn’t explain all those parsnips. It’s not as of you can serve them as an entrée.”

“Can you please be serious for a moment, Grey?” Lean said. “I find this message, and the obvious concern displayed by Mrs. Porter, alarming.”

Grey nodded, and Lean took this as the closest he would receive to an acknowledgment of his concern.

“The ‘darkness rising’ bit. She mentioned that in the séance,” said Dr. Steig.

“It’s vague. So is the part about the good woman and her child. Why ‘beware’? Does this ‘good woman’ pose some threat?” asked Helen.

Grey glanced at the note again. “Good is capitalized. Perhaps it’s not a description but a name.”

Dr. Steig went to his bookshelf and pulled down the 1892 Directory of Portland and Vicinity. He flipped through the pages. “Here we go. There’s only one woman by that name, Miss Nellie, a laundress
boarding at 56 Maple, which appears to be the home of her father, William, a shoemaker. And the last name is spelled with an ‘e’ on the end.”

“Wait just a minute.” Helen bolted up from her seat and moved to the table. She began riffling through pages of stacked research. “Given that the killer enjoys using names of Salem victims, it just seems a bit of coincidence that … Here we are. Sarah Good. No ‘e’ on the end. She was in the first group of women accused as witches. Hanged on July nineteenth, 1692.”

“Does it say there if she had a child?” Lean asked.

“That’s why I remembered her. Dorcas Good. Four years old. Also accused of witchcraft.”

L
ean sat at his kitchen table, the pages Helen had assembled spread out before him like some oversize game of solitaire. Most of the passages had been copied from the texts of the Reverend Charles Upham and George Lincoln Burr, referencing the actual transcripts from Salem as well as contemporaneous witnesses and writers like Deodat Lawson, Cotton Mather, and Robert Calef, the last a rare voice of reason amid the collective Salem delusion.

He had gone through a larger stack of writings, boiling them down to the handful of pages that remained under his nose. This reflected the sum of Sarah and Dorcas Good’s role in the Salem tragedy. A mother and her very young daughter, singled out for accusation and condemnation for an illusory crime against God and their fellow colonists. Lean tried to think of the Puritans as mere human beings: flawed, imperfect, reacting to the fears and prejudices of their own ignorant age. But each time he read through the notes, his anger grew.

He closed his eyes and reminded himself of his goal, the connection he had to find. “The darkness rising beware the Good woman
and her child.” He picked up a page and started to read once more the story of the arrest and trial of the first of those accused as Salem witches.

Next Lean took up the transcript from the hearing where Sarah Good was first charged. It was a transcript in the loosest sense only, capturing not so much the exact words spoken two hundred years ago, but rather the impressions of a prejudiced and convinced recorder, concerned primarily with justifying a result that was never in doubt.

Lean took a cigarette from his coat and glanced down the hall at the bedroom door. Emma would be sound asleep. He moved a chair to the window, lit the cigarette, and blew a deep chestful of frustration and doubt, about two centuries’ worth, out into the dark night. The examination of Sarah Good gnawed at him. The magistrate, Hathorne, an ancestor to the author Nathaniel, conducted the judicial proceeding more like a police interrogation. Reading over the record of the hearings and the trials, Lean could not escape the sense of wrongdoing.