The Truth of All Things (30 page)
Read The Truth of All Things Online
Authors: Kieran Shields
Tags: #Detectives, #Murder, #Police, #Historical Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Murder - Investigation, #Portland (Me.), #Private Investigators, #Crime, #Trials (Witchcraft), #Occultism and Criminal Investigation, #Mystery Fiction, #Historical, #Salem (Mass.), #Fiction, #Women Historians
The Puritan judges and magistrates set verbal traps for the accused, ambushing them with leading and disingenuous questions, browbeating them with unconcealed incredulity and animosity. They assumed guilt from the first and sought nothing other than to coerce anything that could be perceived as a confession. As Upham’s treatise had noted, every kind of irregularity was permitted. Accusers were allowed to make private communications to the magistrates and judges before or during the hearings. In some instances, as in the case of Sarah Good, the magistrate endeavored to deceive the accused by representing falsely the testimony given by another. The people in and around the courtroom were allowed to play a role, by clamors and threatening outcries; and juries were overawed to bring in verdicts of conviction and rebuked from the bench if they exercised their right to do otherwise.
Lean flicked the cigarette butt out the window, then watched it plummet and strike the paved alleyway below in a pathetic burst of sparks that flickered and vanished. He dragged the chair back to the
kitchen table and flipped through the pages to find what he considered the most flummoxing event in the whole of the Salem witch trials, an incident at the trial of Sarah Good as reported by a skeptical Robert Calef.
One of the afflicted fell in a fit; and, after coming out of it, cried out at the prisoner for stabbing her in the breast with a knife, and that she had broken the knife in stabbing of her. Accordingly, a piece of the blade of a knife was found about her. Immediately, information being given to the Court, a young man was called, who produced a haft and part of the blade, which the Court, having viewed and compared, saw it to be the same; and, upon inquiry, the young man affirmed that yesterday he happened to break that knife, and that he cast away the upper part,—this afflicted person being then present. The young man was dismissed and she was bidden by the Court not to tell lies; and was employed after to give evidence against the prisoners
.
Lean reread the passage, and his mind struggled against the impossibly flawed words on the page. A witness, testifying about an invisible specter supposedly sent forth by the accused, was caught red-handed before the judges maliciously attempting to plant the sole piece of physical evidence from a witchcraft attack. The only response of the judges was to tell her not to lie again before she continued testifying against the prisoner in a matter punishable by death.
He took up another page and began the far more depressing portion of his search for a clue to Mrs. Porter’s warning.
Dorcas, a daughter of Sarah Good, was brought before the magistrates on March 24. She was between four and five years old. When led in to be examined, Ann Putnam, Mary Walcot, and Mercy Lewis all charged her with biting, pinching, and choking them. The afflicted girls
showed the marks of her little teeth on their arms. The evidence was considered overwhelming; Dorcas was committed to the jail, where she joined her mother and an infant sibling who would die before its mother was hung that summer
.
On the 26th of March, the magistrates were at the Prison-Keepers House, to examine the Child, and it told them it had a little Snake that used to Suck on the lowest Joint of its Fore-Finger; where they Observed a deep Red Spot, about the Bigness of a Flea-bite, they asked who gave it that Snake? Whether the great Black man, it said no, its Mother gave it
.
By the account of the Boston jailer, it appears that they both were later confined there: as they were too poor to provide for themselves, the country was charged ten shillings for two blankets for Sarah Good’s child as well as the following charges: “May 9th, Chains for Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn, 14s. May 23d, Shackles for 10 Prisoners. May 29th, 1 pair Irons.” Even little Dorcas Good was put into chains, based on the belief that extraordinary fastenings were necessary to hold a witch, along with the assertion of the “afflicted” that their sufferings did not cease till the accused were in fetters
.
Little Dorcas Good, thus sent to prison, lay there chained in the dark, dank cells for seven or eight months. The permanent effect on her mental condition is reported eighteen years later in her father’s petition for damages resulting from the expense of looking after her. Dorcas Good’s father alleged that, “being chain’d in the dungeon was so hardly used and terrified that she hath ever since little or no reason to govern herself.” He was allowed thirty pounds in restitution
.
Lean rested his head in his hands and muttered, “ ‘The darkness rising beware the Good woman and her child.’ ” If there was some connection
between Sarah Good and the current killings, he just couldn’t see it. All he could see was a five-year-old shackled to a stone wall in an unlit cell, screaming in fear, all because of some fantastical ramblings about a pet snake. Lean considered the unfathomable and often absurd statements that his own son’s imagination produced every day and shook his held in disbelief at it all.
There was a sound from the back of the apartment, a moan coming from Owen’s room. Lean took a lamp and walked back down the hallway, where he eased open his son’s door. The flame guttered for a moment. It was a humid July night, and the window was propped open with a foot-long scrap of wood.
Owen let out another low moan that sounded almost like a protest. Lean peered in the direction of the boy. There was something different. He held the lamp high and moved a step closer. Then he saw it: a dark shape squatting on the sleeping boy’s chest. Lean took two quick steps forward and swung at it. The back of his hand connected with a dense, furry mass. The thing sprang from the bed. It hissed, and Lean caught the glare of its eyes. He waved the lamp, and the cat leaped to the sill, then darted out beneath the open window.
Owen stirred at the commotion. Lean bent and kissed the boy’s head. “It’s all right. Back to sleep now.”
He lifted the window higher and stuck his head out. The peak of the small roof above the side entrance to the building was less than three feet below. A nearby tree branch would have let the cat jump to the roof and make its way in. Satisfied, Lean was about to pull his head back into the room when he caught sight of a dark shape. He looked down the alley where something, or someone, had definitely moved.
He closed the window and returned to the hallway, leaving the boy’s door ajar. By the time he retrieved his pistol and made it outside to the alleyway, there was not a living creature to be seen. He heard several voices passing a block over, but a trip up and down the alley and around the corner showed no trace of any dark shadows, human or feline.
L
izzie Madson tromped up the last dark flight toward her third-floor apartment, one hand on the loose rail, the other halfheartedly holding up the hem of her brown linsey dress. There was the faint rumble of a trolley car moving away in the street below, but otherwise the building was still. Each stair creaked out its lonely objection. She knew that the neighbors were out; the telltale mix of loud voices was absent from the hallway. She reached the top step and took her key from a pocket sewn inside her short jacket. Peering closely in the dim hallway light, she worked it into the lock, then closed the door behind her. The apartment was not fitted for either gas or electricity. She drew a packet of wooden matches, broke one off, and struck it to light the candle she kept on a small stand just inside the door.
“You here?” There was no answer to her call.
Lizzie stepped around the corner into the parlor and stopped short. She gasped and took a half step back before she realized her error. Surprise gave way to curiosity. Across the room, near the doorway to the kitchen, a white dress was hanging from a peg. For an instant, Lizzie had thought a person was standing there. She crossed over, her eyes fixed on the long-sleeved dress with a sweeping skirt and white lace trimming around the neck. She set her candle down on a table; only then did she see the coiled rope that was set there. Beside the rope was a long filleting knife, the kind used in the fish stalls. Lizzie’s brow furrowed at the sight of the strange items on the table. They definitely hadn’t been there when she left earlier in the afternoon.
“Hello? You home?”
With her mind still mulling over the puzzle, she turned back again to look at the white dress. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw a flash of blackness—a shadow cast by the flickering candlelight—only too solid, too real.
Before she could look, a hand was over her mouth. A weight pinned her left arm to her side, and she felt her chest being compressed, the air squeezed from her body. She was spun around and slammed face-first into a wall. Lizzie squirmed and flailed, but the body behind her was strong, pinning her up against the wall so that only the tips of her toes touched the floor. She reached out with her right hand, trying to shove away from the wall, but couldn’t find the leverage to force her attacker backward. Lizzie’s right hand went up to her face. She clawed at the hand that held a rag to her mouth, gagging her. Only now was she aware of an odor stinging her nostrils. Her eyes began to well up.
“Sorry, love …” His voice paused in silent struggle.
She could feel his lips brushing against her ear. The voice had been low, with an undercurrent of animal rage, but she recognized it as his. Lizzie’s stinging eyes blurred further, and then the tears slipped down her cheeks. For a few seconds, she could hear only the rush of blood pounding in her ears and her own muffled cries, sounding far away as if chained down deep in the pit of her stomach.
“… but you haven’t been true. Have you?”
Lean sat at a small table behind the front desk of the patrol station. Before him on the table were calendar pages for May, June, and July. His eyes focused on today’s date, July 18, then slid over the surrounding squares. Soon one would be marked with an X as the next murder date. Beside the calendar pages was the patrol house’s logbook for the previous week. Each entry recorded, using the fewest words possible, all complaints actually lodged with the police. Shorthand notations conveyed names, addresses, the gist of the problem, which officer had responded, and whether anyone had been taken into custody.
Set out in small hills, forming a defensive perimeter around Lean’s research, were stacks of recent newspapers. One pile was dedicated to each of the city’s four dailies: the
Eastern Argus
, the
Portland Daily Press
, the
Evening Express
, and the
Daily Advertiser
. A final stack encompassed the latest editions of each of a dozen different weeklies. He was
working his way forward in time, toward today’s editions. He’d been through nearly all of them and found nothing. From Hannah Easler’s murder to Maggie Keene’s had been just over a month: Wednesday, May 11, to Tuesday, June 14. It wasn’t much, certainly not enough to show a pattern of behavior by the killer. Still, if the killer stuck to this schedule, another body would be discovered any day now. He stared at the calendar pages, willing them one last time to divulge what they knew.
“Where’s the body?” He hadn’t meant to speak aloud and earned a quizzical look from Officer Bushey.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Just something I’m thinking on.” Lean stood and walked past the front desk.
“Oh,” said Bushey, not even trying to fake an air of understanding. “Well, if it’s any comfort, you’re not the only one looking for a body.”
Lean glanced over to see Bushey holding a newspaper in his hand. Lean shook his head. “What’ve you got?”
“Morning edition, just arrived. Someone saw a dead woman on the side of the road, out in Berwick two nights ago. But by the time he got back with the sheriff, the woman’s body was gone.” Bushey shrugged. “She ain’t turned up yet.”
“Let’s have the details,” Lean said. Then he listened as Bushey repeated the story’s salient points.
A man riding the Berwick Road saw a woman laid out just off the side. She looked so peaceful that he thought she was just asleep or passed out. Her face had a strange reddish color, but there were no signs of injury. Her skin was chilled, and he couldn’t wake her. He didn’t get a chance to do anything more before he heard a gunshot and saw a man coming toward him out of the woods. He hopped aboard his wagon and didn’t look back until he reached town. When questioned further, the man confirmed he didn’t recognize the woman. He described her as in her mid-thirties, dark hair, with a plain face, and wearing a fancy white dress.
“Odd,” Lean said.
“York County sheriff’s stumped. Putting it down to some kind of hoax.”
She wasn’t the next one. The killer never would have left intact the peaceful-looking face and left no sign of injury. A more likely explanation would be that the man with the gun was traveling through when the woman died. Natural causes or otherwise. Too poor to afford a proper burial, or else afraid of being blamed, he found a spot by the side of the road and dug a grave in the woods. Panicking when he saw the good Samaritan stop by the road, he fired a shot to scare the man off. Lean felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.