Bone Rattler (16 page)

After surrendering the box to the woman, Crispin showed Duncan to a small, sparse bedroom on the third floor, under the slanting eaves, explaining that he had a similar room down the hall.

“There was to be a crate delivered to Professor Evering,” Duncan ventured as he dropped his bag on the narrow rope bed.

Crispin nodded. “Carried to the teaching chamber. The Reverend spoke of the professor’s tragic ending. Some people just don’t travel well.”

“I know not what Reverend Arnold told you. Professor Evering was murdered.”

Alarm flashed in Crispin’s eyes. “Surely he wasn’t—” the big man began. “It couldn’t have anything to do with—” he tried again, then grew silent and looked out the window, his brow knitted in worry.

A scullery maid entered, carrying a bucket of hot water that she emptied into the wash basin on the bedside table, and then hastened away without acknowledging Duncan.

“What became of the last teacher here?” Duncan asked to his back.

Crispin took a long time to answer. “Before, it was just gentlemen from Philadelphia or Boston who stayed a month or two. This is the first time all the children have been together. The two little ones will be sent to Europe for schooling in a few years. Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsey wants them to have a teacher from back home.”

Duncan studied the man a moment. Crispin was employed by what must be one of the wealthiest families in the New World, but instead of boasting of its grandeur, he had pointed out its hate and grief; instead of using Ramsey’s title, he was naming him with a common term of address. “I wasn’t hired in England, Crispin,” Duncan confessed. “I was a convict in the Company. I am a convict,” he corrected himself. “A convict with indenture papers that can be revoked at any time.”

The butler stiffened, responded with another worried stare, rubbing the back of his head as if suffering a sudden ache. He seemed
about to fire back questions, but finally he only nodded. “I was once a slave, too,” he offered with a shrug.

“You mentioned two young children. And the third?”

Crispin’s face took on a pained, puzzled expression, as if Duncan’s simple question were impossible to answer. “What did the Reverend tell you?”

“Just that I was to teach three children. What of the third?”

Crispin stepped toward the door with a reluctant expression, as if Duncan were forcing him from the chamber. “She needs the most . . . .” He sighed. “I don’t have the words,” he said, his voice overcome with a sudden melancholy.

Duncan stared after him, trying to fathom his abrupt change of mood, as Crispin retreated down the hall. He gazed out the window over the small, busy town for several minutes, fighting a terrible guilt for being in the comfortable mansion house while the Company moved toward the wilderness, gauging his chances of leaping on a horse and racing to find Lister without being stopped. He pulled himself away to quickly unpack and wash, then explored the house, encountering several servants who hurried past with hasty words of greeting and lowered heads. Wandering through an elegant dining room with an elaborate mural of the harbor painted on one wall, past a long mahogany table adorned with three matching brass candelabras, he found himself in a chamber lined with bookshelves. Duncan walked along the shelves in awe. Several were stacked with newspapers and periodicals:
The Spectator, The Gentleman’s Magazine,
Dr. Johnson’s
Rambler,
and something called
The Pennsylvania Gazette.
But there were also at least four hundred books, a veritable treasure, a collection worthy of the most learned men of England. The complete works of Hume were there, as well as Voltaire, Swift, Rousseau, Pope, Dante, Hobbes, and Defoe. One shelf held nothing but the works of the Greek philosophers.

Flanking the library’s large central fireplace were four oil portraits in ornate gilded frames. On the right were one of the king and another of old King James II, the former regent who as the Duke of
York had taken the colony from the Dutch in the last century. On the opposite side of the mantel were two separate images, one of a beautiful woman whose vibrant face betrayed the austerity of her black dress and lace bonnet, her eyes as bright as the gold and ruby cross hanging from her neck. On a small table below her image was a vase of wilted spring flowers.

The man in the frame beside the woman had an impatient air and a wig of white curls too small for his large cranium. His was the only one of the four portraits that displayed the full body of its subject, seated in a throne-like chair. The man’s closely set gray eyes burned not only with intelligence but with pride and ambition. In one hand he held an ornate compass. At his feet were hunting hounds, behind him a shadowy landscape with running horses over one shoulder and grazing stags over the other. Duncan’s eyes went back to the hands, each of which bore heavy jeweled rings. It was the pose of a member of royalty, or of an explorer, a conqueror of lands. Duncan noticed something else in the shadows of the background, past the stags, at the edge of a dense forest. Stepping closer, he discerned a cabin of logs, with a woman sitting on the ground, cradling in her lap the head of what appeared to be a dying man stretched out beside her. He stared at the dim, unsettling image a long time, chilled by the memory of the attack in the harbor, admitting to himself for the first time that he had been caught up in the war with the savages before even setting foot in America.

Eventually Duncan’s gaze settled on the carved and painted crest set in the top of the frame. On a blue field with gold stars stood a stone tower under a pair of crossed swords. Arched above them were three ornately painted words:
Audentes fortuna juvat.
Fortune favors the bold.

At the bottom right of the crest was a rearing black stallion; in the bottom center, a red rose; and at the left, a globe gripped in a hand. Duncan stared at the globe, then pulled from his pocket the button extracted from the bloody heart, studying it in the sunlight cast through the window. The globe of the button was identical to that of the crest, as intricately worked as the delicate carving on the frame. He
examined the button’s underside and saw many folds of metal. The crushed metal could have comprised such a wrist and hand, and he realized that the object could as easily have been a pendant as a button. Whatever its function, there was no doubt that the ornament that had been left in the bloody heart had borne the Ramsey family crest.

He paced slowly along the rows of books again, trying to comprehend this new riddle, noticing for the first time a narrow door in the corner of the room by the window. As he approached it he heard the muffled sound of a chair scraping the floor. The door flung open and an adolescent boy in the dark livery of the house servants emerged at a trot, holding a leather case on a strap—the case Arnold had carried from the ship. The youth was halfway across the room when, spying Duncan, he halted with a cry of surprise.

“What is it?” a harsh voice called from the chamber, and into the doorway stepped Reverend Arnold. He glared at Duncan a moment, motioned the boy away, then his eyes softened. “I have been remiss in not explaining the facilities to you, Mr. McCallum.” The vicar quickly led him out of the library, then slowed as they reached the dining room. Outside, through the window, Duncan saw the youth hand the dispatch case to a thin, rough-looking man in a soiled leather shirt and a ragged fur cap, who hung the strap around his neck. The man’s weathered, unshaven face bore several deep scars. The quick strides he took toward the horse tied at the gate were those of a wildcat. He reminded Duncan of the raw, feral men who inhabited the remotest parts of the Highlands.

“The arrows,” Duncan said. “Did you discover who shot them?”

“A prank, no doubt. American children are notoriously unruly,” the vicar replied hastily, though the uncertainty in his voice recalled for Duncan the panic that had seized the vicar when the first shaft had been fired. “I expect an early draft of your report,” he abruptly added. “Lord Ramsey will require a full record. Your scientific details will please him. I have already written to him, summarizing how your science points to Lister, but no doubt you will want the opportunity to impress him directly with your skills of deduction.”

“I said nothing about Lister.”

“You proved that Evering died the night before he was discovered, when Lister was one of those unaccounted for. You proved that Evering was struck in the skull with a hard object. I discovered that Lister had offered to repair Woolford’s broken chest, obviously a pretense to gain access to the carpenter’s stores. You showed us how Evering had glass in his knee. Lister was seen hurrying from Evering’s cabin in the small hours last night, trying to remove evidence. You already demonstrated that the one who finished the ritual at the compass had Highland roots. Do you forget that Lister stood in the hold while you examined Evering? He heard everything.”

“Remove evidence? What evidence?”

“The glass on Evering’s knee. Lister had a cloth of the same shards when he was stopped last night. Surely the glass shows Evering died in his cabin. Who but the murderer would want to remove the shards? And consuming the slip of paper when we caught him—not the act of an innocent man.”

Duncan closed his eyes a moment. Lister had gone back for the glass, after Duncan had asked for a cloth to gather it in. And the paper would have been the slip in Evering’s hand indicating a meeting with Duncan. Lister had eaten it to protect Duncan.

“I have every confidence that you will understand the situation after reflection. Let us meet tonight. Shall we say, in the library after the children retire? I shall bring the Old Testament.” The vicar stepped toward the end of the long table. “There,” he said in a louder voice, pointing to the kitchen. “You will find a room off the kitchen that we use for instruction. It is well lit and takes warmth from the kitchen fires. The large desk there is at your disposal, with writing implements and paper. Lord Ramsey has been so kind as to leave an atlas and other books there. The materials brought by Evering will be at your disposal. You are not permitted off the grounds, but you have free access to the kitchen, and on Sunday you will be invited to—”

Arnold’s words were cut off by a peal of laughter. A boy of perhaps eight years and a girl who seemed about two years younger,
both with light brown, curly hair, entered the room, a small spaniel romping at their feet. They did not see Arnold until they were halfway across the room. They halted abruptly, all joy draining from their eyes, and gazed nervously at the tall, stern figure in black. Arnold opened his mouth and seemed about to reprimand them, but then reconsidered as the children darted behind the skirts of a young woman who appeared with a vase of flowers.

She could be no more than eighteen, Duncan thought as he studied her, but there was something in her graceful countenance that spoke of sadness and wisdom far beyond her years. Her long brown hair, streaked with auburn, hung loose over the shoulders of her simple, hunter green dress. Her eyes, though quiet and intelligent, were remarkably shrunken, as if she had long been deprived of sleep. She wore no jewelry except a simple gold cross above the square bodice of her dress. Her unadorned face flushed with color as she looked into Duncan’s eyes, and he struggled with the notion that he had seen her somewhere before. She was the third, the one Crispin had been scared to speak of.

“I had intended to make introductions at tea,” Reverend Arnold said with a sigh, then stepped between Duncan and the newcomers, gesturing for the boy and girl to step forward. “Master Jonathan Ramsey, Miss Virginia Ramsey,” he said with a quick motion to each of the small children. “And our Sarah,” he concluded in a voice gone oddly still. “You may greet your new tutor, Mr. McCallum.”

Sarah seemed to look for cues from her younger siblings, as if she did not understand what to say, then mouthed the words that Jonathan and Virginia spoke. “Good afternoon, Mr. McCallum. Welcome to our house.” Jonathan gave a small, stiff bow; Virginia, a deep curtsy. Sarah, flushing again, made an awkward motion somewhere between a bow and a curtsy, the vase still in her hands.

Sarah seemed unwilling to look back into Duncan’s eyes. She silently retreated around the table, walking along the far side, and stepped into the library alone to place the vase in front of the portrait of the woman, removing the old flowers. As Duncan watched
from a distance, her left hand began trembling, and she quickly clamped her right around it.

Something new had entered the pastor’s eyes, a sudden skittish-ness. As Duncan watched, Arnold pulled his own gaze from Sarah back to the children, who had not moved. His eyes flared and he stepped to Jonathan, prying something out of the boy’s fingers. A long, narrow blade—a letter opener, held like a sword. Arnold dropped the blade into his own pocket and glared at the boy. Duncan watched in surprise as the boy braved the vicar’s steely gaze for a moment before looking toward the floor.

“We must offer new prayers tonight,” the boy said in a bold voice.

The comment seemed to unsettle Arnold. “Prayers for whom, son?”

“The one with the laughing eyes who carved me a beaver out of a stick,” Jonathan said in an earnest tone. “He’s gone to see Old Crooked Face at the crooked tree.”

Arnold seemed to stop breathing for a moment. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. “Of course we shall pray.” Duncan did not miss the alarmed glance he threw toward Sarah. “Meanwhile, should you not take your new tutor to his classroom?”

Jonathan, with an odd expression of triumph, took Duncan’s hand and led him away. As they entered the kitchen, Duncan looked back to see Arnold hurrying out the front door, hat and coat in hand.

The boy scampered away after leading Duncan to the chamber Arnold had described, a cheerful, sunlit room with a large walnut desk and three small tables arranged in front of it, each bearing a slate but also sheets of precious paper, pewter inkwells, pencil leads, and quills. Duncan idly leafed through the expensive atlas on the desk, gazing at the vast, unmarked lands west of the American coast, then saw the open crate in the corner, its contents partially unpacked onto an adjacent bench.