The Salem Witch Society (17 page)

From the connection in Boston, Lean
and Grey had taken the Green-bush Line south along its winding coastal route, through Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham. They exited at Egypt Station in Scituate to be met by Grey’s old colleague Walt McCutcheon. He was of average height, with a new bowler set atop his dark, wavy hair. A full handlebar mustache sat above a wide grin as he greeted them. He had a hearty handshake but seemed unwilling to meet Lean eye to eye. For a brief moment, Lean was suspicious, until he realized that McCutcheon was simply stealing glances behind him at a fine-drawn blonde who was waiting with her baggage.

Lean guessed that McCutcheon had been a fit enough fellow in his younger days, but he was now red in the face and a bit thick through the midsection. He wore a stylish cutaway suit of blue wide-wale diagonals with ivory buttons, a crimson silk vest, and a dark checked bow tie. There was a gleam in his eye that Lean read as the sign of a man who thoroughly savored life and did not suffer much guilt about enjoying whatever pleasures the world had to offer.

McCutcheon gave Grey a friendly slap on the shoulder. He welcomed them to Scituate, a town that, after having spent twenty-four hours there, he could declare to be about as entertaining and useful as the small end of nothing. “Though not without the occasional bit of savory to recommend it, eh?”

Following McCutcheon’s wandering gaze, Lean’s eyes landed on the attractive young woman who had exited the train and was greeting family members nearby.

“Wouldn’t mind turning a short stroll into a long walk with her,” McCutcheon said.

He then suggested they go to the hotel to refresh themselves, which Lean thought was a brilliant idea. Grey was adamant, however, that they proceed to the scene of Hannah Easler’s murder while there was still some good daylight. McCutcheon had their bags sent ahead to the Gannett House, where they had rooms reserved, then led them to the carriage he’d rented. The young driver looked skeptically at the newcomers.

“On, boy. I’m not paying you so well to gawk
at my friends,” McCutcheon boomed.

As they moved through town, McCutcheon apprised them of the situation as he had found it in the past day. He’d asked around at the hotel but was met only with embarrassed looks or mumbled claims of ignorance. Eventually he’d located an older boy hanging around in the street who was happy to earn fifty cents by showing McCutcheon exactly where the girl’s body was discovered. The boy hadn’t actually seen the corpse, but he’d been to the site the day after the discovery, when blood was still visible upon the path through the woods where Hannah Easler had met her fate. McCutcheon had then tried gathering information from some fellows at a dockside pub, but with no more luck than at the hotel.

“No one’s talking. They won’t even listen to my questions. The whole lot of ’em won’t even meet your eye once you mention the girl’s name.”

McCutcheon’s questions were not entirely in vain. They gained him an escorted trip down to the sheriff’s station, where he had to explain himself as a stranger asking untoward questions about a murdered woman. The sheriff made it clear he was handling the matter and didn’t need any city detective sticking his nose in. As far as he was concerned, the killer was from outside the town, likely passing through on the train to or from Boston.

“And, as the sheriff was all too happy to point out,” McCutcheon said with a grin, “we all know the type of vermin that can arrive on the train out of Boston. After he got done puffing himself up in front of his pals, this other old-timer hands me back my piece and shows me the door. He says not to waste my breath around here. And I tell him, ‘I get it—no one in this town wants to answer my questions.’ He just looks me clear in the eye and shakes his head, all sorry like. And he says, ‘No one in this town even wants to
ask
your questions, let alone answer them.’

“So I wait around outside until dinner and tail him to a place a few blocks away. I let him have a couple
of stiff ones before I amble over. At first he wants none of it, but soon enough he’s talking.”

The carriage arrived at the start of a wooded trail, where the three men disembarked. McCutcheon ordered the driver to wait, then led the way along the narrow footpath.

“The girl, Easler, worked as a seamstress at a dressmaker’s closer to the harbor. Lived on the southwestern side of town, Greenbush area. So her way home shouldn’t have taken her anywhere near that path through the woods. No one knows what she was doing up north of the town center. Her parents went out looking just before nightfall. Pretty soon half the town was at it. Found her just after dawn.

“It wasn’t pretty. Her throat was slit. Some other cuts on her, but mostly the guy had split her open. Sliced her from Cupid’s alley right up to her ribs.” McCutcheon thrust out a thumb and mocked gutting himself. “The parents went out of their heads, as much over people in town seeing her that way as about the fact that someone had done this to her in the first place. They raised such a stink over the whole bit—her being looked on like that—that the doctor never did get a chance for a postmortem. They wouldn’t allow it. No photographs, either.”

“We’ll need to talk to them,” Grey said. “Convince them to change their minds.”

“You’ll get as skinny as an almshouse dog waiting for that.” McCutcheon stopped on the path and took a deep pull on his cigarette while they waited for an explanation.

“They were so mortified by the whole affair, they couldn’t bear to show their faces. Packed up and moved. Took the girl’s remains with them. Wouldn’t let her be put in the ground here, where people would see her stone and talk about the way she’d been found.” He had another drag. “That’s just about the end of it all. And now here we are.”

They entered a small clearing. This was the murder site, little more than a widening in the dirt path. The ground was littered with leaves. Lean’s heart had been slowly sinking throughout the story, though he desperately clung to the hope that McCutcheon was merely spinning out his tale and waiting to reveal some lead at the end. It never came. What Lean had feared now seemed
painfully obvious: They were not going to find any conclusive proof here one way or another as to whether Hannah Easler had been killed by their man.

“They didn’t bring anyone in? They must have questioned someone. How the hell else does the sheriff spend his days around here?” Lean asked.

“They made the rounds down by the harbor. No one had been seen acting suspicious or with a drop of blood on him. They reckoned the fellow must have gotten plenty bloody in all this. Besides, we’re not far from the tracks. They think maybe some tramp skipped off the train, then hopped back on later that night and was gone.”

Grey gave a crooked smile. “Local people simply don’t do this kind of thing.”

Lean glanced up through the treetops to the dimming sky. “This is giving me a headache.”

“Well, that’s one matter I can solve,” McCutcheon said, “as soon as we get back to the hotel bar.”

“One moment.” Grey was studying the ground. “There’s something missing here.”

Our entire case,
thought Lean. He said nothing, not wanting to advertise his sense of failure at their trip. Perhaps a nice drop of whiskey or two would be just the thing to grease the wheels and set his mind back on track. It was a good enough excuse for a strong drink, anyway.

“I
t’ll be the same mess of trees, leaves, and dirt, Grey.” McCutcheon’s jaws eagerly worked over his after-breakfast cigar. “Just what do you expect to see that you couldn’t last night?”

“You never know what may appear when you observe matters in a new light,” Grey replied.

They were standing in the narrow street behind the Gannett House. Lean glanced up at the
pale blue sky. It was going to be a fine morning, but he couldn’t wholeheartedly agree with Perceval Grey. His mood was no better than when he’d gone to sleep the night before. With no body to examine and no one willing to speak, their trip had proved to be in vain.

There was nothing else to do but wait and see if this devil was going to strike again in Portland, here in Scituate, or somewhere entirely new.

His eyes settled on a plain-faced woman in her early twenties who had just stepped out of a house nearby. She was a bit stocky, with a bulging belly. Her dress was nothing fancy, a simple cambric jersey wrapper; she was probably a farmer’s wife, or maybe a grocery clerk. She spoke a few quiet words to a matronly-looking woman who patted the younger lady on the arm, then closed the door.

Lean felt an elbow nudge him in the ribs, followed by McCutcheon’s voice, in an enthusiastic whisper. “She could keep a calf well enough, eh?”

The younger woman glanced over and saw the two men staring in her direction. She looked surprised to be the subject of their attention, and her pale face blushed before she quickly turned away.

“Coming?” Grey had already set off along the street in the direction of the path through the woods where young Hannah Easler had met her horrid fate.

Lean followed after the others, kicking at the ground as he went. This was the same route taken by the Easler girl. McCutcheon had mentioned the night before that the girl’s parents lived a mile south from the far end of the path. That’s where she was going. But where was she coming from? Her parents hadn’t known where to look for her that night. That meant she’d likely been somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

Lean stopped in his tracks. “Hold up a moment!” The others stared at him. He looked back the way they’d come. “There’s something I want to check into. You can manage without me, I assume.”

“By all means. We’ll meet you back at the hotel,” Grey said.

“Just a … strange thought that’s occurred to me.”

Grey gave him an understanding
nod, and they parted company. Lean strode back toward the hotel. The image of the thin, pale-faced woman he’d seen in the street minutes earlier now flooded back into his mind. McCutcheon’s observation about keeping a calf aside, it had not been the woman’s bosom that had caught Lean’s eye. The young woman at the house was pregnant. His mind flashed back to their supper at the hotel last evening. From his seat by the window, he’d seen another woman pass by who was with child. She too had exited a nearby building. Was it the same house? He ran the images through his mind. It very well could have been. Those two young women he’d noticed had been drawn there for a reason. Any number of other young women could come from all around town if they had that same reason. A reason that would be a joy for most but, for someone like unmarried Hannah Easler, one that would have been kept secret.

He rapped on the door, a bit more loudly than he had intended. The stout, matronly woman answered. The friendly glint in her eye vanished the moment she saw him.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“Sorry to bother you, but please, can you tell me … are you a midwife, ma’am?”

“I am.” She was regarding him with even closer scrutiny.

“I’m Deputy Lean, and I have to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I do not do that kind of work. Good day to you!” She slammed the door closed.

Lean rapped on the door again; he could hear her thudding away inside the house. “I’ve come about Hannah Easler.” He heard her feet stop. “I need your help. She needs your help.”

The door creaked open a few inches. “What’s this about?”

“Hannah had been to see you, hadn’t she?”

“I don’t know you from Adam. She told me the father was a sailor.”

“I’m not him, I assure you. In fact, I’d never even met Miss Easler. But I’ve come a long way to find out what happened to her.”

“I told the sheriff what I know. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Because he’s not talking. And I need to know the truth of what happened to her.”

The woman’s gaze dropped to the floor. Her hands
were clenched. “Some things should never happen to no one, and when they do, they should never be spoken of.”

“What happened to her—I think it’s happened again, to another girl. And if I can’t find the man who did this …”

“Oh, dear God.” The woman’s eyes welled up as she took several slow steps back into the parlor.

The midwife began to recite everything she knew about the small, lonely life of Hannah Easler. She rambled on until her telling drew near to the girl’s last day.

“Did she mention anything unusual that evening?” Lean asked. “Talk about anyone she had met or seen? Anything that had made her nervous or scared?”

“No, nothing. In fact, she was a bit happier than usual. She lived in fear of her parents finding out about it all. But she said that her fellow was coming back in a few weeks. They planned to run off and get married. He had prospects in New York, an uncle in Albany who had work for him. She just had to make it a little while longer without her folks knowing.”

“Did her parents say anything to you after? About her being in a family way and all?”

“No. Of course, I’m not sure they ever did find out.”

Lean gave her a puzzled look.

“Well,” she explained, “the sheriff swore he never told them or anyone else that she’d been here to see me that night.”