On the Head of a Pin (10 page)

“There didn't happen to be writing on the head of it, was there? It would have been very tiny and hard to see.”

“As far as I'm aware it was just a regular pin, like she might have used for making a dress. In fact, I assumed she had been sewing and had tucked it into the page, you know the way women do, so she wouldn't lose it. But to tell you the truth, I didn't really look at it closely. There was no cause to.”

“Just one other quick question and then I'll let you be on your way. I've heard that it was the Book of Proverbs that she had. You don't happen to recall what chapter it was open to?”

“No, not off-hand. But the pin was left to mark the place, so it would be easy enough to find out. Either the Constable took it for evidence, or the family still has it. But tell me, how do you know about it?”

“I just heard a rumour, that's all, and I wondered if it were true. And now, I'd best get out of your way. I hope Mr. Blezard hasn't lost too much of his foot.”

The doctor continued to look at him suspiciously for a moment, then, remembering his urgent business, he galloped away.

Constable Woodcock was typical of his ilk, appointed to his position for a term or two as a reward for political loyalty. Although the job was considered a mark of favour, many found it irksome, and in some jurisdictions it was hard to find anyone who would agree to take it on. Local constables dealt mostly with tavern licensing and neighbours feuding over the control of livestock. There was more money to be made elsewhere for a man with ambition, and the irregular hours and the enmity of those who felt wronged by officialdom made policemen unpopular figures. Woodcock was a genial man, and well-meaning, but his pay as a constable was only a supplement to his living as a farmer. Lewis found him herding his cows into the barn for their afternoon milking.

“Preacher.” He nodded. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Rachel Jessup. She had spoken to me on a few occasions about joining my church and I was most taken aback to learn that she's died. I've heard only a few of the details. What exactly happened?”

He furrowed his brow. “Well, I'm not sure that I should be talking about any more details than is general knowledge.”

“Please, it's not curiosity. The family has asked me to do the funeral, and I'd like to know what I'm dealing with, that's all.” Lewis sincerely hoped the Lord would forgive him for yet another statement that was not quite true.

Woodcock ruminated for a few moments and then said, “Well, I suppose as a Man of God, you can be trusted with a confidence. I'll tell you what I know, which isn't a lot. A man by the name of Seth Jessup, the deceased's brother, had taken his wife to her parents.” Lewis nodded in encouragement. “He stayed there the weekend, until the babe was born, but was due to come back to work on Monday. When he got home Sunday night, he found his sister lying on the bed, dead.”

“Do you have any idea what happened?”

“There's to be a Coroner's inquest on Thursday, but the doctor said he wasn't sure. She had some strange bruising on her neck. For some reason she had gone to bed fully clothed. She even had her boots on.

Yo, Bossy!”

One cow had broken loose from the herd and was headed toward the road. It took five minutes for Lewis to fully regain the Constable's attention.

“I heard that she was holding a bible.”

“Nay, not a bible, or at least not in its entirety. It was one chapter of it. Maybe you can shed some light on that. It looked like a gift of some sort, because it had an inscription written on the flyleaf. It was one of those pocket editions, you know, the small ones, with a red cover.”

“I believe she was given that at one of our meetings,” Lewis replied. He didn't add by whom. He needed time to think about the ramifications of this before he rushed in and implicated anyone.

“She must have been studying on it at the time.” Woodcock's broad forehead wrinkled up in perplexity. “It was the strangest thing, though. She wasn't exactly holding it. It had fallen open in her lap, I guess, so it was, you know …” he reddened, “down between her legs like.”

“Was she … interfered with in any way?” He already knew the answer was no, the doctor had told him that, but he was curious as to what theory, if any, the Constable might hold.

“No, no, nothing like that. Just her petticoats flung up and the book lying open. Oh, and the marks on her neck.”

“Has the book been retained as evidence?”

He looked surprised at the question. “Well, no. There was no reason to, was there? What would that have to do with anything?”

“Do you know what happened to it?”

“I expect it's still there in the house. You'd have to ask the family, wouldn't you?”

“Thank you for your time, Constable. You've been most helpful.” He wasn't sure the man heard him, for Bossy had broken away again and he left Woodcock in hot pursuit of her.

X

I
t was an odd group that gathered at the graveside. Seth was there of course, and the Varneys, who came because Minta and Rachel had been more or less of the same church, and because it would have been too much for Mrs. Varney's curiosity to miss it. But Minta was not yet allowed up and not even Rachel's parents could be there for a last farewell. They were apparently down with fever, as were her two sisters. She had another brother as well, but he had moved to try his luck on the Huron Tract far to the west. He couldn't be expected to travel so far, not even to bury his sister, nor would he have arrived in time.

The lack of family members was made up for in part by the crowd of young men. Both Caddick brothers were there, and for once they were not attempting to sell pins or portraits. They both looked shaken, Willet in particular. Another young man, the Quaker boy who had been at the church, attended as well, but he stood away from the others, off to the side, emphasizing the fact that he was an outsider, not conversant with the Methodist ritual of death. To Lewis's surprise, Isaac Simms was also there, but he loitered by his wagon just outside the graveyard gate.

Not so Morgan Spicer, who rushed forward to stand by the Varneys and looked as though he was perfectly willing to complete the service should Lewis falter in any way.

Lewis had thought long about what he would say, and in the end decided that he could find no comfort better than the verse in I Corinthians:

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.

“Amen,” Spicer intoned loudly.

For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?

Another loud “Amen” from Spicer. Lewis found the interjections most annoying.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

“Would anyone like to say a few words?” Lewis asked at the end of the reading. He didn't expect anyone to say anything — it was a mere formality on his part — so he was astounded when Spicer cleared his throat.

“This is a sad occasion for the Jessup family, but a happy one for Rachel,” Spicer said. “She has gone to the Glory of the Lord and will be waiting for us all when our times come.” He continued:

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Seth's brow darkened and he muttered something that might have been “Fool,” but might equally well have been a heavy sigh.

After the coffin was lowered into the grave, and the symbolic clods of earth thrown down on top, Lewis led them in a hymn. His choice was not one that was particularly appropriate to the occasion, but it had been the one that Rachel had liked so well when she heard it at the camp meeting. It had the added advantage of being one that nearly everyone knew:

“All people that on earth do dwell Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.”

At the end of the service the young men looked confused and finally just wandered away, leaving Seth alone with his head bowed.

As the Constable had indicated, Dr. Gordon believed there was enough question about Rachel's death to justify an inquest. A group of citizens was selected by the sheriff to judge the case. It was hardly necessary; word had gone round the village that the coroner was unsure of the cause of death, and in spite of the somewhat strange characteristics of the way she was found, people quickly concluded that it was just another of those unexplained miseries with which God chose to punish them all.

There were not many at the inquest. The case was not particularly sensational and there was just not enough interest in it to attract anyone besides the layabouts and the chronically curious, but Lewis adjusted his round in order to be there.

Dr. Gordon presented the facts clearly enough: that the girl had been alone, that she had been fully clothed and was lying in her bed, the strange marks on her neck. But he didn't mention the book or the little pin that marked the page.

Lewis was almost certain that it had been Morgan Spicer who had given her the Book of Proverbs, but since it had not been introduced as evidence, there had not been any point in mentioning it. He wasn't sure himself that it had any bearing on the case. Had Spicer been successful in giving it to her on the day of the camp meeting, or had he gone to her house at some later time? But no, Lewis thought, he had been determined to find her that day, and she had been such a centre of attention he would have had no difficulty in the finding. Besides, what was the harm in giving a girl a present? The other boys had given her presents, too. It was only because it had been found at the time of her death that it seemed in any way relevant.

“And in your opinion, Dr. Gordon,” the justice of the peace asked when the doctor had outlined his findings, “what was the cause of death?”

“Impossible to determine definitively,” the doctor replied. “But I can only conclude that she expired from some sort of fit. There are no other explanations that I can offer.”

Lewis wanted to protest, to stand up and ask about the marks on her neck, to suggest that someone, somehow had had a hand in the death, but he knew if he did so that he would merely be put out of the courtroom. It was what had happened to him at Sarah's inquest.

The jury ruled “death by natural causes.” It was the easiest thing to do, since there was no bringing her back anyway, no clear indication of any culprit's hand, no speculation as to who might have wanted her dead or for what reason. Besides, everyone had more important things to worry about.

XI

L
ewis's next scheduled visit to Demorestville again coincided with Isaac Simms's round and, as usual, the peddler was full of news. For weeks there had been rumours that an American force had crossed the border, or was about to, or had plans to. According to Simms, and he had newspaper accounts to back him up, a small group had in fact mounted a raid down near Niagara somewhere, abetted no doubt by William Lyon Mackenzie, who had somehow got himself off Navy Island and was living in Rochester, New York, just across the lake. The raiders were a motley bunch, consisting of Upper Canadian rebels who had escaped across the border and self-proclaimed American “patriots” who were determined to get rid of the British in British North America.

One of the newspaper articles had quoted Governor Arthur: “There are on the American frontier thousands of these lawless characters,” he thundered, “these atrocious banditti, they are the scum of the population.”

It appeared that the invading band was led by a certain James Morreau. No one was sure who exactly he was. Some said he was an Irishman, others that he was from Pennsylvania. One thing was clear: he had successfully infiltrated a place called Short Hills and was expecting the countryside to rise with him. He had issued a proclamation, complete with high-sounding flights of revolutionary rhetoric, calling on all Canadians to come to his assistance:

We have at last been successful in planting the standard of liberty in one part of our oppressed country. Canadians! Come to our assistance as you prize property, happiness and life! This is the hour of your redemption. Rally to the standard of the Free and the tyranny of England will cease to exist in our land.

Far from rising, the countryside received this proclamation with disdain.

The
Niagara Reporter
summed up the local reaction in an editorial that called the invaders “vagabonds without name or nation” and labelled the enterprise “madness.”

“We believe no individual dotard since the days of the first idiot ever exhibited such unutterable folly,” they wrote.

Folly or not, the vagabonds were in Canada for ten days before Governor Arthur finally sent a troop of Queen's Lancers to deal with them. Surprised at Osterhout's Inn, the Lancers were forced to surrender when the patriots set fire to the building, and were afterward relieved of their uniforms and equipment, much to the embarrassment of the governor.