Sowing Poison (12 page)

“I won't be here tomorrow.” It was the ruddy-faced man. “I came all this way and I didn't get a chance to ask anything.” He looked accusingly at Lewis. “This one chased them all away.”

“I truly don't believe Amelia or anyone else will return today,” Clementine said. “If you push too hard they get very shy for some reason.” She appeared to be deep in thought. “There are other ways to discover the secrets of the afterlife. With your permission, we can try another method.”

The man nodded his agreement. Clementine got up from the table and went to a small chest that had been placed against the wall. From it she produced two large sheets of paper that looked to Lewis like blank newsprint. She returned to the trunk for two inkwells and pens that she placed in front of her. She sat and unfolded the newsprint. She picked up the pens, grasping one in each hand. “I must ask you once again to concentrate. You needn't hold hands this time, but please do not speak, do not interrupt. It would be very dangerous for me if I were disturbed in the middle of this.”

They dutifully stared at the tablecloth. The heavy scent grew even heavier and suddenly the room seemed full of grey mist. Clementine had resumed her trance-like state, but said nothing. Her head swung from side to side, first slowly, then quicker and quicker, then with a jerk her hands sprang into action.

To Lewis's astonishment, she began to write with both at the same time. Her hands flew across the pages of newsprint and the room was filled with the scratching of the pens. In unison they wrote, in unison they dipped the nibs into the wells, but it was as if they were mirror images of each other, each starting in the centre of the page and working outward, the right from left to right, the left from right to left. Then, as abruptly as she had begun, she stopped and fell against the back of her chair, seemingly exhausted.

“Water, please, some water.”

Horatio appeared out of nowhere and hurried to a side table, where there was a pitcher of water. He filled a glass and took it to Clementine, lifting it to her lips and cradling her shoulders while she drank.

“Let us see what was revealed,” Clementine said finally, pulling a candle close, so that they could all see what was written. Lewis leaned forward as far as he could. The writing on the paper was nothing but a scrawl on one side. He could make out only a few words here and there. There was a similar scrawl on the other side of the page, but he could read none of it. Then he realized that the writing was truly reversed, not only had it been set down on the page in an opposite fashion, but the words themselves were backward.

“I read of two men and two horses.” The man nodded.

“There is a storm, great cracks of lightning and sheets of rain.”

“Yes, but…” the man said.

“Sssh! All will be revealed…. Yes, a great storm and the men in great peril. A river is rising. It flows over its banks. The water washes away everything in its path.”

The man groaned.

“There is a maelstrom, a great whirl of water from the river and a great deluge from the sky. The men are unaware of the danger they are in, until the earth gives way under their feet.”

“So that's it, then. They're dead, right?” the man asked, ignoring his previous instruction.

“Three are left, one passes. I see a cave or a nest. It is warm. It is safe.” —A long pause — “That is all.”

“But how can there be three left? There were only two to begin with.”

“Three are left. One passes. Look for a safe place.”

“Look for a safe place?” the man muttered. “What's that supposed to mean. What a waste of bloody money.” And he abruptly rose from the table and left the room.

Clementine seemed unruffled by his sudden departure. “Non-believers will soon believe,” she said, smiling.

The others stood, as well. Obviously, the session was at an end. Clementine remained in her chair. Mrs. Sprung and two of the women lingered in the hall for a moment, all of them expressing dismay that the session had been so short. All three looked at Lewis accusingly as he walked past them.

Lewis now understood why Clementine's customers were so willing to believe that she possessed magical talents, but the mechanisms whereby she produced her apparitions eluded his best analysis. These were details that he decided to ignore for the time being. For now he was determined to collect whatever evidence he could find that would prove double-dealing, for the cruel appropriation of his dead daughter's name into her schemes had transformed his moral objections into something far more personal. He was deeply offended by her attempted manipulation of his grief.

The spiritualists that had been mentioned in the newspaper report from New York had manipulated, as well, and the man they had hoodwinked was so offended by it that he was offering a reward as an incentive to bring them to justice. Lewis did not subscribe to any of the popular theories as to why Mr. Gilmour was in Wellington, or why he appeared to be following Mrs. Elliott. It seemed unlikely that so dignified a gentleman would conduct a love affair on the streets of a small village or lurk outside houses with thievery on his mind.

What if the Elliotts had operated in New York under the name LeClair? If they suddenly needed to go to ground, Lewis could think of no better place than Nathan Elliott's old home in provincial Canada. Their arrival would be easily accounted for, especially since Nate's father was dying. And it was a possible explanation for Gilmour's continued presence — he was here to collect the reward. Lewis turned this theory around and around in his mind. Parts of it fit together neatly. But he was left wondering about Reuben's role in the affair. Was it merely a coincidence that Hiram Elliott became so ill at such a convenient time? Or that Nate had so conveniently vanished? And why had Clementine continued to stay on in Wellington? Why had she bothered coming here at all?

He wondered if there were any subsequent newspaper articles that would provide more information about the LeClair couple and what had happened to them. He searched through the papers that had arrived at the hotel recently, but could find no mention of the story, or any more articles reprinted from the
Tribune
. Newspaper delivery was irregular at best, dependent on someone deciding to pass an issue along to the next person, so it was possible that the appropriate paper had never arrived in Wellington, or that one of the Elliotts had spirited it away. He needed to visit a reading room where there was a better chance of finding the news in chronological order, but there wasn't such a place in Wellington. The nearest was in Picton.

Francis had picked up the routine of the inn quickly. It must have seemed easy after the heavy work he had been doing. Sophie continued to reign in the kitchen, surpassing the most exacting of standards, and Betsy was free to spend a large part of the day in the sickroom drinking tea and reading to Susannah. Lewis could reasonably assume that the entire arrangement would not fall to pieces during an absence of an afternoon, but he would need some excuse for his little jaunt if he hoped to avoid some comment from Daniel or Betsy that might travel back to Clementine or Mr. Gilmour.

As it turned out, his timing couldn't have been better. The deficiencies of the kitchen at Temperance House had been made apparent with the sudden influx of guests and the unexpected rental of the meeting room. Daniel had read in one of the weekly papers that a Picton merchant named Morrison was offering sets of blue-edged stoneware “at a very cheap price” and Sophie put together an order for two or three lined pots.

“If you could manage some that are lined with tin they wouldn't turn the apples so dark,” she said. “And they're easier to clean.”

After a huddled conversation with Susannah, Daniel decided he could afford not only Sophie's pots, but a dozen dinner plates, another dozen soup bowls, some glassware to replace several that had been smashed by rowdy Orange Lodge members, and an extra meat platter.

“I'll fetch them tomorrow,” Lewis offered. “Francis and Sophie can manage dinner between them and I can be home before dark if the livery has a decent horse available.”

That evening he prepared a letter. If he found nothing at the reading room, he would send his inquiry about the LeClair story directly to the newspaper in New York.

He set off early the next morning. Although it was really the season for sleighing, the heavy snow that had fallen had been quickly packed down along the roadway and formed a hard, frozen base that made travel easy. The stable boy had assured him that the going would be as easy with a cart.

Lewis had barely reached the outskirts of Wellington when he realized that it had been too many weeks since he'd gone anywhere, and once again he felt the lure of the circuits. He had spent many long hours on the trail alone, riding from settlement to settlement to preach the Word. He was used to solitude, for the most part, and he missed it. Temperance House was a large building, but even so it seemed that there were people constantly underfoot and the public rooms in particular seemed small when everyone gathered in them. He found the dwellings in town alternately too hot or too cold, depending on how well the fire was fed, and in the wintertime windows were never opened, as once the cold air entered, it was far too hard to get rid of. But this practice made the rooms stuffy and stale and induced a state of near-trance at times. Lewis's clearest thinking had always taken place in the open air on the way to somewhere.

The last months seemed odd to him, and he wasn't sure that he quite had the knack of staying in one place, when new horizons so often beckoned. He shrugged. This was his life now, and the pleasure of spending more time with Betsy and Martha compensated a great deal for the lack of variety in the scenery.

But, as always, the frosty air cleared his head and the lack of company left him free to ruminate. As he considered the investigative task he had set for himself, he realized that the facts he was so eager to consider were few and far between. Nate Elliott was missing, that was fact number one. He had no way of knowing whether he had vanished deliberately or had been injured, as Reuben claimed, and wandered away in a dazed state to expire somewhere in a thicket. Either that or he had died in the clearing and his body had been moved for some reason.
But what reason could that be?
He could think of none. The only other fact he had established was that one of the Elliotts had taken a New York newspaper from the parlour and had appeared to hide it. He was fairly certain that it hadn't found its way between the mattresses by accident; the rest of the room was routinely tidy, with clothing hung up and belongings packed away.

Everything else was nuance; his conviction that Clementine was not what she claimed to be; his suspicion that the Elliotts might well be the LeClairs mentioned in the article; his feeling that Horatio was just a little too practiced at looking innocent and fragile. And why was Clementine so insistent that Horatio be present every time she communicated with the so-called spirits of the afterlife? And had it really been Gilmour who had searched her room on the night of the Orange Lodge meeting?

Lewis hoped he had not fallen into the trap of seeing a pattern where none existed. He had, in the past, allowed his own particular leanings to influence his conclusions about the actions of others. It was one of the things that had hindered the search for his daughter's killer. He had been far too ready to attribute the murder to his son-in-law, Francis Renwell, simply because he didn't like the man.

He didn't like Clementine Elliott either, but it wasn't clear to him if his distaste sprang from her deception or if his determination to unmask her came from his dislike. She was making good coin from her sessions in the upstairs rooms, and this sat uncomfortably with him. Then again, was he himself not paid to spread a message of hope? It was easy enough to argue that he wasn't paid nearly as well and that it was a different thing entirely — after all, he had to have some means to keep body and soul together, and unless he was prepared to become some sort of tattered, wild-eyed holy man dependent solely on the providence of God and nature, he had needed his salary from the Church, such as it was. And then he realized that Clementine could claim the same thing. She brought comfort to the bereaved and charged for it, in order to put food on the table and keep a roof over her head. This would be especially important now that her husband had disappeared, for she would have no other means of support. No, if he were entirely honest with himself, he couldn't point a finger at her for that.

With surprise, Lewis looked around and discovered that he had already reached the town of Picton. The main street was full of traffic — wagons, sleighs, horses, pedestrians — all of them determined to reach their destinations via the most direct route and in the shortest time possible, jostling and in many cases nearly colliding with others as they made their way. Picton was the County seat, and a great deal of Prince Edward's business was conducted here, both at the new court house and because of the town's spectacular harbour.

Lewis went to Morrison's first. The shop was located in a low frame building in a row of similar buildings on a side street that intersected with the main thoroughfare. He carefully consulted the list he had made, for he was sure that he would never remember all the items that he had been instructed to look for. It was a peculiar thing — he could recount by heart numerous Bible quotations and could recall almost every sermon he had ever given, but his memory had never seemed to be equipped to keep track of the more mundane things like grocery lists or errands to be run.

Morrison's stoneware was indeed being offered at an excellent price, and he chose the dish pattern that most closely matched the service that had been included with the other appointments at the hotel. Quite a lovely pattern, he thought; blue transferware, showing an exotic tree and, off in the distance, pagodas, birds, and boats that spoke of faraway Cathay. He would like to go there someday, to see for himself the landscape that was so different from the wooded tract that was Canada. He knew he never would. He was too old for such a journey, but the thought contributed to his wanderlust.

Morrison had glassware, as well, and the tin-lined pots that Sophie had requested. These last were more money than they had counted on, but the china had been so cheap that he cheerfully handed the cash over. Buying everything in one place would give him more time for his investigations.

The reading room was busy, when he finally found it tucked along another back street. Several men, labourers by the look of them, were seated at the long oak tables, leafing through the newspapers.
Probably reading the advertisements
, he thought, trying to gauge who might need an extra hand for a few days or a few weeks, or best of all, a few years. He could read the banners of these papers without appearing too obvious about it. They were all local publications. He looked through the table of remaining newspapers. None of them were from New York; in fact, none of them were American. He would go ahead and mail his letter.

Sitting at another table, carefully away from the rude workmen, were two well-dressed men, their suits brushed and their shoes polished. One of them was holding a book, the other a periodical. Lewis decided he might just as well take the opportunity to see what other reading material was available; after all, he had ridden some way already and had been wanting to visit this place for some time.

Lewis scanned the titles of the books lining the shelf. To his disappointment none of them looked as though they would hold information on the movement and mechanics of stars, something that he would have been very interested in perusing. There were several Bibles offered, a couple of books on religious topics, an atlas that he almost picked down from the shelf — geography was a subject that fascinated him almost as much as the skies. But it was the cover of one of the several pamphlets that caught his eye. It depicted a woman who had obviously succumbed to a bloody and violent fate. She was lying in a cobbled courtyard and he could tell from the architecture of the buildings around it that it was European — France, perhaps, or maybe Spain. The woman's head was lying at an angle that was strangely askew from her body. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” he read. Ordinarily such a lurid and sensational tale would not have appealed to him. He considered these sorts of stories fit only for the morbid appetite, or for those with too little to keep them occupied — those who revelled in the details of horrific events from elsewhere. His experience with murder, however, made him curious.

He carried the pamphlet to an unoccupied table, well away from the gentlemen and the labourers. He realized that he was reluctant to have anyone notice him reading such a thing. To his surprise, he discovered that it was fiction; he had expected it to be some journalist's overblown account of a real murder, as had happened in the aftermath of his apprehension of Isaac Simms a few years back. The story of Simms's confession to multiple murders had been recounted and exaggerated until he could barely recognize any resemblance to what had actually happened.

According to the information in the front of the pamphlet this was a “work of imagination” written by one Edgar Allan Poe, an editor of
Graham's Magazine
. The story had originally appeared in the magazine, but had then been bound separately and was now circulating as a stand-alone work. Intrigued, he began to read, and was immediately swept into the author's argument regarding analysis: “To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.” Lewis could only concur. Had he been a little more observant of the details surrounding the deaths of the young women murdered by Simms, he might well have stopped him sooner. As to Poe's small treatise on chess, checkers, and whist, he could make no judgment. He played no games of chance and was unfamiliar with the rules.

But Lewis was quickly hooked in by the story, fascinated by the abilities of C. Auguste Dupin, who observed his surroundings so carefully that he seemed almost able to read minds. The murders themselves, as he expected, were described in grisly detail, and he commiserated with Dupin's friend, who was able to make neither head nor tail of it. He attended carefully as Dupin examined the apartment and one by one eliminated the means of egress from the murder scene.