The Ninth Daughter (8 page)

“Are you, m’am? At what time did your husband come in last night?”

“He did not,” replied Abigail. “He has been pleading a case in Essex County since Monday. He was to have returned last night, but I presume was delayed until after the time that the gates are shut and the ferry closed down for the night. When I left for the market this morning he had not yet come in.”

“As I told you also,” added John, whose cheeks had developed red blotches of anger. “I expect my children will say the same, if you care to interrogate them.”

“John,” said Abigail sharply, “what does—?”

Coldstone held up a staying hand. “What time was that?”

Queenie saw me outside Rebecca’s door.
“Nearly half past seven. Daylight.”

“And you have only just returned from your marketing?”

“I went first to Mrs. Malvern’s house to see if there was anything I might get for her, and found a slate by her door, saying, No School. I thought she might have been ill, and walked on to return a book I had borrowed from a friend in the North End; I returned by way of Fish Street again, to see if she was awake and in need of anything. ’Twas then I heard that a woman had been found in her house, dead, and no one could say what had happened to Mrs. Malvern or where she might be. I have been seeking word of her.”

“In preference to a reunion with your husband?”

“My dear Lieutenant,” said John, with a half grin that did not reach his eyes, “Mrs. Adams is the original Eve for curiosity. She
knew
where she would be able to locate me, when she needed me.”

Past the Lieutenant’s shoulder, Abigail saw a man cross the window on the outside, a distorted shape in the uneven diamonds of glass. The fourth or fifth to do so, she thought, in five minutes—unusual for Queen Street at this time of a weekday morning.

“As I have told you already,” John went on, “I spent last night at Purley’s Tavern in Salem, my horse having strained a fetlock a number of miles from the ferry—”

“You could tell me you spent last night in Constantin ople, and be away from Boston by the time I’d sent Sergeant Muldoon there to check your story.”

“You can certainly send Sergeant Muldoon to check with the ferryman as to the time I crossed this morning.”

“As a lawyer, Mr. Adams—and the cousin of the man who heads up the Sons of Liberty—you know quite well that there are other ways into this city than the Winnisimmet Ferry or the gate at the Neck . . . and other ways that a man might have to do with a woman’s death, than wielding the knife himself. I—and Colonel Leslie—would prefer to have you where we know we can lay our hands on you.”

With a shock Abigail realized that Johnny had not been exaggerating. The Provost Marshal’s man was, indeed, here to arrest John—for the murder.

Cold panic flooded her, then hot rage.
Seditious
the Crown might well call him—as it called all its enemies. But that anyone would even consider for an instant that he had had or
could
have had anything to do with a crime of that nature left her breathless. She glanced at the window again, and though the flawed glass made it difficult to make out details, she saw that there definitely were at least five men, loitering in the street in front of the house.

She said, “Surely, Lieutenant,” in her most reasonable voice, “if your commander simply wishes Mr. Adams to be available for further questioning, would not a bond serve as well?” She tucked her hands beneath her apron, mostly to keep the officer from seeing them ball into unwomanly fists. “We are simple folk, and not so wealthy that my husband can afford to flee and leave thirty pounds in your hands—I believe thirty pounds is the usual bond for good conduct? Unless you would rather take our firstborn son, but I really wouldn’t want to do that to whoever would have to look after him.”

Outside, a child shouted something, and a man’s voice reproved: “Hush, there, Shimmi, we’re not here to make trouble . . .”

And the voice of the guard, “And what are you here for, then, Rebel?”

Coldstone, interrupted in the midst of his reply, frowned. As he walked to the window John stepped closer to Abigail’s side, stage-whispered, “You’d price Johnny at thirty pounds?”

She shrugged, never taking her eyes from the officer’s crimson back as he angled his head to look through the thick panes into the street. “We’ve two other sons.”

Coldstone looked back sharply over his shoulder at them, narrow face expressionless. Then he stalked to the table, where his sabertache lay, and from it withdrew a sheet of paper. Abigail helpfully fetched her writing box from where it lay on a corner of the mantelpiece, and set it before him. The officer regarded her in hostile silence, then took the quill she offered him, studied the point critically, adjusted it with his penknife, and wrote:

“Do not fail.” He dusted it, poured off the sand, and handed the sheet to John as if he were sorry that it was not poisoned. John inclined his head respectfully.

“I will not. Thank you for your forbearance, Lieutenant.”

Coldstone opened the door to the hall, snapped, “Muldoon!” in the direction of the kitchen, and the young man appeared, vastly flustered and with crumbs of molasses candy on his jacket. “Get your musket,” he reminded him disgustedly. “And come.”

John and Abigail walked them to the front door, emerged onto the step to bow another farewell. From the step it could be seen that Queen Street was filled end to end with men: most of them young, though Abigail recognized Billy Dawes the cobbler and the blacksmith Isaac Greenleaf, who had to be in their thirties and masters of their own shops. None were armed, but all were watching the house, and there were a lot of them. More arriving even as the remaining sentry saluted.

Knowing Bostonians, the moment Coldstone turned away, John put his finger to his lips for silence—but when the Lieutenant and his two sentries turned the corner into Cornhill, somebody let out a cheer that was taken up for the length of the street.

Coldstone didn’t turn around.

Seven

“We’vemadeanenemy.” John closed the door, after thanking the mob, a little stiffly, for its appearance. John was never comfortable with the idea that it was often Sam’s mobs, rather than the well-reasoned justice of British Law, that got things done in Boston.

“He was our enemy when he arrived.” Abigail went back into the parlor, picked up a beaker of tepid cider. It was well past noon, and she had intended, she recalled, to share breakfast with Rebecca. “Did he say why he was so certain you were the killer? Other than that your name is Adams?”

“In that case, why not call on Sam? Which he clearly didn’t, if Sam was able to marshal a mob at short order—”

The parlor door crashed open, and Pattie and the children swarmed through. “Ma, did you see it? Did you see it? Uncle Sam brought them, and Mr. Dawes, and Mr. Revere, and they made that lobsterback captain look nohow!” “Oh, Mrs. Adams, that Irishman said as they were going to take Mr. Adams up for murder—” “Ma, you should have shot him!”

Nabby flung herself silently at John, clutched him around the waist, buried her face in his coat, and burst into tears. Tommy, still very uncertain of his balance, did likewise with Abigail.

“I will say this for Sam,” remarked Abigail, as their family tugged them into the kitchen, “he’s quick.”

“So was the lad who picked my pocket last month in front of Christ’s Church, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him in charge of the destiny of this colony. I’m quite all right, dear girl.” John put a gentle finger under Nabby’s chin, raised her eyes to his. “Spartan women didn’t shed tears after defeat in battle,” he added with a smile. “So why weep for a victory? Keep an eye on your brothers and help Pattie with dinner—Lord, I’m hungry!—while I talk to your mother. What happened?” His voice dropped to a whisper as he followed Abigail to the sideboard, helped her carry to the table the heavy iron Dutch oven and the crock of lard. “Was he telling the truth? Perdita Pentyre!
Did
Mrs. Malvern know her?”

“She must have.” Abigail dug in her pocket, brought out the note. “I think she must have been Rebecca’s source, for secrets and scandal in the British camp. I suppose there’s no doubt that it
was
she, and not another? Her face was . . . much mutilated.”

At the other end of the table, Pattie raised a cleaver and whacked off the head of one of the dinner chickens. The other, decapitated, gutted, pale, and naked, lay on a plate before Abigail already. Her empty stomach turned, and she looked queasily away.

“That officer at least was as sure as he could be,” rumbled John as he unfolded the slip of paper. “Mrs. Pentyre is indeed missing from her home. According to Lieutenant Coldstone, the stableman there says that Mrs. Pentyre took a light chaise out, fairly late in the evening, and its horse was found wandering loose on the Commons this morning. They’re dragging the Mill-Pond for the chaise.” He added drily, “I understand that if Richard Pentyre is unable to identify his wife’s body, Colonel Leslie knows it well enough to do so.”

“It isn’t a matter for jest.” In a low voice Abigail recounted what she had found in Rebecca Malvern’s house that morning, and what she had done about it. “I could have beaten Sam with a broom handle for going through the place as he did,” she finished, as she tucked the chicken into its place in the pot. “The more so now, that any trace of evidence that it
wasn’t
you has been destroyed. I went to Malvern’s after we left Hazlitt’s printshop.”

“You don’t think she’d have taken refuge with him?”

Abigail shook her head. “No. I think she’d have taken refuge with Revere, or with us, or with Orion Hazlitt. But she didn’t.”

John said, “
Hmmn
.”

“If she had,” Abigail went on slowly, drying her hands, “I wouldn’t put it past Malvern—I don’t
think
I’d put it past Malvern—to take her in, and then lock her up again, as he did before—”

He glanced back at her from the note, which he was studying by the stronger light of the kitchen window. “You truly think he would do something like that?”

Abigail hesitated. “I truly don’t know,” she said at last. “One hears of it—and not just in novels,” she added, seeing the corner of his mouth turn down. “He is—a man who will have his own way, no matter what he has to do to get it. Mostly, I wanted to speak with him before the Watch told him of the crime and Rebecca’s disappearance. I knew he’d see no one, afterwards.”

“You’re probably right about that. And much as I hate to admit it, if Sam and the others hadn’t cleared up the scene I suppose Coldstone would have had grounds to arrest me for sedition this morning, instead of being put off with a thirty-pound bond.” At that point in Abigail’s narrative, he’d snatched off his wig and thrown it at the wall; it lay like a dead animal now on the sideboard near his hand. Without it, his face looked even rounder, his blue eyes more protuberant. His mouse brown hair, short-cropped, was graying, and Abigail had to suppress the urge to kiss the thin spots above his forehead. “You say Sam didn’t recognize Mrs. Pentyre? Or know about her?” He turned the note over in his fingers. “Did you take a close look at this?”

She shook her head, set aside the dumplings she was making, and crossed to his side. “When he saw her body, he certainly didn’t have any candidates in mind. There can’t be that many wealthy women who were friends with Rebecca, who would have been using the code of the Sons.” Over his shoulder she studied the paper:

And frowned. She dried her hands again, took from a drawer in the sideboard a much-scribbled sheet on which Nabby—with many blots and scratches—had been practicing the fiddling art of writing with a goose-quill. This she held up to John, her thumb at the topmost line, where Rebecca had written:

“Is that the same handwriting?” she asked.

John fished in his pocket for a magnifying lens, laid the two papers side by side.

“The capitals are the same,” he said, after a long few minutes. “But look how the small
o
’s and
e
’s want to pinch, while Mrs. Malvern’s are naturally round. Not just one or two, but all of them. See there, where the
in
in
Linnet
blots and widens, where he’s tried to imitate that little swoop you see in the
in
in
Things
. The same on the downstrokes of the capital
T
’s and
L
’s: that forced change of angle.” He offered her the glass.

“I’ll tell you what caught my attention,” added John, as Abigail verified the wavery changes of line, the odd thicknesses and blots where the writer’s hand had struggled to imitate angles unfamiliar to it. “Look at the two pieces of paper. No, Rebecca wouldn’t use cold-pressed English notepaper for children’s exercises, but would she have had any of it in the house at all? What did she write her broadsides on?”