Chapter 35

C HAPTER 35

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

—Oscar Wilde

The long pull back to Great Misery was accomplished in silence but with speed—the rumbling clouds of a thunderstorm were building from the mainland and the rising wind rushed them toward the island. Only when the bow of the dory slid onto the sand of North Cove did Marigold relax enough to help Wilbert beach the boat and overturn it in preparation for the rain.

"Do you think we'll actually get any?" she asked with a glance at the dry stubble of the sparse grass. The spring rain that greened the coastline never seemed to reach across Salem Sound to relieve the persistent dryness of Great Misery.

"Dunno, but I don't like the look of it," her cousin declared. "Best get home either way."

But Hatchet Farm wasn't Marigold's home. And despite the improvements she had made and the friendships she had formed on Great Misery, the urge to be done with the place was growing ever stronger.

Accordingly, she went straight to her room, passing up Cleon's latest addition to the glutenous, never-ending chowder pot—"Raked up some quahogs today, Miss Girl"—set her own lock on the door, and fell into a fitful sleep.

She was awakened deep in the night by what she might have assumed was thunder, as lightning flashed through her curtains. But the sound had been too soft, more of a low, creaking sort of sound, as if someone were sitting heavily in a leather armchair. But that was nonsensical—there were no leather armchairs anywhere at Hatchet Farm that she knew of—although the rooms behind the still-locked doors might hold any number of unknown items.

After her regrettable overreaction to last night's strange sounds, Marigold was determined not to let her imagination get carried away, though she couldn't stop herself from retrieving her pistol from the stool next to the bed.

She was just about to give herself a stern reproof when she heard another loud noise—something that sounded very much like a hard slap—from the farmyard below.

Marigold bolted for the window, scanning the yard as her eyes adjusted to the light of the two-day-old moon. She fancied she saw some furtive movement at the far side of the yard, near the refurbished chicken coop, and wondered if some wolf or fox had swum across to try to steal away the skinny hens.

She had thrown up the window sash to listen for any panicked squawks of alarm when something else hit her senses—the smell of smoke, strong and pungent and coming from someplace near.

Who could be cooking at this hour—

A hot spark of orange flared out of the night and slowly grew, inch by inch, into the shape of a rectangle—the barn's loft door.

The loft, where Seviah had stacked all that old, dry hay.

"Fire!" she bawled at the top of her lungs as she lunged for her boots and linen duster and bolted down the stairs, her fingers fumbling clumsily on the wretched lock. "Godda—" She bit off her curse to save her breath and focused on inserting the key. "Wilbert! Cleon, wake up! Wake up! The barn is on fire!"

But it was Sophronia who pulled her door open and reached for her hand. "Come out of here."

Marigold went. As fast as her feet could carry her.

They came out into the yard in time to see Wilbert flinging the swinging barn doors wide.

"The mules?" was her first thought.

"Already loose," he rasped as he turned back to haul out the dilapidated, smoldering wagon. "I'll get the cart, you get your bicycle."

"Yes!" Marigold was thankful for such incisive direction. She covered her mouth with her sleeve and followed him into the smoke-filled barn.

The interior was shrouded in murky darkness, but her machine was just where she had left it, next to the now-empty stalls. She ran her bicycle through the door and out into the yard, gasping and hacking at the acrid smoke.

"Cleon, find those mules!" Wilbert called as the old man wandered into the yard. "They can't have got far."

Marigold ran to help Wilbert haul the heavy cart to a safer distance, but he redirected her. "Get as many shovels as you can find out of the shed."

"What about buckets or pails to form a bucket brigade from the pump?" she asked.

Wilbert shook his head. "Fool's errand—just get the danged spades!"

Marigold fumbled her way back into doing as asked and came out with two shovels and a hoe.

"That'll do. Thank God you're out," he rasped. "The floor's about to collapse down. We'll each take a side." He gestured about the barn. "Use the shovel to stamp out any sparks so's to keep the fire from spreading. The barn can't be helped," he said with another resigned shake of his head, "nor Lucy's place, I fear, but I'll be damned if I let him burn down the whole of this farm."

Him?

"You take the windward side." Wilbert gave her no time to think but pushed her toward the safer side of the barn while he ran downwind, where the sparks were beginning to fly fast and furious.

Sophronia took the flank with Cleon, while Marigold defended the chicken coop and henhouse with as much vigor as she possibly could, working like a dervish in the hellish light of the growing, glowing fire to stamp out any wayward embers carried by the onshore wind.

Marigold had no idea how long she toiled until Sophronia appeared at her side in dawning daylight. "Drink." She took the shovel from Marigold's hands and thrust a cool tin cup of water into her raw palms.

"Thank you." Marigold drank, wondering idly if she herself looked as bedraggled, soot stained, and worn as her cousin did.

Sophronia eyed her over too. "I'll say one thing for you—you don't spare yourself."

"No," Marigold agreed on a smile. "We have that in common."

Sophronia almost smiled too. "Happen we do."

The companionable moment might have stretched had not Wilbert waved them over to the pump, where he was drinking his fill. "Why don't you two rest a spell, and then we'll see what else ought to be done?"

"Ought to eat," Sophronia advised, "to keep our strength up. If those hens haven't been put off laying in all this to-do …" She plodded off toward the henhouse to find out.

"I'll make tea," seemed the most sensible thing for Marigold to say. Strong, hot tea to revive and slake their smoke-seared throats. But first she took the opportunity to douse herself beneath the pump and wash her hands and face before she headed for the kitchen. One might alter one's standards …

As she passed onto the porch, her eye was caught by the motion of Great-Aunt Alva letting her tattered curtains fall. So she had been watching, had she, as others toiled on her behalf? Marigold would make sure Great-Aunt Alva was served her tea last—hopefully when it had gone cold.

She put the water in the kettle to boil before heading for the outhouse past the A-frame rack of scarlet runner beans. The scarecrow had been moved to a new position and was fully dressed in a new suit of clothing.

"Oh, Cleon, thank you," she called over her shoulder. "I hadn't noticed you'd finally found a hat. It looks—" Well, frankly, it looked … odd.

"Miss Girl?" the old codger called from where he had subsided at the pump. "'Tweren't me, Miss Girl. Don't got no hat."

"No, not you—on the scarecrow." Marigold pointed at the figure at the far end of the garden, where Cleon must have relocated it. After his initial objections, he had proved surprisingly faithful in moving the straw man every few days to keep the rapacious crows from getting too used to the careworn figure, who was folded over his crosstree, kicking up the rosemary. Hanging—

She tried to scream, but the sound that tore out of her mouth was more like a gasp. It was as if something within her understood before her normally acute mind could articulate what she was seeing.

Because what she saw was Ellery Hatchet lurched on top of the scarecrow's crosstree. Still dressed in his Sunday-best going-preaching shirtsleeves, as if he had prayed himself out and fallen asleep there. Except that his feet were high off the ground, dangling in the rosemary, stirring up the scent. And his eyes were open wide, staring in glassy oblivion.

Because he was dead. Quite dead.

"Lawd, keep us from being murdered," whispered Cleon as he came up behind her. "He came back," he marveled. "Said as he were bound for Jordan, but he come back."

Wilbert, who had followed Cleon, stopped in his tracks at the sight. "Is he dead?"

"I fear so." Marigold found her voice.

Sophronia came to stand just behind them. "Saw there'd be a Hanged Man, didn't I? Just didn't know who it'd be. But there he is."

There he was, in a manner too calculated to be either a coincidence or an accident of the fire.

"What should we do now?" Wilbert's decisiveness seemed spent.

"Get him down, surely," was Marigold's most rational thought. "Unless we ought to notify the authorities first?"

"Why do that?" Sophronia asked at the same time Wilbert said, "We can't leave him up there—it ain't decent." And indeed, Ellery Hatchet's body was a horrible sight—the man looked as venomous in death as he ever had in life.

"What goes on here?" came a querulous demand from the kitchen door, where Great-Aunt Alva appeared in one of the newly bleached nightgowns Marigold had recently laundered—a slightly brighter, more boraxed Miss Havisham but still trailing her moth-eaten shawls and gray braids. Great-Aunt Alva, who had never come out of her room until three nights ago.

"It's Hatchet," Sophronia said in her flatly factual way, gesturing toward the body. "He's dead."

"He can't be," Alva swore, not a second before she accused, "You must have poisoned him."

"Not I. Hasn't taken a sip or a scrap from my hands these twenty years past," Sophronia said in the same even tone. "You know that."

"Bring him to me," Alva ordered. "Bring him to me so I can see what's wrong with him."

"Granny." Wilbert shook his head. "He's dead."

"At long last," Sophronia said with a touch of wonder, as if she were convincing herself. "Years and years he put it off. But what will be will be, just as I always told him."

"No!" Great-Aunt Alva tottered across the rutted yard in her carpet slippers and nightgown like a wizened fairy, swinging her cane as if she could shoo death away like an errant crow. "Cleon, tell him to get up. Tell him I insist!"

"Now, sister," Cleon said sorrowfully. "Ain't nobody left to tell."

"Nobody but the undertaker," Wilbert added.

"And the police," Marigold put in.

"What for?" Wilbert asked.

Marigold thought the reason was obvious. "He couldn't have placed himself on the crosstree. You can't imagine that he just happened to have an attack of apoplexy last night and then hoisted himself on top of the scarecrow to ease his pain?" Marigold looked from Wilbert to Sophronia, willing them to see what she saw. Willing them to understand—the devil did indeed have long arms. "Someone had to have put him up there, so high that his feet are off the ground."

"Who would do that?" Wilbert's face was tight with disgust.

"You!" Aunt Alva found the easiest target for her agitated accusations in Marigold. "You, who seem to know exactly what happened. You're the serpent with the apple, with your garden and your interference and your bad influence."

"That'll do, Granny," Wilbert instructed in a weary rasp. "We'll take him into the house and lay him out, decent like, but won't do anything else without your say-so, Cousin Marigold."

"Her say-so?" Alva cried. "Who gave her leave? Not I! I say what goes here."

"No, Granny," Wilbert contradicted. "You've got to see how it is. You got to understand."

"I'll do no such thing," Alva countered. "I want … I need …" She turned around in a full circle, as if looking for a new angle of accusation or a fresh source of agitation. "Tell him. Cleon! Tell Ellery I want him to get up and come to me."

"He can't and he won't, Mother Hatchet," Sophronia told her bluntly. "Justice has finally prevailed. Because he is well and truly dead this time."

"And," Marigold clarified, "very likely murdered."