Chapter 36

C HAPTER 36

What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.

—Jane Austen

A steady rain began to fall. Finally. Too late to do anything more useful than douse the last smoldering embers of the fire.

Marigold breathed only a temporary sigh of relief. The situation demanded explanation—which she couldn't yet imagine.

"Marigold!" a low voice called over the rising patter of the rain.

"Cab!" It was just the man she needed—a man who knew the law. He had come at a run, clearly—he was in his shirtsleeves. Behind him, Bessie and Lucy came into view farther down the path.

"We saw the fire from the mainland. What happened?" Cab demanded, reaching her hand. "Are you hurt? Was anybody else hurt?"

"No. I am quite well," she assured him. Apart from being clothed in only sooty, smeared nightwear and dirty cycling boots and surely reeking of smoke. "The barn burned down last night." Best to start at the beginning with the bare facts with no suppositions about the cause of the blaze. "And Lucy's cabin too, I'm sorry to say."

But Cab's gaze had gone over her head, to the scene in the garden behind, where Wilbert and Cleon were just managing to take the stiff body off the crosstree.

"But obviously that's not all," Marigold added. "It's Ellery Hatchet. I just found his body this minute. He's dead."

"Good Lord." Cab doffed his hat in respect as he stepped into the garden. "I'm so sorry, Marigold. Then how did he get up there—?"

"Had an apoplexy during the fire, maybe?" Wilbert suggested, though the hope in his voice was thin.

"No." Marigold kept her voice as kind as she could. "At least, I never saw him during the fire. We hadn't seen him for two days now and assumed he was well away in Manchester or Gloucester or points beyond, with his traveling tent revival." It was astonishing how strangely their lives had kept changing in the past few days. "He was stiff, hanging up there"—she pointed to the crosstree—"on top of the scarecrow, with his feet a good foot and a half above the ground."

"No chance he could have got up there himself?" Cab asked.

"I guess I don't reckon so," Wilbert relented. "The back side there's got nails sticking out"—he gestured toward the post—"that nobody in their right mind would want to mess with."

"But was he in his right mind?" Cab asked.

Trust Cab to ask the pertinent questions.

"They's for holding the straw man, the nails," Cleon put in. "Powerful full of bad luck, just like I said. Didn't I say?"

"Yes, Cleon, you did say," Marigold agreed before she returned them to a more logical line of thought. "The point being that even in the dark, if Ellery Hatchet were having an apoplexy or heart attack, I should think he would have tried to get our attention by coming out into the yard instead of climbing onto the scarecrow."

"Cousin Ellery never did like that thing," Cleon insisted. "Graven idol."

Marigold has some insistence of her own. "So he would hardly replace it with himself, don't you think?"

"So someone put him there," Cab agreed. "We'll need to speak to the police—you'll need to go, Marigold, since you're the one that found him. But"—he looked at each of them in turn—"it might be best to take statements from each of you about your whereabouts last night."

"Ever the lawyer?"

"Marigold," he answered quietly. "From what I can see, you're going to need one. If this really is a murder—"

"You think so too!"

"I didn't say that," Cab was quick to counter. "But from where I stand, looking at the possibilities, you need to understand that you, just as much as anyone else in the house—or the town—are very much suspect, at least until we can get further information." Cab leveled them all with his steely gaze, all take-charge directness. "We can't proceed any further until we can get the authorities out here. All right?"

"All right," Wilbert agreed. "Does that mean we got to leave the old man out here in the rain? Doesn't seem decent."

"We'll disturb him as little as possible," Cab decided as he looked around the garden. "Marigold, did your bicycle make it through the fire?"

"Yes?"

"Then I'm going to ask you to get dressed and go to the authorities." He walked her toward the house away from the others. "But first, I have to ask …" He lowered his voice so only she might hear. "Did you kill him?"

"Cab!" She was truly shocked—it was as if he didn't know her after all. "Of course not. Why would you ask such a thing?"

"Because a lawyer can best defend his client when he knows the truth."

"Why should I need defending? He was the one threatening me, not the other way around."

"What about the others?"

"We were all fighting the fire—all four of us together, Wilbert, Sophronia, Cleon, and I, in plain sight of each other. There was no one else here—except Great-Aunt Alva Hatchet, who was in her room, like she always is. The others were all gone."

"That accounts for a vast deal of last night, but the truth is, we don't know when he died or was killed," Cab said, holding up his hand to forestall her tirade of questions. "Everyone on Great Misery Island will quite naturally be suspect."

"We can eliminate some, surely? Daisy was with the Endicotts and Seviah off with Mr. Keith. And Lucy, as you know, was with her mother in town."

"Perhaps," Cab agreed slowly. "Again, that would account for last night, and—"

"—we don't know when he died," Marigold finished. "Or was killed."

"You understand me." Cab nodded grimly. "So I'll ask Bessie and Lucy to take you to town to fetch Officer Parker from the town hall, and also Doc Oliphant, I think."

"Naturally," she answered, unsurprised that he had gotten to know the town so well. "I'm happy to be of use. After I do that, I'll let Seviah and Daisy know."

"I'm going to ask you not to, Marigold"—Cab looked at her soberly—"but to come back here directly. I'll help your cousin in your absence."

There was that steely determination—he would not eliminate anyone as a suspect until proven otherwise. And she would be just as wise to do the same.

Seviah's defiant words echoed in her head. He'd sell Hatchet Farm, he had said. Or burn it to the ground. Was this his revenge? But why would he come back just when he had escaped? And why would he kill his purported father when he finally had everything he wanted?

Or could it have been Wilbert, left behind and resentful at the others for leaving? Might he have killed his father to prevent his coming back to interfere with Wilbert's new plans for the farm?

And Daisy, with her gun and her secret boat and her dead aim? She had been in an awful rush to leave the island yesterday. And how strange that she had denied hearing any of the commotion of the night before. How uncharacteristically unforthcoming.

And Lucy had been cagey locking up the root cellar. Making sure that neither Marigold nor any of the Hatchets could get into her place before it burned to cinders?

Two weeks ago, Marigold might have happily suspected them all, but now the thought brought her nothing but misery. Surely she knew each of them well enough to be able to believe them innocent—they were her friends now, not merely distant relations. She had helped each of them find their path in life in the past few days—how could they turn back and turn to murder now?

Marigold had no answer for her own questions but to get dressed. She hardly wanted to arrive at the sheriff's office looking like she'd been dragged through an ash pile—Ellery Hatchet wouldn't be made any more or less dead by a slight delay to make herself presentable.

One had one's standards, even with a corpse in the garden.

She washed and dressed hurriedly in a clean, soot-free shirtwaist and warm jacket along with a water-defying canvas mackintosh—though she took the time to secure her pistol in her pocket. If there were murderers abroad, she wanted to be prepared.

Across the empty farmyard, Lucy's former abode had been reduced to two upright, charred corner beams and a few smoldering planks that protruded up from the debris-filled root cellar—a historical wreck, but a complete wreck nonetheless. There was little left for Lucy to salvage, but Marigold could see that she and Bessie had tried—a trail of ashen footprints led up from what remained of the charred cellar steps. So much for replenishing the larder with leftover canned goods.

Marigold pushed aside all questions of larders and empty stomachs and whether the fire had been an unfortunate accident or maliciously set, retrieved her bicycle, and set off for North Cove with alacrity. She had just rounded the great protruding glacial rock at the wooded part of the path, where she could see Lucy and Bessie on the beach ahead, when the bicycle seemed to skid out from beneath her for no reason.

There was something fouling the spokes—a piece of fabric that resolved itself into Ellery Hatchet's suit jacket. His "preaching" suit, for want of a better term.

Marigold reached to pick it up before she stopped herself—anything that was associated with Ellery Hatchet was now likely to be accounted evidence. Especially since his jacket was there, on the path, well apart from his body.

But she couldn't leave it fouling her spokes. Marigold pried the material away from the fender, and in the process, an empty bottle of tonic, similar to the bottles Marigold had seen on the shelves at the druggist in Pride's Crossing, fell out.

Had Ellery been secretly drinking? Such tonics typically contained a large dose of alcohol. Or had he been ill? The jacket certainly stank with a particular odor that wasn't just sweat and lack of washing. Perhaps he had simply died from whatever ailed him.

No—the remembrance of his feet hanging over the rosemary gave lie to that theory.

Another image caught her attention—the fluttering of the white sail swinging on the boom, signaling that Lucy and Bessie were ready to set off.

"Wait!" Marigold called, making the decision to leave the suit jacket for later, when she could show it to the authorities. "Wait for me!"

"You all to rights, child?" Bessie queried when Marigold joined them at the skiff. "You've had an awful shock."

"Yes," Marigold admitted, "but I suppose we all have." Bessie especially could be expected to have complicated feelings about the death of her child's father. "How are you two?"

"We're keeping just fine. Now we best get on, then, and let you get to your business in the town." Bessie directed Marigold around to the port side so she could stow her bicycle in the prow. "You get that in and then push us off."

Marigold noticed that Bessie's hands were smeared with ash and soot. "Were you able to retrieve your belongings?" She looked to the small collection of things at Lucy's feet in the stern.

"Just this and that," Bessie answered, rearranging her skirts as she sat, more interested in catching the tide. "Let's get on and get out of this rain."

Marigold shoved the laden skiff off the sand, just managing to belly flop into the prow, almost on top of her machine, as Lucy put the helm into the wind.

"You hold on to that bicycle of yours, there," Bessie advised. "It looks like it might get choppy."

But the water looked as flat as a cast-iron skillet under the dull pounding of the spring rain. Still, Bessie could be expected to know better than she. And it was just as well—Marigold had too much to think about. Like the realization that Ellery Hatchet might have died just yards away from her while they were fighting the fire. How had she not seen him? Or heard him? Had he called out?

Nobody, not even hateful old Ellery Hatchet, deserved to die like that.

But how had he gotten there?

Marigold instantly looked behind to the beach, but the angle of their steerage, combined with the curtain of the sail and the rain, kept her from being able to see if there had been any evidence of another boat or other footsteps in the sand. She would have to hope Cab had noted such evidence when they had arrived at the island that morning—and be more observant herself in the future.

What else had she missed? What had happened the night before last—the disturbance that no one else had claimed to hear?

Marigold was sure of what she heard—as sure as she had been about Minnie's body in the water that first evening. Why would no one on Great Misery acknowledge what had happened?

But did she really want to get to the bottom of the mystery? Especially if it was going to prove that one of her Hatchet relatives—one of the people she had come to care for and champion—was a murderer. Not that they all didn't have good reason to want Ellery Hatchet dead.

"We'll put you in at the town dock." Bessie called Marigold's attention back to the logistics of reporting the death. "You can go ahead with your bicycle and don't wait on us."

"Yes, ma'am." Marigold jumped nimbly onto the wooden dock as Lucy neatly brought the skiff alongside.

"You let us know how it goes," Bessie called as they pulled sharply away.

Almost as if she wanted Marigold gone. As if all her work bettering the reputation of the Hatchets had already come to naught and she had fewer friends than she thought. Murder, she supposed, had a way of driving people out.

She was entirely on her own.