Chapter 37

C HAPTER 37

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one

begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

—Arthur Conan Doyle

Marigold pedaled swiftly to the town hall, where she entered at the side door marked POLICE . The Office of Public Safety was a wholly masculine preserve—a single rectangular room with a large, grubby desk in sore need of a good scrubbing situated in front of two iron-barred cells along the back wall.

Though it was not the first jailhouse Marigold had ever entered—agitation for universal suffrage was often looked at askance by the powers that be—it was the first time she had done so as a material witness to murder. Even though it was likely the second murdered body she had seen.

"Officer Parker?" She addressed the blue-uniformed man with his feet up on the desk. "I'm Marigold Manners, cousin to the Hatchets of Great Misery Island. I've come to report Ellery Hatchet has been murdered."

Her pronouncement was met with all the é clat of a dud.

"Well, what do you know. Heard about you." The laconic officer let his feet slide to the floor but did not rise. "Oughtn't be surprised someone finally settled old Ellery Hatchet's hash. But I heard he'd left town," he mused. "Run off and joined the preaching circus?"

"He had joined the Reverend Cooper's tent revival, yes. Or at least we thought he did. But we found his body this morning, in the garden at Hatchet Farm."

"This morning? I heard another rumor there was a fire out there last night."

The news had certainly traveled as fast as stink, as these New Englanders might say. And yet the officer had not stirred himself to investigate. "The barn and one of the outbuildings were consumed in the flames."

"Consumed"—he mimicked Marigold's pronunciation—"was it? Burnt down," he amended. "Well then, I reckon he went and had hisself an apoplexy at the sight," the officer reasoned, settling back into his chair like an exemplar of Occam's dullest razor, judging from the thick, unworn shoe leather on the bottom of his soles. "Old man Hatchet was well-known for getting himself hot under the collar. It figures that he'd finally blow his gasket for good."

"While that assessment of Mr. Hatchet's character may be true," Marigold reasoned, "the circumstances in which the body was found are suspicious."

"Says who?"

Marigold wanted to answer, Says me , but she amended her response to, "Says his son, Mr. Wilbert Hatchet, and Mr. Hatchet's attorney, Mr. Cox."

"That so?" Parker had his own theory. "Reckon he changed his mind about wanting to go off with the tent revival. Wanted the comforts of home."

"Hatchet Farm hardly offers comfort, sir," Marigold countered.

"If that's so, why're you out there?" Officer Parker demanded. "Fancy Boston girl like you? You know, there's not a person in this town doesn't wonder what you're up to out on Great Misery."

"Cleaning," she said succinctly with a feeling of rising hauteur. "As any of my Hatchet relatives can attest."

"That so?" He met her nearly insolent tone with sarcasm of his own. "You don't look much like a skivvy. Look like one of those damn sportswomen . Getting up clubs to wheel around on your bicycles instead of minding your own business."

Marigold very briefly debated giving the condescending fellow more than a piece of her mind, but she was a woman of reason and instead did what any frustrated, thinking woman who wanted to get her way as quickly and easily as possible had to do—she spoke more softly in order to force him to listen, while wielding the cudgel of influence.

"I am very much minding my own business, sir, when I report to you that my cousin's husband has been found dead in suspicious circumstances. Mr. Jonathan Cabot Cox, their lawyer, who is nephew to Mr. George Endicott, sent me here to inform you and Dr. Oliphant, and to tell you he is awaiting your investigation out on Great Misery."

"He said that, did he, this Cox? Endicott's nephew?"

Marigold took what satisfaction she could in discommoding the man. "I am merely his messenger."

Officer Parker rather predictably changed his tune. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to take Doc Oliphant out there to Great Misery to take a look. And we'll figure it all out, nice and easy, and that'll be an end to it. Then you all can bury the old bastard in peace."

"Excellent." Marigold produced an audible sigh of thanks. "I know my cousin, Mrs. Hatchet, would appreciate that."

"Would she? From what I hear, if anyone murdered him, it's likely to have been her that put poison down his gullet."

All playacting was immediately forgotten. Marigold was sure she blanched—her face went hot and cold all at the same time.

Parker smiled coolly. "Or maybe it was you. There's been a betting line round town, wondering which one of you would get to the other one first."

Marigold swallowed the bitter bile of her indignation and gathered her aplomb. "Well, if you'd be so good as to do your job, then I'm sure you'll be able to figure out who got to whom. I have my bicycle." She tugged at the hem of her glove in a gesture of impatience. "I will meet you at Dr. Oliphant's." It would be better to speak to the doctor without the officer's clearly prejudicial attitude standing in the way of the facts.

"Well, I got a bicycle too." Parker came up and around his desk with alacrity, suddenly all afire to get to his job. "So, unless you want to be trounced in a race, I suggest you wait a doggone minute."

Marigold waited. Not because she was afraid of competition—far from it—but because she was a New Woman who didn't need to prove herself to any man. Especially not to a thin-necked know-nothing like Officer Parker. It again remained damnable how easily the sight of an independent young woman brought out the littleness in any man.

She pedaled sedately in the officer's hasty wake to the white federal farmhouse that housed the doctor's practice.

"Doc?" Parker bawled as he stomped through the side porch door to Dr. Oliphant's office. "We got ourselves a poser."

"Parker." Dr. Oliphant nodded in greeting. "I take it this isn't a social call?" The physician was nearly exactly as she had pictured him—a gray-haired, spectacled owl of a man with a large, well-brushed mustache and a perpetually perturbed demeanor.

"This girl's from Great Misery," Officer Parker announced, "where she says Ellery Hatchet's been murdered."

"I'm Marigold Manners, sir." Marigold spoke for herself. "And I have come over from Great Misery Island, where, just a little over two hours ago"—she consulted the clock on the wall—"Ellery Hatchet was found dead in suspicious circumstances."

"I get to say what's suspicious," Parker interjected.

But the doctor's face registered neither censure nor doubt. "That's quite an accusation, Miss Manners. Care to tell me what's got you suspicious?"

"The position of his body," Marigold began. "He was draped"—she chose the most decorous word she might—"over a scarecrow, and his feet were several feet off the ground. Too far to jump. His body was also quite stiff when the family tried to take him down. So aside from the curiosity of his position, there is some doubt as to when exactly he died."

"I'll get my bag." The doctor rose. "I'll admit to having some curiosity myself about the Hatchets out on Great Misery all these years."

"You've never had occasion to visit the island before?" Marigold asked. "Not even for a birth?"

"Not once. They keep to themselves, those Hatchets." The doctor was mater-of-fact. "That or they've enjoyed exceptionally good health."

Which was exceptionally unlikely, what with all the drowning and scythes and matches and guns and shovels. Marigold could only think it something of a wonder that they hadn't been steadily burying each other through the years.

Or perhaps they had been and nobody like her had been around to insist upon consulting the authorities? If past experience was any indication, the future would hold even more secrets Hatchet Farm might be dying to keep.

Officer Parker commandeered a large sailing dory at the town dock and proceeded to steer them toward Great Misery.

Marigold sat as quietly as possible until they came to the spot where she had seen the woman in the water that first day. "On the evening of my first arrival in Pride's Crossing, I believe I saw the body of Minnie Mallory just about here, beneath the surface of the water. She was wearing a mulberry-red skirt. But perhaps the color appeared darker because of the water."

"All the way out here?" the doctor queried at the same time Officer Parker asked, "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I did," she informed him shortly. "But no one believed me."

"Not that it makes any difference," Parker finally said, but Marigold noticed the doctor looked pensive, or at least slightly more pensive than before. It was hard to tell with the mustache.

So when they debarked at North Cove—where all evidence of any boats had been washed away with the high tide—and began the walk across the island, it was Dr. Oliphant's gaze that she directed to Ellery's jacket. "Look at that!" she exclaimed as they neared the spot. "That looks like Ellery Hatchet's suit jacket."

"Don't you have an eye for dead people's garments," Oliphant commented wryly.

"So?" Officer Parker said, looking down at the jacket with little comprehension. "So he lost it."

Marigold went ahead and picked the coat up, hoping the empty tonic bottle would fall to the ground, which it obligingly did. "What's that?"

"Let me see that." Dr. Oliphant took a moment to read the label before he took a decorous sniff. "Patent medicine," he decided before passing the bottle to the policeman. "Cider tonic."

"Seen the like at the druggist's," Office Parker said. "Taken the like myself a time or two."

"Indeed," Oliphant agreed. "Common enough."

Marigold was underwhelmed by their lack of enthusiasm for these clues. But as she all but rolled her eyes in frustration, something at the edge of the bracken on the other side of the rock caught her eye. "But what's … why, it's a Bible," she said as she retrieved the battered, soft leather–covered book. " His Bible, do you think?"

She handed it to Dr. Oliphant, who took a quick look inside the cover. "Ellery Hatchet," he confirmed.

"I should think he dropped his Bible first." Marigold tried to envision the fall of objects along the path. "And then his coat and … what else?"

It was Parker who saw the man's tie, dangling from a shrub by the side of the path some twenty feet ahead. She must have missed it when zooming past on her way to catch Bessie and Lucy.

"Also Ellery's," she attested. "He was wearing this ensemble the morning he left Great Misery. So he must have lost or discarded them the night he came back?"

"I reckon," was all Officer Parker would agree to.

But Dr. Oliphant was sharper. "Do you mean last night?"

"I don't know," Marigold answered honestly. "There was some disturbance two nights past that I wasn't privy to. But what would bring Ellery Hatchet back to a place he had been so determined to leave? It's all so curious and strange."

But as the answer was not to be found in any more objects upon the path, they pushed on to Hatchet Farm, where they found Cab, Wilbert, Cleon, and Sophronia in the kitchen, standing around the table, where Ellery's body was now laid out, still in his preacher's shirtsleeves.

Which was also curious and strange—Ellery Hatchet looked far cleaner in death than he ever had in life. Perhaps they had plumbing on the tent revival circuit? Everyplace was more modern, it seemed, than Hatchet Farm.

The doctor immediately put his ear to Ellery's chest. "He's dead, all right. And damp from the rain?"

"Washed clean of the stain of his sins," Cleon said solemnly.

"You washed him?" Dr. Oliphant examined one of Ellery's hands.

"No. We thought to," Wilbert began with a glance at his mother. "We brought him in just as it started to rain. But then Mr. Cox here bid us wait. So we just laid him out, decent like, until … well, you'll see."

"What will we see?" the doctor asked, before he began opening up the clothing that had already been unbuttoned, exposing Ellery's chest and two pale, gaping purple holes for all to see.

"Well, there you have it," Doc Oliphant muttered. "This man's been shot. He's most definitely been murdered."