Chapter 39

C HAPTER 39

Nine-tenths of the world is entertained by scandalous rumors, which are

never dissected until they are dead and, when pricked, collapse like an

empty bladder.

—Horace Greeley

"You'll have to hear more than a word against it, sir." Cab's tone was just shy of adamant. "As I said, you'll need more than the hearsay accusations that have already been refuted by another witness. And frankly, those accusations are suspicious—Dr. Oliphant said that Hatchet was shot. He said nothing of poisons. It won't hold up, sir, and you know it."

Parker looked as if he did not, in fact, know it, but Cab wisely gave him ground to cede. "But I do understand your need to get to the bottom of this," Cab went on, "so I will give you my word as both a gentleman and as an officer of the court of the State of Massachusetts, and more personally as the nephew of retired Justice Endicott, that I will keep Miss Manners in my custody with the promise to deliver her to you if any further evidence of her alleged guilt should come to light. I'll sign an affidavit, if you like."

Officer Parker conceded as gracefully as such an awkward man could. "I don't reckon that'll be necessary."

If she were a romantic, she might interpret Cab's oath as heroic. But she was a New Woman who didn't like the idea of anyone else giving their word for her, though she was also a realist, who would be sure to put Cab's protective instincts to good use.

So, the moment after Officer Parker and Dr. Oliphant finally departed with the body in the singed mule cart driven by Wilbert, Marigold pressed her advantage into insistence. "Did you take a greater look around the island while I was gone? I was wondering if you noticed any indications of other boats landing at the cove. The tide's come up now, but the question of how Ellery Hatchet—or his body—got over here from the mainland is vexing me."

"There were no other marks in the sand." He walked beside her as they followed along in the cart's wake. "The beach at North Cove was quite unmarked when we arrived."

Marigold was momentarily stymied. "It seems unlikely that anyone would have attempted to put in anywhere else—especially on a cloudy night with no moon. Although the others all had boats hidden all over the island, so clearly there are other landing spots to be found."

"Yes, but also, the tide must have turned after he arrived," Cab acknowledged, before he tried a question of his own. "Does your cousin, Mrs. Hatchet, always sound as if she's fresh from reading some tea leaves?"

"Tea leaves, tarot, and embers," Marigold confirmed. " What will be will be seems to be one of her favorites. She said those exact words to Ellery Hatchet about some mushrooms in the garden that morning before you first came with my bicycle. But he said, ‘I'll take nothing from your snake-fed hands.' Those were his exact words, but I thought he was just making a sort of biblically allegorical reference to her being female and therefore a descendant of Eve and therefore responsible for all of humanity's sin. All that is to say, I really do think her husband would refuse any tonic from her."

"She also said you were going to uncover all of Ellery Hatchet's sins," Cab added.

"I'm not sure I want to, even if that's the real reason I originally came out here. I'm sure Isabella told you"—judging from Isabella's past behavior, Marigold was sure her friend had given Cab every detail she could—"but I came out here at my cousin Sophronia Hatchet's invitation, when she wrote me that Ellery Hatchet had done my mother—my sweet mother, who never hurt anyone but herself—a great and godless wrong. But now it seems as if Ellery is the one who has been done a great wrong."

Except this wrong wasn't that godless—Ellery Hatchet seemed to have earned his deservedly messy fate. What ye sow, so shall the Lord reap .

He certainly had been reaped. But how? And when?

"Do you think they're going to be able to establish a time of death as precisely as the cause?"

Cab nodded. "It will depend upon the doctor's skill, but with the state of forensic science today, it is possible to establish."

"And once we know when ," Marigold mused, "it will be reasonably easier to estimate where he might have been when he was shot. I'm sure it wasn't at Hatchet Farm, because I was listening two nights ago—I had a glass pressed to the door—and I'm sure I would have heard a gun go off. But I didn't hear any. So he must have been shot elsewhere, and if we can determine—"

" We are not going to determine that, Marigold," Cab said with some feeling. " I will. Or rather, Officer Parker and Doc Oliphant and I will."

"Don't be absurd, Cab. I do understand your desire to protect me, but as I was present the whole time at Hatchet Farm, where clearly something was afoot the last two nights, though no one admitted, and you didn't ask, what went on—" Her archaeologically trained mind ticked off the outstanding evidence. "And furthermore, I have questions about why, if he was shot, there was no blood on his body or clothes, or about the house, which I clean, so I would have noticed. And then there's the empty bottle of tonic—Ellery Hatchet must have purchased it at Crestfield's in town before he came, or was brought back, to the island. So, if we can place him in the town, we can establish a timeline of the events leading up to his murder."

"Agreed," Cab said. "But we will not establish a timeline of events—they will. You will—" He stopped himself—his head went back, as if he had pulled his metaphorical reins. "I would ask you to please give me leave to sort some things out on your behalf. You've been accused of a crime by two people." He reached out, as if he would take her hands in his. "I don't think you realize—"

She brushed his hands aside to get a better look at something near his feet. "Cab, look!"

"Damn it, Marigold—"

"No." She was too impatient to explain. "Look!" She picked a dusty talcum powder tin out of the overgrowth. "It must be Ellery's money tin that Wilbert assumed he took with him when he left. Ellery definitely must have dropped this unknowingly, or lost it in a fight, just like his suit and tie and Bible—for why would a miserly man like Ellery Hatchet knowingly throw away money?"

Cab pried open the tin and shook out the change. "A dollar ninety-six," he counted out. "That leaves out robbery for a motive."

Marigold looked back up the path, gauging the distance to the spot where she had found the Bible, bottle, and jacket. "Can't you just see him, trudging along here?" Much as Ellery had been doing the day she had impetuously suggested he join the tent revival, she imagined—harried and a little unkempt, even in his suit. "He dropped or threw away his Bible? But he's a preacher man—more likely he just set it down and lost it in the dark. But why set it down?" She let her thoughts spool out logically. "Because he needed his hands to reach into his pocket—for what? Money? What would he buy on Great Misery? Or he was after something else and was so impatient and distracted he either didn't notice the money falling aside, or he tossed it aside? It's the tonic he wanted, then—a tonic for stomach complaints, Sophronia said. So perhaps he's feeling poorly—so poorly he's come all the way back from Manchester, when only a day or so before he couldn't wait to shake the dust of this place from his shoes …"

Cab nodded even as he frowned. "Go on."

Marigold was beginning to envision the sequence of events more clearly now. "So he's plodding on, rifling through his pockets, but he stops and guzzles down the tonic—he empties the bottle. But he's still feeling so poorly he shucks off his jacket and flings away his tie? Because he's in distress and hot and sweating?" Maybe that was why his clothes smelt so oddly. "Maybe he really was poisoned!"

"Seems reasonable," Cab said. "But that's an awfully plausible scenario from someone who claims not to be involved."

"You mean me?" Marigold felt herself bristle like a cat—she very much wanted to hiss and spit at the insufferably perceptive man. "I didn't say I wasn't involved, only that I didn't kill him. I merely put forth what I think is the most logical, likely scenario. That is what archaeologists do, Cab. We take a few items of material culture, be it two days, two years, or two thousand years old, and we try to envision the most rational way people might have used them, to piece together a complete picture of what occurred. Do you have a better suggestion?"

"No," Cab answered. "I don't make suggestions or scenarios—I'll let the facts speak for themselves. So best let me go ahead and find those facts out. Marigold." He reached again for her hands. "Please."

Something within, something vain and hopefully foolish, prompted her to push a stray bit of hair out of her eyes, the better to see Cab's face. But her fingers were permeated by the faintly rank, damp scent of woodsmoke and … something else. Was it rosemary?

The smell must have transferred to her hands from Ellery's shirt. How strange. The rosemary could be explained on his pants, she supposed, but nothing else. "Maybe I was wrong," she said. "All of his clothes smelled of smoke. So perhaps he was on the crosstree the whole time the fire burned. And we never saw."

"Maybe someone didn't want you to see him. Maybe whoever put him up there on the scarecrow's crosstree lit the fire as a diversion." Cab looked especially grave at the realization. "I'll speak to Officer Parker about that."

Marigold wished she hadn't said anything. If her suspicions about Seviah proved correct—

She tried to divert Cab's line of thought. "I know we must wait for the doctor's report to establish the time of death, but how did Ellery get all the way from the mainland back out to Great Misery, do you think? Where would he get a boat? And if he did get a boat, where is it now?" She started off down the path with greater urgency.

"That is something else I will be investigating as soon as—" He broke off, catching up with her to take her arm in a rather implacable grip. "Damn it all, Marigold—a man has been murdered and you're as cool as a cucumber, spinning out likely scenarios—"

"Would you rather I was in hysterics?" She rounded her elbow out of his possession. "If you're implying that I haven't any proper feelings, I assure you, I was as horrified as you could wish. You didn't see me at six o'clock this morning."

"I saw you at six thirty," he acknowledged. "And I will grant that you looked terrible enough then."

"Thank you," she answered with only a modicum of sarcasm. "I am as frustrated and baffled as you, Cab. And frankly afraid too—it's never a pleasant thing to find oneself accused, even by an interfering old eavesdropper and a superannuated harridan, or to be threatened with a jail cell even when one is confident one didn't do it! But what I can't figure out is, if I didn't shoot him—and I didn't! By the way, I suppose now is as good a time as any to show you my gun. It's quite the same as you gave it to me—it has not been fired." She fished the pistol out of her pocket.

He quickly took the gun, checked the mechanism, and put it into his own pocket. "With five bullets," he agreed with some relief. "Thank you. And you sure you didn't hear any other shots?"

"Quite sure," she swore. "Not last night nor the night before. Which I think means that he was shot someplace else before he was brought to Hatchet Farm and put up on top of that scarecrow."

"Agreed," Cab said grimly. "I can at least easily acquit you of that—as athletic as you are, you're too petite to have slung such a tall man up there."

"Thank you." It was less work to keep the sarcasm from her tone this time.

"But Marigold, Ellery Hatchet was murdered, and I've learned from my readings in the new science of forensics that, once a person has killed somebody, they're not likely to hesitate to kill again. And you, with your reasonable suppositions and keen observations, may present a threat to them. Do you see?" He gripped her shoulders, not unlike the way he had gripped her in the dark of the Endicott's terrace. "I'm goddamn worried for you, not about you."

"Then, thank you." She meant to be cool and perhaps even a bit sarcastic, but he had that same look on his face as when he had almost kissed her in the dark of the Endicotts' terrace.

But he didn't kiss her this time either—he took her hand and started all but towing her down the path. "I'm not leaving you out here in this godforsaken place one more night. You're coming with me, and I don't want to hear another word about it."

"You'll have to hear another word about it, Cab. One word in particular."

"And what would that word be?"

"Please." She drew a long breath to try to settle her feelings into some sort of more reasonable order. "As in, please come with me to Bessie's, or my cousin's, or wherever it is you mean to stash me. I will surely come, Cab, for what you said makes remarkable sense. But I should very much like to be asked."

He kept himself from sighing. "Then ask I shall. Marigold, would you please, please for the love of God, come with me?"

"Naturally," she replied with a smile. "I'd love to."