Chapter 40

C HAPTER 40

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

—Oscar Wilde

Cab rowed the dory not west toward Pride's Crossing but north across the sound, toward Manchester, where the coastline curved east into the Atlantic and he hailed the first lobsterman they came upon pulling up pots in the channel.

"Are you getting us dinner?"

"Better." Cab finally cracked a smile. "Information. Sorry to bother you," he called as the dory bobbed alongside. "I'm looking for information on whether anyone from the harbor might have picked up a preacher from the traveling revival out at the fairgrounds and taken him out to Great Misery in the past few days?"

"You'll want Roger Brown and his boy, Harv." The lobsterman thumbed a glove over his shoulder, toward the harbor, where numerous dories were being oared to and fro. "Said something about taking a crazed-up preacher man over. Had to be crazy—who else'd want to go to Great Misery, eh?"

"Do you know when that was?" Cab pressed.

"Day before last, was it?" The fellow checked with his dory mate.

The day of the commotion. Marigold was beginning to get the timeline straight in her head. "Did they say if he was hurt or injured in any way?"

"Davie"—the lobsterman put the question to his mate—"you talked to Harv?"

"Sweating like a sow, Harv said, and just as sour," Davie related. "Complaining of stomach pains, raving like a lunatic that he'd been poisoned. Guzzling down a bottle of patent medicine, Harv said."

"Much obliged." Cab tossed the men a silver dollar.

Marigold was already taking stock. "It really might be poison—but how did Alva know that? And if he came back two nights ago, that was the commotion in the house, although no one else admitted to hearing it, not even Daisy."

"Is that so?" That serious scowl was carving a trench across Cab's otherwise perfect brow. "Doc said a thirty-eight. That's a lady's gun."

Marigold wished she had held her tongue. "Well, you've got my gun and you know it's never even been fired—it's as pristine as if it came out of a box."

"So noted," Cab agreed grimly. "Let us get back to Bessie's and get a decent meal into you. I doubt you've had anything to eat today."

"Are you saying I look starved?"

"I'm saying you've looked better, but you still look so good I'm tempted to ship my oars and show you just how good."

"Cab." She gave him her most encouraging smile. "I wish you would."

"I wish … you're in the middle of a murder here, Marigold, and such things will have to wait."

"Spoilsport," she teased. "I know ladies are meant not to seem too eager"—she paraphrased dear Miss Austen—"but you are very much increasing my anticipation by suspense, according to the practice of elegant gentlemen."

"I try," he answered with that deliciously self-deprecating laugh. "I surely try."

The rest of the row across the sound was accomplished in silence but with a great deal of attention paid to the marvelously rippling sinews of Cab's forearms, which were nicely exposed by his rolled-up shirtsleeves. Gracious, but he was a well-put-together man.

Marigold ogled him until they arrived at Bessie Dove's dock and the aroma from the house captured all of her attention. A few gulps of cold pump water only went so far in sustaining a person.

"Oh, child. You look like you got one foot on a banana peel and the other in the grave." Bessie turned on Cab. "What took you so long to get her out of that place?"

The woman's obvious worry was such that Marigold could only chide herself for earlier fretting that Bessie might not be her friend.

"My apologies," Cab demurred. "But I've brought her here now."

Bessie harrumphed but immediately brought a pungently spiced, burlap-wrapped ham to the table and proceeded to carve off slices. Marigold's mouth all but watered as she took a deep inhalation. And came to a stunning realization.

"Marigold?" Cab was watching her. "What is it?"

She shook her head, as if she could dispel the notion—the reason Ellery Hatchet's shirt smelled like woodsmoke—but her thoughts had finally become clear. "Cab, would you give me a moment alone with Bessie? I have a question of a … feminine nature to ask her."

"You ailing?" Bessie's smile was tight with worry. "I've got just the tonic for female complaints. Make them up myself."

"Yes," Marigold agreed automatically, because while Bessie's concern was all for her, Marigold was now more concerned for Bessie than before—her expertise with tonics opened up new and dangerous possibilities. "How did you know just what I wanted?"

"A body knows," Bessie answered, satisfied to be proved right. "You get that food in you." She watched as Marigold took a few sustaining bites. "That's better. Now, what you need is my black cohosh tonic—mixed with plum cherries and clover mint." Bessie rose and opened the door to her larder.

Marigold could see shelves full of canned and pickled foodstuffs along with an array of bottles much like those in Sophronia's stillroom. "I've seen tonic bottles just like these somewhere else."

Bessie's laugh surprised her. "You likely seen them down to the druggist. Mr. Crestfield buys them from me and puts his own labels on them. Like he doesn't want folks thinking they're buying their medicine from a Black woman's hands."

Crestfield clearly had a great deal of outsourcing—as well as a great deal of pride—to answer for. But so did Bessie.

"What I need from you is not tonic but answers. To questions like"—she lowered her voice to a whisper—"exactly when was Ellery Hatchet at your place two days ago, and why? Did he come to you before he went out to Great Misery?"

Bessie pressed her lips together. And stared.

"I mean to help you, Bessie," Marigold promised. "But you have to tell me the truth."

Bessie was silent for another very long moment until she finally answered, "Lucy warned me you're a sharp one. How did you know?"

"The smell of your smokehouse was on his shirtsleeves, though nearly masked by the smoke from the fire. And I'm sorry to trouble you about this, but," Marigold began, trying to steer carefully between her own need to know and her instinct to keep what she supposed private, "he was Lucy's father, wasn't he?"

"Jesus Lord." Bessie let out a long, low sigh, as if she had been holding that particular breath for years. "Nothing gets by you. And how'd you suss that out?"

"A number of inferences, including the difference of age and appearance between Lucy and Samuel. But mostly by your reaction to Seviah and Lucy's presumed romance and your hushed conference with my cousin Sophronia that next morning."

Bessie shook her head. "Now I wish I'd held my peace, the way things are working out so nice. Seviah brought that Mr. Keith here to my place, and now he's thinking of turning my boardinghouse into the headquarters of the new all-Black revue he's proposed to build. My boardinghouse on permanent lease, always paid up. That's security."

"And very well deserved, I'm sure. Congratulations." Marigold was delighted at such an extraordinary outcome. But she couldn't let Bessie divert her. "But if you hadn't made a fuss out at Hatchet Farm, I daresay you wouldn't know about Seviah's parentage either."

"Lord, there's no keeping things from you." Bessie sighed. "But that's right."

"Lucy is Ellery Hatchet's child, while Seviah Hatchet is not." Marigold felt some small satisfaction in discovering herself correct. But more questions remained. "Did Ellery Hatchet know? About Lucy?"

"He knew."

"And is that why he came to you?"

"Oh, no, he didn't come to me. Least not in the way you think. But it were yesterday morning, early, before the sun was full up." She let out each piece of information carefully, as if she were weighing Marigold's trustworthiness.

"Bessie, as long as you didn't kill him—though I am quite sure you have more than reason enough if you did—"

"Oh, no. He was already dead."

The enormous sense of relief Marigold felt was second only to her astonishment. "How could that be?"

Bessie lowered her voice to the barest whisper. "He was in the cove. I'd gone out to my smokehouse to check on some hams I got curing on order for the grocers. And there he was, tangled in the reeds, washed up in the shallows."

"Washed in from Salem Sound?" Clearly the preferred mode of getting rid of a body. "That's why there was no blood." But Marigold's next question was the same horrible one she had had about Minnie. "Was he tossed in after he died, do you think, or was he thrown in so he would drown?"

"All I know is what I seen," Bessie said. "And that was that he was drowned. The gracious Lord seen fit to take him at last."

"You're sure he was dead?"

"Put my ear to his chest and my hand to his wrist," Bessie confirmed. "He was already as cold and dank as a tombstone."

"All right." Marigold accepted Bessie's admission as truth until proven otherwise. "Then what happened?"

Bessie's face closed up a little, as if she were having second thoughts about confessing to Marigold. "Well, then I'm not so sure."

Marigold leaned closer to assure her. "Bessie, I swear to you, whatever you tell me, I promise you I will not tell a soul, not even Cab."

"Too late," that unmistakable deep voice behind them answered. "You already have."