Chapter CIV

Stephen Clark attended Henry's funeral—of course he did—but he and his wife kept their distance from each other throughout the ceremony, and stood on opposite sides of the grave as their son was interred. Both wept, but Colleen's grief had a different essence to it, I think for many reasons. One of them, at least, I understood: she now knew she would see her child again, and that this was only a temporary parting.

Some intimates of the couple had, I knew, raised the possibility of a reconciliation. Stephen, they argued, had been wrong to believe his wife guilty, but in the face of such evidence, who might not have doubted their spouse? They could start again, have another child, and mourn their lost boy together. But others demurred, because who could forgive a man who would countenance such things about his wife? Somewhere between the two views, I supposed, was a pale version of what passed for truth.

And then there were those of us who could not bring ourselves to even look at him, but we were fewer.

This is what I think, though I have no hard evidence for it, and there are gaps I cannot fill: Eliza Michaud offered to help Stephen Clark achieve success in his professional life in return for his child. The pact might have been made before Henry was even conceived, or it may have been that Stephen did change, if only for a time, and thought he could play the role of a father, only to discover he could not, which made him vulnerable to Eliza's overtures. No, "vulnerable" is not the correct word. Receptive. Stephen provided Eliza with details of the layout of his home, drugged his wife's wine so she would not wake when the Michauds came to take her son, and supplied them with the blanket in which to wrap him, a blanket to be returned to him when Henry was dead and which Stephen would use to frame his wife.

How the DavMatt-Hunter accident might have been arranged also remained uncertain. According to witnesses, the truck driver could have done nothing to avoid the collision, and while the chauffeur had traces of oxymorphone in his system, he had used the medication in the past without impairing his performance behind the wheel. It might have been that, on this occasion, he had suffered some form of reaction to the opioid, causing him to become drowsy.

Perhaps it was only what it appeared to be: a misfortune that benefited Stephen Clark; a coincidence, and nothing more. Still, I was prepared to believe that the Michauds might have found a way to drug the chauffeur, but only because the explanation was more palatable to me than Sabine's: that the reach of whatever dwelt under Kit No. 174 exceeded the environs of Gretton.

SHORTLY AFTER HIS SONwas buried, Stephen Clark moved into a new condo in Saco. One month later, his brother and sister-in-law called to check on him after he failed to turn up for dinner at their home, once they had established that he had also been out of contact with his office for two days. They discovered his body lying in the hallway and an open $400 bottle of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon on the kitchen table, a half-full glass beside it.

According to a note found in the condo, the wine had been sent by a secretary at an oil conglomerate based in Taiwan, one with which Clark's firm had recently signed a lucrative and well-publicized contract, although the conglomerate subsequently denied all knowledge of the gift. The note indicated that one of the company's senior executives wished to speak privately with Clark to discuss a deal that might prove mutually beneficial, as they were impressed with his efforts on the contract and felt he was someone they could work with, perhaps on a discreet but lucrative consultancy basis. Clark was invited to participate in a scheduled online meeting, during which, it was suggested, it would be politic of him to display the opened bottle of wine. He was also advised not to commit anything to email. The secure link to the meeting, the note promised, would be sent thirty minutes before it was due to begin, at 8 p.m. EST. When his computer was examined, no such link could be located.

Both the wine and Clark himself were discovered to contain large quantities of tetrodotoxin, otherwise known as TTX. The poison had been injected through the foil and cork of the bottle using a very fine needle. Clark would have begun to feel its effects within minutes of ingestion, starting with pain in the lips and tongue, quickly followed by sweating, nausea, and full paralysis. He had been trying to get to his cell phone as the poison took effect, but failed after dialing the first digit of 9-1-1. Death, given the size of the dose, would have occurred within four hours, during which time Clark would have been conscious and lucid, if in agony and unable to move.

Colleen, when interviewed by police, seemed shocked at the news of her husband's murder, but admitted to not being especially saddened. The subsequent investigation revealed no evidence of her involvement in the delivery of the wine. It had been purchased using an over-the-counter preloaded credit card, paid for in cash by a bum in Concord, New Hampshire, who remembered only a woman in a surgical mask, the woman claiming to be medically vulnerable and never having regained her confidence following the COVID pandemic.

She had given him twenty dollars for his trouble.