that happened. And then when she gave me a fine, healthy boy and it appeared that she was out of danger, I did something very silly.”
He stopped, and Lewis waited, knowing that it would take this man of few words a moment to compose his confession.
“I went and bought a bottle of whiskey. Oh, I had no wish to consort with the drunks at the tavern — they’re a foolish lot — but I wanted to celebrate what I thought I had done. Here I was, with a wonderful wife and a new son, a good job and money saved. I was on top of the world, you see, but I thought it was all my doing. I felt I deserved it all, and that I would darn well spend a shilling and have a good time for once.”
“Oh, Seth …” Minta began, but Lewis silenced her with a glance. There was much more to come, and silence was the way to coax it into the open air.
“I woke up in the woods the next morning and was sick as a dog,” Seth said. “I felt stupid over the whole thing — money wasted, and it wasn’t such a nice pastime after all. Why do people drink like they do?” he asked. “I felt terrible, and I never want to feel that way again.”
Lewis thought for a moment. “But one of the first times I ever laid eyes on you, you were coming out of a tavern.”
It was Seth’s turn to think back. “I don’t know why, unless I’d gone to tell a customer his horse was shod. I never went there otherwise.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “A bunch of wasters in there, that’s what they are — knaves and braggarts. Nay, Preacher, I’d have nothing to do with them.”
Again Lewis took himself to task for jumping to conclusions. “Go on,” he said, “what happened then?”
“And then I went home and found Rachel dead, and I knew my foolishness for what it was. My good fortune had little to do with me. It was Providence alone that had brought me my blessings, and I realized that it didn’t matter what I did, it could all be taken away in the flash of an eye. How stupid I was to think that hard work alone would get me what I wanted. And then I realized that what I really wanted had nothing to do with riches. I wanted Minta and Henry to cherish, and I wanted my lovely sister to get up off the bed and live and breathe again, and she could tease me all she wanted, for I loved her, too.”
His voice grew husky with emotion. “I vowed then to turn over a new leaf. Oh, I would still work my fingers to the bone, and gladly, for my family, but I would take time to be with them, too, and do my best to make life easier for them — not at some far-off time in the future, but now. And I would open up my soul and give thanks for what I’d been blessed with.”
Lewis’s heart went out to the man. Poor dour Seth: a good man, whose goodness had to be ferreted out and cosseted before it could find the light of day. He reached over and squeezed the man’s hand.
“I’m happy that you realize how fortunate you are,” he said. “I’m just sorry about what it took to make you realize it.”
Seth nodded. “You said you’d explain why you were asking.”
“I have reason to believe that Rachel was murdered.”
Minta gasped, and her hand flew up to her mouth, but Seth had a thoughtful look on his face. “I’d wondered,” he said. “All this time, I’ve wondered.”
Lewis told them of the other deaths, and a little of the strange details that anointed the bodies, the details that dovetailed with what Seth had discovered at his house that night. He omitted his theory of who had done it; it was not yet time to make his suspicions public.
“I was almost certain Rachel had been strangled,” Seth said, “but I couldn’t make head nor tail out of the other stuff. I thought maybe it was the Quaker boy she’d been seeing on the sly; his father was pretty upset at the notion of him marrying out. You know how they are — it’s their way or no way. I thought maybe something had happened between the two — they’d had an argument or something — and the boy flew into a rage and killed her.”
“No,” Lewis said, “I’m sure it wasn’t the Quaker boy. If it were only Rachel, you might think so, but he was nowhere near the others. And I’m positive the murders are all related, all done by the same person. There seems to be this strange ritual with each of them. The bodies set up in the same way, with the same things placed with them. That speaks of one man.”
“How do you know it’s a man?” Minta asked. “You men always seem to think that women are far too noble to do such evil things, but there are women who are monsters as well.”
Lewis smiled at her. “Believe me, Minta, I considered it. I know that evil comes sometimes in a female form, but there are certain aspects of this that point to a man. It would have to be someone with an excuse to be in many different places. There is also something else going on here that points to a man, a certain warped and depraved lust that somehow becomes something else. Please, Minta, don’t make me go into the details.”
But they had already imagined what those details might be, and they both looked taken aback.
“Do you know who it is?” Seth asked.
“Maybe,” Lewis replied. “But I have no proof, so I’ll not bandy names at this point.”
“But at some point in time you must have wondered if it was me,” Seth said, and Lewis sheepishly admitted that he had, but had quickly dropped him from consideration. “You have a happy family, and somehow I don’t think this man knows what that is.”
His timetable was once again in a shambles. Betsy was still far too lame to sit a horse, and even when she did start to feel better, he would still have to take her back to Bath. He debated whether or not he should ride west and resume his round for a few days and then return to take his family home, but that would mean leaving them with Minta. He felt they had imposed far too long as it was. Besides, he would once again be abandoning his appointments and he knew that many of them were in the northern reaches of his circuit, which would add substantially to the number of miles he would have to ride and the amount of time it would take for him to return. It was probably wiser to wait a day and see how things were.
His mind went round and round as he tried to fit together all the pieces of information he had gathered. Again and again he came back to Simms. He studied the Book of Proverbs again, the admonition to “come not nigh the door to her house,” and to “cleave unto thy wife.”
But Simms didn’t have a wife, did he? He had spoken only of a demanding mother and three unmarried sisters. Yet, he had been in Demorestville, in Prescott, in Millcreek. And who had given Sarah the little book and the painted pin, if not a peddler who had a large stock of both? He tried to recall whether or not he had ever seen the peddler’s wagon near Sarah’s cabin, but if he had, it had obviously made no impression on him. It would have been such a common sight that there would have been no reason to remember it. He did feel for the longest time that there was something he had overlooked, and then it came to him: Simms had said he was in Prescott awaiting a shipment, a shipment that had been sent down the river by his brother-in-law. As far as Lewis was aware, he had no brother-in-law; he had mentioned only the unmarried sisters. And he had been quite specific about their unwed states. And where had he been coming from when he had caught up with Lewis that day? Again, everything was pointing to the peddler. It was as clear as the writing on the wall.
The writing … the inscription inside the cover of Rachel’s book! It was a fine, educated hand that had written that. Mentally he compared the writing to the blotched and nearly illegible scrawl that had been on Morgan Spicer’s application for appointment.
