Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

That possibility seemed pretty remote, though, to everybody-everybody except, again, Miss Howard, who just refused to give up on whatever horse she was riding until it was good and dead. And so early Saturday morning she had the four of us who’d made the Troy trip up and aboard Mr. Picton’s surrey. (The Doctor’d wanted to come along, but he felt a personal responsibility to head out to the Westons’ farm that day and see how Clara was doing.) The town of Schaghticoke was located about half a dozen miles inland from the east bank of the Hudson, which meant another ferry crossing and another monotonous ride through farm country what wasn’t much different from the territory we’d covered in Saratoga and Washington Counties. We arrived in the place to find that the locals were getting a few big fields ready for the Rensselaer County Fair, a fact what made the general atmosphere, along with the attitudes of the town’s residents, more cheery than they likely were ordinarily: we didn’t have to ask but a few people about the Franklin farm before we found one helpful old soul who gave us very exact instructions on how to get there.

The spread lay to the east of the town, alongside a shadowy back road what was painful to travel, and what made Miss Howard and me figure that we were on our way to yet another gloomy house haunted by the ghosts of past violence and tragedy. You can imagine our shock, then, when we came around one bend in the bumpy road to find ourselves faced with a couple of very well tended cornfields on our left, and some cow pastures with newly strung wire fences on our right. Most surprising of all was the sight, between the cornfields, of a small but pleasant-looking little house, its clapboards bearing a fresh coat of white paint and its neatly clipped lawn bordered by pretty little flower patches.

We turned up the short drive to the house, seeing no sign of life at first, but then finally spying a man in overalls walking from the house to a large green barn what was hidden behind one of the corn fields. He looked to be about forty-five or so, and seemed a decent, friendly enough type: as he spread chicken feed from a bucket around to a group of hens what were clucking in the barnyard, he made some pleasant, maybe even affectionate little noises, smiling as he watched the birds scurry around to peck at the food. Watching him, I pulled the surrey to a stop in front of the house.

“We’re in the wrong place” was all I could say.

Miss Howard just studied the scene for a few minutes, looking troubled; then she got down off the buckboard and moved up to a gate in the white picket fence what bordered the front lawn.

“Stay here,” she said, passing through the little gate in the fence. El Niño didn’t much like the idea of her going to talk to the unknown man in the barnyard by herself, but I told him to just relax, pointing out that she was almost certainly carrying some kind of firearm. All the same, he produced his little bow and one of his short arrows from inside his dinner jacket (he’d rigged the lining of the garment to accommodate his weapons) and kept a steady eye on what went on across the yard.

“Excuse me!” Miss Howard called as she reached the corner of the house. At the sound the man turned and, smiling pleasantly, trotted on over to where she was standing, which was just within earshot of the rest of us.

“Hello,” he said, setting his bucket down and wiping his hands on his overalls. “Something I can do for you?” Looking past Miss Howard, he caught sight of the rest of us in the surrey; and though I don’t think the sight of two black men made him feel exactly easy, he didn’t seem to get overly nervous about it.

“I hope so,” Miss Howard answered. “My name is Sara Howard. I’m an investigator working with the Saratoga County District Attorney’s office. I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. George Franklin.”

The mention of the Saratoga D.A. also didn’t seem to rattle the man as much as it should have, certainly not as much as it had the other people we’d visited in the area. The fellow’s eyes grew puzzled, but he didn’t lose his smile completely. “They’re my folks,” he said. “Or were. My father died five years ago.”

“Oh,” Miss Howard answered. “I am sorry. And your mother?”

“Over in Hoosick Falls, visiting my brother and his wife,” the man answered. “They’ve got a store there. She won’t be back ’til tomorrow afternoon, I’m afraid. What’s this all about?”

Matching the man’s pleasant tone, Miss Howard asked, “Would you be George Franklin, then? Or Elijah?”

The man cocked his head in surprise. “Looks like you know all about us, miss. I’m Eli-that’s what I’m called. Is there something wrong?”

“I-” Miss Howard glanced back to the rest of us, looking like she wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. “Mr. Franklin-if I may ask, have you had any communication from your sister recently?”

“Libby?” For the first time, a cloud seemed to pass over Eli Franklin’s features, and he glanced at the ground uneasily. “No. No, we haven’t any of us heard from Libby for-well, for quite a few years, now.” When he looked up again, the fellow wasn’t smiling anymore. “She in some kind of trouble?”

“I’d-really rather discuss the matter when your mother’s here,” Miss Howard answered.

“Look,” Franklin said, “if there’s something my mother needs to hear, I think you’d better let me be the one to tell her. What’s Libby done?”

“You assume she’s done something?” Miss Howard asked curiously. “Why not that something’s been done to her?”

Franklin’s eyes got wider with surprise as he considered this possibility. “ Has something happened to her? Is she all right?”

“Mr. Franklin…” Miss Howard folded her arms, her green eyes focusing right in on the man’s brown ones. “I’m afraid I have to tell you that your sister is right now on trial in Ballston Spa. On a very serious charge.”

Franklin absorbed this news, what should have been pretty rattling, with much less alarm than I would’ve thought possible. “So,” he said, after a few silent minutes. “So that’s it.” His voice wasn’t outraged or even stunned, just sort of-well, sad was the only way to put it. “What happened? There’s a man mixed up in it, I guess. Is he married, something like that?”

“Something like that,” Miss Howard lied coolly, figuring, I knew, that she was likely to get more information out of the farmer if she went along with his assumptions instead of telling him the truth. “Why? Was she ever in that sort of trouble before?”

“Libby?” Franklin grunted. “When it came to men, Libby was always in trouble.” Looking away and making a little hissing sound of disappointment, Franklin said, “So why are you here? Are we going to be called into court? I don’t see why-”

“No,” Miss Howard answered quickly. “Nothing like that. I just thought that perhaps you and your family could provide us with some information about your sister’s past. She’s rather reluctant to talk about it herself.”

Franklin shook his head. “Nothing surprising in that, I’m afraid,” he said. “Well… you probably should wait for my mother, if that’s the kind of thing you want. She’ll know more than I can remember. You could come back tomorrow-”

“Oh, we’ll come back,” Miss Howard answered quickly. “But if you could just tell me a few basic facts.” She turned to walk across the lawn toward the door of the little house. “Have you always lived here?”

“Yes,” Franklin answered; then he caught himself. “I’m sorry-can I get you anything? Something to drink, maybe, or-”

“Yes, that’d be very nice of you,” Miss Howard said. “I’m afraid it’s been a long, dusty drive.”