Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“You mentioned two young children. And the third?”

Crispin’s face took on a pained, puzzled expression, as if Duncan’s simple question were impossible to answer. “What did the Reverend tell you?”

“Just that I was to teach three children. What of the third?”

Crispin stepped toward the door with a reluctant expression, as if Duncan were forcing him from the chamber. “She needs the most. . ” He sighed. “I don’t have the words,” he said, his voice overcome with a sudden melancholy.

Duncan stared after him, trying to fathom his abrupt change of mood, as Crispin retreated down the hall. He gazed out the window over the small, busy town for several minutes, fighting a terrible guilt for being in the comfortable mansion house while the Company moved toward the wilderness, gauging his chances of leaping on a horse and racing to find Lister without being stopped. He pulled himself away to quickly unpack and wash, then explored the house, encountering several servants who hurried past with hasty words of greeting and lowered heads. Wandering through an elegant dining room with an elaborate mural of the harbor painted on one wall, past a long mahogany table adorned with three matching brass candelabras, he found himself in a chamber lined with bookshelves. Duncan walked along the shelves in awe. Several were stacked with newspapers and periodicals: The Spectator, The Gentleman’s Magazine, Dr. Johnson’s Rambler, and something called The Pennsylvania Gazette. But there were also at least four hundred books, a veritable treasure, a collection worthy of the most learned men of England. The complete works of Hume were there, as well as Voltaire, Swift, Rousseau, Pope, Dante, Hobbes, and Defoe. One shelf held nothing but the works of the Greek philosophers.

Flanking the library’s large central fireplace were four oil portraits in ornate gilded frames. On the right were one of the king and another of old King James II, the former regent who as the Duke of York had taken the colony from the Dutch in the last century. On the opposite side of the mantel were two separate images, one of a beautiful woman whose vibrant face betrayed the austerity of her black dress and lace bonnet, her eyes as bright as the gold and ruby cross hanging from her neck. On a small table below her image was a vase of wilted spring flowers.

The man in the frame beside the woman had an impatient air and a wig of white curls too small for his large cranium. His was the only one of the four portraits that displayed the full body of its subject, seated in a throne-like chair. The man’s closely set gray eyes burned not only with intelligence but with pride and ambition. In one hand he held an ornate compass. At his feet were hunting hounds, behind him a shadowy landscape with running horses over one shoulder and grazing stags over the other. Duncan’s eyes went back to the hands, each of which bore heavy jeweled rings. It was the pose of a member of royalty, or of an explorer, a conqueror of lands. Duncan noticed something else in the shadows of the background, past the stags, at the edge of a dense forest. Stepping closer, he discerned a cabin of logs, with a woman sitting on the ground, cradling in her lap the head of what appeared to be a dying man stretched out beside her. He stared at the dim, unsettling image a long time, chilled by the memory of the attack in the harbor, admitting to himself for the first time that he had been caught up in the war with the savages before even setting foot in America.

Eventually Duncan’s gaze settled on the carved and painted crest set in the top of the frame. On a blue field with gold stars stood a stone tower under a pair of crossed swords. Arched above them were three ornately painted words: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold.

At the bottom right of the crest was a rearing black stallion; in the bottom center, a red rose; and at the left, a globe gripped in a hand. Duncan stared at the globe, then pulled from his pocket the button extracted from the bloody heart, studying it in the sunlight cast through the window. The globe of the button was identical to that of the crest, as intricately worked as the delicate carving on the frame. He examined the button’s underside and saw many folds of metal. The crushed metal could have comprised such a wrist and hand, and he realized that the object could as easily have been a pendant as a button. Whatever its function, there was no doubt that the ornament that had been left in the bloody heart had borne the Ramsey family crest.

He paced slowly along the rows of books again, trying to comprehend this new riddle, noticing for the first time a narrow door in the corner of the room by the window. As he approached it he heard the muffled sound of a chair scraping the floor. The door flung open and an adolescent boy in the dark livery of the house servants emerged at a trot, holding a leather case on a strap-the case Arnold had carried from the ship. The youth was halfway across the room when, spying Duncan, he halted with a cry of surprise.

“What is it?” a harsh voice called from the chamber, and into the doorway stepped Reverend Arnold. He glared at Duncan a moment, motioned the boy away, then his eyes softened. “I have been remiss in not explaining the facilities to you, Mr. McCallum.” The vicar quickly led him out of the library, then slowed as they reached the dining room. Outside, through the window, Duncan saw the youth hand the dispatch case to a thin, rough-looking man in a soiled leather shirt and a ragged fur cap, who hung the strap around his neck. The man’s weathered, unshaven face bore several deep scars. The quick strides he took toward the horse tied at the gate were those of a wildcat. He reminded Duncan of the raw, feral men who inhabited the remotest parts of the Highlands.

“The arrows,” Duncan said. “Did you discover who shot them?”

“A prank, no doubt. American children are notoriously unruly,” the vicar replied hastily, though the uncertainty in his voice recalled for Duncan the panic that had seized the vicar when the first shaft had been fired. “I expect an early draft of your report,” he abruptly added. “Lord Ramsey will require a full record. Your scientific details will please him. I have already written to him, summarizing how your science points to Lister, but no doubt you will want the opportunity to impress him directly with your skills of deduction.”

“I said nothing about Lister.”

“You proved that Evering died the night before he was discovered, when Lister was one of those unaccounted for. You proved that Evering was struck in the skull with a hard object. I discovered that Lister had offered to repair Woolford’s broken chest, obviously a pretense to gain access to the carpenter’s stores. You showed us how Evering had glass in his knee. Lister was seen hurrying from Evering’s cabin in the small hours last night, trying to remove evidence. You already demonstrated that the one who finished the ritual at the compass had Highland roots. Do you forget that Lister stood in the hold while you examined Evering? He heard everything.”

“Remove evidence? What evidence?”

“The glass on Evering’s knee. Lister had a cloth of the same shards when he was stopped last night. Surely the glass shows Evering died in his cabin. Who but the murderer would want to remove the shards? And consuming the slip of paper when we caught him-not the act of an innocent man.”

Duncan closed his eyes a moment. Lister had gone back for the glass, after Duncan had asked for a cloth to gather it in. And the paper would have been the slip in Evering’s hand indicating a meeting with Duncan. Lister had eaten it to protect Duncan.

“I have every confidence that you will understand the situation after reflection. Let us meet tonight. Shall we say, in the library after the children retire? I shall bring the Old Testament.” The vicar stepped toward the end of the long table. “There,” he said in a louder voice, pointing to the kitchen. “You will find a room off the kitchen that we use for instruction. It is well lit and takes warmth from the kitchen fires. The large desk there is at your disposal, with writing implements and paper. Lord Ramsey has been so kind as to leave an atlas and other books there. The materials brought by Evering will be at your disposal. You are not permitted off the grounds, but you have free access to the kitchen, and on Sunday you will be invited to-”