Hester Fox - The Widow Of Pale Harbour

Gabriel stiffened in his seat at the descriptions that were eerily similar to what he had found just the other night. This must have been why Mr. Marshall had wanted his church to preach crime and punishment.

A thick silence had settled over the table. Gabriel put down his glass and looked between Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. “What is it?”

A meaningful look passed between the husband and wife. “No one has been apprehended,” Mrs. Marshall said tightly. “But most people around here know who’s behind it without a signed confession.”

Gabriel looked at them blankly, waiting for one of them to elaborate.

“Sophronia Carver,” said Mr. Marshall, as if it cost him something just to say the name. “Nathaniel Carver’s widow.”

“She killed her husband,” Mrs. Marshall added. “And lives in...an unsavory manner that I won’t expound upon in front of the children.”

Gabriel barely had time to ask what constituted an unsavory manner, when the children in question piped up.

“She’s a witch,” said one of the twins.

“It’s true,” said the other twin, nodding gravely. “Lucy Warren looked through her window and saw her stirring at a great pot. And what do you think was sticking out the bottom of her dress?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to say he was sure he had no idea, but the twins were too fast.

“A tail!” they exclaimed in joyful unison.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Marshall seemed particularly taken aback by this outburst, Mr. Marshall continuing to saw away at his beef, and Mrs. Marshall only saying indulgently, “A tail! I don’t know where you girls get such stories.”

The twins dissolved into giggles again. “And she has the most horrid scar running down her face.”

“Probably from one of her victims trying to escape!”

“Well, tail or no,” said Mr. Marshall, taking the accusation against Mrs. Carver in stride, “the woman is queer and you can lay your last nickel on the fact that she’s behind all this unpleasant business.”

The dinner was taking on a decidedly peculiar slant and, unused to drinking so much rich wine, Gabriel’s temple was starting to throb. The widow in question would have to be a queer woman indeed to go traipsing about in abandoned churches, setting out dead, mutilated animals. It seemed more likely that it was, as the Marshalls had first suggested, the work of some cruel youngster.

The conversation continued in that vein for a while longer, but Gabriel was no longer listening. He was tired and on edge from trying to say the right things, to sit the right way on these damned uncomfortable chairs. All he wanted was to stand up, thank the Marshalls for the hospitality, and then go back to his empty little house and fall into bed. But then the conversation took an even more horrifying turn.

“Are you married, Gabriel?”

He froze, his fork hovering over his plate. It had been nearly a year, but the question still made him feel as if the carpet had been ripped out from under him, the breath stolen straight from his lungs. He put down his fork, hoping to appear composed in his answer. “My wife passed away. Childbirth,” he added, knowing that if he didn’t provide the cause now he would only be asked later anyway. “The baby died, as well.”

Mrs. Marshall’s face creased and fell. “Oh, dear, I am sorry to hear that.”

Gabriel waved off her concern, but it took a considerable amount of effort to keep himself in the present. It seemed that no matter how far he ran from Concord, Anna would haunt him, never mind that he had hungered for her ghost to follow him here.

“Well, I don’t like to impose where it isn’t my business, but Pale Harbor has any number of good, capable young women who would make good wives to a minister.”

“Clara!” Mr. Marshall exclaimed.

“Well, it’s true,” she said in an injured tone. “I don’t pretend to be a matchmaker, but there’s no hurt in him considering his options.”

Mr. Marshall gave Gabriel an apologetic look as if to say they both knew how women could be. Gabriel dropped his gaze to his plate, his appetite gone.

They finished dinner in silence, even the twins apparently content to be quiet. Afterward, the girls were sent up to bed while the adults retired to the parlor for dessert. Gabriel drank the coffee that was offered to him and ate the fruitcake, nodding politely along at the depthless conversation about the weather and the new portrait studio in Rockport.

Coming here had been a mistake. Why did he think he could converse with prominent, wealthy families? Social graces and etiquette had never been his strong point. What need had a man like him, from his background, for social graces? He’d had to learn everything painstakingly from Anna, and even now he was more suited to enjoying a good story in a tavern than polite small talk over delicate china cups of coffee.

“I should be going,” Gabriel said, standing abruptly.

Mrs. Marshall’s brows drew quizzically together, but she pasted on a bright smile. “Of course, I hadn’t realized how late it was getting. Horace?”

“Mmm? Oh, right, right,” said Mr. Marshall, standing with a grunt.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, giving Mrs. Marshall a stiff bow of his head. “Dinner was delicious.”

Gabriel’s coat had almost completely dried after the benefit of being on a stove, and the men went out to the porch, where Mr. Marshall lit another cigar. The storm of the previous night had rolled off, leaving in its wake a steady drizzle and crisp breeze.

“You’ll think all it does is rain here,” Mr. Marshall said with a hint of chagrin. “We seem to be stuck in some sort of weather pattern, with storms from the sea rolling into the harbor every few days.”

Gabriel welcomed the rain. Every drop that chilled him to the bone was a penance, a reminder. He deserved to be wet and cold for the role he had played in Anna’s death. If he hadn’t gotten her with child, she would still be here. She had been too delicate, too fragile, for childbearing, and he hadn’t protected her. God, he was doing it again. Stop thinking about her, you dolt.

Mr. Marshall reached for something in his waistcoat pocket, pulling Gabriel from his thoughts. “I hope you won’t mind the presumption, but I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a list of all the families in town for you.” He handed Gabriel a folded sheet of paper. “Thought you might want to make the rounds and introduce yourself.”

Gabriel took the list and scanned the jumble of names, unable to fathom actually having to put faces to them. “Thank you. I’m sure this will be very useful.”

But Mr. Marshall wasn’t listening. He was worrying at his mustache, staring out into the gray dusk. “There is one name I omitted from that list.” He paused. “You would do well to steer far and clear of Sophronia Carver.”

“The widow?”

Nodding, Mr. Marshall took a slow puff from his cigar. “My wife has a flair for the dramatic, but there’s no getting around the fact that something’s not quite right about what goes on in that house.”

Gabriel followed Mr. Marshall’s gaze to the tip of a white cupola that just showed above the treetops in the distance. His heart grew heavy and his gut churned at the thought of meeting with anyone on the list, least of all the odd widow who had so captured their imaginations.

Sophronia looked down at the deluge of ink slowly spreading across her desk and bit back a curse; nothing had gone right that morning. First, she had taken out her favorite wool shawl for the winter, only to find that moths had eaten the fringe clean off. Then the magazine’s board had delivered a stern missive, warning that subscriptions were down from last year and that if she couldn’t bring in a higher caliber of submissions, then the magazine’s future would be in grave jeopardy. It was all bluster on their part, but it still was never a good sign when the board was unhappy. The last straw had been when Duchess had knocked a bottle of ink over a stack of unread submissions. Now half of them were stained and stuck together, and would be unreadable. If the next brilliant submission to save the magazine had been in that pile, she would never know.