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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

“I saw none, but then, I was so shaken by what I’d seen that I may well have missed something. Then, too, the family was due back that day. If I know Queenie, the Tillet house hadn’t been properly cleaned since they’d left for Medford, and it was market day into the bargain. She could well have gone to the market while we four were at the house, and returned just in time to have Sam and the others ‘call on Rebecca’ so that they all went in and ‘discov ered’ the corpse in the bed where Sam had left it.”

“And still didn’t tell Sam or the Watch.”

“That all depends on what Rebecca said to her,” said Abigail. “And what she thought she could make out of the matter. The fact remains that when the Tillets returned to find the Watch and the Provost Marshal’s men going over Rebecca’s house and questioning the servants, Queenie did confide in her mistress, who sent Mr. Tillet upstairs at once to investigate. She herself—Mrs. Tillet, I mean—strode in and claimed to Coldstone that she had just arrived with the luggage, and Mr. Tillet would be along shortly.”

“And Mr. Tillet—or more likely Mrs. Tillet—decided that as long as Rebecca Malvern had disappeared without a trace, now might be an excellent time to acquire a permanent sewing woman who had no family and very few friends to inquire as to her whereabouts?”

Something in his voice made Abigail ask flatly, “You think it’s absurd, don’t you?”

“Actually,” said John, “I don’t.” He shifted her weight on his lap, dug in his pocket for pipe and tobacco. “Your father’s parish at Weymouth is in a long-settled and peaceable town—”

“Hmph. You weren’t there for the last uproar by those who don’t approve of his views on Arminianism.”

“Well, at least your neighbors are a fairly civilized crew. I’ve been trying cases for years in the backwoods circuit courts, in Essex and Worcester and on up into Maine. And you do find men—mostly in isolated settlements, isolated farms—who consider themselves perfectly justified in all kinds of outrageous behavior, that somehow always redounds to their material benefit: keeping sons and daughters as virtual indentured servants; robbing and killing Indians and kidnapping their children to raise in kennels like dogs . . . sometimes taking multiple wives, like your friend the Hand of the Lord, because God told them they might.”