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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

Nevertheless, Mrs. Tillet refused to budge until the magistrate—a man of Mr. Tillet’s age, bluff and red-faced from his profession as a ship’s carpenter—appeared, grumbling and snorting at being called from his work and glaring at his red-faced sister-in-law. In the interim, Mr. Tillet repeatedly began his long train of explanations: “—my niece, sir, and subject to violent fits; ’tis only out of the goodness of my wife’s heart that we took her in at all—” which invariably ended in his wife telling him to hold his tongue. For her part, Mrs. Tillet spent the half hour or so that the wait occupied in railing against Abigail’s morals, personal habits, marriage, family, housekeeping, and sanity, despite Lieutenant Coldstone’s reiterated warnings that her words were being taken note of, and would lay her open to action for slander.

“Let her sue me!” shouted Mrs. Tillet, pounding her chest with one massive fist. “I’ll repeat every word I’ve said to the whole of the General Court, and then they will all know her for the slut and unbeliever she is!”

Abigail listened in stony silence, only praying that Sam wouldn’t get word of all this and show up to further complicate matters.

And that, once in Coldstone’s hands, Rebecca would not reveal that the killer was, in fact, Abednego Sellars or some other member of the Sons.

Sam didn’t come. With the magistrate’s appearance, the whole of the party filed upstairs, to find that the door of the attic stair was indeed locked. This ultimately debouched into the wide, freezingly cold space at the top of the house—not even Queenie’s chamber at the west end, above that of her master and mistress, gleaned any warmth, for obviously no fires were kept up on the second floor at all.

The door of the small room called the south attic was also locked. The bolts on the outside of its door looked new. Beside the door stood a water pitcher, a plate innocent even of crumbs, a basket filled with newly sewed shirts, and beside them, a short, braided-leather whip, of the kind hunters used for beating dogs away from a kill.

“The woman’s got to earn her keep,” stated Mrs. Tillet fiercely. “She’d eat us out of house and home if left to herself, a glutton and a wittol. ’Tis only Christian charity that we took her in, and she refuses to turn a hand to help us or support herself. She should be put out into the road—”

“Why then do you lock the door on her instead?” Coldstone took the key, and opened the door. “Strange charity, m’am.”