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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

Hamilton, Barbara.
The ninth daughter / Barbara Hamilton.—Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback ed.
p. cm.—(An Abigail Adams mystery; 1)

eISBN : 978-1-101-14038-3

1. Adams, Abigail, 1744-1818—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3.
Massachusetts—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.A673N56 2009
813’.6—dc22 2009025137

Dedication

For Gene L. with thanks

One

One

002

A bigail Adams smelled the blood before she saw the door was open.

In November, Boston didn’t reek the way it did in summer, especially down here in Fish Street. The coppery blood-stink cut the more prosaic pong of fish-heads and privies from the moment she stepped through the gate into Tillet’s Yard, the way the single thread of gore seemed to shriek at her against the gray of the wet morning, trickling down Rebecca Malvern’s doorstep.

For that first instant, Abigail thought: One of the cats.

Or maybe Nehemiah Tillet’s cook had been clumsy, gutting a chicken.

Only then did she see the open door.

The British—

Her marketing basket slipped from her hands and she gathered her skirts, strode to the place, heart in her throat.

Rebecca—

It wasn’t the first time blood had been shed in Boston. Before Abigail’s eyes flashed the red-spattered snow of King Street, three and a half years ago now but alive in her mind as if it were yesterday. For an instant she heard again the shouting of the King’s soldiers and the mob, smelled powder-smoke thick in the air.

Rebecca’s broadsides against the King and the King’s troops were absolutely scathing. If someone told them who she was, and where she could be found—

Abigail froze in the doorway, hand pressed to her mouth.

Her first impression was that the whole floor of the tiny kitchen had been flooded with blood. It pooled in the hollows of the worn bricks, overspilled the threshold. Yet it wasn’t the first thing that slashed her mind, seized her eyes.

A woman lay facedown close to the overturned table. Gray dress, dark hair; skirt and petticoats turned up to her waist. Her bare buttocks and thighs were crisscrossed with knife slits. One shoe of fine green leather had been kicked off, lay on its side like a tiny wrecked boat against the irons of the hearth.

“Rebecca—”

Abigail’s vision grayed.

The British—

Then against her will the words came to her mind—or Charles Malvern?

He wouldn’t! She groped for the doorframe, thoughts momentarily frozen at even a mental accusation of such a thing. Charles Malvern was a pinchpenny, moneygrubbing Tory, violent of temper and outspoken in his opinion that the Crown had every right to kill traitors where they stood. Yet surely, surely, he would never do this to the woman who had walked out of his bed and house.

Would he?

Someone had.

Not Charles! Not Rebecca—!