The Colonel raised his eyebrows. A youngish man, he was handsome in his way, but Abigail thought he looked tired—as indeed would any man, who had been given the chore of enforcing the King’s Law in a town that would have none of it. It was a commonplace in hundreds of pamphlets—including the one Harry Knox had been printing on the night of the murder—to accuse the British of being either knaves or brutes, but in fact Abigail was well aware that Alexander Leslie, second son of the Earl of Leven, was neither.
And while he would certainly have welcomed the opportunity to put a suspected Son of Liberty to the choice of death on the gallows or turning King’s Evidence, she didn’t think he looked the kind of man to relish going into court against clear evidence of conspiracy with nothing more than a jealous father’s trumped-up story about scarves and faces seen providentially by moonlight.
“And this Mrs. Sandhayes—”
A knock sounded on the office door, and a young midshipman put his head through. “Colonel Leslie, sir, Captain asks, with his compliments, will there in fact be a prisoner to transport to Halifax? If we’re to be in open water before the tide turns, sir, Captain says, it must be soon.”
Leslie held up a finger. “Thank you, Mr. Purfoy, just one moment more—This Mrs. Sandhayes simply asked Sir Jonathan to tea and he went? Drinking tea with a complete stranger in a strange house? And then she admitted as much to you?”
“I had made her angry, sir,” replied Abigail. “And as she was holding a pistol on me—by which means she meant to persuade me to drink tea, which I believe I can prove to be poisoned—I suspect she was confident of my later discretion. I am here in your quarters, sir—having never been introduced before—drinking tea, without thought that it contains anything but tea.”
“I think you’ll find, sir,” put in Coldstone, “that the undated letter I found in Sir Jonathan’s room concerning questionable title of lands in the Kennebec Grant is written on paper identical to that to be found in the Fluckner household, where Mrs. Sandhayes was staying as a guest.”
“Circumstantial evidence.”
“As a scarf,” inquired Abigail, “claimed found by an employee of a man who would like to see Harry Knox shipped away to Canada, is not?”
“I myself can vouch for the authenticity of the tea in question, Colonel,” added Coldstone. “I entered the house and sealed the pot with my signet ring, and am confident that its contents are in fact lethal.”
One corner of Colonel Leslie’s mouth turned sharply down; he glanced over at the midshipman, still standing in the doorway. “My compliments to Captain Dashwood,” he said. “Please let him know that he is free to make sail at his earliest convenience. There will be no further passengers at this time.”
Abigail was heartily glad that she was the only American present. The Colonel of the Sixty-Fourth would not have taken kindly to the war-whoop of joy that would have greeted these words had any of the contingent still on the Magpie been privileged to hear them.
“And I have spoken to Lieutenant Dowling,” added Coldstone, when the middy had gone. “Upon my request, he has just reexamined Sir Jonathan’s body—which has been kept preserved in one of the post stores-depots, as the ground has been too frozen for burial. He says that the torso is certainly bruised beneath the arms, as if a thickly padded rope or line had been passed around it, to hold it suspended. Likewise, he attests that the discoloration of the extremities, which he took to be the result of cold, is consonant with livor mortis, in a body so suspended, and that the abrasions on the corpse’s head and hands could easily have been produced as the result of convulsions caused by certain types of poison.”
“She said,” murmured Abigail, “that she did not wish Sir Jonathan to die swiftly. It appears that he did not.”
It took another hour of arguing, however, to convince Colonel Leslie to release Harry Knox on a bond and let him return to Boston on the Magpie pending confirmation of Abigail’s story. As Abigail emerged from the office, almost shaking with exhaustion, she heard behind her the Colonel’s voice: “You will change your coat, Lieutenant, bullet-hole or no bullet-hole in your shoulder, and return to Boston this evening. And if you find the Sandhayes woman at the Fluckners’ after all, so help me I shall have Mr. Knox and Mrs. Adams clapped in irons, and yourself as well!”
As the Magpie put to sea again—Charley and Tommy sleeping like tired puppies with their heads on Abigail’s lap—Harry Knox dropped onto the bench beside her and whispered, “Thank you, Mrs. Adams.” He looked like he’d lost a good ten pounds during his incarceration and had neither bathed nor shaved in that time, nor, Abigail guessed, slept much. “I cannot—there are no words. Thank you.” He reached to clasp her hand, then drew back his own filthy one; from a pocket Abigail produced one of the several clean handkerchiefs that motherhood had taught her to always have upon her person, and draped it over her palm. Harry smiled—probably for the first time in two weeks—and gripped her fingers with a thankfulness that almost cracked the bones.
Dusk was gathering when Abigail finally reached her own kitchen again. Pattie, emerging from the cowhouse with a pail and a half of milk, cried, “Mrs. Adams!” and from the back door burst not only Johnny and Nabby, but John, Philomela, and, gorgeous as a peony among demure New England herbs, Lucy Fluckner.
“My God, Nab!” John cried, as the older children fell upon her, and Charley—just set on his feet by Paul Revere—said proudly, “We was in the mob!”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m well,” she said, half crushed by his embrace, “I’m well—did you at least free Mrs. Teasel from jail?”
“I did indeed—having proved the murder on her husband’s brother, who wanted to secure the property to himself before Teasel married again. The scoundrel cleared up his own tracks in the house but not those of his dog—”
“Mrs. Sandhayes has disappeared,” cried Lucy, “and we found her walking-sticks here in Mr. Adams’s parlor, and a bullet lodged in the paneling, and Pattie says there was shooting, and a fire, and a mob, and the British—” She broke off with a gasp, as the men who’d escorted Abigail back to the house moved aside, and Harry Knox stepped into the yard. “HARRY!!!”
Lucy flung herself into his arms, lice, jail-filth, and all, and buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, Harry!” And was enfolded in a massive embrace and a blissful and reeking kiss.
“What happened, Nab?” asked John, taking her hand to lead her into the kitchen. “Miss Fluckner has been back and forth three times this afternoon, and Pattie was only able to tell me—and her—that Mrs. Sandhayes was here, waiting for you . . . and knows nothing further of what befell. But it appears that your Lieutenant Coldstone has put the teapot under seal . . .”
“I hope you left it so!”
“Good Lord, yes! The cups as well, which were set aside with a note from him to be left precisely in situ—”
“I knew I could trust my Lysander.” Despite seasickness and fatigue so great she felt almost faint, Abigail managed a smile as John tucked a loose strand of her disordered hair behind her ear. “The Lieutenant—and he is not my Lieutenant—will undoubtedly arrive in the morning to impound pot, cups, tea, and all, and test them for poison. Lucy, dearest”—she turned back in the doorway—“perhaps you had best return home and inventory everything Mrs. Sandhayes left behind her before Lieutenant Coldstone gets there. I’m sure a look into her trunks will be instructive.”