At least the red hairs are on a different frame from the white wig hairs, I puzzled, and turn’d again to the candle-dipping machine.
It consisted of a large cart-wheel mounted horizontally atop a stout post higher than my head. The rim had been saw’d out, leaving the six spokes, and loop’d from the end of each spoke by a leather strap was a dipping frame of cross’d dowels, with long wicks hanging from them nearly to the kettle.
In operation, each frame, in its turn, was taken down by hand from its spoke and lower’d, its wicks descending into the liquid wax, then hung up again for the wax to harden, the machine being turn’d so that the next frame might be then taken down.
Thus, I would have expected the murderer’s hair, as he bent the candlemaker into the kettle, to have brush’d against the same frame of wicks as did Mr. Gill’s white wig.
Yet I wonder’d if Dennis might have dallied outside with his empty pail until the old man finally went for the cart and the silversmith mounted to his garret. Then the strong lad might swiftly have return’d, struck down and drown’d his master in wax, lock’d the front door so that no customer might enter and discover the body too soon, then hurried to the Sailor’s Pleasure.
The other two would testify he left before them, and because of the hardness of the wax and the head on the beer when he return’d to discover the body, it would seem the murder had been done some time before, in his absence.
I could see the streaks of wax gleaming on Dennis’s red hair.
Yet this is not conclusive, I argued, for he works often at the dipping machine. Further, he would have expected the old man to return before him. Still further, he would not have fled in such a guilty manner when Warwick Lowther rush’d down the stairs at him; yet one never knows how one will react with his life in the balance.
I must cease these suppositions, I thought sternly, and gather more substance. A house is not constructed by first hammering together the roof in empty air.
Examining the double-boilers on the hearth, I reflected that making bay berry candles would be less onerous than pouring tallow ones as I had done. The excursions to gather berries would be pleasant, and boiling the wax from them would produce a woodsy fragrance rather than the slaughterhouse stench of boiling tallow. Because the bayberry wax shrinks on cooling, it cannot be pour’d in molds, and is therefore dipp’d — a pleasant, rhythmic labour like press-work. I began to think the candlemaker’s apprentice complain’d too much.
And I toy’d with one of the greenish candles. It did not feel greasy, like a tallow candle. Tho’ of more irregular shape than cast candles, a greater price was ask’d, for bayberry candles will not droop against the wall in hot weather, and the snuff is pleasant rather than foul. The smoke is consider’d an aid for parted lovers; each lighting a bayberry candle at the appointed hour, tho’ the Atlantic Ocean separate them, the two smokes are believed to mingle.
I wonder’d that, with two to help him, Mr. Gill had not produced larger quantities of candles and thus offer’d really worrisome competition to my father. Above the mantel was painted the old rhyme:
I doubted it had brought much gold to Mr. Gill’s pocket. For laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. Yet the candlemaker was still known as a buyer of expensive trifles, and I wonder’d that Warwick Lowther’s rent was enough to support Mr. Gill’s continuing extravagance.
Thus I began to smell a dead mouse.
Indeed I now doubted that the little silversmith was capable of paying any rent at all. He was said to have fled Providence to avoid debtor’s prison, and I thought it unlikely he would better his lot here, since many Massachusetts folk would as soon commission their silverware from a Papist, or Lucifer himself, as from a Rhode Island free-thinker. And Boston already housed an excellent silversmith.
With seven or eight mouths to feed, Warwick Lowther must scent the foul odour of a debtor’s prison no matter which way the wind blows. Were he a larger, stronger man he might exchange his tools and silver for an axe, a plow, and oxen, and escape to the wilderness, westward into the valley of the Connecticut River, where Indians would take more than his wig. But that he had escaped from Providence with silver enough to make the articles display’d upon his table was puzzle enough for me.
Suddenly a portion of the mob flow’d back into the shop, their teeth showing with satisfaction, for they dragg’d Blossom Gill in their midst. Prominent among them, little Warwick Lowther bent a knee to the Colonel. “Sir, we discover’d him in a ditch behind the wheelwright’s.”
“Dead drunk,” my brother James added, and the Colonel afforded my kin such an ill-temper’d glance he would have been wiser to have removed himself at once to our printing-house.
Hulking old Blossom away’d between the pushing hands of his captors. He blink’d like an owl in the daylight, and when Colonel Clinton snapp’d at him: “Confess!”, he fell heavily to his knees and the mob guffaw’d. The old man’s limbs would not support him. The Colonel whirl’d about, unable to silence the mob, and pointed his ring’d hand at the body of Mr. Gill.
“You, sot, can you see what that is?” the Colonel cried.
There was no answer, for Blossom Gill had sunk his elbows and forehead to the floor, drunk as an Iroquois. Colonel Clinton, sliding forward like a dancing-master, kick’d him smartly. “Get up, I say!”
Disliking to see even a confirm’d drammer kick’d, even by a gentleman, I put my arm under the old man’s, my brother took the other, and we lifted Blossom upright. The Colonel then kick’d his leg with such force he near brought down the three of us. This seem’d, however, to waken the old man, and he mutter’d: “It ish my brother’s son.”
“Why did you not return at once with the cart?” the Colonel demanded.
“Wush waiting for it.”
“In a ditch?” Colonel Clinton demanded. “Why did you not return? You knew the boy had been sent for beer!”
“Bottle of rum,” Blossom gurgled. “Made my nephew give it to me, or I will go to the mashi-magistrate and we shwing together.”
The Colonel’s eyes narrow’d. “Smugglers, eh, like half of these people. So, you murder’d your nephew for a bottle of rum. Speak up, I say!”
“Not shmugglers,” the old man mutter’d, but the mob had grown so noisy, I believe the Colonel thought Blossom had mouth’d some imprecation against him; for he deliver’d another savage kick.
“In the Name of the King, confess!” Colonel Clinton raged, and, receiving no answer, set to kicking him with such force the old man jerk’d in our arms like Kidd upon the gallows.
“Hold, sir,” my brother protested, and express’d himself in somewhat contradiction to his own previously officious conduct. “Boston is no longer a hamlet without proper magistrates; therefore these men should be speedily brought before them. Private enquiry is usurpation.”
This insulted the Colonel extreamly, and he turn’d to the mob. “Upon my orders, throw this fork-tongued printer’s devil into the street!” And there being a few in every crowd who tug their forelocks and jump to obey the meanest order so long as it springs from someone they consider of exalted rank, my brother was dragg’d, loudly protesting, from the shop.
I was allow’d to remain, I think, because the Colonel had forgotten whose apprentice I was and, perchance, imagined me a useful lackey, though a half-wit. On my part, I resolved to disappoint him as to the latter.