"Who?"
The sausages were likely too expensive for her purse, he thought. And too expensive for Noggin's, as well? "Back to Noggin. And use yours, please." He waved away whatever she was going to say before she could open her mouth. "Has Noggin brought a man here to see Mrs. Lovejoy? In the past five days? Or after dark?" But how would she know? he wondered. Where the girls lived was a good distance away from Mrs. Lovejoy's house.
Opal just stared at him, her eyes wide. Matthew thought she was trying to make a decision. Whatever it was, it wasn't easy.
"I am investigating Mrs. Lovejoy," Matthew said. "It's better that you don't know my name. But I believe that a man I'm looking for may have-"
"Kitt found out Noggin didn't bury Mr. White," she blurted out. "She told me. Everythin' she saw that night."
Matthew had stopped speaking at this bizarre assertion; he had no idea what she was talking about, but it seemed very important-urgent-to her. He said, "Go on."
"Mr. White was laid out in his coffin, in the church," Opal said. "For the service. Kitt said for me to look, that Ginger had dressed him up in that fine lace cravat he always wore, and it was a shame such a nice piece of lace was gonna get buried. She had a mind to come back before Noggin put him under and get it, but I said if Mizz Lovejoy caught her she was out on her ear." She paused, making sure Matthew was following.
"Ginger being another servant?" Matthew asked.
"Yeah, she's gone now. But Kitt said she wanted that lace, and she wanted me to go get it with her after we'd fed 'em their suppers. I wasn't havin' no part of it. So Kitt said she was gonna hurry to the church, sneak in and get the lace before Noggin wheeled the coffin out."
"Wheeled it out?"
"He's got a cart with wheels on it, that's how he moves the coffin about. See, he makes the coffins, too. So Kitt went back just as dark was fallin', but she told me she was too late because she saw Noggin's lanterns burnin'. And the thing is the thing is she saw Noggin right there pushin' the coffin into the back of the wagon, and she didn't know what to make of this so she slipped into the woods to watch."
"He'd already dug the grave?"
"That's not what I'm gettin' at," Opal said. "Kitt told me she saw him open the coffin and look in it for a time. Then he reached in, lifted up Mr. White's head-she said she could see his hair in the lamplight-and all of a sudden, whisk! He pulled that lace cravat off Mr. White and wrapped it around his own neck. Then he closed the lid, and he walked back to the graveyard as nervy as you please."
"Then he hadn't yet dug the grave?"
"No, just listen!" She came closer, until she was right in front of him a hand's reach away. "Kitt couldn't make tits nor teeth out of this, so she followed him. And there was Noggin in the graveyard, tampin' the last of the dirt down on Mr. White's pile. He'd finished it. But Mr. White was still in his coffin, sittin' in the wagon!"
"Noggin didn't bury him," Matthew said.
"That's right! He didn't bury him! But he'd made it look so! Well, Kitt figures she ought not to be where she is, and she starts off along the path away from there. Then all of a sudden somebody comes out of the woods right in front of her, right smack dab, a lantern's pushed in her face, and she said she hollered so loud she was surprised I didn't hear it way down where I was. She said she just turned tail and ran. And she said, 'Opal, don't you breathe a word of this, and I'm forgettin' I saw anything either.' And I said, 'Well, what is it you saw?' And she said, 'I don't know what I saw, but I didn't see it.'"
"Saving money on their coffins, I suppose," Matthew ventured. "Using the same one over and over in the funeral service."
"Yeah, I thought that." She leaned in to him, her eyes wide again. "But what became of Mr. White?"
Her question begged another. Matthew wondered if any of those forty-nine graves were really occupied. Were the bodies actually buried somewhere else? Or just dumped into the woods beyond Paradise? If so, what the hell was this about?
"The next day," Opal said, "I went and looked for myself. Sure enough, the grave was dug and filled and there was a new marker planted. And I started wonderin' right then is anybody to home in there?"
"Interesting," Matthew agreed, but this was totally off the subject of Tyranthus Slaughter. Except for the fact that if Mrs. Lovejoy knew about this fraud, it indicated a larcenous frame of mind. Still, what did she stand to gain from something like that? A few shillings saved on the wood for a coffin? "Have you or Kitt told anyone else?"
"Not me, for sure. I can't say for Kitt. 'Specially since she up and ran away about three days after it happened. So says Mizz Lovejoy to the staff. Says Kitt must've gotten sick of the work and bolted in the middle of the night. She wouldn't have been the first, just took out for the road. Well, I looked and all her clothes were gone out of her room, and her travelin' bag gone too." Opal held up a finger. "But,"she said, "Kitt never would've left without sayi n' good-bye to me. Never. I just know it in my bones. So right after that Mizz Lovejoy says she wants to see the staff one-by-one, to find out what might have made Kitt bolt like she did, without even drawin' her week's coin. Find out what might have been so heavy a weight on Kitt, she says. Me, I sat in there across from Mizz Lovejoy and all I thought about was who it might have been come up on Kitt and shone a lamp in her face. And I kept my mouth sealed tight. There you have it." Opal looked in all directions to make sure no one had crept close enough to overhear.
It was an odd story, Matthew thought. He really didn't know what to make of it. A grave dug and filled, but no coffin or body in it? The coffin and body then put onto a wagon, and taken where? Obviously Noggin knew. Matthew was surmising that Mrs. Lovejoy also knew. And Kitt's fate? Had she actually run away, or had she
There was a very large mallet in the back of Noggin's wagon, Matthew remembered.
But was what Kitt had seen damning enough to kill her for?
Matthew figured that had to do with the i importance of the secret.
If, for instance, a servant-girl decided to ask for a little extra shine in her pay in order to keep the secret, a mallet might have to fall. Or the decision might be to go ahead and use the mallet early, because if that same servant-girl got in contact with one of the families of a deceased person and talked them into coming back and having a grave dug up
"Tonight," Opal said. "He'll be doin' it again, with the widow Ford."
Whatever Noggin was doing, Matthew knew it had to be nasty.
And Nasty seemed to be Tyranthus Slaughter's middle name.
Was there a connection? He had no idea. But he thought one slime trail might lead to another.
"I'd best get you back," Opal offered, suddenly sounding wan and older than her years. "Oh the man you're talkin' about? I ain't seen nobody like that."
Matthew didn't follow when she started back toward the cemetery, and she paused to wait for him. He asked, "What's your full name?"
"Opal Delilah Blackerby."
"All right, Opal Delilah Blackerby. I want you to have this." He reached into the pocket of his dark green waistcoat, felt for what he knew to be there, and brought it out. "Here. Come take it."
She came forward, slowly, and when she took what he was holding she blinked first at it, then at him, then at it again. "Is this is this real?"