Matthew watched Noggin get the wagon turned around. When the wagon pulled away, heading back in the direction of the main road, Matthew emerged from his hiding-place and made his way as quickly and safely as possible across the meadow to his horse. As he mounted up, he looked toward Mrs. Lovejoy's house through the trees on the other side of the meadow. Not a light showed in the windows.
He turned his horse, caught sight of Noggin's wagon by the glint of the lanterns, and set forth in a leisurely pursuit, for Noggin was going somewhere but in no hurry.
Matthew also had plenty of time. He kept watch of the lanterns, and followed Noggin under the same sky of stars that had looked down upon Lark, Faith and Walker that night in the forest. He still felt he was Walker's arrow, shot here through the dark. It might take him a while to reach his destination, but reach it he would. He still felt he was trying, for Lark.
The horror of both the Burton house and the Lindsay house had come to him in nightmares every night since he'd arrived in Philadelphia. He thought they would be waking him in a cold sweat for many nights to come. That was how it should be; he should not easily forget those scenes. They were part of his penance. But one thing kept coming back to him, over and over again, in broad daylight as well as deepest dark.
The marbles that had belonged to Lark's brother. On the table and the floor in that murder room. Then rolling across the floor in the watermill. Thrown through the window by whom?
Matthew didn't believe in ghosts. Well, yes, he did, actually; he believed Number Seven Stone Street was haunted by the unquiet spirits of the two coffee merchants who had killed each other there. He might tell himself those bumps and thumps were Dutch stones settling into English earth, but often he felt he was being watched, or heard a faint chuckle or saw a shadow pass across the corner of his eye where there should be no shadow. He did believe in those ghosts, but what unquiet spirit had tossed a handful of marbles through the watermill's window?
It was something he'd thought about, but which he didn't wish to think about for there was no answer. He'd told himself quite sternly that it had not really been the dead boy's marbles thrown through the window, but instead pebbles that his heated and pain-wracked brain had incorrectly seen. Some passing farmboy had heard the fight, peered through the window and thrown pebbles in to distract one man from killing another. Then the boy had hidden while Slaughter raged and raved.
But why hadn't this boy come forward? Why hadn't he gone to fetch the constable? Why had no boy appeared in Hoornbeck to tell his tale, during the duration of Matthew's stay there?
A ghost? The marbles hadn't been ghostly. They'd clattered loud enough when they'd hit, and one had given him a substantial sting to the neck. Or had they been only pebbles, after all?
When this was over and the local constable informed that Mrs. Lovejoy's dead guests did not stay in their graves, Matthew had decided he would go back to that watermill and find out if either marbles or pebbles lay on the floor. But first there was this and Mrs. Lovejoy was going to have to explain how her thief trap had ended up holding Slaughter's buried treasure. Mrs. Lovejoy? Mrs. Sutch?
What did the mistress of Paradise have to do with the queen of spicy sausages?
He thought of something Opal had said, about the pepper plants: Mizz Lovejoy feeds 'em to her guests. Grinds 'em up in every damn thing, excuse my French. Even gives 'em pepper juice to drink, mornin', noon and night.
Matthew watched the lanterns far ahead. He saw them sway with the wagon. Is anybody to home in there? had been Opal's question about the cemetery.
He had the mental image of Hudson Greathouse sitting in Sally Almond's, eating some of Mrs. Sutch's sausages for breakfast. Whew, this is hot! he'd said, as he'd blotted sweat from his forehead with his napkin.
And Evelyn Shelton, saying, Only have 'em a fewdays a month as is, so if you want 'em you'd best get your order in!
Matthew whispered, "Easy, easy," to his horse, though it was he who had given a start, as if a cold hand had suddenly been laid across the back of his neck.
He refused to consider what had just gone through his mind. Refused it. Shut the book on it. Closed the coffin. Mrs. Sutch owned a hog farm up north of Nicholsburg. A hog farm. Pork. Hear me?
Opal's voice came to him, asking, But what became of Mr. White?
And, the real question: What may have become of all forty-nine people supposedly buried over a period of five years in Paradise?
Mrs. Lovejoy? Mrs. Sutch?
Sisters in crime? Or one and the same?
Matthew had no idea. He banished these wild, unsettling, and downright sickening suppositions from his mind, as best he could, and concentrated on the glint of Noggin's lamps. The wagon moved on, the horse and rider following at a distance behind and cloaked by the night.
Two hours passed, during which Matthew drew no closer nor fell back no further. In a shift of the chill breeze he caught the rank scent of hog filth, and by that he knew Noggin was near his destination.
The wagon turned to the left. Its lanterns suddenly disappeared. Matthew picked up his horse's pace, and in a few minutes came to the forest track that Noggin had followed. Through the trees Matthew could see no lights, but the smell of the hogs was overpowering. He urged his mount forward, though even the steadfast horse grumbled and didn't seem to want to proceed. About fifty or sixty yards along the track, with dense woods on either side, Matthew caught sight of lanterns. He instantly dismounted, led his horse among the trees and tied the animal up. When he had sufficiently bolstered his courage, he left his tricorn and cloak with the horse and crept through the forest into what appeared to be yellow layers of smoke hanging in the sullied air, the stomach-turning miasma of hog stench.
It was developing into a delightful evening.
Through the trees and low underbrush, Matthew saw that Noggin's wagon had pulled up alongside a one-story house painted dull gray. The house had a front porch with a rope handhold up the woodblock steps, and window shutters painted the same gray as the walls. Light showed in the windows and a lantern hung on a hook next to the door, which was shut. Matthew wondered if Noggin had crafted the house, for though it seemed at first glance to be of good construction it began to dawn on him that the structure was somewhat malformed, that the walls were crooked, and none of the windows were the same size. A stone chimney spat smoke from the yellow roof, which sat like a crumpled hat on the head of a blowsy drunk. Matthew thought Noggin might be an able handyman, but house building was not his talent.
A black horse with a white star on its forehead stood tied to a hitching-post on the far side of the house. Matthew saw the dark shapes of other structures beyond the house, back where a few fitful lanterns burned and the haze was thick enough to choke a mule. From what he could tell there looked to be a barn, a long shedlike structure that probably was part of the hog pens, another utility building of some kind-the slaughterhouse?-and finally a scabby-looking rectangular building that might be a smokehouse. The noise of hogs gobbling and grunting came from the pens.
The domain of Mrs. Sutch. Matthew thought it was very far indeed from Paradise.
Noggin was nowhere in sight. The coffin's lid was open. Matthew shifted his position a few feet and saw an open cellar door. A faint glow of dirty light washed out upon the boards.