And she saw Jedidiah Thorne walking among the dead and wounded, himself bloodied as he tended to his men, the other side's men. It was as if she were inside that image captured so long ago, seeing what he saw, touching what he touched. Boys, old men, young. Too many praying, begging. Jedidiah comforting when he could, but never looking away from what he knew he must see.
Hating it. The violence. Promising himself he wouldn't kill again, ever, even in self-defense.
He would die first.
Tess had to push the picture away and close up the folder. She was gasping for air, sweat streaming down her temples, between her breasts. She stumbled to her feet and found a washroom down the hall. With shaking hands, she splashed her face with cold water.
How could Jedidiah have killed Benjamin Morse after what he'd seen and done?
She returned to the archives. She was drained, as if she'd spent three days at Gettysburg herself. She wished there was a soda machine and gave a small, humorless laugh at what Muriel Cookson would say if she slipped down the street and fetched herself a Coke while she sorted through the files. She could use the jolt of sugar and caffeine, the tangible presence of the twenty-first century. A nice cold can of soda. She felt better just thinking about it.
The next folder contained a dozen pictures of the carriage house since its construction in 1868. Much better. Tess noticed the lilacs had been there from the beginning, and she sat back in her uncomfortable wooden chair, thinking about a handsome, serious young captain on a bloody battlefield, a stern man who would later build a house by the sea and plant lilacs-and who reminded her too much of the man she'd nearly made love to last night.
There was a separate folder on the duel. "I think Benny Morse is the one haunting the carriage house," she remembered Ike saying. "He got what he had coming to him. Jedidiah should be resting well in his grave."
But he had no grave, Tess thought.
Thirty minutes later, Lauren Montague joined her in the small room. She was dressed in trim, elegant slacks and a silk sweater, a contrast to Tess's casual slim khakis and black cotton top. "The duel's fascinating, isn't it?" She came up behind Tess and peered over her shoulder at a yellowed, crumbling clipping of a newspaper article on Jedidiah's trial. "It's still something of a mystery why a pacifist like Jedidiah Thorne would even respond to Benjamin Morse's challenge, never mind actually shoot him. Morse was a bastard. Everyone knew it."
"Your brother told me he was a man who needed killing."
She smiled wistfully. "That sounds like Ike. But who are we to say who needs killing and who doesn't?"
"It gets at Benjamin's character," Tess said, "if not what should have happened to him."
Lauren pulled out a chair on the other side of the table and sat down. She was gracious and mannerly, so unlike her brother it was hard to believe they were siblings-and yet Tess could see touches of Ike in her, especially in her eyes and the shape of her mouth. But she wondered if Lauren tended to operate in his shadow, if she ever resented her brother's strong personality and outrageousness.
"I'm mesmerized by these files," Tess said. "Suddenly it all seems so real. Jedidiah Thorne, Benjamin and Adelaide Morse. She never remarried. She stayed right here in Beacon-by-the-Sea until her death in her mid-eighties."
"Apparently she was quite a shallow, vain woman. Most people believe she was rather pleased to have two men fight a duel over her."
"I haven't gotten the impression she and Jedidiah were lovers-"
"Oh, no, nothing like that. But she was the reason for the duel. She caused the two men to do what they did, and I think it gave her a sense of power over them. In the end, Benjamin was dead, and Jedidiah was in prison." Lauren leaned back, smiling enigmatically. "I wouldn't be surprised if she manipulated the whole thing to get rid of Benjamin."
"But she couldn't have been sure he'd be the one killed-"
"Couldn't she?"
"You mean she rigged the duel," Tess said.
"Why not? We would think of it as dishonorable and manipulative, but women had to use the means they had to effect a desirable outcome. Maybe Benjamin abused her-maybe she just wanted to be rid of him and convinced Jedidiah her husband was beating her." Lauren swung back to her feet and walked over to the window, staring down at the harbor. "Have you seen pictures of her? Adelaide Morse was a very beautiful woman."
Tess picked up a picture tucked into the file with the articles on the duel. Adelaide was dark-haired and unsmiling, but indeed, very beautiful. "Jedidiah didn't mount a defense at his trial. After he got out of prison, he never spoke about the duel."
Lauren glanced at her from the window, her arms crossed on her chest. "That's a Thorne trait, as you've perhaps already discovered. They have a long tradition of not giving a damn what other people believe about them. They operate from a code of honor all their own."
"But if Adelaide rigged the duel, if she used him to get rid of her husband, it makes no sense for Jedidiah to have continued protecting her-"
"Honor is seldom that practical."
"Well," Tess said, rising, "thanks for letting me use the archives."
"Have you decided yet if you'll keep the carriage house?"
She shrugged. "No, I haven't."
"You'll feel better when you know where Ike's taken himself off to." Lauren moved from the window, but she looked tired suddenly, slightly pale. "I understand. He's been doing this sort of thing most of his life, so I'm used to it. I forget other people aren't."
"He's not the only reason-"
But Lauren didn't seem to hear her. "The police want to find him. So do the people supporting my husband's appointment to the Pentagon. Whether Ike likes it or not, he will be found."
"That doesn't thrill you?"
"It's been a quiet year."
An awkward silence settled between them. Tess broke it, quickly returning files to their appropriate drawers. "Have any reporters called you? I've been avoiding them. It's embarrassing, calling the police to come find a skeleton and then having nothing there-"
"Was there nothing there?"
She thought of Susanna asking her that same question. What did she see that night? Was she sure? She saw a human skeleton. And she was sure.
But she didn't want to be. She wanted to have doubts. She wanted to be wrong. She'd rather have the police think she was the sort of woman who conjured up scary things in her attics and basements.
"I don't know," she said.
Lauren didn't seem satisfied. "Forgive me, Tess, but I think you do know, and you just don't want to admit it because it'll be complicated-because you're afraid what you saw was, in fact, my brother."
"If that's the case, then someone stole his remains."
"Because he was murdered." Her voice was soft, barely a whisper, and hoarse. "I don't blame you, Tess.
I've been afraid to say those words aloud myself."
"Let's hope they're not true."
"Yes." Lauren started for the door, but stopped abruptly and looked back at Tess, composed, almost regal, with her straight, tawny hair shining. "And to answer your other question, yes, reporters have been calling, too. My husband's not very happy about the timing."
"Because of his appointment," Tess said. "Is it important?"
Lauren Montague smirked, a touch of humor sparking in her eyes, reminding Tess of her brother. "Everything Richard does is important."
Twenty-One
Al Pendergast was working the ghost angle more than the Ike Grantham angle, because, he told Andrew, it was more fun. He liked the idea of a ghost of a convicted murderer trying to scare off a Boston graphic designer by putting a skull at her feet. "Maybe he goosed the cat or something to make her yowl," Pendergast said, plopping down in a chair in Andrew's office. "Would you have gone down in that cellar by yourself?"