“You tell Sam,” retorted Abigail, “to come and talk to me.”
John took the precaution of being absent from home the following morning.
When Abigail went to the front door at the sound of a military knock—it was barely nine; Shim Walton must have flown down to the harbor and taken one of the first boats across—the first person she saw past Lieutenant Coldstone’s square crimson shoulder was Paul Revere, lounging in the opposite doorway wrapped in his sorry old gray greatcoat (
How wise of John, she reflected, to make sure the Sons of Liberty had been alerted to the Lieutenant’s visit so that they could form a cordon sanitaire around him and his men.
She waved to Revere, nodded to Sergeant Muldoon and his red-coated companion posted outside her door, and led the way to the parlor: “Lieutenant Coldstone, would your men care to go around to the kitchen for some hot cider on this dreadful cold morning? I’m sure they’d be more comfortable. The local children do make such pests of themselves.”
“Thank you, m’am.” As usual, the young officer gave the impression of having swallowed his own ramrod. “I’m sure the children do their best to obey their parents’ wishes.”
“To be sure they do.” She smiled dazzlingly, and went back out to send Muldoon and the other man—the same short and disgruntled private who had accompanied him here on the last occasion—around to the back, then reentered the parlor and sat beside the crackling fire. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“Are you certain of your accusation, m’am?”
“How certain do I need to be, Lieutenant?” she asked quietly. “Was the figure I saw in the window pounding the glass to get out? No. Have I seen baskets of sewing, and a little bread and water, waiting to be taken up— baskets similar to what one of the prentice-boys in the house has seen being taken up to the attic? Yes.”
“So you’re going on the accusation of a prentice-boy against a mistress he hates?” Coldstone didn’t speak the words scornfully, or with any kind of irony. He sounded rather like John had last night, or when John was testing out a client’s arguments with how they might sound to a jury. “You realize you’re risking a lawsuit.”
“ ’Tis a risk I’m willing to take. A woman disappeared on Wednesday night, and Thursday morning we have the sudden mysterious appearance of a locked attic, an extra chamber pot, food and sewing being taken up, and no one not of the household permitted anywhere near the house. The civilian magistrate of the ward is a close relative of the kidnapper, and the victim, a woman who through no fault of her own is considered beneath the notice of most of its respectable citizens. I’ve asked you to help me because you are able to move swiftly and independently, and to take the perpetrators of this—this mad scheme—by surprise, before they can cover their tracks. And I’ve asked you because I judge you to be a humane man.”
“Fair enough.” Coldstone inclined his head, and picked up his hat.
When the party reached Fish Street—still surrounded by a loose ring of Revere’s North End boys, to keep off unscheduled demonstrations of disapproval against Royal power and red uniforms—Lieutenant Coldstone signed the grim-faced little private to watch the yard gate, while he, Muldoon, and Abigail entered the shop. Nehemiah Tillet came around the counter smiling. “What can I do—?” before it dawned on him how extraordinary the presence of any British officer must be in Boston at this particular time.
The next moment he saw Abigail behind the Lieutenant, and his face blenched a little in the gray light of the shop.
“An allegation has been laid against you that you are unlawfully keeping a woman—who is herself wanted for questioning in the murder that took place here on the night of the twenty-fourth—prisoner under lock and key in this house.” Coldstone laid a paper on the counter. “Here is a warrant from the Provost Marshal, to search your house and ascertain the truth.”
“It isn’t true!” gasped Tillet. “She’s my daughter—my niece, I mean—she isn’t right in the head! We keep her locked up for her own protection—”
“Shut up, Tillet!” His wife appeared in the doorway, face even less attractive than usual due to its mottled flush of rage. She stabbed a furious finger at Abigail. “That slattern would say anything to disgrace us, before our church and before our friends! Bringing soldiers here, in broad daylight, to turn all our neighbors against us! She has always been jealous of this household, and worked as a go-between to ruin the marriage of an honest woman! Her accusation is ridiculous!”
“The question is not about her relations with your family,” responded Coldstone evenly, “nor whether her accusation is ridiculous, but whether it is true.” The two prentice-boys, Queenie, and the scullery maid had assembled in the doorway behind her, and Abigail saw the glance that went among the three youngsters. Queenie was staring at her, her big hands working and unmantled hatred in her eyes.
“Hap,” snapped Mrs. Tillet to the younger boy, “you go now, at once, to Mr. Goss the magistrate over at Went-worth’s Wharf and bring him here.” She turned furiously back to Coldstone. “My sister-in-law’s husband is the magistrate of this ward, sir! We’ll see if your warrant stands up to his authority!”
“By all means send for him, m’am.” Coldstone stepped aside from the doorway. “Yet this warrant has the King’s authority, and save for your messenger boy, none of the household shall stir from my presence until I have seen that attic.”
Nevertheless, Mrs. Tillet refused to budge until the magistrate—a man of Mr. Tillet’s age, bluff and red-faced from his profession as a ship’s carpenter—appeared, grumbling and snorting at being called from his work and glaring at his red-faced sister-in-law. In the interim, Mr. Tillet repeatedly began his long train of explanations: “—my niece, sir, and subject to violent fits; ’tis only out of the goodness of my wife’s heart that we took her in at all—” which invariably ended in his wife telling him to hold his tongue. For her part, Mrs. Tillet spent the half hour or so that the wait occupied in railing against Abigail’s morals, personal habits, marriage, family, housekeeping, and sanity, despite Lieutenant Coldstone’s reiterated warnings that her words were being taken note of, and would lay her open to action for slander.
“Let her sue me!” shouted Mrs. Tillet, pounding her chest with one massive fist. “I’ll repeat every word I’ve said to the whole of the General Court, and then they will all know her for the slut and unbeliever she is!”
Abigail listened in stony silence, only praying that Sam wouldn’t get word of all this and show up to further complicate matters.
And that, once in Coldstone’s hands, Rebecca would not reveal that the killer was, in fact, Abednego Sellars or some other member of the Sons.
Sam didn’t come. With the magistrate’s appearance, the whole of the party filed upstairs, to find that the door of the attic stair was indeed locked. This ultimately debouched into the wide, freezingly cold space at the top of the house—not even Queenie’s chamber at the west end, above that of her master and mistress, gleaned any warmth, for obviously no fires were kept up on the second floor at all.
The door of the small room called the south attic was also locked. The bolts on the outside of its door looked new. Beside the door stood a water pitcher, a plate innocent even of crumbs, a basket filled with newly sewed shirts, and beside them, a short, braided-leather whip, of the kind hunters used for beating dogs away from a kill.
“The woman’s got to earn her keep,” stated Mrs. Tillet fiercely. “She’d eat us out of house and home if left to herself, a glutton and a wittol. ’Tis only Christian charity that we took her in, and she refuses to turn a hand to help us or support herself. She should be put out into the road—”
