A Marked Man

information, and it occurred to me that you may have learned something from Miss Fluckner or her chaperone about events at the Governor’s ball that might have escaped the host.”

“Not yet.” Abigail settled back again in her chair. “Though Miss Fluckner and Mrs. Sandhayes assure me that they will gossip their way through the parlors of every other guest that evening and learn what they can of who might have absented themselves from the ball at ten or eleven in the evening—I doubt we can place Sir Jonathan’s death much later than that, on account of the heat of the body—or whether anyone in Boston hated the man enough to kill him.”

“Other than the Sons of Liberty?” enquired Coldstone politely. “Or the man whose sweetheart he attempted to ravish the morning of his departure?”

“Possibly a friend of the maidservant he attempted to ravish in her own room in the Fluckner house?” returned Abigail. “The one who disappeared? He seems to have made a habit of that sort of behavior.”

“He did.” Coldstone’s voice was suddenly dry and flat. “He was known for it. My mother would not have him in our house.”

“You knew him?” Abigail regarded him in startled surprise. And yet, she thought, Lieutenant Coldstone came from the same class of society that Sir Jonathan Cottrell did, the English gentry whose landed wealth and sense of social responsibility formed the backbone of government and society in the home country. They were the men who were elected to the House of Commons, the magistrates who enforced its laws in thousands of England’s villages from Land’s End to Hadrian’s Wall, the officers who commanded her armies, and the churchmen who were given livings whether they deserved them or not. They knew one another, married one another’s daughters to their sons, attended the same plays and salons, patronized the same modistes and bootmakers. Rich or poor, they sent their sons to the same schools, where they learned to write with Coldstone’s elegant hand, to speak with his clear diction, to wear clothes with a certain style—even if they were refurbished like Margaret Sandhayes’s gowns, or put on, as Coldstone had put on his crimson uniform, because the family had not the money or the influence for him to do otherwise.

Of course their families had moved in the same circles.

“I did not know him personally, as I was at school when he was obliged to leave the country.”

“Was there a scandal?”

“Of sorts. A girl hanged herself.” The savagery in his voice was all the more shocking because it was not raised above his usual soft conversational tone. “It would have raised no eyebrows, except that she wasn’t a servant. A number of people cut him after that and he went to the Continent for some years, but of course such things do get forgotten, particularly if the man in question is a friend of the King’s. My mother knew him. If you will pardon me, the recollection played a part in the immediacy of my suspicion of Mr. Knox. But it is equally likely that another outraged husband or brother or sweetheart did the office, or that the crime was connected with the absence of the memorandum-book from his pocket.”

“It was not in his luggage, I suppose?”

“No. Nor in his room at the Governor’s.”

“Did his luggage contain a journal or daybook of any sort, recording where he went in Maine?”

“Nothing. Not even notes. His regular daybook of expenses he left at the Governor’s. Mr. Fenton says that his master’s memory for such things was quite good, and he would frequently go for a week without making any notation, then tally up all the preceding expenses at once. His luggage did contain letters of introduction to Mr. Bingham at Boothbay, and to another agent of Mr. Fluckner’s on Georgetown Island, further along the coast. Both letters bore the appearance of having been unfolded, handed about, and read, as is to have been expected.”

“Please don’t tell me,” sighed Abigail, “that we’re going to have to pursue enquiries into Maine at this season.”

The afternoon was darkening, and as she genuinely liked Lieutenant Coldstone, when he rose to go, Abigail went to the kitchen and donned cloak, scarves, shawls, and pattens to accompany him as far as the wharf. The mob that had followed him from the Governor’s would still, despite the cold, be waiting in Queen Street, and while they might have orders from Paul Revere not to lay a hand on the two British soldiers, she wouldn’t have wanted to wager on the chance that they’d protect them if others tried.

Sergeant Muldoon, his red coat off and his musket placed carefully in the pantry where none of the children could get at it, was helping Pattie fill the lamps at the big worktable in the kitchen, while Johnny and Nabby, instead of doing their lessons, were listening to the sergeant’s tales of camp and transport and fighting the French. At Abigail’s appearance in the doorway the children dived back into their books and slates; Pattie and Muldoon scrambled to their feet. “I trust you’re not corrupting my son?” Abigail inquired.

“No, m’am. I doubt I could,” he added with a grin, “with all his da’s already havin’ him read of what the Romans got up to! Lord, think of a boy that age, able to write Latin and all.”

“Young Mr. Adams brought you a note from Mr. Sam.” Pattie produced a folded paper from her apron pocket.

The

Magpie,

out of Boothbay, sloop of 94 tons. Master: The Heavens Rejoice Miller. Put in at Scarlett’s Wharf Saturday, March 5, cargo butter, potash, skins. Still there. Ship’s boy Eli Putnam sleeping aboard, Miller and Matthias Brown, also of Boothbay, went ashore morning of March 5 shortly before arrival of Cottrell on the

Hetty,

not seen since.

Eight

The Magpie was a thirty-five-foot sloop, Jamaica-rigged, that badly needed a coat of paint. Among the tall oceangoing vessels of the harbor it blended in, like a shabby idler in a crowd, but Abigail picked it out at once as she crossed the icy black planks that joined Scarlett’s Wharf with the higher ground along Ship Street. Somebody on board had built a fire in the little galley. Smoke trickled from the cabin’s half-open door, snagged and whipped away by the wind that tore at Abigail’s cloak and cut through the quilted jacket, skirt, and petticoats beneath.

“You know a man’s poor, when he’s living on water in weather like this.” Paul Revere hunched his shoulders and kept one steadying hand on Abigail’s elbow against the force of the squalls, the other hand being engaged in holding on to his hat.

Abigail could only nod agreement, so tightly were her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering.

One truly knew one’s friends, she reflected, on evenings like this: after escorting Coldstone and Muldoon to Rowe’s Wharf, she’d walked along the waterfront to North Square in the fading twilight and knocked at the door of the tall, narrow Revere house. The silversmith, God bless him, had not inquired why she wanted an escort to Scarlett’s Wharf, which lay only a few yards beyond. He’d only laid aside his pipe, kissed his wife and his numerous offspring, and gotten his coat.

He called out now, “Ahoy the Magpie!” as he held out his hand to help Abigail up the gangplank. The boy who appeared in the low cabin doorway was well in keeping with the vessel and with everything Abigail had heard about the inhabitants of Maine: unwashed, glum, his shaggy hair drooping in his eyes, he was dressed in castoffs that would have embarrassed a scarecrow.

“You’d be Eli Putnam?” Revere enquired briskly. “We’re looking for Mr. Miller or Mr. Brown.”

The boy’s eyes widened with alarm and he whirled like a hare seeking its burrow. Only Revere’s quickness kept the boy from slamming the cabin door behind him. Revere got a shoulder and a thigh into the aperture and leaned his weight on the door as the youth struggled to shut it. “Don’t know nobody by that name,” the boy shouted out of the smoky murk below.

“Are you the master of this vessel, then?” demanded Revere.

The boy, confused, said, “Yes.”

“Don’t be daft, son.” Revere leaned his weight on the door and heaved it open, leaned in to catch the youth