Sup With the Devil

about retaining a drunkard in his service, but he would not listen. Preferring, I suppose, the prestige—if one can call it that—of owning a Negro to the drudgery of making up his own bed.”

“If your honor will pardon me for speaking,” said Weyountah, “in my experience of the man, Diomede was not a habitual drunkard. He would go on an occasional spree for an evening if he thought Mr. Fairfield was not going to return to his rooms until late, as was the case, I believe, last night. But this is not the same thing as a man who punishes the bottle night after night.”

“’Tis but a step, and a short one,” replied the president coldly, “from the ‘occasional spree,’ as you call it, to greater and greater frequency as the demon takes hold. Surely you of all people do not deny the pattern?”

“No, sir.” Weyountah’s voice held level, despite the reference—which Abigail considered tactless in the extreme—to the notorious effect that white man’s liquor had on many of the Indians who used it. “I speak only of my observation as to where Diomede stood in regard to that pattern.”

“With what was he stabbed?” Abigail wondered if Perry would let her get a look at the wounds themselves and decided that a request to do so would only exacerbate a futile situation.

“The paper knife from Mr. Fairfield’s desk was in Diomede’s hand, m’am,” said Weyountah.

“Would a paper knife be sharp enough to kill a man?” And do I need to worry about Johnny getting his hands on John’s from the study desk and murdering Charley while I’m away?

The Indian edged between doctor and president—neither of whom looked as if they would have made way for him, had either been able to find a good reason for standing on his dignity to that extent—and returned from the outer study a moment later with the bloodied weapon in his hand. “The edge is no sharper than it has to be to cut paper,” he said. “But the point would surely be a deadly weapon in a strong man’s hand.”

A bit gingerly, Abigail took the hilt and touched the point with her fingertip. Aside from the smallness of the guard and the narrow blade, it would have almost served as an actual weapon: English-made, steel, with ivory plates on the hilt and a blade about seven inches long. Long enough and strong enough to reach the heart.

“And is there anything missing from the room? Where did Mr. Fairfield keep his money, for instance?”

“In his pockets, if he had any,” replied Weyountah with a sigh. “Or in a desk-drawer or lying on the corner of the desk. Every excursion involved George searching for money—” A slight break flawed his voice as he remembered a hundred or a thousand tiny, trivial scenes. “And he never had a penny.”

“I thought his father was rich!”

“He is, m’am. And George had credit all over town. But actual money in his pockets—”

“The boy was a gamester.” Langdon’s voice reeked with disgust. “And worse,” he added darkly, meaning, Abigail guessed from Mrs. Squills’s remarks at the Stair, given to wenching. Weyountah laid the paper knife on the corner of the desk and looked over the untidy papers there.

More than untidy, thought Abigail. Shuffled up together into loose bundles, the way Sam’s were when he had been looking for something in his overcrowded study.

It could just mean that George Fairfield had mislaid his money and had searched his own desk. Still . . .

Two Spanish doubloons and a couple of Pennsylvania pound notes lay on the floor, as if they’d fallen when the desk was opened. A dozen or so books—the Iliad and the Aeneid, lexicons of Greek and Latin, Hoole’s Catonis Disticha de Moribus and Ezekiel Cheever’s A Short Introduction, to the Latin Tongue, for the use of the lower forms in the Latin School, Being the Accidence abridged and compiled in that most easy and accurate method wherein the famous Mr. Ezekiel Cheever taught, were piled on a chair higgledy-piggledy.

She remembered the tidiness of the front chamber. Looking around her, every portion of the bedroom save the vicinity of the desk attested to Diomede’s housekeeping skills.

The stain on the floor was exactly between the desk—which stood beneath the window—and the bed.

She asked, “Does it look to you as if George had done any work at this desk? As if he’d been able to do work at it as it is?”

The Indian frowned and reconsidered the papers—the fact that no single paper lay in the center, that the inkstand and standish had been moved to the windowsill . . . the fact that, in effect, the desk looked as if someone had taken everything off it, then piled it back on . . .

“He did keep up with his work,” said Abigail, standing at Weyountah’s side. “He spoke of it last night . . . See, there’s been wax dripped on the surface of the desk, fresh, it looks like, and under these papers . . . When did George come in last night, do you know?”

“The curfew is nine o’clock,” pointed out Dr. Perry, rather severely, from the door.

Weyountah said nothing, but the glance he gave Abigail spoke clearly enough.

“Mrs. Squills spoke yesterevening of George meeting a friend out by the stables,” she went on, turning toward Horace, who now stood a little behind the physician and the college president in the doorway. “Horace, you walked with George from the inn after he so very kindly saw to my lodging . . .”

In a stifled voice, Horace said, “We—George and I—parted between Massachusetts Hall and the brewhouse. I-I did warn him ’twas nearly nine, and he said he’d not be late.”

And quietly, Weyountah added, with a warning glance toward Perry and President Langdon, “George had many friends. If he . . .”

Voices raised in the staircase outside, followed immediately by a thumping on the outer door. “Dr. Perry, sir —!”

At the same moment, Abigail became aware of voices in the quadrangle below.

Going to the window, she saw Pugh’s tall, skinny follower Lowth slumped unconscious beside the door of the staircase, with two of his companions bending over him. Another young man lay on the ground, surrounded by his friends, a short distance away. She turned back as the excited young Mr. Yeovil burst into the study, crying, “Dr. Perry, Dr. Perry, they’ve been poisoned!”

Mr. Ryland, hard on his heels, added, “Dr. Perry, there’s something very strange going on . . .”

Sheriff Congreve led Diomede away to the town jail while everyone piled and crowded after the stricken scholars as they were carried into the parlor of Massachusetts Hall. Since one of them was Mr. Lowth, Pugh and Jasmine Blossom had apparently lost any interest in guarding the staircase; even as she turned from the window, Abigail heard some of them coming up the stairs. They’ll trample over the room like cattle . . .

She dropped behind as Langdon and Perry followed everyone out, then quickly turned down counterpane and sheet—she’d heard both John and her friend Joseph Warren speak of doing this with the victims of murder, and it made good sense to her—and caught up the paper knife, intending to compare the width of its blade with the size of the wounds. But as she turned back, she stopped, stood for a moment, and looked down into George’s face: that young man she’d met but yesterday, that personable young gentleman, as Diomede had called him, who had talked of men as he’d found them, who’d never been able to tell Ajax son of Telamon from Ajax son of the other fellow, who’d come running from an assignation with a willing wench to make sure she, Abigail, was housed in the best inn of the town . . .

Someone killed him, she thought, and her throat tightened suddenly, her eyes flooded with tears. The slight changes of mortality had already taken hold, so that his face was not so disturbing as a man’s new-dead. Her uneasy horror was gone, leaving only memory and pity.

Someone stabbed him, ended his life at the age of—what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? With all the world before him . . .

Feet in the stairway; voices in the chamber.

What was it the Romans said? Ultio prima, secundae lacrimae. Vengeance first, then tears . . .

No, she corrected herself, as she laid the blade against that strangely ivory-colored flesh. ’Tis not vengeance I seek but salvation for the man who didn’t do this crime . . .

All four of the wounds looked a good half-inch wider than the width of the blade.

Swiftly, Abigail pulled down the young man’s nightshirt, drew up the coverlet, even as she heard the doctor’s voice cry angrily in the staircase, “Here, this won’t do!” She dunked her handkerchief in the water-pitcher and was