said, of a sudden, that he had a headache, and we were all to get out. I knew that was all stuff—Pugh wouldn’t have a headache if you gave him a hundred pounds to do it and wouldn’t stop a game if there was an ax sticking out of his skull . . . Myself, I thought he’d got a signal.”
“A signal?”
“Through the window,” said the boy. “He’d sat himself where he could see it, instead of where he usually sits in the corner by the fireplace. I thought later—when I was talking to Horace—that he might have been meeting a girl. He wouldn’t have come across to speak to George anyway, because George’s window was dark.”
“Hmm,” said Abigail. “Well, another theory gone west. Would George have been asleep at midnight, Horace? It sounds a trifle early for him.”
“I don’t think so,” said Horace, and she saw the shadow of grief darken his eyes. “He—Weyountah and I stayed up until nearly ten thirty, at work on a—a
“There was a light in his room earlier,” provided Mr. Pinkstone. “But that would have been old Dio waiting up for him like a mother hen.” He grinned sadly. “I say, that was all stuff about Dio murdering him, wasn’t it? Old Dio wouldn’t hurt a fly, and the way he quizzed George when he’d been out, and waited up for him when he was off with some girl or other, and tried to find fellows to do his work for him—that’s a damned shame, what they’re saying. But when Pugh broke up the card game, George’s window was dark, because he looked out—Pugh did—and I was standing behind him, and him with one of those nasty cats sitting on his shoulder like a parrot. Besides,” added the boy, “the Black Dog wouldn’t have come across to speak to George anyway—they couldn’t stand one another.”
“Really?” said Abigail. “Whyever not? Mr. Pugh wasn’t in favor of colonial rights, was he?”
“Not that I ever heard.” The boy glanced up the stair, then back across the courtyard toward the window of the man of whom they spoke, as if Mr. Pugh might be standing in it, watching for his return. “No, the thing is, m’am, old George had cut him out with Sally Woodleigh, and had drawn his cork over it but two days before. So there’d be precious little that he’d have wanted to say to George at midnight or any other time.”
“Did he, indeed?” murmured Abigail, as she and Horace made their way up Horace’s own stairway to deposit the honey—and Weyountah’s rather depleted stock of gingerbread—behind the books in Horace’s room. “Did you know that?”
Horace shook his head. “I knew George and the Black Dog were at odds, but I thought . . . George never could stand a bully,” he said. “I think even before Pugh started plaguing me, it raised George’s dander. He was like that.” He was silent a moment as they returned down the stair. Then, carefully controlling his voice, he added, “But I can’t see even Pugh poisoning Dio in order to lie in wait for George . . .”
“No, of course not. Yet if George surprised him in the act of stealing from his rooms—an act that might end Pugh’s career at Harvard and would certainly end any chance of his winning back the fair Mistress Woodleigh—it might be enough to make a man lose his head in anger or in fear. ’Tis only a theory,” she added.
“One that takes no account of Mrs. Lake,” pointed out the boy diffidently.
“On the contrary: the Black Dog might have been watching George’s window, waiting for the candle to wink out, demonstrating that Diomede was well and truly asleep. ’Tis far more likely that he went across on account of Mrs. Lake’s business than that of Mistress Woodleigh; what matters would be that he was in the room when George returned.’Twill be something to bear in mind when we drive out to see this house that you and Weyountah have discovered.”
Ten
Diomede bore out Horace’s account of relations between George Fairfield and St-John Pugh, and to it added an eyewitness account of the combat that had taken place between them the preceding Saturday afternoon. “It was nothing much, m’am.” The servant leaned forward on the bench in the sheriff’s little watch room, his elbows on his knees. Abigail was pleased to see that Mrs. Squills had kept her word about seeing to it that Diomede had at least clean linen and food to eat in the jail. And the small brick jail in Cambridge—though it could never have been called comfortable—was at least habitable, unlike the “Hell on Earth,” as it was described, of Boston’s.
Through the window that opened onto Church Street, the sound of drums drifted from the Common, where the militia of Cambridge were beginning their drill. Mr. Congreve, slouched in a wooden chair (he had given Abigail his good one) by the door, moved his head now and then as if following the sound with his ears, though whether this was because he thought he should be among them bearing a musket or because he was waiting for the sound of a fight beginning, Abigail couldn’t tell.
Diomede looked haggard, and—Abigail was distressed to see—older than he had only four days ago when he’d joked with her as they’d walked back to Cambridge in the twilight, leading the limping Sassy by the bridle.
“They’d always rubbed each other the wrong way, from the time Mr. Pugh was a junior ordering around Mr. George as a freshman—not that Mr. George would take any nonsense from him or any man, no matter what these college customs say. First day he was a sophomore, Mr. George thrashed Mr. Pugh, and him five years younger than Pugh and nowhere near his weight. Miss Woodleigh, I can’t say she favored Pugh much over any of the others that courted her—if you’ll excuse me saying so, m’am, she’s a bit of a butterfly—”
“She’s a damned little flirt,” put in Congreve from the doorway, “and her father’ll be the happiest man in the colony when she finally settles . . . and her new husband the most miserable.”
“Well,” said the slave carefully, “it’s not my place to say, of course.”
“What you’d expect, m’am. Mr. George and a dozen of the Volunteers rode over to Mr. Woodleigh’s house on the Lexington Road after they were done with their drill; I think Mr. Woodleigh had invited them all for a bowl of punch. He—and Mrs. Woodleigh especially—had great hopes for Miss Woodleigh and Mr. George, and of course from the moment Miss Woodleigh saw George in his uniform, she’d had eyes for no one else. Myself,” he added with a wry half smile, “I think the uniform might have had a great deal to do with it, for he did look mighty splendid. Mr. Pugh’s nose was out of joint over it, as you’d expect.”
“Everyone’s was,” put in Horace, glancing up from surreptitiously counting his own pulse. “
“And the prettiest little thing under a bonnet in Suffolk County.” Diomede smiled.
“The best-educated little thing under a bonnet in Suffolk County,” added Weyountah thoughtfully. “Or at least the most comprehensively tutored. Entirely free of charge, I might add. They fall over one another to instruct her— Latin, history, theology, not that she’d know a sacrament from a syllogism. I taught her astronomy for about three months when it was first fashionable, but I made her father pay me, since there wasn’t a hope he’d have let me court her if I’d wanted to. She burned off Ryland’s eyebrows during a chemistry lesson, but he’s still tutoring her, I think: he’ll be lucky if she doesn’t blow him to bits. She’s clever, though . . .”
“She’s clever enough to pick the handsome ones as tutors,” grunted Congreve. “Makes the rest jealous. And who was it who said, there’s no such thing as an ugly heiress?”
“Well, be all that as it may,” continued Diomede, “Mr. Pugh was there when the Volunteers rode up. Of course Miss Woodleigh went into ecstasy over Mr. George. She always spoke of him as her affianced, but there was nothing formal to it, and to my mind he never favored her above the common run.”
“I just don’t think it ever crossed her mind that the man she adored wouldn’t adore her in return,” Horace opined. He coughed and cleared his throat and wiped his lips with one of the half-dozen clean white handkerchiefs he habitually carried in his pockets. “I know he didn’t speak of her when they were apart—well, not more than any of the others.”
