exhume a corpse.
The sun was warm, the air still, the summer birds singing, and the insects awhirr in the gilded shafts of light spilling through the boughs. Matthew struggled to keep his horse in control. The beast was much stronger than Suvie, headstrong as well, and kept wanting to veer off the road. “What’s this creature’s name?” Matthew asked toward Greathouse’s back.
“Buck,” came the reply. “He’s a fine animal. Just let him have his head, he’ll do all right.”
“He wants to leave the road!”
“No, he wants to pick up his pace. You’re holding him back like an old woman.” Greathouse suddenly urged his mount into a canter and said, “Come on, I want to get there before tomorrow!”
Matthew just had to press Buck’s sides with his knees to cause the horse to nearly leap forward, an action for which Matthew was totally unprepared and almost unseated into a tangle of green briars. He hung on, resisted the urge to pull the horse back to a more comfortable speed-and somewhat doubted Buck would heed him, anyway-and soon he was travelling neck-to-neck with Greathouse’s horse instead of nose to tail.
They followed the road through a wilderness of thick-trunked trees that Matthew thought could never be felled by a hundred axemen working a hundred days. Redbirds fluttered in the high branches and a fox skittered across the road as the horses approached. After a while, Greathouse settled his horse back into an easy trot and Matthew did the same with Buck. A stone wall soon appeared along the left side of the road, and knowing the Ormond farm must be within a mile or so, Matthew said, “What’s this about? We’re not really going to dig up a grave, are we?”
“We didn’t bring shovels to knock apples out of the trees.”
“But why? What’s so urgent about this particular corpse?” He got no answer, so he tried another tack. “I told you everything Mr. McCaggers told me. There’s nothing more to see. Anyway, I don’t think it’s proper to disturb the dead.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t. There’s the turn ahead.”
Greathouse took the next road to the left and Matthew kept up with him, or rather had no choice as he had begun to suspect Buck had been trained to follow Greathouse no matter who thought they guided the reins. “Listen,” Matthew persisted, “I’m not used to this kind of thing. I mean…what’s the point of it?”
Greathouse abruptly drew his horse up, causing Buck to stop almost immediately as well. “All right,” Greathouse rumbled, with a nod. “I’ll tell you why. The way you described the murder set me to remembering something. I can’t tell you what that is. Not yet. And I’m going to insist that you not mention anything of this to Mrs. Herrald, either. Just help me dig, that’s all I’m asking.”
Matthew caught a note in the man’s voice that he’d not heard before. It was not exactly fear, though there was indeed an element of that, as it was more abhorrence. Of what? Matthew wondered. The corpse? Surely not just that, for it was likely Greathouse had seen-and created-his share of them. No, this was something else entirely. Something that went deep, and was yet to be revealed.
Greathouse continued on, and so Buck followed with Matthew along for the ride. In another few minutes a more narrow track turned off again to the left and this was the route they took to the Ormond farm.
It was a well-worked plot consisting mostly of apple and pear trees, along with plantings of corn, turnips, beans, and a few rows of tobacco. As the two riders approached a farmhouse of brown stones that sat beside a barn and animal corral, chickens squawked and fluttered for shelter and a half-dozen hogs looked up inquisitively from their pen. From the barn appeared a burly man wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, a brown shirt, and gray trousers with patches on the knees. Accompanied by a barking cinnamon-colored dog, he came out to meet his visitors as a wide-hipped woman opened the farmhouse’s door and two small children peered around her skirts.
“Mr. Ormond!” Greathouse called as he reined his horse. “It’s Hudson Greathouse.”
“Yes sir, I recall ye.” The farmer had a long dark beard and eyebrows as thick as wooly caterpillars. He eyed the shovels. “Plannin’ to dig up your own turnips?”
“Not exactly. This is my associate Matthew Corbett. May we step down?”
“Come ahead.”
That civility done, Greathouse waited until the dog had calmed down and was content to lope around sniffing at everyone’s shoes before he continued. “It’s been brought to my attention,” he said, “that a body was discovered on your property.”
Ormond regarded the ground and pressed a stone with the toe of his boot. He said in a slow, thick voice, “True enough.”
“And it was buried beside the river?”
“Where it come up.” He lifted his gaze and took stock of the shovels again. “Oh, Mr. Greathouse! I wouldn’t want to be doin’ what you’ve got a’ mind.”
“Mr. Corbett and I are not what you might call constables, in the strictest sense,” Greathouse explained, “but we are representatives of the law. I feel it’s my duty-our duty-to examine the corpse.”
Speak for yourself, Matthew thought. The sun seemed terribly warm, and more brutal than bright.
“Not much left,” said Ormond.
“We’d still like to look.”
Ormond drew in a long breath and let it slowly leak out between his teeth. “I’d best put the dog in the house. Come on, Nero! Come on, boy!”
Greathouse unbound the shovels from his saddle and gave one to Matthew, who took it as if it were a venomous reptile. When the dog was put away and the wife and children also behind the closed door, Greathouse and Matthew walked with Ormond along a wagon track that led across the orchard.
“Nero found him,” Ormond said. “Heard the dog barkin’ up a fury, thought he’d treed a bobcat. Thank the Lord my children didn’t go runnin’ down there. I went to town that very afternoon, walked right into City Hall and asked for the biggest constable they’ve got.”
Matthew might have made an inner comment about this statement, but he was too fixated on the river he’d begun to see beyond the trees.
“They said they couldn’t handle him. Gettin’ him from here to town, I mean,” Ormond went on. “So I said just bury him. The coroner wrapped him up with a bedsheet and that big slave put him under. He’s over this way here.”
They came out from the orchard and there was the shimmering blue expanse of the river winding between the forested banks. Ormond led them about forty yards farther to a mound of dirt with a headstone of three ash- colored rocks. “Washed up there, he was.” Ormond stood on a flat boulder and pointed down the hillside to a dead tree that had uprooted and fallen into the water. “Hung in those branches.”
“Who has the next property upriver?” Greathouse was already at work moving aside the rocks.
“Farmer by the name of Gustenkirk. Good enough fella, keeps to himself. Wife and family, four children. Got a wooden leg.”
“And the next property after that?”
“Another farm. Fella’s name is Van Hullig. I spoke to him once, on the road to town. Older man, in his sixties. He can hardly speak anythin’ but Dutch. After that, I guess there are some more farms ’til you get to the ferry crossin’ and you’re almost to the end of the island.”
“The body might have been carried across the river,” Matthew said as Greathouse got his shovel ready for the first blow against earth. He looked out upon what seemed a vast unbroken wilderness on the Jersey shore. “Mr. McCaggers said the young man died from a fall. Shattered his skull and broke his neck. That would suggest a more severe cliff than a sloping hillside.”
“We’ll see.” Greathouse struck hard with the shovel and removed the first scoop of dirt. He worked so methodically, his head lowered to the task and his eyes fixed on the grave, that Matthew felt shamed at just standing there. Matthew realized the body was coming up whether he liked it or not, so he stepped forward, clenched his teeth, and started digging.
“Gents,” said Ormond uneasily, after a moment or two, “I’ve had my say over this fella, whoever he was, and I wish him God rest. You toss a care if I go back to work?”
“Go ahead. We’ll put him back down when we’re done.” Greathouse had spoken without a pause in his shoveling.
“Thank you kindly.” Ormond hesitated. A whiff of decay had soured the air. “You want to wash afterward, I’ll
