“And speaking of honest work, I’m just as glad this whole case is wrapped up. I’ve finally had time to get ready for the lecture series,” he said. “And I’ve had a few more days to spend with my little angels before I go on the road again. I’d been neglecting you girls shamefully with all this murder business.”
“Oh, don’t feel so bad, Papa,” said Clara, with a saucy laugh. “The murder is the most exciting thing we’ve had to talk about in ages. It’s almost a shame it’s solved—now we’ll have to find some other amusement.”
“Amusement?” said Mr. Clemens, raising his brow in mock horror. “Are these the same three girls I was calling ‘my little angels’ just a moment ago? Where exactly did you get the idea that talking about a man being shot dead is some kind of amusement?”
“I cannot imagine where such a morbid fascination comes from, Youth,” said Mrs. Clemens, with a little smile. “Certainly nobody on the Langdon side of the family ever had such unsuitable thoughts.”
“Hmmph!” he said, making a mock-ferocious expression. “I resent that implication. The girls must be getting these ideas on their own. They’re probably reading some sort of low-class stuff about detectives, like those Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ll soon put a stop to that. We’ll start a course of improving readings soon as we get home—”
But little Jean burst out laughing. “Oh look, Mama, the bad, spitting gray kitten has come back! We’ve been ever so lonely without him.” She reached up and stroked her father’s hair.
And at that, even my employer had to let a smile onto his face as the carriage took us home through the twilit streets of London. Life had returned to normal—or as close to normal as it ever got in Mr. Clemens’s company—and I was just as glad.
If you enjoy the MARK TWAIN
mystery series,
you will also want to read
THE DUMB
SHALL SING
by STEPHEN LEWIS
Catherine had just come out into the garden with Phyllis to see what vegetables might be gathered for supper when she heard a confused cacophony of voices rise from the road that skirted the hill on which her house sat. She and Phyllis hurried around to the front, and there she saw a crowd heading toward the northern edge of Newbury, where the town ran abruptly into the untamed woods. The voices seemed to carry an angry tone. She turned to Phyllis.
“Catch up with them, if you can, and see where they are going, and to what purpose.”
She watched as the girl hurried down the hill and trotted toward the people, whose voices were becoming less distinct as they moved farther away. Catherine strained her eyes, keeping them focused on the white cap Phyllis wore, and she saw it bobbling up and down behind the crowd. The cap stopped moving next to a man’s dark brown hat. After a few moments she could see the cap turn back toward her while the hat moved away, and shortly Phyllis stood before her, catching her breath.
“They are going to the Jameson house. They say the babe is dead. And they want you to come to say whether it was alive when it was born.”
She recalled holding the babe in her arms and seeing that he was having trouble breathing. She had seen that his nose was clogged with mucus and fluids, and she had cleared it with a bit of rag she carried in her midwife’s basket for that purpose. The babe had snorted in the air as soon as she removed the cloth and then he had bellowed a very strong and healthy cry. The only thing out of the ordinary during the birth that she could now remember was how the Jameson’s Irish maidservant eyed the babe as though she wanted to do something with it. Catherine had seen dozens of births, and usually she could tell when a babe was in trouble. This one had given no indication of frailty.
“Come along with me, then,” she said to Phyllis. “Just stop to tell Edward to watch for Matthew.”
Phyllis did not respond, and Catherine motioned to the tree under which Massaquoit had slept.
“You know,” Catherine repeated, “Matthew.”
“I see, yes, he should wait for Matthew,” Phyllis said.
“Edward need not think about going to lecture.”
“He does not think about that anyway,” Phyllis replied.
“Be that as it may, I do not think there will be lecture tonight,” Catherine said. “Now go along with you.”
The Jameson house was a humble structure of two sections, the older little more than a hut with walls of daub and wattle construction, a plaster of mud and manure layered over a substructure of crisscrossing poles. Henry Jameson had recently built a wing onto the back of the house to accommodate his growing family, and this new room was covered in wooden shingles outside and was generally more luxurious inside, having a wood plank floor and whitewashed plaster walls.
It was in this room that Martha had delivered her babe. Catherine remembered that the Irish servant girl had a little space, not much more than a closet, for a bed so that she could be near the infant’s cradle, and that the parents’ bedroom was in the original portion of the house. She also remembered how the girl had fashioned a crude cross out of two twigs, tied together with thread, and then hung it over her bed until Henry had found it there and pulled it off. He had
