Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(44)
Wolf filled in a small bit of information. “About how Matthew tried to drown her?”
Ah. So that’s what he’d heard. It was a reasonable thing for Ebenezer to say, when he did not wish to seem mad or unreasonable. What he’d shared with me, he’d shared in confidence. It would not do for me to betray it.
“Something like that,” I said without confirming or denying anything.
Once again the Bordens leaped to the forefront of my mind.
Their daughter’s trial flashed through my brain, and yes, I reminded myself with terrific firmness: yes, I must be very careful with regard to what I said about Ebenezer’s confession or behavior. Any little thing could be used, construed, or bent to whatever ends the authorities settled on when the time for formal inquiry came around.
But Wolf pressed on. “Something like a drowning? What do you mean?”
Still, I was cautious. “He was quite distraught. He talked in circles, and not all of it made sense.”
The inspector eyed me warily, a moment longer than was comfortable. Then again, he might’ve only been trying to stare at something other than the corpses before us. My extensive experience with the dead had done precious little to ready me for the sight of these two, so I could hardly blame him if that was the reason. But surely a man who investigated murders would have experience comparable to mine in war, or some experience anyway. Unless he typically investigated something else. Really, I had no idea—and his evasive answers thus far suggested he wouldn’t be too forthcoming, were I to ask.
I forced myself to look at the corpses again. No, even in war there was nothing to compare this to. War was only brutal. This was unnatural.
Beside the table was a shelf, with the implements of embalming ready at hand. How the Wann family planned to prepare the Hamiltons, I could scarcely imagine. The boy was in pieces, and his mother was . . .
Not herself.
I picked up a long metal probe and gingerly, with as much respect (and as little disgust) as I could muster, I prodded at Matthew’s flesh. It oozed fluid—water? Some unusual decomposition?—and the probe left virtually no impression in the flesh. The texture reminded me of nothing half so much as a sea-jelly.
“What are you doing?” Wolf asked.
“Nothing useful. I’m at a loss. They’ve been dead two days or less, and they almost look like they washed up on the rocks after a week in the ocean. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He cleared his throat and reached into his pocket for a set of vials. “So might it be said, Doctor Seabury, that I have your permission to take some samples?”
“My permission? You don’t need it. You’d be better served to ask the Wanns, but honestly, there’s little they can do for these two. Other than close the casket.”
He agreed, and selected a small scalpel from the table with the probes, tubes, and jars of foul-smelling fluids.
I averted my eyes while he worked, though I loathed myself for it, just a little. I ought to be stronger, better, more of a man—and a professional—than this. If I were to treat myself more kindly, I might’ve made the excuse that my specialty was the living body, and not the dead.
But in fact, I was a coward.
That night, I dreamed of the drying table, and the tubes, and the probes. But beneath the sheet lay Abigail and Andrew Borden, bloated and swollen. Waterlogged and yet living, their eyes watching me as I walked horrified around them, unable to leave the room. Unable to understand. Unable to look away.
Emma Borden was right. I needed a word with her sister.
A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
Emma L. Borden
APRIL 18, 1894
The Hamiltons have been murdered. Two of them, at least—the wife and son. Nephew? Godson? I can’t recall the particulars, but I believe he wasn’t theirs by birth. Regardless, he’s dead now: shot by his father, or whatever the man of the house was, in relation to him.
Ebenezer Hamilton has been taken into custody, and Fall River whispers so loudly that even such shut-ins as my sister and I have heard a number of details. The newspaper told us little that the gardener or the milkman hadn’t; we gleaned only one new tidbit from the official report, which was very brief, likely due to the suddenness of it all.
Apparently the boy had been ill for some weeks. He’d been kept indoors before the tragedy, out of fear that he might be a danger to himself or others. There are rumors that he’d been physically restrained, tied to a bed.
None of these precautions were excessive, as it turns out. They were not even sufficient.
When young Tim Haines came to collect our newspaper fee, he added the salacious detail that Matthew (that’s the boy’s name—I’d forgotten it until just now) had drowned Mrs. Hamilton in a washtub, and Ebenezer tried to save her. That’s where the gun came into it.
I have a terrible suspicion about this, and I know that Lizzie does as well. I know this, because she can hardly be persuaded to speak of it. She’s hidden the papers from Nance, lest she be called upon to gossip about the situation, and it’s entirely too near to the heart.
What an awful little place this town has come to be. Full of awful little people, and awful little creatures who make everything worse, exponentially. Daily.
And Nance hardly improves matters.
I honestly believe that Lizzie would throw that tall, noisy strumpet back onto the first train north for her own good, if she could—and it might yet come to that. I keep hoping there may be some catastrophic fight, instigated by my sister with the specific intent of sparing her beloved, even at the expense of the love itself.