Page 21 of The Orphan of Cemetery Hill
Caleb’s elation was short-lived. “But surely they don’t mean to bring up charges against me... I’m innocent!”
Whitby raised a brow, tucking the papers back inside his coat. “Yes, yes, I know, but they must play out the whole thing so that they can say justice has been done.”
Caleb chewed at his lip. “I suppose. Well, for God’s sake, get me out for now. My mother will be worrying herself half to death over this.” And that was to say nothing of whatever scheme Tabby had gotten into her head.
Tabby slowly made her way back home from her encounter with Mr. Whitby, this time aware that perhaps she was not as inconspicuous as she had always thought. Hugging close to the sides of buildings, she checked that she wasn’t being followed before leaving behind the statehouse and the city’s bustling business district.
She had promised that she would help Caleb, and despite his orders not to, she had every intention of making sure that his innocence was proven. There could be no true justice for Rose so long as the wrong man sat behind bars. But how was Tabby to prove that Caleb was not the killer? The song that Mr. Whitby had been humming was the same one that Rose had sung, she was sure of it. But was that proof? Tabby didn’t trust Mr. Whitby, but that didn’t mean he was a murderer. What did he have to gain from killing her? If only Rose would speak to her again, help Tabby learn who was truly responsible for her death.
As she mused these problems, she turned onto Tremont Street and immediately came upon a roiling mob of people outside the Granary Burying Ground where she had stood not even one week before for Rose Hammond’s burial. Large crowds had always unnerved her, but there was a hushed energy to this one, as if gripped by some singular fascination. She was just about to slip by when she noticed a familiar figure with dark hair standing toward the back.
“What’s all this?” Tabby asked, coming up beside Mary-Ruth and linking arms with her friend.
“There’s been another snatching,” she whispered.
Tabby’s heart flew to her throat. “It’s not...it’s not Miss Hammond, is it?” After all the poor young woman and her family had gone through, what a tragic postscript that would be.
“No,” Mary-Ruth said, shaking her head. “God help the poor thing, but her body was too badly mangled to be of much use to the snatchers probably. It was a Mr. Goodwin, a patient I laid out the other day. He was only just buried.”
Craning her neck, Tabby could see a police officer at the front of the crowd, pressing people back and trying to keep order. The last time she had seen that officer he had been leading Caleb away.
A man in a tweed suit and bushy side-whiskers heard them and leaned over. “It’s the Spunkers Club,” he told them in confidential tones. “They’re a secret society, from Harvard. Medical men and professors and the like. They use the bodies for dissection. My brother writes for theGazetteand says that they have been dormant for decades, but they’ve resurfaced again.”
“The Spunkers?” she repeated. It sounded like a made-up word, childish, not like a club comprised of doctors and professors.
Another man, overhearing the conversation, shook his head vehemently. “This isn’t the Spunkers. Say what you will about them, at leasttheyhad the decency to leave the grave looking as pristine as the day the minister stood over it. I should know, they got my great-granduncle back in ’01,” he said, almost with a note of pride. “’Twas almost six months before we even noticed he was gone.”
A familiar sense of outrage welled in her breast. Life was cruel enough; who would deny the dead the peace of eternal rest? The dead, who could not defend themselves.
She turned toward the man with the bushy side-whiskers who was puffing on a cigar. “Did your brother say why they have started up again? Why now?”
The man tapped his cigar, looking rather pleased to be asked. “Oh, I’m sure he has his theories. You hear rumors, you know.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Well, a gentleman doesn’t like to say.” It was becoming clear that perhaps he didn’t know as much as he let on.
Mary-Ruth snorted. “Gentleman indeed,” she muttered.
But the second man was more than happy to speculate. “Don’t you know? It’s because of all these Spiritualists. Now that science is making advances with talking to the dead, they need bodies for their experiments. Have you heard about High Rock Tower in Lynn?”
Tabby shook her head, not sure she wanted to know.
The man rocked back on his heels. “Some science-minded men are trying to build a new messiah, they say. Building mechanical men and reanimating corpses.” He looked at Tabby expectantly. “Well, where do you think they get the corpses?”
The abundant sunshine couldn’t stop a chill from running down her spine. She had a thousand more questions for the men, but Mary-Ruth was taking her by the arm.
“What rubbish. Come on,” she said, pulling Tabby to the front where they could get a better view. They wove through the crowd which was finally starting to disperse once they realized there was nothing to see and there would be no answers.
When they reached the grave, Tabby caught her breath. As with Mr. Bishop’s robbery, the gravesite before them was a mangle of iron bars and crumbled plaster. The hole in the ground gaped back at them, violated and hopeless. Whoever had done this had not been overly concerned with being discreet. Whoever had done this had wanted a body, and badly.
11
IN WHICH THE PRISONER IS FREED.
THE FIRST MATTERCaleb had seen to upon his release was getting a good strong cup of coffee and a plate of oysters at the public house. Bolstered by this, he’d been able to go home and face the grateful hysterics of his mother. Then it was calling for hot water for a bath and scouring the stink of prison off himself. He was under no illusions as to the permanence of his situation, but as he luxuriated in the hot water, he was grateful for the reprieve. He would have to appear in court, put together some sort of defense, and it still wasn’t clear at all if there were any other suspects for Rose’s murder.
When he was scrubbed clean as a newborn and dressed in a freshly pressed suit, he slipped downstairs, ready to go out and see what he had missed at the club over the past week. He was hungry for some amusement, for the company of a pretty girl and a game of cards, anything to distract him from how he had failed Rose.