Death Brings a Shadow Page 4

  They worked in silence, gently soaking and then wiping away the mud that stained Eleanor’s fair skin.

  “It won’t all come off,” Prudence said.

  “It’s the tannins in the swamp water,” Geoffrey explained. “They leach out from the tree roots.”

  “Like tea leaves left lying in the bottom of a cup.” Prudence remembered a childhood fascination with the art of seeing the future in the configuration of tea leaves swirled against fine china. And how easily the leaves stained if accidentally spilled onto the white cotton of a summer dress. “There. I think that’s the best I can do.”

  Each of Eleanor’s shoulders bore a faint discoloration, as though someone had poured tea on a cloth, then neglected to rinse it out. Or rubbed too hard and inadvertently made the stain worse.

  Geoffrey leaned over the body and gently laid his hands on Eleanor’s shoulders. The discolorations disappeared beneath his palms and outstretched fingers.

  Prudence’s indrawn breath was like the rasp of a saw against metal. “Someone held her beneath the water,” she whispered. Then, her voice stronger. “And looked right into her face as she struggled and choked for breath. Someone watched as she died.”

  Geoffrey raised the sheet they had been using to cover Eleanor as they washed the body. “He straddled her, one knee on either side. But she must have fought fiercely enough to dislocate her shoulder, and in his fury, he didn’t feel the bone slip out of place.”

  Prudence examined one of her friend’s hands, then the other. What had been done to Eleanor sickened her. She could hardly see through the tears she blinked away, but she was determined not to give in to the wave of grief threatening to overwhelm her. “If she managed to scratch him, I cleaned the evidence from under her nails when I washed away the mud.”

  “The nails aren’t broken. It happened quickly, Prudence. She probably opened her mouth to scream and breathed in as she was pushed or thrown into the water. It’s a fear reflex. You gasp for air when there isn’t any.”

  “Can we prove she was murdered, Geoffrey?”

  “There aren’t any marks of strangulation around her neck. Just the dislocated shoulder and the discolorations. But remember, she was facedown in less than a foot of water when we found her, shoulders pressed by the weight of her body against the mud and broken branches of the swamp bottom.”

  “He turned her over because he wanted it to look as though she’d fallen. As though the drowning was accidental.”

  “There’s nothing here to prove it wasn’t,” Geoffrey said, his eyes fixed on Prudence’s face. It was like scanning the page of a book. Everything she was thinking and feeling flitted across her features. She wasn’t attempting to hide anything from him. “Picture the spot where we found her.”

  “It was muddy,” Prudence said, closing her eyes the better to call up the scene she would see in nightmares for months to come. “She was half submerged in the water, her hair floating around her shoulders. A log lay nearby. One of her hands was stretched out as if to reach for it.”

  “What else?”

  “I saw mud, cattails, waterlogged branches, and tree trunks.” Prudence opened her eyes. “One of the men tripped on something hidden beneath the water when he helped lift her out.”

  “The coroner will say it was death by mischance. That Eleanor, not familiar with the swamp and probably hysterical with the fear of being lost, stumbled blindly through the muddy water until something made her lose her balance and she fell. She isn’t the first to die this way and she won’t be the last.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, Geoffrey,” Prudence said, determination in her voice. Her eyes flashed in the lamplight, remembering the fear in Eleanor’s voice when she’d spoken of eyes watching her from the live oaks. How monstrous to have foreseen your own death and been unable to save yourself. “The only thing I don’t know is who would want to kill her.”

  “Cui bono?”

  “Who profits? I can’t imagine anyone profiting from Eleanor’s death.” Prudence wiped the remaining mud from her friend’s face. She had expected horror, but beneath the grime of the swamp Eleanor’s features had suffered less disfigurement than Prudence had steeled herself to find. The pale, bloated skin was mottled with reddish blotches, clusters of puncture wounds, and what could only be the tiny bite marks of shallow feeding fish.

  “Water moccasins,” Geoffrey said. “And probably some small catfish. “ He turned Eleanor over, then pressed hard against her back, kneading his fist into the base of her lungs. A trickle of dark water flowed from between her lips. He settled the body on its back and wiped the fluid from her mouth and chin. “That’s evidence of drowning, nothing more.”

  “We’ll have to tell her parents what we suspect,” Prudence said. “Are there police on the island?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” Geoffrey shook his head. “A county sheriff on the mainland is probably the closest law enforcement. And a local doctor or justice of the peace to act as coroner whenever there’s an unexplained or violent death.”

  “Will they take her away?” Prudence asked. She couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger’s indifferent eyes examining Eleanor as though she were the carcass of a slain animal. Her friend lying alone in a makeshift morgue somewhere.

  “Not if the Bennetts have the kind of influence I expect they do.” Geoffrey drew a clean, dry sheet up over the body, threw another one over the pile of wedding finery. “That’s all we can do for now, Prudence. It’s better to leave her the way she is until after the sheriff has been here.”

  “Will he care, Geoffrey? Will he care enough to find whoever did this?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. We care, Prudence.”

  I promise you, Prudence swore silently to her friend, one hand lightly touching the sheet that concealed Eleanor from view. I promise you we’ll find whoever did this. I’m not leaving Bradford Island until we do.

  Geoffrey’s hand came down softly on her own, closed around it lightly, and joined his promise to hers.

  CHAPTER 4

  Aunt Jessa waited in the Seapoint summer kitchen while Eleanor Dickson’s body was washed and readied for the grave.

  The master had locked himself in his study and the housekeeper had given the mistress enough laudanum to keep her in bed until well after sunup. By which time Aunt Jessa would have seen what she came to see and done what she’d come to do.

  “Won’t be long now,” she was told by one of the maids the housekeeper sent scurrying from the main house to the kitchen building. The heat of roasting and baking vibrated off its brick walls and the steam of boiling pots danced in waves out the doors and windows. Open hearth kitchens were the most dangerous buildings on any southern plantation. The cooks who worked in them rolled their sleeves up as high as they would go, opened their bodices, and hitched up their skirts whenever no one was around to see and reprimand them. Their arms, legs, and chests were pockmarked with new and old burn scars. But the dishes they sent to the tables of the big house were rich, highly spiced, swimming in gravy, and delicious.

  Aunt Jessa sipped a tiny cup of New Orleans coffee and waited patiently, impervious to the noise and bustle all around her, ignoring the sidelong glances of the kitchen helpers who tried not to brush too close to her skirts as they scurried to follow Cook’s orders. Nobody knew if Master Dickson would come out of his study to eat a proper dinner tonight, but the table would be laid and a meal prepared just in case. Young Miss’s friend and the gentleman who’d come down from New York with her would have to be seen to in any case.

  “They done,” a skinny little girl announced. She hopped from one foot to the other, proud to have been given the task of informing the conjure woman that it was safe to go into the big house, jumpy as a grasshopper to be so close to a caster of spells and juju. Her eyes darted to the seagrass basket beside Aunt Jessa’s rocking chair. A mat of woven swamp willow concealed the contents, but couldn’t entirely mask an aroma of pungent herbs and earthy roots. She t
hought she detected the smell of candle wax and something dead and dried out. A frog? Was she supposed to pick up the basket and carry it inside? The housekeeper hadn’t told her what else to do beyond giving her the message to deliver and a shove to start her out the door.

  “Go on now, girl. You done what you sposed to.” Aunt Jessa heaved her considerable bulk out of the rocking chair, chuckling as she watched the skinny little girl’s legs pump her across the raked dirt yard surrounding the kitchen. She nodded her thanks to Cook for the coffee and the concealment, then picked up her basket and made her way slowly to where the housekeeper waited for her.

  The narrow stairway down to the cellars was difficult to manage, but Aunt Jessa kept her eyes on the lantern held aloft by the spit boy leading the way and murmured a spell to protect herself against stumbling down it to her death. It seemed nowadays as though she lived in a cocoon of small spells, a warmly fortified place peopled by friendly spirits and the inquisitive ghosts of a host of islanders who’d passed over.

  She’d never expected to live as long as she had. Despite bones that creaked and cracked in the morning and the occasional bout of forgetting who she was or where she stood, she didn’t mind growing old. She had her little shack in the live oaks. There was always a spot of sunshine burning through the canopy of leaves onto the chair where she sat and rocked most afternoons.

  Aunt Jessa remembered everything that had ever happened on Bradford Island. She recollected the name of every person who’d been born there, married into the place, or been bought and brought over. Black or white, it didn’t matter. She knew them all.

  It had been against the law to teach a slave to read and write, but Aunt Jessa had raised two generations of Bennett children, sitting quietly in a corner of the schoolroom to ensure good behavior as the youngest were introduced to their letters. None of the tutors or governesses paid her any mind. She’d absorbed every word that was spoken, every instruction on how to form the curlicue or the leaning straight line of educated handwriting, every lesson on sounding out a word until it made sense. Sometimes, when a Bennett child was slow or reluctant to learn, it was Aunt Jessa’s determined coaching that saved him from a beating for laziness or stupidity. By the time the child grew up, he’d forgotten that he hadn’t done it all by himself.

  When freedom came, Aunt Jessa found herself too rooted in Bradford Island sand to be able to leave. She thought about it for a while, but in the end, she stayed, moving easily between the whitewashed brick walls and wide porches of Wildacre and the neat little wooden house in the live oak forest where she could breathe her own air and not have to answer to nobody. White children sat in her lap as babies, trailed at her skirts as toddlers, and brought her their troubles before they grew too self-conscious to admit to any weaknesses. When they grew up they congratulated themselves on allowing Aunt Jessa to remain part of island life after it was obvious she’d gotten too old to do much work.

  What she did was preserve and pass along the secrets of the island and unlock the world of reading and writing to the young ones who wanted to learn. Every now and then she singled out for special attention a girl who might have gone her whole life without knowing what it was that made her so different from everyone else. Aunt Jessa knew how to mix remedies for stomach aches, monthly pains, and rheumatic joints. She comforted women in painful childbirths, closed the eyes of the dead, and chanted their souls to heaven.

  The real juju work was done by another former Bennett slave. Queen Lula was as sweet as a ripe plum until you brought her your enemy’s name and crossed her palm with silver or placed a gold coin in her long, wrinkled fingers. Then she was all business. She called up devils, threw out spells like lightning bolts, and never, ever failed to rain down destruction, heartache, and unbearable physical pain. If you could pay for it. Not being rivals, Queen Lula and Aunt Jessa drank sassafras tea together, relived moments from their shared past in the Wildacre quarters, and told outrageous stories that neither of them believed for a Geechee minute.

  * * *

  “I don’t have any appetite, Geoffrey.” Prudence ran her fork through the braised pork with apples and onions that she’d been unable to eat. The gravy had gone cold and greasy, as had the unidentifiable greens he’d told her were collards flavored with fatback. She didn’t want to insult the cook or Geoffrey, who seemed to relish what they’d been served, but she couldn’t help wondering who had approved tonight’s menu. Surely not the fastidious Abigail Dickson whose New York table was as elegant as any to be found in the city’s most exclusive French restaurants.

  “This was my idea, Prudence,” Geoffrey said. “I’m sorry it’s not to your taste, but I told the housekeeper that we’d eat whatever was being prepared for the staff. Under the circumstances. Once I knew Philip wouldn’t be joining us.”

  “It’s not the food,” Prudence lied. “I have a lump in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow.”

  “We’ve done all we can for tonight. You need sleep.”

  What I need is what I can’t have, she thought, remembering the scent of the spoon the housekeeper had used to dose Abigail Dickson with laudanum. Almost as an afterthought, she’d held the small brown bottle out to Prudence when they met in the hallway before Eleanor’s body was carried into the wine cellar. Prudence had shaken her head and turned away from what was healing to some, deadly for her. What she wouldn’t give now for just a few drops to help her sink into comforting oblivion.

  “I think I will go up to bed,” she said, getting to her feet before the sight and smell of what remained on her plate made her gag. “I don’t have the right words to thank you for staying with me this afternoon, Geoffrey. I’m not sure I could have done it without you.”

  He leaned over and did something utterly unexpected and quite extraordinary. He very softly kissed Prudence MacKenzie on her forehead, then brushed away an errant lock of her soft brown hair. “Good night, my dear.”

  * * *

  Giving in to a sudden impulse to visit Eleanor one last time before she started the long climb up to her bedroom, Prudence skirted the servants’ dining hall quickly and quietly. The babble of conversation was loud enough to drown out whatever noise she made, and no one looked into the corridor. The knob of the door to the cellar staircase turned easily in her hand. A moment later she was alone in a soft grayness lit by a lantern from the bottom of the stairwell. Someone had thought it indecent to leave their young mistress in the pitch-black darkness of night.

  Prudence crept carefully down the stairs, feeling for her footing at each step of the descent. Halfway down she paused to listen for a repetition of what she thought but couldn’t believe she had heard—a steady, rhythmic chanting that was only slightly louder than a whisper. Then came the odor of something sweet, pungent, and acrid burning in the heavy, dense air of belowground. Incense?

  She couldn’t turn around in search of Geoffrey. Whoever was down there with Eleanor might hear her and disappear. The door had a lock, but there’d been no key in it. She remembered checking for one when she’d reached out to turn the knob. She hesitated only long enough to start feeling dizzy from the smell of whatever burnt offering was being prepared below. Then anger and indignation steadied her, made up her mind.

  Throwing Pinkerton caution to the wind, Prudence stepped quickly down the final steps of the staircase, not bothering to muffle her approach, not caring if danger awaited her.

  The woman who had lit a candle at Eleanor’s head and another at her exposed feet glanced once in Prudence’s direction without interrupting the smooth cadence of what she was crooning. Prudence thought it sounded vaguely like French, but unlike any French she had ever studied. Just when she felt she was close to grasping the meaning of a word, it slipped away from her. She didn’t make a conscious decision to do nothing, but she stayed silent, mystified by what she was seeing, yet no longer afraid.

  The heavyset black woman wore a full skirted black cotton dress, her hair covered by an intricately wound, snowy white turban
. Thin wisps of gray smoke curled above the candle wicks, the source of the odd odor that wasn’t exactly incense but something very close to it. What looked like a vial of oil lay atop the sheet with which Geoffrey had covered Eleanor, and beside it a lock of black hair and an unlit white candle with what appeared to be a name scratched into the wax just below the wick.

  The woman stroked Eleanor’s cheeks with the loving tenderness of a mother, then shook a drop of oil from the glass vial onto a fingertip. As solemnly as a priest, she anointed the dead woman’s forehead, eyelids, and mouth. She braided the lock of black hair into Eleanor’s hair until Prudence couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Then she lit the white candle and let it burn until whatever had been written on it melted. Finally, she drew the sheet over Eleanor’s face, extinguished the other candles and turned to smile at Prudence.

  “She safe now,” the woman said. “Can’t nobody hurt this baby no more.”

  “Who are you?” Prudence murmured. “What are you doing here? Who let you in?”

  “They call me Aunt Jessa. I come to see everything done right by Young Miss here.” She laid a wrinkled, reassuring hand on Prudence’s arm.

  “She was my friend,” Prudence said, choking back a sob. “Neither of us had a sister.”

  “Miss Eleanor gone to a better place, chile. You gotta let her go.”

  Tears filled Prudence’s eyes but refused to spill down her cheeks; her voice shook with anger. “She was going to marry the man she loved, the man who loved her. They were planning a life together. Having children someday. How can being dead be better than being alive and happy?” She brushed Aunt Jessa’s hand from her arm.

  “She weren’t never going to be happy like that, Miss Prudence,” Aunt Jessa said. “No matter how hard she might have tried, they wouldn’t have let her be happy.”

  “What are you talking about? Who would have stood in the way of her happiness?” Later Prudence would wonder how the woman people called Aunt Jessa knew her name.