The Salem Witch Society Read online

  The man reached down and grabbed a long ax handle with the head missing and moved out of the doorway. Helen heard the running footsteps of her pursuers enter the alley. She crouched back, not daring to look. There were curses, then scuffling feet and a horrible sound that she knew was the wooden shaft meeting flesh and bone, followed by a terrible shriek. Helen leaned forward and peeked out of the doorway. The giant man was upon her again. He took her by the wrist and yanked her after him down the alley.

  “Hurry along now, miss” he said, panting heavily. He wiped his mouth with his free hand. Helen saw blood there.

  Glancing back over her shoulder, she could make out the two men lying in jumbled heaps. Helen hurried to keep pace with the man, her apparent rescuer. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him. As she stared sideways at the man’s sweating face and his bushy reddish mustache, Helen realized where she’d seen him before. He was one of her uncle’s former patients.

  27

  The day after their return from Scituate, Lean and Grey shared a carriage, answering Dr. Steig’s frantic summons to the Soldiers’ Home. Dr. Steig’s housekeeper led them to the study door. They could hear raised voices inside the room.

  “You’re just being stubborn, Helen.”

  “And you’re overreacting.”

  The housekeeper knocked, which produced silence, and then she opened the door. Lean saw that Dr. Steig was red in the face. He recognized Helen Prescott as the doctor’s niece who had reported the late-night intruder at the public library.

  “Gentlemen, please come in. I believe introductions may be in order.” The doctor tugged on the bottom of his waistcoat, tidying his appearance. “And then perhaps an explanation on my part. Deputy Lean, you remember my niece.”

  “Of course. I trust there has been no further trouble.”

  “No. Thank heavens, though we have been more careful in our duties at closing time.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” Lean said.

  Dr. Steig motioned toward Grey. “And this—”

  “Is Mr. Perceval Grey. I’m Helen Prescott.”

  “So nice to have a name to put with the face,” Grey said.

  Helen gave him a puzzled look.

  “From that morning when you followed me into the telegraph office and across half the city. I was initially flattered. Then suspicious. And now simply curious.”

  “You saw me then?”

  “Yes, though I must compliment you. It seems you must have followed me all the way from the library. I didn’t spot you until after I’d reached the telegraph office.”

  “I’m sorry. It was after the incident at the library. I was still very much distressed, and you showed such keen interest in the lecture series we have going. Asking about witchcraft and all, it just seemed too much a coincidence, being the same material that man had been after. So I followed you to see what I could learn.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  Helen paused and bit softly into her lower lip. Lean could tell she was considering how to answer honestly.

  “You placed a call to Harvard. Then you sent a gruesome-sounding telegraph to the Pinkertons in Boston before meeting Deputy Lean at the observatory. Which showed that you weren’t connected to the man who’d threatened me, though you were likely investigating him.”

  Grey smiled at her. “Well done, Mrs. Prescott. Though I am unhappy with myself for leaving so clear a trail of my own activities. I’d say your investigative talents are being wasted in your present profession.”

  Helen gave Dr. Steig a triumphant smile.

  “Unfortunately, Helen’s investigative exploits don’t end there,” said the doctor. “After you left for Scituate, I was informed by the staff that Helen had borrowed the book I’d promised her. Only I didn’t recall any such promise. Upon a close inspection of my shelves, the only volume missing was Kirkbride’s work, Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane. You can imagine how puzzled I was, being unaware that my niece was currently engaged in the construction of an outdated insane asylum.”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm, Uncle.”

  “Knowing Helen’s overly curious nature, I concluded it was not that book but access to my study that she was after. The only thing I was hiding in this room was my notes on the investigation. I assumed the worst, and it’s damn lucky for her that I did. Fearing she might do something foolish, I asked Tom Doran to keep an eye on her. And sure enough, she’s down to McGrath’s place the very next day. If Doran hadn’t been there … well, I daresay I’d be …” Dr. Steig’s voice had risen, and his attention focused on Helen as he finished: “I’d be making arrangements for the grieving, orphaned Delia to come and live here after her mother’s funeral!”

  “I’ve already apologized, Uncle. And promised not to do anything so careless again. I was wrong to go there … unaccompanied.”

  Dr. Steig tried to answer but couldn’t manage to get out a response to such an infuriating understatement.

  “But you have to admit, my visit wasn’t totally in vain.” Helen then recounted her discussion with Boxcar Annie: The new man in Maggie Keene’s life was named John; he was short and dark; he made references to wealth, power, and grand designs; he was secretive and showed hints of anger; and he knew something of medicine and supplied her with some.

  Lean felt his excitement grow as Helen provided detail after detail that matched their suspicions about the killer, and a new thought struck him. “Maggie Keene was having stomach problems. That could be a connection to Hannah Easler. Doctor, during your postmortem, could you tell if—”

  “No. Maggie Keene was not pregnant.”

  “But her pains did come on about the same time as this John appeared?” Grey asked.

  Helen thought for a moment. “Yes, both occurred in the week or so before her death.”

  “This shows an even deeper level of preparation and cunning than we’d previously thought. He dosed her with something, and the resulting stomach pains provided an easy excuse to have her well drugged on the night of the murder. I daresay my estimation of this man’s fiendishness continues to grow,” Grey declared.

  Lean could see that Helen had something else to say, though she didn’t look overly excited about it. “Is there something more?”

  After some hesitation, and several sideways efforts at easing into the matter, Helen just plunged in and described what Boxcar Annie had told her about Maggie Keene’s physical relations with the man. She was red-faced by the time she ended and could not look Dr. Steig in the eye as she added, “Sorry, Uncle Virgil.”

  “I’m a doctor, dear. You haven’t hurt my ears any. I only regret that you were the one who had to hear all that business. It does confirm our impressions from the postmortem. He was fascinated with this excrescence of hers in life as well as at her death.”

  “Excrescence?” repeated Lean.

  “Her witch’s tit,” Grey said, “as you so graciously put it.”

  “I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the Salem trials for our lecture series,” Helen said, “and they actually would conduct searches of the accused witches’ bodies. Looking for these. Could be anything really. Warts, moles, any sort of additional bit of flesh or growth that was deemed unnatural. Thought to be the devil’s mark. Used as actual nipples by these witches to suckle their demonic familiars.”

  “What do you mean by ‘familiars’?” Lean asked.

  “Demonic spirits that drew nourishment from the witch. The familiar was believed to be a pet in addition to serving as some kind of bond between the witch and the devil. Could take any form; yellow birds were a common one. Cats, dogs, and toads as well.”

  “It makes no sense,” Lean said. “Is that why our man singled her out, because he thought that bump made her a witch? Then why on earth would he suckle at this thing himself?”

  “It’s yet another riddle. Our man is becoming not only more dangerous but an ever more challenging mystery to unravel.” Grey turned to stare out the window. “Where
are you leading us, John?”

  “John,” Lean repeated, then drew a paper from his pocket and set it on the table. “If he stuck with that name when he was in Scituate, that would make him the John Proctor from our list of Gannett House guests.”

  Dr. Steig went to his desk and rummaged through his notes. “No John Proctor among the recent boarders on the east slope of Munjoy Hill.”

  “Boxcar Annie mentioned that John’s room was on St. Lawrence Street,” Helen said.

  The doctor flipped through his notes again. “Well, look here, one of the three names on our list of short, dark-haired boarders who’ve gone missing: John Willard at the house of Mrs. Kittredge on St. Lawrence.” Dr. Steig set his notebook down beside Lean’s page.

  Helen came close and stared at the names. “What a strange coincidence.”

  “What do you mean?” Lean asked.

  “The names he chose,” Helen replied. “John Proctor and John Willard were two of the five men hanged as Salem witches.”

  28

  “It’s highly unusual, Mr. Grey.” The owner of Harding’s Oyster House and Lunch Room had come straight from the steam-filled kitchen and was still dabbing at his sweaty forehead. “I do have my other customers to consider.” He waved his arms, indicating the wide expanse of the bustling men’s dining room behind him. The man’s gestures were so emphatic that Lean wouldn’t have been surprised to see two hansom cabs pull up in front of the restaurant’s tall street-side windows.

  “Of course, Henry,” said Grey. “I wouldn’t have asked, except the young lady and her uncle, Dr. Steig, were assisting me on a delicate matter. Now I’ve kept them from their supper.”

  Henry smiled as if to say, So unfortunate, but there’s really nothing I can do. His hand was lifted at his side, the fingers pointing up the stairway, mimicking the carved wooden sign outside with its oversize gloved hand gesturing up to the second-floor dining room for ladies.

  “I feel obliged to remedy the situation but can’t bring myself to take them to one of the lesser oyster rooms.” Grey rubbed his chin, his eyes lifted toward the ceiling. “Though I’ve heard good things about Johnson’s new place on Exchange.”

  A look of disgust passed over Henry’s face. Miniature shock waves rippled outward from the epicenter of his wrinkled nose, across the expanse of cheeks, before subsiding in the bright pink of his braised jowls. Grey reached out to brace the man, and Lean saw a bill disappear into the proprietor’s meaty grip. Henry raised a finger, an exclamation point punctuating the revelation that had just occurred to him. He led them through the dining room, along a snaking path through the canyon of stony stares from the curious, dismissive, or even hostile crowd of napkin-necked bankers and insurance men. Lean guessed that some of the disapproving looks were aimed at the tawny skin of Grey rather than Helen’s presence in the men’s dining room.

  They were deposited in a semiprivate booth in a back corner, facing away from the main dining room. Grey ordered for the table, then turned to Helen. “Lost in the excitement of today’s discoveries, we must remember our gratitude to Tom Doran for our being able to meet here, all in good health.”

  Helen smiled. “I tremble to think what might have happened. I must have thanked him a dozen times, but it seems so inadequate. There must be something more we can do for him, Uncle.”

  Dr. Steig shook his head. “Lord knows I’ve offered tokens of gratitude in the past, for lesser favors, of course. But he’ll have none of it. Still thinks of himself as being indebted.”

  “What is the story with our Irish giant, Doctor?” Grey asked. “You made reference to some history, back at Maggie Keene’s funeral.”

  Dr. Steig took a drink and considered the question. “Tom saw a lot of fire in the war—Fifth Maine Infantry. He wasn’t quite the same afterward. Some men see so much killing, it’s like a part of them dies in battle too. Took to drinking and brawling. He spent some time with me at the Soldiers’ Home, but I couldn’t help him.” The doctor paused to light a cigarette.

  “It wasn’t until he met a young woman named Mary Mitchell that he pulled himself together. She was able to calm him, set his soul at ease. They were married and had a little girl. But then Mary lost a second child. She caught a fever and died. Tom started drinking again and didn’t stop until the police came for him. It took six men to bring him down. He broke one man’s jaw. The judge would have put him away for a good spell if I hadn’t testified to Tom’s army service, Mary’s death, and promised to keep him confined and get him sober.”

  “What about the child?” asked Helen.

  “That’s the indebted bit,” answered Dr. Steig. “Tom couldn’t have cared less about me getting him out of jail sooner or sobering him up. But I managed to keep the girl out of the orphanage. Got her put directly with a nice, decent couple.”

  “Does he see her much?” Helen asked.

  “Never. Tom was unpredictable, given to rages. The new family worried what he might do, so their identity was concealed as part of the bargain, and Tom agreed to it.”

  “He never asks about her?” Lean said.

  Dr. Steig shook his head. “He just takes it on faith that she’s been with a good family and God’s watched over her. That’s what he says, anyway. Though I’ve seen him stop in a crowd and stare at a girl who’s about the age she would be now, one who maybe reminds him of his poor Mary.”

  “‘Such is the cross I wear upon my breast,’” Lean recited, “‘These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes / And seasons, changeless since the day she died.’”

  There was a short silence afterward that was cut mercifully short by several waiters, heavily burdened with oysters both fried and escalloped, turtle soup, duck and oyster croquettes, Saratoga fried potatoes, and beets stewed with onions. An hour later and the table was littered with plates, bowls, platters, and tureens, looking like a pile of bones discarded outside the den of some primitive scavenger. Lean’s head was spinning trying to make sense of the web of facts, theories, and opinions that the group had chewed over during the course of their extensive lunch.

  The killer was obsessed with Salem. Consumed with what Dr. Steig had labeled as a fixed idea about witches. Was he killing these women as witches, or just as sinners? And why these particular women? Traveling hundreds of miles to different states seemed random and incongruous for one whose actions at the Portland Company were so elaborately planned. Maggie Keene died inside a rail-car shop. And Hannah was killed near train tracks. Both were killed on bare ground. But there was no other connection between the victims: different backgrounds, both mutilated but in different ways; there had been prior intimate contact with Maggie but not with Hannah. There were too many missing details about the Scituate woman to divine any motive. But his treatment of Maggie Keene’s body gave a possible hint: The pitchfork and cross cut into her chest were meant for her as an actual witch.

  “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ Exodus 22:18,” Lean said as he broke the surface, emerging from the depths of his contemplation to rejoin those at the table. When he saw all three pairs of eyes staring at him, he added, “I think he’s conducting an actual witch-hunt.”

  “A witch-hunt?” Dr. Steig set his coffee cup down and dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “He’s two hundred years late. Real-live witches, today, in our city? Why, it’s preposterous.”

  Lean gave him a questioning look. “No doubt it all sounds utterly mad. But is it any less mad to learn that someone is assuming the name of Salem witches, traveling hundreds of miles, singling out women for no reason at all, and actually murdering them as witches? Just like in the Salem trials.”

  “Mrs. Prescott,” Grey said, “you are our resident expert on the Salem witch trials. Please confirm for the deputy that those Salem victims, like ours, were not in fact real witches.”

  “Of course not. At least not in the common understanding of witchcraft—standing around the kettle casting spells and all that. That’s not to say that people back then weren
’t engaged in certain activities that were considered witchcraft at the time. Things that today we view as harmless superstitions, charms and such.”

  “That’s more of what I was getting at,” Lean said. “I’m not suggesting Maggie Keene spent her nights flying about on a broomstick.”

  “We know for a fact that is not how she spent her nights,” Grey said.

  “But she may have been involved in something, some occult group or activity that could have gotten her named as a witch and killed for it. After all, those Salem witches didn’t need to be casting real black-magic spells, yet how many of them died?” He turned to Helen and shrugged, showing that his question was more than rhetorical.

  “Nineteen hanged, one pressed to death, and some others died in jail during the months of waiting for trials,” she said.

  “See?” Lean wagged a finger. “Nearly two dozen dead all the same, because they were thought to be witches. And now our man apparently believes the same of these women. Why?”

  Grey pondered this for a moment, while his right eyebrow arched upward, like the hammer of a rifle being drawn back. “What do you think, Mrs. Prescott? Is it plausible that Maggie Keene could have been involved in something perceived as the practice of witchcraft?”

  “I’m certainly not an expert on modern witchcraft,” Helen protested, “although while gathering materials for our Salem lectures I did speak with some of the women around town who work as spiritualist mediums. So yes, I would have to say that there are people, even today, who are actively interested in ideas such as black magic.”

  PART II

  JULY 4, 1892

  So it is with all human actions; not one of them happens by pure chance unconnected with other happenings.… They are the fruits which must of necessity develop under the influence of nature and individual culture, fruits whose formation is explained by the organism producing them.… We do not look to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles.