CHAPTER NINE

It took two men to lift the frozen body and carry it across the winter-hardened earth and hoist it into the mud-splattered wagon. They had stood self-consciously around the dead girl for a few minutes, charged with another uncomfortable duty. “Take note of everything,” the sheriff demanded. “For the inquest.”

The woman’s cloak was properly fastened, but her shoes, one soiled with mud, had been neatly placed eighteen inches to the right of her stockinged feet. The ribbons of her bonnet were caught under the cord hung tight around her neck. Durfee—with a nod from Hector Borden, the sheriff—then cut the cord and lowered the body to the ground.

Borden directed the loading with as much cool precision as possible. There were four of them, and they worked gently, in a state of embarrassment at their own vaporous grief. A girl, not much more. The morning light made them want to avert their faces; to think of their children, still asleep, left them teetering on the edge of the fear that all parents share.

The reins snapped sharply; the cart lurched forward.

At the farmhouse, three women dressed in fresh white aprons stood in the doorway, watching the wagon bounce over the rocky ground toward them. Nobody spoke much. Not at first.

“Suicide,” the sheriff said to one of the women, who happened to be his wife. “Probably destitute.”

Clara Borden stared at the rope still tight around the girl’s neck. “She hung herself?” she asked.

“I would think so,” he said.

“Who is she?”

“Don’t know, but she’s dressed like a mill girl. We’re checking.”

His wife pointed toward a man down on knobby knees praying in the vegetable garden, a frown spreading across her well-worn face. “He’s doing a good job of flattening my pumpkin vines,” she said.

“Don’t mind him, Clara. He’s a preacher, name of Wilbur Ralston. Started praying as soon as we brought her in. These Methodists, I don’t know what to make of the stagy ways of some of them.”

“How did he hear so fast?”

“Everyone in town knows by now. Says maybe she was a member of his church.”

“Well, if she was, it didn’t do her much good, did it,” Clara said. She turned and walked into the kitchen, the other two women following dutifully. They had a job to do.

The body was laid out on the bright red-and-white oilcloth covering the kitchen table, which only recently—and hastily—had been cleared of hot oatmeal and pitchers of cream. Clara stared at the girl before them, noting the calluses on her fingers. A mill girl, of course. With a pretty, finely drawn face. The clarity of her young features framed by strands of frost-dampened hair was a bit unnerving; they seemed to still hold the fleeting ghost of animation. She looked like a girl used to smiling and laughing.

“Well, let’s get to work,” Clara said.

None of them had done this washing before. Each worked gently, as if not wanting to hurt the girl, massaging warm water into the folds of her small, young breasts and between her legs. They stared at her swollen eyes, her belly, her arms; mostly at her neck, darkened with bruises. They could see what appeared to be the indentation of fingers and thumbs. Silently, each put her own hand over the indentations; they looked at one another, lips tight. Finally, only Clara could say it out loud. “Suicide?” she said in a troubled tone.

“Maybe murder?” said another.

“Maybe.”

“There are no murders here,” protested Mariba Ford, the third woman. “We’re a peaceable lot.”

“Always a first time.”

They continued their work, plucking out twigs from the dead girl’s hair, brushing away dirt from her arms and legs and cleaning blood from under her fingernails. They stared at the results of their work. A clean, naked girl.

“I’ll get my good nightgown, it’s white,” said Mariba.

“Hurry,” said Clara. She pulled a worn comforter over the body, up to the girl’s neck. “There will be people here very soon. Poor thing, she deserves some shielding from view.”

Her husband cleared his throat from behind her. “The doctor and the coroner are here,” he said. “Dr. Stanhope, from Lowell. Doing his rounds up here; we got him as he was leaving.”

“No good he can do,” his wife responded.

“We need confirmation of death.”

Clara looked at the tall older man standing, hat in one hand, a cane in the other, next to her husband. She had little confidence in his skills, but she had little confidence in any medical skills. At least he didn’t pretend to be important. She stepped aside.

Benjamin Stanhope looked down at the girl, the color draining slowly from his face. Silently he handed his cane to Hector Borden. With a slight tremor in his hands, he turned her head. The rope around her neck was imbedded a good half-inch into her flesh. He did not pull down the comforter; instead, he stepped back.

“You know her?”

He nodded.

“A mill girl?”

He nodded again. “Lovey Cornell, a patient of mine,” he said heavily.

“What do you know about her?” John Durfee pressed. “Mr. Hicks here”—he nodded at an elderly man squinting over glasses—“is the coroner. Needs a little observational help, I feel free to say.”

“She was with child,” the doctor managed. His face was stiff as he lifted his hat to his head and turned away. “I’ll notify the Fiske family.”

Gasps from the women. “Poor thing,” Mariba finally managed.

“Pregnant?” The clergyman from the garden had followed the coroner inside. He looked horrified. “She’s not one of ours, then.”

“What do you mean?” snapped Clara.

“We take no one of low virtue.”

“You and your kind. Just leave my house,” Clara said.

Elihu Hicks, the elderly coroner, stepped forward next, peering shortsightedly at the body; his examination was brief. He studied the blackened bruises on Lovey’s arms and legs. He examined her swollen lower lip where she had bit down, probably as the rope went taut. He probed her belly. An autopsy would be performed before burial to confirm her pregnancy, but all seemed in order. In silence, he scribbled out his verdict in a worn black leather notebook, nodded, and walked out.

That evening, Benjamin Stanhope stepped slowly up onto the porch of Boott Boardinghouse 52. He took his hat off, clutching it tightly, and knocked on the door.

Alice had seen him through the window, noticed the slump of his shoulders and the way he clawed at his hat, and knew. Right then, as she took in a deep breath, Alice inhaled for the first time the smell of her own grief. It would be the moment she would remember most vividly: the darkened sky, the crisp air, the sharp corners of the chipped glass doorknob cutting into her hand, the sound of Benjamin Stanhope’s boots shuffling reluctantly up the steps. A page of Mary-o’s songbook had come loose and been blown into a corner of the porch by an errant wind.

She opened the door.

“I bring sad news,” he began. His words had been carefully rehearsed, but it didn’t matter. Alice slumped against the door, banging the wood with her fists as he delivered the news.

She didn’t want to believe it. No, not Lovey.

One by one, tiptoeing silently, arms crossed tightly in front of their chests, the girls in the boardinghouse gathered in the parlor. Pressing themselves almost self-protectively to the walls, they leaned against one another. No whisperings or questions. The sight of the company doctor in their midst told them all they needed to know. The warnings and scoldings of disapproving relatives when they came here, the brazen daring of pulling on aprons and walking into a factory for the first time, excited and free, eager to pocket pay and stay respectable—all of it was jumbled together in this room as they waited for the doctor to confirm their fears.

Benjamin Stanhope recited the facts. Alice rocked back and forth in one of the chairs, pulling her knees to her chest as she listened, holding them tight.

“Are you saying this was suicide?” Mary-o asked, tears trickling down her cheeks.

“That’s what the coroner says,” Stanhope replied.

“No,” Alice said forcefully. “Lovey would never commit suicide, never.”

“There was a particular circumstance,” he began, and then stopped.

No one spoke. But instant understanding swept the room, the kind that comes without language, that sends a fist into the gut.

“Dear Lord, the same old story,” Mrs. Holloway said. Her voice held a deep, sad weariness. She stood in the doorway, still in her dinner apron, arms folded in front of her.

Stanhope started to speak, then paused, obviously hoping Mrs. Holloway would save him the trouble. She did.

“The girl was pregnant, of course,” she said.

There were moans around the room.

“You knew?” asked Stanhope.

“No. But why else? I’ve seen it many times before, poor girl.”

Benjamin Stanhope cleared his throat, vaguely unsettled now at losing the center of attention. “That is correct,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“She came to see me. I asked her symptoms and confirmed it for her.”

“Oh, God, we would have helped her.” It was Jane, pious, disapproving Jane, wringing her hands. “We would have done something.”

The room went silent as they thought of what that might be, of what it could not be, of their own helplessness. “She couldn’t tell anybody, I know how it works,” Delia said. “One whisper, and you lose your job. I know.”

“No,” Alice said. It was as if she hadn’t heard any of them. “She didn’t kill herself. It didn’t happen that way.”

Benjamin Stanhope was now in a hurry to leave. He put his hat on his head and stood, reaching for his cane, edging toward the door. “My condolences to her family,” he muttered.

“There is none that we know of,” Alice said.

The girls stared at one another in confusion, realizing how little they knew about Lovey.

“She has at least a mother, I think in Fall River,” Alice went on. “They were not on good terms.”

“Where will she be buried?” Tilda, always the practical one, asked.

“On the farm where she was found. After the inquest.”

“No church service?”

Again, Stanhope cleared his throat. “They called in a preacher who said first she might be a member of his church, but when he heard she was pregnant, he refused to do a service.”

“Odious worm,” spat out Mrs. Holloway.

“They’re not going to dig a hole and throw her in. That’s not what’s going to happen, I won’t let it.” Even Mrs. Holloway paused at the ferocity of Alice’s declaration.

“Doctor, what else can you tell us?” Mary-o asked.

Benjamin Stanhope tugged at his collar, looking desperately uncomfortable. He shoved one hand into his pocket and pulled out a key. “This was in her pocket,” he said.

“For her storage case, I suspect,” said Mrs. Holloway, stepping forward and taking the key.

“She will not be tossed in a hole,” Alice repeated. Her resolve steadied her. She searched Stanhope’s face, trying to find an entry point; a weak spot. Something more, something that would make all this untrue.

“I must go,” he said. “Please do brace yourselves for a deluge of reporters and the like. People are upset. I understand one of the Fiske sons is coming to offer his family’s condolences. You certainly have mine.” He turned and pulled open the front door and exited, head hunched forward, heavily burdened by the sadness and pain he had introduced into the Boott Boardinghouse, number 52.

After a bleak, barely touched dinner, Lovey’s roommates crowded together around Lovey’s bed. Mrs. Holloway got down on her hands and knees and pulled out a battered trunk, its leather straps worn thin; mute acknowledgment of the gypsy nature of Lovey’s life.

Alice knelt down next to her, inserted the key, and paused before turning it. The act felt intrusive, almost a violation. None of them had a right to paw through Lovey’s possessions. Alice wanted no such task, but she knew already, without the words fully formed, that Lovey’s privacy no longer existed. It would be as piteously exposed as her body must have been on the sheriff’s kitchen table. She turned the key, acknowledging also that she shared with the other girls something else: a reluctance to know.

The lid was heavy, the hinges rusty, protesting as Alice pushed it open. She peered inside.

There was very little there. A few trinkets, including a brooch with glittering green and yellow stones that Lovey had bought on their last trip into the Lowell store. “Who needs diamonds?” She had laughed, pinning it to her shirtwaist. “They’re so ostentatious. Isn’t that a wonderful word? I read it somewhere and just found out what it means.”

A Bible was tucked into a corner, the one from which Lovey had torn out pages, shocking more than a few of the girls in the mill. Next to it were the carefully stacked sheets of poetry that had adorned her loom. What else? A doll she had bought and tucked away as a surprise for Ellie’s birthday. Two shirtwaists. A bright purple off-the-shoulder dress with flared short sleeves that had horrified Mrs. Holloway when Lovey wore it to church. Not much more. There were no explanations here.

“What about that?” Mary-o said, pointing to a small bundle of tied papers tucked into a corner of the trunk. Alice reached down and pulled out the package, untying the string that held it together. In her hands were three pieces of paper, each containing a scrawled note—one on plain white paper and two more, written on yellow and on pink stationery. She peered into the trunk, seeing what the papers had hidden: a glass vial filled with liquid and wrapped in newsprint.

Alice opened one note and read it out loud. It was dated December 8.

I will be here on the 20th if pleasant at the place named at 6 o’clock. If not pleasant the next Monday eve. Say nothing.

“It’s unsigned,” Alice said. The others stared at her in silence as she opened the pink one, again a note about a planned meeting. And finally the yellow one:

No word to anyone. Bring the letters I sent to our meeting.

“It isn’t Lovey’s handwriting,” Alice said, showing the notes to the others. “Clearly she was meeting someone.”

Mrs. Holloway nodded. “There’s no other possible explanation,” she said.

Delia held up the glass vial, squinting at it. “It has a yellowish fluid in it,” she said. “Medicine, perhaps?” They looked at each other with uncertainty.

“We’ll get these to the sheriff in the morning,” Mrs. Holloway said.

As Alice prepared to close the trunk lid, she spied a scrap of paper caught under a bottom slat. A wrinkled piece, torn raggedly from a notebook. The carelessly scribbled words were instantly recognizable. No question, this was Lovey’s handwriting. For a strange second, she could almost see Lovey chewing on the end of her pencil as she wrote, the way she did when she copied poems or worked on her manifesto. She could see the pencil scrawling out her message, even feel the haste with which Lovey must have written it. She reached down and picked up the piece of paper, which lay crumpled and gray in the palm of her hand, and read it aloud.

If I should be missing enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol. He will know where I am.

Dec. 20th. SM Cornell

A memory flashed: the piece of paper Lovey had pulled from her pocket when she stood by Alice’s Boston-bound carriage.

“Who is the Reverend Avery?” Alice asked out loud.

The girls looked at one another, puzzled. Except for Mary-o, who turned pale and covered her face.

“Do you know who he is?” Alice asked.

Silence first. When she spoke, Mary-o’s voice was toneless, almost resigned. “Yes,” she said. Her eyes were watering. She stared at Alice across the sparsely filled, almost-forlorn trunk yawning open between them. There wasn’t a sound in the room. It was so still, Alice could hear the clattering of dinner dishes and pots being put away in the kitchen.

“Tell me.”

Mary-o’s chin was trembling. “I can’t tell you, I have to show you.”

“Well, then, show me.”

“You have to come somewhere with me. Tonight.”

Alice said nothing, just walked to the hook where her coat hung and took it down, pulling it on and buttoning up. “I’m ready,” she said.

They trudged for at least half an hour on a rock-littered path, with Mary-o leading and saying very little. Alice followed, pushing away branches that hung over the path, wary after being slapped in the face by one of them. Their shared sadness clung to every step. Finally Alice spied a clearing ahead, a broad circular space surrounded by tall trees as straight and forbidding as sentinels. The air was sharp with the scent of smoking campfires.

They emerged from the trees and stood on a small embankment that gave Alice a full view of the clearing. There was activity everywhere, almost as if they had stumbled on some kind of village. Dozens of small shabby tents dotted the landscape, with women standing over washtubs in front of them, scrubbing clothes and shouting to small children. In the center of the clearing was a raised platform built of rough wood painted crudely in white. A stream of men and women was emerging from the tents and making its way toward the platform, some singing, some appearing to pray.

“This is the revivalist campground,” Alice said. It wasn’t a question.

Mary-o nodded. “Don’t move too much,” she cautioned. “We don’t want to be noticed.”

Alice caught sight of a man who was striding toward a raised platform, his back to them. He was tall and walked with the graceful, confident fluidity of a person who expects to be known and respected. His frame was broad and powerful as he moved with ease past the tents, patting a child’s head here, conversing with the women.

Curious, Alice turned to Mary-o to ask who he was. But her friend was focused on what was happening closer to the platform—which was clearly a stage. Alice could hear music, an instrument she could not place, until she realized it was a merging of voices, with no instrument at all. People gathering at the stage were swaying and chanting, arms overhead, at first gently, then louder and louder.

“What are they doing?” she asked Mary-o. They did not move from the edge of the clearing.

“Praying to be saved,” Mary-o said sadly. “I was with them before. But I felt foolish when I didn’t have any more money to give them. They didn’t seem to care about my salvation after that.”

“What have you brought me here to see?”

“Look,” Mary-o whispered urgently, grabbing her arm. “There he is.”

The man she had seen—clad now in a long white robe—had mounted the podium, moving gracefully, slowly raising his arms toward the sky. “Welcome, brothers and sisters,” he said in a rich, warm voice that carried through the clearing. “Come all ye sinful and sorrowful, come to Jesus.”

A wave of yearning sound rose from the crowd, a sound as full as that of a roaring wind. “Glory, glory!” shouted a husky man with scars on his face. His words were borne into the air, mixing, echoing with the other voices, producing a haunting refrain the likes of which Alice had never heard.

“Know this,” the man in white said. “God accepts all sinners, if your penitence is real. There will be no hell, no ocean of liquid burning brimstone, for those who confess and pray.” Murmurs through the crowd. “Come, prostrate yourselves before God,” he coaxed, beckoning. “Come, come. Don’t hold back.”

A woman walked forward, head bowed, arms folded across her chest. She threw herself to the ground; a man followed suit. Then another.

The preacher looked down at their prone figures. “God welcomes you,” he thundered. “Tonight brings you salvation.” He turned to the larger crowd and began clapping his hands. “Shall we salute these reformed sinners?” he cried. With a sharp pivot, he signaled to a band of assistants poised below the stage. They ran forward, each one holding a large bucket. With practiced speed, they began wending their way through the singing crowd.

Through it all, the soothing drumbeat of the preacher’s voice never stopped. “Support us, my friends, and know this—we are your pathway to God. Join us, and we will stand with each other through eternity.”

“Yes, yes!” came cries from the crowd as more people surged forward, tossing money now into the buckets. The clapping began again. With tears streaming down their faces, men and women continued to prostrate themselves before the stage. The man in white stepped down to walk in their midst, speaking all the while, soothing them with the rhythm of his deep and powerful voice.

“Do you see, do you understand?” Mary-o murmured. Her eyes were shining with tears, and she seemed to be forcing herself not to step forward.

“Lovey wasn’t part of this,” Alice said. Her own heart was pumping faster, caught in the manipulative emotion of the scene. That frightened her.

“I thought I could convert her at first. But she saw things so clearly. She didn’t mock and poke fun; she didn’t do that to me. But she stood here and watched it all. I remember, she said, ‘Who counts the money?’ And I found myself watching through her eyes.”

Riveted, Alice couldn’t look away.

“He’s coming this way.” Mary-o stepped back. “Don’t let him see you.”

Too late. The man in the white robe was moving through the crowd with contained grace, in no hurry, offering blessings as he went. He stopped suddenly and looked up, directly at them. As if he had known they were there all along. He stared at them through round, green-tinted glasses that magnified the size of his eyes. His lips—full and soft—curved into something of a smile, except it wasn’t quite a smile.

Alice found herself unable to move, held by the magnetic pull of his still, ordered face. She felt paralyzed for a moment. She thought of Lovey.

“Who is he?”

“The Reverend Ephraim Kingsbury Avery.” Mary-o said his name slowly, almost fearfully, drawing out each vowel. “And once I knelt before him, too. Once I felt transported.”

“Did you have reason to suspect—”

“She didn’t treat him with reverence, not like the rest of us. She didn’t pray. She liked the fact that he was smart. He noticed her.”

“Then what—”

“Remember that time she and I first came in late?”

Alice nodded, recalling the flushed, excited look on Lovey’s face when the two of them finally came home that night.

“I had gone to a final prayer session. Lovey said something about finding God in her own way. Jokingly—you know how she is.” Mary-o’s voice was shaky. “We were supposed to meet here, on this hill; she was so bold, she wanted to talk to him, face-to-face. To tease, to challenge? I never knew with Lovey. So I waited. It was a long time before she joined me. And she looked—you know, that reckless spark she would get in her eye; something had happened. I didn’t know what to think.”

Alice’s eyes were still locked on the preacher named Avery. She couldn’t let go. Then with one sudden, whipsaw movement that set his white robe swirling, he turned and strode away. Not with authority, as before. No, he looked like a man ready to run. Or perhaps that was wishful thinking.

It was close to midnight when she and Mary-o returned to the boardinghouse. Mrs. Holloway was waiting in silence for them; no reprimands. Mary-o said nothing, just headed into the dormitory. But Alice did not take off her coat, asking Mrs. Holloway for Lovey’s note.

“I have more questions for the doctor,” she said. “And they can’t wait.”

“No, it’s too late to go out again.”

“It’s important. I owe it to Lovey.”

A moment of hesitation before Mrs. Holloway sighed and turned away. “I’ll leave the latch off,” she said. “Please be careful.”

Alice half ran, half walked into town, a thin layer of ice crackling under her feet. When she reached Stanhope’s office, she pounded hard on the door. There was no answer. She leaned down, picked up chunks of ice, and threw them at the second-floor windows. He was there; she knew he was.

He opened the door, dry metal hinges complaining shrilly.

“My goodness, do you know the hour?” he said, blinking sleepily.

“I’m sorry, but I must talk to you.”

“Come in, Miss—”

“Barrow.”

“Yes, Miss Barrow?”

“I’ve found a note Lovey wrote.” She thrust it into his palms. “And three others in another hand, unsigned.”

He read, then stared at the floor. He locked his hands, flexing the fingers up and down, his face weary with more than age. In the silence, Alice could hear an unseen wall clock ticking steadily.

“When she came to see me, Miss Cornell hoped what she suspected was untrue. But it was my unhappy duty to tell her she was wrong. I expected weeping and wailing, but she stayed under control. She even laughed, made a small joke. Strange.”

Not strange; that was Lovey. Give her hard news, and she would find a way to toss her head, to mock, to challenge. Yet how terrible it must have been for her to sit here and have her fears confirmed.

“I tried to counsel her,” Stanhope continued. “I told her the man who did this to her must be held accountable. That she needed to confront him and demand either marriage or money. She said that avenue was closed. Quite matter-of-factly.” He looked at Alice, as if waiting for a reaction. She said nothing.

“Well, then I urged her to demand money or threaten to expose him. God help me, I did that.” He paused, mopping his brow with a sturdy white handkerchief.

So all of this had burdened Lovey, all held inside, in the darkest places where secrets grow. Each secret demands more: another avoidance, another lie. The fact that she knew quite precisely how this worked was unnerving.

“Did she tell you who he was?”

“She said he was a prominent figure in the community.”

“Nothing more?”

“No.”

The face of that strangely mesmerizing man at the campground hovered in her memory. “Did she say he knew she was with child?”

Stanhope nodded. “He promised to help her. She was hoping he would give her money to go away and have the baby. She seemed determined to keep the child if she could.”

Alice flashed back to Lovey’s announcement that she was going to “learn about love.” Was this what she had meant? “But he didn’t.”

“No, no. Instead he gave her a medicine to induce miscarriage. She was a clever woman, and she brought it to me first, to ask what it was. When I saw what he gave her, I was absolutely appalled.” He stopped, took off his glasses, and pulled the same white handkerchief from his pocket, proceeding to scrub the spectacles vigorously.

“What was it?”

“I must be careful here, I’m not accusing anybody—”

He made her impatient. “Just tell me, please.”

“It was oil of tansy—a poison. In large doses, it dissolves the intestines. He urged her to take thirty drops.” He shook his head back and forth.

“That’s too much?”

“Four drops is considered a large dose. If she had taken it, her internal organs would rot. It would have killed both her and the baby.”

Alice drew her breath in sharply. “Was it in a small glass vial? A yellowish substance?”

“Yes,” he said. “You mean she kept it?”

“It was in her trunk with letters that were obviously from him. That man wanted to kill her.…” Now, certain as she was, she could hardly swallow.

Stanhope raised his hand in a flutterly, feathery gesture of caution. “He may have said three drops, of course.”

“Yes, well, the words do sound alike,” she said evenly, holding back her impatience. She briefly closed her eyes, imagining how such news would affect Lovey. Had she truly expected help from that false man of God?

“How did she react?”

“She just sat there, in the chair you are in now, stunned, I think. I waited for her to understand the obvious. But then she laughed.” He shook his head in disbelief. “She actually laughed. She said, ‘Well, that makes me something of a fool, I suppose.’ I know, that sounds strange.”

“Not to me. I knew her. What else did she say?”

“She said he wasn’t going to get away with it. She would expose him if he didn’t help her.”

They both fell silent.

“Why didn’t you tell us all this at the house?” Alice finally said.

Stanhope leaned forward slightly, spreading his large, tapered hands wide, planting one on each thigh. The clock chimed, a thin, brittle sound.

“Miss…Barrow…more important, why didn’t I stop her? I fear I sent her to her death.” He paused, slowly straightening his glasses, which had slipped down over his narrow, almost spindly nose. “I know you all see me as someone afraid of my own shadow. But I thought I was, at least, capable of taking care of my patients.”

She felt a need to offer something, but it could only be the half-truth that consoles or comforts and comes with a price. “You were trying to help,” she said.

He didn’t seem to hear her words.

“And I am left to wonder, what kind of doctor am I?” he said, staring now without focus.

She stood slowly. “I’m giving all the notes and the vial to the sheriff first thing in the morning,” she said. Surely there was enough evidence to charge Avery with murder. “I wish you had told all this to the coroner, but now you must come forward.”

Stanhope seemed to shrink in size as he looked away. “I can’t be sure of what she said; I may be wrong.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “You told me she said it was someone important in the community. Well, I think it was a revivalist preacher named Ephraim Avery. He had the opportunity and the motive.”

“The inquest will uphold the coroner. And then who am I, possibly implicating an innocent man?”

He was dodging the obvious truth of his own words. “Are you afraid of something?” she asked, bewildered.

He cleared his throat and refused to look directly at her. Instead of answering, he said, “It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“If this man Avery had anything to do with this, I’m sure he’s fled already.”

“And you would give up?” she sputtered.

“It’s too late, I said. As the Bible says, ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’”

“Then perhaps someone should pursueth.”

He smiled faintly and stood. “I wish I could help you, Miss Barrow. It is past midnight, and I have a full day tomorrow. I fear I have babbled on too much, and I regret that. Maybe your evidence will be useful to the authorities; I hope so.”

“I’m giving the note to the sheriff in the morning. You could go with me and tell your story.”

He shook his head vigorously. “I have a very busy day,” he repeated.

“Dr. Stanhope, let me know when you decide to stand up for what you believe is true,” she managed to say.

He replied with an unexpectedly strong voice. “Miss Barrow, you judge me quickly. Perhaps you at times feel uncertainty, but I will tell you only this—I am swallowed by it.”

“Perhaps you mean paralyzed by fear,” she said stiffly, and then turned to go.

It was mid-afternoon the next day when Hiram Fiske deposited his valise on the floor of the entrance hall of the family’s rooms at the Lowell Inn, his joints stiffer than usual from the hurried journey up from Boston. News of the mill girl’s death had moved through town after town with incredible speed, and Lowell was in turmoil. You could feel it pulsating out from the clusters of agitated people talking at street corners. One of the mill girls had brought a note to the sheriff she found in the dead woman’s trunk that implicated some itinerant preacher. So now the coroner was vacillating over his verdict of suicide. The old coot had better hurry and make up his mind, or the preacher would vanish, if he hadn’t already.

Hiram sat down abruptly, unbuttoning his jacket while he talked about all this with Samuel, who had followed him into the room.

“We’re not going to let this damage us,” Hiram said. “If it’s suicide, we’ll do plenty of handholding to calm things down. If it’s murder, we’ll hire the best lawyers in the state and get a conviction as fast as possible. Nothing is going to cast a shadow over how well we take care of those girls and keep them safe. I won’t allow it.” He rubbed one fist into the other, straightening up. His energy was coming back.

“We’ll have to do more than that,” Samuel said.

“Obviously you have something to say.”

“The agitators intend to turn this in their favor. If they can get people to believe the girls who work here aren’t properly protected, they strengthen their hand. We’ll face criticism on every front, especially safety.”

“Slander, stupidity.” Hiram slumped again, staring at nothing.

Samuel walked over to the sideboard in the dining room and picked up a crystal decanter filled with bourbon. He held a glass in the other hand and poured. Silently, he handed it to his father.

Hiram’s face wrinkled into something of a smile as he reached for the glass. “Thank you,” he said.

“I’m thinking of visiting the boardinghouse where the dead girl lived,” Samuel said.

“Good, that’s wise. Give them our regrets. Find out about her family so we can send condolences.” Hiram stopped and eyed his son shrewdly. “Does that pretty little girl we had to dinner live there?”

“Yes. She’s the one who found the note.”

“I see. Don’t get yourself too involved.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“I believe you do.”