Chapter Twenty-Three

When they had finished washing the supper dishes and left the kitchen for their own small house, Lewis reached down for Martha’s hand and gave it a squeeze. She left her hand in his, but there was no returning warmth.

She no longer needed supervision to ready herself for bed, but she always called down to him when she was ready to say her prayers. It was a task he cherished, a time when his granddaughter vouchsafed her secrets and sleepily asked questions about topics that puzzled her. That night, he slowly hauled himself up the steep flight of stairs to her attic room and sat down on the bed beside her.

“What’s wrong, Martha?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, but her eyes looked away as she said it.

“I know something’s bothering you. You haven’t been chattering away like a chipmunk these last few days.”

She shrugged.

“I know I tease you because you chatter, but to tell the truth, I miss it, and I have to think that something’s wrong when you turn into a clam. Is it something at school?”

She shook her head.

“Is it something to do with Francis?” This was pure guesswork on his part, but Francis’s return and its consequences was the thing that was bothering Betsy the most, so it was reasonable to assume that Martha had reached some of the same conclusions that her grandmother had.

“Sort of.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it.”

She heaved a great sigh. How awful to have the weight of such a load on your shoulders at such an early age, he thought. He hoped he would be able to lift at least some of the burden.

“I lost my necklace,” she said quietly.

“The one Francis gave you? I thought you had put it away and were only going to wear it for special times.”

“That’s what Grandma told me to do. But I didn’t do it. I wore it all the time — underneath so nobody could see. And now I’ve lost it. I’ve looked and looked everywhere, but I can’t find it.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “If Francis finds out, do you think he’ll be mad? Do you think he’ll go away again?”

Lewis had forgotten what it was like to be a child, how easy it was to add two and two and come up with five, and to interpret the actions of adults in the light of schoolyard logic. He folded the little girl into his arms. “No, my darling, he won’t be mad, and if he goes away again, it won’t be because of you, but for some other reason. Is this what’s been bothering you all this time? You should have told me, so I could help you look.”

She snuffled. “I know, but I thought you’d tell Francis. And I thought Grandma would be mad, because I didn’t do what she told me.”

“Well, you should have listened to her, but I promise you, she won’t be mad. I’ll tell her not to be, all right?”

“Yes, sir.” There was a hesitation, though, and Lewis knew there was more.

“You like Francis, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes. And I like Sophie, too. But what happens if Francis and Sophie get married?”

What indeed, he thought. But he was astounded that even Martha appeared to have noticed the chemistry between the two.

She went on. “One of the girls at school has a stepmother, and she says it’s horrible and she has to sleep in the shed and do all the work. If Francis and Sophie get married, will I have to go with them? I don’t want to sleep in the shed.”

Lewis had to fight to suppress a chuckle, but he could see that Martha was extremely worried by this prospect. “Listen, sweetheart, Francis travelled a very, very long distance to come back and find you. He loves you very much. I don’t think he would make you sleep in the shed after going to all that trouble, do you? And Sophie is a lovely, lovely girl, and she’s very fond of you, so I don’t think she’d be mean to you either. And we don’t know for sure that they’ll get married, do we? After all, they haven’t known each other for very long. Maybe they’ll decide they don’t like each other that well after all.”

Even as he said it, he knew that there was an element of wishful thinking in his argument.

“But if they do, will I have to go with them?” she asked. “Because I’d rather stay here with you and Grandma.”

“I don’t really know, Martha. It’s something I’ve been wondering about, too. But I have decided one thing — if Francis moves away and wants you to live with him, your grandmother and I will move with you, so we’ll always be close by. We won’t ever be so far away that you won’t be able to see us whenever you want to. Would that make it better?” He hoped that what he told her was in fact true, for he couldn’t imagine a life without her.

The smile that had been so elusive over the last days returned to the child’s face. “Yes, sir.” Then her face fell again. “But I still can’t find my necklace.”

“I don’t like secrets very much. I think we should tell everybody, and then everybody can help look for it.”

“Horatio helped for a little while, but then he got bored and wanted to look for the Holey Man. I think I lost it when we were playing down by the lake.”

“Well, we’ll have a good look around the hotel first, and make sure it didn’t just slip off here.”

“I was going to ask Mr. Gilmour to keep an eye out for it, but he never came back.”

“Mr. Gilmour? Why would you ask him?”

“Because he was there. At the lake.”

“When was this?”

“Saturday afternoon. I saw him down by the wharf. I’d have asked him then, but I didn’t know it was lost then.”

“Did he walk back to the hotel with you?”

“No. I said hello and he nodded at us, but then he just stood there looking at the lake.”

What would Gilmour have been doing down by the lake? Probably, Lewis thought, the same thing he had been doing in the marsh — looking for something. And now someone needed to look for him.

He tucked Martha in and kissed her good night, but his mind was only half on what he was doing. The other half was wondering what exactly could have happened to their guest.

The next morning, when Francis heard the reason for Martha’s listlessness, he did what he had wanted to do ever since he’d returned — he scooped her up in his arms and hugged her.

Lewis had not totally excused Martha from responsibility for her actions. He made her tell both her grandmother and her father herself. Betsy’s eyes narrowed and her lips tightened when she heard that the necklace was lost, for after all, she had warned Martha, and the girl had disobeyed her. But Lewis forestalled her with a glance.

“Well,” Betsy said finally, “I hope you understand now why you should have saved it for special.”

Martha nodded, relieved that she was to receive no tongue-lashing to add to her misery.

She approached Francis right after the breakfast rush was over, when everyone else had left the table.

“I thought you would be mad.”

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s just something I thought you would like. I’m sorry you’ve lost it, but I’m even sorrier that the losing of it has made you so miserable. We’ll see if we can’t retrieve it. Don’t ever be afraid to tell me things, though. I’m not sure what you could tell me that would ever make me angry with you.”

She had hugged him back then, and the look on Francis’s face made Lewis wonder how he had ever suspected this man of any crime.

Sophie and Daniel both promised to give the hotel a thorough search. Francis was still needed at the hotel in the mornings, but as soon as dinner had been served and the dishes cleared away, he and Lewis set off for the harbour. They had questioned Martha carefully about where she and Horatio had been playing, but when they reached the lake, Lewis realized that the children had roamed over a huge area, and the prospect of ever finding an object so small as a coral necklace was remote. Gilmour would be easier, if he were truly out there somewhere.

They picked their way along the sandbar, Lewis searching on one side, Francis on the other. They found nothing but a few glass bottles and a wooden spar that had washed ashore.

When they reached the channel that separated West Lake from Ontario, beyond which the scrubby poplars and marram grass began to give way to more substantial cedars and thicker underbrush, they realized they would have to cross water to go any farther. But the state of the ice made Lewis profoundly uneasy. There were puddles lying on the surface and he could see two big cracks that ran nearly all the way across. Granted, this time he could be sure of aid if he fell through — it was broad daylight, not a bone-shuddering cold night; there was little current here, not like the fast-flowing waters that had nearly sucked him down between Kingston and Wolfe Island; and it was such a small distance to cover, no more than a few steps, really, and in all probability it was only a few feet deep. Still, only with a supreme act of will did Lewis force his legs to take the first steps out onto the frozen surface. Francis waited until Lewis had reached dry land again, then skipped across in a few easy strides.

“Are you sure they came this far?” Francis asked. “Martha didn’t say anything about crossing the channel.”

“No, she didn’t,” Lewis said. “But she did say something about seeing Mr. Gilmour down by the wharf. I’m just wondering if he wandered this way for some reason. Let’s climb this hill. We may be able to get a better view of things.”

The two men clambered up the sandy slope until they crested the dune. From this vantage point they could see almost all of West Lake. Off to the right, Lewis spotted a plume of smoke drifting in the air, but it was impossible to tell where, exactly, it was coming from, although it was most likely chimney smoke from one of the farmhouses across the lake. Wellington lay over to their left, the village seeming small from this distance, its buildings huddled along the shore. As they looked to the northeast, the structures became fewer and were punctuated by the barns that belonged to the farms that fronted the lake. Lewis could just make out the Elliott house, a short field away from the water.

From this perspective, he realized that West Lake was, in fact, nearly two inland lakes, bisected almost entirely by the islands and the long point of land that thrust out from the mainland opposite them. The marsh filled the part of the lake between the peninsula and the mainland, with the islands spilling out into the open water from there. He wondered if the entire lake would be filled in after a hundred or so years. Or perhaps it would take a thousand, he didn’t know; but even now, if the ice was solid enough, it would be but a short distance from the Elliott farm to the peninsula or to one of the islands.

When they had been looking for Nate Elliott, he had dismissed the notion that the injured man had headed south toward this lake. He would have been spotted, they had all thought, if he had crossed the main road. But what if he had somehow got as far as the marsh, or staggered across to one of the islands and finally succumbed to his injuries there? But no, the lake had not been frozen then. It would have to have been the marsh. If so, it could be months, or maybe even years before anyone found his body.

It seemed impossible that he could go so far unremarked. Except that it really wasn’t that far at all when you got out here and saw the geographic relationships from a different vantage point. And what if he hadn’t wanted to be seen, if he had for some reason taken advantage of the opportunity to slip away? Lewis knew that Clementine was a fraud and Nate had been her partner in it. What if there was more chicanery involved here? He wondered if Gilmour had reached the same conclusion.

“I don’t see much of anything,” Francis said. “Should we head back?”

Lewis hesitated. If Gilmour had come out here, something had certainly happened to prevent him from getting back. They could at least go on a little farther to try to find out what it was.

“Let’s keep going for a bit,” he suggested.

The sandbar was wider and the hills taller on this side of the channel, and cedars thrust their way up through the tough grass. These grew thicker as they progressed, and in places the overhanging trees forced the men out over the water. The ice underneath their feet was brittle and apt to crack suddenly. Here and there they could see markers that signalled traps and the piles of brush that served as dens. Muskrats would find the sandy soil here to their liking, and the marshy areas would provide plenty of food.

As they worked their way along the shore, they could see evidence of human presence, as well, in the form of an occasional footprint that had been frozen in the mud and patchy snow cover. The marks were too large to have been made by Martha and Horatio, who claimed not to have ventured this far anyway. Perhaps they were the tracks of a hunter or trapper, or maybe the mysterious Holey Man, who, according to the children, wandered this way regularly. There were no returning prints to indicate anything but one-way traffic.

The men stopped to rest for a moment when they reached a clearing — an area of springy grass that had held its own against the cedars.

“Why is it that every time I go somewhere with you, there’s ice involved?” Lewis grumbled, wringing out the bottoms of his pant legs. They had become soaked when the ice had given way in their trek along the shore.

Francis laughed. “At least it’s nicer weather today. That was a raw night at Wolfe Island. And, by the way, why would Mr. Gilmour have come along here? It’s not exactly the place someone would choose for a casual stroll.”

Lewis realized that he needed to set aside any lingering reservations he had about his son-in-law and tell him at least a little of what he suspected.

“I think he’s been following the Elliotts. I’m certain he’s been trailing Mrs. Elliott at any rate, and he may have thought he could find out what happened to her husband.”

“Out here? But why?”

Briefly, Lewis outlined what he had discovered so far — his knowledge that Clementine’s contacting of the dead was a trick, and his suspicion that the Elliotts were, in fact, the LeClairs mentioned in the newspaper.

“If so, there’s a reward offered by the man they bilked in New York. I’m wondering if Gilmour decided to collect it. The only thing that puzzles me is why he hasn’t turned Mrs. Elliott in long since.”

“Because American law has no jurisdiction here,” Francis replied. “And none of her Canadian customers has put in a complaint. As long as she stays on this side of the border, Gilmour wouldn’t be able to touch her, short of kidnapping her and hauling her back to New York.” He reddened a little. “It sort of works both ways, you know.”

Of course. Lewis should have realized that. But then he had little experience with the ins and outs of border crossings or international crime. Francis, who had fled across that same border as a rebel would understand much better the implications.

“If what you think is correct, maybe Nate knew Gilmour was on his trail and arranged his own disappearance.”

That was exactly what Lewis was beginning to think. Gilmour had arrived at Temperance House two or three days before Nate Elliott had gone missing. The timing was certainly right. And then Clementine had arrived, just at the point when Gilmour must have considered the whole thing a lost cause. Why had she come to Wellington, if her husband had gone to such pains to cover their tracks? Surely, if their theory was correct, her husband would have arranged to meet her somewhere, after the fact of his death had been assumed, and they could have gone merrily on their way. There was a piece missing somewhere in this puzzle, but Lewis couldn’t find it.

He rose and stepped away from the clearing, but with the first step his right leg plunged through the ice, soaking his boot and leg to the knee.

“Why is that when we’re on the ice together, you’re always the one to go through?” Francis commented mildly. “You seem to have a real talent for it.”

Lewis’s retort died on his lips. There was something in the water. He had kicked against it when he pulled his foot away. As he broke a little more of the ice away around the hole, he discovered it was a small leg-hold trap, of the sort used for muskrat, fully baited and unsprung.

“You’re lucky you didn’t step into that,” Francis said when he saw it. “It wasn’t marked at all. It wouldn’t be much fun out here with an injured leg. Somebody would have quite a time getting back home again.” Then he stopped to consider what he’d said. “You don’t suppose that’s what’s happened to our missing Mr. Gilmour, do you?”

“Maybe.”

It was an old trap that Lewis had found, covered with algae, and it had probably been there for a long time. That would explain why it wasn’t marked — it had been set and forgotten. He wondered if there were even deadlier traps scattered around the lake. Maybe he wasn’t the only person who had stumbled upon one.

After the discovery, the two men continued more cautiously, testing each step before committing their weight to it. The trees were thick here, and at times they were unable to see more than a few feet into the woods. It was little wonder that they nearly passed right by the clearing without noticing it, but Francis suddenly missed his footing and slid across the slick surface, almost going down entirely. At the last moment, he stuck out a hand to save himself from a soaking. From this low angle, he could see through the lower branches of the thick cedars that masked a small gap in the growth.

“Let’s check up in there,” he said, and they pushed their way through.

There was no question that someone had been there. Vegetation was broken and smashed and the snow was stained a reddish brown. Something heavy had been dragged to the opposite end of the clearing, where a trail disappeared into the woods.

“Someone’s taken a deer, maybe?” Francis suggested warily, but he sounded unconvinced.

“I hope so,” Lewis replied, “but somehow I don’t think so.”

Francis was about to follow the trail that led away, but Lewis hesitated. “Just a moment,” he said. “Let me take a look around.” The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe, Dupin had said in the Rue Morgue story. Lewis would observe, and hope that he would find the knowledge he needed. He followed the marks on the side of the hill up to the top of the dune. They appeared to be a long skid that ended abruptly at the stain on the ground. There was no blood — for Lewis was sure that was what it was — on the hill itself, just at the bottom. Something, or someone, had fallen, landing against a broken cedar stump, for there, too, he could see a stain that darkened the wood. A few feet away he discovered a boot print, but this was well away from the skid. Did whoever fell manage to rise and walk away? Or had there been a second person in that clearing?

Lewis looked more closely at the print. If it had been made by the trapper who supposedly guarded these woods, he would have expected him to leave the mark of a heavy, irregular tread of a homemade boot. This print was smooth, with very little tread at all — a city boot.

Had Nate Elliott been hunkered down here in the wilderness all this time? Had Gilmour somehow figured this out and been ambushed for his trouble? Suddenly, Lewis was profoundly uneasy at what they might find if they followed the trail that led away through the trees, and he wondered if they should return to Wellington for help. But he wasn’t sure how he could persuade anyone that help was needed. A footprint in the snow and a brown stain wouldn’t be enough to propel Constable Williams out of his lassitude. He and Francis would have to go ahead, but they would need to be very, very careful, regardless of whether it was Nate Elliott or the trapper waiting for them at the end of the trail.

The drag marks were easy enough to follow. Here and there, spots of blood marked the way. Then, on a low branch, Francis spotted a small jagged piece of cloth — the same brown tweed as Mr. Gilmour’s overcoat. Lewis had walked right past it. So much for making the necessary observations, he thought.

“It looks like the branch caught on whatever was being dragged and ripped it away,” Francis pointed out.

“Whatever or whoever,” Lewis agreed. They moved even more cautiously after that.

The trail seemed to lead them deeper into the forest, following the contours of the great sand hills that Lewis knew lay underneath. In many places the soil was loose and tree roots lay in a tangle just beneath the surface, waiting to snag his foot and trip him up. He could see how easily someone might have fallen. He became winded as they climbed and then descended the dunes, and his left knee pained him with every step.

“Do you smell smoke?” Francis asked. Lewis sniffed the air, but could detect nothing until they had travelled another difficult hundred feet.

I’m too old for this, Lewis thought. My body aches and my senses have all dwindled away.

The trail appeared to be leading them away from West Lake and toward the windswept shores of Lake Ontario, an area that was unsettled and seldom visited.

The forest suddenly opened up to reveal another small clearing. In it stood a ramshackle structure that appeared to have been built of old cast-off boards and pieces of log. One side of the structure had collapsed, but a thick plume of smoke rose from the chimney on the side that remained standing.

The drag marks led straight across the clearing to the cabin door.

“I think we should be very careful here,” Lewis said in a low voice. “I’m not sure who, or what, we’re dealing with.”

“Do you think it’s Elliott? Has he been holed up here the whole time?”

“I don’t know. But whoever it is either attacked Gilmour or at the very least dragged him off. Neither action speaks of anything but a desperate man.”

“Why don’t we circle around behind and see if there’s another way in? I don’t fancy bursting in the front door.”

There was no back dooryard, as a small dune pressed its sandy bulk against the rear wall of the cabin.

“If we can get up on that, we should be able to see the whole clearing,” Lewis whispered.

Francis nodded and they crept around the edge of the clearing as silently as they could. As they reached the top of the dune, they realized that it sloped sharply down on the other side into a small ravine before it rose again in yet another mound of sand. Stones projected a foot or two from the steep side, and as he slid down the bank, Lewis realized that a heavy oak door had been set into these stones.

“A root cellar?” Francis whispered.

Lewis was aware of a nauseating stench that seemed to emanate from behind the door. Something foul was hidden there.

There was no lock to bar entry; instead the door was held shut by two iron bars that slotted into brackets on either side. Lewis lifted these out and, holding his breath, jerked the door open. A disgusting odour rushed out, making his eyes water, and it took a moment for him to register what was inside. Two wooden barrels, homemade from the look of them, stood against the back wall. A third had fallen over and spilled its contents over the bone-littered floor of the cellar. Crudely butchered hunks of meat strewed from the mouth of the open barrel.

Lewis stepped inside for a closer look. The bones crunched unpleasantly under his feet. Some of them were very old, picked clean by the insects that no amount of stone wall could keep out. Some had bits of flesh still clinging to them.

Francis tied his handkerchief over his mouth and nose in an attempt to protect himself from the worst of the stench, and inched into the cellar behind Lewis.

“My God,” he said, “some of this is human.” He used his foot to flip over one of the chunks of flesh. At one end was what appeared to be the remains of a human foot. Lewis backed away from it hurriedly and slipped on the unstable footing beneath him. He fell squarely on his knee, the one that was already sore from their long trek, and he couldn’t suppress a yelp at the pain.

“Sshh!” Francis said, but it was far too late for silence to save them. When Lewis looked up he was staring straight into the muzzle of an ancient musket.

Martha had described the Holey Man, but her childish account had not prepared him for the reality of the man’s appearance. His mouth was a gaping hole and Lewis wasn’t entirely sure that he had any jaw at all, for his flattened, fish-like face seemed to merge with his neck. His eyes were odd in some way, and full of his fury at their trespass. But none of these strange details could divert Lewis for long; most of his attention was claimed by the gun that was pointed at his head.

He sensed that beside him Francis was shifting his weight cautiously, as if he were making ready to spring. Lewis’s knee protested with a stabbing pain when he moved, but he did the same, preparing to rise at the same moment. They could not both be shot, for it took time to reload the gun. Lewis thought he was most likely to be hit, being the most directly in the line of fire, and he steeled himself for the shock. He hoped that he could move fast enough to avoid injury to anything vital.

Even though he was ready for it, he was still a second or so behind the younger man when they moved. With a leap, Francis crashed into the Holey Man, knocking him down and sending the musket flying. Lewis rolled to his right and crashed into the corner where a small cascade of bones brought him face to face with yet another horror.

The skull had been scraped clean and the dome of the braincase had been cleaved in two, but it was still recognizably and unmistakably a human head.

Lewis had no time to consider the ramifications of his find.

His first impulse was to locate the gun, which had landed a few feet away from the doorway. He scrambled over to it. It had not been cocked or loaded. He threw it down again and went to help Francis, who was attempting to subdue the Holey Man, who howled and spat and kicked in a frantic effort to get away. Lewis pinioned the arms while Francis gained a stronger hold on the man’s feet. As soon as his limbs were immobilized, the Holey Man stopped struggling and went limp. His howls subsided to a whimper. Francis flipped him over so that he was lying face down, wrenched his arms behind him, and held him immobile with a knee in the small of his back. In one part of his mind, Lewis wondered where his son-in-law had learned such manoeuvres, but it was a question that would have to wait. Right now he had other, more pressing questions to ask.

Gingerly he picked up the skull he had found and set it down in front of the Holey Man.

“Oh, my God,” Francis said. “Did you do this?” and he gave his prisoner’s arms a wrench.

“Found it,” the Holey Man whined. “Old Man say dead meat no good. Not in woods, in marsh. Belly hurt. Not dead long.” But with his horrendous and deformed mouth, this statement was unintelligible to his questioners and sounded like nothing more than a long nasal whimper.

Lewis cautioned Francis with a glance. “We won’t get to the truth of the matter by frightening him.”

He crouched down in front of the Holey Man, whose features were truly monstrous, a twisted parody of a normal face, the eyes lash-less above the deformed nose and mouth. The ears were wrong, too; tiny and set forward in a peculiar way. In fact, everything seemed peculiar, and Lewis suspected that the horrendous hare lip was only a part of what was wrong with this poor creature. A number of pelts of varying origin — muskrat, beaver, fox, coon — had been haphazardly sewn together into a sort of cloak that he wore over his shoulders, and a hat of similar design lay nearby. But Lewis did not see much evidence of the “holey” clothing that Sophie had described. His pants were of good quality and intact, and under the furs he sported a brown jacket of very familiar design. The boots he wore were too small for him, but the caps had been sliced so that his feet would go in, and his bare webbed toes stuck out through the slits. Before they had been mutilated, the boots had been first-quality — city boots. Lewis began to get a very uneasy feeling about where these articles had come from.

“What’s your name?” he asked softly.

There was no answer. Lewis wasn’t sure if he had been heard so he reached out to turn the man’s face toward him, so that he would understand he was being addressed, but the Holey Man flinched at his hand’s approach, so he let it fall. His gesture did, however, gain the man’s full attention, and he repeated his question in a louder voice.

“What’s your name?”

“O-ee.” Lewis struggled to understand the words. He realized that the Holey Man’s lips had difficulty closing over the gaping hole that was his mouth. “O-ee. O-ee.” And finally with an enormous effort, “Bo-ee.”

“Boy? That’s your name? Just Boy?”

The Holey Man peered at Lewis through the shaggy mass of hair hanging in front of his eyes.

“Old Man call me …” he seemed to have to think a little, “Old Man call me Idiot.”

Lewis understood only the last word, and felt a twist of pity for this poor malformed creature.

“May I call you Boy? Is that the best name?” The Holey Man obviously understood him, for he nodded his assent. “Where did the head come from, Boy?”

“Ra.” He jerked his head to the right to indicate a place away from the cabin.

“Are there any more?”

The Holey Man didn’t answer, but his eyes darted back toward the cabin.

“I wonder if Gilmour’s in the shack.”

Francis heaved the Holey Man to his feet and half-dragged him up the dune and down the other side to the cabin. Now that they were closer, it was evident to them that the shack was in the process of falling down. When a portion of the roof had collapsed, it had smashed most of one wall beneath it, causing the entire structure to lean alarmingly. It wouldn’t take much, Lewis thought — a heavy snow load and it would come tumbling down.

When they went inside, it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness of the interior, but his awareness of the stench was immediate. It was the smell of half-cured hides and offal and of bedding and pots gone unwashed for a very long time. There was a richer and more immediate odour, as well, one that was far more pleasant, although not nearly strong enough to mask the essential fetor of the room. It seemed to be coming from the iron pot that steamed on the crude hearth in the corner.

The wall beside the fire was a jumble of broken logs, boards, and bark shingle. No attempt had been made to clean it up or repair it in any way, and there were a number of gaping holes in the rubble where the wind blew through. This would be a sad place to spend a winter, Lewis thought to himself.

“Oh, my God. Look.” Francis was staring up at the ceiling. There were several joints hanging from the rafters of the shack. Most of them were unrecognizable as anything but hunks of meat, but one shoulder still sported most of an arm and Lewis thought that one piece might be a buttock.

Francis began to retch. Lewis himself felt the bile rise in his throat. He had seen many terrible sights in his time — from the dreadful wounds inflicted on the bodies of soldiers to the white and bloated dead in the aftermath of battle; he had seen young women strangled and mutilated by an insane murderer and he had seen that same murderer struggle and kick as the life was choked out of him — but he had never seen anything quite like this deliberate degradation and destruction of human flesh.

He drew his handkerchief to cover his nose, and continued his inspection of the cabin. The fireplace was a crudely built pile of fieldstone with a wooden chimney that had been twisted askew by the fallen roof. A large homemade wooden ladle lay on the hearth beside several stone jars that appeared to be full of a greasy fat. Lewis grabbed the ladle and stirred the contents of the iron pot that had been set to simmer over the fire. Its principle ingredient rose to the top. Like the grisly relic he had discovered in the root cellar, the top of the skull had been cracked in two, but the eyes were still intact and yellowed teeth protruded from underneath a bristly moustache. It was, without a doubt, the missing Mr. Gilmour. Gagging, Lewis quickly withdrew the ladle and the head sunk back into the simmering stew.

The Holey Man had been watching without expression during this survey of the cabin. It was only when Lewis neared the corner opposite the fire that he seemed to become agitated again, and Francis was forced to restrain him once more.

There were a jumble of items in a pile against the wall — a ragged pair of man’s trousers and the filthy remains of a woman’s dress. The trousers were gigantic, far too large to have ever fitted The Holey Man. It made no sense for him to have kept the dress. And then a possible explanation struck Lewis — these must be the relics of the trapper and his woman — the people with whom the Holey Man had lived. His parents, he supposed. He wondered how they had died. Killed when the roof collapsed, maybe, and the poor raggedy creature had been left behind to fend for himself?

There were other pieces of apparel, as well, Gilmour’s orange cravat, some men’s underthings, a pair of leather boots, and another pair of trousers, the leg torn and covered in dried blood — trousers that matched the coat now worn by the Holey Man. No, not the Holey Man, for that was the name others had given him, this was Boy.

As Lewis shifted the clothing to one side with his foot, Boy began to howl again. There were more treasures underneath the clothing — Gilmour’s gold pocket watch and Martha’s coral necklace. Lewis’s stomach turned at the thought of his granddaughter coming anywhere near this fetid hole, but then he realized that, in fact, she hadn’t. She had lost it when they were playing by the shore. The Holey Man — Boy — must have found it and brought it here to add to his hoard. Lewis hesitated for a moment; he knew he should leave things as they were. Everything was evidence. But the necklace had no bearing on what had happened here, he judged, and so he palmed it and put it in his pocket. He hoped Boy hadn’t noticed.

There was more — three red buttons, a child’s toy soldier, a marble — things that might have been lost by others along the shore and found by Boy on his trap route around the lake. In addition, there was a brown calfskin folder. Inside was a sheaf of documents, legal papers from the look of them, but Lewis recognized none of the names on them, save one — a handwritten agreement that had yet to be signed. It was a conveyance of property, assigning Nathan Elliott’s share of his father’s estate to his brother Reuben “in exchange for agreed services.” There was no indication of what, exactly, these services consisted of.

Puzzled, Lewis returned the papers to the folder. Had all of them belonged to Nate Elliott, or only the one? If so, had Boy found it and, unable to read it, stuffed it into the folder with the others? If that was the case, where had the others come from? And did this mean that the skull and rotting meat in the root cellar was all that was left of the missing Nate?

Lewis was about to replace the papers when he realized that one side of the folder felt much thicker than the other. He pulled at a strip of leather along the side. It slid back easily, revealing a pocket underneath the flaps that had held the papers in place. Inside was a handful of banknotes, all of them American in origin.

“What do you think we should do?” Francis asked. “Should one of us go for the constable or should we try to take him in ourselves?”

“Maybe we should try to take him. I don’t think either of us wants to have to stay here and wait.”

As Francis turned to speak, the Holey Man saw his opportunity. One hard shove and Renwell went crashing to the floor. The Holey Man scrambled toward the door. Lewis threw himself in that direction, and only just closed his hand around the fleeing man’s foot. The Holey Man kicked and Lewis lost his grip, but by this time Francis had regained his feet. He knocked the shaggy figure flat and blocked his escape route. The Holey Man slithered away from them, and seeing his exit barred, lunged toward one of the gaps in the rubble of the caved-in wall. Clawing at the broken logs, he tried to force himself through.

Francis slammed into him again and the Holey Man went flying toward the hearth. For a moment Lewis was sure he would land in the fire, but, arms flailing, he managed to avoid the flames, crashing instead into the iron kettle that hung above. The greasy contents spilled over the side and splashed over one of the man’s arms. He spun round and round the cabin holding his hand and howling from the scalding pain.

Lewis tried to stop him. “We’ll help you,” he said. “Just stop and we’ll put some cold grease on it. It will stop hurting so much then.”

Francis and Lewis were so occupied with trying to calm this hysterical outburst that they failed to notice that the Holey Man’s wild scramble had knocked one of the stone jars into the fire and dislodged part of the rubble wall. The flame flared as it found the grease, then the tinder-dry cedar shakes from the roof exploded in a flashover that ignited the wooden chimney.

They had not thought that the Holey Man could make more noise than he had already been making, but now he rushed forward with an ear-splitting scream and began trying to put out the fire with his bare hands. Lewis grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away.

“Get some water. Is there a bucket?”

There was, just outside the door, but by the time Francis located it and filled it from the lake, the fire had engulfed the entire wall of the cabin.

“This is useless, it’s gone,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Together they hauled the Holey Man through the door. They thought he would calm down once outside, but he continued to struggle with them, and then in one frantic, twisting motion pulled away. He went straight back into the cabin, his howls still audible over the roar of the flames.

Lewis tried to go after him, but by this time the smoke was thick and the heat intense, and Francis pulled him back just as what was left of the roof fell in a storm of flame.

“You’ll burn, too, if you go in there.”

The Holey Man’s screams ended abruptly and they knew there was no point in continuing to fill the bucket with water or to throw it on the burning cabin. They could do little but wait a safe distance away until nothing was left but a smouldering heap of charred wood. It was best to leave the constable to sift through the debris and retrieve what was left of the body, Lewis decided, if anything at all remained of Gilmour’s head or the grisly meat that had been hanging in the cabin.

“We should go.”

Lewis knew Francis was right. The fire was burning itself out and there was nothing more they could do. Wearily, they began the long trek home.