that?”
Tom recounted what he remembered: having a rum, going to bed, waking up to his arrest. “I didn’t drink enough to sleep as long as I did.”
“You sound like every drunk I ever met,” Pitt scoffed. “Explain your knuckles and your ribs.”
“Somebody must have done it while I slept,” Tom said.
Pitt looked to Abigail and Benjamin and laughed, only to be dumbstruck by finding them attentive. “Hell and death, he wasn’t tickled! Have you seen his cuts and bruises? I’m expected to believe he wasn’t awake when he received them?”
Benjamin reached for Abigail, requiring her support, but neither made a show of his deteriorating strength. He coughed and said to Tom, “Describe the stupor when you woke.”
Tom’s grogginess had faded, making it hard to recollect, the way a half-lit dream is soon forgotten in the sun. “More than tired,” Tom said. “More than waking up thick. My limbs didn’t answer. Everything was smeared, like a room looks blurry through a grease-paper window. They dragged me in here before I thought to say a word and then I couldn’t, not at first.”
“Was there any taste or odor?” Benjamin inquired.
Tom had noticed it for hours, scarcely giving it a thought. “Cherry.”
“Sweet or sour?”
“Salty,” Tom said.
Benjamin’s eyes flickered wider and his pupils grew sharp. He was holding on to Abigail’s arm to keep his balance but he yanked it down hard with sudden, vital force.
“There is a singular native berry called the blood drop,” he said, “frequently mistaken for the drupe of common holly. It is similar in size but distinguishably redder. I learned of it from Hook Feet, the Elkinaki boy whose ankles I corrected. It is known as a relaxant, given to children suffering nightmares. In minor amounts, the berry’s effects are negligible, and yet the juice, boiled to a concentrate and carefully fermented, is said to possess soporific qualities, inducing in its user a profound weight of sleep. A characteristic, I am told, is the flavor you described.”
“You think a natural did this?” Pitt said.
Benjamin closed his eyes as if inanity had stung them. “Any individual can utilize a potion.”
“Humbug and nonsense. He got himself drunk.”
“Furthermore,” Benjamin said, “the abrasions on Tom’s knuckles are inconsistent with the oft-seen injuries of fisticuffs, unless perhaps he fought against a rough piece of granite. I believe”—here he coughed again, brandishing his stump—“Tom was physicked with a sedative and wounded in his bed.”
“What on earth for?”
“To make him look guilty,” Abigail said, as if the sheriff might have sipped a little blood drop himself. “Do you not find it strange that no one saw Tom leaving or returning? That Lemuel’s body was halfway out the door of his house, his head wound plainly visible, as if the fire’s only purpose was to draw the town’s attention? Someone wanted Tom arrested right away.”
“Who?” Pitt said.
Abigail turned, speaking pointedly to Tom. “Someone who came for Molly and perceived you as a threat. She hasn’t been seen since yesterday evening.”
“I know,” Tom said, then remembered no one had told him. “I heard people talking outside below the window.”
Pitt squinted at the lie, piercing through the gloom with sharper intuition than he typically displayed. Then he bungled it and said, “Who’s to say she didn’t play a part in Lem’s murder?”
“There’s something else,” Abigail said. “I spoke to a young man here at the tavern yesterday morning. The two of you had just returned with the Maimers. So many people were inquiring after Benjamin, I was relieved when the young man asked about Molly. He didn’t identify himself but he was charming, I was heady from a third glass of wine, and I confess to answering a good many questions, very uncharitably,” she said with a noble blush, “about Molly’s provenance and place here in Root. In retrospect, his interest was peculiarly direct.”
“What did he look like?” Pitt said.
“Delicate, of slight build and milk-white complexion. He had black hair tinged with gray. One of his upper teeth was prominently chipped.”
Benjamin turned to Tom, luminously keen, and said to Abigail and Pitt, “Molly’s locket held a tooth.”
Abigail regarded him with evident surprise, seeming piqued that she hadn’t learned the information sooner. “When did you discover this?”
But Benjamin waved her off, using the stump as if to call upon her patience and her sympathy. She stiffened and relented; her expression stayed tart.
Tom looked down to gather his composure and the paper felt all the more abrasive in his stocking. Was it possible that Molly hadn’t shot her brother? Had she