grouse-feathered hat. His long hair, gathered by a ribbon, had fallen to one side, and at the base of his neck there was, indeed, a dark hole, rather like the gaping mouth of a small fish caught on a line. Nearly an inch wide, it seemed the width of the hatchet's point her father had often used to break the ice in their rain barrel, beneath the back eave.
As a countrywoman, she knew the anatomy of animals used to supply her kitchen—and, that life was quickly extinguished once a neck was wrung, or otherwise damaged. Among her neighbors, the knowledge necessary to kill swiftly and quietly was not uncommon. But who could have committed such a crime in cold blood?
“It hardly seems,” she said aloud, “to have been an act of rage.” She heard her voice half-swallowed by the soft boughs that surrounded them. Longfellow looked up from a closer examination of the wound to study his companion.
“No,” he agreed. With some difficulty, he turned the youth over. The face was white with frost. The frozen eyes remained open, staring horribly.
“I doubt that he put up any sort of fight,” Longfellow muttered after he'd examined the entire head, and then the fingers, for scratches and further blood. He tried to open the corpse's mouth, interested in the state of its tongue, but found the jaw frozen shut. He stood with a grimace, and took a step to retrieve the hatchet under a nearby bough. Its point, he saw, was stained to a depth of a few inches.
“Yours?” he asked. She nodded. Then she compared this to other corpses over which they'd stood. Here, at least, was no attempt at masquerade, no possibility of accident or disease.
“I assume it was done just outside,” said Longfellow. Then he pointed, and she leaned closer to see a small, sad detail. The buttons that secured the front of Alex's breeches were done up, but not quite correctly. At the top, the last had no place left to go; the first hole had been skipped. She supposed a young man careful of his appearance would hardly have done such a thing unless he'd been surprised, and in a great hurry. Had someone come up behind him with a greeting? Someone he may have had reason to distrust, or even to fear?
“I would also say,” said Longfellow, “that he was carried here, so that no one would find him—at least until his assailant was elsewhere.” He took a square of cloth from his coat pocket as he continued. “Though I suppose it's barely possible this was done after we all went home…”
“I don't think so. Last night, before we left, I had a feeling…”
He knew her well enough to stop at this, and wait for more.
“… a feeling of something not right, here in these trees. Orpheus, too.”
“Animals are able to smell death at some distance.”
“Richard, if he wished to hide his crime, wouldn't he have come back after we all went home, to take the body somewhere we might never find it? That, he did not do.”
Longfellow considered this while he tied the sharp and bloody hatchet in the square of cloth, knotting its ends twice together to form a loop.
“He could have felt it unlikely we'd think to connect him with the deed. That, I'm glad to say, suggests someone other than Lem Wainwright—simply because there is much to make him seem guilty.”
“That may convince some, though I suspect not all.”
Longfellow looked up into the sighing branches. “Godwin, I believe, lived with someone as a boarder.”
“With Frances Bowers, Hiram's sister.”
“I will talk to her. But it would be better—safer—if you were to leave the rest of this to me.”
“If Lem is still in danger—”
“I will see to his interests.”
“Haven't you a larger concern? To satisfy the village?”
“My greatest concern will be finding the truth.”
“But how will you find it? What do we know so far?” His expression, she saw, had hardened.
“First things first,” he told her abruptly. He handed her the hatchet, then bent to pick up Alex Godwin, almost as if he were a sleeping child. He realized at once that instead, the body was little different from a heavy, fresh-cut log.
He took hold of the shoulders of the old coat and pulled backward, slowly parting the boughs. Charlotte waited until they'd snapped back safely. Then she picked up the hat that had been left behind, smoothed its few proud feathers thoughtfully, and followed.
Chapter 11
RICHARD LONGFELLOW PULLED his sled and its covered burden