normal course.
“It's not about the spoons, is it?” asked Hannah suddenly. “Have you found out what's behind all of that?”
“Yes. I have.”
Hannah's heavy bosom began to heave. Eagerly, she waited for more.
“It seems several of our neighbors have been filching silver from their wives. And pewter, too…”
“Yes… go on.”
“… melting the objects down, then bringing them back.”
“Back? How?”
“As counterfeit coins.”
“Ahhh!” cried Hannah. She rocked back, causing her nerves to issue a new pang. She winced but otherwise ignored it, for she'd begun to imagine something far more painful.
“Shillings, actually,” said Charlotte.
“Shillings!” Hannah's new exclamation caused Lem and Mattie to pause and look over, though their own conversation had become ardent.
“Mattie! Go upstairs and get the purse that's under my pillow.”
Amazed by her mother's request, the young woman quickly left her corner.
“My Samuel,” Hannah assured not only the kitchen, but the world at large, “will pay for this—and not with shillings, either!”
Charlotte glanced at Lem, and saw that he seemed resigned to what was happening. When Mattie returned, Hannah opened a leather purse and spilled several shillings into her lap.
“Like this?” she asked. Charlotte took one up. She looked at its edges carefully.
“I'm afraid so,” she said as she returned it.
“And this?” asked Hannah, thrusting out another.
“That, too.”
“Samuel ‘confessed’ to me that he'd won these playing cards at the Blue Boar. My father's silver snuff box! Ohhhh!” While Hannah's brows knitted themselves together, her eyes seemed to sink further into her weathered face.
“Samuel is not the only one,” Charlotte assured her.
Lem had turned the color of a boiled crustacean. The young woman beside him also seemed affected by the news.
“Who?” Mattie asked.
Lem shrugged, then saw that this was not the right response.
“Who else knew?” she demanded. “You?”
This time he nodded, watching her face darken. He was reminded of a woman he'd read about in Tacitus, while he studied in Boston—one Boadicea, who'd led British warriors against the might of Rome. That had not turned out well, either. And this fight, he supposed, would unite all of the women of Bracebridge against the entire male population. It wouldn't take a sibyl to see who would lose. At least he would have plenty of company, while he lived out his life hungry and dirty.
“John Dudley, among others,” said Charlotte to Hannah. Her friend realized at once the implication of this, and finally understood how such a man had been elected to uphold the law. “A travesty—nothing more!” she cried.
“Perhaps something more,” Charlotte replied softly. “It's likely the coins were made on Boar Island. So they may have been connected with the death of Alex Godwin… and perhaps that of old Mrs. Knowles.”
“You don't mean to say she was murdered? There on the island?”
“It could easily have been an accident, so I really shouldn't have said—and Hannah, please say nothing of what I've told you to Samuel, or to any other man in the village. Not yet. I think we might surprise them after we learn a little more—for one thing, I would like to know who else has lost something of silver or pewter. For another, we should find out who has lately been to the island, and knew about this scheme. Shall we form a conspiracy of our own, for a time? Lem, I think, may be counted on to keep our plan to himself—at least for a few days more.”
“But not Mr. Longfellow? He wasn't—?”
“No. He knows now, and so does Captain Montagu.
They're conducting their own investigations. I only thought we might assist them.”
“So we will! Every woman here will want to get her own back, even if she has to hold her tongue at home. For a few days, you say?”
“That should be enough.”
“All right, then. You may as well leave this to me! I'll go and enlist Emily Bowers; Rachel Dudley will be more than glad to alert those north of the village.”
“Ask them to try to account for the whereabouts of all the village men, as far as they can, on the afternoon of the ice harvest. And, on the day of the storm, between ten and two.”
“That's far more serious business,” Hannah objected.
“It is. But that part of what's happened here must be considered, in case they're connected. I'm still not sure, as I told you, about the second death, though it's what Mrs. Knowles believed. It's likely she was wrong. Yet Alex Godwin was murdered.”
“Of course,” said Hannah. Neither spoke for several moments.
“Lem Wainwright,” Mattie then said quietly, as she began to back him further into