less than yours?”
“No, I mean she didn’t show up,” Peters returned. “She’d written to say she’d be there, and as a courtesy I’d saved a prime spot on the green for her booth, but she never arrived. Tibbets, that old beast from Jacksonville, moved right into the space, and I could hardly stop him, as I couldn’t let the space go to waste. Not that the spot did him any good, mind you.”
Peters drank some more catawba, and so did I.
I was still brooding about Peters’ revelation as Martha and I drove the final miles back to Springfield the following morning. The merchant seemingly had no reason to lie about Rebecca’s failure to appear at the market fair. But what could it mean that she hadn’t been there? It made no sense she had engaged in an elaborate ruse merely in order to kill her niece in her own barn. Still, why had she tried to deceive the sheriff and Prickett?
In the wake of the storm, the morning air was crisp and cool, carrying the first faint portent that summer might not last forever. After we’d ridden in silence for a half hour, Martha suddenly turned to me. “Remember I said yesterday how pleased I am people here have been taking me seriously?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s one person who hasn’t been. You.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Whatever do you mean?”
“It’s not like you to take off a whole day from your own work to go chasing down someone else’s problem, like we did yesterday. And then there were those questions you asked the merchant last night. It’s obvious, to me anyway, that you have a special interest in those wretched children you’re not telling me about. And in the Widow Harriman.”
She wrinkled her nose with thought. “How well do you truly know the widow, Joshua?”
I shook my head in wonder. “All right, then,” I said, drawing in a deep breath, and I proceeded to tell her the whole story.
“If you’re certain the widow had nothing to do with the murders,” Martha said when I had finished, “you’ve got to help prove her innocence.”
“I’ve been trying. So far, I seem to be finding more reasons to hold her in suspicion.”
“In that case, you’re going to have to do a better job,” my sister said. “Quickly.”
CHAPTER 20
When I returned to A. Y. Ellis & Co. at noon that same day, the urgency of my task came into sharp focus. The new edition of the Sangamo Journal was waiting on the counter. Simeon’s lead story reported Rebecca Harriman had become the sole suspect in her wards’ murders. Simeon also reported that Rebecca’s violent arguments with her niece Lilly had been widely known in Menard in the weeks leading up to the girl’s death.
My temples pounding, I threw down the paper and rushed over to the Journal’s offices on “chicken row,” the dilapidated north side of the town square.
“This is an outrage,” I roared as I pushed through the door.
The phlegmatic newspaperman did not look up from his composing table. “You do realize,” he said, “that shooting the messenger does nothing to change the message.”
“Of course. But even so . . .”
“Even so, Speed. That is the message. I’d have thought you’d thank me for passing it along at once, when you still might be able to do something about it.”
“If I didn’t know it would make you happy, I’d cancel my subscription,” I said. The newspaperman was chuckling as I slammed the door shut behind me.
I decided to complete my interrogation of the mysterious Prussian Gustorf. I went straight to Dr. Patterson’s house and asked to see him. But the hired girl told me he was still recovering from the doctor’s medical procedure on his leg.
“It’s a matter of immediacy,” I said as I pushed past her into the home.
At that moment, Patterson himself emerged into the hallway from his public parlor, shutting the door carefully behind him. “What’s this?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the girl. “I told him he couldn’t—”
“I need to talk to Gustorf at once,” I said.
“Why?”
“A private matter between me and him.”
“It’ll have to wait, whatever it is. He’s in no condition to receive visitors.”
“But—”
“When he awakes from sedation, I’ll tell him you called,” Patterson said, ushering me toward the door.
As I walked back to my store, I tried to build a brief against Gustorf in my mind. He had gone into Rebecca’s store in Menard, perhaps, and encountered Lilly there. He’d made roguish advances toward the girl, and when