FITZ

1879-1887

LOVE ALWAYS, FROM MAMA

As I read the last line, I felt as though somebody’d run along my back with the hard end of a goose quill: they were the very same words what were carved on Thomas and Matthew Hatch’s graves in Ballston Spa.

“Sure,” I whispered to nobody, taking a couple of frightened steps back as I kept staring at the headstone. “Of course-she was a wet nurse …”

At the sound of the Doctor’s voice I finally looked up. “What did the dog die of, Mr. Franklin?” he said.

Franklin just shook his head. “I don’t know. She brought him to me-dead. Not a mark on him. I built her the coffin, and she took it off and sealed it up. Then I helped her bury it,”

“And your sister’s-’bilious fever’?” the Doctor asked.

“It lasted all night,” Franklin answered, turning to stare at the headstone. His voice became what you might call detached as he added: “Came on her after we’d all gone to sleep… nearly killed her. But do you know? She never said a word, until morning. Never made a sound… My mother and father, they slept right through it. Right through it.”

The Doctor nodded. “You understand, Mr. Franklin, that a person who destroys evidence of a crime can be indicted as an accessory?”

Franklin nodded, his face still blank. “It’s only a dog…”

The Doctor moved closer to the man. “I hope, for your sake, that your sister will see reason, and make it unnecessary for us to return with a court order authorizing an exhumation of this-dog. In the meantime, I advise you to make very sure that the grave is not tampered with.”

Franklin didn’t say anything to that, just kept nodding and staring at the headstone. Satisfied that the fellow’d gotten his point, the Doctor looked to Miss Howard and me, then turned and started back for the surrey.

“Doctor,” Franklin mumbled as we went, causing us to stop and turn back to him. “She never-Libby, I mean-she never had much. You heard my mother-she was just a servant in this house. Not even that-a servant gets her own quarters.” He looked down at the grave again. “She had men-boys, really-who chased her. She was foolish. But it was something of her own. She deserved to have that much, without it ruining her life. She deserved to have more than just a dog …”

The Doctor nodded once, and then we kept moving to our rig.

“Do you think,” Miss Howard said quietly, “that Judge Brown will give us a court order?”

“It’s my belief that such action won’t be necessary,” the Doctor answered. “Darrow and Maxon will be able to see reason, even if Libby can’t.”

As we climbed up onto the rig, Miss Howard looked back toward the barn. “And the brother-did he know? Does he know?”

“He suspects, certainly,” the Doctor answered, as I started our horse moving. “But as to whether or not he’s sure…”

“What about the mother?” I asked. “She ain’t so harebrained as she makes out-she might know, too.”

“It’s possible, of course,” the Doctor answered. “She, too, suspects much about her daughter, and wouldn’t be altogether surprised by this. But I don’t think she’s aware of it. A woman like Libby Hatch would have found ways to conceal the pregnancy-and you heard what happened when she finally delivered the child. She never made a sound. In most cases I wouldn’t believe it, but in this instance we are dealing with a person capable of incredible discipline when she finds herself trapped.”

“But who was the father?” Miss Howard asked.

“All questions to be answered later,” the Doctor replied. “Stevie-I saw an inn on our way through the town. They may have a telephone. We must call Mr. Picton, and tell him to meet us at his office as soon as we return. Then he must contact Darrow and Maxon and have them, along with their client, join us at, say-” Pulling out his watch and checking the time, the Doctor made a quick calculation. “Nine o’clock. Yes, that should leave us enough time to work out the details.” Tucking the timepiece away again, the Doctor folded his arms anxiously. “And then we shall see.”

CHAPTER 50

By seven-thirty that evening our entire team was packed into Mr. Picton’s office one more time, to weigh the results of our trip to the Franklins’ farm and determine what we should do about it all. Even El Niño was present: as usual, it wasn’t that he understood most of what was going on or had anything to contribute, but he was always concerned that “the lady,” “Mr. Mont-rose,”Mr. Picton (his future “jefe”), or one of the rest of us might be set upon by some villainous characters. He’d come to believe that it was his personal mission and responsibility to prevent any such assault; and as those of us what actually had something to say about the case sat in a circle around Mr. Picton’s desk, the aborigine stood by the door, weapons at the ready. At the time I considered this, like so much of his behavior, amusing and touching, nothing more; later, I’d come to wish that we’d all followed his cautious lead.

The main topic of conversation-a conversation what rapidly turned into a debate-was how we were going to present our discovery to the defense lawyers, and what the best deal to try to strike with them in light of it was. The general thought was that Mr. Picton would tell Libby Hatch that the state’d be willing to forget about the coffin what was buried behind her family’s barn in return for her changing her plea to one of guilty-but guilty of what? Mr. Picton was very reluctant to abandon the first-degree murder charge, what would’ve sent Libby to the electrical chair; but he knew that giving someone a choice between death now and death later wasn’t really much of a carrot. So, he tried to reconcile himself to the next best thing: second-degree murder and a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Some of our group-Marcus and Mr. Moore, mainly-didn’t see why Libby’d go for that option, either, given her personality: a woman who seemed to enjoy her freedom in as many different ways as this one did wasn’t likely to look on the prospect of spending the rest of her days behind bars with much enthusiasm.

But the Doctor disagreed. He figured that, though the woman might rebel at the idea of such a sentence on the surface, some deeper part of her soul would accept and maybe even welcome it. Mr. Moore and Marcus were skeptical about this thought, too, until the Doctor explained it further. Prison, he said, would actually satisfy the conflicting longings of Libby’s spirit: the need to be isolated while at the same time having people around; the need to perform what she saw as some sort of useful task (for a woman as clever as Libby would no doubt be assigned to a position of some authority among the prisoners in, say, the women’s block at Sing Sing) while at the same time feeling like she was defying accepted social customs and authority (she would, after all, be a jailbird). And then there was the question of her desire to control what went on around her: many criminals, the Doctor said, especially those of Libby’s stripe, secretly craved some kind of regulation and discipline in their lives (she had, he reminded us all, been able to go through hours of labor without ever making a sound loud enough to wake her parents); and though physical control in this case would actually be administered by the prison, Libby, with her talent for self-delusion, would quickly convince herself that in fact she was the one who was dictating what went on. And in a way, the Doctor said, she’d be right, being as it would be her own criminal actions what would’ve landed her in jail. But one consideration weighed above all others in convincing the Doctor that Libby would take the deal what Mr. Picton planned to offer: over and over we’d seen her demonstrate that she prized her own life above all things, including the health and safety of her own offspring-the chance to escape execution would be enough, the Doctor said, to make Libby play along, even without the other influences.