Miss Howard wound up spending just half an hour inside the Franklin place, but it was long enough to learn a few interesting little nuggets of information, ones she refused to tell the rest of us in the surrey until we’d gotten back to Mr. Picton’s house that evening and had collected around the chalkboard along with the Doctor and everyone else.
It seemed that the house we’d seen was very old, and contained only a few rooms-and out of these, just two were for sleeping. The Franklin brothers had shared one of them, while Libby had spent all of her childhood and early adult years sleeping in a small bed in her parents’ room. There’d been no dividing curtain or partition of any kind in this chamber, and so for most of her life Libby had lived with a total lack of privacy, a fact what the Doctor considered extremely important. Apparently both he and Dr. Meyer had done a lot of work concerning children who were almost never out of sight of their parents, and had discovered that such kids developed a whole batch of problems when it came time to deal with the outside world: they were generally short-tempered, viciously sensitive to any kind of criticism, and, as the Doctor put it, “pathologically afraid of embarrassment, almost to the point of what Dr. Krafft-Ebing has labeled ‘paranoia.’ ” And yet, underneath all that, these same types, when grown, could be strangely doubtful about their ability to make their own way in the world: they generally grew up with a strong need to have people around them, but at the same time they resented and even hated those people.
“We are not speaking of something precisely similar to violent physical or verbal abuse, of course,” the Doctor explained, as he began, for the first time, to fill in the section of the chalkboard what had been set aside for facts concerning Libby’s childhood. “But such a lack of privacy can produce many of the same results-primarily, the failure of the psyche to develop into a truly unified, integrated, and independent entity.” Again I thought back to Miss Howard’s words about Libby’s personality being broken, at an early age, into pieces what she could never reassemble, “It’s difficult to conceive of,” the Doctor went on. “The stifling horror of being forced to spend every waking and sleeping hour in the intimate, watchful company of some other human being, of rarely if ever knowing solitude. Think of the incredible frustration and anger, the sense of complete-complete-”
“Suffocation,”Cyrus finished for the Doctor; and I knew he was thinking back to the various babies what Libby’d done in through that very method.
“Precisely, Cyrus,” the Doctor said, writing the word on the board in big letters and underlining it. “Here, indeed, we have the first key that fits both the enigma of Libby’s mind and the apparent puzzle of her behavior-suffocation. But what did it lead to, Sara, in her early adulthood? Did the brother give you any idea at all?”
“There was one subject he was willing to discuss,” Miss Howard said. “Primarily, I think, because he didn’t want his mother to have to hear about it. It seems that Libby had a lot to do with boys, and from a very early age. She was extremely precocious, romantically and sexually.”
“Again, it’s logical,” the Doctor said, considering it. “Such behavior would of necessity be secret, and therefore private-yet it reflects her inability, her very frustrating inability, to achieve such privacy and independence on her own.” As he scribbled these thoughts, the Doctor added, “I don’t imagine, as a result, that she was particularly kind to the unsuspecting young men who became involved with her.”
“No,” Miss Howard answered. “Quite a heartbreaker, would be the most-charitable way to put it.”
“Good,” the Doctor judged, nodding. “Very good.”
Mr. Moore, who’d been sitting in the corner with a big glass pitcher full of martinis what he’d mixed for himself, let out a big groan at that; and the sound seemed to be echoed by the wail of a train whistle off in the distance. Listening to it, Mr. Moore held up a finger.
“You hear that, Kreizler? That’s the sound of this damned case getting away from us. It’s fading into the night, and what are you doing? Still sitting around with your blasted chalkboard, acting like there’s some way you’re going to think your way out of losing. We’re finished-who the hell cares why Libby Hatch is the way she is, at this point?”
“The eternal voice of encouragement,” Mr. Picton said, glancing over to Mr. Moore. “Have six or seven more of those foul concoctions, John, and perhaps you’ll nod off-then we can go on in peace.”
“I know it seems late in the race, Moore,” the Doctor said, lighting a cigarette as he studied the blackboard. “But we must do what we can, while we can. We must.”
“Why?” Mr. Moore grumbled. “Nobody wants the damned woman to be guilty, they’ve made that much clear. Who the hell are we carrying on for, at this point?”
“There’s still the problem of Ana Linares, John,” Lucius said.
Mr. Moore let out another grunt. “A girl whose own father doesn’t care if she lives or dies. She’ll probably have as good a chance with Libby as she would with him, the Spanish bastard.”
“I wasn’t actually thinking of Ana Linares, just now,” the Doctor said, his voice going very quiet.
“No,” Miss Howard said, “it’s Clara, isn’t it? How was she? I didn’t even think to ask.”
The Doctor shrugged, looking uneasy. “Bewildered. And not very talkative, though I don’t blame her for that. I promised her that this ordeal would help both her and her mother. It’s done neither-and now her terror at the memory of what happened three years ago is being matched by her fear of what will happen if her mother goes free. She’s not so young as to be blind to the danger she may be in if Libby is loose to take revenge on what she no doubt sees as a treacherous child who was the only witness to her bloody act.” Setting his piece of chalk down, the Doctor picked up a glass of wine and tried to take a sip; but he stopped in mid-action, as if he had no interest in any kind of relief.
“You can’t blame yourself, Doctor,” Marcus said. “The case looked solid. There was no reason to believe it would go this way.”
“Perhaps,” the Doctor said, sitting down and putting his glass aside.
“And may I remind everyone again-” Miss Howard said. But she got only that far before Mr. Moore let out another big groan.
“Yes, yes, we know, Sara, it’s not over yet! My God, don’t you ever get tired of that saw?”
“If you mean don’t I wish it would end so I’d have a good excuse to sink to the bottom of a glass and live there, John, then no,” Miss Howard snapped. “It’s true that we may not have gotten very much information today-but the mother must know more, and she returns tomorrow. So will we.” She looked to the Doctor. “Will you come with us? I’m not sure I’ll know all the right questions to ask.”
From somewhere deep, the Doctor managed to stir the final traces of what passed for encouragement. “Of course,” he said, putting his hands on his legs and then standing up. “But now, if you all don’t mind, I think I’ll retire before dinner. I’m not particularly hungry. We don’t need to be at the Franklins’ until the afternoon, you say, Sara?”
“That’s right.”
“Then there’s no reason to rise early, at least.” He looked around the room a little awkwardly. “Good night.”
We all mumbled replies, and then grew silent as the Doctor slowly climbed the stairs.
Once she’d heard his bedroom door close, Miss Howard took a piece of chalk from the board and flung it at Mr. Moore’s head, catching him very nicely between the eyes and making him yelp.
“You know, John,” she said, “if the Times won’t take you back, you could always open a new business kicking injured dogs or knocking the crutches out from under cripples.”
“Someday,” Mr. Moore moaned, rubbing the chalk mark on his head, “you’re going to do me some serious physical injury, Sara-and I promise you, I’ll sue! Look, I’m sorry if you all think I’m being a defeatist, but I just don’t see what you’re going to find out from Libby Hatch’s mother that’s going to change things.”
“Maybe nothing!” Miss Howard shot back. “But you’ve seen what the Doctor’s been through this week-and remember, we drew him into this case, to help him forget his troubles in New York. Now it looks like we’ve only made things worse. You might at least try to be encouraging.”
Mr. Moore glanced over at the stairway, looking a little ashamed of himself. “Well-I suppose that’s true…” He poured himself another drink and then turned to Miss Howard. “Do you want me to come along tomorrow?” He did his best to sound sincere. “I promise you, I will try to keep things hopeful.”
Miss Howard sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think you could be hopeful right now if your life depended on it. No, it’ll be better if just Stevie and I go-the fewer people, the less awkward the silence will be.” She looked up at the ceiling. “And I’ve a feeling there’s going to be a lot of silence…”
It was a sound prediction. The Doctor didn’t come down from his room ’til close to noon on Sunday, and he still didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. He did his level best to take an interest in the job what lay ahead of us, but it was a pretty hopeless cause: he seemed to know just how unlikely it would be that we’d discover anything so crucial at the Franklins’ farm that it would swing our fate in court. By the time we climbed aboard the surrey, he’d dropped any effort at conversation and grown very quiet and thoughtful again, and he stayed that way through all of the long drive over to Schaghticoke.
The Franklin house was just as peaceful as it’d been the day before; but this time, in addition to Eli Franklin working around the barnyard, there was an elderly woman-fleshy but not fat-weeding one of the flower patches by the house. Her white-haired head was shielded from the sun by a wide-brimmed straw hat, and her gingham dress was covered by a slightly soiled apron. Even from halfway up the drive we could hear her singing to herself, and a small dog was happily prancing around, letting out a little yap occasionally to get the woman’s attention and receiving a pat on the head and a few kindly words in return.
As the Doctor took in the scene before him, his black eyes began to glow with a light what I hadn’t seen in evidence for a couple of days. “So…” he said, as I drew the surrey to a stop beside the gate in the white picket fence; and when he got down to the ground, he smiled just a little.
“Not precisely what you expected?” Miss Howard asked, joining him.
“Tragedy and horror do not always come with the appropriate trappings, Sara,” the Doctor answered softly. “If they did, mine would be a useless profession.”
As I tied off our horse’s reins, I saw that Eli Franklin had caught sight of us and was running out to the gate. He seemed to be moving with real purpose.
“Hello, Miss Howard,” he said, his face full of worry.
“Mr. Franklin,” she answered with a nod. “This is Dr. Kreizler, who’s also working on the case. And I don’t think you met our young associate Stevie Taggert yesterday-”
Eli Franklin just shook our hands quickly without saying anything, then turned to Miss Howard again. “My mother-when I told her-”
But by then the woman who was tending the flowers had turned and seen us. Her little dog was yapping louder and faster as he, too, registered the presence of strangers. “Oh!” the woman called, in a voice what was both very loud and sort of melodious. “Oh, are these Elspeth’s friends, Eli, dear?”
She started toward us, and Eli Franklin spoke even faster and with more urgency: “I couldn’t tell her that Libby was actually in trouble-it would set her nerves off, and her heart’s not so strong anymore. Is there any way that you can find out what you need to know without-”
“We shall try, Mr. Franklin,” the Doctor answered good-naturedly. “It may be that your mother can tell us all we need to know without our revealing our true purpose.”
Eli Franklin’s face filled with relief, and he just had time to say, “Thank you, Doctor, I do appreciate-” before his mother arrived at the gate.
The little dog was yapping louder than ever, and as Mrs. Franklin held her hat in place on her head she looked down to scold him gently: “Leopold, stop that, these are visitors!” The dog tried to calm down, but it was an effort. “I’m sorry,” the woman said to us, her singsong voice growing a little addled. “He’s very protective! Well! So you’re all friends of my daughter’s? And trying to find her, my son says?” Back behind her amber-colored eyes you could see that Mrs. Franklin-who must have been very handsome in her day-didn’t quite believe the story, but that it was easier for her to accept it than to contemplate other, less pleasant possibilities. “I’m afraid we can’t help you,” she went on, before the Doctor or Miss Howard could answer. “As Eli told you yesterday, we haven’t heard from Libby in several years. Not that I’m surprised! So careless, that girl! She never could take care of the simplest little-”
“Yes, Mother,” Eli Franklin said, touching her elbow to quiet her down. “This is Miss Howard and Dr.-Kreizler, was it? And the boy is called-”
“Just Stevie’ll do,” I said, looking at the woman and getting a big smile in return.
“Oh, just Stevie, eh?” she said, reaching out to touch my cheek. “Well, that’s good enough-you’re a fine-looking boy!”
“They think maybe something we know about her past will help them locate Libby,” Eli Franklin went on.
Miss Howard nodded. “You see, she hasn’t contacted us in quite some time, either. Perhaps if we knew a little more of what her usual habits were-”
Mrs. Franklin nodded. “Hasn’t contacted you? Well, that doesn’t surprise me, either! I don’t know why that girl never could take care of the smallest details. We’ve gotten one or two little notes, over the years, but never so much as a single visit! She just dances through life, doing as she pleases. Ah, well, some people are that way, I suppose.” She pulled the picket gate open. “Please, please, come in and sit on the porch out back-we’ve screened it in, so you won’t have to fight off these terrible flies. What with all the moisture this summer, I’m afraid the insects have been positively thriving!” We started to follow her around the side of the house, none of us getting a word in. “Now, I’ve made lemonade and iced tea-I thought it would be too warm for anything else. There’s some gingerbread, too, and we might find something even sweeter for you, Stevie, if you crave sweets as much as my boys did! But as for Libby, I don’t know how much help I can be…” Moving onto the back porch of the house, we found that the big screen panels did in fact remove us from the annoying blackflies what had started to swarm in the afternoon sun. “It may be that you can tell me more, really. As I say, we haven’t even seen her in-how long has it been, Eli?”
Eli Franklin looked at Miss Howard what you might call pointedly. “Ten years,” he said.
“Ten?”his mother repeated. “That can’t be right. No, you must be mistaken, Eli, I can’t believe that even Libby, careless as she is, would go ten years without a visit! Has it really been that long? Well, sit down, sit down, everyone, and have something to drink!”
I took a seat in a big wicker chair, sighing a little to myself: getting information out of this biddy was going to be a job, all right.
“Thank you, Mrs. Franklin,” the Doctor said, taking a seat in another of the wicker chairs. “The afternoon is warm, and the drive was a long one.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Franklin answered, pouring out glasses of her cool refreshments and handing them around. “All the way from Ballston Spa! I must confess, I never would’ve guessed that Elspeth would be the center of so much attention.” In the words, and also in their tone, there was something what reminded me in a chilling way of the first time we’d ever heard Libby Hatch speak, outside her house on Bethune Street. “She was never the kind of girl that people took much interest in.” Eli Franklin shot Miss Howard a quick look again, asking her with his eyes not to bring up the things he’d mentioned the day before. “Her brothers were more outgoing, of course, more social-they got that from me, I suppose. But Elspeth was more like her father-a daydreamer, too busy in her own mind to ever be of much use, really.”
“I understand your husband is no longer with us,” Miss Howard said.
“No, bless his heart,” the woman answered, reaching around from the table to slip sprigs of fresh-cut mint into all our glasses and then passing around a plate of gingerbread. “He’s been gone almost five years, now. Poor George worked himself into the grave, keeping the farm going. He never was much good at it, really-if he hadn’t had the boys to help him… but they’re born workers, both of them. They get that from me, too, I expect. Practical heads. But George was a dreamer, like Elspeth. It was all we could do to raise three children and keep this place afloat.”
“And Elspeth?” the Doctor asked carefully. “Surely she was some help to you.”
Mrs. Franklin laughed: the light, well-oiled sound of a woman what was used to handling men. “Well, I don’t know how many ways I can say it, Doctor, but the girl was never really any good to anyone, not when it came to the practical business of living. Oh, she was pretty enough. And clever, too, especially with her studies. But not useful in any way that would have really been important for a young lady.” I saw Miss Howard near choke on her piece of gingerbread, but she managed to keep a pleasant expression on her face. “A positive fright in the kitchen,” Mrs. Franklin went on. “And as for housework, well… I couldn’t even put her to dusting without her breaking whatever we had that could be broken. A sweet thing, but what does sweetness matter when you’re all grown up? It was no wonder she never had any suitors. Lived with us until she was near an old maid, and not one man ever came to ask for her hand. I didn’t wonder. Men around here work hard-they need a woman who can tend house, not a clever dreamer. And prettiness fades, Doctor, prettiness fades…” The little dog, who’d followed us onto the porch and was panting in excitement beside Mrs. Franklin’s chair, let out another yap. “Oh! Leopold, you want gingerbread, I’m so sorry! Here…” Handing the dog a piece of the cake-which I had to admit was as good as any I’d ever had-Mrs. Franklin began to stroke his head. “Yes, there, my sweet boy. You don’t remember Libby, do you, Leopold? She left before you came to live with us…” The woman looked back up, lost in thought. “We had another dog, then-Libby’s dog. What was his name, Eli?”
“Fitz,” Eli Franklin answered, munching on his gingerbread and swilling his third glass of lemonade.
“Yes, that’s right. Fitz. Oh, she loved that dog. Cried awfully when he died-I thought she might expire herself! Remember, Eli?”
Suddenly Eli Franklin stopped chewing: he looked around at all of us what you might call guardedly, then slowly got the gingerbread in his mouth down his gullet. “No,” he answered, quickly and quietly.
“Well, of course you do!” Mrs. Franklin said. “Don’t be silly-it was just before she left to work with that family in Stillwater-”
“The Muhlenbergs?” Miss Howard said hopefully.
“Oh, then you know the Muhlenbergs, Miss Howard?” Mrs. Franklin replied, happily surprised. “Fine people, Elspeth said-she wrote from there once. Very fine. And just before she left, she had that attack of bilious fever-”
“Mother-” Eli Franklin said, still looking a little alarmed.
“-and the morning after that Fitz died. I’m sure you remember, Eli-we buried him out by the barn. You built a little coffin, and Libby painted a headstone-”
“Mother!” Eli Franklin said, a little harshly now; then he smiled around at the rest of us, though it was a strain. “I’m sure these people don’t want to hear about every little thing that happened to Libby while she was living here-they’re interested in what’s happening to her now.”
“Well…” Mrs. Franklin looked at her son in some shock; but along with the shock there was a trace of sudden, cold anger, of the variety what I’d sometimes seen come into Libby Hatch’s face. “I certainly apologize if I’m embarrassing my own son. But I was telling them about the Muhlenbergs-”
“You were telling them-” Eli Franklin said; then, catching his mother’s look, he dropped it. “All right. Go ahead, tell them-about the Muhlenbergs.”
“They were very fine people,” Mrs. Franklin went on, giving her son one last warning look as her tone became musical again. “That’s what she said in her letter. And of course I was glad, because it seemed the perfect sort of work for her!”
Miss Howard’s face near dropped, and I imagine mine did the same. For anybody to say that being a wet nurse was the “perfect sort of work” for Libby Hatch indicated that they didn’t know her at all; and Mrs. Franklin, however addled she might’ve seemed at moments, did appear to be aware of her daughter’s strengths and weaknesses. Before either of us could give voice to our confusion, though, the Doctor, suspecting that the story’d undergone a change somewhere along the line of communication, asked, “And what sort of work was that, Mrs. Franklin?”
“Why, don’t you know?” she answered, surprised. “Surely if you know the Muhlenbergs, you know that Libby was their son’s tutor-before she went to New York, that is. But perhaps you met them after she’d already left?”
“Yes,” Miss Howard said, quickly and nervously, “just recently, in fact. And we didn’t meet your daughter until she’d arrived in the city-you see, that’s where we’re all from.”
“Oh, is that so?” Mrs. Franklin answered. “Well, if you’re from New York, then you certainly know more about my daughter than I do. You see, I’ve had only one letter from her since she moved there, and that was so long ago-it’s been years since I’ve heard anything at all. But then, as I say, Elspeth was always that way-I doubt she even realizes she hasn’t written! So very careless, that girl, always daydreaming about something…”
For a moment Mrs. Franklin’s mind seemed to wander in that way we’d already witnessed; but when it did so this time around, I began to see that what I’d taken for addle-headedness was really just a way of avoiding subjects what she wouldn’t or couldn’t discuss, maybe because they were too painful, or maybe because they would’ve revealed things about her what she didn’t want known, especially to strangers. Such being the case, I expected the Doctor to start pressing harder for information: he wasn’t one to let people get away from the point. I was doubly surprised, then, when he just stood up, studied Mrs. Franklin’s eyes as they stared into the distance, and finally said, “Yes. I suspect you are right, Mrs. Franklin. Thank you so much for the refreshment-we shall continue to look for your daughter in New York.”
Snapping out of her seeming daze quickly and looking very relieved, Mrs. Franklin also stood up. “I am sorry I can’t be of more help to you all, truly I am. And if you do run across Elspeth, you might just tell her that her family’s curious to know what she’s up to.” With that she started to walk us toward the screen door.
“Doctor,” Miss Howard said, looking concerned, “I’m not sure that we’ve-”
“Oh, I think Mrs. Franklin’s told us all she can,” the Doctor answered pleasantly. “And it will prove extremely helpful, I’m sure.” As he said these last words, he gave Miss Howard a very meaningful look; and she, taking it on faith that what he said was true, just shrugged and moved to the screen door. As for me, I had no idea what they were talking about; but then, I hadn’t really expected to. I hadn’t even been sure I’d be let into the house, and once I was there, I figured I’d have to wait ’til the ride home for explanations.
As we passed back out onto the lawn from the porch, Mrs. Franklin held up a finger. “Do you know, Doctor-you might try the theaters. I always had an idea that Elspeth would end up on the stage-I can’t imagine why, but I always did! Well, good-bye, now! It was so pleasant to talk with you all!”
Miss Howard and I tried not to look even more confused as we said good-bye to Mrs. Franklin, who called to her little dog and then vanished into the small house.
“I’ll see you to your rig,” Eli Franklin said, himself looking pretty relieved that we were departing. “And I thank you for not mentioning the matter of Libby’s being in trouble to my mother. You see how she is, and-”
“Yes, Mr. Franklin.” The Doctor’s voice had suddenly lost the soft, polite tone he’d used with the man’s mother. “We do indeed, as you say, ‘see how your mother is.’ Perhaps more than you know. And I’m afraid I shall require a service for concealing our true purpose from her.”
The words and the way the Doctor said them struck new nervousness, maybe even fear, into Eli Franklin. “Service?” he mumbled. “What do you-”
“The barnyard, Mr. Franklin,” the Doctor answered. “We should like to inspect the barnyard.”
“The barnyard?” Franklin tried to muster up a laugh. “Why in the world would you want to see that, there’s nothing-”
“Mr. Franklin.” The Doctor’s black eyes struck the man’s features dead still. “If you please.”
Franklin started to shake his head slowly, a movement what quickly became agitated. “No. I’m sorry, but I don’t even know what you want, I’m not going to let you-”
“Very well.” The Doctor turned back toward the porch. “You make it necessary for me to ask your mother…” He seized hold of the handle on the door, only to have Franklin grab his forearm with one of his powerful hands: not roughly, but with desperation, all the same.
“Wait!” Franklin said; then, as the Doctor spun a scowl on him again, he released his grip. “You-you just want to look around the barnyard?”
“Mr. Franklin, you know perfectly well what we want to see,” the Doctor answered; and as he did, Miss Howard suddenly clutched at her forehead, apparently realizing whatever it was that the Doctor was driving at.
Swallowing hard, Franklin looked to her. “Libby’s in a lot more trouble than you said she was, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Miss Howard said, “I’m afraid so.”
Seeming a little pained by that information, Franklin nodded once or twice. “All right. Come on, then.”
Leading the way with long, slow steps, Franklin guided us off the back lawn of the house and across the dusty drive, then into the manure- and mud-covered barnyard. As he did, Miss Howard and I pulled up close to the Doctor.
“You suspect-” Miss Howard asked.
“I suspect nothing,” the Doctor finished for her. “I’m certain. We need only an accurate description of the site, to demonstrate to the woman that we have actually been here and are in earnest.”
“Description of what site?” said yours truly, now the only member of our group who didn’t know what was going on; but Miss Howard and the Doctor both kept following Franklin silently, around to the far side of the barn.
There was a muddy water hole to one end of the structure, round back, and a large patch of prickly raspberry bushes at the other. Franklin walked over to one section of the raspberries and then, sighing as he looked to us again, grabbed an old branch that’d fallen off of a gnarled crab-apple tree what stood not far from the water hole. He used the branch to slash and pry at the thick, thorny stems of the bushes in front of him, and as he did a small object came into view on the ground:
It was a wooden headstone, maybe two feet high. The thing was cracked in a few spots, but not badly and the lettering what’d been painted on it, though faded, was easy to read:
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.”