The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [301]
“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 the 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