“You are reasonably sure, Mrs. Fraser, of the cause of death?”
“Yes.” Trying not to breathe the fetid air, I picked up the edge of the blanket, and turned it back, exposing the corpse’s legs. The feet were faintly blue and beginning to swell.
“I drew her skirt down, but I left everything else as it was,” I explained, pulling it up again.
My stomach muscles tightened automatically as I touched her. I had seen dead bodies before, and this was far from the most gruesome, but the hot climate and closed atmosphere had prevented the body from cooling much; the flesh of her thigh was as warm as mine, but unpleasantly flaccid.
I had left it where we found it, in the bed between her legs. A kitchen skewer, more than a foot long. It was covered in dried blood as well, but clearly visible.
“I…um…found no wound on the body,” I said, putting it as delicately as possible.
“Aye, I see.” Mr. Campbell’s frown seemed to lessen slightly. “Ah, well, at least ’tis likely not a case of deliberate murder, then.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but caught a warning look from Jamie. Not noticing, Mr. Campbell went on.
“The question remains whether the poor woman will have done it herself, or met her death by the agency of another. What think ye, Mistress Fraser?”
Jamie narrowed his eyes at me over Campbell’s shoulder, but the warning was unnecessary; we had discussed the matter last night, and come to our own conclusions—also to the conclusion that our opinions need not be shared with the forces of law and order in Cross Creek; not just yet. I pinched my nose slightly under pretext of the smell, in order to disguise any telltale alteration of my expression. I was a very bad liar.
“I’m sure she did it by herself,” I said firmly. “It takes very little time to bleed to death in this manner, and as Jamie told you, she was still alive when we found her. We were outside the mill, talking, for some time before we came in; no one would have been able to leave without our seeing them.”
On the other hand, a person might quite easily have hidden in the other room, and crept out quietly in the dark while we were occupied in comforting the dying woman. If this possibility did not occur to Mr. Campbell, I saw no reason to draw it to his attention.
Jamie had rearranged his features into an expression of gravity suitable to the occasion by the time Mr. Campbell turned back to him. The older man shook his head in regret.
“Ah, poor unfortunate lass! I suppose we can but be relieved that no one else has shared her sin.”
“What about the man who fathered the child she was trying to get rid of?” I said, with a certain amount of acidity. Mr. Campbell looked startled, but pulled himself quickly back together.
“Um…quite so,” he said, and coughed. “Though we do not know whether she were married—”
“So ye do not know the woman yourself, sir?” Jamie butted in before I could make any further injudicious remarks.
Campbell shook his head.
“She is not the servant of Mr. Buchanan or the MacNeills, I am sure. Nor Judge Alderdyce. Those are the only plantations near enough from which she might have walked. Though it does occur to me to wonder why she should have come to this particular place to perform such a desperate act…”
It had occurred to Jamie and me, too. To prevent Mr. Campbell’s taking the next step in this line of inquiry, Jamie intervened again.
“She said verra little, but she did mention a ‘Sergeant.’ ‘Tell the Sergeant’ were her words. Do ye perhaps have a thought whom she might mean by that, sir?”
“I think there is an army sergeant in charge of the guard on the royal warehouse. Yes, I am sure of it.” Mr. Campbell brightened slightly. “Ah! Nay doubt the woman was attached in some way to the military establishment. Depend upon it, that is the explanation. Though I still wonder why she—”
“Mr. Campbell, do pardon me—I’m afraid I’m feeling a bit faint,” I interrupted, laying a hand on his sleeve. This was no lie; I hadn’t slept or eaten. I felt light-headed from the heat and the smell, and I knew I must look pale.
“Will ye see my wife outside, sir?” Jamie said. He gestured toward the bed and its pathetic burden. “I’ll bring the poor lass along as I may.”
“Pray do not trouble yourself, Mr. Fraser,” Campbell protested, already turning to usher me out. “My servant can fetch out the body.”
“It is my aunt’s mill, sir, and thus my concern.” Jamie spoke politely, but firmly. “I shall attend to it.”
* * *
Phaedre was waiting outside, by the wagon.
“I told you that place got haints,” she said, surveying me with an air of grim satisfaction. “You white as ary sheet, ma’am.” She handed me a flask of spiced wine, wrinkling her nose delicately in my direction.
“You smellin’ worse than what you was last night, and you look like you come from a pig-killin’ then. Sit you down in the shade here and drink that up; fix you up peart.” She glanced over my shoulder. I looked back as well, and saw that Campbell had reached the shade of the sycamores by the creek bank, and was deep in conversation with his servant.
“Found her,” Phaedre said at once, dropping her voice. Her eyes cut sideways, toward the small cluster of slave huts, barely visible from this side of the mill.
“You’re sure? You didn’t have much time.” I took a mouthful of wine and held it, glad of the sharp bouquet that rose up the back of my throat, cleansing my palate of the taste of death.
Phaedre nodded, her glance moving to the men under the trees.
“Didn’t need much. Walked down by them houses, saw one door hangin’ open, little bits of trash scattered round like somebody done left in a hurry. I find a picanin’ and ask him who livin’ there, he tell me Pollyanne live there, but she gone now, he don’t know where. Ask him when she leave, he say she there for supper last night, this morning she gone, nobody see her.” Her eyes met mine, dark with questions. “Now you know, what you mean to do?”
A bloody good question, and one for which I had no answer at all. I swallowed the wine, and along with it, a rising sense of panic.
“All the slaves here must know she’s gone; how long before anyone else finds out? Whose business will it be to know such things, now that Byrnes is dead?”
Phaedre raised one shoulder in a graceful shrug.
“Anybody come askin’ find out right quick. But whose business it be to ask—” She nodded toward the mill. We had left the small door to the living quarters open; Jamie was coming out, a blanket-wrapped burden cradled in his arms.
“Reckon it’s his,” she said.
I am already part of it. He had known, even before the interrupted dinner party. With no formal announcement, with neither invitation nor acceptance of the role, he fit the place, the part, like a piece slipping into a jigsaw puzzle. Already he was the master of River Run—if he wanted to be.
Campbell’s servant had come to help with the body; Jamie sank to one knee by the edge of the mill flume, surrendering his burden gently to the earth. I gave Phaedre back the flask, with a nod of thanks.
“Will you fetch the things from the wagon?”