The Widow Of Pale Harbour. Hester Fox

church, but they hadn’t the funds to keep it up.”

      Gabriel murmured that he had not known. Perching gingerly on a precarious-looking settee, he searched for an ashtray in which to snuff out his cigar. He’d never liked the things, and the ash was growing long and threatening to spill onto his sleeve.

      Oblivious to his predicament, Mr. Marshall tugged at his mustache and continued with his line of thought. “Might do the town good to have more of a godly presence, too.”

      Gabriel commandeered a vase and discreetly tapped out his ash. “Oh?”

      When Mr. Marshall didn’t respond immediately, Gabriel asked, “And why is that?”

      “Hmm?” Mr. Marshall looked at him as if coming out of some deep private thought. “Oh, nothing. It’s only we’ve had some troublemakers lately, and a bit of fire and brimstone might be just the thing to keep them in line.”

      “I see.” Gabriel frowned. “Well, transcendentalism generally doesn’t go in for that kind of thing.” That much he knew, at least. That’s what Anna had loved about the spiritual movement, “the exquisite freedom” of it, as she had once told him. There was no good and bad, no heaven and hell, only a beautiful energy that permeated the universe, connecting each and every soul. It was a nice way to look at the world, but it simply wasn’t true. There was good and evil—he had seen so for himself.

      Mr. Marshall looked a little disappointed and cleared his throat before taking another puff of his cigar. “Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing. You’re the big city man, but I think hellfire would go a sight farther around Pale Harbor than any of this wishy-washy transcendental business.”

      Gabriel choked on his cigar smoke but was spared the need to respond by the maidservant sticking her head into the parlor and announcing dinner.

      He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the covers were lifted off the dishes, revealing steaming platters of buttery fish and fried potatoes, roast beef, succulent green beans and thick chowder. He shifted in his seat so that his hosts wouldn’t hear the rolling growl of his stomach.

      Mr. Marshall clapped his hands and rubbed them together in anticipation. “You won’t find food better than this anywhere in Pale Harbor,” he said. “Tell me, have you employed a cook yet?”

      “Er, no,” Gabriel said as he helped himself to a heap of potatoes. He’d barely opened his trunks yet, let alone found domestic help.

      The twins, who couldn’t have been more than ten, had apparently been deemed mature enough to dine with their parents at the table, and were in the process of trying to wriggle out of their starched smocks. Their whispers and giggles were a constant backdrop to the conversation, and more than once Gabriel glanced up to see them sharing secret conversations behind their hands while staring at him.

      With a careful glance at them, Gabriel swallowed his food. “Mr. Marshall—” he started, only to be waved off.

      “Please, we don’t stand on ceremony here. Horace.”

      If the wealthy businessman had known who Gabriel truly was, would he still have allowed Gabriel to address him so informally? He shifted a little in his seat. “Horace,” he began again, “you mentioned something in the parlor.” He chose his words carefully, mindful of the young girls seated at the table. “When I first went to look at the church, there was...” He cleared his throat. “There was some sort of...” How to describe the pile of remains that had left him so unsettled and had lurked at the back of his mind since the night before? “Some sort of...animal at the altar. A dead one.”

      Despite his best efforts, Gabriel had attracted the attention of the twins, who immediately left off their whispers and regarded him with eyes the size of saucers.

      Mr. and Mrs. Marshall shared a look. “I expect you will have heard something of the troubles that are plaguing the town?” asked Mr. Marshall cautiously, after a long pause.

      “Troubles?”

      “Horace!” Mrs. Marshall’s ruddy cheeks pinkened further. “That is not a conversation for the dinner table.”

      Unperturbed, Mr. Marshall gave her a dismissive wave and settled back into his chair, swirling his wine around in his glass. “Well, he’s going to hear it sooner or later. He might as well hear it from us without all the embroidery some of the other townsfolk will give the story.”

      Mrs. Marshall pressed her lips together before snapping at the twins to cease their giggling.

      “Troubles?” Gabriel prompted again.

      “Just last week Maggie Duncan found a pile of skinned squirrels in the woods behind her house,” Mr. Marshall said. “At first she thought it was the work of a fox, but what fox eats just the fur and leaves the meat? Then there was some sort of...of effigy. Crude little doll with all manner of buttons and strings sewed about it and stuffed into the hollow of the old elm tree in town.”

      Gabriel stiffened in his seat at the descriptions that were eerily similar to what he had found just the other night. This must have been why Mr. Marshall had wanted his church to preach crime and punishment.

      A thick silence had settled over the table. Gabriel put down his glass and looked between Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. “What is it?”

      A meaningful look passed between the husband and wife. “No one has been apprehended,” Mrs. Marshall said tightly. “But most people around here know who’s behind it without a signed confession.”

      Gabriel looked at them blankly, waiting for one of them to elaborate.

      “Sophronia Carver,” said Mr. Marshall, as if it cost him something just to say the name. “Nathaniel Carver’s widow.”

      “She killed her husband,” Mrs. Marshall added. “And lives in...an unsavory manner that I won’t expound upon in front of the children.”

      Gabriel barely had time to ask what constituted an unsavory manner, when the children in question piped up.

      “She’s a witch,” said one of the twins.

      “It’s true,” said the other twin, nodding gravely. “Lucy Warren looked through her window and saw her stirring at a great pot. And what do you think was sticking out the bottom of her dress?”

      Gabriel opened his mouth to say he was sure he had no idea, but the twins were too fast.

      “A tail!” they exclaimed in joyful unison.

      Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Marshall seemed particularly taken aback by this outburst, Mr. Marshall continuing to saw away at his beef, and Mrs. Marshall only saying indulgently, “A tail! I don’t know where you girls get such stories.”

      The twins dissolved into giggles again. “And she has the most horrid scar running down her face.”

      “Probably from one of her victims trying to escape!”

      “Well, tail or no,” said Mr. Marshall, taking the accusation against Mrs. Carver in stride, “the woman is queer and you can lay your last nickel on the fact that she’s behind all this unpleasant business.”

      The dinner was taking on a decidedly peculiar slant and, unused to drinking so much rich wine, Gabriel’s temple was starting to throb. The widow in question would have to be a queer woman indeed to go traipsing about in abandoned churches, setting out dead, mutilated animals. It seemed more likely that it was, as the Marshalls had first suggested, the work of some cruel youngster.

      The conversation continued in that vein for a while longer, but Gabriel was no longer listening. He was tired and on edge from trying to say the right things, to sit the right way on these damned uncomfortable chairs. All he wanted was to stand up, thank the Marshalls for the hospitality, and then go back to his empty little house and fall into bed. But then the conversation took an even more horrifying turn.

      “Are you married, Gabriel?”

      He froze, his fork hovering over