Still, there was at least a stirring, as if the colony had held its breath for a long time and was now cautiously exhaling again. The future might be rosy yet, the omens were there, but in the short-term that was of little benefit to a peddler like Simms. Lewis felt quite sorry for the man and the pressure he was under.
Still, he could not be absolved from suspicion in the matter of the four murders. It remained difficult for Lewis to subscribe to the notion that this man with the friendly, open face and the wagging tongue was anything more than an honest peddler, yet there was something that kept nagging at him about that day in Millcreek. Simms had too quickly seized on the opportunity to blame Bill Johnston for the Clark girl’s death. It may just have been a serendipitous opportunity to make a little money, and he supposed that if he were in Simms’s place he would do the same — as odious as that was given the circumstances — but Simms had been just a little too quick off the mark, too eager to agree with the pat answer as soon as it was presented. And what had he been doing there in the first place? Why had he been hovering outside the meeting that day? Had he heard about the murder and rushed to the meeting, sure that his relics would be in demand? He had stood outside the graveyard gate at Rachel’s funeral, as well, although he hadn’t attempted to sell anything that day. He wasn’t aware of any connection between Rachel and Simms and yet the man had more or less attended her funeral. Why?
In spite of his suspicions, he found Simms’s company entertaining and enjoyable and was not at all sorry that they travelled the same route so often. He reassured himself that by riding along with the peddler he would be able to keep a closer eye on him, alert for signs that might give the man away if he were the culprit. He was careful not to signal distrust in any way, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask a few artfully posed questions.
As soon as he finished grumbling about lack of business, Simms filled him in on all the latest news. Seth Jessup had finally purchased the smithy in Demorestville — an arrangement that Minta had mentioned to him at one point. Lewis hoped that she and the baby were happily settled into the house behind the smithy and reflected that, no matter how bad the economic times, people would still need their horses shod.
“He always used to strike me as an evil-tempered man,” Simms remarked, “but there’s quite a difference in him now. He’s got a family to work for and his wife rules the household, they say.”
“Ah, Minta. She’s one of those women who hide a personality of iron behind a facade of soft washed cotton.”
Simms chuckled. “Seth doesn’t seem to mind at all. He’s even begun attending the Methodist meetings.”
He had never seriously considered putting Seth Jessup on his list of potential suspects. The man had not really been in the right places at the right times. Still, Lewis wondered where he had disappeared to so mysteriously on the night of his son’s birth —the night of Rachel’s death. He briefly reviewed the information he had gathered. No, Seth couldn’t be the killer, at least not of the last two victims. If he was comfortably settled in the Demorestville smithy shoeing horses day in and day out, he would be hard-pressed to find a reason for absenting himself from his work and was unlikely to forego the money he earned from it. He could ask, if he got the chance, whether or not Seth had gone away for a day or two on occasion, but he was fairly certain what the answer would be.
Sometimes he wondered if the murders were indeed unrelated, although the doctor in Millcreek had agreed with his assessment that one hand had slain all. But who was to say that he even knew the man that the hand belonged to? There were any number of desperate men roaming the colony — strangers, madmen, rogues, thieves. Why not murderers as well? But then why did the murderer seem to be following Lewis wherever he went?
“Are you still selling those little pins of the Caddicks’?” he asked Simms one time as they jogged along the road toward Percy.
“Oh, yes, they’re still good sellers,” Simms said. “Although the Caddicks haven’t time to make many these days. Benjamin’s married, you know, and so is his brother Willet.”
Lewis hadn’t heard this.
“Oh, yes,” Simms said. “The two brothers married two sisters. Willet always did have to do whatever Benjamin did, although I hear that even in this instance he lost out. Benjamin got the sister that’s much the best-looking.”
“And the girl who was murdered in Millcreek? Have you heard any more of that?”
“Not at thing. I think it’s pretty clear that it must have been the pirate … or Americans. Do you know a preacher named Spicer? Runty little fellow.”
“Morgan Spicer? Yes, but he’s not a preacher, not really. He just wants to be. What about him?”
“He’s not one of yours? How odd.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was sure that he must be some sort of assistant or something. Everywhere you go he seems to be somewhere close by.”
Lewis shrugged. “Anyone can preach the Word. It’s just unfortunate that he calls himself a Methodist, after all the accusations that we’re uneducated and illiterate. Spicer tends only to confirm this opinion.”
“No, I mean that murder seems to happen wherever the both of you are. It’s becoming rather a disturbing pattern, don’t you think?”
Except that Spicer was nowhere near Sarah when she was murdered, at least as far as Lewis was aware. He had never mentioned the details of his daughter’s death to the peddler, only the fact that she was one of many who had died. Come to that, he couldn’t ever recall expressing to him the opinion that Rachel’s death had been anything but an act of nature. A pattern? Two deaths were no pattern, four surely were, but how would Simms know that? Except that Simms always seemed to know everything.
He was uncertain how to respond. Was this mention of Spicer’s name in connection with the murders a genuine attempt to help bring a criminal to justice, or was it a ploy to divert attention, in the same way that Simms had shifted focus to Bill Johnston that day at Millcreek?
He decided to laugh off the statement. “What are you suggesting, Isaac? Do you think I’m the killer? Or that Spicer and I have conspired in some way?”
“Of course not,” Simms replied. “I just think Spicer bears watching.”
As do you, Lewis thought.
The conversation was unsettling, though Simms’s words only echoed what he himself had considered, and he worried away at it for several days afterward. And then, when the words he remembered were becoming jumbled and fragmentary in his mind to the point where he had almost decided to try to forget them, he realized what his problem was. It was his approach that was faulty. He had been trying to find the connections that would point to one person, but what if he turned the riddle around, and simply tried to eliminate rather than prove? “Murder seems to happen wherever the both of you are,” Simms had said. What if one of them hadn’t been there after all?
Simms’s movements would be the most difficult to trace, especially if he was trying to be discreet about his inquiries. It would be far easier to track Spicer. He knew for a fact that Spicer had been in both Demorestville and Prescott when the murders had occurred nearby. He could have been in Millcreek — he had dropped in at Bath often enough to enquire after Lewis’s health — but it was uncertain where he had been specifically when the Clark girl was killed. And where was he when Sarah died? He would need to return