Thoreau in Phantom Bog

Book 3: Henry David Thoreau Mystery

by B.B. Oak

Genres: Biographical; Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

Henry David Thoreau’s impassioned activism in the Underground Railroad leads him away from the banks of Walden Pond into a morass of murder… In the spring of 1848, Thoreau returns to Plumford, Massachusetts, in search of a fellow conductor on the Underground Railroad, who has gone missing along with the escaped female slave he was assigned to transport. With the help of his good friend, Dr. Adam Walker, Thoreau finds the conductor—shot to death on a back road. When the two men discover that Adam’s beloved cousin Julia has given the slave safe harbor, their relief is counterbalanced by concern for Julia, who has put herself in grave danger. Another conductor has been murdered in a neighboring town and a letter has been found from someone claiming to have been hired to assassinate anyone harboring fugitive slaves. With all of them now potential targets, the need for Thoreau and Adam to apprehend the killer is more urgent than ever…

Release date: August 25, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Wednesday, May 17, 1848

When I called on Henry Thoreau’s mother this afternoon, she was affable enough, but hardly forthcoming. And the same could be said of her two daughters. Mrs. Thoreau ushered me into her small parlor to meet them, and I found their resemblance to Henry quite striking. His elder sister Helen has large, deep-set eyes like his, and his younger sister Sophia has an aquiline nose just as prominent. So familiar and endearing were their features to me that I felt as if I already knew them. They did not reciprocate my warm feelings of friendship, however. Their manner toward me remained polite but wary throughout my short visit, and rather than be frank with me, they outright lied. But with so much at stake, I do not fault them for their subterfuge. Nor do I resent their hesitancy to include me, a complete stranger, in their clandestine operation.

Even Henry, to whom I have proven myself trustworthy and even doughty when the situation required it, was not very forthcoming when I broached the subject with him last week. I had requested that he come to Plumford to advise me on a structural change I wished to make to the house I’d inherited from my grandfather.

“I hope you do not intend to destroy the elegant proportions of this fine old construction with gables and fretwork,” he said immediately upon arriving. Dressing up the plain fronts of eighteenth-century houses with Gothic Revival motifs had become all the rage, even in small towns like Plumford and Concord.

“Of course not, Henry. You should know me better than that,” I replied. In truth, although we have shared some rather harrowing experiences during the last few years, we did not know each other all that well, for Henry is most reserved around women. I showed him the rough plan I’d drawn up, and he understood its purpose immediately.

“This looks to be a drawing of a hidden compartment beneath the stairs,” he said. “I surmise its use would be to conceal runaway slaves from the eyes of the law.”

“Exactly. I would like to offer you the use of my house as an Underground Railroad Station, Henry.”

He kept his expression impassive. “Why make such an offer to me?”

“Come now, Henry. It’s common knowledge that the Thoreau family is active in the Railroad.”

“The more common the knowledge, the less it can be trusted,” Henry said in a dismissive tone and went back to examining my plan. “Your measurements are slightly off,” he concluded. He took a pencil from his coat pocket and made some corrections. “There. That should work.”

“Now all I need is a carpenter I can trust. Will you take on the job, Henry?”

“I might.”

“And will you link my house to the Railroad?”

“I might,” he said again. For a man who speaks his mind so freely and eloquently, Henry can be very tight-lipped when he so chooses.

“Pray be less ambiguous,” I implored.

“The configuration of the network we speak of is intentionally kept ambiguous,” Henry replied. “I freely admit that I conduct fugitives from one Station to another, but I leave the organization of Station routes to others.”

“And who might they be?”

“I reckon you’ll find out soon enough, Julia.” And with those parting words, off he went. Shortly thereafter I received an invitation from Mrs. Thoreau to take tea with her and her daughters this afternoon.

And so here I was, cup in hand, sitting betwixt Helen and Sophia on a worn horsehair sofa, across from Mrs. Thoreau on a straight-back chair. After we had all expressed our pleasure in the fine weather we were having, Mrs. Thoreau got down to the purpose of my visit. Or so I thought.

“Thank you for volunteering to help in our Cause,” she said. “Your offer could not have come at a better time, Mrs. Pelletier.”

I inwardly flinched, as I always do, when I am addressed by my married name. Outwardly I smiled.

“Henry tells me you are a most accomplished portrait artist,” Mrs. Thoreau continued.

Rather than modestly demur, I nodded my assent. My talent and skills, after all, are all I can lay claim to in my present situation.

“The Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society holds a fair on the Common every summer to raise money,” she went on to inform me, “and we are hoping you will agree to make portraits of the attendees for us to sell. Nothing elaborate, of course. Just quick pencil drawings.”

I’d come with the expectation of being asked to take part in the Underground Railroad, not some humdrum fair. But I have vowed to do anything I can to help free the four million slaves in my country, so I swallowed down my disappointment and told her I would be most happy to oblige.

“Excellent!” Mrs. Thoreau said. “Your participation will give us the opportunity to get to know you better, Mrs. Pelletier. And once we are on more familiar terms, we might discuss your participation in . . . other activities related to the Cause. All in good time.”

When I heard the phrase “all in good time” my face fell, for that usually means a good long time.

“Do not look so let down, my dear young woman,” Mrs. Thoreau said. “The fair is a most important endeavor. All the proceeds we earn from it pay for the printing and dissemination of antislavery literature.”

“Members of our Society work on handicrafts to sell at the fair all year round,” Helen added.

As if on cue, Sophia pulled from her pocket a hook and a bobbin of white thread and commenced crocheting. “God in His providence has placed this Cause in the hands of women,” she declared.

“It is left to us to agitate this nation’s conscience if men are not willing to do it,” Mrs. Thoreau stated firmly. “Even if we must step out of the bounds of our womanly sphere to do so.”

“It’s high time we extended the limits of those bounds!” I put in.

All three Thoreau ladies voiced their enthusiastic agreement, and I anticipated a rousing discussion concerning women’s rights to follow. Instead the conversation turned to mundane matters concerning the fair, and I confess that my attention waned. Gazing out the front window I observed a man in rough farm clothes ride up on a sturdy dray horse. He tied the horse to the gatepost and hurried to the Thoreaus’ entrance door. Mrs. Thoreau left us to answer his vigorous knocking, and, after a brief conversation with him in the dooryard, she returned to the parlor, looking rather concerned.

“Is something amiss, Mother?” Helen asked her.

“So it seems. The Plumford cargo did not arrive in Carlisle last night.”

“Henry will get to the bottom of it,” Sophia said. “I’ll run to the Emerson house and inform him.”

“No need to do that,” Mrs. Thoreau said. “He’s helping Father in the pencil manufactory right now. I’ll go tell him myself.” And with that she hurried to the house’s back annex.

I looked from Helen to Sophia in the ensuing silence, waiting for them to speak. “What sort of cargo has gone missing?” I finally made bold to ask them.

“Oh, just a crate of Thoreau pencils,” Helen replied.

I could not be put off by such a clumsy lie as that. “Why were pencils made in Concord dispatched from Plumford?”

Helen stared back at me blankly. “Why indeed.”

“No delivery wagon was available in Concord,” Sophia said, apparently more adept at invention than her sister.

Realizing further questions would only result in further fabrications, I left off my inquiry and looked out the window again. Henry and his mother had joined the farmer waiting in the dooryard. They talked awhile, and then the farmer shook hands with mother and son and rode away. Henry headed off on foot in the opposite direction, and Mrs. Thoreau returned to the parlor. Conversation concerning the fair resumed, and nothing more was said about the undelivered cargo. I took my leave shortly thereafter, and no one protested my hasty departure. I am sure they could not wait to talk frankly and openly amongst themselves. That they did not feel free to do so in my presence was disappointing but understandable. Trust is won through actions rather than words.

When I left the Thoreau home on Texas Street, I walked briskly but decorously down Concord’s bustling Main Street, but as soon as I reached the open road north, I lifted my skirts and broke into a run. I sighted Henry as he was crossing a bridge over the Concord River and called to him to wait. He looked surprised to see me.

When I drew up to him, I was panting more than a little. As a girl I could run like the wind without getting winded, but that was before decorum required I wear stays. “I’ve just been visiting your mother,” I explained to Henry as soon as I caught my breath. “She told me nothing concerning your mission, but I have deduced you are going to Plumford to see about a fugitive slave.”

Henry remained silent.

“I can help you, Henry!”

“How?”

“By offering my house as a safe haven for the runaway if need be.”

Henry did not accept my offer, but neither did he turn it down. “Come along then,” he said in a brisk tone. “Since we’re both going in the same direction, we might as well walk together.”

We continued over the bridge and up Lowell Road to Plumford, three miles away. Most men would have slackened their pace or at least offered a supporting arm to a female walking companion, but Henry did not. That’s one of the traits I like best in him. He treats me as a comrade with little regard to my gender. Nor does he make any effort to engage in polite conversation with me. His long silences are contemplative rather than brooding, and I do not mind them.

When we reached the base of Wolf Hill, Henry suggested that we take a path that traversed it rather than continue on the road, and I agreed that would be the more efficient route. The path turned out to be steep and rocky, but I made no complaints as pebbles bruised the undersurface of my feet through the thin leather soles of my cloth gaiter boots. The left boot soon tore along the side, leaving my poor little outermost toe exposed to very rough treatment. On we trudged through groves of birches and beeches unfolding new leaves and stands of tamaracks sprouting fresh needles. Purple-trumpeted trillium and fragrant lily of the valley bloomed on the forest floor, but Henry did not suggest we stop to admire their show. Nor did he hark to the calls of the spring birds, disregarding the ovenbird’s sweet refrain of teacher, teacher, teacher and the insistent pit-pit-pit of the wood thrush. He didn’t even remark, as he usually does with wry amusement, that the oriole was saying eat it, Potter, eat it. His concern for the slave who’d gone missing pushed him forward, and he ignored my stumbling effort to keep up with him. When the path narrowed, however, he held back branches so I could pass unscathed. He may not be gallant, but he is always considerate, and if I could conjure up a big brother, he would be just like Henry Thoreau. But at my ripe old age of four and twenty, I reckon I no longer need a big brother to guide me. I have gone my own wayward way for too long now.

Back on the Lowell Road, about half a mile from the Plumford Green, Henry came to a stop and took off his broad-brimmed straw hat to wipe his brow. His thick crop of hair stood up like a patch of unruly weeds. “I think it best for me to go alone from here,” he told me.

“Why can’t I continue with you?”

“Allow me to remind you that it’s against Federal Law to aid and abet fugitive slaves, Julia. You could be severely fined, even arrested, for taking one into your home.”

“I am willing to risk it!”

“I have found that most people who say that are just spouting off their moral or political convictions and have not considered the consequences long and hard enough.”

“Well, I assure you that I have. I am not like most people, Henry. My reasons for wanting to aid and abet fugitive slaves are deeply personal rather than merely theoretical.”

“Personal?” He regarded me closely. “In what way?”

I would have preferred to keep it to myself but saw that Henry needed further convincing. Therefore I divulged the wretched truth about the man I was bound to for life. “I am married to a man who was once a slave trader.”

Henry does not often look surprised, but he did at that moment.

“My husband, Jacques Pelletier, made his fortune shipping captured Africans to the French West Indies,” I continued. “When I learned of this I immediately left him, for I could not abide living off the profits of his trade.”

“You were right to renounce a life that went against your moral sense,” Henry said. “Once you learned the truth, leaving such a man was the only honest thing you could do for yourself, despite the marital vows you made.”

“And if I am to stay true to myself, how can I now abide living by the unjust laws that support slavery in my own country?” I asked him. “It seems so selfish and wasteful for me to live alone in the big house my grandfather left me when I could harbor fugitive slaves in it. Indeed, I have come to believe that is the very purpose of my inheritance.”

Henry was silent for a long moment. “I will not stand in the way of such a high and earnest purpose, Julia,” he finally said. “Let us go on together.”

We left the main road and took an overgrown byway called Drover’s Lane that cut through poor fields and rocky pasture. Henry told me it used to be a well-traveled route to the town of Carlisle ten miles away but had fallen into disuse when a more direct highway was built twenty years ago. Eventually a ramshackle homestead that I assumed was abandoned came into view. “That’s the Station,” Henry said.

The dilapidated house was set a good ways back from the lane, but as soon as we set foot on the drive leading to it, a dog started barking. The closer we got, the more furiously it yelped, but it held its position on the sagging porch. It was a very large mongrel, and I hoped it was tethered. It was not. Just as it was about to bound off the porch and charge us, a woman came out of the entry door and gripped it by the scruff of the neck.

“Ripper doesn’t like strangers,” she warned us as we drew near. She did not appear to like strangers either as she glared at us, eyes furrowed into slits.

“I am not a stranger to Ezra Tripp,” Henry said. “Is he your husband, ma’am?”

She nodded and raked a hand through her snarled, graying tresses, attempting to put them in some semblance of order. She had my sympathy, for no female likes to be caught with her hair down.

“I would like a word with him,” Henry said.

“He’s not home at present.”

“Where is he?”

“What business is it of yours, sir?”

“Your husband and I are both in the same business,” Henry said.

“Are you a farmer?”

“No, a Railroad Conductor. I come from the Stationhouse in Concord. We have been alerted by another Conductor that your husband did not deliver his shipment to the Carlisle Station last night. Do you comprehend my meaning?”

“Oh, I get your meaning all right. But I got nothing to do with my husband’s unlawful undertakings,” Mrs. Tripp replied.

“Could you at least tell me if he left for Carlisle last night?”

She nodded.

“By way of Drover’s Lane?”

She nodded again.

“Alone?”

“No, with that shipment, as you call it, in the back of his wagon under the cover of a blanket. I reckon the master she ran from would call her his rightful property.”

“We should simply call her a human being, Mrs. Tripp,” I put in. “Same as we are.”

“But for her skin! And that makes a world of difference, as you know as well as I do,” she replied.

I opened my mouth to argue, but Henry gave me a silencing look and addressed Mrs. Tripp. “What time did your husband leave for Carlisle?”

“A few hours before daybreak.”

“Aren’t you concerned that he has not yet returned?”

“Not at all. He is no doubt having himself a good time with his drinking cronies in Carlisle. He’ll be back when it suits him and no sooner. Now Good Day to you. I have told you all I know, and I have chores to attend to.” She turned and tugged the dog inside the house with her.

“I must go find Tripp,” Henry told me. “I hope I’ll meet up with him along the byway as he is returning home, but if I don’t I’ll walk all the way to Carlisle and seek him out there.”

“I’ll go with you.”

He gave my damaged boot a disparaging look. “Time is of the essence, and you would only slow me down.”

I didn’t argue with him, for I knew he was right. “I’ll go home then. If you locate the fugitive, and she is in need of a place to stay, pray bring her to me.”

“I will,” Henry said. “It is obvious that she would not be welcomed back by Mrs. Tripp.”

We parted and went in opposite directions on Drover’s Lane. But I did not get very far before further walking became near impossible. Realizing I would never make it to town unless I mended my boot, back I limped to the Tripp homestead.

The front door was ajar, and I called to Mrs. Tripp. She did not respond, but I heard Ripper’s toenails scratch against the bare wooden floor as he ran across it. He came charging out and cornered me on the porch before I could retreat down the stairs. His barking and snarling terrified me, but I challenged him by stamping my feet and yelling. This went on for a long moment or two until Mrs. Tripp finally came out. Her face was wet with tears.

“Ripper,” she said softly. “Settle down now, boy.” And he did!

“Forgive me for disturbing you again, Mrs. Tripp,” I said, “but my boot is in need of mending. Would you happen to have a large needle and strong thread or string? Even some rags would do. I could wrap them around the boot to keep the sole from flapping.”

With a sigh Mrs. Tripp motioned me to come inside. It was a humble place, with little in the way of decoration, but for a daguerreotype of two boys framed in cheap pasteboard upon a simple shelf.

“Your sons?” I said, indicating the picture.

She nodded.

“Fine looking boys.”

“They take after their father. Billy is ten. He’s at school now. And Jared is sixteen. He went to Ohio to work on his uncle’s farm.” Mrs. Tripp turned and looked me in the face as tears continued to run down hers. “He left two weeks ago.”

She obviously missed him a great deal, and I hoped he was not the sort of boy who would forget to write home to his mother. “Well, at least he didn’t go off to fight in that horrible Mexican War.”

“Oh, he wanted to! And he would have too, if not for his brother.” She blotted her eyes with the edge of her apron. “But never mind about Jared. Let me hunt you up a darning needle and yarn.”

I set to work mending my boot at the kitchen table, and Mrs. Tripp put on the kettle. She said very little over tea, and I did not stay long. But I could not help thinking she was not a bad sort despite the ignorant prejudices she’d expressed concerning slaves. Perhaps she resented the time her husband devoted to helping them escape to freedom. The farmstead was in sad disrepair and certainly could have used more of Mr. Tripp’s attention.

When I reached the end of the rutted drive I was surprised to see Henry running down Drover’s Lane from the direction whence he’d gone. As he neared I saw that his countenance was most grim. I rushed to him and asked what had happened.

“Tripp has been shot dead,” he told me. “I found his body by a bog less than half a mile up the lane.”

“No! What about the fugitive?”

“Vanished,” Henry said. “I was on my way to Plumford to report the murder, but if you would do so instead, I’ll return to the bog to look for her.”

“Yes, I’ll inform Constable Beers.”

“Best inform our good doctor first, Julia. I would like Adam to have time to examine the body without Beers’s interference.”

I did not question Henry’s instructions, for I have come to trust his judgment completely in matters concerning murder.

Wednesday, May 17

As I stood on my office doorstep gazing across the road at the Green this afternoon, every living thing before my eyes seemed to mirror my desire for Julia. The songbirds clad in gaudy mating colors were singing with an ardor that near matched my own, and the coronas of the narcissus were opening wide to the swallowtail butterflies hovering above them. Finally Julia came into view, running across the Green as fleet of foot as the goddess Atalanta, her pale blue dress billowing like a cloud. When she reached my doorstep I pulled her inside, slammed shut the door, and threw the bolt. Ere she could utter a word I curled my arms around her waist and pressed my lips to hers, greedy to taste her nectar. Although we’d had our customary tryst at cockcrow this morning, my hunger for Julia is never satiated, and I would have taken her right then and there if she’d allowed it. She did not. Instead, she broke away from me, breathless and flushed from my kiss or, more likely, from running.

“We’re quite alone,” I assured her. “Molly went home early to help her mother dig a garden, so we have the whole house to ourselves.” I grasped her hand. “Come. We’ll go up to your chamber.” She shook her head and pulled back her hand. Her reluctance confounded me. She had been my ardent lover for five blissful months. “What’s wrong, dearest?”

“A man has been shot dead, Adam. A farmer named Ezra Tripp. Henry Thoreau found his body on Drover’s Lane near a bog, and he awaits you there.”

“How did Henry get involved? Or more to the point, how did you, Julia?”

Her brief explanation confirmed my belief that she should take no part whatsoever in the Underground Railroad. But now was not the time to resume our ongoing argument concerning this. I hastened to the barn, hitched Napoleon to the gig, and drove off to the bog. I had learned from experience that it is best to examine a corpse before Constable Beers and the Coroner’s Jury gathered around it and mucked up evidence. I knew the murder victim, but not well. I had treated him only once since he and his family had become tenants of a farm off Drover’s Lane last year. And I was familiar with the bog up the lane from the farm, having had a few boyhood adventures there. We locals called it Phantom Bog, and as I drew closer to it, I saw four redheaded vultures circling above, ominous portents in a cloudless blue sky.

And then I saw a man of middle height and solid build in the center of the bog. It was Henry David Thoreau, and he was walking on water. Now I have witnessed Henry perform a number of athletic feats, but this was a new one. Of course he was not actually walking on the water itself but upon the sphagnum moss that covered its surface. As he raised a hand in greeting and continued toward me, he had to keep shifting his body weight this way and that to maintain his balance on the spongy, decaying vegetation that quaked and undulated beneath his feet.

There was a horse hitched to an empty wagon near the edge of the bog. A body lay beside the wagon. I climbed down from the gig and identified the dead man as Ezra Tripp. Last month he’d fallen from his hayloft, and I’d popped his dislocated shoulder back into place, much to his great relief. And now he was staring up at the vultures with unblinking eyes as a whirl of flies danced on the clotted blood of the wound in the center of his chest. I knelt beside the body to inspect it more closely.

Henry joined me. His clothes were soaked through. Assuming he had taken a misstep and fallen into the water before I arrived, I did not remark upon it.

“Tell me what you see, Doctor,” he said. It was not the first time he had given me this directive over a corpse.

I attempted to flex the dead man’s arms and legs to no avail. “Rigor mortis has taken hold,” I said. “That indicates he has been dead for at least ten to twelve hours.” I unbuttoned Tripp’s waistcoat and shirt to examine the wound. “He was shot through the heart with a rifle, not a fowling piece,” I continued. “The entry hole of the ball is clean and small as my thumb. He died instantly. And since he is lying on the ground I assume he was standing beside his wagon when he was shot.”

“I think not,” Henry said. “Note the blood spatters on the dashboard. And see there.” He pointed at hoof marks gouged deeply into the soft soil a dozen feet from the body. “I hypothesize that the shot was fired at close range just to the left of the horse, and the animal reared at the sound, yanking the wago. . .