"for Mischief done," Part Two

Second installment in a four-part serialization of "for Mischief done."

To read installment one, go to:  http://thelymes.patch.com/blog_posts/for-mischief-done

To purchase, go to:  www.andresblanton.com 

Chapter Two

Evening, Private Chamber, The Red Lion Inn, July 21, 1786

The foreman peeled the spectacles off his face with one hand, folded the arms thoughtfully, and laid them on top of the Colonel’s book for notes. He rubbed his eyes, then looked at Halsey. “A Bolles has been murdered.”

“Yes,” Halsey acknowledged in a dry, neutral tone.

“You’re quite sure that it is murder? Of course it is,” the foreman answered himself before Halsey could respond. “The evidence is quite clear.”

“We couldn’t believe it either, at first,” Richards commented. 

Hempstead nodded. “We’ve come to the Grand Jury for guidance.” He ran a hand over his face. “None of us has ever been called out to investigate a cold-blooded
murder.” 

“That’s true enough.” Richards turned to address Colonel Halsey. “When was the last homicide in New London County?”

Halsey shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t remember one. We’ve had a few manslaughters, but pre-meditated murder . . .  Not in my lifetime,” Halsey paused. “Until today, that is.”

“You traveled south down the Norwich-New London Turnpike this morning,” the foreman prompted the Colonel.

“Yes. I had a meeting at the shipyard this afternoon, and it being such a pleasant morning, I decided to ride down rather than come by boat.”

Halsey described how, about nine o’clock that morning, something lying in the hard-packed dirt turnpike caught his eye as he came over the slope to Bolles Cove. Curious, he spurred his horse to a trot. As he rode down the hill, the small fluttering blur coalesced into a book, lying on its spine, the soft, warm wind fingering its unsullied pages. Surprised to see a valuable possession abandoned in the dust, the Colonel twisted in the saddle, searching for the negligent owner. As he scanned the verge on the north side of the road, he noticed something lying
close to a tumbled-down section of the stone wall that separated the narrow sunken road from the Widow Rogers’ garden. 

The bundle turned out to be a corpse, sprawled in a bed of glistening red grass. It lay face down, long disheveled hair streaming over its back. A large stone from the ruined wall rested on the back of the caved-in head. Smaller stones were strewn over and round the body.

Halsey methodically walked the Grand Jury through a detailed description of the body and the scene of the crime, refusing to let his words re-conjure the horror of
watching flies light on the battered head and walk to and fro, feasting on
sticky blood and serum. Whenever his words called forth too vivid a memory, the
Colonel shifted in his chair and looked down to consult his notes.

“I could discern finger marks coming up around the back of the victim’s neck. The victim couldn’t have been dead long.” Halsey cleared his throat. “I didn’t move the body until later, after Sheriff Richards and Mr. Hempstead arrived to begin the
formal investigation. At that point, we turned the corpse over and found more
marks on the throat.”

“You say the victim had not been dead long when you first happened by?” asked the foreman.

“No,” Halsey shook his head. “Judging by the condition of the body, perhaps only a matter of minutes before I came over the rise above the Widow Rogers’ lot. I
checked for a pulse  . . .” Halsey unconsciously pulled out his soiled handkerchief to wipe his clean hands, then realizing his mistake, hastily shoved it back into his pocket. 

“Was that the death blow?” the foreman winced as he turned to the doctor. “The injury to the skull?”

“Maybe. We’ll never know for sure. I believe the murderer probably doesn’t even know. He was in an absolute frenzy and inflicted so many wounds . . .  The investigators found a book and a small stone, smeared with blood and hair, in the road, so we assume that murderer and victim struggled on the turnpike. During the struggle, the victim sustained at least several blows about the head with the small rock. The finger marks and bruises around the neck indicate strangling; either in the road or after the body was dragged to the verge, where he threw the stone wall down on the body. Thank God, the throttling probably rendered the victim unconscious before the murderer held the large rock directly over the head and dropped it.” 

The doctor paused, then continued, “The body also had massive bruising on the torso, several fractured bones, and a broken back.”

The jurors stared at the doctor in stunned silence as he sipped from the glass Molly handed him. Finally, a juror recovered his voice. “Why?”

“What do you mean?” asked the foreman.

“Why would anyone kill Eunice Bolles, a six-year-old child?”

The doctor shrugged in an eloquent gesture of mingled anger and bewilderment.

“Does someone have a grudge against her parents?”

“When we questioned the Bolles, they couldn’t think of anyone,” answered Halsey. “And even if the parents do have an enemy, who among us would take such horrible revenge against a child? A stranger did this, someone passing through, or from one of the ships.”

The juror hesitated momentarily. “Did he rape her?” he asked.

“No,” said the doctor. “I found no evidence that he violated her, and the Widow Rogers and Rachel Rogers didn’t find any, either. We thought it best for them to wash and compose the body before we let the parents see it.”

“Perhaps he intended to rape her,” suggested Hempstead, “but panicked and killed the child when she resisted.”

Richards shook his head doubtfully. “It’s possible, Stephen, but a large boy or a man could easily grab a defenseless six-year-old girl and carry her into the woods. Why struggle on a public road and risk being caught? And why leave the corpse where it would be so easily found? The murderer must have known that Eunice would be missed fairly quickly. Why not hide the body in the woods, or throw it in the river, and give himself more time to get away? Leaving it on the side of the road makes me think he wanted her found as soon as possible.”

Halsey nodded his head. “That’s exactly what he intended. He wanted to make it appear that the child tried to climb the stone wall and it collapsed on her by
accident.”

“But who would believe that Eunice, instead of going directly to school, took a notion to scramble up a steep road embankment and attempt to scale a high stone wall at the top? If she wanted to go to the Widow’s, all she had to do was walk down the road twenty feet and go up into the front yard. How could the murderer possibly think that anyone would fall for such a preposterous ruse?” 

Richards shook his head again. “A desperate man.”

The Foreman looked down at the notebook. “You found the Widow Mary Rogers at home just after you discovered the body, and you spoke to her first.” He looked up at the Colonel.

“Yes, Eunice lay by her garden wall, and I went up to the house right after I found
the body. Naturally, I questioned the Widow,” Halsey’s clipped tone betrayed
irritation, “and Mrs. Ichabod Rogers gave us very little information.”

Chapter Three

Evening, Private Chamber, The Red Lion Inn, July 21, 1786

Richards clamped a hand over his mouth, horrified by a sudden urge to smile at Halsey’s exasperation, knowing how much the Colonel - like Richards and every other official in town for the last hundred years - disliked having anything to do with the tempestuous Rogers/Bolles clan. Their notorious ancestors, religious dissenters John Rogers and his friend, John Bolles, had spent decades disrupting the peace until 1721, when Rogers died from smallpox contracted during a faith healing session.

Now-a-days, scores of the huge extended family perched on ancestral lands in Quaker Hill and expended their seemingly boundless energy hauling each other in and out of court. Only a small handful of the family adhered to Rogers’ unusual religious beliefs. Mary Rogers, widow of Rogers’ grandson Ichabod Rogers, was one of the few.

“The Widow Rogers told us that she saw and heard nothing,” Halsey continued. He turned to look at Richards. “Later on, when we questioned the victim’s father, James Bolles . . .”

“Which of the many James Bolles would that be?” The fore-man raised his eyebrows satirically.

Halsey turned back. “Which? Let me see, this James is married to Eunice Strickland; they live near Bolles Cove.”

The foreman rested an elbow on the table and turned his palm up theatrically.

Richards stepped in to answer. “James Bolles, the war veteran.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” responded the foreman hastily, a respectful expression replacing the smirk. “We all know the veteran James Bolles and his service.”

Halsey continued. “Mr. Bolles said that they sent Eunice off to the dame’s school this morning, as usual. The next thing they knew, Stephen Hempstead appeared at their kitchen door to tell them Eunice had been found murdered.

“The Widow Rogers claimed that she hadn’t heard anything or seen anybody this morning,” Halsey repeated. “We finally got information when we questioned Hannah, the Widow’s eleven-year-old mulatto[i] servant. The girl told us that when she went out to draw water from the well in the front yard this morning, she saw four boys in the road throwing rocks. A few minutes later, she heard the stone wall fall. Very soon afterwards, she heard Colonel Halsey knocking on the door.”

“Did the girl see Eunice Bolles?” asked the foreman.

“She said that she hadn’t seen Eunice at all this morning,” answered Halsey thoughtfully.

“You stayed with the body while the Sheriff and Mr. Hempstead searched for physical evidence of the boys.”

“Pardon, I’m sorry,” Colonel Halsey looked up.

“You waited by the body . . .”

“Oh, yes. I did. To make sure that no one meddled with it while they searched the woods and we waited for the doctor.”

The Foreman looked to Richards. “Sheriff?”

“We didn’t find any sign of the boys, nor did we find anyone else who had seen them.”

A middle-aged juror leaned toward Richards. “Will, are you entirely sure that you conducted a thorough search of the area? Could you have accidentally overlooked a section of the woods?”

“I don’t see how. Mr. Hempstead and I scoured the turnpike verges and side roads a mile in either direction and even went up the side roads a quarter mile or so.”

“If there had been any evidence that anyone at all had been in the woods,” Hempstead added in confident tones, “the Sheriff and I would have found it. Tracking four boys blundering about, throwing rocks, would be much easier than tracking game.  Since we know that they did not go into the woods, they either had to escape by fleeing north toward Norwich or south toward New London. If they went north, they would have had to go by the Colonel. If the boys went south, they would have had to pass by several farmers out in their fields and local people traveling on the road. So, no matter which way they went, someone would have seen them. No one did.”

Frowning, the foreman turned to Halsey. “Colonel, do you think the mulatto girl is reliable? Could she be mistaken?”

“She seemed frightened - understandable considering the circumstances - and confused about details, but Hannah insisted that she had seen four boys. I . . .”

A juror at the opposite end of table grunted contemptuously and crossed his arms over his chest. “Confused! More likely, she’s lying. If she didn’t do it herself, she
knows who did and won’t identify the murderer.”

All heads, Molly’s included, swiveled toward the speaker.

“Mr. Tinker, are you suggesting that a child of eleven - even an Indian - could do
such a thing?”

“I am saying just that, Mr. Foreman. This girl attacked and beat Mary Fish six years ago at Poquonnock Bridge in Groton.”

“Mary Fish? Oh, yes. So, this girl, Hannah, is the same child who attacked Captain Fish’s daughter . . . But, Mr. Tinker, if memory serves, Hannah Sharper didn’t act
alone. An older boy, her brother, I believe, instigated the attack; and, in any
case, the Sharpers didn’t kill Mary Fish.”

“Not from lack of trying.”

“What did the authorities do with Hannah and her brother?”

“The Town Selectmen bound the boy out to one of the Packers.”

“Of course, they did,” said the foreman, voice tinged with impatience. “The proper thing to do. And Hannah. What did they do with her?”

“Nothing.”

Tinker surveyed the room, obviously relishing the effect his answer had on the Grand Jury.

One of the younger jurors finally broke the heavy silence. “Why didn’t they do something?”

 “Her mother spirited Hannah away from Groton, and the town dropped its case against her.”

“How did she get to Quaker Hill?”

“I don’t know,” Tinker replied. “Does it matter? She’s here.”

“Sheriff, you know the neighborhood better than most of us. What do you know about her?” asked the foreman.

Richards bit off the exasperated retort that almost jumped out of his mouth. Just
because he happened to inherit property in Quaker Hill, everyone expected him
to know all the ins and outs of the zealots’ tangled lives. Since boyhood,
Richards had made a point of not being associated with any of the Rogerenes,
and he always emphasized that what he knew about the Quaker Hill Rogerenes and their business came from serving many warrants in the neighborhood and
arresting them on various charges. Now, the foreman’s pointed question forced
the Sheriff to reveal in front of the entire Grand Jury that in this instance,
he did happen to know something about a notorious Rogerene household.

“Although the child lives with the Widow Rogers, she isn’t her slave. Mrs. Rogers told us the girl’s surname is Occuish . . .”

“Occuish!” the foreman turned to Mr. Tinker. “I thought that you said that this child is the Sharper girl.”

“She is,” Tinker replied. “I guess the Rogerenes hoped to conceal her identity as Mary Fish’s attacker by using her grand-father’s name.” Tinker’s mouth twisted. “Not that it is much use to her to be known as Jacob Occuish’s niece.”

Several jurors murmured agreement with Tinker as the foreman gave his attention back to Richards.

“So you say she is not a slave, Mr. Richards. Then she is a bound girl, of course.”

Richards sighed. “I don’t believe so.”

“That’s odd,” said the foreman. “A young Indian girl, without parents, who is not bound out to a master?”

“It is unusual,” agreed Richards, “but the Widow told us that she took Hannah as a favor.”

“How did an Occuish end up in Quaker Hill near the Mohegan Reservation?” Stephen Hempstead asked. “Her grandfather is a Nehantic. If she isn’t indentured, why isn’t she with her own family in Niantic? Do you know, Will?”

“I don’t know much about it, and I have to admit I haven’t given Hannah Occuish any thought, until today,” Richards answered. “I only know that Sarah Occuish left Hannah with Mrs. Rogers about four or five years ago, while I was away fighting, and she never came back for her. Exactly how or why she chose the Widow Rogers, I can’t say. Since I’ve never served a warrant on Mrs. Rogers from the Occuish or Sharper families or from a master or even from the Groton authorities demanding Hannah’s return, I assume that the girl is not bound out to anyone else - at least not to anyone who wants her back - and that her parents or relatives and the Groton selectmen approve of her situation.”

“What about her brother?” asked Hempstead. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know anything about him, Stephen. I haven’t ever seen him. All I know is that he isn’t in New London, so he’s probably over the water in Groton, with his
master.” Richards drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Perhaps we
should go back to Mrs. Rogers’ in the morning and question Hannah again. By
then, she may be calm enough to give us a clearer account of what she saw and
heard. It would also be a good idea to find out if her brother has been in the
vicinity recently.”

“Are you saying that the brother may have committed the murder? Why would he want to kill Eunice Bolles?” asked Hempstead.

Halsey spoke up. “Charles may have come to visit his sister and saw an opportunity to commit another robbery. Only this time, things got even more out of hand, and he accidentally killed Eunice. Then he tried to make it look as if the wall fell on her when she tried to climb over it.”

The foreman nodded. “Yes. The attacks on Mary Fish and Eunice Bolles are too much alike.  We need to know if Charles Sharper was in the vicinity of Quaker Hill today.”

To purchase, go to:  www.andresblanton.com

[i] Used at the time to mean
part Indian and part African.