Chapter Fifty-Four Frankie
FIFTY-FOUR FRANKIE
The soil was not hard to shovel. I worked quickly, not wanting to be caught. I knew others would be coming later to bury Benjamin.
The knackerman’s grave was easy to find: a plot of freshly turned earth at the northwest corner of the cemetery, bordering the woods, far away from other graves.
Uncle Thomas was right—this was the one place no one would ever dare look. The perfect hiding place.
I’d go to Boston, bring back a team of doctors, and together we’d dig up the samples and notes.
I dug until I hit the white sackcloth they’d wrapped the body in. No coffin.
I got down on my belly at the edge of the hole I’d dug, gently lowered the locked metal box with the samples and notes inside.
I could smell damp earth and the smoky burned flesh smell coming from inside the sackcloth.
My arms didn’t quite reach and I had to drop the box.
It landed on the wrapped corpse with a dull thud and I jerked back, afraid it might wake him somehow, make him sit up in his grave, reach for me with charred bony fingers.
I scrambled back to my feet, and quickly refilled the grave with my shovel. As I worked, I had the feeling of eyes on me, of the trees themselves watching, mocking me. The wind ran through them and I was sure I heard whispering as the branches rubbed together.
But I couldn’t make out the words, just a thick brogue, the words coming out like a chant.
I turned and fled the cemetery, followed the path through the woods, holding the shovel in both hands in front of me, ready to use it as a weapon.
But no foe materialized.
At last our house came into view. I cut across the backyard, where the coals of my abandoned fire still smoldered, and entered through the kitchen door, leaving the shovel outside.
“It’s done,” I said as I stepped into my uncle’s surgery. “I’ve buried it all, where nobody will find it.” My boots tracked mud across the floor, and there was dirt under my fingernails, on the knees of my trousers. My heart was hammering. My mouth tasted like copper.
Uncle Thomas was sitting at his desk, slumped forward, hands and head on the desk. He’d changed into a clean shirt and trousers.
Aife was there at his feet. She lifted her head when she saw me and gave a nervous yawn.
“Uncle?” I said around the tight knot in my throat.
He could have been resting, finally getting the sleep I’d been encouraging him to get for days now.
But I smelled the gunpowder, saw the Smith and Wesson wrapped in his right hand on the desktop.
I approached my uncle slowly, my legs wobbly and not wanting to move forward. I touched him, felt for a pulse at the carotid artery. There was none. And gone was the fever. He was cool to the touch.
Gently I touched his head, saw the entrance wound in his right temple.
I blinked stupidly at him, like perhaps it was an illusion, a trick my eyes were playing on me. Or perhaps it was a dream. A dream I might wake up from if I willed myself strongly enough.
I let out a strangled little gasp. I could not feel my legs beneath me and had to hold myself up with the back of his chair. I shoved my right hand to my face, gnawing at the knuckles that filled my mouth in an effort to keep myself from screaming.
I thought of my uncle’s lessons, his instructions to put my emotions in a box when there was work to be done. And God knew, there was work to be done.
I took in a ragged breath, attempted to steady myself.
There was a note on the desk, and under it a letter addressed to Dr. James Fulton, Boston City Hospital Chief of Staff.
The note, written in my uncle’s neat cursive, said:
It’s better this way and we both know it.
Go to Amsterdale. Find your aunt. Tell her nothing of what transpired here, what the knackerman said, or what was done to him.
Tell her I love her and our unborn child with all my heart.
Board a train to Boston. Bring Dr. Fulton my letter.
I’ve asked him to assemble a team and return here.
You’ll guide them, Frankie. You’ll show them where the samples and notes are hidden.
You’re going to make a fine doctor, Frankie. The very finest.
I could not be more proud of you.
Your loving uncle,
Thomas