Free A Marked Man by Barbara Hamilton

would surely have been glimpsed at the far end of the lane by the latecomers.”
    “Could he have been killed elsewhere?” suggested Thaxter hesitantly.
    “The thought occurred to me,” said Coldstone. “But why? Why take the trouble to bring a beaten corpse, obviously murdered, to a place where it will be discovered, when with very little trouble it can be disposed of in the river or the harbor? In fact it did cross my mind that he might have been moved, because I saw no sign of postmortem lividity in the face or chest, but quite frankly, as cold as it was, I’m not sure there would have been any.”
    Abigail turned her coffee-cup round in its saucer, seeing in her mind the towering, bulky shape of Thomas Fluckner, as she had seen him here and there about the streets of Boston during the few years that she and John had lived in the town. A bosom-bow of the Governor’s and the recipient of any number of favors from the Crown; a King’s Commissioner himself and a member of that elect, golden circle of merchants and Great Proprietors, who twenty years ago had induced the then-royal governor to give them all those acres of land in Maine and build forts against the Indians on it at public expense, in trade for a share in the profits. It was expected that any of Fluckner’s daughters would marry a Hutchinson or an Oliver, a Bowdoin or an Apthorp, and keep the lands that would be theirs within that privileged group.
    Nobody would welcome a bookseller who read too many of his own books and printed up broadsheets decrying Crown monopolies in his basement.
    “And nothing of where Sir Jonathan went after he rented this horse of Mr. Howell’s? If he rented a mount to ride to the ferry, which lies in that direction, he must surely have returned by sunset, when the town gates close, and after that he must have been in town somewhere, between sunset—say, six o’clock—and ten, which I think must be the latest he could have died. Where could he have ridden, if he took the Charles Town Ferry, in order to be back before the ferry ceased to operate?”
    She glanced at Thaxter, who had relatives in Lynn. Her own knowledge of the territory north of Boston ended five or six feet on either side of the Salem Road.
    The young man frowned doubtfully. “At this season, he might reach Cambridge.” He didn’t sound as if he thought it a likely possibility. “Horse and man would tire very quickly in cold like Saturday’s. Of course, the countryside is thickly settled up, you know. He may just have gone visiting—er—Well, he could have had a sweetheart in any of a hundred farms . . .”
    Coldstone moved his head a little, and for a moment, Abigail had the impression that he was about to crack his self-imposed calm and make some remark about the victim.
    “Has he been in these parts before?” she asked. “Miss Fluckner indicated that he came down from Halifax late in December, but is this the first time he’s been in the colony? How would he have known how long to give himself, or where to go, if he took the ferry to the mainland Saturday?”
    “Before Halifax, Sir Jonathan spent two years in Barbados,” replied Coldstone, in tones chillingly correct. “Prior to that he was about five years in Spain, upon the King’s business. Yet had he thought it worth his while, he would have learnt the ways of the countryside hereabouts quickly enough. And so might others have learnt where he was likely to go, so that they could close up their shops in good time and wait close to the ferry for his return.”
    Abigail set down her coffee-cup with a clink. “To be sure, what does a man need to do to witness that he sought his bed at an honest hour because he felt poorly?”
    “Cough now and then.” Coldstone folded his long-fingered hands upon his knee. “Which the guards assure me Mr. Knox has not once done in the thirty-some hours he has been in his cell.”
    “I’m pleased to hear he’s feeling so much better,” responded Abigail