Free Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution by Suzanne Adair

the Welshwoman was
beyond consolation.
    Releasing her
shoulder, Helen stood and steadied herself.   Her knees still shook.   "I'm
going to the wharf.   Perhaps an
investigator from the Committee can tell me more.   I shall return before dark."   With an hour of daylight left, and the wharves just a few blocks
away, she needn't worry about being out after sunset.   Enid's weak nod communicated that she'd understood.
    Cloak draped
over her shoulders, Helen let herself out the front door.   As usual, the docks were so cluttered with
stacks of lumber and barrels of naval stores that she had to thread her way
around the goods.   Men from a boat
unloaded crates of live chickens, contributing blown feathers and the sharp
stink of chicken turds to the smells of tar manufacture, tobacco smoke, and
unwashed humans.
    In the
lengthening shadows, onlookers had gathered before a warehouse near the
intersection of Dock and Front Streets.   Deputies from the Committee blocked the doorway.   The press of spectators kept Helen on the
periphery of the crowd, but comments she heard from the curious, the nosy, and
the tragedy leeches made her thankful she couldn't move closer, where she might
draw attention to herself.
    "When did he kill hisself?"
    "He didn't
kill hisself.   Someone shot 'im.   Early today, after midnight, I heard 'em
say."
    "Weren't
'e Chiswell's butler years ago?"
    "Ya, an'
Chiswell shot hisself in the head."
    "Shot
hisself, my arse!   We know better, don't
we, lads?"
    Stomach
knotting, Helen kept to the shadows.   Deputies made way in the crowd for the egress of two men, between them a
stretcher bearing a man's supine, sheet-covered body.   Waving off queries from onlookers, George Gaynes followed them
out, caught up, and led the procession — to a surgeon's office where there'd be
an autopsy, Helen knew, shaken.   She'd
seen it all before.
    Her gaze
followed them back nine years, when she'd watched Silas's covered body removed
from another warehouse on a stretcher.   At her left on that day stood Charles, and at her right was Jonathan
Quill: the Seconds.   At the funeral,
Charles had again stood on her left, and Jonathan on her right.   Beneath the mottle of bruises on her ribs
and abdomen, hidden from the world by a polonaise gown, her early miscarriage
gathered momentum.   Ashes to ashes, dust
to dust.
    She blinked,
jolted to the present by grief for Charles, an intensified headache, and the
eerie coincidences.   Had anyone yet
informed Hannah, Charles's newlywed daughter?   It was too late in the day for her to walk to Hannah's house — probably
for the best.   If she paid her respects
on the morrow, she'd be less visible.   The last thing she wanted was for residents of Wilmington to string
together coincidences, dredge up the business of Silas's death, and connect it
to Charles's.
    Chapter Eight
    "THE
FUNERAL IS Monday morning, the twentieth."   On the couch beside Enid, Helen released the housekeeper's hand
and massaged her own brow with a sigh.   "In the morning, we shall visit Mistress Hannah.   Let us rest tonight.   We've slept little."
    "You've a
headache."   The Welshwoman
rose.   "Wait right there.   I've just the thing for you.   A boy delivered it while you were at the
wharf."   She bustled from the
parlor.
    Helen rested
her head in her hand.   When would she
tell Enid about the assignment?   She had
to do it soon.   Badley had paid the
mantua-makers and shoemaker to expedite their work, tipped them a prodigious
amount to fit her for a wardrobe at ten the next morning, Sunday.   But informing Enid was the easy part.   How in the world would she negotiate a truce
for weeks between her and Fairfax?
    Enid returned,
and Helen studied the label on a bottle of wine she held for inspection.   Not for several years had she been able to
afford such an Italian red.   Mystified,
she searched the servant's face.   "You said a delivery boy brought it, but who sent it?"
    A wise