The Strangers' Tomb

By Robin Hazard Ray

A night watchman is assaulted. An extra corpse turns up in a tomb. How are they connected—and who’s next?

Cambridge, Mass., February–April 1858. Civil war looms in the United States as scientific frontiers are rapidly expanding across the globe. Harvard botanist Asa Gray is discerning odd patterns among his new botanical specimens. Gray’s findings set him at odds with Louis Agassiz, the most celebrated man in American science, who believes that the races of humankind represent separate species—a popular notion in the slave-owning South. Gray, in contrast, fervently supports Charles Darwin (whose On the Origin of Species will be published the following year) in believing all humans are variants of one species. The conflict is particularly acute because in Gray’s employ is Darius Jacobs, a fugitive slave. Gray and Jacobs expect the worst when Cambridge anticipates a visit from amateur botanist Robert Claridge, the South Carolina owner from whom Darius fled with his sister Roxanne.

An attack on a night watchman at nearby Mount Auburn Cemetery coincides with the disappearance of Claridge. When Claridge turns up dead in a tomb at Mount Auburn, botanical clues lead the cemetery superintendent, Sumner Bascomb, to his friend and colleague Gray. Bascomb, a melancholic bachelor who once hoped to marry Gray’s wife, Jane, strives to unravel the mystery of this assault and a series of murders that threaten the peace of his cemetery and community. But first the embattled superintendent must contend with his eccentric intellectual mother, Adelaide, and his strong attraction to the cemetery’s genial arborist, Tom McMead. Roxanne, meanwhile, finds love when she can least afford it.

As Bascomb, Gray, and Roxanne work their way to a solution, the bodies pile up. A pregnant girl drowns herself in a frozen pond; a Southerner is found in the Charles River estuary. Behind the Boston murders lie shadows of family secrets, lost siblings, and connections of blood, love, and vengeance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483559902

Book preview

For the Three Graces

Cover Art: Fran Forman

franforman.com

©2015 Robin Hazard Ray

ISBN: 9781483559902

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Dedication

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part 1: Hamamelis (Witch Hazel)

Part 2: Apocynum (Hypericifolium).

Part 3: Spurge (Euphorbia).

Part 4: Arum (Dracontium)

Part 5: Yew (Taxus)

Author's Note

Sources

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Columbia, South Carolina, September 1850.

A slave may expect her death any day. The trouble is, she never knows which day.

The old master, the one they called Hobnail, had long been dead when, one September morning, the young master sent for Tomyris. A child appeared at the washhouse where she was boiling the week’s linens. She was to come at once. She took the wash kettle off the fire and followed the child up to the main house. The child vanished.

Two white men sat on the veranda in a pair of rocking chairs. One was the young master—only he wasn’t so young anymore, he was well past thirty. The other was someone Tomyris had never seen before. He was plump and sweating heavily, even though the Carolina heat had abated some since August. He fanned himself with a straw hat. Tomyris stopped at the threshold of the veranda, waiting for permission to ascend.

Yes, sir? she said.

Robert Claridge, the young master, gestured for Tomyris to approach. She came noiselessly up the steps, looking quickly from Claridge to the second man before lowering her gaze.

Turn around, said Master Claridge. We want to see the back of you. Tomyris did as she was told, turning slowly in a full circle.

Your mother, said the master, what was she called?

Sarah Jacobs, sir.

"Jacobs, was it? Tomyris kept her eyes fixed on the floorboards, but she could hear derision in his voice. Was that the black bandit she mated with? I tell you, Doctor, what further proof is necessary? Do you think that our species, our women, would just rut with any buck they laid eyes on?"

Tomyris concentrated on the ant crawling at her feet. The young master had been very quick to introduce the subject of mating. That did not bode well.

Please, Monsieur Claridge, if I may? the second man interrupted. The girl allowed herself another quick look at his face, which was flushed but not, she thought, with lust. She allowed herself an even breath, out and in. A doctor, was he? His accent was strange.

Please to be at your ease. What age have you, Tomyris? the man continued.

I couldn’t say, sir, she murmured. Some more than twenty, but not twenty-five. Sir.

Twenty-three, according to the register, Claridge drawled.

And your mother, born in America?

No, sir. On the ship.

This answer seemed to please him. She did not look up, but she could hear his tone lighten as he said, And your father?

She hesitated. Answer, growled Claridge.

Julius Coffin. So mama said. Sir.

Coffin! A good New England name, jested the doctor. "And was he born in zis country?"

Zis? No, sir. Not zis country. Fante country. Sir.

Tomyris glanced at the fat doctor and then at Claridge. The flesh under the master’s thick sideburns was red with suppressed anger. She reckoned that, were it not for the doctor, she would already have been slapped. But something about the doctor’s presence seemed to keep Claridge in check.

Fante country. What we call Upper Guinea?

I don’t know, sir.

Yes, very good. The doctor had warmed. She’ll do very well.

With a flick of the hand, Claridge sent her back to the washhouse. For once, she was glad to go.

A few days later, early in the morning as she was letting the chickens out, Tomyris was summoned once again, this time by the overseer. The master wanted her in town. Should she take her things? No, no, she’d be back by nightfall. A cart and driver—an old field hand, reveling in the luxury of a day off—were waiting.

Into town she went, an hour’s drive.

She rarely got to town these days. She had grown up there in care of her grandmother and her sister Roxanne, but the master had moved her to the plantation nearly a decade ago. Since then she got to town but once or twice a year.

As the cart passed through the busy streets, jammed with loads of rice and cotton, she searched the dark faces. She hoped to catch a glimpse of her sister, who was always out on some errand for grandmother. But the people swept by unglancing, and Tomyris sank back against the buckboard.

You have a beau, said the old driver.

A what?

A beau. A man friend. Look. He pointed an elbow toward her feet. She looked down.

A little bouquet, tied with a blue ribbon, lay between her shoes.

Her head snapped around. Where …? Did you see who it was? No one was looking at her, though. The crowd seemed just as indifferent as before.

Naw, said the driver. Just saw it pitch in. But deliberate. He wanted you to have it.

She stared at the flowers without touching them. Marigolds. Flowers of grief and sorrow, Grandmother said. Tomyris shuddered. She wanted to kick the bunch into the street, but she didn’t dare. In case, he was watching—whoever he was.

Just then, the cart pulled up before a small wooden building. At the door, she recognized old Virgil, who was there to see her in. She stepped off the cart without a backward glance.

She was led up a stairway to a room that was strangely furnished. Heavy drapes shrouded three of the walls, and an odd collection of furniture—settees, armchairs, ottomans—lay piled to one side. Virgil went away.

Master Claridge and the white doctor were there, plus a third white man, a stranger with the marks of smallpox on his face. Tomyris trembled and backed away—three white men alone with one black girl—but Claridge spoke sharply to her. We’re men of science, damn it, not schoolboys, he said. Sit down. She found a wooden stool and sat.

The third man, whom she took to be the operator of the establishment, was manipulating a wooden box on a stand. It had a metal tube jutting out the front, almost like a gun. Long minutes passed. At last he finished his preparations and nodded to Claridge.

Then Claridge said to Tomyris, Take off your clothing. Lay it on the chair over there. He gestured to an ornate wooden chair with a red velvet seat.

Tomyris made a run for the door, but Claridge caught her arm and slapped her hard across the face. She anticipated another blow, but the violence had made the visitor—the fat, well-dressed doctor—very uncomfortable. He said something to Claridge that Tomyris didn’t understand. Whatever it was seemed to make her owner hold back. He repeated his command through clenched teeth. Tomyris could only obey.

The three white men had the grace to look elsewhere as her hands fumbled with buttons. Everything came off and went onto the chair.

When she stood naked, the third man waved her to a spot in front of the box on its stand. There stood a metal frame, like a lamp stand with no lamp but an extra arm, and something that looked like a pump handle. The man gripped her shoulder and backed her into this metal frame, like a cart horse being coaxed into its shafts. Two metal prongs were adjusted to fit the sides of her head, and another set dug into her waist.

The fat man whispered something to Claridge.

The kerchief, Claridge growled. Off. She hesitantly pulled at her headscarf, which briefly became tangled in the metal prongs. Claridge stepped forward impatiently and snatched the cloth from her hand, tossing it onto the pile of her clothing.

All right, girl, said the operator. You must stay absolutely still from the time I say ‘hold’ until the time I say ‘stop.’ Is that perfectly clear? It will be less than a minute.

She tried to nod, but the prongs kept her head from moving. Yes, sir, she managed.

He placed his hand on the end of the gun barrel or whatever it was.

Hold, he said.

No blast emerged from the device; indeed, nothing at all happened. She tried very hard to stay still as instructed. She focused her eyes on a chair in her line of sight, counting and recounting the rungs of its laddered back: six, seven, one, two, three … . Finally, the operator put his hand back on the apparatus and said stop. He stepped forward and pulled her head from the prongs. The fat gentleman handed her a woolen blanket, which she gratefully wrapped about her nakedness.

Claridge pointed to a bench. Sit there and wait.

Time crawled by. The operator vanished into a closet for many minutes, during which time a colored boy came up with a coffee tray. He goggled briefly at the panorama before him—a naked black woman imperfectly robed in a plaid blanket in company with two white men—but he managed to deposit the tray and escape without being caught looking. Claridge and the doctor helped themselves to teacake and coffee. The doctor murmured something to Claridge, pointing at Tomyris. Claridge looked over with annoyance.

Do you need something to eat? he demanded. The professor seems to think so.

She nodded. Yes, sir, please, sir. In fact she was starving, having been taken from home so early. Claridge backed away from the tray and signaled for her to come forward. She stood tentatively in her blanket wrap and picked up a piece of cake before returning to her bench.

It was a mistake. Fear had made her mouth so dry that she could barely force the buttery crumbs down her throat. Still, having done so, coughing as quietly as she was able, she felt a little better, a little less bare.

The operator emerged from his closet with the box in hand. Back it went onto the stand.

Girl, come here, he said. Tomyris stood and moved reluctantly back to the spot in front of the box. The operator said, Blanket. Without a word, she shed the blanket. Once more, Claridge and the fat man watched as the operator positioned her, fixing the metal prongs this time to her forehead and the back of her head. Lower down, the second pair of metal arms pinched her ribs front and back. This time the operator took the opportunity to run his hand over her breast. The other two men, chatting with one another to the side, either did not notice or did not care.

The business with the box and the stillness was repeated. Once again the operator disappeared for a time and she was left to wait on the bench. Then she was once more arranged in space, this time facing the wall. As she held still, tears ran down her face and dropped onto her bare collarbones.

Then, apparently, they were done. The operator went back into his closet.

The doctor appeared pleased; he was smiling. Zese daguerreotypes, zey will be a great advance of ze science of man, no? he remarked cheerfully. He shook Claridge’s hand, collected his hat, and made his way to the stairs. In a moment he was gone. Tomyris hastened over to her clothes, but just as she was about to retrieve her skirt, a hand seized her arm.

We’re not done, said Claridge. Maintaining a fast grip, he called out. Ready, Mr. Zealy?

Just one minute, Mr. Claridge, came the operator’s voice from behind the closet door. Are you, ah, ready?

Yes, damn it. Hurry up.

Tomyris heard a clank of metal and bit her lip as her arms were pulled behind her. Manacles were swiftly locked around her wrists, digging into her flesh. Then a metal collar snapped around her neck. A cry died in her throat as the collar was pulled to the choking point. Something cracked inside her neck.

Claridge drew the red velvet chair over and forced Tomyris’s chest down over its seat, holding fast to the metal bonds. With his free hand, he pulled her left breast out so that the third white man had a good view of it. Then Tomyris, struggling for every breath, could hear Claridge opening his pants.

The operator chuckled. "Heh, you’re ready all right. I’ve got six plates. Let’s make ’em good. One, two, three and … hold."

Part 1: Hamamelis (Witch Hazel)

The horse, the ass, the zebra, and the quagga, are distinct species and distinct types: and so with the Jew, the Teuton, the Sclavonian, the Mongol, the Australian, the coastal Negro, the Hottentot, &c.; and no physical causes known to have existed during our geological epoch could have transformed one of these species into another. A type, then, being a pristine or primordial form, all idea of a common origin for any two is excluded, otherwise every landmark of natural history would be broken down.

—Samuel George Morton, Types of Mankind (1855)

Mysterious plant! whose golden tresses wave

With a sad beauty, in the dying year,

Blooming amid November’s frost severe,

Like a pale corpse-light o’er the recent grave.

—Unknown poet, To the Witch Hazel (1831)

2 February 1858, Watertown, Massachusetts

Drink was a failing of his. He knew it.

Teddy Holt, gatekeeper and night watchman at Mount Auburn Cemetery, felt it keenly as his boots slipped past one another in the black slush, which was all but invisible in the wavering light of his lantern. In the dark all he could see were the still shapes of obelisks, a few stone slabs, the bare, low-hanging arms of trees, with thick, wet snowflakes audibly slapping onto their diverse surfaces. He shuffled unsteadily toward the main gate.

No one could blame him, he’d swear to that. Night watchman at a graveyard? The chap who locks the dead in at night so the living were spared their visits? Who wouldn’t drink on such a job?

Still, he regretted his current condition. Yes, he did. Sober, he’d be seeing the way better, feeling his feet better, not so slidey like this. Sober he was not. Drink was his failing, without question.

He was a man of middle age, slight and slightly warped with some curvature of the bones, yet sturdy for all that. His whiskers could have done with a trim. He was bundled against the February storm in a rough wool jacket, a pair of very old boots, and a tweed cap that had so lost its shape that it might have been a jute sack. Teddy had tried—with poor success, given his state of inebriation—to tie a knitted muffler over this sorry hat and his cold ears.

So far he had checked two of the gates, the first up in the northeast corner and the second in the southeast. Just the main gate left and then home to his supper. The missus had promised tripe, as the butcher sold it cheap on Tuesdays. The thought of it made his stomach rumble.

Just as he negotiated a turn on the slush-covered road, a twig from one of the cemetery’s tall maples made a skate under his foot and down he went. With a jerk of his right hand, he saved the lantern, but his left, which took the fall, registered a nasty jab. The dark wavered. Teddy put a knee in the slush and managed to get back on his feet.

He had to stand a moment to shake the pain out of his left hand. The fall had disordered his bearings. Where was he? He lowered the lantern a bit, the better to find a landmark. To one side he could make out a bountiful sheaf of wheat, cut from Italian marble, which marked the grave of Henry Storrs. Off to the left was a relatively new grave. Oh yes. Beneath it would be the Caldwell girl, taken by fever in October. That was some kind of funeral, Teddy recalled. When the box was lowered down, the mother fainted dead away, striking her head on a curbstone. Blood all over the place.

He still had a distance to go, but least he knew where he was now. He breathed deeply to clear his head, then started forward, trying to keep his footing. He’d be no more than half an hour late in making the chain fast at the gate. Hopefully, no one would notice and make bad report of him to the superintendent.

The snow, which had come down soft and lovely two days before, was liquefying now, making a splat with every step. The wind was kicking up too, making a filthy rushing sound in the pine trees. Teddy picked up his pace and rounded the bend. Only a hundred yards now to the great stone entryway and its iron gates.

Just then, a light struck his eye. It was small and warm, no more than a candle, but utterly out of place just before ten at night in the mausoleum of the Owen family, which was cut into the hillside at Teddy’s right.

The light went out so quickly that for a hazy moment Teddy thought he must have been mistaken.

He became aware of several things at once: that his feet were soaking wet and very cold; that he was truly drunk, much more than he had meant to be, much more than you’d think from such a small bottle; that his wrist was likely broken.

That he was not alone.

He stood fixed for a moment, feeling a trickle of cold water enter his boot. His lantern jiggled a little. Without realizing it, he’d begun to mutter. Lord bless me, Lord keep me …

All at once he was in the air. A powerful pair of hands, hard as talons, had seized him at collar and waistband and heaved, launching Teddy upward and forward in a great arc, so that he smashed into the icy roadway beard first. A tinkle of broken glass announced the demise of his lantern. He lay face-down in the slush gasping with pain, as the metal taste of blood oozed around his teeth. Any moment, he was sure, the fellow would come finish him off. Strip his boots and leave him as food for the rats.

But no. Through his pain and terror, he registered footsteps retreating, quite unhurried, from where he lay shaking on the ground. Splat, splat, splat. In a few seconds the noise was lost in the whining hurry of the wind. The assailant was gone.

A certain amount of time vanished. Was it ten seconds? Five minutes? Teddy would never be sure.

Slowly, painfully, Teddy pulled himself to his knees and then to his feet. It was horribly dark. His knees jittered and he felt snow sliding down his face. As his eyes got more used to the dark, he became aware of a faint light ahead. A streetlamp. He stumbled toward it, colliding more than once with the black iron fences that separated one family’s plot of sorrow from another’s.

At last, he made out the great papyrus columns of the entrance gate and lunged toward them. In a few minutes more, he reached the portal.

With difficulty, he fished an enormous key ring from his coat pocket. His good hand shook so violently that he could barely open the great brass padlock to loose the chain, which was wrapped securely around two vertical iron bars. Finally the lock sprang, the chain dropped, and the gate opened with a screech. He staggered through and, with the last of his strength, pulled the gate to behind him. His glove, he realized, was forgotten on the other side along with … whatever it was. There it would have to stay. The chain, which he was under severe instructions to lock every night, went swinging free as he crumpled to the ground, shuddering uncontrollably.

Twenty minutes later, when the last horsecar of the night came scraping down the rails of Mount Auburn Street, the driver pulled up in front of the cemetery gate. Securing the reins, he stepped gingerly down into the slush. The figure sprawled at the portal was Teddy all right. The driver shook his head in disgust, but, being a good man at heart, he grasped the wet, comatose watchman under the arms, hauled him into the nearly empty car, and laid him flat on the floor. Holt could sleep it off in the carbarn, as he had done before.

Mrs. Holt won’t be liking this, will she, Miss Jacobs? he remarked to the car’s only other rider, who sat impassively, watching the water drip from Teddy’s coat onto the slatted wooden floor.

No more should she, the rider said quietly. It’s been many a time you have picked him up in a poor state. This time, she added thoughtfully, it looks like the devil has made him pay.

17 March 1855

Professor Asa Gray, Cambridge, Mass., to Robert Claridge, Columbia, S.C.

My dear Mr. Claridge,

Your letter and parcel with samples of Compositae were, I assure you, very much appreciated. It is only the fatigue induced by presenting the Fungi to the undergraduates—three lectures, then on to the Smuts and Lichens—that has heretofore prevented me from responding to this most generous and welcome addition to the Botanical Collection here at Harvard.

I must remark particularly on the fine quality of the specimens and mounts. Such painstaking work—better were never made—rendered this contribution the more valuable. Perfectly charming!

As your letter mentions the prospect of explorations into the hinterlands of the Appalachians, would you do me the great service of searching out unusual Rosaceae and Carex. Live if possible. I have some faith that they may be propagated here at the Botanic Garden.

Do please let me know if you are aware of some collector headed into the Rocky Mountains. I am most anxious to obtain materials from these blasted areas of the Creator’s devising.

I am ever yours faithfully,

A. Gray

2 May 1855

Robert Claridge to Asa Gray

My dear Professor,

The parcel herewith contains specimens taken from a spinney of virgin forest, all that remains of the primeval wilderness in the extreme southwest of my State. As per your wishes, you may see some fine Rosaceae of a type with which I, at any rate, was unfamiliar. The arrangement of the ovaries appears to be quite singular.

You are gracious to complement the mounts—I heard much the same praise from Prof. Hooker at Kew Gardens when I sent him the odd little Sparganium from the pine bog in Albemarle. Every pistil distinct, despite 2 months in transit—so he reported. The boy to whom I assigned this work is conscientious, to the extent that members of his race can be. I shall mention that the great Professor Gray approves his labors!

I do hope, my dear professor, that someday your travels may bring you down to the Carolinas. It would please me to be able to show you what we here in Columbia have been able to achieve for science. As you undoubtedly know, we were privileged to host your Harvard colleague Louis Agassiz here some years ago. The effect of his visit is, I can attest, still being felt.

Perhaps you would entertain the idea of delivering a series of lectures to our Scientific Society.

Yours very sincerely,

Robert Claridge

1 September 1855

Asa Gray to Robert Claridge

My dear sir,

I found your parcel upon my return from Connecticut a few weeks since. Regrettably the heat has been withering this past month and I have been working like a dog trying to save some of the more delicate specimens in the Garden from becoming so much mattress stuffing. I fear some of the water-loving species may never recover. The man I left in charge has had to be replaced and there is no telling whether the new one will be any better.

I hope you will not take it amiss if I mention that this collection of specimens, while very welcome (especially the Clintonia, utterly captivating!), does not quite reach the fine standards of preservation I had come to anticipate from your hands. Perhaps you too are having the trials of patience to which all mortals are subject. I am weekly grateful for the respite of the Sabbath, when I am forced to reflect on the many blessings that are mine, rather than working and working again in my mind the shortcomings of myself and others.

It had slipped my mind that you were host to Professor Louis Agassiz when he visited South Carolina. No doubt that accounts for his glowing recollections of his time there.

Yours faithfully,

A. Gray

23 September 1855

Robert Claridge to Asa Gray

My dear Professor,

I am preparing for a visit to Washington and Philadelphia in the spring, and would