“Makes sense. Are you going to join in the search?”
“I will. If I might trouble you for a ride into Exmouth?”
“No problem. But first, since we’ve got some time, you’d better dry out a bit.” Silas opened a woodstove and chucked in two pieces of wood. As Pendergast moved to settle himself down, Silas turned. “Um, if you don’t mind, not the sofa. The wooden rocking chair is plenty comfy.”
Pendergast sat in the rocking chair.
“You look like you might need a shot of bourbon.”
A hesitation. “What kind, pray tell?”
Silas laughed. “Discriminating, are we? Pappy Van Winkle twenty-year-old. I don’t allow rotgut on the premises.”
Pendergast inclined his head. “That will suffice.”
Silas disappeared into the kitchen and came back out with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He plunked them on the coffee table, filled one, then the other.
“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Silas,” said Pendergast, taking up the glass.
Silas took a delicate sip. “So you were out there investigating the murder of that historian?”
“I was indeed.”
“That scream back there was enough to make the devil himself fall to his knees, rosary in hand.”
Pendergast removed his map and spread it out on a nearby table. “I would like you to indicate, if you please, where you were when you heard the scream, and from what direction you think it came.”
Silas pulled the map toward him and hunched over it, his brow creased. “I was right here, in these woods, and the scream came from this direction.” He drew his finger along the map.
Pendergast made some notations. Silas’s finger lay over a section of the cone he’d previously drawn on the map. “This will help in the search for the body.” He rolled up the map. “Have you heard any rumors of someone living in the marshes?”
“Not specifically. But if I were trying to escape the law, that’s where I’d go.”
Pendergast took a sip of the bourbon. “Mr. Silas, you mentioned your family had been here two hundred years. You must know a great deal of local history.”
“Well, I’ve never much cared for genealogy and so forth. Back in the day, Dill Town was the so-called Negro end of town, mostly whaling families. But it wasn’t just African American. There was a lot of South Seas blood—Tahitian, Polynesian, Maori. I’m almost half Maori myself. The Maori were the greatest harpooners who ever lived. And then some of these sea captains had South Seas wives and families, you know, brought on board during the long voyages. They’d drop them off in Dill Town before heading into Boston to their white families. When they went back out to sea, they’d just pick them back up.” He shook his head.
“And so you are a descendant, then, of the original inhabitants of Dill Town?”
“Sure am. Like I said, I’m as much Maori as African. My great-granddad had some hellacious tribal tats, or so my grandma told me.”
“I understand most of the African Americans abandoned Dill Town after a lynching that happened there.”
Silas shook his head. “That was a terrible business. Terrible. The man was innocent, of course. But that didn’t matter to the vigilante group that strung him up. After that, folks in Dill Town decided it wasn’t a good place to raise their families. They had the money to get out, thanks to the whaling business, and most of them did. Some just went to New Bedford. Others as far as the Chicago slaughterhouses.”
“But your family stayed.”
“Well, my granddad had lost his throwing arm in a whaling accident and so he’d begun a medicinal herb business. This area’s full of herbs, especially nightshade, which grows all around here. You find it especially down where Oldham used to be. He couldn’t transfer that kind of skill to a big city like New Bedford. So we stayed. We just moved out of town, down the road a piece—and here we are.” He spread his hands.
“You live alone?”
“I had a wife, but she left. Too lonely, she said. The loneliness suits me just fine, most of the time, although I’m always happy to meet someone different. I’m no hermit. I hit the bar at the Inn once a week, drink, eat fried clams, and play dominoes with friends.”
Pendergast stood up, drink in hand, and walked to the window, staring into the darkness, southwestward toward the marshes. “If you could take me into town now, that would be much appreciated. But I do have a final question. These vigilantes you mention—who were they?”
“Nobody knows. Local folks, masked. I’ll tell you this: my granddad said that in the old days, there was a bad element in Exmouth. Not just a bad element—some truly evil people. He said they were like that story of the Gray Reaper: fellows looking to start a hell of their own.”
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