Chapter 15

On his way to visit the Brookes again, Beall stopped by the McNishs' place the following morning. Mrs. McNish answered his knock and told him that Timothy and her husband were down in their tobacco barn. Beall found them replacing dry-rotted side boards.

"Good day, Tom," he said. "Nice spell of weather for a change."

"Tis, so we are making the most of it. Hay while the sun shines, you know."

"Need to talk to Tim a minute."

"Go ahead, if he's willing."

Beall climbed up inside the fragrant shed where Tim McNish was sawing lengths of milled pine. He stopped and smiled at Beall, "Now what?" he said.

"Just two questions, Tim. Did you know a fair haired whore down in Georgetown called the Swede, or Joan something?"

"Haw, that's a good one, me and the big Swede. She wouldn't comb my hair for what I could afford much less..." Tim McNish looked over at his father who had stopped hammering and was listening. "Yes sir, I knew her on sight. And some regal sight it is. Best set of tits on the river, enough to make both your cods and your teeth ache."

"You ever see James Brookes with her, the fellow we talked about the other day?"

"Nope, never, but I seen that overseer of the Brookes's, you know, Sparks, that hellraiser, walkin' with her. Don't know how he could afford it 'less he had his hand in the till, but he was squirin' her now and then. Damned expensive rogering that. Use to see them along High Street when I was working for Mr. Sipe. You ought to hear the stories they tell 'bout what she'd do for a man if he had enough hard cash. She's surely younger than me, and one feller swore she's got whip marks on her back."

At the Brookes' home one of the black stablehands took Beall's mare and led her back toward the barn while he climbed to the front door and knocked. A liveried servant answered and invited him in and soon he was led to Thomas Brookes' small library and sitting room.

"Judge Brookes, good to see you again. Please don't get up."

"Mr. Beall, a pleasure," the older man said half rising.

"I'd like to see James again, if I may?"

"More questions, eh. Well, he is probably down at the quarters. Shall I have him called?"

"No, I'll go down there. I wanted to tell you that I stopped by McKendry's yesterday and asked about those dresses, the ones that murdered woman made."

"Oh yes," Brookes said, but Beall could not tell from his look if he really remembered.

"McKendry's clerk said you had paid for one but not the other."

"I did ask my wife again about that, and she convinced me that the dressmaker was an honest woman, so I assume there was just a mistake in bookkeeping somewhere along the way."

"Most likely," Beall said. "I did not want you to think I had been going about behind your back with questions."

"Thank you, Beall. Most considerate."

After asking a few youngsters who were playing around the slaves' quarters, Beall found James Brookes supervising the construction of some sort of small outbuilding. When the younger Brookes saw him, he approached quickly and stuck out his hand in greeting.

"It's going to be a press. We're hoping to get into wine production in a year or two. The vines are in their third year now and doing well. We'll make cider too, of course."

"Your idea?" asked Beall.

"Oh yes, something I saw up in New York, or perhaps it was in Rhode Island, when I was a guest of good King George. Didn' spend my whole time on the damn hulks."

"Did you think any more on that dress I asked you about?"

"No, not really. Use some more mortar there, Philip. Lay 'em level and check it. They really have to be watched in this kind of work. What were you saying?"