Elaborate headstones, simple markers, and stone vaults lined the path that I followed. At the end was a columned pavilion with a slate roof.
Graves surrounded the pavilion, some headstones adorned with Latin inscriptions, others with images of angels, along with a name and date of passing for the person buried there.
The headstone for Reverend William Chastain was among them with the year that he had died, 1877. And beside it, another headstone.
I brushed the snow from the name etched there:
Mary Chastain, beloved mother. 10 September 1892
“You cannot stop what must be done!”
The warning came from behind me.
“For her! For what they did!”
A man was there, a half dozen steps away, no more. Beside the grave of Mary Chastain.
He was of medium height, neither old nor young, dressed in black, pale hair tangled around his head, a crazed look in light blue eyes, as he slowly came toward me, bent over as if holding himself against some pain, his steps slow as he dragged one foot.
A man with a limp, seen after one of the murders, then briefly glimpsed through the crowd of passengers at the rail station.
“I followed you to Cambridge. You know what they did,” he whispered.
I wanted to ask who he was, but it was there on Mary Chastain’s gravestone—beloved mother—and evident in the way he glanced down at it now with sadness and some other emotion that narrowed his eyes as he looked back at me.
“Lady Forsythe!”
The way he said it was filled with contempt and pain as he continued to slowly move toward me.
“What she went through. All these years living with the shame of it and not even a name that any of them would give her! I have no name!
“I am nothing, but a cripple, dirt beneath their feet!”
The words were filled with pain and anger.
“No one would help her! Not any of them! And now you come here for them! To ease their guilt? I will not let you! No one can help you! Just as there was no one to help her!”
His shoulder caught me in my shoulder as he lunged at me, my bag with the revolver thrown to the ground.
He was surprisingly strong, and I was spun around, his arm clamped across my shoulders, the edge of a knife cold against my throat as I clawed at that arm and fought for footing in the mud and snow.
“Let her go.”
It came from behind us, my attacker’s breath hot against my cheek. And that faint scent I had smelled before.
Incense that someone might burn, the thought came and then slipped away as I continued to struggle.
That arm tightened, and I was pulled back, away from those words and a man who stepped out of the shadows of the pavilion and slowly followed, his revolver aimed at us.
“Let her go, now,” Brodie repeated as he stalked us.
I was dragged backward, that blade at my throat, as I stared at Brodie and the slow but deliberate way he moved as the son of Mary Chastain limped haltingly, taking me with him.
“She had no part in what happened all those years before,” Brodie told him. “Just as those young men had nothing to do with it.”
“You don’t know. You don’t understand!” the man with that knife screamed.
“I do know,” Brodie said then in that same calm voice as he took another step toward us.
