The Devil's Cold Dish Read Online Free Page A

definitely did. He’d suffered at the bully’s hands so often Rees would have speculated about the scrawny farmer’s guilt if Drummond hadn’t been there as well. And if Farley suspected Rees of the murder, he would be thanking Rees rather than condemning him.
    Rees acknowledged them with a nod and turned his attention to the body. The granite shelf on which Ward lay protruded from the hill almost as though it were a stage, bare of trees and vegetation. The sun shone upon the corpse, illuminating it. Rees could focus on nothing else. He hurried across the stony surface and knelt beside it.
    Ward had been shot twice, once through the upper chest and once through the neck. Rees guessed that second wound was a head shot gone wrong. Not that it mattered; Ward was dead. His death had been fairly recent—his blood had formed a sticky darkening pool that had just begun to dry. “He must have come here straight from the mill this morning,” Rees muttered. And the shooter owned a rifle and was an experienced marksman; no musket could hit a target with such accuracy. Rees glanced back at Farley, wondering if the rifle he carried had been fired. Rees reminded himself that many men in Dugard owned rifles and most were good shots. Ward himself had carried a musket, but it had dropped from his limp hand. The bags of shot and powder were still slung around his chest. He had not suspected anything and had made no effort to load his weapon.
    Rising, Rees stared around him, searching for the shooter’s location. There was nowhere on this outcropping for anyone to hide. Rees looked at Caldwell, who was now crossing the rock. Maybe another man had come up behind Ward? But he had not been shot in the back.
    Rees returned his attention to the body. It was lying with the head toward Caldwell and with the feet facing the edge of the drop-off.
    Rees walked to the edge and peered down. The steep rock face descended into a nest of trees and shrubbery about twenty feet below. No one had climbed up that way. He turned and looked across the ravine at Bald Knob. A rifle and an experienced marksman could easily make the shot from there.
    â€œWhat’s he doing here?” Farley’s querulous voice sent a flock of black birds spiraling into the sky. The crows had already been at the body; Rees turned his gaze away from the bloody ruins of Ward’s eyes and found Farley staring at him with angry hostility.
    Farley was a short, bandy-legged man and his face was deeply creased. His wispy hair reached his shoulders in a frizzy gray fringe and he looked older than his forty-one years. Under Rees’s glare, Farley grasped the leather bag hanging around his neck and stared at Rees nervously. Farley’s world was filled with ghosts and bogeymen and omens; Rees thought him a superstitious fool. And his wife, the local wise woman and midwife, was no better, hanging apples shriveled into faces for good luck and putting ears of corn on women in labor. Rees suddenly decided he could not allow Mrs. Farley to deliver Lydia’s baby. He wouldn’t have that nonsense in his house. But where would they find another midwife?
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Caldwell asked, interrupting Rees’s thoughts. “Will is very experienced at solving these kinds of riddles, beginning when he was a soldier in the War of Independence.”
    â€œHe was fighting with Ward just today,” Farley interrupted.
    â€œI know. Ward fought with everyone,” Caldwell said. But he threw a nervous glance at his friend. Rees was also wondering about the coincidence of his battle with Ward mere hours before his death, but he couldn’t let the implied accusation lie.
    â€œYou fought with him, too,” he said. Both Ward and Farley had been in their cups and aggressive; the clumsy battle had been described to Rees as a regular Punch and Judy show.
    â€œNot today,” Farley said. He turned his pale eyes toward Rees.