Author's Note:

I originally intended this chapter to continue past the point where it currently ends. However, I have chosen to end the chapter earlier because I had a particular reason for wanting to post it on November 17, 2014. This is the anniversary of the date in 1967 on which Episode 365 of Dark Shadows was broadcast: the episode in which Vicki Winters travels back in time to the year 1795. Thus it is also the anniversary of the day, in the universe of Stand Fast and Damn the Devil,on which Bill Malloy makes his own journey backward in time.

Aficionados of the 1795 storyline will recognize that my version of Eagle Hill Cemetery in 1795 doesn't look quite the way that cemetery is depicted on the show. I chose to use artistic license to give my interpretation of how I believe the cemetery would have changed over the course of nearly two centuries. And anyone who would like to visit Constable Hemphill's house in Collinsport can do so if they make a trip to the town of Dedham, Massachusetts. The Hemphill house is an homage to the circa-1640 Fairbanks House in Dedham, the oldest-standing timber-framed building in North America.

Chapter Eleven

My name is Bill Malloy.

Another morning dawns to drive the shadows from Collins House. The sunlight should bring with it happiness and hope. But for one man within these walls, the day brings only despair.

A man who has journeyed backward in time seeks answers. These answers may mean salvation for the Collins family, now and in his own time. But time is running out. If he does not find the answers soon, there may be nothing left to save.

In his desperate efforts to induce Bill to leave him, Jeremiah Collins had not set a time for their morning appointment. Bill figured if he presented himself at Jeremiah's room shortly before the hour when his employer typically left for the shipyard, he would probably be right on time.

At 7:00 Bill was heading for the kitchen to grab some breakfast. As he started through the dining room, he noticed things looked different than they had on the other mornings he'd been here in this time period.

A selection of covered serving dishes was set out on the dining table. Plates and cutlery waited on the sideboard. On every other morning when he'd walked through here, the table had been empty and Riggs or another staff member had been hovering nearby, ready to take the breakfast orders of Collinses and guests.

Wondering what made this morning different from the others, Bill continued down the hallway to the kitchen. Here, things were different and then some.

Instead of the usual more-or-less orderly scene, today Collins House staff were milling all over the place. They all seemed dressed in their best, and they had on hats and coats or cloaks. Mrs. Riggs was re-tying the bow that fastened young Bessie's bonnet. Riggs was in the process of buttoning up his overcoat. John Knowles – whom Bill hadn't seen since the embarrassing occasion when Bill asked to take a hot bath – was licking his thumb and then using it to wipe a smudge off of Isaac Hinckley's face.

The kitchen maid whose name Bill didn't know, as well as Mrs. Collins' maidservant Anna and Jake Tierney the teenaged stable hand, were there as well. Most of the party nodded to Bill or called some greeting to him as he walked into the room.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Malloy," said Riggs. "Will you come to meeting with us? There is still plenty of room in the wagon."

Good grief, thought Bill. Of course, it must be Sunday. They're all literally wearing their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

He said, "I don't think I will this week, thank you. Perhaps I'll be able to next Sunday."

Never mind that he hadn't been inside a church, except for funerals and weddings, since before he left home for World War II. Going to "meeting" with his fellow Collins House staff members should be a good way for him to keep on winning their trust. And that could be a big help in finding out the answers to questions like "Who put a wig on a skull and stuck it in a hatbox?"

"That is," he added, as something else occurred to him, "unless Jeremiah Collins is going today. Then I imagine I'll be attending."

Isaac Hinckley gave a snorting sort of laugh. The Riggses, Mr. Knowles, and Naomi Collins' maid all cast dirty looks at him. The young man murmured, "Sorry."

"No," answered Riggs, with that stoically blank expression perfected by all good butlers. "Mr. Jeremiah is not likely to be going. The only family member who regularly attends is Miss Collins."

I should have guessed, thought Bill. That gave him a reason to be glad he was not attending meeting today. Of course if he did, probably Abigail Collins would be too intent on her prayers or her Bible-reading even to notice him. But he could still imagine all manner of comments from her, along the lines of being amazed that her decadent little brother's follower, a man who consorted with that brazen hussy the new governess, would dare to set his feet within the House of the Lord.

So he said, "Then I'll have to stay here. Mr. Jeremiah asked me to meet with him this morning. Thank you for the invitation. I hope I can go with you next week."

Mrs. Riggs had finished fussing with Bessie's bonnet. She said to Bill, "Porridge and coffee are on the hearth, Mr. Malloy. Help yourself."

He thanked her. Then the whole party was off, trooping out through the back door. Bill ate a quick and solitary breakfast. A few minutes later, heading back through the family's portion of the house, he had a thoroughly predictable Murphy's Law encounter. Miss Collins was descending the stairs just at the moment when Bill arrived in the entry hall.

Bill resigned himself to the inevitable. He greeted her, "Good morning, Miss Collins."

She sniffed and eyed him with the expected disapproving stare. "Will you be attending meeting this morning?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not," said Bill, putting on a regretful look. "I am due to meet with Mr. Jeremiah Collins."

"I see," Abigail said primly. "I might have expected as much. Good morning." The God-fearing woman collected her cloak from the coat tree at the foot of the stairs, put it on with a swirl of fabric that would have hit Bill in the face if he hadn't stepped backward, and proceeded out the front door.

Grinning a little at the worthy Miss Collins' disapproval, Bill continued up the stairs for his next encounter with a member of the Collins family.

At first he thought this next encounter would prove a total wash-out. His initial knock at Jeremiah Collins' door went unanswered.

Here we go again, thought Bill. So now I guess I'll go searching for Jeremiah. Here comes another day of chasing my own tail, hunting people and answers in every nook and cranny of Collins House.

But it turned out he didn't need to start chasing his tail yet.

On his second knock, the door of the room next to Jeremiah's opened instead. Jeremiah Collins stepped into the hallway, followed closely by his nephew Barnabas.

"Good morning, Mr. Malloy," said Jeremiah. "I am sorry to have kept you waiting."

"It's all right," Bill told him. "I just got here."

The emotional states of uncle and nephew were a study in contrasts. Jeremiah looked understatedly grim. He was no longer in quite the same state of panic he'd been in last night. But Bill thought probably the only thing keeping Jeremiah calm was his passionate need not to alarm his nephew.

Barnabas, on the other hand, seemed to be walking on air. He had the quietly blissful look of a man in love, contemplating a future filled with domestic delights. Bill wouldn't have been much surprised if at any moment Barnabas Collins started belting out a love song, like some character in a musical.

Jeremiah said to Barnabas, "You are certain you will not change your mind?"

"There is no need, Jeremiah. I assure you I feel perfectly well. I have felt not the slightest ill effects since just after my attack ended. Immediately after the attack, I was tired, naturally. But now I have had several days in which to recover. I am certain you have no cause for concern."

Jeremiah gave him a less-than-convincing smile. "You must at least promise me not to over-exert yourself. If you should feel fatigue, or any manner of discomfort, give me your word that you will return home and rest."

"Very well," said Barnabas, smiling warmly and clasping his uncle's shoulder. "I do promise you that. And I am certain that Josette will prove an extremely able deputy to you this afternoon. She will keep as sharp an eye on me as you would. At the least sign of weakness she will bundle me home to my bed. You see, Jeremiah, Josette babies me just as much as you do."

At this, Bill thought Jeremiah looked even less comfortable than before. He seemed to be talking through gritted teeth when he said, "I am sure that she does."

Forcing another weak attempt at a smile, Jeremiah turned to Bill. "Against all of my wise avuncular advice, Barnabas insists on going in to the yard with us this morning. At least with the two of us riding alongside him, we should be able to catch him in time if he faints and begins to fall off his horse."

"Ay-yuh," remarked Bill. Meanwhile he was thinking, He's doing this on purpose. He's making a song and dance out of wishing Barnabas wouldn't leave the house, but I'll bet he's actually thanking his lucky stars.

Having Barnabas along for the ride means that Jeremiah gets more time to put off telling me what the hell is bothering him.

Barnabas was already wearing his caped coat, nearly a twin of the coat that his descendant Barnabas would wear in the 20th century. Jeremiah and Bill stopped off at their rooms to collect their respective coats. When Jeremiah stepped back into the hallway, he was carrying a canvas saddlebag with a squared-off, suspiciously box-like shape inside it. Bill was pretty certain he knew what that box-like shape was. Sure enough, Jeremiah gestured ruefully with the saddlebag and said, "Our mysterious parcel is within. Mr. Malloy, I have a plan that I will discuss with you at my office, for another means whereby we may seek to determine the parcel's origin."

"All right," was Bill's wary reply. Mentally he added, You're not getting out of it that easily, Jeremiah. We're still going to have that conversation.

As they started toward the staircase, Barnabas told Bill, "I am only going in to the yard for the morning, in the attempt to make a few inroads on the work that must have piled up for me in the days since my attack. Then this afternoon Josette and I have an appointment in Collinsport. We are paying a call on Mr. Daggett the cabinetmaker, to discuss with him the furniture we will be commissioning."

Bill gave a more-or-less humorous grimace. "More power to you, Mr. Collins," he said. "I wouldn't want to do that at the best of times. Let alone a couple of days after I was lying at death's door."

Smiling in amusement, Barnabas said, "I doubt whether it will be as strenuous as that. Since my plan is to acquiesce to Josette's every wish, the burden of decision-making on questions of furniture will rest upon her, not on me."

Just as they got to the foot of the stairs, the front door burst open. Josette Du Prés herself sped inside. The schoolgirlish pink hair ribbon at the top of her head contrasted oddly with the wild look on her face, as if something was chasing her. She leaned against the door to shove it closed against the wind that rushed inside with her.

Confronted by the three men on the staircase, Josette gave a startled gasp. Then she lowered her eyes and murmured almost inaudibly, "Good morning."

Barnabas hurried down the last three steps to reach her. "Josette, my darling," he said, taking her hands in his, "what is troubling you?"

Bill thought that Josette's smile as she looked up at Barnabas was as unconvincing as the smiles Jeremiah had been managing recently.

"Nothing is troubling me, Barnabas. I went out for a walk and it was colder than I expected. That's all."

"I must apologize for our weather," Barnabas answered, with a rueful tinge to his smile. "I fear that even at its best, the weather of Maine is far indeed from that of Martinique."

Josette Du Prés looked troubled instead of responding to his pleasantry with another smile. "Are you certain you are well enough to be out of bed?" she asked him.

Barnabas glanced up the stairs at his uncle and grinned. "You see, Jeremiah," he said, "I told you Josette coddles me as much as you do." Turning back to his fiancée, he went on, "I am certain I am well enough, my dearest. I will only spend a little time at the yard, and I will return here early enough to take some rest before our lunch. And after lunch, I vow, I will zealously conserve my strength. I will not become agitated in the slightest in the process of selecting our furniture."

Josette pursed her lips. Her eyes seemed to be welling with tears. "You are making fun of me," she whispered.

"I am not!" he protested earnestly. "I promise you, I am not."

Jeremiah went to the two of them. He said in his quiet, courteous tones, "If I might, Barnabas, there is something I should like to discuss with Miss Du Prés. It will only take a few minutes. You and Mr. Malloy can continue to the stable; I will catch up with you shortly."

Barnabas cast a questioning look at Josette. She dropped her gaze again but nodded.

"Of course," answered Barnabas, looking only slightly puzzled. "But I trust the two of you will not be plotting some way of making me remain in my bed!"

"Mr. Malloy," Jeremiah said, seemingly not quite able to meet Bill's gaze. "Would you please carry this for me to the stable?" He held out to Bill the saddlebag with its sinister contents.

"Sure thing," Bill answered. For far from the first time, he wondered, What in the hell is going on now?

As they walked toward the back of the house, Bill eyed Barnabas Collins. The man was still smiling a goofy, lovelorn smile. That made sense, of course, as a residual effect of having just seen his best girl. Still and all, Bill did think Barnabas might have noticed that his best girl and his uncle were both looking far from happy.

Oh well, thought Bill. I guess he's just too busy looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

What are Jeremiah and Josette talking about? Bill wondered. Something to do with the skull in the hatbox? Perhaps Jeremiah was reaching for some of the same tentative conclusions that Bill was working his way toward. Perhaps he was asking Josette about Angelique Bouchard; about whether the maidservant might have any reason to wish harm to her young employer.

Outside, while they headed from the back of the house to the stable, Barnabas asked Bill, "You are married, Mr. Malloy?"

"Yes," Bill answered. Without even thinking about it, he added, "To the love of my life."

The moment he said that, he mentally kicked himself for wearing his heart that much on his sleeve. But, come on, Bill, he told himself, you shouldn't be ashamed about sounding sentimental. It's nothing to be ashamed of, anyway. But you really don't need to be ashamed of it when your only audience is Mr. Barnabas Collins, the walking embodiment of a Hallmark card.

Barnabas smiled at him. "Then you know how I feel about Josette. Your wife is still at your home in – in Pembroke, wasn't it?"

Bill nodded, and he hedged a bit so the words he spoke wouldn't actually be a lie. "She's back home."

"Have you thought of having her join you here?"

Don't I wish! Bill thought. He came up with an answer, "I … don't think that would be possible. She has business to attend to at home."

Despite his answer, Barnabas' innocent question started him daydreaming. He thought it wouldn't be so bad to be stuck in the past if Liz could be with him here.

We could live out our retirement years together here in the Good Old Days. Only with my luck, our retirement years wouldn't be all that long. After all, I've already seen a sampling of the medical standards in this time period.

Unlike many of his fellow Collins House staff members, Mr. Tierney the elder was apparently not a church-goer. At the stable they found him comfortably ensconced in an old, battered chair, smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper. He jumped to his feet as they arrived, to which Barnabas said, "No, no, I'm sorry to disturb you. We can saddle our own horses."

Speak for yourself, Barnabas, thought Bill. But it turned out he wouldn't need to show off his inexperience on that front. Tierney said, "It's no problem at all, sir. That's what I'm here for. Shall I ready your horse and Mr. Malloy's?"

"Yes, thank you. And Mr. Jeremiah's, as well."

Bill took the opportunity to hand over the saddlebag, telling Tierney that Mr. Jeremiah would be taking it into town. He told himself he hadn't actually been creeped out by lugging around the saddlebag containing the hatbox and the skull. All the same, he couldn't deny that it felt pretty darned good to get rid of it.

As Tierney set to work, Bill picked up the newspaper from Tierney's chair. He glanced at the date. It was the Collinsport Star for Wednesday, November 18.

Wednesday, Bill thought as he put the paper down again. And this is Sunday. So that makes today … November 22.

November 22. He realized grimly that in 1967, tomorrow would be Thanksgiving.

I'm sorry about this, Liz, he thought. I didn't mean to miss our first Thanksgiving together. I didn't mean to get hijacked into 1795.

He thought of what a gloomy day tomorrow would be at Collinwood in 1967.

The cannery would be closed for the day, of course, so Roger would be even more underfoot than usual. Although probably Rog would just spend most of the day camped out by the brandy decanter. Mrs. Johnson, he figured, would try to bury her worry over Bill's disappearance by cooking up a storm, despite the fact that no one in the house was in the mood for a Thanksgiving feast. So there would be one big old turkey dinner going to waste. Probably, he thought, Mrs. Johnson would end up boxing up most of it and taking it to her church to distribute to the needy, since none of the Collinwood folks would do any more than pick at it. The only ones he figured would even show up at the table for the meal were David and Vicki – if David didn't just insist on taking a plate of fixins up to his room. Carolyn might make an appearance at the table with them, take a couple bites, and then throw down her fork and go storming off to the Blue Whale to find some inappropriate guys to dance with. The Whale was the only place in town that stayed open on Thanksgiving, though Bob did close up shop early at 6:00 to get home to his own dinner. But he always said it was his moral duty to keep the place open Thanksgiving afternoon, for those customers who didn't have homes to go to – or those with homes they needed to escape from.

And Liz … Bill thought she would probably spend most of the day outside, walking along the cliffs. He hoped that for at least part of the time, Vicki would be out walking with her. He thought he could see just exactly what the two of them would look like, bundled up in their coats and their headscarves, standing together on the cliff top talking about Bill or maybe trying not to talk about him, pretending they both believed that the tears on Liz's face were caused by the Widow's Hill wind.

Jesus, Bill thought. I've got to stop thinking about this. If I don't, I'm going to start crying, too.

Jeremiah Collins rejoined them while Tierney was saddling Bill's Gracie, the third of their three horses. As far as Bill could tell, Jeremiah was still not a happy camper. But at least he didn't seem in danger of an immediate melt-down.

Tentative but hopeful, Barnabas asked his uncle, "Is all well between you and Josette?"

"All will be well now between us," Jeremiah told him firmly. "I promise you that."

For the hour of so of their ride down to Collinsport, neither Collins showed any inclination to discuss the mysterious skull in the hatbox. Instead, Barnabas Collins waxed eloquent in praise of his incomparable Josette.

He talked about the moment when he first saw her, surrounded by the flowers of the garden at her family's estate on Martinique. He talked about the two of them watching hummingbirds flitting through that garden, and of how, for one instant, a hummingbird had hovered just above her hand. He talked of their long horseback rides together along the shore – with, naturally, her chaperoning aunt in tow. He talked of the hurricane that had struck during that summer he spent on Martinique. He talked of Josette's calm bravery and steadfastness in helping the people of their estate get to safety, and of her gentle kindness as she brought them food and clothing and medicines in the aftermath of the storm.

Barnabas talked about how he had not even dared to imagine that she might love him. He talked about his wondering joy as they exchanged letter after letter, and she began to reveal the depth of her feelings. He talked about the day when he finally found the courage to write of his love to her. And he said that if he did not have the answering letter she had sent him, sometimes he would still scarcely believe the miraculous truth that she loved him in return.

"You don't need the letter, now, Barnabas," Jeremiah said, in a strained, tense voice. "You have Josette herself."

"Yes," Barnabas said blissfully. "I do."

I know how you feel, Barn, Bill thought. Now you just get a move on and marry your girl. You get that knot tied before the skeletons climb out of the cupboards to stop you. Get married before there's a supposedly murdered first husband, supposedly buried in the basement, who's going to spend twenty years or thereabouts stopping you from walking down the aisle.

Off and on during that ride, Bill glanced over at Jeremiah while Barnabas talked. The older Collins stared grimly ahead. His jaw was so firmly set that Bill thought he was probably giving himself a jaw-ache. From time to time he managed some terse, generic reply when his nephew paused in his soliloquies.

If Jeremiah was trying at all to hide his miserable mood, he was doing a very poor job of it. Anyone less caught up in lovesick reveries than Barnabas would have been certain to notice.

They had reached the outskirts of town when Bill managed to turn the discussion away from the flowers and birds and divinely-scented air of Martinique. He said, "I'm surprised to see the two of you going in to work on a Sunday. Seems to me remembering the Sabbath Day and keeping it holy is the better part of valor, if it means you can avoid Miss Collins' dirty looks. But I guess maybe by now she's given up on trying to save your souls."

Barnabas Collins laughed. "I'm afraid she has. My aunt has long known that our feet are firmly planted on Satan's pathways. Well, I look upon that as Jeremiah and me doing our part to assist my father with the politics of this family! The fact that we do not adhere to Aunt Abigail's strictures is a useful reminder to my aunt that Joshua Collins, not she, is the master of the house."

Barnabas went on. He was clearly so buoyed by his reminiscences of Josette that it enabled him to talk about his father in a cheerful humor. "My father, in one sense at least, adheres to the spirit of those who first journeyed from England to these shores. He is so thorough a non-conformist that he believes he is fully as capable as anyone else of interpreting the Word of the Lord. Father says that he can comprehend the scriptures perfectly well without some Harvard-educated pendant lecturing him upon them once a week. Of course," Barnabas added with a grin, "Aunt Abigail would say it is merely his overweening self-conceit speaking, not his non-conformism."

With a snort, Jeremiah Collins muttered, "That is disturbing: to find that there is one topic, at least, on which I agree with my sister."

As amusing as he found the uncle and nephew's family sarcasm, Bill didn't think this conversation would get them much of anywhere. He turned to Jeremiah and said, "When we get to the yard, I hope we'll be able to discuss that question we talked about last night."

Jeremiah looked at him like a condemned man facing his executioner. "Yes," was all Jeremiah said. His voice was as tense and strained as his face.

Swiftly changing the subject, Jeremiah told Bill, "One thing I intend to do today is to speak with a number of our employees at the yard. I believe certain key men will be able to shed some light on the question of who, among the Collins Shipping employees, might have sent this charming present." He punctuated the closing of his sentence by patting the squared-off saddlebag.

Taken by surprise, Bill asked, "Do all of the Collins employees go in to work on Sundays?"

If so, he thought, I can well believe that our skull-in-a-hatbox was sent by a disgruntled employee who doesn't approve of Joshua Collins' business practices.

"No," answered Jeremiah, "not all of them, by any means. Only a small proportion of our work force actually does so. But of those who do, quite a number of them are men with whom I hope to speak today. And in the case of several others, I intend to visit them today at their homes."

Barnabas chimed in, returning to the topic of Joshua's religious policies, "You see, Mr. Malloy, my father's celebrated non-conformism manifests itself in his doctrine that a man can serve his creator far better by working on Sunday, if he has work that needs to be done, than by sitting on his backside in the meeting house and thinking pious thoughts. Thus any of our workers who wish to come in to the yard on Sundays, are permitted to do so. And you're right," Barnabas added, turning with a grin toward Jeremiah, "it is a bit frightening to find there are topics on which I agree with Father, just the same as you agreeing with Aunt Abigail!"

Jeremiah managed a faint answering smile. "And you see," he said, "your father's doctrine has been proved correct. One can have revelatory experiences anywhere and at any time, including on horseback riding in to the shipyard, not just while sitting on one's backside in the meeting house." Jeremiah then turned toward Bill. "Mr. Malloy, there is a task I will ask you to take on in our search for answers. I will go with you to Constable Hemphill and apprise him of this business of the skull. If he has the time, I hope that you and the constable will investigate together its possible origin points. By that I mean the burying yards, and as you mentioned yesterday, the establishments of Collinsport's medical men. And perhaps the constable may have theories on other avenues we should pursue."

Bill nodded. "All right." He thought, If you think that's getting you out of the conversation ahead of us, you've got another think coming.

A few minutes later, Barnabas Collins was seated at his desk and staring at a slightly intimidating pile of papers. Jeremiah and Bill continued onward, past a couple of doors down the corridor, to reach Jeremiah's office.

Jeremiah set the saddlebag gently on his desk. He stood gazing down at it with a distant, preoccupied frown.

"All right, Mr. Collins," Bill said. "I hate to hound you about this. But I don't think we've got any choice. It was pretty danged obvious last night that something out-of-the-ordinary was bothering you. And it's still bothering you. You're going to have to tell me what it is."

Jeremiah Collins turned toward Bill. On his face was a regretful but mulishly stubborn look.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Malloy," he said. "That is something I cannot do. The secret is not mine. It concerns the honor and good name of another. I am duty bound not to reveal it."

Bill stared at Jeremiah in aggravated surprise. "Duty bound, my foot!" he blurted. "Look, Mr. Collins, I'm sorry if I'm offending your noble sensibilities. Maybe in the 20th century our sense of honor isn't as fine as what you folks have these days. But fine sense of honor or no, you've got to see what a desperate situation we're in. If we screw this up, then every person you love could be dead in a matter of weeks! Not to mention that maybe my family in 1967 is going to be destroyed."

Jeremiah stared back at Bill with a stricken, sickly look. Bill hurried on.

"Listen," he said, "I'm not here to pass judgments on anyone. I'm not here to drag anyone's name in the mud. I won't go gossiping about anything you tell me. I promise you that. But you have to tell me. There's no way of getting around it."

"No," Jeremiah answered in grim finality. "No, I do not have to tell you."

Normally Bill Malloy wasn't much given to swearing. At least not out loud. But this situation was moving farther and farther past normal.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Bill exclaimed. "Are you telling me somebody's honor is important enough to you that you're going to let your family die for it?"

He thought Jeremiah looked about to faint. Either that or the man was going to throw up. But Jeremiah kept his voice more-or-less steady as he said, "I assure you, Mr. Malloy, the two matters are in no way connected. The issue that has troubled me since last night … it has nothing whatever to do with the threat which you and I are investigating."

Bill thought, I can't believe I'm hearing this.

"What makes you so sure of that?" he demanded. "It seems to me they're a heck of a lot more likely to be connected than not."

"And what makes you say that?" Jeremiah countered in challenge.

"Look," argued Bill, "it stands to reason. If a problem's so serious it's got you looking like it's the end of the world, then it just makes sense it's connected to the massive disaster we're smack in the middle of. It makes a darn sight more sense that way, than that we've got two unconnected massive disasters striking at the same time."

"It may make little sense," Jeremiah said stiffly, "but I assure you that is the case. Unlikely though it may seem, the two issues are entirely unconnected."

"Ay-yuh," answered Bill. "You'll have to forgive me if I remain unconvinced."

"That is, of course, your prerogative."

Damn it! thought Bill. It's as bad as it used to be trying to get straightforward answers out of Roger Collins and Sam Evans!

He didn't figure his next question would get a truthful answer, either. But he asked it anyway. "Does the problem you're not willing to talk about have something to do with Miss Du Prés?"

Bingo, Bill thought. If that's not a guilty reaction, I don't know what is.

After a jump of surprise and a widening of his eyes, Jeremiah got himself back under control. But the damage was already done.

"Why do you ask?" Jeremiah inquired.

"Look," Bill said flatly. He was getting pretty danged sick of having to say things like this. "There you are, looking like hell. Miss Du Prés comes running into the house, and she's looking like hell. The two of you have something to discuss that can't be said in her fiancé's hearing. Then when you catch up to us at the stables, Barnabas asks you if everything is well between you and Josette. Since I'm not wearing a blindfold or ear plugs, it strikes me there might be some connection!"

Jeremiah took a deep breath and paused to marshal his arguments. "I can at least satisfy your curiosity regarding my conversation with Miss Du Prés. When Barnabas and I spoke in his chamber this morning, he confided in me that his fiancée has felt some uneasiness concerning me. She has feared that I … dislike her; that I do not approve of her as a match for my nephew. I assured Barnabas this is untrue, and he asked me to say as much to her. That was the import of our discussion. I told Miss Du Prés that I have no reason to think of her as any other than a worthy and admirable young lady. I told her that nothing is more important to me than my nephew's happiness. Since she is essential to his happiness, I have nothing but support for their union."

"Unh-hunh," Bill said, nodding doubtfully. "That doesn't explain what you were in such an all-fired panic about last night."

Jeremiah Collins looked at Bill in desperate earnestness. "Mr. Malloy," he said. "On this question I will have to entreat your patience and your discretion."

"I can be patient," said Bill. "And I can be discreet. I don't plan on being so patient and discreet it gets both of our families killed."

To his surprise, Jeremiah smiled – although it was a wan and thoroughly rueful smile. "That is understood," Jeremiah said. "And it is deeply appreciated." He sighed and then went on. "I believe that the issue which troubled me last night has been successfully resolved. And I truly do not believe it is connected with the larger dangers you and I are investigating. If I should be proved wrong…"

He paused to regroup his thoughts.

"I will make you this promise," Jeremiah said. "If the problem of last night should recur, then I will tell you of it and I will seek your help. For now, while there is the chance that the problem has indeed been solved, I must beg your forbearance as I deal with it as I think best, and keep the details to myself."

"All right," Bill growled. He was still very far from impressed. "If it happens again, you'll tell me. I've got your promise on that? Your word of honor as a gentleman?"

He felt a bit silly saying all of that. It sounded to him like he was asking Jeremiah to cross his heart and hope to die. But he figured an eighteenth-century gentleman wouldn't see anything funny in what he'd said.

Sure enough, Jeremiah seemed to take it seriously. He took it seriously enough that it seemed to hurt him to say the words.

"Yes," he said, with what looked like a grimace of pain. "You have my word of honor as a gentleman. And now," Jeremiah continued, seeming suddenly brisk and purposeful again, "let us pay a call upon Constable Hemphill."

The cold day, with its bright, gleaming sun, was one heck of a contrast with the previous time the two of them had visited the constable. It was a nice change, this time, that their clothes weren't dripping wet and their horses weren't plodding through roads of soupy mud.

There was also a contrast in the activity level at the house. The last time, when he'd been fixing his mudroom door, Constable Hemphill seemed to be the only family member around. This time Jeremiah led the way to the front door, carrying the saddlebag with its unpleasant burden. Moments after he knocked at the door, a woman's voice inside shouted, "Will somebody please answer that?"

The pounding of running footsteps answered her. The door opened inward to reveal two little girls and a massively hairy sheepdog. Clearly the sheepdog had the patience of a saint, because large portions of its fur were currently braided up with numerous colorful ribbons. The opening door brought music to them from somewhere in the innards of the house: a piano accompanied by a not-quite-painfully-off-key violin.

Jeremiah Collins took off his hat and bowed to the two little girls. Bill followed his example, doffing his hat in turn. "Good morning to you, young ladies," said Jeremiah. "Would your father happen to be at home?"

The elder of the two, six years old or so, turned and hollered over her shoulder, "Papa! Two gentlemen to see you!"

"For mercy's sake, Lydia," came a woman's voice from a room to their left. "You'll make the gentlemen go deaf. Anyhow, Papa can't hear you over all the noise." The woman joined the girls and the sheepdog in the doorway, and added, "Good morning, Mr. Collins."

The lady of the house was a beaming vision of roundness. She had round rosy cheeks and blond hair in a big round bun perched right at the top of her head. Her belly swelled her soiled white apron and blue satin dress to give her more-or-less the appearance of a balloon.

Guess the newest member of the Hemphill family is on its way, Bill thought. He didn't say anything about it, of course – both on the off-chance that she was normally shaped like that, and on the theory that people wouldn't talk about such things, here in the 18th century.

"Good morning, Mrs. Hemphill," Jeremiah greeted her. "I hope you and your family are well. May I present my secretary, Mr. William Malloy." Bill bowed to her, and Mrs. Hemphill answered with a smile and a nod but didn't try maneuvering her way into a curtsy. Jeremiah concluded, "We are hoping we might consult with your husband."

Another girl, probably around eight years old, joined Mrs. Hemphill from the left-hand room to stare at the visitors in owl-eyed curiosity. She carried a big mixing bowl filled with sliced apples, holding it in front of her as if she was imitating her mother's impressive belly.

Mrs. Hemphill glanced to either side of her and sighed. "You shouldn't stare, girls," she observed. "You know it isn't polite. Lydia, Dorcas, will you please take Gargantua and go play with him somewhere else? The gentlemen are liable to trip on him."

The two younger girls and the dog raced off into the depths of the house. Mrs. Hemphill smiled again, rubbed sweat from her brow, and managed to get a streak of flour across her forehead. She said, "Stephen is in the west parlor, Mr. Collins. Just follow the sound of the music and you'll find him."

"We are greatly obliged to you, Mrs. Hemphill, for letting us disturb the tranquility of your household."

Jeremiah Collins was grinning as he said that, and the lady of the house grinned back at him. She remarked, "It's the first time I've heard it called that."

Before he stepped into the house, Jeremiah turned to Bill and warned, "Mind your head here," patting the top of the doorframe as he said it. It was good advice. If Bill hadn't ducked as he walked through the doorway, he would have whacked his forehead on the doorframe.

As they walked into the house, Mrs. Hemphill called after them, "Remember to mind your heads on the other doors!"

The room to the right of the front door seemed as dim as a cave, after the bright sunlight outside. Bill had an impression of a big fireplace to his left, a round table and some fancy armchairs. At the far end of the room, a step upwards led to another doorway. This particular doorframe would have caught Bill on the nose if he hadn't ducked.

"She wasn't joking about the doors, was she?" said Bill.

"And Constable Hemphill is as tall as you and I," Jeremiah added. "He grew up in this house, though. I imagine by this time he has learned where he needs to duck."

Making their way towards the music, they cut through a long, low lean-to of a room. They took a right-hand turn and made one more step up. This time the doorway they stepped through, for a change, was tall enough that they didn't have to duck through it.

In contrast to the other rooms, this one was awash with light. It had larger windows and more of them. Over to their right at one end of the room, Bill glimpsed the doorway into the mudroom where he and Jeremiah held their previous discussion with the constable. As for the constable himself, he was here in what Bill supposed was the west parlor – in the middle of a bevy of kids.

Constable Hemphill and a boy were sitting side by side, playing a duet on the piano. Standing near them and playing just off-key enough that Bill had to struggle not to let it bother him, was a girl playing a violin. Sitting on the oval rug at the center of the room were two younger boys, building some massive structure out of wooden blocks. A young toddler in a long white dress and a frilly lace cap was trundling around the room, strapped into a wooden walker that looked to Bill like a life preserver with legs and wheels. The boys with the building blocks kept steering the little kid away from them, to avoid the walker flattening their construction project.

Bill gave up on trying to guess how old each kid was. He hoped he wouldn't be introduced to the whole gang of them and expected to remember their names. He also hoped there was a set or two of twins among this horde. He thought it would be nice if Mrs. Hemphill could have had a few years when she wasn't pregnant in the past decade or so.

Constable Hemphill glanced over and nodded to the newcomers, but he and his fellow musicians kept on playing. To Bill's slightly guilty-feeling relief, it wasn't all that long before the piece was over. Father and son got up from the piano bench. Jeremiah and Bill politely applauded while the boy and the girl both shyly lowered their eyes.

"All right, then," said Constable Hemphill, grinning and ruffling the hair of his son and his daughter in turn. "You both know which parts you need to keep practicing the most. However," he continued, with a glance to Jeremiah and Bill, "you'll need to put off doing that for now, I think. I imagine I have business matters to discuss."

"If it is not too great an imposition," Jeremiah answered apologetically. "I truly regret interrupting your day with your family."

With another grin, the constable shrugged. He said, "This is why the village of Collinsport pays me my wages: so that I will be available for interruption at all hours of the day and night. We'll go into my study," he continued, gesturing to another room just beyond the parlor. He raised his voice to address the assembled multitude. "All right, children. Either go help your mother in the kitchen or go upstairs, but you can't stay here. If I catch any of you listening at the door, you will rue the day!" His smile as he said that to them undermined his threat and the admonishing shake of his finger.

It took some milling around before all of the kids departed. The girl put her violin away in its case on top of the piano. Her piano-playing brother unstrapped the littlest kid from its walker and carried the youngster away, presumably in the direction of the kitchen. The violinist followed him, lugging the walker. Meanwhile the two younger boys charged up a set of stairs that Bill hadn't noticed before, concealed behind a door next to the piano. Bill thought it would be easy to verify that those two boys, at least, weren't eavesdropping. As long as they were upstairs, anyone downstairs would be able to hear them, thundering overhead like a herd of buffalo.

"We'll need two more chairs," said Hemphill, picking up one chair from the edge of the room and nodding for Bill to grab another. The constable's study was a bigger room than the mudroom, but it was still a tight squeeze getting the three of them into there. The room was barely deep enough to hold Hemphill's desk, his chair, and a squeezed-in corner fireplace that backed up against a matching fireplace in the parlor.

Hemphill closed the study door while Jeremiah and Bill got their chairs arranged with an inch or two to spare between them. As they were settling themselves, Hemphill said, "Mr. Malloy, I have been meaning to say this to you: congratulations on recovering your memory. And congratulations on being hired by Mr. Collins, here."

"Thank you," said Bill. He heaved a mental sigh of relief that he no longer had to keep on spewing that amnesia malarkey.

"I'm glad that your identity is no longer a mystery I must solve. But I imagine you gentlemen have brought some new mystery to me?"

"Indeed we have," Jeremiah answered ruefully. He handed the constable the skull-in-a-hatbox-in-a-saddlebag and launched into its story.

When the tale was finished, Hemphill stood up. He frowned at the bewigged skull peeking out from its box on his desk.

"I will say this, Mr. Collins," he mused. "Your family does call forth some odd reactions from people."

"You will hear no disagreement on that point from me," Jeremiah sighed. Meanwhile Bill was thinking, You don't know the half of it!

"Let me see if I have this right," stated the constable. "You want Mr. Malloy and me to ride around to the burying yards and to go call on the physicians, and learn whether anyone is missing a skull."

Jeremiah nodded, with an apologetic smile and shrug.

"Well, we can do it," Hemphill said. "I will be frank with you, sir; I have my doubts that we will learn anything positive. But one never knows. And in the meantime, it is a pleasant day for a ride."

When the constable opened the study door, they encountered no spying youngsters with eyes glued to the keyhole. And Bill thought they would have heard any little spies running away, considering the usual noise of the kids' progress through the house.

Jeremiah and Bill waited outside the house while Constable Hemphill said goodbye to his wife and their young herds of buffalo. When the constable joined them, Jeremiah bade Godspeed to the other two and rode off to continue his part in the investigation. Hemphill and Bill set out together down Main Street. Hemphill slung the saddlebag over his own shoulder and carried it along, since the skull was now official evidence in a police investigation. With Bill leading Gracie by the reins they walked to the Collinsport jail, to collect Hemphill's horse from the stable.

As they walked, Bill asked, "How many burying yards does Collinsport have?" He had made a conscious effort to say "burying yard" like the locals seemed to say, instead of "cemetery" or "graveyard."

"It's hard to say," answered Hemphill, scratching his chin. "Of course a lot of families have their own private grounds on their land, for their family burials. Particularly those families that have been here the longest. That's what is going to make this particularly difficult. It's why I told Jeremiah Collins I don't have high hopes for success. I'll wager there are many family yards in our vicinity that I don't even know about. And besides that – we'd be making ourselves a deal more conspicuous than I reckon the Collins family wants us to do, if we turn up on every householder's land to look for outrages to their burying grounds."

"I reckon you're right on that," Bill agreed, with a sigh. He pictured Mr. Joshua Collins' reactions if he were even to learn about the skull-in-a-box – let alone if he found out that half of the township had learned of a threat to his family before he did.

Constable Hemphill went on, "I'm figuring what we'll do today is just go to the big town yards, and visit the doctors. Then if we haven't found our answer, I'll discreetly continue the inquiries. I'll put together a more complete list of the family burying yards, and I'll ask around quietly to learn if aught is amiss in any of them. I still think it will be a miracle if we track down the Collinses' skull-giver. But you never know. Miracles do sometimes happen, I suppose.

"So," Hemphill continued musingly, "let us see. We'll start with the new town yard; it is just up the street. Not that I think we'll have any success there – hardly anyone has been buried there, yet. Then the next nearest is the old town yard, on the Collins property up on Eagle Hill. And then a ways beyond that, there is the Stockbridge burial yard, out towards Logansport. Of course," he added, sighing, "who is to say that if the malefactor even got the skull from a grave, it was a grave in any of our local burying yards? I fear Mr. Jeremiah Collins is doomed to disappointment, if he expects me to investigate every burying ground from here to Bangor!"

The jail was precisely where Bill expected it to be: on Court Street a little ways back from Main Street. In all other ways, it was not what he expected.

There was no trace of the big, impressive stone-and-brick courthouse, police station and jail buildings he was used to seeing. The white-painted, three-story wooden building that Hemphill pointed out as the courthouse looked to Bill like nothing more than a large house. And the building next door, that Hemphill told him was the jail, looked more to Bill like a great big old barn.

Between the two buildings was a stretch of fence along the roadside. It was made from hefty posts about 12 feet tall, carved with pointed tops like the stockade of a fort in a television western.

Constable Hemphill led the way to a gate in the fence. He produced a big key ring from one of his coat pockets and unlocked the gate's absolutely massive padlock. Beyond the fence was a yard between the courthouse and the jail. The stable was nestled up against the courthouse wall.

Bill let Gracie have a drink from the big stone trough outside the stable while Hemphill was saddling his horse. He kept his gaze on Gracie, scrupulously avoiding looking at the jail – specifically, at its windows. He had the same feeling, standing here in the jail courtyard, that he'd always had as a kid whenever he would walk or bicycle past the later jail. He'd always tried not to look at the jail windows, in case some prisoner was looking out of his window at the same time. He always imagined what he would feel like if he was locked up in one of those cells, and he looked out his window to see some danged kid staring up at him.

The constable and Bill were soon on their way again. They rode up School Street, past a modest little wooden building that Bill guessed was the first incarnation of the Collinsport School. Actually, he did more than guess that. He was almost 100% certain there'd been a framed engraving of that schoolhouse hanging on the wall in the principal's office, in Bill's own Collinsport Elementary School.

They made a left onto Church Street. Glancing in the opposite direction, toward Church and Main, Bill saw what had to be the meeting house. The white-painted, tall-steepled building looked like the same one he knew as the First Congregational Church of Collinsport. But it sure looked weird to see it without the adjacent Fellowship Hall, the church office building, and of course the big parking lot.

Today's church service was clearly still in session. The streets all around the meeting house were packed with horses waiting at the hitching posts and a bunch of carriages, carts and wagons that looked to Bill like the collection from some museum of antique vehicles.

By the time I get home, Bill thought as they rode along Church Street, I'll be ready to write a book. I think I'll call it The Village by the Sea: Collinsport at the Dawn of the Nineteenth Century. That'll be an impressive new string to my bow. Everyone in town will say, "Why, Bill, I never knew you had such an interest in history." And my standard answer, that everyone thinks is a joke, will be, "I don't. I just happened to go time-traveling."

And at this rate, he thought, I'll get my book published before Miss Hoffman finishes hers, since I don't have her motivation to dawdle over the research process.

If she ever finishes writing, she won't have any excuse for late-night visits to the Old House to "research" with Cousin Barnabas.

They headed up a slight incline, and Bill was interested to hear Constable Hemphill describe the slope as "Haskell Hill." At the top of the hill was the place Bill knew as the Old Collinsport Cemetery.

Hemphill and Bill dismounted, hitching their horses at the low wooden fence. "This is our new town burying yard," Hemphill said. "You can see why I don't think we'll need to linger here very long."

"Yeah," said Bill. "I guess we probably won't."

The new town yard was little more than a grassy hilltop. A quick count of the cluster of stone and wood markers showed a grand total of eleven graves. All but one of them were clearly undisturbed, lying peacefully blanketed by the winter's dry, grey-brown grass.

"What about that one?" Bill asked. At the end of one row was a small wooden marker, presiding over a patch of raw, newly-turned soil.

Constable Hemphill grimaced. "That's Rebecca Tripp's grave. She was buried … a little over two weeks ago. So her skull … her skull won't be in the condition yet that the wedding present is in. And even …" He paused, with an unhappy glance at Bill. "Even if the ghoul who committed this horror did something to remove the flesh from the bones, that wedding present can't be Rebecca Tripp's skull. It's larger than hers would be. She was ten years old."

"I see," said Bill, with a grimace of his own. "All right. Where do we go next?"

"Eagle Hill," Hemphill answered. "North of town a ways."

As they rode back through town, Bill found himself thinking of ten-year-old Rebecca Tripp.

Ten years old, he thought. Ten years old like Sarah Collins. Like Sarah Collins who is supposed to die in a few weeks' time, on her eleventh birthday.

It wasn't the first time today he had thought about Sarah. He'd thought of her when he was at the Hemphills' House, with kids stampeding around upstairs and generally popping out of the woodwork.

He thought the two kids who had played the recital with their dad must be about Sarah's age. But he figured it was a foregone conclusion that she had never been allowed off the hill to play with them. With them, or with any of the other kids in town.

Of course she hasn't. She's a Collins. She's the daughter of the Lord of the Manor, and Heaven forefend she should play with any of the townsfolk's children. So here she is, almost eleven years old, and maybe she's about to die. About to die, and she's never had any playmates her own age.

And maybe she won't, either. Not for another two centuries. Not till Roger and David Collins move home to Collinwood, and David starts playing at the Old House.

But even if he thought he could convince anyone it was a good idea, he couldn't suggest sending Sarah to play with the Hemphill kids now.

If she'd already been exposed to whatever disease would kill her, going to play with them might kill the Hemphill children, too.

They made their way along the familiar winding curves of the Coast Road. And some of that ride was all-too familiar to Bill, even without most of the houses he expected to see along the road.

For instance, there was Lookout Point.

Bill fought not to let his body tense up as they rode past that promontory. He fought that same skirmish with his instincts in his own time period, every time he walked or drove past Lookout Point. Ever since that night in January, the last time he saw Matthew Morgan alive.

They rode past the future Evans Cottage, where the sign for "T. Thornton, Apothecary" swayed in the freshening wind. Constable Hemphill told Bill, "We'll stop by here on our way back into town. Thomas Thornton is one of our two doctors, so we should find out if he's had any skulls stolen. Right now, though, he'll still be at the meeting house."

A little ways onward they rode past another promontory. The rocky ground here was as bare as that of Lookout Point. Bill felt a weird, aching wistfulness as they passed.

He imagined the house that would stand there one day. The house that a certain Andrew Malloy would build for his family on this spot in 1885. The house where most of Andy's children and all of his grandchildren would be born. Where a grandson of Andy Malloy would live until the summer of 1967, when he married the woman of his dreams and went to live with her in a haunted house on Widows' Hill.

On they rode. The farmhouses scattered along the roadside got much fewer and farther between. And then, seemingly a great deal farther out of town than Bill expected it to be, was the road leading up a steep hillside.

"Here we are," Constable Hemphill said. "Eagle Hill."

Up the hill their horses plodded. Hemphill remarked, "Now you'll see why we needed a new town burying yard. Imagine driving a wagon with a coffin in it up this road in the snow! More than one of our dearly departed suffered the indignities of tipped-over wagons and coffins sticking out of snowbanks. Not to mention the time or two that the coffin broke open in the process. It's all very well for the Collins family. They don't have to drive uphill to get here. The rest of us prefer a burial ground we can reach by a gentler elevation."

Bill's first glimpse of the Eagle Hill burying ground was another crazy moment for him. Again the sights that he expected to see superimposed themselves on the reality.

It felt weird as heck for him to see the cemetery without trees. The Eagle Hill he knew was smack dab in the middle of the woods, but in 1795 it was an open field. By his estimate the burial yard had sixty or so grave markers – maybe a third of the number of gravestones that would be here in his own time. All of the markers looked straighter, cleaner and in better repair than he automatically expected to see them. Presiding over the graves from a prominent central location was a familiar edifice: the imposing, grey stone bulk of the Collins mausoleum.

"You ask me, we're on a wild goose chase here," said Hemphill, as they hitched their horses to wrought-iron fence posts. "But I guess we'd better take a good look around, so we can truthfully tell Jeremiah Collins that we did our best."

They split up and walked along the rows of markers, Bill starting at one side of the burial yard and Constable Hemphill at the other. Grave after grave showed only undisturbed ground.

Once Hemphill called out, "Here's something, maybe," as he crouched down at one of the graves. But he backtracked almost immediately. While Bill was still walking over to him, he shook his head and stood up.

"Sorry," Hemphill told Bill, "never mind. It's just an animal burrow. I think it's pretty clear it doesn't go deep enough to have reached the burial."

They went back to walking the rows of graves. With no discoveries, they met up again at the center of the graveyard.

"What about in there?" Bill asked. He nodded to the mausoleum with the name "Collins" carved above its black iron gate. "Can we get inside to look around? Or would we need to get the key from Joshua Collins?"

"I imagine we probably would," answered Hemphill. "But there's no need. There won't be any skulls missing from inside, because no one's been buried there yet. Mr. Collins had that place built twenty years or so ago, during the Revolution. I remember, because my father was one of the stonemasons who worked on it. But there haven't been any deaths in the Collins family since then. It's still waiting for its first occupants."

Bill nodded, grimly eyeing the dark building. He thought, If Jeremiah and I don't manage to change history, it may not be waiting much longer.

"What do you say?" Hemphill continued, "shall we continue onward to the Stockbridge burying ground? Perhaps the third time may be the charm."

"We can always hope," muttered Bill.

As they started back down Eagle Hill, Bill was very much looking forward to this day's ride being over. It might not quite be accurate, but he had the feeling he'd done more horseback-riding in these past six days than he had during all of the previous 56 years of his life. And today had lots of extra riding crammed into it, with this tour of the Collinsport burying grounds. He had no doubt that when he woke up tomorrow, his muscles would inform him they did not appreciate the unusual demands he was making on them.

But a passel of sore muscles was the least of his worries.

Where in the beejesus did that blamed skull come from?

Now that Eagle Hill had failed to pan out, Bill admitted to himself he'd had high hopes for that possibility. It had seemed the most likely source for the skull, if their prank gift-giver was living at Collins House. A person could get to this burying ground from the great house on foot. So there'd seemed a reasonable chance that someone from one of the households might have paid a night-time visit to the Eagle Hill burial yard to dig up the gag gift. But now it was pretty clear they hadn't. Bill felt more-or-less back to square one.

If the skull hadn't come from somewhere close to Collins House, did that make Jeremiah's theory more likely? The theory Jeremiah was investigating today, that some aggrieved Collins worker or other villager might have sent the skull instead?

But, no, Bill thought. There was one major objection to that theory. If someone outside of the households had sent the skull, how could the skull have gotten into Josette Du Prés' hatbox? Which, he realized, he hadn't even had the chance to tell Jeremiah about, what with all the craziness of whatever was bothering the man, and his maddening refusal to explain to Bill what in the hell was going on.

It's not time to give up yet, Bill told himself. There's too danged many unknowns; too many possibilities.

For all you know, the evil-doer already had the skull in their possession. If they already had it, they wouldn't need to dig it up from anywhere.

While they were jolting back down the hill, and then while they were once again clopping along the relatively smooth Coast Road, Bill's thoughts wandered back to the Collins mausoleum. Back to the loathsome fact that in just a few weeks, Sarah Collins might be buried in there. And onward to the idea that in 172 years, that mausoleum would be one of the places where David Collins went to play with Sarah's ghost.

As far as Bill knew, David had never said the mausoleum was somewhere he went to meet her. But it seemed to make sense. Certainly that was what poor Doc Woodard had believed, in the last week or so before his death, when he and Burke Devlin searched the mausoleum in the hope of finding Sarah.

Gloomily Bill's thoughts lingered on Sarah and David. On two children with nearly two centuries separating them. Two smart, lonely kids, living up there on Widow's Hill with no friends of anywhere near their own age. Both of them desperately afraid that the adults they cared about most would either send them away or leave them.

One big difference between David and Sarah, Bill thought. If the skull-in-a-box turned up in 1967, I'd figure David sent it. But nobody in his right mind would think such a thing about Sarah.

Or would they?

Maybe nobody would think that. But was it possible that somebody should think it?

Bill reined in Gracie for a moment. He just sat staring blankly at the roadside, until he recovered from his shock enough to let the horse keep on going.

Bill, he demanded of himself, are you completely insane?

How can you imagine that sweet little kid would put a skull in a hatbox to frighten her brother and his fiancée?

David, yes. David could definitely do it. Given the right circumstances, Bill thought he probably would do it. After all, it was pretty mild behavior for a boy who had drowned his pet kitten and who had tinkered with his father's car with the intention of killing him.

To be fair, Bill reminded himself, the kitten incident was years ago. He didn't actually think the boy would do something like that any more. But whatever darkness inside of him could drive a little boy to murder his cat, it wasn't something that could go away overnight. Bill thought it was too optimistic to believe that the darkness was fully gone.

The darkness clearly wasn't gone when David pilfered the bleeder valve from Roger's car engine and listened to his dad drive away down the hill.

But that's David, Bill thought. The fact that David can do those things says nothing at all about Sarah.

That didn't stop Bill from thinking about it.

He remembered how he had felt when Jonas Carter first suggested to him that David had tried to kill Roger. He felt like the world had broken apart. And then the world put itself back together again as some warped and brutal travesty.

Sure, he had heard about five-year-old David killing that poor kitten. But he couldn't believe the boy would go farther than that. He couldn't bear to think the kid really meant to murder his own father.

Liz had told him the truth about it, the morning after she and Bill were married. She told him then that the story of the valve falling out by accident had been nothing but a cover-up.

It really was little David who had made off with that bleeder valve. It really was David who had nearly caused his father's death.

Liz told Bill she felt he should know the truth, now that he was a member of the family. Maybe that had been a weird conversation for a newly-wed couple to have. But Bill figured it was just par for the course, considering that he was now living with the Collins family.

When he finally learned it was true, Bill hadn't been so shocked any more. And he thought he knew why that was. By the time Liz told him, he had the Matthew Morgan business to look back on.

Learning that a man he thought he knew, a man he had known since they were kids, had homicidal tendencies – and having that man try out those homicidal tendencies with his hands around Bill's windpipe – he guessed it made him more ready to accept that people he cared for were capable of utterly appalling actions.

He knew it was a lesson he shouldn't forget. But did it really make Sarah a suspect in the mystery of the skull in the hatbox?

Bill asked himself if his resistance to that idea was really a rational response. Or was it just as misguided as when he insisted that David would never try to kill his father?

Let's think about this calmly, Bill told himself.

Sarah had the opportunity to pull off the stunt with the skull. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to go into her governess' room and slip out again with the hatbox. He knew she had a tendency to sneak around the house and to pop up in places where the grown-ups neither expected nor wanted to find her. Proof of that was the complaint he had overheard from Joshua Collins to Miss Wick, when Joshua found his daughter playing with her dolls in his study.

Assuming that Sarah got ahold of the skull somehow, it would be easy as pie for her to filch the hatbox and leave the delightful present for Josette and Barnabas to find.

So Sarah did have the opportunity. Now, did she have the motive?

Well, yes, Bill had to admit. Yes, she's got that, too. She's got a pretty darned obvious motive.

Sarah had told Bill flat out that her brother's approaching wedding worried her. She said she was afraid he would go away and leave her. She was afraid he would stop playing with her. She was afraid he wouldn't love her any more.

It sounded like a strong motivation. It sounded to Bill like a stronger motivation than most of the others he could think of.

She had opportunity and motive, but he didn't think she had done it.

The girl who was so proud of learning French so she could greet Josette in her own language … the little sister who was so thrilled about finishing her sampler so she could give it as a wedding present … he just couldn't see that she had the darkness of spirit to threaten Josette and Barnabas with a grinning symbol of death.

Anyway, he asked himself, aren't you getting your underdrawers in a twist over nothing?

So she's got opportunity and motive. But how in the heck do you think she would get the darned skull?

If the skull didn't come from Eagle Hill, where do you think she got it from? She isn't a twentieth-century kid, with the freedom to gallivant about the countryside for miles around on her bicycle.

And what if she did find a way to sneak out to a cemetery? Do you think that little girl is strong enough to dig six feet down into a grave to find a skull?

Maybe he shouldn't dismiss the idea that Sarah Collins was a suspect. But he sure as heck thought he could move that idea onto a back burner.

There was one good thing about pondering so hard: it made the horseback ride seem to pass that much faster. It seemed like it was just a hop, skip and a jump before Constable Hemphill, riding a little ways ahead of him, called back to Bill, "Here's the turnoff to the Stockbridge yard."

The Stockbridge burying yard was almost as devoid of trees as the other two cemeteries they'd visited. The exception this time was a pair of weeping willows, planted at either side of the door to the Stockbridge family's mausoleum. The willows' thin, trailing branches had been stripped almost bare by autumn and winter winds.

Bill thought the Stockbridge mausoleum looked strange. At first he couldn't think why that was. Then he saw it, and he felt ridiculous for not realizing sooner.

The mausoleum looked strange to him because it and the forty or so grave markers were the only structures in the cemetery. In the Stockbridge Cemetery as Bill had always seen it, when he'd gone there for a few funerals over the years, the mausoleum formed the back portion of a much larger building. Now the mausoleum stood aloof, no larger than the Collins mausoleum over on Eagle Hill. There was no trace of the caretaker's house, that in Bill's day would be an ivy-draped relic looking as old as time.

Hemphill and Bill dismounted at the edge of the burial yard. The constable said, "There are hitching posts by the mausoleum." They started leading their horses between two rows of graves.

From ahead of them a man's voice challenged, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

The owner of the voice appeared around the corner of the mausoleum. In that first moment, Bill had the crazy notion it was Death itself who had challenged them. The man striding toward them was armed with a gigantic scythe.