Fic: Thirteen at Dinner (6/15)
Masterpost
Chapter IV: Colum O'Donnell
Chapter V: Alexander Ashby
“Colum O’Donnell?” Dean wondered if Sam had finally lost his mind. “Really? Now we’re chasing another red herring? And what motive could this Colum O’Donnell possibly have had to kill Ralph Ashby?”
“Being in love with his wife! And knowing he was an abusive bastard.”
“Yeah, about that. Sounds like your precious Frances wasn’t so perfect after all, was she? Oh, I’m not saying she encouraged the guy, but she did keep it a secret from her supposed best friend.”
“What else could she have done?” Sam shook his head. “That’s not the point. You were right this morning. We can’t get justice for every single person victim of superstition who’s ever existed. But Steve said he saw Colum - or, well, a male ghost that Frances thinks is Colum -”
“So now we’re listening to junkies?”
“Steve has a problem. That doesn’t make him a liar.”
Dean sighed and looked around. Avery had left when she’d seen Dean, obviously still not wanting to talk to him, and Frances had disappeared with a mutter about leaving them alone to sort it out.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sam. Dean trusted Sam with his life. There was nobody he trusted more. It was that Sam just wasn’t thinking about this sensibly. He was too caught up in whether or not Frances had murdered her husband, and sure, it sucked that she’d had her life ruined by a false accusation of witchcraft, but that was her problem, not Sam’s, and definitely not Dean’s.
“Sammy, I’m not saying he’s not a good kid. But, yeah, if he’s doing drugs, then it’s possible that he hallucinated the ghost. We need more to go on than just his word.”
“Let’s look into it. We still have that bunch of people to meet - from the list Mathieson gave you. We can ask if any of them saw a ghost that matches Steve’s description.”
“I don’t know. Seems like a lot of work to do based on the word of a kid who might be crazy.”
“Come on. We have to kill time till tonight, anyway, right? Let’s just try.”
“All right,” Dean said with another sigh. He reached into his pocket for the list. “So… We can start with the parents of the kid who got hurt today. I called the mom from Mathieson’s office, they were on their way home from the hospital. They should be back now.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
They spent the afternoon talking to witnesses, first little Natalie’s parents and then the others on Mathieson’s list. It didn’t get them far. People remembered cold spots and fogged-up mirrors and weird noises, but nobody had actually seen the ghost.
“This isn’t helping,” Dean said in frustration after the fifth visit. “So there’s been Frances written on a couple of mirrors. Could’ve been Frances, or it could’ve been this Colum trying to call Frances. Or it could’ve been something else we don’t know crap about.”
“What about the diary? You think you can ask Mathieson to find out who might’ve had access to it to cut out the pages?”
“You willing to take his help now?”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, OK. I’ll talk to him, see if he can get us something.” Dean glanced at his watch. “We’ve got a few hours to kill before we have to meet Mathieson at the youth centre. You want to go shoot some pool? Maybe think about something else for a while?”
“Sure.”
Pool was fun when they weren’t hustling. Sam was getting good at it - better than Dean, though Dean would never admit it. Dean was better at poker, but Sam loved pool, especially when he wasn’t stressed out by trying to con people.
This bar was a little more upscale than the places they usually went. That was probably Dean’s way of apologizing for their argument, and Sam met him halfway by buying the first round and getting Dean the most ridiculously-named cocktail on the list. (It was called a Pink Squirrel. Dean had called Sam a bitch, downed the entire thing in about four seconds and immediately ordered another.)
They had to be sober for the night, so they both stuck to Coke after a couple of drinks.
It was when Sam was going around the table collecting the balls after he won the fourth game in a row (Dean still insisted it was beginner’s luck though Sam had playing for years) that he noticed the décor. The wall behind the pool table was covered with framed knick-knacks that were probably meant to look like historically important artefacts. Most of them were clearly knockoffs, but a couple looked like they might have come from somewhere other than a stall selling fake antiques for a nickel.
One of them was a letter.
Specifically, the signature on the letter.
“Dean!” Sam said. “Dean, come here.”
“What?”
“Look at this.”
Sam pointed. Dean squinted. “I’ve drunk too much to read that squiggly spider writing, Sam. What does it say?”
“Alexander Ashby.”
“Frances’ son?”
“Maybe.”
“Wait here.”
Dean went to the bartender. Sam kept his distance, watching with amusement as Dean flirted determinedly for fifteen minutes. She clearly wasn’t impressed, and Sam was pretty sure she eventually gave in just to make Dean stop. She came over, took the frame holding the letter off the wall, and laid it on the pool table.
“Be careful with that,” she said. “It’s the only thing around here that’s actually old. I’ll lose my job if something happens to it.”
“We’ll be careful,” Dean promised.
Sam took a couple of pictures, but he was pretty sure the grainy resolution on his cell phone camera wouldn’t be enough to let him decipher it later, so he took out his notebook and went to work on the spot.
“You know,” Dean said, peering over his shoulder, “your handwriting isn’t a lot better than Alexander Ashby’s.”
“Shut up,” Sam muttered.
He worked steadily, and by the time the bartender came to say she needed to put the letter back on the wall, he had it down. He and Dean found an empty booth and bent over Sam’s transcription.
Andover
May 13, 1683
My dearest sister,
Words cannot express my delight at the news that you and Mr. Elliott will soon be welcoming another child into the world. I trust you will finally give him a son, though he has been most generous in spirit about your failure to produce an heir.
As you must have heard, matters are difficult at home. The farm makes little money despite my best efforts. I would ask Mr. Elliott’s assistance if I could be certain of his temper. For my sake, at least, dear Joyce, give him an heir this time.
Mary’s father persists in believing Isabelle’s vile rumours, and will not consent to my courting her. What grudge the French woman has against me I do not know, unless she still harbours resentment for our father’s just suspicions of her. Her accusations are infamous. For a wanton, a wanton who has been charged with witchcraft and escaped through only Heaven knows what dark arts, to name me a parricide!
Yet Isabelle has more courage than our poor mother, who did not even dare face the just sentence for her crimes. Had she only waited until the jury could pronounce its verdict, I would not suffer so today.
With all my heart, my dearest sister, I wish you greater joy than I have today.
Your loving brother,
Alexander Ashby
“What a jerk,” Dean muttered when he finished reading. “So he’s a suspect too?”
“Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone who was at dinner.” Sam grinned at his big brother. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You want to solve the case.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to gank the ghost, whoever it is. With our luck, it’s both Frances and Colum, and maybe our new pal Alexander Ashby’s still knocking around too.” Dean laughed. “But, fine, let’s say we need to find out who killed Ralph Ashby. Where do we start?”
“The old-fashioned way?” Sam settled back, flipping a page in his notebook. “Who had a motive to kill Ralph Ashby?”
“His wife,” Dean said promptly. “Because he was a horrible excuse for a human being.”
Sam wrote Frances Ashby on the first line.
“Fine, let’s start with the family. Son and daughter?”
“Can’t see why they’d’ve wanted to - well, the son, maybe. He might’ve had some kind of money trouble and needed his inheritance pretty quick.”
“There could’ve been some family problems we didn’t know about. We could ask Frances.”
“Think she’ll tell us the truth?”
“If she lies, that’ll tell us something, too.” Sam wrote Alexander Ashby and Joyce Ashby on successive lines. “And if the girl’s a suspect, we have to include her boyfriend, too. He might’ve helped, or done it for her.”
He wrote Bernard Elliott.
“Or old man Ashby might not have liked him as much as he pretended. Might’ve been forbidding the match.” Dean leaned in closer to see what Sam was writing. “What about the brother?”
“Philip? Yeah, I guess. If Ralph didn’t approve of Isabelle, he may have been giving Philip a hard time about her.”
“Hmmm.” Dean watched Sam write Philip Ashby, followed by Isabelle Beaudreau. “Sammy?”
“Yeah?”
“If I forbade a girl from dating you, would you murder me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sam said promptly. Then, “Wait, what do you mean if you forbade a girl from dating me? I don’t need your permission to date! I’m an adult.”
“I’m not saying you need my permission to date.” Dean clinked his Coke against Sam’s. “I’m saying other people need my permission to date you.”
“Dean!”
“What? You’re my little brother! I need to look out for you! I can’t let you date some horrible girl who’s going to break your heart!”
“Shut up,” Sam said, cheeks flaming. “Right, let’s go on. Colum and Kat O’Donnell?”
“Colum was in love with Frances Ashby. He had a motive. But his wife probably had the opposite of a motive. At least, as long as Ralph Ashby was alive, Frances couldn’t be a home-wrecker.”
“Maybe she wanted to get Frances arrested? Frances said Kat turned against her almost at once.”
“Why not just kill Frances?” Dean shrugged. “Keep her name in. Maybe there’s something else. Hell, maybe Kat killed Ralph for being a jerk to her friend and then didn’t dare say anything when Frances was accused in case suspicion turned to her.” He watched Sam write the names. “Walter Winn? And… what was his wife called?”
“Agnes. We know the motive there.”
“The property. Right. Could’ve been either of them.”
“What about the kid?”
“Did Frances say how old he was? Well, not like little kids can’t do horrible things. Still…” Dean shrugged. “Hard to know how he’d’ve done this without getting caught. Are we missing anyone?”
“Father Maynard.” Sam wrote the last name down. “Frances didn’t say much about him.”
“She said he tried to help her. If she’s telling the truth… Oh, I don’t know. Why would a priest kill some random guy?”
“Maybe he didn’t believe in witchcraft? That’s possible, if he helped Frances.”
“And Ralph was throwing accusations around, so he offed him?” Dean made a face. “That’s thin.”
“It’s all we’ve got for now.” Sam added Father Maynard, the last name on the list. “So we can cross them off as we eliminate them.”
“Look at you all excited.” Dean jostled Sam’s shoulder companionably. “OK, now what?”
“They all had the opportunity, I’m sure, they were all at dinner. Now we need to figure out how it was done, and who could’ve done it.”
“Seems like we have two options, poison and witchcraft. There’s no way we can know which one - I mean, kind of too late for a post-mortem, isn’t it?”
“Let’s look at both, then.”
“Poison could’ve been anyone at the table. That many people, you don’t know who leans over or who gets up to go to the… outhouse? Witchcraft…”
“Isabelle, if William Winn was telling the truth about her. Maybe Philip.”
“Maybe anyone.” Dean shook his head. “No, we’re not going to solve it by speculating about who might or might not have had a great-grandmother who taught them voodoo tricks.”
“How then?”
Dean glanced at his watch. “For now? We go to the rec centre. Mathieson’s going to meet us there in half an hour. And he said he’d ask the snooty auction lady who might’ve had access to Winn’s diary, so maybe he’ll have an answer for us. If he does, it’ll be a starting point.”
“If he does, it’ll probably mean it was Isabelle Beaudreau who killed Ralph Ashby.”
Dean grimaced. “Just our luck if it is. I freaking hate witches.” He shook his head. “Right. C’mon, kiddo. Time’s wasting.”
Chapter VI: Bernard Elliott
Chapter IV: Colum O'Donnell
Chapter V: Alexander Ashby
“Colum O’Donnell?” Dean wondered if Sam had finally lost his mind. “Really? Now we’re chasing another red herring? And what motive could this Colum O’Donnell possibly have had to kill Ralph Ashby?”
“Being in love with his wife! And knowing he was an abusive bastard.”
“Yeah, about that. Sounds like your precious Frances wasn’t so perfect after all, was she? Oh, I’m not saying she encouraged the guy, but she did keep it a secret from her supposed best friend.”
“What else could she have done?” Sam shook his head. “That’s not the point. You were right this morning. We can’t get justice for every single person victim of superstition who’s ever existed. But Steve said he saw Colum - or, well, a male ghost that Frances thinks is Colum -”
“So now we’re listening to junkies?”
“Steve has a problem. That doesn’t make him a liar.”
Dean sighed and looked around. Avery had left when she’d seen Dean, obviously still not wanting to talk to him, and Frances had disappeared with a mutter about leaving them alone to sort it out.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sam. Dean trusted Sam with his life. There was nobody he trusted more. It was that Sam just wasn’t thinking about this sensibly. He was too caught up in whether or not Frances had murdered her husband, and sure, it sucked that she’d had her life ruined by a false accusation of witchcraft, but that was her problem, not Sam’s, and definitely not Dean’s.
“Sammy, I’m not saying he’s not a good kid. But, yeah, if he’s doing drugs, then it’s possible that he hallucinated the ghost. We need more to go on than just his word.”
“Let’s look into it. We still have that bunch of people to meet - from the list Mathieson gave you. We can ask if any of them saw a ghost that matches Steve’s description.”
“I don’t know. Seems like a lot of work to do based on the word of a kid who might be crazy.”
“Come on. We have to kill time till tonight, anyway, right? Let’s just try.”
“All right,” Dean said with another sigh. He reached into his pocket for the list. “So… We can start with the parents of the kid who got hurt today. I called the mom from Mathieson’s office, they were on their way home from the hospital. They should be back now.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
They spent the afternoon talking to witnesses, first little Natalie’s parents and then the others on Mathieson’s list. It didn’t get them far. People remembered cold spots and fogged-up mirrors and weird noises, but nobody had actually seen the ghost.
“This isn’t helping,” Dean said in frustration after the fifth visit. “So there’s been Frances written on a couple of mirrors. Could’ve been Frances, or it could’ve been this Colum trying to call Frances. Or it could’ve been something else we don’t know crap about.”
“What about the diary? You think you can ask Mathieson to find out who might’ve had access to it to cut out the pages?”
“You willing to take his help now?”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, OK. I’ll talk to him, see if he can get us something.” Dean glanced at his watch. “We’ve got a few hours to kill before we have to meet Mathieson at the youth centre. You want to go shoot some pool? Maybe think about something else for a while?”
“Sure.”
Pool was fun when they weren’t hustling. Sam was getting good at it - better than Dean, though Dean would never admit it. Dean was better at poker, but Sam loved pool, especially when he wasn’t stressed out by trying to con people.
This bar was a little more upscale than the places they usually went. That was probably Dean’s way of apologizing for their argument, and Sam met him halfway by buying the first round and getting Dean the most ridiculously-named cocktail on the list. (It was called a Pink Squirrel. Dean had called Sam a bitch, downed the entire thing in about four seconds and immediately ordered another.)
They had to be sober for the night, so they both stuck to Coke after a couple of drinks.
It was when Sam was going around the table collecting the balls after he won the fourth game in a row (Dean still insisted it was beginner’s luck though Sam had playing for years) that he noticed the décor. The wall behind the pool table was covered with framed knick-knacks that were probably meant to look like historically important artefacts. Most of them were clearly knockoffs, but a couple looked like they might have come from somewhere other than a stall selling fake antiques for a nickel.
One of them was a letter.
Specifically, the signature on the letter.
“Dean!” Sam said. “Dean, come here.”
“What?”
“Look at this.”
Sam pointed. Dean squinted. “I’ve drunk too much to read that squiggly spider writing, Sam. What does it say?”
“Alexander Ashby.”
“Frances’ son?”
“Maybe.”
“Wait here.”
Dean went to the bartender. Sam kept his distance, watching with amusement as Dean flirted determinedly for fifteen minutes. She clearly wasn’t impressed, and Sam was pretty sure she eventually gave in just to make Dean stop. She came over, took the frame holding the letter off the wall, and laid it on the pool table.
“Be careful with that,” she said. “It’s the only thing around here that’s actually old. I’ll lose my job if something happens to it.”
“We’ll be careful,” Dean promised.
Sam took a couple of pictures, but he was pretty sure the grainy resolution on his cell phone camera wouldn’t be enough to let him decipher it later, so he took out his notebook and went to work on the spot.
“You know,” Dean said, peering over his shoulder, “your handwriting isn’t a lot better than Alexander Ashby’s.”
“Shut up,” Sam muttered.
He worked steadily, and by the time the bartender came to say she needed to put the letter back on the wall, he had it down. He and Dean found an empty booth and bent over Sam’s transcription.
Andover
May 13, 1683
My dearest sister,
Words cannot express my delight at the news that you and Mr. Elliott will soon be welcoming another child into the world. I trust you will finally give him a son, though he has been most generous in spirit about your failure to produce an heir.
As you must have heard, matters are difficult at home. The farm makes little money despite my best efforts. I would ask Mr. Elliott’s assistance if I could be certain of his temper. For my sake, at least, dear Joyce, give him an heir this time.
Mary’s father persists in believing Isabelle’s vile rumours, and will not consent to my courting her. What grudge the French woman has against me I do not know, unless she still harbours resentment for our father’s just suspicions of her. Her accusations are infamous. For a wanton, a wanton who has been charged with witchcraft and escaped through only Heaven knows what dark arts, to name me a parricide!
Yet Isabelle has more courage than our poor mother, who did not even dare face the just sentence for her crimes. Had she only waited until the jury could pronounce its verdict, I would not suffer so today.
With all my heart, my dearest sister, I wish you greater joy than I have today.
Your loving brother,
Alexander Ashby
“What a jerk,” Dean muttered when he finished reading. “So he’s a suspect too?”
“Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone who was at dinner.” Sam grinned at his big brother. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You want to solve the case.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to gank the ghost, whoever it is. With our luck, it’s both Frances and Colum, and maybe our new pal Alexander Ashby’s still knocking around too.” Dean laughed. “But, fine, let’s say we need to find out who killed Ralph Ashby. Where do we start?”
“The old-fashioned way?” Sam settled back, flipping a page in his notebook. “Who had a motive to kill Ralph Ashby?”
“His wife,” Dean said promptly. “Because he was a horrible excuse for a human being.”
Sam wrote Frances Ashby on the first line.
“Fine, let’s start with the family. Son and daughter?”
“Can’t see why they’d’ve wanted to - well, the son, maybe. He might’ve had some kind of money trouble and needed his inheritance pretty quick.”
“There could’ve been some family problems we didn’t know about. We could ask Frances.”
“Think she’ll tell us the truth?”
“If she lies, that’ll tell us something, too.” Sam wrote Alexander Ashby and Joyce Ashby on successive lines. “And if the girl’s a suspect, we have to include her boyfriend, too. He might’ve helped, or done it for her.”
He wrote Bernard Elliott.
“Or old man Ashby might not have liked him as much as he pretended. Might’ve been forbidding the match.” Dean leaned in closer to see what Sam was writing. “What about the brother?”
“Philip? Yeah, I guess. If Ralph didn’t approve of Isabelle, he may have been giving Philip a hard time about her.”
“Hmmm.” Dean watched Sam write Philip Ashby, followed by Isabelle Beaudreau. “Sammy?”
“Yeah?”
“If I forbade a girl from dating you, would you murder me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sam said promptly. Then, “Wait, what do you mean if you forbade a girl from dating me? I don’t need your permission to date! I’m an adult.”
“I’m not saying you need my permission to date.” Dean clinked his Coke against Sam’s. “I’m saying other people need my permission to date you.”
“Dean!”
“What? You’re my little brother! I need to look out for you! I can’t let you date some horrible girl who’s going to break your heart!”
“Shut up,” Sam said, cheeks flaming. “Right, let’s go on. Colum and Kat O’Donnell?”
“Colum was in love with Frances Ashby. He had a motive. But his wife probably had the opposite of a motive. At least, as long as Ralph Ashby was alive, Frances couldn’t be a home-wrecker.”
“Maybe she wanted to get Frances arrested? Frances said Kat turned against her almost at once.”
“Why not just kill Frances?” Dean shrugged. “Keep her name in. Maybe there’s something else. Hell, maybe Kat killed Ralph for being a jerk to her friend and then didn’t dare say anything when Frances was accused in case suspicion turned to her.” He watched Sam write the names. “Walter Winn? And… what was his wife called?”
“Agnes. We know the motive there.”
“The property. Right. Could’ve been either of them.”
“What about the kid?”
“Did Frances say how old he was? Well, not like little kids can’t do horrible things. Still…” Dean shrugged. “Hard to know how he’d’ve done this without getting caught. Are we missing anyone?”
“Father Maynard.” Sam wrote the last name down. “Frances didn’t say much about him.”
“She said he tried to help her. If she’s telling the truth… Oh, I don’t know. Why would a priest kill some random guy?”
“Maybe he didn’t believe in witchcraft? That’s possible, if he helped Frances.”
“And Ralph was throwing accusations around, so he offed him?” Dean made a face. “That’s thin.”
“It’s all we’ve got for now.” Sam added Father Maynard, the last name on the list. “So we can cross them off as we eliminate them.”
“Look at you all excited.” Dean jostled Sam’s shoulder companionably. “OK, now what?”
“They all had the opportunity, I’m sure, they were all at dinner. Now we need to figure out how it was done, and who could’ve done it.”
“Seems like we have two options, poison and witchcraft. There’s no way we can know which one - I mean, kind of too late for a post-mortem, isn’t it?”
“Let’s look at both, then.”
“Poison could’ve been anyone at the table. That many people, you don’t know who leans over or who gets up to go to the… outhouse? Witchcraft…”
“Isabelle, if William Winn was telling the truth about her. Maybe Philip.”
“Maybe anyone.” Dean shook his head. “No, we’re not going to solve it by speculating about who might or might not have had a great-grandmother who taught them voodoo tricks.”
“How then?”
Dean glanced at his watch. “For now? We go to the rec centre. Mathieson’s going to meet us there in half an hour. And he said he’d ask the snooty auction lady who might’ve had access to Winn’s diary, so maybe he’ll have an answer for us. If he does, it’ll be a starting point.”
“If he does, it’ll probably mean it was Isabelle Beaudreau who killed Ralph Ashby.”
Dean grimaced. “Just our luck if it is. I freaking hate witches.” He shook his head. “Right. C’mon, kiddo. Time’s wasting.”
Chapter VI: Bernard Elliott