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  His family.

  He was almost out of sight now, turning right to exit the burying ground, and Liza considered again going after him, but that would be pursuit, she guessed, and gave it up. Reminded herself of what he must have been through, was perhaps still going through even now.

  He did not want to talk to her.

  She did not entirely blame him.

  Their families both hailed from Shiloh, a village in Providence County, Rhode Island, nestled up against the town of the same name to its immediate north, east and south, with woods and farming land to the west, just a few miles from the Connecticut state line.

  Not a picture-perfect New England village, more of a mongrel of a place, Federal architecture rubbing shoulders with Greek Revival, Queen Anne-style, a Gothic Revival church and a number of very ordinary twentieth-century houses. St Matthew’s Episcopal Church at the east end of Main Street was rather fine, designed by a follower of Upjohn, and there was a grand house called Shiloh Oaks on the south-west corner of Oak Street built by the same architect, a run of small useful shops and a café that was pretty good; and finally, there was the Shiloh Inn at the west end of Main, a comfortable place with a decent dining room overlooking the elm-lined street.

  All in all, especially by comparison to some of the old, now run-down villages in that part of the state, Liza guessed that Shiloh had kept up appearances pretty well, though its absence of ‘pedigree’ had kept it out of the majority of guide books or Trip Advisor.

  There was little reason to pause in Shiloh.

  Unless you were an aficionado of high-profile true crime stories.

  Of murder, in particular.

  Shiloh was Liza’s ‘home town’, but not her home.

  Had not been for a number of years, would not be again.

  The occasional weekend break was OK, and either Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year’s – every other year and then only three nights max. Guilty as that often made her feel, any more time spent with her eighty-four-year-old, thoroughly disagreeable grandfather seemed almost intolerable to her.

  It hadn’t been easy even while her parents had still been there, but Andrew and Joanna Plain had died one icy February night five years ago after her father’s car had skidded on Shiloh Road and hit a truck coming the other way. Three dead, Liza’s greatest grief for her mom, an easy-going, generous person who’d never tried to change her daughter. Unlike Andrew Plain, forever disappointed in Liza for not following in the Plain tradition of doctoring, and his father, Stephen Plain, who was even more disapproving of the granddaughter who’d refused to fall in line, never appreciating that his own strong-willed gene had taken root in Liza.

  She’d known from an early age that she wanted to become a journalist, or at least to be involved with the news. The Plains had cable, and while most of her contemporaries were watching teen shows, Liza had been lapping up Dan Rather and Connie Chung on the CBS Evening News, Bernard Shaw on CNN and Katie Couric on Today. Unorganized ambition had become determination, her short-term target the Department of Journalism at URI. Kingston was less than an hour away, which meant that she might easily have commuted, but Liza had wanted to live as full a student life as possible, specifically away from Shiloh.

  Hard to say, her own home aside, exactly what had made her so keen to escape. Village life, for sure, with its innate claustrophobia, its inhabitants permanently avid to know everything about each other’s lives, yet paradoxically clutching secrets close with almost unnatural intensity. But there had been something more than that, something uncomfortable about Shiloh, Liza had always felt, even as a child.

  Nothing at college came easily, neither good grades nor the right internships nor – with her father opposed – funding. She took out a student loan, shared lodgings, worked part-time jobs in a diner and bar, and her mom secretly helped out when possible. Though Liza had cherished her time at URI, especially her fifteen hours a week with CBS Boston, and her work for The Good 5 Cent Cigar, the student news organization, she knew she’d only just scraped through, completing her major but aware by then, alas, that she was no blazing natural talent.

  All the more reason to work harder, she told herself, crawling reluctantly back to Shiloh, on the lookout for her real way out.

  ‘Pipe dreams,’ Stephen Plain said.

  ‘Better than no dreams,’ Liza told him.

  He’d told her once that journalists were odious vermin.

  ‘I should know,’ he’d added. ‘We had enough of them here during the case.’

  The case. The big story that had spun Shiloh onto the front page of the Providence Journal and into the Boston Globe five years before Liza’s birth. A shocking, tragic tale of murder and suicide that had fascinated her ever since she’d become aware that she was surrounded by people who’d been a living part of the news.

  Something else she’d fallen out with her grandfather about, because the local doctor had to have known more than most about the Cromwell case, but Stephen Plain had not only refused to speak to her about it, he’d ordered his son and daughter-in-law to follow his line. Liza had heard whispers of the ugly basics early on at school, but little more because the head teacher had banned the subject and, outside school, too, no one seemed to like talking about it, even the meager library in Shiloh Town Hall’s basement having no more than the scantiest record.

  Talk about asking to light sparks under an aspiring journalist.

  ‘You will not allow that child to become a vulture.’

  Liza had heard Stephen Plain saying that to her mother.

  The sparks had fanned, and become a fire.

  FOUR

  1975

  The June day was warm and pleasant, Main Street almost deserted just after noon because people were lunching – many at home, a few at Ellie’s, the café on North Maple Street, and some inside Tilden’s, the only restaurant in Shiloh Village.

  It was quiet, too, except for the sounds from the school playground. Shiloh Elementary and its adjoining house – home to head teacher, Betty Hackett – stood at the west end of Main, and though some people found the noise of small children at play cheery, others found it irritating, and there had long been talk of relocating the kindergarten and primary school to the town, where Shiloh High was located.

  For now, they remained in the village, and the second- and third-grade boys and girls were letting off a little steam in the playground before their lunch. Ordinarily there would have been two teachers supervising, but Annie Stanley had the flu, so flame-headed Gwen Turner was on her own, and she was, at eight minutes after twelve, busy scooping eight-year-old Edie Jones off the ground after a spill, making sure she had no worse injuries than two scraped knees.

  Which was why Miss Turner had her back turned to the side gate of the playground, the shadiest part, especially in summer, when the oak trees outside were in full leaf, and where Norman Clay was sitting with his back to the railings, his nose and attention buried in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

  Alice Millicent was not naturally sociable, at least not when it came to other children. Seven years old and in the second grade, she liked her teachers well enough, and the other kids were OK, but she had no ‘best’ friend, nor had she ever found herself included in what she might, later in life – had she come to live that life – have known as a ‘clique’.

  She was, in some ways, a loner.

  But she loved animals.

  Dogs, especially.

  The sight of an adorable golden puppy just outside the school gate was irresistible to Alice, especially since it was attached by a red leash to a man she knew, a man with a dark hat and shiny black shoes and a shiny black car, who was beckoning to her.

  Alice looked back over her shoulder, wanting to ask Miss Turner if she could go play with the puppy, but the teacher was busy with one of the bigger girls who’d hurt herself, and she guessed that Miss Turner would have said yes because it was only strangers they weren’t supposed to talk to, and everyone in Shiloh knew this man.


  And the puppy was wiggling, its little tail wagging like crazy.

  So she opened the gate, went through it and closed it again behind her, as they’d been taught.

  The man with the puppy was standing under a big old oak tree beside his car.

  ‘Hi there, Alice,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ she answered. ‘Can I pet him, please?’

  ‘You most certainly can,’ the man said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Alice ran forward, bent down and stroked the puppy’s silky head, and the animal made the sweetest sounds, wagged its tail even harder and licked her, and Alice squealed with delight.

  The man looked toward the playground. ‘If you’d like,’ he said, ‘you can come play with her.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Alice asked.

  The man hesitated, his cheeks flushing under the shade of his fedora.

  Not that Alice noticed.

  ‘Her name’s Maggie,’ he said. ‘If you want to come play with her, I already cleared it with Miss Hackett. She said it’s OK, just this once.’

  Alice squealed again and tried to pick the puppy up, but the man quickly opened the passenger door of the black car, bent down, plucked the animal off the ground and put it inside.

  ‘So what’s it to be, Alice?’ he said. ‘And no more squealing, because I have a headache.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘That’s good,’ the man said. ‘Get in then, dear.’

  And in she climbed.

  Good as gold.

  Edie Jones was inside the school now, her scrapes dabbed with iodine, Band-Aids administered, and Miss Turner was back in the playground, checking her watch, looking around.

  Norman Clay was still reading.

  All was well.

  Only one man had seen.

  Seth Glover, the owner of Glover’s Food Market at the corner of Maple and Main, making his way to lunch at Ellie’s Café. He’d noticed the pup and the little girl, knew who she was, that her family lived outside the village on the road to Chepachet.

  He certainly knew the car she’d gotten into.

  The only Cadillac in Shiloh.

  He’d seen the child clamber into the front passenger seat, seen the door close, seen the man with his familiar fedora hat and elegant suit and shiny shoes get in on the other side, and then he’d seen the car glide away, wondering momentarily where they were going.

  And then his stomach had growled.

  An Ellie Burger was needed.

  Right away, if not sooner.

  They all came to help with the search. Adults of all ages, only those with disabilities, care-givers and locals with little children or dependent relatives staying away. Almost the whole of Shiloh Village had come, and some from the town itself, including its most prominent citizen, the president of the town council, Donald Cromwell, with his wife, Susan; and the vicar of St Matthew’s, Thomas Pike, was there, trying to comfort head teacher Betty Hackett, her heart heavy with guilt, the searchers fanning out now through the woods west of the village.

  Denny Fosse, who bred German Shepherds, had brought Blaze, his own dog, a black-and-tan with a fine nose, Fosse told Cromwell, though he hoped to hell that Blaze would sniff out nothing more significant today than a rabbit or some old stinking pizza box.

  ‘Sheriff Julliard told me they’re going to be bringing in the real dogs,’ Cromwell said. ‘No offence intended, Denny.’

  ‘None taken by me,’ Fosse said. ‘Though I can’t speak for Blaze.’

  Every available cop had been hunting since the school had broken the news to Mary-Anne Millicent that her daughter was missing, and they’d asked people to stay away at the outset, just to search their own properties and outhouses and land in case little Alice had wandered off and got herself lost. All the local shopkeepers here too now – except Seth Glover, who’d been called away to Sharon, Massachusetts, to tend to his sister, who’d taken a bad fall.

  The only other people not actively involved in the search were Alice’s mom and brother, and Gwen Turner, who had shut herself away in her house, too distraught to face anyone because that lovely child had gone missing on her watch, making it her responsibility, her fault, which meant she had no right to be falling apart now. But if anything bad had happened to Alice, Gwen couldn’t imagine herself ever going outside again, let alone going back to teaching …

  It was Betty Hackett who found them.

  A child’s Clarks shoe first.

  Then a pair of small pink underpants.

  Then the golden puppy, its neck broken.

  Then the child.

  The head teacher thought she would faint, but managed to call out to the others, her voice cracked with horror.

  They all came running. Dick Millicent, Alice’s father, howling, being dragged off by two of Sheriff Julliard’s deputies. Donald Cromwell coming forward to help, John Tilden (the local restaurant owner) alongside him with Eleanor Willard (of Ellie’s Café); and Reverend Pike fell on his knees, praying, and Dick Millicent, struggling with the deputies, keening and kicking out, caught the vicar in his side, and Thomas Pike yelped with pain, but went on praying regardless.

  A lot of people in the woods prayed, though it did no good.

  A seven-year-old girl had still been strangled to death. No sexual assault, they learned later, despite the underwear that had been removed. The rest of her clothing all intact and nothing missing, her mother confirmed, except her pink hair ribbon.

  Possibly, it was thought, the murder weapon.

  Her killer at large.

  Two days later, when Seth Glover, still at his sister’s in Sharon, heard what had happened, his face blanched and rage and guilt filled him as he picked up the phone.

  Seven hours after that, his statement secured and an arrest warrant issued, a suspect was picked up and taken in for questioning.

  By morning, Donald Cromwell, President of the Shiloh town council, had been charged with the abduction and murder of Alice Millicent.

  Less than a year later, two weeks into his trial, Cromwell hanged himself in his cell.

  A good conclusion, many felt in Shiloh.

  Hoping to put it all behind them.

  FIVE

  Tragedies have consequences. Some in the short term, others lasting a lifetime.

  Some descending to future generations.

  As it was for the Cromwells.

  Four decades later, piecing the tale together, compiling notes and recollections, organizing them in chronological order to help her make more sense of the whole, Liza Plain came to think of it all as a kind of ‘tragi-graph’, with far more descending than ascending lines.

  Cromwell’s indictment and suicide. His wife Susan’s subsequent nervous breakdown and, ultimately, permanent hospitalization.

  Then a slow upward climb with their sixteen-year-old daughter Emily’s escape to Boston. Facilitated by her father’s decision, made before his disgrace, to leave everything to her with the proviso that her mother be allowed to remain for her lifetime in their home, Shiloh Oaks, or in any home of her choosing, in the style and comfort he had created for her.

  Lawyers in charge, given that Emily was a minor, the family’s wealth dwindling steadily because of legal fees and Susan Cromwell’s refusal to leave her comfortable nursing home, because of the slow recovery of the stock market after the disasters of previous years, because of the property slump in the region and, of course, because of the ongoing costs of the administration of Cromwell’s estate.

  Despite her age and the family’s traumas, Emily had been clear about what she wanted. She could no longer bear to remain in that small Shiloh community with ghosts and pain, false sympathy and gossip encircling her daily. She met with the lawyers and agreed a modest advance from the estate, enough to get her away. Her parents had anticipated college for her, but what Emily now longed for was real life to immerse herself in; she didn’t want to go to Harvard, but was attracted by the idea of living in Cambridge, rubbin
g shoulders with the young and brilliant while making her own way. Which she did by taking an apartment share and a job with the American Cleaning Company – good, honest toil to keep her going while she licked her wounds and tried to recover.

  Her line ascended a little way, then leveled out until she met Thad Rider, a rock singer with a band called Tight. He had long gold-streaked hair, dark eyes made up with liner and mascara, a skinny guy with a voice like sandpaper laced with dark maple syrup and hands that could do what Emily Cromwell needed most back then. Make her forget.

  She recognized the problems from the start, but tried to blot them out along with her own past. Thad was talented and sexy, but he drank and did drugs, everything to excess. Emily drowned herself in his chaos and pretended that it was the perfect, healing antidote to Cromwell history and Shiloh. She lost her job, drank too much, smoked marijuana – then discovered she was pregnant. They married, but seven months into the pregnancy, no longer enjoying this woman who now wanted to be clean, sober and a good mom, Thad packed his stuff and left her a note, wishing her and the kid luck.

  Emily steeled herself for a visit to Shiloh, and found Susan Cromwell cocooned in her own protected, prescription-drugged world, beyond caring if her daughter showed up or not. Emily visited the lawyers, told them that all that she wanted now was to provide her child with a decent home and education – away from Shiloh. She relocated to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, bought a small house with a little backyard, transferred her health records to the obstetrics department of Memorial Hospital, terrified that her lifestyle with Thad might have harmed her baby, but gave birth to a slightly underweight yet otherwise healthy son in mid-January, 1979.

  Michael Rider.

  The line that had, for a while, descended again, began to rise.

  SIX

  1985

  The man who had once been the boy who sang sweetly and heard angels, but who no longer sang, and tended, these days, to take his lead from a voice belonging to someone he called the Messenger, watched the woman as she stood on the chancel floor just below the sanctuary, regarding the high altar and her handiwork. She nodded, apparently satisfied that she had set all in readiness: the chalice – front center – properly vested, gospel book and missal on their stands. Two feet before her, forming a semicircle on the wood floor, pumpkins, squashes and gourds, all painstakingly polished for the Thanksgiving Eve service, after which, the man supposed, they would become offerings for the food bank detailed on the noticeboard outside.