The Magic of Murder Read Online Free

The idea of doing nothing, not even bothering to dress, brought a smile. I reached for the novel.
    Elvira shifted on the wingback chair. Her head on her paws, she shot me a pink-eyed glare. Read about Salem, dammit! You’ve got time now, she seemed to say.
    “You’re an oversized pest,” I told her. “I ought to tape you in a box and ship you back to The Black Cat.”
    That outburst reminded me of Rebecca Nurse, and what she’d said: I’d find something I needed to know in the book about the Salem witch trials.
    My stubborn streak kicked in. “Not gonna do it,” I muttered.
    Lower lip out in a pout, I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, the cat was on the floor next to me, staring up.
    “Stop it,” I said. “You’re not gonna change my mind.”
    Elvira didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t waver.
    I pulled the afghan up to my chest, as if it were armor. It didn’t help. Those pink eyes penetrated my resistance, took control of my intention. I put down my novel, and reached for the Salem witches.
    Now that the cat had accomplished with her eyes what Rebecca Nurse hadn’t been able to do with words, she returned to the wingback chair.
    Settled again under the cover on the sofa, I opened the book.
    The first page contained a chronology. As I skimmed down the lines, I saw movement from the corner of my eyes. The cat was sitting up, alert.
    “What now?”
    She leaned toward me.
    “Go to sleep,” I said, and turned my attention to the book. That’s when I saw it:
     
    July 19, 1692: Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wildes, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Goode are hanged on Gallows Hill.
     
    Rebecca Nurse. Sarah Goode. Gallows Hill. Hanged!
    I sprang from the sofa in stocking feet to stamp out the flame of the candle that, in my shock, I’d knocked to the floor. Panting, I stared down at the black spot on my carpet.
    Elvira jumped from the wingback chair, circled my legs, and rubbed her back on my flannel pajamas.
    “Look what you’ve done!” I growled.
    She licked her face, and looked up at me, as if to say, Don’t blame me. I wasn’t there when they got hanged.
    I shivered now from both the cold, annoyance, and from something else I couldn’t name. I went to the kitchen to brew a mug of tea. Minutes later, I returned. With the mug clutched to my breast, I retrieved the book and plopped onto the sofa. Elvira leaped up and snuggled between me and the cushions. Cold house, chilled by what I’d just read, a warm cat lying beside me: without realizing I was doing it, I scratched the cat’s neck. Her response was a contented purr.
    With the book resting on my lap, I raised my mug and blew at the steam. “Satisfied now?” I said.
    The cat rubbed her head on my arm.
    “Yeah, I’m going to read it.”
    She mewed.
    I rested the mug on the coffee table. The afghan pulled nearly up to my chin, I opened the book.
    Through the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, I devoured the text as if it were food and I was starving. It told that, though accusations of witchcraft in Salem had begun years before, the witch-scare reached a crescendo in January 1692, when a group of young girls began to behave as if they were high on LSD. Which they were. Sort of. I’d read somewhere it was ergot poisoning—something in the wheat they harvested back then. It didn’t dawn on the girls to say they’d been bewitched until a country physician named Griggs suggested it. In short order, suspicion ran wild, and a farm woman asked a slave named Tituba, to bake a ‘witch cake’—a concoction guaranteed to lift any spell cast by Devil worshippers. Then, as if late at night people heard Macbeth’s three witch sisters cackling around their cauldron, the madness spread. Pressured by the townsfolk, at the end of February one of the girls identified Tituba as the source of the spell. Then they said it was Sarah Goode. No one thought to catch his breath, step back, and logically consider what was going