“She couldn’t have been,” Grace said without hesitation. “I consider myself an expert on the extant documents concerning the trials. I’ve never come across the name Elizabeth Stewart even as a witness, much less one of the twenty victims. Who told you she was accused?”
“It’s a rather long story,” Kim said evasively.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t true,” Grace said. “There’s been too much research by too many people for one of the victims to have been missed.”
“I see,” Kim said. She didn’t argue. Instead she thanked the woman and returned to the card-catalogue area.
Giving up on the documents associated with the trials, Kim turned her attention to another important resource of the institute: genealogical information on families from Essex County.
This time Kim found a wealth of information on the Stewarts. In fact they took up most of an entire drawer of the genealogical card catalogue. As Kim went through the material it became obvious that there were two main Stewart clans, hers and another whose history wasn’t quite so old.
After a half hour Kim found a brief reference to Elizabeth Stewart. She was born on May 4, 1665, the daughter of James and Elisha Flanagan, and died on July 19, 1692, the wife of Ronald Stewart. No cause of death was given. A quick subtraction told Kim that Elizabeth died at age twenty-seven!
Kim raised her head and stared with unseeing eyes out the window. She could feel tiny gooseflesh rise up on the nape of her neck. Kim was twenty-seven, and her birthday was in May. It wasn’t the fourth but rather the sixth, so it was close to Elizabeth’s. Remembering their physical similarities from the portrait and considering the fact that she was planning on moving into the same house Elizabeth occupied, Kim began to wonder if there were just too many coincidences. Was this all trying to tell her something?
“Excuse me,” Grace Meehan said, interrupting Kim’s reverie. “Here’s a list I copied for you of the people who were hanged for witchcraft. There’s also the date of their execution, including the day of the week, their town of residence, their church affiliation if there was one, and their age. As you can see, it is very complete-and there is no Elizabeth Stewart.”
Kim thanked the woman again and took the paper. After the woman left, Elizabeth dutifully glanced at it and was about to put it aside when she noted the date of Tuesday, July 19, 1692. Five people had been hanged that day. Looking back at Elizabeth’s day of death, she noticed it was the same. Kim understood that just because the dates were the same, it didn’t prove Elizabeth was hanged. But even if it were only circumstantial, it was at least suggestive.
Then Kim realized something else. Thinking back to the previous Tuesday, she remembered it had been July 19. Looking again at the paper Grace Meehan had given her, she discovered that the daily calendar was the same in 1692 as it was in 1994. Was this yet another coincidence whose meaning Kim had to ponder?
Going back to the genealogical information, Kim got a book that summarized the early history of her family. In it she looked up Ronald Stewart and quickly learned that Elizabeth had not been Ronald’s first wife. Ronald had married Hannah Hutchinson in 1677, with whom he’d had a daughter, Joanna, born 1678. But then Hannah died in January 1679, with no cause of death listed. Ronald at age thirty-nine then married Elizabeth Flanagan in 1682 with whom he had a daughter Sarah, born 1682, and sons, Jonathan, born 1683, and Daniel, born 1689. Finally Ronald married Elizabeth’s younger sister, Rebecca Flanagan, in 1692, with whom he had a daughter named Rachel, born in 1693.
Kim lowered the book and again stared off into space while she tried to sort out her thoughts. Mild alarm bells were going off in her head in relation to Ronald’s character. Looking back at the genealogy book, she reviewed the fact that three years after Hannah died, Ronald married Elizabeth. Then after Elizabeth died, he married her sister the same year!
Kim felt uneasy. Knowing her own father’s amorous proclivities, she thought it possible that Ronald could have suffered a similar flaw and indulged it with far more disastrous consequences. It occurred to her that Ronald could have been having an affair with Elizabeth while married to Hannah, and an affair with Rebecca while married to Elizabeth. After all, Elizabeth certainly died under unusual circumstances. Kim wondered if Hannah did as well.