Image by Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay
One of the things that made Col. Henry Fitzhugh Lee a masterful investigator of complex and complicated cases was his ability to compile details over a long period of time, consciously and subconsciously, and to be able to access both sides of his mind ... dangerous though that was in and of itself, because the subconscious is generally hidden for a reason...
One matter at hand was the missing person's case nobody had filed, the case that had kept him and Maj. Ironwood Hamilton in the Army Reserve officially for one more year … the wives and children of the most disturbed of their men that they led in monthly Reserve activities had all disappeared over New Year's weekend, and had now been gone for eight months. However, none of the children in question had missed a single assignment on independent study through the winter and spring, and this news had relieved their fathers greatly.
All those men were now in the treatment their wives had begged them to get into – there had been all kinds of other behaviors that Col. Lee and Maj. Hamilton, who had been commander and adjutant commander of these men at different times, had contained and redirected.
But all of these men were now beginning to plateau – they were doing the work they needed to do, but they still had no hope and no idea if they were going to get what they needed from this work: a return to their families, or at least access to their children.
Technically, Col. Lee was Capt. H.F. Lee of the Big Loft Police Department … but this was a matter among brokenhearted veterans who had come home wounded to the inside and had not had the foundation and the will to heal that he had … he and Maj. Hamilton had painstakingly put that foundation in place and backstopped it personally, but now the other shoe needed to drop.
Col. Lee had studied the timing of the disappearance carefully, and the corresponding absence of travel data in Lofton County that should have showed an exit. He also had studied Lofton County history back to 1872 … this was not the first time something had happened like this … but there were no cases before 1872. But, that being the case, and travel being what it was through the late 19th and early 20th century, that could mean only one thing.
“The men are taking their treatment at the Veteran's Lodge,” the colonel had said to the major, “and their wives and children must be somewhere next door in Fruitland Memorial Park.”
“My leads suggest that too,” Maj. Hamilton said, “because you know Aggie [Agnes Hamilton, the major's wife] talks to everybody and has confirmed to me that Mrs. R.M.S. Lofton, who married Major Jonathan Lofton, did speak out for the wives and children of veterans who had not adjusted well to losing the Civil War. She married him in 1871.”
Fruitland Memorial Park was 12 miles square, the personal residence first of General Joseph James Lofton from 1840, then left to his younger brother Jonathan in 1864 … over all that time, everyone in need with no help found their way to Fruitland, so it made sense.
Major Lofton had bought adjacent land between Fruitland and the foothills of the Blue Ridge to build the Veteran's Lodge in 1866, and then married the widow Rebecca Mae Slocum, thus bringing the bulk of the Slocum lands and all of the W.T. Lee lands in with her in 1871 … so, in the end, Major Lofton had owned almost all of what would become Lofton County … and yet, the only part of Lofton County that actually did not have open roads remained Fruitland. It had wonderful riding and walking paths … but it was the only part of Lofton County that neither foot surveyor nor Google Maps had gone over, inch by inch. General Lofton had done that on purpose … there were large tracts of his residence that were hidden in plain sight … and so, though there was no obvious path, Col. Lee and Maj. Hamilton knew that the only place the wives and children could be was somewhere in those tracts of land.
So, when Col. and Mrs. Lee had moved down to the Veteran's Lodge to take care of the Ludlow grandchildren, that was the beginning of the colonel doing what no one had done since 1840: covering Fruitland Memorial Park on foot, inch by inch, beginning with walking all its official roads and paths to their ends, first by day, and then by night … for he kept having recurring features in his dreams as July approached August … a path that at its end had its regular lamps joined by a light with a purple shade, leading off to a foot path softly lit by said purple lamps to a clearing yet unknown … or, sometimes, groups of women streaming from all sides of Fruitland save from the Blue Ridge, bearing torches with purple flames, and converging to a new path of their own.
On the first Wednesday in August 2020, as he slept, Col. Lee dreamed of a grand convergence of those elements … he himself was walking the known path, and had come under the lamp of the purple shade at last … but the instant he had stepped off the end of the road onto the secret path, the women with their purple torches had surrounded him, their faces drawn with fear and anger, and would have burned him alive – but another figure, a tall, powerful woman with iron gray hair, stepped forward.
“Stop!”
It was Mrs. Rebecca Mae Slocum-Lofton herself, in her aged but still striking beauty.
“Do not harm him! He comes in peace – this Lee, as his Uncle Robert would have if the situation were the same, comes in peace!”
The women with the torches stopped immediately, and Mrs. Slocum took the colonel's hand.
“You are not to enter here,” she said, “but whatever message you have, you may leave it here, and it will be taken to those who need to know it. Seek to know no more, Colonel – but when you come to this place of the purple lamps, believe that right will be done, and here is our pledge!”
Mrs. Slocum handed the colonel a great purple gem, carved in the figure of a rose. That, he had seen before – and upon receiving that, he woke up, for it was dawn on Thursday.
Mrs. Maggie Lee was also an early riser, and was a little startled that her husband woke with a start. She listened attentively as her husband told her about his dream of the incident at the end of the road under the purple lamp, and then added a clue.
“Mrs. Ludlow has a necklace like that – she was wearing it Sunday,” Mrs. Lee said. “I understand that every veteran's wife who moves down here gets one as a housewarming gift. Mrs. Trent probably has one too, but they are too finely wrought to be worn around a bunch of little kids.”
“It's actually a bit too 19th century for me,” Mrs. Trent said, “but the glasswork is beautiful, and the little card that came in the box was intriguing: “If in need of help at home, rub the back of your stone.”
The pendant was as large across as Mrs. Trent's fist, and indeed beautifully wrought … but the back was indeed rough to the touch … and, to Col. Lee's eye upon getting a magnifying glass, it yielded a map of Fruitland with a “new path” cutting across several of the known paths, intersecting with the end of Plum Road, and then proceeding over the top right edge of the back of the pendant into the wrought front of the rose.
That afternoon, before his own weekly therapy appointment, Col. Lee called all the veterans for whom he was pursuing the matter, told them that a new lead had been found, and that they should ask their doctors to prepare for them a progress report to share with their families and also write such things as they wished their wives and children to know about the treatment they had been taking and what they had learned, and about how they loved their families. There were questions, and fussing, but not too much, for hope and the trust the men had in Col. Lee, overcame that.
One added this to the conversation.
“Colonel … you could have been a bigshot general somewhere not paying any attention to us … you could have been retired on a beach somewhere with your lovely new wife … but you've been working on this for us since January, not even deterred by your own marriage or Covid. Thank you for your continuing service, sir, to all of us.”
“Lieutenant, active duty may stop, but our service to which we are called does not in this life. It is my duty and honor and pleasure to see to all the good that may be done for you, who served with me, and your families, and all our brothers and sisters in arms. We will see this through, as always.”
I am very interested to find out where this goes, do the woman have a safe place somewhere in Fruitland? I can't wait to read more and how Col Lee had a vision about it. And this purple rose, with the secret map, wow.
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Stay tuned ... this actually goes back quite a way ... before the Ludlows and Trents, and just before the Stepforth arc, Col. Lee and Maj. Hamilton had this conundrum ... in their world, eight months of investigating have passed, and the two master investigators have concluded: there is nowhere on Earth that the women can be but somewhere on Fruitland... but if so, it is one of the best kept secrets in Lofton County... an area full of brokenhearted, defeated veterans in 1865, in a time in which women had no rights to anything ... so it would need to be a good secret...
I can not wait to see what you write.
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The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want, plus you can win Hive Power (2x 50 HP) and Alive Power (2x 500 AP) delegations (4 weeks), and Ecency Points (4x 50 EP), in our chat every day.
