A Simple Country Mystery

by Blythe Baker

  Evangeline nodded again, her eyes still glued on me as she stood up and moved away from the toy chest.

  The dining room was through the kitchen and in the next room, where a worn table with many scratches told stories of fun and many meals enjoyed together as a family.

  Mrs. Vernon appeared with some freshly squeezed juice in a pitcher, which she set down on the table. “Evangeline, sweetie, would you like a biscuit?”

  “Before breakfast?” Evangeline asked, her eyes widening.

  “Just as a special treat,” Mrs. Vernon said.

  Evangeline nodded, her eyes bright once again.

  Phillip gestured for Sam and me to take seats beside him.

  “So, Evangeline…” Sam said, putting on a smile that seemed a bit too forced. He leaned on the table, the wood creaking beneath his arms. “How are you doing today? Are you feeling well?”

  The girl looked nervously back and forth between him and Phillip.

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” Phillip said reassuringly. “Sam is a good friend. He just wants to help.”

  Evangeline nodded. “I’m – I’m fine,” she said.

  “That’s good,” Sam said. “Now, I came here today because I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions, all right? Easy questions that you can answer in no time.”

  “O – okay,” Evangeline said, some of the color draining from her face.

  How many times had this poor girl been interrogated since her mother’s death? Too many; her reaction alone was proof of it.

  “I was wondering what you might be able to tell us about Mrs. Douglas,” Sam said.

  I pulled the little pad of paper that Sam had pressed into my hands outside out onto my lap, my hand poised over the page, waiting.

  “Mrs. Douglas?” she asked. “Oh. She – she is the lady that let Mother and I live in her house after Father died.”

  My heart sank as I heard her talk about her parents, both now deceased, in such a flat tone. No…not flat. Numb. It seemed it still hadn’t sunken in yet.

  I scrawled the note down about the look in her eyes.

  “Indeed,” Sam said. “What is she like? Did she and your mother get along?”

  Evangeline shook her head. “No, sir. Mrs. Douglas didn’t seem to like Mother and me.”

  “Oh? And what makes you think that?” Sam asked.

  “She would tell us how much of an inconvenience we were. I remember one day last autumn when she came in and shut the water off on us without telling us. She said she needed to fix something,” Evangeline said, her shoulders curling in on herself.

  Sam glanced sidelong at Phillip and me, but only briefly.

  “Perhaps she’d simply forgotten,” Sam said.

  Evangeline shook her head. “It wasn’t the only time. She also made us leave the house for a few days this past January when she wanted something worked on. She said she was going to have the part of the roof that was caving in fixed, but when we came back almost a week later, nothing had changed.”

  I quickly wrote that down.

  “What was she doing, then?” Sam asked.

  Evangeline shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I don’t know. Mother thought it was because she was mad that her rent money was late. She thought she was doing it out of spite.”

  That certainly wouldn’t surprise me…I thought sourly. The house was in terrible shape just by looking at it yesterday.

  “I heard that they had a row a few weeks ago,” Sam said, his brow furrowing, his tone hesitant. “Would you care to tell us about that?”

  Evangeline shook her head. “N – no.”

  “That’s all right,” Sam said. “Not a problem. How about any other people that your mother knew? Were there any other people that she seemed to be upset with?”

  Evangeline frowned, her fingers knotted tightly together in her lap. “Well…I don’t know,” she said, and I saw the first telltale signs that she was about to burst into tears.

  Sam opened his mouth to speak, but I held out a hand to stop him.

  Glancing over, he gave me a questioning look.

  I furrowed my brow, looking back and forth between him and the poor girl. She’s going to clam up if you push too much more, I thought.

  Sam’s eyes narrowed, but he sat back and gave me a permissive wave to continue on for him.

  “Um…Evangeline?” I asked, smiling at her. “Hi. We just want you to know that we understand this is all very hard for you to talk about. We know you have been asked a lot of questions over the past few days, and that you are feeling very tired because of it. And more than all of that, we know how much you miss your mother, and how confusing this all is.”

  Evangeline’s bottom lip trembled as she stared at me, nodding.

  I could feel Sam’s gaze on me, feel his annoyance that I might ruin this whole conversation.

  “These questions are important, Evangeline, to make sure we can help you, and find out the truth about what happened to your mother, so that something like this doesn’t ever have to happen again,” I said. “I know these questions might hurt a little, but if you answer them, we can help you even better. All right?”

  Evangeline nodded, wiping the tears that had fallen onto her cheeks with the back of her hand. “All right,” she said in a slightly shaky voice.

  “Now…was there anyone else that you can think of that your mother was not happy with?” I asked. “Someone she had maybe fought with like with Mrs. Douglas?”

  Evangeline’s eyes widened, and I knew she’d thought of someone.

  “Who was it, Evangeline?” I asked. “Who?”

  The young girl, who really must have been closer to seven or eight, steeled herself, taking a deep breath and meeting my gaze with eyes that had seen far too much pain for someone her age. “I…well, I don’t know his real name. My mother asked me to call him Mr. Smith when he would come to visit, but I knew that wasn’t his real name. He always brought me candy when he came over for a visit, but he and Mother always used to go into the other room and talk in whispers…”

  I glanced over at Sam, our eyes widening.

  A love interest? I thought.

  Sam’s gaze hardened. “So this Mr. Smith…he and your mother were close friends?” he asked.

  Evangeline nodded. “I think so. He came over a lot, especially in the mornings. I only saw him a few times, though. He was nice, but he and Mother did fight sometimes…something about Mother still loving my father…”

  “Evangeline, would you be willing to describe what Mr. Smith looked like for us?” Sam asked.

  Evangeline looked at me, almost as if for permission.

  I nodded encouragingly.

  “All right,” Evangeline said. “I’ll tell you.”

  6

  I went back to my shop before nine o’clock that morning, and was able to have it open before anyone seemed to notice. Only Mrs. Waverly, who was always determined to get her shopping done as early as humanly possible, wandered by around lunchtime to tell me how disappointed she was that she couldn’t pick up her order when it was convenient for her.

  I closed by three, happy to have had the chance to get in almost a full day of the shop being open, and then hurried upstairs to start preparing dinner for that evening.

  At half past six, my guests arrived, timely as always.

  Irene and Nathanial arrived with their son Michael in tow. Nathanial was holding a box of tools when I answered the door, and Irene had a scrumptious pie that smelled as if it had been freshly pulled from the oven.

  “Hello, come in, come in,” I said, standing aside to let them both in.

  “How are you today, dear,” Irene asked as we started toward the stairs at the back of the shop. “Are you feeling well?”

  “Yes, I am, thank you,” I said. “You know, I cannot thank you enough, Nathanial, for coming over to help Sidney with the stones in the fireplace. I’ve really started to worry about them, wondering if the whole fireplace was going to need replacing.”

&n
bsp; “It’s not a problem,” Nathanial said. “We’ve had troubles with our own fireplace in the past. It’s just something that comes with these old houses. They need taking care of once in a while.”

  We reached the top of the stairs, and found Sidney standing over his own tool box, which was sitting on the floor beside the fireplace.

  “Good evening,” he said, looking over his shoulder, waving at the Driscolls.

  “Hello there,” Irene said.

  Sidney’s eyes widened. “Is that pie?”

  Irene grinned. “Indeed it is. Blueberry. Freshly picked from our garden.”

  “Well, then I will have certainly earned my work for tonight then,” Sidney said with a grin, sliding a hammer through the toolbelt that he wore.

  Nathanial went over to start collaborating with Sidney, while Irene and I walked over to the kitchen where a pot was boiling merrily on the stove, and the egg timer on the counter was ticking away the time until my casserole was finished.

  “Thank you for allowing me to borrow him for the evening,” I said. “I know family time is important to you.”

  Irene smiled warmly, hugging me. “Oh, sweetheart…you’re family, too. Haven’t you realized that by now?”

  I flushed, but I hugged her back tightly.

  “Miss Helen, I picked these for you,” came the voice of Michael from somewhere near my elbow.

  I turned to see a bouquet of partially wilted wildflowers in his hands, two of the petals already having fallen onto the floor at his feet.

  “Oh, those are beautiful Michael, thank you,” I said. “I’ll put them in a vase right away.”

  My heart was full as I walked the flowers over to the sink, and found a small bud vase inside one of the cabinets above my head.

  The men had already gotten to work on the fireplace, examining the rocks that were coming loose. I’d cleared off the mantlepiece just in case they needed to remove it, and found Irene looking at the picture of Roger and I that I’d relocated to the credenza beneath the window for the time being.

  “Helen, is this Roger?” she asked, turning around with her grey eyes wide, pointing at the photograph.

  I was surprised at the sadness I felt when I saw her gazing upon it. It was a strange feeling, my past and my present momentarily blending together, something that I never had considered, or ever thought could happen.

  “Yes, it is,” I said, putting the spoon for the boiling potatoes down on the ceramic rest and wiping my hands off on the apron I wore.

  “Why haven’t I seen this before?” Irene asked, picking up the photo and examining it, looking back and forth between it and me.

  “I’ve had most of his things put away,” I said, walking over to the sitting room to stand beside her. “It was too hard to look at.”

  “So what made you want to bring it out now?” she asked.

  “Well…” I said. “I keep having these dreams about him at night, and…I don’t know. I guess I realized that I needed to stop trying to run from my past and just give myself the time to heal. Hiding from it was not helping me, and I needed to admit that to myself.”

  “That’s very brave of you,” Irene said. She turned back to the photo, smiling.

  “Where was this picture taken?” she asked.

  “During our honeymoon in Italy,” I said. “About two years ago, in fact.”

  “Well, I think it’s very nice to have some reminder of him around your home,” Irene said. “He was an important part of your life, after all.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I also pulled some of his letters out and tucked them into a shadowbox that is hanging in my room. I like to take them out at night and read them.”

  “Oh, Helen, that’s so sweet,” Irene said, a sad smile appearing on her pretty face.

  “This is your husband?”

  We turned and saw Nathanial and Sidney standing behind us, peering over our shoulders at the photograph.

  “Yes,” I said, flushing slightly. I hadn’t anticipated so much attention to be given to this picture.

  “He’s quite handsome, isn’t he?” Irene asked.

  “He was,” I agreed.

  “And I’m sure he was a good man, too,” Nathaniel offered kindly, before he and Sidney turned back to their work on the fireplace.

  “So how often did you see Roger when you were together?” Irene asked, setting the photograph down, shifting it ever so slightly so the light didn’t glint off the glass. “From what you’ve said, it wasn’t all that frequently.”

  I started back toward the kitchen. “It wasn’t nearly as often as I would have liked,” I said. “The war began just after we were married, and he had to spend most of him time in London.”

  “What sort of work did your husband do?” Sidney asked, glancing over his shoulder as Nathanial knelt down beside his tool chest and started to search for something.

  I glanced over at them, my face flooding with color. “I…well, to be honest, I never really knew much about it,” I said. “It involved the military or the government or something. He couldn’t talk about it much. He was able to come home for three days out of the month, but those three days never felt long enough. He wasn’t even able to come home for Christmas…”

  “So I take it that you were not together when he was killed?” Sidney asked. “You weren’t in London?”

  Silence fell over the room, the sort of silence that sat heavily on us all.

  “No,” I said. “No, I was at my parents’ home in Plymouth.”

  “Well…I’m sorry,” Sidney said.

  It was incredibly uncomfortable after that. I busied myself with finishing the potatoes, and Irene stood helplessly in the sitting room.

  Nathanial cleared his throat behind me. “I heard today that the police have been contacting Evangeline Lowell’s family, trying to find someone who will take her in. Unfortunately, it seems that no one wants her.”

  I was drawn back into the present, recalling the morning I’d had with Sam Graves.

  “That poor dear,” Irene said. “Nathanial, maybe we can take her in if they can’t find anywhere else for her to go.”

  “That might not be a bad idea,” I said, looking at her over my shoulder, not wanting to hide behind my own frustrations any longer. “Her family apparently disowned them when her mother married her father.”

  All three heads swiveled around to stare at me.

  “How do you know that?” Irene asked.

  I hesitated. “Well…Sam Graves told me, actually.”

  “Sam Graves?” Irene asked. “What was he doing telling you anything about that case?”

  I turned the stove off and hoisted the pot off the burner, carting it over to the sink where the colander waited for me. “He…asked for my help,” I said, not looking over at her when I spoke.

  “Why?” she asked. “He has been adamant about you staying out of all this.”

  “I know,” I said. “But he told me that he sees value in my help, considering how involved I was with discovering the truth about my aunt’s death. He seemed eager, even, to allow me to get information in ways that he as an inspector never could.”

  Irene’s face hardened, and she folded her arms over her chest. “I have a hard time believing that he would be so willing to have you involved, especially after he was so frustrated with you about the Polish beggar.”

  “Yes, well…” I said. “He seemed willing enough to have me along this morning.”

  Irene rolled her eyes, huffing in disbelief.

  Sidney said, “What did he need help with this morning?”

  I nervously met his gaze for but a moment before turning away. “Well…I went with him to speak to Mrs. Lowell’s little girl, Evangeline.”

  “You what?” Irene asked. She looked over at her husband. “Nathanial, can he really be doing this? She isn’t a part of the police force. How can he – ”

  “Inspector Graves can do what he pleases, unfortunately,” Nathanial said, wiping his hands on an old cloth he
’d brought with him. “Though I am surprised that he would ask a civilian for help. Why did he want you to go with him?”

  “For one, I was able to get information from the girl that he could not, being as curt as he always is,” I said, somewhat indignant. “We came by the knowledge that her mother had been in a fight with her landlady, Mrs. Douglas, and – ”

  “I’ve done some work for her,” Irene said, her face paling. “She’s a right bitter woman, let me tell you.”

  “She certainly is,” Nathanial said, his brow furrowing. “Do the police suspect she was the one who killed Mrs. Lowell?”

  “Well, just between us, she’s one of the suspects,” I said. “Though I’m not certain that she is the primary one, especially given what we learned this morning about the mother’s secret lover.”

  “Lover?” all three asked at the same time.

  I stared around at them all, my voice catching in my throat. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that…

  “Who was it?” Irene asked.

  “Well, the girl wasn’t entirely sure,” I said. “Her mother asked Evangeline to call the man Mr. Smith when he would come over, but she was almost certain that wasn’t his real name. Sam asked her if she would be willing to give a description of the man so that the police might be able to find him, as they’d had no idea of his existence…”

  “Everyone always seems to have sordid pasts, don’t they?” Sidney asked, shaking his head as he turned back around to the wall with a tub of some sort of concrete in his hand.

  “That’s a rather hard view of people,” Irene said. “I never took you for a cynic, Mr. Mason.”

  Sidney gave her a wry smile before scooping some of the mixture up with a trowel, and beginning to slather it on the cracks in the fireplace between the large stones.

  “What did she say he looked like?” Nathanial asked, also picking up a trowel to help Sidney. “I can’t imagine a girl as young as she would be able to give an accurate description.”

  “Oh, it was quite descriptive, actually,” I said. “She told us that the man was about as tall as Sam was, and that he was very thin. She said that he wore glasses, and that he had a scar on the back of his right hand.”