Necessary Evil

by Killarney Traynor

  “The Poe reference!” he cried out and I hushed him, indicating that Aunt Susanna’s room was within hearing distance. He dropped the volume, but not the arrogance in his tone. “Don’t you see? It’s Edgar Allen Poe he’s talking about - the writer.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve heard. What of it? So the south reminded Alexander of The Raven – it’s not flattering, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It does when you remember the other thing Edgar Allen Poe was known for.”

  “Dying of alcoholism?” I guessed, and grinned when he threw his hands up in frustration. “Oh come on. Give, professor. It’s too late for guessing games.”

  “We’d be here all night if I didn’t,” he growled, which only made my smile broader. I liked getting to him, even if he was as good as I was at tossing the insults.

  He leaned forward again and jammed his finger over the name. “I’ll tell you what makes me sure that Alexander hid a message in this letter. He was writing to his mother - by all accounts, his best friend in town -and though he’s not a man of many words, he describes the landscapes using the name of the best-known cryptologist of the eighteen-forties.”

  Now I stared. “Cryptologist? Edgar Allen Poe was a cryptologist?”

  “One of the finest. He used to hold contests whereby people would send in their best efforts and try to stump the master.”

  “And could they?”

  “Only very rarely,” he admitted. “But the point was, he was a code cracker and known to be very good at it, and here is his name, nestled in the middle of your little mystery.” He jabbed the paper with more force. “Now, doesn’t that make you think that there might be a little bit more to this letter than meets the eye?”

  I wrapped my arms around my waist, suddenly very tired. “Yeah, maybe. But you have to remember, others have tried to crack this letter and failed. I’ve got fields and trails pockmarked with abandoned attempts to prove it. Now, doesn’t that make you think that if there ever was a treasure, maybe someone already found it? Someone like Avery Chase who was living in the same house as Alexander, and no doubt would have known about his hobbies?”

  It was a good point, better than my average on a late night like this.

  Randall frowned and drew back, taking the letter with him.

  “You know what I like best about you, Warwick?” he asked, deftly folding the letter.

  “No.” I leaned forward. “Enlighten me.”

  “Your boundless sense of optimism,” he said, annoyed. “Good night.”

  Chapter 17:

  Saturday came soon enough. After my early morning run, I had two lessons simultaneously – both little girls around the same age. It went smoothly enough, until one of the mothers asked me about getting a refund for the summer camp.

  “Elizabeth can’t make it?” I stammered.

  Elizabeth’s mother looked surprised.

  “I just assumed that with Lindsay gone, it was cancelled,” she said, running a hand through her red hair. It glowed like polished copper in the early morning sunlight, and I found myself wishing that I had time to go to the hairdresser before tonight’s date.

  “Oh no, we’re going ahead with the camps,” I assured her. “We’ve got a new stable hand, Jacob, a new lesson plan, and I’m really excited about having a more active role in the camps.” I paused to help her daughter cinch the saddle, then turned back to the mother with an expression of helpful innocence. “Of course, I’d be happy to refund your fees anyway, but the other girls would really miss Elizabeth. So would I.”

  She seemed doubtful, but said that, of course, Elizabeth would come. She was sorry that Lindsay wouldn’t be there, but she wouldn’t want to disappoint her friends. I agreed, sending up a prayer of gratitude for the narrow escape.

  I entered the house hot, hungry, and wondering where my new stable hand actually was. Aunt Susanna had arranged his schedule for me, a schedule that had him starting at 8:30 on Saturdays. It was nine a.m. and he was still absent.

  “Kids,” I muttered, as I kicked off my boots at the door.

  Randall stuck his head around the doorway. “Did you say something?” he asked.

  “Just talking to myself. Have you seen Jacob?”

  “He’s in the study,” he replied. He was making himself a cup of tea, with the hot water in one hand and a pint of milk in the other, looking for all the world like a proper English butler. “Something hot to drink?”

  “Not unless it’s coffee,” I said. “What’s Jacob doing in the study? He’s supposed to be helping me in the stables today.”

  “He came in looking for you, but I, also, had a list and I knew you were with a client, so I grabbed him and put him to work.” He put down the milk and began to rhythmically dunk his tea bag. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I do, as it happens. We’ve got a truckload of work today and I want to get it done early as possible,” I snapped, grabbing a mug and a granola bar from the cabinet. “Besides, I thought he was hired as a farmhand, not a research assistant.”

  “Bit of both, actually. The boy needs help with his history, and I promised him that if he would condescend to helping out with farm chores, he would, also, have access to one of the finest minds in American History.” He said this with a self-satisfied grin, his attention remaining on his mug.

  I grunted. “Well, when David McCullough shows up, be sure to get his autograph for me. I loved the miniseries.”

  It took a second, but when the jibe sunk in, Randall lifted his head and exclaimed, “Hey!”

  I waved it off, and decided that Jacob’s time wasn’t worth fighting a war over. “Seriously, when can I have him?”

  “If it means I’ll get my tour sooner, anytime you want,” he said.

  I’d almost forgotten about the promised property tour. I checked my watch while quickly considering my schedule, and nodded rapidly. “All right, all right. Give me a half hour with Jacob and I’ll take you around the place.”

  His face lit up. “Excellent!” he said. “I’ll gather my maps!”

  “Professor!” I called after him, as he hurried with his mug to the office. “How do you want to go? Afoot or horseback?”

  He made a face. “Very funny,” he said.

  I took Jacob out into the barn, where we sorted and put away the supplies that were dropped off Friday night. Several riders were around the stables, taking advantage of the bright morning, and they were very pleased to be introduced to Jacob. He grew more effusively polite as he realized that most of our clients were pretty young girls. It would be difficult to keep his mind on shoveling manure and cleaning stalls, but perhaps his presence would inspire my volunteers to keep a more rigorous schedule.

  Aunt Susanna was in the kitchen when I came back to collect Randall. Despite the warmth of the day, she was wearing a long sleeve shirt and long pants, and she looked white and tired.

  “Feeling all right?” I asked. When she nodded, I continued: “I’m taking Randall on a walking tour. Want to come? It’s a nice day.”

  “I think I’ll stay inside,” she said quietly.

  Randall came out of the office then, carrying a notebook, some folded pages, and his tablet.

  “Where do we start?” I asked.

  “Let’s walk around the perimeter,” he said. “I understand that it hasn’t changed much since the eighteen-sixties.”

  “Oh, it hasn’t,” Aunt Susanna said. “Of course, there were more fields in those days. When the family gave up farming, the trees grew back like weeds.”

  “Not all of it is very walkable,” I said. “You might want to change into boots or something.”

  “I don’t own boots,” he said.

  I sighed and shook my head. “Of course you don’t. After you, Professor.”

  “Oh, Professor!” Aunt Susanna stopped, blushing. When we turned to her, she continued, “I mean, Gregory, will you be having lunch with us today?”

  To my surprise, the professor stiffened and looked as though he’d gone
on his guard. “If it isn’t too inconvenient,” he said, glancing towards me.

  I shrugged. “Might as well,” I said. “Are you cooking, Aunt Susanna?”

  “I was in the mood for grilled cheese,” she said evasively. “And while you’re out, shall I just tidy up the office? Or maybe you need some filing or…”

  “No,” Randall said firmly, and we both did a double take. “I mean to say, thank you for your offer,” he said, in a gentler tone. “But I’d appreciate it if you left everything as it was for now. It’s untidy, but it suits me - and if you should put anything away, it would set me back hours. So no, thank you.”

  Aunt Susanna looked more disappointed than upset, and she pushed him until he agreed - over my protests of her physical limitations - that she could dust the room, if she really wanted to. My warnings went unnoticed in her eagerness. She grabbed her cane and began limping for the office while the professor opened the door and ushered me out.

  “What was that about?” I demanded, as soon as the door swung shut behind us.

  Trusty, who had been following Jacob all day, spotted us and raced over, her tail a flurry of happy motion. She ran up to me, then jumped up at Randall, who seemed to have difficulty holding on to his maps while attending to her. Finally, he managed to calm Trusty down enough to pet her and still hold on to his work.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your aunt,” he said, straightening up, and I immediately went on the defensive. If he had one word of complaint…

  “What?” I asked warily.

  He took his glasses off and hung them from his collar, then rubbed his nose. “She’s a lovely woman,” he said, and held up his hand when I opened my mouth. “A genuinely lovely woman. She washes my socks. She makes me breakfast, lunch, the occasional dinner. She puts flowers in my room. She arranged that the bathroom should have my preferred brand of toilet paper…”

  “Toilet paper!” I couldn’t help exclaiming.

  Again, the hand.

  “She won’t play loud music, and she won’t allow her friend to exercise in the living room unless she’s cleared the noise level with me. She’s even given up her TV time to let me have control of the TV at night, when I’m finished work,” he said, his impatience mounting with each word while I stood completely confused. “In short, she’s done everything in her power to be the perfect hostess.”

  “And?” I interrupted.

  He rubbed his nose again. “And, my dear Madeleine, she is driving me completely mental. She won’t leave me alone! She asks me how I feel, if I’m hungry, if I’m too cold, too hot, too tired, too bored. She wants to clean my room, help with my research, maybe even clean my car if I’d let her. She’s around all the time, driving me to distraction and keeping me from my work.”

  “She’s friendly,” I said.

  “A bit too friendly,” he growled. “I was looking for Yankee hospitality. Here’s your bed, here’s your meal, leave me in peace. Instead, I’m under constant scrutiny and investigation. Doesn’t she have anything to do during the day? Any friends, any hobbies, a volunteer project, or something? I just can’t get my work done with her constantly underfoot!”

  I bristled. “Now, look here…”

  But we were interrupted.

  “Hello, Ms. Warwick!”

  Shannon Granger, a bright sixteen-year-old with crazy curls and a blindingly pink polo, waved from the hitching post in front of the stables. Her mount, the placid Sarah Anne, barely twitched an ear at the sound, but the same could not be said for her human companion. Shannon’s sister, the more bookish Erin, was holding Sarah Anne’s bridle and burying her face in the horse’s flank.

  As we looked, Shannon waved even more eagerly. I was confused about her enthusiasm. Shannon is an excitable girl by nature; but being Lindsay’s student, she had only a passing acquaintance with me. I knew that I was viewed as distant and difficult by most of the students, so I couldn’t explain her friendly overtures until Shannon turned and poked her sister in the ribs. When Erin looked up, the older girl pointed to us and giggled. Erin turned pink, but couldn’t help grinning in return, and that’s when it hit me: they hadn’t seen Randall before and they’d never seen me with a boyfriend. Being excitable, hormonal teenagers…

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

  I turned, exasperated, and found Randall waving back.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  He looked at me with exaggerated innocence. “Being friendly,” he said and waved again. A chorus of giggles tripped through the summer air.

  “Don’t encourage them!” I said, pulling his hand down.

  “That’s your job, equestrian,” he said jovially. “Shall we mosey on over and say hi?”

  I knew that would do no good. Say what I might about Randall being here for research, the Granger girls would think what they wanted and only the presence of a true boyfriend would convince them otherwise. Quelling the rumors was yet another reason I needed to invite Joe over for a ride when Randall was out. And, well, any excuse to have him close by…

  “Maddie?”

  Randall waved his hand in front of my eyes, frowning in confusion, and no wonder. One minute I was ready to kill him for waving to a pair of students, the next I was standing stock still, grinning like I was a teenager confronting my first serious crush.

  I wiped the idiotic grin off my face and shook my head.

  “Forget it,” I said, and stamped off the porch. My boots sounded like they meant business and Trusty - who’d danced off to yap at the girls - came running back over to follow me. “Come on, Pro-Vincent, let’s finish our walk.”

  My voice echoed off the stable wall and judging from the chorus of giggles, the girls heard every word. They were sure to tell everyone they met riding today that the stern Ms. Warwick was walking with her boyfriend in the woods; and if they didn’t jokingly stress the word, “walking”, someone else would do it for them. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind.

  “It’s a lovely day for a stroll,” Randall observed, a bit too cheerfully.

  “What did you want to see?” I asked.

  “Everything.”

  “Right.”

  We cut across the clearing, heading towards the trail. In the clearing, you can hear the rush of roadway traffic, chattering voices, and whinnies from the busy paddock, but behind the curtain of trees and struggling brush, everyday noises are hushed. Grandfatherly old maples spread their thick roots, disturbing the tumble-down rock walls that irregularly lined the trail. Tall pines, their tips so sharp as to seem to slice the sky, reached toward the sun and sheltered the old road under their gently green boughs, yet light gets through, enough to feed clumps of weeds and flowers that struggle to live in the ancient wheel ruts and hard packed dirt. Squirrels chittered, chasing each other around the tree trunks, while birds took up the chorus that the tree frogs left off at morning light. The Chase Farm was a busy place; but here, under the shadows, life fairly pulsed within every square inch.

  Despite recent history on these trails, I always breathed easier here than anywhere else. I used to hide here as a child, wandering up and down the rutted path, out of sight - but never too far out of reach: hidden, yet close to the doings of the farm. The woods had sheltered and comforted me as a child and there was a short space of time where I might have believed in wood nymphs, had I known about them then.

  Even now, when I was too old, too tired to believe in such thing, I could still sense magic in the atmosphere, even if somewhat dissipated with time and experience.

  Once in the shelter of the tree-cast shadows, I expelled a sigh of relief. Randall, who was consulting his tablet, looked up and grinned at me.

  “Out of earshot at last,” he said.

  He stopped to take a picture and I found myself wishing that I’d come here alone to think. Then again, I was always thinking that when I was with Randall.

  “It’ll only make things worse,” I groused, running a hand through my hair before remembering
that I hadn’t washed it since putting Graybeard out to pasture. I withdrew it with a grimace. “They’ll be imagining all kinds of things. If this was eighteen-sixty, I’d be worried about a scandal.”

  “Mmm hmm,” he said, concentrating on his lens. “Although from what I’ve observed, your life could use a bit of scandal.”

  Not with you, it couldn’t.

  I considered continuing our conversation about Aunt Susanna, but he seemed to have forgotten about it and I didn’t really relish another argument. Much better for me to advise Aunt Susanna on the sly that her help wasn’t needed. Randall was right about one thing: she didn’t have enough to do. Maybe I should talk to Darlene about that…

  But that was a problem for another time.

  While he focused on the tablet, squinting at the screen, I said, “We’re facing south. This is the western edge of our property. The property line follows the road almost exactly and has done so since eighteen-thirty-two. At least, that’s what my uncle said. But as you pointed out, he wasn’t very good at citing sources.”

  He either missed the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “It doesn’t matter – I’ve already scheduled a trip to the town land records office for this week.” He took another picture, then stopped, frowning again. “Road? Was this a road once?”

  “Still is, technically.” I swatted at a black fly. “I used to play here all the time. I got to know each side of the road pretty well. I used to like to tell my school friends that I played in the middle of a road all the time, no big deal.”

  “It’s a wonder you weren’t the cause of any accidents,” he remarked and I grinned.

  “That’s what Uncle Michael used to say.” I began to walk, Trusty trotting beside me. “Our neighbor took lessons with Uncle Michael, and she would take a shortcut through these woods. There’s an old foundation somewhere. Whenever I saw her coming, I used to hide in it.”

  Randall snapped another picture before following me, pulling his glasses back on as he walked. “Was this part of the farm property back in Alexander’s day?”

  “No,” I said. “This was Hill property then. According to Uncle Michael, they lost interest in it when they discovered gold in the Black Mountains. It’s been forested ever since the eighteen-fifties, I think. This road leads – led – down to the back property, which was ours for a while, but that was lost in the twenties. Don’t bother searching there, though,” I said quickly, when his face lit up. “It was left wooded for the sap and the hunting. And because both Obadiah and Avery were too cheap to hire help.”