“Oh, no, no!” Hancock quickly assured me. “I would not have anything to offer that would assist him in any way, confined as I am. Good gracious! I don’t suppose I have seen poor Lu in thirty years. And since my wife passed away, I have little contact with any of her family. But I am deeply concerned and wanted to know what progress has been made.”
It seemed to me that my host had made the point he wished to make and that the party was over. So I finished my coffee, brushed the crumbs of the shortbread from my lap and stood up.
“It’s been pleasant chatting with you,” I said as I extended my hand, “but I really must get on my way or I won’t be at home in time to cook for my husband.”
He said something silly about what an accomplishment it must be to play the organ and cook and that very few women nowadays cook for their husbands (as though he would know!) and pressed the button on his intercom and summoned Nurse Bowen to see me to the door.
I mulled this episode over from Roanoke to Borderville. Anthony Hancock had not got any information out of me, but I was puzzled that he had thought it necessary to emphasize his disability so much. Surely he could have assumed that I would not expect a cripple to take an active part in the murder of a cousin of his long-dead wife.
One thing was obvious: Hancock had wished to see me in order to explain why the family had not come forward to claim the body of Luís Garcia. “The wicked flee,” my mother always said, “where no man pursueth.”
HOW HARRIET BUSHROW BEGAN TO TAKE A SPECIAL INTEREST IN THE DAR MURDER MYSTERY
Harriet Bushrow
Hello! I’m Harriet Bushrow, and I’m eighty-six years old. But that doesn’t mean that I am dead.
I read what Helen Delaporte said about me in the first chapter of this book, and I admit that it is almost the truth that I am jealous of Lizzie Wheeler—but not quite. She is a bright little thing—reminds me of a little che-che bird, always with something cheerful to say, mostly about her family or cooking; and I don’t give a damn about either one of them.
There! I’ve shocked you. Eighty-six-year-old ladies are not supposed to talk like that. Well, if young ladies can do that nowadays, I don’t know why I can’t. Besides, I always did.
But Helen is right. I am jealous of all those ribbons and gold bars dripping from Lizzy; but we’ll set that to one side. I guess the only good thing you can say about old age is that you can do anything you want to and people have to put up with you.
Now to get down to this DAR murder thing: It was exciting though not at all nice to be there when the body was found. Of course, having just got over flu, I had to stay down at the Pennybacker’s house when the reporters got there; and I didn’t get my name in the paper the way the others did. And anyhow, that was good because the people we finally caught were not sure for a long time that I was connected with the investigation. So I was able to be the “undercover” girl.
It would have been nice to be on TV, but then in the end we all got our pictures in the papers everywhere. Still, I was a little put out at the time. When I saw Lizzie on TV that evening, she looked so little and old—I thought, well! I’m glad they don’t have me on that thing—because I am more than ten years older than Lizzie, and television is not flattering to the old. At least I don’t think so.
Well, of course I was interested in the case from the very beginning, but I kept telling myself: Now, you are eighty-six years old, and you just let the younger ones do anything they want to do. Though I will say this—that if Ron Jefferson had given me the brush-off the way he did Helen Delaporte, I would have given him a tongue-lashing that he would remember to his dying day.
But Helen probably took care of him well enough in the end.
I think Helen has already explained that I like old furniture and have a lot of it. I don’t like Victorian. I want my pieces to be early. But I do get as late as the Federal style. Some of the books call it Empire, but that’s French. Or they call it Regency, but that’s English—or Biedermeier, but that’s German. I call mine “crotch mahogany.”
There was such a craze for that beautiful veneer with all those marvelous swirls and variations in color back there about 1820 that all the crotches in the forests in Honduras had been hunted out and shipped to the United States by 1840 or a little later. And after that, why, of course there was no more crotch mahogany to be had until the forests could grow some more crotches.
That took about sixty years, and it wasn’t until around 1900 that crotch mahogany veneer came in again. So there is crotch mahogany in this century. But heavens! the furniture doesn’t look at all the same.
Well, I have a bedroom completely furnished in crotch: two side chairs with the urn-shaped plats, an armchair in almost the same design, a butler’s desk, a pier glass, a wardrobe, a marble-topped dresser, two candle stands, and a tester bed that I am just especially proud of. It belonged to my great-grandfather Andrews and was in his bedroom at Pleasant Hill. It is in perfect condition, more’s the wonder, and not a chip out of it or a buckle in the veneer.
Every week for the past 140 years someone has gone over the surface of that bed with an oiled rag, and the wood has a depth you can see into.
Well, so that’s my bed!
This little antique club that I belong to meets in the homes of the different members, where there are things that the club has decided to study. The meeting for May was to be at my house because the ladies were going to study crotch mahogany.
I just felt I had to make that bed look the best I could. I oiled it just extra well—got up on a stepladder to go around the tester and the posts, of course. I’m glad nobody could see me, because I look like an elephant in my work clothes anyhow.
When I got down and admired my bed, it just looked so pretty that I thought: If only I had a pretty quilt to put on it!
Now, I have quilts. I have some that any museum in the country would like to have. I have a crazy quilt that I usually put on that bed. But it’s dark and doesn’t really show off either the quilt or the bed.
I’m afraid I commenced to be envious. Pshaw! what do I mean “commenced”? I have always been envious; it’s my besetting sin. How can I help it when Margaret Chalmers has a quilt that I’ve wanted for fifteen years?
It’s embroidered on white satin—the most beautiful work—the tiniest little flowers and wreathes and little birds. Each square is different and each one is absolutely a jewel. I’m sure Margaret could get $5,000 for it in New York.
I’ve been trying to buy that quilt from her all these years. Of course, I don’t have the kind of money it is really worth. And Margaret would sell it to me except that it was in her family.
Well, I can understand that all right. But I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t borrow it for the club meeting.
So I put on my hat and went over to Margaret’s house.
Margaret has some nice things. She’s not a collector, but her people have lived here for ever and ever, and their furniture was good country stuff. Margaret hasn’t much sense about how to put the furniture together in a room; but with good country furniture, you can’t go wrong. All of it is individual enough to be interesting, and it harmonizes no matter how you arrange it.
As soon as I told Margaret what I wanted, she was perfectly agreeable. She went immediately and got the quilt out of her blanket chest.
“You know,” she said, “I have put it in my will that you are to have this when I’m gone.”
“What earthly good will that do?” I said. “I’ll go long before you do. Why don’t you give it to me now?”
But that was not at all nice of me; so I said, “You are just a darling to let me borrow it,” and I gave her a little hug.
Then, of course, she had to ask me to stay a while. And of course I did.
Well, while we were sitting there, I saw this car drive up in front of Margaret’s house. And who should get out but Helen Delaporte?
Instead of coming directly to the door, she went around and opened the trunk of her car a
nd took out this great huge thing—I couldn’t imagine what on earth it was.
Well, when Margaret let her in, it was a telescope!
It seems Helen got it for one of her boys. All the Delaportes are very intelligent, and I suppose her son is going into science and was exploring the heavens. Anyhow, it had legs on it and this thing you look through on the side.
“What in the world!” I said.
“I just brought something over to amuse Margaret,” she said. Then she explained.
Ever since we dedicated that marker out at Brown Spring, she had had this feeling that Allen Comming was the man we ought to keep our eye on.
“Haven’t you got a nice glassed-in back porch here?” Helen asked. “And doesn’t it wrap around all across the back of the house and hang over the cliff?”
And of course Margaret has that absolutely wonderful back porch. Mr. Chalmers had that all fixed up the summer before he died, and it has really made Margaret’s house, I imagine, one of the most comfortable houses in town.
I guess I ought to explain that Margaret lives on Fort Hill, which is where the original fort was built that was really the beginning of Borderville. There couldn’t have been a better place for a fort, because there is a right good slope toward the east and the north and the south. But on the west, along the side of the creek there, it is just a drop-off of about thirty feet. Fort Street goes pretty close along this bluff, and Margaret’s house is the only property on that side of the street.
So the house has a little bit of a backyard, but when you are inside the house or on that porch, you feel like you are just hanging off into space.
But to get back to what Helen had to say.
She had been thinking about it and she seemed to remember that the Borderville Transfer—that’s Allen Comming’s company, you know—has its headquarters and warehouse and all that on the hill on the other side of the creek from Margaret. And then the freeway—four lanes, two one way and two the other—goes down next to the creek. Which is about the only thing that isn’t so good about Margaret’s house. But she said she doesn’t notice the noise. So that’s fine.
Anyhow, Helen thought that Margaret’s back porch would be a dandy place to spy on Allen Comming. (Helen didn’t use the word spy, but you know what I mean.)
Now I am going to butt in on the story just a minute to say my piece. If there is anyone who thinks we were just a bunch of nosy old women to set up an “observation post”—that’s a good thing to call it—they don’t know what they are thinking about. People talk about what is wrong with our government and our communities and all that; but if they don’t do anything about it, they are just as guilty of tearing down our country as the people they object to. Our patriot heroes did something about the things that were wrong at that time; and if they hadn’t, we’d still be paying a tax on tea. (Come to think of it, I believe we still do, only they call it a sales tax.)
What Helen wanted was for Margaret to set up that telescope on her back porch and train it on Borderville Transfer so as to see just what was going on over there.
I have to admit that I always was a tomboy. I played spy and soldier and everything else with my brothers—Indians! I never would be a squaw, always insisted I was a “brave”—it nearly drove my mother to distraction. Anyhow, it was kind of an exciting thing to think of being a spy—even at the age of eighty-six! And on that nice porch it was just the thing for a nosy old woman to do.
But Margaret is not a nosy old woman, and I could see that she was reluctant.
“I wouldn’t know what was going on if I saw it,” she kept saying. And Helen and I kept saying, “Why, of course you would!”
Finally I said, “Now, Margaret, we’re just going to set that thing up on the porch and show you how easy it will be.”
So Helen set it up right there close to a nice wicker chair with a cretonne cover on the seat and a little cretonne cushion at the back. And Margaret could sit there and every once in a while she could just lean a little bit to the side and look through the eyepiece in the side of the apparatus and just get a wonderful close-up view.
Margaret was still protesting—she just didn’t know if she could do it! But once she looked through that little eyepiece, she began to weaken.
“My goodness!” she said. “I can see everything as close as if it was right outside the window.” And it was true, because it must have been a very expensive telescope. But, then, Henry Delaporte is a lawyer and can afford it.
“If anyone should come in and see it, I would just die,” Margaret said.
“Throw a sheet over it and tell them it’s a hair dryer,” I said. She looked with a kind of blank look. I tried again: “Tell them you are bird-watching. Aren’t there some little ducks in the creek that you have to keep an eye on?”
She said, “Ducks would never nest that close to a busy street.”
“It’s a Christmas present for your sister’s son,” I suggested.
“He’s a field geologist in Ecuador,” she said.
“Didn’t your husband have a nephew in Ambrose Courthouse?”
“Well, yes.”
“Does he ever come to see you?”
“He comes every Christmas Eve with a potted poinsettia.”
“And has he got a boy?”
“Yes, twelve years old.”
“Perfect,” I said. “You are keeping the telescope for your nephew who is going to give it to the boy for his birthday.”
Well, she had no answer for that, and so the matter was settled, and I said that I would help her watch Borderville Transfer. And of course with the two of us watching like that, we would soon catch on to anything unusual that might be going on over there.
Now that that was taken care of, I collected the quilt, and Helen and I left.
My meeting went off very nicely at 1:30 the next afternoon. The program was good. Alice MacKey—she’s not a DAR—had it, and she had done a lot of work on it. The bed just looked marvelous, and although I was pretty well tired out by the time all the members had gone, I felt that the house looked the best it had ever looked.
So the following day—it was a Wednesday—I folded up the quilt and wrapped it with the same tissue paper Margaret had had it in, and put it back in its box, and off I went to take it home.
“Now Margaret,” I said, “What have you seen through the telescope?”
“Oh, a lot of things,” she said vaguely.
“Now, just exactly what?” I said, trying to pin her down. Well, she said that trucks had come in and trucks had gone out.
I said, “Margaret, you have got to watch that place and take notes. Now, this is what you have got to do. Get me a memo pad.” And she did, and I wrote time over to the left up at the top, and then occurrence over against that. “Now,” I said. “look here. You just sit right here and you can knit, or watch the channel, or pet the cat”—she has this great big orange cat; I can’t stand cats—“but you must look up now and then and see what goes on over yonder.”
“But there are other thing I just have to do,” she objected.
She had me there. But I kept after her until finally I said, “I’ll help you.”
The upshot of that was that I agreed to watch in the mornings because Margaret works in the literacy program. She has this thirty-six-year-old woman she is teaching to read. The woman’s husband has left her and three children on welfare. After the woman’s children have got off to school, Margaret goes to the public library and gives her a lesson. And I think it is just marvelous of the woman to have lessons. The poor thing will never get work if she can’t read. And then she’ll be on welfare for the rest of her life, and we’ll be paying for it.
So I told Margaret: “Let’s get started right away. You watch this afternoon, and I’ll be in early tomorrow.”
Now, the whole time we kept up that watching, there were long stretches when nothing happened. We didn’t just keep our eyes glued to the telescope; but by staying around on the porch, it wasn’t hard to k
eep up pretty well with what was going on over there. I like to work the crossword puzzle in the Banner-Democrat. I am just a little afraid that this old brain doesn’t work as fast as it used to. That means that I spend more time trying to think of a word than I do writing it down. So you see, I could do that and watch Borderville Transfer too.
And Margaret took my suggestion about knitting and started a beautiful blue afghan for her niece.
It’s a little hard to explain the lay of the land that the Borderville Transfer is built on. As I said, there is a very sharp drop-off behind Margaret’s house, and beyond that is the creek. Then the land slopes up gradually and we come to Anderson Freeway. That runs along the side of Turkey Creek. Sixth Street runs into Anderson a little to the right, as you look out from Margaret’s porch, and dead ends there. On that corner just south of Sixth it is level place, and that is where the transfer part of the business is.
It is a big flat area with blacktop on it and a garage and some pumps for gasoline or diesel or whatever it is. Usually you would see two or three big vans painted white and green.
Then to the south of that a hill goes up, not as steep as the bluff on Margaret’s side of the creek, but it goes up quite a way. Then it levels off a little and goes up into a sure ’nuf hill beyond that.
Well, on that level space half way up the hill there is the storage part of the operation, and a drive that winds up to a parking area big enough to turn a truck around, and that’s next to a big warehouse.
I tried to draw a sketch of it, and it looked so awful that I took it to Ida Benfield’s husband, and he drew it up very nicely for me. He’s an engineer for the city.
To get back to the main business—
When I got to Margaret’s house the first morning and took up my “observation post,” I said, “Margaret, did you observe anything yesterday?”
The Famous Dar Murder Mystery Page 11
