The house was fancifully designed, in a summer-cottage style that resembled something built in the late eighteen hundreds by a wealthy businessman as a retreat from the city. Or perhaps it was only a dozen years old. These days, it was hard to tell.
As she approached the iron gate, she looked to the left and saw several outbuildings inside the fence, tucked among the trees—one that looked like a garage or a large storage shed, and another possibly a guest cottage.
But there was another building farther back in the trees. After focusing in on it for a few moments, Candy decided it looked like a steep-roofed stone chapel.
And behind it, shadowed by the dense branches of the surrounding pines, she could see what looked like a stone wall.
Just like in the black-and-white photo.
Her heart quickened as she studied it, wondering. She’d reached the gate now, but she saw no lock, only an iron latch, which she tested with a finger. It seemed to move easily in its bracket. She lifted it all the way up, and much to her surprise, the gate swung open.
She hesitated. No doubt this was private property. She wondered if she should first announce herself at the house, just in case someone was in residence.
But like the rest of the island, the building looked deserted, its windows dark, with no lights on inside. No sign of even the slightest whiff of smoke from either of the two chimneys. No sounds or movements to indicate someone might be about.
Making up her mind quickly, she passed through the gate, deciding it would take her only a few moments to determine if this was the cemetery she sought. She’d be gone before anyone knew she was here.
Walking back along the property inside the fence, she started toward the chapel. It was small—probably with no more than a few benches inside, able to hold maybe a dozen or so parishioners. As she got closer, she saw that it had no steeple—only a simple cross above the white wooden door frame. The chapel’s tall, narrow windows were dark as well, just like the main house’s. The door was closed and presumably locked.
Candy didn’t stop to check it. She walked around the side of the building, toward the stone wall she’d seen behind it, as if drawn by a magnet.
The wall stood about four feet high and enclosed a plot of land perhaps twenty-five feet square. Thick vegetation hugged the wall in places, while low branches of nearby pines shielded other parts of it from view.
When Candy reached the wall, she walked around one side, then another, until she found an opening with another iron gate. This one, too, was unlocked, and she went through.
It was indeed a cemetery—probably a family plot, she thought. She walked to the nearest gravestone, which was black and nearly waist high, and read the name. It was a Wren—Chester P., born 1815, died 1881. She checked another, and found another Wren buried there, this one a Martha, born in 1819 and died in 1849. She checked the others. They were mostly Wrens, with a few Butlers, Steeles, Sturlings, and Gilfords mixed in.
But there was one gravestone in particular that drew her attention. It sat in a grassy area in a rear corner of the cemetery, nearly hidden behind larger, darker gravestones.
Candy recognized it the moment she saw it. She walked toward it almost in reverence, and stopped a few feet away.
“Hello, Emma,” she said softly into the silence.
THIRTY-SEVEN
It looked exactly as it had in the photo she’d found in the files Sapphire Vine had kept. The name EMMA in capital letters across the top. No last name. No dates.
Candy’s gaze dropped to the lower portion of the tombstone, where she’d seen other inscriptions that were too blurred to read in the photos. And now she knew why. Dirt had been throw up against the stone, and tendrils of ground-cover ivy clung to the lower area, obscuring some of the inscriptions and making them hazy in the images. Candy approached the tombstone, knelt before it, and brushed away some of the dirt while pushing aside the ivy. Finally she could make out what was written here.
There were actually three inscriptions—well, two inscriptions and an image.
In the lower-center portion of the tombstone, made up of several simple flowing lines, was the stylized outline of a bird—a wren, Candy imagined. She’d seen a similar image on some of the other tombstones in the cemetery. It must be a family symbol or icon.
Below that and off to the side, in the lower-right portion of the stone, a phrase in Latin was engraved, in capital letters using an archaic font: SAPIENS QUI ASSIDUOS.
Candy stared at it for several moments, wondering what it meant. Then her gaze shifted to the opposite side of the stone, where in the lower-left portion, another phrase in Latin was engraved, its letters dark and shadowed on this overcast day: DEUS PASCIT CORVOS.
There was nothing else carved into the stone—still no dates to tell her when the tombstone had been erected, when Emma had lived, died, or been buried.
But she could guess at least one of the dates.
More than likely, she thought, the woman who was buried here was the same one who had died in a pumpkin patch in Cape Willington twenty years ago, and been interred here shortly after.
The Jane Doe had been an island person, Mr. Gumm had told her, so that piece fit. Here was Emma buried on an island. It also meant the woman she’d previously thought of as Emma Smith, according to legal documents from the nineties, was more likely Emma Wren—or at least had some connection to the family after whom the island had been named. That much at least seemed apparent. Again, Emma was buried here, on Wren Island, in a private cemetery occupied primarily by deceased members of the Wren family, with a stylized bird engraved on the stone.
Candy mulled over what she’d just discovered, and linked it to other clues she’d found over the past few days—and the one she’d learned just this morning from Finn.
The institution in Portland. She surmised that Emma had met Sapphire Vine there sometime in the early nineties. At some point after that, perhaps only months later, Emma must have left the institution and shown up in Cape Willington, and had later died in the pumpkin patch. And then, Candy thought, turning and gazing out toward the sea, her death had been hushed up for some reason, and she’d been buried here, in a back corner of this largely forgotten family cemetery on a deserted island off the coast of Maine.
That much, at least, seemed to fit together.
That was part of the puzzle, but what was the rest?
Candy reached into her daypack, took out her phone, swiped her finger across the screen to unlock it, and checked the readout at the top of the display. As she’d suspected, there was no signal out here on the island.
She couldn’t jump online to check the meanings of the Latin phrases, so instead she used her phone to take a few quick photos of the tombstone and the grave before she slipped it into her back pocket, switching it out for her regular camera. She snapped a dozen more images, including some close-ups of the inscriptions at the bottom of the stone. She also took out a notebook and pen and carefully wrote down the inscriptions, making sure she had the exact spellings, just in case. As soon as she was back on the mainland and could get a signal on her phone, she’d search for the phrases on the Internet and see if she could find out what they meant.
Once she’d finished, she replaced everything in her daypack, zipped it up, and swung the strap up on her shoulder. Then she walked around the back of Emma’s tombstone and checked the stones nearby as well, but after a few minutes, she realized there was nothing else she could learn here.
She left the cemetery and walked to the main house.
If someone was around, she wanted to talk to them.
She knocked politely on the back door, waited, knocked again. When no one answered she walked around to the seaward side of the building, climbed up onto the porch, and knocked again at the front door.
Again, no answer.
It appeared she’d been right. The place was deserted. No one was home.
She thought for a few moments, and quickly decided on her next course of action.
Since she’d been on the island she’d seen only one other person.
It was time to find Mrs. Trotter.
Candy made her way back along the dirt lane, through the small woods and out the other side to the foot of the pier, where she turned right, following the footpath she’d seen the elderly woman take. The path hugged the shore for a short while before angling northeast and turning inland. It skirted a patch where the sea had carved its way into the land, creating a rock-strewn inlet, then swerved back to the shoreline again.
After four or five minutes of walking, Candy could see around the north side of the island. She spotted what looked like a small, steep-roofed cottage out near a point, half hidden among the mists and foliage. It was not nearly as large as the gated estate she’d found on the island’s eastern end, but it had similar architecture on a smaller scale.
She could see no other buildings around, so this must be where Mrs. Trotter had been headed.
Candy approached casually, as if she were simply a tourist out for a walk. She didn’t want to appear threatening or spook anyone. She started humming a pop song as she approached the house, just to make a little noise and perhaps alert the person inside that a visitor was nearby.
She walked up the path that led to the front door, knocked, and waited.
It took a few moments, but finally the door creaked open. A wizened old eye set in a thin face peered out. “Yes,” said an uncertain voice.
“Hello, Mrs. Trotter? I…um…I heard the deckhand on the mail boat call you that. I hope I’m not being too much of a bother.” And in a genial manner, Candy introduced herself and explained who she was.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any public bathrooms here,” Mrs. Trotter said in an apologetic tone, apparently misunderstanding Candy’s reason for knocking.
“No, I’m…I’m not really looking for a bathroom. I’m a reporter. From the Cape Crier. In Cape Willington. I’m…I’m researching a story about some of the local families and I have a question about the cemetery at the eastern end of the island. The one by the big gated estate? I wonder if you know anything about it, and if you’d be willing to answer a few questions for a story I’m writing?”
“A story?” The woman gave Candy a look up and down, her eyes showing sudden wariness. “Where did you say you were from?”
“Cape Willington. I’m wondering about that cemetery over by the little chapel. Inside the gated estate. Do you know which one I mean?”
“Yes.”
Candy waited for her to say more, but when that didn’t happen she plunged ahead. “There’s a gravestone in the cemetery for a woman named Emma. There’s no last name, and no dates for her birth and death. Would you happen to know anything about her?”
The elderly woman blinked rapidly several times, and her mouth seemed to physically twist, as if she were actually chewing on her words. She looked at Candy with no small amount of caution. “I’m not sure I can say much about that. It happened a while ago. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
She started to close the door but Candy persisted. “Mrs. Trotter, please, this is important!” she blurted, realizing she had only seconds to explain what she was after before the door shut in her face, and deciding in an instant that blunt honesty was the best approach at this point. “I’m here because of a murder that took place in Cape Willington a few days ago. It’s possible Emma was somehow linked to the victim. Maybe you’ve heard about him—he was a poet named Sebastian J. Quinn.”
The door stopped moving, and for the longest time, the elderly woman studied Candy from the house’s shadows, her face frozen, saying nothing. But finally she coughed very deep in her throat, backed away, and pulled the door open wider.
“So, you’ve traced her here, have you?”
“I have,” Candy said simply.
The elderly woman’s narrow shoulders sagged. “I was beginning to think—to hope—she’d been forgotten by now. We’ve had a few visitors over the years asking about her, you know, but they always went out to the big house, where no one has lived for years. No one’s ever stopped here before—I’m too far off the main path, I guess. But I thought sooner or later someone might come knocking at my door. And here you are.” She turned and started off into the house. “You might as well come in,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll put on some tea.”
They sat in the kitchen, near a window that overlooked the sea to the north. “This is the caretaker’s cottage,” Mrs. Trotter told Candy, after she’d put on a kettle to boil. “My husband was the caretaker, of course—not me. His name was Ellis. Ellis J. Trotter. He was a wonderful man. He passed away a few years back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Candy said. “What was he the caretaker of?”
“Why, Wren Estate, of course—the big place.” The elderly woman waved off toward the far end of the island. “Where you saw the cemetery. By the way, that house was designed by John Patrick Mulroy. You’ve heard his name, haven’t you?”
“I have, Mrs. Trotter,” Candy said, with a faint smile. “I’ve been inside a few of the houses he designed in Cape Willington. A friend of mine lived in one of them for many years. She had an extensive collection of ketchup bottles. She showed me a hidden document drawer in a built-in cabinet Mulroy had designed. He was a contemporary of John Calvin Stevens.”
“That’s correct. You’ve done your homework.” Mrs. Trotter gave her guest an appraising look. “And please, call me Nettie. I was born Annette, but everyone’s just called me Nettie. No use for airs around here anymore. Anyway, Stevens designed a number of summer cottages on some of the nearby islands, and over on the mainland, of course. But the Wrens chose Mulroy to design that estate house you saw, and the outbuildings, including this cottage. The chapel dates back decades earlier though. It was the first building on the island, you know. Anyway, the family was up here quite a bit around the turn of the century and up through the thirties and forties, or so I’ve heard. But during the fifties, many of the older Wrens passed on, and they hadn’t produced enough male heirs. It was quite a concern at the time. The line here on the island almost died out, but a few held on. One of the daughters, Cornelia, lived out at the estate for years. But she eventually passed on as well, and the place sat empty for many years, so Ellis—that’s my husband, the caretaker—mostly looked after it himself, and I helped him take care of it. In time the Wrens lost some of the property around the west side of the island, but another daughter managed to keep control of the estate. No one’s lived there much since Cornelia though. She rarely left the place, until she fell ill in her later years. She kept a ward out here with her for a while, you know—a young girl, during the late sixties and early seventies.”
“A ward?” Candy repeated, curious at the woman’s use of that specific word. “Was it Emma?”
Nettie nodded and rose as the kettle began to whistle. Candy waited as she pinched two tea bags from a glass jar on the counter, set out two mugs on the table, dropped a tea bag into each one, and began to fill the mugs with hot water.
“Was Emma a Wren?” Candy asked, breaking the silence, hoping to finally attach a real last name to the mysterious woman who had died in the pumpkin patch two decades earlier.
But Nettie shook her head. “No—not a Wren. Though I can see where you’d get that idea, considering where she’s buried. But she was something else.”
“Who was she then? Why is she buried in that cemetery? And why no last name on the tombstone?”
Again, there was silence for several moments as Nettie returned the kettle to the stove and settled again in her seat at the table. She appeared to be thinking carefully about what to say. Finally she pressed out a breath of air, as if she’d made up her mind—or perhaps it was a deep sigh of resignation, an indication of the realization that she could no longer keep the secrets she knew to herself.
“They tried to keep it hushed up,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, “and mostly it worked. That’s why they brought her out here
when they found her, and it’s why she’s buried here. They didn’t want anybody else to know about her. But Ellis finally figured out what was going on, and he told me—though of course we never told anyone else. We kept it to ourselves all those years. The Wrens were good to us. They paid us well, and left us this piece of property, free and clear, so we couldn’t say anything against them, could we?”
Candy leaned in closer to the elderly woman. “What did you find out? Who was Emma?”
In response, Nettie rose and walked to a cabinet that stood along one wall. She opened a lower drawer and pulled out an old photo album.
“Here, let me show you.” She crossed the room, set down the photo album on the table in front of Candy, and opened it. “There are some photos taken at the estate in here, from back when the family was still around.”
With short, sturdy fingers roughened by decades of manual labor, Nettie turned to a page near the back of the album. “Yes, here they are.” She pointed to a small, square black-and-white photo, probably forty or fifty years old. “Here she is. That’s Emma.”
Candy looked first to Nettie, and then down at the photo album. She focused in on the image the elderly woman had indicated.
It showed a skinny girl of medium height, with pretty curled blonde hair, wearing a crisply pressed white linen dress with a flowered belt, white socks, and shiny black patent leather shoes, standing near the stone house on the point with the sea in the background. Flanking her were three people—a handsome, rugged-looking man in work clothes, probably in his early to mid-thirties, and two middle-aged women, of similar build and features. One wore a dark skirt and shawl while the other—the taller of the two—was in high-waisted khaki slacks, a navy blue jacket, and rubber-soled boat shoes. She also wore sunglasses and a patterned scarf over her dark hair, though her distinctive face was still recognizable.
Town in a Pumpkin Bash Page 20
