Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564)

by Maclean, Anna

  “I was not there that day!” Clarence had returned from his perambulation about the pasture. Apparently whomever he sought was not at the fair, and he had crept up behind us with a second glass of lemonade in his hand. This he handed to me.

  “Of course you were there, dear. Don’t you remember?” insisted his mother. “I had gone into town with Brother, to see a specialist, and left you and Mr. Sykes together for the day.”

  “I was fossil hunting that day,” muttered Clarence, whose lace cravat was suddenly too tight, for now he tugged at it in discomfort.

  “Then we moved to Walpole and I met Jonah Tupper. Oh, how he courted me!” Ida fanned herself briskly. “Mr. Tupper did not care much for Clarence, I have to admit. Those two never hit it off.”

  “It does seem unfair,” I commented. “To have been left a widow so young and so often, and now you are alone again.”

  “A man must earn his living,” Ida said. “Oh, it is sad to think of the past. We must cheer up. Too bad it is so difficult to make a name for oneself in the theater. I understand you are to write a play, Louisa? Ah, you young people, so much promise, so much fun. I once acted, you know.” Ida grew gay once again, her sorrows forgotten. She had a mind like a mayfly. “My day school when I was a girl had a teacher who was fond of theatricals, especially Shakespeare. ‘So good for the memory, girls, so good for the memory,’ she would tell us. My last year in school we played King Lear. Can you believe it, Louisa, dear? I was Lear! I had such a fine long white beard and really the best lines in the play. I still remember some of them.”

  Ida rose from her chair and struck a posture with one lace-mittened hand pointing up and the other at her nipped-in waist. She frowned, and even so I could not imagine a less Lear-like figure than the one before me.

  “ ‘Come not between the dragon and his wrath!’ ” she growled, knitting her brows and stabbing her hand higher into the air. “ ‘I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest on her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight! So be my grave my peace, as here I give her father’s heart from her!’ ”

  “Brava!” I exclaimed with feigned admiration.

  Ida curtsied and blew kisses to me, arching them over the imaginary limelights of a stage.

  At that moment the tent flap opened and a dreamy-eyed girl dressed in white came out. The fortune-teller must have given her good news, for she seemed to barely touch the ground as she walked away.

  “Next,” said the Gypsy with a tone of impatience in her voice. Her silver bracelets gleamed and clanked as she gestured at her opened tent flap.

  “That’s me,” said Ida, clasping her hands under her chin.

  “No. You,” said the Gypsy, pointing at me. She squinted. “You, I think, are next. Those eyes. You live in two different worlds.”

  “You are mistaken,” I said. “Mrs. Tupper was next.” I pushed Ida toward the tent. As interesting as it would have been to spend time with a Gypsy fortune-teller, I could not spare a dime on such amusement. Besides, I had already acquired a considerable quantity of information.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Cold Kitchen

  IN THE MORNING before my run in the ravine, I sat down at the little desk in the room I shared with Anna and Sylvia and wrote a letter to the coroner’s office in Worcester.

  “What is that for, Louy?” asked Sylvia, still yawning but woken by the scratching of my pen. Anna slept on.

  “To discover, if I can, whether or not Clarence was with his stepfather on the day he drowned. There is some confusion over it, and the detail seems rather important to me,” I told her. “Will you take it to the post for me later?”

  “Ummm.” She turned over and went back to sleep, pulling the quilt over her head to keep out the bright dawn.

  For good measure, I wrote a second letter to the Unitarian church in Manchester, Vermont, asking for details of the Tupper family and Ida’s first marrriage. Such curiosity borders on low gossip, so I did penance for that sin by spending an hour with Father, weeding in the vegetable patch, after my run in the ravine. It was an unpleasant, muddy task, and the soil had a rotten smell that grew almost unbearable when it began to rain again and Father retreated to his study, still wearing his yard boots.

  Absolved from further manual labor because of the rain, I decided to work on the play I had agreed to write for the theatrical group. First, though, I thought to quell the rattling in my stomach, for I hadn’t eaten since the day before. A mystery often undoes my appetite, which renews once I have found an action that will forward my speculations. The letters gave me a sense of momentum, and that sent me to our little kitchen in search of a bowl of soup and mug of coffee.

  The kitchen was damp and cold. The soup was chilly. “Abba?” I asked. She sat in a corner by a window, knitting a stocking. Rain pelted against the pane, making a crackling sound as if to compensate for a missing fire in the stove.

  “It is a potato soup,” Abba said. “Very good cold. I hear they eat it chilled in Paris. Try it, Louy.” There was a dogged cheerfulness in her voice.

  “What has Father done this time?”

  Abba put down her knitting and smiled a little crookedly. “He gave away our firewood, dear. To a man who was in much greater need than we.”

  “I heard your voice, Louy. Are you done working for the day?” Sylvia came into the kitchen, wrapped tightly in a shawl.

  “Have you had the Potage de Pommes de Terre?” I asked, laughing. “It is a French dish, served often on warm summer days.”

  “This is hardly a warm summer day,” Sylvia complained. “What is it?” She stared into the bowl I had ladled for her. “Cold potato soup?”

  Mother and I were laughing. Life with a philosopher had its ups and downs. Father had given away all the wood, but at least we still had our rain capes. One previous spring those had disappeared as well, and I had had the uncomfortable feeling, during a stroll on the Boston Common, of seeing a young woman walk by in what I recognized as my own cape. Attached to the hands and knees of that young woman was a swarm of hungry-looking children. Father had been right: She needed a little warmth in a cold world.

  “I will send to Uncle Benjamin for more wood,” I said, kissing Abba’s cheek. “There is more than enough in the shed to get us through this rainy spell.”

  “You might ask him for a pail of potatoes as well,” Abba said. “It will be some time before the new potatoes can be dug.”

  “Now that is a strange thing, how well Father’s vegetable patch is growing,” I remarked. Sylvia sat next to me and dutifully swallowed cold soup. “Remember Fruitlands?”

  “How could I forget it?” said Abba. Our months at the commune called Fruitlands had been a very hard time, and she, on her frail back, had carried all the practical exigencies of a community of philosophers and children. We had almost starved, since Father had refused to fertilize the fields and the harvest was a failure.

  “I remember all too well,” Abba continued in a tone as close to a complaint as that patient woman ever came. “It will not happen again. Seeing the ribs on my children stick out like that. Not again. Think no more on it.”

  “Think no more on what?” Llew came into the kitchen from the back stairway.

  “Hard times,” I said.

  “Strange! I was just reading that volume when I fell asleep!” said Llew.

  “You fell asleep over a Dickens novel?” I asked, stunned. “That is one of his best! It is excellent.”

  “Louy, you know I have little time for novels,” said Llew, “so do not berate my lack of knowledge of current romance. Say, it’s freezing in here! The fire gone out? They say there will be a death by misadventure when the kitchen fire goes out.”

  I shivered. “No misadventure,” I corrected. “Only that Father gave away our firewood.”

  Llew laughed and rubbed his hands together. “I thought voices disturbed my study. Perhaps it was just the cold and damp.”

  “You heard voices?” I asked. “It must have been us, speaking her
e in the kitchen.”

  “No, they were men’s voices, outside the window of your father’s study. I admit to using Hard Times as a pillow when I rested my eyes. A very hard pillow, though of substantial thickness.” Llew grinned sheepishly. “Then I heard a man’s voice say something about Miss Nooteboom, and then, ‘Louisa Alcott will know.’”

  “You were asleep,” Sylvia said.

  “I was not,” Llew insisted. “As a medical student I know the difference between asleep and awake. Moreover, I know the difference between the typical male and female voice and have learned to deduce intent. This was a man’s voice, very angry. A young man’s, I would say. And there was a second voice, another man’s, deep as Mr. Alcott’s. He said, ‘It does not matter.’ They seemed to be quarreling rather vigorously.”

  “Could you discern the subject of the quarrel?” I asked.

  “Mr. Tupper’s name was mentioned, but I could not tell if they referred to father or son.” Llew rose from the table and paced, rubbing his hands together to warm them.

  “Were you in the chair by the window, and was that window open?” I asked.

  “Yes and yes,” said Llew, sitting at the table and tasting the cold soup. He frowned. “I will fetch over more wood before supper,” he told Abba, and he gave me a wink. He put down his spoon after the first mouthful and patted his stomach to indicate he desired no more.

  “Could one of the voices have been Clarence Hampton’s?” I asked. Llew nodded thoughtfully. Walpolians do not take “shortcuts” through other people’s gardens. But if Clarence and the second man had been standing by the hedge that separated our house from Ida’s, their conversation could have been heard in Father’s study. Who was the second man? And what did they mean by “Louisa Alcott will know”? Somehow even more ominous was the other statement, that it did not matter.

  “Louy, I forgot to tell you,” said Sylvia. “When I posted your letters, Clarence Hampton was in the office. He saw them in my hand and I think he read the addresses. He had such a funny look on his face.”

  THE NEXT MORNING Mr. Dill, the unemployed railroad worker who had inherited our firewood, came by to give his thanks and to bring us a half dozen eggs from his hen coop. He stood on the back step rather than broach the kitchen, because his boots gave pungent evidence of his recent venture into a farmyard. I hoped it was his own, and the eggs were properly his to dispose of.

  “Is the mister here?” asked Mr. Dill, cap in hand.

  “He is,” said Abba. “Bronson, you have a caller!” She raised her voice somewhat, despite her disapproval of such rudeness, but she was at that crucial moment of porridge stirring when the pot cannot be left.

  “If you are what is meant by a philosopher, then I approve, I approve,” said Mr. Dill when Father appeared. He shook his benefactor’s hand with such lengthy enthusiasm we thought that appendage might drop off. Father, still in his nightshirt but with a volume of Cicero in his left hand, beamed.

  “If it was philosophy made you send over the wood, then philosophy is a fine thing,” asserted the man.

  “It was nothing,” said Father. “ ‘Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore of nicely calculated less or more.’ ”

  “Say,” said Mr. Dill, scratching his chin. “Now, is that a piece of philosophy? I’ll have to remember that.”

  “It is Wordsworth,” said Father.

  “Well, well,” said the man. “Fancy that. I’ll be off, then. I’ve got work for the morning, sweeping out the town hall, since there’s to be a hearing today.”

  “A hearing?” I looked up from the loaf of bread I’d been slicing.

  “Town fathers have decided to officially question Mr. Tupper about Ernst Nooteboom’s death,” said Mr. Dill. “Seems his sister found a piece of what they are calling evidence.”

  Abba looked at me and sighed. A detective word had been used.

  “Evidence?” I asked, handing Mr. Dill a slice of buttered bread. He stretched for it from his place on the step.

  “She was cleaning out her brother’s things and getting ready to sell his Sunday suit when she found a note in the pocket from Tupper, asking Ernst to meet him by the ravine for a conversation.”

  “Who is this Mr. Tupper?” asked Father, who had been in his shop a half dozen times but had not yet noticed the sign overhead.

  “Ida’s father-in-law,” Abba said. “It is an uncommon family, though. Mrs. Tupper and her father-in-law do not care for each other.”

  “Ah.” He shook his head in disapproval. Father had adored Abba’s family. “It’s those horsehair pads in her hair, I suspect,” he said. “Makes for a strange daughter-in-law.” He wandered off with a plate of bread and jam.

  I did not dismay Father with the news that Mr. Tupper senior also seemed to hold a grudge against Uncle Benjamin and had made domestic trouble for Lilli, as well. Mr. Tupper in all ways seemed at odds with his own community.

  “Could I attend this hearing?” I asked Mr. Dill.

  Mr. Dill stared unhappily at his boots. “Well, with you being a girl and all, and an outsider . . .”

  “Louy, perhaps you should visit with Lilli instead, after the meeting,” Abba suggested. She was right, of course. A stranger at such a meeting would cause considerable discomfort and perhaps even delay whatever truth might be available. Lilli would have to provide the information.

  AFTER THE NOON meal of fish chowder (served warm, thanks to Uncle Benjamin’s woodpile), Sylvia and I went off together to meet with Lilli Nooteboom.

  She was in Mrs. Roder’s back parlor with a cold compress on her forehead.

  “Oh, dear,” said Sylvia. “You look all-in. May I help?”

  Her eyes were red. “I don’t see how,” she said.

  “It is a temple massage I have learned,” said Sylvia. “My mother suffers the most frightful migraines. Sit up here, with this pillow behind your back, and let down your hair.” Lilli did as instructed, and an arm’s length of white-blond hair fell over the harsh black of her mourning dress. I would use that image, I knew, in one of my “blood and thunder” stories about heroines in danger. Sylvia stood behind her and began moving her fingers in gentle circles over Lilli’s forehead and the top of her head.

  “That is better,” admitted Lilli some minutes later. “I feel almost well, and the pain has gone. You want to hear about the meeting. It was as I knew it would be. They believed Mr. Tupper, not me. He denied the note was in his handwriting, or that he had sent for Ernst that day. They think I wrote the note to lay blame.”

  “May I see the note?” I asked.

  Lilli took it from the little drawstring bag of black leather she wore tied to her waistband. It was a small piece of inexpensive brown paper, the kind merchants use to wrap purchases, and it contained very few words:

  Meet me at the ravine. I have a better offer. Tupper.

  “It is in script,” Lilli said, “and Mr. Tupper wrote to Ernst in block letters, because we were foreigners and he made fun of our English, said it was children’s English. But maybe this time he forgets.”

  Or maybe it was son, not father, who wrote the note, I thought. Or maybe someone who only claimed to be Tupper. Whoever it was, they had written on the same paper I had found at Clarence Hampton’s camp.

  “So we are back at the beginning, with Miss Nooteboom’s word against Mr. Tupper’s,” said Sylvia as we made our way back home.

  “Not quite at the beginning,” I said. “Think, Sylvia, who else would profit from the acquisition of land wanted by Mr. Tupper?”

  Sylvia frowned and puffed a little, trying to keep up with me. I was walking quickly by then, using the long-strided pace that often accompanies my worried moods.

  “That would be his partner, which he doesn’t have,” she guessed. “Or his heir, who is not here.”

  “Jonah Tupper,” I agreed. “Where is Jonah Tupper? But remember, Sylvia, there is more than one potential heir. There is a daughter-in-law, and she has a son.”

  “Clarence Hamp
ton,” said Sylvia.

  “The first is missing, or at least his whereabouts are not known, and the second is . . .”

  “Very strange,” supplied Sylvia.

  BY THE EVENING of the second Thursday after the picnic, I had the beginnings of my play ready for the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company. Since I must wait for the mail to bring responses to my inquiries about Clarence’s family, I had gone back to my writing shed with renewed energy.

  The play scenes were not as humorous, when humor was desired, nor as tragic, when tragedy was the mood, as I had hoped to produce, but there was time yet to further work them. It is my experience that initial attempts often fall short. It is in the second and third and fourth renditions that value might be mined in prose, another lesson learned both from Father and Mr. Emerson, who used much ink crossing out misshapen phrases and straightening them into a lovelier form. Meanwhile, we had an initial set of lines to rehearse.

  However, the faults of the plot and characters became even more apparent once we had gathered in Helen Kittredge’s attic for rehearsal.

  Our rehearsal room was a beamed area brightened with oil lamps and as large as a barn loft. One end had been cleared of the usual leather and wooden trunks, woven baskets and boxes of chipped china, and ancient shoes that accumulate in attics, and a large rose-colored curtain put up to mimic a stage area. The effect was rather romantic: an island of possibility set into the debris of the past, rather like one of those gloomy and mystical paintings of the German landscape school.

  The new Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company was there, a half dozen expectant faces.

  Helen beamed. “Well, then, shall we start?”

  There was a shy shuffling of feet among the young men and a giggling among the young women.

  “Perhaps Louisa should tell us about the play we have commissioned,” Helen suggested after a moment of deep thought. “Sit here, Louisa.” She pulled forward a chair into the middle of the gathering and held an oil lamp over my shoulder.