So they worked out the details, and Aunt Molly went home, leaving Hilda filled with wonder at the strength of this little woman who, believing her son dead, nevertheless went about the business of life with grace and courage.
Hilda’s background didn’t encourage a belief in clairvoyance. The spirits that live in trees, in woods, in water, yes—perhaps. Hilda wasn’t sure she actually believed in the tomte and trolls of her Scandinavian folklore, but she didn’t like walking near woods, especially at night, and she was careful about streams. Just because one was a good Christian didn’t mean one shouldn’t be careful.
But she had also learned not to scoff at the beliefs of others. And if Aunt Molly thought, believed, that Clancy was dead, well—she, Hilda, would bear it in mind as a possibility.
Maybe her dreams would be less troubled.
For Hilda had not been sleeping well. She had blamed the heat and her heavy, ungainly body that made comfortable sleep impossible. But when, finally, she fell asleep, she had nightmares that she could never remember in the morning, except the impression of trying to run, run away from some undefined horror—only she could not run, could not walk, could only try to crawl from the Thing that came nearer, nearer.... She would scream and then wake with Patrick’s hand on her hair, soothing, calming, easing her back into sleep.
For the next few nights after Molly’s visit the dream was different. This time she was chasing the Thing down endless corridors, twisting, writhing tunnels, a labyrinth that led nowhere, and always with mocking laughter in her ears. In the mornings she would remember that laughter and clutch Patrick’s arm tightly until its echoes faded from her mind.
The day of the picnic arrived, a beautiful day, warm, with no hint of rain. Hilda’s capable crew had made all the arrangements. Mrs. O’Rourke had volunteered to bake enough of her famous chocolate cakes to feed an army; she and Mr. O’Rourke were to drive them to the park in state in the carriage.
As they were carrying the last load out, Hilda made a decision. Patrick was at the store, so she could not consult him. “Mrs. O’Rourke, can you fit me into the carriage? I could hold a few of the cakes on my lap.”
Mrs. O’Rourke looked at the bulge where Hilda’s lap used to be. “No need for that, madam. There’s room enough. But—”
Hilda didn’t let her continue. “I will not get out. No one will see me. I want to hear children laughing, to smell the fresh air. I have been in the house too long.”
“Yes, madam.” Mrs. O’Rourke didn’t quite sniff, but her disapproval was evident in every line of her body.
Hilda didn’t care. This picnic was her idea and she intended to be there. If anything exciting happened, she wanted to be on the scene. With most of the city’s police force there, she and Kristina would be well protected.
All the same, she hoped Patrick wouldn’t find out until she was safely back home.
It began well. O’Rourke drove the carriage to a spot where Hilda could see everything without being conspicuous. She had feared hers might be the only carriage, but there were several others, waiting, she assumed, for the fine ladies to be finished with their charitable work. She recognized the Malloy coachman, who had left his driver’s seat and was chatting with—oh, Herre Gud, with John Bolton! She had never thought Mrs. Studebaker would come in person.
If John saw her, there could be trouble. He would certainly come over to chat, and that would attract attention. She slid down in her seat until she could barely see out, a most uncomfortable position in her present condition. As an afterthought she snatched off her hat, but it was too late.
“Doing an imitation of an ostrich, are you?” It was John’s lightly sarcastic voice. “But no, it’s their heads they stick in the sand.”
“Go away, John,” said Hilda through her teeth. “I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.”
“And why are you here, is what I’d like to know. Or no, let me guess. It’s Hilda Pinkerton, hot on the trail of Clancy Malloy.”
“What do you know about Clancy Malloy?” In her eagerness to gain whatever information John had, she forgot to keep her voice low.
“Nothing I want to tell the whole world.” In a quick movement, John hoisted himself onto the seat beside Hilda.
“John! Get down! If anyone sees you in here with me—”
“If anyone thinks I’d be up to no good with you at this particular time of your life, they’ve got a filthy mind. Do you want to know about Clancy, or don’t you?”
“I want to know, but quickly, John.” She looked around nervously. No one seemed to be paying any attention. O’Rourke had gone off with his wife to help arrange the cakes on the serving tables, and the boys, of course, had no eyes for anything but the food.
“I don’t know if this is going to make things better for you, or worse, but I have it on good authority that the blot on the Malloy family escutcheon will deface it no more. In short, Clancy has departed for a better world. Or maybe a worse one, come to think of it. I somehow can’t see the pearly gates opening wide for such as him.”
“Aunt Molly said so.” It was the barest whisper.
John looked at her sharply. “His mother knows?”
“No, she—yes, she knows, but not that way. She—oh, John, you would not believe me, anyway. How do you know? What happened?”
“It’s only rumor, but a pretty reliable one. If you want to know the whole story, talk to your little friend Andy Mueller. He’s the source of the story, as far as I can tell. I expect you’ll have to wait a bit, though.”
His last remark came over the strident sound of a dinner bell that set up a cheer from something like a hundred young male voices.
“I think I’ll join them,” said John, stepping down lightly. “Shall I bring you a plate, milady?”
“Do not make fun of me, John Bolton! And I do not want any food, but I would like some lemonade, please—lots of lemonade.”
She had to wait until the boys had eaten their fill, and that took some time. All healthy boys have good appetites, but boys who almost never have enough to eat can resemble a plague of locusts. The trestle tables, groaning with food to start, were left with plates of crumbs. Mrs. O’Rourke’s eighteen chocolate cakes had vanished down to the last dollop of icing, leaving that good lady both gratified and annoyed. She had planned on taking at least one back home for supper at the Cavanaugh house.
John, having eaten his own lunch, went off in search of Andy and brought him to the carriage, along with Hilda’s lemonade.
Andy was alarmed when he saw Hilda.
“Miss! I didn’t ought to be seen talking to you.”
He would have run away if John had not caught him by the arm and virtually thrust him into the carriage. He came in behind the boy and sat next to him to make sure he didn’t bolt. “There, now, nobody will see you. Tell the lady what you know.”
So, with hesitations and a few tears, Andy told his tale.
17
A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “My Lost Youth,” 1858
And a remarkable tale it was.
“Promise you won’t tell nobody, miss!”
“I cannot promise that, Andy. If you tell me what I think you will, I must tell Mrs. Malloy. You see that.”
Reluctantly, Andy saw. “But you mustn’t let anybody know it was me who told you. You mustn’t!”
“People already know,” said Hilda gently. “Mr. Bolton knew it was you from whom the rumor came. If you are afraid, Andy, what you must do after we talk is go and tell your story to Sergeant Lefkowicz. He is here. Many policemen are here, and the reason they are here is to protect you and your friends.”
“The police don’t care about the likes of us, miss. They’re here to see we don’t make trouble.”
“Not this time. This has been planned, Andy. I knew you could not come to me safely, so I have come to you—with many witnesses. You see, when
people know you have told the police what you know, you will be safe. If someone wanted to harm you before you could tell...”
Andy got the point. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Yes, miss. Sorry, miss. But I was so scared—I saw it, miss.”
Hilda was confused. “You saw what?”
“I saw them kill Clancy Malloy.”
For a moment Hilda thought she was going to faint. She turned as white as the fluffy summer clouds floating in the deep blue August sky. John handed her a glass of lemonade.
She waved it aside. “I am all right. It was yoost—just that I was surprised.” What a weak word, she thought, but in her astonishment she could not think of the proper English word. “Andy, tell me everything. When did this happen?”
“A long time ago, miss. Almost as soon as they started huntin’ for him. And it was my fault!” He swallowed hard. At his age, tears were a grievous sign of weakness. He was nearly a man; he couldn’t cry.
Hilda had coped with many a case of Erik’s near-tears. She forbore to offer sympathy. “Andy! It is not your fault. I do not suppose you killed him?”
“No, miss, but—”
“Then do not be foolish. Tell me what happened.”
“Well, miss, when we all heard about Mr. Malloy bein’ so bad, with his heart and all, and it all bein’ Clancy’s fault—”
“Wait! How did you know it was Clancy?”
“Aw, miss! You know. When somethin’ happens to a big, important man like Mr. Malloy, the whole town knows. It was Mike, see, the elevator boy at Malloy’s, and he told Joe, who was deliverin’ from Hibbard’s, and then—”
Hilda waved away the rest. “Yes. I had forgotten.” She felt a momentary sadness. She was no longer a part of that network of servants and delivery boys who knew everything almost before it happened. “Go on.”
“So when I found out how sick he was, I was pretty mad, see, ’cause Mr. Malloy, he’s a real nice man. He’s an honest politician, even, and there ain’t many of that kind around. And Mrs. Malloy, she’s real good to us boys—like you, miss—and here she was worryin’ herself half-sick over Mr. Malloy, and it was her own son that done it! That Clancy never was no good, miss. Oh!”
His hand flew to his mouth. He began to stutter an apology.
“It is all right, Andy. He is no—he was no relative of mine, thank the Herre Gud, and his own family know what he was. Go on.”
“Well, I just wanted to give him what he deserved. I’m not so big, miss, but I’m tough, and that Clancy, he’d gone soft. I seen him oncet when he first come back to town, and he didn’t look so good, sort of pale and puffy-like. So I reckoned if I could find him, I could give him a good fight. I guess I wasn’t thinkin’ too clear, miss, just sort of boilin’ over with what he done to his pa.”
Hilda was too troubled even to notice Andy’s grammar, much less correct it. “So you went to look for him,” she prompted.
“Not right then. I was still workin’, and I figgered it was better to wait until night, anyway. So when I got off work I went home, and then when Ma and Pa and the kids had all gone to bed, I snuck out. There’s a good tree by the bedroom window, and I can move real quiet when I want to.
“I had a pretty good idea where he might be, too. ’Cause when there’s lots of funny business goin’ on, I figger it’s maybe mixed up together, you know?”
Hilda nodded.
“So there was this business of Clancy bein’ back, and up to no good if he was hidin’ out in the store, and there was the fire and all, and the wrecks, and I thought—” he paused for breath “—I thought, if Sam Black was behind some of it, maybe he and Clancy were workin’ together, so maybe I’d find Clancy at Sam’s.”
“I thought the same thing, Andy, later on. So the police went to find out. But he was not there, and Sam said he had not been there.”
“He was there, all right, miss. That was where he got killed. I saw it.”
His voice was sounding shaky again. Hilda, by this time, had herself well under control. “Tell me,” she commanded.
Andy gulped and went on. “See, I knew where Sam lived, because when there was all that talk about him, some of the boys told me. It’s on up Colfax a ways, out of the fancy houses like yours and into the little ones, you know? It was real dark, and there’s no streetlights when you get that far west, but I found the way easy enough.
“When I got there, there was a light on, an oil lamp, inside the house. So I figgered, a light when it’s close to midnight, he’s got company, or he’s expectin’ some. And I reckoned it was Clancy, so I got as close as I could and hid in the bushes and tried to look in the window, but it was too high off the ground for me to see much. I couldn’t see anybody inside, but if they’d been around the other side of the room, I couldn’t’ve seen ’em anyway. The window was open, though, ’cause it was a warm night, and I couldn’t hear nobody talkin’, so I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe he’d just went to bed and left the lamp burnin’, but that’s a pretty stupid thing to do. So I was tryin’ to figger out what to do next, when somebody came up the front walk.
“Well, I’ll tell you, miss, I thought I’d die on the spot, I was so scared. I couldn’t see hardly anythin’, you know, no moon or nothin’, just the light from the lamp. And this guy—”
“You could see that it was a man?” asked Hilda, interrupting.
“I wasn’t sure, not then. See, he was walkin’ real quiet, or tryin’ to, but that front walk is gravel, so he couldn’t help makin’ some noise, and he sounded kind of heavy. And he couldn’t walk on the grass, because there’s bushes on each side of the walk. After a minute or two, when he didn’t say nothin’ or come to get me or anything, I realized he couldn’t see me, not even as much as I could see him, which wasn’t much, ’cause I was hid in the bushes up close to the house. So I thought he’d ring the doorbell or knock on the door or somethin’, but he just stood there, not movin’, or anyway I didn’t hear the gravel crunch anymore. And I could see a kind of shadow where I reckoned he was, just a little darker than the rest of the dark.
“I couldn’t move or he’d hear me. I didn’t hardly breathe. And pretty soon I heard some little sounds like he’d got off the walk and up on the porch, to get inside. And that’s when...”
Andy stopped.
“Did Mr. Black come out of the house, Andy? Is that what happened?”
“No, miss. It wasn’t Sam Black killed him. Someone come up behind him, real fast, crunchin’ on the gravel walk. I couldn’t tell what was happenin’ till I heard a sort of crack, like—like somebody hittin’ a baseball a real good one. And then there was this awful thud and a crash, and I heard somebody runnin’ away. And then the door opened, just so wide—” Andy measured a space with thumb and forefinger “—and Sam Black looked out and said—well, whispered, I guess—he said, ‘Clancy? That you?’ And when he didn’t hear nothin’ he opened the door wide and the lamplight shone out and he saw...”
“Yes. You can leave out that part. Clancy was dead?”
“He wasn’t movin’, and his head—I reckon he was dead, miss. And I reckon Sam Black was ’most as scared as I was. He went back in the house, anyways, and I lit out of there fast as I could.” Andy’s fist clenched, and he gave a little dry sob. “See, miss, I reckon if I hadn’t gone there lookin’ for Clancy, whoever it was wouldn’t have found him. I led him there, and it’s my fault!”
“Now, Andy,” said John, who had been silent through the recitation, “that’s a mindless sort of thing to say, and not what I’d expect of a bright boy like you. Think, boy! If the man who killed Clancy had followed you, he’d have got there before Clancy, and he’d have known you were there. Do you think he wouldn’t have disposed of you first?”
Andy digested that, his fist slowly relaxing. “Then you reckon I had nothin’ to do with it?”
“Plainly the man followed Clancy. If we knew where he picked up his trail, we’d know a lot more.”
“Followed him,” said Hilda slowly, “or
already knew where he was going. It was a good plan, I think. The man killed Clancy in a place where someone else, Sam Black, could be blamed. So it was not likely that Sam would tell the police. He would do just what he did—take the body away, probably to the river, and say he had never seen Clancy. He is smart, whoever did this. Andy, you do not have any idea who it was?”
“No, miss. I was too scared to see hardly anything, and anyway it was too dark.”
“Not even his size?” asked John. “Tall, short, thin, fat?”
“I never saw him at all! I didn’t even hear him come till the last minute. I just heard that crack, and then Clancy fell, and I heard the man runnin’ away.”
“Ah! You heard him running? That would give some idea of his size. Did he sound heavy or light?”
Andy thought about that. “Heavy, I guess. He was sort of crashin’ through bushes and stuff, and maybe his feet thudded on the ground. But I can’t say for sure. I was—”
“You were frightened,” said Hilda soothingly, with a warning look at John, “and no wonder. But you do not have to be frightened anymore. I am glad you have told us, Andy. Now go back with your friends, and tell them everything. Be sure to say you do not know who the man was. And tell Sergeant Lefkowicz. You see, Andy, if everyone knows, you are in no danger.”
“I guess,” he said dubiously, but as he left the carriage, Hilda saw that he was headed in the direction of a group of policemen.
“Why did you send him away so fast?” said John in a grumbling tone of voice. “There were a lot more questions I wanted to ask him.”
“That is why. He could not bear any more. He had been very brave, but he could not talk about it any longer. If you, John Bolton, had seen murder done when you were his age, would you not have been frightened and worried, too?”
Murder in Burnt Orange Page 12
