“No idea?” It was Sabra Jane’s turn to express surprise.
“That’s right, none,” Daggett eyes met Sabra Jane’s.
Willa interrupted, “Where were you when it happened?”
“At home, eating dinner. First real meal Elizabeth and I have had in some time,” Daggett mused. “Sat down at noon and probably didn’t finish until shortly before two.” He glanced at Edith, “I’m sure the person who put the torch there wiped off any finger prints, but you just can’t be too careful about things like that. I have to check it out.”
“Of course,” Edith smiled, “it was thoughtless of me to try to touch it. I’ve read Agatha Christie, after all.”
Daggett laughed, and Little John, whose silence had become notable, finally asked, “Who’s Christie?”
Daggett laughed again. “I was on my way after dinner to pay visits to Rob Feeney and young James, but when I opened my car door, there was this torch. It took me a minute to realize what it was.”
They sat in silence, everyone looking at the bag with the torch. Daggett accepted a cookie from the dish but shook his head at lemonade. Little John helped himself to both, ignoring for the moment that it was Sabra Jane who passed the cookies.
“I checked for footprints, of course,” Daggett chewed for a moment then shrugged. “Nothing there. Gravel driveway must have obscured them,” he swung his foot across the grass as though covering his tracks. “Elizabeth saw no one, and Jennifer was gone. So I retrieved an old pillowcase and got ready to take the torch into the office. But I wanted you to see it first. Then I remembered that young James might actually be here. And then Little John flagged me. And then, well, here we are.”
“Yes, well,” Little John moved his body toward the front of his chair.
All three women turned to look at him.
“You do think this might be the torch you saw last night?” Daggett’s question recaptured their attention.
“It certainly looks like it could be,” Edith responded.
“I agree,” Willa nodded.
“Perhaps if we saw it lit at night,” Edith glanced over at Seven Days Work, “we would be certain.”
“Yes. Good idea,” Willa shifted toward the front of her chair.
“Only a few fellows use a torch like this,” Daggett advised, “almost all of them on their boats.”
“Wonderful,” Sabra Jane cried out, “you’ll get him now.”
Daggett gave his full attention to Sabra Jane for the first time that afternoon.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Daggett’s smile remained pleasant. “When did you arrive?”
XIV
“THANKS AGAIN FOR the vote of confidence,” Sabra Jane hugged them both and slid behind the wheel of her Reo, “and for the lemonade, as well.”
“Think nothing of it. It’s we who owe you,” Willa swept her hand toward the partial wall where sprigs of sedum and herbs already rode jauntily among the rocks, their roots taking hold.
Willa and Edith watched as the Reo followed Roy Sharkey’s wagon, then swung around it and disappeared into the trees. Sharkey had promised that he and young James would deliver the final loads the next afternoon. Daggett’s Chevrolet, bearing the flashlight and Little John Winslow, had already driven off.
From the Red Trail
“That putrid, puffed-up pouch of foul air,” Willa growled on the way back to their chairs.
Edith picked up the lemonade jug and several glasses. Willa retrieved the tray.
“Why Constable Daggett ever allows Little John Winslow to tag along, I’ll never understand.”
Edith held her peace. Willa had been in and out of sorts all afternoon. She was out again, Edith surmised. And sympathized. Little John Winslow was an impossible man.
“Detective Winslow, reporting for duty,” Willa tut-tutted and pulled herself to attention, adding a mock salute. Then she glared at the chair in which Sabra Jane Briggs had been sitting, “You. You with the red hair. You’re the guilty party. Must be. No one else here with red hair, is there.”
Edith laughed.
“Logic, deduction. That’s the ticket,” Willa harrumphed and grabbed Edith’s arm. “I demand you arrest this red-haired heathen, Constable,” Willa pointed to the empty chair and shook Edith’s arm. “Well, sir, what are you waiting for?”
“Exactly like,” Edith applauded Willa’s performance.
“It’s nice to know such intellect is on the loose,” Willa began to chuckle, “don’t you think?”
“We should always be so safe,” Edith felt almost like giggling.
DAGGETT found it mildly amusing that Little John’s mustache made several violent leaps, almost as if his lips had gone into spasm.
“Why ask me where I was?” Little John’s mustache made another leap. He placed great emphasis on the I.
Daggett pressed his foot on the accelerator.
“Why don’t you ask the witch where she was?” Little John squared his shoulders against the seat. “Or James where he was? Young James has one of those shirts, I heard you say so.”
Daggett looked forward to the moment he could drop Little John off at Tinsley’s Pharmacy.
“Well?”
“I will ask James, you needn’t worry,” Daggett spoke with just enough volume to carry over the noise of the Chevrolet’s engine. “But I’m asking you now. Routine, remember? Means we ask everyone everything.”
Daggett momentarily considered going into Tinsley’s himself to purchase some aspirin. He should never have given Little John a ride in the first place. Daggett patted his pocket for the reassuring pipe. Little John seemed so contrite, almost remorseful when Daggett stopped the car. He said he wanted to go along, he didn’t care where, he wanted someone to talk to.
Then Little John got in and said nothing. Daggett shook his head. Nothing at all. Except that nonsense he spouted before the ladies. Daggett’s hand reached again for his pipe. Perhaps the aspirin could wait. He should waste no time checking out Jackson’s Drygoods and the Boat Supply at Seal Cove. One of them must sell oversized torches. And he still had to drop by Rob Feeney’s office and swing over to visit with young James. It would be another long day.
Daggett glanced again at Little John, “I’m waiting for your answer.”
“I wasn’t anywhere special.”
Little John actually squirmed. Daggett was amazed.
“I was home and in bed by ten,” Little John turned to face Daggett fully. “Ask Anna if you don’t believe me.”
“And this afternoon?”
“When you saw me,” Little John returned his eyes to the road, “I was heading toward Tinsley’s from McDaniels’. Eva had asked me to stop by after noon. Had something she wanted me to look at,” he turned his head away.
“What time did you get there?”
“Must have been half-past one.”
“When did you leave?”
“Soon after. You saw me.”
“When did you leave home to go to McDaniels’?”
“I didn’t leave home,” Little John glanced out the window on his side of the car again, “I wasn’t there. Had some biscuits at the bakery.”
“You had a large breakfast?”
“If you must know,” Little John swung around to face Daggett again, his cheeks bearing odd purple splotches, “Anna isn’t speaking to me.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“This morning she refused to cook my breakfast,” the words flew out of Little John’s mouth. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that woman.”
Daggett kept his eyes on the road.
“Can’t anybody understand women anyway,” Little John shrugged, “ever since Eve. Adam sure never understood her. If he had, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” he gestured broadly.
Daggett felt a smile rise. He suppressed it.
“I don’t know why I try,” Little John sighed.
BY the time Daggett returned to his office from Seal Cove, it was ten minutes past six. He had
already missed Feeney, and he had promised young James he wouldn’t stop by until well after six. He could afford half an hour or so for his pipe. Time enough, he hoped, to go through the day’s mail and check back through his notes. Too many places sold oversized torches, Daggett placed the notebook on his desk. And too many people bought them.
A quick glance at the pile on his desk suggested that his mail contained the usual assortment of government correspondence. Daggett’s occasional secretary, Jane Hobson, had apparently come in to straighten up the office and open his mail. She left it stacked to the right of his blotter.
Daggett let himself sink deep into his chair. He undid the buttons on his jacket and placed his notebook on the blotter. Then he took out his tobacco pouch and pipe. No sense rushing, no matter how short the time.
Daggett raised his feet to the desktop and tamped tobacco firmly into the bowl, but when he reached for the tin of matches, which he had taken out of his pocket and placed next to the ashtray, he noticed the sheet on the bottom of the mail. It was a telegram. New Bedford, Massachusetts. He began there.
Not one John T. Brown in all of New Bedford. No such customer at Chin’s Chinese Laundry on West 13th Street.
Chin’s did, however, do shirts on a regular basis for a John Thomas Bush. White shirts with French cuffs, Daggett drew deep on his pipe. Chin’s was concerned about this Mr. Bush. He had dropped off his last order Saturday, June twenty-ninth and never returned. The order he picked up on the twenty-ninth contained six starched shirts and a navy blue suit. Daggett opened his notebook and reached for a pen.
John Thomas Bush’s clothes were expensive. His suits carried a Boston tailor’s label, Daggett began to place check marks next to parallel items in his notebook. The physical description of John Thomas Bush matched precisely what Daggett knew of John T. Brown, Daggett expelled the smoke from his lungs in a concentrated stream.
Mr. Bush had no criminal record in New Bedford, but he was well known to the police. A girlfriend had disappeared. The police investigated but had never been able to pin anything on him. Bush might be an alias. He divided his time between New Bedford and Detroit, Daggett found himself breaking into a grin.
The New Bedford police thought Bush a gambler and probable bootlegger. Rum customer, the telegram concluded. Wry sense of humor, the lieutenant from New Bedford. With a wide grin, Daggett placed the yellow sheet exactly in the center of his blotter and ran his hand over it several times, as though ironing out wrinkles.
Whatever else he did this evening, he would take time to fire a telegram back to New Bedford asking for everything they had on John Thomas Bush. He would send new telegrams to New York and Boston to see what they had on a Mr. John Thomas Bush. Maybe if he made their jobs easier, they would come up with something after all. And he would ask Doc McCauley to get what prints he could from the corpse. The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, DC might be able to find a match. If Bush was an alias like Brown, the FBI could tell him. Daggett had never had occasion to use them before, but he understood the FBI now had the best records in the world.
“JAMES isn’t usually so careless, you know,” Mary Daniels placed one hand on her son’s shoulder and lowered the coffee pot in the other to pour steaming black coffee into Constable Daggett’s cup, “especially not with a brand-new shirt.”
“No, I’m sure James is not careless,” Daggett reached for the sugar.
“Well, I was this time, that’s for certain,” for one second James Daniels looked directly at Daggett. “Before I could catch it, it went overboard. So I’m sorry, Mr. Daggett, I just don’t have that shirt anymore.”
Mary Daniels gestured with the coffee pot toward James. He nodded and raised his cup. She poured his coffee and moved around the table to pour herself another cup. Then she returned the pot to the stove and filled a large plate with freshly baked gingerbread. She placed it on the flower-patterned oilcloth next to Daggett’s notebook. Daggett sat with his pencil poised.
“When did you wear the shirt?”
“I wore it that morning, first day out,” James blew on his coffee, “because of the chill.”
“It was a nice warm shirt,” Mary Daniels sipped from her cup and nudged the gingerbread closer to Daggett.
Daggett lowered his pencil.
“Then, I don’t know,” James glanced at the clock above the stove, “by ten or eleven it warmed up and I took the shirt off. I don’t remember what I was doing, but I put it down on the side of the boat. Guess I wasn’t thinking,” he tried a sip, then blew again on his cup. “Next I knew, it was gone.”
“Notice anything unusual about the shirt?” Daggett helped himself to a piece of gingerbread and pushed the plate toward James, “any loose seams or tears or rips that you remember?”
“Don’t recall any,” James traced the pattern on the oilcloth with his cup. “Why?”
“Buttons missing, anything like that?”
“Don’t think so,” James reached for the gingerbread.
“Sam carry a torch on his boat?”
James paused and cocked his head, “Of course.”
“What size?”
“The usual.”
“Any oversized?”
“The long one, you mean?”
Daggett nodded.
“S’pose so,” James took a large bite of gingerbread.
“Know where he got it?”
“No, why do you want to know?”
“Sam ever run liquor on his boat?”
“Of course not,” James swallowed and swung his head away to cough. Something was caught in his throat.
“James wouldn’t go out with Sam if he did anything like that,” Mary watched until her son stopped coughing.
Daggett pressed on, “You and Sam got back when, did you say?”
“Not until eleven or so,” James cleared his throat and sat straighter in his chair, then glanced again at the clock, “just ahead of the storm.”
“Not enough ahead. James came in dripping wet, he did,” Mary began to laugh.
“That’s true,” James confessed.
“Very soon now he’s going to drip water all over somebody else’s clean floor,” Mary winked at Daggett, “at least he will if Jenny Dawson has anything to say about it.”
Daggett watched the flush rise from the base of James’ neck. It had been a long time since anyone had teased him that way about Elizabeth.
“Got water all over my floor last night, he did,” Mary continued. “Always does,” she raised her hands in a shrug. “That’s a man for you.”
Daggett chuckled, enjoying Mary’s warmth.
“WHAT I don’t understand,” Edith trimmed the wick in their oil lamp, “is why anyone would put that flashlight right in the Constable’s lap.” Light leapt again into the corners of their sitting room.
“That is a puzzle,” Willa rested the open pages of Francis Parkman against her stomach. “Perhaps the idea was that if the man turned it in, so to speak, he wouldn’t have to hide it.”
“As long as Daggett has the flashlight, he doesn’t have to find it, is that what you mean?” Edith rose to stir the ashes in the fireplace and put another log on to burn.
“That’s right.”
“Clever,” Edith poked the log into place.
“Yes,” Willa tapped an open pack of cigarettes against her palm.
“And plausible,” Edith settled into her rocker and put her feet on the hassock. Willa moved her slippered feet to make room.
“That would mean our man has a certain assurance and a cool sort of intelligence, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose,” Willa struck a safety match, “at least he would have to be wise to the ways of the police,” she said between puffs.
The Lucky Strikes were damp from the previous night. They had forgotten to put the open pack in the sun to dry.
“That would mean an experienced criminal,” Edith picked up her book, “or a very smart prankster.”
“Exactly,” Willa exhaled.
“SOMEONE either knew very well what he was doing and had good reason for doing it,” Daggett nodded to his wife, “or he was confused beyond measure.”
“Well, finish buttoning your pajamas and come to bed,” Elizabeth plumped up his pillow.
“What I can’t figure out is why. Why he was there in the first place,” Daggett sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes and socks.
“No need to figure anything more tonight.”
“Had to be an islander,” Daggett swung his legs under the covers and shoved his shoulders deep into the pillow.
“Why an islander?”
“Who else would carry an oversized torch?”
“But an islander,” Elizabeth turned to Daggett, her voice hushed, “why would an islander kill someone from the States?”
“That’s a good question,” Daggett smiled at his wife. “Of course,” he paused to yawn deeply, “it is still possible that Mr. Bush’s death was accidental.”
Daggett closed his eyes and felt the tension ease out of his body. This was his lull before the storm, his chance to think through what he had to do next. He stretched until he felt his toes reach the bottom of the bed.
“Accidental?”
The pillow next to Daggett’s ear crinkled. Elizabeth was leaning toward him.
“We know that the person in the red shirt was with Mr. Bush, but we don’t know that his actions caused Mr. Bush’s death.”
“Oh. But then how …”
“The person in the red shirt stood close to the cliff, closer than Mr. Bush. And Mr. Bush went off head first. That could suggest a plunge or a leap,” Daggett opened his eyes to glance at his wife, “not a shove. So the correct question is why,” he closed his eyes again.
“And where,” Elizabeth touched his shoulder, “where is that person in the red shirt and why did he hide.”
“Yes,” Daggett felt a second yawn begin somewhere near the base of his diaphragm. “It is also possible,” he struggled to continue around the edges of the yawn, “that the person in the red shirt and the person with the torch are not one and the same.”
“But then why …”
“The person with the torch may simply have been curious about what happened to Mr. Bush,” Daggett forced his eyes open and reached for the clock on the nightstand. “Maybe he was afraid to go during the day. Didn’t want to raise suspicion. Or maybe he couldn’t go then. Tied up at work,” Daggett finished winding the clock and set the alarm for five-thirty, “or maybe he was out at sea.”
On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery Page 14
