by Maia Chance
“Yes, and perhaps also desperation—if, you know, there’s a pea in the pod.”
“It makes some sense, I suppose. But then, why would Roy Ives have stolen the dossier from my room and burned it? And does he have a darkroom in his cellar?”
“Perhaps there is some connection between Patience and Roy that we haven’t uncovered yet.” I tried—and failed—to snap my gloved fingers. “I’ve got it—what about going to Roy’s cottage to have a look in his cellar?”
“You mean break in to his cellar?”
“You make it sound criminal.”
“It is criminal. I suppose we could do it … if Roy is not at home.”
“You’re reluctant.”
“Of course I am reluctant, Mrs. Woodby! I am more than sixty years of age. My very bones ache from all this cold and higgledy-piggledying about, and it seems that every time I turn around, someone is killed!”
“That’s only happened to us a few times,” I said.
“One quick look in the cellar, and then I am afraid I must stay in for the remainder of the day and rest. I do not wish to be feverish in bed on Christmas Day.”
We made our way through the bustling village to the covered bridge.
“Dandy—no one appears to be home,” I said to Berta as we walked up the track to Roy Ives’s cottage. “His motorcar is gone, and there’s no smoke coming from the chimney. Let’s try the kitchen door, so we’ll be out of sight if anyone shows up.”
We went through the picket gate and circled around the cottage.
“There is nothing to do about our footprints, I suppose,” I said.
“No. But there are already lots of other footprints here, including our own from this morning.”
From inside the cottage came the booming barks of Ammut. At least I now knew that he was harmless, if alarmingly large.
We were mounting the kitchen porch when I said, “Look. There’s the cellar door.” I pointed to a ground-level entrance, a wooden bulkhead door set at an angle against the foundation of the house.
The kitchen door shuddered against Ammut’s weight.
Berta and I went down the porch steps and over to the cellar door.
“Rats,” I said. “It’s padlocked. Could you do your hairpin trick again, Berta?”
In silence, Berta removed her hat, extracted a hairpin, replaced her hat, and then bent over the padlock. She fiddled with it for a minute. Then two.
Ammut kept on barking, lending a sense of panic to an otherwise pastoral setting. The maple-treed slope rose up behind the cottage. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d see a stealthy flash of dark fur—
“Presto,” Berta said as the padlock made a tiny click.
I privately didn’t think presto was quite accurate for a lock-picking that took three minutes to execute, but I would say that to Berta at my own peril.
Berta was opening the cellar door. The hinges squawked, and a stale odor puffed out. “Are you ready, Mrs. Woodby?”
I gulped. “Champing at the bit.”
For the second time that day, I followed Berta into the dank unknown.
The cellar was dirt floored, and it smelled earthwormy. Instinctively, I hugged Cedric and tucked my nose into my scarf to filter the unwholesome air. The only light came in a pale shaft from the stairwell behind us. It wasn’t a large space. We saw everything.
“Well,” Berta said. “I believe this explains quite a bit.”
“Does it?” I said. “Because I have questions.”
About a dozen wooden crates sat in a low, untidy stack. One crate was open, revealing grime-filmed wine bottles. I picked up one—it was full, cork intact—and scrubbed grime from the label with my glove. “Château Margaux 1901,” I read aloud. “Golly, this is a fine bottle of booze, Berta. Where did Roy get it?”
“Where does anyone get wine in this country? From a smuggler’s middleman. It hardly means he is a killer.”
“No. But it does confirm his impossibly luxurious tastes. If he wants to keep up this style of living, maybe he really does need to inherit—wait. Did you hear that?”
“Motorcar engine.”
Berta and I scrambled out of the cellar, snapped the padlock back on, and dashed around the cottage. We were squashing ourselves simultaneously through the picket gate when a green motorcar rolled out of the covered bridge.
“Rats,” I said under my breath as I waved to Roy, who was behind the wheel. “What’s our story?”
“We were merely knocking upon the kitchen door, hoping to find him,” Berta whispered back. She was waving, too.
“But why?”
“Ahh…”
Roy parked his motorcar and waddled over in a capacious camel coat and a cashmere scarf. “Good afternoon,” he called, his eyes beady with suspicion.
“Think of something!” Berta whispered from the corner of her mouth.
“Hello, Mr. Ives,” I said. “We were in the neighborhood, and we thought we’d ask if you’d, um, like to join us for dinner at the inn tonight.”
Roy stopped. “Don’t you think that’s pushing things a bit far?” he asked coldly. “I mean, aren’t I one of your murder suspects?”
“No?” I said cheerfully. “Oh well, it was worth a try. Come along, Berta.” I tugged her sleeve, and we walked at a clip toward the covered bridge. “Have a lovely evening, Mr. Ives.”
I didn’t look back, but I knew Roy watched us until we vanished into the shadows of the bridge.
* * *
After a few minutes of walking, we were passing a flat, snowy field stretching alongside the frozen river, just on the edge of River Street. On the opposite side of the road stood the white clapboard Methodist church and, beside it, a trim green house with a picket fence and lace curtains in which, I suspected, the Reverend Mr. Currier resided.
“This field looks like a nice place to throw Cedric’s ball,” I said, setting Cedric down.
He looked up at me with accusing button eyes.
I took his red rubber ball from my handbag and threw it across the snow.
He perked his ears, skittered after it, and brought it back.
I threw it twice more, and he retrieved it. For a Pomeranian, he is an uncommonly enthusiastic retriever. On the third throw, however, the ball went too far and bounced into a heavy thicket close to the river.
“Phooey,” I said. “I’ll just go and get that.” I stepped off the road and into the deeper snow of the field. Tiny Cedric had been bounding around on the icy top crust of snow, but with each step, I sank knee deep.
“Be careful at the edge of the river,” Berta called after me. “You never know which parts are not frozen for one reason or another.”
“I won’t go anywhere near the river,” I called back over my shoulder. Actually, it wasn’t clear exactly where the field ended and the river began, although I assumed it was somewhere near those dry brown reeds spiking up from the snow.
I crunched laboriously toward the thicket, Cedric prancing along beside me on the crust. Freezing wind whipped down the valley and rattled the branches.
Then—a tiny blur of red sailed out of the thicket and landed near the river—no, on the river.
Cedric’s ball. Some unseen person had thrown it—
And Cedric was running flat out after it.
“No!” I cried. “Cedric! Stop!”
Cedric ignored me.
I slogged after him, knee-deep in snow. He was crashing through the reeds, out onto the river ice—
“Come!” I screamed. If he were to fall through—
The red ball rolled across the river’s flatness.
Cedric kept going, four yards, six, toward the middle of the river.
I reached the reeds and shoved through them. This was certainly frozen river here, although the crusted snow made it not so slippery as it could’ve been. “Peanut!” I cried. “Come! Come on, boy.”
Cedric’s nose touched the ball, sending it shooting even farther across the ice.
“No!”
came Berta’s windswept wail behind me. “Mrs. Woodby, it is not safe!”
“Cedric!” I croaked.
He pranced after his ball.
Horror clawed at my heart. Cedric was the only real family I had, and if he were to fall through and get swept away in a freezing dark current …
I minced and slipped after him across the marbleized ice.
A cracking sound cut the air. The ice beneath me shifted incrementally.
I managed to stay upright. I kept going.
“Cedric!” I cried. “Come!”
Cedric finally caught up to his ball and snatched it in his jaws. He turned, tail swishing, to look at me.
I should have turned back. He probably would have followed me to the riverbank. But I was so panicked at seeing my little peanut out there on the ice—a toy-size, bright-eyed marmalade puff—that I took the last few steps and swept him into my arms.
More cracking. The ice beneath me dropped an inch or two. Water oozed up from a long, dark seam.
“Mrs. Woodby!” Berta was calling behind me, closer now. “Turn back!”
“Mrs. Woodby!” came a man’s voice. “Stay there! Don’t move! I’m coming for you!”
Verrrrrry slowly, my pulse throbbing in my throat, I turned.
Mr. Currier was striding across the snow-covered field in shirtsleeves, carrying a ladder over his shoulder. “Don’t move an inch!” he shouted. Berta was hovering amid the scrim of dry reeds.
Cedric squirmed in my arms. From the corner of my eye I saw the long, dark crack in the ice travel, as though alive, farther out.
I sank another inch. Water—so cold, it was almost jellylike—submerged my boots.
A whimper rolled out of my lungs.
“I’m going to slide this ladder across the ice,” Currier called. He walked carefully onto the ice—his trousers were covered with snow—and, a few yards out, he crouched and lay the ladder flat. Slowly, he pushed it toward me. It made a scraping sound.
My feet were numb and soaked. Cedric wouldn’t stop squirming. The crack was growing—and there was another crack now, too, stretching at another angle.
I spoke, trying to sound rational, but in fact sounding mousy. “I don’t want Cedric to get wet,” I said.
“Keep hold of him,” Currier called. “Now. The ladder is only a yard away. Lean down—slowly—and catch the end rung.”
I leaned.
The ice below me sagged and tipped. Water rushed up to my shins. I slipped, and fell to my knees. Cedric leapt neatly out of my arms and skittered toward the bank.
“Grab on!” Currier shouted.
I half fell, half dived for the end of the ladder just as the ice below me gave way, pitching at a sickening, RMS Titanic angle into a dark, swirling current. But I caught the last rung of the ladder, first with one hand and then—with a grunt—the other. Currier was dragging the ladder—and dragging me, like an enormous furry-wet seal.
I was in the reeds on the bank. Alive. Panting. Trying not to burst into tears.
“You’re safe, Mrs. Woodby,” Currier said. “Safe. Come along, before you catch your death of cold. My house is just on the other side of the road. You must warm yourself immediately.”
I nodded. My teeth chattered, and the muscles in my back were tremoring in waves.
Berta had Cedric, and we made it across the field, over the road, through the gate, and into the minister’s house.
12
Several minutes later, I was sitting in front of the wood fire in Mr. Currier’s small, book-filled parlor with my snow boots (ruined!) and stockings off, a thick quilt laid over my lap, and Cedric on top of that. He wasn’t even wet, except for a few melted snowflakes on his whiskers. He had lost his red rubber ball somewhere in the commotion, but I wouldn’t mind never seeing that thing again.
And I was still shivering, with the odd tooth-chatter every thirty seconds or so. My feet felt cold to their very bones. I kept blinking away the image of the river’s dark swirl whooshing under the ice.…
Currier could be heard in his kitchen at the rear of the small house, rattling china. Berta sat beside me.
“Someone was spying on us from that thicket,” I whispered to her. “They might’ve even been following us.”
“Spying?” Berta clucked her tongue. “The ball merely bounced off a tree trunk, causing it to ricochet onto the river—”
“No. Someone threw that ball. I’m sure of it. I saw the way it just shot out of the thicket. It was too … too forceful.”
“All right, and who do you suppose threw it? The fabled bear prankster, Slipperyback?”
“No,” I said, although honestly, the idea had popped into my head. Blame it on shock. “I think it was Fenton Goddard.”
“Fenton!”
“Think about it. We found his darkroom and his Peeping Tom photographs. We found cyanide in there. Besides, he didn’t exactly hit it off with Cedric, you may recall. Fenton has every reason to wish to frighten us off, as well as to harm my dog.” I stroked Cedric’s fuzzy domed head. “We saw him today at Goddard Farm, after which he could easily have followed us—maybe even with his camera.”
“Could not it have just as easily been Rosemary, or George, or Roy? We saw all of them, as well.”
“Don’t forget, Berta, that Fenton kicked Cedric. He’s violent, and he’s angry at us.”
Mr. Currier entered, carrying a tray of tea things, which he set on a table. “Feeling all right?” he asked me. “Are you warm now?”
“Yes. Just a little nervy.”
Currier poured cups of tea and passed them around. “Would you care for a slice of fruitcake?” he asked. “My housekeeper brought me one just yesterday. It looks rather delicious.”
“No, thank you,” I said quickly.
“Yes, please,” Berta said.
We spent a pleasant hour drinking tea. Berta and Currier ate slices of dark, nutty fruitcake. I ate bread that Mr. Currier toasted on the fire, one slice at a time, and then slathered liberally with butter from a dairy that he said was only a few miles distant. Berta oversaw the butter slathering with silent approval. Currier told us about life in Maple Hill, where he had been minister for only two years, fresh out of Harvard Divinity School.
“That explains your library, then,” I said, pointing to the book-lined walls.
“Yes.”
“I believe reading is terribly important,” Berta said, forking up her last bite of fruitcake. “Without it, one’s mind is crippled. Mrs. Woodby and I are, of course, voracious readers.”
Neither Berta nor I mentioned that our literary diet consisted mainly of pulp. One doesn’t admit such things to graduates of Harvard Divinity School.
“You haven’t lived in Maple Hill terribly long,” I said to Currier, “but you must be acquainted with the Goddard family.”
“Oh yes, of course. They aren’t churchgoers—except for Mr. Ives. He is a regular attendee.”
I tried to picture Roy Ives sitting in a church pew. It was a strain on the noodle. On the other hand, it wasn’t as though I was a churchgoer. My mother was secretly an Irish Catholic, but she kept this fact hidden like a patch of ringworm. She never spoke of church once we moved to Park Avenue except in the context of society weddings, which were strictly Episcopalian.
“Still,” Currier was saying, “one learns all about one’s neighbors in a town as small as this. Of course, the Goddards are not year-round inhabitants—again, except for Mr. Ives. They have always kept themselves aloof, and, I am told, this aloofness only intensified after the death of Judith’s husband, Elmer. He was a child of this place, but she was from a prominent Cleveland family.”
“Elmer Goddard was born in Maple Hill?” Berta asked.
“Yes. He was a farmer’s son, but he went away to Cleveland to make his fortune, rose through the ranks of the hotel business—he started as a bellhop, I believe—and eventually became the owner and manager of a rather luxurious hotel in Cleveland. Having made his fortune, he built a lavish co
untry house near the Vermont village of his birth.”
“Goddard Farm.”
“Yes. Even with his newfound wealth from the hotel, Elmer still had old friends from childhood. Not many family, however. I believe there are no more native Goddards in this valley.”
“Are the Cleveland Goddards friendly with the villagers?” Berta asked.
“Not really, no. Although Mrs. Rogerson—Rosemary—has lately become friendly with the woman who comes in to clean and cook for me every morning, Hester Albans.”
“Hester Albans?” I said, feeling a lift of excitement.
“Do you know her?”
“We have met her briefly a few times at Goddard Farm.”
“Oh yes, of course. Well, ever since Rosemary arrived in Maple Hill for her visit two weeks ago, she has been paying lengthy calls upon Miss Albans in my kitchen to enjoy a cup of tea and a cozy chat—by the by, Miss Albans baked this fruitcake.”
“It is exceptionally flavorful,” Berta said.
“Miss Albans and Mrs. Rogerson are an unlikely pair of friends,” Currier said, “but then, that is so very often the nature of friendships.”
“That reminds me of another friendship about which we learned today,” I said. “Well, a rivalry that was once a friendship.”
“Ah. You must be speaking of George Goddard and Maynard Coburn.”
“Yes.”
“I do not know George well at all. He is not a churchgoer, nor is he a regular resident of Maple Hill—although he was here for a several-month stretch last spring and summer, apparently wooing Patience Yarker, but nothing seemed to come of that and he went away, only to turn up again last week. I know Maynard slightly better, although he is not a churchgoer, either. He is a good fellow, keeps very busy, you know, with his sport. Skiing in winter—here and abroad—and in the summers, it is mountaineering. I encountered him once, high on a ridge above the village, which was rather amusing, since we both imagined ourselves quite alone—I am something of a mountaineering enthusiast myself. It is a tremendous help in writing sermons.
“Forgive me—I’m rambling. With regards to the rivalry between George and Maynard, I am not clear as to its nature. But I’m told the late Elmer Goddard saw something of himself in young Maynard—the deprived background and so forth—you know that Maynard’s father was a Maine timberman, yes? When it was announced that Maynard was to marry Judith Goddard, I was equally as surprised as everyone else and, I confess, relieved that they intended to marry at an Episcopal cathedral in Cleveland rather than here. Alas, now I shall perform her funeral service the day after tomorrow at ten o’clock. How mysterious are the workings of God. At any rate, it is no wonder that her children were upset about the match—although, of course, no one should ever be upset enough to commit murder. More fruitcake, Mrs. Lundgren?”
