by Maia Chance
“You threw the ball out onto the river yesterday, didn’t you, Fenton? You tried to kill me.”
“You deserve to be killed.”
Was that a confession?
“I saw the potassium ferricyanide in your darkroom,” I said. “It was cyanide that killed your mother.”
“Every darkroom requires potassium ferricyanide. Your little clue means nothing.”
“You had easy access to the poison.”
“Any one of the family could have brought their own supply.”
True. I’d try a different tack to rattle him. Rattled suspects slip up. “I saw the photographs you took of Patience, Fenton. I saw them pinned up in front of the town hall. Why did you do it? To frighten her? To humiliate her, or to wreak vengeance?”
“I didn’t pin up those photographs,” Fenton said. “Someone stole them from my darkroom.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.” A flash of Fenton’s sharp incisors.
Bats had those sorts of teeth, didn’t they? And vampires, of course, although I had never seen a vampire at the cinema who wore a fur coat.
“Well, then, I’m not sure I can believe you, Fenton,” I said.
“I don’t care.”
“Do you mean to take more photographs tonight?” I asked, gesturing to the camera slung around his neck.
“I take my camera everywhere. You never know what you might come across.” He gave me a nasty little smile.
“And I suppose you intend to photograph Patience Yarker some more?”
“The coronation might make for a good shot, but then again, the light isn’t good.”
“No, it isn’t. Say, are you just a wee bit, well, jealous of your brother George?”
Fenton scoffed. “George is an idiot. He devotes all his time to attempting to break his own neck.”
“But Patience loves him.”
“She doesn’t!”
“I believe she does.”
“No. She wouldn’t. She isn’t that—that stupid.” Fenton’s face drained of color, and his eyes flicked left, right, down, up. He leaned closer and in the torchlight, I saw the red capillaries in his eyes.
Cedric’s growling grew louder, and it took all I had to keep him from boinging free.
“George doesn’t care for Patience. He’s toying with her, simply to boost his own ego. I have proof.”
“Go on.”
“I saw a letter to George. From a girl. Another girl. A love letter.”
“Who is the girl?”
“Someone named Juliet who writes with violet ink.”
Poor, poor Patience. Poor, poor little Possible Pea. “Where was the letter?” I asked.
“In his bedroom. On his highboy.”
“What were you doing in his room?”
“I—I’m sick of your questions! Leave me alone!” Shoving his hands into the pockets of his fur coat, Fenton slid past me.
I watched him cross the crowded village green, cringing and darting from every person who came within five feet of him. Then he disappeared behind a tree.
It was obvious that Fenton was infatuated with Patience, a sentiment I knew she did not return. He could be a killer, an irrational, jealous, cold-blooded killer.
Which begged the question, what else was he capable of?
* * *
The crowd was beginning to congeal around the torchlit ice castle. I allowed myself to be pulled along. The coronation was to be at the castle, so that’s where Patience would be, too.
Making certain Patience remained unharmed by Fenton was the main thing.
Strom and Pickard were standing in front of the ice castle now, cheerfully announcing the beginning of Maple Hill’s 1923 Winter Carnival, cracking jokes about Jack Frost and jingle bells to the delight of the crowd.
Where was Berta?
I inched closer to the ice castle, accidentally treading upon a few toes in the process. Luckily, everyone was wearing snow boots, so no one complained.
I spotted Maynard Coburn leaning on a tree trunk, arms crossed, in an attitude that looked deliberately casual. His dark-gold faux hair was visible under his hat. He was working his jaw.
Someone was blatting out a fanfare on a trumpet. Then, applause and cheers as George Goddard and Patience Yarker appeared in front of the ice castle, smiling—
There. I saw him. Fenton, over at the farthest edge of the crowd, holding one of the cocoa cups. Just like Maynard, he was watching the proceedings with a frightening intensity.
Pickard began to talk about kings and queens and Maple Hill. Strom was holding up a sparkling crown.
I must get over there and stop Fenton from doing, well, whatever it is he’s—
“What I wouldn’t give for a sprig of mistletoe right about now,” a man said very close to my ear.
I spun around. “Ralph!”
Ralph, in a tipped fedora and an overcoat with a turned-up collar, smiled down at me. “Lola.” His warm gray eyes glowed in his gorgeous, weathered face. “I’ve missed you, kid. Say, did you get a little shorter?”
These dratted flat-heeled man-boots! And me without a speck of lipstick or mascara. “I—”
“Don’t get me wrong.” Ralph edged closer. “You’re prettier than ever.”
Cedric dabbled his legs in the air, whimpering with frantic joy.
“What—what are you doing here?” I asked, toasty from my ears to my blistered toes—which, as it happens, suddenly didn’t hurt in the least. “Golly, I’ve missed you, too—has it really only been a few weeks?”
“Yeah, only a couple weeks, but I’ll be darned if they didn’t feel like centuries.”
Then I was in Ralph’s strong arms, and he gave me a kiss that was worth waiting two weeks for. Heck, it would’ve been worth a two-year wait. Not that I’d tell that to Ralph, for fear of giving him the go-ahead.
Coming up for air, I asked, “Truly, Ralph—what are you doing here? What about your job in Chicago?”
“I wrapped it up and I was on my way back to New York City. At the station, I bought a couple papers, and what do you know, the news of Judith Goddard’s murder was splashed on the front pages. ‘Maple Hill,’ I thought. ‘Now, why does that ring a bell?’”
“I told you that I was going to Maple Hill.”
“Yeah. And I knew that if there was a murder and you and Mrs. Lundgren were there, well, there was a chance you were mixed up in it—”
He was cut off by a woman’s scream.
My blood went cold.
Ralph tensed in my arms.
Oh golly. Fenton. Patience.
Ralph gently peeled my hands from his shoulders, and set off running toward the screams.
The crowd was in a tizzy, murmuring and looking around.
Another scream, and a wail of “Help! Oh, help!”
I ran after Ralph to the back of the crowd, stumbling, breathing hard, with Cedric bundled like a bread loaf under my arm.
There was the igloo up ahead, from behind which another “Help!” issued. Ralph was dashing around the corner.
I followed—and slammed into Ralph’s back. He had stopped hard.
I peered around his arm.
A weeping woman lay crouched beside something. Someone.
Fenton.
“He’s—” the woman whimpered. “He’s—”
“Yeah, I see,” Ralph said.
Fenton lay sprawled on the snow behind the igloo, his camera on its twisted strap beside his head, a breeze ruffling his fur coat. An upended cocoa cup lay nearby, pale brown cocoa staining the snow.
And his face—wide eyes, gaping mouth …
He was dead.
21
I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d gotten it all wrong. But I had. Fenton wasn’t the villain I’d supposed him to be. Well, all right, if the story about him trying to push the nurserymaid out the window was true, he’d possibly been a villain as a child. But all the rest of it�
��the mad jealousy of George, the suspicion that he meant to harm Patience—had utterly missed the target.
And now Fenton was dead. Perhaps I was partly to blame.
Ralph knelt beside the body, checking for a pulse. I helped the weeping woman to her feet and led her away, murmuring, “There, there, it’s all right.”
More people came rushing in around the body like a noisy, babbling surf. There were cries of “Murder!” and “Poison!” and “Where in the blazes are the police?” and “Stay back, Molly, it’s no sight for a woman,” and then Sergeant Peletier strode onto the scene and urged everyone back, all except a man who crouched beside the body, saying, “I’m a doctor,” and then, “Ah, poor fellow, he’s dead.”
“Yep,” Ralph said to the doctor, shaking his head sadly. “Say, what’s this he’s got in his hand? A note?”
“You,” Peletier said softly to me. “You just so happen to be at the scene of the crime again, eh?”
I pointed. “There’s a note in his hand.”
“I’m not through with you, Lola Woodby.” Peletier went over, bent over Fenton’s corpse, plucked the folded paper from his hand, and slid it into his coat pocket.
“Someone fetch Dr. Best!” Peletier bellowed to no one in particular. “Someone fetch a sheet or a blanket or something to cover this poor soul up.” He turned to me. “And you—I want you at the station, you and your sidekick. Immediately.”
“Sure thing,” I said, swallowing hard.
Ralph was on his feet, looking between Peletier and me. Once Peletier began speaking with someone else, Ralph came close to me and said softly, “What’s going on here, Lola? You’ve got the fuzz on your case?”
“Something like that.”
Ralph groaned. “Every time. Every time!”
I pushed out my lower lip. “Now you’re making me feel bad.”
Ralph scratched his temple. “Sorry, kid. It’s just that … every time?”
Berta appeared, and hurried over to Ralph and me. “Good evening, Mr. Oliver. What a surprise to see you here, and—” She cast an appalled look at Fenton’s corpse, now covered with a red blanket. “—under such dreadful circumstances.”
“Sergeant Peletier wants to see us at the station,” I said. “Immediately, he said.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Berta said. “He simply cannot let go of the wrong end of the stick, can he?”
“And—I overheard the doctor saying something about poison.”
“Oh dear. Not again.”
“The first one was cyanide?” Ralph asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll fill you in on the details later—we must go, or risk antagonizing Peletier further.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ralph said.
“No.” I did want him to come with me, but I’d never admit it. I had my own agency to run, and it would make me look like a dumb bunny dilettante to tote a fellow with me. Peletier would probably speak to Ralph over my head and Berta’s. That’s what men did. “Here,” I said to Ralph, thrusting Cedric into his arms. “It would be a great help if you took Cedric—Peletier isn’t precisely sending fan mail his way. Would you meet us in the lobby of the Old Mill Inn in an hour or so?”
“If we are not nailed by the police and put under glass, that is,” Berta said grimly.
“Sure,” Ralph said, sounding slightly muffled because he was scrunching his face against Cedric’s enthusiastic licking. “Better yet, I’ll book myself a room.”
“They’re all sold out,” I said, “so—”
“Don’t worry.” Ralph winked. Or perhaps he was simply protecting his eye from Cedric’s tongue. “I’ll figure out something.”
Berta and I set out, weaving through the hushed, gawking crowd. Mr. Persons, the journalist, hovered nearby. I saw him take a stealthy snap of the covered body with his camera, but I doubted it would come out, since the area was lit only by juddering lanterns.
* * *
When Berta and I arrived at the police station, Sergeant Peletier was alone. He looked at us accusingly as we entered with a blast of cold air.
At Peletier’s desk, he slid a sheet of paper toward us in silence.
A note read in a quavering hand,
I killed Mother. I couldn’t bear that she was going to marry that oafish Maynard Coburn and abandon me, yet now I find that I cannot bear to live another day without her. Farewell, cruel world.—Fenton Burke Goddard
“Suicide?” I whispered. “Good golly.”
“Cyanide in his hot cocoa. George Goddard confirmed that this is indeed his brother’s handwriting, and there was a bottle of potassium ferricyanide—photographic stuff—in Fenton’s coat pocket, so that’s everything squared away, then,” Peletier said gruffly. He seemed embarrassed and relieved. “And there I was, thinking I’d have to get the County Sheriff involved. You’re free to leave Maple Hill.”
Relief flowed through me, and I saw that Berta’s shoulders sagged in relief.
But as we were climbing back into the Speedwagon, I said, “I can’t believe it.”
“Believe what?” Berta asked.
“That Fenton killed himself.”
“Does it not make perfect sense? Think of it. Realizing that his mother would abandon him once she married Maynard Coburn, he did the only thing he could think of—he killed her so that no one could ever, ever take her away. It is likely that George’s dalliance with Patience proved to be too painful for him, as well. Perhaps he fostered some insane hope that Patience would become the new woman to which he could attach himself, and yet her taking up with George—with that kiss Fenton himself photographed as proof—dealt the final blow. He could bear it no more.”
I started the engine and maneuvered onto the dark road. Ice glistened under the cast of the headlamps. “I can’t say that you don’t make it all wrap up neatly, Berta, but my gut tells me that Fenton was murdered, too. I spoke to him less than two hours ago. He didn’t seem happy, but neither did he appear to have suicide on the brain. He had been taking photographs—I wonder what of—and he said he wished to go to college, but his mother had never allowed it, and that now he felt free. He even told me about some love letters he’d seen in George’s bedroom—”
“Indeed!”
“—love letters from some girl named Juliet who writes with violet ink.”
A pause. “Could George have overheard your conversation?”
I thought of how Fenton and I had been standing behind the igloo. Anyone could’ve been just around the igloo’s curved walls or, perhaps, inside them.
“Yes, I suppose George could have overheard,” I said. “But all our other suspects were there tonight, too. Roy Ives. Maynard Coburn—”
“Patience Yarker.”
“And Rosemary—who likely served Fenton the cup of cocoa that wound up with poison in it. Anyone could’ve tipped a little cyanide into Fenton’s cocoa cup when he wasn’t looking, really. There was such a crowd, and such poor light.… The killer is craftier than we supposed. The killer set us up to be suspicious of Fenton with those photographs pinned up at the town hall, don’t you see? The killer is attempting to put us—to put everyone—off the scent.” Cold fear traced my spine. “And just think about it, Berta. Each suspect we interviewed in one way or another implicated Fenton as being unsettling, unpredictable, or downright dangerous.”
“And yet, Sergeant Peletier has absolved us from suspicion.”
“But what about the burnt dossier in Roy Ives’s fireplace? What about Patience arguing with Maynard Coburn? What about Rosemary slinking around the village like a guilty woman, and George possibly two-timing Patience, and the furry thing you saw in the forest—”
“Calm yourself, Mrs. Woodby. Although … I would like to know why Mr. Ives burned my dossier. All my hard work, burned to a crisp…” Berta sniffed. “Yet none of it matters anymore. Is that not a relief? We are free to go.”
“Yes,” I said with a sinking stomach. “Free.”
* * *
Ralph
and Cedric weren’t in the lobby when we arrived at the inn. Not that I had expected they would be. Ralph had said he’d figure out something, and experience had taught me that he always did.
Funny Papers was lounging behind the front desk, chewing gum with his head propped on his hand, staring glumly into space.
Berta got her key, said good night to me, and went upstairs.
I said to Funny Papers, “Has a man by the name of—”
“Mr. Woodby?” Funny Papers said around his chewing gum.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your husband. Mr. Woodby. Hauling that little dog of yours around? Ginger hair?”
“The man or the dog?”
“Well, both, actually. I directed Mr. Woodby to the airing cupboard.”
“Ah,” I said. “Thank you.”
My heart thumped as I went up to the third floor, and it wasn’t simply on account of the stairs’ steepness. Murder and guilt and bewilderment faded into the background. I felt as though Christmas had come early, because, quite unexpectedly, I was to have my gentleman caller all to myself.
Ralph always seemed like a gift. Sometimes when I was still not fully awake in the morning, I would think myself still trapped in my old, unhappy life, without love. Then I would open my eyes wide, remembering Ralph in a delighted flash, and I’d smile.
I wasn’t alone. I had love.
On the other hand—phooey. Having packed for Vermont with practicality in mind, I had only the frumpiest nightgowns and warm woolen underthings in my suitcase.
Reaching the airing cupboard, I gently rapped before I opened the door a crack. “Ralph?” I poked my head in. The bare lightbulb made the suspended drying bedsheets glow. Ralph lay on my cot in trousers, shirtless and shoeless, with Cedric curled up beside him. He lowered my copy of Christmas Romance magazine and smiled. “Hiya, kid.” He sat up.
“Hello.” I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, but I didn’t take my hands off the doorknob. The sight of Ralph’s bare skin and rounded muscles made me inexplicably shy.
Ralph gave the magazine a wiggle. “Gripping read. I just got to the part in ‘Meet Me Under the Mistletoe’ when the spinster librarian’s glasses fly off on the toboggan ride, and the handsome widower with the six kids suddenly realizes what a looker she really is. Say—what’s the matter? You’re here, which means the cops didn’t arrest you, so—”
