Of Dubious and Questionable Memory (5 page)

“To more woods. Then more woods the same. I walked as far as I could without getting lost. But I didn't want to completely abandon you. There are no footprints. No sign of broken branches.”

“The young man I spoke to—Nicholas—he also works at the Wright Tavern doing odd jobs.”

Merinda sparked alive. “Really!”

“I know—the pamphlet! But Merinda, Concord is not that large, and of course tourists roam all the sites. That really doesn't provide any help toward uncovering what happened to Del.”

Merinda merely nodded and tugged me in the direction of the Emerson House, our next stop. “We shall see.”

The Emerson House was bright with the chatter of visitors, and I sincerely enjoyed learning about the life of the great wordsmith. After the guide formally excused himself, we were free to roam the first floor. Merinda, thankfully, was eager to take her time in case we stumbled upon something of interest.

That something turned out to be the raised and haughty voice of a man whose broad shoulders suddenly commanded the front foyer.

“You must have seen her!” he angrily confronted the man at the desk. “She loves Emerson. Walden. All those poets.”

The man at the desk cleared his throat. “I think you mean Mr. Thoreau, sir. Walden is a pond—”

“What's it to me if it's a man or a pond?” the man thundered.

“I have a logbook of guests. Perhaps you would like to see it? No one is required, of course, to leave their name and address, but many are kind enough to leave an encouraging comment.”

The haughty man demanded the book and then flipped through the pages with apparently little success, or so his string of curses led us to believe.

“Sir, would you please desist in such language? If you continue, I must ask you to leave the premises!”

Merinda and I waited until the man slammed the front door before smiling at the befuddled fellow behind the desk and thanking him for the experience. I left a comment in his book.

“Only follow someone if you are sure there is no more than a five-percent chance of detection,” Merinda muttered, quoting her favorite detective manual as we exited. We set our feet on a slow road bordered with wide, green spans of grass and picket fences. The solidly built angry man stomped ahead. “In this landscape, I estimate an eighty percent chance of his noticing us.” We swerved and let him go on his way.

“It's clear he was speaking about Del,” I said as we kept in stride, using Miri's map to find our way back to our inn for a bite of lunch and a chance to properly unpack our trunks.

The Colonial Inn nestled on a perfectly manicured lawn. Autumn was in full color inside, with wreaths of red and gold leaves and bright,
overfull cornucopias. Merinda smiled at the woman tending the front desk, who was fidgeting with the screw on her glasses.

“Ah—Miss Herringford, Mrs. DeLuca. Welcome back, ladies. Oh, Mrs. DeLuca, a telegram arrived while you were out. This was forwarded from Boston.” She fussed with a small pile of papers at the desk, finally extracting one and handing it to me.

I read it quickly and then shoved it in my pocket. Merinda looked at me with an inquiring eye, but I just shook my head. Ray's words were for me and me alone.

“Might I use your telephone for a long-distance call?” I asked.

“Of course. Anything you need.”

“It's to Canada,” I continued.

“You can see Walter in the back, and he will be more than happy to assist you.”

Merinda went up to the room to unpack, and I went to the telephone with the intention of catching Ray at the
Hog.

A man named Walter stood sentry by the telephone, and he held it out to me with ceremony. “To Canada?”

“To Toronto,” I said, giving him the exchange number.

He laughed. “You must have a neighbor, late of Concord. I put in a similar number not two days back.”

I swallowed my surprise and waited for the connection. Ray wasn't at the office, so I left a message with stern Mr. McCormick—which I wasn't entirely sure the old editor would remember to relay.

Merinda and I took a late lunch at the Liberty restaurant. She was into her second helping of rich molasses bread sopped in squash soup when we looked up to find the angry man from the Emerson house approaching our table.

“You two those lady detectives Miri and George Winthrop brought?”

Merinda nodded. “And you are Robert Hutton, I presume.”

We invited him to sit. As he tucked into his own repast, he spoke mournfully and melodramatically of his beloved fiancée's disappearance. “So close to coming into her inheritance!” He took a large bite. “And our wedding.”

“I understand you had a bit of a row.”

“Del's a free spirit. That's part of why I love her, but she follows her heart into these silly causes. Highly inappropriate and probably dangerous. Those radicals who bomb things.” He slapped his open palm on the table.

“She may just be interested in reading a differing view,” Merinda said, trying to placate him.

“I just want her to find the happiness her sister has.”

Merinda, sipping her tea, spluttered and nearly choked. “Yes. Her sister seems quite happy,” she said through gritted teeth and a pasted-on smile.

The remainder of the meal was painful. So much so that Merinda even waved away the dessert menu, despite her love for the delicacies it offered, in hopes we would be spared a few more incessant minutes of this man's gargantuan ego.

After an unproductive stroll to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, we realized we had little to go on other than the list of locations Miri had given us. Dozens of visitors, hikers, and enthusiasts of all sorts descended upon Concord daily, and the residents didn't bother to distinguish them. Del had no remarkable traits. She was pretty, slender, of light coloring and hair, but there was nothing so distinctive as to spark a strong memory.

The police constable was happily at his post, doing the crossword and smacking a wad of chewing tobacco when we approached him.

“You're the only officer on duty?” Merinda said.

“I'm the only officer,” he replied proudly.

“And when a missing girl was reported?”

He doodled on his crossword page and said perfunctorily, “I did the best I could, but I thought it best for the Boston police to take over.”

“There's not a lot of crime in Concord, I take it.”

“A bit of petty theft. One fellow thought it was a lark to sink old man Trumble's wagon in Walden Pond. That was a night, all right.”

I thanked him for his time while Merinda concentrated on keeping laughter from spilling out until we had reached the street and passed a gaggle of beribboned women en route to a tea sponsored by the Ladies'
Auxiliary to Honor the Dearly Fallen, or so the banner they carried before them said.

“Ladies, excuse me,” I said kindly. “You haven't heard anything about a missing girl, have you?”

“Of course they haven't,” Merinda said, grabbing my elbow and leading me away. “And if they had, it would have circled the town in chittering gossip twelve times by now. I think it's time for a cup of tea.”

Chapter Four

Late that night, well after the supper hour, Merinda and I exchanged our dresses for tweed coats and pants in preparation for the Labor meeting. The evening was awash with mellow light spilling from the shutters as we made the short trek to the Wright Tavern.

We found our seats amid the bustling congregation of mostly male attendees. The group seemed in high spirits, likely due to the tankards of ale we saw in many hands. A stove in the corner sputtered a bit but provided little warmth. I shivered despite my tweed coat and knit scarf.

“Quite appropriate for them to meet here where the revolutionaries rallied,” Merinda said, taking in the history of the place.

We were greeted with smiles from a small group of women settling into the row in front of ours. They had taken the train from Amherst, we learned. Merinda said we were from Toronto visiting our cousin, and that we were interested in the workings of the anarchist movement in the States. She wanted to bring back information, she said. She was much better at keeping her voice low than I, but these Federation women took us for who we were in an instant.

Finally, we whipped off our hats and let our hair trail free.

“I keep forgetting this town isn't stupid enough to have a Morality Squad,” Merinda whispered to me before leaning forward in her chair and asking around about Del, showing people a photograph she had secured from Miri just as we were leaving Boston—a girl who had seemed to have every intention of joining this group.

No one had heard of Delphina Barton, of course, but they said that wasn't entirely unusual. They were all one in pursuit of a singular cause, and names were of little consequence.

Finally, the congregation came to order and the last stragglers took their seats.

I learned from the first speaker that Massachusetts housed several textile and fabric mills, and each was on the brink of an uprising. Children as young as seven worked fifty-six-hour weeks in dark, dingy conditions with little pay. The children were malnourished, their growth was stunted, and the poor air conditions caused lung problems. As the man spoke, I could tell Merinda, like myself, was thinking of the working conditions at Spenser's shirtwaist factories back home.

As applause followed the speaker to his seat, an upturned hat was passed around to pay for the medical care of an injured worker in nearby Amherst.

Then a familiar figure rose from the middle of the crowd and made for the podium. It was Nicholas Haliburton from Orchard House, raking his fingers through his shock of white-blond hair and smiling broadly at the crowd.

He had an immediate and winsome charm, all blue eyes and boyish smile. His earnestness was arresting.

“I grew up privileged,” he began. “I never went to sleep with my stomach complaining for food. My hands and face were not chapped and cracking with the winter chill. I do not suffer from the inability to read and write. But there are children who cannot say the same. Children who hunger, who long for warmth and love. That's the essence of God, isn't it? Love.”

Merinda gripped my hand at the mention of the familiar quotation. Nicholas continued with a vision about his great plans for the future, with fair pay and equal treatment for all.

After the rally, we waited to speak to him. He looked as surprised to see us as I had been to see him. He took in our male attire.

“I thought I made you out in the crowd, Mrs. DeLuca.” His voice was pleasant as he took my hand. “But I could hardly believe it. What are you doing here? And dressed like that!”

“We're doing what the police have failed to do!” Merinda spoke before I could, extending one of our business cards. “I'm Merinda
Herringford. You've met my associate. We are here to find Del Barton. It could be you know where she is.”

“How do you know that?”

“We found evidence that she meant to attend this meeting. If you are as renowned in this circle as you were tonight, surely you must have encountered her.”

“Lady detectives.” Nicholas smiled evasively as he turned Merinda's card over in his palm. When he spoke again it was with boyish amusement. “Surely we all would have heard about a missing woman. I said as much to Mrs. DeLuca this afternoon. Concord is a small place, Miss Herringford.”

“Well,
we
heard about it in Canada,” Merinda emphasized, much to Nicholas's surprise. He tugged at his collar, a nervous gesture both Merinda and I noticed even as his smile stretched winningly. “Women don't just vanish, Mr. Haliburton. And I want to know why this was written on her pamphlet for this very meeting if you had never heard of her before.” She thrust the pamphlet at him, and he squinted at what was written there.

“ ‘Love is the essence of God,'” he read. “Ralph Waldo Emerson, Miss Herringford. Not exactly a secret code. Surely you've noticed how proud Concord is of its literary heritage.”

Merinda looked doubtful of this statement but remained quiet.

“And you thought the Labor Federation had something to do with her disappearance?” Nicholas asked.

“You're sure a fresh face hasn't attended a meeting in the past week?”

“There are always new faces,” Nicholas said, his eyes kindly meeting mine. “Lots of folks come from out of town. But I haven't seen your missing woman.”

Merinda studied Nicholas closely. He was polite and warm, but clearly the conversation was over.

When his back was turned and his small entourage moved in the direction of the door, Merinda held a shushing finger to my lips and pulled me behind the podium. I saw Nicholas looking around one last time before switching off the electric light and setting out into the night. He assumed we had left already.

Alone, Merinda made for the podium, but Nick had left no abandoned notes or scraps of paper.

We stole out the back door and across the street to the inn. “One person in this small town has to remember seeing Del Barton!” Merinda let out a frustrated sigh.