On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery (12 page)

Jacobus rose to add a few logs.

“What about you and the others here,” Daggett directed the question to Jacobus. “Do you remember seeing Mr. Johnson on the trail to Whale Cove? Or anyone else,” he added when Jacobus shook her head.

“Edith and I didn’t see him,” Willa reminded him.

Margaret Byington shook her head. “Claude Gilmore drove the three of us over to Dark Harbour early that afternoon,” she explained, indicating Manning as well as herself, “and we didn’t return until well after the excitement was over.”

“Miss Bromhall and Peter and Cobus and I were in the garden most of the afternoon,” Felix reflected. “I don’t recall seeing anyone, do you?” she turned to Winifred.

“Two men,” Winifred frowned, “but I didn’t really see them. Only their legs. And heard them talking. I was bent over picking beans and not really looking at the trail, you know.”

Daggett waited for Miss Bromhall to recall more details. When she didn’t, he asked what the men were wearing. She had only a vague impression, she said. They could have been wearing any kind of pants, except, perhaps, jodhpurs. The legs were loose, not snug. And dark, but she couldn’t say about colors. They were in the shade. She frowned again. She hadn’t seen their feet, only the bottoms of their legs. One of them walked in front of the other. Could she be certain they were men, Daggett asked to be sure. Oh, yes, she heard their voices but only a murmur.

Whale Cove Inn Living Room

Daggett raised his pencil off the page.

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you what they were saying,” she looked around at the group, “but there were two voices,” she turned to Daggett, “I am certain of that.”

Daggett leaned forward, “Could you tell what sort of accent they had?”

“American, I believe, but I’m not at all certain. I’m afraid I can’t always tell the difference from Canadian, and I couldn’t really hear their words,” Winifred watched Daggett’s pencil move on the page.

“Did they speak in regular tones or might they have been arguing?”

“Oh, I can’t say,” Winifred shook her head.

“Would you recognize their voices if you heard them again?” Jacobus interjected, moving to take her seat on the couch next to Winifred again.

“No, no, I can’t say,” Winifred shook her head at Jacobus and, frowning again in concentration, slumped deeper into the couch. “Oh, let me think,” she finally declared, staring vaguely in Daggett’s direction, her eyes not quite focused.

Lovely woman, Daggett sat quietly, waiting. Illustrated children’s books, he understood. British, professional, independent, and really quite lovely, he cocked his head on one side. Perhaps she was the reason Elizabeth and the others were occasionally so diffident about the Cottage Girls. Surely Elizabeth could see there was nothing to worry about here where Jennifer was concerned. These women might very well prove to be a good influence.

It was true Jennifer would acquire notions from them that were grander than Grand Manan, but Daggett himself had gone off island as a youngster. It hadn’t hurt him, and it wouldn’t hurt Jennifer. And it should be quite all right if Jennifer were to go to somewhere like the States or decide to get an education. Women did that these days. Then she could come back and start an island library as well as a family. The Cottage Girls would like that, Daggett glanced again at the books lining the shelves around room. It wasn’t like his wife to be so difficult. Besides, he returned to his internal argument with Elizabeth, look at all the fellows who went off island. They came back when they could. Young James, now, he was just back after two years in the States. Mary Daniels said he was glad to be back and wanted to stay. Most sons did who could figure out how to make a living on Grand Manan. Jennifer wouldn’t have to worry about that.

“It’s no use,” Winifred finally halted her retrospection. “I can’t remember anything more. I just didn’t pay that much attention,” her eyes conveyed genuine sorrow.

No one else recalled anything further. Jacobus and Felix had returned to the kitchen before the men passed by. They saw and heard nothing at all. And the others had told him all they could remember.

“What now?” Jacobus rose to poke the logs into a better position. The fire leapt up.

“Find out where the red button belongs, I guess, first thing in the morning,” Daggett closed his notebook and stretched his legs. Then he tucked the little notebook into the inner pocket of his jacket and let his open hand rest for a moment on his chest. He was reluctant to rise. It was warm and peaceful here.

R
OB
F
EENEY
’
S
late evening constitutional took him past Newton’s Bakery, where he remembered the encounter. The man with the vacant eyes meeting the woman with the blazing hair. And red shirt, Rob reminded himself. And now the whole island was gossiping about Sabra Jane Briggs. The Amazon killed the misogynist, everyone was saying, and did so because she hated men.

Rob had to laugh. He was certain that when he saw them in front of the bakery, they were meeting for the first time. Those eyes had widened before they narrowed, Rob remembered, and widened not from meeting the familiar but from discovering the unexpected … a woman dressed like a man.

“I suppose I should have asked, but I didn’t want Constable Daggett to think we, like everyone else, suspected Sabra Jane Briggs,” Alice Jordan was clearly rueful over the missed opportunity to hear about village gossip. And to hear it from the constable’s point of view, Mary reminded her.

When Daggett departed, the group around the fireplace broke up and the Jordans were just about to turn onto the path that ran along the orchard and up the hill to their cottage near the road. Willa and Edith would go straight on through the pines.

“Sabra Jane is planning to work on our wall again tomorrow afternoon,” Edith was happy to point out.

“Yes,” Willa finished Edith’s thought. “Perhaps we can ask her what she did when she left here yesterday,” Willa’s voice softened, “and about the button.”

“The missing button,” Alice’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I believe she would tell us,” Edith began to speculate. “She does seem to be a direct sort of person. Straightforward, I mean.”

“Like me is what you mean,” Willa laughed. “Edith tries to be diplomatic about my lack of polish, but we both know it’s a matter of country and class. Edith at least had Smith College to smooth out her western edges, but despite the years I spent in Pittsburgh, there’s not a drop of small talk in me and I have no patience for etiquette,” Willa tilted her head. “Of course, those are nothing compared to Yankee roundaboutness.”

Both Jordans smiled.

“But, seriously,” Willa added as an afterthought, “do you think Sabra Jane would be offended by our asking?”

“I wish I knew her better,” Alice turned to her sister, whose shoulders were in the midst of a shrug. “Cobus knows her fairly well. Why not ask her advice at breakfast?”

“Excellent idea,” Willa agreed and said good night, taking Edith by the elbow for their trek through the woods.

Moonlight slipped through the pines ahead, picking out in pencil points the path that led from the main house to their cottage. Behind them the orchard stood motionless in a light so stark it seemed almost to etch the young apples on their boughs.

“I’m not ready for sleep,” Edith turned her back to the woods and paced in reverse to keep the orchard in view, “are you?”

“I could sleep for days,” Willa yawned, “but I’ll settle for one good night.” She paused to look back. Edith had stopped.

“It is so beautiful,” Edith spoke each word separately, looking first at the orchard and then at the moon-full sky, too bright for stars.

Willa responded softly, “‘That tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies.’”

Edith smiled at Willa’s Byron and countered with Ben Jonson.

“Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, /…Now the sun is laid to sleep, / Thou that mak’st a day of night, / Goddess excellently bright.”

Willa yawned deeply.

“My favorite,” Edith confessed.

“Mmmm, but you omitted the poem in between.”

“I know. Somehow the poem doesn’t matter right now.”

“The moon matters. Fair Diana, ’tis a-hunting she will go.”

“We must, too,” Edith caught Willa’s hand to pull her along, “but not a-hunting. ’Tis too late this night for us.”

“Ummm, well beyond our bedtime.”

Edith responded with a yawn.

“This sleuthing is a tiring business,” Willa complained, “all that hiking in the afternoon and so much puzzling in the evening.”

“It does require a different kind of concentration,” Edith agreed. She saw again the intensity in Winifred’s eyes, and their conversation with Daggett began to replay itself in her mind.

“I wonder if Mr. Brown was one of the men Winifred saw. What do you think?”

“I am too sleepy to think and wondering about Mr. Brown will just keep us awake.”

“That and the moon,” Edith agreed. She often had a touch of insomnia.

When the path broke out of the woods just above their cottage, Edith halted again, her hand on Willa’s arm. The splash of moon-glow flooding the area struck her like a physical force. So moved she could not contain herself, Edith stretched as high over her head as her hands could reach, then drew her arms down and out, as if to encompass the whole of the scene before them, their cottage, the cliffs, the sea beyond.

“Listen to the crickets,” Willa said after a moment and touched Edith’s arm.

D
AGGETT LEFT THE
house early the next morning to walk the trail from Whistle Road to the waterfalls and inspect more carefully the sites Miss Cather and Miss Lewis described. He had removed the button from his wallet and placed it in his jacket pocket, where every now and then he touched it like a talisman. It was, he knew, exactly like the button missing from the left sleeve of Miss Briggs’ red shirt.

Daggett was in no hurry to arrest Miss Briggs. As far as he had been able to tell, even with opportunity and means, she had no motive. And there were several things he needed to check on first, not the least of which were the two men Miss Bromhall had noticed and the question marks he had placed in his notebook.

He had also to locate the third passenger to arrive with Mr. Brown and Miss Driscoll on the S. S. Grand Manan. The man had to be somewhere on the island. Daggett just didn’t know how to look for him. He should have insisted that Feeney’s young assistant open up the office the night before and retrieve the list of passengers. At least then he would have had a name. But it had been so late in the evening. And now it was so early, Daggett could only plan to swing by to see Feeney as soon as he finished checking out the trail. Or if something else intervened, perhaps when the steamer returned to North Head later that morning, Daggett could at least get a physical description. Possibly one of the crew had overheard a name.

Miss Driscoll had been of little help. She told Daggett she had not really looked at the man and had spoken only a word or two with Mr. Brown, nothing worth jotting into the notebook. Daggett could only hope the crew would prove more useful. He also intended to stop by Jackson’s Drygoods and ask about their supply of red shirts, Daggett touched the button again, but first he wanted to see for himself where the button had been lodged and look once more at the cliff. Miss Briggs could wait. It wasn’t likely she would leave the island.

“C
OME
on, man. What are you waiting for?” Little John Winslow’s voice was insistent, his manner abrasive.

Little John had arranged his stocky body, legs spread, elbows crooked, to occupy most of the room on the sidewalk in front of the North Head Bank. His small audience blocked Daggett’s progress toward the boat landing, where the S. S. Grand Manan was preparing to dock.

Little John’s entourage was already excited. Eva McDaniels, his eager disciple, had hitched her thin shoulders as high as she could and posted herself firmly beside Little John to glare at Daggett. The Winslow’s black-and-white puppy pranced and yapped and jumped against Daggett’s legs. Daggett reached down and patted the puppy’s head, then picked him up and handed him to Little John’s son Jocko.