Terrible Tide (22 page)

“Hardly. That’s why Geoffrey invented Mrs. Brown.”

“Who was she?” Holly asked. “Not you, surely?”

“No, Geoffrey himself. He loves disguises. He even fooled me one day when he’d been out to see Roger and walked in here wearing some outlandish New Yorky getup. Green stockings, I remember. How ever did you catch on to his tricks so fast, Holly?”

“How could I miss? The first copy I came across had a stain of my own blood on it.”

Holly told them about the Bible box. “After that, it wasn’t hard to pick out others, and to find the little holes underneath where Roger’s nameplate had been taken off. I’d seen a scrapbook Fan kept with photographs and notes about all Roger’s different pieces before I went to Cliff House. Come to think of it, Fan showed the scrapbook to Geoffrey that night he came to dinner at Howe Hill.”

“Yes, and he had a fit,” said Claudine. “All those notes in his own handwriting, that he thought he’d got back safely! It never occurred to him she might have had them copied.”

“So that’s why Fan acted so strange about the scrapbook that day Geoffrey drove me back to Howe Hill. I asked to see it and she made a ridiculous excuse not to bring it out. I suppose Geoffrey’d stolen it by then and she didn’t dare let Roger know it was missing.”

“I’m sure he had. He was cocky enough a day or so later, bragging to me about how he’d had so much fun making you help him take pictures of a piece he was going to get Roger to copy. I warned him you’re no fool and I—I’m afraid he did listen to me for once. He said he’d give you a test. I don’t know what he meant.”

“I do,” said Holly. “Sunday morning he came to Cliff House with Earl and set up a group shot using a pair of piecrust tables Roger had made. When I saw what he’d done, I panicked. By then, you see, I’d made up my mind it must be Fan who was working the swindle. I had visions of all us Howes winding up in jail together if the photo ever got published. I thought I was terribly clever about working a razzle-dazzle switch to get the tables out of the shot.”

“You were,” said Claudine. “That’s what bothered Geoffrey. He came in here last night while I was talking on the phone to you. He said you were too bright and would have to go. I asked what he planned to do and he said not to worry, it was already done. Then he left and I remembered about those pills. I grabbed the keys to Ellis’s truck and headed for Cliff House as fast as I could. But he beat me.”

Claudine buried her face in her hands. “I suppose I’d known for a long time that Geoffrey was only using me. But when you’ve lived with dreams and illusions all your life, it’s hard to face the truth. Oh, God, how I want to be honest! I swear I shan’t mind going to jail. At least I’ll know where I am.”

“W
HAT MAKES YOU THINK
we’re going to turn you in?” Sam asked her.

Claudine stared at him from under swollen eyelids. “Why shouldn’t you? If I hadn’t pulled that awful trick with Mother and Great-aunt Mathilde, none of this would have happened. And if it hadn’t been for Holly, she and Annie and Mother and Bert Walker would all be dead by now, and it would be my fault.”

“Did you know Cawne intended to fire-bomb Cliff House?”

“Of course not! What do you think I am?”

“Did you know what was in that bottle of rum you sent up Saturday?”

“Some kind of mild sedative was what Geoffrey told me. You see, back when Annie was there alone, Geoffrey and his helper would just lock her in her bedroom when they were—working. They moaned around a little, I guess, and made her think it was ghosts. I hated having Annie scared like that, but—”

Claudine swallowed hard. “Anyway, with Holly around, Geoffrey said we’d have to step up our security measures. The sedative was supposed to be an experiment.”

“Some experiment!” snorted Neill. “Who put it in the bottle? You?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t have dared, for fear of poisoning somebody. My part was simply to send the rum on up with the groceries when Bert came. That’s why Geoffrey was here in the shop that day, Holly. He had the bottle under his jacket and dropped it in my basket while he was pretending to look at the stock. What a fool I’ve been!”

She looked ready to burst into tears again. Sam hastily asked her, “Who was the helper? Ellis?”

“Not Ellis. That was part of our bargain from the very beginning. I told Geoffrey I wouldn’t go along with him unless we kept Ellis clear out of it. I don’t know who helped him. I couldn’t go near the place, myself. I’d made that silly remark ages ago that I’d never set foot in Cliff House till we got our rights, and Geoffrey decided I’d better stick with it. Then if the thefts should ever be discovered, nobody would think to suspect me. Besides, it kept Ellis from having any more notions about Cliff House. I kept harping on our having too much pride to go back on our word and that sort of foolishness till he honestly believed we were involved in a big family feud. Ellis is easily led in some ways.”

“Then you don’t actually know how the furniture was got in and out?” said Holly.

“Only what Geoffrey told me. He’d worked out some kind of arrangement with a warehouse in Saint John. Your sister would deliver the copies there and Geoffrey would go and get them, disguised as a truckman. He always got such a kick out of pretending to be what he wasn’t. I sometimes wonder if he’s even a college professor.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Sam. “I tried to read that book of his on the Canadian poets. Most of it was cribbed, and the rest is pure hogwash. As for being a visiting lecturer, all I can say is that makes a great excuse for being someplace else at a convenient time. I sure wish we could find out who’s been fencing what he’s stolen.”

“At least I can ask Fan what warehouse she went to,” said Holly. She happened to glance out the window as she spoke and noticed oil spots splashed around the driveway. “Looks as if Ellis’s truck is in about the same condition as hers.”

“Oh, that old crate,” sighed Claudine. “He’s forever trying some crazy invention to make it run better, but they never work. It spews oil every time he steps on the gas. He has to keep a bicycle in the back for when it breaks down and he has to pedal back home. Anybody want another cup of tea?”

She was refilling the pot when the truck clattered into the yard. Loaded into its back was a late Victorian dresser, dripping wet and half stripped of its veneer. Sam got up and went to the door.

“Ellis, come in here.”

Claudine started to say something, but Holly shushed her. Young Parlett shambled into the kitchen, looking scared.

“Been hauling your traps, eh?” Sam remarked.

Ellis nodded.

“How much was Professor Cawne paying you to help him smuggle furniture in and out of Cliff House?”

“He never paid me a cent!” Ellis turned to his shocked sister. “Honest, Claudine, I’d never have gone against what you made me promise, only he threatened to turn me over to the Mounties. I didn’t dare let myself get arrested for fear they’d find out about—” he flushed scarlet and shut his mouth fast.

“It’s all right, Ellis,” said Holly. “We know about your mother and we’re not blaming you for doing what you did. Just tell us what Geoffrey Cawne put you up to.”

“He saw me putting a dresser to soak here in the cove once, so he got this bright idea about me doing it out at Parlett’s Point instead, buoyed to look like a lobster trap. I wasn’t supposed to know why, but I’m not quite so dumb as I look. I hung around till I found out he’s got somebody with a thirty-foot yawl who comes up into the bay when the tide’s right and sends a skin diver out at night in a dark-blue dinghy to make pickups. I was supposed to leave each piece for a week and not go near it in the meantime. That’s what I did. I never pinched anything, not even—”

“Not even after you found out what he was putting in the drawers,” Sam finished for him. “Okay, Ellis, I took a peek myself. How did you manage about the furniture?”

“We’d meet out back somewhere and he’d take my truck and drive off in it. He’d be got up in a ratty old flannel shirt and stuff so he looked just like any guy driving a truck. He can change his cap and rub a little dirt on his face and I swear you’d never think it was the same guy.”

“So that’s why you’ve been coming home on your bicycle and lying to me about the truck’s breaking down,” Claudine snapped.

“I had to say something, sis.”

“Save it,” said Neill. “Go on about the furniture, Ellis.”

“Well, the next night I’d have to meet him again out at Parlett’s Point. There’d be a big crate in the truck. We’d drive down onto the ledge and rig a hoist up over the face of the cliff. We couldn’t take the crate in through the yard, see, for fear Annie would find out and know we weren’t ghosts.”

He grinned, then caught his sister’s eye and sobered in a hurry. Claudine had turned white as a ghost herself.

“Ellis, do you mean to tell me you’ve been driving that mess of junk down on the ledge? You could have been drowned like a rat in a barrel.”

“Aw, what do you take me for? We had to time it right, that was all. I admit I was scared at first, but then it got to be kind of a game.”

“So you were playing games the other night,” Holly remarked.

“You mean when I locked you in the parlor? I’m sorry about that, but I had to.”

“On account of the man going out to the buoy? But I could see that out the window.”

“No, that wasn’t it. I didn’t even know he was coming. I was inventing something, if you want to know.”

“Something to dump gasoline down the chimney with?”

Ellis squirmed. “Cawne told me it would only be a smoke bomb. See, having you at Cliff House got him worried. You were too smart. It wouldn’t work long for us to just shut you in your room and make funny noises like we did with Annie. Cawne figured we’d better have some way to create a diversion. That’s what he called it. You don’t have to glare at me like that, Claudine. All I did was go up through the attic and out the trap door to the roof—”

“Ellis!”

“And fasten a couple of little pulleys to the lightning rods. Then I rigged a fishing line through them and led it over the top of the chimney, and dropped the ends of the line down to the ground. See, all you’d have to do was hitch the smoke bomb to one end of the line and haul on the other end till the bomb was right over the chimney, then slack off and whammo!”

“I guess ‘whammo’ describes it as well as anything.” In spite of himself, Sam began to laugh. “Well, Ellis, at least you’ve invented one thing that worked.”

“I don’t see anything funny about trying to make my brother an accomplice to murder,” said Claudine bitterly. “If I ever get my hands on Geoffrey Cawne again—”

The shop bell rang. Without waiting for an invitation, Earl Stoodley rushed into the kitchen. “Claudine, I need your name on these insurance papers, quick.”

“What for? There’s not going to be any Parlett Museum now.”

“Never mind the museum. I got a better idea. We clear away the rubble, turn the barn into a recreation hall and the old henhouse into a shower room, put in a few chemical toilets to save the cost of digging a septic tank, and set up a campground. Like Fundy National Park, eh, only smaller. It’ll bring in the tourists like—say, you folks heard the news?”

“About what?”

“The professor. Remember I told you he got hurt trying to save Mrs. Parlett? I doctored him up some, but I guess he figured he’d better drive himself down to Dr. Walker. He must have been in a bad way because he was gunning that Jaguar for all she was worth, according to Sergeant MacBeith. They’d got word down at police barracks about the fire and Sarge was on his way up when this gray car came at him hell a-whooping and swerved right into his path. MacBeith swears the driver was trying to force him off the road, but of course we know better. I figure the professor must have passed out from the pain. Anyway, the Jag hit a soft shoulder and skidded down over the cliff. The tide was making then, so there wasn’t a thing MacBeith could do but sit and watch.”

Stoodley shook his head. “Sarge says it was the awfullest thing he ever had to do, just watching that tide come in over the car. They got tackle down as soon as they could and managed to raise the car, but the professor was dead as a mackerel. Never knew what happened, I don’t suppose. It’s an awful loss to Jugtown, him and Cliff House both gone in one night, but I’ll pull us through in grand style. You wait and see. Any more tea in that pot?”

“Sorry, Earl,” said Holly firmly, “we’ve drunk it all. At least there’s one consolation. Mrs. Parlett came through without a scratch and she’s resting comfortably upstairs right now. So you’ll have to cool it with the tourist camp for a while.”

Even Claudine was laughing as the shop door closed on her stricken fellow trustee. Ellis looked from one merry face to another.

“Then you’re not going to tell?”

“What is there to tell?” said Holly. “Geoffrey Cawne is dead, Cliff House is burned to the ground, and who’d believe a crazy yarn like this anyway? Right, Sam?”

Neill put his arm around her. “Right. The Parletts have been punished enough already. Anyway, Holly and I have to keep on your sister’s good side. We’ll be needing my old baby-sitter again one of these days, maybe.”

The two young women embraced. The two young men pounded each other on the back. Holly started crying and Sam had to kiss her to make her stop. In the midst of it all, Bert Walker ambled in.

“What are you so all-fired het up about?”

They told him and he nodded. “I knew somethin’ was in the wind soon as Sam bought himself that bottle o’ fancy shavin’ lotion. Worst-tastin’ stuff I ever threw a lip over. Well, there’s another good man gone down the drain. Between you an’ me an’ the bedpost, he might not be the last.”

“Bert!” shrieked Holly. “You mean you and Annie—”

“Don’t rush me, drat it. I ain’t said I’d go so far as to marry ’er yet. But I s’pose I’ll have to or Lorraine will chew my ear off. You busted the news to your mother yet, Sam?”

“Haven’t had time, but we’ll do it today. Speaking of which, Holly, I suppose we’d better mosey on over to Howe Hill. Your brother must be tearing his pretty curls out by now.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” sighed Holly. “Wait till he and Fan find out they’ve lost a Brown and gained a Neill! At least I still have some clothes there, and a bed to sleep in, such as it is.