The Blue Herring Mystery (2 page)

Djuna stared at the water of the brook, hurrying past them.

“Where does it go from here?” he asked curiously.

“Why, don’t you know?” asked Miss Annie. “It flows off to the west about three miles, and empties itself into the North River, just a little way from the railroad station at Beekman’s Landing, where you’re going to meet Bobby. I’m sure you’ve crossed it on the bridge, north of the village. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, sure!” exclaimed Djuna. “Is that Miller’s Brook, too? It’s much bigger there than it is here. I thought it was some other brook.”

“No, it’s the very same one,” Miss Annie assured him. “Of course, another, bigger stream, from up in the hills, feeds into it before it reaches the bridge. Or you might say Miller’s Brook feeds into the bigger stream. It just gets bigger as it goes along. That’s really how the village got its name — Brookville.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Boots to take us around that way after we meet Bobby,” said Djuna excitedly. “I’ll show it to Bobby and tell him we live at this end of it!”

By this time they had reached Aunt Candy Barnes’s house, which was surrounded by a neat white picket fence. Inside the front gate, Djuna tied Champ’s leash to one of the pickets, snapped the leash to his collar, and asked him to be patient while they went in to see Aunt Candy. Then they went up the walk and Miss Annie knocked with the big brass knocker fastened to the front door.

“She’s a widow, you know,” Miss Annie whispered, as they waited. “Her husband, Mr. Barnes, died years ago. So don’t ask any — oh, good morning, Aunt Candy!”

The door had opened and Aunt Candy stood there, smiling at them. She was a very old lady, heavily built, with snow-white hair and rosy cheeks. Little Miss Annie Ellery hardly came up to her shoulder.

“Oh, come in, come in, Miss Annie!” Aunt Candy exclaimed, beaming. “Mighty glad to see you! And you, too, Djuna! Come in, both of you!”

She led them into the big front room, in which a cheerful log fire was burning in a wide stone fireplace, and pointed to two chairs by the fire.

“Draw them chairs up closer to the fire,” she urged them, “and make yourselves comfortable! Weather’s a mite chilly still. I was just a-settin’ here, knittin’ another pair of socks for my boys. This pair is for Olin. Already finished a pair for Dolan. If it t’aint one, it’s t’uther!”

“You know, I’m ashamed of myself, Aunt Candy,” said Miss Annie. “I mean, I’m mixing business with pleasure this time, and that’s no way to visit. But a friend of Djuna’s is coming to visit him, all the way from Florida, and I thought I’d make an apple pie for the boys. And now I find that I’ve run all out of cinnamon and nutmeg! And I know Mr. Pindler hasn’t any on hand at his store. Could I just beg, borrow, or steal a little from you?”

“Why, of course,” said Aunt Candy. “I’ll just go and git it now, and then we can settle down for a good talk. Just you set down, and I’ll be right back!”

She bustled off to the kitchen, and Miss Annie gave a sigh of relief. Aunt Candy was back in a jiffy. Miss Annie thanked her, and then asked politely if Aunt Candy’s two sons were at home.

“No,” sighed Aunt Candy, settling herself in her armchair. “They’ve gone over to Brookville. Said they had some business to tend to at Beekman’s Landin’, but
I
know they’re only draggin’ a red herrin’ over their own trail. What they’ve
reelly
gone over to Brookville for is to watch some sort of foolishness on that there tellyvision set in the hotel over there. They can’t fool
me!
”

Djuna looked startled. “Excuse me, Aunt Candy,” he said, “did you say a
red
herring? We had herring for breakfast, but they weren’t red. They were
brown!
”

Aunt Candy chuckled. “Of course,” she agreed. “What I said about a red herrin’ is just a old sayin’. Near as I can explain it, draggin’ a red herrin’ over somebody’s trail just means tryin’ to
trick
somebody — for instance, when one of them magicians in a theayter tells everybody to be sure to keep watchin’ his
right
hand, chances are he’s goin’ to do some trick with his
left
hand, and he don’t want you should watch it. A red herrin’ is just suthin’ to fool people with.”

“But why does it have to be a
red
herring?” Djuna persisted. “And how could you drag a little fish like that?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Miss Annie. “Just as Aunt Candy says, it’s a very, very old saying, or expression. Maybe it goes back, hundreds of years, to the days when people in England first began hunting foxes with a pack of hound dogs. Of course, the dogs used to follow the fox by the scent he left behind him, and when the dogs lost the track somebody would say that a red herring must have been dragged across the trail, so that the dogs were tricked into going off on a wrong scent. Perhaps a red herring smells fishy enough to drown out any other smell there is. And there’s another old saying, you know — when you say something ‘smells fishy’ you mean there’s something crooked or tricky about it. But I don’t really know why.”

“Are some herrings red?” asked Djuna. “I mean, not brown, like ours were?”

“Not to begin with,” said Aunt Candy, smiling at his persistence. “There used to be a kind of herrin’ that everyone ate around here that was called red herrin’. They was herrin’ that was smoked and then dried.”

“Jeepers!” exclaimed Djuna, looking puzzled. “You mean you smoke ’em like a cigar?”

“My goodness, no!” Aunt Candy laughed. “After you catch ’em you put ’em down in brine — that’s water with lots of salt in it, you know — to keep ’em. Then, when you’re ready, you take ’em out an’ soak the brine out of ’em for two or three, or mebbe four days. Then you put ’em in a mixture of molasses and bay leaves an’ other things and then you put ’em in a smokehouse an’ smoke ’em for a couple of days. That’s what turns ’em red, or sort of, inside.”

Djuna thought this over in silence — for about two seconds.

“Then what color are they before they are smoked?” he demanded.

“Blue!” replied Aunt Candy, firmly. “A kinda dark blue. Almost black-blue, reelly. On the back, at least. Lower down their sides, they’re sort o’ yellowish, in spots, and then they’re white. On their stummicks, I mean. Like silver, almost.”

She thought for a moment. “No,” she said at last, “there ain’t no sech thing as a
red
herrin’ — leastways, I’ve never seen one.”

Djuna thought this over. But while he did so, and in fact ever since he had entered the room, he kept staring at some long poles hanging on the side wall opposite him. They were resting on pegs fastened to the wall. One of them was nearly twenty feet long. Others were shorter. Some were tipped with sharp-pointed blades of rusty steel. They looked like terrible weapons, such as soldiers of King Arthur’s time might have carried. But what were they doing in this peaceful old lady’s house? Finally, he could not hold in his curiosity any longer. “Excuse me, Aunt Candy,” he burst out, “but what are those poles on the wall?”

Aunt Candy turned her head. “Those?” she said. “Oh, those belonged to my gre’t-grandfather. Cap’n Jonas Beekman, his name was. He was cap’n of a whaler. Them short ones be harpoons. That longest one, that’s a whalin’ lance. Many a big whale that one has killed, I reckon!”

Djuna jumped to his feet. “Jeepers!” he exclaimed. “May I look at them, Aunt Candy? I never saw one before.”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t go to touch ’em, if I was you,” she said. “You wouldn’t want one of ’em to fall on you.”

Djuna crossed the room and gazed up at the array of lances and harpoons in awe and wonder. His fingers itched to take one of them down, but he resisted the impulse. There was one long one, he noticed, that was unlike the others — at one end it had the usual lance point, but at the other end was fastened an iron crossbar, the ends of which were bent into hooks.

“What was that one for, Aunt Candy?” he asked, pointing at it.

“That?” she answered. “That’s what they call a waif-pole. They used that when they killed a whale late in th’ day, too late to tow it alongside th’ ship, and had to let it drift during the night. They’d stick th’ lance end of th’ pole into th’ dead whale, and hang a lighted lanturn onto th’ top end, so’s they could see where it was durin’ th’ night, an’ no other whaleship could claim it.”

“Why did they call it a waif-pole?”

“Well, you know what a waif is, don’t you? A lost child, that’s what a waif is. Only, they didn’t want their whale t’ git lost!”

And Aunt Candy chuckled again.

Miss Annie interrupted. “Djuna, you won’t let us get in a word edgewise!” she said. “Can’t you let Aunt Candy and me have a minute’s peace?”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Aunt Candy. “Whalin’ was mighty interestin’ business.” She heaved her big body from the chair. “Jest you wait, Djuna, I’ll git you a book you might like t’ look at.”

She stepped briskly across the room to a large wooden chest which stood beneath the poles racked on the wall. Lifting its lid, she drew out a large flat book, carefully bound in yellow oilskin cloth, to protect it from dampness.

“There you be,” she said, placing it in Djuna’s hands. “That there is the logbook of th’ last whalin’ voyage old Cap’n Jonas ever made. Mebby you’d like to look at it.”

“Oh, boy,
would
I!” exclaimed Djuna. Rushing back to his chair, he began to turn the stiff, ink-blotted pages slowly over, one by one; and for the next ten minutes, although Miss Annie and Aunt Candy were talking away at a great rate, he didn’t hear a word they said.

He looked up only once, and that was to ask Aunt Candy if she could tell him what Captain Jonas Beekman looked like.

“Goodness, I’m not
that
old!” she laughed. “It must be all of seventy years since he died, an’ that was before I was born! But my grandmother — she was his daughter, ye see — she told me he was a mighty powerful big man. An’ she told me that th’ night he died —”

She paused suddenly. “Now, this is right curious!” she remarked, “seein’ as how we were just this minute talkin’ about herrin’. What I was just goin’ t’ say was that my grandmaw told me that th’ very last thing th’ Cap’n said, th’ night he died, was su’thin about herrin’! He’d been tossin’ around in his bed, sort of mutterin’ — she couldn’t make out a word he was sayin’ — and all of a suddent he sort o’ r’ared his-self up on one elbow, an’ he says to her su’thin’ about a blue herrin’. ‘Lift th’ blue herrin’,’ he says, or su’thin’ like that. An’ then he fell back, an’ never said another mortal word, not in
this
life! Poor old man, his mind must ha’ been wanderin’, that’s all. ‘Lift th’ blue herrin’’ — it just didn’t make
sense!
”

Djuna thought this over in silence, but asked no more questions before he went back to his study of the old captain’s last voyage. The writing was crabbed and hard to read, some of the pages were blotted and stained by salt water, and many words misspelled — even the name of the vessel, which, written at the top of the first page, appeared in the words:

LOG Of the Wailing Bark DUCHESSE of DUTCHESS on a Vyage tords the Coast of Japan 1858

“Jeepers,” Djuna said, as there was a lull in the conversation between Miss Annie and Aunt Candy. “Captain Beekman had an awful funny way of spelling some words.”

“He ne’er had much learnin’,” Aunt Candy said with a smile. “He went t’ sea when he was knee-high t’ a grasshopper. They didn’t get much schoolin’ in them days. He wan’t no reader, neither. That is, except th’ Bible. He was a great Bible reader in his las’ years, Grandmaw tol’ me. You notice every so often he jots down a chapter and verse of some book of the Bible in his log?”

“Yes,” Djuna said. “That’s what he did right here. Look!”

And he pointed to a page in the log-book where the old Captain had written these words, under a blotted date:

“Then,” Djuna went on, “I suppose those chapter and verse numbers mean he had been reading the Bible that day, but golly, there are an awful lot of different books
in
the Bible, and he doesn’t say which one! Maybe he wrote it on the next page, but that page is
gone!
Someone must have torn that page out.”

Djuna looked up and his eyes widened a trifle as he saw that Aunt Candy’s lips were pressed together in a straight line and an angry flush had crept over her face. She was staring at the log on Djuna’s lap and after a moment she muttered, “Yes, a page got tore out by accident.”

Djuna rose and handed the old book back to Aunt Candy. “Thanks an awful lot,” he said. “I’d like to look at it some more, some day, if you don’t mind.”

“Why, certain’y!” said Aunt Candy. “Any time you like!” She was staring down at the open book at the place where the page had been torn out and Djuna wondered if he had said something that made her look so angry.

“I think we’d better be getting along, Miss Annie,” Djuna said. “I’ve got to go all the way to Beekman Landing with Mr. Boots to meet Bobby, and —”

“Land’s sake, you’ve got plenty of time,” Miss Annie said as she rose. “But I better get back and bake that pie.”

As Djuna and Miss Annie started home, Djuna glanced back. Aunt Candy was standing at the window with the torn book in her hands, looking at it. And the expression on her face was very grim.

D
JUNA WAS SO
worried for fear he wouldn’t get to the railroad station, in time to meet the train Bobby Herrick was coming on, that he kept begging Miss Annie to hurry as they walked home.

“Stop worrying!” said Miss Annie. “Mr. Boots said he didn’t need to start until one o’clock, and it isn’t even twelve yet. You’ve got plenty of time for lunch. Just calm down!”

“I think I’m too excited to eat anything,” said Djuna. To prove it, when they got home he gobbled down two large meat-loaf sandwiches, two glasses of milk, and a half dozen cookies. Then he fed Champ, fastened his leash to the ring that would slide back and forth on the wire stretched between two posts in the backyard, and rushed off to Mr. George Boots’s carpenter shop.