Witch Cradle (22 page)

Chapter Forty-Two

It took about four hours, at the end of which McIntire possessed a list showing every taxpayer in Flambeau County as it existed in 1934. Now all he needed to do was discover which of them were from households that included males over eighty years of age and hope the mystery man had been a resident of Flambeau County. That might turn the four hours into four years. But Leonie's original premise was a good one, and if he limited himself to St. Adele Township, population three hundred fifty, he had a fighting chance.

According to his calculations, the St. Adele personal property tax rolls, and the 1930 census report, the number of males over age seventy-five—might as well be on the safe side—numbered seventeen. Eliminating those he was positive, from personal knowledge, had not died in the arms of Rose Falk left McIntire with eleven possibilities.

Birth and death certificates were filed and recorded by the township clerk before being turned over to the county. That meant that McIntire had only to locate those record books rather than seek out the certificates themselves. Those books, up to and including 1945, were stored right here in the county courthouse.

Each of the eleven possibilities was represented by an entry in one of the books. The entries were numbered consecutively beginning with the first death of the year, included the date the death certificate was received, and each entry was signed by the township clerk. One of the elderly had died in 1934. Einar Hegstrom had succumbed to heart failure. Didn't everyone, when it came down to it? That was in late June.

The next octogenarian death was entry number two of 1935, filed July first. Dr. Cedric Hudson had drowned.

McIntire had a single vivid memory of the doctor who'd preceded Guibard. Hudson had come to the house when McIntire had an earache. While he rocked in agony, the doctor, ancient even then in Johnny McIntire's eleven-year-old eyes, had heated one of his mother's darning needles in the flame of a kerosene lamp. It glinted in the light as he held it up. “Hold him still.” McIntire had screwed his eyes shut and pressed his face into his mother's arm. A lightning bolt of pain, a pop deep inside his head, and it was over. When he opened his eyes, his savior was turned away, dabbing a handkerchief at a streak of yellowish brown on his white shirt front. Sophie McIntire had turned down the doctor's suggestion that he do the other ear “just in case.”

The only other thing McIntire knew about the doctor, or thought he knew, was that he'd drowned when his car went through the ice. Even in Lake Superior that didn't generally happen in July.

McIntire went in search of the ponytailed assistant registrar, Pamela, to ask that she fetch the death certificate. Then he went in search of a chair to settle himself in for the wait. It was less than an hour. Pamela was mastering her trade, or at least the alphabet.

The date of Hudson's birth was listed as December 20, 1848, which would have made him eighty-six when he died, of drowning, on—McIntire looked again—November 3, 1934. So he hadn't gone through the ice after all, even the bay wouldn't have been frozen by that time, but he also hadn't lived until the following July when the certificate was filed.

McIntire felt a tap on his shoulder and gave a leap.

“Must be some great reading if a guy my size can sneak up on you.” Pete Koski leaned against the table. “What's up?”

“Do you remember a Cedric Hudson? Lived out my way and drowned in nineteen thirty-four.”

“Before my time. Why?”

“He was a doctor. At least he claimed to be. I think I'll take a stroll over to Teddy Falk's sanctuary and find out if Hudson ever treated his wife.”

“Falk's getting out. There ain't no point in keeping up feeding him 'til we got some evidence to charge him. He's got too many people interested in him to go anywhere. And I'll just be hanging on to his car for a while. That's why I came looking for you. To see if you can give him a ride out to—guess where.”

“Pelto.”

“Bingo.”

McIntire stood up. “Let Teddy know I'll be back for him in a half hour. I'm going over to the newspaper office for a bit.”

McIntire said hello to Clayton Beckman and descended to the basement cubicle where seventy-five years' worth of the
Chandler Monitor
was stacked on pine plank shelving, more or less in chronological order. It was front page news, November 5, 1934. As three witnesses looked on “aghast,” Cedric Hudson, retired physician, had taken his fishing boat onto Lake Superior in a raging gale, where it had filled with water and sunk “with awe-inspiring speed beneath the icy waves,” in an estimated sixty feet of water. Which meant—same old words, same old tune—his body wouldn't have been recovered. At least not until the following spring or summer.

***

McIntire put his question to Falk before they were a half mile out of town.

“I don't remember Rosie ever seeing a doctor. She didn't get sick.” Falk used his mitten to wipe at the side window. “I'd forgot how much snow you get here.”

“I forget every summer,” McIntire told him. “It's a surprise every year. Do you remember Cedric Hudson at all?”

“I don't think so, but I didn't live here that long. I only moved here when I married Rose.”

“How did you meet your wife? Your first one, that is.”

Falk didn't show surprise at McIntire's knowledge of his second marriage. “Finn Hall.”

The silence stretched. Falk cleared his throat. “I didn't expect to ever get back to America. Rose left me. There wasn't any reason I shouldn't have got married again.”

“No,” McIntire said. “I guess not. I shouldn't have mentioned it.” He tapped the brakes and lurched across an icy patch. “I understand your second wife is still in her home country.”

Falk's response was a movement of his head that could have been a nod. McIntire didn't bother to express sympathy, or to ask how Falk had managed to get out of the Soviet Union. He wouldn't get the truth. He wondered if anybody from the FBI had questioned the man while he was in jail—had tried to find some link between the two of them.

Falk pulled a pack of Luckys from his shirt pocket. “I got two kids. I guess I'll never see them again.”

Once again McIntire felt chagrin over his thick-headedness. Of course Teddy might not have come here by choice, other than a choice between the U.S., leaving a hostage family behind, and a Soviet prison or worse. What would happen to him and to his family now, with Melvin Fratelli on his tail?

“I'm sorry.”

“They don't know I'm here. They think I'm dead.”

“I'm sorry,” McIntire said again.

He left Falk at the end of Pelto's driveway and headed for the narrow road that ran past the tavern formerly owned by Colin McIntire and down to the lakeshore. To the northeast, beyond the narrow bay with its village of ice fishing shanties, Lake Superior lay hard and blue, and benign. Not a swallower of old men. He shivered.

He turned in at Mark Guibard's icicle-wreathed house.

He expected to find the doctor with a chair drawn up to the table near the window, reading his newspaper or playing a game of solitaire while he watched the sun setting behind the hills. A glass and a crumb-filled plate testified that Guibard had been in his customary spot, but the paper next to them was still folded, and the cards were in the box.

He pulled out a chair for McIntire and fetched another glass.

“We figured it was suicide.” Guibard squinted to pour two precise measures of the Canadian whiskey. “He headed straight out into the lake. The boat flipped and sank out of sight.”

“Whose sight?”

“What's that?”

“Who were the three aghast witnesses?”

“Elsie Karvonen and one of her kids, and somebody who'd come into the store. I forget who. Cedric went out onto the bay in one hell of a gale and made a bee-line for the open lake. I suppose he could have passed out or something, had a heart attack or stroke maybe, but I'd put my money on suicide. He sure as hell wasn't out there fishing. And he'd shown some signs—getting his house in order, withdrawn.”

“I don't suppose his body turned up?”

“No.”

“But you signed a death certificate.”

“We had an inquest. All the evidence was that he was dead. He had a grandson that wanted it official.”

“Did Hudson have false teeth?”

“Damned if I know. John, if you figure this has something to do with Rose Makinen, forget it. Hudson didn't die until sometime late in the fall.”

“When did he stop practicing medicine?”

“Practicing, good word for it. He never really got past the practicing stage, and practice did not make perfect. Maybe I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but the man was worthless! He didn't have any real training that I know of. He worked for a couple of the mining companies, and took outside patients, too. People went to him because he was all they could get. It wasn't long after I took over in Chandler that he retired and moved out here full time, into the old lighthouse. Not the old lighthouse that's there now, the one on the other side of the point.”

McIntire nodded. The
really
old lighthouse. Ironically, it had washed away in a storm.

“It was a nice spot. Nothing there now. He didn't practice medicine after he came here…to any extent…only….” Guibard shuffled his deck of cards. “Maybe you
should
find out about his teeth.”

“Who would know? Except you. Did you ever treat him? Get him to open his mouth and say aaah?”

“No, I didn't, and he lived to be a hell of a lot older than the majority of my patients.”

“And died still able to get out in his boat.”

“People better look out, I'm going to be back at it again.”

“Back at what?”

“Curing or killing. It's happened, Palmerson's been called up.”

The world was going straight to hell. Old deaths were the best deaths. “Maybe it won't be for so long.”

“I ain't counting on it. Take your vitamins.”

“Back to the other doctor,” McIntire said. “Karvonen's store must be a half-mile from the lighthouse.”

Guibard nodded. “More like three-quarters.”

“So anybody watching from the store could have seen Hudson's boat on the lake, but wouldn't have been able to tell for sure who was in it.”

“I guess not.”

“And his body never washed up?”

“You gonna start looking for another stiff, count me out.”

“Maybe it was Jack Stewart,” McIntire said. “Sorry.”

“That boat and whoever was in it,” Guibard pointed out, “went into the lake two or three months after Rose Falk died. If Hudson had been gone all that time wouldn't somebody have noticed?”

“Nobody noticed Rosie missing.”

“Because people expected her to be gone.”

That was only partly true. Rose had family and friends who expected her to be away, right enough, but they knew where she should be and they might have expected to hear from her. Presumably that was true of Hudson, also. That grandson, for instance. “Who would be most likely to have missed Doctor Hudson?” he asked.

Guibard scratched the back of his neck. “You might have a point. Old Cedric wasn't the sociable sort.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Mia stared into the open cupboard. It was looking more Mother Hubbardish every day. And she was getting hungrier every day. She was beginning to get an inkling of the way many of her neighbors lived. The way Nelda Stewart had probably lived most every day of her life. No, that was stupid. Her and Nick's hardships weren't even close to Nelda's and a lot of others she could name. Yet.

But there was no yeast. They'd have to make do with baking powder biscuits. Which meant she'd need to wait until Nick tore himself away from hacking at those trees and could go to the cellar for some milk. At the rate he was working, he might have the job done by 1960. He was probably in no rush, he'd nothing better to do and it gave him an excuse to stay out of the house.

His back was turned toward her and he was bent down, struggling to use the buck saw with only one hand. She knew that if he turned, the face she saw would be that of a stranger. If she could bear to look at it at all.

She put her fingers to her chest, where the tiny lock of hair lay next to her heart. A soft, warm part of her baby, her tiny perfect Nicola, and he'd kept it from her. It would be with her forever now.

The irregular rasp of the saw was drowned by the grumble of an approaching car. The arrow-shaped nose of John McIntire's Studebaker appeared from behind the snowbank and turned into the driveway with Leonie at the wheel. She was brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to plow her way through the snow-choked driveway to stop near the house. It gave Mia no time to sweep the crumbs from the table or pick up the dirty towels, but for once she didn't care. If Leonie McIntire was offended by the disorder in Mia's kitchen, let her stay in her own. If she was fussy, she might just try muddling along with a broken leg and a helpless husband, herself. She'd see how her own kitchen ended up.

“I'm on my way to town, Mia, and I stopped to see what I could pick up for you.” Leonie smiled and touched Mia's arm, but the words were more of an order than an expression of neighborliness.

“I could use some yeast.”

“Milk?”

“We buy it from Irene Touminen. She's been bringing a quart over every couple of days.” And it was now in the cellar, Mia remembered. “Do you have time for coffee?”

Leonie hesitated for just a moment. “Yes, thank you. That would be lovely.”

She didn't insist on brewing it herself, did not even offer to lend a hand as Mia hobbled to the stove.

She sat at the table and waited while Mia thumped about, getting spoons and filling the cups.

“If you take cream, I'm afraid you'll have to get it from the cellar.” Leonie took milk, and Leonie knew that Mia liked cream in her coffee.

“Black will be just fine.” Mia was foiled.

It wasn't like Leonie to be insensitive or stubborn. Mia wondered if she'd offended her some way.

They sipped at the bitter liquid.

“It must be awful for you cooped up inside like this, unable to work.”

She'd hit the nub of it. Mia found that more than anything, she felt the need to make something. Anything. A maple chest or a loaf of bread, it didn't really matter. She was having a hard time doing either.

Leonie asked, “Wouldn't you like to come with me?”

Amazingly, Mia discovered that she would have liked that very much. But by the time she got herself presentable the sun would be going down. “I don't think crutches and ice are a very good combination.”

“No. Perhaps not.” Leonie nodded.

“I'll have the cast off in another ten days.”

“And looking forward to that I'm sure.” She touched the rim of her cup to her lips, then set it down as if she'd suddenly remembered some pressing question. “Mia,” she asked, “do you remember a doctor who used to live here, a Mr. Hudson?”

Mia nodded. She remembered him, not with fondness. “He lived in the old lighthouse place. He drowned when his boat sank in a storm.” A more recent memory intruded into Mia's consciousness before it flickered out.

“John and Mr. Guibard think maybe he didn't. They think he might have been the man in the well with Rosie.”

“Rosie in bed with Dr. Hudson? They've lost their minds! Besides, he died long after she did.”

“A couple of months later, and his body was never found.”

“Elsie Karvonen saw it happen, and his glasses and some of his clothes did wash up…. No! It couldn't be. Rose Falk was
not
having an affair with Cedric Hudson!”

“Maybe she had gotten sick and called him out.”

“We didn't have phones then. If Rose had been sick, somebody would have taken her into town. If she was too sick for that, she'd have had to send for a doctor, and that would have been Guibard or his partner, Doctor Monroe. Not Hudson. Nobody sent for Hudson. Not when they were sick.”

“But Guibard was living in Chandler then, almost twenty miles away. Even if Mr. Hudson was old and out of practice, if Rose was desperate….”

“If she was having some sort of emergency, somebody else would have had to go for a doctor, whoever that doctor was.”

Leonie relented. “And that person shouldn't have had any reason to keep it to himself.”

“Or herself.”

“If he or she is still living.”

“You have a point.”

“Oh dear!” Leonie took a final microscopic sip and leapt up. “I'm afraid I've been gabbing instead of drinking this lovely coffee and need to be off straight away.” She slipped into her coat and, after begging the promise of a recipe or two, was out the door.

Mia watched as she backed the car down the winding driveway. All four tires stayed neatly in the tracks.

Cedric Hudson. Where had she…? She slid her chair to the pot-bellied heater and pitched in the last two chunks of birch from the woodbox. Then she hoisted herself onto her crutches once more and stumped to the living room.

Her grandmother's jewel case still sat on the table. A case her father
had
opened. She carried evidence of that next to her heart. She lifted the lid and took out the watch. Her father would have loved that watch. If it belonged to him he wouldn't have hidden it away, even if it had been left to him by a mother he hadn't spoken to in…how long? She didn't know. Since his marriage most probably. Was it really Charlotte Vogel's Indian-ness that had estranged them? It seemed inconceivable that a mother could end all contact with the child she'd borne simply because of his choice of a wife.

Mia couldn't begin to know why he'd put the watch away any more than why he'd conspired with Nick to hide the lock of her daughter's hair from her. Or Rose Falk's money. She thought her father had been a friend to Ted and Rose Falk. She thought that he was a generous person who tried to see the good, and appeal to the sensible, in everybody. Now she was finding that there was another side to him, but she'd always known that there was one person Eban Vogel truly hated. If he'd gone over to see how Rose was getting along with her husband away and found that she was ill or had some sort of accident, the last person on earth he'd have called upon for help would have been Doctor Cedric Hudson.

Ornate engraving covered the front of the watch case. With some imagination it could represent an H intertwined with a C. Inside, the watch face said that it was a
Russel keyless chronograph
.

The back opened in the same way as the front to reveal the wheels and gears of the watch's inner workings. Mia wound the screw and set it into motion. Two covers were hinged at the back. She closed the inner one over the clicking gears. On the inner surface of the silver cover were engraved words which left no doubt as to the owner of the spectacular timepiece.

Presented to ASST. Surg. C. Hudson J.M.P in acknowledgement of his valuable services as assistant to Civil Surgeon by BR. Surg. Lt. Col. Carnegie, September 1894.