His Elizabeth would be about the same age, if she had lived. If Frances had lived. Jarvis did not think about his first wife now as often as he used to. It was eighteen years ago, three weeks after giving birth. First her and then the baby. Frances had never been strong and she had lost a lot of blood. He should have brought in another doctor to look after them. He was too close to it all. Too close and too stubborn. He would not eat or sleep, and had hovered over them. His whole world had been in that narrow bed and he had lost it.
His parents had never wanted him to marry Frances Walker. They knew of her only through the letters he sent home from Edinburgh, during his medical training. But they disapproved of her background. “Beneath you,” was how his mother, Anna, the wife of Prince Edward Island’s Chief Justice Edward Jarvis, had phrased it. So they wed before sailing to Canada, just to be sure that his mother, who usually got her way, could not come between them. Then, two years after Frances’s death, Henry married the young woman that Anna Jarvis had in mind for him all along, Lucy Harding, the daughter of an old family friend, a judge, from Gagetown, New Brunswick.
Frances’s and Elizabeth’s absence were always brought back to him keenly whenever he was faced with the death of a baby or a young woman. Tonight he thought about how he would feel if it had been his daughter who washed up some place where no one knew her, examined, speculated upon, and buried by and among strangers.
Jarvis sat up in bed and threw aside the covers. Moonlight streaked across the wooden floor. Using it as his guide, he felt his way back to the desk. He carefully reached for the lamp and turned its flame up slightly. Reopening the book, he turned to the page he had last written upon and slowly, while watching the sleeping boy, tore it from its bindings.
***
“That must be Flynn now,” Gilbert observed as he rose from the table and looked out the porch window.
“Yeah, that’s him. Likely want some breakfast, even though he’s probably stuffed his face once already today.”
Sheriff Darrell Flynn had to stoop slightly coming into the kitchen from the porch.
“Morning, Darrell. How’s Beth?”
“The little woman’s just fine, thanks.” Flynn smiled and nodded at Dr. Jarvis, who rose from the table.
“Nice to see you again, Sheriff.”
“Likewise.” Flynn shook the doctor’s offered hand enthusiastically.
“Darrell, can I offer you some breakfast?” Catherine asked, tapping a chair back with her fingernails. “I’ve got some toast and tea to keep you going until dinnertime.” She headed for the pantry.
“That would hit the spot,” Flynn replied and sat down.
“I couldn’t make it yesterday afternoon when I first got your wire,” he said. “I was just about to leave for here when some kids came flying in yelling about a fire up by the old creamery. There are a couple of fire bugs I’ve been trying to get my hands on for a while. They’ve been setting fires all over Summerside for the last three months. The little nose wipes claim they’re doing the town a favour, getting rid of old buildings. I’d love to get my hands on them.”
“Do you know who’s doing it?” Gilbert asked.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea and heard lots of rumours, but I got to catch them at it. So tell me what happened yesterday. I know that there was a body found and thought I could wait till today. It wasn’t going to get any deader, I figured.”
Catherine returned from the pantry. She placed a jar of blueberry jam on the table and carried a wire toaster containing two thick slices of bread to the stove. Taking off one of the stove lids, she laid the toaster over the open flame. When the bread was browned evenly on both sides she put it on a plate in front of Flynn and poured him a cup of tea. He bobbed his head in thanks and reached for the last piece of ham on a serving plate in the middle of the table.
“It was about three o’clock yesterday afternoon,” Gilbert began. “My young fella Jimmy and Neill McPherson’s boy Tom found her on the beach.”
By the time Gilbert finished his story, Flynn was wiping his face with one end of the tablecloth. Catherine’s mouth was a straight line of disapproval as she leaned against the oven door, arms folded.
“Here’s the boys now,” Gilbert said, turning away from his wife to keep from laughing.
Avard and Eddie had finished the morning milking and each was bringing two full pails in for their mother to separate and churn. They placed the buckets in the far corner of the porch and covered them with pieces of cheesecloth.
“Boy, you two have grown since the last time I saw you.” Flynn smiled and rose from the table. “All right, Gil, we’d better go out and have a look. Thanks for the lunch, Catherine.”
“Cath, see that Jimmy gets out of bed pretty soon so Darrell can have a word with him.” Gilbert reached for his hat and led the men outside. The twins trailed behind.
“So, Doc, what do you make of all this?” Flynn asked on the way to the barn.
“I believe that the girl drowned,” Jarvis said softly so the boys couldn’t hear. “Her lungs were full of liquid, which means she was alive when she first got into the water. Let’s keep that just to ourselves for now. The official word will have to wait until the coroner’s jury makes its determination.”
“Know who she is?”
“No.”
“So what do we have here?” Flynn asked no one in particular as they walked through the barn door.
“I’ll unwrap her,” Jarvis said, removing the blanket from the girl’s head.
“That’s good,” Flynn said, waving his hand sideways. “So here’s where the trouble is, eh?” He bent over the wound. “Looks pretty nasty,” he observed. “Was she wearin’ anything when she was found?”
Gilbert turned and pointed to the pile of clothing he had neatly placed on the floor the day before. “Right here,” he said.
The sheriff lifted each garment individually and tucked them under his arm. “I’ll take these back to Summerside with me,” he said, then shook his head at Jarvis, who had begun to unwind the rest of the covering.
“Never mind that, I’ve seen enough.” Reaching into his coat pocket, Flynn took out a toothpick and rolled it around in his mouth.
“You don’t want to look at the rest of the body?” Jarvis asked, surprised.
“Nuh, it’s pretty cut and dried from what I can tell. You said that she had no marks of violence on the rest of her, and that she had water in the lungs. This is clearly a case of drowning.”
Jarvis covered the girl’s head again. Avard made a motion forward to help. Gilbert, standing beside him, put out his right arm and shook his head.
“Yep, I see this quite a bit,” Flynn said as he stooped his head to get back out the barn door. “Young girl runs away from home for one reason or another. Three weeks ago I got a telegram telling me to be on the lookout for some young thing that went missing from the Annapolis Valley. She turned up in Halifax a few days later, whorin’ around the docks, and she’s one of the lucky ones. I mind the time—”
The twins’ eyes were wide. Gilbert shook his head.
“Huh? Oh,” Flynn said.
“Tell us,” Eddie urged.
“Not today,” Gilbert interrupted. “You two have chores to finish. The first thing I want you to do is move the last of the ice from the ice house and bring it here in front of the door.”
The boys walked across the barnyard.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Gilbert yelled after them, then turned to Jarvis and Flynn. “Have to use up the last of my ice to try to keep the smell down. Thought if I dragged the old pig trough in there and filled it with ice, we could lay her on top of it. Now, what happens next?” he asked.
“Well,” Flynn said. “I’ll write up a physical description and wire it around the Maritimes, see if anyone is missing a girl. Somebody might come forward to claim her. If we don�
��t hear anything in a week or so, after the coroner’s inquest, you can bury her.”
“A week or so!” Gilbert raised his voice. “I can’t have her lying around that long. A person can barely stand the smell in there as it is and I’ve got to get back to work. Can’t you take her off my hands, Darrell?”
“I’ve got no place to keep a body, especially this time of year,” Flynn said.
“This is crazy. I thought you’d be able to help us out.”
“Sorry, Gil.” Flynn spit the chewed toothpick out on the ground. “Can’t. You have to keep her here at least until after the coroner’s jury anyway. But you know, you’d be surprised at the number of corpses that no one ever claims. Why don’t you go ahead and bury her after the jury’s done with her. She’ll have to be planted sooner or later anyway, and if she has a family you’ll be doin’ them a favour.”
“I’ll go see the minister this afternoon,” Gilbert said, relieved. “They have a section in the back of the churchyard for unknowns. We can likely bury her there.”
“There you go.” Flynn slapped Gilbert on the shoulder. “Now, do you suppose Catherine has any more of that hot tea on the stove?”
When the men came into the kitchen, Jimmy Bell was sitting at the table waiting for his breakfast while Catherine stood before the stove stirring porridge. The boy’s eyes widened at the sight of the sheriff. His face was shiny and red from the scrubbing his mother had just put him through. His hair was wet and slicked back, and freckles stood out on his chubby face.
“Jimmy.” Flynn’s voice boomed. “I heard that you had an exciting day yesterday.” He sat down and placed a hand on the child’s right shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy responded, looking at his father.
“Just tell Sheriff Flynn everything you know,” Gilbert told him.
“Before we start, Jim, I want to give you this.” Flynn plunged a sausage-shaped finger into one of his shirt pockets, fished out a shiny piece of tin, and handed it to the boy. “For your good work yesterday. I hereby declare you an honorary sheriff’s deputy for the province of Prince Edward Island.”
“Holy smoke, Dadda, look, it’s a real badge.”
“You’re a deputy now, son,” Flynn said. “You’re obliged to tell me everything you know.”
The boy nodded his head, serious now.
“Me and Tom were on the beach looking for things washed up and we saw her. She was lying in the seaweed with her eyes open. Tom was scared to touch her but I went over to her and saw she was dead. I wasn’t scared.”
“Atta boy,” Flynn said.
“As soon as we saw that she was dead as a doornail, we ran to get our daddas. Then they came and picked her up and brought her to our barn. Can I see her again now that I’m a deputy?”
Flynn laughed.
“No, you can’t!” Catherine said, plopping a Blue Willow bowl down on the table in front of him. “Eat your breakfast.”
Flynn ruffled the boy’s damp hair. “Thanks, Deputy Jimmy. You’ve been a big help. Now I’m just goin’ to have another cup of your mother’s good tea and a piece of that pie I see in the pantry there, and then I’ll be off.”
“So you’re going to be in touch with the mainland?” Gilbert sat down beside Flynn. “See if anybody knows her?”
“Yup, first thing,” the sheriff replied, his mouth full.
***
The jury’s deliberations commenced, first in the barn and then in the Bells’ parlour. The jury members all went home for supper, but Catherine did give them dinner at noon and kept them supplied with hot tea, pie, and molasses cookies throughout the afternoon.
Gilbert started out early next morning for North Tryon. Before he jumped up onto the seat of the express wagon, he buttoned his coat and pulled the red knitted cap that Catherine insisted he wear further down on his head. It was chilly with the sun still low on the horizon. He flicked the reins over Ned’s back.
“Off we go again, boy. No chance to get any work done today.”
The road to North Tryon was lined on both sides by red and yellow maple trees. Gilbert liked this drive. It always made him think of his father, whom he used to accompany along here as a young boy. And, as his father had done years before, Gilbert usually stopped to talk to the men he saw out in their yards. But this morning he just waved and hollered “hello” or “how’s she’s goin’?”
“No time today,” he said, urging Ned to go faster past each gate.
All anybody would want to talk about anyway was the dead girl in his barn.
Alexander Morrison’s two-storey furniture factory was situated on the corner just before the right turn into the village. The lumber mill and the huge piles of wood, pulp, rough boards, and dressed planks fanned out in the large yard behind it.
Gilbert stopped on the road across from the factory, jumped from the wagon, and walked along the front of the building to where a man was standing before an open door. He was bent over the edge of a board, holding it between his legs and carefully smoothing it with a plane.
“Morning, Gil.” Lester Chisholm looked up and smiled. “What you up to today?”
“I’m looking to buy a rough box, Les. Got any at a good price?”
“Oh yeah, heard you had some trouble up your way. Buryin’ that girl, are you?”
“Yeah, as soon as I get the say-so from Doc Jarvis. These things take forever once doctors and the law get involved.”
“That they do. Do you know yet who she is?”
“No, don’t have a clue. So can I get a rough box?”
“Yeah, there’s a few you can take a look at.”
The clean smell of new wood met Gilbert as he walked through the door of the factory. Sunlight coming in through the upper-storey windows cast shafts of light over the open space, causing the fine coat of sawdust on the floor to look like winter’s first snow. Though men and boys were all over, hammering, sawing, and working at the lathes, to Gilbert, the place had a silence that didn’t come from inactivity and quiet but from the meditative movement of industry. He often thought that he might prefer this line of work to farming. At least this job didn’t depend so much on the weather.
“I said this might do. I heard she was just a wee thing.”
“She’s quite tall,” Gilbert replied curtly, angry that he hadn’t been paying attention. Chisholm selected a wooden box, as high as his shoulder, from a number of them leaning against the wall and was holding it upright for Gilbert’s inspection.
“She’s about five foot five,” Gilbert said, “so that’s a good size.”
“Hold it steady and I’ll get a lid.”
A number of lids were leaning against the opposite wall. Chisholm walked across the room, rearranged them for a few minutes, and then selected one from the back.
“I think this’ll fit,” he said, walking back across the floor with it under his arm. He placed it next to the box that Gilbert was holding up on its end. “Yeah, that’ll do. I’ll help you get it to the wagon.”
After they had carried the box outside, Chisholm went back in for the lid.
“There you go,” he said, placing it beside the box in the wagon. “That’ll be two dollars, Gil.”
Gilbert rummaged around in his shirt pocket and brought out two folded bills. “And I’ll need a receipt,” he said, handing over the money.
“Wait here.”
***
The next morning Jarvis gave them his permission to take the girl to the churchyard. The jury had viewed the body under his direction and now was holed up in Catherine’s parlour. Gilbert, Avard, and Eddie placed the body in the box. Gilbert secured the lid by winding a piece of old clothesline rope round and round the box and knotting it.
“Why don’t you just nail it down, Pa?” Eddie asked.
“Doc Jarvis said not to until I get his say-so, just in case.”
They carried the box out to the express wagon. Avard had picked some golden rods earlier and once the box was securely in the wagon, he placed the flowers on top of it.
“This gives her a bit more dignity,” he said. “Ma always says dignity is important.”
Eddie smirked and opened his mouth to respond but saw his father’s stern look.
It was two miles to the Cape Traverse Methodist Church. The people they met along the way were eager to talk. Some even asked to see the body but Gilbert shook his head.
“No time,” he told them. “Got to hurry up and get back to the farm.”
“Fools! Why would anybody want to see a dead body? What do they think this is, a Barnum sideshow?” he asked no one in particular.
When Gilbert pulled on the reins and hollered, “Whoa,” the five boys walking behind the wagon came to a halt as well and ceased their chatter.
“You’d better keep back now,” Gilbert shouted as he jumped down to greet Reverend Silliker, who was waiting at the bottom of the church steps.
“Mornin’, Reverend,” Gilbert, Avard, and Eddie called out in unison.
“Good morning, all,” Silliker responded, with the Scottish lilt that he had never lost despite the decades he had lived away from his home country.
“It’s a lovely fall day, don’t you think, boys?”
As was his practice when meeting any of his flock, no matter how many times a day he encountered them, Silliker shook hands all around.
“It’s a sad task you’ve got today, Gilbert.”
“Yes, Reverend. It’s been a rough few days, what with all the coming and going and people about.”
“Well, hopefully having the poor soul here will ease things for you a bit. And God bless you and your family for doing what you have.”
“Where were you planning on putting her?” Gilbert asked.
“In the biggest shed there in the back. Roy McWilliams cleared off the table in there yesterday. She can stay there until she’s buried. Do you need any help?”
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