“I see none of them went home to stay,” Black said. “There’s even more here than this morning. And this being a Sunday and all.”
“Sheriff Sherman and Constable Ryan, bring the prisoners in, please,” Oxley directed.
The sheriff led Ann and Beatrice back to their chairs, followed by Will, still in shackles. Constable Ryan, and then Fred LeFurgey and John Dempsey brought up the rear. John braced himself against the closed door with his head bowed and Fred stood beside him.
Oxley lowered his gavel on the table.
“Okay, let’s get back into order. This preliminary examination of Michael William Harney and Ann Helen Harney, on the suspicion of murder of Mary Harney, will now resume.”
Oxley, clearing his throat, looked around the room. The Post reporter, Robert White, was looking up expectantly, clutching pencil and pad.
“Damn papers, looking to pick the bones,” Hingley whispered in his ear.
Oxley nodded and cleared his throat again.
“After careful deliberation, my colleagues and I have come to the following conclusion.”
He paused. There was not a sound in the room.
“After careful deliberation—”
“Yeah, yeah,” someone in the crowd scoffed.
“After careful deliberation we have come to the conclusion that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant this case going to trial,” he spat out hurriedly.
Groans and shouts rose throughout the room. Beatrice threw her arms around Ann and began to cry. Will relaxed back into his chair and John bolted out the door, slamming it behind him.
“What the hell does that mean?” Calvin Bailey shouted, rising to his feet.
“It means that the prisoners are free to go.”
There was more shouting. Sherman and Ryan positioned themselves in front of the justices’ table with rifles visible in their crossed arms. Fred walked over and stood beside them.
“This ain’t right, Oxley, and you know it!”
“There’s just not enough evidence to hold them,” Carter said. “Not enough for a lawyer to make a case.”
Most of what he said was lost in the noise made by the yelling and by a spray of broken glass. A young man carrying a stick jumped through a window and ran towards Will, who put his arms up to his face to ward off attack. Beatrice screamed and threw her arms around Ann.
“All right, all right, that’s it.” Sherman grabbed the man by the arm and held him fast. “You’re under arrest,” he told his captive, whose face was scratched and bleeding.
Sherman nodded at Ryan who hurried towards the door, opened it, and stood in the entryway.
“Okay, everybody,” Sherman shouted above the noise, “we’re all going to slowly move towards the door in single file and leave the building quietly. Any problems and you’ll find yourselves either under arrest or with your kneecaps shot off, women and children excepted, of course. And any firearms in this room better stay where they are.”
With Fred’s assistance, Sherman placed handcuffs on the man in custody.
Children were crying and three women collapsed back into their chairs. Their companions reached into bags and pockets for smelling salts.
The crowd filed out but not without protest.
“This isn’t the end, Harney,” someone shouted. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you.”
“The law won’t be here to protect you all the time, you bastard.”
“Something funny’s going on. Her family probably paid them off.”
“I heard that she did come from money.”
“Shut up and move along,” Ryan ordered.
I don’t hear the shouts of the approaching boys or feel the stones.
Rockley
Nova Scotia
September 8, 1877
“Mumma, why do you let Pa do things to me?” Mary wiped her mouth on her mother’s nightgown to remove the feel of her father’s kiss.
“It’s because I’m not your pa. No one knows who he is, not even your mother, I don’t suppose.”
Mary looked from one to the other.
“I’m not your father, you stupid cow. I married your mother out of pity and for money. I couldn’t stomach her otherwise. Neither her ma or her pa could handle the thought of a scandal. Scared them to death, the old hypocrites. That old bastard Hennessy promised me a lot of money for my troubles, but after we married it stopped coming. Ma told me to walk away at the first. I should have.”
“Mumma?”
Ann was leaning against the doorjamb with her hands over her eyes.
Will forced her to look at Mary.
“Tell her. Tell her.”
“Yes, it’s true. Will’s not your father.”
“I hate you. I hate the both of you.”
Mary ran from the room and down the stairs. She fled out the kitchen door, leaving behind Harry and Little Helen still sleeping on the veranda. She tripped over a doll’s carriage on the doorstep, her mind whirling as her feet flew over the uneven ground.
Not her father. He was not her father. All the times that she feared what he might do and thought her mother didn’t care.
Well that, at least, was true, Mary thought to herself: she didn’t care.
Mary heard the door slam. She slowed down and looked back. Will was on the doorstep. She could see her mother through the kitchen window, lighting the lantern on the table. She turned and ran down the lane.
***
Ann found an old pair of boots in the corner of the porch and struggled to get them on her bare, swollen feet. Carrying the lantern, she hurried out the door and down the lane, in the direction she had seen Will take. She stumbled along in the gathering darkness crying, her mind racing. I should have told her…that Will saved me. Shame to the family…music teacher…ruined. Had a wife…said to get rid of it.
Ann was half walking, half running now. The backs of her ankles were raw from the tight boots. The wind blew the tears down her face and neck. The muscles in her right arm ached from carrying the lantern. My poor mother…assumed Mary was Will’s.
Ann’s thoughts were interrupted by a scream. She listened, then hurried on again, stumbling and shivering down the lane in her thin blue nightdress.
***
She would go to Merigomish, right now, tonight, even if she had to walk every step of the way. She’d go to Mrs. LeFurgey’s. She’d let her stay there tonight.
The wind picked up, swaying the trees. The dark air was warm on her face. She reached the main road, ran across it and over the narrow strip of grassland leading to the river. She stumbled down the short bank, scuffing her boots on the way down to slow her progress.
She’d never have to do anything that he told her to do again. She’d never have to see him again.
But I’ll never see the little ones again either, or Uncle John, or Smith, she reminded herself.
Tears welled in her eyes and she clutched at the locket around her neck. They’d expect her to come back after a while with her tail between her legs but they’d soon find out she was gone forever.
She stopped and looked out across the river. The moving water was the only sound in the night. The moon peeked in and out behind the gathering clouds.
“And where might you be going?”
Soft words, little more than a whisper, in her left ear. Mary screamed and jumped away.
He had followed her.
He was smiling.
Fear froze her, then Mary turned to run. He grabbed her hair. As pain shot through her head and into her neck, she felt a spike of anger rising.
“How dare you?”
Mary slapped him across the face.
“Oh, sassy, eh? You’re not accomplishing anything, just making me madder than I already am. You’d better quit while you’re ahead.”
Mary spat in his fac
e.
“You’re not my father. Where is my real father?”
He grabbed her throat and brought her face up close to his, their noses touching.
“I said, quit while you’re ahead. You’re never getting away from me.”
He hauled his arm back and hit her in the mouth. The pain of it almost made her pass out. There was blood and a tooth. She felt her knees buckle. Regaining herself, she reached up with both hands and raked her fingernails over his face. Four red welts appeared on each of his cheeks and down his neck.
“Jesus Christ!”
Mary ran. Then something heavy caught her in the back of the head and brought her to her knees. She looked around and saw him walking towards her through the dusk.
Got to get away from here, she thought, her mind straining to focus. Got to get away.
Will bent down to pick something up, then kept coming.
Got to get away. Her body had a strange coldness.
She was on her feet when she saw, beyond his approaching figure, a light bouncing closer. A lantern. Someone was coming. Mumma. Mumma was coming to help her, to save her. And someone was yelling something, or was it she herself who cried out, making a sound that was carried away on the wind. Then pain surprised her.
“I told you, told you, told you a hundred times not to make me mad,” Will yelled in rhythm with the blows he brought down upon her head.
Mary’s face was sticky with something that was making it hard to see but she sensed that the lantern had stopped in front of her. She could see the hem of a nightgown and heard screaming again.
“Mumma,” she whispered. “Mumma.”
Bell’s Point
Cape Traverse, Prince Edward Island
May 1891
“Dadda, there’s men here to see you,” Elizabeth called, running into the barn.
“Thanks, Puddin’, tell them I’ll be right out.”
Avard emerged to find two men standing in the barnyard in front of a horse and buggy. They both smiled and extended their hands as he approached.
“Mr. Bell?”
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Charles LeBlanc. This is my friend Henri Cormier. He doesn’t speak English too good, so I’ll talk for the two of us.”
Avard nodded at Cormier.
“We’re from Richibucto, over in New Brunswick. We’re hoping you can help us.”
“I’ll try. Come on into the house,” Avard offered.
“Non, merci.” Charles shook his head. “It’s better if we talk here.”
“Puddin’, you go and see what your brother’s up to.”
The child skipped across the barnyard.
“We were told that there was a girl found on the beach near here.”
“Yeah, there was, a long while ago now, just down here at the point. My younger brother Jimmy found her. He doesn’t live here now. Works on a farm over in St. Eleanor’s. Just got married last week.”
Charles translated Avard’s words to his friend.
“Henri’s sister disappeared back in ’77, when she was just seventeen years old,” Charles said. “He has been trying to find out what happened to her ever since.”
“Oh well, the girl we found was from Nova Scotia.”
“Can you tell us what she looked like?”
“Well, she was small and had blond hair. She’s buried up in the Methodist churchyard. I can show you where. There’s a wooden marker.”
Charles spoke in French once more. Henri nodded and asked a question.
“He wants to know if there was anything found with her. I know it was a long time ago now.”
“There was. Come with me.” Avard directed them to a small tool shed on the other side of the yard.
“Haven’t been in here since the old man passed away,” he said, placing his left shoulder to the door of the shed and giving it a shove. “I’ll see if I can find them.”
He emerged ten minutes later with a faded burlap bag and handed it to Charles.
“These were what she was wearing. Her father threw them in the woods behind our outhouse when he was here,” he said. “I watched him and picked them up after he left. Should have given them to Sheriff Flynn when he came back around looking for them. But I was kinda sweet on the girl even though she was dead, and I wanted to keep something of her for myself. Here they are.”
Avard didn’t tell them about stuffing the flowers into the girl’s body. He had never told anyone about that. His father had never asked him about it though Avard was sure he suspected.
Charles set the bag on the ground, reached in, and handed the items, one by one, to Henri, who began to nod.
“Oui, Natalie, Natalie.”
“T’es-tu sûr?” Charles asked his friend each time he spoke.
“Oui, oui.”
Henri was on his knees beside the clothes now, touching each item. Then he jumped to his feet, took a tintype out of his coat pocket, and handed it to Avard. A girl seated on a wicker chair was wearing the same garments that now lay crumbling at their feet. A solemn young man stood behind her.
“I’ll be…damned.” Avard shook his head.
“Ah, bien, dis-y!” Henri grabbed Charles by the arm and pushed him around to face Avard.
“Natalie disappeared the same day this picture was taken,” Charles began. “She was going to be married. Her fiancé said that she must have ran away because she didn’t want to marry him. He married somebody else just two months later. The police looked for her but never found anything. Don’t think they tried very hard, being that she was French and them English. Henri’s been looking for her off and on ever since. He’s never given up. He heard a story a year ago about a girl turning up over here and finally saved enough money to make the trip.”
“What did he say her name was?”
“Natalie. Natalie Cormier,” Charles answered.
Henri stood still, clutching the garments to his chest, tears running down his face.
“Come on into the house,” Avard said gently. “The wife will make you a cup of tea, and I want you to meet my mother, Catherine. She often speaks of the girl, especially in the fall. Then I’ll take you to the graveyard to visit your sister.”
Rockley
Nova Scotia
August 15, 1952
“Hold it, a half turn at a time, remember. It has to stay level.” Edgar Fraser, down on his hands and knees, yelled while eyeballing the structure. There were four men at each corner of the building, and another four underneath it working the screw jacks. “Hold it a minute, not yet. Cecil, don’t get so excited.”
Fraser raised one hand and shook his head amidst laughter.
Ian Gordon and Barry Fraser sat in the long grass under a spidery apple tree and watched. They were two of the many boys, on a hot, humid day, who had come out to watch the old Dempsey house being lifted from its quarry stone foundation and placed on the new concrete wall, just down the lane and across the main road. The Rockley Baptists had purchased the building from the landowner in the States and paid to have it moved. They were going to use it as their new church.
The farmhouse’s lane and yard were grown up in alders, grass, and thistles, the barn was gone. The remaining grey outbuildings were in varying stages of collapse and the gardens had long since weeded over.
“The building isn’t in too bad a shape; it needs some work, a new roof, but it can be used again,” Barry’s father had said last night at the supper table.
The Dempsey house had been vacant for a long time, longer than either of Barry’s parents could remember.
“My old man says this place in haunted,” Ian told his friend. “Said that when he was a kid, people used to see a light moving around at night down here and along the river and hear screaming and crying something awful.”
“Yeah,” Barry said. “
Me and Nan were walking to the store one night last winter and we heard something. She ran all the way home.” He grinned at the memory. “Some girl’s supposed to have been killed around here a long time ago. Look, they’re starting to take the booms out now.”
It was another two hours before the timbers were removed, the float backed up into position, the jacks lowered, and the house eased onto the flatbed. As the float slowly made its way to the new site, the boys walked over to where the building had stood.
“Look at the hole it left,” Ian said, standing at the edge. “Bet you there’s some interesting stuff down there. Remember that film at school about the people who dig in the ground for old things? We could do that here.”
Barry jumped into the hole, and walked around jabbing at rocks and clumps of dirt with his feet. Then something he kicked free flew up in the air, catching Ian’s eye.
“What’s that?” he called jumping down next to Barry. “I saw something just now.”
He walked over in the direction the object had fallen and got down on his hands and knees, sifting through the dirt with his fingers.
“I’m sure I saw something. Yeah, look at this.”
“It looks like part of an old locket,” Barry said. “Nan got one of those for her birthday last year.”
Ian rubbed it on his pant leg.
“Have to take it home and clean it up.”
“It’s a treasure! Bet it’s worth millions,” Barry whispered.
Ian took out a red and white polka-dot handkerchief, wrapped his find in it, and placed it inside his pocket. They scrambled out of the hole and mounted their bikes to catch up with the float. Then, like the other boys, they made a game of throwing stones at the windows, trying to shatter the few remaining panes of yellow glass.
In Search of the Real Mary Harney
Found Drowned is a novel, but it is based on a series of events that really happened. I first heard of Mary Harney’s disappearance as a ghost story and became fascinated with her. I researched through a number of sources to find out more. The only archival information I was able to track down concerning the case was contained in newspaper articles. Then I built Mary’s story around them. Here are some examples of those news stories.
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