The Sister's Tale

by Beth Powning

  Flora put her hand on her chest, pressing down on her heart’s heavy pound.

  “Mr. Tuck is missing,” she said to Josephine.

  The back door opened. Maud stood, panting.

  “She’s not in the garden.”

  Laughter, the clatter of silverware.

  Ellen put out her hand and brought it down slowly, as if pushing something away. “Flora,” she said. “Did you see that brass duck on Enid’s bed?”

  “Mr. Tuck’s brass duck? The one from the workshop? On Enid’s bed?”

  “What are you talking about?” Josephine said.

  “The children, they never had a brass duck?” Ellen asked her.

  “I don’t remember any such thing.”

  “Dear God in Heaven.” Ellen snatched up her glasses, went to the corner where articles about the axe murder trial were still pinned to the wall.

  She ripped a yellowing paper from its tack. She sat at the table and ran her forefinger down a column until she found what she was looking for.

  “This testimony was from a woman who used to visit the one that was murdered. She had gone to the house on the very day the woman was killed. After she was killed. I saw that nothing was missing from the chest of drawers except a large box containing her savings and a small brass duck that had been of particular notice, as being the only decorative item amongst her possessions.”

  “There could be other brass—”

  “Taken,” Ellen said. “Taken by the axe murderer.”

  “The axe murderer was hanged, Ellen.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe they hanged the wrong man.”

  “Oh. Oh, no. No. No.”

  “What, Flora?”

  “The drawer. He has a drawer stuffed full of money. Banknotes. Like a lifetime of savings. He threatened me if I ever spoke about it.”

  * * *

  —

  They ran into the falling night, trailing half-buttoned coats. Mr. Sprague and Mrs. Beaman clustered in the doorway. Miss Harvey was putting through a telephone call to the town constables.

  Harland noticed them from his dining room window. Light behind him, as he opened the front door. Table napkin fluttering from his hand like a moth. Flora veered from Ellen, Josephine and Maud.

  Up the path.

  She called out. The words, panted.

  “Enid and Mr. Tuck. Disappeared. We found. Something that makes us think he is the murderer.”

  “Murderer?”

  “The axe murderer. Please, come, I’ll…”

  He dropped the napkin. Left the door wide open behind him. The others had continued, were turning onto Main Street. Flora and Mr. Fairweather broke into a run, passing houses where people sat to supper. They caught up at the town hall, where a constable stood on the steps, surprise in his round blue eyes. He had received Miss Harvey’s telephone call.

  They followed him into the office. He touched a match to the gaslights. Ellen stood at his desk, panting, holding out the article. He took it from her, sat. Read it.

  “But they hanged that man,” he said, slowly. He spoke to Mr. Fairweather. Streak of mustard on his shirt. One cuff, unbuttoned. He ignored the women as if they were a cluster of hens.

  “Let me see it,” Harland said.

  He skimmed the article, eyebrows raised.

  Ellen had not stepped back from the desk. She held herself as if in the process of falling to pieces: arms crossed, shoulders hunched, mouth pinched. Flora had never seen her outside of the kitchen.

  “ ’Twas the brass duck.” She nodded at the paper. “See how it says…”

  Mr. Fairweather did not comprehend. Josephine drew a breath, preparing to explain. The constable looked back and forth, now, between Josephine and Mr. Fairweather, doubt creeping into his face, a hint of irritation. He ignored Ellen. He had been interrupted at his meal.

  Flora pushed in front of Mr. Fairweather. Her heart—heavy, surging. She took the paper from the constable’s fingers and slapped it down in front of him. He pushed back his chair, startled.

  “Look at me,” she said. “You look at me and listen to me. This is my sister has been took.”

  She enunciated each word like the distinct poke of a forefinger against the constable’s chest.

  “Took by Mr. Jasper Tuck. They’re both missing. He lives at our boarding house. I work for him. He has a drawer filled with cash. I saw it. And a brass duck. Exactly what was stolen from that murdered woman. Cash, and a brass duck. This brass duck.” She worked the brass duck from her pocket, slammed it onto the desk. An unwashed teacup rattled in its saucer. “A murderer has my little sister. He has my little sister. We got to go after them. There’s no time. No time.”

  A second constable stepped into the room. Both men pored over the article with increased interest.

  “You seen this cash?” the first constable asked Flora.

  “Yes,” Flora said. “An entire drawer filled with banknotes. In his workshop.”

  “Why didn’t you—”

  “Never mind,” Mr. Fairweather snapped. His cheeks flushed. His clothing, like the constable’s, was disarranged by his dash from the dinner table. “As she said. There’s no time.”

  * * *

  —

  Reinforcements would arrive on the next train: four constables from St. John, three from Moncton.

  The constables spread a map, traced the twisty roads.

  “He will look for an abandoned barn. Or an abandoned house. Could be the old Carty place, up here on the Wallen’s Ridge. Or there’s another place down in Midvale…”

  Mr. Fairweather murmured in Flora’s ear.

  “I’ve asked the others if they would like to return home. They said they would. I’ll join the search.” Harland knew of outlying and abandoned places in the vicinity from his time as Overseer. “Do you want to come with me?”

  Clothes turned up…bruises on the insides of her thighs…scratches from a man’s fingernails…marks of teeth…the whole forehead was broken in…blood…blood…

  She turned and pressed her face into Mr. Fairweather’s wool overcoat. He put his arms around her and pulled her close.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Like Beautiful Objects, Like Possessions

  THEY TRAVELLED FAR INTO the countryside. As the sky changed from pink to dusky blue, darkness rose like water in the alder hollows, and orange maples turned black against the sky. The horse’s hooves crunched the dirt in rapid concussion, the rhythm of fear. Soon Enid could see only the lantern swinging at the side of the buggy, an erratic sear illuminating goldenrod, dry ferns, and the flash of ironclad wheel. Squares of occasional windows flickered in the night—candlelight, a yearning. The moon rose, as on the night she had run away from Mr. Mallory. She slid forward as the road descended, entered a stretch of woods. An owl swooped, an intent darkness, undeterred by their passage. The road emerged into silvered fields—in their centre, like black pearls, a house and a barn.

  She stumbled down from the carriage. He slung a carpet bag over his shoulder, took the lamp from the buggy and walked behind her, shoving her across a tangle of collapsed grass until a house loomed in the circle of light. He kicked open the back door. A hallway. A room with a wood stove, a bed, a table. She smelled something sharp and lively. A scrabble on the low ceiling.

  “Racoons,” he muttered. He set the lamp on the wood stove. He pushed her onto the bed. He set down the bag, then picked it up and stood with it in his arms. Finally he set it down on the floor beside the bed. He untied her hands, released her from the saliva-soaked rag. She clutched herself, shivering, trying to read his expression, but he was black angles, he was the scrape of chair legs, he was a chair held in one hand, swung close. He was swift sitting and kneecaps and the tap of a fingertip on her own thigh.

  Broken window. The house held the silence of long emptine
ss.

  “You don’t know me, do you?”

  She knew Mr. Mallory. You had to do what he wanted. You had to guess not only what he would want you to say, but with what quality of submission to say it. With what absence of judgment. Enid had watched Doreen and learned how to breathe, where to look, how to hold her shoulders, what to do with her hands. How to make herself into what he wanted. How to be like the air that he would take in, satisfactory and barely noticed.

  “I got to decide if I am going to take you with me or leave you here.”

  He could leave her tied to the bed—feet tied, arms tied, gagged. The raccoons would creep down and attack her with their sharp-clawed, fingery paws.

  “I got to know if you will be a help or a hindrance.”

  Absolute silence. No horse and carriage passed on the road.

  “I will be a help.”

  “Will you, now? Because there was other women who said that to me. I will be a help. If they weren’t, I did away with them.”

  To tremble. To still her trembling. To show fear. To be brave. Enid did not know. Moonlight on a piece of wallpaper. A flower. She fought against the image of Fred, turning on his rope.

  “I took you because I want to have you.”

  “Yes. You can have me.”

  “Well, then. That’s nice. You do what I say, you be my girl, you don’t go running off to your sister, you come away with me, no one follows, we change our names. Understand?”

  Why? She had done him no good. She had not sold a house. He had been angry with her. She did not understand.

  “Yes.”

  They would have noticed her absence. They would be looking for her. Words were papery, fragile, like toy boats set onto a river. She could not say she was glad to go with him. She could not promise to obey him.

  He was hunched like a raccoon, eyes in a mask, glints. He raised a finger and drew it across her throat. His finger traced her nose, the circle of her face, followed her hairline, came down over her cheek and her ear.

  “Any man had you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be your first.”

  Could a heart hammer itself to death?

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll be my woman. You understand?”

  She thought, now, that he wanted her not to understand.

  “Mr. Tuck, I don’t understand, but it’s all right, I’ll be your…your girl, anyway.”

  “And why is that? Why would you do that?”

  Was he asking Why would you want me? or Why would you hate me? Did he want her to tell the truth? That she would do it only because she had no choice? She did not dare say it.

  The tears came. She could not stop them. She kept herself from sobbing. Tears, mucus, the salty slime at the corners of her mouth. He slapped her face.

  “Why would you do that?”

  She had forgotten the question.

  He pushed her down on the bed and unbuckled his belt. She panted, staring upwards, knees clenched. He would roll her over onto her stomach. She had seen Mr. Mallory climbing on top of Freddy, in the stall.

  “I stole,” she said, suddenly. She could show him how she could be a thief. She could make him believe in her usefulness.

  I did away with them.

  He tossed his belt onto the floor. “Stole what?”

  “I found a…a brass duck in your workshop. I figured it to have been a toy. Of…” she could not sully their names. “Of one of the children. I never had a toy so I took it.”

  “When? When did you take it?”

  “Today. I went to find my ribbon. I found the duck behind a basket…and I kept it.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “I…I don’t have it. I hid it in my bedroom.”

  “Did you hide it well? So no one would see it?”

  The beak.

  “Yes,” she lied. “I put it under a floorboard. No one will find it.”

  He dropped to his knees. He put his hands on her neck and pressed her against the damp cot. She could not turn her head from side to side. She could not breathe.

  “When you’re my girl,” he hissed, whispering even though no one could hear, not the racoons or the owls or the rising moon. “You will not take my things.”

  My neck. Breaking. Stars at the edge of rising water.

  The hands, lifted.

  To breathe. Shuddering. Her own hands, small and soft, on her own skin. Sweet skin.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse, strained.

  He sat on the floor, against the wall. The moon, now, was shining directly into the room. A pile of droppings, in the middle of the floor. A cast-iron tea kettle on the stove. The belt.

  The raccoons, upstairs, made no sound. Wind, the sigh of grasses, leaves.

  No crickets, no frogs.

  This is how it had come to Freddy, when he had reached for the rope and settled it around his neck. You are walking straight ahead, not knowing you approach a threshold—and a door slams closed. You walk into it. You and the door meet.

  Enid dropped her face onto her knees, held herself. The doll. She saw it, now. Wooden head with no face, wooden arms and legs. No name, no eyes or mouth; yet she had given it the life she should have had. A wedding. A daisy for a bonnet. Rhubarb leaf for a gown. Crooning, songs. Hear that, dolly, held to the sky when the night birds sang.

  Dying.

  “I had one…toy…just wanted…another. Didn’t know it was…yours, Mr. Tu—”

  “Ain’t a toy. No more than my houses are toys.”

  “No,” she whispered, frantic, wiping her face. “No, no, I didn’t mean to say toy.”

  He sat with his wrists on his knees, hands hanging. Fingernails, like onion skin. The tremulous rush of air going into his nostrils, the huff of its return. She heard an eerie yipping coming from field or forest; remembered the scream of the bobcat, it’s not a woman, Freddie told her, but still she had dreaded the sound, like a woman being murdered, she told him, the sound she always feared they would hear coming from Doreen.

  Why would Mr. Tuck want a brass duck. Duck, Tuck, luck.

  A charm.

  “I’m going to ask you one thing, Enid Salford.” He made a pistol with his finger but aimed it at the carpet bag and then shifted it to the iron stove with glints of metal like slitted cat’s eyes. “I am going to ask you one thing and I will know if you are lying. If I so much as think that you are lying, then I am going to put my hands around your neck. And I am going to strangle you.”

  Say yes. Say nothing. Say nothing.

  “I want you to tell me where you put that duck.”

  The floorboard was where Flora hid the money. Flora had never told anyone but her about the money.

  “I put it under my pillow.”

  “Any part of it showing?”

  “The beak. The beak was showing.”

  He snatched her chin, wrenched her face towards him.

  “That’s true, isn’t it.”

  She nodded into his hand. He released her. He bent forward, holding his forehead.

  Flora, Flora, Flora.

  Roaring in her ears, a throb behind her eyes, her chest aching with the pressure.

  She would hear the clock-clock of hooves coming up the road. They would be looking for her. They would come.

  He planted his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. He hitched his pants at the waistband, testing. He picked up the belt. He buckled her hands to the scrolled metal headboard, all the while whispering to himself. He picked up the carpet bag and slung it over his shoulder. He did not look back.

  The drumming of hooves on dirt was like a scattering. Pepper on the night. Sprinkled.

  Fewer.

  Fewer.

  She heard a soft thump upstairs, again the scrabble of claws. She struggled
, wrenching her hands, feeling the skin on her wrists stretching. Her breasts. She could not cover them with her arms, bend forward, protect her face, belly. She could only kick. She could kick at the raccoons when they jumped up on her. She could scream.

  Another thump, close overhead. A second racoon, following the first.

  Scritch scritch. A rapid, wild raking. Would a scream frighten them away or signal her vulnerability? They would approach, hunchbacked, with their sidling, sneaky scuttle. Eyes, glinting.

  Flora and Josephine and Ellen and Maud would by now have alerted Mr. Fairweather and everyone else they knew. Enid has been stolen by Mr. Tuck.

  Ellen: You keep clear of that one.

  Flora: Stay away from him.

  She explored with her fingertips. Her thumb touched the bar of the buckle, her finger straightened the prong. Slipped, snagged, slipped, snagged.

  She gave up.

  Tears. She licked them from the corners of her mouth.

  Try again. Maybe he didn’t tighten it as much as he could have.

  She pressed back against the headboard to loosen the belt. She bent the belt upwards with thumb, fingers, nudging the leather over the prong.

  Nudging. Nudging.

  She heard the thump of a racoon coming down the stairs.

  “You get away,” she shouted.

  The prong slid down. She pushed it back up, bent the leather. Panting, now.

  Over and over.

  The prong suddenly, miraculously, slid from the leather. She worked the belt through the bar. It slithered to the floor.

  She pulled up her legs and sat cross-legged on the bed, bent forward, forehead on knees, rubbing her wrists. Trembling. Let them come, those racoons, she thought, feeling vicious contempt.

  I can attack. I can run.

  When she escaped from the Mallorys, there was no house on Creek Road; no Josephine and Ellen and Maud; no white-painted bedstead and patchwork quilt and chest of drawers with leaf-shaped pulls. No sister.

  No hope.