Taken Too Soon

by Edith Maxwell

  “I can’t eat,” she said.

  But she let me lead her to the dining table in a spacious room whose large windows faced the inlet. Sadie beckoned to Tilly to sit by her and I took a seat next to David. With my aunts, a middle-aged woman whom Sadie introduced as Marie Deorocki, and the Giffords, we held hands in silence around the table. No modest house, Sadie and Huldah’s home was a new construction with a tasteful light hand in its woodwork and design. The decor—rugs, lamps, furniture—was understated and of high quality. It was the same effect David and I had tried to achieve in the new house he’d had built for us, which we would begin living in upon our return to Amesbury. It even had room for me to have my midwifery office. We had finished decorating and furnishing it shortly before we were married.

  Sadie, to my right, squeezed my hand to signal the end of our grace. “I made a very simple seafood stew, and we have a lovely tomato salad courtesy of Marie’s mother’s garden.”

  Tilly murmured her thanks but sat slumped in her seat. David and I exchanged a look. At her advanced age, poor Tilly shouldn’t have to endure the murder of a cherished young person.

  “Marie’s a fellow resident of Amesbury,” Sadie now said as she ladled stew from a white tureen into wide bowls.

  “Thee is?” I asked, surprised. I pushed up my spectacles. “I don’t think I’ve seen thee there.”

  “I’ve lived in Amesbury all my life.” Marie adjusted her own glasses and spread her napkin on the lap of her yellow dress. “But I’m a Roman Catholic, and my children are all grown now, so our paths haven’t crossed. I’ve heard of your escapades, Mrs. Dodge.”

  Escapades? I grimaced inwardly. “Please call me Rose.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Marie said. “Mrs. Gifford has been after me to do the same, but it wouldn’t seem right.”

  “I hope thee will,” I said. “What brings thee to the Cape?”

  “My mother is ailing. I came down a few weeks ago to nurse her back to health, if I can.”

  “Her mother Judith lives next door,” Sadie said. “We thought we should at least introduce you three Amesburyites.”

  “And introduce thee to Judith’s prizewinning tomatoes,” Huldah added. “I try to garden, but the soil is so sandy, it’s hard to grow what I’d like.”

  I liked the look of Huldah. He wore suspenders over a rumpled homespun shirt and, with his mussed hair, eyeglasses, and a pencil behind his ear, had the air of an absentminded professor. Aunt Dru had said he was a lawyer, and from the appearance of this house, he must make a pretty penny. He was also a Friend, and it showed in his plain dress and manner.

  “I don’t know how Judith does it, but these fruits pop with flavor,” he added.

  The plate of thinly sliced tomatoes above my knife was adorned with flecks of parsley and bits of black pepper, and had been drizzled with oil and perhaps something else. My eggs and toast were a long-ago memory and I was dying to try the salad. But the hot portion of the meal should come first. I waited for Huldah to pass a basket of warm rolls and Sadie to take her first bite before I dipped into the stew.

  I’d opened my mouth to speak when David beat me to it.

  “This is a most delicious stew, Mrs. Gifford,” he exclaimed. “The broth is wonderful.” He rolled the tastes around on his tongue. “I detect dill, parsley, and a hint of pepper. Perhaps a bit of citrus. Is it lime?”

  Sadie laughed. “So thee married a chef, Rose? I had no idea.”

  David’s cheeks pinked up, but he smiled. “I enjoy cooking for relaxation.”

  “He’s good at it.” I smiled fondly at him. “And he’s a doctor, as thee might know, so the job can be difficult and tense at times.”

  “I hope you’ll share your recipe,” he said to Sadie.

  “Only if thee promises to call me Sadie, not Mrs. Gifford.”

  “Very well.”

  Sadie cocked her head. “Thee is not a Friend, then?”

  “No,” David said. “I worship with the Unitarians, much to my Episcopalian mother’s chagrin.”

  “One can only imagine.” Our hostess smiled at him. “Thy faith doesn’t matter to us.”

  “No, it certainly doesn’t,” Huldah agreed.

  “But Rose, what do Amesbury Friends make of thy union with this man?” Sadie asked.

  I scrunched up my nose. “The women’s business meeting is displeased and informed me I would be read out of Meeting. I shall appeal upon my return and pray for their lenience.”

  Sadie cocked her head. “I would be happy to write thee a letter of support if thee wishes. I have clerked our women’s meeting for many years. I am considered in some circles a rather weighty Friend.”

  I brought my hand to my cheek at this unexpected gift. “I would be most pleased for such a letter.” I gave her the name of the clerk she could address her letter to.

  “I shall mail it in the morning, and happily so. I hope it helps in thy reinstatement. It’s been a decade since we in West Falmouth abandoned the archaic practice of shunning those who marry out.”

  Tilly sat at Sadie’s right. The crevices in her face seemed to have deepened even since this morning. She’d at most poked at her stew. I hadn’t seen her take a single bite.

  “Aunt Tilly, the stew is quite good, and it will sit easily in thy stomach,” I said gently. “Please try it.”

  She laid her spoon on the table. “How can I eat when my Frannie will never eat again?” Her eyes filled. “When she was taken too soon, her young life extinguished before her time?”

  “Oh, Till, dear.” Dru’s voice was full of anguish. “We must go on. She would want us to, thee knows.”

  Sadie and Huldah murmured their agreement. I’d only met Frannie once when she was a wee thing, so I kept quiet.

  Tilly fixed her dark eyes on me. “Rose, thee must promise to find my girl’s killer.”

  I swallowed. “I will do my best, Aunt Tilly.” It was a heavy responsibility to take on, but what else could I do?

  “Please eat, Friend Tilly. I used one of the fish thee caught last week,” Sadie said, also softly. “Remember thee had too many? I kept it on ice. And I added the scallops thee likes and some clams, too.”

  “Tilly likes going out in her boat alone to fish,” Dru explained to David.

  “I fish, too, every chance I get.” Marie gazed at Tilly. “I think I know what you’re going through, Miss Tilly. Let’s go have a rest, shall we?” She stood and whispered something to Sadie.

  I was surprised to see Tilly agree to let herself be helped up and ushered out by a near stranger. After I heard a door click shut somewhere in the house, I glanced at David.

  “All this might be overwhelming for her,” he said. “Attending worship and being in a social setting is a great deal to handle for someone in deep grief.”

  “Marie lost her father last year, whom she was very close to,” Sadie said. “And she works with the less fortunate in Amesbury. She’s a keenly empathetic woman. She’ll get a bite into Tilly, mark my words. Please excuse me while I dish out a bowl of broth for our grieving friend.”

  “I thank thee,” Dru said. The level in her own bowl was steadily dropping. She was a woman who didn’t let sadness come between her and her appetite.

  Chapter Nine

  After Sadie returned from delivering the soup, I asked, “The man who spoke in Meeting, Abial Latting. Is he a businessman? He appears to be quite wealthy.”

  “Thee could say that.” Sadie frowned. “He owns a fleet of ships and has his finger in several other enterprises, as well.”

  “Sadie doesn’t approve of Abial’s ostentatiousness, but he has been quite generous with the Meeting,” Huldah added. “He’s donated money to maintain the building and to assist in improving the graveyard.”

  Dru raised a single white eyebrow. “If I may say so, Tilly and I, and several of the ladies at the library, also harbor a concern for his interest in the accumulation of funds and material possessions. It perhaps exceeds the bounds of Friendly p
ropriety.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sadie said. “As thee knows, Huldah and I have been blessed with a comfortable income, but we still try to live modestly. Abial? Not so much. He’s quite lavish.”

  “People in our town perhaps imbue him with a power he doesn’t deserve,” Dru added.

  “He also does not always conduct himself with modesty,” Huldah said. “One hears rumors of his proclivities from many corners.”

  “What do you mean by proclivities?” David asked.

  Sadie and Huldah exchanged a look. Sadie spoke. “He’s been known to—”

  A knock sounded on the front door. Huldah rose to answer it.

  Known to what? I snuck a quizzical glance at David, but he only shrugged. Of course he knew no more than I.

  Huldah returned, frowning, with a neatly dressed man following him. Our host cleared his throat.

  “Pardon me, everyone, but this is Detective Merritt with the County Sheriff’s office. He wondered if he might have a word with Tilly, but I told him she was indisposed. He, ah, rather insisted on coming in, anyway.”

  “Tilly is most certainly indisposed, Edwin,” Sadie said. “Would thee like to sup on First Day fish stew with us?” Sadie clearly knew him personally, but then, West Falmouth was a much smaller town than Amesbury.

  A stocky compact man with wavy hair the color of beach sand, the detective blinked. “No, thank you, Mrs. Gifford. I have dined. Miss Carroll, perhaps I might speak with you, instead.”

  Dru finished buttering her bread before answering. “Sit thyself down, Edwin. Whatever thee wants to ask me, thee can say it in the company of my friends and family. I harbor no secrets.” She cupped her hand around her mouth and said to me in an entirely audible whisper, “I taught him when he was in short pants.”

  Edwin’s color rose, but he sat where Tilly had been. Sadie introduced David and me. Edwin peered at me when he heard my name.

  “Would you be Miss Rose Carroll of Amesbury?”

  Kevin must have acted fast.

  “I am the former Rose Carroll, still of Amesbury. David and I were married yesterday, and my surname is now Dodge.” I peered back at him. Curiously, the man had one blue eye and one green, a sight I’d never seen until now.

  “I was going to pay you a visit tomorrow, ma’am,” he said. “Your friend Donovan suggested I seek you out.”

  “Here I am,” I said. “Can thee tell me what time of day is Frannie supposed to have died, and how?”

  The detective blinked. “Perhaps we can discuss that at a more suitable time, Mrs. Dodge.”

  “Very well.” I assumed he was taken aback by my forthrightness. I didn’t mind. If I stopped investigating every time someone wasn’t pleased by my questioning, I might as well not even begin. “How can I help thee?”

  “I’m not quite sure. We’re still gathering the facts, as you might imagine. But it’s good to know someone with such honed detecting skills is in town and is also intimately familiar with the family in question.”

  Huldah cocked his head in interest, but he kept quiet.

  “Which is why my sister desperately wanted Rose to come early.” Dru popped in another bite of bread. “What did thee want to talk with Tilly about?” she asked Edwin after she swallowed.

  “We are looking into the character and whereabouts of a Reuben Baxter,” Edwin said. “Has he been at or near your house since Miss Isley disappeared?” he asked Dru.

  “I told thee yesterday.” Dru waved her bread in the air. “She didn’t disappear. She went off to the tag shop like she always did on Sixth Day.”

  “But you said she didn’t come home.”

  “She didn’t.” Dru calmly buttered another piece of bread.

  “Weren’t thee and Aunt Tilly worried when Frannie hadn’t appeared by nightfall?” I asked.

  The detective shot me a look of annoyance, which didn’t seem quite fair, as he had as much as asked for my assistance.

  “Not really, dear,” my aunt said. “She sometimes spent the night with a friend from the tag shop.”

  Edwin checked his notebook. “A Miss Hazel Bowman.”

  “Yes, as I told thee yesterday. They’d been school chums.”

  “We have learned that Frannie was, in fact, not with Miss Bowman on the night in question at all,” Edwin said.

  “I suppose that explains it.” Dru lifted a shoulder and dropped it.

  “Explains what, Aunt Dru?” I prodded. The detective looked to be growing frustrated, and with good reason. I was, too.

  “Well, she was dead, of course.”

  My aunt was not making sense. Was senile dementia affecting Dru? She’d acted normally up to now, although her lack of sorrow about Frannie’s death both last night and today seemed odd to me. I hadn’t spent time with my aunts in recent years. They were both getting on in age, which is why I wanted to bring David to meet them. Or maybe Drusilla was the kind of person who shut away her feelings and grieved in private later.

  Edwin chose to ignore her circular logic—or whatever it was—and returned to his earlier question. “Miss Carroll, has Reuben Baxter been at or near your house since Friday morning?”

  “I haven’t seen him. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. I was returning books to their proper shelves at the library most of Sixth Day. Thee must know, Edwin, that we Quaker ladies founded the lending library not so long ago.”

  The detective’s smile was a thin one. “Yes, Miss Carroll, I know. An excellent library it is, too. How about Joseph Baxter?”

  “Abial Latting’s handyman?” Dru asked. “What about him?”

  “I would like to know if he has been around your abode in the same time period.” Edwin leaned forward a bit.

  “Why would he come to our house?”

  Sadie cleared her throat. “If everyone is finished eating, I’ll just clear. And, Detective, perhaps thee could postpone further interrogations until tomorrow. Of course we want Frannie’s killer to be apprehended, but this is our day of rest, after all.” She smiled genteelly, but there was no mistaking the steel in her voice, again reminding me of Mother. The two of them would get on famously.

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. Gifford.” He pushed his chair back so fast he had to catch it from falling. “Please forgive my intrusion. I thank you for your time, Miss Carroll. Miss . . . I mean, Mrs. Dodge, might I have a word with you in the hall?”

  My hostess signaled for me to go. “I’ll be right back to help,” I said to Sadie.

  “Let me.” David stood and began to collect my dishes and his.

  Near the front door, Merritt donned his hat. “Mrs. Dodge,” he began.

  “I don’t suppose I could prevail on thee to call me Rose?”

  “I’m afraid not. My pitiful brain needs the tidy order of social convention or it gets mightily confused. To start again, I hope you will consider keeping your eyes and ears alert for any information pertaining to this case. The only possible suspect we have is the beau, but it’s a long shot.”

  “I will, in exchange for information. For example, how did Frannie die, specifically?” I kept my voice as soft as I could, both so it wouldn’t carry to the dining room but also so Tilly wouldn’t hear, since I had no idea which door she and Marie had disappeared behind.

  “From a preliminary examination, the girl appears to have died from drowning. But we also discovered a laceration on her head. The state medical examiner is coming down from Boston to perform an autopsy tomorrow.”

  “Good. Her body washed up on which beach?”

  “On our own Chappaquoit, yesterday morning.”

  “And was she at work all day on Sixth Day?”

  “Yes, so says Mrs. Boyce. Time of death has as much as an eighteen-hour span, though.”

  “How unfortunate. Thee will keep me informed of the autopsy results, I trust. My aunts will know where to locate me.”

  “I promise to. Good day, Mrs. Dodge. And you can find me at Mr. Gifford’s law office. He’s agreed to give us a
suite for the duration of the investigation, as there’s no police department in town, nor in Falmouth at all. There’s only the Cape District, so the Barnstable County Sheriff handles all matters criminal.”

  “Has thee investigated many homicides, Edwin?”

  He grimaced. “Only two in the last decade. This area is generally peaceful and not rife with murderers.” He let himself out.

  I stood in the cool quiet of the hall, barely taking in the fine Oriental carpet runner, the mirror edged in teak above a small table for gloves and calling cards, the burnished mahogany of the newel post, the ticking of the tall case clock. What I saw was a spunky girl with a bashed head washed up from the bay with the incoming tide. Had she fallen or was she thrown overboard? Was she alive or dead when she hit the water? Was her death purposeful, violent? Or accidental? Did Edwin even have the skills to find the person who ended her life? I closed my eyes and held her memory in the Light of God, that it might lead me to assist the detective in his search for the truth.

  Chapter Ten

  Sadie refused all help with the washing up, saying she found it relaxing and that she had a kitchen girl coming the next morning to do the pots and pans. Dru retired for a nap, so David and I took ourselves off for a tour of the town, such as it was.

  “How did Dru seem to thee, David?” I asked as we strolled arm in arm in the fall sunshine. “Did she seem to be losing her senses a little?”

  “A bit, yes. Or perhaps she was evading the detective’s questions on purpose.”

  I glanced up at him. “On purpose? But why?”

  “I don’t know, Rosie. A girl the aunts raised was murdered. Drusilla doesn’t seem particularly broken up about it. Please don’t take offense, because I know she’s your beloved aunt, but I wonder why she isn’t grieving at least partly as much as Tilly is.”

  “It is perplexing, and I wondered the same. It could be senility setting in, rather than guilt about something.”

  “It certainly could be. She is, what, seventy-five? Although many old people remain clear of mind until they die.”

  “Like Orpha,” I said, referencing my dear midwifery mentor who, blessedly, was still very much alive, albeit increasingly frail. “And John Whittier, of course.”