Blood upon the Snow

by Hilda Lawrence

  “No. I’m returning it. And this envelope.” He explained about the six cents.

  Beulah shook the pennies into her lap. “That’s funny. She didn’t have to pay me this way. She could have brought it herself, any day. I mean, she could have if—”

  Amos spoke harshly from the window. “She didn’t expect to see you for some time. She was planning on taking the ten o’clock this morning and catching the New York train at Bear River.”

  They stared at him.

  “Come over here,” Mark said. “How do you know that?”

  Amos came over. “She was going away to-day. She called me up yesterday morning and asked me to say nothing. She wanted me to borrow a truck and come up for her things after she’d gone. I was to store them in her cellar. I got a key. I always have had a key ever since she went to work for Davenport. Even when her husband was alive. . . . She trusted me.”

  “I knew she was leaving,” Mark said. “But she didn’t tell me she was going away. She said she was—tired.”

  “I used to air the place for her when she couldn’t get down to do it herself,” Amos droned on. “And she told me to have her ticket ready. She never did much travelling and thought you had to order in advance, like Europe.”

  “New York,” breathed Bessy. “I can’t believe it.”

  “No?” said Amos sharply. “Well, you can ask somebody else then. Somebody else knew just what I know. That she was going to New York, and why.”

  Mark gave him a shrewd look. “Who?”

  Amos shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “Wish I did.”

  Mark lit a cigarette and waited a few seconds. Then, “I liked Mrs. Lacey. I only saw her once in my life but I’ll never forget her. But—I don’t feel right about this business. Of course it has nothing to do with me; I’m employed by Mr. Stoneman just as Perrin is employed by Mr. Morey and I have no right to meddle in Mr. Morey’s household affairs. But when I talked to Mrs. Lacey she’d been crying. And she said some odd things about evil. I wondered then if she was frightened. Or if she was simply being silly about some trifle.”

  Amos bristled. “She wasn’t silly about anything! She was frightened!”

  “Ah. . . . Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Never heard her so upset. Wanted to leave right away. Even said the girls could pack for her. But it was Sunday and the trains ain’t so good. First one she could get leaves here at six in the evening. The New York train leaves Bear River at eight. Put her in New York around midnight—too late for a lady, I told her.” He turned his head. “I wish I’d let her go,” he said softly.

  Beulah cleared her throat. “But New York? Why did she want to go to New York?”

  “Going to see her niece. I asked her what for because the niece is going to have a baby and Ruthie always believed in leaving women alone at times like that. Better for them, she always said. So then she said it was the niece’s husband she wanted to see.”

  “Why did she want to see the niece’s husband?” Mark asked patiently.

  “Didn’t tell me, except to say she had some business for him.”

  “What is his business?”

  “He’s a police captain.”

  “That’s funny,” Beulah said slowly.

  Mark lit another cigarette. “Could be anything,” he said carefully. “Could be advice about her property. She may have wanted to make some provision for the baby. . . . Amos, what did you mean when you said somebody else knew about her plans?”

  “I was waiting for you to get around to that,” snorted Beulah.

  “She was telephoning me from the garage,” Amos said. “Told me she didn’t want the girls to hear. She said the garage was safe because there wasn’t anybody there. But Ruthie wasn’t smart about telephones. That garage ’phone is connected to the house ’phones. Anybody that saw her go out there could have listened if they’d wanted to.”

  “Did anybody?”

  “I thought there was somebody on the line besides her but I wasn’t sure. So when she hung up I waited. Sure enough, I heard someone else hang up too.”

  Beulah broke the silence that followed. “Scott says it was an accident,” she said thoughtfully. “What did Dr. Cummings say, and that good-for-nothing Perley Wilcox?”

  “They all agree. Accidental death. But they seem to think it wouldn’t have happened if Davenport had put in proper light and heating. I think we’d better agree with them.”

  Bessy, who had been rooting around in Beulah’s lap looking for another handkerchief, suddenly held up the white envelope.

  “There’s something else in it!” she shrilled. “A lot of money and a letter!”

  Beulah snatched it quickly. “Ridiculous,” she scoffed. But there was. She drew out a folded paper and a five-dollar bill. She read aloud: “Miss Pond, the six cents is my fine. The book was lovely. I am going away and will see you on my return. The five dollars is something for you to do for me if you will be so kind. When you go over to Bear River next Sunday please drop it in the poor box at St. Michael’s. I will appreciate. Yours, R Lacey.”

  Bessy looked stunned. “Why does she want to put money in the poor box? She has her regular collection envelope like everybody else.”

  Mark didn’t have the answer. He said good-bye as soon as he could and left them poring over the note. On his way up the mountain he was overtaken by a crew of workmen. They gave him a lift and talked about the fire. They were carpenters, come to replace the burned doors and windows.

  There was a tray on the desk in his room and a note from Florrie asking him to drink the soup in the thermos jug and eat the sandwiches and bring the tray down to the pantry when he was through, please.

  Stoneman was still asleep. He ate his lunch slowly and carried the tray downstairs according to instructions. Florrie was cleaning silver in Perrin’s pantry and showing clearly that while she knew it wasn’t her job she’d do it anyway, because she was that kind of girl.

  “Just put them down anywhere,” she told Mark. “And thank you. In times like this everybody has to pull more than their weight.”

  “Where’s Perrin?”

  “Out somewhere. An easy job if you ask me. Not that he’s the only one around here with an easy job. Are you working this afternoon or taking another walk?”

  Mark got the point. Equals now, he said to himself, and no more sirs. “Neither,” he answered. “I’m going to help you, if I may. Mr. Stoneman is still asleep.”

  “Well.” Florrie softened. “You can do that urn if you want. It’s really too much for me. So Mr. S. is asleep, is he? I wish I could say the same for Mrs. M. We’re a pair, you and me. Tied down to a couple of notional people.”

  “What’s Mrs. M.’s trouble?” he asked as he rubbed.

  “Nerves. I’ve seen nerves before and I know. Lots of ladies come to the summer hotel with nerves. Looks to me like it comes from having too much money. Now, if I had too much money I’d enjoy it, I would. Plenty of time to rest when you’re old.”

  “Maybe your Mrs. M. is really ill,” he ventured.

  “Ill! Her! With all those evening gowns? Dozens, I tell you, and this year’s style. And fur coats. And jewellery. Just like in a magazine. She didn’t buy all those things to wear in bed, which is where she spends most of her time now.”

  Florrie was a different girl when she forgot her refinement and enjoyed herself as she was doing now. Mark was delighted, and showed it—carefully.

  “I guess her husband gave them to her to cheer her up,” he said.

  “Him!” Florrie collapsed against the table with joy. “That one! Why, he has to ask her for every penny! She’s the one with the money around here. I think he married her for it. Not that she’s close with it, I’ll say that for her. Very liberal. She pays double wages to what you’d get anywhere else. That’s why I stay. That and the children.” She gave him a side glance. “No girl with a heart could help but love children, don’t you think?”

  Mark returned the glance but decided to circulate a rumou
r that he was married.

  “But he’s good to her, for all her tantrums. I think he’s handsome, don’t you? And between you and I, not a bit fresh. When you work out, you appreciate that. The things I could tell you!”

  “I can believe it,” Mark said admiringly. “And I wouldn’t blame any man who—” He stopped and let the suggestion take root and flower into a blush. “But,” he went on easily, “if the wages are so good I don’t see why Mrs. Lacey, poor thing, wanted to leave.”

  Florrie’s eyes clouded. “Oh, she was well-to-do in her own right,” she explained. “She only came to help the Moreys because they were the Colonel’s friends. And she wasn’t so young any more, you know. All this nervous business, and people not coming to meals, and wanting trays; and that Mr. S. of yours being really worse than my Mrs. M. Fed up was what she got.”

  “But my Mr. S. had nothing to do with Mrs. Lacey.”

  “He had enough to nearly drive her crazy. Locking himself in his room and only opening the door to take in food. And making her swear nobody had touched it but herself. He used to say he had a creese. Perrin says that’s French for fidgets. Personally, I think he suffers from a mania.”

  “I believe you’re right,” Mark said admiringly. “Did Perrin work for the Colonel too?”

  “My,” said Florrie. “You don’t know a thing about us, do you? Perrin came from one of those agencies that deals with only the highest type. Mrs. Morey got him. His references would give you a thrill. Dukes and so on, titles on the other side. I never saw them myself, but Mrs. Lacey did. He had a bad cold one day and Mrs. Morey asked her to go out to the garage with some medicine and things. She’s real thoughtful that way. She told Mrs. Lacey she knew it wasn’t her work and it was a long walk for a heavy woman, but she thought it would look better than sending a young girl. He was in his bathroom when she got there and the papers were lying on his table. She couldn’t help but read them.”

  “Um,” said Mark.

  “He’s high-toned, Perrin is.” Florrie took satisfaction in this. “So is Mr. Stoneman high-toned. It comes from their foreign contacts. I understand Mr. Stoneman dug up things in Europe. Some digger, too, if you ask me. I bet he could get things out of you that you wouldn’t breathe to a soul. You should have heard him with Mrs. Lacey!”

  “Florrie!” cried Mark, enslaved. “You’re wonderful! The things you know! . . . Don’t tell me Mrs. Lacey had a past?”

  “If you mean what I think you mean,” sparkled Florrie, “no. But about two weeks ago he came down to the kitchen and gave her five dollars and—”

  “Florrie!”

  “And gave her five dollars,” went on Florrie with a look, “if she would tell him exactly what she was doing and where she was the night before. She hadn’t been anywhere and hadn’t done anything, so she told him so. And gave him back his five dollars and ran him out of the kitchen. He’d die if he knew I knew.”

  “Um,” said Mark again.

  “After he left she cried and cried. She thought she was alone, see, and nobody would know.”

  “Apparently they both thought they were alone. How did you ever find out, Florrie? Did she tell you?”

  “Tell me? Not her! Close-mouthed. But I was right in here hanging down the dumbwaiter shaft. The voices came up clear as a bell.”

  Mark put down his cleaning rag. “You don’t know anything else, do you?” he asked respectfully.

  “No. Except he kept after her. The last time was yesterday morning—imagine that—only yesterday. When you went out for a walk he had her up in the library, asking her all over again. She said all she knew about that night was that there were broken bottles all over the cellar next morning, and somebody had swiped the light bulb on the stairs. She said did he think she broke the bottles. He said no, he only wanted to know if she was in her room all the time and if she saw or heard anything.”

  “Did you and Violet hear anything?”

  “Not us. That was one of the times we slipped down the mountain, with permission. Well, you can say what you will, but it looks like fate. That was only yesterday and when she came back to the kitchen she was crying like anything and saying, ‘God help me.’”

  “And,” prompted Mark.

  “He didn’t,” Florrie said simply. “She wrote out her resignation and had me take it up to Mrs. Morey. But she died just the same.”

  Mark regarded her thoughtfully. “Sure nobody knows you were hanging down that shaft, Florrie?”

  “Who could? That’s the kind of thing a person keeps to herself.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going. Perrin is the head here and he’ll let us off, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  They both jumped as Perrin entered quietly.

  “Speaking of the devil,” said Florrie brightly. “I was just saying how obliging you were. And Mr. East”—she was a great lady distributing largess—“Mr. East is very nice and friendly too.”

  Mark felt himself flushing. “Well, if that’s all—”

  “I’ve got to run up to Mrs. Morey and give her hair a good brush. Then I’ll pick up the library a bit. And then it’ll be time to take the children out for a run. They’re pestering.”

  Mark plunged. “I’d like to do that, if I may. Take the children out.” He found himself addressing Perrin. “I have nieces of my own,” he lied sadly, “and I miss them now and then. Especially—now.”

  Florrie looked eagerly at Perrin. She was thinking of the nice long letter she wanted to write to her boy friend, telling him all. “Honestly,” she murmured, “Violet and I are that rushed. And if Mr. Stoneman could spare Mr. East—”

  In less than ten minutes Mark found himself prancing through the snow with two small girls.

  Young Anne was sturdy and poised, almost grave. Ivy was a dumpling who rolled into drifts and rolled out again under her own steam. They liked Mark and he liked them. It was good to feel their icy little mittens tucked in his hand.

  They led him directly to a small clearing a few yards from the terrace. It faced the house and was backed by a semicircle of trees and rocks. It was their den; they told him so, proudly. It was degrees colder than the terrace, but they didn’t seem to mind.

  There were old brooms and shovels littering the ground and several wrecks of snowmen standing about; headless dwarfs, no taller than their waddling creator. Mark made derisive comments and offered to build another. When he produced straws from one of the brooms and told Ivy they were eyelashes, he reached the stature of a god. Anne left her snowballing and joined them.

  He had been watching her for the last five minutes. She aimed at impossible targets and never missed. Her grave little face was twisted into a scowl and there was something studied and patterned in the way she handled her right hand and wrist. He thought he knew what it was, and when she came over to help Ivy he laid a small trap. He tossed a snowball himself, holding his hand as she had held hers.

  “Pelotari?” he grinned.

  She threw him a look of dismay but recovered herself like a woman. “Lots of people over here play pelota now,” she said carelessly. “They have teams.”

  “Yes, I know.” He gave her a smile, and felt like a heel because he was setting traps for a baby. “I like the Basque country, don’t you?”

  “I love it,” she said quickly, and then again the painful flush and look of dismay. “I mean, I think I would. I’ve seen pictures, in books.” She turned swiftly to avoid his eyes, and kicked at the snow. “I’m going to find some bits of coal for buttons. We saw one in Bear River with buttons.”

  “Wait.” He put his hands on her shoulders and bent down so that his face was level with hers. He said: “For some reason, and I don’t know what it is, I’ve made you uncomfortable. It was that question, I think. Well, you forget all about it and I will too. I was only trying to be friendly but I guess I’m clumsy.” Then he waited.

  Anne waited too, weighing and appraising. Her eyes sear
ched his and he felt as if he’d taken a bottle from an infant. But he stared straight back. Suddenly, to his intense relief, she relaxed, but there was no eight-year-old smile on her face, only a look of thoughtful surrender.

  “You were quite all right,” she said. “I am the one who was wrong. I shouldn’t have answered that question but you asked it so naturally I forgot to be careful. You must forget what I said, Mr. East, because I promised my mother I would forget. I promised not to speak of places to anyone; not to anyone at all.”

  “But I’m not just anyone,” Mark said quietly. “I’m nobody. I don’t count.”

  “You mustn’t say that,” she frowned. “Everybody counts. But you understand what I mean, don’t you, about forgetting? . . . It upsets my mother to remember Europe. But we were very happy there and she isn’t happy here.”

  “It upsets lots of people, Anne. Don’t worry about it. You’ll go back again some day.”

  Then she said a curious thing. “If I’m obedient.”

  He wasn’t sorry to see Morey coming toward them. There were other questions he wanted to ask, but she had him licked. It was that obedient clause. And now her blue eyes were watching him closely.

  “Friends?” he whispered.

  “Friends,” she whispered back.

  Morey came up with his usual bounce; there were circles under his eyes, but he grinned happily at the children. “Don’t fall in love with this guy,” he warned. “He’s not half as nice as I am.” He tossed Ivy into a drift and watched her scramble out again. “I’ll take over now, East. Joe’s up and raring to go.” Ivy went into the drift once more, but this time she complained loudly.

  “Don’t give her any sympathy,” Morey said to Mark. “She needs toughening up. Her mother spoils her.” They both watched as Ivy staggered off with an injured air.

  “How is Mrs. Morey?” Mark asked casually.

  “Not too well. Last night did her up.”

  “Me too,” Mark said. “There I was in the pitch-dark with Stoneman howling on the floor and you whamming that iron. A nice way to wake up. Give me a sunbeam across the eyelids.”

  Anne ran over, followed by Ivy. “Here comes Mother,” she said. “She’s—she’s in a hurry.” She rested one hand on Ivy’s shoulder and waited.