“I can’t claim always to be one but my stomach served as a wakeup call this morning and I could not refuse its urgings. Especially considering the quality of Mrs. Doyle’s cooking.”
“A rare one she is, that Mrs. Doyle. Cook, housekeeper, and gardener all rolled into one. If I weren’t already married to my beloved Cecelia, I’d ask Mrs. Doyle for her capable hand.”
“Isn’t Mrs. Doyle married already?”
“Widowed, she is, for more years than you’ve been rattling the Earth. Her husband had taken to beating her and she left him. She was spared the difficulty of deciding to give him another chance because he was fortunately claimed by the sea the very day she left.”
“Is that how she came to be at the Belden?”
“Aye. Your grandparents heard of her troubles and offered her a position here.”
“And she’s been here ever since?”
“Indeed she has. Devoted to the family like they were her own.” Mr. MacPherson broke off a bit of toast and popped it into his mouth. “I wouldn’t want to be on Mrs. Doyle’s bad side. You should have seen the rampage she was on this morning when she discovered someone had made a mess of her kitchen. A woman in rare form, I tell you.” A bite of egg lodged in my throat. I had lost my ability to swallow. Just as I thought I was softening Mrs. Doyle up a bit. I took a sip of water from my cup to force the egg down before attempting to speak.
“You seem to know a great deal about Mrs. Doyle’s history. How did you come to be so informed about her?”
“I’m informed, as you say, about many things, but I am especially interested in this hotel. Mrs. Doyle was happy to share some of her own part in its history with me.” Mr. MacPherson scraped butter across a second biscuit, then loaded it with strawberry preserves. “This property is bewitching, don’t you agree?”
“If you are speaking of its beauty, I would heartily agree,” I said. The gleam in Mr. MacPherson’s eyes was that of a zealot. I braced myself for whatever message he was about to extoll. At least he was too wrapped up in his own enthusiasms to leave me worrying about not spilling any secrets about his wife.
“I mean the energy here. Surely someone as sensitive to the world of spirit would sense that the atmosphere here is unusual.”
“In which way?” I had noticed that the voice had become a louder, more frequent visitor since I had arrived at the Belden. But I wasn’t prepared to share that even with Honoria. Still, what he had to say interested me and with a nod of my head I encouraged him to continue.
“Take my dowsing, for instance. Allow me to demonstrate.” He pulled a clear crystal hanging from a chain from his vest pocket. Grasping a knob at the end of the chain firmly between two fingers he dangled the crystal above the tablecloth. I watched silently as he waited for the pendulum to stop swaying. “Ask it a question,” he said.
“What sort of a question?”
“Anything you like as long as it can be answered with a yes or no. Ambiguity is for card readers and crystal ball gazers, not for dowsers. We’re more the straightforward sort.”
“Is today my birthday?” I asked. I watched as the crystal began to sway side to side, slowly at first and then picking up speed. I looked at Mr. MacPherson’s hands in an effort to detect the source of the motion. They appeared steady as a rock.
“It says that it is not. A side-to-side motion indicates a no and a back-and-forth motion signals yes.”
“Are there any other movements?” I asked.
“The pendulum can swing in a clockwise rotation for maybe and widdershins to request a different question or more likely to show that there is more information available for the asking.”
“Widdershins?”
“Counterclockwise to you Americans.”
“I was raised in Canada.”
“That may be true but you still didn’t know what it meant. Ask another question.” Mr. MacPherson once again stopped the pendulum’s sway and held it steady while I thought. There were many questions on my mind, the top one being how he managed to make it appear that he wasn’t moving the pendulum when he so clearly was.
But other things were there, too, like what to do about Officer Yancey’s determination to dig into my background? Or, more important, would I be able to convince Mr. Stickney that my abilities were real? None of these were questions I wanted to share with Mr. MacPherson.
“Are you feeling shy about the question? That’s all right. You can ask anything silently and I’ll dowse for it. Sometimes I prefer not to hear the question so I can’t influence the reading with my own opinion.”
I nodded and decided to ask if I would succeed in convincing Mr. Stickney of my abilities, as it seemed the most pressing concern. “I’ve thought of one.” Not that I would necessarily believe the answer the pendulum offered. I wasn’t saying Mr. MacPherson was trying to trick anyone. I thought it was possible he was one of those unfortunate souls who made the colossal mistake of believing his own con.
“Have you got the question firmly in mind and are certain it can be answered as yes or no?” he asked me. I nodded and he released his staying hand from the crystal. It hung motionless at first and then, with slight twitches and waggles began to stir. Then slowly but steadily it began to swing back and forth, gathering speed and increasing its arc. “That is a definite no.”
“Not what I hoped. But I confess, I am not entirely convinced that dowsing works.” I took a bite of my biscuit. “I hope you are not offended.”
“You wouldn’t be the first skeptic I’ve met. But I would like a chance to convince you. Will you come with me to the beach and try it for yourself?” He pushed back his chair and held out his hand.
“Now?”
“Why not? Do you have a pressing appointment so early in the morning?”
I heard Mrs. Doyle’s voice bellowing down the hall about the state of her kitchen. I had no wish to encounter her in her current frame of mind. And, if the pendulum was correct about Mr. Stickney, I would do well to avoid him as long as possible. Any excuse to leave the hotel seemed appealing.
“I would love nothing more,” I said as I took Mr. MacPherson’s arm.
• • •
The tide was almost at its height as we paced along the soft sand above the high-water mark. The morning was foggy and I was startled when a seagull dropped from the sky and landed on a large white shell. Others, drawn to its work, flocked to the same spot and drove the first gull away.
Beside me Mr. MacPherson held his arms stiffly bent at his sides. A shaft of sunlight burnt through the fog and glinted off the metal rod held in each of his clenched fists. He held out the brass rods to me. I took them in my hands and felt how warm the metal had become.
“What do I do with them?”
“You hold them firmly enough not to drop them but lightly enough so they can swing as they’re a-mind to do.” I adjusted my grip and he nodded with approval. “That’s right. Just so.”
“Now what?”
“Now you start to look for something worth finding.”
“What sort of thing should I look for?”
“How about gold? That’s what I look for most mornings.”
“It seems an unlikely place to find nuggets,” I said.
“That may well be but it is a fine place to discover lost jewelry. People are forever losing things on the beach.”
“That makes sense. So how do these work?”
“You put your mind to the item you are looking for. Then hold the rods and walk slowly. When they cross you know to stop and dig.”
“That’s it?” I was not convinced. If it was as easy as that why wasn’t everyone roaming the sand with a couple of pieces of brass wire bent into an L shape?
“Well, you do have to keep your mind fixed upon what you seek. It also helps to know what getting close feels like.” He pulled a brooch from his trouser pocket an
d placed it on the beach a few yards away. “Hold the rods over the sand and feel the way they act.” I did and they just bounced up and down slightly in the breeze.
“I feel nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Now slowly walk this way.” He gestured toward the brooch. “Keep the idea of gold in your mind as you walk.” I felt a tingling in my hands, and as I reached the brooch the rods swung violently then crossed, one over the other.
“I did it,” I said, not certain it wasn’t a product of my own doing. “But what’s to say I didn’t cross them deliberately because I knew the gold was there?”
“I can’t make you believe but maybe if you tag along you’ll be convinced.”
I agreed and we spent an enjoyable half hour moving slowly back and forth over the beach, pausing now and again to check the sand for treasures. Every time the rods crossed Mr. MacPherson pulled a mesh sieve from his bag and sifted through the sand. More often than not the items he dug up were not gold but they were always made of metal. It was an engrossing activity. Almost without realizing how much ground we had covered, the pier suddenly emerged from the fog.
“I’m feeling a strong tug. This way,” Mr. MacPherson said, hurrying along faster now than before. I trailed behind, struggling to keep the hem of my skirt above the incoming tide. Even from a distance I could see how excited he was becoming. It was as though he was being pulled by a magnetic force or floated along on an invisible current. Then Mr. MacPherson stopped as the rods crossed each other with a swish.
A large black mass lay spread at his feet, the waves lapping at the edge of it. Mr. MacPherson bent over. I hurried forward, abandoning the notion of keeping my hem dry, too eager to see what he had discovered. It was just like a treasure hunt in one of the dime novels Father hated for me to read. Mr. MacPherson sank to his knees on the sand. What could he have found?
“Have you found a pirate’s chest?” I called out, coming alongside him.
“Oh, lassie, I wish you weren’t here to see this,” he said. The wind shifted and the fog streaked away from the mass in front of us. Mr. MacPherson had discovered a gold pocket watch on the beach. Unfortunately, it was still attached to the very dead Leander Stickney.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
What do you think?” Frank Nichols asked as they bent over the body. “Pickpocket turned violent?”
“Perhaps. The fact that his watch is still with the body makes me wonder.” Yancey pointed at the fancy and obvious chain stretched over the dead man’s waistcoat. He began searching the victim’s pockets. Even after hours spent wicking salty moisture up from the sand, the fabric of the victim’s suit felt like money under Yancey’s fingers. He pulled out a billfold and flipped it open. Several five-dollar bills and a few ones still nestled inside. Finding nothing else besides a book of matches from the Sea Spray Hotel, he turned his attention to the wound. “Nasty gash in the skull.”
“It’s enough to put me off my feed,” Frank said. Frank’s appetite was legendary. It wasn’t surprising, though. His wife, Sadie, was Mrs. Doyle’s daughter and every bit the cook her mother was. Yancey found himself envying Frank more often than he liked, especially when they pulled out their lunch buckets.
“Have you located the weapon yet?”
“No, but I just arrived. From the depth of the wound it had to have been something pretty heavy.”
“Agreed. Have one of the other officers start scouring the area for it in case we are lucky and the murderer discarded the weapon here.”
“Will do.” Frank shouted to a skinny young man with a scanty mustache and sent him off with the order to search the beach for something bloody. Yancey looked down at the body stretched before him. He shook away thoughts of other times he had been in the presence of violent death and brought his attention back to the matter in front of him. The mist would make it more difficult to accurately record the position of the body, and the tide was still rising.
“Get one of the boys to fetch the photographer from up by the livery. Roust him from bed if you have to and get him down here to document this. Hurley’ll have all our hides if this isn’t cleared up before the pier opens.”
“You can’t want that guy Lydale,” Frank asked.
“He’s just trying to make a living like everyone else,” Yancey said, then straightened and brushed the damp sand from his knees.
“Yeah, but he does it on the backs of the dead.”
“Sometimes, so do we.” Yancey gestured at the body in front of them. “I want any help I can get. Speaking of which, who found the body?”
“They did.” Frank pointed to two figures whose details were obscured by the fog. Yancey patted his pocket for a notebook and a pencil as he started up the beach. The pair that discovered the body was sitting on the edge of the boardwalk. Before he reached them the chief loomed into view and intercepted his path.
“Yancey, have you gotten to the bottom of this mess yet?” Chief Hurley’s mustache drooped in the humidity. He pulled off his spectacles and wiped the mist from the lenses on a fine white handkerchief.
“I’ve only just arrived, sir. I’m about to question the people who discovered the body.” Yancey pointed to the pair of witnesses.
“Let’s get to it, then.” The chief set off before Yancey could object to his participation.
Chief Hurley reached out to shake the hand of a gaunt man unfamiliar to Yancey. Unfortunately, the young woman was not.
“Miss Proulx, it seems your real supernatural gift is an ability to attract a criminal element.”
“Old Orchard does seem to be rife with violence.”
“Not before you arrived, it wasn’t.”
“Yancey, that’s no way to speak to a young lady. Are you all right, my dear?” Chief Hurley asked.
“I’ll be fine once I’m allowed to return home,” Miss Proulx said.
“Of course. We’ll hurry things along.” Chief Hurley scowled at Yancey, then smiled at Miss Proulx. “Who might you be, my dear?”
“Miss Ruby Proulx. Perhaps you know my aunt Honoria Belden?”
“Of course I’m acquainted with Miss Belden. She’s a pillar of the community. Yancey, I cannot see subjecting her niece to questioning.”
“I need to question her, sir. She found the body along with this fellow.” Yancey tipped his head toward the gaunt man. “And you are?”
“Everett MacPherson. I’m one of the practitioners at the Hotel Belden, and Miss Proulx and I were out using my dowsing rods when I was drawn to the body.”
“Drawn to the body? How so?”
“It was the watch, you see. I had attuned my mind to seek out gold and my rods guided me straight to the watch on Mr. Stickney’s waistcoat.”
“So you knew the victim?” Yancey printed the victim’s name in his notebook in block letters for clarity. Most of his notes were scribbles and swirls but victim’s names called for more respect than that.
“He was a guest at the hotel.”
“Did you see anyone else in the area?” Yancey asked.
“The only one I saw out and about was the Indian woman who reads palms on the beach. She walked quite near me not long before I came upon Mr. Stickney.”
“Any idea why someone would want to kill him?” Chief Hurley said.
“I can’t possibly say. I hardly knew the man.” Mr. MacPherson stepped closer to Miss Proulx.
“Nor did I,” said Miss Proulx.
“You don’t happen to have a message about the crime from the deceased?” Yancey felt his neck grow warm under his collar as his boss arched an eyebrow at him. “Miss Proulx offers her services as a medium at the hotel.”
“If only it were that simple. The world of spirit is not ours to command. If there is nothing further, I am feeling light-headed. Would it be possible for me to return to the hotel?” She batted her eyelashes at Chief Hurley and bit her lip.
> “Allow me to escort you home.” Chief Hurley crooked his elbow and extended it to her. “Mr. MacPherson can surely give you any additional information you might need, Yancey.”
“That’ll be fine so long as I know where to find her if I need to question her further,” Yancey said, tipping his hat. “You aren’t thinking of leaving town unexpectedly, are you, Miss Proulx?”
“Despite Old Orchard’s disturbing crime rate I do believe there are plenty of reasons for me to stay,” Miss Proulx said. She and the chief slipped off through the fog, leaving Yancey unable to shake the notion he had been bested and hadn’t even known he was playing a game.
“Quite a lovely lassie, that one,” Mr. MacPherson said.
“She may be to some men’s taste but I’d say trouble follows her like mud season follows snow melt.” Before his companion could comment, Frank hailed him from across the beach. “I expect you have no plans to leave Old Orchard anytime soon, either, do you?” Yancey asked, pocketing his notebook.
“The season is already too short for my liking. I shan’t make it even more so on purpose.”
“You’re free to head home, too. I’ll call in at the hotel as soon as my business here is concluded.” Yancey hurried to Frank’s side.
“Lewis found this tucked into a pile of other metal bars.” Frank held out a steel rod about three feet in length. Bits of sand clung to a patch of brownish-red discoloration near one end. Yancey took it and carried it to the body. He squatted next to the corpse and held the bar next to the wound.
“It’s hard to tell by eyeballing it but I’d say this has a good chance of being the weapon.” Yancey stood and handed the rod back to Frank. “We’ll have to wait for an opinion from Dr. West, but it looks promising. Good work, Lewis.” The young officer blushed and bobbed his head.
“If someone wanted to do away with this duffer they were taking a chance that there’d be something just lying around here to cosh him with.”
“I don’t know about that. The bar is construction material, and thousands of people have been through here ogling the pier project. Anyone could have known the pile of steel would be on site,” Yancey said.
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