A Deadly Snow Fall

by Cynthia Gallant-Simpson

“Eloise?”

  Emily reached out to move the crystal ball closer to her and, cupping it gently in her tiny hands, she gazed into its smoky depths and then back up again at me. A tremor of fear rolled across my shoulders.

  “Liz, meet Eloise. Eloise, meet Liz. She tells it like it is. No sugary coating. Can you take the unvarnished truth, Liz?”

  I know. I ought to have run like the proverbial scalded cat. Bad imagery, but so was a talking glass ball named Eloise.

  “Edwin had no choice but to do what his old friend commanded.”

  “So, Edward Granger told Edwin Snow to write a memoir or biography or whatever? Was that their only communication…through Eloise?”

  “No, there was one other time when they spoke about the ghosts. But that was the last time, the time when…no matter, not important.”

  “Ghosts?” I was rapidly descending into monosyllabic babbling.

  “Up in that old arc of a house where he lived. You wouldn’t catch me stepping beyond the front door. Full of angry spirits.”

  Do not, absolutely do not pursue this line of foolishness, I cautioned myself.

  “Came here in the dark of night, by the back door. Heard knocking but as it was a stormy night I assumed it was the shutters banging. Eventually, I went to check and found him there drenched and as angry as a wet hen. I made him tea hoping to calm the man so that he could tell me what had brought him to my door on such a terrible night.”

  “What had brought him, Emily?”

  “Ghosts. They had been particularly uppity for weeks and were keeping him from sleeping. Man was obviously sleep deprived.”

  I struggled to keep my expression noncommittal but it was not easy. Between a crystal ball and a story about ghosts, I wondered if I might be in a sleep deprived emotional breakdown state myself.

  “What could I do but recommend a priest? An exorcism. But, he’d have no truck with priests. Begged me to do it. I refused.”

  I bit my lip. Could I bring myself to ask questions pertaining to ghosts? I jumped when Jasmine hopped up onto my lap and began kneading to make herself a comfortable place to sit. I didn’t need to speak as Emily continued.

  “Then, he demanded I contact Granger again because he needed help with the book. He insisted that he had to get the artist’s permission to include certain things in the book he’d been ordered to write. ‘Things of a delicate nature,’ is how he explained it to me.”

  “And you helped him contact Granger that night, Emily?”

  What happened next I told and re-told both Daphne and James until they both grew sick of hearing about it.

  A flash of light beamed out of the crystal ball, hit a mirror on the wall across the room and then re-bounded back into my eyes causing me to blink hard. My eyes felt burning hot and they stung like a million bees had struck. The flash caused me to jump nearly out of the chair and with an angry growl Jasmine was gone like a shot.

  Emily said not a word. Had she even seen the flash? Had she been aware of my reaction? I assumed not. Finally, the stinging settled down and our conversation continued as if nothing had happened. If Emily had been aware of what happened she showed no sign. But I knew that she had tried to frighten me away. Or had it been Eloise?

  Looking at Emily I saw that she appeared to be in a trance. I had to listen closely to what she said next. “Perhaps since he’s dead, I can share this in the interest of justice.”

  Another far brighter flash issued forth from trusty Eloise. This time, it hit a tall blue glass bottle just about a foot from where I was sitting. It exploded into smithereens. Blue glass flew like confetti. I ducked but my hair was full of it. Fortunately, neither of us was cut. But only I had screamed. Emily sat silent, motionless and seemingly transfixed. Unaware and somewhere else entirely.

  “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” Emily’s voice sounded unearthly. I tried to shake the bits of glass from my hair but kept my eyes glued to the tiny woman. Emily’s face twisted and paled. Her body seemed to implode. Her shoulders fell as if under a great weight and her chest sunk inward, as if the plug had been pulled on an inflated doll. My first thought was that the flying glass must have hit her and caused the cave in. Was I losing it? Had the tiny woman cast a spell on me?

  “Are you ill? Did the glass hit you?” I reached out and touched the tiny, soft hand that lay palm down on the lace covered table.”

  “Oh, my, my. I am so sorry but I cannot tell you what the artist said to Edwin that final night. Edwin forbids it. Sorry, please excuse me, I must lie down.”

  Emily rose and headed through a glass bead screen that evidently led into her private quarters. I heard the cat jump down from a nearby shelf. I felt a sudden rush of wind that came from nowhere. I could see no open window or door. Our session had ended. What else to do but leave. The air outside was life-saving. I gulped at it hungrily.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sitting in Daphne’s gallery on a paint spattered stool, I watched my best friend put the finishing touches on a scene duplicated right out the back window. Like looking into one of those fun house mirrors wherein the scene is duplicated endlessly. This, however, was just the original and the duplicate on canvas. “It’s just lovely, Daphne. Is it a commission?”

  “Yep; money in the bank. So how’s the murder investigation going?” Daphne put her brush into a Mason jar half-filled with turpentine and wiped her hands on an apron that could easily have been hung in any gallery and mistaken for an original Jackson Pollack.

  “Brace yourself, Daph. It seems, according a reliable source, Bill Windship, that he was the man Rosita left Edwin for on her wedding day. If we can believe him. Imagine how embarrassing for poor, old Edwin all decked out in his wedding gear, the pews full of guests, the organist ready to strike the first note of the wedding march and ta da, no bride.”

  “Maybe old Bill was worth more than Edwin and when she found out she jumped ship. Maybe the lovely Rosita was just a gold digging opportunist.” Daph laughed and sat next to me on an upturned antique wooden lobster trap.

  “How about this, Daph? What if the lovely Rosita had an affair with Granger while he was painting her and she got pregnant? If he refused to leave his wife she might have grabbed onto Edwin? What man would refuse such a gorgeous woman if she was also very clever? She could have convinced poor Edwin that she loved him and pulled off the bun in the oven thing. Then, at the eleventh hour, she regretted it and just split.”

  Daphne shook her head and reached over to pick up a fallen paint brush. “So, old Bill wasn’t exactly the source of enlightenment, gal pal?”

  “Not exactly. He’s cagey, but he’s not fooling me. Mark my words; Bill Windship knows more about this murder than he’s willing to share.”

  “Hey, how about this idea? Rosita came back recently to hit up old Edwin for long-overdue child support, still insisting the kid was his? Maybe they’d had a romantic moment up at the top of the Monument six decades ago so, she convinced him to return with her there. When he refused to hand over the dough she pushed him over the side. Splat!”

  “So, you think two octogenarians could have climbed the Pilgrim Monument in the throes of old remembered passion and Rosita convinced the old man to hang over the edge and carve their initials into the side of the Monument so she could give him the final shove?”

  “If only I could find Rosita and talk to her it might clear up a lot of things. If she’s still alive. This is giving me a real headache. By the way, on the subject of heads, what is that color your hairdresser foisted on you this time?”

  “This gorgeous shade of my lush, magnificent locks is called the Strawberry Fields Fade. It’s the Hollywood rage. The “fade effect.” See how the soft red at the top of the hair shaft gradually moves down to become a gentle, golden brown as it approaches my shoulders. If you you, my dear, were a fashionista like moi, you’d know that.”

  “Oh right. I really want hair that looks like some kind of hard candy. How can I find Rosita?”

  “Google he
r. Facebook her.”

  “Of course. Do you have your laptop here?”

  Daphne rummaged under a pile of rags, paint spattered smocks and brown paper bags to retrieve a leather case that looked as if it had come over on the Mayflower.

  “Rosita Gonsalves. But what if she married and changed her name? I’ll start with Facebook.”

  Suddenly, there on the screen was a photo of the most beautiful and glamorous octogenarian imaginable. “Look at this, Daphne. She’s still gorgeous although she must be at least eighty-three. We should look so good at that age.”

  “Hey, I should look that good right now. Well, so there she is, the vixen who went around town breaking hearts and leaving grooms red-faced at the altar. What does she say about herself?”

  “Let’s see. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, but she gives Massachusetts as her birthplace. She writes, oh my gosh, romance novels. Well, write what you know. She’s widowed. She has a daughter who lives in New Hampshire. Edward Granger’s lovely portrait model. Rosita in the morning light. Makes me wonder if they ever….”

  “Quick, send her a message. Ask her about Provincetown. Tell her Edwin bit the dust or, more appropriately, the snow.”

  “No, not just yet. I have to think about this before I go off half-cocked.”

  “A bit of advice, gal pal. Considering her advanced age, better to go off half-cocked than not cocked at all. She could pass on any minute and then you’ll have nothing.”

  Daphne pulled on a ratty looking sweater at least two sizes too large for her and headed for the door. “I’ve got a hankering for a lobster salad roll. How about you? Let’s saddle up and hit the trail.”

  I turned off the computer, slipped it back into its case and put it on a shelf alongside a pile of blank canvases and assorted tubes of oil paints. “Imagine the lovely Rosita still savvy in her ninth decade. We might just be getting somewhere, Daph.”

  “The only where I want to get to right now is a table by the window where I can dig into the best lobster roll on the east coast. Saddle up, Liz.”

  “You know, pal of mine, you are beginning to sound a lot like Hollywood westerns. Bad westerns. And, you’re influencing my vocabulary against my will. Maybe I will just have to stop hanging around with you. My father always said that I was too easily influenced by my peers.”

  “Just trying to fit into the colonies.”

  “Right.” We headed out of the gallery and down Commercial Street. “What should I ask Rosita first, Daph?”

  “Let’s see, how about asking her if she did it? If she adamantly says “NO” then ask her for a list of likely suspects.”

  “Duh. Brilliant, Daph.”

  “Just trying to be helpful. Did you stop to consider that he might have dumped her, at the last minute?” Daphne asked.

  “Sure, and then he got into his wedding finery and showed up at the church just asking to be pitied. Get a grip, gal pal.” Why not? Agatha Raisin asked

  I stopped dead on the sidewalk while Daphne marched ahead salivating for lobster. Realizing I wasn’t next to her she turned back. “Where are you, girl? What? You look weird.”

  “Let’s suppose that Edwin did find out the night before the wedding that she had shacked up with Granger and the baby was his. She might have begged him to marry her anyway. She was, after all, quite a catch for “Eggy.” But, he stood his ground and dumped her, in a rage. Then, Edwin showed up for a wedding he knew was not going to take place? Why?”

  “Damned if I know. A fondness for wedding cake frosting?” Daphne asked as she pulled me along the sidewalk.

  “Consider this, Daph. Men fell all over the gorgeous Rosita. Probably had fistfights over her. Yet, Edwin had the chance to marry her. All he had to do was look the other way about the baby and pretend to be the little blighter’s father. It is done. Rosita would have been quite a brilliant feather in unpopular Edwin’s cap. However, at the very last minute Edwin showed some pride and refused her.”

  “Damn, you just might have something. Now, let’s discuss it further over heaping lobster chunks mixed with finely diced celery and drowning in home-made mayo on a toasted Portuguese roll.”

  “Daph, you will be thinking of food on your deathbed.”

  “Planning right now to be laid out on a buffet table surrounded by the stuff. Do you think that will put people off the lovely food?”

  I groaned and followed Daph to the Lobster Bowl. “Daph, you are seriously in need of professional help.”

  Sitting at a window table, gazing out at three catboats gliding along, I mulled over my new idea. As we waited for our orders to arrive Daphne offered, “So, he turns Rosita down flat. But, not to be outdone, the lovely lady turns to number two, Bill Windship, also a man smitten by her beauty and charm. Then, she dumps him for…who knows? Maybe a traveling salesman. But we still have a very strange situation unresolved. Why would Edwin Snow, Provincetown’s bad boy and least favorite son, show up for a wedding he knew was not going to happen?”

  “For the very reason that he was unloved and unpopular--to earn the town’s pity. At least, pity is a human emotion. Maybe the poor guy was willing to take anything he could get. Even if it involved utter humiliation.”

  “Right.” Plates heaped with chunky lobster arrived and we dug in. Silenced by the delectable food.

  “By the way, I need to tell you what I learned from a trusted scientist colleague and old friend from childhood. He is a renowned forensic scientist employed by MI6. He told me that if Edwin jumped he would not have landed squarely on the top of his head but on his front or possibly his back but never the way he landed, point blank on the top of his cranium.” Like Humpty Dumpty.

  “How do you know he landed on his head? How could you know that? Did you witness his fall or were you in attendance for the forensic investigation? What are you talking about, Liz?”

  “None of the above. I, just as you did, watched the EMT’s take the body away. Obviously however, you are not as observant as I am although you certainly ought to be since you are an artist, Ms. Crowninshield.”

  “Touché, friend. Sorry I wasn’t captivated by the blood on the snow and checking out the head of a man who’d fallen over two hundred feet to his death. Yuck, brain mush on ice. You really checked that out?”

  “Of course. Agatha Raisin would have been that astute. Miss Marple would most certainly not have overlooked it. The very top of Edwin’s head was horribly broken from hitting the ground. Like tossing an egg. In fact, according to my friend Nigel, that indicates that someone tossed him off the top of the Monument probably with a long rope tied around his ankles. Let’s hope the old man was already dead or at least, unconscious. That would have guaranteed his fall, head-first. ‘Like a heat-seeking missile,’ as Nigel put it.

  “Ouch.”

  I suddenly jumped up and headed for the door nearly toppling the half-filled glass of iced tea I’d been sipping.

  Daphne grabbed what remained of her lobster roll, plunked down some money on the table and raced after me. “Hey, was it something I said? Do I have parsley between my teeth? Hold up, Liz.”

  “Daphne, I’ve got to go up to the top of the Monument. Want to come?”

  “No.”

  Arriving at Bill Windship’s house, I knocked and knocked but no one answered. “Have to see if he’s at his store; come on.”

  Heading back along Commercial Street toward the Army-Navy Surplus store followed by Daphne, I spotted Bill outside the shop talking to a man dressed in overalls and carrying a tool box.

  Going right up to the men, I stood waiting for them to finish talking. Bill gave me a frosty look and then turned back to the carpenter. “Thanks Henry. Like to get the work done just as soon as possible. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Tuesday.”

  “What do you want Ms. Ogilvie-Smythe? I’m a busy man. I have nothing more to say to you.”

  “Mr. Windship, I need to get up in the Monument. Today. Right now.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Ogilvie-Smythe,
but the Monument is closed for the winter. As is the museum. Come and see us after Memorial Day.” He turned but I grabbed at the arm of his jacket.

  “Look, Mr. Windship.” I quickly rummaged around in my mind for a reasonable excuse for my urgency. “My editor insists that I get pictures from the top of the tower and familiarize myself with the climb and the viewing platform to give my writing more integrity. It will not take long, I promise. I’m working on a tight deadline.”

  “Don’t care to hear your reasons. The answer has not changed, Ms. Ogilvie-Smythe. It is still emphatically, no.”

  “But, Sir, this really is important. Can’t you make just this one exception?”

  “No.”

  “So, if it is not convenient now, then how about some other day this week?”

  Looking at me as if I was either deaf or daft, Bill went on to explain that there were five broken steps undergoing repair and it would be at least a week before anyone could safely climb the tower.

  “How and when did the steps get broken? Could a body being dragged up the stairs bumping and dragging have damaged already old and crumbling wooden steps?”

  A deep sigh from this man whose late onset misogyny had grown, over the years, to nearly match his homophobic stance.

  “You are entirely too imaginative, young lady. The steps are constructed of metal, not wood and thus, they rusted and broke clear through in places. In fact, as they showed signs of being dangerous at the end of the summer I was forced to close the Monument to climbers earlier than usual. Dragging a body up the stairs? Where do you get this stuff? Read too many Agatha Christies, do you?”

  Realizing that no amount of pleading would get me up the tower until the repairs were completed, I gave up and turned to walk away. Behind me I heard Daphne’s sotto voce comment and wanted to pop her in her aristocratic nose. But as I had caused enough commotion for the time being I kept walking.

  “She’s been under a lot of stress lately. You know, learning how to run the inn. One of those academics who finds it difficult to learn new skills not of the brainiac kind.”