by Lea Wait
Chapter 25
This Queen continueth daily to resort to my wife’s chamber where with [Mary] Seton she useth to sit working with the needle in which she much delighteth and in devising works.
—Letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwick’s husband, and Mary, Queen of Scots’ jailer, to William Cecil, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state, in March 1569
“Wow. What kind of embroidery did she do?”
“The sort I told you about before. Embroidery of natural history designs borrowed from books. And ‘emblems’—designs based on fables or Bible verses or Latin mottoes. Books with pictures weren’t common in the late fifteen hundreds, but women like Queen Mary and her friend Bess might have had them. The designs they stitched have been traced directly to those wood engravings.”
“But wouldn’t those books have been available to any wealthy ladies of the period?”
Sarah nodded. “Of course. And to women and girls in convent schools.”
“So how could work Mary did be separated from work other women did?”
“Mary had a small staff with her—her ladies-in-waiting, for example. One book said a professional embroiderer was even included in her staff during her imprisonment. He might have prepared her cloth by copying the figure she wanted to embroider. Many pieces attributed to her had shapes outlined in black silk. She’d fill in the stitches with tent or cross-stitch, and add bright colors or silver in chain or braid stitch. Colors and designs were more important to her than different stitches.”
“Like that crude bird on Mary Clough’s embroidery.”
“Exactly. And Queen Mary signed her needlework—not with a pen, but with a needle. Sometimes she stitched the royal arms of Scotland, or her initials, MS, for Mary—or Maria, as she was known in France—Stuart. Or a crown. Or M with an R attached, for Mary or Maria Regina.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember any letters in our embroidery.”
“No. But whoever stitched it included a thistle and a rose and a fleur-de-lis. They could easily represent the countries Mary Stuart had lived in, and where she had claims to the throne. Often she embroidered squares or octagons on fine canvas or linen, which could later be joined to make a hanging. Historians think she didn’t embroider large pieces because she was always hoping to be released, or to escape. The largest piece she stitched was a crimson satin skirt embroidered with bright flowers in colored silks with gold and silver threads as a gift for her cousin Elizabeth. On each point of the skirt was a thistle.”
“So, do you think our Mary’s embroidery is the queen’s work?” I asked.
“I’m still doubtful. It’s in the right style. But although it’s old, it’s almost too perfect for a piece stitched in the late fifteen hundreds. I’m wondering if it was done one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, by someone familiar with Mary Stuart’s work.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” I said, hoping the embroidery was authentic.
“To be sure we’d have to have another piece of her embroidery that had been authenticated, so we could compare them. Considering the resources we have now, we can say there’s a possibility that needlepoint was done by Mary, Queen of Scots. But not a probability.”
Chapter 26
As Mary these lines has wrought
Lord please to hear her tender thought
O to a child thy grace impart
And write thy name upon her heart.
—Verse stitched by twelve-year-old
Mary Skillings of
West Gorham, Maine, 1828
The next morning was Sunday.
I was tempted to skip services, but that wouldn’t have gone over well with Gram and Tom. I sipped a large cup of coffee, dug a skirt out of my closet, and slipped into a back pew in time for the first hymn.
Gram probably would have liked me to join her in the first pew, but I’d barely made it in time. I figured I didn’t need to call any more attention to myself. Or to the new wife of the minister.
I did a fast walk-through of the reception after the services, leaving Gram and Tom telling everyone about their honeymoon.
I’d already heard most of it. I had other things on my mind.
At home I turned on the television while I made an easy lunch. The house didn’t seem as empty when I could hear voices.
Weather would be brisk but sunny. A fire in Saco. No developments in the Haven Harbor murder of lawyer Lenore Pendleton.
I turned it off before they got to the national news.
Local news was depressing enough.
The word “murder” always reminded me of Mama. If she hadn’t been trying to protect me . . . but that case was over.
Then I smelled smoke. I hadn’t been paying attention, and the bread I’d planned to toast and then melt one of my Canadian cheeses on was, instead, burning.
Nothing serious, but I felt stupid. I opened the kitchen window and back door to get rid of the smoke, threw the crumpled toast out for the birds, and put two more slices of oatmeal bread in the toaster.
The second time I paid closer attention. I slathered soft blue cheese on the toast and had another cup of coffee. Gram would have suggested I add a fruit or vegetable to the meal, so, in her honor, I peeled a banana for dessert.
I shouldn’t have had as much coffee. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lenore, and the missing jewelry and needlepoint.
Without expertise, the only other way to prove the embroidery wasn’t a copy—an old copy, but still, a copy—would be to establish provenance. A connection between the needlepoint and Mary Clough’s house in Haven Harbor.
Ruth hadn’t called. She must not have found any connections yet.
And I hadn’t found the embroidery.
Ethan and Pete would contact the obvious places someone would try to sell the jewelry: jewelry stores and auctioneers and pawnshops. If whoever had stolen it had removed the stones, they might sell the gold and silver and stones to one of the many Mainers who handcrafted fine jewelry. The police would have all that covered.
But without provenance, no one would buy the needlepoint. An auctioneer, if he dealt in high-end merchandise, probably had a staff to try to identify old stitching. That’s what we’d been trying to do. But provenance had to come with the item. It couldn’t be faked. Or, at least it couldn’t be faked and be legal.
No one legitimate would offer cash for anything of questionable ownership.
Establishing provenance was the key.
But how?
On the Fourth of July Mary’d said she had cartons of family papers. I hadn’t asked her about those when I’d seen her Friday. Lenore’s death had been a much more immediate concern. I should call Mary again. Sarah had volunteered to help Mary go through her papers, but Sarah was tied to her store. Maybe if I helped Mary we might find a clue to the needlepoint’s history.
I wasn’t finding clues anywhere else.
The weather forecast was right. It was brisk. I could see the pines swaying in the breezes. But the sun was out, and I was restless. I didn’t feel like going through boxes of musty papers on a beautiful July day.
I’d call Mary later. In the meantime, I decided to take a walk.
The harbor was as busy as it usually was on a summer morning. A fleet of small sailboats, probably a sailing class sponsored by the yacht club, bobbed up and down between the Three Sisters Islands and the town. Most lobster boats were at their moorings, which, with the buoys marking traps, spotted the harbor with red and blue and yellow.
I leaned over the railing near the town wharf and tried to relax.
“So, you’re checking up on me?”
I turned and found myself face to face with Josh Winslow. “Hi, Josh. Why would I be checking up on you?”
“I seem to run into you a lot.”
“It’s a small town,” I answered. “I’m surprised you’re not out with your dad on the Anna Mae,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“Nah. I decided I’d stick around here. Dad can
do without me for a day. He has a couple of other guys with him.” I wondered how Ob felt about Josh’s taking the day off.
I left him standing on the pier and walked along Wharf Street toward the beach and Haven Harbor Light. How long would Josh stick around Haven Harbor? Jude Curran was going to be disappointed if he took off.
It was close to low tide. Pocket Cove Beach was officially a rocky beach, not a sandy one, but most of the rocks were small pebbles smoothed by the sea. A patchwork of blankets and beach towels marked where families had settled. Several people were in the water, and two small boys were filling red plastic buckets with pretty stones and shells and sea glass washed up onto the beach or caught in the dry rockweed above the high tide line. Treasures to take home.
I was restless, too, like Josh. I didn’t feel like sitting anywhere. Instead, I climbed the rocky path beyond the beach that led out to the point where Haven Harbor Light stood, surrounded by wild beach roses not yet in bloom, and a small patch of grass.
The light had been automated long before I’d been born. No one had lived there for years. By October no one would bother to make the steep climb to the lighthouse. But today the small area was filled with people taking selfies or photographing their families in front of the lighthouse or watching waves crash over the rocks below. At low tide the surf wasn’t dramatic; it was soothing. I stood for a few minutes and counted the waves, as I had when I’d been a child. The seventh was supposed to be the biggest, but almost never was.
A lot of life was like that. Not the way you were told it would be.
Each wave was separate. Different. But all part of the same pattern.
Four cormorants spread their wings out on an exposed ledge. Cormorants were the only seabirds whose feathers weren’t oily. After they dived for their dinners they had to dry out.
A strange result of natural selection.
I decided to climb down the far side of the rocks. That was a more difficult climb. The kind kids challenged each other to make, and parents forbid.
I’d done it dozens of times when I was growing up.
The rocks on that side of the lighthouse hadn’t been smoothed by the waves. They were long, sharp ridges formed by hundreds of years of incoming tides cutting into layers of granite shiny with traces of mica and quartz and specks of garnet or obsidian.
The farther down I climbed the more I focused on making sure my every step was on solid rock. Some of the largest rocks were the least stable.
The tide was beginning to turn. Waves were now breaking over higher rocks covered with thick slippery rockweed. I threaded my way around tide pools full of starfish and barnacles and periwinkles and the green algae called mermaid’s hair. Broken crab and sea urchin shells gulls had dropped were sprinkled on the rocks.
My feet slipped a few times, but I caught myself. Climbing these rocks had always been a part of my life. Something I did to escape from what was happening in town. Or in my life.
No other climber was even close to where I was. The few others on this side of the Light had stayed up higher, on rocks and ledges that were steadier. Safer.
Now the tide was coming in faster and stronger. I decided to climb a little farther and then go back. Not to would be risky.
One last climb. I pulled myself around a sharp ledge to see the spot where one of the largest tide pools had always been. The spot I’d collected sea urchins and starfish and limpet shells and pieces of sea glass no one else had found.
Today it was where Uma Patel lay, her body half submerged in the tide pool, her black hair mixing with green mermaid’s hair.
Around her neck was a sapphire necklace.
Chapter 27
How fair is the rose, what a beautiful flower
In summer so fragrant and gay.
But the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour
And they wither and die in a day.
Then I’ll not be proud of my youth or my beauty
Since both of them wither and fade
But gain a good name by performing my duty.
—Poem on sampler by Eleanor Waring, aged eleven, at the Young Ladies’ Academy in Georgetown, Washington, DC, 1819
It wasn’t easy to recover Uma Patel’s body, but the Haven Harbor Fire Department, working with the police, the marine patrol, and the coast guard, managed to get her on her way to the medical examiner’s office in Augusta before the incoming tide swept her away.
I hid out at the police station to avoid the television cameras and reporters wanting to ask questions of the person who found the body.
“So you were just climbing the rocks, and there she was,” said Pete, looking down at the statement he’d asked me to write out.
“Yes,” I answered. I wasn’t a suspect. But I still felt a little defensive. Was it my fault I’d been the one to find Uma Patel? I hadn’t even known she was missing.
When I’d found her body I called Pete directly. I figured he’d know exactly who to go to. If I called 911 they’d notify everyone possible, and the whole town would figure out what was happening before the police had a chance to decide what to do.
I’d made the right decision.
I’d been there through the whole process. And through Ethan’s decision that no one would mention the necklace Uma was wearing.
I was pretty sure my first guess was right. It was sapphires. While I was talking to Pete, Ethan was searching Uma’s room at the Wild Rose Inn. Mrs. Clifford hadn’t hesitated to give him permission to look. This publicity wasn’t the sort she was looking for.
But something rang false.
“Are you sure the necklace she was wearing was the same one stolen from Lenore Pendleton?” I asked Pete.
“We’re assuming so,” he said. “We have pictures of Lenore wearing that necklace.”
That necklace put Uma at the top of their suspect list.
A suspect who couldn’t be questioned.
But Uma as thief and murderer didn’t make sense to me. “How would a tourist from Massachusetts even know Lenore had jewelry in her safe? Much less kill her for it?”
Pete shook his head. “I’ll admit pieces of the puzzle are missing. Not to mention other pieces of the stolen jewelry.”
“And the needlepoint,” I put in.
“And that. That’s why Ethan’s searching her room at the inn.”
“Why would she wear an identifiable necklace stolen from a murder victim? Not to mention that wearing any sapphire necklace to climb rocks seems odd.”
Pete shook his head. “I don’t know the answers, Angie.”
“She looked as though she’d been in the water for a while. And she was in a place that’s covered at high tide,” I added.
“We’ll see what the medical examiner says,” Pete said. “But I agree she’d been dead at least one or two tides. Maybe she fell on the rocks and got wedged so the tide covered her, but didn’t move her body far.”
I looked at him. We’d both grown up in Haven Harbor. We knew the tides and rocks.
“Okay. So that’s unlikely in that spot,” he admitted. “But until we have the official word on how she died and when, it’s all we have to go on. You knew she was staying at the Wild Rose Inn,” he continued, taking notes.
I did. So did they. It was in their records, from their interview with Uma the morning she and Rob had found Lenore’s body.
“Mrs. Clifford at the inn said you’d visited Ms. Patel there Friday morning.”
“Yes. I did,” I said.
“How did you know her?”
“I didn’t,” I admitted. “But I’d heard she’d been with Rob when he discovered Lenore Pendleton’s body. I wanted to hear her story about why she was there, and what they’d seen.”
“Angie, you weren’t supposed to be questioning witnesses,” said Pete, looking more frustrated than angry.
“I didn’t ask her about the body, although she did seem shaken at having found it. I asked her about the needlepoint.”
“But she didn’t
see the needlepoint.” Pete paused. “Lenore was already dead. The needlepoint was gone.”
“Right. But she’d gone there because she wanted to see it. She’d met Josh and Arvin and Rob and Jude Curran at the Harbor Haunts Tuesday night. Rob was bragging about the embroidery. Said it was old and valuable. Uma told me she hoped that if she could identify a special piece of needlepoint, it might prove her worth to the museum where she worked.”
“So she knew about the needlepoint the night before.” Pete was taking notes.
“She knew about it Tuesday night. By Wednesday night she must have known where it was—Rob must have told her—because by then she’d made arrangements to meet him Thursday morning to go to Lenore’s office and see it.”
“And this needlepoint is valuable?”
“At first we thought it might have been done by Mary, Queen of Scots. Now we’re not as sure.”
Pete looked blank. He’d attended Haven Harbor schools, too. We hadn’t spent a lot of time studying Elizabethan England. “And if that’s so, it would be worth a lot?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Uma might have known more.”
“When you talked to her, did she say anything about the missing jewelry?”
“No. I did notice she was wearing a pair of sea glass earrings, though.” I was pretty sure sea glass earrings weren’t the kind Lenore had kept in her safe. “She was excited about going lobstering with Arvin that afternoon.”
“Lobstering?”
“She’d told the guys she didn’t know much about it. Arvin had invited her to go out with him on his boat Friday afternoon while he hauled a few traps. Show her how it was done.”
“The ME said Lenore was killed at about midnight the night before Rob and Miss Patel found her,” mused Pete. “I wonder where Ms. Patel was then.”
“Earlier that evening Sarah Byrne and I saw her at the co-op with the same group she’d been with Tuesday night at the Harbor Haunts.”