Shadows of a Down East Summer

by Lea Wait

  We giggled as he strode back and forth amidst the carpenters, Sam and Duck having forgotten their quarrels and both parading after him as he explained what he wanted to do. He also had a plan for painting one, or perhaps both of us, sitting on driftwood by the dunes. Clearly our one week away from Prouts Neck had provided Mr. Homer with many ideas!

  He conferred with Mr. Wright, and they both agreed it would be more peaceful to do such painting away from the studio, perhaps on Ferry Beach. That is the same beach where we picnicked on the first day we met Mr. Homer and Mr. Wright, so long ago.

  Mr. Homer assigned Mr. Wright the task of finding an appropriate spot, away from vacationers, for such painting, to begin tomorrow.

  Today he sat Jessie and me on a large rock near the road in front of his studio and sketched each of us in turn. While he sketched Jessie, I took advantage of the free time to walk closer to two of the summer inns so I could observe those seated on Adirondack chairs and enjoying the ocean breezes.

  Before the end of our posing I will find a way to see the inside of one of the inns. I am most curious to see what those large, high-ceilinged rooms look like.

  July 8, 1890

  Today was our first day posing on Ferry Beach. Micah (for so he has told both Jessie and me we may call him!) has found an old float that was once attached to a pier, but which must have been loosened in a nor’easter, for it is in weathered condition. It will serve as our dance floor on the beach. A large log brought in by winter storms and left above the high tide line will serve as a seat for the poses Mr. Homer wants near the dunes.

  Micah drove us directly to Ferry Beach today. Madame Homer, who has, since that first day, been in the background to provide lemonade, iced tea, fruit or cheese and crackers, was also there, although she left before we were finished. I overheard her tell Mr. Homer that she had guests to attend to. She asked Jessie and me if we felt quite comfortable staying by ourselves with Mr. Homer. We both assured her we did.

  I trust Mr. Homer. If anything, I would like him to allow us more freedom to explore the beach and cliffs. We are never solitary. Jessie and I are together, Mr. Homer is with us, and often Micah, or one of the other men who help Mr. Homer at his house, is also with us.

  On the beach families enjoy the sea air. Nursemaids watch out for their little charges who have changed into beach attire in the small houses at the top of the dunes. Not everyone changes. Many men and women are dressed for day, as are Jessie and I. It is warm on the sand even in the early morning, and Mr. Homer will not have us wear hats, as our mothers would certainly insist we do, since he is painting us in an evening scene. We are conscious of freckling and reddening our noses.

  Jessie jokes that perhaps she’ll get such a bright nose that Orin will decide she is too wild a woman to be Mrs. Colby, wife of the owner of the largest shipbuilding company in town. But I know she is only hoping.

  Each day she asks how long I think it will be until Luke and the men on his boat are able to make their way back to Maine. Each day I give her the same answer: I do not know.

  July 10, 1890

  I am not sure I should even write what happened today. It is too frightening. Perhaps it will change my life, or scar it forever. I cannot write now. I must think. I will tell Mother to turn the wagon away tomorrow morning, saying my head is paining me. I am not ready to return to Prouts Neck. I may never be again.

  Chapter 32

  Wave. Black-and-white lithograph of surf, unsigned and undated, but attributed to Alfred Russel Fuller (1899-1980), New England-born painter, teacher, and lithographer known for his coastal paintings. He lived in California during the 1930s, but then settled in Maine, in Port Clyde and Monhegan, in the mid-1940s, where he taught. 11 x 15 inches. Price: $150.

  Maggie put the journal aside. The washing machine had stopped some time before, but she’d been so focused on the pages she hadn’t noticed. Now, wondering what had happened to Anna May, she shifted a load of sheets and towels to the dryer and piled dirty clothes into the washing machine.

  Giving the journal a longing glance, she realized she’d better focus on cleaning the upstairs for at least a half hour. After all, she’d told Will she’d be putting Aunt Nettie’s house in order.

  Starting with her bedroom, which was in worse condition than Will’s, she sorted through what probably had been in the closet, and then replaced the bureau drawers and their contents. Nowhere did she see the missing morocco leather photograph album. She hung her clothes back in the closet, and cleaned the outside surfaces of the furniture as best she could.

  Carolyn’s house, too, had been trashed, she thought. Had the upstairs of her home looked the way this house did? Had the same man searched both houses? Aunt Nettie had been quite definite in saying it had been a man, and thank goodness, Aunt Nettie’s mind was fine.

  She found clean sheets in the bottom drawer of the bureau and struggled to get the plump feather pillow to fit inside a tight pillowcase. She whacked it several times with her hand. Hard.

  Life. Death. It all happened too fast. Planning seemed foolish. No matter what you did, life interfered. You planned to be married, but your husband cheated on you, and then had the discourtesy to die before you could even catch him at it. You planned to have children, but your timing was always off. You found a guy who seemed perfect...Maggie looked at a small picture of a grinning ten-year-old Will, sitting on the front steps, wearing a Boston Red Sox cap, that Aunt Nettie had framed and put on her bedside table.

  Perfect, except that he didn’t want children. His first wife had died during an ectopic pregnancy, and he wasn’t willing to risk the pain again. Even for adoption.

  Maggie gave the now-lopsided pillow one more solid thwack and glanced around. One more room done. Blood pressure probably up. She couldn’t decide if she were angry or depressed. If she was angry, then why was she blinking away tears?

  She found a diet cola in the refrigerator, poured it into a tall glass, added ice, and then, in an unusual move, checked Aunt Nettie’s limited liquor supply, and added a little rum to her drink. “Thank you, Aunt Nettie!” she toasted her hostess. She checked the dryer. Still another twenty minutes to go, bless energy-efficient but incredibly slow appliances. She went back to 1890.

  July 14, 1890

  Mr. Homer sent a lovely nosegay for me with Jessie last Friday when I didn’t go to pose, and Mother said I had an obligation to go today. Even Jessie asked how I was. She knows I don’t suffer with headaches. I determined to return to Prouts Neck and see what had changed in the world.

  To my surprise, the world was no different than it had been before. Micah brought the wagon to pick me up and inquired about my headache, but did not seem in the least interested in me beyond that. I looked at him so many times to see if guilt or shame were written on his face, but he seemed more interested in seeing to the horses. He scarcely paid me any attention.

  I looked up at the windows of the South Gate House from Ferry Beach, where Jessie and I have been posing—together, or alone, as on that frightful day last week when Jessie posed alone for a short while and I foolishly agreed to take a walk with Micah. Now I know what the inside of that grand inn looks like, the dark walls, the bright porches, and the small bedroom, with that narrow bed that must have been for one of the servants, not one of the guests. I am no longer tempted by it. I know it was my fault for having ventured into such a place without a chaperone. Nothing I said or did after entering that room could have stopped what happened.

  I am still sore, although it is not my head that is throbbing, and I am thankful for the long skirts and sleeves that cover me, despite the numbness and faintness that I feel when I allow myself to remember what has happened.

  Several times during the past few days Mother asked me if indeed I was still feeling ill, since I did not seem to hear her questions. She said I acted as though I were in a dream.

  I did not tell her it was not a dream. But I feel I have aged many years in the past week, and no longer see the world in
the same way.

  How do women live through such experiences? For I am not so naïve as to assume I am the only one to have been treated such. This is why men wish to be married. Why women wish to be married, and how they can stand up in church and say before God and their families that they will endure such a thing, I do not understand. Only a woman who did not know the horrors of it could do such a thing without shame.

  I posed today, but I hardly remember doing it.

  And Micah ignored me, as though what happened never occurred.

  July 16, 1890

  Jessie and I have continued posing. Most days we pose as though we are sweethearts, dancing closely in each other’s arms, in ways that we would never allow men to hold us. Certainly not in public, as Jessie has whispered to me. Her arms around me feel solid and comforting, though, and I do not mind, although the idea of dancing in such a way with another woman seems strange.

  Some days we each posed alone, sitting on that driftwood log, or looking out to sea, or in any of several other poses Mr. Homer has devised. When one of us is posing alone the other is free to sit in the shade of the trees above the dunes or walk along the beach.

  Micah asked me to walk with him again one day, but I shook my head. I will never do that again. I can tell he is no longer interested in me. He has looked more closely at Jessie. I have told her she should not go anywhere alone with him. She does not listen; she laughs, and says she can take care of herself.

  Perhaps she is stronger than I was. But I will be very glad when our trips to Prouts Neck are at an end.

  I have saved some money. My mother has said I may use it as I wish. I had planned to buy a new dress or even two. I know Mother would like me to add to the store of linens and blankets put away for my future home.

  But I am thinking of leaving Waymouth. I need to get away. I need to think.

  If only I had a place to go.

  Chapter 33

  Hussey’s Reaping Machine. Wood engraving from The Cultivator farm newspaper, 1841. Drawing of primitive reaping machine pulled by two horses, with instructions from Mr. Obed Hussey of Baltimore on how to build such a machine “warranted to cut 15 acres of wheat in one day.” 3 x 5.5 inches. Price: $35.

  The dryer came to a sudden stop. Maggie put down her now-empty glass. Anna May married Luke; she’d read that at the Waymouth Archives. So she must not have left. Or left and came back quickly. Whatever she did must have happened quickly, since in the journal it was mid-July, and according to the archives Anna May had married Luke in...October? She thought it was October. She’d have to check her notes.

  Right now she had to fold laundry. The dryer had been full of sheets, pillowcases, and towels. She refilled it with the clothes in the washing machine, and carried the dry laundry upstairs. Towels went in the hall bureau. She put one set of clean sheets on the bed in the room Will had been using, and folded the other sheets and put them in the bottom drawer of the bureau in that room. Aunt Nettie put extra sheets in bottom drawers, she remembered.

  She began at the door of Will’s bedroom, and put it back in as much order as she could manage. She hadn’t spent any time in this room.

  The prints of sandpipers and gulls on the walls were large Morris birds. British vicar and ornithologist the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris had created some of the best drawings of birds in the mid- and late-nineteenth century, all of them hand-colored by his wife. These were lovely ones. Had they been purchased recently? Or had the Brewer family been enjoying them since the 1870s?

  Maybe Anna May had visited a Brewer home and admired these prints. It was fun to think so. She made a mental note of which birds were on the walls so she could check those in her inventory. Maybe she could give Aunt Nettie an addition to the collection for Christmas.

  Her ringing cell phone brought her back to the present day. Will? She’d been wondering how long he’d stay at the hospital. She took the stairs two at a time down to the first floor where she’d left her phone, slipping a bit on the last stair and almost sliding into the wall.

  By the time she’d dug the phone out of her bag it had stopped ringing. She looked at the number that had called. It wasn’t Will’s number in western New York. It was a Maine number.

  She listened to the message.

  “Ms Summer? This is Brad Pierce. I’m working on the settlement of Carolyn Chase’s estate, and thought you’d be calling me today. I understand you’ve had some problems this past weekend, but would you please get in touch with me as soon as you can. You have my number.”

  Right. Brad Pierce. The lawyer. She’d completely forgotten about him. She decided to call Will first, but Will’s phone went straight to messages. Either he’d turned it off, or there was no reception inside the hospital. No excuses, then. She called Brad Pierce. “This is Maggie Summer. You called a few minutes ago.”

  “Thank you for calling back. By the way, I understand Miss Brewer’s home was broken into over the weekend and she was assaulted. How is she?”

  The grapevine in small-town Maine. You didn’t need the Internet or even a telephone here. News reached everyone by osmosis. “Much better, thank you. Will’s at the hospital right now, hoping to bring her home today.”

  “That certainly is good news,” replied Mr. Pierce.

  “Has there been any progress in finding Carolyn’s murderer?” asked Maggie.

  “Not that I’ve heard. I understand the detectives are exploring several different angles. They’ve completed going through her aunt’s home, and finished the autopsy.”

  “Did they find out anything?”

  “Not much from the house, I’m afraid. Hard to tell what might have been missing, since both Susan and Carolyn are dead, and they were the two who might know. The autopsy showed Carolyn died of bleeding into her brain, the result of a blow.”

  “Was she attacked sexually?”

  “Thank goodness, no,” said Pierce. “Or if she were, then no one’s told me about it. In any case, I don’t think we should be discussing police matters. What I called you about was a trunk of family papers that Susan Newall wanted you to have in case of Carolyn’s death. She had me write a letter to that effect the day before she died. The letter was signed and witnessed, and acts as a codicil to her will. I don’t think any court will question it.”

  Thank goodness, Maggie thought. Otherwise she’d been walking around with a journal that wasn’t hers.

  “In Maine an estate isn’t settled until six months after someone has died. But I know you don’t live here, so I thought you might like to come to my office and look through the trunk to see if you want to take possession in six months. If you do, I’ll hold it for you until that time. If you don’t, I’ll add the trunk and its contents to the list of items to be given to the Portland Museum of Art. That’s the institution Carolyn Chase left her estate to.”

  He was going to give the trunk of documents away! “No! I mean, yes, I’d very much like to come and examine the contents of the trunk,” said Maggie. “When would be a good time?”

  “My secretary and I will be here tomorrow morning after eight,” Mr. Pierce said. “May I assume we’ll see you tomorrow morning, then?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Yes,” said Maggie. “I’ll be there.”

  She’d just put the telephone down when it rang again. Will? No, another Maine number.

  “Maggie! It’s Rachel.”

  “Yes, Rachel?”

  “When I was at the auction gallery this afternoon I did what you wanted me to. I checked the bids for those two paintings. There was one bid for each of them from the owner of a local inn for two hundred dollars, plus. You know what that means?”

  “Yes. I know,” said Maggie. A plus bid meant the amount you bid plus one additional bid if someone else bid the same amount you had. If you bid $200-plus, it meant you authorized the auctioneer to go one bid for you over $200. For a low-priced item that might mean $225. If you were talking about a bid of $25,000-plus, you might be authorizing a bid of $30,000, if the bidd
ing was in $5,000 increments. Buyers had to understand the playing field before they placed a plus bid.

  In any case, a bid of $200-plus for any oil painting, signed or unsigned, was below bargain-basement. Whoever placed it was hoping everyone else at the auction had their eyes closed.

  “No other bids?”

  “There was one. An Internet bid. It was for six thousand dollars. Plus.”

  “What was the bidder’s name?”

  “That’s what’s funny. The bid was taken by Lew Coleman. We don’t accept ‘left bids’ of any kind unless there’s a credit card to back up the bid and we’ve checked the card out to make sure it’s good for the amount bid.” Rachel paused. “I’ll admit we don’t always check if the bid is, say, under five hundred dollars, or the bidder is a regular buyer. But for a bid that large, the credit should have been verified.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “The note next to it says Lew verified it. But there’s no credit card number listed. Just Lew’s initials.”

  Maggie thought for a moment. “Rachel, I assume no one working at the auction house is allowed to bid on items.”

  “Oh, no. That’s against the rules,” Rachel said. “If one of us really wants to buy something, once in a while someone has a friend bid for them. But it’s against state regulations for the auctioneer to buy anything, and Walter English runs a tight ship.”

  “The way it should be,” said Maggie. “Did anyone see you checking those bids today?”

  “I don’t think so. Everyone was busy answering phones from people who wanted to pick up their items, or unsuccessful buyers, or people wanting appraisals. With the economy down, a lot of people are de-accessioning, and we always hear from a lot of new clients just after a big auction.”