Shadows of a Down East Summer

by Lea Wait

  CRIME OF PASSION

  July 17, 1893

  This morning the bodies of Mrs. Anna May Trask, aged 22, and her husband Mr. Luke Trask, aged 23, were found in the bedroom of their home on Water Street in Waymouth. It appeared that Mrs. Trask had been shot by Mr. Trask, who then took the gun and shot himself in the head. No notes were found. The bodies were discovered by Mrs. Trask’s sister, Miss Sarah Pratt, who had stopped in to consult with her sister on plans for her upcoming wedding.

  The couple’s daughter, Miss Kathleen Trask, age 2, was visiting at the home of Mr. Trask’s parents at the time of what appears to be a murder/suicide.

  The couple, both respected lifelong residents of Waymouth, were not known to have been having any problems. They had been married a little less than three years.

  Mr. Trask worked for Northland’s Mercantile in Waymouth. The couple were members of the First Congregational Church of Waymouth, where services are to be held Wednesday afternoon next. In addition to their daughter, survivors include Mrs. Trask’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Pratt, her sister, Miss Sarah Pratt, and Mr. Trask’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Caleb Trask, all of Waymouth.

  Maggie read the articles a second time and then closed the journal. There were the answers to her questions about what happened that summer to Anna May and Jessie.

  It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Luke killed Anna May and himself just after Jessie had come back to town, bringing with her a son who was close in age to their daughter Kathleen.

  Tomorrow at the library she would check the birthdates for Kathleen Trask and Homer Thompson to be sure.

  Chapter 38

  Present State of the National Monument to Washington, at the City of Washington. Hand-colored wood engraving from London Illustrated News, 1853, of the partially built Washington Monument. The monument was begun in 1848, but because of political and financial factors was not completed until 1884. This engraving shows masons cutting blocks of stone, and oxen pulling them toward the incomplete tower. Originally black-and-white, it was most likely hand-colored in the late nineteenth century by a Victorian woman as a leisure-time activity. 11 x 15.25 inches. Price: $85.

  Rachel was at the front desk when Maggie got to the library. “Good morning, Maggie! I didn’t expect to see you this morning! How’s Aunt Nettie?”

  “Better, Rachel, but still weak. Her brain seems fine, but her body still needs time to heal. Will’s going to try to get out of the antiques show we were planning to do this weekend, to stay home with her. She’s not ready to stay alone yet.”

  Rachel frowned. “It’s a shame Will has to miss the show. That’s his income.” She thought a minute. “I could keep her company on Saturday, and maybe Sunday, too. I’ll see if I can rearrange my schedule. You both probably have to set up Friday, too, right?”

  “You do know the antiques business!” Maggie said.

  “When you work at an auction house you pick up the basics,” Rachel said. “I have an idea! Lew Coleman’s friend, Joann Burt, is a home health aide. Maybe she could help out.”

  “Joann Burt...” Maggie thought for a moment. “I’ve heard that name before. Have I met her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rachel. “She lives here in town. Maybe Carolyn Chase mentioned her? Joann worked for her Aunt Susan last winter. She often comes to the library to pick up books for the people she takes care of, or calls me to pick some out and sends Lew or Josh to get them. Susan liked Agatha Christies. She read the same ones over and over again.”

  “And Joann’s a friend of Lew Coleman? And—Josh? Josh Thompson?”

  “She’s been with Lew ever since he’s been back in town. They were high school sweethearts or something. They were younger than me, so I don’t really know. And I guess they knew Josh, too, because sometimes she and Josh would stop in at the auction gallery to see him. That’s what made me think of her. Would you like me to help out with Aunt Nettie this weekend?”

  “It’s a wonderful offer, Rachel. Can I let you know in a few minutes?” Maggie balanced her bag on the counter. “Let me sign in for the archives room. I’ll call Will from there and see if he’s cancelled out of the show yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out what he wants to do.”

  “Not a problem,” said Rachel, handing Maggie the key to the archives. “I’ll be right here until noon. Then my guy is taking me out for lunch.”

  “I’ll definitely let you know before then,” said Maggie. “Do you have Joann’s telephone number, if we need it?”

  “She works for Waymouth Home Services. I’ll look the number up for you.” Rachel checked a directory behind the desk, wrote a number down, and handed the slip to Maggie. “Here’s her name and the number of the service. They’re nice people. If Joann isn’t free, they may have other home health aides available. A lot of people in town use them for respite care.”

  “Respite care?”

  “Sort of babysitting for elderly or disabled people who need someone with them all of the time, so their caretakers can go out for the evening, or take a short vacation. It’s a great organization.”

  “Sounds like it,” said Maggie, tucking the slip of paper into her pocket. “I’ll go and put this stuff down and call Will. Thank you for volunteering, Rachel!”

  ”No problem. Aunt Nettie’s a dear. And she’s family. I was planning to stop in anyway.”

  Maggie opened the Archives door, put her bag down on the table, and telephoned Will.

  “Hello!” he answered. “Couldn’t stand to be away from me?”

  “True,” Maggie teased back. “But actually I have a proposition for you from Rachel. I told her you were going to stay home with Aunt Nettie this weekend, and she volunteered to stay with her Saturday and maybe Sunday so you could do the antiques show.”

  Will hesitated. “That’s really terrific of her. I called the promoter, but he wasn’t in his office, so I haven’t talked with him yet. I’d really like to do that show. My budget would appreciate it.”

  “And Will, there’s more. Rachel knows we’d need someone to be with Aunt Nettie for most of Friday, too, for setup, and she can’t come then. But she suggested Joann Burt. Seems Joann was the home health aide who helped Susan Newall last winter. Aunt Nettie might even know her.”

  “That’s an idea,” said Will.

  “It’s two ideas,” Maggie continued. “First, if we need someone for Friday, I have the name of the place that Joann works. They have other people who do this sort of work, too. So that’s a possibility, for now and maybe for future reference. But, listen: this Joann Burt is Lew Coleman’s girlfriend.”

  “You’re saying that the home health aide who probably had her own key and was in and out of Susan Newall’s home last winter and spring is the close friend of the guy who somehow lost all the paperwork for whoever consigned the Helen Chase paintings at the Walter English Auction House?”

  “Exactly. You got it. And she’s also a friend of Josh Thompson’s.”

  Will was silent. “We need to tell Nick.”

  “Can we wait a couple of hours? I want to check a couple of dates here in the library. They might confirm another idea I have. In the meantime, shall I give you the name of the agency that provides other home health aides?”

  “Go ahead,” said Will. “I think Aunt Nettie would be fine with Rachel being here over the weekend. I don’t know what she’ll think about having a home health aide here. But I’d like to try. That last show was such a disaster, I could use a good show.”

  “Me, too,” said Maggie. “Shall I tell Rachel?”

  “I’ll call and talk to her,” said Will. “You go ahead and do your research. Rachel’s sitting at the main desk?”

  “Right.”

  “Then I’ll talk with Aunt Nettie, and call Rachel directly. Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it all.”

  “I love you, Will Brewer.”

  “Me, too, Maggie Summer,” said Will. “See you soon.”

  Maggie hung up and went to the file cabine
ts where the genealogy files were stored. She wanted to know more about Jessie Wakefield, or Jessie Thompson, as she became.

  The “Wakefield” folder was empty. Maggie checked the folders in back of it and in front of it to be sure, in case someone had carelessly refiled documents. There must have been information on the family at one time, or the name wouldn’t have warranted a listing at all.

  An open archives was wonderful for those who wanted to browse through old documents and weren’t sure precisely what they were looking for. But it came with the possibilities of source materials being removed.

  Maggie went on to the “Thompson” folder. It was full. She paged through newspaper articles from the 1920s and ’30s about the Mirage Art Colony, and several notices of Maine gallery openings of paintings by Winslow Thompson in the l970s. There was no mention of his having shown anywhere south of Portland.

  At the back was a two-column obituary for Wesley Thompson from the Boston Globe dated 1925. It listed his home as Boston, and his summer residence as Waymouth, Maine.

  He’d been eighty-three at the time of his death, and left his wife of thirty-three years, Jessica Wakefield Thompson, his son, Homer Thompson and wife Esther, whose residence was listed as Waymouth.

  Wesley Thompson had been forty-eight years old when he’d married twenty-year-old Jessie Wakefield in 1890 or 1891. Clearly a good catch: he’d made enough money as an officer of the Boston and Maine Railroad not only to support his family, but also, she suspected, later to support his son and his daughter-in-law. Although Mirage’s condition today might show the money to be drying up, his grandson and great-grandson were still living in that “summer residence.”

  Jessie’s obituary was dated in 1931. It listed her residence as Waymouth. She must have come to live with her son and his wife. It listed one grandchild as a survivor: Winslow, three months old. Jessie had lived long enough to see the stock market crash, no doubt taking a lot of her funds with it, and to see the birth of her first grandchild.

  The next clipping was a marriage announcement. Winslow Thompson married Lauren Johnston of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1968. Winslow was thirty-seven; residence, Waymouth. Still living at home with his parents? Maggie did some quick calculations. His parents would have both been over 65. The young couple, Winslow and Lauren, would be at home at Mirage.

  Of course. At the family compound in Waymouth. Good thing that house had a lot of rooms.

  Lauren had died in the mid-1990s, leaving Winslow free to marry again. Enter Betsy, from somewhere. Fascinating. Basically confirming what she already knew. But what she’d been looking for still eluded her. What was the birth date of Jessie’s son, Homer Thompson?

  Maggie looked through all of the papers again. Finally, at the bottom of an article about one of his gallery showings, she found it. “Homer Thompson, born in Boston April 10, 1891...”

  It didn’t take a mathematician to figure out that, even if Jessie had met Wesley Thompson the day she arrived in Boston and married him the day after, a highly unlikely scenario, Homer Thompson was not Wesley Thompson’s biological son. He’d been conceived at close to the same time as Jessie’s daughter Kathleen. In either Waymouth or Prouts Neck.

  If he’d been the son of Jessie’s fiancé, Orin Colby, then probably Orin wouldn’t have ended their engagement.

  The pieces of the 1890 puzzle had come together.

  Maggie carefully put the clippings and notes back into the “Thompson” folder and left them on the library table. She was almost to her car when a voice in back of her made her jump.

  “Maggie!”

  “Hi, Kevin!” said Maggie, turning around. “You startled me. I guess I was deep in thought. On your way to the library?”

  “Going to do a little more research,” he answered. “It was nice seeing you at Betsy’s the other day. But I’d like to talk to you about some of Winslow Homer’s wood engravings. I’ve heard you’re an expert on them.”

  “They’re my favorites,” Maggie said, pulling herself from 1890 to the world of antique prints. “I’ve always felt it was a shame that art historians didn’t recognize their importance in nineteenth-century art history, or American social history for that matter, until recently.”

  “I’d love to know more,” said Kevin, moving a little closer to allow a car to pass by. “For some reason I’ve been putting off going down to Prouts Neck to see where Homer lived and painted. I was there years ago, but not since I’ve learned so much about Homer. Have you been there?”

  “No,” Maggie admitted. “I’ve always wanted to go, but never seem to find the time.”

  “Let’s go together!” said Kevin. “I just heard on the radio that last Saturday’s nor’easter is still kicking the surf higher than usual, and this is the time in August when there are astronomical high tides. Come with me this afternoon! We can see where he painted, and look at the surf, and you can tell me about the wood engravings.”

  “You know they were done before he lived in Prouts Neck,” Maggie said.

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about them there!” said Kevin. “I’d love you to come with me.”

  “I’m tempted,” said Maggie. “But I’d have to go back and talk to Will about our plans for the weekend first.” She hesitated, and looked at her watch. “Give me an hour. I’ll meet you back here.”

  She drove to Aunt Nettie’s slowly. Will would be aggravated that she was taking the afternoon and going somewhere with Kevin Bradman, even if she could justify it with scholarly research. If she told him the real reason she was going, Will would be furious. But this was important.

  Sometimes a lady had to lie.

  Chapter 39

  “I Cannot! It Would Be a Sin! A Fearful Sin!” Wood engraving by Winslow Homer, published in The Galaxy, September 1868, story illustration. Gentleman with mustache looks down at a woman seated on the floor who is covering her eyes and crying. 6.875 x 4.875 inches. Price: $150.

  Maggie didn’t dare stay long at Aunt Nettie’s, for fear she’d say something she shouldn’t. Instead, she chatted about the obvious. She’d found what she wanted at the library. She’d run into Kevin Bradman, and she hoped everyone wouldn’t mind, but they were going to take the afternoon and drive to Prouts Neck and talk art and history. Two academics, you know.

  Will looked dubious, but his mind was on the weekend. He’d spoken with Rachel and had a call into the home health care place. It looked as though they’d both be able to do the antiques show that weekend. There was enough lasagna left for dinner.

  Maggie got a sweatshirt from her room in case ocean breezes required one, and slipped Anna May’s journal under her pillow for safekeeping. After a moment’s hesitation she also left her notebook where she’d written down the family tree information she’d found at the library.

  Fresh batteries were in the little tape recorder she always carried in case she had any brainstorms or thoughts for her “to do” list while she was driving. She hadn’t used it since she’d walked through her booth at the Provincetown show and made a verbal list of the types of prints she should be looking for in Maine.

  Maggie sighed, listening to that list. “Astronomy. Shells. Maps of New England. Architectural drawings or blueprints. Ships. Fish, especially trout. Don’t need any more fashion or nineteenth-century birds or children’s. Maxfield Parrish being reproduced too much—not selling well.” She hadn’t had a chance to do any buying since she’d been in Maine. Would there be any time to do that before she headed back to New Jersey for the fall semester?

  For now, she tucked the little recorder into the side pocket of her canvas bag so she could easily turn it on and off.

  She braided her hair tightly and pinned it up. A hat might help prevent sun or wind burn if gales were blowing down at the shore. On the other hand, her hats had a tendency to fly off, despite attempts at securing them with the nineteenth-century hatpins Anna May would have recognized as a practical solution. Clearly Anna May and her friends knew tricks to securing hats
and long hair Maggie had never managed to master.

  Instead, she dabbed on SPF 30. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. Here she was seriously considering murder suspects, and yet was making sure that her nose wouldn’t blister in the sun or wind.

  On the other hand, appearances were appearances.

  She dabbed once more, stuffed her sweatshirt into her bag, and headed downstairs.

  “I went to Prouts Neck once, years ago,” said Will. “A trail around the top of the cliffs is open to the public, but as I remember it’s a mile or two long. Not an easy path, especially if the winds or surf are heavy. Walking it could take all afternoon.”

  “Thanks for warning me,” said Maggie, reaching up to kiss his cheek. “Don’t worry. I have my phone. I’ll call if there are any problems, or if I’m going to be late.” She headed for the door. “I’m going to be just fine.”

  Kevin was waiting for her at the library, pacing in front of the entrance. He smiled as she pulled up, and reached to open her van door. “Why don’t we take my car?” he suggested.

  Maggie hesitated. Why not? Kevin was being a gentleman. She was just trying to get some information.

  They headed onto Route 1. “Prouts Neck is south of South Portland. We’ll drive through Scarborough, and turn east,” said Kevin. “Have you read Philip Beam’s Winslow Homer at Prouts Neck?”

  “Many times,” said Maggie. “He does a wonderful job of pulling together all the information that was available about Homer and his family at that time. I remember little details. Like, the town of Scarborough was spelled S-c-a-r-b-o-r-o when Homer lived there.”