Terrible Tide
Page 14
As she’d expected, the eggnog was untouched. She pulled Annie to a half-sitting position, propped her with pillows, and picked up the glass.
“Okay, no more playing games. You’re going to drink this if it takes all afternoon.”
It did take quite a while, with pauses for swallowing, breath catching, and pep talks when Annie showed signs of wanting to quit, but at last the glass was empty. Then Holly fetched warm water, soap, and towels and proceeded with a bed bath, to Annie’s embarrassment.
“It’s too much for you, dearie.”
“Hush up or I’ll get soap in your mouth. How’d you like a back rub?”
“I don’t know. I never had one.”
“Then it’s high time you did. Can you roll over?”
Annie made feeble scrabbling motions. Heartened by this small sign of improvement, Holly heaved her over, sprinkled the age-spotted back with talcum powder, and began to rub. “Feel good?”
“Lovely, dearie.”
She’s perking up, Holly thought, but Annie was asleep before the back rub was finished. Holly straightened the covers, lowered the blinds, and tiptoed out, taking the dirty dishes with her. It wasn’t till she was putting them in the dishpan that she remembered she hadn’t had any lunch herself.
There was still a little chicken soup in the pan, but that was the last thing Holly wanted. She made herself a lettuce and tomato sandwich and took it out to the back terrace. It was good to get out, away from dust and decay and things that had been around too long.
Poor Mathilde, lying up there in her dainty nightgown, with those withered eyelids hiding her beautiful eyes. She must have something fresh and bright to look at, if she ever opened them again. Holly got up and roamed the hillside, picking black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, and wild asters, dividing them scrupulously into two equal piles. It was time Annie, too, knew how it felt to have somebody bring her flowers.
Chapter 23
“MY, AREN’T THEY PRETTY!” Food and rest were doing their work. Annie responded to the bouquet like a real, live human being.
“I’ll set them here in front of the mirror so they’ll look like more,” said Holly. “It’s rather a sparse arrangement, but they’re almost gone by now and I wanted Mrs. Parlett to have some, too. She always liked the wild flowers, you said.”
“Lordy, yes. I can see Mathilde now, bringing in an apron full and dumping them in the sink where I was trying to peel the potatoes. Black-eyed Susans were her favorites. Uncle Jonathan said it was because they matched her eyes. Mathilde had the blackest eyes you’d ever want to see, and when she smiled it was as if little sunbeams twinkled out of them. Lord bless her, she was a lovely woman.”
“Her eyes are still beautiful,” Holly agreed. “I noticed them as I was giving her lunch. But I’d hardly call them black.”
Annie sighed. “My poor old head, I keep forgetting. She’s changed, dearie, changed so nobody would know her. It’s awful, seeing a fine-looking woman go like that. Dearie, you weren’t thinking of making a nice cup of tea any time soon?”
“Right this minute.”
Delighted that Annie was at last showing some interest in taking nourishment, Holly limped downstairs and filled the old brown Betty. Annie would have had it stewing on the back of the stove since breakfast. Tomorrow morning, or maybe the day after, she’d be down here slopping around in her ratty blue cardigan, letting the porridge spatter all over the stove. How could you get to love somebody so much on such short acquaintance?
Annie drank her tea without coaxing, asked for the chamber pot, then murmured that she thought she’d enjoy a little nap. That was all right. Holly took the cup back to the kitchen and started preparing braised beef with potatoes, carrots, onions, and the turnip Bert would surely yell for if she left it out. She’d make enough to warm over for tomorrow night’s supper, and save herself some bother.
When she went out to dump the vegetable parings in the garbage pit down behind the stone wall, she noticed a black-eyed Susan she’d neglected to pick. How could that center ever have matched Mrs. Parlett’s eyes? People’s eye color did often tend to fade as they got older, but what fantastic quirk of nature had turned Mathilde’s from almost black to that divine shade of hazel?
Maybe Dr. Walker would be able to explain it when she went back to have her leg checked. It was bothering her a lot, no doubt from too much climbing up and down stairs. He’d tell her to go to bed and stay there, but how could she? As a slight concession to her infirmity, she stretched out on the kitchen cot with a mildewed novel Annie must have been reading. She could keep an eye on the cooking while she relaxed. This wasn’t such a bad place to be, with the stove glowing red through the slits in the damper and good smells puffing out of the stewpot as its lid bumped gently up and down.
Holly turned the page. Harold was clasping Vivienne to his manly bosom, his burning cheek resting tenderly on her perfumed cloud of golden tresses. She wouldn’t mind being clasped to a manly bosom herself, if it was the right bosom. Now Harold was raising a clenched fist and vowing to avenge his adored Vivienne if it took his last and ultimate breath. There was a chap who didn’t mind getting involved. What slush! She laid the book down and closed her eyes.
Then she heard Bert’s voice. “Huh! Anybody could walk in here and carry you off.”
“They’d darn soon bring me back,” Holly answered. “I wasn’t asleep, just resting my eyes.”
“I’ve used that one a few times myself. How’s Annie?”
“Better. I poured an eggnog into her at noon and a while back she asked for a cup of tea. Don’t you think that’s a good sign?”
“Is it a good sign if a feller asks for a snort of rum?”
That depends on whether he’s filled the woodbox. I’m cooking you a potroast to make up for all those beans.”
“Heck, that reminds me, I brung a little ice cream. Annie always was kind o’ partial to strawberry.”
“Bert, that’s sweet. Give it to me before it melts. I’ll put it in the fridge.”
He handed over the brown-paper bag sheepishly, as if afraid she might think he was a sissy. “I got some more stuff, too. Claudine phoned up an’ told Miz Howe to have me stop by for somethin’ you wanted.”
“Good, it’s time she learned there are other kinds of soup than chicken. What’s this weeny little box?”
“That’s for you. The drugstore sent it Claudine says she found it in her mailbox with a note.”
Holly read the typewritten message. “Miss Howe forgot part of her prescription. The dose is one at bedtime and one in the morning.”
“Oh. Maybe that’s why my leg still hurts. Thanks, Bert. I must call Claudine and thank her, too. I’m afraid I wasn’t very polite about the soup.”
“Well, do it after we eat. Cripes, I could chew on a stove lid. That sister-in-law o’ yours wouldn’t part with a crumb if a man was starvin’ to death on ’er doorstep.”
“All right, go get the wood. I’ll have supper on the table in three shakes of a lamb’s tail.” That was what she’d heard Annie say. “You may have your rum for dessert when I go up to feed my patients. Oh, all right.” Holly laughed at his woebegone face and got down the bottle.
“Ah, that’s the stuff!” Bert gulped his tot, wiped a hand across his grizzled whiskers, and ambled cheerfully off to the woodpile. When he came back, Holly had the meat and vegetables all dished up. He sat down and swooped upon the food like a starving wolverine.
“By the Lord Harry, if you was thirty years older, I’d marry you. Ain’t nothin’ kills an old man faster’n a young wife. I seen that Cawne feller givin you the eye. Dern fool. He’s fifty if he’s a day.”
“I’d have said forty,” Holly protested.
“That’s ’cause you don’t know no better. He don’t fool me none with his pansy clothes an’ that snazzy limousine he drives.”
“It’s not a limousine, it’s a sports car.”
“Some sport he is. Where in tarnation does he get the money
for a buggy like that, is what I’d like to know. Schoolteachers don’t make nothin’ to speak of.”
“He’s not exactly a schoolteacher, Bert. He’s a professor, a traveling lecturer, and a well-known author.”
“What did he ever write?”
“Why, I don’t know. I’ll phone down to the library and find out, if it will make you feel any better.”
“Save your breath. I don’t give a hoot. Any more turnips in the pot?”
“Plenty. Give me your plate, if you can let go of it long enough.” Holly got up and ladled him out another generous helping.
Bert sent the second load the way of the first. “There, by cripes. I ain’t et, I’ve dined.” He belched contentedly and picked his teeth with his thumbnail, happy as a gambler with two aces up his sleeve.
“Want some of your ice cream for dessert?” Holly asked him.
“That’s for Annie. Why don’t you go on up and give it to her?”
“Leaving the rum handy?”
“Since you’re kind enough to suggest it.” Bert poured himself another generous slug, took off his boots with much grunting and puffing, settled himself in the rocking chair, stuck his feet in the oven, and cuddled the thick glass tumbler in both gnarled hands. Holly could stay upstairs with her patients as long as she liked. Bert wasn’t going to miss her.
Holly ladled out a cupful of rich broth from the stewpot for Mrs. Parlett. Then she prepared a sort of hearty soup for Annie by dicing bits of meat and vegetables and moistening them with broth. It must be positively seething with vitamins, and Annie was hungry for it.
“That’s real tasty, dearie. I declare, I don’t know when food’s tasted so good to me.”
“That’s because you’re getting better. Finish it up. Your boyfriend brought you a special treat.”
“Who?”
“Bert, of course. He says you like strawberry ice cream.”
“So I do, but I never thought he’d remember.” Tears filled the old housekeeper’s eyes as she spooned the pink sweetness in tiny bites to make it last longer. “Land’s sakes,” she murmured over and over, “to think he’d remember.”
Chapter 24
“YOUR ICE CREAM MADE a big hit,” Holly remarked as she took the empty tray back into the kitchen.
Bert didn’t hear. He was dead to the world, lolling back in the rocking chair with the half-full tumbler clutched to his chest. Holly took the drink away and set it on the table, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Whatever had possessed Claudine to send such rotgut?
Maybe this was what Claude Parlett used to drink. If so, no wonder he’d landed down among the lobsters. Holly was standing with the bottle in her hand wondering if she ought to pour the rest of it down the sink when Sam Neill tapped on the window.
“Taking to drink, eh?”
“Thinking about it.” Holly set the bottle back on the table. “If you’ve come for your uncle, forget it. He’s out like a light.”
“That doesn’t surprise me any. Feel like coming for a walk?”
“No, but I’ll sit out in the yard and talk for a while, if you like.”
“That’ll do. I’m here on serious business.”
She was too tired to play games tonight “Were you here on serious business Saturday around midnight, by any chance?”
To her surprise, he grinned. “Oh, you saw me, did you?”
“You almost stepped on me. I was curled up beside the wall pretending to be a rock.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“In the first place, I wasn’t sure it was you. In the second, I didn’t know why you’d come prowling in the dead of night. I still don’t,” she added flatly.
“I know, that’s what I want to talk to you about. After I left you the other night, I got to thinking about Ellis and his lobster pot. Here, sit down on the wall, I promise not to step on you.”
Neill sat beside her, close enough so that she could feel the warmth of his body. “I’m not saying Ellis and I were ever what you’d call buddies, but I’ve known him all his life, pretty much. It was rough on him and Claudine, with that loudmouthed drunk of a father and having their mother go the way she did.”
“How did she go?” Holly asked.
“Nobody knows for sure. Alice Parlett was always a strange sort of woman. She snubbed everybody in the village, didn’t want her kids to play with the rest because they were Parletts even though they didn’t have a whole pair of shoes among ’em. I expect Annie’s told you some of the family history.”
“Yes she has. Alice died quite young, didn’t she?”
“She seemed old to me, but you know how kids are about anybody over eighteen. Anyway, Alice was always a touchy woman, but after Claude died she became plain impossible. She’d get into fights at the store, claiming somebody else had grabbed what she was reaching for, silly things like that. Then she took to staying in the house with the blinds down, never going out at all. My mother went to see if she was sick, finally, but she didn’t get in. Claudine said her mother was resting and couldn’t be disturbed. Nobody was allowed but the doctor. Then one day a hearse from Moncton hauled up in front of the door. All Claudine would say was that her mother had died of pneumonia.”
“But if Alice was that sick, why didn’t they take her to a hospital?”
“Don’t ask me. Mum’s theory is that Alice had cancer of the face and wouldn’t let anybody see her because she was too horribly disfigured. That could be why the casket wasn’t opened at the funeral.”
“Do you believe that?”
Neill shrugged. “It’s as good a reason as any, and more charitable than some.”
“But wouldn’t Dr. Walker say what really happened?”
“Uncle Ben doesn’t talk about his patients, not even to Mum. Anyway, he didn’t know. He was in Europe at the time. A young chap just out of medical school filled in for him. Poor guy, we read in the papers that he’d been killed in a private plane crash not long after he left here.”
“Then that means there’s nobody left alive but Claudine who knows.”
“I suppose Ellis must. Look, I don’t know how we got off on this tangent about Alice Parlett. It was Ellis I started to tell you about.” Sam rubbed a knuckle over the bridge of his nose, a gesture of old Bert’s that Holly was tickled to see. “You may have got the notion Ellis is the village idiot, but he’s not. Ellis’s problem is that he’s an efficiency expert.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The way he interprets efficiency. At school, Ellis spent so much time trying to figure out the easiest way of doing his work that he never managed to finish anything. Once the teacher made him stay after school to write ‘I must finish what I start’ five hundred times on the blackboard. Ellis spent about half an hour trying to strap ten pieces of chalk between two rulers so he could write ten sentences at once, then found he couldn’t write with the darn thing at all. That’s been the story of his life, pretty much.”
“But Sam, if Ellis is always trying to save work—”
“That’s what I’m driving at. Why row a heavy old chest of drawers all the way to Parlett’s Point when he could get the veneer off just as easily by tossing it into the pond behind his own house? Folks are so used to Ellis’s brainstorms that they’ve taken this lobster pot business as just one more for the list, but when I got to thinking, it didn’t fit in.”
“So you rowed out later that same night and hauled up the chest to find out what he’d put in the drawers besides rocks.”
“Not much gets by you, eh?”
“It’s just that my leg was hurting and I couldn’t sleep. My room looks out over the bay. So what did you find?”
“I’m not quite sure. It seemed to be a lot of doodads like candlesticks and figurines. He had them all carefully wrapped in plastic and packed in nylon bags such as skin divers use. I didn’t know what to think. It’s awfully easy to tag a kid a crook just because his old man was always getting jugged for one thing or another.”
“No,” Sam growled, “I came because I was worried about you, if you want to know. The only two places I could think of where Ellis might find anything worth hiding like that were his sister’s shop and Cliff House. I knew he’d never have the guts to rob Claudine, so I figured the stuff must have come from here.”
“The possibility never crossed your mind that he and she might be in it together?”
“Never. Claudine wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Forgive me if I’ve offended you,” Holly said spitefully.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I merely wished to congratulate you on your taste. Claudine’s a handsome woman even if she does have the personality of a barracuda.”
Sam stared at Holly, then the corners of his mouth began to lift. “So that’s what’s been eating you.”
“Not at all. It’s no concern of mine if you go rolling in the poison ivy with every woman from here to Vancouver.”
“For your information,” Sam yelled, “Claudine Parlett used to be my baby-sitter. How could I get romantic about somebody who used to twist her hands into the neck of my pajamas and march me off to bed half-choked when I wanted to stay up and watch television? Speaking of baby-sitters, however, I understand you’ve acquired one of your own.”
“That’s a detestable thing to say! Just because an agreeable, cultured gentleman shows a little common courtesy—”
“An agreeable, cultured gentleman,” he mimicked in a mincing squeal. “I thought you had brains enough not to fall for a middle-aged baloney artist.”
“And I thought we were discussing your baby-sitter. Why don’t you believe Claudine and Ellis are working a racket together?”
“Because Claudine wouldn’t be fool enough to trust Ellis any farther than she could throw him, that’s why. She knows he’d go off on some tangent or other and gum up the works. I thought if I kept watch here I might get a clue to what he’s trying to pull.”