by Andre Norton
“It’s—it’s Miss Wing at the Hartwell bookshop.”
“Oh yes, Miss Wing.” He hesitated. Suspicion had now become solicitude. “Are you quite sure nothing’s wrong? Well then—”
In the end he gave her Thane Carey’s number and she put it beside the telephone. Then, feeling both virtuous and courageous, she went upstairs, took one of Dr. Scott’s pills and went immediately to sleep.
When Fredericka woke the morning was fresh and cooler after the rain of the day before. The sun sparkled brightly on the wet green grass when she slipped out on to her back porch to look for signs of her marauder and to sniff the air. The path was trampled with footsteps of all sizes and shapes—yesterday’s rain and yesterday’s visitors had churned the brown earth and flattened the grass. No, there was no evidence. But even in the bright light of day, Fredericka knew that she had not been dreaming. And she was more than ever convinced that her visitor had been Margie. She thought of this as she was cooking and eating her breakfast, and then her mind travelled backwards to the problems that had become crystal clear by the simple process of writing down, as she had in her last night’s letter to Miss Hartwell, the significant events since her arrival in South Sutton.
As she poured out her coffee and made her toast she thought of this letter and what she had said, and then, inevitably, that she must get it off. She hadn’t bothered with a stamp last night. She’d have to find one and then get Christopher to take it to the post office. If only he would put in his appearance. Why hadn’t he come yesterday? During the first week, she had put him on to full time. Surely he understood this. She had expected him all morning and then, when the afternoon’s visitors had started to appear, she had forgotten him completely. Now, thinking of him, she remembered his perspiring black face as it emerged from the bushes that first afternoon when she had been lying in the hammock. Had there been something sinister about that face? Certainly the events of these last few days were enough to make anyone uneasy and suspicious without cause. Could it have been Chris last night? Of course not. But why hadn’t he come yesterday?
As if in answer to her question, there was a loud knock on the back door. Startled, and annoyed with herself for being startled, Fredericka got up quickly and went out. Christopher stood on the porch, turning his battered straw hat in his workworn brown hands. He smiled disarmingly and Fredericka’s nightmare vanished.
“Fixin’ to come yist’dy, but found it advisable to help out at the depot with a parcel o’ freight for Miss Philippine.”
“But that didn’t take all day, did it?”
“No ma’am, Miss Wing. But I then went out to the Farm where I busy myself with one business and then another business. Did reckon to come along here afterwards, but they wasn’t no time lef’, time I got done.”
“But Christopher, I thought you were going to be regularly employed by me now. Wasn’t that what we agreed? I mean, I thought you were my man.”
“Yes, ma’am—but the good Lord He say we is to help one anothers and as they done have all this trouble…” He stopped and then added significantly, “Mis’ Hartwell, she never used to mind much.”
“I see.” Fredericka bit her lip in annoyance, but she knew it would be both unwise and quite useless to say more. “I have some coffee for you,” she said quickly.
Christopher’s grin returned and he nodded vigorously. “I’ll jes’ set myself down on the porch here for the time bein’. Mis’ Hartwell she don’t like my boots for outside to go inside on her floors.” He exhibited a pair of muddy shoes heavily studded with nails. As Fredericka turned to go in to the kitchen, she looked back and saw with surprise that Christopher had glanced furtively over his shoulder and then walked to the far end of the porch.
Was everyone queer, or was there something wrong with herself? Fredericka poured out the coffee quickly and took two doughnuts from Miss Hartwell’s large crock. When she got back to the porch she found Christopher sitting on the far edge with his feet stretched out before him. He seemed to have shrunk down into his bright plaid shirt, and to be regarding his outdoor boots with deep concentration.
“What’s the matter, Chris?” she asked, feeling sudden anxiety for the man.
He took the coffee with obvious gratitude, but did not reply. And all at once, Fredericka knew the answer. Christopher was frightened—plain frightened. That was why he had to get himself as far away from the hammock side of the house as possible. No doubt that was why he hadn’t appeared yesterday.
“It’s all right, Chris,” she said quickly. “They’ve taken the—er—I mean they’ve taken Mrs. Clay—and the hammock away.”
“Yes, ma’am,” was all Christopher said, but his look of relief was obvious. He began to dunk his doughnut in his coffee with every appearance of complete satisfaction.
Was it simply superstitious fear or was it a sense of guilt? How much did he know about Margie Hartwell’s secret hiding place?
“Chris,” she said suddenly, “I was looking about the place on Sunday and I discovered a break in the fence. Did you know about that?”
“Jes’ an ole foxhole, I reckon. I told Miss Lucy and she say she ain’t worried about no foxes round here.” He laughed and the sound grated unpleasantly on Fredericka’s oversensitive nerves.
“Well, what about that collection of things in the old greenhouse back there?”
“Those belongs to Miss Margie. Miss Lucy, she say they is not to be removed.” He frowned down at his empty coffee cup.
It’s a conspiracy against me, Fredericka thought unreasonably. Well, it was no use trying to get anything more out of Chris. She took the coffee cup and went to get the letter to Miss Hartwell.
In searching for a stamp in the desk drawer, Fredericka saw the little silver patch box, and her mind strayed for a moment from her immediate purpose. She could have asked James Brewster if he had observed anyone using it. Perhaps Peter had been serious after all. But surely the box must belong to Margie. It had been found near the porch and it was Margie who used the back way more than anyone else. But it was true that the box didn’t look in the least like Margie. It looked more like—yes, of course, like Catherine Clay herself. Catherine probably did come around to try the back door when she found the front locked on that fateful Saturday afternoon. And it was a fact that she had come part way around since she would have had to in order to get into the hammock. If only she had asked James, he would have known whether or not it was Catherine’s and his reactions would have been interesting—very. Well, she wasn’t much of a sleuth.
Fredericka put the box back into the drawer with a gesture of impatience. What would happen to her work if she spent all her time in idle speculations that came to nothing? She found a stamp, stuck it on the letter with unnecessary force, and went back to Christopher.
“I don’t know when the mail goes, Chris, but will you please take this for me? Don’t make a special trip but I would like it to go out today.”
“Yes ma’am. I was fixin’ to cut this here grass, and straighten out the contents of the stockroom. Mail don’t go nohow this forenoon. Reckon I can take it when I go for the mail round about twelve o’clock.”
“Good.” Fredericka turned to go back into the house when Chris spoke again.
“I’ve been thinking further about that ole well. It do make me worry some, all open like it am. I put an ole box cover over it like but it’s not much use. Sam Lewis is doin’ a job down the road. I could jes’ ax him to come by and have a look at it.”
“I’ve written to Miss Hartwell, Chris. We ought to have an answer in a few days. Don’t you think we can get along until we hear? I don’t really like to involve Miss Hartwell in expense unless I’m sure she wants me to.”
“Yes, ma’am, O.K. then.” Chris now put his dilapidated hat on his head with an age-old gesture of resignation and loped off through the jungle path. Fredericka returned to her dishes and then to her desk, and, after a few moments, was relieved to hear the clanking whir of the lawn mower. He see
ms to be doing the side lawn, she thought. So he must have recovered from his panic. That was one good thing.
She continued to work steadily but some impulse made her get up and go to the window when the lawn mower stopped suddenly. Between the two trees where the hammock had hung, Chris was down on his hands and knees. Praying? Fredericka asked herself. Surely not. She was about to go to the door and investigate when Chris got to his feet and returned to the lawn mower. I must pull myself together, Fredericka decided. There is no doubt whatever that he was trimming the grass around the trees—
After this interruption, the morning passed uneventfully except for a telephone call from Thane Carey who had received the sergeant’s report. She told him briefly of her adventure and he questioned her closely. Then he said that he was on his way out to the Farm and would, himself, question Margie. He sounded abrupt and hurried and after a few brief pleasantries, he hung up. Well, he doesn’t seem to be much alarmed, Fredericka decided as she returned to her desk. Thank heaven I didn’t get him out of bed in the middle of the night.
Two or three customers came to return books to the lending library and lingered to ask the inevitable questions. But Fredericka despatched them quickly, having now learned a satisfactory technique for dealing with them. Each time she remembered the little silver box, but none of her visitors had ever seen it before. They looked at it with undisguised interest, however. “Better put up a notice in the post office,” one of them suggested.
“I will if all else fails,” Fredericka said, slipping the box back into its drawer.
She was still working at the pile of bills and orders on her desk when she was aware that someone had come in behind her. She turned quickly to see Chris standing in the doorway.
“What is it?” she asked, trying to keep the fright and annoyance from her voice. Why did he have to creep so? “I thought Miss Hartwell didn’t like you coming in the house with your boots on,” she added severely.
“I took them off, Ma’am, Miss Wing.” He handed her a pile of letters. Fredericka looked down at his stockinged feet and one large protruding toe, and was ashamed of her outburst.
“Thanks, Chris.”
When he did not at once depart, she looked up at him.
“I saw you had a stamp there from foreign parts—” He coughed. ‘France.’ Then, in a rush, he added, “Miss Hartwell very kindly give me such stamps for my collection.”
“Of course, Chris.” She tore open the letter carefully and cut out the stamp.
Chris took it and stared at it for a moment. “Miss Catherine she got one jes’ the same as this here one. But she won’t be there. No ma’am. Bein’ as how she am dead,” he added lugubriously.
“No. You take the Farm mail too?” Why all this service to the Farm? And why am I so unnaturally curious? she asked herself.
“Yes, ma’am. I am, as yo’all might say, the postman hereabouts and the freight man and the general handyman, as it were.”
“I see. Then I don’t wonder you collect stamps,” Fredericka said a little absently. She wished now that he would go and let her get on with her work.
At this moment, the back door banged and Margie burst into the room.
“Have you got the Farm mail, Chris?” she asked without so much as a glance at Fredericka. “I’m just going back—”
Chris handed her the letters with a look of disappointment. It was obvious that he would have liked to have personally delivered the letter addressed to Mrs. Clay. His departure was slow and dignified.
Margie flopped down into the big chair and thumbed through the letters. Fredericka, who had had more than enough of Margie, started to express her feelings when she was saved by the appearance of an old lady with a book for the lending library. Fredericka went across the hall with her and soon learned that her customer was Mrs. Pike, and that she had made the quilt which Fredericka had won at the bazaar. Fredericka would normally have been interested in this fact and in the long and detailed story of how the pattern had evolved but she had Margie very much on her mind. Should she ask her about last night or leave that to Thane Carey? The girl had seemed so preoccupied and tense.
Then, in the middle of pink against blue or red against green, Fredericka suddenly remembered that she must ask Margie about the silver box. She made some excuse and the old lady turned rather huffily to the shelves. Fredericka hurried back to the office to find Margie gone, and the desk drawer half-open. She looked inside quickly and was relieved to find the box there, just as she had left it. Perhaps she had, herself, forgotten to shut the drawer properly. She took out the box and, without bothering to make further excuses to her customer, dashed out the back way. She ran all the way to the gate into the alley which she found standing open. But there was no sign of Margie.
“Plague take her,” Fredericka muttered as she hurried back to the shop and her fretting client.
For the rest of the day Fredericka was too busy with customers to think of anything else. She ate only a sandwich for lunch and a chocolate milk shake that Chris brought back to her when he took his wheelbarrow to the station to collect freight parcels in the afternoon. He trundled the barrow in by the front gate and around the side path to the back porch where Fredericka stepped out to meet him. The paper carton of milk shake was poised precariously on top of the bundles of books like a lookout on a craggy mountain. Chris handed it to her solemnly.
“Everyone in this town is talkin’ like they was murder crimated in this place,” he said heavily.
“Nonsense,” she said a little sharply, and then felt sorry as she took the drink from the large brown hand and looked into the anxious face.
By night, Fredericka was determined to escape from the bookshop and, though she did not admit it, even to herself, she wanted to see Peter Mohun again. Neither he nor Thane Carey had appeared all day and this fact in itself now seemed, to her overwrought mind, to be full of portent. That afternoon a customer had reminded her that there was to be a lecture at the college at eight-thirty. Something about Korea. She hadn’t had a thought of going to it until, after supper, she found herself changing into her best linen dress. Half an hour later, she shut and locked both doors, and departed, hurrying across the campus as though escaping from demons. When she reached the hall she discovered that she was a little late and slipped quietly into a back seat.
The large room was crowded with people, but Fredericka could not see any familiar faces near her. She sat back on her hard chair and looked around at the panelled walls and the row of impressive portraits that circled the room. Certainly the college hall was a far pleasanter place than the church one. Fredericka reflected briefly on the rapid decline of American architecture in the fifty or sixty years from the time this hall had been built around 1825 or 1830 to the church hall, a memorial to the worst that 1880 could do. The lecture was given by a correspondent, recently back from the Korean front and he was introduced by Peter Mohun who seemed abstracted and tired, Fredericka thought. She found it difficult to concentrate—a blue bottle fly buzzed around the light above her and the room grew close and hot. At intervals she dozed but, in spite of this, the time dragged until the sudden stir in the room announced her release. She got up at once and followed the crowd out to the lighted porch where everyone was stopping to gossip and enjoy the soft summer night.
Fredericka stood for a moment, feeling alone in a crowd of strangers. She looked anxiously for Peter but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had to entertain the speaker. Well, there was nothing for it but to leave. She started slowly across the campus, feeling abandoned, and frightened at the prospect of returning alone to the book-shop, when a hand fell heavily on her shoulder. Startled, she turned to look up into the large red face of James Brewster. Her disappointment was acute.
“The thing to do now,” he announced easily, “is to adjourn to the drug-store for an ice-cream soda. Personally I would prefer something a little stronger but we are in Rome, my dear Fredericka, and so we must be Romans.”
�
��Must we?” Fredericka asked, and meant it.
He took her arm. “We must, at any rate, make a pretence of doing so.”
Fredericka decided that anything would be better than to return alone to her empty house. For this reason, she did not withdraw her arm as she longed to do, and they walked together down the dark street.
“It’s no joke being the Sutton family lawyer,” Brewster said suddenly, but he spoke low and confidingly.
Fredericka who had been avid for news all day was suddenly annoyed. She didn’t want to hear about the Suttons from James Brewster. She didn’t even want to think about them. But James went on without encouragement. “Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but really Catherine’s affairs were in a shocking state. Wouldn’t wonder if she had decided to take a quick way out—”
“Whatever do you mean?” Fredericka was now roused to sudden attention.
“Nothing. Oh nothing really, of course. Philippine’s got the family in a much better state with her herb farm. Most remarkable woman. Forget what I said, my dear.” He squeezed her arm affectionately but Fredericka did not even notice. She was thinking of the conversation she had overheard in the inn on her first Sunday and of what Peter had told her of James’s admissions. James Brewster was suggesting that Catherine Clay had committed suicide. How convenient for him if he had indeed switched his affections from the glamorous Catherine to Philippine whom on Sunday he had called “good” and now thought “remarkable.”
“I thought Mrs. Sutton had started the herb business before Philippine came,” Fredericka said quickly.
“Yes, started, but she is old and really quite worn out. It certainly needed someone like Philippine—” He stopped in midsentence and turned toward Fredericka suddenly. She had walked on without noticing that the crowd had thinned: the white dresses had flashed away into the darkness and the chatter of voices and the sound of laughter had become spasmodic and remote. At the moment that James Brewster turned toward her and she felt his hot breath against her face, she knew that they were alone.