Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  The next day the lawyer had a visit from Parley Willum, who claimed a legal attachment to the baby. The mans motives were clear enough, as he was willing to state them.

  “That brats in for some money,” growled the man, “and as his grand father I’m entitled to my handful!”

  Daniel had difficulty remaining still behind his desk. “Inheritance doesn’t generally work in that direction,” he replied.

  “Then I want the brat, “stated the man flatly.

  “I will warn you now, Mr. Willum,” said Daniel, “that if you had custody of that child, the judge would surely stipulate regular visits from the law.”

  The thought took Willum aback; his face pinched up as if he had smelled something bad, though he was the worst-smelling object in the room. “No ones visiting regularly up that place, I expect!” he declared, meaning the Linnett estate.

  “And that crazy old coot there, who murdered my kin!” Parley stormed around Daniels office before leaving, shouting, “I’ll get what’s coming, soon or late, you can trust! Parley Willum isn’t one to come up short, no, he’s not!”

  From his desk window Daniel watched the man storm down the walk to his buckboard and drive of At least I know where trouble may come, he thought, which foresight, like so much else in life, proved unhelpful.

  Daniel first met Edward Penfen in July. Ian Linnett had been calling Daniel to some unusual duties in those weeks, liquidating his assets (which were rich in railroad stock, among other things) into physical wealth. Daniel had inf act sold of thousands of dollars’ worth of Linnetts investments in the past months and, per instruction, bought the most precious gems he was able to lay hands upon in Portland and Boston. The lawyer had argued with his client about this strange business and would have quit it himself had he not worried that a less scrupulous agent might be hired in his place.

  He had no idea where the old man kept his growing hoard. Neither, as it happened, did Edward Penfen.

  Daniel hardly bothered to knock at the front door when he came to the Linnett house. The old man rarely answered, and it seemed a lot of trouble to bother Mrs. Cutler when he could easily let himself in.

  On this particular day in July, however, the door opened before he had reached it, and he had his first glimpse of Penfen.

  He was a narrow, wild-eyed fellow, even dressed in his best suit, which appeared well worn, if tidy enough. His hair was wanting an appointment with the shears, clean but disordered. If Asher Willum was a wolf, here was a fox, with no telling which was the more dangerous. Daniel mistrusted the man the moment he set eyes upon him.

  “Mr. Plainway, I presume,” said Penfen with a flash of teeth.

  “You have the better of me, sir,” said Daniel.

  “Edward Penfen, “said the man. “Mr. Linnett is expecting you.”

  The tale was that Penfen had been hired to look after the baby, Bertram, and that the man was qualified to be the child’s instructor when the time came. Ian Linnett fell silent on the matter after the first explanation, though he made sure that Penfen was out of the room before he resumed the business between himself and Daniel.

  As always, Daniel stopped by the nursery, where Mrs. Cutler would be rocking Bertram or her son, or feeding them, or singing nursery songs. She was a large woman who kept to herself and the children, venturing no opinion concerning Mr. Linnett or Edward Penfen. Daniel found the babies mysterious, if pleasant, and stayed awhile to talk to Bertram. The baby watched him with a mild, serious expression; when Bertram smiled Daniel thought he saw a flash of his mother in the child’sf ace.

  Penfen, as far as Daniel could see during his subsequent visits, did nothing, though he was sure to answer the door, a means to see who was calling upon his employer. The tutor, as he came to be known, made occasional appearances in town and failed to ingratiate himself there. Daniel said nothing about the man to anyone but waited his moment.

  That moment seemed to arrive one October day when Penfen didn’t greet him at the door and as the man was supposed to be “tending to personal business” in another town, Daniel thought it was a good time to bring up the security of Linnett’s growing cache. The old man was standing in the front room, across from the parlor, looking at a portrait of Nell that had been painted when she was yet sixteen. Daniel had been a little put off by the picture when it was commissioned, since it had made her look older than her years, but now it seemed to fit his memory of her.

  “They’re safe put away,” said Linnett when Daniel brought up the subject of the gems.

  “Safe from Penfen?” asked Daniel bluntly.

  “You’re not to worry about Penfen,” said the old man.

  “Ian,” said Daniel, “as much as I dislike to bring it up, your investments are nearly gone, and there is only enough left-by your own plan-to eke out a bare existence for yourself and your household. What if something were to happen to you? How would Bertram be provided for? How are we to know where you’ve hidden this cache of jewels?”

  A smile, barely discernible, touched Linnett’sf ace then, and not happily. “I he’s as big a man as I am-” he said, “the boy, that is-he will see where it’s been put, in his mother’s eyes.”

  Daniel peered after the man at the portrait of Nell, exasperated, wondering if he had done something as simple and foolish as hide the gems in the wall behind the portrait. Then he saw, reflected in the glass before the portrait, the shadow of a man standing in the don’t Jay to the hall.

  “Mr. Penfen, “said Daniel, “I was told you were away on business.”

  “How are you today, Mr. Plainway?” was Penfen’s indirect reply.

  Daniel had hoped that Ian Linnett was opening up to him, but the old man lost all sign of vitality upon sight of his employee. The lawyer did discover one thing, however: Linnett knew Penfen for what he was, for the old man behaved as if a leering stranger had entered Nell’s very presence. “You are allowed in the remainder of the house, Mr. Penfen, “said Linnett, “but you will kindly avoid this room in the future.”

  Penfen bowed obsequiously and backed into the hall. Linnett then turned to Daniel, and not without an expression of regard. “If you would shut the door when you leave, Daniel,” he said, but he stopped the lawyer at the door by adding,

  “I heard her again last night.”

  Daniel waited.

  “I hear her every once in a while,” said the old man, “singing in her room.”

  Daniel could have wept to hear him.

  Linnett looked over his shoulder at Daniel. “It’s Nell, you know. I went to the door once, when I was over being frightened, but she stopped, so I stay down here now and listen.” Then Linnett fell to contemplating the portrait once again.

  The lawyer collected his hat and was reaching for the front door when someone spoke softly to him from the other end of the hall. Penfen stood there, beckoning Daniel like a fellow conspirator. When Daniel advanced upon the man, one would have thought them in close confidence, Penfen seemed so pleased to speak with him.

  “I think Mr. Linnett is not himself,” said the man, and Daniel only frowned, meaning that Penfen had better be both specific and cautious. Penfen appeared to take pains to make his next utterance as delicate as was possible. “I don’t believe the dear fellow is in his right mind,” he said.

  “I daresay he is not,” said Daniel quietly, “upon which state your presence has not an ameliorative effect.”

  “Mr. Plainway, we are both men of the world who can come to an agreement. It is plain to me that we are seeking the same things.”

  “Never in my life,” said Daniel, “have I strock another man, but perhaps you would care to help me break that habit.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Plainway, not at all.” Penfen did take a step back but continued his sly tack. “]was only thinking we might benefit from one another.”

  “] have but to understand the hold you have on Mr. Linnett,” said Daniel,

  “and you are gone.”

  “That is devils’ knowledge
, Mr. Plainway, that may do more harm than good.” There was a wild smile on Penfens face, and Daniel decided that here was the one not in his right mind. The thought almost divided the lawyer from hi anger.

  It was at about this time that Daniel caught wind of a story regarding a discussion between Penfen and Parley Willum, held in the middle of the street, in front of the Post Office and General Store, that turned into an altercation of shouted threats and shaking f.

  In November Mrs. Cutler left the Linnett house, saying that the “dampening atmosphere” was not healthy for her boy. Daniel thought he knew where the dampness lay, and the darkness. He tried to get Linnett to hire a new woman to care for Bertram, but the old man, more lost in regret than ever, refused, and Daniel had to admit that Penfen was administering to the childs physical welfare rather ably.

  “Oh, I am a man of many talents, Mr. Plainway,” said Penfen. He had the child drinking from a cup. “We’ll be working on his catechism before you know it, won’t we, Bertram?”

  At least, thought Daniel, he’s earning his keep. He didn’t let the mans presence drive him from the nursery, and when he sat down to spend a moment with the little boy, Bertram smiled at him. Ah, thought Daniel, there’s your mother.

  Penfen went to work as winter progressed, keeping the stoves and the fireplaces stoked, tending to the laundry and the meals. Ian Linnett grew thinner and more haggard. He neglected his clothes, his hair, and his beard, all of which took on the ragged measurements of a scarecrow. He rarely left the parlor and then only to consider the portrait of his granddaughter in the front room. Once, in February, Daniel came in on an argument between the old man and Penfen, and the lawyer suggested in front of the wild-eyed man that Linnett kick the repellent individual from the house. Penfen listened to the ensuing conversation with an unchanging smile.

  The winter was mild and open until February, and then what they had missed began to tumble out of the western mountains and fill the skies and fields with snow. An involved business in contract law kept Daniel very busy through March, and he went to the Linnett house only twice.

  In April he knew that the old man was not long for the world, and he pressed again for the location of the hidden jewels.

  “His mother’s eyes,” was all the old man would say.

  Penfen hovered over the old man like a vulture.

  Bertram was walking. He recognized Daniel when he came to the nursery, and the lawyer felt guilty for having lingered away.

  It snowed again. On the first anniversary of Eleanor Linnett’s death, Daniel took a sleigh up to the estate. He was surprised to see another vehicle’s tracks in the new snow before him. But he was a little lost in his thoughts, remembering his first trip among these oaks, more than twenty years before: the summer sound of the brook over which the carriage drive ran on its way to the house.

  He was climbing from the sleigh when he noticed the footprints coming from the side of the house and descending toward the pond. Something unnamed caught him like ice at the pit of his stomach. It did not seem like Penfen to go strolling through deep snow, and as he neared the tracks, he realized that they were made by someone who moved feebly and in confusion: the footprints wandered and wavered.

  Struggling through the snow, Daniel had barely crested the hill when he saw the body of the old man sprawled, facedown upon the white slope. He knew that Ian Linnett was beyond saving, was inf act hours dead, before he reached the body.

  But where had he been going? His stiffened arm was stretched out in the direction of Clemons Pond.

  Daniel had wrestled the body part of the way back to the house when he thought of the baby. This time he was gripped by real fear, and he left Ian Linnett’s remains where they lay.

  “Penfen!” he called as he hunied down the front hall of the estate. “Bertram!” From the front door he ran to the back of the house, calling both for the fox and the child.

  40. Two Hearts

  “They were gone, of course,” said Daniel Plainway. “The house was cold, the fires long dead. How many hours, or even days, Ian had been out there, the Lord only knows, and whether Penfen took the boy before Ian died or after. Some people assumed that Ian was going for help, but I think he was beyond even that simple office. I believe that there was little more than guilt left in him and that he was struggling toward the place where Jeram died. Looking back, I was a fool for not having watched them more closely.”

  Sundry Moss silently considered the floor before him. Charlotte Burnbrake, who was seated near to Daniel, watched the lawyer with no emotion telling upon her face. There were tears in her eyes.

  Standing by the window of his hotel apartment, Mister Walton remembered what had been told him when he was a boy. “‘What we know, we must first have learned,’” quoted the portly fellow, his hands folded behind him. “It is a human dilemma-and not yours alone, Mr. Plainway that we have hindsight rather than foreknowledge, and it seems to me that you have done more for these sad people than others would have or could have.”

  “But I did make a promise to Nell,” said Daniel, “and failed even that.”

  “You haven’t failed at all,” said Charlotte, the first words from her lips since Daniel started his tale.

  “My prayers have not failed, at any rate,” he said, lifting his head. “But I have never understood why she did it.”

  “Nor did she, I promise you,” said Mister Walton sadly.

  “She was greatly disappointed in her grandfather,” ventured Sundry.

  “But in the end,” said Daniel, “her instincts were true, for she felt more shame for the old man than she did for Jeram.”

  Mister Walton took his spectacles from his nose and rubbed at them with a handkerchief. “I fear,” he said, “we ask too much of our young people when we shelter them from life, then expect them to behave sensibly when life comes knocking.” Placing his spectacles back on his nose, he added, “but when we first laid eyes upon that little boy in the dory of let out a sigh. “We guessed it would be an unhappy tale, Sundry,” he Fort Edgecomb, we couldn’t know that we would be so entangled with his fate.”

  It did seem a great deal of story for so small a person. Bird had rubbed shoulders with them in Edgecomb and Boothbay, Portland and several points in between; he had affected many, including Mollie Peer, the young woman who saved him from drowning in the Sheepscott River, and Wyckford O’Hearn, who had been shot and his career perhaps ruined in the boy’s defense. Even the Moosepath League had followed many circuitous wanderings (without Mister Walton’s leadership!) in its attempt to keep the boy from harm.

  “And you had no further trouble from Jeram’s family?” asked Sundry.

  “There was a story going around town,” said Daniel, “a month or so after Ian died-something of a joke among the locals, actually-that Parley took his clan to the house one night to rob the place, but they were frightened off.”

  “Was someone waiting for them?” asked Mister Walton.

  “Only the Linnetts, if anyone. Perhaps Ian’s grim visage greeted them at the door.” Daniel pronounced this without levity, and it was followed by silence, till he spoke again. “The problem of the house of course takes a new turn, now that there is a surviving heir. It doesn’t seem in the boy’s best interests to let his legacy remain in an empty house.”

  “And yet,” said Mister Walton, “there is’more than coin to an estate.”

  “Exactly. a man doesn’t leave his watch so that his son can pawn it.”

  “And the gems,” said Charlotte.

  “If I could find them, there would be no trouble. I could manage the upkeep on the place and have a healthy bequest waiting for Bertram when he came of age. But without them, or the wealth they represent-well, let’s just say a country lawyer might get paid in apples or a side of ham, or he might get paid in two or three years.” Daniel was not moaning but only stating a natural fact, and he could do it with something of a smile on his face.

  Mister Walton made a low sound, and his brow fu
rrowed with thought.

  Daniel said, “I should like to meet the boy.”

  Mister Walton’s head came up from his musing. “Of course,” he said. “He must know where he comes from. And he should know you, Mr. Plainway.”

  “Is he too young, do you think, to hear some of it?” wondered Daniel.

  “He will be pleased that the woman in the portrait is his mother, I think, and certainly glad that she didn’t abandon him. I wonder, however, if he should wait to see his family home when he is old enough to ask.”

  “I should like to burn it down,” said Daniel, “or see it lighted once again and filled with people. If l could just know that Nell and her grandfather are not wandering there: Ian in his guilt, Nell waiting to hear from her child.” He was conscious that Charlotte had reached across the small space between them and taken his hand. He hardly dared breathe, as if some exquisite bird had lit upon him.

  Mister Walton looked out the window again. Sundry, who understood that these people had met each other only the day before, raised a surprised eyebrow, then looked after Mister Walton.

  “I fear, sir, that for yourself,” said Mister Walton, “they do still walk those rooms. Perhaps the place will need to be lit and filled with people once again before you can let them go. I know that my own family’s house, once I was alone in it, was vastly haunted till my friends brought new voices inside its walls.” Without fear of appearing sentimental, Mister Walton gripped Sundry’s shoulder.

  “Any of you are invited whenever you like,” said Daniel, but he directed this thought to Charlotte, who drew her hand away. Daniel took a deep, regretful breath.

  “I should see how my uncle is,” she said.

  Daniel got up and nearly knocked his chair over.

  “Miss Burnbrake,” said Mister Walton. He stepped up to her, purposely navigating his portly self in a manner that would most likely draw attention from the lawyer’s obvious discomfort. “I look forward to seeing you and your uncle in the morning.”

  Charlotte offered her hand to Sundry Moss and Mister Walton; it was not as awkward then for her to do the same to Daniel Plainway, where her touch lingered as she thanked him for his escort.