by Van Reid
“Have you got him, Mister Walton?” asked Sundry.
“Yes, I think so,” said the bespectacled fellow.
Sundry went to the door, where Daniel stood, and asked quietly, “What was it that the old fellow did say?”
Daniel turned into the hall, and Sundry followed him. “He said, ‘He’ll see it in his mother’s eyes.’”
“There was something else, wasn’t there?” wondered Sundry. He wanted a rendering of the man’s exact words.
“Yes,” said Daniel, “‘If 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.’”
Sundry went into the front room, and Daniel followed him. The young man looked about the room and pulled a frown; then he took the portrait of the lovely Nell Linnett from the couch. “Something else that you said has put me to thinking,” he told Daniel. Daniel smiled. From recent experience he had grown to respect Sundry’s process of thought, and it pleased him to see the young man at work like Sergeant Cuff.
Sundry brought the portrait to the mantel and after a t or two hung it by its wire to the hanger on the wall. “I remember your telling us about the day Miss Linnett’s grandfather was in here, looking at her picture-”
“Yes?”
“And how you caught the reflection of Pembleton-you think of him as Penfen, of course-in the glass before the portrait.”
“I did.”
“Was Mr. Linnett very much taller than I?” wondered Sundry.
“I wouldn’t say,” said Daniel, intrigued.
“And he was standing?” continued Sundry.
As best he could remember, Daniel expressed to the young man where old Ian Linnett had been standing that day. tel. “Do you know what I can see when I look at her picture, when I look “Here then,” said Sundry. He considered the portrait above the manat her eyes?”
Daniel stepped up beside Sundry and craned his head a little to make up for the few inches’ difference in height. “What are you looking at?” he asked, feeling the muscles in his back contract with something like alarm.
“I don’t think you have to be such a particular height,” said Sundry. “It’s the picture on the other side of the room.”
Daniel let out a stunned “Oh!,” then turned on his heel and viewed the tinted photograph of the Linnett tomb directly. He would have discounted such a macabre solution out of hand if the entire affair had not already taken so many twists. “The tomb?” he said, and without thinking, added, “What would that mean?”
“Indeed,” said Sundry, for he couldn’t say for sure, or else didn’t like to. He followed the lawyer up to the picture, and they looked more closely at it, as if more clues might be apparent.
The more that Daniel considered the picture, the more certain he was that Sundry had hit upon the answer to Ian Linnett’s riddle. Why did such explanations seem so obvious when they were pointed out? “Of course that’s what he did,” said Daniel aloud, and Sundry nodded, a little ashamed to have pointed out what seemed to be so melancholy a fact.
BOOK EIGHT
Christmas Eve - Christmas Day 1896
61. Through the Kitchen Door
Sundry was conscious of being followed, so when he got to the corner across from the Grand Trunk Station, he ducked into the side street and waited. He hadn’t counted three heartbeats before he heard them running, out of breath, and he sensed that they were alarmed to have lost him.
It was growing dark, and lazy flakes of snow drifted between the buildings. Sleighs jingled past, and Sundry could hear carolers on the hill behind him. He was tng to pick out the tune when the first of those following him stepped beyond the corner. Sundry waited, hardly believing his luck when the second one passed by and didn’t turn his head. When the third stepped into sight, he was more than suspicious, and just as they turned as one upon him, he let out a shout and threw the snowball he had been saving.
The boys shouted with glee and pelted him in return. Several other pedestrians either laughed as they walked through the flurry of snow or looked dismayed and made a detour around the battle. At a certain point, however, it was clear that victory was in numbers, and Sundry conceded defeat with a laugh and a cry of “Uncle!”
He was still laughing when the half dozen or so boys charged off with a great cheer. Now if only the members had been with me, thought Sundry wryly. He might have hired, a carriage or a sleigh to come to the railhead, but it was this sort of thing on the Portland streets on Christmas Eve that he didn’t want to miss, though his bags were beginning to weigh upon his shoulders.
A sleigh full of strangers trotted by, bells ringing on harnesses, people waving and shouting the best of the season. a cabbie drove by, his tall hat decorated with holly and a red ribbon. Along the wharves the prows of ships were garlanded, and lamps were lit in every cabin window. Sundry was well out of the business district by now, but the store owners had outdone themselves in the art of decoration, and many a business window was marked with the hand and nose prints of children old and young. Carolers strolled everywhere.
A older man stumbled at the edge of the sidewalk and would have lost his small mountain of packages if Sundry had not dashed up and caught several of them (dropping some of his own in the process). He offered his assistance and walked across Commercial Street with the man to the station, whereupon he carefully stacked the bundles in the man’s arms and bade him Merry Christmas.
Here the cabbies picked up and dropped their trade and folk waited for late arrivals. a group of boys ran by, chased by a happy barking dog. Sundry could hear singing from inside the station, but his attention was taken by a tall blond man, who seemed to be monitoring his approach.
Sundry tipped his cap to the fellow as he neared him, then slowed his pace as it was obvious the man had something to say.
“Merry Christmas,” Sundry said.
“Leaving town won’t change matters,” said the man. There was the hint of a sneer in his voice and in the movement of his upper lip.
“I don’t believe I have…the pleasure,” said Sundry.
“I do know you, however,” said the man. He was a tall, imperious sort of fellow, with curly blond locks and piercing blue eyes.
“Found what you thought you were looking for up on Council Hill, did you?” said Sundry.
The man seemed startled. “As with knowledge, Mr. Moss,” he informed, when he had recovered himself, “a little cleverness can be a dangerous thing.”
“I will bow to your experience in this matter.” There was something precariously overwrought about the man, and Sundry glanced about them to see that they were well lighted and not solitary upon the walk. Sundry’s previous adversaries were striding past the station, looking for mischief, and he caught the eye of one of these boys. The man was conscious of the little gang as it settled nearby and watched the two men speak.
“You may think that you have outdistanced fate, Moss,” said the man, “but there are those who have not forgotten your interference in their affairs.” He was visibly shaking now, though whether from anger or some other fight within himself, Sundry could not know. “And you should be more careful whom you befriend. You may tell Mr. Plainway that I am not finished with him. And you may tell Mr. Covington and his wife that their attempts to preempt the goal of the society have met with disappointment.”
“Do you refer to the other rock on Council Hill?” said Sundry, who was surprised but, from the reference to Daniel Plainway, pretty sure he knew who the man was. He felt that a moment of danger had passed, and he was ready to walk away from the man. “The runes your club found there?”
“The runes Covington did not find.” The blond man turned to leave. “Good-bye, Moss. I doubt that I shall see you again, but someone surely will.”
“Oh?” The implied threat snapped at Sundry’s heart, and he felt a nasty qualm.
“Indeed. Someone will surely see you and Mister Walton, though you may not see them.” The man gave a sneer over his sho
ulder, the threat implied very much unveiled in his wolflike expression.
Sundry’s brief fright twisted into a flash of anger then, and if he had intended to warn the man about the curse (if indeed he had believed in the curse), the vileness of that expression and the absolute danger of that threat toward Mister Walton stopped the words in his throat.
“Mr. Noble,” said Sundry when the man had reached the snowy drive.
The man turned his head, surprised, and considered Sundry; it may have bothered him to see a look of absolute fearlessness on the young man’s face. but one thing to say, sir.” Sundry glanced to the boys and gave them a brief Sundry stood with his arms crossed before him and said simply, “I have wave as he stepped around the man to continue his way to the station door.
“Oh?” said Roger Noble, the newest member of the Norumbega Club; his lack of interest dripped from his voice.
Sundry gave a wink and almost a sincere smile. “Tell your friends not to believe everything they read.” Sundry swept the boys with a nod. “Gentlemen,” he said, which amused them. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Noble,” he called back before stepping into the station house. There, he thought, I have done my duty, and it is warning enough. But I was right the first time, and I still don’t have the pleasure.
Sundry hadn’t intended to go home for Christmas; but Mister Walton had insisted, and Sundry was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be needed. Mister Walton was glad that his young friend and employee would be visiting his family in Edgecomb, but also a little melancholy to be without Sundry’s company when his situation with Phileda McCannon seemed so vague.
Sundry seemed cheerful all around, however, when Mister Walton saw him off from his front door at Spruce Street, and the portly fellow did his best to appear jolly as he waved from the stoop.
It was snowing on Christmas Eve, all up and down the coast of Maine. It was dark by four o’clock and absolute night by five. a man with a tin whistle piped up some carols as the train progressed from town to town. Sundry had a bag of brightly wrapped gifts in the seat beside him, and he occasionally prodded through them to recollect what he had gotten for whom.
Wiscasset was wrapped in snow, and the air was filled with flakes that seemed to be blowing up the steep hill of Main Street from the Sheepscott River. The streetlights gave off haloes of descending and swirling points of white and the streets were rutted with the traffic of Christmas Eve. After the train had dropped Sundry and several other people of fat the county seat, they could hear singing from above them. a large crowd was gathered on the courthouse lawn, joining in the music of the season. Sundry hired a horse and sleigh, piled his things into the back and covered them up with a blanket. In the brief time it took him to cross the Sheepscott, he and the blanket were covered with a layer of snow.
His family had no idea he would be home for Christmas, and even as he realized how very much he missed them, he grew giddy with imagining their surprise. He wondered if his twin, Various, would be home.
The ride along the perimeter of Davis Island and down the shoulder of the Boothbay peninsula did not take long, in fact not long enough for Sundry, who was relishing the anticipation of his homecoming. The closer he got, the more acquainted he was with the houses and the more he could guess from the lights in people’s windows as he passed. He turned off the main road beneath a knoll, and a quarter of a mile further on he turned again toward the Cross River, where the land descended in a series of fields. He passed one house where a single light burned in a parlor window, then drove through a stand of hardwood and along a stream till he came to a clearing and the dark forms of buildings punctuated by several lighted windows.
He and his horse had been driving almost by instinct till now, but Moss Farm gave off enough light so that he was able to draw them up beside the barn. He heard a low noise from within and thought, The dogs must be abed. The only thing that kept him from waking them was the sound of the wind and the sift of the snow, drowning his approach.
The farmhouse stood above him, and he could hear voices. Someone was laughing, one of his younger brothers, he thought. He climbed down and threw the reins over the limb of his mother’s plum tree. He picked up the great sack, feeling like St. Nick himself, stealing up to the house.
He paused halfway to the door. He could see, through the panes of the kitchen door, his mother at the sink. She was washing dishes perhaps or preparing some Christmas treat. She was looking at the window before her, out at the darkness or perhaps the reflections of her loved ones. She was smiling. Sundry heard his father’s voice, and his mother laughed at something. Snow fell between. There was something about the moment that he did not want to break.
“I’ll get it!” he heard someone shout: almost certainly his younger brother Bowdoin on an errand. “I’ll get it!” The kitchen door was flung open, and thirteen-year-old Bowdoin came dashing out. He let out a gasp when he was aware of the shadow on the path between the house and the barn and skidded to a halt.
“Boo,” said Sundry.
62. Two Mysteries
Daniel Plainway wondered if his life had been made richer for having known Charlotte Burnbrake or inadequate for being without her. It was always with a sharp plunge of the heart that she came to mind, yet that sadness, that longing seemed more like living to him than had the undeviating standard of his previous existence. He had know her for three days, and by way of a single letter that he had with him even now, and it was strange how important she was when viewed alongside his forty-odd years. That he would ever see her again, he knew, was unlikely.
Beneath it all, he was eager to meet the O’Hearns and curious to see the boy once again, anxious to see the living testament to Nell Linnett. It Dr. Bolster’s report, since he expected that whatever was painful in that was that anticipation that allowed him to open the envelope containing work was best read now, when the promise of the Linnetts’ most important legacy lay ahead of him.
He had asked the doctor to write a statement of what happened on the twenty-third of December 1896, in the cemetery at Hiram, and for several reasons: Of course there were obvious legal issues involved in disturbing a place of interment, but Daniel also wanted the matter on record to discourage future fortune hunters. Most important, he wanted an account that would explain to Bertram Linnett, when he was old enough to understand, what had happened. Daniel himself had been absent.
The long envelope was tied with twine, and Daniel set these aside when he had the papers out. The doctor’s hand was meticulous and even handsome, contrary to what is commonly observed in the species, and in the miles between Waldoboro and Rockland, Daniel perused the account, which had the feel of a formal narrative.
On the first page were yesterday’s date and the day of the week, which was Wednesday, followed by the sentence An account of the investigation of the burial tomb of the Linnett family, Hiram, Maine; most specifically, the chamber and casket containing the remains of Eleanor Linnett, who died in the month of April 1892; as witnessed by Sylvanus Arcade Bolster, M.D., of Hiram, and verified by Constable Ralph Haig and Deputy Constable Hiram Pleat of Hiram.
This seemed enough for the first page and all Daniel had asked for and perhaps more. The account itself began on the following page.
In the months preceding April of 1892, several events led to the birth of one Bertram Willum, known also as Bertram Linnett, and the subsequent death of his mother, Eleanor Linnett, over which circumstances, good and bad, I presided under the eye of God and the Auspices of His Will.
Daniel Plainway, a lawyer of Hiram, was also present at the mother’s death, and being an adviser and friend of the Linnett family, he continued to observe the progress of the boy. It will be for others to make account of the events that followed this child’s birth, but important to this narrative is the evidence that Bertram’s legacy is largely involved in a small cache of precious gems and that his great-grandfather Ian Linnett, since deceased, has hidden them from the common knowledge of men.
In this meticulo
us style, the situation and evidence that led Dr. Bolster, the constable, and his deputy to the Linnett tomb were laid out, and the approach to the cemetery was described.
The party above mentioned, as well as Mister Tobias Walton of Portland and Mr. Sundry Moss of Edgecomb, whose own recent stories have been entwined with Bertram’s, arrived at the Hiram Cemetery, where an uncommon depth of snow, for December, blanketed the grounds and made walking between the stones somewhat difficult. a shovel was brought to clear the way to the Linnett tomb, and the cemetery keeper, George Oakum, unlocked the door. Messrs. Walton and Moss stood at some distance away, filling the office of seconds, in case there arose the need of further work or corroboration.
The darkness and expected cold touched us as we paused upon the threshold of that resting place, in which stone walls the remains of several men and women await the last trumpet. Mr. Oakum waited at the head of the stairs while we three pressed forward with the proper tools and lanterns.
We first made a thorough and exhaustive search of the area around the niches and the central dais upon which stood the casket of Eleanor Linnett. Against hope, we did not find what we looked for, and so the decision was made to move to the next stage of our search. We were surprised to find how easily the lid of the coffin was lifted, and it became obvious to us that it had been lifted since the young woman’s burial.
As a doctor Bolster took some interest in what they found there, and though Daniel passed over this section of the narrative, he caught the gist of the doctor’s continued surprise when the mortal remains of Eleanor Linnett offered no sig, that she had passed from this sphere more than four years before.
Her loveliness was undimmed, and had I not known her in life I would have still believed whatever good and sweet that was said of her. There was a look of potent peace upon her brow, and even the constable was moved near to tears.