On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery

by Sue Hallgarth

  Why had he done that, Daggett contemplated the clock on his office wall. Its minute hand clicked forward.

  The Reimers had occupied the end room, just beyond the Johnsons and across from the Blackalls of New York. After the Reimers left, their room remained empty. The Jamesons were opposite the Johnsons, on the back side of the building. No view of the sea there, Daggett narrowed his eyes, though the garden was pleasant enough, he supposed.

  The Ainsworths, Harts, and McKinneys were in the other end of the front section. The Ainsworths’ two children and their nanny, a Miss Jacobs, had rooms in the rear. So did Jackson Knoll, a big, swaggery fellow Harvey had called him, whose room was opposite Miss Anna Driscoll’s. The back stairs were wooden, circular, and narrow. They opened into the kitchen below.

  There was usually someone in the kitchen during the day, Geneva had pointed out, and often well into the evening. Except for about two hours Thursday afternoon, someone was usually at the front desk as well, Harvey insisted. The desk was next to the staircase and if Harvey were not there, he was usually in the sitting room or parlor, somewhere close to the stairs. Thursday Geneva kept an eye on the desk while Harvey went to get supplies and have his hair cut. No one should have been able to slip up to rifle through Mr. Bush’s room without their knowledge.

  But someone did rifle through Mr. Bush’s room, Daggett’s hand paused again near the bottom of the page. Mr. Bush’s empty room.

  Daggett had made no effort to curtail anyone’s movements. Perhaps he should have.

  According to Harvey, Jackson Knoll’s leave-taking had been unexpected. Knoll’s original booking was to have extended another week, through the following Friday. Knoll told Andrews he was leaving because there was nothing to do on Grand Manan.

  So where had Jackson Knoll gone? Did he really know Burt Isaacs? What about the possibility that Isaacs knew Bush? And where was Matthew Johnson? Too many questions, too many unanswered questions.

  The Jamesons and Johnsons were booked through the following Saturday. As originally Mr. Bush had been, Daggett’s hand paused again.

  Did Mr. Bush know the Johnsons? The Jamesons? Anyone on Grand Manan? Daggett reached for his pipe, glad for a quiet moment. The hands on the clock continued to tick forward.

  Once Little John got hold of these complications—a rummaged room and disappearing guests—Sabra Jane Briggs might be loosed from the pillory, but Daggett’s competence would certainly be challenged. Daggett questioned it himself.

  XVI

  “WELL, MISS, I’M sure I don’t know what’s happened exactly, but I cannot deliver your rocks today,” Roy Sharkey’s cigar bobbed, “not without young James to help me.”

  “No, of course not,” Edith lowered her paint brush and glanced back toward the cottage. They hadn’t expected Roy Sharkey this early in the afternoon. Willa had gone back to the attic to write letters.

  “You’ve still got quite a pile of rocks back there,” Sharkey nodded toward the cottage. “Should keep you busy enough.”

  “Absolutely. And Miss Briggs is putting on a program at The Anchorage tonight so she is not joining us this afternoon. We’re in no rush.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sharkey’s nod was vigorous. “The Missus was talking about going tonight, but I say it’s too far. A lot of North Headers are going, though. Eva McDaniels, now, she’s our neighbor, she’s riding with the Winslows. Leastways with Little John and his boy,” Sharkey’s smile grew wide.

  “Yes,” Edith wetted her brush.

  “You read the Recipe Exchange?”

  “I did the last issue.”

  “Then you know who Eva McDaniels is,” Sharkey looked hopeful.

  Edith nodded gravely.

  Sharkey put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. “Can’t account for young James,” he lifted his cap to scratch the top of his head. “He wasn’t home like he said he would be, and his mother had no idea where he might be. His fiancée neither,” Sharkey rested most of his weight on one leg. The folds of his stomach followed the tilt of his body. “Mary was all in a fluster. Said James hasn’t been himself lately, worrying as he does about money and wanting to get married.”

  “He seems a nice enough young man,” Edith cocked her heels on her stool. “Polite, industrious.” This could take a while, she flicked her brush and wetted it again.

  “William Dawson’s Jenny,” Sharkey pulled a blue bandana out of his pocket. “That’s who James plans to marry,” he wiped grit off his forehead just below the line of his cap. The afternoon had turned warm. “It’s her brother found the body.”

  “Yes. Well,” Edith smiled and rested her hand on her knee, “if Eric Dawson’s sister is anything like her brother, young James will have a fine wife.”

  “That’s how I came to get him to haul these rocks,” Sharkey stuffed the bandana into his pocket and placed his cap on his head. His fingernails were crusted with dirt.

  Edith shifted the brush to her bandaged hand and used her good hand to scratch her ear.

  “James has always done odd jobs because his mother needed the money. Jim Daniels died when James was a baby, you see, and Mary never would have anyone else. Proud woman that one,” Sharkey’s frown seemed to still his cigar.

  Edith waited.

  “Yes,” Sharkey cleared his throat. “Well,” he did it again. “But now that James wants a wife, he’s taking on even more work.”

  “Perhaps that is what happened today. Something more lucrative came up,” Edith shifted the brush back to her good hand.

  Two gulls swung through the air. Edith turned to watch them fly over the weir.

  “Yes, ma’am, could be,” Sharkey glanced at the gulls. “All the same, it’s an odd bit of business.”

  DAGGETT felt enormously foolish standing by himself on the cliff at Seven Days Work. This would be the third time he had been over this territory. But he also felt reasonably certain that whoever had gone to the trouble of searching the cliff in the middle of the night and turning John Thomas Bush’s Swallowtail room inside out had not found what they were looking for.

  Daggett checked the room thoroughly himself before removing Mr. Bush’s belongings. He felt under pillows and blankets, raised the mattress, looked behind pictures, ran his hand along the edges of shelves in the wardrobe. Routine, by-the-book how-to-find when you don’t know what you’re looking for, when you don’t even know whether you should be looking for something.

  Daggett was looking for identification, the missing wallet and passport and keys, anything to say more about the man. He found nothing. Not at Swallowtail and not on Seven Days Work. He hiked the trail several times, searched under and around rocks, and gazed down the cliff toward the sea. Nothing turned up.

  What made today different was that someone else was also looking. For what, he couldn’t say, but it was obvious they were searching all the same places.

  Another difference was that Daggett brought a pair of binoculars with him to study more carefully the sides of the cliff and the beach below. A rain storm and several tides had intervened since his last visit, but a gun, a wallet, a set of keys, or a passport might still be lodged somewhere among the rocks.

  Daggett focused his binoculars on the jagged cuts below his feet and began a determined sweep, taking in hundred-yard swathes every ten feet or so. He forced his hands to be slow and his mind to register detail. He prolonged his investigations of crevices and inched his eyes through deepening shadows. The cliff’s two-hundred-foot drop took well over an hour to search thoroughly. Finally, Daggett rested his back against a rock and slid down to sit. He rubbed his eyes, stretched his legs, and reached for his pipe. There was plenty of time, he told himself, for a methodical scan of the boulders and rocks on the beach below. It was just four o’clock.

  Earlier that afternoon, Daggett had added to his list of telegrams, sending them this time to St. Andrews, St. Stephen, and Montreal. He wanted to follow up on the activities of Jackson Knoll, Burt Isaacs, and Matthew Johnson. Another set
of telegrams went to Machias, Calais, and Bangor, three places in Maine Daggett guessed might be able to supply him with information about Jack Watson. Bootlegging was no crime in Canada, but murder was. A last set of telegrams went to Boston and New Bedford. In all of them Daggett requested information about current bootleggers and their runs, added the name of John Thomas Bush, and suggested that Bush might be an alias. The earliest answers, he figured, would not come in before late that evening.

  Just off Seven Days Work three seals leapt in unison out of the sea. Two more followed, all five heading north, swimming away from Whale Cove along the north end of the island toward Ashburton Head. Were they to continue on their journey, Daggett shook a match out of his tin box, they would swim past Campobello and the tip of Maine, and head right up the bay past Eastport to St. Andrews. From there they could, if they chose, Daggett struck the match and held it to his pipe, go on in narrowing waters until they reached St. Stephen where the St. Croix River emptied fresh water into the bay. Those were the choices the steamer also made, Daggett blew out a long stream of smoke, the S. S. Grand Manan, which would return this evening from St. Andrews with or without Matthew Johnson on board.

  EDITH lowered her binoculars and rested them on the back of Willa’s Adirondack.

  “That is Constable Daggett, isn’t it?”

  Edith nodded.

  For some moments, Willa had been leaning forward, her hand raised to shade her eyes, squinting toward the two waterfalls on Seven Days Work.

  “I wonder what he’s looking for,” her voice trailed off.

  Edith raised the binoculars again and scanned down Seven Days Work. She paused to adjust the focus.

  Willa and Edith were watching three seals play their way up the coast when Willa noticed movement on the trail at Seven Days Work. Edith retrieved their binoculars from the cottage, and together they had spent several minutes watching Daggett use his binoculars to scan the cliff.

  “Whatever it is he’s looking for, he’s stopped now. He just propped up his legs and lit his pipe.”

  “Well, sit and finish your tea then,” Willa leaned back in her chair. She placed her feet, still in the loose slippers she preferred for the attic, on the edge of their low wicker table. A saucy red tea pot with two cups perched in the middle.

  “Yes,” Edith sat down and reached for her cup. Daggett was engrossed in his pipe, his binoculars idle in his lap. He apparently was waiting for the seals to make their next leap. Edith waited too.

  “Wait a minute,” Willa half rose, pointing up the beach toward Ashburton Head. “What’s that?”

  Edith set her cup down and focused the glasses for the greater distance. A lone man made his way along the shore, his head covered, eyes lowered to the rocks at his feet. The brim of his hat prohibited Edith from seeing the whole of his face. He paused frequently and changed directions often to skirt the rocks and pockets of salt water left by the tide.

  “Do you think he’s helping Daggett?”

  “I think Daggett would have signaled to him if he were,” Edith kept her eyes on the man. He must have been out there for some time without their noticing. His pace was slow, but he had already come a long way down the shore.

  “Umm,” Willa leaned forward, “it’s hard to believe Daggett would send anyone out there with the tide coming in.”

  The boulders and rocks on the beach below Seven Days Work were so random and large it was rare for anyone to walk there. And the distance between Eel Brook and Whale Cove, the only two places one could get inland and away from the sea, would be intimidating even had there been no danger from the tides. High tide along that coast reached all the way to the cliffs, leaving virtually no beach at all for several hours.

  Low Tide Seven Days Work

  “You know,” Willa ventured, “I don’t believe Daggett has noticed him yet.”

  “He hasn’t looked up,” Edith observed. “Maybe he hasn’t seen Daggett either.”

  Without binoculars, Willa had the larger view. Edith lifted her eyes a moment to glance at Daggett, then went back to the man.

  “Can you see his face?”

  “No,” Edith scanned the glasses down, “but he’s wearing canvas shoes,” she stared at a foot taking off from a rock, “and white cotton pants,” she caught up with his legs.

  “Tennis whites,” Willa’s voice was excited. “Not an islander, surely.”

  Edith moved to study the man’s head. She could tell that his jaw was clean shaven, but the brim of his hat obscured most his face. The hat was canvas, like his shoes. Its brim flopped.

  “Has Daggett seen him yet?”

  Edith panned her glasses up. Daggett was enjoying his pipe.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What’s that on his back?”

  Edith lowered the glasses again to the beach. The man was almost directly below Daggett now and stood bent over at the waist. He seemed to be studying a pool of water at his feet. A brown pack covered his back. Its flap was buckled, but the pack itself looked empty, deflated and slack.

  “A hiker’s pack, I believe,” Edith handed the glasses to Willa, “but he can’t be carrying much.”

  “Ahhh,” Willa agreed.

  “Do you suppose he doesn’t know how dangerous it is with the tide coming in?”

  The man had less than an hour if Edith’s calculations were correct.

  “An off-islander, he might not.”

  “Daggett could warn him off.”

  Willa ran the binoculars up the side of the cliff, “I don’t think he has seen him yet.”

  A flash of color caught Edith’s eye. “There,” Edith grabbed Willa’s arm, “over there. Look at Eel Brook.” Edith saw the flash again. Blue, a brilliant blue. “Look for something blue.”

  Willa swung the glasses up and scanned the valley between Seven Days Work and Ashburton Head where Eel Brook worked its way to the sea.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “No.” The blue had not returned. “Perhaps I was wrong,” Edith dropped her eyes to the bent figure on shore.

  “What could it have been?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The man uncovered his head.

  “Look,” Edith reached for Willa’s arm again, “he’s taking off his hat.”

  Willa swung the glasses, and Edith shaded her eyes, willing herself to see. The man turned toward them and then away.

  “I don’t recognize him,” Willa tilted her head, then handed the binoculars to Edith, “could be one of those tennis players at Swallowtail.”

  Edith aimed the glasses at the man and worked up the length of his body. He was certainly fit. The hat had returned to his head. He was leaning over again, reaching down, his left side toward Edith. She couldn’t see what attracted him.

  “Could be,” Edith exhaled slowly. Tennis had never been Edith’s game. Louise Pound had so dominated the sport in Lincoln that Edith’s younger set had never quite taken an interest. Edith much preferred horseback riding, as had her whole family, but there wasn’t much of that on Grand Manan.

  The man straightened and put his hand in his pocket. Then he put his hands on his hips and leaned against them so that his back arched. His face rose. Suddenly his body froze, as if he were playing the child’s game of Statue. Edith followed his gaze, swinging the glasses upward in time to catch Daggett, binoculars trained down, rising to his feet.

  “Look,” Willa grabbed Edith’s arm and pointed.

  Edith shot the glasses down. The man had turned toward them. He began to run.

  “Daggett’s seen him.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s coming this way.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “It may be the man you thought. Johnson, I think his name is.”

  “With an h?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “No,” Edith watched the man leap across rocks. At this rate he would reach Whale Cove in thirty or for
ty minutes.

  The man’s hat blew back. The top of his forehead was pink from the sun.

  “Daggett will know.”

  “Yes,” Edith raised her glasses.

  Daggett had disappeared.

  THE glint of light recurred. Eric Dawson dipped his oars, tentatively this time, and stared at the cliff. The dory rolled smoothly beneath him, no longer shooting toward the weir.

  “What’s this now?”

  The sound of his own voice steadied the thumping in Eric’s ears. His pulse slowed with the boat. He wasn’t sure whether the pounding in his ears was due to exertion or to the sudden start he experienced at the sight of someone on Seven Days Work. Someone in the very place the man had gone off the cliff. Someone wearing red.

  Whoever it was was gone now. The glint was the last of him. Sunlight hitting glass or metal, Eric couldn’t tell.

  Someone else, someone in white, was running along the beach. That’s all right, Eric grinned, I’d run too this time of day with the tide coming in. Odd place to be, though, Eric watched the man zigzag.

  Eric pulled on the oars. The dory shot forward and Eric’s mind with it. He had to get on with his work. How he had let Lizzie talk him into going to The Anchorage tonight when there was so much to do, Eric shook his head. He didn’t understand himself sometimes. And that idiot Little John was certain to cause a row.

  A gull lifted to Eric’s right, and far up the coast, three seals leapt in unison.

  The oars creaked. Eric pulled for the weir.

  “THEN your understanding,” Daggett’s eyes narrowed, he made his words deliberate, his voice uninflected, “is that your husband boarded the S. S. Grand Manan this morning for Eastport?”

  “That is what I said, Constable Daggett,” Maggie Johnson arched an eyebrow and tipped her head in Daggett’s direction. She was again ensconced in the arbor swing behind Swallowtail, this time with Jean Jameson beside her. Both women held drinks.

  “Never fear, Constable Daggett,” Sam Jameson sat opposite, crossing his legs at the knee, “Matt will be back this evening. I’m sure whatever it is can wait.”