Winnie's Web

by Felicity Nisbet

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He didn’t seem to hear me. Was he that entranced by Winnie’s painting? Perhaps she had painted it while he was working in the garden beside her. But when I looked at him again, I knew that wasn’t it.

  “Did she ever paint your portrait?” I asked him softly.

  He nodded.

  “Was it hanging here?”

  “Aye.”

  “Do you know what happened to it?”

  He shook his head, still staring at the lighthouse.

  “I’ve searched everywhere but haven’t found it,” I told him. “I knew she must have painted you.”

  He was able to pull his focus from the lighthouse painting to my face. “I think I know where it is. Do you mind?”

  He removed the painting from the wall above the fireplace. Carefully he removed the frame. There behind the lighthouse was his portrait. A young man, strong and handsome, standing in the garden. A Portrait of a Man in Love. If Winnie hadn’t named it that, she should have.

  “How did you know?”

  “I recognized the frame. She must have covered it with this painting when—”

  “You disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s yours,” I said, helping him remove it from the frame. He carefully rolled the canvas and set it on the table. Then he tucked the lighthouse back into the frame and restored it to its proper place above the fireplace.

  “Thank you, Jenny.” He leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

  Sasha put her arm through Alistair’s and together the three of us walked outside to the garden. Alistair stood in the center of the garden in reverent silence or perhaps he was lost in his memories.

  He gathered a rose in his hands and pressed it against his face, inhaling its sweet scent. His eyes were closed. He had journeyed back to another time, a time shared with his love.

  When he opened his eyes, he spoke softly. “’Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!’”

  I smiled. I remembered the poem. “Kipling.”

  He nodded and joined Sasha and me in a circle as I said a ceremonial prayer before opening the top of the urn. “I know you’re not in here, Aunt Winnie. I know that your spirit and soul live on and that you are here with us always. I know this. But we need to do this.”

  I handed the urn to Alistair so that he could spread some ashes in his beloved garden. Tears ran down his cheeks as he did so, and I suddenly felt Winnie’s presence more strongly than I had since she had left her body.

  The three of us hugged before we ventured down to the beach. This time Sasha spread the ashes, giving them up to the Strait. The third location was my choice. Like my companions, I too had thought of the garden and the water. I had trusted my instinct to find another spot. It did not fail me.

  We walked up the narrow stairs to the top of the lighthouse. It was as clean as always. I wondered if you could clean things when you were out of your body. I laughed inwardly at my thoughts. We took a moment to recover our breath when we reached the top. Then we opened the window facing west and the water. I opened the urn and let the remaining ashes fly over the vast water that went far beyond the capacity of the human eye.

  The three of us stood at the top of the lighthouse for several minutes, each of us lost in our own thoughts. The silence ended with a sense of release as we backed away from the window and looked at one another.

  “Do you think she’s still watching over this lighthouse?”

  “She’s watching over all of us, I’m sure,” Sasha answered.

  “She must have had a special love for this lighthouse though. It’s been so well cared for.”

  Alistair looked around the room that comfortably held the three of us. “Aye, it has been that. Everything in its place.” He ran his hand across the stack of books that were still here and then the bold brass railing. “All shiny and polished. Reminds me of when the young lad used to come here.”

  “Winnie mentioned someone in her diaries. She never mentioned his name or said much about him, just that she would see him coming and going from the lighthouse.”

  “Aye, she let him do that, said he seemed to need to be here.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I can’t say as I remember. Just a local lad. Had a fierce anger in him though. I didn’t like him being here, but Winnie insisted he was harmless. Didn’t seem to mind that he hated her so.”

  “He hated her? Why?”

  “Can’t answer that, Jenny, but I remember it.”

  “Did she ever talk to him about his using her lighthouse?”

  “Not that I know of. She said it was better to let him be.”

  “A bit strange if you ask me,” Sasha said.

  I was right there with her. This was too odd. A boy who hated my aunt would come and go from the lighthouse on her property and she never communicated with him. “Do you think he’s still alive? Living on the island?” Chills ran through my body as I asked that. “Still visiting the lighthouse?” Or not living but still here.

  “Who knows,” Alistair said. “I wish I could remember his name, if I ever knew it.”

  “Well, if you do, please let me know.” Or maybe I could just sit and wait for him to show up and ask him myself. That is, if my shadowy visitor was the same as my aunt’s visitor from 1949. Was solving this mystery going to take the place of solving the mystery of the buried bones? I had, after all, let that one go. At least I had a good reason to pursue this one. There might very well be a man visiting my lighthouse who hated my aunt and by association, hated me.

  Chapter 22

  Sasha, Alistair, and I were sitting by the fire, sipping tea and eating the apricot scones that I had baked that morning. It was the most at home I had felt in this cottage since I had moved here. It must have been the company. I had called Seth and invited him to join us, but he had plans to go over to Gael Island to visit the General. His appreciation for my call and invitation told me that we were okay.

  “Do you have any older albums, Jenny?” Alistair asked, closing the last of the photograph albums on the coffee table.

  “I haven’t found any. I’ve been looking for them, but they aren’t in the armoire or the attic where I found the letters and diaries.”

  “Did you try her bedroom closet, top shelf?”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Now how would you know that? I thought you were the perfect gentleman, never entering the house unchaperoned.”

  He laughed. “And what gave you that impression?”

  “Winnie’s diaries. You were always in the garden together. Oh. That’s right, I was confusing Maggie’s and Winnie’s diaries and from that, got the impression you never came inside the cottage.” I looked at him, smiling. “Did you?”

  “Oh, aye, at least once a day. Your aunt loved to bake, you know, always had some lovely sweet waiting for me in the late afternoon.”

  “And her bedroom closet?” Sasha asked.

  “She asked me to fetch her albums for her. She couldn’t reach them without a stool—or me.”

  “Un huh,” I said.

  “Right,” Sasha said.

  “Don’t believe me if you choose not to. No business of mine.”

  I was laughing as I headed up the stairs to Winnie’s bedroom. Sure enough, beneath her knitting box, I found two very old albums wrapped in packing paper. I carried them downstairs as I would a tray of fragile china.

  Alistair stood up when I reached the bottom of the stairs. I took it as a gesture of respect. Either that, or he was overcome with the anticipation of seeing a photograph of my aunt the way he remembered her.

  The first album was of my aunt’s early years, black and white photographs of her childhood. I had never seen pictures of my grandmother as a child or my great grandmother as a young mother. We carefully turned the pages of my aunt’s early youth.

  The second album was the one Alistair was anxious to see. Alistair’s breath caught when he saw the first photograph of Winni
e sitting on the porch stairs of her island cottage. We would be turning the pages of this album even more slowly than we had the first.

  The photograph that held my attention was of my Great Aunt Winnie and her sister, my grandmother, sitting side by side on the old wooden porch swing. Between them sat a little girl. She looked more like my daughter Holly than I wanted to admit. It was then that I realized how few photographs I had seen of my mother as a child. I had seen a few baby pictures and a couple of her as a teen, but none in between. She was wearing a gingham dress and shiny black Mary Janes. Her hand was touching a string of pearls that hung around her neck and she was smiling. I wondered if the pearls had been a recent gift, or even more special, if she was wearing a strand of her mother’s.

  When we turned to a page that contained group pictures of people eating and drinking in the garden, I asked, “Did my aunt have parties here?”

  “Oh, aye, she did.”

  “Who came?”

  “Friends on the island, artist friends from Seattle and further.”

  I sighed and Sasha said, “Me too. I wish I had known her then.”

  “Do you remember who these people are?” I asked.

  “Not really, the faces look vaguely familiar is all,” Alistair said, taking a closer look.

  He went from face to face, and photograph to photograph, trying to remember. “Ah, this one is the lady who still works in the post office. What is her name?”

  “Myrtle Ormsby,” Sasha offered.

  “And was this her husband?” I asked, pointing at the gentleman beside her. They were about the same height, possibly due to his slumped posture.

  “I believe it was.”

  So there really was a Jeffrey Ormsby.

  “And I believe these two were artists who lived on the island. Rachel and Michael, I think. Very good friends of Winnie’s.”

  “They must have moved away or died,” Sasha said.

  “They were older than we were, so that’s very likely.”

  “Who is this?” Sasha asked, pointing to a photograph of a young couple. She had her head on his shoulder and he held her around the waist.

  “Familiar faces but I don’t know the names.”

  I leaned in closer to take a second look. “I think I do. George and Lilly Ewell.”

  “Oh, my gosh, I think you’re right,” Sasha said. “I see the resemblance between Lilly and Daisy here. How did you figure it out?”

  “Oh, I’ve seen photographs of George Ewell,” I said.

  “You have? When?” Sasha asked.

  I shrugged. “I paid a visit to Lilly.” I was still not comfortable discussing the identification of the body.

  “In the line of duty?”

  “Something like that. Anyway, I didn’t think they were friends of my aunt’s.”

  “Apparently they were.”

  “Until when is the question.” My guess was, until Maggie moved to the island and started turning the heads of married men.

  “Here’s another one of them,” Sasha said, pointing to a picture on the adjacent page. “They’re with another couple. Do you remember them?” she asked.

  Alistair stared at the picture. “They look familiar, must have been to a few parties here, but I don’t recall who they are.”

  “The man does look familiar, doesn’t he?” Sasha said. “That square jaw line. Hmmm. Wonder if he still lives on the island.”

  “If he does, he’d be plenty old,” Alistair said. “Like me.”

  We covered more pages of unidentified friends of my aunt’s. But the majority of pictures were of her, painting, sitting on her porch or standing in front of the lighthouse. There were three pictures with Alistair in them. All three were in the garden. I gently removed one from the album and gave it to him. I also gave him a photograph of my aunt painting, and another of her standing by the lighthouse, her long hair, flowing in the breeze. The tears in his eyes was his thank you.

  When we reached the end of the second album, I knew we had found her. She was as stunning as I had expected her to be. “Maggie,” I whispered.

  “Aye.”

  She had long thick auburn hair that she unabashedly wore down on more than one occasion. In four of the pictures, she wore white summer dresses and large straw bonnets. I could see her dancing around my aunt’s garden, always the little girl. There were no photographs of her with a man, only one with my aunt.

  “Wait a minute,” I said and ran out of the room and up the stairs.

  “What is it, Jenny?” Alistair asked.

  “This,” I said a moment later as I carried a painting down the stairs.

  “Oh my,” Alistair said.

  Sasha exhaled loudly. “Winnie was amazing. She really captured her spirit, didn’t she?”

  I set the painting on the mantel. “So that was your bedroom after all, Maggie. I can see why you attracted the wrath of so many women.”

  “She was a beauty.”

  “Was she the reason some of the islanders turned against Winnie?”

  “I believe so. They did not appreciate her taking Maggie in and wanted her to send her away.”

  “But Winnie wouldn’t do that,” Sasha said.

  “No. Never. Maggie was like a little sister. Winnie loved her,” Alistair said.

  “Despite her frivolous ways?”

  “She did have a tendency toward frivolity, but it never seemed to be intentional. She tried to grow up, I think. She did look up to Winnie after all.”

  “Who loved her, Alistair? Do you remember which men fell in love with her?”

  “I’m afraid not, Jenny. I never saw her with a man. Although at some of the parties several men would be gathered around her. Never one.”

  “Why does it matter?” Sasha asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I think it might lead us to the killer.”

  “It would help if we knew who the victim was, don’t you think?” Sasha said.

  I didn’t say anything. That was all it took for Sasha to see through me. “You know, don’t you?”

  “Know what?” I played dumb.

  “Whose body was buried beneath the rose garden.”

  I nodded.

  “Tell us!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? Police business?”

  “Something like that.”

  Sasha stared me directly in the eyes. “You’re protecting someone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then you’re off the hook.”

  “Thanks.” It was nice to be understood.

  I ended the evening with Winnie’s words. I finished reading the last of her diaries.

  June, 1951

  I know I shock them. I am sorry for that and sad. But I know it is their insecurities that cause them to wish to project their own inner limitations onto me.

  They wish I had never come to this island. They blame me. I know this but I shall not leave. This is my home. I have friends here—those who bother to truly know me and who do not blame me. I am sad, but I shall not leave. I may not write anymore. It depresses me, I think. And it takes me away from my painting.

  No, this is not so. I know it helps clear me for my painting, but still, I feel the end is coming to my written words.

  And so it was, at least in diary form.

  I read her final entry over again. The second time through, it struck me. They blamed her for something. After reading the old and new gossip columns in the local newspaper, I had assumed they disliked her for what they thought were her wild ways and free lifestyle. And once the body was discovered, they even blamed her for murder. But now I wondered if they had blamed her for that back then as well. Did the town, the island, know all along that a murder had been committed?

  * * *

  I didn’t plan my day. I followed my intuition wherever it led me. I thought it would take me to the beauty parlor or the market or even the post office, but it didn’t. It took me to Ned’s ferry.

  “Hey there, Jenny, it’s good to see yo
u.” Ned greeted me when I pulled up behind the second car in line.

  “You too, Ned.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “I’m not sure I know,” I told him.

  He nodded as though this made perfect sense, but then he was a fan of my aunt’s.

  “Tell me something, Ned, you remember the day I moved to the island?”

  “Sure do.”

  “You were trying to warn me not to go to the Crown and Anchor or the Main Street Market, weren’t you?”

  “Thought that was obvious enough.”

  “Apparently not. But why?’

  “Why was I warning you? Just in case they decided to put their prejudice against Winnie onto you.”

  “Which they did. But why, Ned? Do you know why the Ewells hated my aunt Winnie?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you have a hunch?”

  He raised his cap and scratched his head. “It’s all kind of jumbled up in there, if you know what I mean. I was a boy back then you know, back when it happened.”

  “What happened, Ned?”

  “Somein’.”

  I held my breath, waiting while he made sense of the jumbled memories.

  “Somein’ to do with a scandal. An affair of some sort. Didn’t directly involve your aunt, but someone she knew.”

  “Maggie.”

  His eyes lit up. “That’s it! She was the prettiest thing that ever came to this island. I was just a boy, but I knew it.”

  “Who did she have the affair with Ned? Do you remember?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t know that I ever knew. Sorry, Jenny, is it important?”

  “It might be. But thanks for trying.”

  When a fourth car pulled into line, Ned raised the gate and guided us on. I was halfway to Gael Island when I realized my intuition had told me to go to Ned’s ferry, but not necessarily to take a ride on it. But since it was too late to change my mind, I decided to make the best of it. That included a trip to my favorite cafe for lunch, some library research—even though I’d finished with the Henrys—and a walk on the beach.

  Just as I was pulling off the ferry, Ned put up his hand to stop me. Then he motioned for me to roll down my window.