by Maia Chance
“To keep us in Maple Hill, perhaps.” Berta leaned forward. “You must recall that Sergeant Peletier said we could leave town only if we produce the invitation, and now that invitation has vanished.”
“But that could mean—”
“This could be a frame-up job. Yes. As I said, it is a disaster.” With shaking hands, Berta poured out steaming cups of coffee for us both from the pot on the table.
I doused my coffee with cream. I drank some. Then I took a stab at sounding plucky and levelheaded. “Perhaps Sergeant Peletier will see reason and allow us to go home anyway.”
“That is unlikely.”
“Well, we must try. We’ll go straight to the police station after breakfast. I don’t want to miss today’s train out of here.” I wasn’t going to mention it, but I had a dinner and dancing date for the following evening with my gentleman caller and maddening distraction, Ralph Oliver, PI. He’d been away for weeks on a case in Chicago, and I was perishing to see him, ideally beneath a sprig of mistletoe.
“Oh! Our waitress is coming,” Berta whispered. “When she brought the coffee earlier, I recognized her.”
“Really? Where di—?”
“Shush, Mrs. Woodby.”
A waitress appeared beside our table, a slim, golden-bobbed young woman with large, thick-lashed blue eyes, a storybook sort of beauty. “Could I take your orders, please?” she asked in a sweet voice.
I, too, had seen this young woman before.
“Good morning,” I said. “I beg your pardon, but weren’t you working at Goddard Farm last night?”
“Yes.” The waitress gave Berta and me closer looks. “Oh yes, and you’re the women who turned up uninvited. You fibbed and said Mrs. Lyle invited you, but Sergeant Peletier said that really, you’re private detectives from New York City—”
“Please—” Berta’s eyes darted around the dining room. “—we prefer to remain discreet.”
“Sorry. I’m Patience. Patience Yarker. Mrs. Goddard hired me from time to time to help out up at the house when there were a lot of guests. Which wasn’t very often, these past few years. Hester Albans manages by herself when it is—was—only Mrs. Goddard and Fenton staying. No one lives in that house year-round, you see.”
“Hester Albans was the other woman working at the house last night?” I asked. I’d glimpsed a rangy, dour woman in an apron a few times. She had attended to Mrs. Goddard’s hysterical daughter after the death.
“That’s right. But I reckon you’ll be leaving this afternoon, won’t you?”
Golly, I hope so. “Perhaps,” I said.
Patience’s eyes widened. “Oh. And … have you … have you spoken to Hester about last night?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, well, good.”
“Why is that?” Berta asked.
“It’s nothing, only that Hester tends to be … superstitious, I suppose you’d call it. She said she saw a-a thing last night. Out the windows at Goddard Farm.”
My scalp prickled. “What sort of thing?”
“She called it a—” Patience swallowed. “—a ‘furry critter.’”
I racked my brain, trying to think what sort of creatures roamed northern Vermont. “A moose?”
“She said it was, well, ‘walking upright’—”
“Upright!” Berta said, touching the locket she always wore at her throat.
“—but you ought to ask Hester about it, really. I only mentioned it because, well—” Patience bit her lip. “—I don’t want you to suppose we’re all backward hayseeds here in Maple Hill.”
“Of course we don’t,” I said. “Mrs. Lundgren and I both grew up in rural places, you know.” I had whiled away my formative years in Scragg Springs, Indiana, before Mother had decided a career change for Father was in order and we moved to be within pillaging distance of Wall Street.
Patience was fidgeting with her apron tie. “Isn’t it just awful about Mrs. Goddard?”
“Shocking,” I said.
“I’m awfully sorry for her children,” Patience said. “I’ve known them my whole life, you see. They came to Maple Hill every summer growing up.”
“Did you play with them?” I asked.
“Only a little, and on the sly, out in the fields or down by the river, when their nurserymaids and tutors lost track of them. Their mother didn’t want them consorting with the rural folks.” Patience sighed. “Poor Fenton. He was so attached to his mother, went everywhere with her … now I just don’t know what he’ll do.”
Fenton was the younger of Judith’s two sons, a wan, stringy young man of about twenty years.
Berta said, “But his mother was about to remarry. Surely Fenton would have set out on his own then? Or gone back to college?”
“Fenton doesn’t attend college. He lives—lived—with his mother in Cleveland.”
“Mrs. Goddard mentioned something about a long honeymoon in Europe,” I said. “Was Fenton planning on tagging along for that?” I pictured Judith and Maynard Coburn at the Eiffel Tower, motoring along the cliffs of Capri, and yachting amid Greek isles, all with silent, heavily pomaded Fenton in tow. “That sounds … unusual.”
“Fenton is. Unusual, I mean to say.”
Berta cleared her throat. “Patience, a small, rather insignificant item has gone missing from my suitcase,” she said in a grandmotherly tone. “I know that I locked the door to my room when I was out yesterday evening. Tell me, who has access to the room keys?”
Patience’s eyes widened. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that, Mrs. Lundgren. We’ve never had anything stolen from any of our guests before. Dad takes pride in that.”
“Your father is—?”
“Samuel Yarker. The innkeeper.”
“He checked us in yesterday, yes,” Berta said.
“This inn is our family’s place.” Patience lifted her chin a notch. “Always has been.”
“Ah. And … the keys?”
“Well, there’s only the numbered room keys, one of each—we keep those behind the front desk.”
As in most hotels, at the Old Mill Inn one turned in one’s room key before going out.
“There are no other keys?” Berta asked.
“No. The cleaning women use the room keys.” Patience glanced over her shoulder. “Grandma will give me a stern word if I don’t hurry up and take your orders. We’re awfully busy this weekend on account of the Winter Carnival.”
For the past ten years or so, winter carnivals had popped up all over the map in northern climes, from Winnipeg to Portland, Maine, offering festivities like skating, toboggan racing, sleigh rides, and ice-sculpture carving. Some local club usually sponsored the things. I’d been told that the final preparations for Maple Hill’s annual Winter Carnival were under way, so merrymakers were arriving to fill every boardinghouse, inn, and spare room for miles around.
With any luck, I’d be missing the carnival.
Berta and I ordered sausage and johnnycakes with maple syrup, and I asked for extra sausage and a bowl of water for Cedric. Patience slipped away.
“Should we ask Patience, or her father the innkeeper, where the police station is?” I asked Berta.
“No, indeed. We cannot have them knowing we are mixed up in this bad business. After all, we could end up needing to stay an extra night. We should inquire elsewhere in the village.”
I thought, but did not say aloud, that Patience Yarker herself was mixed up in this bad business, too, if only by happenstance. After all, she had been in the room when Mrs. Goddard’s drink was poisoned.
3
After breakfast, Cedric and I bundled up to go outside again—Cedric in his sweater, I in my coat, hat, gloves, and the fur-lined, high-heeled boots I’d splurged on at Wright’s Department Store on Fifth Avenue the previous week. I made certain I had several Discreet Retrieval Agency business cards inside my handbag, and as an afterthought, I tucked Cedric’s favorite red rubber ball in my handbag, too. He did not always consent to walk in the snow, in wh
ich case I would need to throw his ball so he’d get a spot of exercise.
I encountered Berta in the upstairs corridor. She, in serviceable, flat-heeled, shin-high lace-up snow boots, clucked her tongue when she saw my choice of kicks.
“They’re comfortable,” I lied, “and anyway, I feel just like a motion picture star.”
This was only a little bit true. Yes, I was blessed with a shiny brunet Dutch bob, large blue eyes, and a happy mouth. And given plenty of sleep, a minimum of bathtub gin, and a maximum of Guerlain lipstick, I was generally considered rather fetching. However, motion-picture stars were always lithesome paper dolls, whereas my own figure was unrelentingly three-dimensional. Not that Ralph Oliver, for one, had ever filed a complaint.
“You shall be singing a different tune shortly,” Berta said to me. “A tune of blisters and twisted ankles.”
“Hooey.”
Downstairs in the lobby, we passed the innkeeper, Samuel Yarker (and, we now knew, Patience’s father), reading the Burlington Daily Free Press behind the front desk.
“Morning,” he said, and promptly coughed. He was perhaps fifty years old, gnarled by the elements, with the figure of a beer keg, and bushy blond hair. Even though the lobby was warmed by a coal fire, a green tartan scarf was bundled and knotted around his throat.
“Good morning,” Berta and I chimed in unison.
I felt Samuel’s eyes on us all the way out the door.
“There’s the general store,” I said, blinking in the sudden cold. Hopefully my Maybelline Cake Mascara was up to the challenge. I pointed across the street. “Someone in there will know where to find the police station. Let’s buy something, and then ask in a casual, offhand fashion.”
“I am not certain it is possible to be offhand when asking about the fuzz,” Berta said, “but very well.”
We picked around snowbanks and parked vehicles, crossed the street, and went inside. The store was dimly lit, heated by a potbellied stove, and fragrant with the mingled aromas of coffee grounds, yeast, and spices. Worn floorboards creaked underfoot.
A man in a wool jacket sat behind the counter, gnawing on an unlit pipe and sorting through his till. “Morning,” he called without looking up.
Berta and I perused the shop, which sold everything from tinned smoked oysters and salt crackers (in a barrel—I hadn’t seen a cracker barrel since I’d left Scragg Springs!) to garden shovels and chintz tablecloths. We lingered at a display of maple syrup and maple sugar candies. Cedric, tail swishing, sniffed the shelf displaying cloth-wrapped sausages.
I selected a box of maple sugar candies and carried them to the counter.
“In town for the Winter Carnival merriments, I reckon?” the shopkeeper said as he took my dollar bill.
“Actually,” I said, “we wish to visit the, um—” I swallowed audibly. “—the police station?”
“That so?” The shopkeeper’s eyebrows lifted. He slid my change across the countertop. “Well, then, go west along River Street, which turns into the Waterbury highway. It’s, oh, a mile, mile and a quarter out of town. Can’t miss it.”
The bell on the door tinkled, and the shopkeeper glanced past Berta and me. “Morning, Titus,” he called.
A big, lantern-jawed fellow loped inside. A greasy-looking red cap was pulled down over shaggy black hair. His coat and boots appeared to have been many-times mended.
The man—Titus—said nothing to the shopkeeper, but went straight to a large electric icebox against the rear wall. A handwritten sign affixed to the icebox’s wooden door said MILK BUTTER EGGS. He unlatched the door, stooped, reached past the front two rows of milk bottles, and pulled one from the very back, causing all the bottles to shudder and clink. He shut the icebox, went to the counter with the milk tucked under his arm, and, shoving an outlandishly long arm between Berta and me, slapped a quarter on the counter. Then he was gone with a bang of the door and a jingle of the bell.
“Peculiar one, that Titus Staples,” the shopkeeper said, plucking the coin off the counter. “Always takes the bottle of milk from the back corner.”
“Perhaps he believes it will be fresher,” Berta said.
“Not in my store. I get new milk every morning—one bottle is as fresh as all the others. Anything I don’t sell I give away at the end of the day to Widow Arthur. She’s got six children, you understand. No, Titus just isn’t right in the head.” The shopkeeper opened his cash register, dropped the quarter inside, and slammed it shut—briiing-clang.
I wedged the maple sugar candies into my handbag, next to Cedric’s rubber ball. “Thank you for the directions,” I said.
* * *
“Stolen, eh?” Sergeant Peletier said to Berta and me, once we’d told him our tale of woe. “Stolen right out of your suitcase, in a locked room? A likely story.”
“I beg your pardon?” Berta drew herself up.
We both stood in front of Peletier’s untidy desk. Cedric was slung over my arm. The police station was a tiny, squat brick building that smelled of wet socks. There was but one room, and only two policemen—Peletier and a pale, doughy fellow called Clarence, who was making coffee on a kerosene burner in the corner.
“I’ve been thinking it over.” Peletier leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I reckon you made up the story about that invitation. Oh, I know you’ve got yourself a silly little ladies’ detective agency—I already telephoned down to the New York City police to confirm that—but I reckon finding lost cats and stolen umbrellas isn’t really paying the bills, so you decided to do a little thieving to cover the rent. You came up here to Goddard Farm, cased the house, poisoned Judith Goddard, and then set about stealing the family jewels.”
“That doesn’t make a bit of sense,” I said. “To begin with, we didn’t steal Aunt Daphne’s ring. We left it in the breadbox. You saw Mrs. Lundgren put it there!”
Berta asked, “Have any family jewels gone missing?”
“You tell me.”
Berta opened her mouth as though she would tell Peletier something, all right.
I delicately trod upon her toe.
She shut her mouth.
“You two are up to no good, and we’re going to figure out exactly what it is—isn’t that right, Clarence?”
“Oh, sure,” Clarence said. His coffee was coming to a boil.
Peletier gave Berta and me a stern look. “Don’t you dare leave Maple Hill until this is sorted out.”
“But—”
“What’s more, if we catch that dog of yours doing his business where he shouldn’t—” Peletier gave Cedric a loathing look. “—it’s off to the pound in Waterbury for him. Lots of real big dogs in the pound. That clear?”
Clarence snickered.
I pressed Cedric so tightly to my chest, he paddled his paws in protest. “Quite.”
Berta said nothing, but merely spun on her heel to go.
“Oh,” Peletier shouted as we went out the door, “and Merry Christmas!”
Numb, I got behind the wheel of the Speedwagon—the engine was still warm, so it didn’t require cranking—and shakily shifted into reverse.
“Drat,” Berta said. “I have not mailed my Christmas cards yet.”
“That’s the least of our worries!” I cried. “That—that rotten elf thinks we’re killers!”
“Calm yourself, Mrs. Woodby, and please do keep your eyes on the road.”
I drove for a bit, half-blinded by sunlight bouncing off snow, snow everywhere. My thoughts spun just like the ice crystals flurrying behind the Speedwagon. “Obviously, we have to figure out who killed Mrs. Goddard ourselves,” I said, “because it doesn’t appear that Sergeant Peletier is going to do it.”
“It seems that we have no choice in the matter.”
“Why is it that we never have any choice in the matter?”
“I wish I knew, Mrs. Woodby.”
* * *
The first order of business was securing our rooms at the Old Mill Inn for another three nights. The very i
dea that Berta and I could crack a murder case in only a few days was utterly goofy, but it seemed bad for morale to book for a full week. Besides, next week was Christmas.
At the front desk, Samuel Yarker told us that, because of the Winter Carnival, the rooms we had stayed in the previous night were no longer available. “Every room in the county is sold out, I’d reckon,” he said. “But one of you is in luck, because I’ve just had a cancellation for another room.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “We’ll take it.”
“Only one narrow bed in there, so you can’t share. It’s number three on the second floor, small but comfortable.”
“I will take it,” Berta said.
I shot her a glare, which she pretended not to notice. I turned to Samuel. “You don’t have anything else? The trouble is, I can’t leave town.”
He scratched his head. “Well, I suppose you could sleep in the airing cupboard.”
“Cupboard?” For Pete’s sake, I wasn’t a hatbox.
“It’s more of a big closet,” Samuel said. “It’s real warm in there because it’s next to the main chimney, see. It’s where Mother dries the linens. I could put an old army cot in there—I’ve got one up in the attic—and fix you up nice and cozy. The third-floor shared bathroom is just next door, as a bonus.”
Hearing the lav flushing through the night couldn’t possibly be a bonus. “How much?”
“Two dollars a night.”
The regular room-and-board rate was four. “Deal,” I said. “Oh—and we’d like to continue renting the truck.” Samuel had arranged our rental of the Speedwagon, which belonged to a local farmer who didn’t use it during the winter.
“I’ll fix it up.”
* * *
I fetched my already-packed suitcase, and Samuel’s mother, a wizened old woman in a black dress whom everyone called Grandma Yarker, showed me to the airing cupboard on the third floor.
Drying bedsheets and towels hung on long wooden racks. Feeble light shone from a bare lightbulb, and from a funny little window just above floor level. It was indeed warm, however, and it smelled pleasantly of Lux laundry soap.
I set down my suitcase.
“We’ll put your cot up against the chimney—” Grandma Yarker gestured to the exposed brick. “—and you’ll be snug as a hibernating critter in here. There is, however, one small matter.”