by Maia Chance
“Good,” I said. “That police sergeant said Judith was poisoned with cyanide, and now we know there was a big bottle of cyanide sitting in the cellar—under lock and key. What if Fenton is the only one with a key to his darkroom?”
“Someone else could have picked the padlock, as I did.”
“True.”
“What do you make of Fenton’s photographs?”
“I’m not quite certain what to make of them, except that they’re awfully creepy—I mean, he had to be spying upon people to take the snaps that he did. And did you happen to see his trousers?”
“Not in the melee, no.”
“They were wet and muddy about the cuffs.”
“Oh?”
“As though he’d just been outside in the snow.”
“You are not suggesting it was Fenton in the thicket? In a fur coat, perhaps?”
“If that was him—oh golly. He could’ve been taking photographs of us.”
“We have nothing to hide.”
“Not yet.”
* * *
When we reached the bottom of the hill and crossed a red covered bridge (a different bridge from the one we’d traversed to reach Roy Ives’s cottage), we came upon an Esso filling station. It was originally a T-shaped farmhouse, and a large roof had been built to cover the gasoline pumps. A sign announced that Green’s Coffee Shop lay within.
“Oh, let’s stop here,” I said, practically teary with relief. “I’m so thirsty, and my feet are—”
“Yes? Is it your impractical boots, Mrs. Woodby? Bunions and blisters?”
“Nope,” I said quickly. “My toes are just a little … cold.”
We crossed the icy highway—there was only a little traffic—and went into the coffee shop. It was warm and cramped, with a lot of old-timers drinking coffee. They looked curiously at Berta and me, smirked at Cedric, and then proceeded to ignore us. They must have thought we were tourists in town for the Winter Carnival.
I sank into a chair, limp with thirst and foot discomfort.
“Of our six murder suspects,” I said softly to Berta once we had been served large helpings of shepherd’s pie, “we have already spoken to three. Not bad for a morning’s work. I’d like to get to the bottom of Patience Yarker’s relations with Maynard Coburn. Something was funny about their argument. It was so … intimate. And if she’s been kissing George Goddard…”
“We must speak with Maynard, yes, as well as George and Rosemary. Miss Albans said that George was practicing at the ski jump.”
“Funny that he’s going ahead with the contest in the light of his mother’s death.” I spooned up steaming mashed potato and meat. “I wonder if Maynard will go ahead with it as well.”
“We ought to ask him.”
“The sixth suspect on our list is Rosemary. The minister Mr. Currier said something about her doing charitable work. I wish I had pressed him for more facts.”
* * *
After lunch, Berta and I set forth once more, now in the direction of the ski jump hill. Our waitress at the coffee shop had given us directions. (“Yonder, past the school and Emmeline’s boardinghouse. Village thins out, trees begin, but don’t let those trees frighten you. Just go right on through, and you’ll find a cleared-out slope with the ski runs. There’ll be plenty of boys up there, I reckon. They’re all mad for ski jumping and tobogganing and whatnot. Break their necks, I wouldn’t wonder. Mad.”)
Berta had declared that we should go on foot, since the jump was only a little outside the village. Pride kept me from objecting, despite a pulsating big-toe blister.
It was early afternoon, yet the pale sun was already low in the sky, sending long blue shadows across the snow. A smattering of tiny, dry snowflakes floated through the air.
“How short the winter days are in the country,” Berta said with a shiver as we walked. “In the city, with all the lights and noise everywhere, it is easy to forget.”
“Look.” I slowed. “Isn’t that Rosemary Rogerson getting out of a motorcar up the street?”
“Indeed it is.”
Berta and I slowed to a snail’s pace, watching as Rosemary mounted a porch and knocked on the door of a rust-red clapboard house. The door opened. A woman greeted Rosemary and stepped aside for her to enter.
Just before the door fell shut, Rosemary cast a furtive look over her shoulder.
Her gaze fell upon Berta and me. Her expression clouded.
“Rats,” I muttered. Smiling, I made a twiddly wave. “Hello, Mrs. Rogerson!” I called.
The woman said something to Rosemary, and Rosemary shook her head. They both disappeared inside the house, and the door fell shut.
“How do you like that?” I said. “She’s avoiding us! What do you suppose she’s up to?”
“Paying a call upon a friend, or else attending to her charitable work,” Berta said.
“And yet … she looked guilty.”
“As guilty as a fox in a henhouse.”
“Let’s take a peek through the windows,” I said.
“In broad daylight?”
“We don’t have time to waste, Berta. See?” I swept a hand around the street. “No one’s around except that cat in the window there.”
“Oh, very well,” Berta grumbled.
We walked to the rust-red house. It had a tiny, snow-covered yard with no fence, so it was a cinch to creep up to one of the side windows.
Slowly, we raised our eyes to windowsill level and peeked in.
We were looking at an unoccupied dining room.
“I see people moving about through that doorway,” I whispered.
We crept to the next window. Again, we raised our eyes and peeked through.
Two women—Rosemary and the woman who had opened the door—stood at a kitchen table. The woman was rolling dough. Rosemary was watching, holding a tin pie pan and talking, but we couldn’t hear what she said.
Berta and I ducked down and hurried away from the house.
“Piecrust and gossip,” I said. “If that’s all she’s doing, why the guilty look over the shoulder before she went inside?”
“Perhaps it is because they are using lard, not butter, in the crust,” Berta said. “It is disgraceful.”
10
Berta and I walked on. The village was alive with activity. Parked vehicles cluttered the narrow streets that had been built before the era of motorcars. People in snow boots and colorful scarves strolled along sidewalks. In the village green—which was in fact white with trodden snow—ice sculptors chipped away at blocks of ice with hammers and chisels. Men were constructing an igloo, and children, shouting and rosy cheeked, were building a snowman under a bare oak tree.
The houses thinned, and the village merged into snowy forest.
We followed a well-beaten snowy track through a stand of fir trees (I peered hard at every rustling branch), and several yards along, we found ourselves in a clearing with a few more haphazardly parked vehicles. Bundled-up men loitered. Behind them, a mountain reared up.
“Ah.” I stopped. “There’s the ski jump, then.” This was uttered in an ironic tone, since the ski jump was impossible to miss. It sat halfway up the mountainside, which had been shorn of trees. With its wooden scaffolding that reached high into the air at least one hundred feet, it resembled a portion of a Coney Island roller coaster. Its swooping length was covered in packed snow.
An engine had rumbled to life, and now a new, black Rolls-Royce Tourer was edging toward us, its elegant lines out of place amid the other rusty, ice-caked vehicles.
“Berta!” I whispered. “It’s George Goddard.” I called out, “Mr. Goddard! Oh, Mr. Goddard!” He was rolling just past us now, no more than two yards away. “Mr. Goddard! George!”
He kept his eyes forward, revealing his matinee-idol profile. I could tell by the set of his jaw that he was deliberately ignoring me. With a spurt of slush, he accelerated away toward the village.
“I don’t believe it!” I cried to Berta. “First Rosem
ary and now George, giving us the blow-off!”
“It is no wonder,” Berta said. “They do not wish to be interrogated by detectives. I cannot blame them—”
“Detectives?” a man said behind us.
Berta and I turned to see a wiry, bowlegged, white-mustached man approaching.
“You must be the lady detectives everyone’s abuzz about,” he said with a friendly smile. His bright green eyes lit keenly upon Berta.
Berta drew herself up. “I beg your pardon—you are—?”
“Daniel Pickard. President of the Maple Hill Alpine Club.” He stuck out a wool-gloved hand and gave first Berta and then me a sprightly handshake.
“Mrs. Lundgren,” Berta said.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Pickard,” I said. “We came here hoping to speak with George Goddard, but I’m afraid he’s just left—”
“Eh? What?” Pickard tore his eyes from Berta to regard me blearily.
Holy smokes. An instant conquest for Berta. How did she do it? Because this wasn’t the first time she had bowled over a gray-templed fellow. Oh, no. Fellows, perhaps intuiting her baking prowess and spirit of adventure, buzzed around her like worker bees around their queen.
“We wished to speak with George Goddard,” I repeated. “Do you know if he plans to return today?”
“Nah, not until tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.” Pickard saw Berta gazing up at the ski jump. “It’s a new jump this year—the tallest in North America. The club spent all summer building it. Took every dime we made on the last four Winter Carnivals combined.”
“Is the jump … dangerous?” I asked.
“Takes a smidge of extra finesse, I guess you’d say.”
A few people were milling around on the platform at the jump’s summit.
“Is anyone going to jump now?” I asked.
“Nah, we’re shutting it down for the day. Wind’s too nasty up there.”
“It looks rickety,” I said. “And the railings are so low—why, just one little push and you’d simply topple over the side—”
“Oh, the fellers are experienced,” Pickard said. “And we skiers have good balance, of course.” He wore a green wool ski costume, I noticed, and oiled snow boots. Pinned to his breast was a badge that read MAPLE HILL ALPINE CLUB, with two crossed skis over a snow-peaked mountain. He noticed me eyeing the badge. “The Alpine Club started the Winter Carnival here in Maple Hill,” he said with obvious pride. “Twelve years ago, now—took years off during the war, of course. Every year it’s a little bit bigger—getting too big for its britches, really. There’s not enough places for folks to stay. But the inns and shops and restaurants, why, they’ve come to depend on the carnival. Brings dollars to our out-of-the-way little village. Not that we started the carnival for the sake of money, of course.” This last utterance was directed at Berta.
“Oh?” Berta said. “For what sake did you start it, then?”
“Why, for the love of snow sports, Mrs. Lundgren. Ski jumping, snowshoeing, toboggan racing, and alpine skiing, too—we’ve got plans to install a rope tow on this slope here.” Pickard’s eyes twinkled at Berta. “I’d enjoy giving you a skiing lesson before you leave town—if, that is, you don’t suppose Mr. Lundgren would mind.”
It was an effort not to roll my eyes.
“There is no Mr. Lundgren,” Berta said, “and as for skiing, I am already proficient, but thank you.”
“You? Ski?”
“Of course.”
I wasn’t sure if this was a whopper or not. Berta cannot abide officious persons, and sometimes she fibs in order to keep them in check.
Berta went on, “I was born and raised in Sweden, Mr. Pickard. We invented skiing.”
Another man pulled up beside us, this one tall and lanky, with frizzled white eyebrows peeking out from a blue wool hat. He, too, wore oiled snow boots, a worn ski costume, and a MAPLE HILL ALPINE CLUB badge. “Hello, Pickard,” he said. “Ladies. I could not help but overhear your discussion about the origins of skiing.”
“Mr. Strom is the other president of the Maple Hill Alpine Club,” Pickard said in a grudging voice.
We did another round of introductions and handshakes, with Strom clasping Berta’s mitten tight in his own and not letting go. “I overheard you say you are from Sweden, and that the Swedes invented skiing. I myself was born in Norway, and I beg your pardon, but in fact the Norwegians invented skiing.”
“Indeed not!” Berta tugged her hand away.
“Dear lady, you are mistaken.” Strom’s blue eyes sparkled.
“Don’t antagonize her,” Pickard said out of the corner of his mouth. To Berta he said, “Please forgive my friend. He isn’t accustomed to speaking with ladies.”
“Alas, that’s true,” Strom said, edging in front of Pickard. “Mrs. Lundgren, if I may be so bold—and if, of course, there is no Mr. Lundgren who might voice an objection—”
“Nope,” I said, to help speed things along. With gloved fingers, I was clumsily fishing two of our agency cards from my handbag.
“Ah, good—then, Mrs. Lundgren, would you care to join me at the Alpine Club Lodge this evening for a drink? It’s nice and cozy up there.”
Berta’s eyes glittered. “Only if you concede that the Swedes invented skiing.”
“Ah, but I cannot tell a lie.”
“Then I am afraid that I cannot accept your invitation.”
Strom’s shoulders sagged. Pickard, however, was smiling again.
“Mr. Pickard, Mr. Strom,” I said, passing them the agency cards. “As you have heard, we are private detectives, now investigating the unfortunate death of Judith Goddard. If you don’t mind, I have a few questions that perhaps you could answer.”
“Glad to help,” Pickard said, inspecting the card.
Strom said, “Certainly.”
“Well, to begin with,” I said, “why do you suppose George Goddard is going ahead with the ski jumping contest in the light of his mother’s demise?”
“Oh, that’s on account of Maynard Coburn,” Pickard said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Maynard’s going ahead with the contest, too.”
“With his fiancée not yet buried?”
“Not much respect for the dead there, I’ll grant you that,” Pickard said. “But Maynard and George, well, they’re just like two mountain goats with their horns locked. Neither is willing to back down. It’s been like that for years, and it’s a sad thing, too, seeing as what good friends they used to be.”
“It all began with Patience Yarker,” Pickard said.
Now we were getting somewhere. “What occurred with Patience Yarker?” I asked.
“She’s a sweet girl,” Strom said.
“I know, I know,” Pickard said irritably. “It wasn’t her fault what happened.”
“What happened?” Berta asked.
“George Goddard and Maynard Coburn both fell in love with her at the same time, that’s what,” Strom said. “About a year back.”
“It’s terrible when two men fall for the same girl,” I said, lifting a knowing eyebrow at Berta.
She gave me a stony look in return.
“Did Patience return either of the men’s affections?” I asked.
“Didn’t seem to,” Strom said, “but that wasn’t for lack of them trying. It was a wooing contest for months on end. George, what with his wealth, why, he showered the girl with flowers and chocolates and gosh knows what else. Maynard doesn’t have much to his name, but he’d give Patience little attentions—pick her apples, write her little notes and leave ’em at the inn. Poor Patience, well, she seemed more embarrassed than anything else—she’s a quiet, well-mannered girl, and from a good family, too—and it all died down late last summer. George went off somewhere for the fall—Europe, I think—and the next thing you know, Maynard’s engaged to marry George’s own mother! Well. I reckon George thinks Maynard’s out to take everything that’s his, if you know what I mean. And that brings us back to the sk
i jumping contest on Sunday. It’s not really about the jump. It’s about two young bucks’ self-esteem. And that, ladies, is a dangerous thing.”
“Will Maynard be practicing on the jump today?” I asked.
“He’s already come and gone,” Strom said. He turned to Berta. “How long will you be in Maple Hill, Mrs. Lundgren?”
“I am not yet certain.” Berta patted her earflapped hat with a mitten.
“But surely you won’t leave until you’ve solved your case?” Pickard said.
“No, we certainly won’t,” I said. “You fellows are in luck.”
Berta shot me a dark look.
Strom grinned. “Then perhaps I shall see you at the coronation tomorrow evening, Mrs. Lundgren—if not before.”
Berta frowned. “Coronation?”
“Of the Winter Carnival King and Queen. That’s George Goddard and Patience Yarker, matter of fact. Funny, I didn’t think how awkward that might be for ’em until just now.”
11
Berta and I took our leave of the Alpine Club co-presidents and set forth for the village. Cedric was like a furry anvil in my arms and my feet were screaming with pain, but each time I set Cedric on his own four paws, he’d plop to a seated position and refuse to budge.
“He must have a little more exercise before we go in for the rest of the day,” I said, lugging him along, “or he’ll whittle the chair legs. Oh—I’ve just remembered. I have his rubber ball in my handbag. I’ll look for a nice, open spot to give it a throw.”
“Very well,” Berta said, “but not for too long. I must return to the inn and rest. All this trooping about through forest and dell! It is wearisome.”
“On the positive end, it’s kept us nice and warm. And,” I added slyly, “I suppose you’ll want to look your freshest for the Winter Carnival tomorrow?”
“Please, Mrs. Woodby.” Berta compressed her lips.
“Here’s a theory,” I said. “Despite what Mr. Pickard and Mr. Strom told us, what if Patience really did return Maynard Coburn’s regard—perhaps secretly? Then Maynard jilts her and becomes quickly engaged to Judith Goddard, and so Patience turns around and poisons Judith.”
“Out of jealousy, you mean.”