by Maia Chance
“I beg your pardon,” Berta said to Funny Papers, “but where does Patience live?”
“In the house right next door. Uncle Samuel, Patience, and Grandma, all under one roof. I live with my parents.” Funny Papers’ mouth pinched. “Patience doesn’t care that we’re booked solid and there’s twice the usual amount of work to do. Hester Albans came in to help in the kitchen, thank goodness, but I’m still stuck wearing this apron.”
“Perhaps someone should send for the doctor,” Berta said.
“Nah, Patience’ll recover, all right,” Funny Papers said with a smirk. “She’s got the Winter Carnival Queen coronation this evening, and she wouldn’t miss wearing that crown for the world—even if it is only made of glass beads. She thinks of herself as a cut above, if you know what I mean. And … funny thing is—” He glanced over his shoulder and leaned in close. “—Maynard Coburn usually comes and has his breakfast in the kitchen—he doesn’t have anything but an electric burner for coffee up in his apartment, see—but this morning he’s still abed, too.” He lifted a pale eyebrow. “You know, Patience isn’t as innocent as she makes herself out to be.” Then, brisk again: “Okay, I’ll go and put your orders in.” Funny Papers left.
Berta and I looked at each other.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“And I know what you are thinking,” Berta said.
“Of course, Funny Papers was dropping hints—these are the sorts of things he wants us to think. He feels resentful toward Patience, he wants to get her in trouble, and he knows we’re detectives—”
“Still,” Berta said, “what if there is some truth in the matter? What if Patience and Maynard are at this very moment … together?”
“A shocking notion.” I sipped my coffee. “But surely not impossible. You packed the camera?”
“The Brownie, yes.”
“It’s all set with a spool of film?”
“Yes.”
“Then I may have thought of an elegant solution to our problem of being stuck in Maple Hill. All we’ve got to do is snap a photograph of Patience and Maynard, you know, together, develop the film, and take the photograph to the police—”
“That does not sound elegant at all.”
“—and surely that will be enough proof for anyone that Maynard had secrets from Judith Goddard, secrets big enough for which to kill. Or that Patience could have poisoned her rival, Judith. Or that Patience and Coburn were in cahoots.”
“This is utter madness.”
“Don’t you want to be home for Christmas?”
Berta sighed. “Very much, yes.”
14
It was a stab in the dark. I suppose Berta and I were growing desperate, but we didn’t discuss desperation, only whether we should look for Patience and Maynard in the Yarker house next door or in Maynard’s apartment above the inn’s garage.
Having decided to try Maynard’s apartment first (bonus: we knew where it was), we went to Berta’s room and fetched our Eastman Kodak Brownie. This was a boxy little hobbyist’s affair with a retractable lens. Not glamorous, but in the past it had delivered the goods.
“What shall we do if his door is locked?” Berta said.
“I’ve got a skeleton key in my handbag—I’ll put it in my coat pocket.”
“A skeleton key?”
“Sure. Ralph gave it to me for a present. So much more useful than flowers.”
We put on our coats and, leaving Cedric on Berta’s rug with a Milk-Bone, went outside through a rear door and mounted the steps leading to Coburn’s apartment.
At the top of the stairs, we put our ears close to the keyhole and listened. Absolutely anyone could’ve seen us if they happened to be looking out one of the inn’s rear windows. This was a risk that I was willing to take if it meant I could catch the afternoon train out of town.
“I hear something,” I whispered.
Berta checked the spooled film for the third time.
“No voices,” I whispered. “Only a sort of rustling.”
“There are no words in the language of love.”
“Didn’t I read that in Christmas Romance magazine?”
“We must act swiftly. If one of them jumps out of bed, I might not be able to get them both in the picture. It is important that they are in the same picture. Are you ready?”
I held up my skeleton key. “Ready.” My pulse whooshed. This was nuts.
I fit the key into the lock. It made only a ghost of a rattle. I turned the key. I twisted the doorknob, shoved the door open, and stepped aside for Berta.
The next bit was a blur.
Berta thrust herself into the open doorway, camera to her chest. Click went the Brownie.
But she had not photographed Patience and Maynard cuddled in bed together. No, she had photographed Maynard standing at a mirror, lowering a toupee onto his patchily bald head.
He’d seen Berta through the mirror, seen her take the photograph.
He swung around, his face purple with fury, the toupee sagging over one ear. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Oh dear,” Berta said. “I beg your pardon. We seem to have come to the wrong place.”
We spun around and stampeded down the stairs—“You two are off the tracks!” Maynard shouted after us—across the rear parking lot, through the inn’s back door, and up the back stairs to Berta’s room. We slammed ourselves inside.
I doubled over, laughing. “A toupee?” I gasped. “Not a lover, but a toupee?”
“I do not find it so very humorous, Mrs. Woodby. This is a dangerous development.”
“What do you mean?” My laughter tapered off. I wiped a tear of mirth from my eye.
“When a man is seen with a lover, well, even if he ought not be in bed with her, his male pride has not been damaged. If anything, it is a boon to his pride. But a man whose use of a hairpiece has been not only discovered, but photographed?” Berta shook her head. “There is nothing so dangerous as a vain man whose pride has been hurt.” She lowered herself into a chair. “That beautiful golden hair … a hoax. Maynard is famous for that hair, Mrs. Woodby. The way it wafts on the ski slopes … None of those magazine covers and cigarette advertisements he has appeared in would have been possible if it were publicly known that he is bald. I had only the briefest glimpse, but it did not appear to be the distinguished sort of baldness, either.”
“No,” I said. “It was the mangy sort.”
“Mark my words, this is very dangerous.”
“Then why don’t we go back and, I don’t know, hand over the film as a show of good faith?”
“It is too late. We have seen the unspeakable. What is more…” A long pause ensued, during which Berta’s pale blue eyes gleamed.
“Why are your eyes gleaming like that?” I asked. “Have you detected a hot lead?”
“Better. I have just realized that having that photograph of Maynard’s toupee application gives us leverage over him, should we need it in the future.”
“Berta! Blackmail?”
“You need not pretend to be shocked, Mrs. Woodby. We must use every means at our disposal to swiftly solve this case. Perhaps, for instance, our possession of the photograph will prompt Maynard to be forthcoming when we finally have an opportunity to interview him.”
* * *
A few minutes later, we set forth once more from Berta’s room (this time with Cedric in his green turtleneck sweater), armed with a to-do list I’d jotted in my detecting notebook. It looked like this:
Speak with George Goddard (10:00 at ski jump)
Speak with Rosemary Rogerson and Fenton Goddard
Ask Hester Albans about her kitchen visits with Rosemary
Interview Maynard Coburn
“I’ve just remembered that Funny Papers said Hester Albans is helping in the kitchen this morning,” I said as we went down the stairs. “Let’s try to have a word.”
Hester was indeed in the large, untidy kitchen, up to her elbows in suds at a zin
c sink. Grandma Yarker and Funny Papers must’ve been out in the dining room. When I said “Good morning, Miss Albans,” Hester’s shoulders tensed.
She turned her head only halfway, so she was looking at Berta and me from the corner of her eye. “Oh. It’s you.” She kept scrubbing at something underneath the suds.
I said, “Miss Albans, the Reverend Mr. Currier told us that you keep house for him—”
“You leave Mr. Currier be!” Hester said, flushing.
Oh dear. Was it one of those dreary scenarios, then—the Reverend Mr. Too Handsome, secretly adored by his spinster parishioner?
“—and he mentioned in passing that you and Rosemary—Mrs. Rogerson, I mean—have struck up a friendship.”
“So?”
“Do you … bake with Mrs. Rogerson?” I asked.
Hester’s breath caught—almost inaudibly, but I heard it. “Get. Out,” she snarled.
Gee. What could be so terrible about baking?
The door leading to the dining room swung open, and Funny Papers came in with a tray piled with dirty dishes. He went to Hester’s side at the sink and placed the tray on the draining board. “Whew,” he said, smearing his forearm across his brow. “The dining room is crackers this morning. I never saw so much bacon being eaten in such a short time. It’s hair-raising. Say—” His eyes fixed on Berta and me. “—what’re you two doing back here in the kitchen, anyway? Did you … find Patience?” Another eyebrow waggle.
“No, we did not,” Berta said.
“Too bad,” Funny Papers said. He was reaching for something on the open shelf above the sink—a small glass jug of maple syrup—then unscrewing the cap. He tipped the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. “Ahhh,” he said, coming up for air. “Nothing like Vermont’s finest maple syrup to get a feller through the workday.”
Berta and I traded a glance.
“Miss Albans,” Berta said, “is that by any chance the same kind of maple syrup you use in your fruitcake recipe?”
“Maybe,” Hester said on a grunt.
“Want some?” Funny Papers asked, holding out the jug.
“No, thank you,” I said. “I can smell it from here. Whiskey, I think?”
“You got it.”
“Thank you for your help,” Berta said to Hester, even though she’d been as helpful as a kick in the caboose.
Berta and I hurried out the way we’d come.
“Whiskey in the maple syrup jug?” I whispered as we went along the back hallway. “Is everyone bending the elbow all the time in this town? Good grief!”
“It is the wintertime, Mrs. Woodby. It is cold outside. People do require the occasional warming nip.”
* * *
The next order of business was purchasing a new pair of boots for my poor blistered feet. We went across the street to the general store.
To my horror, there were no cute, farmer’s daughter medium-heeled lace-up boots to be had. There were only three pairs of men’s work boots, brown, stiff, and clunky-soled.
“These?” I said to Berta in disbelief. “These are the boots you spoke of?”
“What did you expect? The latest frivolities from Paris? We are in Vermont, for pity’s sake. Please do hurry up.” Berta was peeling back her coat sleeve to look at her wristwatch. “I wish to reach the ski jump hill before George Goddard begins his practice, and it is already ten past nine.”
“Then we’ve got gobs of time.”
The smallest of the three pairs of men’s work boots would still be a few sizes too large. Worse, I’d lose two inches of height. It wasn’t that I was short, but those two inches were essential to my feeling not-dowdy. On the other hand, it would be scrumptious to walk without pain, and my velvet T-straps were out of the question in the snow.
With a sigh, I selected the smallest pair of boots, a pair of thick wool socks, a fresh box of maple sugar candies, and carried it all to the cash register.
* * *
After a trip back to the inn so I could change into my boots (Berta was practically bursting with impatience by then, but she was mollified by a maple sugar candy), we were going through the village toward the ski hill. Sunlight glinted off icicles. Children were out in force, shouting merrily, building snow forts, and sledding down any available slope. The mountains rose gently all around us, lacy with bare brown trees.
I stopped in my tracks. “Berta! Is that—? Yes, it’s Rosemary Rogerson, and look, she’s coming out of that house. She’s at it again! Quick. Hide.”
Berta and I scurried behind a snow-bogged hedge and crouched down. I created a peephole by burrowing my gloved hand through the hedge, causing some of the snow to cascade away.
Berta and I peeked through. Rosemary said goodbye to a woman in the doorway, went down the steps, and, after a furtive glance to the left and right, hurried up the street.
“Caught red-handed again,” I whispered.
“Yes, but caught red-handed doing what?”
“Let’s go and ask her.”
“But the time, Mrs. Woodby—”
“We’ve got ages until ten o’clock.”
Berta and I got up, brushed snow off our knees, and hurried after Rosemary.
15
“Mrs. Rogerson!” I called as Berta and I followed Rosemary down the snow-clotted street. “Oh, Mrs. Rogersooon!”
Rosemary’s shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t stop or turn around. She was carrying a handbag, and some sort of book pressed tight to her bosom.
“I can’t believe it!” I said. “She’s speeding up!”
“Oh dear, we are destined to be out of breath again,” Berta said with a light moan.
“Have two slices of pie at lunch and you’ll recover.” I had already picked up the pace, feeling unusually athletic in my new man-boots.
Rosemary was hiding something, and the fact that she couldn’t face Berta and me suggested it was something important.
Something, perhaps, to do with murder.
Rosemary hurried through the streets, Berta and I huffing and puffing half a block behind.
“Do you believe it?” I said. “Rosemary’s quicker on her feet than we are.”
“She has guilt on her side. It works wonders on one’s stamina, or so I am told.”
Having traversed the busy length of River Street, Rosemary was headed for the red-painted covered bridge that, I knew, connected to the road to Goddard Farm.
“She must have walked to the village this morning,” I said.
A motorcar was rumbling down the road on the other side of the river. It entered the bridge, and Rosemary had no choice but to stand aside and wait outside the bridge for it to pass.
This was just the amount of time Berta and I needed to catch up to her.
“Mrs. Rogerson,” I said breathlessly.
Rosemary spun around. Her eyeglasses were fogged up. “Oh, what is it? You women are mad, do you know that? Mad! Chasing me down the street? Why, I have half a mind to go straight to the police station and report you!” She adjusted her grip on the book clasped to her bosom. It was a plain, brown book with no lettering, like a journal. “Well? Out with it.”
Berta, gasping for breath, said, “To put it simply, we would like to know why you pay secretive calls upon women in the village.”
Rosemary made a derisive noise. “Truly. Do you realize how absurd you sound? Why shouldn’t I pay calls upon the village women? I’ve known most of them my entire life. Why don’t you attend to the really dangerous people and leave me alone?”
“Who do you suppose the really dangerous people are?” I asked. “You must realize that it was likely someone in your own family who poisoned your mother. One of your brothers. Or your uncle.”
“You’re forgetting Maynard Coburn,” Rosemary said. “You know, the fortune-hunter? Oh, I knew no good would come of it when Mother started taking him around to all her glitzy dos in Cleveland as though he were some sort of expensive lapdog.” She turned her foggy eyeglasses in Cedric’s direction.
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“Am I to understand that you dislike dogs?” I asked in a cool tone.
“I adore animals,” Rosemary said unconvincingly.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “Your brother Fenton doesn’t like dogs, either. He kicked Cedric yesterday—”
“Because you were intruding in his darkroom! He told me all about it. You upset him. But as I said, Maynard Coburn should be your chief suspect.”
“Why is that?” Berta asked.
“Because he was more than twenty years younger than Mother, that’s why! It was positively humiliating for me, you know, having everyone I knew asking me about their relations—and then, lately, their engagement, ugh!—not to mention keeping it from my little children, Mabel and Oliver, that their grandmother was bent on being the most decadent, most outrageous woman possible.”
“Perhaps she was in love,” Berta said.
“Love? Mother? Ha! She was incapable of love. She only wanted to prove to the world that she was still beautiful and desirable. As for Maynard, well, he only wished to marry her for her money.”
“Then why would Maynard poison her?” I said. “Wouldn’t that be a case of biting the hand that feeds you?”
“Heaven knows. Something to do with another woman, probably. He couldn’t stick to only one, you realize.”
“Do you refer to Patience Yarker?” Berta asked.
“Oh, he was done with Patience. Because, you see, the thing about Maynard is, he lives for thrills. Making a conquest gives him a thrill, but once that’s done, he’s got to move on to the next. There is something voraciously hungry about him. Insatiable. I suppose it’s because of the way he grew up. Poor, you know, a filthy little hillbilly from the backwoods of Maine.”
This was uttered with such venom, I wondered if Rosemary could herself have once been jilted by Maynard. No. Surely not. They appeared to be about the same age—around thirty—but while he was an Adonis (albeit a secretly bald one), she was the stodgiest of Society Matrons.
“It’s just like Mother to get herself murdered, you know,” Rosemary said. It wasn’t that she had warmed to Berta and me, but that she had found a vent for her spite. It was coming hard and fast now. “She couldn’t simply die quietly of pneumonia or something like that, oh, no. She must die in a sensational way that made it into the national newspapers. I only hope that the scandal dies down quickly, and without any harm done to my husband’s business.”