by Maia Chance
“Why did your family not accompany you here to Vermont?” Berta asked.
Rosemary sniffed. “I keep my children away from the noxious influence of their relations. I must do my familial duty and visit when required, but I’ll leave my poor little darlings at home, thank you very much. And my husband, of course, is terribly busy with his work.”
“I recall that your husband owns a cash-and-carry self-service store chain in Ohio,” Berta said. This was a tidbit from her stolen dossier.
“Yes. Rogerson’s Stores.”
Rogerson’s Stores. Rogerson’s Stores!
At last, I realized why my mind had been pinging at every mention of Rosemary’s married name.
“The maple syrup factory in the village is called Rogerson’s Brand Maple Syrup,” I said. “Is there any connection to you or your husband?”
“My husband owns the factory, yes.” Rosemary pruned her lips. “He owns dozens of factories. I do hope I have satisfied your vulgar curiosity, and I’m afraid that I really must be going. Good morning.” She spun around, clearly with the intent to hurry onto the covered bridge. But at that precise moment, a snowball arced through the air, hit her in the side of the head, and skewed her hat. She lost her footing, and as she flailed to regain her balance, the book spun out of her hand and thumped into the roadside snowbank.
Rosemary dived for the book, snatched it up.
I had only the briefest glimpse of scribbly penciled pages before she smacked it shut. “I wish you two would go away,” Rosemary snarled, shoving her slipped glasses back up her nose. “You’re nuisances.”
“Who threw that snowball?” I said. “I didn’t see anyone.” I peered into a stand of icy brush on the other side of the road. Was that flicker in its depths a bird, or … something else?
“Some ill-behaved child,” Rosemary said.
“If I were a superstitious woman,” I said, “I’d blame Slipperyback.” I said this only—all right, mostly—to see Rosemary’s reaction to the mention of the legendary bear.
She scoffed. “The local fools blame every little prank and mishap on their monster. If you ask me, it only gives the local children an excuse to be naughty.”
Rosemary marched onto the covered bridge, her footfalls thunking on the boards.
* * *
“Whoever threw that snowball could’ve gotten an earful,” I whispered to Berta as we walked once more in the direction of the ski hill. “Her husband owns the maple syrup factory! And what do you suppose was in her notebook?”
“Addresses, perhaps, or reminders, or, well, it really could be many things. Did you make out any of the words?”
“No.” The handwriting had been slanted and frail. Finishing school handwriting.
“Nor I.”
“But…”
“If this entails more chasing, Mrs. Woodby, I am afraid I must decline. What is more, it is now approaching ten o’clock, and we risk missing George Goddard at the ski hill again.”
“No chasing. We’ll walk as slowly as molasses if you wish, all the way back to the house from which we saw Rosemary emerge, and ask what Rosemary was doing there. It’s on the way to the ski hill.”
Berta answered with a put-upon sigh.
However, when we spoke to the woman of that house, she was not inclined to answer.
She was a plump, pretty woman with hair tinseled with silver, in a well-made dress and apron. She looked at us suspiciously through a half-opened door. Delicious buttery, nutmeggy aromas wafted from behind her.
“Mrs. Rogerson? What business is it of yours why she’s paying me calls? Who are you? Here for the Winter Carnival, I suppose? How I wish Mr. Pickard never got it into his head to start that everlasting thing! Our peaceful town overrun with noisy, rude city folk, and for what? A few extra dollars for the inn and the general store?”
“Mrs. Rogerson carried a notebook,” I said.
“Aha, you’re newspaper reporters, is that it? That explains why you’re wearing men’s shoes, then. Prying into poor Mrs. Goddard’s death?”
“Um—” I said.
“Yes,” Berta said. “Tell me, who do you suppose poisoned Mrs. Goddard?”
“I reckon it was only a terrible accident.”
“And yet…,” Berta prompted.
“No, no more questions. I must say good morning to you. I’ve got pies in the oven.” The door slammed shut.
We crunched along through the snow.
“Do you know what I think?” I said. “I think Rosemary has some way of preventing that woman from speaking with us—and Hester Albans, too.”
“Blackmail?” Berta sounded excited.
“Not necessarily. Maybe she simply pays them not to disclose what she’s up to. Whatever that could be … What could it be?”
“She could be planning something. A church function, perhaps. Or something to do with her husband’s maple syrup factory.”
“Why the secrecy, then?”
“Perhaps she is planning, oh, a surprise birthday party for someone.”
“But she’s so shifty and angry about it.”
“Not every person to plan a birthday party is pleasant, Mrs. Woodby.”
We were walking past the village green, bustling once more with carnival preparations, and then passing the knitting factory, then the long, white clapboard building with the sign reading ROGERSON’S BRAND MAPLE SYRUP.
“Shall we have a peek?” I whispered to Berta. “See if Rosemary’s got any skeletons hidden in there? The windows are dark and there aren’t any footprints in the snow leading to the door. Maybe it’s no longer in business and Rosemary’s broke—”
“Please. Focus. We must get to the ski hill!”
“Oh, all right.”
“I do not know what has come over you, Mrs. Woodby.”
“It’s these boots. They make me feel invincible.” Actually, they made me feel dumpy. Not, of course, that that was an important consideration.
16
We reached the bottom of the ski hill where, just like yesterday, a few vehicles were parked. I recognized the luxurious motorcar George had been driving when he evaded us. I released Cedric, and Berta and I looked up, up—shading our eyes from the bright sunlight with our hands—to see three men on the tippy-top of the scaffold.
“George is up there,” I said. “We’ll have to wait till he comes down.”
“Oh, he must come down,” Berta said.
Up on the scaffold, the men’s voices grew more animated, and then George was positioning himself at the top of the jump, aligning his skis, bending his knees, leaning forward—finally he launched himself—
Down he went, picking up speed, then—UP! the swoop and into the air—and he was flying.
Forward and down George went over the mountainside, waving his arms a little for some mysterious sporty reason I couldn’t fathom, and then—wumph—with a wobble he landed, steadied himself, and zipped along the silky snow to the bottom of the slope.
“Wowie,” I said to Berta, “he isn’t half-bad at this.”
“No, although not nearly at the level of Maynard Coburn. Unless Maynard is in poor form during the competition tomorrow, I cannot imagine that George will stand a chance at besting him.”
George caught sight of Berta and me gawking, and he did a fancy sideways swoosh on his skis and pulled up beside us. His handsome face was flushed with cold, and his brown eyes danced with what must’ve been elation from the jump.
“If it isn’t the Detective Twins,” he said, breathing hard. “How’d you like that?”
“It was marvelous,” I said.
Berta said, “I suspect you would get farther if you leaned forward toward the tips of your skis once you are in the air.”
George looked confused.
“Mrs. Lundgren is from Sweden,” I said.
“Recent innovations in the sport suggest that leaning forward gets you farther,” Berta said.
“You don’t mean to say you ski,” George said, looking Ber
ta’s sugar bowl figure down and up.
“Indeed I do,” Berta snapped.
“Mr. Goddard,” I said, wedging myself in front of Berta, “I wonder if we could have a few words.”
“About my mother’s death.”
“Yes.”
“Which you’re investigating because the police forbade you to leave town.”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“You can’t be very good detectives if you go and get yourselves implicated in murders at every turn,” George said. “And what kind of business are you operating, anyway, pinching jewelry for your clients? I’m sorry to break it to you, but that’s not detecting. That’s run-of-the-mill crime.”
Pink spots had appeared on Berta’s cheeks. “We have learned that your mother hired us to retrieve a ring that rightfully belonged to her. Your great-aunt Daphne has confirmed as much.”
“Sounds like something Mother would do. She liked to pull the strings.”
“It has come to our attention that your brother, Fenton, keeps potassium ferricyanide in his photographic darkroom in the cellar,” Berta said.
“Potassium what?” George said, scratching his head beneath his wool hat.
“In short, cyanide,” I said. “According to Sergeant Peletier, that was the poison that caused your mother’s death. I do not mean to be overly blunt, but—”
“I will be blunt,” Berta said. “Mr. Goddard, is it possible that Fenton poisoned your mother?”
George’s eyebrows lifted. Then he squinted past Berta and me, as though pondering the possibility. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t buy it. It was an accident. It had to be.”
Funny. George was the first person to suggest this.
“Perhaps it was an accident,” I said. “Either way, we must get to the bottom of the matter.”
“The police are investigating it.”
“The more heads, the better.”
“As my sister, Rosemary, said, too many cooks spoil the soup.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “We noticed Rosemary helping a village woman make a pie in a rather furtive manner.”
George gave a bark of laughter. “Rosemary can’t bake to save her life! She wishes she could—just like she wishes she kept a spotless house single-handedly and raised angelic children, as she lets on in those pompous books she writes—but she can’t.”
Mrs. Rogerson’s Practical Guide to Housekeeping and Mrs. Rogerson’s Practical Guide to Childrearing were a bunch of baloney, then?
“Mr. Currier, the Methodist minister, suggested that Rosemary is on quite friendly terms with Hester Albans, as well,” Berta said.
“No! Hester? The servant? Haven’t you two figured out that Rosemary is a snob? She only consorts with the peasants when she’s at her charitable work.”
“What is her charitable work?” I asked.
“Something about temperance—or was it orphans? I can’t remember. She dabbles in it whenever she’s here in Maple Hill—which isn’t very often, actually. I think she wishes to keep up the Grand Benevolent Lady act for the villagers. Feeds the sense of her own nobility.”
“Rosemary has been known to stop in Mr. Currier’s kitchen when Hester is working there, simply for a cup of tea and a cozy chat.”
“Oh? That’s difficult to picture. Perhaps it’s something to do with her charitable work as well. She’s got to have something to do to kill the hours until the will is read.”
“And when might that be?” I asked.
“After the funeral tomorrow.”
“At the house?”
“Yes. The family lawyer is on his way from Cleveland now.”
“Any notion who your mother’s heirs will be?”
“Trying to figure out whether one of us bumped her off for the estate, is that it?”
“There are worse motives.” I was thinking of what Aunt Daphne had said about Uncle Roy killing to preserve his style of living.
“I’ll have you know that my siblings and I are comfortably off,” George said. “Father set up trusts for us long ago, and they’re more than adequate.”
“What about Mr. Ives?” Berta said.
“Uncle Roy?” George scowled. “Well, of course, he doesn’t have a trust fund. He’s only Mother’s lazy brother. Squandered his own inheritance years ago. He’s a great, fat leech.”
That’s more or less what Aunt Daphne had said.
“But I understand he is a rather successful greeting card artist,” I said.
“You call that a job?”
That was rather rich, coming from a young man who seemed to subsist entirely on a trust fund as he traveled the globe in pursuit of expensive pleasures. But I had known more than my share of good-for-nothing fellows with hereditary bucks. (I’d been married to one, after all.) They often felt that they were entitled to leisure, but that the riffraff must humbly toil.
“And Aunt Daphne?” I said. “Is she financially independent?”
“Don’t tell me she’s one of your murder suspects,” George said.
“No, she isn’t. She was sitting near Mrs. Lundgren and me during the critical moments.”
“Aunt Daphne is Mother’s aunt—she’s really my great-aunt—and, yes, she’s extremely well off. She and Mother didn’t travel in precisely the same circles in Cleveland—I was surprised that Mother invited her up for the engagement party, actually, and surprised that she came. I suppose Aunt Daphne steers clear so she doesn’t get saddled with baby-minding Fenton.”
“Fenton does not attend college, I understand?” Berta said.
“You met him. He’s a child, and always shall be. Can you imagine setting him loose on a campus? And then there was Fenton’s jealousy of”—George swallowed thickly—“of Maynard. Mother wanted a long honeymoon with that scoundrel, and she meant to leave Fenton behind with Uncle Roy. Well, Fenton and Uncle Roy were raising a ruckus about that. Fenton was making Mother miserable, moping and skulking and complaining—even more than usual, I mean. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mother poisoned herself just to be rid of Fenton.” A pause. “That was a joke.”
“Ah.”
“Pardon me,” Berta said, “but what was that you said about Fenton being jealous of Maynard Coburn?”
George rolled his eyes. “Well, of course he was. Fenton was in an absolute panic over the engagement. He’s always been hideously jealous, and he’s always sort of, well, latched on to women. Always one particular woman, you know, over whom he obsesses. When we were children, he was in love with our nurserymaid—a beautiful girl called Colette. Well, Colette preferred me over Fenton and Rosemary. Rosemary didn’t care, of course—all she wanted was to be left in peace to play with her dollhouse—but Fenton, well, he couldn’t stand it. This was when he was, oh, seven years old. He took it out on me, and then he took it out on Colette. First, it was only little things. Making an awful mess with his food so that she’d have to clean it all up. Pricking her with a pin. But then, one warm summer day when all the nursery windows were open—and the Cleveland nursery was up on the top floor, four stories up, you understand—Fenton tried to push Colette out the window.”
Berta and I exchanged alarmed glances.
“It was a good thing Fenton has always been a weakling,” George said, “because she would’ve died if she had fallen. She gave her notice that very day. After that, it was Mrs. Helmstein, who was a drill sergeant.” George looked between Berta and me, and burst out laughing. “If you could only see the expressions on your faces! I know what you’re thinking, but it can’t be true. Fenton was too tied up in the apron strings to kill Mother. Someone else he could’ve poisoned, easily. But never darling Mother. As I said, I’m sure her death must’ve been an accident. But if you’re bent on proving it’s murder, why, if I were you, I’d take a good, hard look at Maynard Coburn.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? He’s a fortune-hunter.”
“But fortune-hunters generally attempt to marry money,”
I said, “not commit murder before they get their hands on the boodle.”
“Not if Mother already wrote him into her will.”
Oh.
Berta said, “I was told that you and Maynard Coburn were once good friends, but that relations have cooled over the years.”
“You certainly have been busy little bumblebees, haven’t you?” George said. He was growing angry, now that the lens was trained upon him. “Yes, we were friends for a time at Dartmouth. We both enjoyed skiing and having a good time. We lost touch after college—the war began only a month after we graduated, and Maynard took himself off to be a hero.” This was spoken with a sarcastic curl of the lip.
“Did you go to war, Mr. Goddard?” Berta asked.
“Oh, no. Not me.” George scratched his nose. “Flat feet. Desperately frustrating for me, of course, that I couldn’t do my bit.”
We all regarded George’s feet, shod in snow boots and strapped and buckled onto skis.
“How nice that you are still able to enjoy sport with your flat feet,” Berta said in an innocent tone.
George flushed. “Mark my words, if murder’s the game, then Maynard’s your man. He’s a—well, I guess you could say he’s an innate thief. He’s hungry for money, and it gives him a thrill to swipe things out from other men’s noses.”
“You mean, to swipe women,” I said. “Such as … Patience Yarker?”
George’s eyes flared.
Up on the ski jump platform, a man shouted George’s name.
“Listen, I’ve got to go up and do a few more runs.” George bent and unbuckled his skis, hefted them, and tucked them under his arm. “See you round.” He started the trek up the mountainside.
“It is ever so narcissistic for George to believe that Maynard wished to marry his mother simply to goad him,” Berta said once George was out of earshot.
“Forget about that,” I said. “If that story about Fenton nearly killing the nurserymaid is to be believed—!”
“We must ask Rosemary to confirm the incident.”