by Maia Chance
“She won’t be pleased to see us again.”
“No.”
Golly, I didn’t wish to go up to Goddard Farm once more. That place gave me the heebie-jeebies. “Fenton will likely be there,” I said.
“Then we will stay away from the windows—and keep your canine restrained.”
17
The Rogerson’s Brand Maple Syrup factory sign called out to me as Berta and I walked back through the village to fetch the Speedwagon. We meant to drive up to Goddard Farm.
Berta noticed me eyeing the factory. “No,” she said. “That place has nothing whatever to do with the murder.”
“How can you be sure?” I said. “We may as well have a peek through the windows. Isn’t the idea of huge vats of maple syrup at all intriguing?”
“You find it intriguing only because you are growing hungry for lunch, Mrs. Woo—”
“Look! Footprints. Berta, there are footprints leading to the syrup factory door—there weren’t any when we passed by earlier. I’m sure of it. Someone is in there.”
“Why should there not be someone in there?”
“I’m … I’m not certain. Something about the factory is bugging me, that’s all. Perhaps because Funny Papers was drinking whiskey out of that maple syrup bottle.”
“That was merely his decoy, so he could suckle with impunity.”
“Let’s go and ask a few questions of whoever’s in there.”
“You are stalling because you do not wish to go to Goddard Farm.”
“Quite possibly.”
We followed the single pair of footprints in the snow, up to the door under the syrup factory’s sign. I knocked.
We waited. And waited. I tried to put Cedric down, but he wouldn’t allow it. Down on the village green, partially visible from where we stood, ice sculptors were putting the finishing touches on angels, Santa Clauses, and an ice castle the size of two motorcars. The igloo appeared to be complete, and awning-covered tables had been set up under the trees.
I was just reaching for the door’s handle when it swung open.
The worn face of Hester Albans appeared. “You again!” she said.
“Goodness, Miss Albans,” Berta said cheerfully, “I did not expect to find you here. Why, you work in ever so many places, your poor thing.”
Hester softened a little. “Yes, well, I never did marry and I’ve got to keep a roof over my head, haven’t I?”
“We sympathize completely,” Berta said. “Mrs. Woodby and I make our own livings as well—do you mind if we come in? Mrs. Woodby is most curious about the maple syrup operation—sweet tooth, you understand.”
Hester shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Well, maybe for a minute or two.”
“Oh, good,” Berta said, squeezing past Hester into the factory.
I followed, and Hester—after a worried glance out into the village—shut the door.
The factory was one enormous, freezing-cold room with a wooden floor. The only light came from high, square windows. One end of the space was taken up by stacks of wooden crates, half-lit by a ray of light. The middle of the room had two long, empty tables, and the other end was cluttered with mysterious metal equipment.
“The factory only runs during sugaring time,” Hester said.
“When is that?” I asked.
“At the end of the winter.”
That explained the shut-up look of the factory, then.
“During sugaring time,” Hester said, sweeping her arm, “there’s hustle and bustle in here. The factory employs a dozen village women—Mrs. Apple, Miss Yarker from the inn, Mrs. Allen and her daughter Astrid, and more besides. We’re all happy for the extra income. Farmers bring in their sap and we boil it down, bottle it up, and slap on Rogerson’s labels.”
“Pardon me,” I said. “Boil it down?”
Hester sniffed. “You city folk. I reckon you thought maple syrup came out of a faucet stuck in a tree, didn’t you? Thought you could put your plate of flapjacks under the spigot and go to town?”
“Certainly not,” I lied. “Although that does sound delightful.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Albans,” Berta said, “but I confess to being surprised that Rosemary’s husband owns this factory. I understand he is the owner of a large grocery store chain in Cleveland.”
“Well, the factory fell upon hard times a few years back, so Mr. Rogerson snapped it up for a steal. It’s now the chief supplier of syrup for his Cleveland stores. That’s why I’m here today. I’m the factory’s only year-round employee. The syrup is not only made and bottled here, but stored—see all those crates over there?” Hester pointed to the wooden crates. “I’m responsible for shipping crates down to the stores in Cleveland when they need them. They send me orders by telegram one, two times a week. Today I’m sending two crates down on the afternoon train. I label them with the store addresses and take them to the train depot. Doesn’t pay much, but then again, it doesn’t take much of my time, either.”
That was it, then. Boring old commerce. A dead end that had nothing whatsoever to do with Judith Goddard’s death.
I studiously avoided Berta’s I told you so look as we thanked Hester and took our leave.
* * *
After that, we retrieved the Speedwagon from River Street and motored up to Goddard Farm. Rosemary answered the door. When she saw it was Berta and me, she yanked the door so it was open only a few inches.
“Have you no shame?” she said. Her eyeglasses were sliding down her nose.
“Mrs. Rogerson,” Berta said, “did your brother Fenton attempt to push a nurserymaid out of a window when he was a little boy?”
Rosemary shoved her glasses into place. “You suppose that a boyhood indiscretion is somehow proof that Fenton killed Mother?”
I privately thought that attempted murder was not a mere indiscretion, but I kept my lips zipped.
“What of a motive?” Rosemary asked, her tone victorious. “Fenton was devoted to Mother.”
I said, “We came across some of Fenton’s unsettling photographs—”
“‘Came across’? Hah! You were intruding!”
“—including one of Patience Yarker and George.” I cleared my throat. “Canoodling.”
Rosemary’s cheeks went pasty. “That doesn’t mean Fenton killed anyone. He’s been creeping about, photographing people since Father gave him a camera on his tenth birthday. It’s harmless.”
“He spies,” I said.
“So do you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Someone murdered your mother,” Berta said. “If not Fenton, then who?”
“Maynard,” Rosemary said. “Or Patience Yarker. Someone from outside the family.”
Slam went the door.
“Lunch, Mrs. Woodby?” Berta said.
I had oodles of questions piling up in my mind, but Berta was quite right. Lunch was, as it so often is, the first order of business.
“Okeydoke,” I said.
* * *
Back in the village, someone had taken my parking spot in front of the Old Mill Inn, so I had no choice but to leave it two blocks down River Street. The new spot, however, was just in front of Peggy’s Restaurant, which looked bright and cheerful and warm, so we went in. The hostess didn’t blink an eye at Cedric, luckily, and seated us at a table near a blissfully radiating woodstove.
Over hot, creamy potato chowder, Berta and I discussed what we’d learned (quite a bit) and what we could make of any of it (zip).
“I require rest after lunch,” Berta said with a sigh. “I want nothing more than a hot-water bottle, a cup of tea, a footstool, and a book.”
“All right,” I said, feeding Cedric a last nibble of the steak I’d ordered for him. I wouldn’t say it aloud—after all, Berta was three decades my senior—but I wouldn’t have minded a rest myself. My spirit sagged under the knowledge that we weren’t going to be leaving Maple Hill on the afternoon train. We were stuck for at least another day.
&nb
sp; We needed a breakthrough like anything.
“This evening, the Winter Carnival officially begins,” I said, wrapping the rest of Cedric’s steak in a piece of notebook paper so he could have it for his dinner. “Perhaps we can glean more information there.” I shoved the wrapped steak in my handbag. The things I do for love.
* * *
We set off walking toward the inn.
“This dreadful wind,” Berta said, clutching her scarf against a cold burst from the valley. “I feel as though I do not have the fortitude to fend it off.”
“You always say Nature protects us,” I said.
“Do I? Today I quite feel like it is attempting to spank me.”
We were passing the town hall. A small crowd had gathered around a wooden noticeboard. The crowd’s worried murmurs and shaking heads, so different from the village’s general air of festivity, caused Berta and me to stop.
Everyone was looking, not at a printed announcement, but at three photographs tacked to the board. From a few paces off, the photographs looked like nothing more than black, white, and gray blobs.
Yet something about the haphazard way they’d been pinned gave me the collywobbles.
Hugging Cedric to my chest, I inserted myself into the crowd and looked.
One photograph depicted Patience Yarker, laughing and rosy cheeked, ice-skating in baggy trousers and a fitted jacket. She looked fresh, lovely, and free—and very much as though she was unaware of being photographed.
The second photograph was one Berta and I had seen drying in Fenton’s darkroom: Patience and George Goddard in a snowy wood, locked in a passionate kiss.
The third photograph depicted a young woman sleeping peacefully in bed. This one was quite grainy—the room was dim—but there was no mistaking that this, too, was Patience.
My skin prickled, and it wasn’t because of the winter air. Because who had a camera?
Fenton. That’s who. Fenton Goddard, near-murderer of nurserymaids.
Fenton had been in Patience Yarker’s bedroom while she was sleeping, photographing her. And hadn’t George told us that Fenton latched on to women in an obsessive fashion?
“Oh my,” Berta whispered.
“Ditto,” I whispered back. “Come on.” I looked around the group of gawkers, which was growing as passersby peeled off to see what the fuss was about. “We should tell Patience about these photographs—surely she’ll want them taken down.”
“We should take them down.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Sergeant Peletier will accuse us of meddling.”
We hurried to the inn. Patience herself was seated behind the front desk in the lobby. She looked up in surprise when Berta and I stopped, both of us agitated and panting, before her. Even Cedric was panting, which was absurd, since I had carried him.
“What’s the matter?” Patience asked.
“You tell her, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said.
“Miss Yarker,” I said, “I’m afraid we have some unsettling news. On the town hall noticeboard, there are … three photographs of you.”
“Of me?” Patience’s eyebrows shot together.
“You’d better go and see,” I said. “We would have taken them down ourselves, but we feared Sergeant Peletier would accuse us of meddling again.”
“I can’t leave the desk unattended. Dad would be so annoyed. We have six check-ins today—”
“We’ll mind the desk,” I said. “Go on.”
“All right. Thank you—I’ll be back in a few minutes. If anyone comes to check in, have them wait for me.” Patience went away, her cheeks pale and her eyes wide.
18
I went behind the front desk and sat down on the swiveling stool. Cedric snuffled the unoccupied cat cushion at my feet. If he hadn’t been wearing a turtleneck sweater, I’m sure his hackles would’ve risen.
“I shall just go upstairs for my rest,” Berta said.
“Not so fast,” I said.
“My feet are aching loaves of agony, Mrs. Woodby.”
“But we haven’t discussed those photographs.” I looked left and right. The lobby and stairs were unoccupied. Still, I brought my voice down to a whisper. “Those photographs—are you supposing that Fenton snapped them?”
“Seeing as one of them was identical to one in his darkroom, yes, of course.”
“I think so, too. But do you suppose Fenton pinned them to that noticeboard?”
“Anyone could have pinned them, and they could have been pinned up at any time. The question is, what do they mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Fenton’s been snapping secret photographs of Patience, and that means he has some kind of … of unwholesome interest in her. I mean, it’s downright spooky. He skulks around after her with a camera, watching her smooch his brother, watching her sleep … I’m afraid Patience could be in danger.”
“That is taking it a bit far.”
“Is it? There’s a murderer afoot, Berta. We can’t be too careful. We’ve established that Fenton is violent, that he is dangerous, obsessive—”
“What do you propose? That we ask Patience if she would like us to be her hired muscle? Please. I must rest.” Berta went upstairs, looking alarmingly slow-footed and stooped.
She was fed up with gumshoeing. I knew that. But why wasn’t she as worried as I was about Fenton?
I swiveled the stool I sat on, back and forth, back and forth. I examined my fingernails. I hummed a Christmas carol or two, and in the middle of “Silent Night,” I noticed a corner of what I thought was a magazine, protruding from beneath the reservation book.
A magazine. Just the ticket for while I’m waiting.
I slid aside the reservation book to reveal not a magazine, but a selection of colorful hotel brochures from Catalina Island, California. Waikiki, Hawaii. Havana, Cuba. Swanky hotels. The sort of hotel you wouldn’t suppose was in the budget for a young woman employed at an inn in rural Vermont.
Unless, of course, Patience was, say, planning her honeymoon.
But whom was she going to marry? George Goddard? Or was it Maynard Coburn? I wasn’t even sure if Maynard could afford such luxurious hotels, unless—yes—unless he had a windfall.
A windfall, for instance, from Judith Goddard’s will. If, as George had suggested, Maynard had managed to get himself named as a beneficiary even before the marriage.
My thoughts spun and mad theories half presented themselves as I absently polished off the maple sugar candies in my handbag. Cedric drifted to sleep on the cat cushion. No one arrived in the lobby to check in. None of my theories seemed especially plausible.
After several minutes, Patience burst into the lobby in a swirl of wind and snowflakes. Her eyes glittered with fury, and her cheeks were fuchsia. She clutched the photographs in one mitten.
“The nerve of him!” she said, striding over to the desk. She left a trail of snow on the floor. “He was—he was spying on me!”
“You mean Fenton?” I asked, standing and stepping away from the stool.
“Yes, of course, Fenton. He … he…” Patience’s voice trailed off and she sank onto the stool. The photographs trembled in her hand.
“I think you should tell the police, Patience—”
“The police!”
“Fenton intruded upon your bedroom when you were asleep. How did he get in there, anyway?”
“We don’t keep our doors locked here in Maple Hill. He knows where I live. He must have simply … walked in.” Patience shivered. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mrs. Woodby, I’ll be locking my bedroom door from now on.”
“Are you sure you won’t report Fenton to the police?”
“No.” Patience jutted her chin. “I don’t want to cause a fuss. The coronation’s this evening, and I don’t want it to be spoiled by Sergeant Peletier nosing around. Although…”
“What is it?”
“It’s probably nothing, but, well, Fenton has been really chewed up about George and me being the carnival king and queen—”
“Surely Fenton can’t have hoped to be crowned carnival king,” I said.
“No! What a thought. Still, he’s mad with jealousy.”
“Because he’s in love with you.”
“Ugh. It’s not love—well, I suppose he thinks it’s love.”
“And because you and George … have reached some sort of understanding?”
Patience looked down—to, it seemed, the corner of the Waikiki brochure poking out from beneath the reservation book. She sighed. “Not yet.”
“Did Mrs. Goddard—?”
“No!” Patience looked up at me again, her eyebrows drawn. This time, she was angry at me. “Everyone’s had it up to here with your snooping. Why don’t you and Mrs. Lundgren just—just go home?”
How I wished that I could.
“Patience,” I said, “I don’t like to spread gossip, but in this case…” In low tones, I relayed to Patience the story George had told us, of how Fenton had once tried to push their nurserymaid out the window.
By the time I had finished, Patience’s eyes were wide. “George told you that?”
“Yes.”
“He never said anything like that to me, and we…”
I leaned forward a bit. “Yes?”
“Well…”
Patience and I both regarded the topmost photograph in her hand, the one of George and her in the midst of a winter wonderland smooch.
“Perhaps George didn’t wish to upset you,” I said.
Patience shook her head. “George would never say anything against his family.”
That was funny, because he’d had no qualms about disparaging all of them to Berta and me.
“He’s really proud of his family’s station, you see,” Patience said. “Proud of their wealth. He refuses to say anything, do anything, that might bring them down a notch in anyone’s eyes.” She was still wearing her checked wool coat, and she ran a mitten fleetingly across her belly.
She caught me looking, and glanced away. Then, if I wasn’t mistaken, she gulped.
Something was bugging me. I mean, I’d read piles of novellas in which the peasant girl is spurned by the family of her hoity-toity lover. It rarely ends well. And if Patience really did have a pea in the pod—George’s pea—and Mrs. Goddard had not been sympathetic … well, maybe Patience or George or both of them together bumped off Judith Goddard for the sake of their pea.