Rogues on the River

by Alice Simpson

  Twenty minutes before Mrs. Timms had treated me like a teenage debutant. Now I might as well have been in pinafores. Still, Mrs. Timms meant well, so I drank the lemonade, submitted to the hot water bottle, and then snuggling down in my warm bed, slept soundly. When I awakened, sunlight streamed in through a gap in the curtains. Cocking an eye at the dresser clock, I saw to my dismay that it was ten o’clock.

  “My Aunt!” I leaped out of bed. “All this good time wasted.”

  With the speed of a trained fireman, I wriggled into my clothes. I ran a comb through my hair and managed find a pair of stockings with only one run, which was mostly hidden by the hem of my skirt. Then I bounded down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Is that you or a gazelle escaped from the zoo?” inquired Mrs. Timms who was washing dishes at the sink.

  “Why didn’t you bounce me out of bed two hours ago? I have an important business engagement for this morning.”

  “You’re not going to the river again, I hope.”

  “Oh, but I must, Mrs. Timms.” I opened the refrigerator and helped myself to a bowl of strawberries and a Martha Washington pie.

  “You’re not breakfasting on that.” Mrs. Timms took the dish out of my hand. “Oatmeal is what you need. Now why must you go to the river?”

  “Someone has to salvage the Maybelline. Besides, I lost a valuable object last night—”

  The telephone jingled, and I darted off to answer it. As I had anticipated, the call was from Florence, who in a very husky voice inquired after my health and wellbeing.

  “Fit as a fiddle and ready to go bottle hunting,” I told Flo “And you?”

  “I hurt in all the wrong places,” Florence complained. “What a night.”

  “Why, I enjoyed every minute of it. If you’re such a wreck I suppose you won’t care to go with me to the river this morning. By the way, what did you do with that blue bottle?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. I’m sure I had it in my hand when we reached shore, but that’s the last I remember.”

  “Well, never mind, if it’s anywhere on the beach I’ll find it. Sure you don’t want to tag along?”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Then meet me in twenty minutes at Halvorson’s dock. Signing off now to gobble a bowl of oatmeal before Mrs. Timms resorts to putting me in a head lock and force feeding-me.”

  Without giving Florence a chance to change her mind, I hung up the receiver and returned to the kitchen.

  “What do you know about the Maxwells?” I asked Mrs. Timms.

  “Do you mean the Maxwells who live down the street or the ones who run the butcher shop on Willow Avenue?”

  “Neither. I mean the Maxwell Implement Factory Maxwells. They have that big stone mansion overlooking the river. That one with the red tile roof. Looks like they brought it over stone-by-stone from Italy or someplace.”

  “I don’t know much about those Maxwells,” Mrs. Timms insisted. “They keep themselves to themselves, and even if Mrs. Maxwell was the sociable type she and I wouldn’t run in the same circles.”

  The Maxwells were known to be one of the richest families in the city, so I conceded that Mrs. Timm’s statement was true but refused to change the subject. “Don’t you know anything at all about Mrs. Maxwell?” I persisted. “Dad says it was a bit of a scandal when Mr. Maxwell married the present Mrs. Maxwell.”

  “That was all conjecture,” Mrs. Timms said. “There may have been some truth to the tales that were being spread, but I think it’s more likely that the Stedman family was upset about Mr. Maxwell’s choice of a second wife and contrived to make the circumstances surround Mr. Maxwell’s remarriage appear as tawdry as possible.”

  “The Stedman family? The ones that own the tool factory out by the fruit packing warehouses?”

  “The first Mrs. Maxwell was Maria Stedman. The second Mrs. Maxwell was rumored to have been a barmaid when she met Mr. Maxwell.”

  “And the Stedman family thought Mr. Maxwell marrying a barmaid so soon after his first wife’s death was an insult to Maria’s memory.”

  “I suppose so,” said Mrs. Timms, “although I didn’t believe the rumors going around about the first Mrs. Maxwell’s death being due to anything other than complications from her illness.”

  “Oh?”

  “Our own Dr. Hamilton was her physician at the time,” said Mrs. Timms. “I imagine he was the one who signed the death certificate. I never asked him about it directly, of course. It was none of my business and it would have been unprofessional of Mr. Hamilton to comment on the accuracy of idle gossip.”

  “So the entire Stedman family hates Mr. Maxwell?”

  “I think most of the animosity exists between Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Morris Stedman, Maria Stedman’s older brother.”

  “Morris Stedman? Isn’t he in charge of running the Stedman Tool Factory?”

  “Eat your breakfast instead of asking so many questions,” Mrs. Timms said and clammed up.

  After fortifying myself with cumin and cinnamon-flavored oatmeal, a glass of orange juice, bacon, two rolls with peach chutney and sundry odds and ends, I started off to meet Florence.

  Flo, looking none too cheerful, was already waiting near Halvorson’s dock when I arrived.

  “Why did you ask me to meet you here, Jane? It was three blocks out of my way.”

  “I thought we might rent one of Halvorson’s boats and row down to the bridge. It will be easier than walking along the mud flats.”

  “You do think of everything,” Florence said, with grudging approval. “But where’s the proprietor of this place?”

  Not far from a long shed which served as rental office and canoe-storage house, an empty double-deck motor launch was tied to a pier. An aged black and white dog drowsed on its sunny deck, but there was no sign of either Fred Halvorson nor his wife.

  “Guess the place is deserted,” I was forced to admit after loudly “Helloing” several times.

  I wandered about a bit, then sat down on an overturned row boat which had been pulled out near the water’s edge. When the boat moved beneath me, and an irate feminine voice demanded: “Would you mind getting off?” I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  As the boat was pushed over on its side, a girl in grimy slacks, rolled from beneath it. Barely twenty years of age, her skin was rough and brown from constant exposure to wind and sun. A smear of varnish decorated one cheek, and she held a can of caulking material in her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you live under that boat?”

  I started to laugh, but then I looked at Anne Halvorson’s face and saw that the girl regarded me with undisguised hostility.

  “Very clever, aren’t you,” she said scathingly. “In fact, quite the practical joker.”

  “Why, I didn’t mean anything by sitting down on the boat,” I said. “I had no idea you were working under that thing.”

  “So clever, and such a marvelous detective you are, Mrs. Carter,” Anne went on, paying no heed. “If it isn’t the magnificent Jane Carter who not so long ago astonished Greenville by solving the mystery of the masked night riders. And who but the marvelous Mrs. Carter aided the police in locating the vanishing houseboat? And it was our very own Mrs. Carter who learned why the tower clock struck thirteen. And now we are favored with her most valuable opinion in connection with the bridge dynamiting case.”

  I looked over at Florence who seemed as dumbfounded by the sudden, unwarranted attack as I was. By no stretch of the imagination did Anne Halvorson mean her words as a joke. But what had put such a bee in her bonnet? While it was true that I had solved many local mysteries, I had never been boastful of my accomplishments. I supposed I might be deluding myself, but I’d always believed that I was reasonably well-liked in the city of Greenville.

  “I fail to understand you,” I said to Mrs. Halvorson.

  “Of course you wouldn’t understand,” Anne said, her voice fairly dripping with derision. “You’re not used to talk coming straight from the sh
oulder. Why are you here anyhow?”

  “To rent a row boat.”

  “Well, you can’t have one. And if you never come around here again, it will be soon enough.”

  She glared at me for another three seconds, then turned and strode into the boathouse.

  Chapter Four

  “Now will you tell me what I did to deserve a crack like that?” I muttered as the door of the boathouse slammed behind Anne Halvorson.

  “Not a single thing,” Flo said. “She just rolled out from beneath that boat with a dagger between her teeth.”

  “I guess I am a bit of a prig, Flo. I must be to inspire a reaction like that.”

  “You’re no such thing.” Florence grasped my arm and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Come along and forget it. I never did like Anne Halvorson anyhow. She’s probably had some personal setback and was simply taking out her angst on the first person to come along.”

  I allowed myself to be led away from the dock, but the younger woman’s hostility kept repeating in my mind. Although occasionally in the past I had stopped for a few minutes at the Halvorson place, I hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to Anne. All my business dealings had been on the weekends when Fred Halvorson, Anne’s husband, was manning the docks. Fred was a pleasant man of about my own age who repainted the Maybelline every spring.

  “I simply can’t understand it,” I groused to Flo as we trudged along the shoreline. “The last time I saw Anne she spoke to me politely enough. I must have offended her, but how?”

  “Oh, why waste any more thought on her? She probably just had a fight with her husband. Young wives at that age are so temperamental.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what qualified Flo as an expert on marriage, but I bit my tongue.

  “I can’t stop thinking about it. Anne mentioned the bridge dynamiting affair. Maybe it was my byline story in the Examiner that offended her. ”

  “I thought that story’s byline implicated a Miss Hortencia Higgins, not Mrs. Jane Carter. Anne couldn’t possibly know that Hortencia Higgins used to be your nom de plume.”

  “True,” I admitted, more confused than ever. “But Anne might have known I was the one who fed the Examiner the information.”

  “What did the story say?” Flo asked. “I didn’t see the morning paper.”

  “Neither did I. I gave my story to a rewrite man over the telephone. I meant to read the entire account, but was in a hurry to get over here, so I skipped it.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t worry about the matter if I were you.”

  “But one thing I’m sure of,” I told Flo, “the boat used in the dynamiting came from Halvorson’s dock. Perhaps, Anne is just out of sorts because she and her husband lost their property.”

  We’d arrived at the tiny stretch of sand where the Maybelline had been beached the previous night. It lay exactly as we had left it, cockpit half filled with water, the tall mast nosed into the loose sand.

  “What a mess,” I said. “Well, the first thing to do is to get the wet sail off. We should have taken care of that last night.”

  Before beginning the task, I wandered toward the nearby bridge to inspect the damage caused by dynamiting. An armed policeman refused to allow us to approach closer than twenty yards. All traffic had been halted, and a group of engineers were inspecting the shattered pier.

  “Is Mr. Sinclair around here?” I asked the policeman.

  “Sinclair? Oh, you mean the bridge watchman. He’s been charged with neglect of duty, and relieved of his job.”

  I was sorry to hear the news, feeling that in a way I was responsible for the old fellow having left his post.

  When we returned to the Maybelline, it soon became apparent that, without a pump, it was going to be an onerous task to remove the water from the cockpit. By rocking the boat back and forth about a five-hundred times and scooping the remaining water out with an old tin can, we finally got most of it out.

  “We’ll have to dry the sail somehow or it will mildew,” I told Flo. “The best thing, I think, is to put it on again and sail home.”

  Together Florence and I righted the Maybelline. As the tall mast flipped out of the sand, I caught glimpse of a shiny, blue object.

  “Our bottle!” I said and made a dive for it.

  “Your bottle,” said Florence. “I’m not a bit interested in that silly old thing.”

  Nevertheless, as I sat down on the deck of the sailboat and removed the cork, Flo edged nearer. I used a hairpin to fish the folded slip of paper out of the narrow neck.

  “Well, what does it say?” Florence said.

  “I thought you weren’t interested. I thought you unequivocally waived ownership.”

  “Don’t try to be funny. Just read the message.”

  “It’s rather odd message,” I said. “Listen: “‘The day of the Great Deluge approaches. If you would be saved from destruction, seek without delay, the shelter of my ark.’”

  “If that isn’t nonsense. And the note is signed, ‘Noah.’”

  “Someone’s idea of a joke, I suppose,” I said. I tossed the paper away, then thought better of it. I retrieved the message and place it along with the blue bottle into the cockpit of the boat. “Well, it’s rained a lot this spring, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the Great Deluge.”

  “As a daughter of a member of the clergy,” said Flo, ”I know all about Noah, but I didn’t suppose you’d be on speaking terms with him.”

  Flo’s father is the minister of St. Luke’s. Reverend Sidney Radcliff is a dreamy, slightly-dotty character who likes to take the occasional tipple in the garden shed in between composing admonitions to his flock. I’m fond of Reverend Radcliff—unlike Flo’s mother who is a bossy old biddy who makes her daughter’s life a misery by making Florence take on all the charitable acts Mrs. Radcliff would like to take credit for but doesn’t want to go to the effort of doing herself.

  “I do too know all about Noah,” I admonished Flo. “Noah’s common knowledge even to a relative heathen like me. I remember that when God told him it would rain forty days and forty nights, Noah built an ark to resist the flood waters. Then he took his family in with him and all the animals, two by two.” I nudged the beached sail boat with my toe, “Suppose we shove off for home.”

  After a great deal of straining (me) and a bit of muttering under the breath of language unbecoming to a daughter of a member of the clergy (Flo), we managed to get the Maybelline afloat in the shallows. I raised the wet sail and allowed it to flap loosely in the wind.

  “We’ll have everything snug and dry by the time we reach home,” I said. “Tired, Flo?”

  “A little. I like to sail, but I don’t like to bail. I’m not going to allow you to forget that if you hadn’t been so crazy to get that blue bottle, we’d have spared ourselves a lot of hard work.”

  “Well, one never knows. That bottle might have provided the first clue in an absorbing mystery,” I pointed out. “Who do you suppose wrote such an odd message?”

  “How should I know?” Florence yawned and leaned back. “Probably some prankster.”

  We took a zigzag course and tacked slowly upstream. The wet sail gradually dried and regained its former shape.

  As we approached Halvorson’s dock, I saw Anne on one of the floating platforms, retying several boats which banged at their moorings.

  “Better tack,” Florence said. “We don’t want to get too close.”

  I pretended not to hear and made no move to bring the boat about.

  “We’ll end up right at Halvorson’s unless you’re careful,” Florence warned me. “Or is that what you want to do?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Well, if you deliberately go there again, I you must enjoy being insulted.”

  “I’d like to find out why Anne is angry at me. If it’s only a misunderstanding I want to clear it up.”

  Florence shook her head mournfully at me but made no further protest as the Maybelline held to its cour
se. Not until our boat grated gently against one of the floats at Halvorson’s did Anne notice our approach. She glanced up from her work, then deliberately looked away.

  “The air’s still chilly,” I said to Flo in an undertone. “Well, we’ll see.”

  I made our boat fast to a spar, then walked across the float to confront Anne.

  “Mrs. Halvorson,” I began, “if I’ve done anything to offend you, I wish to apologize.”

  Anne turned slowly to face me. “You owe me no apology,” she said in a voice which said that not only did I owe her an apology, but if I were to offer one, she had no intention of accepting it.

  “Then why do you dislike me? I always thought I was welcome around here until today,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I spoke to you the way I did,” Anne replied stiffly and with no warmth. “It was rude of me.”

  “But why am I such a pot of poison?” I persisted. “What have I done?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Why, of course not. I shouldn’t be asking if I did.”

  Anne looked at me for a full minute, and at the end of it I could tell she had still not made up her mind as to my sincerity.

  “Do you never read the papers?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Has this misunderstanding something to do with the bridge dynamiting?”

  Anne nodded her head grimly. “It has. Didn’t you see the morning edition of the Examiner?”

  “No. I was too much in a hurry to get back down here and retrieve the Maybelline.”

  “Then wait a minute.” Anne turned and vanished into the boat shed. A moment later she reappeared, carrying a copy of that morning’s Greenville Examiner.

  “Read that,” she directed, as she thrust the front page at me. “Now do you understand why I feel that you’re no friend of mine?”

  Chapter Five

  I stared in disbelief at the headline on the front page of the Greenville Examiner.

  FRED HALVORSON ARRESTED AS SUSPECT IN BRIDGE DYNAMITING

  The opening paragraph of the news story, was even more dismaying than the headline. It began: “Acting upon information provided by Mrs. Jane Carter, police today arrested Fred Halvorson, owner of the Halvorson Boat Dock, charging him with participation in the Friday night dynamiting of Seventh Street’s bridge.”