Carried to the Grave and Other Stories Page 19
“Oh, my. That must have been devastating. What happened?”
“I never knew whether the woman I was to replace ended her engagement, or something happened to her intended. The school board allowed her to rescind her resignation, which was the right thing to do, but it left me at loose ends.”
One generosity becoming another’s hardship. It was unfair that a woman could not teach after she married, a subject of much debate among the females in the Flannery household, especially after Kate’s sister, Mary, chose a teaching career, but it was almost universally true.
“We were fortunate,” Anne continued, “that Jewel Bay needed a teacher and was willing to overlook the unusual circumstances.”
Which no doubt included Frank. But Kate wasn’t going to ask about him.
“I’d like to hear,” Kate said, choosing her words with care, “your thoughts on a long-term situation for Grace. If no relatives step forward. I’ve written to her grandmother, though from what Grace has said, a welcome seems unlikely.”
One of the older boys rang the bell, and the children began to form lines by grade, girls in front, boys in back.
“No, not a happy tale, I’m afraid,” Anne replied. “I’m sure you’ll hear, if you haven’t already, rumors about Arval Haugen and me. About marriage.”
“I—” Kate raised her hands in protest.
“No. I want you to know. We did take a few walks together, down along the bay. Ate a picnic supper by the ferry landing. Arval was a good man. I would have married him, if he’d asked.”
If.
“But he never did. He was burdened by the sense that marrying again would betray his late wife.”
Better, Kate supposed, than treating marriage as a transaction or convenience. But given the risks of the world, a view that condemned one to loneliness, and denied the heart a second chance.
“I’m sure you’ll have other opportunities,” Kate said. “An attractive single woman, in a town with a lot of single men . . . I’d say Ivan Gregory has his eye on you. And maybe Daniel Gibson, too.”
“What is it that makes every married woman think every single woman desires the same state?” Anne Lang said in a tone that could be joking or serious. The bell rang again and she bustled off.
Kate watched her usher the children into the school and wondered what bucket of mire she had stepped into.
∞
On her way down to the Mercantile late that morning, she again saw Thaddeus London walking near Ivan Gregory’s two-story yellow house. The man said nothing, though he tipped his head and lifted his cap. She’d ask Paddy about him later. She asked a lot of questions, but that was the best way to get to know the townspeople, and as Paddy often said, he knew everyone because everyone needed potatoes and nails.
On Mondays, Paddy did not make deliveries, but there was plenty of custom, so Kate stayed until it was time for piano lessons.
“You’re a quick learner, lass,” Paddy said, and his compliment made her warm inside.
The week grew long. No sign of the suspected thieves was reported and no arrests were made. A thin fog of fear had settled over the town, which Kate hated. She did not want to live like that, but nor did she want Grace to go on without knowing the truth about her father’s death. Even if it was harsh, more than an eleven-year-old ought to have to bear. It did no good to hide the truth from children and claim you were protecting them.
One evening, Grace took the embroidery hoop from Kate’s hands.
“Let me show you.” She made a length of backstitches then a graceful sweep of stem stitches, making sure Kate watched closely. “Now you try.”
“How did you learn to embroider so beautifully?” Kate asked as she took the linen and loop.
“My mother taught me.”
Every night, Paddy helped Grace set up the cot behind the sofa. It was a good solution, but a temporary one—a growing girl could not sleep forever on a borrowed cot in the front room. More than once, Kate heard her crying quietly. Sometimes she steeled herself against the tears and let her be, but other times, she put a hand on the quivering back and the girl threw her thin arms around Kate and sobbed.
One afternoon midweek, Kate finished her lesson with Elizabeth Peterman and went outside with the girl. Grace sat on a bench reading and keeping an eye on Elizabeth’s younger brother and sister. A canvas satchel lay open on the ground, papers sliding out, and Kate picked them up. One was a drawing of a man in a cap, arm raised, mouth open, a woman close by. Behind them stood a large house with columns flanking the front door and a tall leafy tree.
A chill rippled up her spine. Did these bright, lively children with their beautiful mother, their prosperous father, and their elegant home, live in the shadow of violence?
“Oh, Mrs.” Young James, seven or eight, ran up. “That’s mine.”
Kate handed him the satchel but held on to the picture. “Did you draw this?”
“Yes. We were supposed to draw a visitor. It’s a man who came to see my mother last week.”
“It’s not your father? I mean, the man in the picture.”
“Oh, no. He never gets angry. Not with our mother, anyway. He was angry when he heard about the man who came to visit, though.”
“I should think so. Do you know who the man was, or what he and your mother were talking about?”
“No. I was in the tree, way high up. Too high to hear them. I am very good at climbing trees.”
Kate handed back the drawing. “I can tell. What did your teacher say about your picture?”
“She never got to me. She only looks at the good drawings, and I’m not very good.”
“I like to draw. Maybe we can draw together sometime.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’d rather climb trees.”
But his drawing had been good enough to convey the man’s anger and the woman’s fear, Kate thought. Then the children’s father drove up and they ran to the Packard. The house was a long walk, even without concern about thieves, and it was no wonder Reverend Haugen had used his bicycle to visit the Petermans. But it was not Reverend Haugen in the drawing. The boy would have known him, and despite his lack of skill with the wax crayon, would have added the reverend’s distinctive hat.
Who would assail the kind and gentle Mrs. Peterman? Why? And what had James Peterman done, when he heard the story from his wife?
“Grace,” Kate said as the two walked home. “Has Elizabeth ever said anything to you about her parents arguing? Or about a man making threats?”
But Grace said no, and Kate let the matter drop.
∞
On Friday, five days after Reverend Arval Haugen’s burial, a letter arrived from Chicago. Paddy left it for Kate, propped on the brass cash register, and she took it up to his private office to read.
Mrs. Murphy,
Thank you for your letter with news of the misfortune that has struck Mr. Haugen. How distressing it must have been to find him. You will think me cold for lacking much sympathy for the man, and perhaps I am. I have not yet forgiven him, despite the passage of time, for putting my daughter into the impoverished condition that led to her death. By serving God, you will say. No. By his insistence on doing so despite knowing that she was fragile, that working in the slums amid filth and poverty would expose her to disease. By allowing his belief that God had destined him to bring the comfort of Christ to the poor and the immigrants to outweigh his responsibilities as a husband and father.
There it was, the barest acknowledgment of her granddaughter. But the woman went on, continuing her description of the vile conditions of those Reverend Haugen had ministered to, and her rage over her daughter’s death. Her anger, Kate could understand. It was part of grief. Consumption was a horrible disease, but it could have struck Freya Haugen anywhere. Even in her mother’s wealthy neighborhood. Even here, with all the fresh air one could breathe. And why blame him? It was clear that he had suffered deeply, even letting his loss keep him from the possibility of new happiness.
“Arrangements?” Kate spat out the word. “We’re talking about a child, not a garden party. Your flesh and blood, Mrs. Agnete Swensen of Chicago. And I am not sending an eleven-year-old girl halfway across the country on a train by herself.”
Paddy would help her figure out what to do. She dried her eyes and started down the stairs, the gray linen envelope in hand. At the sound of a man speaking in the hallway, she stopped.
“It’s this business about Arval Haugen, Paddy,” the man said. “It’s shaking things up. People are talking about leaving town, pulling up stakes.”
“Not you, James,” she heard Paddy say. James Peterman? “Not with all you’ve done to establish the bank. The investments you’ve made.”
Among them, the loan that had financed the Mercantile.
“We’ll have to see, Paddy. We’ll have to see. But it would be better, don’t you agree, if we all acknowledged that the murder occurred in the course of a theft, and left off asking questions?”
Kate froze, her hand over her mouth. He was talking about her. James Peterman must have heard from his son that she’d asked about the drawing, about who he’d seen and what he’d heard. James Peterman wanted her to stop asking questions and—he’d made this clear by his tone as well as his words—if she didn’t, he would withdraw his support for the Mercantile. The shop that was Paddy’s heart and dream.
She could not hear Paddy’s reply over the thumping in her chest. Not until she heard two sets of footsteps heading back to the shop floor did she dare to breathe again. When she was sure they had gone and could not hear her move, she retreated to the office under the eaves.
Had the boy pretended that the man he’d drawn was a visitor, not wanting to admit it was a picture of his father shouting at his mother? Secure in the knowledge that the teacher would not inspect his drawing, had the boy drawn the violence he’d seen, knowing no one would ever guess the truth? Until she’d picked up the wrinkled paper, smoothed it out, and asked him about it.
Or the man, not much more than a stick figure, might have been Reverend Haugen after all, the boy unable to see him clearly from his leafy perch.
Or what if—and this sent a chill down her spine as cold as the Baraboo River in the dead of winter—what if James Peterman, by all accounts as good-natured as he was prosperous, had himself been involved in the reverend’s murder?
She could not stay up here all afternoon, and she couldn’t sneak out the back door. Paddy would worry, and troubled as she was, she would not add to her husband’s burden. Besides, they truly did have to decide what to do about Mrs. Swensen’s letter, and Grace.
Thank goodness Paddy was alone, polishing the perfectly clean counter with a thick white cloth. At the sound of her footsteps, he raised his head, his hand stopping mid-swirl. His face was pale, his hair mussed.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “There yeh are, lass. Bad news then?”
She gestured with the envelope. “How could a woman as horrid as Mrs. Swensen raise such a loving wife and mother as Freya Haugen?”
“Kate, you know she’s acting out of her grief, first over her daughter’s decision to marry against her wishes, and then over her death.”
“It’s been years, Paddy. Why can’t she put her grief aside for the sake of her granddaughter? The granddaughter whose love and comfort she has denied herself, out of her own bitterness.” Kate’s own parents had not approved of every decision their daughters had made. They’d worried about Alice’s intended before their marriage because his father had been known to strike his wife and children. But he’d proven himself a good provider and a devoted husband and father. They’d worried that Mary’s decision to teach doomed her to a life alone, though Kate suspected that was what Mary wanted. They’d only agreed to let Margaret go to art school in Chicago because the school kept a private boardinghouse for its female students and did not allow men and women to study together until they reached advanced levels.
And her own decision to marry a man who was building a future hundreds of miles away had not been easy to accept.
Chicago. She couldn’t ask her younger sister to visit Mrs. Swensen—the old lady would not take a young unmarried woman seriously. But what about Alice or Mrs. Flannery? They were mature women, mothers themselves, though Alice wasn’t thirty yet and her children small. But she had a persuasive manner, and if the two women took the train together, to visit Margaret, maybe they could pay a call.
“It isn’t right,” Paddy said, “though I can see how Freya would have wanted to get away from her mother.”
She must have been torn, but she’d chosen her husband, as she should. She’d chosen to make her own future. As Kate had.
Kate felt a battle of her own right now, between her fear that she’d put their future in danger, and her conviction that Reverend Haugen was murdered not by thieves but by someone right here in Jewel Bay.
One of their neighbors. A hot, sour taste filled her throat.
What if she was right? What if she was wrong?
But she had to put those feelings aside and focus on young Grace. She was just about to ask Paddy what he thought about enlisting her mother and Alice when the door opened. Paddy tucked the corner of his towel into his apron pocket. Kate straightened her spine and readied her face to welcome their customer.
But their visitor was not there to order supplies.
“Paddy,” Deputy Gibson said. “Mrs. Murphy.”
“Aye, Daniel.” Paddy put out his hand and the men shook. “What’s bringing you into the Mercantile today?”
“Is there any news?” Kate asked. “About the murder?”
The deputy deflected her question. “Mrs. Murphy, might I ask you to tell me more about that altercation in the cemetery?”
She glanced at Paddy, who gave her an encouraging nod. She’d told him everything Sunday night, so he wasn’t surprised by the details, or the language, but she could see the protective glower drop over his face.
“I know the man,” Gibson said after she wrapped up her story. “Farms north of town, by the river bend. I suspect his wife dragged him to Sunday services.”
“Why are you asking, Daniel?” Paddy said. “Has something happened?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t involve Henry Clyde. We’ve found the second silver candlestick.”
“Where?” Kate and Paddy spoke at the same time.
Daniel Gibson rubbed his unshaven cheek.
“In Ivan Gregory’s woodpile.” He trained his steady gaze on Kate. “A pile he hired Frank Lang to stack.”
∞
Kate was grateful to have no students that afternoon. She knew she ought to go see Anne Lang, but feared her presence would be unwelcome, even though she’d done her best to intervene when Henry Clyde confronted Frank. Though Gibson had questioned Frank, he had not arrested him. He’d told his boss that he couldn’t spare the time from his other duties to haul him thirty miles to the jail in Pondera. The real reason, he’d told Kate and Paddy, was that Frank’s stammer and limp and the accusation that he’d killed a man of the cloth would make him an easy target of the other prisoners.
How long he could keep Frank out of jail, Gibson hadn’t wanted to guess. Most likely, the sheriff would overrule the decision, even though Frank’s damaged leg meant he couldn’t escape without help. Even so, the delay was a relief. Kate didn’t know if Gibson possessed a tender side she had not seen until now, or was motivated by his admiration for Anne.
Did it matter why you did the right thing, as long as you did it?
She’d stayed in the shop the rest of the afternoon, helping Paddy, though both were subdued. A few customers had heard the news and offered their theories. Why, one wondered, had Gregory hired Frank to stack the wood, a job his nephew could have done? So the boy could focus on his schoolwork, Kate supposed, since that was th
e reason he spent the week in town. Plenty of work to do on weekends at his parents’ homestead. She’d almost bitten her tongue half through when a man in a dirty coverall said, “That’s the thanks you get for hiring an idiot.” Paddy, bless him, had told the man to take his purchases and leave.
By unspoken agreement, Kate and Paddy said nothing when Grace arrived after school, smiling, with a new book a teacher had lent her. Not Miss Lang, who had been absent this afternoon. Kate offered the girl her choice from the penny candy jars, and she chose a long stick of hard candy, which turned her tongue purple.
Not until they were home did Kate tell her about the discovery of the candlestick and the fear that Frank Lang had killed her father.
“But that can’t be,” Grace protested. “Frank respected my father. He helped out at the church whenever he could, making small repairs or stacking wood.”
“To some, that means Frank would have known exactly how and where to hide the candlesticks.”
Grace’s hands flew to her mouth. “But why? Why would he do that?”
“I don’t believe it either. But people are ready to think the worst of him because of his condition.” Kate paused, wanting to get the words right. “Some think Frank knew of your father’s fondness for Anne and feared that if she married him, he, Frank, would be left on his own.”
“Miss Lang would never have done that! Papa would never have wanted her to!”
Kate was surprised. “Did your father speak to you about Miss Lang?”
“Not in that way,” Grace said, her pale cheeks pinking. “But he enjoyed her company, and I thought he might want to marry her. She would have been a wonderful mother, I think, as good as my real mother. And Papa was the kindest, gentlest soul, Kate. He would never have thrown Frank out.”