Horse With No Name (4 page)

Betty kissed her husband goodbye, which made
Julia avert her eyes, and the two women proceeded down Main Street
toward Hunter's little house that was tucked away in the street
just behind his shop.

Doctor Parker had set Hunter's arm in a
splint. He said the break wasn't too bad and that Hunter should
regain the use of the arm in no time. Julia assumed this was a huge
relief to Hunter. A watchmaker with only one working arm was like a
clock with just one hand.

"Yoo hoo! Mr. Hunter!" Betty called as she
tapped gently on the front door and then opened it without waiting.
Julia loved her friend's implacable friendliness. It was totally
without guile and one of Julia's favorite things about Mrs.
Mitchell. It would never occur to Betty that someone might not
appreciate her barging into their home. In her mind, she was there
on a mission of goodwill and closed doors didn't mean much to her
in that case.

"Hello?" the querying voice came from the
back of the house, unsure of itself.

"Mr. Hunter, it's Betty Mitchell and Julia
Thom. We're here with provisions. May we come in?" Betty was
already standing in the front hall, eyeing the kitchen.

There was some rustling and a thump from the
bedroom and then Hunter appeared in the doorway, clad in a striped
dressing gown over what appeared to be a long nightshirt. His hair
was rumpled from his pillow and he held the splinted arm gingerly
with the other.

"Um..." he said, looking confused.

"Don't fight it, Mr. Hunter," Julia said,
smiling at him. "You'll not win. We won't stay long. We just
brought you some bread and scones, and some of Christopher
Mitchell's famous venison stew."

"I ...uh..." the man blinked several times
but was at a loss for words.

"We'll just put these things in the kitchen,
shall we?" Betty marched off into the small kitchen, and Julia
followed in her wake.

For the next hour Betty bustled about,
lighting the stove to keep the stew warm, tidying and washing the
dirty dishes, and generally making herself very much at home. Julia
soon realized that she would only be in the way, so she asked Mr.
Hunter to join her in the living room where they could chat.

The swelling had gone down around Hunter's
eyes, and they had reopened slightly. His face was several
different shades of blue and purple. There was a cut on his lower
lip that Julia hadn't noticed when she'd been helping him. His
nose, which had been the source of most of the blood at the scene,
was swollen as well, and from where Julia sat, it also looked
slightly crooked now. Although she thought that could just be an
illusion of the swelling.

She got Hunter settled on the sofa, putting a
pillow in his lap to rest his broken arm on. She took the blanket
off his bed and put it over his legs.

"I'm not an old woman," he said, protesting
slightly.

"I know, but let me fuss," Julia said. "You
helped me the other night. Let me return the favor."

Julia's first meeting with Hunter had been a
week earlier. He had come to her house to repair her grandmother
clock, one of the few possessions other than clothes that she had
brought with her from her family home. At the time, while she had
watched him work, she had experienced him as a man who was reserved
to the point of near-muteness. He was polite with her, and very
competent at his job - he had the clock fixed very quickly with
seemingly no difficulty at all - but he seemed decidedly
uncomfortable in her presence.

When they were settled, Julia looked around
the room, which was much like her own little living room; it had a
small parlor stove in one corner, a bookcase against a wall, the
upholstered chair she was sitting in and the two-seater sofa where
Hunter rested. The furniture looked well taken care of, though not
new. And around the room Julia saw several clocks, mounted on the
walls, all ticking gently.

"You'll never be late for anything will you,
Mr. Hunter?" she teased him.

"Hazard of the trade, I'm afraid," he said,
"Every once in a while someone wants to sell a real beauty. They
make a good investment so I buy them, and then I can't seem to
bring myself to sell them." He shrugged, obviously willing to
accept his own weaknesses.

Just for something to say, Julia asked about
the history of the clocks. Hunter spent a very content fifteen
minutes telling her where each one had come from, its pedigree, and
its manufacturer. Even some background on each manufacturer and
where they stood now in the world of clock making.

He glanced at Julia after a story about
pendulums and stopped mid-sentence. "I'm boring you."

"Not at all," Julia lied, "I had no idea the
world of clocks had so much intrigue."

There was a pause and Julia listened to the
clatter of dishes and crockery in the kitchen. She and Mr. Hunter
smiled at each other in a shared moment of chagrin about getting in
Betty Mitchell's way.

Finally Hunter said, “How are you feeling
after your...encounter on Saturday evening?"

Julia shifted in her chair, remembering her
fright on that night, and Mr. Hunter's gallantry.

"I'm sorry," the man said, noticing Julia's
discomfort. "I didn't mean to upset you all over again."

"No, it's no trouble. I just hadn't thought
about it for awhile what with..." she gestured toward Hunter
himself.

Hunter grimaced. "I'm so sorry you had to see
that."

"Please, don't, Mr. Hunter. I am so happy I
came into your shop when I did. I hate to think what would have
happened if I hadn't."

"As do I. Your timing was impeccable." Hunter
paused, thinking. "Did Dr. Parker come to the shop and take me to
the surgery?"

"Don't you remember?"

Hunter shook his head.

"Well, no," Julia explained, "Constable
Merrick and I walked you to his office." Now it was Julia's turn to
ask a question, "Do you know who it was that attacked you?"

Reflexively Hunter reached up and touched his
nose and then pulled his hand away quickly. "I really don't
remember very much."

"Do you think it was the two men who were..."
Julia wasn't sure what word to use, "being so rude to me on the
night of the dance?"

"I don't know, Miss Thom. I really can't say.
The men at the dance were almost impossible for me to see, with the
darkness and the shadows from the trees. Can you remember what they
looked like?"

Julia shook her head. "I just have a vague
impression. It's their voices I remember most. Did your attacker or
attackers speak to you?"

Hunter hesitated slightly, thinking, "My
memory of the event is quite muddled. I really can't remember much
at all."

"Did they steal anything?"

The clockmaker had been looking away in the
middle distance, perhaps remembering the beating. He brought his
eyes back to Julia now. "Anything from the shop?" he asked, seeming
puzzled and then recovering. "Oh. I see what you're asking. Well,
no, I don't think so. But to be honest I haven't been back there
since Dr. Parker brought me home last night."

"I'm sure Constable Merrick will ask you
this, if he hasn't already. But I must ask: do you have any idea
why you were attacked?"

Hunter seemed to be growing increasingly
uncomfortable. He gently raised his broken arm and shifted the
pillow in his lap. Even taking into consideration the bruising
around his eyes, he looked frightfully exhausted. Julia wondered if
he'd slept at all. It couldn't be easy with the arm the way it
was.

Julia stood up, feeling she'd been
insensitive to Mr. Hunter's discomfort. "Do you have any whisky?"
she asked.

Hunter looked at her with a furrowed brow.
"It's not yet noon, Miss Thom."

"Never mind that. You're obviously in
considerable pain."

Hunter pointed to a short, narrow cabinet
that stood in a corner of the room. In it Julia found a small
bottle of whisky. There were no glasses present so she went to the
kitchen to find one. Betty had found an apron and tied it around
her waist. She was stirring the stew and had placed thick slices of
her bread on the kitchen table on a plate. The butter dish was
standing at the ready, as was a bowl for stew. "You can ask Mr.
Hunter to sit up at the table, Julia. It's time to get some food in
him."

Julia took a short glass, which was
delicately etched with a leaf and vine motif, off one of the
shelves and took it back in the living room. She poured a measure
and waited while Hunter drank it.

"Betty says lunch is ready," she said when
Hunter handed her the glass back.

"I confess I'm not all that hungry."

Julia returned the whisky bottle to its
cabinet and turned to face the patient. "I'm not sure that's going
to matter to Mrs. Mitchell," she said, grinning.

***

The watch maker's shop was exactly as Merrick
and Julia had left it the day before. Julia could even see drops of
blood on the floor behind the counter.

Hunter had been falling asleep in his stew
when Betty showed some mercy and let him leave the table without
finishing. She took him to his room, propriety be damned, and
tucked him into his single bed, his arm resting beside him on the
pillow he'd been using in the living room. Something Dr. Parker had
not thought to do the night before.

"Men!" Betty scoffed when she returned to the
kitchen to help Julia wrap up the bread and scones. "Dr. Parker is
an excellent physician but as a nurse he is sorely lacking. Leaving
that man in his bed without any relief for his arm. It's such a
simple thing to do. That pillow makes all the difference to him.
He's asleep already." Betty fussed and muttered, her maternal
instincts getting a rare opportunity to be in full sail.

The ladies left a small fire going in the
stove, and the pot of what stew remained on top, so that Hunter
could have more when he awoke. They had promised Hunter they would
look in on the shop.

The front was tidy, as it had been when Julia
had been there the day before. It was in the back, the workshop
area, where the evidence of the battle that had occurred lay.

Hunter had told them that he had a vague
impression that whoever had attacked him had come in through the
back door that led out onto the laneway that ran behind this row of
shops on Main Street. Hunter had no real use for the lane, as his
deliveries were small and periodic. Unlike the Mitchells, who had a
small paddock for their horse and a parking spot for the delivery
wagon, the back of Hunter's shop was simply a bare patch of dirt
with a dry watering trough set to one side and an outhouse. Julia
and Betty glanced at it briefly and then went back inside.

The workshop bore the evidence of the melee.
Gears and rods and springs were scattered all over the floor like
cherry blossom petals in spring. The two women tip-toed around
them, trying not to crush anything under their buttoned boots. They
spent twenty minutes carefully picking up every piece of hardware
and every tool they could find.

A second table, separate from the one where
Hunter appeared to do most of his work, had been knocked over, and
this seemed to be the source of most of the confettied clock
pieces. Julia and Betty lifted it back into position against the
wall that bordered the front of the shop and put the clock pieces
on it.

Lining the walls of the workshop were shelves
that reached almost to the ceiling. These were filled with small
and larger clocks, either awaiting repair or perhaps awaiting
pick-up by their owners. Smaller shelves over Hunter's workbench
held pocket watches, also in wait of repair or cleaning. Each one
had a small tag attached to it with a string, usually tied around
the chain, with the owner's name written in a neat and precise
script. Julia saw Walt Sheehan's name on one of the watches. Its
face was liberally scratched but when she picked it up and turned
it over she saw that it had a beautiful Celtic cross carved into
the back.

"Look at this," Betty said from behind
her.

Julia put the watch back where it had been,
and joined Betty by the back door. Her friend was standing over a
third, narrow table that stood under the widow on the back wall of
the shop. The window overlooked the lane and provided what Julia
assumed was much-needed light in the space. The three tables in the
workshop were separate but they formed a U-shape in the room,
leaving space in the middle for Hunter's chair. The table Betty
stood beside was only eight inches deep and had two hand-made
wooden trays lying side-by-side on it. The trays were divided into
smaller compartments and each compartment seemed to have a specific
type of gear, spring or mechanical object in it. Julia looked at
the trays, not understanding what Betty wanted her to see.

"No, here." Betty pointed to the floor below
the table. There was a single work glove lying on its back, fingers
slightly curled.

Julia bent down and picked it up. It was
leather and well-worn. There was a hole beginning to form in the
index finger, and the entire thing seemed covered in layers of
stains. Julia imagined it had been the light tan of deerskin
originally.

Together both women scanned the shop for the
glove's mate, but the only other piece of clothing they saw was
Hunter's apron, which was hanging on a hook affixed to the wall
between his primary workbench and the doorway to the front of the
shop.

"That doesn't look like a watchmaker's glove
to me," Betty said.

Julia turned it over in her hands. "Look at
the size of it. Hunter's hands are not even close to being this
big. They're delicate. Perfect for a watchmaker."

The two women raised their heads in concert
and looked at one another. "It was dropped by whoever assaulted
Hunter," Betty said.

Light came into Julia's eyes and she smiled.
"It's a clue."