Working Murder (17 page)

I said: “How old is he? I never did know.”

“Let's see...” Hester slathered more mustard on her sandwich. “He was younger than
Irene—I remember she used to joke about it—and she was my parents' age. I guess he's
middle to late eighties. Of course, they both aged badly after the Ellen thing.”

I sipped my wine. “What do you think happened that night?”

“Well, I know one thing that happened: Those four kids were someplace else besides Bass
Rocks Beach—whoops—here's a napkin.”

The jerk of my hand which splashed the wine down my front was mild compared to the leap
of my mind.
Someplace else besides Bass Rocks Beach
. Now Peggy was back, her step
brisk.

“Mr. Hewitt's awake and heard voices and said he wants to see you.”

Hester stood up. “Take Mrs. Gamadge in, Peggy. I'll bring his tray.”

As we walked through the living room, I said: “Did you tell him my name, Peggy?”

“Yes, I did. He said, ‘Oh, isn't that nice, I thought she was in Florida.' He's quite
clear at the moment, but he goes in and out.”

“He's lucky to have you. I brought the pajamas.”

“Yes, thank you, I saw them. I put them on him. Remind me to give you a check.”

With troopers like Peggy and Hester on hand, Tully's condition was now the least of my
worries. My one desire was to find a quiet table for dinner and pump Hester on
“someplace else besides Bass Rocks Beach.”

Peggy opened the double doors, and I prepared my smile, but it was hard to maintain at
the sight of poor Tully, pitifully changed in the mere few days since I'd seen him. He
looked like a scarecrow in his new blue pajamas, and they were the only bright spot in
the room. He held out his arms to me and said, as I embraced him:

“Clara, I did such a dumb thing. Why didn't May tell me she was sending Ellen's picture?”
His breath came in little gasps. “When I saw that frame I could have been back in May's
living room. I'm afraid I—what do the kids say—‘freaked out.'”

“You certainly did.” I kept smiling. “But that black-and-blue spot on your forehead goes
nicely with your new pajamas.”

Peggy had pulled up a chair for me, one of the old dining room set of which half a dozen
still stood about. She went out and I said:

“Weren't you smart to make this into a bedroom.” I refrained from adding that he might
have removed such cumbersome items as sideboard and table, which he had merely jammed
into a corner. Tully looked as if he were ensconced in a used furniture shop. “By the
way, your nice friend, Hester Connell, picked me up at the station. She's a dear.”

“Yes, isn't she.” Tully looked at me with a clear and intelligent gaze. “Did Henry come
with you?”

It wasn't possible. I hesitated, then said: “No, he and Tina couldn't get away. They sent
their love.”

“I mean your husband.”

I supposed I'd heard that a mind could become compartmentalized, but it was still a
shock. I said: “Tully, Henry's dead.”

“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.” He looked distressed, then added: “I lost Irene, too, you
know. And May died recently. She had Ellen's picture sent to me—did I tell you? I'm
afraid I wasn't expecting it. That's how I got this bruise.” The poor creature looked at
me in perplexity. “I don't understand this. My health has always been so good. I just
said to May this morning that I was fine until she said she was going to look for Ellen.
I'm sure that's what upset me.” Now he smiled brightly. “Did you say Hester brought you?
Is she still here?”

“She sure is.” Hester's voice at the door was a comfort. “And she's got a tray of lunch
you're to eat right now.”

She yanked one of the chairs forward with her foot and sat down beside me. “Pull your
sheet over the blanket, Tully. Not that lunch can do much harm to it. Good God, did this
bedding come from the Ark?”

“I don't want any lunch.” Tully slid down on his pillows and looked into space. “I want
to go out to my garden.”

Hester and I sat there not looking at each other. Then she said:

“If you don't eat you'll never go out there again. You won't have the strength.”

Tully lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly. Hester shrugged and we stood up. His
eyes opened and he smiled at me.

“Clara, you were so nice to come. Bring Henry next time.”

As Hester and I walked to the door, she took a piece of bread from the tray and munched
on it. In the living room Peggy was on the telephone, and I heard the word “oxygen.”

“Good thing, too.” Hester put the tray on the pile of seed catalogues. “The portable
stuff, Peggy?”

“Yes.” Peggy hung up. “He wouldn't use it last time I ordered it. Now he has no choice.
Do you have the sales slip for the pajamas, Mrs. Gamadge?”

“Oh, please.” My depression deepened. “Consider it a gift.”

I walked to the big window that overlooked the garden, vaguely remembering that the ocean
fore and the garden aft had made the place spectacular. Now, with only posts here and
there to define paths, the garden lay sleeping under the snow. The two beautiful spruce
trees that stood at one end, a stone bench between them, were bowed and white.

My eye traveled to a corner of the kitchen porch where a large box leaned against the
railing.

I said: “Hester, we'd better get that crate inside or the portrait will be ruined. It's
Ellen, you know.”

“It's
what
?” Hester, who'd been sipping Tully's soup, walked to the window.

“It's a portrait of Ellen when she was a child. It always hung in her parents' home. He
recognized the frame.”

“For pity's sake. So that's what did it. What shall we do with it?” She looked around.
“One more thing in here, and we can rent the place out for a horror movie.”

I said: “I think we should hang it.”

“
Hang
it? My God, if the frame alone sent him into a tailspin ... Of course, poor
Tully will probably never come in this room again—but”—she gazed at the walls—"where?”

“Right there.” I pointed to where a scattering of family pictures hung tipsily. “It
belongs here. This house was as much Ellen's home as the one next door.”

“True enough.”

“I'll pay somebody tomorrow to come put it up.” I felt a sort of elation. Ellen was home
again.

“Hester, I'm going to take you up on your offer to stay with you.”

“I'm delighted, Mrs. Gamadge.”

“Clara.”

I HAD NEVER BEEN IN THE SEASIDE TOWN OF Rockport, which, Hester told me, suffered being
described variously as “arty,” “charming,” and “picturesque.”

It could have been all those things as far as I was concerned. My preoccupation, as we
sat that evening in a nice restaurant overlooking the town beach, was whether or not to
level with Hester. Would my questions regarding Ellen be purposeful or academic? I
decided on the latter as Hester read aloud from the menu, recommended the swordfish, and
ordered it. This was a family matter. I wanted to do what my husband had always done, go
quietly about my investigations and keep them to myself or even abandon them. What Henry
and Tina did in New York was their business and their right. But here, where the story
had happened and was still open-ended, I felt a distaste, even a dread, of making my
intentions known.

Hester produced a bottle of wine from a paper bag. “Welcome to the quaint customs of a
dry town. You can't buy it here, but you can bring it. Shades of Hannah Jumper.”

“Who's she?”

“Big temperance lady back in the nineteenth century. Got all the Rockport women out with
axes to smash the rum kegs and the town's been dry ever since. Of course, the amount of
liquor consumed here would fill a quarry—and that reminds me to answer your question
about Ellen Dawson.”

I was afraid she'd forgotten it, and I didn't want to appear to press. “What question?
Oh, yes, about where she'd been that night other than the beach.”

“She'd been at the quarry. Flat Ledge Quarry. All those kids had.”

I repeated blankly: “The quarry. Flat Ledge Quarry.”

“Take you there after dinner if you like.” Hester popped the cork and filled our glasses.
“All the young people, including me, used to swim in the quarries. Kids still do. It's
forbidden, of course, and risky as hell, but fun—especially at night. Especially Flat
Ledge. Try the wine.”

I did, grateful not to have to speak for a few seconds. Then I said: “Delicious. Nice and
dry. How do you know she was there?”

“Saw her.”

I took another sip and laughed a little laugh. “Now, Hester, you've thoroughly aroused my
curiosity. No fair stopping there.”

“OK. A short lecture first—it's the schoolteacher in me.” Hester put her elbows on the
table, her wineglass in both hands. “One of the early industries of this town was
quarrying. A quarry is what they call ‘working' until the blasters hit water. For years,
even decades, they blast and blast, and then one day spring water gushes up, and that's
the end of that one. There haven't been any working quarries in Rockport for over fifty
years. They're all filled with lovely spring water. Some of them have even become
private swimming clubs. They're very deep and very dangerous.”

“Sounds exotic.”

“I used to have my kids in school write an essay on the place in Rockport they liked
best.” Hester smiled into her wine. “A bright little girl once wrote, ‘At night the
quarry looks like a scene from
The Arabian Nights
.' Judy, you're a wonder. We're
starving.”

The waitress put steaming plates before us and said:

“I told Kenny to give you and your friend ‘specially nice pieces, Miss Connell.”

“Kenny still here? I thought he went in the Navy. This is Mrs. Gamadge—Judy Purcell—had
her in school.”

I smiled at Judy, wondering if there was anybody in town Hester hadn't had in school.

“He's going next week,” said Judy. “I'll get your rolls.”

I said: “Hester, I've read practically every account of the night Ellen Dawson
disappeared. Nowhere have I seen anything about a quarry.”

“Of course you haven't. Because I promised her. Tell you about it when we go up there.
Right now we should settle something about Tully: He's going to need a third nurse.
There's Peggy, and one at night, and I've been taking the early morning shift—”

“Hester, you haven't!” I laid down my fork in dismay.

“It hasn't killed me—it's only been for the last two days—but I can't keep it up, I'm too
old. Besides—I'll be honest—I don't want to be there when the poor guy dies. Will you
authorize the expense for the third nurse?”

“I thought he authorized all expenses himself.”

“Yes, but are his funds without limit? Suppose the checkbook runs out. Do you know
anything about his finances?”

“Nothing.” I felt inadequate in the face of Hester's competence. Dragging my thoughts
from quarries, I added, “I'll talk to his lawyer tomorrow. Do you know who it is?”

“Sam Venner. Same as mine.”

I became brisk. “One thing is certain—tomorrow
I
take the early shift.”

“Nonsense—”

“And the minute I finish this fabulous swordfish, I'm going to the phone to call my
daughter. Thanks to you, she can cancel my room at the Parker House. And I don't want to
hear another word about tomorrow morning. I truly want to do it. What time does the
night nurse leave?”

“Don't gag. Five a.m.”

I gagged.

Rockport did indeed look “picturesque” in the snowy winter dusk as we walked back to
Hester's snug, clapboard house on a hilly side street. Her monstrous car stood in the
driveway.

“Hop in,” said Hester, “and we'll go quarrying.”

“I can't wait.” I never meant anything more. “How many quarries are there?”

“Half a dozen or more. Some big, some little. Flat Ledge is the most spectacular, to my
mind.”

“That's where Ellen was swimming.”

“Hold on—I didn't say
she
was swimming.” Hester backed out of the driveway and
into a snowbank. “Damn.” She pitched out of it. “This is a one-way street, thank
heaven.”

Thank heaven indeed. We more or less careened down it and onto Main Street.

“How far?” I asked.

“Less than a mile.”

Less than a mile from these guest houses and gift shops to something worthy of
The
Arabian Nights
? We skirted a beach and went up an incline past a row of
undistinguished houses to a stone bridge. Hester pulled in tight against the bordering
snow.

“I'll put my blinkers on, but we can't stay long, nothing can pass us. If you suffer from
vertigo don't go farther than the bridge. Let's move.”

I clambered from the car, she took my arm, and we walked across the frozen street to the
bridge and looked over.

A meteorite, rather than men, might have made it. A half-mile wide? Jagged, sheer,
snow-etched granite sides plunged to a pool of black water at the bottom. An early moon
trembled there. How deep? I must have murmured the last aloud.

“God knows,” said Hester. “More damn drownings in these places. But you can imagine how
thrilling to splash around down there.”

“You said Ellen wasn't swimming.”

“No. Blast this snow. It's hard to envision what happened on a summer night fifty years
ago. We'd better get back in the car. I think I hear the snow plow.”

We drove across the bridge, and Hester pulled into somebody's driveway. The plow rumbled
by, and she pulled out again. We moved slowly back across the bridge.

“See that fence? The old one was flimsier. We used to crawl under it and slip and slide
down the rocks, they're not as sheer on this side. That stone building”—it loomed across
the bridge—"was the only one here. It was the old quarry office. There wasn't much else
but fields between here and the ocean.”