A Mischief in the Snow (19 page)

“Seven weeks ago?” Longfellow interrupted.

“We have all been busy in Boston lately, with many insisting their business be concluded before the revenue stamps arrived.”

“Of course,” said Longfellow. “But will you tell us who the final will names as her heir?”

“Soon… very soon,” the lawyer replied. His smile did not seem altogether happy. “There are things I must learn first. The interests of others are bound to be involved.”

“Perhaps we can help. You realize this situation could have a bearing on a murder,” Longfellow added, watching the lawyer's face carefully.

“Soon,” Reed repeated gently. “It's all that I'll promise, at the moment.”

“But the second will,” said Diana. “Do you suspect Catherine Knowles might
not
have sent it to you?”

“I think that she did, Mrs. Montagu; but I would like to question Magdalene on this point, as well. When she is ready.”

Longfellow rose and walked to the tall window that faced west, toward the village. Tonight no light was visible, but by the reflected glow from the house he could see snow eddying as it came over the rooftop, and around the corners. To the east, he imagined, it would be even worse.

“This is all very interesting,” he said finally, “but I suspect we'll get no further tonight. And there is no improvement in the weather,” he added to John Dudley. The constable leaped to his feet.

“I must be going. I may have to stay in the village after all.”

“As I've offered Mr. Reed a bed here, you might take his, John, at Reverend Rowe's.”

“Or I might make my way to the Blue Boar. That would save the preacher trouble.”

“And make Phineas Wise glad, I'm sure,” Longfellow returned. “I'll see you out.”

Moses Reed stayed with Diana, although he respected her silence with his own. When his host returned, the attorney left sister and brother to sit together, saying he
would speak with Lem in the kitchen and give him the latest news.

“Someone will pay for Godwin's murder, I suppose?” Diana then asked, her voice weary.

“If we can find him,” said Longfellow. He, too, found the thought an unpleasant one.

“Richard, I hoped earlier that I could be of some help to you, in seeking some sort of justice. But after all that I've seen today, it seems to me I've had too much of death lately. All that I truly wish—”

“I know, Diana. I know. It's anything but easy. Yet whatever happens next, we'll face it together. Until something better comes along.”

“I hope it won't be long. If only Edmund—”

She suddenly seemed to fade, as she'd often done in the last week. He was about to say more to distract her, when his eyes shifted.

Had something moved, out in the snow?

There, through the dark window, he saw the ghost of someone coming along, making a path through the new drifts. Who could have come out of his barn on a night like this?

“Diana,” Longfellow said with a twisting smile, “I think we're in for another surprise.”

“Oh, what now?” she asked, trying to restrain her tears.

She might soon shed a bucketful if she wished, her brother told himself. “I'll be back in a moment,” he added aloud, leaving her.

Diana sank back into her chair once more, and drew a handkerchief from her bodice. Down the corridor, she heard the front door open. From the entry hall came a muttering of voices and her brother's ringing laughter, which jarred her. Neither did whoever had entered share
his mirth—but that did not stop it. Another peal broke out, and then she heard Richard's heels clicking as he came toward the study. Behind him, someone shuffled feet that were far heavier.

Longfellow entered and stood to one side.

“You have a visitor, madam,” he said, extending a hand. What she saw next frightened her, for it was more a bundle than a man, covered by a cracking layer of snow. He flung his cloak open, and threw off his hat.

“Edmund!” she cried, running into her husband's quivering arms.

“My love,” he said with something that sounded like a sob, though Longfellow assumed the captain's voice had merely been muffled by his wife's neck, onto which his lips had fallen.

“Now it is my turn to go,” said Richard Longfellow, relieved to do so. Quietly, he shut the door on their renewed happiness, and went to see how affairs progressed in the kitchen.

T
HE FIRE IN
the farmhouse kitchen had fallen to a comfortable glow, as occasional tongues of flame rose above the red remains of logs. Together for several hours, the two women at the hearth enjoyed a companionable silence.

Earlier, they had spoken while Charlotte prepared a supper of eggs and cod, to be followed by a pudding of apples and currants. Magdalene Knowles had walked along the walls, softly touching the china teapot on the sideboard, a polished silver tray, the glazed crock containing dried beans. At last she'd seated herself to stare at the long hunting gun that hung above the fire. Occasionally, she reached a hand to Orpheus, who kept one eye open.

Now Charlotte sat as well. She recalled Diana's warning, then Magdalene's responses to her own brief questions. These had been answered with the directness of a child. Seeking to establish the extent of the woman's understanding, she'd learned that her guest was anything but stupid, whenever her attention could be captured and
held. However, it soon seemed to return to a place within her—something Charlotte supposed was not surprising, when one considered Magdalene's life had been more solitary than if she'd lived within a convent's walls.

“Do you have a favorite kind of work?” she asked, after speaking of her own delight in her plantings.

“I ply my needle, to keep our clothes. We have no garden.”

Of course, thought Charlotte, for where would they have put one? Magdalene had said, though, that she enjoyed walking about the island, so she must have watched many things grow. Did she also know the place had an odd reputation? Surely, she must have seen the boars. Had she no fear of them? Later, perhaps, she might ask.

“Would you like to help me in my garden one day?” she tried. Magdalene seemed unable to imagine such a thing. It would be a pleasure, in a few months’ time, to show her Longfellow's roses.

Charlotte next decided that she must inquire, after all, about that morning.

Magdalene showed no reluctance. She described Lem as he'd appeared at the front door. She had taken him to Catherine, as she'd recently taken Charlotte in. He told them Alexander was dead. Catherine then put him to work. Magdalene went out for a walk as she did each day. She knew nothing more of what went on in the house until she approached it again, and heard Lem calling her. By then he had wrapped Catherine in blankets, and told her to gather a few things of her own, which might serve as the old lady's pillow. He told her they would walk over the ice to the village. It was something she'd often longed to do, but could not.

When asked why that was, her guest became evasive for the first time. Was it, Charlotte asked, because Mrs.

Knowles would not allow it? Magdalene nodded, and added something more.

“How could I go? I had to wait for him.” This she would not clarify. Charlotte decided to ask nothing else until she could make more sense of what she already knew.

Only Lem and Magdalene had been on the island when Catherine fell into the fire. If it had been no more than that, there would be nothing else to do about it. But the woman had accused someone of pushing her. Such an action would have amounted to murder. Who could have wished her dead?

Catherine surely possessed a heightened sense of her own importance in the world; no doubt she'd also formed strong opinions about a number of things. Her outward manner had not been pleasant—yet her description of her marriage gave some indication of why she had become embittered. Perhaps it had done more than that? Had Catherine been entirely sane before she died? Since she'd lived with no restraints, and with only one companion of limited abilities, it would hardly have been noticed, had her mind become unbalanced.

The same, she supposed, could be said of Magdalene.

Still, Catherine could have stumbled, causing her own death. Dying, though, she had spoken as if she were
sure.
Had she been pushed after all? Who could have done it? Not Lem, of course—and no one would imagine he'd had a motive. Even if Old Cat had baited him, as she'd enjoyed teasing Alexander Godwin. Even if Lem had taken offense and lost his temper, and then—?

Could Magdalene have been capable of such a thing? It was true she'd had a long and difficult servitude. Might she have been overcome, in the end, by an urge to give one savage thrust? Had she the ability to plan? What if
she'd somehow come back into the house quietly, meaning to blame someone else for the old woman's death once she'd accomplished it herself? Could Magdalene be clever? No—a woman able to plan would have left Boar Island long before this! Today, she'd not found it difficult to walk to the village.

You, madam, you… find out if the boy was… if… the boy…

Alex Godwin was dead. What other boy was there but Lem? Catherine had not been off the island for years. Who else, Charlotte wondered, might have gone there lately, and especially this morning?

Once again she considered the spoon, and the canvas bag taken up by Constable Dudley, after Lem had put it down by the fire. Might Dudley have carried it off for a reason? As soon as he returned home, the spoons were discovered in their usual place in Rachel Dudley's locked cupboard. If, as Charlotte already suspected, Dudley had first taken the spoons himself, and then lost the one she'd found, he must have decided the best thing to do would be to retrieve the rest. Had someone near the bonfire slipped them into the bag, then, with a nod to alert him?

But it wasn't only the spoons—a good deal of silver, and some pewter too, had gone missing in the last several weeks, in Bracebridge and beyond. What had become of it all? Had it been taken to Boston? If so, why had she found a piece of it on Boar Island?

Lem had told her he'd once been to the island, but he'd discouraged her from returning—as had Ned and Jonah. Hadn't he withheld something else from her lately? For one thing, there was the fact that he was fond of visiting the Bigelows.

Lem had also said there was a house in a hidden part of the island. Hannah had mentioned fires in the night, and
phantom torches bobbing along the shoreline. Recently, these occurrences seemed to have increased.

What else might happen to a set of spoons, once they were sold? A caudle bowl, part of a silver tea set, a box full of shillings? Melt them down, add some pewter from an old porringer, a dented mug or two, and what would you have then? Something less than silver. And yet, perhaps something more?

Was
this
what some men in Bracebridge had been doing lately, keeping it to themselves? Hadn't their wives seen something unusual going on, without being able to put a finger on it? Could Longfellow know? Was that why he'd been avoiding her? And what if Lem and Ned, too—? Did they sometimes meet on Boar Island, a place Alex Godwin visited regularly? She'd supposed he only went up the path to the stone house, and back down again. But what if Alex had begun to suspect something else was happening on another part of the island? Might he have told Catherine Knowles of his suspicions? Or had someone decided to prevent him from doing so?

Her head reeling, Charlotte looked to Magdalene. She had taken daily walks about the place. Might she have known what went on? She must have! But had she the sense to realize it was not only unusual, but against the law? It seemed she'd told Catherine Knowles nothing about it. Did she enjoy keeping secrets?

Magdalene raised her eyes from the fire, sensing something new in the air. And Charlotte began to pose a new series of questions.

“Magdalene, do you recall seeing men on your island?”

“Once, many came. They sang… danced… fought. They came to kill the boars. Then they went away.”

“But recently?”

“There was one…”

“Within the past year?”

“One who came for me. He promised to return.”

For years, according to Catherine Knowles, Magdalene had waited patiently at the cliff's edge for a lover. Had there been such a man, long ago?

“Magdalene, what was his name?”

“She won't allow it! I can never speak of him. When he looked at me, when he touched me, then, how his eyes would dance! But I know… I'll see him no more. His eyes—his eyes are now my son's.”

“You have a son!”

Magdalene turned, her own eyes wide. “
He
has come back to me,” she insisted. “But please, you mustn't say. She would send him away.”

“Magdalene, you do know… that Catherine Knowles is dead?”

“But now that I am here, how will he know where to find me?”

Magdalene sank back. She shook her head slowly, as if she felt the return of a familiar, coursing pain.

Charlotte became aware of a drop in the wind's savage roar. Now it almost sobbed along the eaves. Enticingly, it began to whisper…

Some time later, she looked up to see Magdalene watching the flicker of the fire, her eyes staring, her hands folded in her lap. Loss, thought Charlotte, was something about which she herself knew a great deal. And yet, her own had been nothing like this.

Nothing at all