Indigo Christmas (24 page)

“Is something the matter, Mrs. Cavanaugh?”

“No, sir. nothing.” Her feelings were too complicated to explain. She wasn't sure she understood them herself.

The mayor waved the two men to chairs and then said, “now. What can I do for you today?”

At a nod from Patrick, Dan explained the situation. “And what we'd like to know is, where did the police get that pocket-knife? Sounds to us like there's funny business goin' on.”

The mayor looked grave. “Mrs. Cavanaugh, what exactly did the fireman say to you about the knife?”

Hilda repeated the conversation as nearly as she could remember, and added, “It did not seem likely to him that the police and fire inspectors would have overlooked the knife the first time they examined the remains of the fire. And it does not seem likely to me, either. And, Mr. Mayor, I am certain that Sean—that Mr. O'Neill found that billfold the way he said he did, and that there was no money in it. So why would he have set the fire? even if he could have done so, working all the time a quarter mile away?” Her voice had become vehement. She cleared her throat. “I am sorry, sir. I did not mean to become angry. But it does seem that the police had no reason to hold Sean, and no other suspect, so it is very—very
convenient
that they found this knife when they did.” She hoped it was the right word.

“Hmm.” The mayor frowned, picked up a pencil, and began drawing little circles on his desk blotter. “Yes. Hmm.”

Dan Malloy was getting red in the face again. “now look here, ed,” he began.

Hilda's eyes grew wide. She, too, was irritated, but calling the mayor by his first name!

“Don't blow a gasket, Dan. That temper's not good for your health. Molly'd have my head if I let you get so mad in my office you dropped dead of a heart attack. I'm thinkin', that's all.” Mayor Fogarty drew a few more circles, puffed out his cheeks, pursed his lips.

Then he stood up, when Hilda was ready to scream with impatience. “All right. It wants explaining. I'd better go talk to the chief. Any of you want to come along?”

Hilda shook her head. The police chief didn't like her, nor she him. They had crossed swords more than once, particularly a while back when Uncle Dan had disappeared, under false suspicion of murder. It was better to let the mayor handle this confrontation.

Patrick looked at his uncle. Dan heaved a sigh. “Ah, I'd just lose me temper. Better you do it, ed. Mind you rake the fellow over the coals, though!”

“I'll get the truth out of him,” said the mayor grimly, “but I'll do it my own way. You'll be at the store?”

“All afternoon. What with business as slow as it is, I'll be twiddlin' me thumbs waitin' for you to show up with news.”

Hilda went back to the store with them. There was, after all, shopping to do. Her heart wasn't in it, but she bought the muffler for Patrick and some cologne for Aunt Molly. Her own family didn't want expensive presents, though Hilda longed to give them some pretty things. She compromised on warm, attractive shawls for Mama and the older girls and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs for the younger ones. Erik was easy; he'd wanted really good ice skates for a long time. Sven, as usual, was almost impossible. Mama knitted him all the mufflers and mittens and caps he needed, and he had no time for such things as skating. His only pipe was a cherished companion of many years; he wouldn't care for another one. She browsed various departments, seeing nothing suitable, and at last gave up. There was still time before Christmas, and her mind was with the mayor and the chief of police.

Well, there
was
another problem she could deal with. She went upstairs to Uncle Dan's office, where she found him staring into space. “No word,” he said when she came in.

“No. I knew you would tell me if he called you on the telephone, and I would have seen him if he came in the door. I have been watching. No, I came to ask you about gifts for the Boys' Club Christmas party. There are so many boys, about three hundred I think, and I do not know how we can raise enough money in such a short time to buy the food and give them presents, too.”

Dan chuckled, a sound with little humor in it. “Welcome to the world of ladies doing good! If I had a nickel for every do-gooder who's done me out of me money or me merchandise, now, I'd be a wealthy man.”

Hilda studied his face for a moment and then ventured, “Uncle Dan, you
are
a wealthy man.”

“Ah, called me bluff, have you?” His laughter this time was genuine. “All right, all right, they've not beggared me yet. You tell me what you want of me, and I'll see what I can do.”

“I have a list,” said Hilda. “I do not expect you to give us the things, but maybe you could sell them to us at a good price? And I thought perhaps you could ask for some sleds from someone. Is there not a company in town that makes them? And—do you know any of the owners of South Bend Toy? Because it would be wonderful if they would give us a wagon, maybe two. I know they are expensive, but—”

Dan Malloy's secretary tapped on the door and opened it. “The mayor is here to see you, sir.”

“Thank you, Sadie. Come in, Ed, and have a seat. No, stay, Hilda. This is more your problem than mine. And Sadie, ask Mr. Patrick to join us.”

The mayor tipped his hat to Hilda, waited until Patrick had come in and they had seated themselves, and then sat down and took out a cigar. “You don't mind if I smoke, do you, Mrs. Cava-naugh?”

Hilda, who hated the smell of cigar smoke, knew when to insist on her way and when to give in. She smiled and shook her head, but Dan spoke up. “But I mind, Ed. So does Sadie. She says the smell never gets out of the office and even drifts down to the sales floors. The ladies don't want to buy dress goods and linens that stink like a men's club. So what do you have to tell us?”

The mayor grimaced, but put the cigar back in his breast pocket. “Don't be tellin' my wife that. I've convinced her it's the best smell in the world. Well, I've been to see the chief, and unless he and Applegate and two of his officers are lyin' themselves blue in the face, they did find that knife in the ashes of the barn this mornin'.”

“But why?” Hilda burst out. “It makes no sense! Why would they decide to drive out there on a morning when the roads are deep with snow and it is bitter cold, to look again at what they have already looked at carefully?”

“That's just what I asked him,” said the mayor with satisfaction. “Told him it looked fishy to me. And do you know what he told me?”

Since they obviously did not know, all three of them just looked at him.

“He told me he got a tip.”

Hilda frowned.

“A piece of information. A suggestion,” Patrick translated. “What kind of tip, sir?”

“A letter. Unsigned, of course. They always are. Said the police had better look through those ashes again, because they—whoever wrote the letter—knew Sean O'Neill set the fire and knew he was missing something he always carried. They figured he'd lost it when he set that barn on fire. So the chief took some of his boys out first thing this morning, and sure enough. There was that knife.”

“Where was the letter mailed? And when?” asked Hilda, trying to comprehend this unbelievable thing.

“Wasn't mailed. Stuck through the letter drop at the police station yesterday afternoon late, but they couldn't do anything about it till today.”

“And when was the last time anybody looked in that same spot before?” asked Dan, his jaw thrust forward pugnaciously.

“Asked 'em that, too. That was when the chief got a little cagey. See, he had to either admit they didn't do such a good job lookin' before, or admit it looked funny findin' the knife now. So he said they'd looked, real carefully, a couple of weeks ago when Jenkins's brother first cried murder. But, he said, there was all that strong wind on Tuesday with the blizzard and all, and probably things shifted some and this was buried before so they couldn't find it.”

They were all silent, thinking. Finally Dan said, “And you believed him?”

“I believe he did what he said, and found what he said. I don't believe, any more than you do, that this-here knife was there before. I believe somebody planted it and then wrote that note. And it must be awful important to them, because the only time they could have done it was yesterday or the day before, and the chief said it was as much as the police could do to get out there and back this mornin', with a sleigh and four good strong horses. And that's with most of the roads in town cleared.”

“Did they see any sign of anyone going before them? Hoof prints, the marks of sleigh runners?” asked Dan.

“Not a thing. The chief pretended he believed that meant the knife had been there all along, but he really believes the same as I do, that some durn fool went out there in that blizzard and the snow covered up all their tracks. And that means somebody risked their life, not to mention the lives of their horses, to do it.”

“Someone had to steal Sean's knife,” said Hilda, thinking hard. “And it must have been during the blizzard, because he went home early that day and changed his clothes, and then went out in the storm to look for a job. After that he came to our house to see Norah and the baby, and then the storm got so bad he didn't leave again until they arrested him this morning.”

“According to the chief, O'Neill's story is that he went home to clean up a bit after workin'. He says he was in a hurry because he wanted to get to as many places as he could before they closed, and maybe he forgot to put the knife back in his pocket. And then he forgot about it, what with the storm gettin' so bad and all. He acted real broke up about losin' it, claims he's had it since the fire and other people have seen him with it. He wanted the police to give it back to him, claimed again he was never near the barn till after the fire started. Made sense to me.”

“So you told the police to let him go?” said Hilda eagerly.

 “No.” The mayor settled back into his chair and took his cigar out of his pocket.

?
No?
But you said—”

“I think he's an innocent man, and he's been set up for this.” All trace of the mayor's folksy Irish accent was gone. “I also think the safest place for him right now is the city jail. As long as— whoever it is—thinks Sean's under suspicion, they won't try to get him. We let him out, the murderer feels threatened again, and who knows what they might do? As long as Sean O'Neill is alive, he can tell his story, and might think of something that would lead the police to the truth. And that's why he's going to stay right where he is until the chief gets those boys of his off their—er—chairs and out working to find out what really happened.”

“And what,” said Hilda, her Swedish lilt coming to the fore, “am I to tell Norah when she asks me what I do to free her husband?”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Cavanaugh, but you can't tell her anything. No one must know that the police believe Sean to be innocent.”

Women, who are, beyond all doubt,
the mothers of all mischief…

—R. D. Blackmore
    Lorna Doone
, 1869

 

 

25

P
ATRICK WENT HOME with Hilda. “She needs you more than I do this minute, me boy,” said Uncle Dan. “It'll not be such a pleasant time she'll be havin' at home, I reckon.”

If Hilda had known just how unpleasant it was to be, she might have elected to stay with the Malloys for a while. But she was mildly optimistic. “norah is still not well enough to get really angry,” she said to Patrick as O'Rourke drove them through the frosty twilight. “I will tell her part of the truth, that I do not think it will be long before Sean is free. She will not be happy, but she will think of the baby and she will be reasonable.”

That was reckoning without Norah's mother.

Mrs. Murphy was standing in the hall when Hilda and Patrick approached the front porch. They could hear her through the stout oak door.

“…come to take my daughter and her babe, and no chit of a girl like you is goin' to stop me!”

Hilda hesitated, her hand on Patrick's arm, but he covered her hand with his own and led her up the steps and into the house.

In the entryway, with only the inner door between, the voices were much louder. “But ma'am,” pleaded little Eileen, “the nurse and the doctor both, they say she isn't to be moved, 'specially not in this cold. And Mrs. Cavanaugh—”

Hilda opened the door and stepped into the hall. “Mrs. Cavanaugh is here,” she said. “Thank you, Eileen. Please go and telephone the doctor. Mr. Cavanaugh and I will speak to Mrs. Murphy.”

“And there's no need for that,” said that good lady, hands on hips, her hat askew, her shawl dragging on the floor, her face red in the warm hall. “I've done all the talkin' I'm goin' to. I'm takin' me daughter and me granddaughter home with me, and that's flat!”

“Indeed you are not going to do any such thing.” A new combatant entered the fray, nurse Pickerell marching down the stairs, disapproval written in every line of her face. “And you will please stop shouting. Mrs. O'Neill is asleep, as is the baby, and I cannot have you disturbing them.”

“I'll not be ordered about by you or anybody else,” roared Mrs. Murphy. “Is this a free country, or isn't it?”

A lusty wail issued from somewhere upstairs. The nurse glanced up, a ferocious frown on her face, but stood her ground. “now see what you've done! You've gone and wakened the baby. If you insist on screaming, will you
please
go into the kitchen to do it!”

“Oh, so you think the likes of me belong in the kitchen, do you! Well, let me just tell you a thing or two, you jumped-up hussy, think you're so fine in that apron and that silly hat, when everybody knows a nurse is the one what carries the slops and—”