Murder in Burnt Orange (6 page)

“Who are they?” asked Hilda eagerly.

“I tell you, we don't know. They give names like Schmidt and Sovinski and Svenson, but they are not German or Polish or Swedish, this I know. And worse, Hilda, there have been accidents. Oh, nothing serious,” he said when Hilda looked alarmed. “A few gallons of paint disappear and then are found where they don't belong. A cart is left in a dark corner where someone can trip over it, and someone does, and cuts his head. Tools are found in someone's pocket, never the same person twice, never someone who would have any reason to steal them. It is all just—odd. And I do not like it.”

As if the storms could give repose...

—Mikhail Lermontov, “A Sail,” 1841

Mama was strict about mealtime conversation, especially on a Sunday. It was to be cheerful and uplifting. So there was no talk about the wreck or the fire until dinner was over and everyone was sitting, stuffed to the eyebrows, in whatever shade they could find. Hilda wanted a nap, but she wanted even more to hear everything Sven could tell her.

“Sven, if it was the brakes, who could have done that? And when?”

“We have thought about that, all of us who work there. It must have been done after the last stop, and that would have been Mishawaka—it was coming from the east.”

“At the Woolen Mills, I suppose. But Mishawaka, that is only a few miles away. Why would the train have been going so fast?”

“The men say maybe someone damaged the air hoses while the train was stopped in Mishawaka. That would mean that the train would just go faster and faster, and the engineer wouldn't be able to slow it down at all. Mishawaka lies a little higher than South Bend, you know, so the train would get up speed going downhill, and—”

“But that is a terrible thing! Anyone might have been killed, at a crossing, or around a curve!”

“Mind, Hilda, we do not know that is what happened. But we cannot think how else the train might have derailed. It is fortunate that the fire was not worse, and that more people did not die.” He looked at her very seriously, glanced over at Mama, dozing under a nearby tree, and switched from the Swedish he had been speaking to English. “My sister, I know Mama asked you to study these things. But you understand, now, that if evil men did what we think, they have no respect at all for life. They are wicked and malicious. It is better that you leave it alone.”

The baby gave Hilda a vigorous kick just then. Hilda sighed and put her hands protectively over her swollen belly. “Everyone says the same thing, everyone except Mama and Aunt Molly. I think maybe they wanted me only not to think so much about myself. I have done that. I am much better, even though it is still so hot I cannot breathe. Maybe I will do what everyone says and not try anymore to find out what has happened with the wrecks. Probably I could do nothing anyway.”

* * *

Later she thought that she had meant it, at the time. And she might have kept to her do-nothing plan, if it hadn't been for the next thing that happened.

* * *

It didn't happen immediately. That hot Sunday was followed by more hot, airless days. Fans waved, dusty trees drooped, day followed oppressive day. Hilda woke, dressed, ate, read the newspaper, napped, and wished the baby would hurry up. Her temper was greatly improved, but she was bored nearly to tears.

Patrick fretted at the lack of business at the store, but Uncle Dan wasn't worried. “It'll pick up as soon as the heat breaks, and it's got to, soon.”

A week went by. Tuesday, July 4, dawned hotter than ever, with a gray-green sky that seemed to put a heavy lid on the stifling air. “Glad we're not doin' a picnic today,” Patrick commented as he sat at the breakfast table in his shirtsleeves. Even though it was a holiday, both he and Hilda had risen early, unable to sleep any longer, but Patrick hoped for a nap later. “There's goin' to be a storm, or I'm a Chinaman.”

The city had planned no Independence Day parade, which was a good thing, because shortly after Hilda and Patrick had finished picking at a cold lunch, the sky was riven by a lightning bolt and a clap of thunder shook the house. “Here it comes!” Patrick cried, and ran to close windows and doors. Hilda insisted on leaving the back porch door open. The linoleum on the kitchen floor would take no harm if water came in through the screen, and she basked in the cool, sweet-smelling air that blew in with the rain.

It poured all afternoon, and both Patrick and Hilda napped, grateful for the respite from the punishing heat. Then in the evening the rain moderated to an on-again, off-again drizzle that made a lovely sound as it pattered on the roof. Everyone in the house, servants included, was yawning by nine o'clock. Eileen unearthed a light blanket from the linen closet and put it on Hilda and Patrick's bed, and they were glad of its warmth as they snuggled in. “At last,” said Hilda with a deep sigh, laying her head on Patrick's chest. “Tonight I will sleep.”

Her sleep was doomed to be short. Long before there was any morning light in the sky, there came an agitated knocking at their bedroom door, and Eileen, candle in hand, put her head in. “Please, Mr. Patrick, it's sorry I am to wake you, but Mr. Malloy is callin' for you on the telephone. He says there's a fire down at the store, and he needs you!”

Patrick made muffled noises, sighed, and pulled himself out of bed. “You go back to sleep, darlin'. Likely it's nothin' serious, and I'll be home before you even wake up.”

She tried to do as he said, but could not. How could she sleep when Patrick might be in danger—and not only Patrick, but his job, their livelihood? She got up, wrapped a warm robe around as much of herself as it would cover, and went down to the kitchen to make coffee. At four in the morning, she was safe from Mrs. O'Rourke's disapproval, and she, Hilda, still made better coffee—strong, proper Swedish coffee.

The rain continued, slow but steady. Hilda pulled her chair close to the stove, which still exuded some warmth, and sipped her coffee, and thought.

This fire had reawakened all her questions, all her fears. True, it had nothing to do with a train wreck—or did it? When so many terrible things happened so close together, could they not be part of a pattern? But try as she would, even after several cups of coffee, Hilda could not make a pattern in her mind that would encompass train wrecks, random fires, and labor unrest. It was, she thought, like one of those new puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, they were called. Hilda had played with one once. There were so many oddly shaped pieces of the picture, and if even one were placed incorrectly, the picture could not be completed—the other pieces would not fit.

None of these pieces seemed to fit. They did not even seem to be from the same puzzle. Locomotives, flames, angry laborers marching, angry soldiers and police firing weapons—the pictures formed and re-formed in her mind's eye and began to blend, a picture in red and black with no shape, no meaning....

“Is there any more of that coffee, darlin'? And what are you doin' in the kitchen? Mrs. O'Rourke'll likely skelp you.”

“Patrick!”

She rubbed at her eyes with her knuckles, looking so much like a sleepy child that Patrick's heart ached a little with his love for her. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing, after all, if their baby turned out to be a girl, looking like her mother. There was plenty of time for a son, after all. He kissed her gently. “What are you doin' down here, me girl? You'd no need to get up.”

“I could not sleep. You are wet, Patrick, and you smell of smoke. Take off your raincoat and tell me. Was the fire bad? Is the store all right? Is Uncle Dan all right?”

“There was nothin' much to the fire atall.” Patrick shrugged out of his raincoat, which was not only wet, but sooty. “It was in the little storeroom at the back. You know, where we keep boxes and wrapping paper and that?”

Hilda nodded. “But there is much there to burn!”

“Sometimes, but not just now. We're gettin' low on boxes and our new order hasn't come in yet. Lucky, that was—the fire might've been much worse with that extra fuel. What was there mostly made a lot of smoke, and the night watchman smelled it and turned in the alarm, though he passed out just after—from the smoke or somethin'. He just managed to get back to his cubbyhole before he fell. He would have been burned up, too, but for that. Anyway, the firemen got there right away, and they had it all under control before I even got there.” He stopped abruptly. “Is there coffee, still?”

“It is cold. I will make more. Patrick, there is something you are not telling me. It—it is not Uncle Dan?”

“No, darlin'. Uncle Dan's fine, and the store wasn't hurt atall, barrin' a lot of smoke smell we'll have to wash out of the linens.”

“Then what is it?”

Patrick spread his hands in a weary gesture of resignation. “Someone was killed in the fire, Hilda. A man. We don't know who, yet, nor what he was doin' at the store at that time of night. Now I'm goin' up to get a little sleep. I need to get back to the store in an hour or two to start puttin' things to rights.”

He knew more by midmorning. Uncle Dan came back to the store as soon as he had finished talking to the police. He sat down wearily in his office to talk to Patrick. “His name was Bill—William—Beeman. His father came to the police station to say he hadn't come home last night, and they had him identify the body. By the belt buckle, a present for his birthday in April. That was all—well.” Dan wiped his eyes; the handkerchief came away with soot on it. “He was only a boy, it seems, eighteen years old and just starting his first job, up at the Merchants' National Bank.”

Patrick frowned. “But, if he didn't work for us, what was he doin' in our storeroom in the middle of the night?”

“That we don't know. The police did find one thing, though, in the corner of the room: the remains of a Roman candle. They're guessin' that the boy was settin' off fireworks, it bein' the Fourth, and maybe got into the storeroom to shelter from the rain. There's an outside door, y'know.”

“It's kept locked, though. And why would he try to set off fireworks in the rain, anyway?”

“I don't know, me boy. I'm past thinkin'. I need to get home and clean up and get to bed for a bit. Can you manage here for an hour or two?”

So Patrick telephoned that he would not be home for lunch, and Hilda, who was longing for news, was forced to wait, though not as long as she had feared. In midafternoon, Eileen showed Aunt Molly into the parlor.

“You're feeling better, my dear,” Molly said. Her hat was damp, but not soaking wet; the rain had moderated. “I'm so glad.” Her voice was warm, but her attention seemed not to be entirely on Hilda.

“It is cooler. I can sleep.” She brushed the topic aside. “Aunt Molly, what happened at the store last night? Patrick has not had time to tell me, only a little.”

“Well, it's all a bit strange.” Molly related what she knew. “What no one can figure out,” she concluded, “is why that boy was where he was. Setting off fireworks, the police say. In the middle of the night? Indoors? What claptrap!”

“That is maybe what someone wants the police to think,” said Hilda after a pause for thought. “About the fireworks, I mean. Me, I think—”

“Hilda.” Aunt Molly, who was a tiny woman, could be a commanding presence when she chose. “Hilda, I don't want you ‘thinking' anything. I know, I know.” She raised a hand as Hilda started to speak. “I encouraged you to look into these incidents. I'm sorry now I ever did so. The trouble has come too close to home. If we hadn't had that soaking rain yesterday, the store could have been badly damaged—and both Mr. Malloy and Patrick could have been hurt, fighting the fire, if it had come to that.”

“But the fire was not bad, and they were not hurt. Only that poor boy. I think—”

Once again Molly interrupted. “Hilda, please listen to me. At this time in your life, you must not involve yourself in such great danger. My dear, Mr. Malloy and I have no grandchildren, you know. Your baby is a great hope for our family. If only—but you and Patrick are as dear to us as our own children. Please say you will leave it alone.”

Hilda looked at the carpet. Molly Malloy could read minds, Hilda was firmly convinced. And she didn't want her mind read just now. “It is confusing,” she said slowly. “I do not see how the fire can be connected to the other things that have happened. And I see that there could be peril. Aunt Molly, I promise I will do nothing that could harm my baby.”

It was an ambiguous reply, and Molly wasn't fooled for a moment. “Hilda, there are—there has been a—a development. I don't know—no, never mind about that. But can you not trust me when I say that you
must
not pursue this matter further?”

Hilda was saved from having to reply when Eileen appeared in the parlor doorway. “Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill are here to see you.”

“Mr. and Mrs.—oh, Norah and Sean! Why are they here at this time of day, I wonder? Sean should be at work. But show them—oh, Norah, I am glad to see you!”

Norah had never stood on ceremony with her best friend, and she was not about to now, even if Hilda had metamorphosed into a fine lady. She slipped past Eileen, Sean close behind her, and was about to speak when she saw Mrs. Malloy and hesitated. To curtsey, or not? Mrs. Malloy was a lady. But she was also the aunt of Norah's best friend, and this was her friend's house, where she, Norah was not a servant but a guest....

Aunt Molly saw her uncertainty and stood. “I will leave you to your guests, my dear. Mrs. O'Neill, it's good to see you again, and Mr. O'Neill. Little Fiona is doing well, I trust?” For Molly had helped with Fiona's birth and knew all about the difficult circumstances surrounding it.

“She's bloomin', thank you, ma'am. Our neighbor's lookin' after her for a bit.”

“And enjoying it, I'm sure. She's a sweet baby. Hilda, we will talk again.”

Hilda was sure of that.

When Mrs. Malloy was safely out the door, Norah plumped herself down on a chair, settling her damp skirts, and Sean took the chair beside her. “Hilda, we had to see you, right away. Sean's on the early shift this week, and he heard some things at work this mornin' that you need to know.”

Sean cleared his throat. “See, Flynn works with me. Norah's brother, you know?”

Hilda nodded.

“And him and me both used to work for Sam Black, you remember, before Black's went out of business. And there's talk, Flynn says, that Sam's somehow mixed up in all that's happenin', or most of it, anyway.”