On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery (16 page)

Mary Daniels proved equally forthcoming and uninformative. Mary was delighted Daggett stopped by. She fed him a piece of gooseberry pie and made him walk every step of the way around the outside of her cottage to admire the new roof her son had installed when he returned from the mainland, where he had been making more money working on commercial fishing boats than he could for Sam Jackson on Grand Manan. Mary had been widowed when James was a toddler, and it was hard for her with no man around while James was off making his way in the world. Now James was home and wanted to start his own family with Eric Dawson’s sister, a fair-haired beauty if Mary did say so herself. The problem was still money. James managed to find work with Sam Jackson and Roy Sharkey, though Mr. Sharkey just wanted help delivering rocks to those famous ladies at Whale Cove, such nice women they are, Mary added, nodding. She thought they could make do, the three of them together, under this new roof.

But when it came to answering Daggett’s questions about the red shirt, all Mary could tell Daggett was that she bought it for James, who was still out on Sam Jackson’s boat. The shirt was not in James’ room, and Mary could not say when or even whether James had worn it. James was due back that evening, but everything depended on their catch. The season had been slow and dragging for scallops could be a difficult business, as Daggett well knew.

Tourist Brochure 1927

M
ATTHEW
J
OHNSON
was another matter altogether. Daggett found him with his wife Maggie, sitting on opposite ends of the arbor swing behind Swallowtail. Wisteria entwined with grape vines covered the lattice, providing shade from the late afternoon sun. Among a semicircle of lawn chairs facing the arbor, two carried wet spots on their arms, apparently left by tumblers like the one Maggie Johnson still cradled in her right hand. Daggett could see two cubes of ice and some sort of pale liquid. He raised an eyebrow. Ice cubes were rare on the island.

A third wet spot glistened on the arm of the swing near Matthew Johnson’s elbow. He seemed perfectly comfortable, lounging next to his wife in spotless tennis whites. His wife wore something drapey and loose with a bold blue design. Beach pajamas, Daggett thought they were called, though he never expected to see anyone in an outfit like that on Grand Manan. A wide-brimmed straw hat took up the center of the swing. Its baby blue sash fluttered with each back and forth roll.

“I doubt that I can be of much help, Constable,” Johnson bent his head over a match, then leaned back to blow cigarette smoke with measured force. His blue eyes watched intently as the white puff dispersed the air. His face was framed by light chestnut hair, slicked back and spare, with deep vees on each side, the top of his forehead pink from the sun.

“The man who died, well, we have no idea who that man was,” Maggie Johnson spoke with a certain listlessness, her voice low, the words throaty, “but we are eminently curious about the details of your investigation.”

“The details, yes.”

Maggie Johnson surprised Daggett. By now he had heard a great deal about this young couple and expected Johnson to be, as he seemed, distant, relaxed, fit. But Johnson’s wife Daggett expected to be edgy, brittle, almost high-strung, yet her words came slow and listless, tinged with arrogance and boredom. Daggett had heard she smoked cigarettes, and now it seemed she drank liquor as well. The women he knew did neither.

Fast living, Daggett watched Maggie Johnson sip from her glass. Her lips matched the enameled blaze on her nails. Johnson blew another precise stream of smoke, this time directed toward Daggett, then flicked at an ash poised on the crease of his trousered left leg. Fast living and a great deal of money, Daggett concluded.

“Ah, Constable, won’t you join us in a gin fizz?” The voice came from behind, then attached itself, as Daggett turned, to the male half of the other couple in Johnson’s party, a lanky fellow named Jameson according to The Swallowtail registry, Samuel Jameson.

“Name’s Sam.”

With drinks in both hands, Jameson nodded instead of offering to shake.

“We’re celebrating Independence eve, Constable,” the willowy blond in Jameson’s wake bore a dish of crackers along with her drink. “We’ve already celebrated your Canada Day.”

“My wife Jean,” Jameson nodded toward the blond. “You’ve met Matt and Maggie, I guess,” Jameson’s glance took in the swing.

“Independence eve?”

“American independence from the Brits. You know,” Jean Jameson’s lips rose lazily at the corners.

“Oh, Fourth of July. Of course.”

Daggett waited while Jameson handed Johnson his drink and his wife resumed her seat and balanced the plate of crackers on her knees. Jean Jameson was also adorned in beach pajamas, though hers were all lemony and pale orange. Daggett preferred them to the blue.

“Come on now, Mags, give us a smile, why don’t you,” Jameson cajoled, nudging the swing with his knee. “The girls are tired of life on the island,” he turned to Daggett. “Can’t seem to think of anything to do with their time.”

“There is nothing to do,” Jean Jameson corrected her husband, smiling vaguely in Daggett’s direction. “I don’t like to hike, and I’m not the least bit interested in boats or birds.”

“What did I tell you,” Jameson shrugged toward Daggett. “Now, how about that drink,” he took a step toward the inn.

“None for me, thank you. Not while I’m on duty.”

“On duty? How formal that sounds.”

No mistaking it this time, Maggie Johnson was trying to be droll. Daggett offered a smile.

“Well, have a biscuit then,” Jameson sank into his chair. “That is what you call crackers, isn’t it?” He put a hand on the empty chair next to him, “At the very least, you can sit and chat for a moment.”

“Yes, thank you,” Daggett pulled out his notebook before he sat down.

“An inquisition?”

Rays from the late sun slanted through the wisteria, striking Maggie Johnson on the crown. Her brown hair fitted snug, like an aviator’s cap, and her eyes, turned fully on Daggett for the first time, overpowered the rest of her features. They were large and a very deep brown. She was, Daggett guessed, considered handsome. Possibly even beautiful, like a model in one of those magazines displaying women’s clothes.

“You like to play tennis, do you?” Daggett returned Maggie Johnson’s gaze but decided to ignore her question, aiming his own directly at her husband.

“Best game in the world,” Johnson’s tan exaggerated the whiteness of his teeth. “Even Maggie likes it, don’t you, Mags?”

“I play, if that’s what you mean,” Maggie Johnson continued to rest her eyes on Daggett’s.

“You have courts near where you live?”

“We have courts where we live,” Maggie Johnson underscored the
where.

“I don’t believe I caught the location?”

“Massachusetts,” Jameson held the plate of crackers in one hand and gestured with the other, “near Boston.”

“With a summer place on Martha’s Vineyard,” Maggie glanced at her husband. “That’s why this trip is so absurd,” she paused to raise an eyebrow.

Jean Jameson giggled.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Maggie continued, “this is a marvelous little island. For a while.” Her hand draped itself over the left arm of the swing and made a languid sweep in an apparent effort to indicate the whole of Grand Manan. “I’m sure you enjoy living here immensely,” she crooned. “It’s just that we needn’t be here with you.”

“Matt lured us all into coming,” Jameson said heartily, “with marvelous tales about puffins.”

“I’m an avid birder,” Matthew Johnson acknowledged over the rim of his glass.

“I have yet to see a single puffin,” Jean Jameson complained, her voice flat.

“Machias is the place for that,” Daggett began to explain. “The next island over. Any fisherman will take you and there’s an excursion motor launch,” he stopped. It was not his job to make Grand Manan palatable to these people. “But, tell me what you do in Boston,” he veered back onto course, aiming again at Matthew Johnson.

“Do? In Boston? Oh, what business, you mean. Investments. Banking. Desk work. Nothing so vigorous as here.”

“Matt hardly does anything anywhere, really,” Jameson put in. “Midas touch,” he nodded toward the couple on the swing, “and a rich wife.”

“Don’t be jealous, Sammy,” Maggie Johnson chided. Jean Jameson laughed.

“It’s Jean who has more money than God,” Matthew Johnson allowed, tipping his glass in her direction and bowing his head with great solemnity.

D
INNER
that evening at Whale Cove began even livelier than usual, with everyone puzzling aloud over all the red shirts and all the loose buttons.

“How did you ever think to go to Jackson’s Drygoods to look at the buttons on those shirts?” Winifred Bromhall had placed her hand on Edith’s arm, her eyes wide.

“I didn’t, actually,” Edith confessed. “I just wanted to look at the shirts and perhaps find out how many people had bought them. They were wonderfully soft and I let my hands run over the fabric. That’s when I felt the loose thread.”

“What a detective,” Margaret Byington exclaimed from across the table.

“Here, here,” Willa laughed in agreement.

“No, no, no. Not at all,” Edith felt herself blush. “It was purely by accident. The truth of the matter is Rebecca and I were engaged in gossip about Little John Winslow, and I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing.”

“Little John Winslow,” Margaret exploded, “what a silly little man.”

“Yes,” Winifred agreed. “We stopped by the bakery this afternoon and heard all about his nasty allegations. And not just about Sabra Jane. But about all of us.”

“I’ll never understand such men,” the corners of Margaret’s mouth turned down and she shook her head. “What a trial he must be for his wife.”

“Yes,” Edith agreed and reached for the salad.

“Yes,” Willa nodded.

Willa, Edith knew, encountered enough such men to make the horrifying effects of ignorance and misogyny clear in her fiction. Wick Cutter, Buck Scales, two of the worst of her misogynists, were evil. But Little John was really not a bad man. Just very ignorant. Yet it was the nonsense men like Little John spouted that made the evils of misogyny possible, Edith thought. Also, it seemed, the evils of a misogynist like Mr. Brown. And again she saw the body, angled slightly toward her, plummet from the cliff wearing what she now knew to be a pin-striped suit and wing-tipped shoes.

L
ATER
, much later, Daggett stared at the notebook outstretched before him on the desk. One line said
Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, investments, new rich.
Another said
hiked alone, tiff, others Castalia, check Gilmore.
Farther down, Daggett studied again the third line in his handwriting.
Red shirt, backpack, button missing left sleeve.

Yes, Matthew Johnson had walked from Tattons Corner to The Whistle early in the afternoon of the day Mr. Brown died. He was alone on the road and saw no one. On the way back, he took the Red Trail around Ashburton Head and got as far as the waterfall at Seven Days Work. At that point, Johnson said, he cut inland along the brook. About half way to the road, near where a fallen log crossed the trail, he stopped to rest and eat some pemmican. It was well beyond noon, he had had no lunch, and the others in his party had taken the picnic hamper with them. When he finished the pemmican, he removed the light wool shirt he had been wearing in lieu of a jacket and tied it loosely around his neck. Once the sun burned off that morning’s fog, the day turned warm, even in the woods. He grew so warm by the time he reached the road that he put the shirt in his backpack. Yes, the shirt was red. He had purchased it at Jackson’s Drygoods earlier that day. And yes, when he untied the sleeves from around his neck, he noticed the button on the left sleeve was missing.

Johnson stayed on the road until he came to a cottage and stopped to ask how to get to Whale Cove. Once there, he made his way back to the Red Trail and walked on into North Head. An older woman, Boston accent, gave him the necessary directions. He couldn’t remember who told him about the hiking trails in the first place. Someone he spoke to in the village, perhaps the banker, perhaps Andrews or his wife. Johnson saw no one on the trail at Seven Days Work or on the road, certainly not Mr. Brown. And no one else in a red shirt. Johnson did not believe anyone saw him either. With further prompting, he recalled hearing the sound of a bicycle on gravel as he neared the road. That was all he remembered.

Yes, Johnson nodded again in answer to Daggett’s question, the button was in place shortly before noon when he began his walk. He remembered distinctly fastening the buttons on both sleeves. He first put the shirt on when Claude Gilmore stopped at Tattons Corner to let him out. The four of them were on the way to Castalia, to watch birds on the marsh. Johnson planned the excursion and was to have gone with them, but his wife’s irritability was more than he could bear that afternoon. He had gone off by himself to maintain the equilibrium of their marriage. That’s exactly what he said, the equilibrium of their marriage. The Jamesons affirmed his statement, as did Maggie Johnson. According to her they often chose not to be together.