On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery (31 page)

“Be careful, Mark, you’ll sound like a snob and a eugenicist,” Elizabeth scolded.

Daggett grinned. Elizabeth surprised him sometimes. Like now. She seemed perfectly comfortable with Miss Lewis and Jacobus. Comfortable enough to tease him.

“Putting class and breeding quite aside,” Edith returned the conversation to the line of thinking she had been developing, “it’s clear that the only gain from the sort of pact Mr. Johnson was about to strike with Mr. Bush is a great deal of pain. It was a devil’s bargain. Mephistophelean.”

“Right,” Jacobus swung Edith’s thought around to fit her own, “and Prohibition is the devil’s tool box. Thou Shalt Not …”

“And
thou shalt not
means one has to try … whatever it is,” Elizabeth nodded a faint
yes
, “I see what you mean.”

“Fortunately for Johnson,” Daggett reached for his pipe, “he never hesitated when it came to turning over the slip of paper and passport he found on the beach,” Daggett paused to tap charred bits of tobacco into the ashtray before him, “never denied knowing John Thomas Bush … and never feigned ignorance when it came to explaining how he misled me.” With the pipe emptied, Daggett tamped fresh tobacco and retrieved the little can of matches from his breast pocket. “He did try to mislead me, you know,” he added between puffs as he relit the pipe.

“We certainly do,” Edith said with emphasis, “and so did these … what were their names … the fellows who searched the room at Swallowtail and the cliff at Seven Days Work?” She paused to rub her sore hand, “They were looking for the same slip of paper, right?”

“That’s my bet, anyway. And I’m guessing Jackson Knoll was the first one, Burt Isaacs the other. Knoll had easy access to Bush’s room, Isaacs to the torch,” Daggett paused to retamp his pipe and strike another match. “Odd sense of humor, that Isaacs,” he mused through puffs of smoke, “leaving his torch in my car.”

“Effective, though,” Elizabeth glanced at her husband. “He managed to frighten me half to death and throw you off track,” she turned to Edith, “to say nothing of what he did to you and Miss Cather.”

“Added excitement to your evening, that’s what he did,” Jacobus chuckled. Mattie stirred, and Jacobus reached down to scratch her behind the ears.

“Lucky it wasn’t Willa’s hand, that’s all I have to say,” Edith glanced at her own bandaged left hand. “Such pain,” Edith shook her head, “she’s had enough of such pain, and it keeps her from writing.”

“That’s true,” Jacobus agreed, “hard as this may be for Edith, the other’s worse. Willa has been experiencing terrible pains in her hand,” Jacobus explained to Elizabeth and Daggett. “Her thumb really.” When Edith nodded, Jacobus stiffened everything from her wrist to her fingertips. “Had to keep her hand and part of her arm in a brace.”

“Terrible, terrible pain and the dullness of immobility,” Edith nodded. “It truly has been awful. Mine,” she flexed her hand and grinned, “is nothing compared to that. And you’re right, Cobus, that experience certainly did add to the excitement of our evening … of our whole summer.”

“But if you’re right,” Jacobus turned to address Daggett, “Burt Isaacs and Jackson Knoll must have been as mystified as everyone else. They didn’t know who killed Bush, and they didn’t know who Johnson was or how to find him. They only knew each other.”

“Right,” Daggett leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, “and until Johnson got his hands on that slip of paper, he had no idea who Jackson Knoll and Burt Isaacs were. But by the time he found it, he was more interested in keeping his own name out of the whole mess than he was in making contact with them.”

“But then why …”

“Something he overheard Harvey Andrews say,” Daggett anticipated Elizabeth’s question, “made him think he might be able to find Knoll on Machias, so he decided it was worth a try. Imagine Johnson’s surprise,” Daggett began to laugh, “when Johnson found that the Machias Dickie Dalhouse took him to was an island populated only by puffins.”

“Machias, Machias,” Elizabeth caught the joke, “he wanted the town in Maine, but Dickie took him to the island.”

“Exactly,” Daggett leaned forward, his face sober again. “My theory,” he pointed with the stem of his pipe to squares on the oilcloth, “is that only Bush knew all the players.” Daggett touched one square with the stem of his pipe, then circled through the surrounding squares, “Johnson, Knoll, Watson, Isaacs.” The pipe stem named off the squares, then stopped and backed up. “No, maybe Bush didn’t know Watson and Isaacs,” Daggett reconsidered, “maybe only Knoll knew them. Well,” the pipe stem hesitated, “that’s not entirely clear yet, but it doesn’t matter. It’s also not clear whether they intended to run liquor from Grand Manan,” the pipe stem touched the center square, “or just use the island for their rendezvous.”

The three women studied the squares in silence.

“In some ways a rendezvous makes sense,” Elizabeth finally volunteered.

“Mmmm,” Daggett thought it through, “we may never really know, but at any rate,” the stem returned to square one, “Bush’s job was to introduce Johnson and Knoll. Johnson was to put up the money, Knoll and Bush to arrange liquor and transportation. That takes a lot of money. Boats, trucks, guns, payoffs, ammunition, men, they all cost a lot. Knoll was to make arrangements in Canada, Bush in the United States. Knoll’s was the easy part. He had to be secretive but liquor’s legal in Canada, at least the production and transportation of it. Bush had all the rough stuff, and probably because of that, he couldn’t look the part,” Daggett chuckled. “Neither could, I suppose. Had to look classy, you know, Bush and Knoll, or they’d never have been able to hook a partner like Johnson,” the pipe stem moved through the squares and back again. “Knoll might have been a little swaggery, as Harvey Andrews said, but presentable enough for Johnson, I guess.”

“How did they hook him, anyway?”

Daggett looked up and grinned at Elizabeth. It was as though they were leaning over their own kitchen table, Elizabeth’s questions falling right into place. He took a sip of coffee, cooling now.

“Johnson said he met Bush in Boston and saw him again in New Bedford. He said Bush impressed him. He had the right contacts … talk … manners … dress. All the right surface stuff,” Daggett shook his head, “and, after all, Johnson’s a fool.”

“Naive,” Jacobus glanced up, “that’s not so bad.”

“Yes, a true innocent,” Edith placed her hands on the table.

“Naive, innocent, a fool. A man who wanted to win his wife’s respect and didn’t know how to do it,” Daggett drained his cup. “He knew that what he was planning to do was illegal in his country, but he believed he could get away with it without real harm coming to anybody. Just a little irregularity, I believe he called it,” Daggett coughed and took a moment to clear his throat.

“Not exactly high ethical standards,” Jacobus agreed.

“And absolutely no judge of character,” Daggett returned to his narrative. “Johnson had no idea, he said, that the man he chose to do business with would ever do anything so damning as murder. How could he realize that Bush was a killer, a man who killed women as if it were sport.”

All three women at the table sat a little straighter. Mattie rose to her feet.

“And New Bedford thinks the young woman whose death James witnessed wasn’t the only one Bush killed,” Daggett sat back in his chair. “There may have been other girls, their telegram said. And in Boston. New York. Other girls. None of them heard from, none of them found.”

“I can’t understand a man like that,” Edith pushed against a spot on the oilcloth with her fingernail.

“No one can,” Daggett assured them.

“S
O
James held the key to solving several crimes. Amazing,” Sabra Jane sipped her tea and cast a glance toward the weir.

“Four murders at least,” Edith held up four fingers on her good hand.

“All of the victims were young women,” Willa settled deeper into her chair.

“And there were numerous dealings with gangsters and episodes of violence.”

“That’s not counting the solution to the death of John Thomas Bush or Buschetti or whatever his name really was. Or all they’ve learned about bootlegging and bootleggers,” Willa pointed out.

“That’s right,” Edith agreed, “Mark Daggett says Matthew Johnson’s testimony and the papers he found on the beach opened up a whole network of names. More than were on the blue sheet of paper. Bush had a little notebook tucked in with his passport. There already have been several arrests.”

“But numbers don’t matter as much as the fact that James is responsible for bringing an end to the misogynist’s shady dealings and murderous career,” Willa deepened her voice for melodramatic effect.

“The odd thing is, you know,” Edith turned to face Sabra Jane, “that man seems to have murdered only women.”

“At least that’s all Daggett has been able to find out,” Willa put her feet on the low wicker table they used for a hassock. “Of course, they are still investigating. Bush or Buschetti seems to have had several aliases.”

Every morning brought new telegrams to Daggett’s office and he brought them to show Willa and Edith. They served the best oatmeal cookies on the island, he declared.

“It is odd, though,” Willa mused, “only women. But, then,” she paused and went on, “misogyny is odd.”

Edith and Sabra Jane agreed with silent nods. Willa moved her feet closer to Edith’s. Their canvas shoes touched.

After a moment Sabra Jane chuckled and, placing her tea cup on the wicker table, rose to face the sea. “Now,” she declared, “when we bring an end to misogyny, we’ll really have done something.”

“Yes.”

Edith felt suddenly very tired and her hand hurt. An incoming tide lapped against the rocks below. Edith rested her head against her chair. All along the cliffs weathered spruce leaned in from the sea. Naughty children, willful children, Edith smiled and glanced at Willa. Naughty children with the wind in their hair, digging in their heels and reaching back to touch the land with their whole bodies. They would survive.

Beyond Sabra Jane lay the weir. Two gulls circled above. Edith watched their circles widen.

Their Circles Widen

I
FIRST VISITED
Grand Manan, an island in the Bay of Fundy, in 1989. Willa Cather and Edith Lewis found Grand Manan in 1922, travelling by train to Campobello, Maine, where they caught a ferry to North Head, one of five fishing villages on the island and its main port. My partner Mary Ellen Capek and I reached the island the way most people do these days, taking a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from Blacks Harbour in New Brunswick, Canada. I had only a vague sense of where their cottage might have been on the cliffs overlooking Whale Cove. But within minutes of leaving the dock, we found ourselves taking the first drive to the right after the sign to Whale Cove Inn and bouncing down a single-track, rutted dirt road through the woods to where their cottage once stood.

Neglected after the beginning of World War II when Cather and Lewis felt it too dangerous to travel to the island, their cottage had collapsed. Before Lewis died in 1972, Cather’s niece, Helen Cather Southwick, acquired the land and built a cottage replicating theirs on the same spot. When we arrived, that cottage was empty, its front windows blank, staring east through harsh sunlight toward a fishing weir circling into itself in the Bay below. There were no fishermen and no ships. The place was quiet, almost too quiet, but a trail passing through to the south proved magical, its tall pines and lush grass giving the shade and comfort Cather and Lewis must have experienced more than sixty years before. We sat a long while enjoying their presence and the sound of waves crashing on the rocks more than two hundred feet below.

Whale Cove Inn and Cottages had no vacancies that trip, so we stayed in the son’s bedroom of a private home near Pettes Cove, on the way to Swallowtail Lighthouse. The room had a waterbed, a window facing the cove, and a hallway decorated with a black velour tapestry featuring a painted stag. Breakfast included strong tea and plenty of gossip about local islanders and the island’s fishing industry but almost nothing about Whale Cove or Willa Cather. The next summer and the two that followed, we stayed in Orchardside at Whale Cove Inn. Located a bit farther south and closer to the Bay on the same trail we found that first day, Orchardside is an old guest cottage that Cather and Lewis shared with others during their early years on Grand Manan. It is divided into sections with two separate attic bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a living room made cozy by a fireplace and built-in bookcase. Cather and Lewis’ quarters, downstairs on the north side, consisted of two rooms, one of which faced Whale Cove and held a small writing desk used, I was told, by Willa Cather.

The person who told me was the Whale Cove innkeeper, Kathleen Buckley, who had been a serving girl during the years Cather and Lewis were there. She explained that, for the first three summers, they stayed in Orchardside then built their own cottage in 1926. Other guests also built cottages on land bordering the property of Whale Cove Inn around the same time, Buckley said, all of whom continued to take meals and share in activities at the Inn. The same was true for Cather and Lewis.