“DOROTHY?”
“Yes, Maureen? How are you?” Dorothy gripped the receiver tightly. She knew just how Maureen was and just what Maureen was going to ask. She hadn’t talked to Maureen in two weeks, not since the day after she’d spent the awful few hours in the Hoades’ bathroom closet, not since the day of the baby’s burial. She’d called Maureen then because she’d been frightened. Now Maureen was going to call in her chips, Dorothy just knew it.
“Have you asked if you can get Labor Day off?”
“Well, no, but I will.”
“Dorothy?”
“Yes, Maureen?”
“Two weeks ago to this day you called me up,” said Maureen in a voice as measured as a drumbeat. “You wanted my help. You told me all that silly stuff about hiding in a closet and asked me a bunch of fiddle-faddle about labor unions. The minute you get into trouble you come to your sister, right? Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, but...
“No buts. It was an act of Christian charity, if you ask me, for me to advise you to stay on your job. I could have very well played on your silly, baseless fears, couldn’t I? I would have much preferred you to come home and give me a hand here, but instead I told you to stick to your commitment and stay on the job, didn’t I? To my own disadvantage, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Maureen.”
Mrs. Hoade stepped out of the kitchen. “Almost ready to begin, Dorothy,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Right,” said Dorothy to Mrs. Hoade. “All right, Maureen. I’ll come on Labor Day,” she replied into the receiver.
“Well, that’s more like it,” said Maureen. Dorothy could have kicked herself for making that silly phone call while the Hoades had gone off to the baby’s burial. She had waited at the window until Matthew had started up the station wagon. Mr. and Mrs. Hoade had climbed in the front seat with him. It had been pouring rain. She had watched the sheets of water wash over the top of the old brown wood-sided Plymouth, over the end of the shiny black metal coffin that extended out onto the open tailgate. There had been a metal angel stuck to the back of the coffin sobbing over its lyre, wings spread like the wings of an eagle on a silver dollar. Dorothy grimaced at the memory of that awful angel. “Bridget’s fine,” Maureen was saying.
“Maureen, I have to go. Mrs. Hoade is calling me,” Dorothy interrupted.
“We have two and a half minutes left,” said Maureen pleasantly. “I got a letter from Mother and one from Kevin.” Dorothy hoped Mrs. Hoade wouldn’t mind her going home a day early. Everything had been so fine lately. I guess I do owe a debt of thanks to my sister, really, Dorothy told herself. Maureen had scoffed at Dorothy’s fears. She’d point-blank refused to go to the newspaper or the library and find out which labor union had been involved in a year-old scandal. She’d told Dorothy to mind her own beeswax, to come home with four hundred dollars or Daddy’d have her head, and to take advantage of night rates if she called collect again. Score one for Maureen, Dorothy thought as she listened to the latest injustice to which Arthur had been subjected. If it hadn’t been for my silly imagination, Dorothy told herself, Maureen wouldn’t have had one up on me, and I wouldn’t have gotten trapped into Labor Day.
“Are you still riding on those horses?” Maureen wanted to know.
“Yes,” said Dorothy, “and it’s so terrific! I had the loveliest ride today. I’ve got a pair of boots and...
“How much did they cost?”
“Nothing. I found them.”
“You probably took them.”
“I asked, Maureen,” Dorothy lied.
“Well, don’t come home with a fused spine.”
“Maureen.” Dorothy felt herself choke. She tried to bite back the tears that filled her eyes and made her whole mouth ache. She might as well have tried to stop the rain.
“Try to write Mom a little more, too. I’ve written her twenty-one times and she’s only had four letters from you. Time’s up. Take care of yourself. Good-bye,” said Maureen.
Dorothy looked at the receiver. She listened into the empty line. “Good-bye,” she said softly.
“Dorothy?” Mrs. Hoade asked, equally softly, from the kitchen doorway. “Would you like a little drink?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Hoade,” she said, “I’ll be fine.” Dorothy thought she might like one after all, but liquor affected her thinking badly. She had promised to help Mrs. Hoade with what was to be the pièce de résistance of the cookbook, and she didn’t want to ruin anything by being light-headed. “Jenny and Lisa!” Dorothy called up the stairs. “Very soon now!”
“We hear you,” one of them called back down. Dorothy wiped her eyes, went into the kitchen, put on a clean apron, and sat down at her desk with a stack of blank note cards. She was to observe Mrs. Hoade’s actions and record them.
“I wish Dinna was here,” said Mrs. Hoade.
“Wouldn’t she stay?” asked Dorothy.
“She refused to do anything as complicated as this. At least she made the broth,” said Mrs. Hoade hopefully.
“Oh,” said Dorothy. According to the French cookbook from which Mrs. Hoade was cribbing, Cold Turkey Gallantine in Aspic took two days all together to make. “Cold Boned Turkey in Amish Jelly” wrote Dorothy at the top of the first card. “Is that right?” she asked Mrs. Hoade.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Hoade answered. “Now watch me carefully.” Dorothy watched, pen in hand. Mrs. Hoade made a deep slit with a knife through the length of the turkey.
“Wait!” said Dorothy. Quickly she consulted the cookbook that lay open beside her. “I think you ought to turn it over,” she said.
“Why?” asked Mrs. Hoade.
“Well, it says here you’re supposed to cut it through the backbone, not the stomach.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Hoade. She flopped the twenty-five pound fowl over on its other side. “I hope it doesn’t leak,” she said. “If it does, I have two reserve turkeys in the icebox. Just in case I make an irreversible mistake.”
“We have all evening,” said Dorothy. “Let’s go slowly. Now, it says remove all the bones without disturbing the skin.”
Mrs. Hoade put the turkey down and walked around to stand behind Dorothy and read the cookbook’s instructions. Dorothy sat, her eyes on Mrs. Hoade’s face, her pen poised. Mrs. Hoade read through two pages of turkey anatomy. “We’ll need a pair of pliers to pull the sinews out,” she said. “Jenny!”
After a moment, “Yes, Mom?” floated downstairs.
“Get me a pair of pliers, will you please? In the drawer in the hall table.” Slow steps thumped down the hall and then down the back stairs.
“I’m going to do it another way,” said Mrs. Hoade, sighing at the cookbook. “That way will take all night.” Dorothy wrote down Step One.
Mrs. Hoade busied herself with the knife for at least ten minutes without speaking. Dorothy wrote down, Remove all meat from carcass. Discard bones. Place all the pieces of meat according to the bone they came off of (sic, better grammar) in neat stacks on another table.
Jenny came in with the pliers. She plopped them down on the table with a loud clank. “Did you save me any apples?” she asked.
“In the icebox,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Next to the cream.” Jenny took two green apples and walked back upstairs to the library.
“Now,” said Mrs. Hoade. She brushed her hands clean on her apron. “I wonder which the sinews are. Well, we’ll leave them in for now.” She took a needle and thread out of a drawer. “Now, I’m going to sew it back together again,” she said.
“You are?” Dorothy asked.
“Much easier,” said Mrs. Hoade. She sat in a chair and placed the three bits of meat from the left-hand drumstick together and stitched them into a drumsticklike form. Dorothy wrote Step Two: Stitch all parts together to retain original shape of the turkey. “Won’t there be a lot of thread when it’s finished?” Dorothy asked.
“We’ll take it out,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Dinna used thread on a chicken cavity last week.”
“But don’t you think it’ll fall apart?”
“The aspic will hold it together,” said Mrs. Hoade with a smile.
“But how will we get the thread out through the aspic?” asked Dorothy.
Mrs. Hoade snapped a piece of thread off between her teeth. “I think it will dissolve in the cooking,” she answered. Dorothy and Mrs. Hoade sewed the rest of the turkey up as best they could.
“I think I put some breast pieces on the wings,” Dorothy admitted.
“Well, it looks nice,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Look at that! It looks like a turkey again!”
“It’s amazing,” Dorothy agreed. She thought she would put a discreet change in her notes. Use all light-colored thread, she wrote.
“Jenny! Lisa! Come down now!” Mrs. Hoade yelled, in the meantime squeezing a large wet dish towel.
The girls sauntered into the kitchen after a minute or two. “What’s that?” Lisa asked.
“A turkey,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Now, Jenny hold one end of the towel and Lisa the other. That’s right. Now, here goes the turkey in the middle.”
“How can it be a turkey?” Jenny asked. “It’s just a big ball of...something.”
“Hold the towel,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Dorothy, are you taking notes?”
“Yes, Mrs. Hoade.”
“Okay,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Now hold it up like this. That’s it. Twist the end. That’s right.”
“It’s getting heavy, Mom,” said Lisa. The girls held the suspended turkey between them like a jump rope.
“Now swing it!” Mrs. Hoade instructed.
“Wrap string around circumference,” Dorothy read aloud, “in several places to prevent slippage during cooking.”
After the turkey had been rewrapped in the towel and held, this time by Mrs. Hoade at one end and Dorothy at the other, while Jenny tied the string around the middle, Dorothy wrote: Two adults needed to hold turkey while the string goes around. Do not let turkey fall.
“Now,” said Mrs. Hoade, placing the bundle gently in the large baking pan of broth. “We need a weight, don’t we?”
Dorothy checked the Gallantine recipe. “Yes,” she said. “About ten pounds.”
“How about that iron pot up there?” Jenny suggested.
“That’s an antique,” said Mrs. Hoade.
“There’s half a cinder block outside the kitchen door,” Dorothy said. “I could go get it and wrap another wet towel around it.”
“Good thinking,” said Mrs. Hoade.
First Dorothy wrote down Cinder block (half) or other weight.
Dorothy, Mrs. Hoade, Jenny, and Lisa all took one final look before they closed the oven door.
“Is it supposed to be that flat?” Lisa asked.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hoade.
The girls were permitted to stay up and watch Dragnet, in honor of this, the last recipe. Dorothy was asked if she would have a little celebration drink. Mrs. Hoade washed her hands, removed her apron, and ushered Dorothy into the living room. She sat down in her favorite chair, a wing-back covered with plum-colored velvet, next to a brass whaler’s lamp. She poured herself a Scotch on ice. “Now tell me what’s wrong with your sister,” she said. “You were so upset before.”
Dorothy settled herself on the sofa, her hands between her knees. “Oh, it’s really nothing,” she explained. “She wants me to go home Labor Day. That’s not what bothered me. She thinks my riding is a bad thing to do.”
“A bad thing to do! But you enjoy it so. Didn’t you have a good ride today?”
“Oh, yes. It was the most perfect day of the summer. We went back to... Dorothy stopped herself. “An old apple orchard,” she invented on the spur of the moment.
“You must have a drink. You must keep me company,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Get yourself a glass.” Mrs. Hoade walked, a little unsteadily, over to the liquor tray. Reluctantly Dorothy roused herself to fetch a glass from the kitchen. She wished she could have shared the day’s lovely experience with Mrs. Hoade. The sky had been bright blue, without a suggestion of haze. The air was dry and nearly cool. The birds had sung all over the woods like a chorus in a great leafy cathedral. She and Baldy had returned to the little Coburg graveyard. There a new grave, with a haze of baby-green grass upon it, marked Miriam Coburg, had taken its place among other members of its family. Again, Baldy had said that it ought to have been creepy. Dorothy’s gaze had fastened on all the other peaceful old stones and crosses, some so vine-covered that the names were illegible, some so old that even if the latest Coburg to pass had lived to a hundred and ten, she couldn’t possibly have known the ancestors who’d gone a century before. Whoever rested there, Dorothy had decided, rested, as the saying went, in peace, also in dignity and privacy. Her own Uncle Dennis had been buried in the St. James churchyard in Newburgh, she had told Baldy, “with strangers all around.”
Dorothy congratulated herself on her tact, as she brought an old-fashioned glass in from the kitchen. To mention the graveyard, no matter how beautiful it was, might have saddened Mrs. Hoade.
“No. That’s the wrong kind of glass for wine,” Mrs. Hoade said. “You’ll want an aperitif glass.” She fetched a gold-chased sherry glass from another cabinet. Pouring out some very dark red liquor, she told Dorothy, “Now this is only blackberry wine. It won’t hurt you and you ought to learn to drink properly. If you don’t start with something light now, you’ll be a drunk by the time you’re twenty-one. Now tell me. Is it money you’re worried about? I heard you tell your sister about the boots Baldy gave you. Something about paying for them?”
“No, it isn’t money,” said Dorothy, hoping to get off the topic of the riding boots. “The money is all set. I have to put it all in the bank anyway for my college education.”
“What?” asked Mrs. Hoade. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve worked this hard all summer and you won’t have a nickel to yourself?”
“I guess not,” answered Dorothy. “But it’s all right. After all, college is expensive. My parents have paid for my food and clothing all my life. I have to contribute if I can.”
Mrs. Hoade swizzled the ice in her drink with her finger. “I have a surprise for you, Dorothy,” she said.
“Yes?” Dorothy tried to block out all the possibilities that flooded to mind.
“I’m certainly going to acknowledge your contribution to the book, in print. I also think you deserve an extra hundred dollars for your work. In light of what you just told me, I’ll make it a hundred and fifty.”
“Oh, Mrs. Hoade, I couldn’t. Thank you so much. But I just couldn’t!”
“Why on earth not?”
“Well, first of all, it wouldn’t be right. The time I spent on the cookbook was time I would have been watching Jenny and Lisa instead of them being up with the TV. So it isn’t really extra work, it’s just different work. The other thing is, my mother would make me send it back.”
“Don’t tell her!”
“Don’t tell her? I’ve never...not told my mother anything in my life!”
Mrs. Hoade laughed. “I’ll think of a way,” she said. “In the meantime here’s a toast to In an Amish Kitchen.”
Dorothy raised her glass and touched Mrs. Hoade’s with it. She accepted a cigarette that Mrs. Hoade offered. She allowed Mrs. Hoade to light it for her and inhaled the smoke tentatively with a large swallow of the blackberry wine.
“I’ve changed the title, as you see,” Mrs. Hoade went on. “I’ll tell you why....
The wine and the tobacco and the stuffiness of the room began to mesmerize Dorothy. Matthew had forgotten to turn off one of his lawn sprinklers outside in the garden. It threw a shower of water against the window behind Mrs. Hoade every three seconds or so. The light from the whaler’s lamp made the drops diamond bright. There was something about the wine that stirred a memory in Dorothy. She tried desperately to concentrate on what Mrs. Hoade was saying, but she kept picturing her Aunt Ruth. Her Aunt Ruth’s parlor on Sunday afternoons. That was where she’d tasted blackberry wine before.
Tiny prisms of light rolled down the windowpane, only to be whipped aside as new drops took their place. Two nameless things began to merge in Dorothy’s mind as if two ends of a rope were inexorably knotting themselves together in as perfect a clove hitch as one of Baldy’s tethers. It began with a smell. The smell of Aunt Ruth’s parlor. Identical to the smell inside the cottage, when Miss Borg had opened the door the day Dorothy was looking for Lisa. The smell of lavender sachet in the bureau drawer. That was what I was looking for. It wasn’t a thing at all. It was the smell that brought me back there. Dorothy shuddered.
“And then again,” Mrs. Hoade was saying, “I had another idea for a title. Let me try this out on you.”
“Yes?” said Dorothy. As surely as she knew the peculiar odor of Maureen’s house—sometimes pleasant and powdery, usually sour and ammoniac—and the smell of every other house she’d been in that contained a baby, she knew for certain there had never been a baby in that cottage at all. Someone else had been kept there.
All the thoughts she had so successfully prevented herself from thinking during the past two weeks came rushing back to her. She couldn’t stop them. What were the Hoades hiding? Whom had she seen in that window during the storm? What had happened to Miss Borg? Dorothy had not seen her come back from the hospital with Mr. and Mrs. Hoade. She had not gone to the burial. She had vanished.
Dorothy’s glass dropped and shattered between her feet. “I’m a little sick, I think!” she said to a bewildered Mrs. Hoade. She dashed upstairs.
Dorothy hung her head out her bedroom window. She was determined not to be nauseated. She took several deep drafts of the crisp night air. Where was Miss Borg? Who was Miss Borg, anyway? Like an imp whispering in her ear, Mr. Hoade’s voice repeated, “Borg is hardly in a position to bring anything out now.” Somewhere beneath her, among the flowers and long pulverized by the rain, was a shred of paper that had said “witnes.”
“Dorothy who?”
“Dorothy Coughlin, Sister. In second period English? I’m sorry to bother you, but ...
“Dorothy Coughlin! It’s seven o’clock in the morning!”
“I know, Sister Elizabeth, but I thought you got up at six thirty.”
“I do! But that doesn’t make this hour of the day any more palatable for conversation. A nun is no better before her morning coffee than anyone else! Why on earth are you calling me, child? Where are you?”
Dorothy took a deep breath. “I’m in Llewellyn, Pennsylvania, Sister. And I’m frightened. My parents are over in Ireland. My sister Maureen thinks I’m crazy and Terrance is somewhere playing football in a camp.” Dorothy glanced nervously at the grandfather clock that stood in the far corner of the living room. Its peaceful ticking was the only sound in the house. She took the telephone around the back of the pantry, as far as the wire would stretch, and cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.
Sister Elizabeth listened in silence to Dorothy’s hurried disjointed story. She interrupted only once to say, “That sounds just like Maureen,” when Dorothy described that conversation.
“I probably left out the most important thing, Sister,” Dorothy said in conclusion. “It would be just like me. But I think I have told you everything. Do you think I’m crazy, too? I don’t know what to do. I’m frightened.” Sister Elizabeth did not answer. “Sister? Sister Elizabeth? Are you still there? Are you mad at me?”
“I’m thinking,” said Sister Elizabeth. At last she cleared her throat, as if, Dorothy could not help thinking, she were about to embark on Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy, which was her favorite recitation. Instead, she asked, “You say you actually saw someone in the cottage?”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure. Yes.”
“How sure?”
“Well, it was just for a second, but I did see him...her, whoever it was.” Dorothy added, “I know it wasn’t the nurse, Miss Borg. Miss Borg is short and squat.”
“I believe I can say with certainty, Dorothy, although I’ll look it up to be sure, that the labor union you mention, loathsome as its leadership is, was not the one connected with that dreadful affair last year.... You say there’s a fresh grave not far from the house?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“But the name is Coburg.”
“Yes, Sister.”
“And his name is Hoade and her maiden name was Krasilovsky?”
“Yes, Sister.”
‘Well then, I can tell you one thing. People don’t go around using other people’s graveyards for nefarious purposes. The Coburg family, after all, might not like it. Do something.”
“Yes, Sister?”
“If there’s a phone book there, look up Coburg. If there’s a listing anywhere near your place you can be sure your nurse is not in the grave you saw.”
Dorothy picked up the telephone directory. It was dog-eared and five years out of date. “Coburg,” she muttered. “Coburg, Abel; Coburg, Gerald...there’s lots. Here it is. Coburg, M., Route 8, Llewellyn. It can’t be too far. We’re on Route 8 too. Maybe it’s that big old house way up the road behind the hedges.”
“Most likely, Dorothy,” said Sister. “Well that’s out. The word witness, by the way, is used on hundreds of lands of mundane documents. You’ll find it on marriage licenses, deeds, bills of attainder, wills, contracts of all kinds, mortgage agreements, IOUs, and even some foreign passports. There is no reason, in my opinion, to jump to the conclusion that a witness to that dreadful slaughter was being kept on the estate, and was—in your words, not mine, Dorothy—bumped off.”
“Sister, I just have a feeling something’s going on here.”
“Well, if you’re that frightened, I suggest you invent an excuse to come home. But I really doubt there is much amiss, Dorothy. These things simply don’t happen to imaginative young girls. Only a very bad television program would come up with a drama like that.” Sister Elizabeth pronounced the word television with the accent on the third syllable, as if it were a brand-new invention. “Are you convinced, Dorothy? Are you no longer frightened?”
“I guess not, Sister. I mean, I guess I’m convinced.” Sister Elizabeth said nothing for a minute. Then her pause ended. “By virtue of your nose, you are positive a child was not in that house? And because you saw a grave that wasn’t there two weeks ago, you are suspecting foul play?”
“Well, I don’t know, Sister. I can’t dig up the grave to see who’s in it.”
“Disinter, Dorothy. No, I’m sure there’s a logical, aboveboard explanation for everything you’ve said. I’m afraid, however, that it mightn’t be in your best interest to pursue this any further.”
“You mean it’s just plain none of my business, Sister?”
Sister laughed. “Exactly,” she said. “I would not ordinarily admit this to a pupil, Dorothy, but I happen to be a devotee of Miss Agatha Christie. You see, even nuns have small vices. At any rate it’s better than smoking cigarettes like Father Foley. So I admit to being intrigued by what you say. There is one thing in your story that doesn’t fit in, but I cannot, for the earth, think what it is. I know it reminds me for some reason of the back of father’s haberdashery store, when I was a little girl.” Dorothy had never considered the possibility of Sister Elizabeth’s ever being a little girl or having a father, much less one who ran a haberdashery, but then she had to have a father and he couldn’t very well have been a Jesuit priest. She tried to stop herself thinking trivial things like that at a time like this. “I shall call you back, Dorothy, if that something turns out to be of substance, or if I find your labor leader is a man in trouble. In the meantime, sit tight!”
Dorothy gave the number and hung up. She was positive she’d never heard the words sit tight spill from Sister’s lips nor ever would again. There was a stirring and banging upstairs. Someone was getting up.
Dorothy stood at the bottom of the stairs. Mr. Hoade appeared suddenly at the top. “I didn’t know you were here!” she blurted out.
“It’s my house, isn’t it?” he asked, coming down in his bathrobe. “I drove down late last night. You’re up early.”
“I was expecting a letter from my mother,” Dorothy answered.
As if in answer to a prayer, Dorothy picked up the morning mail, which lay under the letter slot against the front door.
“A letter from my parents,” she said with all the blameless youthful cheer she could muster. “And one from my best friend, Kate.”
The hours until three o’clock dragged impossibly for Dorothy. Three was when Baldy would come around and pick her up. In the meantime Lisa had awoken with a cold and Mrs. Hoade with a hangover, and the turkey wouldn’t make an aspic. When at last she swung herself into Charley’s saddle, Dorothy felt quite out of sorts.
“Where do you want to go today?” Baldy asked.
“Back to the graveyard.”
“Again? We went there yesterday.”
“Tell you why later,” said Dorothy. She remained uncommunicative as they trotted up a ridge, through the woods, and past the place where the farms in the valley could be seen in the splendor of their grain-filled fields. They passed over the wooden bridge exactly as they’d done the day before. Yesterday’s hoofprints were still visible in the soft cinders on the other side of the bridge. The great nests of vines that they’d pulled up to read the headstones two weeks before had not fallen. This gave the little cemetery a disheveled look; Dorothy reminded herself to set them straight when she left this time.
“What are we looking for, Dorothy? Did you lose something?” Baldy wanted to know when they’d tied up their horses and dismounted.
“Something unusual. Something out of the ordinary,” said Dorothy. She realized that she hadn’t any idea what she was looking for.
“Like clues to a murder?” Baldy asked. “I’ve read some Nancy Drews. Tell me if we’re looking for clues.”
Dorothy laughed for the first time that day. “It sounds so silly, Baldy. It wouldn’t help to explain it all. I’d rather not, because if I’m wrong it would be a cruel, awful rumor. So let’s just go looking. Tell me if you see anything odd. Footprints, bits of cloth stuck to nettles, a pocket comb somebody dropped.”
“Will you promise to tell me, if I find something?”
“Okay.”
“Is it about the Hoades?”
“Yes,” said Dorothy, feeling a little frightened and a little foolish all at once. She began examining the blackberry briars. Baldy followed at a respectful distance, eating an occasional berry when Dorothy wasn’t looking.
If there had been any scraps of cloth caught on bushes, or objects dropped from pockets, Dorothy decided she wouldn’t know what to make of them anyway. The rain of the past week would have obscured any footprints, except theirs of the day before, and those were in evidence in great abundance.
Dorothy sighed. In mystery stories, detectives always came upon things suspiciously left in graveyards. From a single heel mark Perry Mason, or even Delia Street, could tell the identity of the wearer and whether he or she had been running, limping, or dragging a body.
“Well, we haven’t found anything, have we?” Baldy asked at last, scratching her nose. “Will you tell me anyway, Dorothy?”
“Well, okay,” Dorothy answered. “This is going to sound pretty dumb. Do you remember when I told you the baby had died? The Hoades’ baby?”
“And so,” said Baldy when Dorothy had finished the whole story, “you thought maybe a witness to that labor union murder was buried here?”
“I wondered. But I guess everything’s on the up-and-up.”
“If my uncle were home, he’d tell us right away about this Coburg family. Probably knows the Hoades too. I could write him,” she added helpfully.
“Takes too long,” said Dorothy.
“Anyway,” said Baldy, placing her left foot in Gabriel’s stirrup and pulling herself into the saddle, “it’s a cinch the Hoades never used this place to bury anybody. First of all the grave’s too big to be a baby’s. Secondly they wouldn’t dare use someone else’s property, if there are live Coburgs in the phone book.”
Up and down, Baldy’s compact, chunky form rose and fell as she posted with the precision of a Swiss clock. Gabriel trotted swiftly, almost soundlessly over the soft earth ahead of Dorothy and Charley. The sweat poured down Charley’s neck like rain on a window. Dorothy flicked at it with her fingers, but it kept pouring down. Like the rain on the end of the coffin... “Oh Baldy!” Dorothy shouted. She felt her foot slip in the stirrup. “That’s it!”
Baldy whirled around and pulled Gabriel up. “What’s it? Do you want to give me a heart attack?” she asked.
“The coffin!”
“What coffin?”
“The coffin. The baby’s coffin. It was so long that it took up the whole back of Matthew’s station wagon. It wasn’t a baby’s coffin at all. There must have been a grown-up in it.” Flies began to gather on Charley’s ears. He wanted to get started again. Dorothy brushed them away. Why didn’t Baldy say anything? Why was she so still, all of a piece with Gabriel like a civil war statue?
“I think you better stop, Dorothy,” she said at last.
“Stop what?” Dorothy asked, wiping her face on her shirt sleeve.
Baldy had brought her horse up even with Charley’s neck. Dorothy felt Baldy’s strong warm hand play against her own wrist and hold it tightly. “Don’t do this, Dorothy. Leave other people’s skeletons in other people’s closets. I know I’m not smart like you, but I do know one thing. I wouldn’t mess around with that Mr. Hoade. Not for a million bucks. If there’s anything you’re not supposed to know about you better not find it out. Please!” Baldy paused for breath. “We’ve had such a wonderful time riding. I don’t have any friends here, you know. I just want to look forward to what’s left of the summer.”
“You’re right, Baldy,” Dorothy said. “Maybe if I had Ned Nickerson to protect me it would be okay, but I don’t.”
“Who’s he?”
“Nancy Drew’s big strong boyfriend.”
And what a thing to give up, she told herself when they’d gotten out of the narrow path that attracted so many horseflies. They cantered all the way to the top of a hill where Baldy said the view was most spectacular. If I meddle any further in this, Dorothy reasoned, I’ll be fired and packed off home in a big fat hurry. There’s not quite two weeks ʼtil Labor Day. Maybe Mrs. Hoade will let me ride more days instead of paying me extra money. She’s sending the cookbook off to the publisher today. She can afford the time and so can I.
The goldenrod brushed against Charley’s legs and under the bottoms of Dorothy’s boots. At the top of the hill the wind blew, the horses ceased to sweat, and Dorothy pulled her hair back, as it had been plastered to her face with perspiration. “When it’s not so hazy you can see five or six miles,” Baldy told her. The view of the undulating pastures and oblong meadows full of field corn held Dorothy and Baldy speechless on their standing horses for a moment. Then Dorothy sighed and said, “I wish it were all mine, too.”
“Yours, too? It doesn’t belong to me or even to my uncle,” Baldy said in surprise.
“Oh, yes, it does,” said Dorothy.
Dinna had not taken home the pancake-shaped turkey, Mrs. Hoade informed Dorothy when Dorothy came in. However, she had decided to include the recipe in the package anyway. It was now in the mail, Mrs. Hoade went on to say with a positive twinkle in her eyes. There had been a call from Dorothy’s sister, Mrs. Hoade added.
Dorothy pulled off her boots in the kitchen. She groaned. “Maureen? I wonder what she wants now. I hope Mom and Dad are okay.”
“I expect they are,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Dinna took the message.” She peered at the greasy slip of paper with the dreadful handwriting. “Everything is hunky-dory. E.M.O.S.H.,” she read, “that makes no sense. Must be a misspelling. Well, it doesn’t seem to be much of an emergency. Now, get the girls washed up. We’ll have turkey croquettes tonight, dear,” said Mrs. Hoade, downing the rest of a large Scotch and pouring herself another.
Dorothy frowned at the telephone message as she climbed the stairs. Emosh? She smiled. Of course it wasn’t Maureen. E.M.O.S.H. Elizabeth Macintosh, Order of the Sacred Heart. If Dorothy hadn’t known it was impossible, she would have imagined Sister was having fun with gangster movie words like hunky-dory and sit tight and her own encoded initials.
Mr. Hoade was changing his shirt in his bedroom as Dorothy went by. “Get your message?” he asked as he buttoned the third button down.
Dorothy shivered a little at his voice. “Yes, Mr. Hoade,” she answered.
“I happened to pick up the extension at the pool,” he said smoothly, “same time as Dinna picked it up in the kitchen.” He looked at himself in the mirror for an instant. “Dinna thought it was your sister, but it wasn’t. It was a nun, wasn’t it?”
Dorothy crumpled the paper in her hand. She hoped Sister Elizabeth had said nothing more than hunky-dory. “Yes, my English teacher,” Dorothy managed to stutter.
“Oh,” said Mr. Hoade. He closed the door softly in Dorothy’s face. “You don’t mind? I’m changing my pants,” he said, with a chuckle that Dorothy didn’t particularly like.
“Time to get washed up for supper, girls!” Dorothy called into the library. “Mom says just a few minutes.”
“Uhm” was the reply. It would, of course, be at least an hour before Mrs. Hoade had anything ready. The girls seemed to know this as well as Dorothy. I have time to write to Kate, she thought. Poor Kate must think I’m dead. I haven’t had a chance to write for the whole summer.
Dear Katey, she began, I’ve been so busy every second that I haven’t had a minute to write (or do much summer reading either). Dorothy stared out her bedroom window into the leaves of the oak tree that stood outside. How far away Kate seemed to be from this spot. I’ve been helping the lady I work for write a cookbook. You won’t believe it but even I am a little more organized than she is. My name is going to go into it in print. Won’t that knock Sister Elizabeth out! Surely Sister had not said much more than hunky-dory. Surely Mr. Hoade had overheard nothing. Why would Sister even mention a labor union to Dinna? You won’t believe this either but these people have the most fabulous parties. Every week I have to order at least two hundred bucks worth of food and booze over the phone. I’ve never seen a hundred dollar bill before. I’ve actually paid out one or two hundred every time the caterer delivers, because Mrs. H. doesn’t trust the maid with the change. Why would he show such interest in a silly phone call? Particularly if everything was hunky-dory, as Sister had said. I’ll just have to find a way of calling Sister back. All the phones are on this one line though. The best thing about the whole summer is riding horseback. ME! The girl I ride with is very rich. She owns a horse. Can you imagine! We go all over the countryside, which is gorgeous. Even more beautiful than the Catskills. The simple explanation for them using such a big coffin is that they probably couldn’t get a little one this far out in the country. You’ll never guess who your best buddy met last week at one of the parties. Desi Arnaz! He’s a gambling friend of Mr. H. I don’t like Mr. H. one bit. He gives me the creeps. The reason I was told not to go out to the cottage is that the surrounding area is full of rotting timbers, rusty nails, and snakes. You remember how we always talked about marrying millionaires and having dinner in the Waldorf Astoria? Well, these people have all the money in the world. This lady did just that. I can tell. She married for money and wait ʼtil I tell you how that works out. Of course it would be different with David Niven or somebody. But there really aren’t any rotting timbers, rusty bits of iron, or snakes down there. There’s only a fairly substantial cellar. Anyhow, tell you all in September. Take care of yourself. Love, Dot. Sister Elizabeth was much too smart to let the cat out of the bag on the telephone. Dorothy folded the letter and licked the envelope. No, there was just nothing to worry about.
Of course Dorothy was hot and tired after she had done all that big pile of dishes. Mrs. Hoade had used every pot and pan in the kitchen again to make her turkey croquettes. She didn’t mind in the least if Dorothy went out to the mailbox on Route 8 to post her letter, and if she took a swim on the way back. Mrs. Hoade seemed unusually preoccupied that evening; perhaps with no guests and only Mr. Hoade to contend with, she was not very happy. At nine o’clock, Dorothy dried the last dish, changed into her bathing suit, and letter in hand walked down the driveway to the road.
She could see only the bulky shape of the cottage, a square of blackness, blacker than the woods that surrounded it. If they hadn’t turned off the telephone down there, the call to Sister Elizabeth would be easy. Mrs. Hoade had never buzzed the phone in the cottage, she’d given the number to the operator. That meant a separate line.
Dorothy felt for the door handle. She gave the door a push as she depressed the latch. It opened so easily that she nearly tumbled in upon the door. The darkness in the little house surrounded her like a muff. Holding on to the wall with one hand, she rotated the other in wobbly circles to find a telephone, or at least a light switch. A light would not be seen at the big house, as the windows had been shuttered over on that side. Her fingers touched the top of a silk lampshade. She steadied it. Then the palm of her hand came directly on the soft lips of a human mouth.