Henrietta calls for Help
Emma was pleased to see the painting of the hallway completed when she and Janey reached home. Abe had excelled himself. He’d started early, before they’d left for town, which was probably why he was asleep now on the front verandah. Janey kicked at his leg to wake him.
“Hey,” he protested. “Where’s my lunch? I’m starving.”
“You can make a sandwich,” Janey countered.
“A sandwich!”
Emma left them to their chivvying and surveyed the hall, admiring its freshness. The rest of the house would have to be repainted now. The other rooms looked drab by comparison. She went to her storage cupboard in the spare bedroom and searched through a box of candles for what she wanted. Lemon verbena. If the whole house wasn’t freshly painted it could at least smell fresh, and what better scent for that than a citrusy one.
She placed two candles in the hall and another in the parlour, and her and Daniel’s bedroom. That done, she took her personal shopping to the bedroom to unpack, leaving Janey and Abe in the kitchen. She unpacked the four shirts ordered from the seamstress for Daniel. These she placed, neatly folded, in his drawer.
The shirts he was wearing had begun to fray at cuff and collar. They would go to the seamstress next week for the worn parts to be replaced. There was plenty of wear still in the bodies. Her next task was to put fresh sheets on the bed and tidy the room. After taking the used sheets out to the washhouse, she decided she had time for a cup of tea before meeting Darcy at school. She was planning to take him to the wharf and to wait there a while. There was a good chance the Mary B would come in while they waited.
Janey appeared from the rooms she shared with Abe off the side of the kitchen as Emma topped up the kettle and stirred the fire.
“Could you make sure the verandahs are swept,” Emma said as Janey set out the cups.
“Uh-huh.”
“And Abe needs to have all the tools back in the shed and tidy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And if…”
“Emma, stop. We do this every time.”
The kettle whistled and she filled the teapot. She should be used to it by now, but there was a drowning last week when a laden barge overturned, trapping the pilot. These accidents hadn’t caused her as much worry when she was on the river herself, on the spot. Henrietta was right. She needed something to fill her time and take her mind off the what if.
Janey put a plate of sliced cake on the table in the breakfast nook and Emma sat while the tea was made. Abe, who seemed to have a sixth sense when tea was brewing, waited until Janey had sat down before joining them at the table. Emma took a sip and tried to relax, gazing out the window at the front garden, framed by white net curtains. The plumbago hedge along the front fence sported its permanent display of blue blossoms, just like the hedge around the homestead at Wirramilla, and the vincas were just flowering in their beds along both sides of the path to the front door.
This came a close second to the back verandah as her favourite spot to sit. Because the house had been built facing the river, the kitchen, usually at the back of a house, was on the street frontage. When Daniel had initially bought and renovated the house, he’d had the kitchen extended out to the edge of the verandah, creating the dining nook and a more appropriate ‘front room’ space. It had been Henrietta’s suggestion, before Emma even knew Daniel had bought the place for them, or that he was intending to propose.
The sound of a horse and vehicle approaching at a clip caught their attention. Janey half stood and peered out the window.
“It’s Mr. Crowley,” she said.
“Did we leave a bag of shopping in the cab?” Emma asked.
“Nope. It’s all here.”
The horse-drawn cab pulled up in front of their house. Had the Mary B already arrived and Daniel taken a cab home? They waited, but it was Mr. Crowley who climbed down from his high seat and opened the front gate.
Abe went out to meet him and a moment later came quickly back in.
“Mrs. Pickles has sent for you,” he told Emma. “Says can you come straight away.”
“Did he say what it was about?” Emma asked, getting up from her seat and leaving a half-eaten slice of cake. Abe shook his head. “Can you meet Darcy at school? Take him to the wharf and I’ll try to join you there as soon as I can. I could drop you on the way.”
“You’ve no time, and we’ve lots,” Janey told her, handing Emma her bag. Emma had the suspicion it wouldn’t just be Abe collecting Darcy and visiting the wharf but what did it matter. She went out to the waiting cab where Mr. Crowley was holding the door for her.
“Why does Henrietta need me urgently, do you know?” she asked.
Mr. Crowley’s jowls wobbled as he shook his grey head.
“No, ma’am. Just that we were to hurry.” He closed the door behind her and hauled himself back up onto his seat.
Emma found herself rocked and jolted as Mr. Crowley urged his horse along Dickson Street at speed and around the corner into Connelly. Emma’s imagination was racing overtime. Had someone died? And if so, why was she needed?
The Pickles’ attractive two-storey boarding house didn’t appear to have changed at all since she’d stayed there a decade ago. Some of the shrubs in the small front garden needed pruning, and the gate squeaked as she opened it. The sound must have been heard inside as Henrietta had opened the front door before she reached it.
“Emma, thank you so much for coming. I’m so frightened.”
“My dear, what has happened?” She could hear voices coming from the parlour. And someone sobbing.
“My father-in-law has died.”
“Old Mr. Pickles?” Emma remembered how unwell he’d looked at the Tearoom. “Was it a heart attack?”
“If only.”
“Henrietta, you’re frightening me now. What is it?”
“He may have been hit on the head.”
“Oh, but…”
“You killed him,” a woman’s voice came clearly from the parlour, distraught. Another female voice responded. Was that Janet? Emma couldn’t make out the words.
“Who is it making the accusation?” Emma asked.
“That’s Miriam, Grace’s daughter,” Henrietta said. “You’d best come and see for yourself.”
She stepped down the hall and pushed the parlour door wide open. Emma reluctantly followed her inside, wondering again what she was doing here.
Conversations ceased at her entrance and all heads turned toward her. The first thing Emma noticed was the heat. Despite the mild weather, there was a fire burning in the fireplace. Drawn up in front of it was a wing-backed armchair. She could just see the side of a man’s grey head, slumped against the back.
A young woman Emma hadn’t seen before was kneeling beside the chair, her head on her hands as they rested on the armrest. She had dark brown ringlets falling around her face, and wore white muslin sprigged with pink. The young man stooping over her, a hand on her shoulder, was tall, slim, and blonde-haired. A very romantic picture. Emma could almost suppose it was posed. They must be Miriam, the visiting granddaughter, and her fiancé.
Charity Pickles was sitting on the sofa, her hands clutched tightly in her lap, a slip of a white handkerchief protruding between two fingers, her thin grey face even sharper than usual. As always, she wore black, unrelieved with any touch of white, as if she was forever in mourning.
A slightly younger and fresher looking woman, whose similar features had a softer look than Charity’s, was standing on the opposite side of the fireplace. She too, was dressed in black, but Emma knew the other Pickles daughter, Grace, was a widow. While her demeanour was calm and composed, she emitted an undercurrent of sadness.
Standing in the centre of the room with Janet, was her father Nathaniel Pickles, Henrietta’s estranged husband, an austere man, like his father, but with a warmer personality and a dry sense of humour. Their faces were etched with shock and disbelief.
“What is she doing here?” Charity’s harsh voice broke the moment of silence that had greeted Emma’s appearance. “Sticking your nose in again are you?” she asked, looking to Emma and not waiting for Henrietta to reply.
“I want her here, Aunt Charity,” Janet said, sending a tremulous glance at Emma.
“You never were very discerning when it came to your friends,” Charity sniffed.
“Please, Charity, this isn’t a time for arguing among ourselves,” Grace said, a pleading note in her voice.
“What would you know? You’ve barely been in the place five minutes,” Charity told her.
“Now, now,” Nathaniel put in, ineffectively, as Charity went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“This is my home, not yours. You left, remember.”
“A woman usually does leave her parents’ home when she marries,” Grace retorted.
“And who’s fault is it that I didn’t?” Charity sniped back.
“Stop it, both of you,” Janet cried. “How can you talk like that when grandfather is, is…”
“But you killed him,” Miriam accused, looking up quickly, her voice shrill. “You were standing right here with a piece of firewood in your hand. I practically caught her in the act,” she said, looking around. “Oh, if only I’d been a few minutes earlier, I could have stopped her.”
“The firewood was lying on the floor,” Janet cried. “I keep telling you, I’d just picked it up. I thought Grandfather was asleep.”
Henrietta glanced at Emma, eyebrows raised as if to say, ‘see why I need your help?’ But surely Henrietta wasn’t expecting her to step in and sort this out?
A loud rat-tat on the front door drew everyone’s attention.
“What now?” Charity asked, as Henrietta went to attend to it.
The fiancé cleared his throat. “I sent for the doctor and the police,” he said.
“The police?”
There were voices in the hall and the Pickles’ maid ushered a young man into the room.
“Doctor Rook,” she announced.
The man looked to be in his mid-twenties, with brown eyes in a fresh-face, and a small moustache like a furry caterpillar above his upper lip, grown to make himself look older and trustworthy, was Emma’s first thought. It didn’t quite work.
“Where’s Dr. MacArthur?” Charity demanded.
“He’s been called out,” Doctor Rook told her. “Now, what seems to be the problem. The message I received was rather confusing.”
“My father-in-law has died,” Henrietta said indicating the armchair. “We need to know the cause of death.”
“We know how he died,” Miriam countered. “He’s been murdered.”
Doctor Rook’s eyes widened.
“We heard you the first three times, miss,” Charity said, “so do be quiet. Now move away and let the doctor do his job.”
“Oh.”
Emma found herself agreeing with Charity Pickles for perhaps the first time since she’d known the woman. Doctor Rook stepped toward his patient, and Miriam’s young man, whose name Emma still didn’t know, drew her to her feet and away to the side+.
Emma hadn’t met Doctor Rook, or any of the doctors in town, though she knew of Dr. MacArthur. If you read everything in the newspapers on deaths, murder trials, and the latest developments in medicine, as she did, you knew the major people involved. Dr. MacArthur was also the coroner.
If there was doubt as to how Mr. Pickles had died, she expected the coroner would order an autopsy. But would this young doctor consider that, or make his own diagnosis? Emma thought it wouldn’t hurt to make some subtle observations of her own.