| |
THE CRAMPED LOBBY OF the Garlock & Larson Furniture Company smelled of varnish and sawdust when Mary and Christena entered it the following day. From the factory floor came the screeching sound of machinery sawing through wood. A workman in denim overalls directed them through a door to the left, behind which was a small suite of offices. They thanked him and went in.
“We’re here to see Mr. Olcott,” Mary told the dour-looking secretary whose desk blocked any further advance. “I telephoned this morning.”
From behind her typewriter, the unsmiling woman inspected Mary through her small, gold-rimmed spectacles. “You’re Miss MacDougall?”
“Both of us are, actually. But I am the Miss MacDougall who made the appointment. My aunt just happens to have accompanied me this afternoon.”
The secretary stood up. She wore a severe black dress and was as thin as a rail. She had the manner of a person whose entire diet consisted of lemons and vinegar. “Just a moment, please,” she said, opening the windowed door to a private office and speaking a few words. She turned back to Mary and Christena. “Mr. Olcott will see you now.”
As they walked into the private office, a tall, handsome man came around from behind a well-made oak desk, a product, no doubt, of Garlock & Larson. He was wearing a gray suit with a blue patterned tie. His thick, dark-blond hair was parted decisively in the middle. Around his left arm he had a black band of mourning.
“Miss MacDougall,” he said offering his hand. “I’m Merton Olcott. So pleased to meet you.”
“Thank you for seeing us,” Mary said, shaking his hand.
“Are you any relation to John MacDougall?”
Mary nodded. “Yes. He’s my father.”
“I’ve been an admirer of his for some years,” Olcott said unctuously. “And this lovely lady must be your aunt.”
“Indeed,” said the older woman. “Miss Christena MacDougall. John’s sister.”
Mary thought she detected a glint of interest in Olcott’s eyes when her aunt’s unmarried status was made known to him.
“Please, make yourselves comfortable.” The man gestured to two oak office chairs before his desk. Then he sat back down, tenting his fingers beneath his chin. “Mr. MacDougall wouldn’t be interested in buying a furniture company, would he?”
Mary was surprised at his boldness. The rumor Clara McColley had cited—that Olcott wanted to sell the company—appeared to be true.
“I’m sure it’s a very fine firm,” Christena answered with a charming smile. “We’ll mention your proposal to my brother.”
“Thank you so much,” Olcott said. “Now, my secretary told me about your phone call this morning. You are generously donating new chairs and desks for the several classrooms at your church. For Sunday school. Is that right?”
Mary nodded. “Correct, Mr. Olcott. There’s such a mongrel mix of battered old things in the classrooms now, it’s a miracle some of them don’t collapse under the children. I would want thirty new chairs in three different sizes. Also, little desks to match. What would be the most economical wood for them?”
“Nothing is sturdier than oak.” Olcott rapped his knuckles on his own desk. “Maple’s cheaper, but I’d go for oak. It’ll take more punishment. And the wee little mites do batter the things in the classroom, don’t they?”
Christena laughed, tilting her head coquettishly. “I taught third grade for a few years in Pittsburgh, and I quite agree. But I’m sure your chairs and tables will stand up to the punishment.”
“Oh, you can be assured that they will,” Olcott boasted, hooking his thumbs into his vest pockets. “They will indeed.”
Mary could see how Clara McColley’s mother, a lonely widow, might find someone like Merton Olcott attractive. His face was nicely formed, if a little fleshy in the cheeks and beneath the chin. He had a ready smile and a pleasant laugh. His voice had the deep and honeyed tone of an actor. But those pale gray eyes could not disguise a certain cold calculation behind them, she thought.
Nor could they disguise his obvious fascination with Christena.
As Olcott and Mary spoke, his eyes continually darted to the left, where the older woman sat. Christena seemed to be purposely playing the flirt, and he appeared to have found her rather appealing. He wouldn’t have minded, Mary suspected, a chance to court the wealthy old maid.
“May I show you our catalog?” Olcott asked. “We have several different styles of classroom furniture on offer.”
Mary and Christena spent the next few minutes looking through catalog pages at etchings of school desks and chairs. Consulting with her aunt, Mary picked a style that she liked and asked Olcott for a written bid.
“I plan to talk to a couple of other manufacturers, as well,” she explained. And she did intend to, after the trip to Mackinac. Loch Lomond Presbyterian Church’s Sunday school chairs and desks actually were in need of replacement, and Mary would fund the purchase herself. It had already been arranged with Reverend Fraser.
The man’s face betrayed no disappointment. “Of course. I understand perfectly. I am confident that I can earn your business with a very reasonable price. And,” he added in an obsequious tone, “may I say how fine a thing it is you’re doing for the little lads and lasses.”
“Well, when one has the means to do good, one ought to, don’t you think?” Mary shot him a fawning smile.
Olcott bowed his head in agreement. “Oh, indeed. Good deeds come ’round back to us, don’t they?”
“I think so, too,” Mary said. “Don’t you, Tena?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Christena agreed. “The Orientals call it karma. You are ultimately rewarded by your own good deeds. Or punished by the evil you’ve done. The world will give you what you have given the world.”
Mary thought she saw a little flinch in Olcott’s left eye, as if he had felt a small sting of something. Guilt perhaps? Of course, it may merely have been a nervous tic.
She leaned forward in her chair, and rested her clasped hands on his desk. “Mr. Olcott, there is another good deed that I wish to perform,” she said with studied gravity. “But I want to make sure that you approve.”
Olcott looked a bit at sea. “I’m not certain what you mean, Miss MacDougall.”
“I am acquainted with your stepdaughter, Clara McColley...”
Mary spied another twitch of the eye.
“...through my volunteer work at Dr. Burns’s practice. She and her children are patients there. And I heard about her mother’s tragic death from cholera.” Mary summoned up her best mournful look. “Please accept my sympathy for your loss.”
The man’s features turned melancholy and seemed quite sincere. “Much appreciated, Miss MacDougall,” he said, casting his eyes down. “It was a dreadful thing, a dreadful thing. I miss my wife terribly.” He looked back up at her and Mary could actually see a bit of moisture in his eyes. “It broke my heart that I was not able to kiss her one last time. But the doctor forbade it.”
If the man was lying, Mary thought, he was putting on an excellent performance. That last comment almost brought a tear to her eye.
“How horrible for you. And for your stepdaughter. Mrs. McColley told me that as much as she wished to visit her mother’s plot, she was unable to do so with two small children to care for.”
The widower nodded solemnly. “Yes, Clara is quite upset about her mother’s passing. But what involvement, may I ask, could you have in the matter?”
“As it turns out, Christena and I are soon to travel to Mackinac Island for a nice holiday. And as the town of Dillmont is right along the way, I thought to bring some flowers to the late Mrs. Olcott’s grave, on behalf of her daughter. Do I have your permission?”
Mary had hoped to see a reaction on the man’s face that signified an emotion of some kind—fear, anger, annoyance, gratitude, sadness—anything that might provide a clue. But his expression was blank. Nothing at all. That, in itself, seemed notable.
“You don’t need my permission, Miss MacDougall,” he replied with a shrug. “Anyone may visit the cemetery in Dillmont. It’s a kindly thing you’re proposing, if quite unnecessary.”
“What do you mean, ‘quite unnecessary’?” Mary asked.
“On the doctor’s recommendation, I had my late wife interred in Dillmont to spare any danger to those who might handle the coffin on its journey to Duluth, not to mention possible danger to loved ones here. But since it is so important to Clara to be able to visit her mother, I’m having the casket disinterred and brought here in the near future. With proper precautions, I am told, it should be safe. I had planned to replace the wooden cross with a permanent monument in Dillmont, but now there’s no need.”
“Ah then,” Mary said, “perhaps we can forgo the visit, after all.”
He gave her a warm smile. “Quite so. You can forge on straight to Mackinac. I’ve heard it’s a lovely spot for a holiday.”
Mary and Christena thanked him and made their way out of the office and back onto Grand Avenue. “So, what do you think of Merton Olcott?” Mary asked, as the two women stood before the three-story brick furniture factory.
Her aunt ruminated over the question. “He has charm aplenty, in the superficial way that businessmen do. But he kept shooting me the eye.”
“Not that you discouraged him.”
“So you noticed.” Chistena looked rather pleased with herself. “I was trying to take the measure of the man, make him relax. And it worked quite well, I must say. But flirting with a middle-aged woman doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a wife murderer, now does it?”
* * *
MARY STILL HAD MUCH to do before their departure for Mackinac the following Tuesday.
Thursday was entirely taken up helping Lillian Burns at her father’s clinic. There was filing to be done and letters to be typed. And Dr. Burns found a few minutes to talk to Mary about cholera and its terrible effects, though he was puzzled by her interest in the disease.
“It often begins with diarrhea and vomiting,” he explained. “Dangerous dehydration may occur literally within hours of onset. The patient needs to drink quite a lot and must be isolated, for the disease is highly communicable through the emissions. That’s why sanitary practices on the part of the physician and nurses have to be absolutely up to snuff. A person with cholera will find himself on a dreadfully arduous road. Dying of it is not a serene thing. In my opinion, hydration is the key to survival.”
“How do you handle and transport the dead victim?” Mary asked, a bit concerned at posing such a peculiar question.
But Dr. Burns answered matter-of-factly. “Sometimes folks go to extremes, and cremate the remains immediately. Certainly, one must be masked and gloved and take care that no secretions are spread from the body. But I believe, with great care and rigorous method, the victim can be handled and moved. It would be up to the medical man in charge, I would say.”
Mary left the doctor’s office feeling a little queasy. Cholera was nothing she ever wanted to encounter firsthand.
On Friday she went to pick up the bicycling outfit that Zoya Kuznetsov, her seamstress, had made her—with its very practical short, divided skirt. Mary planned to make good use of it, cycling the paths around Mackinac Island. She already had a trio of lovely new evening dresses created by Madame Zoya for the trip.
When she arrived back home, Mary saw the afternoon mail sitting in a pile on the side table in the vestibule. As she did every day but Sunday, she started to riffle through the various envelopes.
“Nothing from Ishpeming today.”
Mary nearly jumped out of her skin. Emma Beach had glided up by behind her. It wasn’t the first time the housekeeper had teased her about Edmond. Of course, the woman knew every blessed thing that went on in the house, including what came in the mail. And it didn’t take much to figure out who might be sending Mary missives from Ishpeming. It annoyed Mary to have it jested about. But Emma was more than a mere housekeeper. After Alice MacDougall had died, she became something like a second mother both to Mary and her brother Jim. And Mary loved her dearly, no matter what.
It became even clearer at dinner the following Monday that Mary’s correspondence with Edmond Roy had become an item of interest in the household.
“So,” John MacDougall said, piling mashed potatoes next to his roast beef, “are you two excited about your holiday?”
“Oh, Johnny,” Christena said, “it’s going to be just splendid. I wish you’d take a week off and join us.” She gave Mary a sly, quick wink.
Mary smiled back, knowing that her father would no more take a weeklong holiday than swear an oath of poverty and give up all earthly wealth.
But despite his millions, John MacDougall was a down-to-earth businessman who had no time for the airs and pretensions of some of his peers off in New York and Boston. No one would guess his wealth by looking at him or talking with him. Though he lived in a fine big house on Superior Street, he had no valet or butler, and only a small domestic staff. He had no particular ostentations. He was a simple, practical Midwesterner who just happened to enjoy making money.
Mary’s father wrinkled his nose at his sister’s suggestion. “Can’t imagine there’s enough to do on the island to keep a fellow from dying of boredom. Sheer torture.”
“So terribly tedious,” Mary put in. “You’d have to golf. Go fishing. Go sailing. Read good books. Go sightseeing. Meet new people. Eat three wonderful meals every day.” She gave her father a pitying look. “You’d hate it. It would be just too arduous and awful.”
“And I hear,” her father continued, ignoring her tease, “that Ishpeming is particularly pleasant this time of year, too.”
The subject of Edmond Roy was a touchy one for Mary, when it came to her father. She knew he thought she had become infatuated with an unsuitable man. And she had to agree that he was right—about the infatuation. But since Mary had no intention of marrying anyone—neither a struggling artist nor a young businessman—she felt her father should have no worries on her behalf. And thankfully, he had not forbidden her absolutely from contacting Edmond. This was a great relief, but she understood all too well that she needed to tread carefully.
“You know, Father, that we’re only stopping there to see Mr. Roy’s bank mural,” she said evenly. “If I’m to be his... Patroness...”
John MacDougall’s thick eyebrows shot up. “Oh, a patroness are you?”
“Well, I did get him that lucrative commission from Mrs. Ensign.” Edmond was, in fact, scheduled to come to Duluth at the end of July to begin on portraits of the wealthy old lady and her granddaughter.
“I trust ‘patroness’ is all you’re planning to be,” John MacDougall grumbled.
Mary tried to look outraged. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Father.”
“I shall watch her like a hawk, Johnny,” said Christena, making a crisp salute. “There will be no mischief in Ishpeming while I’m on duty.”
A younger, less mature Mary might have sputtered some retort and stomped out of the dining room. But this older, wiser Mary bore up and presented a composed expression. She would not allow herself to be flustered.
“So, Father,” she said sweetly, “how in the world are you and Emma going to get along without me for three whole weeks? Whatever will you two have to fuss about?”
