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THE RAIL STATION IN St. Ignace was down on the main street, not far from the Mackinac ferry company. Mary and Edmond walked the dusty road to the dock with nary a word said between them. The train ride from Dillmont had been similarly silent.
Mary hoped that Edmond’s reticence was due to his concerns about leaving Christena to the tender mercies of the Westerholm Institution for Women. It was far likelier, she hated to admit, that he was simply disgusted with Mary MacDougall and her whole idiotic scheme.
But at least he shouldn’t be troubled about Merton Olcott’s appearance. Edmond didn’t know the man from the haberdasher down the street.
Mary, however, did. And seeing him come into Westerholm presented her with both good news and bad news.
The good news was that, if he was making a visit to Westerholm, he must certainly be visiting his wife. Ergo, Agnes Olcott was alive, and Christena should be able to find her and tell her what had transpired in Duluth during her absence.
The bad news was that, though Olcott wouldn’t have recognized Mary behind her veil, he might see Christena and remember her. And then he might feel compelled to do something desperate to protect the secrecy of his plot.
As they trudged toward the dock, Mary very nearly told Edmond about the danger that had just arisen. The words were right on the tip of her tongue, but at the last second she held them back.
Really, what were the odds, she asked herself, that Olcott would happen to see Christena in such a big place, teeming with over two hundred women? And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t recognize her—now frumpy and slouching and haggard. Nothing like the handsome, well-dressed woman he had encountered in his office those weeks before.
She convinced herself in a matter of minutes that Christena would be safe. She would tell Edmond about Olcott. But she would wait until the ferry to Mackinac was well away from the dock. That way, it would be too late to return to Dillmont, should Edmond take alarm and insist on rescuing Christena posthaste.
When the boat was about one hundred yards from shore, churning into a healthy chop and brisk headwind, Mary turned to Edmond. “There’s something I have to tell you about. Something that happened just as we were leaving Westerholm.”
“Oh?” he asked with a tone of foreboding. “What’s that?”
And she told him about Merton Olcott.
She had hoped that he would be more understanding. But the first sound to come out of his mouth was a groan.
“Maybe you’re right, and Christena will go unnoticed,” he said, his worry and frustration clear. “But no investigation is worth endangering a loved one or even a friend. I truly think you’ve let your blasted detective books go to your head, Mary MacDougall. You have some cockeyed notion that nothing’s more important than solving the case. But that’s just wrong.”
Mary tried to reassure him. “Westerholm is full of nurses and attendants. Olcott might want to do something, but how could he pull it off?”
Edmond just shook his head. “I have a bad feeling about all this. It looked difficult enough before. But now with Olcott on the loose...”
Mary felt perfectly awful, sitting there with Edmond brooding beside her. This whole mess would never have happened if only Christena hadn’t invited the artist and his friend to vacation with them. Mary would have figured out another way to gain entry to Westerholm. And Edmond would be happily finishing up his bank mural back in Ishpeming.
But the plan now was too far in motion to stop. And Edmond was fully entangled in it. Mary needed him to stick it out until they could gain Christena’s release on Wednesday.
As Edmond stared out at the water, Mary studied his face, which was wracked with worry. From her position of exceptional privilege, she needed to remember that Edmond hadn’t lived anything like the life she had. If he found himself in trouble, he couldn’t depend on a family retainer to come to the rescue, or to hand over a fat check to fix some problem. He had already spent time in jail, and now she had gotten him involved in a scheme that most people would judge to be quite misbegotten, if not illegal.
Edmond was an artist. He had a sweet and sensitive nature. Nothing gave him more joy than simply standing in front of a canvas, applying daubs here and there. Mary had never heard him express a desire to do anything else.
She, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to solve crimes, to catch the villain and bring him to justice. She felt an incredible rush whenever she was on the hunt for clues. Her single-mindedness perhaps made her a little insensitive to what other people were feeling. Clearly, it had when it came to Edmond.
It occurred to her that if she pushed him too hard, he might decide that he had had quite enough of Mary MacDougall. At the very notion, her breath caught. She couldn’t stand the thought of not having him in her life. When this whole affair was concluded, she would make amends. She would find him more commissions among her father’s wealthy friends. If the painter had enough work, she might even persuade him to rent a studio and make Duluth his permanent home.
“Edmond,” she said, grabbing his hand, “let’s spend all day tomorrow painting. We’ll hire a cab and go up to the old fort. Away from the crowds. You can start me on watercolors, show me how to paint with them. Perhaps a Lake Huron vista.”
A reluctant smile appeared on his face. “Well, as a matter of fact, I had a little bit of a surprise planned for you,” he said, straightening up from his gloomy slouch.
“Oh really?” said Mary brightly. “What kind of surprise?”
“I asked Paul to make a portrait of you and me in one of those pretty spots up north on the island.”
For the first time since Mary caught sight of Merton Olcott, she saw a ray of sunshine. “That would be lovely, Edmond. Just lovely. What a wonderful idea. I’ll order a picnic lunch at the hotel and we can make a day of it.”
* * *
AS HE DROVE THE HIRED carriage into Mackinac’s rustic precincts the next morning, Paul Forbes wondered aloud why Christena hadn’t joined them. Had the excursion to Dillmont worn her out?
Edmond, who was sitting next to Paul up front, turned around and glanced at Mary. “Why don’t you explain the situation,” he said, giving her a chiding look.
Mary and Edmond had agreed yesterday that the time had come to reveal everything to Paul. She took a deep breath. “Actually, Paul, Christena didn’t come back with us. She’s still in Dillmont, tying up some loose ends in the case.”
This time it was Paul’s turn to twist around and look at Mary. “Your case? The one with the lady whose husband claimed she died of cholera?”
“The very same,” confirmed Mary from the back seat. To her eyes, it seemed that Edmond was squirming slightly.
“What’s she doing?” Paul asked suspiciously.
Mary deliberated a few seconds over her answer. “You see, some new clues have come to light that indicate Mrs. Olcott might be sequestered in the women’s asylum in Dillmont.”
“Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? You can tell your client and be done with it.”
“But we need to prove it, Paul. We need factual evidence the woman is there.”
“And Christena’s helping with that?”
“Oh, very much so.”
“So exactly what is she doing?”
Mary steeled herself for the answer. “Well, Paul, yesterday the three of us went to the women’s asylum.”
“Yes, go on.”
“And Edmond and I had Tena committed.”
Paul suddenly stopped the carriage in the middle of the road and turned around to stare at her. Or perhaps “glare” was the better verb.
“You put Christena into an insane asylum?” he sputtered in horror. “Oh, please tell me you didn’t.”
“It was the only way to find out if Mrs. Olcott is in there,” Mary quickly explained. “I wanted to be the one committed, but Christena forbade me and insisted on doing it herself. There was no other way.”
“Of course there was another way,” Paul snapped. “You could have told your client that your investigation had gone as far as practicable. You could have told her what you’ve uncovered, and she could have notified the police herself. Surely the woman doesn’t expect you to take such extreme measures.”
Paul had a point, of course. A perfectly sensible point that Mary had heard before. But she was absolutely convinced that she would be delivering Agnes Olcott back to her daughter within a matter of days—and stopping Merton Olcott’s massive fraud in its tracks. The outcome was well worth the risk. And it frustrated her no end that her friends could not understand.
She glanced at Edmond, who looked embarrassed to have been a part of her little conspiracy. “Paul, I promise you that Christena is perfectly safe in Westerholm and we’ll have no trouble extricating her tomorrow.”
The normally jocular photographer did not look satisfied. “I say we all go back up to Dillmont today and free her, Agnes Olcott be damned. For heaven’s sake, Mary, haven’t you read Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House?”
Actually, Mary had read Miss Bly’s harrowing account of a public asylum in New York City, with its brutal conditions and harsh treatment of female inmates. But she had tried to put it out of her mind. It certainly did not provide much comfort.
“I understand why you’re angry at us,” Edmond finally said to his friend. “And I agree—it’s a absurd plan that never should have been hatched.” He shot Mary an accusing glance. “But another day in Westerholm can’t make that much difference.”
“She’s perfectly safe,” repeated Mary, earnestly endeavoring to believe it herself. She quite purposely did not mention seeing Olcott and, fortunately, neither did Edmond. That might have been the last straw for Paul. “And if something goes wrong,” she continued, “I take all responsibility. Let the results of any misadventure be upon my head.”
“But it’s Christena’s head that would bear the brunt of things, isn’t it?” Paul snorted. “You’re damnably irresponsible, if you ask me. The both of you. If anything should happen to her, I hope you two never catch a wink of sleep the rest of your lives. You should be ashamed of yourselves for what you’ve done. I mean, really!”
The temperature being close to ninety, the rest of the ride up to Point St. Clair was hot and sweaty, and was made even more uncomfortable by the tense silence. They arrived at the spot Mary remembered from an earlier jaunt—up on a grassy little hill dotted with maples, overlooking the shore and lake. It didn’t take Paul very long to set up his camera and tripod under one of the trees.
From beneath the black cloth that let him see his ground glass in bright daylight, Paul posed them this way and that. Edmond standing behind Mary, his hands on her shoulders. The two of them sitting on the ground, before the trunk of an old, large maple. The pair gazing out on the lake. Paul exposed ten plates altogether.
And as the photographer became more and more absorbed in his work, his old, genial personality reasserted itself. He even teased Edmond that one pose looked particularly beautiful, except for the painter being in it. Mary felt herself relaxing, and sensed the same in Edmond. By the time Paul snapped the last picture, the gloom that gripped the trio had lifted like a cold fog.
“Now, shall we have our lunch?” Mary asked. “Ham sandwiches, cabbage salad, cookies, lemonade, and beer. Quite a nice rustic feast.”
They ate on the blanket spread beneath the same maple where Mary and Edmond had posed. As they nibbled, Paul told them that the day before he had made the portrait of Thad Watkins and his grandmother. They had found a nice spot in the park down beneath the old fort.
“They were both rather interested in you, Edmond,” he said between bites.
Edmond’s eyes narrowed. “Were they now? Why?”
“I couldn’t say,” Paul replied. “Thad wanted to know how much money you really made, and I said his guess was as good as mine. Grandmama wanted to know where you grew up and who your people were. So I told her.”
“And what did you say?” Edmond asked warily.
Paul kept a perfectly straight face. “I told the old lady that that was the problem. You never did quite grow up. Legend has it that your mother was a disgraced Indian princess who left you in the forest to be raised by wolves.”
Mary bit her tongue to stop an incipient laugh, as she regarded Edmond’s expression, wavering between amusement and horror.
“Some good folks took you in, I said, and civilized you, to a degree,” Paul went on. “Teaching you how to speak English and eat proper and paint a decent still life and such. But you continue to have a proclivity to go out at night and howl at the moon.”
Edmond’s mouth was hanging open. “You didn’t really say that, did you?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. She’s such a sour old thing. I was trying to get her into a better humor.”
“The problem,” Mary said with a smile, “is that Mrs. Richardson actually doesn’t have a humorous bone in her body, apart from her humerus. She’ll be starting all sorts of rumors about our wild man of Ishpeming.”
Mary could well understand why both Edmond and Christena had become so fond of Paul. He loved to talk and joke, and, if anything, enjoyed laughing even more. He was someone who, as he gazed at you with that rugged face and those kindly hazel eyes, made you feel as if you were the very center of the universe. That he was a talented photographer, a real artist, was merely a bonus. But he may have gone a bit too far this time.
“Well,” Edmond sighed, “the horse is out of the barn. Let the old lady think what she wants. Maybe it will embellish my reputation as an artist, being raised by wolves and all.”
* * *
PAUL DROPPED EDMOND and Mary off at the hotel a couple of hours later, and drove away to take the horse and carriage back to the livery. He made both of them swear that they would be on the first ferry the next morning, heading back to free Christena from her captivity.
After returning the wicker picnic basket to the hotel kitchen, Mary and Edmond went to browse through the little store off the rotunda. It sold books, magazines, fudge, cigars and pipe tobacco, and the knickknacks that guests bought for souvenirs and gifts.
Mary wanted to get something for both Emma Beach and Lillian Burns, and thought that the beautifully beaded coin purses or pincushions would be just the thing. She was closely examining a purse when Edmond sidled up to her.
“Pretty little thing, isn’t it?” he said. “You have no idea the amount of work Indian women put into those, in return for chicken feed. It’s really very demanding, finicky labor. The tourists just love them, though.”
As Mary turned around to answer him, she saw, standing nearby, Grandmama Richardson, holding a recently popular book in her hands. She nodded to Mary in a chilly manner. Edmond noticed the old lady, too. He rather ostentatiously took the purse Mary had been examining and peered down his nose at it.
“Hmmm,” he said over-loudly, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if one of my cousins made this. I’m thinking maybe Simone Whitewolf. It looks like her style. She stills lives in a wigwam, you know.”
Mrs. Richardson’s eyes popped open. She made a sharp intake of breath, and turned back to the shelf of books, muttering to herself.
Mary tried to stifle a laugh. “Edmond,” she whispered, “you really are a naughty boy.”
He gave her a conspiratorial wink and it made Mary feel wonderful. It seemed that things were getting back to normal between the two of them. This was the Edmond Mary had grown so fond of—happy and relaxed and ready with a witticism.
She walked him to the front doors of the hotel and they said their goodbyes, arranging to meet early the next morning to catch the first ferry to the mainland. Mary walked back into the rotunda, heading for her room.
As she mounted the stairs up to the third floor, she glanced over at the concierge’s desk. He was talking to a tall, trim man in a dark suit. A tourist, no doubt, looking for directions or advice. Mary continued her ascent, but something made her stop after three or four more steps. She looked back again at the concierge’s desk. At that same instant, the tall man turned to face her.
It was Merton Olcott!
His pale gray eyes fixed on her and a shark’s grin snapped into place. He strode toward her, weaving between clumps of other guests.
Mary’s first reflex was to bolt—run up the stairs and hide in her room. But she couldn’t allow herself to appear afraid. She had engaged this man in a contest, and retreating was not an option. She stepped back down to face him.
“Miss MacDougall,” he boomed in his honeyed baritone, as he came up to her. “How delightful to see you again.”
Mary was unable to reply. In spite of the hot, humid day, a cold chill ran down her spine.
“I thought it was you I saw when I was at Westerholm yesterday,” he said, standing a bit too close for comfort. “I have a friend who works there, you know. Big, strong fellow named Willis. Handles the difficult women. But he seems to think your name is Miss Patrick.”
Mary could feel herself trembling. This was a kind of fear she had never felt before.
“And he said you came with a red-haired lady and her husband,” Olcott continued. “Odd that. I thought your aunt, whom I recall so fondly from our little visit in my office, was single.”
“I’m sure, Mr. Olcott, that I don’t know what you mean,” Mary managed to say, trying to control her quavering voice.
“Now really, Miss MacDougall. A veil? That’s the best you could do?” He gave a derisive little laugh. “After Dr. Applegate wired me about how you popped in at his office, I wondered if you’d turn up again. And sure enough Olive Handy gets a visit from you. She told Willis all about it—she’s got a bit of a crush on him, you know.”
As it happened, Mary did know. Not that it did her any good.
Olcott leaned even closer, and Mary could smell the rank odor of too much whiskey on his breath. “I pray that the good doctor doesn’t need to use any of those powerful drugs on your aunt,” he whispered, like a snake hissing. “I understand that some people are never the same after taking them. Good day, Miss MacDougall.”
And with that he walked away toward the dining room, leaving Mary in a flat-out, heart-racing panic.
