Sherman and Will met Flynn at his office. The girl’s garments were in a brown burlap bag. The first item Flynn removed from it was the brown belt.
“That was hers.” Will jumped up off his chair, spilling his coffee. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, these were Mary’s things, I’d know them anywhere. There’s her skirt, see, with the piece cut out of it.”
“You sure?” Sherman asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. You know, I was kind of mad about having to come over here but it’s proved to be a good time,” Will said. “I’d never been on the ferry before, you know. And I’ve never been to the Island before. The place sure is green, even at this time of year, and I’d heard that the dirt was red but never realized how much until now.”
Flynn and Sherman eyed each other across the room. The latter turned away, shaking his head.
“I thought that today we’d go out to the farm where she was found and talk to the family there and go look at the gravesite,” Flynn said.
“What, she’s been buried?” Sherman looked puzzled.
“Yeah, buried the day before I sent you that telegraph. Didn’t realize they were goin’ to do it so soon. It turned out all right after all since we know now who she is. No harm done.”
“It’s not right, though. The body should have been kept longer so it could be properly identified. It’s not right,” Sherman repeated.
Flynn threw up his hands.
“Look, I’m just as glad not to see a dead body,” Will said. “These are Mary’s clothes so that’s that. What I’d really like to do now, if it’s all the same to you, is look around town for a while, maybe walk down the street and take in the sights.”
“Ah…sure, fine.” Sherman nodded.
“But be back in a half-hour, then we’ll take a drive out to the Bell farm. I’d like to have a talk with them even if you don’t.”
“Good. Can you point me in the direction of the harbour?”
Will started to whistle as he made for the door. While Flynn turned to the pot-bellied stove to refill his coffee cup, Sherman watched as Will proceeded down Water Street, tipping his cap to everyone he met along the way.
***
“What time do you think they’ll be here?” Avard asked Gilbert as they sat down at the kitchen table. Catherine was ladling out boiled dinner for the noon meal. It was a windy and uncommonly chilly day for late summer and the ham, cabbage, and potatoes would taste good, Gilbert thought, after a morning of hauling and stacking wood in the shed.
“They’re supposedly on the two o’clock train. Land here just at mealtime, I suppose.”
“The poor man. I feel so sorry for him and his family,” Catherine said, placing a bowl before her husband.
“Why they had to come here I’ll never know,” Gilbert said.
“The sheriff will have questions, and the father will want to meet the people who found his daughter. He’s likely thankful that she was found at all. And we did give her a proper burial.”
“Just cuts into the workday, is all.”
“She’s been buried,” Eddie said. “How are they going to identify her now?”
“That’s a good question,” Gilbert said, fearing he knew the answer.
“Anyway, it may give the poor man some comfort to know she was found and where she’s buried,” Catherine said, carrying her own bowl over to the table and sitting down beside Jimmy, who was carefully eating around the cabbage in front of him.
***
Gilbert looked up from the harness he was mending to see three men drive up in a buggy. The only one he recognized was Sheriff Flynn. A stocky man with a brown moustache jumped down from the left side of the front seat, followed by Flynn. The buggy’s lone occupant, a tall, thin man with blond hair, was sitting in the back.
“Gil, I’d like you to meet Sheriff Dan Sherman from Amherst.”
Flynn motioned towards Gilbert and then the stranger with his right hand. His left hand held a piece of straw he had just removed from his mouth.
“So that’s the father?” Gil asked, raising his chin towards the buggy.
Avard and Eddy came around from the back of the woodshed, where they had been chopping and piling kindling.
“Do you know the name of the dead girl, sir?” Avard asked.
“Harney,” Sherman told him. “Mary Harney from Rockley, just outside of Pugwash, over in Nova Scotia.”
“Harney, eh? Never heard that last name before,” Gilbert said.
“Originally from around Pictou way,” Sherman said.
“There’s been a bit of a misunderstandin’,” Flynn told Gilbert.
“Oh, how so?”
“The sheriff here didn’t realize that the body had already been buried. He wanted the father to identify it. But he’s seen the clothes and they’re hers all right. Took one look at them—I hadn’t gotten them all out of the bag yet—and he said they were hers. So at least we know now who she is. So many that are washed up are never identified.”
“Have you been over to the graveyard?” Gilbert asked.
“No, and I don’t think we will. He’s not really interested in seeing his daughter’s place of rest.” Sherman shrugged. “More concerned in smoking my cigarettes and when the next meal is going to be. He seems to be regarding this as one big holiday.”
“Gil,” Flynn said, “do you think that Catherine would have the teapot on?”
As they went towards the house, Avard and Eddie made their way over to the buggy.
“How many acres you got here?” Will asked.
“Pa has about a hundred,” Eddie answered.
“I got two hundred acres back home. And got about twenty men working full-time at the place. Wouldn’t believe it to look at me but it’s true.”
“We’re really sorry about…about Mary,” Avard told him.
“Thanks, boy. Yeah, it was a hard blow to both me and her ma. Mary was a good child. Prone to storytelling, but other than that she was mostly well-behaved.”
“How old was she?” Avard asked.
“Eighteen come next January…I think. She was a bit slow-witted. It was hard to get any work out of her either.”
“Did she have a beau?” Avard asked.
“One young fellow had been sniffing around her the last year or so. Had to keep my eye on the pair of them.”
“Would you like to come in the house for some tea?” Eddie asked.
“Wouldn’t mind.” Will smiled. “It’s been a long morning. It’s been a nice trip but, like I say, it’s hard to be away from the farm. I’m needed at home. By the way, could you boys point me in the direction of your outhouse? I drank a lot of strong coffee this morning.”
“I’ll show you,” Avard offered.
As the boys moved to the front of the buggy, Will opened up a satchel on the floor and rummaged around inside. Avard saw him pick up a bundle, also from the buggy floor, and stuff it into the satchel.
“All right, where’s the shithouse?” Will asked, jumping to the ground.
***
Back in Summerside, Sherman purchased tickets for himself and Will for the six-fifteen ferry crossing to Cape Tormentine. It was as they got ready to board the ferry, Prince Edward, that Sherman noticed the burlap bag was missing.
“What the hell, Flynn? I thought you told your deputy to put that bag in the buggy.”
“I did. It should be there.”
“Well, it’s not. Do we have time to go back and get it?”
“You get aboard. It’s getting late. I’ll go back and ask Gerald what he done with it. I’ll get him to run it down here to you before the ferry leaves.”
“All right, but he’ll have to be quick about it. I’ll get the captain to hold the ferry if need be.”
Will whistled as he made his way up the ferry’s gangplank. “It’s a grand day for a boat ride, don’t you think?”
Sherman grumbled under his breath. He took tobacco and papers out of his jacket pocket and started to roll a cigarette.
“Could you spare one of those, Sheriff?” Will asked, walking back down.
Sherman sighed and passed over the newly rolled smoke.
“Thanks.” Will grinned. “Think I’ll take a turn around this tub and see what’s happening.” He flicked a bit of ash into the water and boarded the boat once again.
Sherman commenced to roll another smoke.
He was waiting on the dock when Flynn’s buggy came into view in a cloud of dust. Gerald was driving as fast as he dared through town. He then reined the team in hard to avoid going over the side of the wharf. The horses tripped over their own feet in their attempt to stop. Gerald jumped out and ran up to Sherman, puffing. “I put the bag in the buggy. It should have been there. I put it in the buggy,” he repeated while trying to catch his breath.
Sherman cursed. “Well, then, it’s gone. If it shows up, which I doubt, send it on to Amherst.”
He waved to the first mate, and hurried up the gangplank in search of his travelling companion as the steamer’s engine rumbled to life.
***
When the Prince Edward docked at Cape Tormentine, Sherman hired a wagon to take him and Will to Sackville, where they stayed overnight in a boarding house near the railway station. Throughout the trip Will denied seeing the burlap bag of clothes after they left Flynn’s office.
“Honest to God. I don’t remember the young fellow putting anything in the buggy and I was outdoors with him the whole time he was getting the horses ready,” he claimed.
Sherman wrestled Will’s satchel away from him but the only things inside were an extra shirt, two apples, and a newspaper Sherman himself had purchased in Charlottetown. He suspected Will of lying but didn’t understand why he would take the clothing when he had already been told that it would be returned to the family. And if he did want them back right away, where were they now?
It just doesn’t make sense, Sherman kept telling himself.
***
The train chugged into River Philip at eleven o’clock the next morning. Will shouldered his bag and started walking north. After twenty minutes, a salesman with three steamer trunks in the back of a wagon stopped to offer him a ride.
“Women’s clothes and dainties,” he replied when Will asked what he was peddling.
He was going to Pugwash, as part of his monthly rounds through the county, and had a bottle with him. Will stayed on the wagon and was driven down the main road right past the farm. He saw John walking, stooped, to the barn and grinned to himself. He decided to go straight through to Pugwash, and make his holiday last a little longer. He was sure he’d get a ride back later in the day. The peddler let him off on Main Street and Will tipped his cap to his new friend and walked off in search of a drink.
Hank Baxter lived off Water Street, just behind Phoebe Carter’s bakery. Phoebe let him stay in a room at the back of her building. It was an open secret that Hank and his brother Mac were bootleggers. Mac, who lived just outside town on the way to Wallace, supplied the liquor and Hank sold it. Phoebe didn’t mind. Hank did odd jobs around the place and acted as a live-in night watchman. The Baxter brothers were well liked and many people appreciated the convenience of having a place to buy rum and whiskey on Sundays or after the Wharf Tavern closed for the night.
Will stopped at the bakery first and purchased two dinner rolls fresh out of the oven. Phoebe passed him the change from the ten-dollar bill he presented.
“I just got back from the Island,” he announced, smiling.
“Oh yes, for a visit?” Phoebe asked knowing full well why he had been away.
“No, on official police business. Had to go over there and identify my daughter’s body. She washed up over there, you know.”
“Yes, I had heard about that, Mr. Harney. I’m very sorry.”
“I appreciate your sympathies. Ever been on the Island ferry?”
“No.”
“You should go some time if you ever get the chance.”
The bell on the door jingled as Will closed it behind him.
Hank was sitting on the doorstep with a large German shepherd whose heavy head rested on its paws.
“Got any good stuff?”
“Sure, Mac came for a visit last night. Step inside and make yourself at home.”
As he followed Hank inside, Will threw the uneaten bit of his roll at the dog, who snapped it between yellow teeth.
The room smelled of burnt beans and unwashed clothes and bodies.
Hank pointed to an unpainted ladder-back chair, its seat split in two, and Will sat down.
“What’s your pleasure?”
“Can you spare two whiskies?”
“Yeah.”
Will laughed when Hank pulled a wooden box out from under the unmade bed in the corner.
“I see you got a loan of some Huestis property.”
The words Huestis Graystone Company, Wallace, NS, were stencilled along the side of the box. Its six-by-six-inch compartments originally held dynamite but now contained quart bottles of whiskey.
“Came by it honestly,” Hank told him. “They were doing away with some of their stuff and Mac happened to be there.”
Hank removed two bottles and handed them to Will.
“Here you go. That’s a dollar twenty-five for both.”
“That’s a bit steep, Hank, but never mind. Can I have a couple sips before I go?”
“Fill your boots.”
Will rolled one bottle up in the shirt he had in his bag. Then he unscrewed the top of the other and jerked his head back to take a long haul. His throat burned. He brought his head back down, removed the bottle from his mouth, wiped his lips, then handed it over to Hank who shook his head.
“It’s a bit too early for me.” He grinned.
“Go on.” Will shook the bottle at him. “Have a drink courtesy of the Amherst sheriff.”
Hank reached out for the bottle, took a sip, and handed it back.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Just got back from a paid trip to PE Island. They needed me to identify Mary’s body.”
“So it was her after all. God rest her soul,” Hank said. “Now how did she ever manage to get way over there?”
“Well, my punt disappeared the same time she did. She took it to spite me and ran away from home. She probably was trying to get back to Pictou County to her mother’s crazy family.”
Will took another long drag on the bottle.
“It’s a damn shame,” said Hank.
“Mary was always a little simple in the head.”
“So are you going to work today?” Hank asked, rising from the stool.
“No, lost my place there a while back,” Will informed him. “That bastard foreman was always out to get me anyway. None of them any good, including those rich Seaman sons of bitches.”
Hank gave him a puzzled look.
“It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. But that dynamite box of yours just reminded me of the unfair treatment I got from that place. I think I might take a trip to Wallace today and give them a piece of my mind before I head home to my loving family.”
Will took another drink.
Hank moved towards the door.
“That’s probably not a good idea. Better just to get yourself home now, Will. Do you have a ride?”
“Nope.” Will swayed to his feet. “Got the money to hire a drive but I’ll be damned if I give any of it to that know-nothing Fred LeFurgey. I’d rather crawl home. It’s a nice day and I might be able to hitch a ride with someone going out that way.”
Will stepped out into the sunshine. He patted the dog’s head as he clomped off the doorstep. He tipped his hat to Hank and headed down the road towards Wallace.
***
When Will arrived back home at three o’clock the next morning, he banged on the door with both fists. Mabel eventually opened it and stood before her son with a metal poker in her hand.
“About time you got home,” she said. “Scared me half to death with your knocking. Thought you were somebody come to murder us in our beds. Herself just about drove me and John crazy while you been gone. And wait until you see what she’s done now.”
***
“I can’t believe that poor girl just disappeared into thin air,” Elsie MacDonald said to Elaine Clarke as they sat, knitting, on Elsie’s front veranda.
“Somebody’s done something to her, I’d bet my life on it,” Elaine said. “Heavens, I dropped a stitch. That’s what I get for thinking ill of people.”
“Have you met the sister yet?” Elsie asked.
“Yes, at Bailey’s store the other day. She seems like a sensible person, very ladylike. I’m surprised she’s not staying at John’s, they have more than enough room.”
“I see her walk past here every day from the hotel,” Elsie said. “The first time I went out and introduced myself. I had heard she had come after Mary disappeared. She came in for tea. A lovely person. She’s worried sick about Ann and Mary. Can’t say I blame her. Her and Fred LeFurgey have taken up looking for Mary on their own. They’re going all over the same ground where everybody else looked, and the rumour going around is that Will did away with her, his own daughter. I just can’t believe it even though he seems to be little more than a brute. Remember that time he chased all of us out of the house?”
“I heard something but you’ve got to keep it to yourself,” Elaine said, lowering her voice although there was no one else in sight.
“Cross my heart, I won’t breathe a word to a soul,” Elsie said.
“Well, Freda told me that Martha told her that word is out that it wasn’t Will at all but Smith Reid who had something to do with Mary being gone. Folks are saying that she was in the family way.”
Elsie nodded her head over her work. “I knew it, I knew it. Things aren’t always as cut and dried as they seem. The truth will out, as they say. Of course, Mary just might have gotten it into her head to run away. Mabel said that the girl doted on her Aunt Beatrice, the one that’s here now, and was always agitating to go and visit her.”
“I don’t believe that she just plain ran away,” Elsie said. “I think that somebody needs to be held accountable for what’s happened.”
***
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that son of a bitch did something to her,” said Hiram, leaning on the fabric counter behind him.
“Mind your tea around those prints,” Calvin warned. “Jennie will skin me alive if they get stained.”
Hiram raised the cup in his host’s direction and grinned.
Hiram, Smith and Jack Reid, and Fred LeFurgey were meeting at Bailey’s store to decide what to do about Will.
“Yeah, Harney likely did something. But what and how can we prove it?” Fred asked.
“The police didn’t really do much, did they?” Smith growled.
Calvin snorted. “The police. Did you hear about the Huestis quarry in Wallace? Two of its warehouses burnt to the ground the other night. They’re sure as shooting that it was arson but the police don’t know who did it and likely never will. Their guard dog was found dead just inside the main gate. Beat to death. So it probably wasn’t kids, killing a dog like that. But who knows. There’s been lots of fires around over the last year or two. It’s a worry to a businessman, let me tell you.”
“Anyway,” Fred said, “we might all think that Will did something to Mary but besides stringing him up ourselves, how can we get the authorities to pay attention?”
“We need to speak in one voice. They can’t ignore a large group of people who want something done. And it has to be official,” Hiram said.
“What about a petition?” Smith asked. “Last spring when the ladies’ garden club in Pugwash wanted to have flower pots put around the post office steps, they got a petition going ’round for people to sign and sent it to the village council. They soon got their damn flowers.”
“That’s an idea. But what do we want?” Jack asked.
“I want Harney strung up by the heels,” Fred said.
“Yeah, but we need to put it in a way that sounds legal and official. Something that the authorities will pay attention to,” Hiram said.
“Then who would we send it to? Who would listen?”
“Send it to Halifax,” Fred offered. “To the police. I remember reading in the paper not long ago that they have detectives down there specially trained, who will go outside of the city to look into crimes and to pick up prisoners. They’ve even gone up into Maine. Maybe we could get one of them to come here. We could send the petition to Hiram Black to sign himself and get him to mail it for us. He’s the MLA, he’d know where to send it. He’s a Liberal but he might be good for something.”
“It’s worth a try, that’s for sure,” Calvin agreed. “I’ll go get a pencil and some writing paper.”
“Who will we get to sign it?” Smith asked.
“Every man over eighteen,” his father said, nodding.
“May as well let the women sign as well, the married ones anyway. We need all the names we can get,” Calvin suggested.
“Miss Hennessey will want to sign it too, that’s for sure. And she’s not married,” Fred said, looking sheepish all of a sudden.
“Heard you’ve been spending a lot of time in her company since she got here,” Calvin said, raising his eyebrows at the blushing man.
“I want to sign it too,” Jack piped up.
***
Petition
To the Chief of Police
Halifax, Nova Scotia
September 22nd, 1877
Dear Sir,
In the matter of the disappearance and murder of Mary Harney, the below signed individuals of Rockley, Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, and surrounding areas, request that the Halifax Police Department send a detective to Cape Traverse, PE Island, where a girl washed up on shore and was later buried. The dead girl might be Mary Harney.
The below signed individuals of Rockley and surrounding area accuse William Harney, the father of Mary Harney, of the wilful and wrongful murder of his daughter. We need the assistance of the police to bring him to justice.
Trust that we are your most humble servants,
Calvin Bailey
Hiram Reid
Fred LeFurgey
Smith Reid
Jack Reid