Читать книгу Meg Harris Mysteries 6-Book Bundle - R.J. Harlick - Страница 11

I followed the ribbon of light through the dark to Three Deer Point. My annoyance with Marie waxed and waned with each jarring bump along the main road and up the lane to my cottage. One moment I was trying to excuse her no-show with “bingo”, one of the few joys in her hard life. Next moment, I was deciding it was intentional. She was angry with me for pestering her about Aunt Aggie and Whispers Island.

Whatever her reason, I would go back to her place first thing tomorrow morning before she left for work and ensure that this time she told me what she refused to share with me yesterday. I hoped it could be used to help us fight the gold mine. From what I’d learned at the store, Eric and I were going to need all the help we could get to fight Charlie Cardinal and his groupies.

When I reached the looming shape of my cottage, I swore even harder. Except for the faint blemish from the timer light in the front room, the building had been all but consumed by the moonless night. In my haste to meet Marie, I’d forgotten to turn on the outside flood lights. Keeping them lit in the dark hours was a habit I’d adopted after I’d managed to survive my first traumatic night all alone at Three Deer Point, a terrifying night with no city lights to banish the darkness. I’d since managed to overcome my fears through pigheaded determination not to give in to such childish behaviour and by leaving on a few lights. Still, there were those moments when my imagination suddenly shifted into overdrive, and I’d sit up wide-eyed with the sound of adrenaline throbbing in my ears.

Like now. Images of lurking yellow were convincing me my attacker was here waiting for my return. I stayed in the truck and tried to bring the waves of panic under control by counting slowly to twenty and telling myself this was ridiculous. I strained to see through the darkness, ears, eyes alert for anything that didn’t belong. From inside the house, Sergei barked. But it was his high pitched greeting yelp, not his deep warning woof. I relaxed a bit and waited.

Finally, I gathered up my nerve and raced up the stairs into the house. I locked the door, switched on the hall light and giggled. What a ninny I was. Of course, there was no one in the house. Why would there be? Sergei seemed to agree. With his usual jubilance, he greeted me as if I’d been away a month, then after a few pats returned nonchalantly to his sofa. He wasn’t concerned about unknown visitors.

Still, I immediately turned on all the outside lights. If anyone intended to sneak up on me, I wanted plenty of warning. Unfortunately, while the immediate woods were flooded with light, anything beyond was blotted out of existence. But I did have my early warning system in place, Sergei.

After double-checking all the outside doors to ensure they were locked, I stoked the fire and filled the silence with the Gypsy Kings, the liveliest CD I owned. I started to pour myself the usual calming tonic but remembered Eric’s admonishment. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was drinking too much. So I shoved the bottle aside, sank into the chesterfield in front of the fire and tried to relax on my own.

It was ridiculous, all these precautions. Just my nerves taking over. There was no reason for the guy in yellow to come here. As Eric said, this guy was only protecting his interests on Whispers Island. As long as I didn’t interfere with the claim, he’d leave me alone.

Gradually, I calmed down as the heat of the fire wrapped me in a cocoon of soothing warmth. I sank deeper into the cushions, while the Gypsy Kings’ dancing guitars swirled around me.

As I contemplated the flickering orange, my eyes wandered to the mantel, to Aunt Aggie’s amazing wedding photograph perched beside Sergei’s china cat. She and her unknown husband appeared just like any other newly married couple, shy with each other, but with a hopeful earnestness in their smiles.

I found it a very sad picture. This happy looking Agatha Harris was not the Agatha I knew. Although Aunt Aggie had seemed content with her life, she never smiled. It used to bother me so much that I used to crack jokes, make funny faces to get her to laugh or at least raise the corners of her mouth, but it never worked. She just grunted and told me to stop such foolish nonsense.

Wondering if I could learn more from this photo, I removed it from the mantel.

They looked comfortable together; she, seated with an unfamiliar elegance, a serene smile on her lips, her eyes sparkling, hands clasped firmly on her lap; he, towering behind her with one hand resting on her shoulder, as if proclaiming “she’s mine”.

This young Agatha Harris was slightly slimmer than her older version. While Aunt Aggie’s mind might have suffered from old age, her body hadn’t. Perhaps it was the active life she’d led during her years alone at Three Deer Point that had kept her from becoming stooped and unsteady. She, with the help of Marie’s mother, Whispering Pine, had performed all the heavy work; chopping firewood, tending a flourishing maple sugar operation, maintaining a large vegetable garden and keeping Three Deer Point in good repair, not an easy task, as I was discovering.

Her hair was dark in this picture, not the grey of her later years. No doubt it was the deep auburn I remembered from my childhood. A colour I used to wish I had, not the fiery red I was born with. But it was the smoothness of the skin on her hands and her arms in the photo that I noticed most. With not a blemish to mar the milky whiteness, it was in sharp contrast to the disfigured hands and arms I knew. I’d once asked Aunt Aggie about the angry scars she hid beneath long sleeves. She’d replied they were from a fire a long time ago and then, more as an afterthought, had added, in another life.

I’d assumed she meant when she was a child. I’d even thought the scars had kept her from marrying, but clearly this photo showed that the accident had occurred after the marriage. Perhaps her husband was the kind of man who couldn’t bear disfigurement and had left her.

But then I was assuming it was he who’d left. Maybe it was Aunt Aggie who, unlike me, had had the smarts to call a halt to a relationship that was growing worse by the day. And then again, maybe death had intervened. Death, however, seemed unlikely, for I doubted Aunt Aggie would have hidden her widowhood. In her day, being a widow would have carried a certain cachet, unlike the stigma of shame that would have been associated with a failed marriage.

And who was this ramrod-stiff stranger with dark hair, neatly clipped mustache and pince-nez clamped on the end of his nose? His pale eyes and the shape of his brow seemed familiar, but I couldn’t recall from where. I tried removing the spot of dirt to get a better view of his face but discovered it was under the glass.

The photograph itself didn’t provide any clues. I assumed it had been taken sometime around World War I. My aunt’s gown was of that period. And the setting of the photograph was no different from any I’d seen from that time; the standard chair, this one intricately carved, a small spindly table with a large bouquet of flowers in a Chinese vase, an oriental carpet on the floor and heavy tasseled drapes in the background. Clearly this wasn’t a poor man’s wedding, unless the photographer had provided these props. But then, my great-aunt wasn’t poor nor, judging from his confident demeanor, was the bridegroom.

I tried to remove the picture from the silver frame to see if there was anything written on the back, but the clasps were tarnished shut, and I was reluctant to force them open in case I damaged the photo.

Since this photograph wasn’t going to tell me anything further, I decided to phone my mother, who still hadn’t returned my earlier call regarding Whispers Island. This time I reached her.

“Are you calling to tell me you’ve finally come to your senses?” were Mother’s opening words, before I had a chance to say more than hello.

“Forget it, Mother, we’re not getting into that now. Just tell me if Aunt Aggie ever owned Whispers Island.”

“How should I know? I don’t even know where Whispers Island is.”

So I told her about the gold mine and the threat it posed to Echo Lake.

“Thank God, now you’ll return to where you belong.”

“Mother, stop it, I am where I belong.” I should’ve known she wouldn’t be sympathetic. She hated Three Deer Point and anything to do with Aunt Aggie.

“Just like Agatha Harris to waste her money on a slab of useless rock. But if there’s gold on it, you’ll be rich, dear.”

I ignored her last comment, as I did with most of her asides, but perked up my ears at the inference. “Then you think she owned it?”

“Heavens, how would I know that?”

“Family records, something she said, anything.”

“Of course not, first I’ve heard of it.”

“Okay, what about her marriage?”

“Married? Agatha Harris? What a ridiculous idea. I told you living alone would make you go queer, just like it did Agatha. Why don’t you—”

I interrupted her with a description of the picture and the wedding clothes.

“But, dear, that can’t be. She never married him.”

“Never married who, mother?”

“That dreadful man.”

“What dreadful man?”

“Why, the one who wouldn’t marry her.”

“Stop! Start from the beginning.”

It turned out that Aunt Aggie hadn’t led such a spinsterish life, at least in her youth. The daughter of a wealthy man, she had been pursued by a variety of suitors, including a few fortune hunters. It hadn’t taken long for one of these men to capture the heart of Agatha Harris.

Unfortunately, as far as Great-grandpa Joe was concerned, this potential suitor had three marks against him: he was more handsome than John Barrymore, he could charm the bloomers off a nun—Great-grandpa Joe’s words, not my mother’s, so she said—and although he seemed to have money, refused to divulge its source. Great-grandpa Joe forbade him to court his daughter. The upshot was a planned elopement, which was only prevented by a last-minute betrayal by Agatha’s maid, who’d decided her employment was more certain with Harris senior than with this would-be husband.

Mother then told me what I’d already discovered. Great-grandpa Joe had taken Agatha on a grand tour of Europe, in part to take her mind off her troubles and, more specifically, to introduce her to eligible suitors. But it seemed he wasn’t very successful, and this was the point where Mother’s story became a bit hazy.

“I don’t know for certain, dear,” Mother said, “but there was something about a wedding. I think it was meant to take place shortly after Agatha returned home. But the man never turned up at the church. At least, that’s what your grandfather told me. ‘Left her in the lurch,’ were his words. Your Great-grandpa Joe refused to talk about it. And of course, I didn’t dare ask Agatha.”

“What a terrible thing to happen to Aunt Aggie. I don’t blame her for keeping it a secret,” I said. “But Mother, this picture suggests the marriage did take place. Maybe he left her in the lurch after the wedding. Any idea who the man was?”

“I’m not certain, but I think it was the man she’d tried to elope with.”

“Do you know anything more about him? His name? Where he came from?”

“How could I? You know how the Harrises were. Hide anything unpleasant. You’re no different. Just like your father, never telling me anything.”

“Forget the commentary. Just tell me what more you know, if anything.”

“It was only by accident that I found out about the earlier scandal. I came across an old letter from Great-grandpa Joe to your grandfather. Poor Agatha, I suppose I shouldn’t have been so hard on her, but she was such a difficult person to like. And I know it comes from living alone all those years. Margaret, I don’t—”

“Now that you mention old letters, what about those boxes of Harris family papers father kept in his study? Why don’t you search through those? Maybe you’ll discover more dirt about Aunt Aggie. You’d love that. And while you’re at it, look for anything that might connect her to Whispers Island.”

“Come to think of it, it was a short name,” Mother continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “English name. Started with a ‘w’ I believe. Yes, a ‘w’. Winter, Waters, something like that.”

“Sounds like a good starting point. Let me know the minute you find anything.”

“She went crazy, you know. Tried to drown herself in the lake, but was saved by one of those Indians. She spent several years in an asylum, so your grandfather said. She had another spell, shortly after you were born. This time that Indian woman looked after her.”

“You mean, Whispering Pine?”

“Whistling Tree, whatever, one of those silly Indian names.”

“Enough, Mother.”

“I’ll never understand how Agatha put up with that miserable woman. Why, she never said boo.”

“You know full well Aunt Aggie couldn’t have survived without Whispering Pine.”

“You’re just like Agatha. Care more about those wretched Indians than your own flesh and blood. Why Agatha treated—”

“I said, enough.”

“You’re just lucky you got Agatha’s money, not—”

“Stop it. I suggest we end this call now.”

It was all I could do not to slam the phone down. But I guess she was used to it. It was a frequent ending to our conversations.

My heart went out to poor Aunt Aggie. Little wonder she was so sad. I should’ve guessed a man had been the cause.

As I placed the photo back on the mantel, Sergei suddenly barked. I dropped it, and it smashed on the stone hearth, sending shards of glass in every direction. I tensed, waiting for Sergei to bark again. He didn’t, so I retrieved the damaged photo from the ground. As I lifted it from the frame, something other than glass floated to the ground.

Sergei barked again, this time with real warning. Visions of stalking yellow pushed everything else from my mind. Sergei leapt to the window. For a moment, I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to know what was out there. Then, deciding I wouldn’t relax until I knew, I moved to the wall and poked my head around the window sash, careful to keep my body away from the window. The last thing I wanted to do was present a full frontal to this guy.

I didn’t see anything, not even a hint of yellow. Sergei continued yelping at the door, so someone was out there. And then I saw a small dark shadow lumber slowly towards a tree on the edge of the light.

“Damn you, Sergei! You didn’t have to scare me like that!” I threw a cushion at him. He continued barking, desperate to chase after the raccoon. I was afraid to let him out. Wait a minute, this was crazy. There was no one out there, except that stupid raccoon.

I opened the door just enough to let Sergei get through and slammed it shut. He streaked across the driveway as the raccoon scurried up the trunk twitching his tail.

This was absurd, letting my fears get the better of me. If I kept this up, I’d be packing my bags by the end of the week. I refused to let that happen. I would shove all thought of yellow from my mind and close my ears to strange sounds. I breathed deeply, counted slowly to twenty and let the air out. I felt better. I was going to conquer this fear of darkness for once and all.

I swept up the splinters scattered over the floor and the carpet. I cut my finger on one and accidentally ground a few others into the hard maple flooring. This was obviously not one of my good nights. The sooner I retreated to bed, the better.

After ensuring the doors were locked and the lights on, I started towards the bedroom. Then I remembered the object, which had escaped from the frame. I searched the hearth, where I thought it had landed, but found nothing. Nor did I find it on the floor. Deciding it was just a piece of backing that had become unstuck, I gave up and went to bed.