Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (15 page)

"Ed."

He started as I spoke, then eyed me somberly.

"Hi. Come on in. Hope my fussing around down here didn't wake you."

"I was awake. I smelled smoke and thought I might have left a cigarette around."

"Damn draft." He glared at the fireplace. "When the wind's turned south it don't draw . . . Come in." He offered the bottle. "Nightcap."

"No, thanks. But I'll have a cigarette."

I lit one, and walked to the hearth to drop the match into the

ashes. I couldn't help wondering why Ed was burning papers at that hour. I suppose my curiosity showed.

"It's Nan," he grumbled, as I glanced at the smouldering carbon. He took a drink, ran a wrist across his mouth, and eyed the fireplace ruefully. "My wife's been giving me what for."

Sympathetically I asked, "What for?"

"Well, she objects to all this stuff." He indicated the stack of papers we had left on the end table. "And this." He shifted position to show me a cardboard carton beside him on the sofa. "Old letters. Bills. Notes. Bridewell stuff. I been burning it."

"Not that old store ledger, I hope."

"No. Just bills and things. The attic is full of a lot of crap. Never had time to go through it."

He added that his wife thought the attic a rat's nest. Was always after him to clean it out. "When she come in tonight and saw it down here, she was off again."

I could not help being amused. It was a quaint hour to start your husband on a spring housecleaning.

Ed frowned at the poker. "Nan's tired of all this old stuff, I expect. Besides, she thinks the Pointers—me, for one—are hard on the Bridewells. To her, it's gossip." He looked up. "Well, maybe I have been a little strong on the old lady. I'm sorry about the carbolic acid."

Remembering, I had to laugh.

Ed shook his head. "Annette calls it speaking ill of the dead. She's French Canadian, you know. They're superstitious."

"She's very kindly, Ed."

"Nan? Best-hearted woman ever lived. It's just . . . well, take this parlor." He aimed.the poker around the pentagon. "I don't blame her for not wanting to go down cellar. Can't say I like that dark stairway, either. But just because there was once a casket over in that corner—! Holy mackerel! It was back in Nineteen Eleven. Women are queer."

"They have a different skin than we do."

"What she says. She can feel things in this room." He looked around glumly. "Half a mind to get rid of some of this junk, myself."

He pointed at the stuffed owl. The Eye over the mantel. With poker raised, he pantomimed a blow at the Parian statuette of Chief Massasoit. Then his glance went to the gramophone. Abruptly he rose and walked over to it. He wheeled to face me, and stood with an arm around the morning glory.

"I wouldn't junk this," Ed said in a tone of defiance. "Dealer last summer offered me a hundred dollars for this talking machine. I wouldn't take five hundred for it. This was the first phonograph I ever heard."

What is it about antiques? I had seen curio collectors wear the same expression. The protective arm. The eyes shiny, intense. The pride of ownership.

Then Ed was talking about it, and I realized he meant it literally. About the five hundred dollars. About that particular Edison gramophone being the first he'd ever heard.

It was when he was peddling papers. And as he came up the path to the Bridewell house, he thought he heard a band playing. One was. He didn't know it at that moment, but it was Sousa's Band. The Stars and Stripes Forever. Cymbals, drums, brasses, trilling fifes—as though it was somewhere close, but still far away. Wonderful.

The boy halted his bike to listen. The front door of the house was open to the summer afternoon. And the boy's wonder grew when he realized the sound was coming from somewhere in the house. A brass band at the Bridewells. What in the world!

As reprisal for the two-cent scolding he had once received from Old Abby, the paper boy would usually throw the news at the Bridewell door to let wind or weather take it from there. Now he stood transfixed, listening. Then he carefully folded the paper in the approved fashion. Dismounting, he propped his bike against the hedge. He carried the paper to the doorstep, placed it carefully just inside the door. Big-eyed, he peered into the dim, cool vestibule.

The band music came marching out of the parlor. The boy leaned and craned. But he couldn't see around the inner door into the parlor, and he had to know where that thrilling music was coming from.

He ran back to his bike. Keeping it under cover of the hedge, he wheeled it up to the house and around to the nearest parlor window. He leaned the bike against the clapboards under the window, and climbed up to kneel on the crossbar. With cupped hands, he peered through the windowpane. He found himself looking across the room right into the mouth of the gramophone's morning glory.

He had never seen into the Bridewell parlor before. He had known it would be rich and plushy like the sitting room at the Surf and Sand. But he'd never expected any marvel like that brand new phonograph. Why, there was nobody in the room at the time, and here was this thing going like a hurdy-gurdy with no one turning the crank. Only the music was fifty times better than any hurdy-gurdy.

The boy pressed his nose against the windowpane, and listened with his pulses thumping. Holy gee! What a swell machine. The painted morning glory. The spinning rotary. The varnished box. He supposed it played just that one tune, but that was enough. He almost put his face through the window glass when he heard the morning glory speak. A man's voice—

"This is an Eddij-son reckord"

The thing had talked—actually talked!

With arm around the gramophone, Ed Brewster stared at me, hard-eyed.

"You know what? I vowed I'd one day own one of these machines." He returned to the sofa. He sat down and weighed the poker thoughtfully. A smile formed. "Kids get some odd hankerings, don't they? I wanted a talking machine more than I ever wanted anything. One just like that. With a big bell mouth and a brass crank. Like the Bridewells had, see? Like the Bridewells."

He patted his big palm with the poker, and smiled at the gramophone.

"Kids are nutty, aren't they? Finally, I must have been about eleven years old, my dad came home one night. He asked me what I wanted for my next birthday. You know what I said. And my father, by God, said if I'd save enough for half he would get me one." Ed thwacked his palm.

"What happened, Ed?"

"The P. and Q. Rapid Transit Company happened." Apparently his father had not been a stockholder. But when the transit company crashed the whole Point suffered.

The year was 1909. Tracks were coming across the dunes. An engineering company had started the long trestle over the marshes. State Senator Bridewell told the town that the trolley trestle was a rainbow that would turn the Point into a pot of gold. Everybody knew that Earnest spoke in the voice of Old Abby.

She told friends that the transit corporation had decided on a special stock issue. The shares were to be offered at par—a real bargain!—but the issue was limited, and she urged those who could afford it to buy in. Keep the trolley a local business—that was the idea. They were all one big family, and the Bridewells wanted to share the wealth with neighbors.

Ed Brewster groped into the cardboard carton at his thigh. He found and extended to me a certificate the size of a high school diploma or a Naval Reserve officer's commission.

"This was in the stuff up in the attic. Here's that stock."

Interested, I examined the certificate. Aloud I read: "Number twenty-nine. Ten shares. The Peninsular and Quahog Rapid Transit Corporation. Incorporated under State Law. Authorized capital: five hundred thousand dollars. Par value of shares: ten dollars. This certifies that the holder is the owner of ten shares of the Common Capital Stock of the P. and Q. Rapid Transit Company, Incorporated, transferable only on the books of said company . . . etcetera . . . etcetera."

The fringework was dark green. The face was emblazoned with a steel engraving of a trolley car flying the American flag between an airborne Goddess of Liberty and the winged horse Pegasus. Posed recklessly on the track in front of the speeding trolley, a motorman shook hands with a conductor. A gold seal was splashed

on the lower lefthand corner of the certificate. It looked gaudy, official, and valuable.

Ed said, "It's not worth a sheet out of a Sears and Roebuck catalog."

He took the certificate from me. Lit a match. When the paper caught, he dropped it into the fireplace.

The brief flame-glow reddened his features as he stood looking down. His jawline hardened. Then he shrugged.

"My old man maybe was luckier than some. The Smeizers got stuck. So did the Robinsons, Thorns and Purdys. John Y. Gillion lost his shirt. Grimes family, too." He turned to the end table, picked up a yellowed newspaper. "Here's the story."

Quickly I scanned the column. Rapid Transit Corporation Goes Into Receivership. Stockholders Suffer Heavy Loss. It is believed that some of the charter shareholders sold out in time to rescue their investments. Morgan interests deny manipulation. State's Attorney General may demand investigation.

"Was there an investigation, Ed?"

He grunted. "With Earnest Bridewell a State Senator on the Attorney General's side? Anyhow, I guess the deal was legal enough. How does it go? Caveat empty?"

Let the buyer beware, of course. The slogan of the Barnums, the James G. Blaines, and, I was given to suppose, the Bridewells. But small consolation coming from the trader who's just rooked you with a spavined horse.

"What finally became of the Transit Corporation?"

"Out of business. Few cents on the dollar, or something like that. Bingo!" He shied another stock certificate into the fireplace.

But the Bridewells would have pulled out of it before the crash. They always do. And I could just see Old Abby keeping a few shares of worthless common around the house to create the impression that she and her precious sons had been as hard hit as anybody.

Ed said, "Well, it seems Earnest and Lionel went around complaining hard times and crying poor. I don't know about Old Abby. Whether she wailed around in public or not."

It did not seem likely. As I conceived it, hers would have been the public role that combines Spartan fortitude with Pollyanna optimism. Now, now, we must all keep our chins up. Practice frugality. Eat less. Things will soon be better if we labor in the vineyard, make of necessity a virtue, keep our powder dry, and trust in the Lord. Back to work, everybody!

Yes, that was probably the role. Borrowed from the threadbare nobility down to its last Cadillac. From the tattered philanthropist who urges community austerity before he (or she) departs for the racing season at Saratoga. From the political demagogue who promises soup kitchens to the very constituents who have been diddled. And everyone is fooled except the canny peasantry, the angered community and the sullen constituents in the bread line. The trolley crash must have left Quahog Point in an ugly mood.

"But here's something," Ed said, fishing a crumpled sheet of paper out of the rubbish box. He smoothed it on a knee, and handed it to me. "Notice of a cattle sale. October Nineteen Ten. Old Abby's selling off a stable of prize oxen."

That was interesting. The block-lettered handbill announced that the animals could be had for a bargain. A second handbill, dated January 1911, read:

TEAM OF MATCHED BAYS AND 1 SORREL MARE. . . . ANY REASONABLE OFFER CONSIDERED. . . .

October 1910. January 1911. I thought I knew the why behind these operations.

"Ed," I said, "old Needles told me that Lionel Bridewell pulled out of Quahog Point."

"Why, so he did."

"When?"

Ed stared into space. Then counted on his fingers. Then shook his head. "Seems he went to an inland town—place called Lookout Hill. Folks said he went into tea for a time. Peddled orange pekoe. You know. Drove one of those wagons."

It was an entertaining thought. Handsome Lionel, the orange pekoe man. Like the one who used to stop at my childhood home,

bowing in with his suitcase display of teas, condiments and spices. Just the thing for a Lionel Bridewell. If you're in hot water, go into tea.

But Ed could not "rightiy remember" when Lionel left the Point. "Old Captain Nathan—Abby's husband—died early in Nineteen Ten. Big funeral. Abby stowed him in that mausoleum—only one in the cemetery back then. I disremember if Lionel went away before or after."

However, Lionel frequently returned to Quahog Point. Weekends. To keep an eye on the estate?

"Well, maybe," Ed said, frowning. "Folks did say there was a hell of a wrangle over the old man's legacy. Shouted so loud in this parlor that Mrs. Smeizer heard it up the hill."

"Lionel's being out of town gave Earnest the edge with the old lady," I supposed.

Ed surprised me by saying, "But Earnest wasn't here with his mother all the time. He had to spend some of the time with his wife."

So it goes with story research. This was the first word I'd had of Earnest's wife. The first time I heard of a daughter-in-law in the Old Homestead background.

"I'd like to get the cast straight," I told Ed. "All this time I've been seeing Senator Earnest as a bachelor. The kind who sang I Want a Girl but didn't mean it."

"He kind of was," Ed explained. "Like I said, the bachelor type."

"But he did get married?"

"I thought you'd see it from these old news accounts. Married to a woman, Floss Grimes. They had a farm way over on the south side of the Point. Set up housekeeping there."

"I didn't see her picture in the album."

"There you are," Ed said. "She was as different from Old Abby as a mouse from a cat. Quiet. Kept in the background. She was out of it. She didn't figure."

Ed went on to say he could barely recall Earnest's wife. And I began to see the situation. You didn't marry into a family like the Bridewells. Or, if you did, they kept you off the reservation. So Floss remained on the south side, an outsider.

Too, it seemed that Earnest's wife was not a Sabbatarian. And as the Sabbatarians were not on speaking terms with the congregation she belonged to, this placed her further outside the Bridewell fold. Finally, the Grimes clan did not "care much" for the Bridewell clan, and vice versa. No shooting feud or overt antagonism. Just a lack of recognition when clansman passed clansman on Center Square. Apprised of this state of affairs, I could understand why the Bridewell family album lacked a photograph of the old lady's daughter-in-law.