Terrible Tide (18 page)

Holly ladled out a cupful of rich broth from the stewpot for Mrs. Parlett. Then she prepared a sort of hearty soup for Annie by dicing bits of meat and vegetables and moistening them with broth. It must be positively seething with vitamins, and Annie was hungry for it.

“That’s real tasty, dearie. I declare, I don’t know when food’s tasted so good to me.”

“That’s because you’re getting better. Finish it up. Your boyfriend brought you a special treat.”

“Who?”

“Bert, of course. He says you like strawberry ice cream.”

“So I do, but I never thought he’d remember.” Tears filled the old housekeeper’s eyes as she spooned the pink sweetness in tiny bites to make it last longer. “Land’s sakes,” she murmured over and over, “to think he’d remember.”

“Y
OUR ICE CREAM MADE
a big hit,” Holly remarked as she took the empty tray back into the kitchen.

Bert didn’t hear. He was dead to the world, lolling back in the rocking chair with the half-full tumbler clutched to his chest. Holly took the drink away and set it on the table, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Whatever had possessed Claudine to send such rotgut?

Maybe this was what Claude Parlett used to drink. If so, no wonder he’d landed down among the lobsters. Holly was standing with the bottle in her hand wondering if she ought to pour the rest of it down the sink when Sam Neill tapped on the window.

“Taking to drink, eh?”

“Thinking about it.” Holly set the bottle back on the table. “If you’ve come for your uncle, forget it. He’s out like a light.”

“That doesn’t surprise me any. Feel like coming for a walk?”

“No, but I’ll sit out in the yard and talk for a while, if you like.”

“That’ll do. I’m here on serious business.”

She was too tired to play games tonight “Were you here on serious business Saturday around midnight, by any chance?”

To her surprise, he grinned. “Oh, you saw me, did you?”

“You almost stepped on me. I was curled up beside the wall pretending to be a rock.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“In the first place, I wasn’t sure it was you. In the second, I didn’t know why you’d come prowling in the dead of night. I still don’t,” she added flatly.

“I know, that’s what I want to talk to you about. After I left you the other night, I got to thinking about Ellis and his lobster pot. Here, sit down on the wall, I promise not to step on you.”

Neill sat beside her, close enough so that she could feel the warmth of his body. “I’m not saying Ellis and I were ever what you’d call buddies, but I’ve known him all his life, pretty much. It was rough on him and Claudine, with that loudmouthed drunk of a father and having their mother go the way she did.”

“How did she go?” Holly asked.

“Nobody knows for sure. Alice Parlett was always a strange sort of woman. She snubbed everybody in the village, didn’t want her kids to play with the rest because they were Parletts even though they didn’t have a whole pair of shoes among ’em. I expect Annie’s told you some of the family history.”

“Yes she has. Alice died quite young, didn’t she?”

“She seemed old to me, but you know how kids are about anybody over eighteen. Anyway, Alice was always a touchy woman, but after Claude died she became plain impossible. She’d get into fights at the store, claiming somebody else had grabbed what she was reaching for, silly things like that. Then she took to staying in the house with the blinds down, never going out at all. My mother went to see if she was sick, finally, but she didn’t get in. Claudine said her mother was resting and couldn’t be disturbed. Nobody was allowed but the doctor. Then one day a hearse from Moncton hauled up in front of the door. All Claudine would say was that her mother had died of pneumonia.”

“But if Alice was that sick, why didn’t they take her to a hospital?”

“Don’t ask me. Mum’s theory is that Alice had cancer of the face and wouldn’t let anybody see her because she was too horribly disfigured. That could be why the casket wasn’t opened at the funeral.”

“Do you believe that?”

Neill shrugged. “It’s as good a reason as any, and more charitable than some.”

“But wouldn’t Dr. Walker say what really happened?”

“Uncle Ben doesn’t talk about his patients, not even to Mum. Anyway, he didn’t know. He was in Europe at the time. A young chap just out of medical school filled in for him. Poor guy, we read in the papers that he’d been killed in a private plane crash not long after he left here.”

“Then that means there’s nobody left alive but Claudine who knows.”

“I suppose Ellis must. Look, I don’t know how we got off on this tangent about Alice Parlett. It was Ellis I started to tell you about.” Sam rubbed a knuckle over the bridge of his nose, a gesture of old Bert’s that Holly was tickled to see. “You may have got the notion Ellis is the village idiot, but he’s not. Ellis’s problem is that he’s an efficiency expert.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“The way he interprets efficiency. At school, Ellis spent so much time trying to figure out the easiest way of doing his work that he never managed to finish anything. Once the teacher made him stay after school to write ‘I must finish what I start’ five hundred times on the blackboard. Ellis spent about half an hour trying to strap ten pieces of chalk between two rulers so he could write ten sentences at once, then found he couldn’t write with the darn thing at all. That’s been the story of his life, pretty much.”

“But Sam, if Ellis is always trying to save work—”

“That’s what I’m driving at. Why row a heavy old chest of drawers all the way to Parlett’s Point when he could get the veneer off just as easily by tossing it into the pond behind his own house? Folks are so used to Ellis’s brainstorms that they’ve taken this lobster pot business as just one more for the list, but when I got to thinking, it didn’t fit in.”

“So you rowed out later that same night and hauled up the chest to find out what he’d put in the drawers besides rocks.”

“Not much gets by you, eh?”

“It’s just that my leg was hurting and I couldn’t sleep. My room looks out over the bay. So what did you find?”

“I’m not quite sure. It seemed to be a lot of doodads like candlesticks and figurines. He had them all carefully wrapped in plastic and packed in nylon bags such as skin divers use. I didn’t know what to think. It’s awfully easy to tag a kid a crook just because his old man was always getting jugged for one thing or another.”

“So you drove all the way back here from Saint John Sunday night to do a big brother act?”

“No,” Sam growled, “I came because I was worried about you, if you want to know. The only two places I could think of where Ellis might find anything worth hiding like that were his sister’s shop and Cliff House. I knew he’d never have the guts to rob Claudine, so I figured the stuff must have come from here.”

“The possibility never crossed your mind that he and she might be in it together?”

“Never. Claudine wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“Forgive me if I’ve offended you,” Holly said spitefully.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I merely wished to congratulate you on your taste. Claudine’s a handsome woman even if she does have the personality of a barracuda.”

Sam stared at Holly, then the corners of his mouth began to lift. “So that’s what’s been eating you.”

“Not at all. It’s no concern of mine if you go rolling in the poison ivy with every woman from here to Vancouver.”

“For your information,” Sam yelled, “Claudine Parlett used to be my baby-sitter. How could I get romantic about somebody who used to twist her hands into the neck of my pajamas and march me off to bed half-choked when I wanted to stay up and watch television? Speaking of baby-sitters, however, I understand you’ve acquired one of your own.”

“That’s a detestable thing to say! Just because an agreeable, cultured gentleman shows a little common courtesy—”

“An agreeable, cultured gentleman,” he mimicked in a mincing squeal. “I thought you had brains enough not to fall for a middle-aged baloney artist.”

“And I thought we were discussing your baby-sitter. Why don’t you believe Claudine and Ellis are working a racket together?”

“Because Claudine wouldn’t be fool enough to trust Ellis any farther than she could throw him, that’s why. She knows he’d go off on some tangent or other and gum up the works. I thought if I kept watch here I might get a clue to what he’s trying to pull.”

“You got one last night. Didn’t you notice the odd way Ellis’s buoy started jerking up and down all of a sudden, and then stopped?”

“Yes, but that must have been an underwater eddy.”

“What do you want to bet this particular Underwater Eddie was wearing a frogman’s suit?”

“Scuba diving at night off Parlett’s Point? Holy cats, I never thought of that. But why not, if he had somebody at the other end of a lifeline ready to haul him out if he got into trouble? The tide was right and he had the buoy to guide him. Who could it be? I can’t think of anyone around here who’d be apt to try it.”

“I was thinking of someone off a yacht.”

“You might have something there. If his contact were anybody local, they wouldn’t have to go through all that business, just meet out on a back road and transfer the loot. Using the dresser would allow for flexibility in some outsider’s making the pickup. The stuff could stay in the drawer a week or more if necessary. All right, I’m willing to buy your diver. Where’d he go?”

“I pictured a small boat hidden under the cliff,” said Holly. “Wouldn’t it be feasible to keep close to shore and avoid being seen until you were ready to make a dash for the yacht?”

“Sure. It would be a lot safer, too. You’d have to be a mighty strong swimmer to buck that current for any distance with a bunch of loaded nets tied to your belt.”

Holly winced. Back in Westchester, Fan’s swimming awards from camp and college had been whimsically displayed all over the downstairs powder room. Had Sam seen them at Howe Hill? To her surprise, tears began rolling down her cheeks. “Oh Sam,” she whispered, “I’m so tired.”

“Sure you are.”

Now it was the way it ought to be. His arms were tight around her, her face buried in warm, man-smelling flannel. Holly stayed where she was until something had to be done about her sniffles. Had she been Vivienne of the novel, her Harold doubtless would have produced an impeccable square of white linen, but she and Sam hadn’t so much as a secondhand Kleenex between them. Regretfully, she wriggled out of his embrace.

“I’ve got to blow my nose. Don’t go away.”

“What kind of fool do you think I am? Hurry back.”

Holly ran into the kitchen, grabbed a clean cup towel, and mopped her eyes and nose. Through the window she could see Sam Neill watching the door for her to come out, with a look on his craggy face she wanted to remember forever.

She stood hugging the moment to herself until a horrendous crash broke the spell. Bert had fallen out of the rocking chair.

B
ERT DIDN’T WAKE UP.
That was the incredible part. He lay in a huddle on the grimy braided rug, snoring as though nothing had happened. Holly knelt and shook him by the shoulders. “Bert! Bert, get up. You can’t lie there.”

He didn’t budge. She got a tumbler of water and sprinkled some on his nose. Not an eyelash quivered, not even when she panicked and dashed the whole glassful straight in his face. She was thumping frantically at his chest when Sam called, “What’s taking you so long?”

“It’s Bert,” she gasped. “He’s fallen and I can’t get him up. You’d better come in here.”

He barged through the door. “What’s the old soak been drinking?”

“Some rum Claudine sent up. It’s dreadful stuff.”

“Where’s the bottle?”

“Right here.” She handed it to him. He pulled out the cork and took a whiff.

“Did you have any of this?”

“No, none. I don’t drink. Annie had some Saturday night and she’s been deathly sick in bed ever since.”

Sam took a few drops on his finger and touched them to his tongue, then spat into the sink. “No wonder. Tastes to me like chloral hydrate.”

“Knockout drops? Sam, I don’t believe it!”

“Why not? He’s knocked out, isn’t he?” Sam shoved the stopper back into the bottle. “I’m going to take this down to Uncle Ben for analysis. If he finds what I think he will, I guess we call in the police.”

“Oh, Sam, that sounds so—drastic.”

“Holly, this is a drastic situation. That rum wasn’t meant just for Bert, was it?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Claudine wouldn’t know I never touch liquor, and she surely must know Annie likes her little nip. I can’t see Claudine giving Annie anything that would hurt her, though.”

“Maybe Claudine didn’t know what she was sending,” said Sam. “Ellis could have loaded the bottle when she wasn’t looking.”

“But he’d have to break the seal.”

“So what? If Annie should happen to notice, she’d naturally assume Bert had helped himself to a drink on the way out from town.”

Holly thought that one over, then shook her head. “I know what I’d do. I’d find out what brand it was and get another bottle of the same kind. Then I’d take the seal off carefully, put in the chloral hydrate, and stick the seal back on. When I got a chance, I’d switch bottles. It would be easy enough to do in the shop while the groceries are sitting there waiting to be collected. People are always wandering in and out, I expect, and Claudine can’t be watching them every minute.”

“All right, that sounds plausible. Who’d you suggest?”

“Earl Stoodley, for one. He does want Mrs. Parlett to die, Sam. He practically told me so on Sunday. You can ask Geoffrey Cawne. He heard it all, including what I said when I blew my stack and told Earl off. Suppose Annie and I had both drunk it and got sick? How long do you think Mrs. Parlett would last without anybody to wait on her? You can’t imagine how frail she is. And furthermore, suppose your uncle does find chloral hydrate in the bottle? Who’s going to believe Claudine didn’t put it there? Then Earl can have her disqualified or impeached or whatever they do, and he’ll be the only trustee. You can imagine what will happen then.”