The Silver Shawl

The Silver Shawl: A Mrs. Meade Mystery

By Elisabeth Grace Foley

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Copyright © 2012 Elisabeth Grace Foley

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Table of Contents

The Silver Shawl

More Mrs. Meade

About the Author

GLOUCESTER. In my opinion yet thou seest not
well.

SIMCOX. Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and
St. Alban.

GLOUCESTER. Say’st thou me so? What colour is this
cloak of?

- William Shakespeare, Henry VI.

Mrs. Henney knocked lightly at the door. The
early morning sunlight was streaming in through the potted plants
in the window at the end of the hall, over the faded strip of
carpet down the middle of the floor, and gleaming on the polished
wood of the door by which Mrs. Henney stood. Having waited with
lifted hand, but received no answer, she knocked again.

“Miss Charity?” she said. “Breakfast is
ready.”

She listened with her head tilted toward the
door, but there was no sound. Mrs. Henney smiled indulgently to
herself and turned away. Sleeping a little late, she didn’t
doubt—Miss Charity’d been that busy these last few weeks, and down
to Miss Lewis’s last evening as usual. No harm in letting her get a
bit of rest, Mrs. Henney thought as she descended the back stairs
to the kitchen—she would take a tray up to Miss Charity’s room
after she had served breakfast to her other ladies and
gentlemen.

(There was, strictly speaking, only one
elderly gentleman among Mrs. Henney’s boarders, but Mrs. Henney
always pluralized him when she referred to them as a group. It made
her little establishment sound so much more flourishing.)

Breakfast was over, and Mrs. Henney had just
finished clearing away the dishes from the dining-room to the
kitchen, when the front door banged smartly and Randall Morris took
the main stairs to the upstairs hall two at a time, whistling
merrily, his quirt swinging from his left hand. He stopped at the
same hall door and knocked. “Charity?” he called.

He waited a few seconds, as Mrs. Henney had
done, and then knocked again. “Charity, are you there?”

The door across the hall opened and Mrs.
Meade looked out. Randall Morris glanced over his shoulder.
“’Morning, Mrs. Meade,” he said, a friendly smile flashing across
his handsome face. “Say, is Charity in? I’ve got to go over to
Jewel Point to see Hart about a yearling, and I just stopped by to
see her on the way.”

“Good morning, Randall,” said Mrs. Meade,
smiling pleasantly up at him in return. She was a widow lady of
middle age, but one whom age seemed to have softened rather than
hardened. Her graying hair still showed hints of the soft brown it
had once been, and all the lines of her face were kind. But behind
the kindness in her gray-blue eyes there was an expression of
quaint humor, as though she knew a good deal more about you than
you realized, but was too kind to let you know it.

“Charity hasn’t been down this morning,” she
said. “Mrs. Henney told us she knocked at her door before
breakfast, but she didn’t answer. Mrs. Henney supposed she must
have been sleeping a little late.”

“That’s odd,” said Randall. He tried the
doorknob and found it locked, and knocked once more. “Charity!” he
called in a louder voice.

Mrs. Meade had drawn nearer, and they both
listened attentively, Randall with his ear close to the door, but
neither could hear any sound.

Randall cast an alarmed glance at Mrs. Meade.
“You don’t think she’s ill or something!” he said.

Without waiting for an answer he pounded on
the door with his fist in a way that startled all the other
boarders in their respective rooms, and then would have immediately
forced the door with his shoulder had not Mrs. Meade laid detaining
hands on his arm and prudently suggested applying to Mrs. Henney
for the spare key.

She performed this office herself, and when
she escorted the short and puffing landlady to the top of the
stairs Randall was still listening outside the door with a look of
strained anxiety.

“I can’t hear anything,” he said, and the
look in his eyes as he thus appealed to Mrs. Meade was almost
desperate.

Mrs. Meade put her hand gently on his arm as
they watched Mrs. Henney fumble nervously with the keys and at last
manage to insert the right one into the lock. The door opened
inwards, and Randall pushed unceremoniously past Mrs. Henney into
the room. He stopped in the middle of it, looking about him in
bewilderment.

The two ladies, who had entered after him in
considerable apprehension, likewise looked with astonishment about
the room, which was neat, quiet, and empty. The window-shade was
drawn halfway down, blocking out most of the morning light and
leaving the room mildly dim; the bed was neatly made and had
evidently not been slept in.

Randall Morris turned around to stare at the
ladies. “Did she go out this morning?” he said.

“Why, no,” said Mrs. Henney, whose mouth and
eyes were wide. “I was up early as always, and her door was shut
when I opened the curtains in the hall. She hasn’t come out
since.”

“But how do you know that? Couldn’t she have
gone out when you were getting breakfast?”

“Why, no, sir. I can hear every step on those
stairs, front or back, when I’m in my kitchen, and nobody went out
of the house this morning, not Miss Charity nor anybody.”

“Well, then—where is she? When did you see
her last?”

“Why, she went out to Miss Lewis’s last
evening after supper, Mr. Randall, just as usual. I saw her go out
then, and I was in bed and asleep before she came back, as I’ve
often been. I let Miss Charity have an outside key so she can come
in without waking anyone if it’s late and I’ve already locked up
and gone to bed.”

“You mean you didn’t see her come back last
night? or hear her?”

“Why, no, sir.”

Mrs. Meade, in the meantime, had with a
thoughtful expression crossed the room to the wardrobe and opened
it, and stood looking at the simple dresses hanging there. “The
dress she wore yesterday is not here,” she said. “She was wearing
her light green gingham at supper—”

“Yes, I know that dress,” blurted Randall
feverishly, as if that would be some help.

Mrs. Meade lifted a hatbox a few inches from
the floor of the wardrobe and shook it gently, and set it down
again. “Her summer hat is missing—and her little silk purse, it
seems—but everything else appears to be in order. She was wearing
that hat when she went out, wasn’t she, Mrs. Henney?”

“Yes, yes, that and her shawl. That’s what
she had on when I saw her go out and—”

Randall interrupted the landlady’s trembling
recollections, speaking to Mrs. Meade: “Do you mean she didn’t come
back last night? Then where—”

Mrs. Meade countered the alarm rising in his
voice with a calm interruption of her own. “Perhaps she spent the
night with Miss Lewis, if their work went very late. Miss Lewis
stays at the shop herself some nights if she doesn’t feel equal to
walking home. You should go and ask her first of all.”

“I’ll do it,” said Randall breathlessly, and
plunged out of the room. In a few seconds he was outside untying
his horse from Mrs. Henney’s gate, and swung up into the saddle. He
brought his quirt down sharply across the horse’s glossy flank and
spurred out of the quiet side street into the main road.

* * *

Sour Springs, Colorado, misnamed by an early
settler who did not care for the taste of the mineral water he had
found on his land, was a pleasant little mountainside town nestled
among the wooded foothills, with pine forests on the crests and
lighter green stretches of cultivated farm and ranch land in the
valleys between. The snow-crested Rockies all around made a sharp
silver and white frame for the dome of clear blue sky arched over
it. The sunny main street was a double row of neat frame houses and
storefronts punctuated by fenced, tree-shaded side lawns and
gardens.

Randall Morris, the son of a Southern family
whose fortunes had suffered in the generations following the war,
had come West to make his own way in the world several years
before. Young, energetic and determined, he was already well on his
way to success, breeding and raising horses that bid fair to be as
fine as those of Kentucky or Virginia on the slopes of his land at
the foot of the mountains. Over the past few months, during his
courtship of Charity Bradford, he had spent much of his time
building and furnishing a house there. Half Western ranch house,
sturdy and square and practical, yet partaking of some of the
patrician elegance he remembered from his youth, with its
many-paned windows and wide veranda, it gleamed white and pristine
among the pines, with wild roses tumbling over themselves in the
rocky garden behind it, awaiting its mistress.

Charity was a relative newcomer to Sour
Springs, a girl without friends or relatives who had come there
seeking work, and had been employed as assistant postmistress at
the little post-office that shared a building with the railway
depot. Small and dainty, with a sweet voice and rich brown hair,
she had a modest, if not quite reserved demeanor, but to those she
trusted was capable of a warmth made all the more precious by being
hard-won. Randall Morris had fallen tumultuously in love at almost
his first sight of her, and immediately devoted his considerable
energies to wooing and winning her. Charity had been cautious at
first—perhaps as long as it took her to assure herself that his
impetuosity was in fact sincerity, though, truth be told, her heart
had succumbed almost as soon as his.

Within the year they were engaged, and for
the past month Charity had been busy preparing her trousseau, her
days passed in a near trance of serene happiness and enlivened by
flying visits from her fiancé at all hours of the morning and
evening. Randall was a great favorite with the ladies of the
boarding-house that had become Charity’s home. His manners were
both free-and-easy and charming, and he knew how to be attentive to
old ladies as well as young ones—though when Charity was present,
he was infallibly absorbed in her to the extent that he never saw
the knowing nods and smiles and twitters passed among the ladies as
they watched the pair. Some of the ladies went so far as to believe
they had made the match themselves, but Mrs. Meade, who had a
special place in her heart for young people—especially young people
in love—knew better.

Randall pulled up his horse in front of a
small dry-goods store on the main street and dismounted. The
seamstress who was making Charity’s dresses rented rooms above the
store, and Charity had been visiting her in the evenings for
fittings and to assist her in some of the work. With no dowry and
little money of her own, Charity had at first been hesitant to
accept Randall’s insistence on paying for everything himself, but
had eventually relented. She had, however, managed to override his
expressed opinion that nothing was too good for her, and earnestly
endeavored to keep her expenses as modest as possible.

Randall went up the steps to the store and
grasped the doorknob, but encountered an unexpected resistance. It
was locked. He rattled the door and knocked loudly, and then
looking over at the front windows, saw that the shades were drawn.
The storekeeper and his family lived at the back of the building,
and ordinarily the store was already open for business at this
hour. In Randall’s disturbed state this was yet another
circumstance for alarm. He pounded on the door again. Only silence
succeeded.

Randall was looking about him with a confused
idea of doing something desperate to attract attention, such as
throwing something at an upstairs window, when at last he heard a
faint noise. Someone was coming down the stairs inside. The locks
of the door scraped as they were turned, and it opened to reveal
Diana Lewis, the seamstress.