Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) (6 page)

She turned to leave, then thought better. “It were that Mrs. Tupper that spoiled the party,” she said. “She spoils most things.”

“You are not fond of Mrs. Tupper?” I asked.

“It's not my place to gossip,” said the stalwart Hampshirian. “But she's a newcomer. Only been in Walpole two years and still has outlandish ways. Insists the ladies' Methodist fund-raising committee have a spring bazaar, not an autumn one. That kind of nonsense.”

“I see,” I said solemnly. “Well, I look forward to meeting her son, Clarence Tupper.” I didn't, but this seemed a probable way to obtain information about him. It was.

“Clarence is not the sociable type,” the housekeeper readily supplied. “Not ‘less he's been drinking, and then he'll give you a chase. Bad as the Dodge boys.”

“Dodge boys?”

“Them that looted and robbed up Manchester way. Twenty years ago it was, the year we had the blizzard in June, but Manchester folk still remember how those boys would get drunk and chase the town girls and then . . . well, you can guess. Some say they was involved in worse than that, robbery and all sorts of no-good things.” She stopped and took a deep, righteous breath. “I'll say no more. And he is Mr. Hampton, not Tupper. Mrs. Tupper has been widowed and remarried. I leave you to your supper.” She wrung her hands and turned to leave.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING, after my solitary run in the ravine, Sylvia and I walked down elm-shaded Main Street to the town square to purchase provisions, including seed packets for Father's new venture. It was a lovely morning, full of birdsong and bright colors from the exuberant flower beds.

“It is already July,” said Sylvia, walking beside me. “Isn't it a little late to be putting in a garden?”

“It is,” I agreed. “But who will tell Father so? He has faith in nature.”

Our first visit was to Tupper's General Store, to purchase sugar and cornmeal. We passed again the two rows of idling laborers who glared at us and whispered things I did not care to hear. Sylvia blushed but held her head high.

“Did your trunks arrive safely?” Mr. Tupper asked when we entered. “I sent them over myself in a cart.” He was breathing heavily, as if he had just finished a great exertion. Sweat dripped from his brow, and his mustache was dark with it. His shoes left muddy trails in the sawdust on the floor.

“Safely enough,” I said, “though one trunk had a battered corner.” I did not add that my skirt hoop would never again achieve a perfect circle. Such bitterness is pointless.

“So you are the daughter of Bronson Alcott, the philosopher?” Mr. Tupper asked, reaching under the long wooden counter for the box of darning wools. “You did not mention it. I knew you only as a relative of that scoundrel Ben Willis.”

Reader, as well-known and beloved as Father was through his writings and educational philosophies, I never found it useful to announce myself to the world as the daughter of a famous man. People must take me for myself. I was not, am not, the type to enter a general store and say, “My father is renowned.”

“I am his daughter,” I admitted now. “Are you interested in philosophy?”

He paused from his work of sorting out black wools from white, and gave me a hard look, declining to answer my question, although I had answered his. When he took my shopping list I noticed the unusually large gold signet ring he wore on his right hand.

“Do you want a package of six needles or a single?” he asked gruffly.

“Single. Why do you call Uncle Benjamin a scoundrel?” I asked.

“Walpole would be better off without such eccentrics.”

By eccentricity, I assumed he referred to Uncle's penchant for strange attire and tall tales of piracy on the seas. Or did he refer to something more sinister?

“We all have our little quirks,” I answered, feeling defensive.

Mr. Tupper seemed different today. When the Alcotts had left their trunks and packages with him, he had been frowning, obviously ill at ease, nervous, in the way men of business are when they cannot make a difficult decision. Today he was self-assured, even impertinent. He had the air of a man who has acted rather than hesitated.

I left him to complete Abba's list as I looked over his shelves and tables. Sylvia had already found a display of calicoes and was unrolling a length of green against her skirt to judge the color.

The store was pleasantly arranged, with a rack of ready-made day dresses in one corner, a large display of straw hats, and a shelf of books that could be purchased or rented (Reader, of course I checked for my own,
Flower Fables
. It was not there.), as well as the usual barrels of pickles, sacks of grain, farm tools, and a locked cabinet of patent medicines.

“Here for a long visit?” Mr. Tupper asked, as he measured out a tablespoon of spinach seed.

“I don't know how long,” I said truthfully.

“Well, there are some that come and never leave,” he said, sounding displeased. He referred again, I was certain, to Uncle Benjamin, who had moved his family to Walpole ten years before.

A daguerreotype of a young man framed in gilt hung on the wall over a display of bolts of sprigged muslin. He was square-faced with large eyes and a merry smile and a chin that suggested he would do just as he pleased. His right hand rested in his lap; he wore the same style of ring as the store owner.

“My son,” said Mr. Tupper, following my eyes. “He married against my wishes. Haven't seen hide nor hair of him in half a year. Ida says he's traveling.”

I peered more closely. Ida's husband had to be a full decade younger than she was, if not more.

“Ayeah. She changed him, all right. Doesn't write anymore, just sends picture cards once in a while,” the shopkeeper said. “Not like him at all, to waste money on picture cards when a penny letter would do. I just pray he hasn't come to harm.”

“What harm—” I started to ask, but was interrupted by the loud tinkling of the bell as the door swung open. Mr. Tupper gave me my basket, took my quarter, and directed his attention to the new customers.

“Well,” said Sylvia, when we were back outside. “He is not friendly.”

“No,” I agreed. “I am curious to know the cause of his dislike of Uncle Benjamin, as well as the extent of it. It is not wise to have open enemies in a small town.”

“Any town,” said Sylvia. “Let's go back home, Louy. I'm sure I can find a passage in Confucius pertinent to this situation.”

She was only half jesting, and her eyes were merry, but before I could answer, I saw her face change from laughter to grimness; she looked at something over my shoulder.

I turned around, knowing already that whatever had so changed her expression was something to dread.

Coming down the Walpole sidewalk was a group of men carrying a litter, and on that litter was a body covered with a sheet. Rusty, coagulated blood blotted the sheet.

“What has happened?” A man with rolled-up sleeves ran out of his cobbler's shop, a huge needle in one hand and the unstitched leather sole still in his other. He waited next to us on the sidewalk, peering nervously at the approaching men with their litter.

“Ernst Nooteboom,” called one of the men. “Found him dead in the ravine.”

All movement stopped. Gossiping housewives, skipping children, apprentices with brooms, shopgirls carrying trays of tea, even the leaves on the elms seemed to cease their trembling—the entire square froze in disbelief. The two separate rows of tobacco-chewing unemployed laborers grew still. Unexpected death has that effect.

A woman stepped away from her group of friends. She had fair skin and two long blond braids trailing down her back. A shopping basket hung over her arm. She moved slowly, not wishing to arrive at the side of that broken body but knowing she must. When she pulled the covering off the dead man's face, six eggs spilled from her basket and broke on the cobbles. No one paid any attention to them.

“Ernst?” said the woman gently, as if trying to wake a child from a deep sleep. When he did not respond, she screamed. She shook him so hard the litter carriers had trouble maintaining their awful burden. Finally she collapsed to the ground, wailing, and her friends circled around her once again, not to exchange gossip or recipes, but to comfort, as women do, making a cordon of their arms as though they could fend off further disaster.

I looked back at the cobbler. “She be Lilli Nooteboom, his sister,” he said. He still held the shoe he had been stitching, and the huge needle with its cord was suspended in air, frozen in time by the coldness of death.

Lilli Nooteboom would not be comforted by the women. She raged against the men carrying her dead brother, weeping and gasping, tearing at her hair, shaking her fists at the sky. “Where did you find him?” she sobbed.

“Bottom of the cliffs, Miss Nooteboom. Seems he fell,” said the man closest to her. He avoided her gaze.

“No,” she said, now somehow calming herself. “He did not fall. My brother climbed in the Alps; he was a summer guide. He had sure footing, my brother. Never does he fall.” Her voice was accented with deep Dutch “R”s and the upending inflection.

“Don't know nothing about that, miss,” he replied, still afraid to look into her eyes.

“I do know about that,” insisted Miss Nooteboom. “He does not fall. Something else has happened to him. Oh, I told him we should not come.” And she began to weep anew, then once again controlled herself.

Her blue eyes were like ice, sharp and cold. “Something else has happened,” she insisted. She looked at the row of laborers in their tweed caps and white tunics.

“Well, will we carry him home?” asked one litter bearer, shifting his weight a little in discomfort. The body under the sheet was not small; it must have been a strain even for four men to carry him all the way from the ravine.

“Eh. Home, to the dining room,” said the dead man's sister in a strangled voice. “I will put a clean sheet on the table and prepare him. And then I will be speaking to the sheriff.” She led the way, looking straight ahead with those piercing blue eyes.

The processional passed Sylvia and me, where we stood on the edge of the sidewalk in front of Tupper's General Store. The sheet wasn't quite long enough to cover the dead man's feet. I had a good look at them.

The leather soles of his shoes were worn smooth and had not been crisscrossed with the incised Xs with which walkers and climbers increase boot traction. No sensible person would walk on a cliff in shoes like those on the feet of Ernst Nooteboom; certainly no hiking guide would take such a risk.

“It were an accident,” said a man behind me. I looked back and saw Mr. Tupper standing there.

“Beg pardon?” I asked.

“Mr. Nooteboom. He fell.”

“So they said,” I answered. Mr. Tupper seemed plainly distressed by something; I could see it in the trembling of his hand. “An accident,” he repeated.

The procession disappeared around a corner and the day slowly returned to its previous condition: Birds sang in the ancient oaks and elms, children played at stick and hoop, the idling laborers grumped and talked among themselves. Groups of women stood in closed circles, whispering. Now, instead of recipes, they talked of Ernst and Lilli Nooteboom, I was certain.

CHAPTER FOUR

SYLVIA AND I returned home to find Ida Tupper sitting in the kitchen with Abba.

“Look,” she said with great glee. “Abba is teaching me to knit!” She held up a tangled skein of wool and a needle with two lopsided, uneven rows of knit one, purl two. Ida wore pink-striped linen that day and skirts with enough yardage for two or three of my workday gowns. She looked youngish in a strange way, as middle-aged women who deny their maturity often do when adorned in insistently youthful style. “I thought I would come keep your mother company. We musn't let her get bored here in the country.”

Abba, looking patient but tired, was too kind to point out to her new neighbor that there was dinner to prepare and rows of vegetable seeds to be planted and so had let herself be coerced into yet another task. Judging from the unevenness of Mrs. Tupper's knitting stitches, it was an impossible task.

“I've never attempted a sock before,” said that woman gaily. “Mother insisted I learn crewel embroidery and china painting instead, you know—what ladies do. I learned a bit of hat trimming as well, what Parisian ladies occupy themselves with. Trimmed that one.” Ida pointed to a confectionery of white starched lace and peacock feathers now resting on the table near her elbow. “Jonah bought it for me before he left,” she said. “Oh, it is ever so expensive, I'm sure. You'll not find another like it in Walpole. I asked Lilli Nooteboom if she could make a dress to match and she was just speechless, poor thing. She has no talent for dressmaking, really she hasn't.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Louisa, you look pale,” said Abba, putting down her needles. “And Sylvia, you are trembling. What is the matter?”

I pumped water into the sink from the kettle, and stuck more wood into the stove to blaze up the fire.

“Lilli Nooteboom is the matter,” I said. “Her brother has fallen from a cliff, it seems.”

“Ernst?” Ida Tupper looked up from her lopsided knitting. It seemed she was on a first-name basis with a great many people.

“Ernst,” she said again, wonder in her voice, and a touch of fear. “I do hope he will recover without a limp; it is so awful when a man limps. Such a nice young man. So very tall, and that funny accent. His sister, of course, is another story. So cold, so formal. She purposely shut a door once in my face; I would swear she did it on purpose.”