Storm Tide (55 page)

A slow flush was deepening in Rich's bony face. He seemed undecided whether to get up or remain sitting. He decided to keep still, and stared back at Nils stolidly, as expressionless as a granite boulder.

“Rich, you want to tell me where you got the story that I killed Winslow Fowler?” Nils asked. “That's all I want of you.”

After a moment Rich cleared his throat. He said abruptly, “What right have you to come in and take over this meetin'? You broke in, that's what you did. And I refuse to answer any of your damn'-fool questions.”

Randy said audibly, “Then why don't we throw the son-of-a­bitch of a squarehead out?” The women looked shocked, and someone said, “Hush your noise.”

Joanna, looking at Randy, felt a remote pity for him. He looked like a badly wrecked imitation of the boy who had once come so cockily into her kitchen. She'd heard that he'd been drinking hard lately, and was wild and uncertain of temper; he had taken his brother's death hard, it seemed. She imagined what memories must crowd in on him when he went out to haul alone in the
Janet F
. He and Winslow had always gone together. With his warm, affectionate nature, he'd probably loved his brother in spite of Winslow's sullen ways. It was too bad Randolph didn't have some of that warmth. . . . She could forgive Randy his jerky outburst against Nils, she could not forgive Randolph his iron composure as he sat there beside his son.

There was some confusion in the room, and Nils waited imperturbably until it had died down. “I know you all feel like Rich. You think I'm coming where I'm not wanted. Well, I know I'm not wanted. I know a lot of you feel pretty uncomfortable when you see me standing up here. And I promise you that I'll go—when I've found out what I came here to find out.

“Are you going to tell me, Rich? You going to tell me where you heard the story that made you decide you didn't see me, when we met the other night?”

Rich folded his arms and settled back firmly in his chair. His wife said shrilly, “He prob'ly never saw you! Can he help it if you're one o' them kind that goes around imaginin' insults? I knew your grandfather, Nils Sorensen, and you're just as much of a trouble-maker as he was!”

“You keep quiet, Virgie,” Rich told her audibly. “Don't talk to him. We don't have to talk to him, nor listen neither. He don't belong in this meetin'.”

There was a murmur of assent. Nils said with sober politeness, “You don't want to talk to me? Nobody wants to talk to me?” His voice changed, grew low, and yet held a chilling certainty. “This is your chance. You'll talk now—or you'll talk in court.”

The silence in the room was the most profane and hating silence that Joanna had ever heard. For she
could
hear it. It pounded all around her, a sea of consternation and fearful doubt. They had intended sitting back like Rich, utterly secure in their refusal to notice Nils; and he had jolted them out of their security.

Rich stirred. “I never saw you in Limerock, Nils.” He sounded sullen. “I don't even know what night you was talkin' about.”

“You saw me all right, Rich,” said Nils. “And it was your daughter who teased mine with the story in the schoolyard. She must have heard it at home. I want to know who passed the story on to you.”

Bradford didn't answer. The hush was as thick and oppressive as fog.

“Who told it to you, Rich?” Nils prompted.

“I don't know,” said Bradford. “I still don't know what you're chewin' about.” He stood up, pulling his wife up by the elbow. “I'm leavin'.”

A couple of others stood up too. “We don't have to stay and listen to this foolishness,” a woman said. Joanna was dismayed. This was something nobody had planned on—that they'd walk out like this. Why, nothing could be proved then, and they'd think they'd made a fool of Nils. She looked around swiftly at her brothers. There must be
something
—

There was. Mark had come quietly to his feet, and was standing by the door. Owen got up without hurry, with a leisurely stretch of his big body, and joined Mark. They looked as immovable as the Black Ledges. She saw Rich Bradford hesitate in the aisle. His wife's eyes were furtive and worried. It was she who sat down again. Rich, blushing almost purple, sat down too. There was a muttering, a rebellious creaking of chairs, as the others settled back.

Nils hadn't moved. Now he said easily, “Well, Rich, if you can't give me any information, I wonder if you thought up that little yarn by yourself. Might be you've passed it on to quite a few, the more you thought about it. . . . You know about the slander laws, Rich? You know about lawyers' letters, and damages for defamation of character? Things like that can carve a pretty big hunk out of a man's bank account, Rich.”

He was looking at Rich. But he was speaking to them all, and Joanna knew beyond a doubt that his words were reaching their goal. There were enough strong men in the schoolhouse to pull Mark and Owen away from the door if they wanted to; but even stronger was the impulse to find out just how much Nils knew about them.

A fist fight in the schoolhouse now, with the children outside, and the women looking on and screaming, wasn't going to clear anybody; who knew what information Nils possessed, and could still use against them, even if they tried to give him his come-uppance? They might down Mark and Owen, and black Nils' eyes. But he would still be an unknown quantity.

Joanna realized with pride how skillfully Nils was playing his cards.
Court action:
those words could scare even the most resolute of them, if he had anything on his conscience. And they weren't forgetting that Nils was Gunnar Sorensen's grandson. Gunnar had always been a great one to shake his fist under your nose and threaten you with law, and he never used the word unless he was sure of his rights. That was why no one on Brigport or Bennett's had bothered Gunnar very often in his eighty years.

“I just want to find out,” Nils said mildly to Rich, “where this story
started
. I'd appreciate your help.”

Bradford's face was glistening over the flush. He gave one quick furtive look around the room, and then said, “It was Ralph Fowler told me. Only I wasn't the only one he told, by God! He told Theron Pierce and Sam Robey at the same time, out on the lobster car!”

“What did he say?” Nils asked, as if Ralph weren't sitting just below him. “Did he hint at it, or did he come right out and say it? Careful now, Rich.”

Joanna, looking at the back of Rich's head, thought she could almost see it grow rigid with concentration. “He come right out and said it!” he exploded at last. “I remember that, because Theron, he says he's not surprised, they was a damn' wild crew down on Bennett's. Somebody fired a shot at him while he was haulin' down there once.”

There was a rumble and mutter at this, and Joanna glanced at Owen. He was grinning without shame, and he winked at her.

“All right, Rich,” Nils said. “Thanks. You've been a great help. Well, Ralph—”

Ralph was a cruder version of his brother Randolph. By the tilt of his head, he was staring back at Nils without alarm.

“Well, Nils!” he countered, and chuckled. “You think you're goin' to scare me like you did Rich? Why, son, you couldn't scare me. You ain't hardly dry behind the ears yet!”

There was an eager ripple of laughter. Ralph was going to make a fool of Nils for them, there was nothing to be uneasy about now. But Nils wasn't annoyed.

“Did you tell Rich the story?”

“Sure, I said it,” Ralph admitted easily. “'Course, I wouldn't have thought of it if somebody hadn't put the idea in my head. I'm an open-minded feller, I don't usually go around lookin' for things like murder.” He gave the word a bold emphasis, and someone in the room made a little sound of protest. From where she sat, Joanna could see the nerve jumping in Randy's thin cheek. His hands fidgeted.

“But I was sort of prejudiced in this case, I guess,” Ralph went on. “The boy bein' my nephew and all. And then, when I was aboard ship years ago there was a Swedish feller you put me in mind of, Nils. He was a nice quiet feller without much to say, and neat as a pin, too. He knifed the third mate one night and threw him overboard. We wouldn't have known, except—” He pretended to pull himself away from his reminiscences with a start. His smooth voice was insufferable, to Joanna at least. How could Nils stand there so quietly, without striking that complacent face? “Well, you ain't interested in that stuff. But knowin' you'd had words with Winslow more than once—”

“Just once,” Nils corrected him dryly. “All right, Ralph. You say you didn't think it up by yourself. Somebody gave you the idea. Who was it?”

Ralph was still heavily bland. “I couldn't say right offhand, my boy. And you can't scare me with your slander laws. You're likely to start somethin' you can't finish, unless you shut up and go home like a sensible man.”

Nils didn't seem to hear him. He turned to Mrs. Fowler, a thin, graying woman with drooping shoulders. He spoke to her softly. “Are
you
scared of the slander laws, Mrs. Fowler?”

Joanna felt astonishment and pride in the same breath. Who but Nils would have remembered so swiftly, and used as a weapon, something which had been forgotten for years? It was dim in her own mind . . . something about Ralph Fowler's wife when she was a young woman, telling a story about a Brigport girl who'd had an operation. She'd got into dreadful trouble with the girl's parents.

And now she was speaking in a fluttery, terrified voice. “I talked to Ralph about it, yes.” She wasn't bothering to defy Nils. “But all I said was, It
could
be . . . if circumstances was jest right. But I never said you'd really done it, it was jest because I kept mullin' over what she said to me that mornin', till I had to speak to Ralph about it.”

Her head swung around like a frightened bird's; Joanna had a glimpse of staring eyes above ashen, sagging cheeks, and felt a brief pity for the woman. She herself knew how Nils' unhurried but inescapable presence could burn and freeze at the same time, like a piece of ice you hold in your hands, and cannot let go. But her pity was short-lived. They had had no pity for Nils when they called him a murderer.

“Who told you about it in the morning?” said Nils.

“Bella Merrill,” she said on a gasp, and all eyes moved to George Merrill and his wife. George was a distant cousin of Cap'n Merrill's, and since there'd ever been any great amity between his branch of the clan and the Captain's immediate group, Joanna didn't feel sorry for the Captain now; except to think that it must be hard for him to hear his family name disgraced.

George was in his thirties, a sandy-haired, thick-set man who now sat looking at Nils with open-mouthed amazement. He had never been considered very bright. Bella moved closer to him, her fleshy, rouged face tight with worried resentment; her eyes, small anyway, squinted to shut Nils out.

“You want to tell us about this, Bella?” said Nils pleasantly.

Bella's winter coat was one of the best in the winter catalogue. She pulled it close around her shoulders. “You think you're pretty smart, Nils Sorensen, comin' over here and tryin' to set us all by the ears!” The words tumbled out, thickly. “But what does all this get you? You
still
could've killed Winslow—you still could've done it, just the way we've all been sayin'—”

George looked at her in alarm. The murmurs were rising again, but Joanna noticed in satisfaction that most of the women seemed annoyed with Bella. She wasn't very popular on Brigport—with the women, anyway.

Nils cut smoothly through the confusion. “Bella, remember what I said about slander. This is no time for name-calling. Just tell me where you got hold of the story. If we keep this up long enough, we'll get to the place where it started, and that's all I'm interested in.”

Not a pair of eyes moved away from Bella. Her own eyes were suddenly panicky. Behind the rouge and the powder she became a brilliant purplish red. She was a woman looking for a way of escape, but there was none.

“I don't have to answer you!” she blurted out. “If there was a half a man here, you wouldn't be allowed to come in and insult us like this! I'm gettin' out of here!”

“Would it be easier to tell me in court, Bella?” Nils asked.

She stared at him. Her mouth went slack and shaking. “It was Tom Robey,” she brought out at last.

The story was easy to guess. Joana heard it in the stillness around her, and saw it in George's face. She saw it in the glances of the women, at once curious and disdainful; in the way the men shifted their feet, and moistened their mouths, and grinned. There was an uneasy creaking and straining from the corner where the Robey boys sat, and Tom's wife.

Nils didn't waste any time. “Anything to tell me, Tom?”

Tom was on his feet, massive of shoulder, black-browed, his big fists swinging at his sides. He was six-feet-four of seething rage; it was a question whom he wanted to strangle first, Bella Merrill or Nils. “You're damn' right I got somethin' to tell ye! Who are you to come over here and make trouble, and dig in your nose where it's got no right to be?”

Nils smiled. “Who do I have to be? Take it easy, Tom. Too bad you can't go seining all winter and then you'd stay out of trouble. . . . Who told you that maybe I killed Winslow, Tom?”

“Roger Stone,” said Tom abruptly. He stamped to the back of the schoolroom, brushed by Joanna's seat, and went out, slamming the doors behind him. Mark and Owen didn't try to stop him. He wasn't necessary any longer. They sat down again.

Roger Stone
. Joanna felt a sharp stab of dismay. He'd been one of the Brigport men her father had liked, one of the old-timers, the ground-keepers. She knew Nils had been set back too. She could tell by the way his voice chilled.