Talk of the Town (15 page)

“Ditto,” said Vera. She began to walk along the path toward their campsite. “That rotten raccoon had better not have gotten into anything else while we’re out here clowning around.”

“Oh, I suspect our things are safe,” Alice said. “We made so much noise I doubt there’s an animal left within a five-mile radius.”

Several hours later, Jane and Louise stood in the front hallway laughing as Alice recounted the night’s adventures. Maxwell came downstairs in time to hear most of the story.

“At least it wasn’t boring,” Jane said. She almost wished she had gone along, just to see the scene Alice had described.

“Far from it.” Maxwell smiled. “So were Florence and Ellis very disappointed?”

Alice shrugged. “I imagine so, although none of us dwelt on the fiasco. Ellis left this morning. She was eager to get back and file her report.”

Jane was staring at Maxwell. “You sound terrible,” she said. “Are you coming down with something?”

“I think I might be,” he confessed. “My throat feels swollen and scratchy and I am quite congested. I didn’t sleep well at all last night.”

“Come into the kitchen and let me make you some special tea,” Jane offered.

The young man looked surprised. “Really? Why, thank you, Jane.” He followed her to the kitchen.

“Sit,” she said. “This will take a few minutes.

As she efficiently began to make the tea, he asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m mixing equal parts dried linden, elder and chamomile flowers. I use three teaspoons of this mix for every ten ounces of water.” She spooned the proper measure onto a small square of finely woven linen, then secured it and set it in a mug. Then she set a spoon in the mug and poured boiling water over the linen. “There. That has to steep for ten minutes. Then you can add honey and lemon if you like. A cup in the morning and another in the evening should help until the congestion is gone.”

Maxwell had a look of… almost awe on his face, Jane thought.

“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” he told her.

Jane was startled. “Good heavens, it’s just a cup of herbal tea.” She set down the honey and a plate with a wedge of lemon on the table near the steaming mug of fragrant tea. “There. I have to get Clothilda some information on the computer. Just wait ten minutes and flavor it to taste. I can make you more tonight.”

“Thanks, Jane.”

She left him there inhaling the warm, aromatic steam and went to the reception desk. Yesterday, she had had an idea that she hoped might help Clothilda. Jane was eager to give it a try. Ethel had made plans months before to take a bus trip to Longwood Gardens and she would be gone most of the day.

A few minutes later, their German guest appeared. Jane called to her from the computer. “Clothilda, over here.”

The older woman waved a folder. “I have brought my records down, as you asked.”

“It occurred to me,” said Jane, “that we know your ancestors booked passage on a ship bound for the Port of Philadelphia. But have you ever checked to be sure that they actually were on that ship?”

Clothilda’s eyebrows rose. “No, Jane, I have not tried to see this. You can help?”

“I can help. I think,” said Jane. She swiveled her chair around to face the computer monitor. With a little navigating, she was able to find her way to the records from the Port of Philadelphia. They were listed by ship.

Jane perused the dates, page by page. “When does your information say they sailed and on what ship?”

Clothilda pointed to her paper. “There. I have only days, not name of ship.”

Jane stabbed at the screen. “Look! I believe this is the ship. It’s the only one that lists that date as the ‘sailed from’ that matches yours. “It looks like it arrived in Philadelphia… two months later. Good heavens. Could that be? I suppose in 1749 it certainly could have been.” Rapidly, she scanned the list of the ship’s passengers’ names. “Oh, rats. I don’t see it on here. There’s Marckert, Matthey, Maurer, Mayer, Meer, Mehler, Meltzer, Mohr and Muller.”

“No Moeller?” Clothilda’s shoulders sagged.

“No Moeller.” Jane wished she had better news. “What do these little marks after some of the names mean? Oh… the ones with no marks were copied from the original German signature. The ones with asterisks—this little snowflake thing here—were names written by a clerk. I never thought about it but I imagine some of the immigrants were illiterate.”

“Ill-lit… ill…?”

“They could not read or write. They would have signed their name with a mark like an ‘X’ and told the clerk their name. So the clerk would have written it down.” A growing excitement filled Jane. “Clothilda, is it possible your ancestors might not have been able to write their name? Maybe a clerk wrote it down wrong!”

But Clothilda shook her head. “I have the letters. Letters my family write.”

“I forgot,” Jane said, disappointed.

“What is this mark? This question mark?”

“I didn’t see that one. Hold on.” Jane scanned the information key at the bottom of the page. “The ones with question marks mean the original German name was difficult to decipher.”

“So maybe my family man was bad writer?”

“I never thought of that.” Jane’s natural optimism returned. “A clerk could have copied it wrong if he found it hard to read.” She looked up, eyes alight. “Let’s compare the first names of your ancestors to the names of the people on this list to see if any are close.”

“Yes.” Clothilda consulted her notes. “There are three boys—brothers. First is Georg Christian, twenty-nine years. Second is Hans Jacob, twenty-two years. No good. Many, many Hans and Jacob in Germany. Third is Conrad Maximilian, eighteen years.”

“So the first and third brother have somewhat distinctive names. How about their wives?”

“Georg married to Karolina. Hans married to Gertrud. Conrad not married. Georg have three children, names— Johanna, Mattheis, Ulrike. Hans have no children.”

“Okay.” Jane rubbed her hands together. “Now we’re cooking with gas.”

Clothilda looked toward the back of the house, toward the kitchen. “You must cook?”

Jane laughed. “No, it’s just an expression. It means we are making progress.”

“Ah. This I understand now.”

“I’m going to print out the pages from the passenger manifest we found,” Jane told her guest, “and then we can compare the names to names that are similar. I saw at least two that are very close: Mehler, M-e-h-l-e-r, and Muller, M-u-l-l-e-r.”

“Yes.” Clothilda nodded eagerly. “Let us go cook with gas.”

Chapter Thirteen

S
aturday afternoon, Louise asked three of her beginning piano students to come to the house for a special preparatory session before the National Piano Guild auditions. Each of the three was a first-year student and had never been through the adjudicating process. Louise wanted to be sure they understood how the auditions would work.

The first child did well, but the second child fumbled his way through his music badly enough that Louise felt the need to give him additional instruction. Unfortunately, that put her nearly ten minutes behind the time she had asked Patsy Ravin, the third child, to arrive.

Patsy was a nervous girl to begin with, and Louise was dreading the session. The second-grader’s mother was determined that Patsy should become a concert pianist, and evidently she expected her to reach that goal within the first two years. Louise had rarely seen a parent pester a child so much about practicing. Poor Patsy already was so upset about the Guild auditions that Louise feared that the girl might make herself ill.

When Louise approached the living room where the little girl was waiting, she expected to hear sobbing. Instead, a raspy masculine voice was saying something in a soothing tone. She stopped in the doorway, but the occupants of the living room did not see her. She saw that the man speaking was Maxwell.

“… so when you go in there to play your pieces, don’t forget that I’ll be right there with you.” He was speaking earnestly to Patsy.

This alarmed Louise. “Oh no,” she said. “Maxwell, no one but the judge goes in with the student. I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that.”

“Ah, but I will.” Maxwell turned and winked at her, then turned back to the seven-year-old, holding her gaze even though he still spoke to Louise. “I told Patsy here that I used to play piano when I was young and that I always got horribly nervous playing in front of other people. The trick is to tune them out, right, Patsy?”

The little girl nodded shyly.

“And do what?” he prompted.

“Pretend you’re sitting right beside me,” she lisped.

“That’s exactly right,” he told her. “I told Patsy to pretend she was just playing her songs for me and to forget about anyone else who might be listening.”

Louise was so stunned that she was speechless for a moment. Finally, she found her voice. “What a very good idea.” She stopped to clear her throat, surprised at the catch in her own voice. And then she had an inspiration of her own. “I’ll tell you what, Patsy. Would you like Maxwell to come in with you the first time you play your pieces this afternoon? And then we can try it a second time with you pretending he’s there.”

When the little girl smiled and nodded vigorously, Louise felt as if they might have turned a corner. “Thank you,” she mouthed at Maxwell over the child’s head as they walked into the parlor.

The young man only smiled, raising his hand with the thumb and forefinger forming a circle in the
okay
sign.

On Sunday morning, the sisters were accompanied to church by Maxwell, Clothilda and Ethel, just as they had been the week before.

Louise was quiet as they walked to Grace Chapel. Jane and Clothilda were talking genealogy with Ethel, right ahead of her.

“… and we realized that it had been changed to Muller, M-u-l-l-e-r, when it was copied down from the original passenger manifest,” Jane said.

“Excellent sleuthing,” said Ethel. “Now we can start looking for Mullers. I’ve heard that name before. I’m sure there are some around here.”

“I cannot begin to look,” Clothilda told her. “This afternoon I leave on the bus for New York City.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Ethel snapped her fingers. “And how long will you be gone?”

“We tour for three days, two nights. I am back on
Mittwoch
—Wednesday—in the evening. On next day we go looking again?”

“Thursday,” Jane supplied. “All right. That works for me. We’ll plan a trip around the area on Thursday.”

“Louise?” Alice’s gentle voice said.

“Yes?”

Alice and Maxwell were walking beside her. Louise was quite pleased that the young man was attending church with them while he was here. It was never too late to join the flock, and Alice, bless her heart, was a particularly effective shepherdess. Louise knew Alice had spent quite a bit of her free time showing their young visitor around the community.

“Maxwell and I were just talking about the Lenten season and the reason we make an effort at sacrifice.”

Louise nodded. “Jesus’ death on the cross was the highest sacrifice there can be. Because we believe that Jesus was the incarnation of God here on earth, we believe that His self-sacrifice was the supreme expression of His love for humankind.”

“So if you give something up for Lent, it should be something that you crave or value, something that is truly a sacrifice for you to do without,” Alice explained.

“What have you given up for Lent?” Maxwell asked the two sisters.

“Secular music,” Louise said with a grimace. “The only things I am playing during Lent are religious music and classical pieces. It feels a bit like cheating to include the classics,” she added, “but I would not be getting adequately challenging practice if I tried to stick to only religious music for so long.” She glanced at Alice. “How about you?”

“Caffeinated tea,” Alice responded. “I was drinking far too much of it during my night shifts to help me stay awake.”

“So how are you staying awake now?”

Alice smiled. “I’m trying to be more active. If I have a quiet moment I check on patients even if their call lights aren’t on. I’ve found that I do well if I keep moving.”

“What could I give up for Lent?” Maxwell asked. “Or is it too late?”

“It’s never too late,” Louise said staunchly. “What are some of the things you most enjoy?”

He groaned. “Pie at the Coffee Shop. Oh, how I love June’s pies. I’ve been having two pieces some days. Shall I swear off pie for the rest of Lent?”

“I don’t know if you need to swear off pie completely,” Alice said. “June would wonder what she’d done wrong. How about having no more than one piece a day?”

The young man nodded. “I could do that. But I’m not sure it would be a very significant sacrifice.”

“Just wait until the next time Hope waves that second piece of blackberry pie under your nose,” Alice predicted. “You’ll feel as if you’re making a sacrifice.”

All three of them chuckled. The group was almost at the chapel now, and as they started along the walkway toward the double front doors, one of the Trimble boys came toward them carrying a large plastic cup. Just as he reached Jane, he stumbled.

Jane gasped as the cup turned over. They all expected liquid to cascade down her pretty pale blue skirt—but the cup was empty.

“April Fool!” shouted the young boy as he rushed away.

“Morley Trimble, you get right back here and apologize.” Mrs. Trimble rushed after him, looking as harassed as Louise expected she would look if she had to spend all day with the rambunctious Trimble boys. “Sorry,” the woman called over her shoulder to Jane.

“It’s all right.” Jane laughed. “I haven’t had such a good joke played on me in a long time.”

“I forgot it was April first,” Alice said. “Soon the late tulips will be opening. I especially love those candy-pink ones you planted against the side of the garage, Jane.”

“I love those too,” Jane said. “And best of all, they are perennial tulips so I don’t have to plant new ones every single year. If I add some every third year, we should always have a nice display.” She paused for a moment. “Last fall, Wendell was underfoot the whole time I was planting them. He was convinced there was food in the bag I was carrying.”

“Still no news?” asked Ethel. “I find it hard to believe that cat just disappeared. He’ll be back.”

Alice took Clothilda to a large grocery store parking lot in Potterston early Monday morning to meet the bus that was taking a group to the city. On the way home, she couldn’t resist driving by the gas station one more time where Wendell had jumped out of Mr. Jervis’ car.

She didn’t stop, although she did turn down one of the streets and drive slowly through the now-familiar neighborhood.
Oh, Wendell, whatever happened to you?
Tears stung her eyes. She had not cried this much since Father died.

That thought brought fresh tears, as she remembered how much Father had enjoyed Wendell’s antics when he had been a kitten.

After driving down a few more streets without success, Alice sadly turned toward home. As she pulled into the driveway of the inn, she dried her eyes. Louise and Jane were sad enough without seeing the evidence of her own grieving.

“Good morning, Alice.”

She realized she had been moping along with her head down. As she lifted her face, she saw Maxwell carrying out a white plastic bag to the large trash can near the garage.

Her eyebrows rose.
A guest doing chores?

He began to chuckle. “You should see your face. It’s all right. I volunteered. It’s the least I could do after the way Jane has been making me cold remedies, and all of you have been so gracious about inviting me to dinner.” He still sounded as if he were fighting a cold. In fact, Alice thought he might even sound worse than he had yesterday.

“But you’re a guest. It just seems…”

“It makes me feel like I fit in. Don’t take that away from me, Alice,” he said quietly.

“Oh, Maxwell…” She turned and walked with him to the trash can and back to the house. “You’ll find your place one of these days. You might want to try talking to God about how you feel. Sometimes answers come in the most unexpected ways.”

“Grace Chapel Inn has been one of those unexpected ways for me.”

“What a lovely thing to say.” She turned and smiled at him. “When my sisters and I decided to turn our family home into a bed-and-breakfast, one of our hopes was that it would be a blessing to all who stayed here.”

“It has been for me. I never expected to find friends on this research trip.” It almost sounded as if he had regret in his voice. It seemed as if he was going to say something else, but he began to cough and the moment was lost.

“How is your research going?” Alice asked him. “You’ve hardly said a word about it.”

“Fine, fine.” He seemed quite disinclined to discuss it. “Did I tell you I am considering working on another degree as soon as I receive this one?”