“Then there’s no reason to rise early, at least.” He looked around the room a little awkwardly. “Good night.”
We all mumbled replies, and then grew silent as the Doctor slowly climbed the stairs.
Once she’d heard his bedroom door close, Miss Howard took a piece of chalk from the board and flung it at Mr. Moore’s head, catching him very nicely between the eyes and making him yelp.
“You know, John,” she said, “if the Times won’t take you back, you could always open a new business kicking injured dogs or knocking the crutches out from under cripples.”
“Someday,” Mr. Moore moaned, rubbing the chalk mark on his head, “you’re going to do me some serious physical injury, Sara—and I promise you, I’ll sue! Look, I’m sorry if you all think I’m being a defeatist, but I just don’t see what you’re going to find out from Libby Hatch’s mother that’s going to change things.”
“Maybe nothing!” Miss Howard shot back. “But you’ve seen what the Doctor’s been through this week—and remember, we drew him into this case, to help him forget his troubles in New York. Now it looks like we’ve only made things worse. You might at least try to be encouraging.”
Mr. Moore glanced over at the stairway, looking a little ashamed of himself. “Well—I suppose that’s true …” He poured himself another drink and then turned to Miss Howard. “Do you want me to come along tomorrow?” He did his best to sound sincere. “I promise you, I will try to keep things hopeful.”
Miss Howard sighed and shock her head. “I don’t think you could be hopeful right now if your life depended on it. No, it’ll be better if just Stevie and I go—the fewer people, the less awkward the silence will be.” She looked up at the ceiling. “And I’ve a feeling there’s going to be a lot of silence …”
It was a sound prediction. The Doctor didn’t come down from his room ’til close to noon on Sunday, and he still didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. He did his level best to take an interest in the job what lay ahead of us, but it was a pretty hopeless cause: he seemed to know just how unlikely it would be that we’d discover anything so crucial at the Franklins’ farm that it would swing our fate in court. By the time we climbed aboard the surrey, he’d dropped any effort at conversation and grown very quiet and thoughtful again, and he stayed that way through all of the long drive over to Schaghticoke.
The Franklin house was just as peaceful as it’d been the day before; but this time, in addition to Eli Franklin working around the barnyard, there was an elderly woman—fleshy but not fat—weeding one of the flower patches by the house. Her white-haired head was shielded from the sun by a wide-brimmed straw hat, and her gingham dress was covered by a slightly soiled apron. Even from halfway up the drive we could hear her singing to herself, and a small dog was happily prancing around, letting out a little yap occasionally to get the woman’s attention and receiving a pat on the head and a few kindly words in return.
As the Doctor took in the scene before him, his black eyes began to glow with a light what I hadn’t seen in evidence for a couple of days. “So …” he said, as I drew the surrey to a stop beside the gate in the white picket fence; and when he got down to the ground, he smiled just a little.
“Not precisely what you expected?” Miss Howard asked, joining him.
“Tragedy and horror do not always come with the appropriate trappings, Sara,” the Doctor answered softly. “If they did, mine would be a useless profession.”
As I tied off our horse’s reins, I saw that Eli Franklin had caught sight of us and was running out to the gate. He seemed to be moving with real purpose.
“Hello, Miss Howard,” he said, his face full of worry.
“Mr. Franklin,” she answered with a nod. “This is Dr. Kreizler, who’s also working on the case. And I don’t think you met our young associate Stevie Taggert yesterday—”
Eli Franklin just shook our hands quickly without saying anything, then turned to Miss Howard again. “My mother—when I told her—”
But by then the woman who was tending the flowers had turned and seen us. Her little dog was yapping louder and faster as he, too, registered the presence of strangers. “Oh!” the woman called, in a voice what was both very loud and sort of melodious. “Oh, are these Elspeth’s friends, Eli, dear?”
She started toward us, and Eli Franklin spoke even faster and with more urgency: “I couldn’t tell her that Libby was actually in trouble—it would set her nerves off, and her heart’s not so strong anymore. Is there any way that you can find out what you need to know without—”
“We shall try, Mr. Franklin,” the Doctor answered good-naturedly. “It may be that your mother can tell us all we need to know without our revealing our true purpose.”
Eli Franklin’s face filled with relief, and he just had time to say, “Thank you, Doctor, I do appreciate—” before his mother arrived at the gate.
The little dog was yapping louder than ever, and” as Mrs. Franklin held her hat in place on her head she looked down to scold him gently: “Leopold, stop that, these are visitors!” The dog tried to calm down, but it was an effort. “I’m sorry,” the woman said to us, her singsong voice growing a little addled. “He’s very protective! Well! So you’re all friends of my daughter’s? And trying to find her, my son says?” Back behind her amber-colored eyes you could see that Mrs. Franklin—who must have been very handsome in her day—didn’t quite believe the story, but that it was easier for her to accept it than to contemplate other, less pleasant possibilities. “I’m afraid we can’t help you,” she went on, before the Doctor or Miss Howard could answer. “As Eli told you yesterday, we haven’t heard from Libby in several years. Not that I’m surprised! So careless, that girl! She never could take care of the simplest little—”
“Yes, Mother,” Eli Franklin said, touching her elbow to quiet her down. “This is Miss Howard and Dr.—Kreizler, was it? And the boy is called—”
“Just Stevie’ll do,” I said, looking at the woman and getting a big smile in return.
“Oh, just Stevie, eh?” she said, reaching out to touch my cheek. “Well, that’s good enough—you’re a fine-looking boy!”
“They think maybe something we know about her past will help them locate Libby,” Eli Franklin went on.
Miss Howard nodded. “You see, she hasn’t contacted us in quite some time, either. Perhaps if we knew a little more of what her usual habits were—”
Mrs. Franklin nodded. “Hasn’t contacted you? Well, that doesn’t surprise me, either! I don’t know why that girl never could take care of the smallest details. We’ve gotten one or two little notes, over the years, but never so much as a single visit! She just dances through life, doing as she pleases. Ah, well, some people are that way, I suppose.” She pulled the picket gate open. “Please, please, come in and sit on the porch out back—we’ve screened it in, so you won’t have to fight off these terrible flies. What with all the moisture this summer, I’m afraid the insects have been positively thriving!” We started to follow her around the side of the house, none of us getting a word in. “Now, I’ve made lemonade and iced tea—I thought it would be too warm for anything else. There’s some gingerbread, too, and we might find something even sweeter for you, Stevie, if you crave sweets as much as my boys did! But as for Libby, I don’t know how much help I can be …” Moving onto the back porch of the house, we found that the big screen panels did in fact remove us from the annoying blackflies what had started to swarm in the afternoon sun, “It may be that you can tell me more, really. As I say, we haven’t even seen her in—how long has it been, Eli?”
Eli Franklin looked at Miss Howard what you might call pointedly. “Ten years,” he said.
“Ten?” his mother repeated. “That can’t be right. No, you must be mistaken, Eli, I can’t believe that even Libby, careless as she is, would go ten years without a visit! Has it really been that long? Well, sit down, sit down, everyone, and have something to drink!”
I took a seat in a
big wicker chair, sighing a little to myself: getting information out of this biddy was going to be a job, all right.
“Thank you, Mrs. Franklin,” the Doctor said, taking a seat in another of the wicker chairs. “The afternoon is warm, and the drive was a long one.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Franklin answered, pouring out glasses of her cool refreshments and handing them around. “All the way from Ballston Spa! I must confess, I never would’ve guessed that Elspeth would be the center of so much attention.” In the words, and also in their tone, there was something what reminded me in a chilling way of the first time we’d ever heard Libby Hatch speak, outside her house on Bethune Street. “She was never the kind of girl that people took much interest in.” Eli Franklin shot Miss Howard a quick look again, asking her with his eyes not to bring up the things he’d mentioned the day before. “Her brothers were more outgoing, of course, more social—they got that from me, I suppose. But Elspeth was more like her father—a daydreamer, too busy in her own mind to ever be of much use, really.”
“I understand your husband is no longer with us,” Miss Howard said.
“No, bless his heart,” the woman answered, reaching around from the table to slip sprigs of fresh-cut mint into all our glasses and then passing around a plate of gingerbread. “He’s been gone almost five years, now. Poor George worked himself into the grave, keeping the farm going. He never was much good at it, really—if he hadn’t had the boys to help him … but they’re born workers, both of them. They get that from me, too, I expect. Practical heads. But George was a dreamer, like Elspeth. It was all we could do to raise three children and keep this place afloat.”
“And Elspeth?” the Doctor asked carefully. “Surely she was some help to you.”
Mrs. Franklin laughed: the light, well-oiled sound of a woman what was used to handling men. “Well, I don’t know how many ways I can say it, Doctor, but the girl was never really any good to anyone, not when it came to the practical business of living. Oh, she was pretty enough. And clever, too, especially with her studies. But not useful in any way that would have really been important for a young lady.” I saw Miss Howard near choke on her piece of gingerbread, but she managed to keep a pleasant expression on her face. “A positive fright in the kitchen,” Mrs. Franklin went on. “And as for housework, well… I couldn’t even put her to dusting without her breaking whatever we had that could be broken. A sweet thing, but what does sweetness matter when you’re all grown up? It was no wonder she never had any suitors. Lived with us until she was near an old maid, and not one man ever came to ask for her hand. I didn’t wonder. Men around here work hard—they need a woman who can tend house, not a clever dreamer. And prettiness fades, Doctor, prettiness fades …” The little dog, who’d followed us onto the porch and was panting in excitement beside Mrs. Franklin’s chair, let out another yap. “Oh! Leopold, you want gingerbread, I’m so sorry! Here …” Handing the dog a piece of the cake—which I had to admit was as good as any I’d ever had—Mrs. Franklin began to stroke his head. “Yes, there, my sweet boy. You don’t remember Libby, do you, Leopold? She left before you came to live with us …” The woman looked back up, lost in thought. “We had another dog, then—Libby’s dog. What was his name, Eli?”
“Fitz,” Eli Franklin answered, munching on his gingerbread and swilling his third glass of lemonade.
“Yes, that’s right. Fitz. Oh, she loved that dog. Cried awfully when he died—I thought she might expire herself! Remember, Eli?”
Suddenly Eli Franklin stopped chewing: he looked around at all of us what you might call guardedly, then slowly got the gingerbread in his mouth down his gullet. “No,” he answered, quickly and quietly.
“Well, of course you do!” Mrs. Franklin said. “Don’t be silly—it was just before she left to work with that family in Stillwater—”
“The Muhlenbergs?” Miss Howard said hopefully.
“Oh, then you know the Muhlenbergs, Miss Howard?” Mrs. Franklin replied, happily surprised. “Fine people, Elspeth said—she wrote from there once. Very fine. And just before she left, she had that attack of bilious fever—”
“Mother—” Eli Franklin said, still looking a little alarmed.
“—and the morning after that Fitz died. I’m sure you remember, Eli—we buried him out by the barn. You built a little coffin, and Libby painted a headstone—”
“Mother!” Eli Franklin said, a little harshly now; then he smiled around at the rest of us, though it was a strain. “I’m sure these people don’t want to hear about every little thing that happened to Libby while she was living here—they’re interested in what’s happening to her now.”
“Well…” Mrs. Franklin looked at her son in some shock; but along with the shock there was a trace of sudden, cold anger, of the variety what I’d sometimes seen come into Libby Hatch’s face. “I certainly apologize if I’m embarrassing my own son. But I was telling them about the Muhlenbergs—”
“You were telling them—” Eli Franklin said; then, catching his mother’s look, he dropped it. “All right. Go ahead, tell them—about the Muhlenbergs.”
“They were very fine people,” Mrs. Franklin went on, giving her son one last warning look as her tone became musical again. “That’s what she said in her letter. And of course I was glad, because it seemed the perfect sort of work for her!”
Miss Howard’s face near dropped, and I imagine mine did the same. For anybody to say that being a wet nurse was the “perfect sort of work” for Libby Hatch indicated that they didn’t know her at all; and Mrs. Franklin, however addled she might’ve seemed at moments, did appear to be aware of her daughter’s strengths and weaknesses. Before either of us could give voice to our confusion, though, the Doctor, suspecting that the story’d undergone a change somewhere along the line of communication, asked, “And what sort of work was that, Mrs. Franklin?”
“Why, don’t you know?” she answered, surprised. “Surely if you know the Muhlenbeks, you know that Libby was their son’s tutor—before she went to New York, that is. But perhaps you met them after she’d already left?”
“Yes,” Miss Howard said, quickly and nervously. “Just recently, in fact. And we didn’t meet your daughter until she’d arrived in the city—you see, that’s where we’re all from.”
“Oh, is that so?” Mrs. Franklin answered. “Well, if you’re from New York, then you certainly know more about my daughter than I do. You see, I’ve had only one letter from her since she moved there, and that was so long ago—it’s been years since I’ve heard anything at all. But then, as I say, Elspeth was always that way—I doubt she even realizes she hasn’t written! So very careless, that girl, always daydreaming about something …”
For a moment Mrs. Franklin’s mind seemed to wander in that way we’d already witnessed; but when it did so this time around, I began to see that what I’d taken for addle-headedness was really just a way of avoiding subjects what she wouldn’t or couldn’t discuss, maybe because they were too painful, or maybe because they would’ve revealed things about her what she didn’t want known, especially to strangers. Such being the case, I expected the Doctor to start pressing harder for information: he wasn’t one to let people get away from the point. I was doubly surprised, then, when he just stood up, studied Mrs. Franklin’s eyes as they stared into the distance, and finally said, “Yes. I suspect you are right, Mrs. Franklin. Thank you so much for the refreshment—we shall continue to look for your daughter in New York.”
Snapping out of her seeming daze quickly and looking very relieved, Mrs. Franklin also stood up. “I am sorry I can’t be of more help to you all, truly I am. And if you do run across Elspeth, you might just tell her that her family’s curious to know what she’s up to.” With that she started to walk us toward the screen door.
“Doctor,” Miss Howard said, looking concerned, “I’m not sure that we’ve—”
“Oh, I think Mrs. Franklin’s told us all she can,” the Doctor answered pleasantly. “And it will prove ex
tremely helpful, I’m sure.” As he said these last words, he gave Miss Howard a very meaningful look; and she, taking it on faith that what he said was true, just shrugged and moved to the screen door. As for me, I had no idea what they were talking about; but then, I hadn’t really expected to. I hadn’t even been sure I’d be let into the house, and once I was there, I figured I’d have to wait ’til the ride home for explanations.
As we passed back out onto the lawn from the porch, Mrs. Franklin held up a finger. “Do you know, Doctor—you might try the theaters. I always had an idea that Elspeth would end up on the stage—I can’t imagine why, but I always did! Well, good-bye, now! It was so pleasant to talk with you all!”
Miss Howard and I tried not to look even more confused as we said good-bye to Mrs. Franklin, who called to her little dog and then vanished into the small house.
“I’ll see you to your rig,” Eli Franklin said, himself looking pretty relieved that we were departing. “And I thank you for not mentioning the matter of Libby’s being in trouble to my mother. You see how she is, and—”
“Yes, Mr. Franklin.” The Doctor’s voice had suddenly lost the soft, polite tone he’d used with the man’s mother. “We do indeed, as you say, ‘see how your mother is.’ Perhaps more than you know. And I’m afraid I shall require a service for concealing our true purpose from her.”
The words and the way the Doctor said them struck new nervousness, maybe even fear, into Eli Franklin. “Service?” he mumbled. “What do you—”
“The barnyard, Mr. Franklin,” the Doctor answered. “We should like to inspect the barnyard.”
“The barnyard?” Franklin tried to muster up a laugh. “Why in the world would you want to see that, there’s nothing—”
“Mr. Franklin.” The Doctor’s black eyes struck the man’s features dead still. “If you please.”
Franklin started to shake his head slowly, a movement what quickly became agitated. “No. I’m sorry, but I don’t even know what you want, I’m not going to let you—”