Indigo Christmas (31 page)

When Hilda had thought about it for a little, she realized that the police had almost certainly talked to the men already, but it didn't matter. They had got no further with their investigation than she had with hers. Therefore they had not asked the right questions. Or else…Hilda was growing more and more uneasy about the police, and particularly the sergeant in charge of the case.

At any rate, she would talk to the men herself. It could do no harm, and she might learn something important.

Fortunately most of the men worked at one of three factories: Birdsell's, Oliver's, or Studebaker's. Of these, the busiest at this time of year would be Studebaker's. The other two, which made only farm equipment, always had plenty of work for their employees, but the pace was less frantic in December than it would be in a couple of months. Hilda decided to start at Birdsell's.

There she found the men sympathetic to Sean's plight and eager to talk about that day. The foreman, who knew Sean well, agreed that the men could take five minutes off to talk to Hilda. “Not here, though,” he shouted. The uproar on the factory floor was tremendous. “Better go to the lunchroom. Nobody there at this hour. I'll show you, ma'am.” He escorted her and the four men to the large room where the men ate in inclement weather. “And you tell that Sean O'Neill, when you see him, that he'd have done better to stay on here. We're not laying off, like some. I'm sorry I can't hire him back, but when business picks up in the spring, if he's out of jail and still hasn't found a job, he can come back here and talk to me. He's a good worker.”

“He will be out of jail, I promise. And I hope he will find a job before then, but I will tell him what you said.”

“Right. Five minutes, now.”

The men were so eager to tell her all about everything that she couldn't understand a word. “Please!” she said, holding up her hand. “If we have only five minutes, I must ask questions. First, one of you tell me exactly what happened when you saw the fire at the next farm.”

The biggest of the men spoke up. “Name's Ryan, ma'am. I'm some kind of cousin to Sean, though I couldn't tell you just how we're related. And I can tell you he's no thief, and no murderer!”

“I believe that, Mr. Ryan. Please tell me what happened.”

They went through it all, telling Hilda nothing new. The smoke, the idea it might be a grass fire, the worry about it going underground. The fast run to the adjacent field, the despair when they realized it was a barn fire. “And well alight, ma'am,” said Ryan. “Seems like it went from almost nothin' atall to a regular inferno in just no time. We knew there was nothin' we could do for the barn, so we tried to see if there was animals inside, but we couldn't see none. We all wish we'd knowed about the hired man.”

The others muttered assent, their heads down.

“And did any of you see Sean pick up the billfold?”

No, none of them had, but they believed his story. And yes, he had asked all of them, once they were back at the other farm, if they were the owner. And if that was all, ma'am, they'd best be gettin' back to work.

“Thank you. I will leave in just one minute, but I have one more question. Did any of you see anything unusual that day, anything at all? Did you see anyone leave the farm next door, or come to it?”

A man who identified himself as Neely said he'd seen the farmer leave, early in the morning when they were just getting to work. “At least I reckon it was the farmer. Saw somebody, anyway, leave the place in a wagon. Never saw him come back, nor anybody else.”

“So that was a waste of time,” she told O'Rourke as he handed her back into the carriage.

“But it might not have been,” he said, clucking to the horses. Look on the bright side. There's two more places to try, anyway. Oliver's now?”

They tried Oliver's. It was busier there than she had anticipated. She had forgotten that Oliver's sold plows all over the world. Though it was winter in Indiana, she knew that there were parts of the world that were warm in December and presumably needed plows. The noise at Oliver's was even more deafening than at Birdsell's and the information she gathered even less useful. No one had seen anything unusual. Everyone believed forcefully in Sean's total innocence, but had no idea who, instead, might have started the fire.

“It is just like before,” she said wearily as she climbed into the carriage once more, and if there was a hint of Swedish
y
in the
just
, O'Rourke tactfully ignored it. “I learn nothing. No one knows anything.”

“What I say,” said O'Rourke, climbing to his high seat up top, “what I say is, never give up. While there's life, there's hope. You just keep at it, ma'am. I was saying to Mrs. O'Rourke, I was saying I wasn't so set at first on workin' for a lady as pokes her nose into murders and such-like. But, I says to me wife, I says her heart's in the right place, and what she's doin' for the poor boys in town has needed doin' for a long time, so if she wants to poke, let her, I says. And there's the Studebaker noon whistle, ma'am. We'll catch the men on their lunch break, and that's a better time to talk.”

Well, thought Hilda in some surprise, at least O'Rourke had unbent. Maybe one day they could all, employers and employees, look at each other as human beings, not just pieces to be moved as on a chess board.

“Yes, Kevin, let us try Studebaker's. Oh! And Kevin?”

“Yes, ma'am?” he called down.

“When we get there, why do you not try to talk to the men, too? When I have asked all I can think to, maybe. I could go a little way away. They might talk more to you than to me. You are Irish, and a working man. I am Swedish, and no longer a working woman.”

“Seems to me, ma'am, as you're workin' hard enough these days. But I'll talk to 'em if you want.” He slapped the reins against the horses' flanks and they moved amiably off.

And it was at Studebaker's that Hilda got, at last, her first piece of solid information, her first hint that there might be a solution to this mystery. Perhaps fittingly, it was O'Rourke who first heard the important new fact.

There were five men here who had worked on the barn with Sean and the others, five Irishmen vociferously proclaiming the innocence of Sean and the idiocy of the police. Hilda asked the same questions, got the same answers, sighed inwardly, and left the field to O'Rourke.

She was sitting a little apart, wearily trying to think what she was to tell Norah on her return, when O'Rourke came over to her. “I think you'd better hear this, ma'am,” he said mysteriously, and led her back to the little group sitting on benches at a large table, their lunch pails nearly empty.

“This here's Marty Finnegan, and he's got somethin' to tell you.” O'Rourke was beaming.

“It's not much, ma'am,” said Finnegan bashfully. “Not as if I saw who it was, or what they were doin', or anything like that.”

“But you did see something?” asked Hilda, barely able to contain her impatience.

“Saw someone leavin'. It was when we was all runnin' over there, and tryin' to see through the smoke what was happenin', and that. And I saw a buggy hightailin' it away from the farm. Movin' like all the divils in hell was after it, if you'll pardon the language, ma'am. But that's what I thought, meself, seein' it leavin' all that fire and smoke behind. And I wondered at the time why they were goin' away from the fire instead of stayin' to help. And then I figgered maybe they was goin' for help, and then I forgot all about it when we saw how bad the fire was.”

Hilda took a deep breath. “Mr. Finnegan, did you see the buggy leaving the farm? I mean, driving out the drive, not just on the road?”

“Drove right through the gate, ma'am. And never bothered to close it after them, neither. nobody brought up on a farm'd do a thing like that, so I thought, that must be a city feller. I'd forgot that part.”

“And the buggy went—which way? Toward town or away from it?”

“Oh, back towards South Bend. That's why I thought maybe they was goin' for help.”

“Can you tell me anything at all about the buggy? I know it was getting dark at the time, but—”

“Not all that dark, ma'am. There was still light in the sky, and then there was the light from the fire. Not that it did much good, all flickery like it was. But I could see well enough. Couldn't see the driver, but it was an Izzer buggy. Can't mistake one of them, not if you work right here where they're made, let alone livin' in South Bend where there's about a million of 'em. And it was pulled by a good horse. Gray, and some stepper.”

Make them to be numbered with thy
Saints, in glory everlasting.

—
Te Deum Laudamus
    The Book of Common Prayer

 

 

31

M
RS. MURPHY STOPPED by the house again late that afternoon, breathing fire and ready to turn things upside down again. She wanted her son-in-law out of jail. never mind that she rather disliked him when he was free; now that he was a prisoner he was an angel of light, the best husband any daughter could have, and what was she, Hilda, doing to set him free? And as for Norah and the baby, she was taking them home, doctor or no doctor, nurse or no nurse.

Norah screamed that she wouldn't go, the nurse screamed that she would lock Norah in the room if necessary, the baby screamed on general principles. None of it touched Hilda. She spoke when spoken to, shook her head when Mrs. Murphy threatened the wrath of God and all His saints, smiled at Norah and the nurse.

“I'll have them out of here if it's the last thing I do,” the frantic woman roared.

“No, I do not think so, Mrs. Murphy. If you will excuse me, I must…” and Hilda drifted out of the room without finishing the sentence.

Mrs. Murphy, deprived of her chief adversary, finally departed in confusion, so that Patrick came home to a household restored to calm and order, and a wife lost in contemplation.

“Hilda, darlin', I've asked ye three times how your day went,” he said as they sat at supper. “Have ye gone deaf all of a sudden?”

“Mmm? Oh. No. I am fine.”

“So did anything interestin' happen today? Are ye goin' to get Sean out of that jail?”

“Yes, soon. Patrick, I am not very hungry. I believe I will go up to bed. I need to think.”

She evidently thought herself to sleep, for she made no response when Patrick came to bed hours later. But she slept only fitfully, and woke very early indeed, her heart pounding.

She wondered what noise had awakened her. no one in the house was yet stirring. even little Eileen wouldn't get up for another hour. Hilda, having been forced for years to rise at the unholy hour of 5:30, firmly refused to allow her servants to do the same. Mrs. O'Rourke had at first insisted that she could not possibly get breakfast on the table by seven unless she rose at five. “Then we will have breakfast at eight, Mrs. O'Rourke. That will be early enough for Mr. Cavanaugh to be at the store on time. Remember you have a gas range in this house. There is no need to build up a fire before you can cook.”

The cook, accustomed to her own way of doing things and privately afraid of the newfangled gas contraption, had grumbled but had finally acquiesced and now rose at 6:30 like Eileen.

So what was the noise downstairs? The morning was dark and felt drab and dreary. Her head was clearer, but she saw before her a course of action before which she quailed. Her spirits felt as dark as the sky, as dark as that indigo woolen cloth at the dressmaker's. Beautiful cloth, Hilda had seen at the first fitting yesterday afternoon, and it was going to be a beautiful gown, but would she ever feel festive enough to want to wear it?

She sat up in bed, rubbed sleep from her eyes, and listened more carefully. The muffled sounds, she decided, were outside rather than in. Muted voices, a smothered laugh, a light that shone through the bedroom window and flickered on the ceiling… Were robbers trying to break in?

Then the music began, sung in an uncertain girl's soprano to the accompaniment of an accordian.
“Natten gÃ¥r tunga fjät, rund gÃ¥rd och stuva; kring jord, som sol förlät, skuggorna ruva.…”

Hilda leapt out of bed and opened the window. Frigid air blew in along with strains of music. Hilda joined in the chorus:
“DÃ¥ i vÃ¥rt mörka hus, stiger med tända ljus, Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.”

Patrick sat up, shivering. “What…?”

“Get up, Patrick! It is the
Lussibrud.
Come and see!”

The song continued, Hilda humming along. Patrick pulled on his dressing gown and brought Hilda hers. They stood at the window and looked down.

A young girl stood singing, dressed all in white with a crown of lighted candles on her head. Patrick recognized her as Birgit, Hilda's youngest sister. In a semicircle around her stood the rest of Hilda's family. Sven's accordian was joined by Erik's inexpertly played harmonica, while Mama and the other girls hummed along with Birgit.