Indigo Christmas (33 page)

Mrs. Townsend rose. She looked, Hilda thought, as if she were about to faint. Her face was pale and her hands shook. “We have, Mrs. Elbel. We were of course not about to spend good money to entertain a passel of ruffians. We have asked Miss Collmer if she would have her piano students give a brief recital. She has agreed. One of them will also play for a game of musical chairs.”

The silence that greeted this announcement threatened to prolong itself. Mrs. Elbel cleared her throat. “Yes. Well, I'm sure that the boys will—er—accept the entertainment in the spirit in which it is offered.”

Mrs. Witwer looked distressed. “I did think that we might also ask someone to do something a little—er—lighter, but…” She spread her hands and looked helplessly at Mrs. Townsend.

Hilda stood. She could keep quiet no longer. “Mrs. Townsend, I know some of these boys well. They are not ruffians, but they are not well educated, and they will not sit still for a piano recital. Miss Collmer's students are very young, I believe, and can play only simple pieces. The boys will want something more amusing, something that is fun—a clown, perhaps, or someone who does magic tricks, or—”

Mrs. Townsend was glaring at her. Now her face changed and she interrupted. “I know who you are now!” she said, pointing a trembling finger. “You didn't look like it before, in that fancy dress and with your hair all done up. You're that maid who goes around snooping into everybody's business! I don't know how in the world you got on this committee. We are a group of ladies, and we don't need the opinions of a tarted-up little nobody like you!”

The other women gasped. Mrs. Townsend sat down, her face having gone from ashy white to fiery red. She was breathing hard; her hands grasped each other tightly.

Hilda stepped forward. “I am sorry you feel that way about me, Mrs. Townsend. Excuse me, but I believe you dropped this.” She proffered a black leather billfold. The initials on it, though pale, were clear enough: HT.

“That's my husband's! Where did you get that? You stole it, you dirty little thief! Give it to me this instant!”

The buzz in the room reminded Hilda of an angry hive full of bees. She stepped back, the billfold firmly clutched in her hand. “I did not steal it, Mrs. Townsend. You dropped it, or perhaps it fell out of the buggy, when you left Mr. Miller's farm after setting the fire.”

“I—you—” The angry woman looked frantically around the room. Every eye was upon her, and none was friendly.

“It's all your fault!” she screamed. “You and your Irish friends and all your other precious immigrants. Everything would have worked out if it hadn't been for those stupid Irish laborers and you! You had to poke your nose in, couldn't leave the police to decide who was guilty! Who cares if a stupid lout of an Irish-man—”

“That will be quite enough, Mrs. Townsend,” said Mrs. Clem. Her voice was quiet, but its steel cut through the other woman's tirade. “Please go with Williams until you are able to calm yourself.”

Williams and John Bolton had come into the room. They moved to Mrs. Townsend. Bolton offered his arm. “Madam? This way, if you please.”

They escorted the raving woman away. Mrs. Clem spoke softly to Williams as he left the room; he nodded, his lips set in a grim line.

“He will call the police, my dear,” she said to Hilda. “Such an unfortunate scene! I'm afraid some people have so little self-control. Now, Mrs. Witwer, you were going to tell us more about the entertainment?”

All's Well That Ends Well

—William Shakespeare
    c. 1601

 

 

 

33

S
O THEY WERE going to skip town,” said Patrick, reading the papers the next morning.

“With everyone's money. What was left of it,” said Hilda, cracking open a boiled egg.

“And it was Mrs. Townsend who started the fire. But why? That's what I don't quite get.”

“It was Norah who started me thinking the right way, when she said maybe things did not happen as they were planned. So I thought what might happen if a fire started in a barn, and I thought about our farm in Sweden. A barn fire is very serious, so my father and mother slept in the room nearest the barn, where they could see out of the window if anything happened. If there had ever been a fire, my father would have jumped out of bed and gone to fight it, maybe not even getting dressed.

“I think that is what was meant to happen. Mr. Miller would go down to fight the fire, and then—this is not nice, but I think then Mrs. Townsend planned to shut him up in the barn with the fire. But it did not work, because Mr. Miller was not at home. So Mrs. Townsend waited and waited for him to come out, and when the barn began to burn in earnest, she had to leave in a hurry.”

“And that's when the billfold fell out of the buggy, I s'pose. Though I can't think what it was doin' in there to begin with.”

“Mrs. Townsend said something about that when Williams took her away. She was screaming and not making sense always, but I heard her say something about a fool leaving his old billfold in a buggy. She meant Mr. Townsend, I think.” Hilda primmed her lips. “It is not a proper way to talk about one's husband.”

Patrick grinned. “Of course you never think I'm a fool.”

“If I think it ever, I do not say it to other people.”

He patted her hand and picked up his previous thoughts. “Good girl. But why any of it? What did the pestiferous woman have against Miller?”

“Nothing. It was the farm she wanted. It was—it is—a valuable property. Mr. Miller had no heirs, or so Mrs. Townsend thought, so if he died, the bank that held the mortgage would get the farm. And the bank that held the mortgage was her husband's bank, and it was in trouble.”

“The papers say it looks like he's been bleedin' the accounts for months.”

“It was her, I think,” said Hilda. She speared a sausage with savagery. “She is not a good woman, Patrick. She wanted fine clothes and a fine house and a social position, but she had not enough patience to wait for any of that. So she made her husband buy her these things when he could not afford them, and he had to steal money. I feel sorry for him.”

“Hmph. Seems to me a man who can't stand up to his wife deserves his fate.”

Hilda wisely let that pass.

“So how come she didn't burn the house down, if she wanted Miller dead? Surer way, seems to me.”

“Yes, but then the farm would not be worth so much. It is a very nice house.”

Patrick ate his fried potatoes for a while in thoughtful silence. “And you're tellin' me you thought all this out just because you imagined what was supposed to happen?”

“Not until afterwards. I learned two things, Patrick. I learned that Mrs. Townsend drove somewhere in an Izzer on the day of the fire and brought the horse back in a lather. And I learned that someone drove away from the fire, drove very fast, in an Izzer. I did the sum and
then
I started thinking about why. And then I was sure, when I rubbed powder into the billfold and read the initials. HT. Henry Townsend. I knew, but I had no proof. So I had to make Mrs. Townsend upset. It was not a kind thing to do, in front of the other ladies.”

“And you're real sorry about it,” said Patrick.

“I am not sorry at all,” said Hilda, pouring herself a second cup of coffee. “She was rude about immigrants, especially the Irish. Another sausage?”

 

Afterword

F
IVE HUNDRED AND TWELVE boys attended the Christmas party on December seventeenth. All the ladies involved regretted from time to time that they had ever conceived the idea. Four of the smallest boys got sick, either from excitement or overeating or both. Riggs made an admirable Santa Claus, and almost all the boys were happy with their presents, the exceptions being two spoiled sons of a wealthy family who got into a fist fight with Andy's little brother over a toy boat and had to be sent home. The sleds were especially popular, and two boys who helped keep the younger ones happy and occupied the whole afternoon were rewarded with the two toy Studebaker wagons, and were thrilled into speechlessness.

The ladies went home exhausted, full of the glow of good works, and profoundly grateful that it would be another year before they had to think about such a thing again. Hilda, however, was determined that they would think soon about putting the Boys' Club on a permanent, year-round basis. And then something ought to be done about the girls….

Three days later, on December twentieth, new electric street lights on attractive new cast-iron poles were turned on throughout the business district. According to the South Bend
Tribune,
“The lamps…throw more diffused rays and [are] regarded as greatly superior” to the old arc lights.

On Christmas Day, Hilda and Patrick ate two Christmas dinners, one with her family at noon, one with his family in the evening. As they had given the servants the day off, Patrick drove them himself in the new sleigh he had bought as a Christmas present for both of them. Hilda wore her new indigo gown with the Valenciennes lace trim and let Eileen put her hair up. She also wore Patrick's gift of a gold locket, but tucked under the boned lace collar, lest her family or his think she was showing off. Patrick, on the other hand, consulted the gold watch Hilda gave him at every possible opportunity.

Sean and Norah and baby Fiona celebrated Christmas with her family, saving his family's celebration until New Year's. Norah, feeling almost strong again, helped her mother serve the dinner. Mrs. Murphy drank too many toasts and spent most of the afternoon snoring on the settee. Norah and Sean sat a little apart from the others after they had helped in the kitchen, and talked about the possibility of Norah asking for her old job back, at Tippecanoe Place. Sean wasn't sure it was necessary, now that he had a fine job at Studebaker's helping make automobiles.

Hilda woke on the morning after Christmas feeling distinctly queasy, probably, she thought, from those two dinners the day before. She was disappointed, because there was a fresh fall of snow, and she wanted to try the skis Sven had made for her as a Christmas present. The next day she felt the same, and when the queasiness had gone on for a week of mornings, she began to wonder….

On April 23, 1905, Walter Miller, looking for a strayed calf, found Mr. Jenkins's billfold in a ditch not far from the farm. Having lain there all winter, it was in sorry shape, fit only to be thrown out. It contained thirteen cents.

About the Author

Jeanne M. Dams, of Swedish descent and a lifelong resident of South Bend, Indiana, holds degrees from Purdue and Notre Dame universities. A former teacher and university administrator, she discovered she was really a writer and has published fifteen mysteries in two series. She has traveled extensively, but lives in South Bend with her husband and a varying population of cats.

Dams has been nominated for the Macavity and has won the Agatha Award. She welcomes visitors and email at
www.jeannedams.com
.

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