Authors: Mary Daheim
“Ah!” Tessie tapped a page of
The Olympic-Leader
. “Here’s a burglary at the Rowley house, reported on August fourteenth. The house apparently was broken into after dark. Jewelry, cash, and liquor were stolen.
The actual robbery was thought to have taken place on August eleventh.”
“Eddie and Lena were probably out of town then,” I mused. “Who would have been home? Simone? Jimmy and Carrie? Sanford? Minnie Burke and the rest of the servants?”
“That’s a lot of people on hand,” Tessie noted. “The burglars must have been bold as brass.” She bent over the binder again and we grew silent. “It seems there was a series of robberies about that time. On August twenty-fìrst three more were reported, fairly close by.”
I found a brief story about the Rowley mill in the August 26 issue of
The Tribune-Times
. It was of little interest, merely stating the number of board feet that had been shipped during the first six months of the year.
With a sense of satisfaction Tessie noted that the burglar had been caught on August twenty-seventh while attempting to enter a house on Pine Hill. He was a twenty-two-year-old unemployed logger from Pysht. The crime wave appeared to be over.
The Bullard fire made both papers. By publishing two days earlier in the week,
The Tribune-Times
scooped
The Olympic-Leader
. Both reports made much of the blaze, describing flames “one hundred feet into the night sky” and “sparks flying like comets in every direction.”
I read part of my account to Tessie.
Neighboring houses, including the stone and stucco mansion built by the late Cornelius Rowley, were in constant danger. Residents huddled in the street, anguished over the Bullards’ loss and fearful for their own homes. Horses were evacuated from the nearby livery stable, after the terrified animals had first been blindfolded.
According to
The Tribune-Times
, it had taken over three hours to extinguish the flames. The fire had been started by an overturned oil lamp. The loss was estimated at almost three thousand dollars.
Having been scooped by its rival,
The Olympic-Leader
relied on the human aspects of the tragedy. “ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Fred Bullard and their children were stunned by the disaster,’ ” Tessie read to me. “ ‘Their daughter, Marguerite, and their son, Cosmo, were seen clinging to their mother’s skirts and weeping.’ ”
Grinning, I interrupted Tessie. “Flint’s real name is
Cosmo?
”
Tessie nodded. “Flint is for Flintlock. Or so I remember.” She continued with the article.
A great fear erupted at one point during the evening when members of the neighboring household realized that two-year-old Walter Malone was missing. The child’s father, James Malone, went in frantic search of the youngster. Little Walter was found a few minutes later, safe and sound, in the basement of the Rowley house. The reunion with his parents brought great sighs of relief from bystanders.
Tessie raised her eyebrows. “Interesting, eh?”
“Interesting—or a coincidence?” I remarked. “Is there anything else in that piece about the Rowleys and the Melchers?”
Tessie read down the column. It was a lengthy story. “Yes, there’s a quote here about Eddie.”
Edmund Rowley was walking from his garage to his house when he first noticed the flames. He was going to report the blaze when he heard the clang of the first fire wagon in the distance. Rushing to the Bullard property, he discovered that the family was
already out of the house. He then returned to his own dwelling, where he alerted the household.
I could see Eddie Rowley, limping through the garden, checking on the Bullards, and then going back home to inform Lena and the others of what was happening. It was early September, late summer, and the weather was probably mild. The Rowleys and the Melchers and their staff would have trooped outside. Or so I speculated with Tessie.
“But they didn’t,” Tessie said. “Not all of them. There’s one more note: ‘Mrs. Cornelius Rowley, whose late husband built the handsome home next to the Bullards’, refused to leave her boudoir. She had been feeling unwell earlier in the day and expressed no alarm over her personal safety.’ ”
Now I saw the picture of Simone, attired in a flowing negligee, looking not unlike Mme. Recamier reclining on her Grecian-style sofa. The widow had no compassion for the Bullards; she had no fear for herself. “Ego,” I noted. “I see her as self-centered, vain, and unable to acknowledge that she, too, was mortal.”
“Well …” Tessie sounded dubious. “I give you all that, but she might really have been sick.”
It was true that I hadn’t given Simone credit for any human emotions other than greed, vanity, and possibly infidelity. Yet I was seeing her through the eyes of her contemporaries. As Clara Haines had pointed out, Simone Dupre Rowley would not have had an easy time of it in the Port Angeles of 1908. In any small town, in any era, a newcomer is regarded with suspicion. After almost four years the residents of Alpine still considered me an outsider. I felt a pang of sympathy for Simone.
We returned to our task. There was a follow-up in both papers on the Bullard fire, but the stories were
brief, mainly dealing with the family’s vow to rebuild and their temporary stay at Ennis Creek.
We didn’t find anything of interest until I got to the September twenty-third edition of
The Tribune-Times
. A stop-press box on the front page was headlined
LOCAL
MAN SHOOTS AT INTRUDER
.
Edmund Rowley of 820 West Sixth frightened off an intruder at his home early this morning. Mr. Rowley, who is assistant superintendent of the Rowley Lumber Mill, was awakened by strange sounds around two
A.M.
He discovered a man lurking about the garden. Since the Rowley home was burglarized last month, Mr. Rowley’s sense of danger was alerted. Taking his gun outside, he asked the intruder to identify himself. A stream of unintelligible curses ensued, and Mr. Rowley fired twice into the air. The man rushed off in the direction of A Street, presumably heading for sanctuary in the gully. Mr. Rowley described the intruder as fairly young, above average height, and weighing about a hundred and seventy pounds. He was dressed in work clothes and high boots.
Tessie chortled in her rich manner. “The Rowleys certainly made the news! Of course, they were prominent, and with so many papers being published in those days, every little thing probably got reported.”
I agreed with Tessie’s assessment. I also wondered why these items hadn’t turned up in the periodical file.
Tessie had an explanation. “Those files contain only major stories on individuals and events. It would be too hard to cross-reference everything and everybody. You might have found the Bullard story under
Fires
. Or possibly under
Bullard
. The Rowleys’ presence at the scene wasn’t important enough to catalogue. Neither,” she
went on, pointing to my binder, “is that bulletin. It would be different if Eddie had shot the fellow.”
I understood. Our own file system at
The Advocate
was hit-and-miss. The founder and previous owner, Marius Vandeventer, had kept everything in his head. Our bound volumes were sorted only by year, with an index to major events. Someday I hoped to organize the back issues by subject, but there was never enough time or manpower. Now I had come up short on staff. I couldn’t worry about past publications; there were enough problems with the present edition.
The Tribune-Times
that came out two days later had a small story about horse thieves. A chestnut mare and a bay gelding had been stolen from the Lincoln Hill livery stable on the night of September twenty-fourth.
“That’s the old wreck in back of the Rowley house, isn’t it?” I asked Tessie.
She nodded. “That’s interesting, too. I wonder if it ties in with the intruder.”
It seemed that we had no way of knowing. In subsequent editions there was no reference to the intruder’s apprehension or the recovery of the horses. The Rowleys and the Melchers weren’t mentioned again until October ninth, when the D.A.R. gratefully accepted a donation of “fashionable ladies’ apparel and fripperies” from Lena Stillman Melcher Rowley.
The bells in the courthouse tower had just chimed eleven o’clock when we got to December. For almost two months the Rowley-Melcher family slipped out of the news. Then, in both papers, the engagement of Rose Felder to Sanford Melcher was announced.
The Tribune-Times
ran a picture of the bride-to-be. Rose Felder’s fair hair was piled high atop her head in an attempt to compensate for the overly long chin. The effect was sabotaged by the big pearl dog collar around her neck, which served to emphasize the length of her face.
The pose was graceful, however, and the dress had a modest chiffon fichu decorated with more pearls. Rose looked nubile, almost coy. Recalling the later photos of her, I sympathized for what lay ahead.
Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Felder of this city have announced the engagement of their daughter, Rose Anne Felder, to Mr. Sanford Stillman Melcher, the son of Mrs. Edmund Rowley and the late Mr. Ferris Melcher. The couple will be honored at a private fete December nineteenth hosted by the groom’s mother and his stepfather, Mr. Edmund Rowley. The wedding is planned for St. Valentine’s Day.
The stories in both newspapers were virtually identical. I suspected that they had been submitted not by Mrs. Conrad Felder but Mrs. Edmund Rowley. It should have been up to the bride’s family to issue the formal announcement, of course, but Lena would have dashed etiquette aside.
In the final issue of December 1908, we found the item about the Bullards’ return to Sixth Street. There was no account of the engagement party. I surmised that Lena had meant what she said about keeping it
private
.
The hot tea had long since been consumed. Traffic out on Lincoln Street had dwindled to an occasional passing vehicle. There were circles under Tessie Roo’s eyes and my back was killing me.
“We needn’t go into 1909.” I said. “Let’s call it quits.”
Tessie, however, wanted to see the wedding picture of Rose and Sanford Melcher. It appeared in both newspapers, though the poses were different. Sanford looked faintly terrified; Rose wore a smug expression. The wedding sounded appropriately lavish, with five bridesmaids, banks of flowers, and a harpist imported from
Port Townsend. As with Carrie and Jimmy Malone, the Melcher reception was held at the Rowley house. The bridal couple planned to honeymoon at the brand-new Empress Hotel in Victoria.
“That’s it,” I declared, leaning back and stretching. “Tessie, you’ve been wonderful. Thanks a million.”
Tessie didn’t look at all pleased. “I haven’t been wonderful at all.” She spread a hand across the stillopen binder of
Olympic-Leaders
. “What did you learn? That there was crime in Port Angeles eighty-some years ago just as there is today? That carelessness starts house fires? That Lena Melcher was involved with the D.A.R.? Where does that get us?”
I stood up and grinned at Tessie. “It gets me off the hook.” Seeing Tessie’s expression of chagrin, I patted her shoulder. “Look, it may be one of those situations where what we didn’t learn is as important as what we did. That is, there were no obvious incidents that could lead us to airtight conclusions. When I’ve had time to sift through this information, trivial as it may be, I might think of something. But first I have to sleep on it.”
Tessie was astute. She knew that I was, in effect, palming her off. “It’s trivial, but it’s not unimportant. While all these things were happening”—she jabbed at one of the binders with a stubby finger—“someone was being murdered. If you could look beyond the printed words, you’d know who—and why. You’d also know the killer. Don’t give up now, Emma. I have a sixth sense about these things. When I’m getting close to connecting a farmer from Missouri with a lumberjack from Idaho, I have a feeling for it. I can’t see the link until I look way out on the family tree. It’s there, Emma. You just have to climb a little higher.”
J
ACKIE WAS WAITING
up when I got back to the Melcher house. Tessie had given me a lift after she gave me the pep talk. It was just past eleven-thirty when Jackie let me in and insisted we adjourn to the den. I tried to argue but failed.
“Don’t fuss over me, I had a nap. Honest,” Jackie insisted, settling onto the little sofa. “I went right to sleep while Paul and I were watching a rerun of
Seinfeld
.”
I couldn’t admit to Jackie that I was more concerned about my own weary state than I was about hers. I buoyed myself with a Pepsi and told Jackie what I’d learned from the old newspapers. She listened in a distracted manner, shifting and twitching on the sofa until I began to get nervous, too.
“Well?” I finally said when I’d concluded my account. “What do you think? Or should I say, what’s wrong?”
“The police, that’s what’s wrong.” Jackie was noticeably upset. “They came just after we left for Downriggers. Somebody named Arkwell put a note on the door. He’s probably the same jerk who gave me the ticket.”
“Well?” I prompted. “What did the note say?”
Jackie heaved one of her monumental sighs. “They’ll come back tomorrow to remove the body. I don’t want them to, not until we know for sure who it is and why
she was killed.” She leaned toward me, her gray eyes pleading for understanding. “Once she’s gone, the chain is broken. It won’t be the same. She won’t be
our body
anymore.”
Jackie’s feeling of kinship was justified, by real estate if not by family ties. On the other hand, she had to be reasonable. I knew that was asking too much, but I tried anyway.
“There are laws and moral duties involved here,” I began, but Jackie scoffed.
“Poopy on the law,” she declared. “As for moral duty, it’s ours, to make sense of this tragedy. We’re on the right track, I’m sure of it. All we need is a little more time.” Jackie reached into the pocket of her cotton bathrobe. “I went to get the magnifying glass again to have another look at that picture of the house. You know how those drawers in the bookcase are sort of … crammed?”