He must have been very disappointed, indeed.
“There’s more than the stepbrother’s testimony.” Cobban looked up.
“The thefts,” I said.
“More even than that. Have you seen a dead person—that is, a person who died peacefully more or less in their sleep?”
I had. Making visits with Marmee last winter, I had come across the body of old Mrs. Witherington, asleep in her bed, dead at the age of eighty-three. Surprisingly, at her great age there had been no evidence of disease or damage other than her dowager’s hump and her swollen joints. Her face had been peaceful, exactly as the old adage goes; she looked as if she were merely asleep.
Mrs. Percy’s face had not been at all peaceful. The mouth had been contorted, the eyes wide with shock or horror.
“Well, I’m down to the harbor to find our Suzie,” Cobban said. He stood and put on his wide-brimmed hat, though he was still indoors and etiquette required that he remain bareheaded till he stood directly in front of the door by which hewould leave. One of the qualities I admired about the young constable was his almost total disregard of etiquette.
“May we come with you?” I asked.
“Miss Louisa!” Mr. Barnum protested, his spiky black eyebrows moving up and down with disapproval. “The docks are no place for a lady!” For a man who had stitched together the top half of a stuffed monkey and the bottom of a fish and called it a mermaid, he could be, I thought, very obstructionist.
“If you find Suzie, I think it would be well to have a woman with you,” I said to Cobban. “She looks the hysterical kind, I think. And I don’t understand why Suzie, if she had murdered her employer, let us sit in that waiting room for so long instead of just telling us to go home. Wouldn’t she have tried to remove us if she knew her employer was dead?”
“She wasn’t thinking clearly,” insisted Cobban.
“I’ll come, too,” spoke up Sylvia. She gave the young constable another sideways glance.
For the third time we quit Mrs. Percy’s waiting room.
“I’d like to see the cook’s room again,” I said.
“Female curiosity?” asked Cobban, with a knowing smile.
“Perhaps something more,” I said, but did not specify. I wondered how Mrs. Percy had treated her cook, and the room itself would tell me much of that relationship.
We found the bedroom just off the kitchen, a large corner room with several curtained windows, a rug on the wood floor, and a tile stove with a large bucket of coal next to it. It was a fine room, comfortable and convenient. From it, I would have guessed that relations between cook and employer were amiable. Appearances, however, can be deceiving.
“Satisfied?” asked Cobban, revealing a masculine indifference to what lace curtains and a thick carpet can say about the management of a household.
“Yes.” I said. We returned to the front hall and went back out that front door, leaving behind the dim and dreary aspect of a house too expensively furnished and too poorly lighted, leaving behind the nuances of emptiness behind all those heavily closed doors. It was a very, very big house for a woman and a single servant and a brother who visited occasionally, and a sense of Mrs. Percy’s isolation and loneliness pierced me like an arrow: to die alone like that, behind a locked door, and perhaps violently.
We went into the bright afternoon winter, the white-and-silver streets and the bustle of humanity on those streets, and as we passed through Mrs. Percy’s white wicket gate I had a strong sense of leaving behind the true Slough of Despond, of which Mr. Bunyan wrote: …
for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place. And this is the reason of the badness of this ground.
Thank you, Father, I thought, for reminding me to read
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Where else could I have
“There’s more than the stepbrother’s testimony.” Cobban looked up.
“The thefts,” I said.
“More even than that. Have you seen a dead person—that is, a person who died peacefully more or less in their sleep?”
I had. Making visits with Marmee last winter, I had come across the body of old Mrs. Witherington, asleep in her bed, dead at the age of eighty-three. Surprisingly, at her great age there had been no evidence of disease or damage other than her dowager’s hump and her swollen joints. Her face had been peaceful, exactly as the old adage goes; she looked as if she were merely asleep.
Mrs. Percy’s face had not been at all peaceful. The mouth had been contorted, the eyes wide with shock or horror.
“Well, I’m down to the harbor to find our Suzie,” Cobban said. He stood and put on his wide-brimmed hat, though he was still indoors and etiquette required that he remain bareheaded till he stood directly in front of the door by which hewould leave. One of the qualities I admired about the young constable was his almost total disregard of etiquette.
“May we come with you?” I asked.
“Miss Louisa!” Mr. Barnum protested, his spiky black eyebrows moving up and down with disapproval. “The docks are no place for a lady!” For a man who had stitched together the top half of a stuffed monkey and the bottom of a fish and called it a mermaid, he could be, I thought, very obstructionist.
“If you find Suzie, I think it would be well to have a woman with you,” I said to Cobban. “She looks the hysterical kind, I think. And I don’t understand why Suzie, if she had murdered her employer, let us sit in that waiting room for so long instead of just telling us to go home. Wouldn’t she have tried to remove us if she knew her employer was dead?”
“She wasn’t thinking clearly,” insisted Cobban.
“I’ll come, too,” spoke up Sylvia. She gave the young constable another sideways glance.
For the third time we quit Mrs. Percy’s waiting room.
“I’d like to see the cook’s room again,” I said.
“Female curiosity?” asked Cobban, with a knowing smile.
“Perhaps something more,” I said, but did not specify. I wondered how Mrs. Percy had treated her cook, and the room itself would tell me much of that relationship.
We found the bedroom just off the kitchen, a large corner room with several curtained windows, a rug on the wood floor, and a tile stove with a large bucket of coal next to it. It was a fine room, comfortable and convenient. From it, I would have guessed that relations between cook and employer were amiable. Appearances, however, can be deceiving.
“Satisfied?” asked Cobban, revealing a masculine indifference to what lace curtains and a thick carpet can say about the management of a household.
“Yes.” I said. We returned to the front hall and went back out that front door, leaving behind the dim and dreary aspect of a house too expensively furnished and too poorly lighted, leaving behind the nuances of emptiness behind all those heavily closed doors. It was a very, very big house for a woman and a single servant and a brother who visited occasionally, and a sense of Mrs. Percy’s isolation and loneliness pierced me like an arrow: to die alone like that, behind a locked door, and perhaps violently.
We went into the bright afternoon winter, the white-and-silver streets and the bustle of humanity on those streets, and as we passed through Mrs. Percy’s white wicket gate I had a strong sense of leaving behind the true Slough of Despond, of which Mr. Bunyan wrote: …
for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place. And this is the reason of the badness of this ground.
Thank you, Father, I thought, for reminding me to read
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Where else could I have
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