Rosemary Herbert - Front Page Teaser

With footfalls softened by the snow, only the sound of the dog’s panting disturbed the peace as the women followed the wooded lakeshore. When Ellen’s mother picked up her pace, Liz was grateful, for the increased speed helped warm her. A quarter of an hour passed in this manner before Liz sensed the silence had become a companionable one. Then the older woman struck away from the shoreline up a small rise to the basement door of a stone and wood-shingled house. Nodding an invitation to Liz, she stepped inside to wipe Hershey down with an old towel.

“Would you mind waiting in the mudroom?” she asked, and disappeared up a stairway before Liz could reply.

There was nowhere to sit, so Liz stood as she surveyed the large workspace. While the New Englanders of her acquaintance tended to term an unheated porch or perhaps a vestibule “the mudroom,” this one existed on a much grander scale. It contained a large potting bench stocked underneath with bags of potting soil, vermiculite, sand, and peat moss. Another potting bench stood nearby, apparently used for flower arranging. Beside it were shelves packed with unusual vases. On the floor nearby, even in the dead of winter, stood a half-dozen French florist containers made of dust-colored aluminum, holding cut flowers fading on their stems. It seemed likely they were purchased before—and had not been touched since—Ellen’s disappearance.

“Coast clear,” Olga Swenson said from the top of the stairs. “I wanted to be sure Erik had not returned with Veronica yet. Thank you for waiting. Come on upstairs and warm yourself.”

Following her hostess’ lead, Liz removed her boots and padded, in her stocking feet, up the steps. Mrs. Swenson looked on approvingly and pulled a pair of terrycloth slippers from behind her back, offering them to Liz when she reached the landing.

It was the sort of house in which one “retired” to a sitting room where a fire was laid ready to blaze at the flick of a match. The matches were some ten inches long, and they were kept in a brass match holder permanently attached to the stone fireplace. Kindling and extra logs stood end-up in brass containers, too. These objects spoke more of comfort than money. While a professional no doubt laid the fires and cleaned the room, the brass wore the patina of age and usefulness. “Not a bad goal for any one of us to aspire to,” Liz reflected.

“My husband always prided himself on laying the perfect fire,” Olga Swenson said. “He’d never have been able to admit our housekeeper can do as well.”

“Where is your husband now?”

“He may be safely spoken of in the past tense. He drowned in the lake twenty-six years ago. It was the beginning of the end.”

“Oh, how awful! How old would Ellen have been at the time?”

“She was just eight years old.

“The same age as Veronica is this year.”

“Of course I’m haunted by that coincidence. I can’t bear the thought of Veronica suffering as my Ellen did. That’s why I’ve decided to talk with you. In confidence. I beg you, in confidence.”

Liz nodded.

“You’re an unusual woman,” Mrs. Swenson said.

“How is that?”

“You don’t ask the obvious. Yet I feel drawn to answer your unvoiced questions.”

Liz held her peace.

The widowed woman crossed the room to a sideboard.

“Madeira?” she asked. “Or, have you got beyond that?”

It sounded like a line in a drawing room comedy. But the seriousness of Olga Swenson’s expression erased that impression immediately.

“Madeira sounds lovely.”

“Yes, the word is melodious. But you’re thinking, ‘The drink may loosen her tongue.’”

Liz only smiled and took the small glass from her hostess’ hand.

“I thought I’d go to my grave with the information I’m about to share with you.”

“Now you won’t do that alone. I will take it to my grave, too.”

Mrs. Swenson considered her glass. Then she set the drink down, untasted, on the table beside her chair.

“My husband’s drowning was ruled accidental, and it may have been. But that does not mean it was not complicated.”

Liz resisted the urge to lean forward.

“It so often seems to me the English language lacks the capacity for shades of meaning that you find, for instance, in French. No, I’m not going to break into another language. Don’t worry. English suffices to describe Karl’s state on the day he died. He was beside himself. Pure and simple. Beside himself.”

“May I assume that was unusual for him?”

“Not entirely. I’d seen him that way when Ellen was born. When the night-blooming cerius came into flower. When our whippet died after lapping up antifreeze in the garage. When Ellen shot her first skeet into smithereens. At times of great emotion.”

“What caused him to be beside himself that day?”

“It was Ellen. He had to know it wasn’t her fault. She was only eight years old. I kept telling him, she’s only eight years old!” Olga Swenson said. “But he was so sure she’d sought to tease. Ellen was an early bloomer. Some girls are these days, you know? But within her generation she was very early. She was at that stage my generation reached at around thirteen years old. You know, more than prepubescent.”

“If she caught the eye of some man, she would not have been the first to do that at a younger than expected age. Why was your husband so distraught?”

“Karl came upon them in the Pinetum. Under a weeping cypress.”

“He came upon whom?”

“Ellen and Al, one of the young men from across the way.”

“‘Across the way?’”

“The school for delinquents, near the property where the Massachusetts Horticultural Society is headquartered now.”

“Ellen and this young man were under a tree together?”

“No. Karl was under the tree. He was spying on them.”

“They were not aware of your husband’s presence?”

“Not at first. I had the impression Karl caught the boy ogling Ellen. When she heard Karl and Al arguing, she ran and got me. That’s how I know how she was dressed. She’d been running along the shore, like a little bird. She seemed to have no idea of the nature of the argument. I calmed her down, helped her change her clothes, and sent her off to her skeet-shooting lesson before I went over to the Pinetum. By then, Karl had his hands around the young man’s neck. If I hadn’t been there, he’d have killed the fellow, I have no doubt.”

“I’m sorry to have to ask you. . .”

“No, you aren’t. Not really. You hope it will solve the case, make your career, if you know what they were up to. Well, if you keep your promise, it won’t do the latter, since you will never put this in print.” Olga Swenson took a swig from her glass at last. Then she continued speaking. “From when she was much younger, Ellen liked to imagine she could fly. She’d run among the trees in the Pinetum, arms out, trailing some of my scarves. She called it ‘flitting and flying.’ Well, on this occasion, it was swelteringly hot, so she took off her blouse and ran around in her little undershirt. The effect was—just too stimulating.”

She rose from her chair and added a log to the fire.

“Karl was disgusted with Al, and not just because, as he put it, ‘the bastard got off on watching.’ He was furious at Al’s reticence. The young man was tongue-tied. I don’t know whether it was from shock and embarrassment at being caught with his pants down, as it were, or because he was learning disabled, or both. Anyway, he kept humming tunelessly and mumbling something like ‘Rah, rah shock. Rah, rah shock,’ like a cheerleader gone crazy.

“It absolutely infuriated Karl, I can tell you.

“Anyway, I urged—I insisted—that Karl get out in the kayak to cool down. I was afraid he’d be arrested. He wouldn’t have taken my advice, except Al’s absence had been noticed at the school and a teacher came looking for him. My husband didn’t bother with the kayak. He stripped off his polo shirt and jumped straight into the lake while I explained to the teacher that there had been an unfortunate misunderstanding. The school was on its last legs financially then, so the administration wasn’t looking for any bad publicity. The boy was transferred to another school. Nothing about the boy ever made the press.”