Cupboards All Bared, page 2
And so, she snuck out at night, hitting the houses mostly located on the South Hill, where the rich lived in their swell mansions, feasting on food they never finished and throwing parties that cost as much as a week’s wages. They lived in safety, while the men in the mines they owned toiled and died on a less-than-average day’s wage.
And if they suddenly found themselves short a couple candlesticks, a few expensive baubles and trinkets from their travels abroad? They probably wouldn’t even notice.
But those candlesticks and baubles and trinkets would mean the world to that hungry street urchin.
As Thomas Love Peacock had written in her favorite book, Maid Marian, “William took from the poor and gave to the rich, and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor: and therein is Robin illegitimate; though in all else he is a true prince.”
Marian closed the back door of Nain’s house and removed the burgundy overcoat and driver’s cap that were the apparel of the Red Rogue.
“For the last time,” she said aloud, standing before Nain’s chair in the living room.
The armless daisy-printed chair stood before Nain’s fireplace in quiet acceptance of Marian’s claim.
“You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs,” she heard Nain’s voice say.
So perhaps not entirely quiet.
“I know it’ll be difficult to give it up, but I mean it. I’m done,” she said, this time with more emphasis, wrapping the coat and cap together into a small ball.
Then she turned on her heel and marched down the hall to her old bedroom. The bedroom that had been hers since she’d come to live with Nain at a young age.
She barely remembered her parents. Just the faint glimmer of a smile, but that was mostly because it was the same smile that had crossed Nain’s face whenever she looked at her. Her father's smile.
In her bedroom, Marian shoved the heavy dresser over two feet before carefully lifting the loose floorboards hidden beneath it. When she’d discovered them, Marian had hidden her diary inside, even though it had only been filled with the musings of a child unaware of the complexities of the real world.
But since her return from Seattle, she’d been using it for quite a different purpose. Beneath those floorboards was hidden her treasure trove, to her more precious than that of Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island.
She’d sold most of the larger pieces in order to finance a personal mourning wardrobe, so she wouldn’t have to continue borrowing from Nain’s closet, an act that had felt uncomfortable to say the least.
What remained now were her favorite priceless first editions and her first pair of stolen candlesticks. She’d taken to stealing a set at every house after reading Les Misérables, in a sort of ironic tribute to the fact that a set of stolen candlesticks had launched her into a new life, just like Jean Valjean.
She gently set down the rolled up cap and coat amongst the collection.
“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow.’”
With a heavy sigh, she buried the Red Rogue in her bedroom.
Then she stood and returned the dresser to its place before moving on to the next hardest thing.
One by one, she wrapped Nain’s things in newspaper and covered the furniture in sheets, shutting the door on each room as she completed it, until all that was left was Nain’s chair.
“‘I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave,’” Marian quoted, even as she stood there, holding the folded sheet to her chest, vacillating over whether to cover the chair or leave it as it had always been.
Everything you have in this world is just borrowed for a short time, the chair said softly. This is the beginning of anything you want.
Marian knelt before the chair, placing one hand on its soft cushion.
“Perhaps,” Marian said, finding herself once more arguing with a memory. “But as you used to say, ‘You know it’s love when you have been saying goodbye how many times but still you’re not ready to leave.’”
There was no escaping death. Perhaps it was part of what gave life its meaning.
PETER BACH HAD BEEN blessed with a gift: an ability to draw people in with his chiseled cheekbones and striking, full beard, coupled with his unassuming nature which made him likable and charming. When people spoke with him, they found themselves saying things they wouldn’t normally have shared with anyone outside immediate family. So naturally, when he’d decided he needed to try a new career on for size, he’d picked being a reporter.
Picking a name had been a bit more difficult.
His friends had called him “Peter Piper” after the Pied Piper of Hamlin, who could whistle the rats out of every corner. Given the alliterative nature of the name, however, he’d felt he couldn’t claim Piper, and instead had opted for Bach as a surname, given its musical connotations.
Of course, attracting rats did mean one was bitten occasionally. He hadn’t meant to unmask one of the leading lumber magnates in Tacoma as an adulterer with three mistresses on the side on his third day on the job. But, really, was it his fault? Shouldn’t the man have been more careful, more prudent, since he was from a family of such high standing?
Peter understood how important a man’s background was to his reputation. A year ago, he’d moved out of his family’s inglorious home near Commencement Bay, refusing to live and die a fisherman like his old man. And so, through a variety of jobs and names, he’d moved up in the world both physically and mentally, from Old Tacoma around North 30th Street with its modest shops and homes up to New Tacoma and an apartment above a grocer on Pacific Avenue.
But that was his old life. At first, Peter had thought being exiled to the wilder eastern side of the state meant the end of his newest career path. Fortunately, it had turned out that Spokane was a lot like Tacoma: a small town that wanted to be a big city. And that meant plenty of social-climbers with skeletons in their carriage houses.
His cousin even had quite a nice setup at The Spokesman-Review, and best luck of all, the Baker’s recent arrest was turning heads and pages, perfect for a go-getter like himself willing to do anything to learn the truth.
Unfortunately, no one had been allowed to speak with her yet—no one but police, at any rate. They’d kept her confined to a jail cell in the bowels of City Hall. Peter wondered what they were hiding...
But luck had still been in his favor—it usually was—and at his interview this morning with Detective Carew, he’d landed an inside informer position by acquiring an invitation to stay at his home as a boarder. His cousin Daniel had cursed his good luck. He hoped that perhaps the next step would be a chance to speak with the Baker herself.
Now he sat in the front room of the Carew residence, overly decorated with Swiss bear furniture, drinking tea with the lady of the house. Mrs. Carew’s flaxen hair was as blonde as his beard, her eyes an intelligent blue, but she was trapped in a wheelchair, causing Peter to question why a man as broad and strong as Bernard Carew had allowed himself to be tied down by an invalid.
The quiet, polite young lady who sat beside her in somber black was of good form and moderate breeding. And yet she, too, had bound herself to this incapacitated woman. It was a shame to waste such beauty.
“I’ll not beat around the bush, Mr. Bach,” said Mrs. Carew. “I hear the reason for your stay with us is to acquire further information on the subject of Eleanor Sigmund.”
“Elean—yes, the Baker.” Peter nodded and sipped his tea, hiding his surprise that Mrs. Carew had referred to the Baker by her given name, rather than her infamous title.
“You must understand, then, that my companion, Miss Kenyon, was a friend of Mrs. Sigmund’s, so we only refer to her by her true name in this home.”
Perhaps Peter hadn’t hidden his surprise, after all. He glanced at Miss Kenyon, whose eyes over the rim of her teacup dared him to contradict this statement.
“Of course, Mrs. Carew. And I shall naturally do the same as long as I am in your charming company. I had not realized there would be so many people attached to the case under one roof. I seem to have struck gold.”
Mrs. Carew merely tightened her lips and reached for her scone. She was going to be a difficult one to warm up to. He attempted to change the topic of conversation. “I understand Detective Carew’s brother was also involved with the case?”
Miss Kenyon and Mrs. Carew exchanged a glance.
“It might be best, Mr. Bach, not to speak of the case with both brothers at the same time,” Mrs. Carew said delicately. “Speaking with them individually will provide you with two unique yet cohesive points of view.”
Peter nodded and sipped politely, smiling over the rim of his cup at the wooden bear crawling up the leg of Miss Kenyon’s chair. He had struck gold all right. And maybe a few rats.
SOME DAYS ROSLYN CAREW felt like she was nothing more than a talking carriage. Only, her carriage couldn’t take her anywhere. Instead it inhibited her movement, like putting a saddle on a horse only to have it go in a constant circle on a lead. She wanted to gallop. To run. To be free.
But she was limited to stretching muscles only in her mind, making her a voracious reader. She had long since given up on reading novels and moved on to the wonders of discovery to be found in books of learning. Philosophy, psychoanalysis, astronomy, physics—new and old sciences, they all appealed to her.
Unlike other women who usually turned to the small women’s column found in The Spokesman-Review alongside recipes and gossip of the week, she read the paper cover to cover, and then when The Chronicle arrived in the evenings, she did the same. The blatant, gory details of murders and hangings intrigued her, but she found herself even more fascinated by the anatomy behind the event: Why exactly would a man’s body require dismemberment before being cooked in a blacksmith’s forge? How might one go about doing such a thing?
And when the local papers had nothing new to offer, her magazines from across the nation and some from overseas kept her active mind engaged. She’d taught herself Italian, Spanish, and French, finding them to be similar enough in their Romantic style that she could pass between the three with relative ease. She’d even become fluent enough in French to read the papers directly from Paris, though she preferred the scientific journals to the fashion mags.
So much knowledge in the head of someone considered an “invalid” was often overlooked, and she’d thought so many times that she’d make a decent detective for that reason. Who better than someone taken for granted to manipulate the unwitting into revealing all their secrets? Of course, the police would never hire a woman, much less one in a wheelchair, no matter how intelligent she might be.
She’d been blessed in finding the Carew brothers—both of them were well-read and remarkably intelligent—but it was Bernard’s kindness that had won her to him, and his persistent love overtures.
No one else would think it to look at him, as he was quite a bear of a man, but he was soft inside like pudding when it came to Roslyn. She knew he’d do anything for her, and she for him.
And for that reason, among others, she’d taken it upon herself to find an exceptional cook for the house. She’d allowed Mrs. Hill to stay on for far too long, but as she fired the fourth cook in a month, she remembered why she’d eventually settled on her. At least she could boil an egg—sometimes. She was starting to worry she’d never find someone the equal of Mrs. Curry up at the House, whom both brothers claimed was the best cook they’d ever met—and she had to admit, after sampling the meals she’d sent home, that Mrs. Curry would indeed be quite the catch. But the good cook refused to leave the inventor who had inherited the Mitchell estate, so there was no way of persuading her to come to them.
Once again, her poor companion, Marian, would have to take over in the kitchen. She filled in the gap quite willingly, saying always that cooking reminded her of her Nain, but then again, everything reminded her of her Nain. The girl was grieving, Roslyn knew, but sometimes she wished the conversation didn’t always turn back to her dead grandmother.
Other than the constant Nainisms, Marian was proving to be quite a remarkable find. She was sweet, helpful, and surprisingly intelligent and well-read. She could hold her own in a conversation, even when Roslyn didn’t agree with her take on something.
In fact, Roslyn was beginning to think she wasn’t the only one who’d taken a shine to her. Thomas, who always had something to say, had been unusually silent of late whenever Marian was in the room. Of course, he was also often giving the cold shoulder to his brother ever since The Spokesman-Review completely ignored his involvement in the catching of the Baker.
She understood his jealousy—she had certainly been the one overlooked on several occasions—but she was waiting for Bernard to ask her for her opinion or figure it out for himself. It had been a month, however, and she was beginning to consider how she might subtly bring up the topic.
After the departure of the new boarder to collect his things, she now sat with Marian in the kitchen, chopping vegetables on a wooden board in her lap to be of assistance.
“Really, Mrs. Carew, I don’t mind doing that,” said Marian for the third time.
“If you try to take this knife from me I might ‘slip’ and slice your finger off and then every time you look at the stub you’ll be reminded what happens to those who think I cannot do something for myself.” She focused on her cutting as she spoke and then looked up with a smile.
Marian smiled in return from where she dressed the roast that would accompany the vegetables in a long day’s stew for supper. “Oh, Mrs. Carew, you know I would never think such a thing. I merely meant I did not think the lady of the house should have to find herself working as a cook’s assistant.”
“I suppose it is somewhat uncouth, but then I’ve never been one to stand on ceremony.” Roslyn studied the young woman with her sleeves forced up above her elbows, an apron protecting the black mourning gown that emphasized her fashionably pale skin. “And how, pray tell, did you come to have such fine cooking skills yourself? I know you had a maid growing up, didn’t you have a cook, as well?”
“My Nain”—there she was—“insisted on doing all the cooking herself in our home. Said no one else could bake apple pie the way my grandfather liked it. The only hired help she’d allow was a maid...like...Eleanor...”
And of course, naturally the conversation had turned to Eleanor, the ghost that occupied Marian’s other shoulder opposite Nain, though she was not dead. Yet.
Roslyn ignored the specter. “And how did the closing up of your grandmother’s house go this morning?”
It took a moment for the depressing cloud to roll away from her brow. Finally, Marian jingled the key to Nain’s house, which hung from her chatelaine along with the key to the Carews’.
“It’s done,” she said with a sigh. “But I intend to stop by every now and then to make sure everything’s all right. Wouldn’t want thieves to think it’s the perfect unguarded location.”
“At least if they did, you’d know who to call,” Roslyn said with a smile. After all, even though Bernard had solved a murder case, that didn't mean he was removed from the more normal jobs of the Spokane Police detectives: that of thieves, drunkards, and ruffians.
“Thank you again, Mrs. Carew.”
Roslyn set down her knife. “For what?”
Marian wiped the back of her hand across her cheek distractedly as she looked up from her work. “For inviting me into your home and life. I was feeling quite lost and I...really needed it.”
Rosslyn smiled. “I do wish you’d call me Roslyn, my dear. As my companion, I hope you’ll look upon me as a friend rather than a mistress.”
“I suppose it has been almost a month since I moved in, though I can hardly believe so many days have passed by already.”
“Yes, somehow we’ve survived Mrs. Harwell’s ‘world-famous blood sausage,’ Mrs. Dougherty’s corned beef—or foot, it was hard to tell—as well as Mrs. Malone’s British tea cakes—or rocks.”
“And Mrs. O’Flanagan’s dreadful boiled eggs this morning.” Marian wrinkled her nose.
“Ah, yes. I never thought someone with such credentials might never have cooked an egg before. I still cannot believe that she tried to tell me all boiled eggs are green on the inside.” Roslyn laughed, and Marian joined in.
MARIAN MISSED LAUGHING. These days it seemed the only times she did so was when she was with Archie Prescot. She wished he hadn’t decided to move out of the Carews when she moved in, but she’d gotten the distinct impression he’d felt it improper for him to remain, and he could certainly accomplish so much more living up at the House with his colleague, Mr. Matsumoto, with whom he did his sound theory research.
She wondered what they were working on today.
Marian sliced through another carrot, focusing on the even back and forth of her knife. Nain had taught her knife skills from an early age.
“Never look away from your knife while it’s in motion,” she’d said. “Keep your fingers curled, so should you nick anything, it’s only a knuckle and not an entire finger tip. Always wash and dry your knives immediately after use, to ensure they remain clean and free of rust.”
Marian had run her fingers along the cuts in the cutting board in her kitchen before she’d closed up the house that morning. It was good for her to be out of Nain’s house officially. Perhaps by doing so the dream-memories wouldn’t be so terrible. She’d been plagued by them almost every night since her return, though now they tended to be about Eleanor, not Nain.
Eleanor hadn’t known she’d been living a double life, with a secondary personality that sometimes took over to defend her against abusive husbands. Or she had known, but she’d hidden it? Or...something like that. It didn’t make much sense to her, but Roslyn had promised to look into it, to do some research, which was her strength and certainly not Marian’s. Marian was a woman of action, while Roslyn was a woman of the mind. She actually understood the psychology of the problem in a way Marian just couldn’t. And it was going to take all the best doctors to figure out what exactly was wrong with Eleanor.
