Away with the Fishes (20 page)

At the Captain’s house, Mrs. Jaymes greeted them cautiously, as she did almost everything now, sure as she was that disaster would strike at any time. From the safety of her kitchen, she listened to their muffled puzzlings over how to get the piano in tune, and when strange buzzes and plinks wafted into her sanctuary, she promptly set off for the sitting room with ice-cold lemonade. There she found Hammer bent over the piano’s innards and the Captain bent over Hammer, humming loudly into his ear.

“Mrs. Jaymes!” Dagmore said excitedly, when he saw her come in. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Mrs. Jaymes.” He smiled triumphantly.

“How so, now?”

“I hum the pitch, and Mr. Hammer here tightens up the pins. Or loosens them, as the case may be. We’ll have her fine-tuned in a jiff!”

They took a short break and downed the cold drinks, then got back to work. The Captain sounded like an angry, monotone duck,
and Hammer looked like a man possessed, fully intent on comprehending every word the duck had to say. “A fine pair!” Mrs. Jaymes said to herself, as she took the tray of empty glasses away.

It took the two men the better part of a day, but as the sun began to set, Hammer Coates packed up his tools and shook the Captain’s hand. With his pocket full of Oh’s rainbow bills, Hammer set off, and Dagmore sat down to his newly tuned piano. He practiced well into the evening, not stopping even for his dinner, a habit Mrs. Jaymes was beginning to get used to, though its implications continued to perturb. For an entire week Dagmore did little more than play the piano, in fact. The music that in England had reminded him of Oh, on Oh was sending him back, magically, into the company of his father. He could smell his father’s whiskey and cigar, could hear him shuffling his feet in a nearby chair, listening as Dagmore played for hours. It seemed impossible to him that mere notes could conjure up such physical sensations, but that’s exactly what they did. Alas, when Dagmore finished his piece, and turned to ask his father what he thought, to explain to him why he had altered the
andante
ever so slightly, his father was gone.

Dagmore played four, five, sometimes six hours a day. Anything to keep his father’s spirit close by. The practicing paid off, for his skills and his memory were as sharp as they had ever been, his interpretations never more masterful. Even the wary Mrs. Jaymes found herself humming along to an especially lively passage one afternoon as she stewed her plums. Could her instincts have misled her? Was it possible that things weren’t destined to be as bad as all that? She was rather enjoying the music that now filled her days, and couldn’t quite work out how this piano might bring about the disaster she had been fearing. Dagmore was calmer, too, than he had been in a good long while. He would have spent the rest of his
life at the keyboard, warmed by his father’s nearby love, had those plum invitations he had sent to drizzly England not suddenly born some juicy island fruit.

It was a typically windy day on Oh, the day trouble first came knocking. Mrs. Jaymes had just come in from hanging the Captain’s freshly laundered tops and bottoms to dry on the line, when she heard pounding at the door.

“Afternoon! Is someone there?” a voice shouted.

Mrs. Jaymes, who had grown complacent and forgotten her fearfulness, what with all that classical music clouding her head, threw the door open without thinking twice.

“Hello, can I help?” she asked cheerfully. As the words left her lips and her eyes fell on the official shirt of the man who stood before her, her jaw fell, too, the
allegro
in her head suddenly stamped-out. “Island Post” the pocket of the man’s shirt said, and below the words, a small, embroidered pineapple of green and brown, it’s bulbous body sporting a pair of wings.

Mrs. Jaymes had no time to react before the man had pushed into her hands a thick stack of cards and letters, mumbled something she didn’t understand, tipped his hat and turned back down the road.

“Wait!” she called to him pitifully, but he didn’t hear her, and she didn’t know what she would have said to him if he had. With shaky hands she shuffled through the pile. The envelopes were beautiful, in spite of what must have been a long and arduous journey. The handwriting was curled and confident, romantic even. The paper, solid and strong. The stamps, in every color. Mrs. Jaymes retched and steadied herself against the frame of the door. “I knew it!” she hissed. Her knack for sniffing trouble was always on the nose.

For a moment she contemplated tossing the lot of it right into the sea, waxy seals and all, then reason prevailed. A known threat is far more easily dealt with than an unknown one, and something told her that the authors of those letters she held would not be kept at bay. (Right she was, as it turned out, for many were already at sea, half the way to Oh.)

“Captain!” she cried, bursting into the sitting room right in the middle of a delicate
decrescendo
. “Look at these!” She handed him the bundle as if it were proof positive of a crime just committed or a lie just told. “Now what are we to do?”

The Captain got up from the keyboard and gently folded the wooden cover over it. He took the envelopes from Mrs. Jaymes and sat on the divan to look them over. Without even opening them, he was moved to half-a-dozen shades of a smile, as he recognized their senders from the return addresses or the script.

“Oh, Mrs. Jaymes,” he said, “let’s hope it’s good news!” He pulled them open one by one and read every line on every page of every letter. He chuckled, he marveled, sometimes he talked back to them, unable to contain himself. Mrs. Jaymes watched him, stunned into anticipatory silence and chanting Hail Marys in her head. When he had finished, he gently returned the last one to its envelope, which he reverently placed on top of the stack with the others.

“Well?!” she nearly yelled.

“They’re coming! They’ve all said yes!”

“All who? When?”

“Not all at once, don’t worry. Some of the letters are two months old. Others were sent just over a week ago.” (It wasn’t uncommon on Oh for mail to arrive in spurts.)

She looked at him with a blank expression that prompted greater specificity on his part.

“It looks like the first guests will arrive in about ten days. Just three of them. Professor Emmitt Abbelscott, with his wife and daughter. Then a large group a month after that: all the Shelbys, with the Fitches. Won’t that be lovely!”

Mrs. Jaymes didn’t know about Applescotts or Finches, but she did know about “lovely,” and it hardly seemed the most suitable word for the awful news that she was hearing.

“‘Lovely,’ did you say, Captain?” she asked. “Are you sure about that?”

“Well, of course, I am. I’ll tell them all about the island. I’ll finally have people to discuss my research with, Mrs. Jaymes— people who can appreciate the island like no islander ever could.”

Mrs. Jaymes took little consolation from this explanation of the Captain’s, this metaphorical rubbing of salt in the wound, and for lack of a more fitting reply, she grumpily returned to the kitchen. The Captain didn’t notice her departure. His guests’ arrival dominated his every thought and sense. He could smell the feast they would share, could feel their admiring eyes upon him and his home, and hear their sighs of wonderment at the island’s vistas. In his head he saw the scenes exactly, and he went to his study to jot down some ideas. He would show his guests a fine time indeed! he told himself, giggling like an excited child. Seated at his desk, he pulled out a sheet of paper, dipped his pen in ink and began to make some notes, never doubting for a moment that everything would go perfectly—melodically—according to his plan.

27

The day the news of Madison’s arrest broke, Trevor’s Bakery was packed morning to night. Every islander who could find the time stopped in to make a purchase, knowing full well that the bakery was—hands down—the best place to put his (or her) finger on the pulse of the island. There, every theory was tested, every opinion flaunted, and no one wanted to miss a word. Extra bread sales were a by-product of island tragedy, and Trevor always tallied his take at the end of such days with a bittersweetness in his heart.

The general consensus of the clientele was that Madison was innocent. His quiet life had conducted itself well under the radar for as long as anyone could remember and this murder business was surely just a blip, one that would fall away as suddenly as it had arisen. Cries rang out of police brutality and persecution of
the common man, until some smart and cheeky feminine soul shouted, “What about the common woman?” This marked an abrupt shift in the discoursing crowd now forced to recall that a woman was dead. At least she seemed to be. The brutality wasn’t at the hands of the police, then, but of man in general, who no longer knew how to respect a woman, and would sooner kill her and feed her to the fishes than treat her as he ought! “Now wait just a bloody minute,” said an offended masculine voice. “How do you know Rena is dead? There’s not even a body, and you’re calling every man a murderer?” And the discourse shifted again.

Like a seesaw on a playground, the debate bounded from one side of the story to the other and back, the customers in the crowded bakery space mimicking the to-and-fro with bobs of their alternately convinced and convinced-again heads.

Amidst the public debate that ensued, a number of those present struggled with more private concerns about the case of Madison Fuller and what was coming to be known as the Bicycle Trial. Foremost in this group was Branson Bowles. Seeing May again the day before, when she had stomped onto his beach, had stirred in him feelings he had been denying for years. Poor May! He couldn’t imagine how much she must be suffering. Her brother arrested! Branson was suffering, too, for he knew that May held him responsible for Madison’s dilemma, and he wondered if he ought not come forth and claim the lonely hearts ad, whether he had written it or not. Would the police believe him if he did? Would it be enough to clear Madison’s name and to win back May’s respect and her affection? Was Branson’s dignity worth her tender dasheen and her dainty touch?

While Branson, nervous and worried, shook his head from side to side, Trevor moved his up and down in an effort to see
one wave of customers over the next. He was anxious to close his doors for the day and to reflect on the problem at hand, for which he felt somewhat responsible, since Madison had turned to him for help. Trevor never liked to disappoint, and disappoint he arguably had, if Madison was sitting somewhere behind bars. Trevor couldn’t even point a finger at Bruce, whose report had merely brought to light the mess that the police were cooking up—a mess that at the end of the day couldn’t really amount to much, could it? Madison was innocent. Of that, Trevor was absolutely sure, and so truth would prevail in the end.

Trevor tried to believe in these arguments he elaborated in his head, but nothing on Oh was so straightforward. All the more when Oh’s authorities came into the picture, dancing their procedural dances to the islanders’ drums. If the case went to trial, as it appeared it would, Trevor was not at all confident that the evidence misconstrued by the police wouldn’t be misconstrued by the public, too. The island’s justice wasn’t always just.