Maids of Misfortune (14 page)

Annie looked over at him and shrugged. "Whatever you say. I confess I've been enjoying myself so much that I've been avoiding the real purpose of the outing. I suppose we ought to talk a little about what we are going to ask Nellie."

Nate expressed surprise. "What is there to discuss? I thought we had agreed that we wanted to hear her version of what happened the night Matthew Voss died, find out about the argument Jeremy had with his father.” Picking up a stone at his feet, Nate skipped it out across the waves. "Anyway, what other questions do you think we should ask?"

Annie had stopped and was staring out toward the horizon. When she didn't reply, Nate glanced at her, startled by how wistful she looked. All the animation in her face had vanished, and there was a dispirited droop to her shoulders. Before he could ask what was wrong, the sound of men's voices interrupted. Two men, roughly dressed, strode up the beach towards them from the Cliff House, each carrying pails, nets, and fishing rods. Nodding greetings as they passed, Nate waited to speak until they were out of sight around the jutting wall of the cliffs to the north of them. Looking back at Annie, he could see that her eyes were brimming with tears.

"Annie, what's the matter?" Nate stepped up to her, and, seeing that she was ineffectually trying to open up her purse, he gently removed her parasol and her bunch of flowers and shells so that she could pull out her handkerchief.

Meanwhile, she was uttering disjointedly, "Oh, forgive me. You are too kind. I really am quite all right."

Nate successfully fought his desire to take her into his arms. Instead, he said, "Please tell me what is wrong."

Annie stood still and spoke softly to his chest. "You see, when I thought about what to ask Nellie, I realized how little I really know of Matthew's, I mean Mr. Voss’s, life; we were just becoming friends, you see, and now he's gone. I've met so few men since my father's death that I could trust, and Matthew Voss was one of them." Annie glanced up at Nate, giving him a shy smile that squeezed at his heart painfully.

She again addressed his shirtfront. "I suspect the friendship of older men has been particularly important because of the close relationship I developed with my father after my mother's death. She died when I was twelve. After that, until I married, my father and I were inseparable. He tutored me himself until I was sixteen. Even when I went on to the Academy, I lived at home. He took me on most of his business trips and was constantly teaching me about the law, and accounting, and the stock market."

Nate let a soft exclamation escape at the picture her words drew, and Annie gave a tremulous smile.

"I know, not your usual subjects for the improvement of a young girl's mind. At night, we'd pour over the financial pages of the paper, and we'd decide what to buy and what to sell. Of course, in my case these were pretend transactions. Then we'd see whether my decisions would have brought in a profit or loss. We kept a running total, and over the years my profits finally began to overcome my losses. Then Father let me invest some real money. I loved it, and I did quite well too. He was so proud of me."

Nate marveled at what a strange childhood she'd had. He thought of his family. His parents, younger brother and sister, and always at least two or three visiting friends or relations, not to mention the ranch hands, who were always around. In comparison, Annie's life seemed unbearably lonely. More importantly, he couldn’t imagine growing up without the warm support and guidance of his mother. No wonder Annie didn't always behave as other women.

Standing back from him, she took the diminutive handkerchief she had retrieved from her bag and resolutely gave one good final sniff, saying, "Now, I really think we should return to our picnic spot to collect our things and get back to the business at hand. If we are to solve this mystery, we shouldn't put off finding Nellie any longer."

Nate then saw Annie stiffen. Almost immediately, he heard a shout. Looking up, he saw one of the fishermen who had passed them a brief time ago running towards them waving wildly and yelling something unintelligible. As he came abreast of them, Nate grabbed him and commanded, "Get your breath, man, and then tell us how we can help."

The man was sweating profusely, and he was soaked with seawater as well. As he stood panting before them, he took out a damp cloth and wiped his face. Finally, he began to speak.

"Jesus, sir. We found her lying by the rocks, body all broken. Could hardly tell who she was. My mate's staying with her. I've got to get someone from the Cliff House. Won't help her any, poor girl. She's dead, looks like she drowned! It's that new waitress up there, Nell. I can't believe it, she was such a lively one. Saw her just this morning. But now she's dead."

Chapter Nineteen

Nellie dead
! Annie couldn’t comprehend the words at first. She had never met Nellie, but she had developed a strong image of the lively redheaded servant, even a sort of sympathy for her after doing her work and sleeping in her bed at the Voss house.
Dead, how could that be?

Nate's voice recaptured her attention as he gruffly said, "Please go back and pack up the picnic things and take them to the carriage and wait for me there. I'll try to get back as soon as I can."

Annie shook her head slightly. Noticing that both the fisherman and Nate were staring at her, she gathered her scattered wits. What had Nate said? She was to return to the carriage and wait. No! She would not be banished like some frightened child. If Nellie was indeed dead, she needed to know the details.

Taking a deep breath, Annie lifted her chin and said, "Mr. Dawson, I don't think that will do." Turning to the fisherman, she used her most authoritative voice. "Good man, now that you have caught your breath, please run on to the Cliff House and notify the owner, making sure he sends a message to the nearest police station. This gentleman and I will walk on and come to your friend's aid. We'll make sure no other people on the beach interfere until the authorities come."

The man looked to Nate, who nodded agreement, and then he tipped his cap to Annie and began a steady trot up the beach. She was glad he'd acquiesced so readily, because the expression on Nate's face indicated they were about to have an argument, and she preferred not to have an audience.

"Annie, listen. You must not go with me. This is not the place for you. I've no time to debate this, so please, go back up to the carriage."

"No, Mr. Dawson, I will not. First of all, we don't even know for sure if it is Nellie's body that was found. That man was so upset that he might have made a mistake. Perhaps she's not even dead, just hurt, and I could be of help. If it is Nellie, and she's dead, well, I need to know what happened. In any event, since I can't get back up the steep hill to the carriage with all the picnic things on my own, I might as well accompany you."

Seeing the truculent look on Nate's face, Annie decided her best tactic was simply to ignore him. She began to walk briskly in the direction the man had come from, forcing Nate to follow. When he caught up with her, he reached out and grabbed her elbow. She glared at him, trying to pull away, and they stood that way for a short time, their eyes engaged in a wordless duel. Abruptly, Nate looked away, muttered a short oath, and then let go of her and started to walk rapidly towards the edge of the headland that divided them from the next cove.

Annie ran to keep up, thankful he'd abandoned the fight. She tried not to think about how much she had enjoyed the sense of warm sympathy and understanding that had been building between them all afternoon and what her actions now would do to the budding friendship. She trailed after him in silence, concentrating on picking her way through the partially submerged rocks and the pools of captured tide that littered this place where cliff met ocean. She could tell Nate was still furious since he made no attempt to help her over the awkward places. Once, when her foot slipped and she involuntarily let out a cry, he simply looked back to make sure she wasn't hurt, and then he turned back to his own slow progress.

Fortunately, the tide was still going out, because at high tide there would be virtually no beach at all, just the waves smashing against the cliff wall. Annie felt a trickle of sweat down her back, and she wished for the hundredth time she wasn't so tightly corseted. She used her parasol to divine which pocket of sand was hard enough to bear her weight without turning into liquid. She shuddered to think of what this walk was doing to the flimsy umbrella or the edges of her skirt.

A slight shift in the direction of the breeze on her cheek made Annie look up to see that they had successfully made it around the headland. The length of the next cove spread out before them. The beach was narrower here, and there were periodic low arms of rock reaching out from the cliff face into the water, as if some monstrous animals sat in a row, staring out to sea. The second fisherman sat huddled near the end of one of the largest of those arms, about three hundred yards away. He'd seen them and gave a shout, waving his arms frantically. Nate waved in response and began to run toward him, while Annie walked more slowly, looking intently at the sand at her feet.

Because of the narrowness of the beach at this point, all of the sand was the wet, hard-packed kind that readily showed footprints. Annie found the tale fairly easy to read. There were two sets of footprints, going in the direction she was walking, probably made when the tide was higher. Both sets of shoe prints showed slightly pointed toes, but she thought one set might belong to a man because of the size of the shoe print and the longer stride. She thought the other prints were more likely made by a woman, being much smaller, more closely spaced together, and because they included the deeper indentation that a woman's heel might make.

Much nearer the water's edge, there was another set of footprints, both quite large, also going north. Once again clearly two people, probably walking together, but in this case their similar size, shape, and spacing suggested the companions were both men. No doubt the two fishermen. There were two other sets of prints that went on top of the fishermen’s prints. One set, she could see, belonged to Nate. The other set, however, went in the opposite direction, going south, back around the headland towards the Cliff House. Probably they were from the fisherman who'd stopped to give them the news, but there was a slight chance they were from the first man who had been accompanying the woman.

Annie stopped at this point and moved toward the cliff to stare at the first set of what she found herself calling the man's prints, measuring them with her parasol and noting again the slightly pointed toes. She then went to the prints of the man running the other way and saw they had the rounded toe and were the size of one of the fisherman's prints. So, Annie thought, with a slight quickening of her pulse, this left the question of where the man with the pointed-toed shoes had gone, assuming it was his female companion that the fishermen had found among the rocks.

She knew it was cowardly to continue to search the sand rather than to go over to where Nate stood in earnest conversation with the fisherman. She had, after all, insisted on coming. Nevertheless, Annie turned toward the cliffs to pick up the man and woman's prints. She followed them until she came to the arm of rocks upon which Nate and the fisherman stood. There the footprints vanished. She scrambled up onto the mound of rocks and peered over but saw no sign that the footprints continued on north. The couple must have walked toward the water on the rocks, which thrust up a good way above the beach here and were flat enough to walk on with some safety. Following along these rocks, she kept a sharp lookout to her right for any prints going north. If the man and woman had come to the rocks soon after the high tide had begun to ebb and stayed on the rocks for any length of time, they might have left the rocks at a point closer to the water as the tide receded. But she had still seen no prints when she got to the water's edge. Since the tide was still ebbing, unless they had waded in the water, their prints should be still visible.

Annie stared north for a minute, letting the splash and hiss of the waves breaking along the rocks obliterate the sounds coming from Nate and the fisherman. Watching the waves gave her an idea, and Annie ran back along the rocks to where she could find an easy way down on to the sand. It had occurred to her that if someone walked just along the wave line, a few laggard waves might obliterate their prints in places. Sure enough, about ten feet to the north, she found the half-erased prints of the man's pointed-toe shoes, and further on she saw where those prints turned at right angles to the water and went toward the cliff face. They showed the characteristics she now associated with haste, and no other prints accompanied them.

She followed them until the prints disappeared at the edge where sand met the sandstone wall that rose above her. Frustrated, she walked a little to the left and then to the right, looking for the prints to reappear. They didn't. Then she looked up and saw what she had missed at first. A narrow fissure in the cliff, no wider than a doorway, contained one perfectly formed print in the sand on its floor, surrounded by debris.

Annie stepped closer, feeling the cooler temperatures of the rock face enclose her and noticing for the first time the strong odor of rotting seaweed. Looking around, she noted that at about knee-height, in the left-hand wall of the fissure, there was a small outcrop of rock, just large enough to hold the toe of a foot. Glancing up, she saw a narrow ledge just above her head that held a scraggly bush. She put down her parasol, pulled up her skirts with one hand, and fitted her foot to the outcrop. Then she stretched, trying to grab the bush to pull herself up to the ledge. She couldn't reach it, but she bet that a man, taller and unencumbered with skirts, could.

But to what end? She picked up her parasol and backed out of the fissure, searching the rock face to her left. Then she saw it. A faint narrow path snaked down the cliff side, disappearing where she had found the ledge. Plainly, it had been a regular path down to the beach until some winter storm had eroded its last length. No doubt the man whose prints she had been following had gone up that path, and he'd gone alone.

Elated by the success of her investigations, Annie ran back to the arm of rocks and clambered up, waving her parasol to get Nate's attention. He and the fisherman were now both crouched down, looking into the waves at their feet. Nate obviously hadn't heard her approach, because when she shook his shoulder to get his attention, he jerked up and whipped around, a grimace distorting his face. Straightening, he grabbed her shoulders to force her away. But he was too late. She had seen.

Annie felt the sight of the woman imprint itself on her eyes, in an instant, like the after-image produced by a photographer's flash. Oddly, the garish vermilion, dark plum, and sickly ochre of the seaweeds that wrapped the still body provided the only color to the picture. Everything else seemed shades of black and grey, like a faded tintype. One black high-buttoned shoe, sporting a pointed toe and a French heel, peeped coyly out from under the seaweeds, and a sodden black dress provided a stark background for the gaudy colors of those same watery weeds. Little of the woman's flesh actually showed––the hand that lay pathetically open, palm up; a high cheekbone with the skin pulled tightly across it; and the lips parted ever so slightly––and all of these were shades of grey.

It was as if all the original skin tones had been sucked up to preserve the only splash of color left on the body that could compete with the ocean's bright harvest, the woman's mass of blood-red hair. Hair that abruptly came alive, writhing and twisting, imparting life to the rest. The hand now lifted in supplication, the cheek turned, and the lips opened in a soundless cry. In another instant, all life departed, the pale grey body lay still, inert, until another foamy wave came in to resurrect it once more.