The Callender Papers Read online

  “Yes, it does,” he said. His expression was hard and serious, as if he were measuring me. “Some impossible things do happen.”

  “I know,” I said, calmly, coldly. It wouldn’t do to let him see my suspicions.

  “I wondered if you wanted to return to Cambridge,” he said.

  “I considered that,” I answered. “I wish Aunt Constance were here. She’d know what to do.”

  “I have written to her,” Mr. Thiel said. “I think I know what she will say. If I were sure she was right. . . . But how do you feel about it? Frightened?”

  “Yes,” I said. I could say that much; he would be more suspicious were I to deny it.

  “It could have been bad food,” he said.

  “That is the only sensible, logical thing,” I agreed.

  “If not—it was either here or there,” he said.

  I knew what he meant: either someone in this house or in the other house had tried to poison me. I knew, further, that he was one of those whom I must suspect, but I could not tell if he knew I knew it.

  “There was nothing odd about your visit yesterday?” he asked.

  “No, nothing at all. We ate, talked, and Mr. Callender walked me back.”

  “To the falls?”

  Perhaps I should have lied to him at that point and told him we crossed at the ford, but I didn’t. I stared helplessly into his dark eyes. I couldn’t tell the truth. I couldn’t lie.

  “I’ve always assumed you crossed on that little bridge my wife told me of,” Mr. Thiel said.

  “I didn’t know anyone knew,” I said. “He told me it was a secret.”

  “As far as he knows, it is,” Mr. Thiel said. “Irene told me. Then, yesterday, you came straight back here. Was everything normal here?”

  “Wasn’t it?” I asked. I was uncomfortable.

  “I’m asking for your impression of things,” he said.

  “I thought so.”

  “I don’t like it,” Mr. Thiel said. “I wish you had eaten some green apples or wild berries.”

  “So do I,” I said. Suddenly I was exhausted, my weakened will dizzied by the conversation with my employer, like a sparring match, or a duel of wills between wary opponents.

  “Mrs. Bywall has asked to sleep in here with you tonight. Shall I let her? Or are you too old for that? I know so little about children. We could easily put a cot in here for her.”

  I couldn’t answer, except to nod my head. I didn’t know whether I should accept the offer or not. I didn’t know where safety lay, or if there was any real danger. I only knew I had dreaded being alone during the night.

  The next afternoon Mac and I, with the help of a pocket knife, opened the drawer.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked, as we heard the lock slip into place, releasing the drawer. “Why don’t you just ask for the key?”

  “I’ll tell you after we see what’s there,” I said.

  He pulled the drawer out and we both leaned over it. It was empty.

  Mac put his hand into it, felt back to every corner, and then closed the drawer. He couldn’t relock it. I could only hope that nobody would notice. “Well?” he asked me.

  I was too surprised to speak. I don’t know exactly what I had expected to find in there. A copy of the will, or some correspondence about it. Something to clear up the darkness and mystery.

  “You said you’d explain,” Mac reminded me.

  I looked at his round face and earnest eyes and decided to trust him. I had to trust somebody. I had to talk to somebody. I was becoming muddleheaded with fear and puzzlement. He, at least, could have been in no way involved in those events of ten years ago. Although, I reminded myself, he was Mr. Thiel’s friend and he disliked Mr. Callender; he wasn’t impartial.

  “You’ll keep it secret,” I cautioned.

  His eyes lit up. “I promise,” he said. “Cross my heart.”

  “I was looking for the will, Mr. Callender’s will.”

  “Josiah Callender?”

  “Yes. I found a note from his daughter to him about changes in it she didn’t want him to make—changes against Mr. Callender. Mr. Enoch Callender,” I added.

  “When was this note written?”

  “It wasn’t dated. But it was in this last box.”

  “So, it was close to when she died,” Mac said.

  I nodded.

  “Do you think that that might be the reason she died—she was murdered?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. But don’t you see, if we knew what the will said, then we would know who inherited the fortune. And we would know if anyone had a motive.”

  “Not necessarily,” Mac pointed out. “It would depend on the person knowing what the will said. And when the will was signed.”

  “If it was actually drawn up,” I added. “Josiah Callender may have decided to do as his daughter asked and not cut out Mr. Callender.”

  “That wouldn’t solve the real mystery anyway,” Mac said.

  “What is that?”

  “How she was killed.”

  “I think I know,” I said.

  For a minute, I enjoyed his surprise.

  “There’s a bridge, a sort of bridge, over the falls. Mr. Callender showed it to me. It’s a board he hides in the trees on his side. I cross over it when I return from his side of the stream. You place it over the falls, he stands on it to steady it, and you can walk across.”

  “That means Mr. Callender is the one.” Mac stated it calmly, but his excitement showed in his eyes.

  “Mr. Thiel knew about it too,” I said. “He told me yesterday.”

  “Either one of them.” Mac was equally calm about this. “Then, if Mr. Thiel inherited the money from his wife, he would have a motive. If Mr. Callender would lose the money by her death, he wouldn’t kill her, would he? But if there was a new will, and it hadn’t been signed yet, Mr. Callender would have a motive. I see what you mean, we need to see the will.”

  “There’s something else too,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “In her note, Irene said that the child would be safe, that she had seen to that. As if the child—” I hesitated. “And then, the child disappeared.” The whole thing was such a huge tangle of possibilities that I had a strange desire to giggle. Macs face was serious though. “Why should someone try to poison you?” he asked.

  “We don’t know that anyone did,” I said. “Does your father think someone did? For sure? That’s not what he told me.”

  “He’s not absolutely sure either,” Mac said.

  All of my vague fears returned. I did not want to worry about that illness—I wanted to throw myself into the search for the will and solving the Callender mystery.

  “The only thing I can think of to do is look for the will, or some information in the papers,” I said weakly. “If somebody knows there’s something there, something they want kept secret, something they’re afraid I’ll find . . . if I find it then there wouldn’t be any reason to try to stop me any more. Would there?”

  “Then let’s get to it,” Mac said. He looked at the stacks of paper on the long table and sighed. “It can’t be worse than Caesar after all.”

  Chapter 12

  So much happened in that final week, I have trouble keeping track of the days. It was Sunday evening that I was—ill. The Monday I spent in bed. Tuesday Mac came, and I confided in him and he became an ally. So much an ally that on Wednesday morning he arrived to help me go through the final box of papers. All of those nights Mrs. Bywall slept with me, and whenever I awoke, her low snoring lulled me to sleep again. You may think it’s strange that a woman with her past could still be a comfort. I trusted her.

  I could not then have said why I trusted her and found her sleeping form a guardian against the nightmares, against the black shape that appeared and reappeared in my dreams. The shape came closer each time, until I could almost see his face within the dark folds of cloth; each night he forced me to return with him to the glade, pulled me up
the edge of the falls. Then he stood across the board from me and held out his hand. At those times, there was nobody waiting in the deep pool and the dark wind whipped my dress around my ankles. I knew then whose body lay at the base of the falls, but the phantom pulled me out onto the board, even so. The water rushed below my bare feet. Once, a woman’s form rose up from below and her arms stretched out as if to embrace me. I awoke, then, shaking, my hand tight over my mouth. Mrs. Bywall’s snores, at those times, sounded in my ears like music—the monotonous, rasping noise in the darkness enabled me to close my eyes.

  Things were happening too fast for careful thought. My nights were without rest. During my waking hours I felt perpetually off-balance. At any moment I might fall over, tumbling helplessly into danger. I knew that. What I might find at the end of that fall frightened me too much to think about it.

  That Wednesday morning I had just begun to work in the library when Mrs. Bywall showed Mac in. I gave him a pile of papers and we both set to work. Mac was restless. Although he remained in his chair, he squirmed and fidgeted. He ruffled through the pile to see how many he had left to do. Once he looked up at me, after only half an hour it was, and remarked, “I was wrong, it is worse than Caesar.” But he kept at it.

  After the disappointment of the drawer, I didn’t really expect to find anything, and I was not disappointed in that expectation. I kept on just to be doing something. There were more lists, an itinerary of the objects in the house (including various baby items like porringers and spoons, which meant that we had progressed to 1882 or 1883). I asked Mac when a baby would need those things, and he explained to me that they were probably presented at birth. He began to make a long explanation of when they were first used by a child and to deduce from that the most exact dating, but I gazed at him sternly. He sighed and returned to the business of reading.

  Among the order lists for a store in Boston and letters from stockbrokers in that city, I did find another note in Irene Callender Thiel’s slanted handwriting. It was a personal note, almost a love letter, and it seemed to me to match the earnest child’s face I had seen in the portrait at Mr. Callender’s house.

  Dan, [it began]

  I hope all goes well with Mr. Rogers. You will remember to thank Constance for me, especially for me? It may be that he will not like your pictures, or will not find them salable. But it is a great opportunity for you. You do not have to thank Constance for yourself if you don’t care to. She will understand. (You two do seem to have an excellent understanding.) Sometimes I wonder if she would not be a better wife for you, both of you knowing so surely what is right. I am a quieter creature, and so indecisive! My heart rules my head. Then I sit beside our child, who reaches out to me with such small hands . . . and I see in my memory your own hands, with the little fingers wrapped around yours . . . and I am confident, contented. Remember, the softest wool you can find (take Constance with you, you are too impatient to choose carefully enough) and the most beautiful toy, if you insist on it. I know you, you will insist; but you must promise me to heed Constance’s advice, which will be good.

  The note was signed only “with love.” It was also, clearly, written with love. I was moved by it. The voice of the woman ten years dead was real in it. I felt a sense of grief, as if I had lost her myself.

  Mac distracted me by shoving a piece of paper before my eyes. “I can’t make any sense out of this, can you?” he asked.

  It was a rough-edged, irregular sheet, apparently scratch paper, filled with capital letters and arrows, separated into four sections.

  “It’s a geometry problem or something,” Mac said. “How can you spend a whole summer doing this kind of work?”

  I was studying the paper. “I think it’s the will,” I said. I was quite calm. Mac was not.

  “You think so? You really think so? You mean we did it? Jean, what’s the matter with you—you don’t even look pleased. It’s the will.” He seized the paper and took it to the window. His face fell. “It can’t be,” he said. “Wills are long and complicated.”

  “It’s an outline,” I explained patiently. “Look—LWT would be Last Will and Testament. The section headed P. would be private or perpetual or permanent or personal bequests. Something like that, because he must have had people or institutions he wanted to leave money to, servants or charities. This section leaves everything to Irene—she’d be Irene Thiel wouldn’t she? That’s IT, isn’t it? and something for J, that’s Joseph Callender; V, Victoria; B, Benjamin; and J.”

  “Two for Joseph?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Couldn’t it have been the initial of the child? Irene Thiel’s child?” Mac asked. “Lots of names begin with J, James, John, Janet, Jessica, you can spell Jeff with a J. What do you think EC means? with PC crossed out?” Mac went on.

  “PC has been added above in that section, see? maybe an allowance? Mr. Thiel said Mr. Callender had one.”

  I was still working my way through the initials, when Mac said, “I understand it.” He had been standing beside me while I followed the arrows through, decoding names, trying to make all the parts of each individual section clear.

  “Listen,” Mac said. “He left it to his daughter. If she died before him (which wasn’t likely, was it?), then the money would be split between the two families, with Mr. Thiel as trustee for all of it. See? So if his daughter was dead, then Mr. Callender got half in trust, so just the income, and this JT got the other half. If Mr. Callender died, his children got his half. So he left it to her first, then to the grandchildren. And if everybody died, he was going to give it to the institutions he had circled. I wonder how much there was. Don’t you?”

  Mac had grasped the major plan before I had begun to know it was there.

  “This,” he pointed to the bracketed section, “must be the terms of Irene Thiel’s will, which leaves everything to her child or—if the child is dead—to her brother. With no trustee.”

  I added a detail: “So that Mr. Callender is never a trustee and Mr. Thiel never inherits.”

  He nodded.

  “If that’s what it is,” I said, “then what happened? Mr. Callender, Josiah Callender, died. Irene inherited.” My finger traced this progress on the paper. “When she died, her child inherited.”

  “With Mr. Thiel as trustee,” Mac added.

  “And when the child disappeared?” I asked.

  “If he’s alive,” Mac thought aloud, “then he inherits it all. If he is dead, Mr. Callender does.”

  “And if nobody knows whether he’s alive or dead, then everything has to stay the same, doesn’t it?” I concluded. “Mr. Thiel has the money now, in a way. Because he is the trustee. So he’s inherited, or as good as.”

  “Yes,” Mac said. “But after a person has been missing for seven years you can have him declared legally dead. Why wouldn’t Mr. Thiel do that?”

  We were silent again. Mac started the next train of thought. “If Irene Thiel was murdered—it would be because the murderer wanted that second version of the will, where the fortune was split equally. If she was murdered, it would be because she was supposed to die before her father, and the money would be split between the two families, with Mr. Thiel in control of it.”

  “We haven’t solved anything, have we?” I realized. “We only have two real choices for people with motives; and they both profit from the second version of the will.”

  Mac looked at me: “I don’t know how you can be so cool-headed about this.”

  I wasn’t cool-headed, if he had known. My mind was in a turmoil. I was just holding onto what facts we had, as a drowning man must hold onto a life preserver.

  “Then,” I continued, “the real question isn’t about the death of Irene Thiel, it’s about the child. First, what happened to him? Second, why was no investigation made? Third, why wasn’t he declared legally dead?”

  Mrs. Bywall opened the door then, to announce lunch. “Mr. Thiel thought you would be staying,” she told Mac.

  “Y
es, thank you,” Mac said, with a glance at me out of the side of his eyes. He seemed embarrassed.

  “What have the two of you been doing here? You look like the cat that ate the canary, the both of you. Mr. Thiel is already at table,” she warned us.

  We returned the paper to its place in the pile. It had lain there so long unnoticed, I assumed it would be safe.

  Something, I thought to myself, should be safe. I did not feel safe. I was confused and disturbed. The nightmare seemed to be seeping over into the daylight hours: just beyond the edges of my vision, shadowy shapes moved, Irene Thiel, this child, the nurse into whose care Mr. Thiel had placed the child, Mr. Thiel himself as his wife wrote to him, Mr. Callender trying to hold his sister’s affections, and old Josiah Callender himself, trying to do the right thing with his fortune, who would perhaps have known his family best, who apparently trusted neither his son nor his son-in-law.

  That lunch was not a comfortable meal for me. Mac ate away as if nothing were wrong. Mr. Thiel was even more quiet than usual. I could not look at him, but could not look away. I wanted him to speak, to say anything, to convince me of the normality of things, but everytime he spoke I was thrown into a panic and could think of no reply. I ate little, and quickly.

  “Didn’t your aunt teach you the manners to clean your plate?” Mr. Thiel said.

  I glared at him. It was none of his business. “Won’t your mother worry if you aren’t home for lunch?” I asked Mac, ignoring Mr. Thiel.

  “Why should she? She knows where I am,” Mac answered.

  “How could she know you’d stay to lunch?” I insisted.

  “Well, she told me I could stay as long as I liked. She said she didn’t mind, for this while.”

  “So you’re here to keep an eye on me,” I said. He looked uncomfortable and his eyes turned to Mr. Thiel. For some reason, that made me angry. It was not just a foot-stamping anger, it was a hot, burning wrath. I looked at the two of them. Mr. Thiel was about to say something, I could tell. I didn’t wait to hear what it was.

  “I don’t need anybody to look after me,” I said coldly, to both of them. “Nobody looked after me before, did they? This sudden concern for my well-being—”