“What do you think, Grace?”
Grace stood wide-eyed. “Oh, my, Rosamund. Oh, yes. Yes, we must have one.”
—
Through a daze of fatigue, Flora chewed toast. The kitchen window was propped open and she could hear the liquid burble of what she had learned were the first birds to return to the north country, red-winged blackbirds. Sun loomed behind a thin veil of clouds, although snowflakes fell like remnants of plenty.
Ellen was avidly following another murder trial in the Daily Telegraph, reading bits out loud, ruminating about the details as she stirred puddings or kneaded bread; but it was not as satisfying as the axe murder. A man had sent poisoned chocolates to prominent St. John businessmen, including a clergyman whose wife had opened the package, eaten the candy, and died.
“Serves her right,” Ellen said. She sat at the table, leaning on her elbows, the newspaper stained with blueberry preserves. “Greedy thing.”
“Chocolate, Ellen.”
Ellen half closed her eyes, shrugging, absorbed in the paper. She cut no slack for women she considered pampered or spoiled.
Still no letter arrived from Nova Scotia. With difficulty, Flora had located Black Creek on a map. Halifax, Pictou and New Glasgow were large dots along the road’s twisting thread, their names printed in bold, black ink, but Black Creek was printed in pale, spidery font, like flakes of pepper. Mr. Fairweather would need to take several trains, spend a night, or even two nights, then hire a carriage. No date had been set for his journey since Permelia forestalled it, listing the state of the roads—pure gumbo at this time of year—and when that danger had passed, making fresh excuses: their daughters’ dances, plays, recitals, her own health, Harland’s obligations.
At the root of it, Flora thought, buttering another piece of toast, was Permelia’s sense that the journey was another one of Harland’s ridiculous notions, the way he had quit his position of Overseer for the sake of some pauper children. Increasingly, an idea nudged Flora like a cold snout—she must undertake the search on her own. She pondered, spreading blueberry jam on her toast: she could slip away without telling anyone, leaving a note; better yet, confide in Josephine, seek advice and help—but there was so much work on these lengthening spring days that she was exhausted by nighttime and had to force herself to sit down with her books and had neither time nor energy to plan such an overwhelming project.
“Listen to them blackbirds,” Flora murmured, sending her toast down with a swallow of tea. “Those blackbirds, I mean.”
“Now the axe murder,” Ellen continued, as if she had not heard. “That was a thing to read, now. Did the accused leave the gate open or shut. Oh, first he said one thing and then another. First he says when he left the house his clothes were hanging on a hook. Then someone else says they saw the clothes on the floor. Every single thing on her dresser, I can see it all. A reel of white cotton thread, a fine comb…Even the print over the bed, St. Patrick in the robes of a bishop. Oh, I can see it all. And the blood. Nearly a large pailful, do you remember? Mr. Dougan loved that part the reporter wrote, something about Shakespeare, oh, you know, like how he must have seen some such tragedy to have had Lady Macbeth say her piece: Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Flora watched her, both hands on her teacup. Ellen missed not only the daily drama of the axe murder, but Mr. Dougan. The story had bonded them in anticipation, like one of Charles Dickens’s serials.
Ellen sat back and swept closed the newspaper. She ran her hand along the fold, creasing it; smoothed the pages, like a pillow, with a brisk stroke. Straightening, hand to back, she set the newspaper on the table beside Josephine’s chair.
“And what are you about today?” she asked Flora. Sharp, with a worrisome cognizance.
Everyone, Josephine, Maud, the boarders, knew that Mr. Tuck was building a replication of Hilltop. No one could quite believe that he would be up to the task and yet, intrigued, they had clamoured to see his drawings, which he spread out on the parlour floor. He held a new status in the household, as if, consorting with the sisters, he was dusted like a bee with the pollen of superiority. Flora kept the money Mr. Tuck paid her in a sock, beneath a loose floorboard in her bedroom. He had forbidden her to deposit it in the bank. After every payment, she lifted the board, slid coins or notes into the sock, hefted it in her hand, pushed it back into the dusty darkness.
Flora sipped her tea. She was determined that one day she and Enid would no longer work in someone else’s house but would have one of their own, with white-painted shingles, a yard with raspberry canes and a vegetable garden. A chicken house would be concealed by red rambling roses, like the ones hiding Hilltop’s laundry yard. Enid would work in the office of the boot and shoe factory; she herself would be in charge of the women working at Mr. Tuck’s miniature house factory. She pictured a summer’s afternoon, Enid coming up the path to their house, chin raised, shoulders back, accustomed to the need for courage.
“Josephine was blessed the day the likes of you walked in her door.”
Startled, Flora looked up. Ellen was looking at her, fondly.
“It was me was blessed. What if that man at the auction had got me? He was enormous. He had a big, nasty fat face. Mr. Fairweather slammed down his gavel before the bidding had ended.”
“Disgusting, now. That you should even have such things in your brain. That our Flora should have sat there in front of all them men.” Ellen dug in the flour crock with a scoop. It made a dry scrape. “You working on that little
