The Secret of the Missing Grave Page 3

  “Don’t you love the way I tell a story?” said Mrs. Carver dryly.

  Bean was wondering if Ab maybe had an imagination after all.

  “Am I right?” Abby begged eagerly.

  “As rain,” said Mrs. Carver.

  “The treasure,” Bean reminded her. “Can we get to it?”

  “I am getting to it,” his mother replied patiently. “Just a little more romance first.”

  Bean flexed his eyebrows, rested an elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, and settled in for the long haul.

  “As you might have guessed, Reuben and Rebecca ran away and got married, which made their fathers furious, so they disinherited them.”

  “What’s ‘disinherit’ mean?” asked Ab.

  Bean piped up excitedly. “That’s when they take a sword and rip open your belly and take your insides out.”

  “Ooh, gross,” said Ab.

  Mrs. Carver shook her head. “Not quite, Mr. Shakespeare,” she said. “‘Disinherit’ means that they were stricken from the wills.” Ab’s face didn’t register comprehension, so Mrs. Carver explained further. “People write up wills so that when they die, all of their possessions go to the people they choose.”

  “Like the melodeon,” said Bean.

  “That’s right.” Mrs. Carver turned to Ab. “When Bean’s great-gram Johnson died, she left us her old melodeon.”

  “What’s a melodeon?”

  “It’s a kind of organ that operates on air,” explained Mrs. Carver. “You push pedals that open and close bellows inside, which pushes air through reeds. I wish it was here, but it’s at my mother’s house.”

  “That melodeon’s over two hundred years old, and it’s been around the world three times in an old sailing ship,” Bean added.

  “Right,” said Ab condescendingly. “I’m sure it has.” She looked knowingly at Mrs. Carver.

  “This time he’s not exaggerating,” said Bean’s mom. “Bean’s great-grandmother’s father was the captain of the Barbara Day, out of Gloucester in the last century. He wanted his family to sail with him, and one of the inducements he used was the melodeon.”

  “Did it work?” asked Ab.

  “I guess so. They sailed with him ’til Gram J was full grown, at least three times around the world. After that, I’m not sure what happened. But the melodeon’s been passed down through the family ever since. Anyway, where was I?”

  “They were disinherited.”

  “Right. Reuben made his living at sea for a few years, also out of Gloucester, I think, while Rebecca kept house over in Owls Head where she could see the island. So, like many seamen’s wives, she didn’t see her husband but once or twice a year.

  “Nevertheless, they managed to have a daughter, whom they named Minerva. Reuben would send her dolls from the ports he’d visit on his travels around the world. But then, one day, the dolls stopped coming.”

  “Shipwreck?” asked Bean.

  Mrs. Carver shrugged. “Nobody knows. Reuben was never heard from again.”

  “Never?” said Ab.

  “Never,” Mrs. Carver replied, shaking her head.

  “What happened to Rebecca?” Ab wanted to know.

  “Well, she moved back to the island, into the cottage her grandmother had left her over on the creek—the little red one with the white trim where Litty Ames lives now. For a while Rebecca and Minerva seemed to get along fine. Rebecca’s granny had left her some jewelry as well, and they managed to live off that. But Rebecca developed the habit of walking alone out on the moors on Lane’s Island, usually early in the morning, even before the fishermen went out. Nobody knew it then, but that was the beginning of her madness.”

  “She went crazy?” said Bean.

  “To put it bluntly, yes.” Mrs. Carver replied. “But slowly. At first those few fishermen’s wives who ventured out on the moors early to pick berries while the dew was still on ’em would find Rebecca sitting on Daddy Lane’s Head, humming to herself.”

  Ab interrupted. “Daddy Lane’s Head?”

  “A little group of rocks that looks like a man’s face if you see it from a certain angle, and use your imagination,” said Mrs. Carver.

  “Which Ab doesn’t have,” stated Bean, though with less conviction than he’d have said it not long ago.

  “Bean,” Mrs. Carver said sharply, “that’s not nice. And it’s not true. Just because Ab’s imagination isn’t like yours doesn’t mean she hasn’t any. She does. It’s just different.”

  Ab stuck out her tongue at Bean, who reciprocated, with a smile.

  “Children,” said Mrs. Carver with a note of warning in her voice, “would you like me to finish the story later?”

  Abby sat up straight. “No, please! I’m sorry. Go ahead. Bean will behave himself.”

  Mrs. Carver cleared her throat in a meaningful way. “Yes. Well, what began as Rebecca’s gentle humming in time became an unearthly moan, punctuated by a chilling wail every now and then. Soon she just pined herself away and died of a broken heart. By that time she’d become sort of a legend. They called her the Widow of the Moors.”

  “I don’t think I like this story very much,” said Ab. “Everybody keeps dying. That’s no fair.”

  “That’s because it’s not make-believe, Ab,” Mrs. Carver explained gently, with a distant look in her eyes. “It’s real life, and real life isn’t fair.”

  “Still ... ”

  “Want me to continue?”

  Ab hung her head a little. She wasn’t sure she did want to hear the rest. “Does it have a happy ending?”

  “You’ll have to judge that for yourself,” said Mrs. Carver. “Besides, I’m not sure it has an ending yet.”

  “How can that be?” Bean objected.

  “Because it’s real life, and things that happen in real life have an effect on other people, sometimes many years later.”

  Ab wasn’t sure she understood, but she wanted to find out. “Okay,” she decided finally. “Carry on.”

  Mrs. Carver looked at Bean. “Okay?”

  “Heck, sure,” said Bean, with a good deal more confidence than he felt. “I got no problem.”

  “All right. Well, both Moses Webster and Isaiah Winthrop were somewhat shaken to their senses; at least that’s the way it seems. Each of them decided to take Minerva, who was no more than two or three at the time, into his home.

  “Of course, neither man would simply give in and let the other care for the child. In fact, the whole battle that followed had far less to do with Minerva than with the same foolish pride that had already destroyed their own children.”

  “What kind of battle?” said Bean, imagining at least a duel at sunrise.

  “A legal battle,” Mrs. Carver explained.

  Bean was visibly unimpressed. “Oh,” he replied flatly. Sometimes reality seemed such a waste of time.

  “They fought for years. Meanwhile, Minerva shared her time between the two of them—back and forth, back and forth, from season to season across the narrow lane that separated the two great houses. And each grandfather would try to win her affection with money, or dresses, or jewels, all the while berating the other grandfather to her.”

  “Berating?” said Ab.

  “Talkin’ trash about him,” Bean explained.

  Ab looked at Mrs. Carver for verification.

  Mrs. Carver nodded. “As a result, by the time Minerva was seventeen she had withdrawn into a world of her own, confining herself to the tower room of whichever house she was in, allowing only her trusted maid, Mary Olson—”

  “Like Katie Olson?” Bean interjected.

  “Katie’s great-great-grandmother,” Mrs. Carver affirmed with a nod. “Allowing only Mary Olson to serve her. Still, the grandfathers courted her affections with treasures, trinkets, and promises, for which she had no use.”

  “She wanted love,” Ab declared.

  “I think you’re right, Ab,” agreed Mrs. Carver. “Don’t roll your eyes like that, Bean. They’ll go back into
your head and never come out again.”

  Bean’s mother continued. “Finally, Mr. Winthrop died. As if to get in the last word, he gave all of his fortune and houses and businesses to his granddaughter.”

  “When was that?” asked Ab. Dates helped her keep track of things in her mind.

  “Late 1800s,” said Mrs. Carver. “Mr. Webster seemed to take exception to the fact that Isaiah Winthrop had beaten him to the grave, so he followed a few weeks later. Apparently he meant to deal with the situation in the next life. He, too, left his vast fortune in Minerva’s hands.”

  “She must have been some rich, huh?” said Bean. “That’s lucky.”

  “Oh, she was rich, all right,” said his mother. “But lucky? I’m not so sure.”

  Ab cringed. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Mrs. Carver continued. “Whether from years of habit or a kind of madness, I can’t say, Minerva kept the same schedule she always had, moving back and forth from Moses’s house to Isaiah’s house—spring and fall at Isaiah’s, winter and summer at Moses’s.”

  “Weird,” Bean observed grimly.

  “Even after she got married?” Ab asked.

  “She never got married. And she hardly ever went outdoors, except to cross from one house to the other, as far as I know, though there are stories that she wandered the streets late at night, dressed in black with her face veiled. That would have made her her mother’s daughter, all right. But I don’t think that part of the story holds much water.”

  “Double weird,” Bean proclaimed.

  “She had a number of servants, but the only one who saw her on a regular basi s was Mary Olson. And Miss Minerva still kept herself to the two little tower rooms.”

  “Even with two great big houses?” Ab cried in disbelief.

  “Mmm. And she’d conduct business from there—through Mary, of course. She never spoke to anyone else directly, not ’til the end. But it seems she had a good head for business. The quarries did well right up until concrete took the place of granite as the building material of choice, just before the Depression. Then she plowed her fortunes into the fish factory, and that was still going strong when I was a little girl.”

  “She was still alive then?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Carver quickly. “I’m not quite that old. No. She sold the factory toward the end of her life. Closed the quarries and consolidated her fortune.”

  “That means she got it all together in one place, doesn’t it?” asked Ab.

  “Exactly right,” Mrs. Carver replied. “And this is where the story gets really interesting.”

  “’Bout time,” Bean grumbled, although he was actually spell-bound by the tale.

  “I said Minerva kept herself to the tower rooms; that’s not entirely true. A year or two before she closed the quarry, she had two stone-cutters come to the Moses Webster House; one was Italian and the other Swedish. There were a lot of Italians and Swedes working the quarries in those days. The odd thing was, these two men moved in, lock, stock, and barrel. The last that was seen of them, about two or three months later, was when Mary Olson took them down to the steamer ferry in Miss Minerva’s best black carriage, pulled by four black horses in mourning.”

  “Mourning? What does that mean?”

  “They were decked out as they would be for a funeral,” said Bean.

  “Spooky.”

  “That’s not all,” Mrs. Carver continued. “They were both dressed to the nines in top hats and tails of the finest silk. Mind you, these were men who’d probably never felt anything next to their skin but wool and burlap. But be that as it may. They got on the boat, and, according to postcards mailed from Boston about a week later, they were shipping out to the old countries. Then pffft, that was the last that was heard of them.”

  “Then what?” Bean inquired a little more breathlessly than he’d meant to.

  “Then,” said Mrs. Carver, lowering her voice theatrically, “the strangest thing of all. Packages began arriving from all around the world—day after day, week after week, from China, California, Greece, Italy, Spain, Russia, Persia, Patagonia—everywhere. Literally hundreds of these little bundles over the course of three or four years, all delivered to the docks by ships sailing from the four winds. They were picked up by faithful old Mary Olson and delivered to Miss Minerva in one of her little tower rooms.”

  “What was in them?” said Bean, nearly crawling out of his skin.

  “Nobody knows.”

  “No,” said Bean, “I mean at the end of the story, when she died. Somebody must have gone in and found all those boxes.”

  “Oh, they did,” said Mrs. Carver with a little twinkle.

  “Then, what was in them?” chorused Bean and Ab.

  Mrs. Carver waited a little longer than necessary before she answered. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” said Bean and Ab, looking wide eyed at each other, then at Mrs. Carver.

  “Nothing,” she repeated. “Mind you,” she added, opening the oven door, seeing the golden crust. and removing the pie, “there had been something in them. Mary Olson swore to that. Nothing very heavy, but something.”

  “Treasure,” Bean said with a sigh.

  “Treasure!” Ab echoed.

  Mrs. Carver’s head tilted indecisively. “Anyway, about the time the boxes started coming, Mary Olson began hearing footsteps on the stairs in the dead of night. One night she mustered enough courage to go find out who—”

  “Or what,” Bean interjected quickly.

  “ ... was walking around that time of night. What do you think she saw?”

  “Miss Minerva,” Ab speculated breathlessly.

  “None other.”

  “What was she doing?” asked Bean.

  “Carrying a bundle down to the cellar. Nobody knows what was in it,” Mrs. Carver added quickly in response to the question aborning in Bean’s eyes. “But whatever it was, it was wrapped in blankets, and she was cradling it like a baby in her arms, and singing to it.

  “What kind of treasure would she be singing to?” Bean mused aloud.

  Mrs. Carver continued without answering. “Mary waited in her room, with the door cracked just far enough to see, until Miss Minerva came creaking up the stairs again, empty handed.”

  Mrs. Carver paused for breath. This time she wasn’t interrupted. Bean and Ab were totally mystified, and looked it. She took some little satisfaction at having shocked even Bean to silence for once, however briefly.

  She continued. “Whenever a package would come, this went on, night after night. Then came the oddest thing of all.”

  Ab didn’t think that anything odder than this was possible.

  “As time passed, fewer and fewer packages came until, finally, they stopped altogether. Then, one day, Miss Minerva sent Mary Olson out on an errand. A wild-goose chase, Mary called it. And while Mary was gone, Miss Minerva dismissed the other servants, all of whom found a generous bonus in their pay packets that month. When Mary returned, Miss Minerva was gone, too.

  “Gone,” Mrs. Carver repeated. “Without a trace. Nothing else was missing—no clothes, no food, no valuables. Nothing.”

  “Where did they find her?” asked Bean with trepidation, as if he had an idea of the answer.

  “They never did.” Mrs. Carver stood up and carried the pie to the counter.

  “I knew she was going to say that,” commented Bean.

  “How do you know all this?” Ab inquired.

  “Hearsay, mostly,” said Mrs. Carver. Scent-laden steam curled from the pie as she cut it and the blueberry filling oozed out. “Seems Rebecca had kept a diary, which Minerva took over at some point—so both their stories were there in the same book. I think that’s kind of poetic.” A quick scan of her listeners’ faces revealed that they didn’t share her sentiment. “All right. Well, that diary constituted pretty much all of Minerva’s reading. Many times she’d have Mary sit in the corner doing her knitting and mending while she read passages out loud. After a while, M
ary knew long stretches of the diary by heart. Of course, the rest of the story she could fill in herself.”

  “And she told someone else ... ,” ventured Ab.

  “Who told someone else, who told someone else,” said Mrs. Carver. “And the story became part of island legend.”

  “I bet she was hiding some kind of treasure in the tunnel,” Bean speculated. “That’s why she had workmen at the house.”

  “Of course, that’s what most people deduced,” said Mrs. Carver. “Which is why we used to go looking for the tunnel when I was a kid and the house was empty.”

  “Who inherited all her money?” asked Bean, cutting to what he considered the core of the matter.

  “There wasn’t any,” said Mrs. Carver. “By the time she disappeared, she’d sold all the property. Even the houses were sold, with the new owners agreeing not to take possession until her death, or disappearance .”

  Ab was getting frustrated. “But the money had to go somewhere,” she interrupted.

  “Well, it turns out she spent it all on whatever was in those boxes. She spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  “Maybe it was jewelry,” Ab suggested. “That wouldn’t have been too heavy.”

  “Maybe she didn’t bury it in the tunnel. Maybe she left the island and took it with her,” Bean added.

  Ab picked up on the thread. “Maybe she moved to Europe with all her money and married a duke who was bankrupt but very much in love with her and—”

  “Oh, please,” Bean sighed, then asked indignantly, “Why haven’t I ever heard this story?”

  Mrs. Carver thought a moment. “You’d never have listened before,” she said softly. “Too much romance.” She sliced three juicy pieces from the warm pie.

  “Who found the diary?” Ab asked.

  “No one ever has,” Mrs. Carver replied. “All we have to go on is Mary Olson’s word that any of it is true—and she’s been dead over eighty years. Of course, people always felt she knew more than she told, but one thing no one doubted—she was as loyal as the day is long. She’d have done anything for Miss Minerva.”

  “But she could have made it all up?” Abby said with alarm, bouncing to her feet.