From the previous part:
That night, Trixie got down to the task of going through the items left by the Henley family. Several times she got sidetracked, rereading items that interested her, but in no way related to the enquiry at hand. As a result, she stayed up late into the night, long after Jim had retired for the evening. Midnight had already passed by the time she found the letters from Alma.
“Bingo!” she whispered into the stillness around her. “I just knew it was her. Now, what can she tell me?”
Part Four
The letters ranged over many decades and were in no particular order, making Trixie’s job rather difficult. Worse, they did not seem to represent all of the correspondence. Some letters had been kept and others had not. It also seemed that the two sometimes saw each other, so that even if all of the letters had been present, they might not have made sense.
In spite of the difficulties, Trixie persevered and by the time one o’clock struck she had begun to develop a sense of Alma’s character and her relationship with Mrs. Henley. It was also abundantly clear that Mrs. Henley had been Ethel’s friend at first and had only become friendly with Alma as a result of her sister’s death. Little hints were evident, here and there, as to the secrets that the two shared. The only tangible one that Trixie could take hold of dated to 1920 and coincided with the Henley family’s suppressed scandal.
‘My dear,’ Alma had written. ‘I am so glad that matters have resolved as well as they have. I was very worried for you and yours, as you will well understand. You can rely on me never to breathe a word.’
Trixie sat and examined that letter for a long time, noting the creases and stains. Years before, she had read another letter concerning the birth of Miss Henley’s sister’s baby. It, too, had shown signs of the emotions of its recipient.
Setting it aside, she examined the rest once more, but could not draw out any further meaning. She set these aside and began looking at the next bundle. Half an hour later, having found nothing more, her eyelids began to droop and she called it a night. She left all of the papers strewn across the dining room table, just as they were.
“You were up rather late,” Jim noted, as Trixie shuffled through the dining room the next morning. “I didn’t even stir when you came up.”
“No, you were snoring like a buzz saw,” she teased, around a yawn.
He gave a good-natured shrug and turned back to the document in front of him. “Well, this is quite a find. I can see why you wouldn’t want to leave it for mere sleep.”
“I wouldn’t… what?” she asked, stumbling over the words. “What is a find?”
Jim looked from the document to his wife and back again. “You mean, you didn’t see this?”
She shook her head. “I got sleepy and went to bed. What did I miss?”
“It’s a letter from someone called Alma to someone called May – though, I’m not sure who either of them was.” He shrugged. “Whoever they were, it seems to be about something they wanted to keep hushed up.”
Trixie leaned over to see it. “Alma was the youngest of the Brouwers; May was Miss Henley’s mother.” She frowned a little as she read, then her eyes widened. “I picked a terrible time to go to bed. Just look at this.”
‘Dear May,’ Alma had written. ‘Unhappily, things are not going well for my sister. After the sad event of last week, we had hoped that all would work out for the best. Instead, she is failing fast. We have had to have the doctor and he gives little hope of her recovery. You have been such a dear friend to her and I am sure that it would cheer poor Ethel to see you. Please come soon, if you intend to come at all.
‘Mother is beside herself with worry and grief. To have this happen so soon after Claude and Father left us is almost too much to bear, and with Betty working in the village, we are quite alone. Mr. and Mrs. Adams are still not on speaking terms with any of us, although why I cannot comprehend, and we have imposed upon the Beldens too much already to ask anything more.
‘Please, if you can find it in your heart to visit, make it soon. Ethel is feverish, but has her moments of awareness. She pleaded with me to write to you, as I cannot ask you in person. Mother, of course, has to stay and care for Ethel. I am trying to help as much as I can, but you know that is not much.
‘I am sorry to burden you with our troubles, but there are so few that I can trust. Already, cruel rumours are circulating. My poor sister is fortunate in that she cannot hear them.
‘Again, I beg you to come and see Ethel before it is too late.
‘Yours in haste, and please excuse my poor handwriting,
‘Alma.’
Trixie looked up at her husband in excitement. “This explains so much. The sad event might be the birth of a baby who died. I guess that would explain why they might have buried it – if that’s actually what they did – they thought Ethel was going to be okay and they could just cover up the scandal, but then she got sick afterwards.”
“I don’t think it’s a wise thing to do in any case,” Jim commented, grimacing. “I’m sure that even in those days you could get into an awful lot of trouble for that sort of thing.”
She nodded. “Probably, but they’re three women on their own, one of them a cripple, and they have no one to protect them, or provide for them, or tell them if they’re being ridiculous. You can kind of see how it would happen.” She peered at the letter some more. “It’s interesting the way she talks about her brother and her father – I guess that means she knew they were both dead.”
He did not look convinced. “Or, it could just be that they were both out of reach. There’s also the fact that they left her life at around the same time.”
“I guess. And we know that Alma didn’t bury anyone – she wasn’t physically capable.” She scanned down a little further. “It’s strange seeing ‘Belden’ in the letter. I guess my great-great-grandparents, or whoever lived at Crabapple Farm in those days, knew all of these people. And I wonder if those are the same Adamses as live in Goodwin Lane now.”
“That’s fairly likely, from what I can see.” He picked up the letter. “It seems some things haven’t changed: the Sleepyside rumour mill was alive and well back then, just like it is now.”
Trixie frowned. “Talking about people that way is such a horrible thing to do. I hope I’ll always remember not to say unkind things behind people’s backs. If I ever take up gossip, you’d better knock me on the head, or something.”
Dropping the letter back onto the table, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. “I think I could find better ways to keep you out of mischief than that.”
“You think?” She smiled up at him.
Jim smiled and kissed her. “Definitely.”
Over the next day or two, Trixie read through all of the papers she could find. Little in them related to her current research. The only relevant information she gained was from an unknown correspondent by the name of Jessie, in whose opinion Claude Brouwer was in competition for the affections of a certain young lady with another young man, whose name Trixie didn’t recognise.
A later letter from the same Jessie intimated that Claude’s attentions were unwelcome to the girl and something about the wording suggested to Trixie that the other man had met some terrible, but unnamed, fate. Jessie’s scathing comments left no doubt that she disapproved of Claude and his methods. Her sympathy lay with the other man and she made a remark about how glad she was that he had won out, which made no sense to Trixie.
She set aside the two letters, in the hope that they might help her later. At the very least, they gave some insight into Claude’s character and personal relationships.
A week later, Trixie arrived home from work to find an unfamiliar car parked in the yard. Instead of taking the fork in the drive that led to the back of the house where she usually kept her car, she eased onto the little-used circuit that passed the front door. There she saw Wendell Molinson on her doorstep talking to Jim.
“Did you want me?” she called, having pulled over near him.
“I did. I was just about to give up and try again tomorrow.”
She smiled. “Wait right there. I’ll park around the back and I’ll be with you in no time.”
He nodded his thanks and she drove on. A couple of minutes later, she entered the living room, where Jim had shown him to a seat.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
The police officer frowned and opened a file that he held. “I don’t suppose that I should be doing this, but since you can’t possibly be involved and you’ve actually been helpful for a change, not to mention the fact that there’s no way I can prosecute this…”
Trixie took the papers he held out and began to read. They contained a preliminary report on the excavation, all of its conclusions supporting the theory that Trixie had already advanced.
“You might be right about the identity of the body,” he told her, as she reached the end and looked up. “And you’ll see that you were right about the baby’s remains, too. You were also right about Trevor Stratton’s relationship to the property.”
She nodded, waiting.
The frown that had not left his face during their entire time together deepened. “I have also followed up the tip you gave me on Weiss. It looks as if it could be connected.”
“I thought so,” she agreed. “I pinned that one down a couple of days ago to almost the same time as Claude Brouwer disappeared. I couldn’t get an exact date, but Weiss must have skipped town within two weeks of the murder.”
“Oh, I can fit things much tighter than that,” he answered. “On October 17th, 1889, Claude Brouwer left his place of employment for the last time. He was a grocer’s assistant. The following morning, his father sent a note to the young man’s boss, saying that he had received a job offer from a cousin visiting from out west and had left at once to take it up. On October 18th, the grocer’s other assistant, Jacob Weiss, apparently took off with the day’s takings and a quantity of goods. A large account had been paid off that day, so it amounted to a considerable amount of money. On examination of the accounts, it was found that someone had been skimming off the top for a long time and it was almost certainly Weiss – though the Weiss family tried to blame Claude Brouwer.”
“And there was no trace of where Weiss had gone?” Trixie asked.
Molinson shook his head. “None. Nor was there any trace of where Brouwer had gone by the time anyone looked. According to the file, the whole town was awash with rumours in the days that followed about what had happened – including ones that Brouwer and Weiss were in it together, or that they had had a falling out and one had killed the other. On October 25th, someone on Goodwin Lane reported that they had heard raised voices and gun shots about a week prior, but could not pin down which day these had occurred. They thought it was probably the Thursday evening, which was the 17th,, or the Friday evening, the 18th.”
“Sounds pretty suggestive,” Trixie answered.
“Yes, it is. There’s not much evidence, however.”
“What about the later sighting that the newspaper mentioned? Was that real?”
He nodded. “It was. The man who had been the grocer travelled to Albany in 1912 and met a man calling himself Jack White, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Jacob Weiss. By the time he could convince anyone to believe him, the man had skipped out. Efforts to trace him yielded exactly nothing.”
“He probably changed his name again,” Trixie surmised. “What about his family? Didn’t they live here, too?”
“They did. They showed no sign that they had ever heard of him again, but that might have been pretence, of course. They were all gone from here by the mid-1920s – either dying, or moving away.” He looked away. “This whole thing is academic at this point. I don’t want to be wasting time on an investigation that has no possibility of an arrest. They’re all long dead.”
Trixie looked at him for a long moment. “But you want to know what happened.”
“I do.” The admission was ground out between his teeth. “I want to know if Weiss and Brouwer were in it together and who killed Brouwer – if that was Brouwer in the ground.”
She thought for a minute before giving a response. “We’re not going to be able to prove any of it. It’s going to come down to an educated guess.”
“I know that,” he grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I want you to look into it and see what you can dig up. The case is going to stay on file, of course, but I’m not assigning any resources to it. As soon as the final report comes in – provided it doesn’t contradict the conclusion that the remains are about a hundred years old – it’s going to become inactive. I want more – I want it personally, not in my official capacity.”
Trixie nodded. “Okay. I was fully intending to do that anyway and, if you’re so interested, I’m perfectly willing to share the results with you.”
“Thank you,” he answered, carefully returning the report to the folder and sliding it between his thigh and the armrest of the chair. “I would appreciate it, however, if you would conceal my interest. I don’t want it getting around that I encourage amateur detectives.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” she answered, grinning.
He gave one short nod. “There’s one other thing. While they were excavating the body, they found a medallion of some sort. It had a hole at the top, where a ribbon might have gone, but it was in a position that suggested it might have been in, say, a hip pocket. It’s too degraded to tell much else, but maybe you can make something of it.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
They both rose and she showed him out.
A few minutes later, when she returned to the living room, she found that he had left the folder behind.
“You’re not going to read that, are you?” Jim asked, from the doorway.
Trixie put on an angelic expression. “Me?” She picked it up and examined the cover. “Would I do something like that?”
Jim did not deign to answer.
Trixie flicked it open and began to read. “It’s not a police file. It’s a plain manila folder. The papers inside are photocopies.” She looked up at her husband. “He left this here on purpose.”
“If you’re sure…” He sighed. “It’s not like him to ask for help.”
“No,” she answered, slowly. “It also doesn’t seem like him to be worried about never solving a case, especially an impossible-to-prove one like this one.”
“You think there’s something more than what’s on the surface?”
She nodded. “Maybe. You can bet that I’m going to look for it, too.”
Jim sighed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Don’t worry so much, Jim. It’s going to be just fine.”
He shook his head and walked away, leaving her to examine the papers in peace.
On Saturday, Honey and Trixie met to work some more on the case. Trixie had, in the meantime, done some further research and had identified a number of leads to follow up. She presented her friend with a pile of papers to look over on the way.
“What’s all this?” Honey asked, eyeing the papers in surprise as she settled into the passenger seat of Trixie’s car. “Trixie, when do you have time to find all these things?”
The other young woman shrugged. “I had a slow week. And you know what my colleagues are like. They encouraged me to keep digging, while I had nothing much better to do. They even helped.”
Honey flicked over a page and drew her brows together. “What, exactly, is this?”
Trixie glanced over. “Oh, that’s a series of sketches one of the guys did, of his theory of what happened.”
“It’s got a kind of bear-thing,” she objected, “and a giant carrot wearing a hat.”
“I never said he was good at drawing,” Trixie answered, giggling. “He thought anthropomorphic carrots and bears were easier. The bear represents Claude Brouwer, by the way, and the carrot is Jacob Weiss.”
Honey frowned some more. “If I’m understanding this correctly, he’s suggesting that the bear and the carrot were in it together – and had been doing some things that bears and carrots don’t usually do together – but that the bear accidentally asphyxiated himself and that the family just buried him in the back yard to cover that up, though why they’d do that I can’t say, then the carrot took the money and skedaddled and both the bear family and the carrot family stood around whistling.”
“That just about sums it up,” Trixie agreed. “When he was telling it, it had a lot more sordid details. From what I can make out, it would have been every bit as big a scandal as my first theory on what Claude Brouwer had been up to.”
Honey shuddered. “Whatever it was, I don’t think I really want to know. Why are we investigating this again?”
“I don’t think we are investigating his sex life. Unless someone has written something down somewhere and we can actually find it, it’s probably not possible. I’m almost certain it’s not really relevant. And I’m absolutely certain we won’t find anything like that among the Henleys’ papers.”
Her friend raised an eyebrow. “But what about the baby?”
Trixie grimaced. “I’m pretty sure I was wrong about that. I found something that suggests a completely different father for it. See, there was this guy whose family had forced him to leave town sometime in the months after Ethel’s baby was probably conceived and he came back after more than a year away, hoping to see her, and no one had thought to tell him what had happened.”
“That’s terrible,” Honey murmured. “He must have felt awful.”
“Awful enough that it got into the social column in the newspaper. He probably felt worse after that happened.” Trixie pulled a face. “As if it wasn’t bad enough, without it being broadcast to the whole town. So, anyway, there was an obituary for him after he died and it mentioned his lifelong devotion to Ethel and how he continued to put flowers on her grave a couple of times a year for the rest of his life, even after he’d married someone else and had a family with her.”
“Well, I guess that’s sort of suggestive.”
Trixie nodded. “And he died late in 1960, so that’s another reason why the baby rumour might have been fresh in people’s minds in April of 1961.”
Honey looked out the window, frowning. “It’s strange the way the story keeps on coming back. I never would have guessed that the rumour about you was actually about something that really happened a hundred years ago.” She gave a start. “Trixie? Where are we going?”
“I was wondering when you’d ask that,” her friend replied. “First, we’re stopping in at the cemetery to see some graves. I called the people that handle the records and they’ve told me where to look, so I’m hoping it shouldn’t take too long.”
“Okay. And after that?”
Trixie hesitated. “I have kind of an idea. I’m not sure if it will work. Oh, look: we’re here.”
Honey closed her eyes and sighed, resigning herself to not having her question answered.
Ten minutes later, she was walking between the rows of graves and marvelling at just how difficult it was to find the ones they wanted.
“I know,” Trixie answered, when she vocalised the thought. “The first time I did something like this, I hadn’t bothered to find out where the graves were. I just kind of thought I’d walk in and find them, just like that. That graveyard wasn’t all that big and I still ended up wandering back and forth for what seemed like hours. This one isn’t much bigger, but I know better now.”
“Here,” Honey noted, a short time later. “This is them, isn’t it?”
The large headstone memorialised several members of the Brouwer family: the parents Joseph and Minnie, an infant son and their daughters Ethel and Alma. By the time that Alma’s name was added, there was little space remaining, so her inscription was very brief. Other adjacent graves were of members of the extended family. The family plot was surrounded by a low wrought iron fence.
“This is kind of depressing,” Honey murmured with a shiver. “A whole family, almost, and this is all that’s left to show they were ever alive.”
Trixie shook her head. “I’m sure there are lots of other things, if you knew where to look. No one vanishes without a trace.”
“I guess so, if you put it that way…” She sighed. “Is that all you wanted to see here?”
“No, I’ve got another few to find, for the Weiss family,” Trixie answered. “They should be over here.”
They wandered around for a little while longer until Trixie found what she was looking for. The headstones on this group of graves were smaller and plainer. At the base of some, smaller plaques had been added, decades more recently than the original graves.
“This is exactly what I was hoping for,” Trixie announced, with glee. “Just look at these. They can tell me so much more than the other ones.”
Honey stared down at the names and dates, frowning. “I don’t get it. What does it tell us?”
Her friend turned to her and began to explain. “To start with, these graves span more generations. The Brouwer family plot hasn’t been used since Alma died – though, maybe there’ve been burials but no headstones. The most recent one here is only about ten years old. The family must have known that this grave was here – look: the surnames are all different, but they knew anyway that it was their family.”
Honey gazed at the inscriptions for a moment, then turned back to Trixie. “You’re trying to trace the Weiss family, aren’t you?”
For a moment, Trixie did not answer. When she did speak, she kept her eyes on the grave. “Put it this way: I know what happened to the descendants of the Brouwer family – there’s not that many of them and they’re all connected to Principal Stratton. If Molinson is connected to someone in this case, it’s most likely someone in the Weiss family.”
Honey considered this for a short time. “It couldn’t be that he’s actually related to Principal Stratton?”
Trixie shook her head. “I already checked that out. His grandmother – Betty Brouwer, before she married – had only one child, who was Mr. Stratton’s father. He lived in Sleepyside all his life and only married once and had two children: a son and a daughter. The daughter lives in Croton-on-Hudson. They’re definitely not connected to Molinson.”
“So, the other option is that he’s connected to the grocer,” Honey suggested. “Any ideas on that?”
Once more, Trixie shook her head. “No descendants. No close relatives. Too long ago for anyone to remember him. He’s buried over there, somewhere, but there’s no headstone.”
“Which leaves the Weiss family.”
“Exactly,” Trixie answered. “And this is going to be a big help in tracking them down.”
“I suppose so. But how does this help us find out what happened a hundred years ago? Even if you do find some of the descendants, you can’t exactly knock on their door and say, ‘I was wondering if you could tell me whether your great-great-grandfather embezzled a whole lot of money?’ They probably wouldn’t know, and even if they did they wouldn’t tell you.”
“True. And I wasn’t thinking of knocking on any doors. I just wanted to know who they are.” She pulled out a notebook and began writing down what she saw on the headstones. “I need to know if I’m looking for the ones who stayed, or the ones who left.”
Honey frowned. “You mean the man who skipped town, who changed his name and who you think changed it again after he was recognised. How could you ever find his descendants, if he has any, when you don’t even know what name he had them under?”
“Okay, so I’ll admit it will be tricky–”
“Tricky!” Honey interrupted. “Trixie, it’s impossible.”
Her friend’s attention seemed to fix on the notebook, but she had stopped writing. “I don’t think it’s impossible. I think… I’m almost sure that I know the answer already.”
Honey fixed her with a cool stare. “How?”
Trixie hesitated for a moment. “I’ll show you when we get back to the car. I found it yesterday.”
After a short pause, Honey nodded. “Okay. Are you finished here, yet?”
“I just need to finish writing this down.”
A few minutes later, they returned to the car. Trixie flicked through the papers that she had given Honey earlier and brought one to the front.
“Read this,” she directed, “and I think you’ll see what I mean.”
As Trixie drove, Honey began to read the newspaper obituary for a man of whom she had never heard, a slight frown on her face. Partway through, her jaw dropped.
“How did you find this?” she demanded. “How did you even know to look?”
A pause ensued, as Trixie concentrated on changing lanes. “I kind of broke my own rule – the one about not consorting with gossips – and went looking for somewhere to start. Mr. Lytell told me about it.”
“Mr. Lytell told you how to find an obituary for Captain Molinson’s step-father?” Honey’s face showed her confusion.
Trixie shook her head. “Not exactly. He told me that Molinson had recently lost someone important to him, that the person had lived upstate and that there’d been an item about it in the Sun. So, I looked through back-issues of the Sun until I found it, and it told me the name of the town and an approximate date. Then, I called a friend who lives near there and she got me the copy of the obit.”
“Right.” Honey drew out the word. “So, you’re saying that this man – Bernard Wise – who also happens to have been Molinson’s step-father, is somehow connected to Jacob Weiss.”
“Yeah, I think so.” She made another turn. “From what I’ve been able to find out so far, Bernard Wise’s father was called Jacob Wise. He appears out of nowhere somewhere around 1915, with a wife and a bunch of kids. I’m guessing that Jacob Weiss became Jack White, who then became Jacob Wise.”
“I suppose you’ve researched the whole family by now,” Honey suggested, sounding more than a little put out.
Trixie let out a surprised laugh. “No. There hasn’t been time. Most of what I know comes from that page you have there.” Her expression became thoughtful. “I think that Bernard Wise was the main father-figure that Molinson had and that he recognised something to do with him in the file. I would guess that he probably knew Jacob Wise. The way that obituary reads, it seems like Bernard Wise absorbed Molinson’s mother and her children into his family when they got married. I haven’t tracked down when Jacob Wise died yet, but I’d guess he was probably still alive when Molinson was a child.”
Honey frowned. “Probably. But I don’t know how old Molinson is, or how old Jacob Weiss was when he left here, and I’ve forgotten how long ago that was.”
“There’s a timeline in the notes,” Trixie told her. “It’s hard to keep it all straight, isn’t it? I think I’ve been working on the assumption that Jacob Weiss was born somewhere in the second half of the 1860s.”
“So, he’s definitely not alive now,” Honey deduced.
“At about 130 years old? Definitely not.” Trixie’s brow creased. “If he lived to be seventy-five, he would have died about fifty-five years ago, which is probably too long ago for even Molinson to remember.”
“I don’t think he’d be more than about fifty-five himself,” Honey agreed. “Probably less, even. But, if he lived until his nineties, that would only be about forty years ago, which is much more likely for him to remember.”
“Or, I know! He might have inherited something.” Trixie brightened at the idea. “Maybe he’s got some item that gave him some sort of information.”
“Maybe, but I don’t see how it would help us. He won’t tell us anything, remember?”
Trixie slumped a little. “It’s a good working theory, though: that some belonging or knowledge in his possession caused him to believe that Jacob Wise and Jacob Weiss were the same person. I guess, if he did inherit something from Jacob Wise, even if it was indirectly, he might feel a bit sensitive about where it had come from and whether it was the proceeds of crime. That would be a bit sticky, considering his current position.”
Honey nodded. “And there’s the other half of the problem – with the body. He’d want to know if Jacob Wise had anything to do with the death.”
“That part kind of worries me. If, as I’ve been assuming, the body belongs to Claude Brouwer, and he died on the same night that he was last seen, that would mean that he was not the one who stole the day’s takings. The evidence at the time was absolutely clear on that point. He may have been involved in the embezzlement, but not in the final act.” She took a breath. “If, as I’ve also been assuming, he was shot by his father… well, it needs a really big motive. Most fathers don’t shoot their only surviving son without a really huge reason, do they?”
“I wouldn’t think so.” Honey’s face showed her distress at the idea. “Are you so sure that he did?”
“Not any more,” Trixie answered. “When I thought Claude had done something terrible to his sister, it was different, but now… well, I’m almost certain that Claude’s father buried him and covered up the murder – if that’s what it was – but I’m not sure now that he killed his son.”
Honey’s eyes widened. “If it wasn’t murder?”
“Claude might have killed himself,” Trixie conceded, “but I don’t know why. If he did… but it doesn’t really make sense, either. Why would they bury him if they didn’t kill him? And what about the argument that people nearby heard?”
“It really does make the most sense that it all happened within the family. They seem to have been a secretive bunch.”
Trixie nodded, a rueful expression on her face. “I talked a little to Principal Stratton. His grandmother never talked about her family and got upset if anyone tried to make her. He knew nothing about the old house, or her relations, or really anything connected, other than what he’d heard from outsiders.”
“And has it gotten into the rumour mill?”
Her friend grimaced. “There’s a rumour going around that makes all the others seem amateurish. It’s got bits and pieces of all the different stories muddled together, with a few invented bits thrown in and hints of some deed so terrible that it doesn’t bear mentioning. The gossipy old ladies are loving it.”
“It’s hard to imagine what could be so terrible as to not bear mentioning,” Honey mused. “Oh, I guess I could think of one or two things. Or maybe, six or seven. Okay, I think I’m finished imagining, now.” She shuddered. “Sometimes, I think my imagination is a little too good.”
Trixie smiled. “Just so long as you don’t take up gossip as a hobby. Some of those old ladies are vicious.”
Honey’s expression became grave. “I hope the Stratton family isn’t suffering too much for this. It’s kind of a pity that the body ever got discovered. It would have been better if it either happened right away, or waited another hundred years, or something.”
“What’s done is done.” Trixie gave a helpless shrug. “Right now, I’ve got to try to find out what really happened, before it gets any worse. Which is why we’re here.”
“Here? But where is here?” Honey wanted to know. She frowned. “Wait! We’re back near the library again. Haven’t we seen everything there is to see in that horrible reference room?”
“Actually, I was going to visit the Sleepyside Historical Society, but this was the nearest place to park. I’ve been thinking we should check some of the records in their archive room… but I’m not certain that they’ll have anything to help us.” She leaned into the back seat and gathered a few things together. “After that… well, if this is a no-go, at least, I hope, they’ll have some ideas on how to go forward.”
Honey nodded and got out of the car. She followed Trixie inside and listened to the conversation she had with someone working there, before descending into the archive room. Then came the process of going through the directories, indexes and other items that were retrieved for them.
“I keep getting distracted,” Trixie complained, some time later. “There’s plenty to read about my family, but the Brouwers don’t feature much at all.”
Honey agreed. “I haven’t seen a single reference to them at all. I’ve seen some for Adams – do you suppose it’s the same Adamses that still live near you? And I’ve even seen a Stratton, who is probably the same Stratton, I’d guess, and some for Belden – and I know your family has been there that long. And I just came across one for Henley.”
Trixie sighed and turned the page of the index book she was checking. “It’s almost like they didn’t exist – oh, wait! I think I spoke too soon. I think I’ve got something here.”
“Which one are you looking at?” Honey asked, leaning over to see.
“The funeral director’s. Here’s a list of Brouwer funerals, alphabetically. Alma in 1942, Ethel in 1890, Joseph in 1889 and Minnie in 1928.” She grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down the exact dates. “Ethel’s is not quite eight months after Joseph’s. I guess that means he didn’t know about the baby before he died.”
“Betty’s not there?”
“Of course not; her surname was Stratton. I’ll find her under ‘S’ most likely.” She turned the pages. “Yes, here she is in 1941. This other name is probably her husband.”
Honey’s brows creased together. “Are you going to look up all of the people involved in there?”
“I wasn’t thinking I would. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Honey leaned back a little. “So, does this really tell us anything?”
Trixie shrugged. “It’s an easy way to get the date that someone died. I think it’s kind of important in sorting out the relationship between Claude’s death, Joseph’s and Ethel’s.”
“We just got the same information off the headstone.”
“Almost the same information. For Ethel, the headstone only gave the year.” She paged through the index a little more and looked up some other names. “Well, I think that’s all I can get from this one. What else is left?”
“Not much,” Honey answered, handing her another index book. “I’m not sure it was worth coming here, really. We’re not any further forward than when we got here.”
Continue to part five.