Chapter 7
Paint blobbed on the paper in front of me. I cursed and blotted at it, trying to stop it from running into the part that I’d already completed and ruining all my hard work.
My attempts were only partially successful. The first wash hadn’t been completely dry and so it had sucked pigment from the fly’s body into the head, turning the carefully rendered eyes into muddy pools.
I flung the damp blotter away and rubbed my face. It was one of those mornings when nothing seemed to be going right. I could not settle at anything and my thoughts ran in all directions, like a flock of pigeons scattered by a dog.
There was no mystery as to why, of course. I could not stop thinking about Halder’s trip to the woods last night. I had never seen the man leave his room before, let alone go tromping through the woods. And what was that building he had visited? And why?
Curiosity had not so much seized me as engulfed me utterly, like a Venus flytrap closing on a small winged morsel. Enough. Halder will get his painting a day late. I’m taking a walk.
I snatched up a sketchbook and a pencil so that I could at least pretend to be working and stalked out of the room.
My spirits lifted once I was in the woods.
I named each tree to myself as I passed it—Quercus alba, Fagus grandifolia, Cercis canadensis, Pinus taeda—and felt as if I were walking among friends.
Sun turned their leaves to hot green stained glass.
The early morning had been cool and humid and the afternoon looked to be warm and humid, to the surprise of no one.
I told myself that I was going to the stream to sketch. That I happened to be following the same route that Halder had taken last night was purely coincidental. It was on the way to the stream, that was all.
It was certainly even more of a coincidence when I saw the outline of a small building in front of me. “Goodness,” I said aloud, as if I were in a play and an audience might be watching me. “What have we here?”
It was rather odder in daylight than it had been at night.
I had thought that it was the size of a well house, but when I circled around it, I saw that it was longer than I had thought.
The roof sloped sharply downward in back, giving the whole building the aspect of a triangle, like a slice of cake laid on its side.
The walls had been tightly caulked and there were no windows, but the strangest thing was definitely the door.
It was made of metal and I could not see any hinges.
In fact, when I approached, I realized that it had been framed with metal as well, even the bottom, which extended a good six inches up from the ground, like the door of a ship.
I walked around it twice, baffled. It reminded me of a bank vault, except that it was secured with a large steel padlock.
If Halder was keeping pornographic etchings in it, he was taking no chances with thieves.
It can’t be a still, there’s no chimney.
And if it’s a garden shed, it’s awfully far from a garden.
I was just about to make a third circuit around the building when a man’s voice barked, “Get back from there!”
I let out a yelp and spun around, my heart pounding.
Asa Phelps stalked out of the woods toward me and I exhaled with a whoosh. “Good heavens, Mr. Phelps, you scared the life from me.” I put a hand to my chest.
His brow was furrowed and he scowled fiercely at me. “You shouldn’t be here,” he informed me.
“I’m not here,” I said, nonsensically. “I mean, obviously I’m here, but I didn’t come here deliberately. I was going to the stream and I saw this odd little … shed. Building.”
Phelps’s scowl lessened slightly. “The stream?”
“Yes?” I held up my sketchbook. “I was going there to draw. I thought there might be some interesting insects.”
His face cleared. “Ah. Insects. Yes.”
“I promise I’ll be back well before dark,” I added. “I remember what you said.” And thought it was a load of nonsense, but never mind that.
Phelps nodded sharply. “Good.”
“But what is this building?” I asked. “It’s so oddly constructed.”
The scowl did not quite return, but I could definitely feel it lurking. He looked reluctant to answer at all, looking from me to the shed and back again. Finally he muttered, “It’s for gunpowder.”
“Gunpowder?”
“And blasting supplies. Can’t store it up by the house.”
“Ohhhh…” I slapped my forehead. “Of course. And you wouldn’t want it to get wet … yes, of course.” I gave him my best smile. “I would never have thought of that.”
He folded his arms and stared at the ground. “You should stay clear of it,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
“No, of course not, Mr. Phelps. I shall keep that in mind in the future.”
He grunted, still gazing at the ground as if it required intense concentration.
“Well,” I said, when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to either elaborate or leave. “It was lovely running into you. I’m going to go sketch some insects.”
He touched the brim of his hat but didn’t meet my eyes. “Miss Wilson.”
I ambled toward the stream, swinging my arms like someone with nothing more on their mind than sketching. I only glanced back once, to see that Phelps hadn’t moved.
Gunpowder. It made perfect sense. Except why would a reclusive collector of insect carcasses have that much gunpowder to begin with? And what was he doing in the middle of the night—reading it a bedtime story?
I reached the stream, selected a rock, and sat down. The water flowed by, the sun sparkled off it, and dragonflies hummed and zipped over the molten surface. My sketchbook was open, but my pencil didn’t move at all.
What had Phelps been doing here? I didn’t think he lived nearby. He’d said that Halder’s place was only “more or less” on his way. So why was he on Halder’s property at all?
Halder doing something odd didn’t surprise me.
Naturalists are inherently odd. My father used to make up songs to sing to his pitcher plants.
But Asa Phelps had been lying to me, I was certain of it.
He was not a terribly good liar. He hadn’t been able to meet my eyes when he did it.
I was guessing he did not have much practice in the art.
What the devil is really in that shed?
There was a light in the woods again that night. I didn’t follow it, but I sat up, waiting to see where it would go.
It vanished into the trees in the direction of the gunpowder shed. I lit a match and checked the wall clock, curious as to how long Halder would take this time, then snuffed the candle out again.
Not very long at all, as it turned out. I expected Halder to go around the side of the house again, but to my surprise, the light turned the opposite way, skirted the edge of the clearing, and went south.
I lit another match once the light was gone.
Eleven minutes. Halder had not stayed long, if he had gone to the shed at all.
Well, that was peculiar, but it was still none of my affair.
Phelps had definitely been lying to me, but that did not mean that there was some great mystery afoot.
It was pure curiosity that motivated me, and however valuable curiosity was for a naturalist, I couldn’t allow it to jeopardize my work.
A job like this came along once in a decade, if I was lucky.
I turned away from the window, padding on bare feet back to my bed, and threw one last glance over my shoulder.
The light had returned. It was going back the way it had come, along the edge of the clearing, toward the shed again.
No, I told myself firmly. It is not my business. Leave it alone.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, determined to sleep. I had almost succeeded when I heard the distant thud of the front door slamming shut, as Halder returned at last.
Feeling both frustrated with myself and resigned to my own folly, I lit a match and checked the clock.
Whatever he’d been doing in the woods had taken him thirty-eight minutes.
“The damnedest thing,” said Mrs. Kent the next morning as I came into the kitchen. She bobbed her head at me in acknowledgment, but didn’t stop talking. “One of the hens missing like that.”
“Huh,” said Jackson.
I sat down and helped myself to biscuits. “You lost a hen?”
“My best layer too.” Mrs. Kent pulled a face.
“Fox?” I hazarded. “Raccoon?”
“No, that’s the strange part. She was inside the coop last night.
I check on ’em myself every night before I go to bed, and she was asleep in the nest box.
I know because I had to reach under her to grab the eggs, and she wasn’t best pleased about it.
” Jackson passed the coffee over and I poured out a cup gratefully.
Mrs. Kent pursed her lips, looking more annoyed than I’d ever seen her look.
“I’m not saying one couldn’t get into the coop, mind, but if they do, they sure don’t take one hen and go back out again. ”
“Fox gets in the coop, it’s a regular massacre,” Jackson agreed.
“So I’m stumped,” Mrs. Kent said. “She was just gone. And no feathers either.”
That did surprise me. Even with my limited knowledge of chickens, I knew that if a predator grabbed one, it looked like a pillow exploded.
“Could it have been a thief?” I asked tentatively.
Mrs. Kent sighed heavily and slumped back in her chair. “Don’t like to think that, but it could be. Can’t imagine any of the neighbors would stoop to stealing chickens though.”
“Might’ve been a tramp,” Jackson offered. “Somebody just passing through.”
“S’pose it could be.” She stared broodingly into her coffee. “My best layer. How do they always know?”
I wondered for half a moment if Halder might have been responsible.
The light had gone in the general direction of the Kents’ house and the chicken coop.
But I had a hard time imagining Halder stealing chickens—and anyway, they were probably technically his chickens, so why would he go skulking around at night after one?
“I could get a lock for the henhouse,” said Jackson.