The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery Read online

  I was still awake when the horn of the peanut train sounded its invitation to those people who were wanderers by nature to get out of their warm beds and hit the open road. Although this train went only about twenty miles, the sound hinted of other trains that traveled across the country. And across other countries. And then there were cars and airplanes. I was tempted to answer the call—and I would someday—but right now I had to stick it out here.

  CHAPTER 17

  I drove Sylvia to school and ate lunch with her and the other two members of our group, but I still had mixed feelings about it. By lunchtime, I had decided on at least a partial course of action. We had glibly called ourselves the freedom fighters, but I didn’t feel much like fighting for any principle right now.

  It was Sylvia who brought up Dr. Graves. “I haven’t been able to get anybody to say anything bad about Dr. G.”

  “You didn’t mention the catwalk incident, did you?” I asked.

  “I didn’t use those words—”

  “Good. I think we should drop the whole thing. We don’t want to start any nasty rumors, especially if they might be traced back to us.”

  “Are you having a change of heart, Gary?” Barney asked. “Getting cold feet maybe?”

  “I just don’t want to get kicked out of this school,” I said, deciding to be frank. “One a year is enough.”

  “Yeah, Gary’s probably right,” Ed said. “I talked to Ruth, and she didn’t know about any problems between Ralph and Dr. Graves. We have no reason to believe that he had anything to do with Ralph’s demise.”

  “Okay, maybe he didn’t,” Barney said, “but even if all he’s doing is taking innocent boys up on the catwalk, don’t you think it’s our duty to do something about it?”

  “We can’t prove it,” I said. “My contact’s not going to testify, and we haven’t found anybody else who will admit to doing it. I say drop it.”

  “I’d like to pursue it,” Barney said. “I’ve got some friends among the freshman boys.”

  Barney and I started to argue. We were getting louder and in danger of drawing attention to ourselves when Sylvia stopped us.

  She said, “Barney, you can only talk to the kids in a way that doesn’t sound negative. ‘How do you like Dr. Graves?’ not ‘Have you had any problems with Dr. Graves?’ And don’t mention the catwalk.”

  Barney promised he would be discreet. I wasn’t sure how discreet he could be, but I settled for that solution since my name would not be linked to anything he did.

  ***

  I went to the Drucquers’ house after school. They lived in a hovel a few miles from the farm. That’s the only way I can describe it. The small, one-story house had seen much better days. It was in disrepair and needed painting. The roof had missing shingles, and I saw a cracked window. However, the small yard was neatly kept. The lawn was mowed, and although no flowers were in bloom, the flower beds were free of weeds.

  The Drucquers had emigrated from England two years ago, a few years after the war ended. From the accounts I had read, most of the English were very poor after the war. Friends of ours had sent boxes of canned food to relatives in Liverpool. From the looks of the house and the clothes they wore, the Drucquers were still poor.

  The doorbell was hanging by a couple of wires, so I knocked on the front door. The screen door was missing altogether. Kate opened the main door and smiled at me. She was wearing her school clothes, a skirt and a blouse. Although the skirt didn’t hang quite right and was frayed at the bottom, and the blouse was a faded pink, I had to admit that she looked good.

  She said, “I’m glad you’re here, Gary. Eddie wouldn’t tell me anything until you got here.”

  She led me into a small living room filled with old, tattered furniture and called, “Eddie. Gary’s here.” She turned to me and said, “He won’t let me go into his room. Secret stuff. Right. I already know about those girlie magazines he buys.”

  I saw an old, elegantly framed photograph on the wall and wondered if the man and woman depicted were Drucquers. They looked at me, stiff and unsmiling, in their formal clothes. The woman’s dress came down to the floor.

  “Our great grandparents,” Ed said from behind me. “He’s the first cousin of your Thomas who came here to Carter and bought the farm.”

  “They don’t look like very fun-loving people,” I said.

  “The state of photography in those days was such that they had to hold their pose for several seconds. They couldn’t afford to smile.”

  When I turned around, Ed said, “We’re only renting this place. We’re going to buy a house soon.”

  It was sort of an apology.

  “Not soon enough,” Kate said. “I can’t bring any of my friends here. And we don’t even have a telly, er, television set.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, feeling embarrassed for them. “Neither do Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Jeff.”

  “But at least they’ve got a big house,” Kate said. “And the barn. I hope we get to play in the barn again soon.”

  She smiled at me, and I was sure her words had a double meaning. I hoped that Ed didn’t notice.

  “Sit down,” Ed said, placing a binder on a scratched coffee table in front of a badly recovered couch. He sat down on the couch.

  Kate sat on one side of Ed, and I sat on the other.

  “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  “She’s at work,” Kate said. “She works at the general store in Carter Center. She’ll be home in an hour.”

  “What does your dad do?” It was an innocent question, but neither of them answered immediately.

  After a pause, Ed said, “He works in the gypsum plant.”

  The plant was alongside the peanut railroad, not far from this house. Ed didn’t elaborate on the type of work he did, and I decided it wasn’t a good idea to ask any more questions.

  Ed opened the three-ring binder to a sheet of ruled, notebook paper, like the kind we used in school. It was written on in pencil, and I got a quick look at a drawing that might be a map. Then Ed quickly turned the page so that we could only see the back of the sheet, which was blank.

  Ed said, “After Ralph died, Cousin Dorothy asked me to go through his possessions and see if there was anything I wanted. I took some books, an archery set, and a few other things. I took this binder, because I thought it might contain some notes from his classes that I could use. Later, when I went through it, I discovered this.”

  “What does it say,” Kate asked, breathlessly. “I couldn’t read it.”

  “I’ll tell you what it says. It refers to the necklace by the letter N. It says it’s in a blue box hidden in the northwest corner of the hayloft. And there’s a map. That corner is currently inaccessible because of the hay bales.”

  “So he hid it when the bales weren’t there,” Kate said.

  “The bales were put in last fall,” I said. “A year ago.”

  “So he did it before that.”

  Ed said, “I assume he found a hole in the corner of the hayloft to hide the box in, so that the farmer wouldn’t find it. I found some cracks along other parts of the wall that might be big enough to hide something.”

  So that’s why he had been nosing around.

  “We won’t know until the hay bales are gone,” Kate said.

  “How do you know that N refers to the necklace?” I asked, reaching for the paper. I wanted to see the writing.

  Ed closed the notebook and said, “Sorry, but I think I should be the only one to handle it. After all, this is evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Evidence that Ralph stole the necklace from his parents.”

  Kate gasped, and I said, “Do you really believe that? First of all, what makes you think that Aunt Dorothy ever had the necklace?”

  “What else can we believe? The rumor is that her ancestor, Thomas, brought it to America. Now we see that it must be true.”

  “We won’t know that until we can look for the necklace. Which
might not be until next spring.”

  “Can’t we ask Cousin Dorothy about it?” Kate asked.

  “Not advisable,” Ed said. “If she kept it a secret this long, she wouldn’t admit to having it now. If she had hidden it somewhere else, herself, she may not even know it’s missing. And we don’t want to have to tell her that Ralph was a thief unless we can prove it. She will not take kindly to it. It is in our best interest not to say anything to anybody until we find it.”

  “What do you think Ralph was going to do with it?”

  “What else? Sell it and keep the money. He was probably just waiting until he was older and could get away with it.”

  “I don’t believe Ralph was a thief,” I said.

  “The proof of the pudding will be when we find the necklace.”

  “So why are you telling Kate and me about it?” I asked, cynically. “Why not find it and keep the money for yourself?”

  “I am shocked that you would say that,” Ed said in his best English accent. “Of course, we will split the money among the three families. I am letting you two in on it, because it is too big a burden for me to carry by myself. But for reasons already stated, I believe we should not tell the grownups.”

  “So we can’t actually look for the necklace until spring,” Kate said. She sounded disappointed.

  “Another secret to keep,” I grumbled. “I’m not promising anything.”

  “But I know you don’t want to hurt Cousin Dorothy, unnecessarily,” Ed said, soothingly.

  I was between a rock and a hard place. I grudgingly accepted the need for secrecy. Temporarily.

  “Well, if we can’t do anything more now, let’s go watch the train go by,” Kate said, regaining her good spirits. “We can walk through the woods right to the tracks.”

  The peanut track did run close by. That meant that the house they were living in was almost due west of the farm. The train went in one direction during the afternoon and then back in the other direction late at night.

  “I can’t go,” Ed said. “I have to write a story for the paper.”

  “Will you go with me, Gary?”

  It was a brisk autumn day outside, a good one for a walk in the woods. What could happen?

  “All right.”

  We put on our jackets, and Kate put a scarf over her head. We went out into the sunlight. It was good to see the sun again after the recent rain. The woods were adjacent to the lot where the house was located, so we entered them almost immediately. The ground was soft from the rain and littered with fallen branches. Some had been blown down by the wind that had accompanied the rain.

  When Kate stumbled over a branch, I grabbed her hand. She righted herself but didn’t let go, and so we walked to the railroad tracks hand in hand. When we got to the tracks, the train was just coming into view down the line.

  Kate was still holding my hand. She turned toward me and said, “Gary, why don’t you like me?”

  I should have seen this coming, but I was unprepared. I said, “I do like you,” although it didn’t sound convincing.

  “You couldn’t wait to get out of the fort and away from me.”

  “That’s because…because you’re my cousin.”

  “Eddie says we’re fourth cousins. Big deal.”

  She had me there. “Well, you’re young yet.”

  “I’m very mature for my age.”

  I couldn’t dispute that, either. I was struggling for something more to say when she said, “I’m not asking that we go steady or anything like that. I just want you to like me a little.”

  “All right, I like you a little,” I said. “About this much.” I held up my thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart.

  She shoved me, feigning irritation, and said, “Then give me a little cousinly kiss.”

  I bent down, intending to give her a peck on the cheek, but her idea of a cousinly kiss was more than a peck and involved lips. I broke away after a few seconds, saying, “That’s about all the cousinly kisses I can take for one day.”

  “Then write me a limerick. You wrote one about Ed.”

  The train sounded its horn as it approached, as if warning us to be discreet. We waved to the engineer as it rolled slowly by. When the noise subsided and we could talk again, I said:

  “There is a young lady name Kate,

  Who all the boys wish they could date.

  She’s funny and charming,

  Completely disarming;

  I’m sure she will find a good mate.”

  “Okay, I get the picture,” Kate said. “Come on, let’s go back to the house.”

  She turned and walked away from me.

  ***

  Dinners with my aunt and uncle were improving. They were talking more and smiling more. Although I certainly wasn’t a replacement for Ralph, I think they were glad to have me staying with them.

  That night we ate roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and squash, with a salad of lettuce and tomato, a common meal in farm country. I asked them what kind of job Mr. Drucquer had at the gypsum plant.

  “There’s a mine, but he doesn’t work in it. He works on the surface in the factory and warehouse,” Uncle Jeff said. “That’s where the gypsum is made into wallboard used in construction.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He told me he’s had a number of jobs. He’s a member of the union and the workers can bid on jobs as they become available. Anything from the assembly line where the wallboard is made, to stacking the wallboard on skids, to driving lift trucks that are used to carry the full skids into the warehouse, to loading trucks and freight cars.”

  “Those jobs don’t sound like they require a lot of training.”

  “They’re basic laboring jobs. And you’re right. Most people can learn to drive a lift truck in a day.”

  “So how much does it pay?”

  “About two dollars an hour. Time and a half for overtime. Lots of overtime is available during the summer when business is good, but they often cut back to three days a week in the winter when not much building is going on in this part of the country. Why do you ask?”

  “I saw the house where they live, today.”

  “Yes, that’s unfortunate. Hopefully, that’s temporary.” Uncle Jeff smiled a wry smile. “Although it’s been temporary for two years.”

  “John didn’t finish the English equivalent of high school,” Aunt Dorothy said. “He had to go to work because his father got sick. But he’s studying accounting and should be able to get a better job one of these days.”

  I hoped that was true, for the sake of the kids. I decided to try another subject. But I had to approach it carefully.

  “Aunt Dorothy, what do you think of the stories about the diamond necklace?”

  “Old wives’ tales. I don’t believe there was a necklace. If there had been, it would have surfaced long ago. And probably been sold, since my ancestors often didn’t have two coins to jingle in their pockets.”

  That didn’t leave much room for discussion. I decided it was time for a second helping of chicken.

  CHAPTER 18

  The lunch bunch ate together the next day. We didn’t say much at first, but after Barney had eaten a few bites, he said, “I talked to someone who admitted going up on the catwalk with Dr. Graves.”

  “A boy?” I asked.

  Barney nodded.

  “Who is it?” Sylvia asked.

  Barney shook his head and waited until he had chewed a bite thoroughly and swallowed it before he spoke again.

  “Can’t say. It’s the same situation as Gary’s. But he’s a freshman. Graves likes the young ones.”

  “Did he say what happened?”

  “Same story. They went up on the catwalk. Graves asked him to sit on his lap. Then they went down, and he returned to class.”

  “That doesn’t do us much good if he won’t testify about it,” Sylvia said, bitterly.

  “He said he would testify under one condition. I told him this had happened to someone
else. He said he’ll testify if that person testifies at the same time.”

  Three pairs of eyes looked at me. I who wanted to drop this whole line of inquiry, because I had the most to lose. But Sylvia had already lost a lot—friends, status. And what about the boys Dr. Graves was playing games with? What were they losing?

  “All right, I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  ***

  “Would you like to come in and have a soda?” Sylvia asked, as I stopped the car across the street from her house.

  I had declined her invitations up to now, because I always had something to do. But not today. Except shoot baskets in the barn. And that could wait.

  “Sure.”

  We ran across the street, and she produced a key, which she used to open the door. We stepped inside to what sounded like a faint echo, but maybe it was the sound of silence. There were no noises indicating habitation by a living person.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked.

  “He’s writing some articles. Anonymously, of course. And Mom’s working. It’s lonely here in the afternoon.”

  That’s why she had invited me inside. Sylvia led the way to the kitchen, which was straight down the hall past the stairs. She gave me my choice of soft drinks and took one herself. Then she showed me around the downstairs, which I hadn’t seen yet. The living room was comfortable. The furniture wasn’t new, but it was in good repair, in contrast to the Drucquer house. There was a separate dining room with a table, chairs, and a sideboard that Sylvia informed me were antique.

  When we completed the tour, Sylvia said, “Would you like to play a game or something?”

  I liked to play games, but I had a better idea. I said, “Have you ever been to Ralph’s place?”

  She shook her head.

  “Let’s go there. I’ll show you the barn and everything. It’s got a great hayloft with a basketball court.”

  “I’ve heard about the court. Some of the members of the team have practiced there.”

  “Change into old clothes. The hayloft is full of hay—which when you think about it is appropriate.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  She ran upstairs. She was actually gone ten minutes, but I let it pass because she was a girl and girls take longer to dress than boys. I was getting more considerate of others as I grew older. She returned wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt that said “University of Rochester” on it.