The Thing From the Lake
Copyright© 2025 by Eleanor M. Ingram
Chapter 9
“These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade.”—Plutarch.
Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of the top or the description.
On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a man who knew everyone and went everywhere!
The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded to me.
“Morning, Mr. Locke,” he greeted. “Now let me get the right stuff into this here box, an’ I’ll sort your family’s right out for you. There’s a sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill ‘em, for Cliff Brown here, that’s gone to the bottom of the bag. I don’t know but Cliff’s poultry’d thank me to leave it be! Up it’s got to come, though!”
“Will it make them lay?” I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering into the sack.
“I guess it might, if Cliff told ‘em they’d have to lay or eat it, judgin’ from the smell that sample’s put in my bag.”
“Not as sweet as this?” I suggested, and leaned across to lay the pomander in his gnarled hand.
The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation.
“Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?” I asked. “A lady with bright fair hair, colored like copper-bronze?”
“Not I!” he denied briefly.
“No one at all like that—with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold color, and a lot of it?”
“No. Not around here, nor anywhere I’ve been! What do you call this perfumery, Mr. Locke?”
“I have no idea,” I answered, sharply disappointed. “No one knows except the young lady I am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me at all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house who might be the one I am looking for?”
He shook his head, giving back the pomander with marked reluctance.
“No one who might be able to tell more than yourself?” I persisted.
A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr. Clifford Brown’s mailbox and began to sort out my letters.
“Far as that goes, I guess Mis’ Hill don’t miss much of what goes on around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and she goes drivin’ all day. Ain’t a house she knows that don’t get to hear the whole yarn! You know Mis’ Royal Hill? Mis’ Vere gets butter and cheese from her. Might ask her!”
I thanked him and drove on.
Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called that morning; inviting me into her parlor to “set,” when she had identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest.
“I guessed you must be the new owner up to the Michell place,” she observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking crumbs. “Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don’t see as that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rampus ‘round in that fast automobile of yours! Now, I’m perfectly sound, and I wouldn’t be paid to drive the thing. You’d ought to get the other fellow to run it for you; the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, though? Writer, ain’t you? Books or newspapers?”
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