Christmas Card Murder Read online

  The hallway had been decorated for Christmas, and Lucy admired the garland that draped the bannister of the steep staircase and the red ribbons that festooned the chandelier. Greens had been tucked behind the spotty old hall mirror, and a lush arrangement of holly and red roses sat on the pine half-moon table beneath it. The house had that old-house scent, a mix of wood smoke and spice from all the meals that had been cooked there.

  “Well, come along,” said Hetty, leading the way into the dining room, where the cards were displayed. She plunked herself down on a curvaceous settee upholstered in green velvet, set the footed cane beside herself, and then began the process of removing her hat, gloves, and scarf. She unbuttoned her wool coat, but decided against taking it off.

  Lucy did likewise as she wandered around the room, studying the various cards, which were arranged on the gate-leg dining table, the fireplace mantel, and the corner hutch. When she’d viewed all the cards, and snapped photos of several, she joined Hetty on the settee. By now, the room had warmed up and they both shrugged out of their coats.

  “So tell me about this exhibit,” began Lucy. “How did the society obtain it?”

  “The cards were collected by one of our members, Sylvia Bradshaw, and she offered it to us for the holiday season.”

  “It’s a very impressive collection,” said Lucy. “I had no idea Christmas cards have been around for so long.”

  “The first ones were produced in England in 1843, and only a handful have survived. Sylvia doesn’t have one of those cards, but she’s seen it at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. She says she’s keeping her eye out for one, but in the meantime the earliest card in this collection was made in 1877. It’s the one with the holly and the ivy. That’s when the idea of sending cards really caught on, and over four million were posted in Britain. We were a little slower and the earliest American card in this collection was printed in Boston in 1882. It shows a little puppy in a Christmas stocking.”

  “I got a picture of that one,” said Lucy. “I assume it’s okay to print photos of the cards in the paper?”

  “Absolutely, that’s why I hauled myself out of my comfy bed this morning to come and talk to you,” snorted Hetty, thumping the floor with her cane for emphasis. “Play it up big. We want lots of people to come and see the exhibit. We’re hoping it will be a big fund-raiser for the society.” She glanced around the lavishly-decorated room and sighed. “You have no idea how much it costs to maintain this old place.”

  “I can well imagine,” admitted Lucy. “I live in a restored nineteenth-century farmhouse and there’s always something that needs doing.”

  “Well, this old place was built in 1789 and it needs a new roof,” said Hetty. “And don’t forget to mention our open house on Sunday afternoon. There’ll be cookies and punch, and Sylvia will be here to talk about the cards.” She chuckled. “Admission is free, but donations will be encouraged.” She looked pointedly at Lucy. “And we’re always looking for new members.”

  “Well,” said Lucy, who had learned early on in her career that she couldn’t afford to support every worthy cause she wrote about, “you will be getting some free publicity.”

  Hetty sighed. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Not at all,” said Lucy, reaching in her bag for her gloves and finding the card Bill had found in the wall. She pulled it out and showed it to Hetty, explaining how it had been discovered. “Can you tell me anything about this card?”

  Hetty’s eyes lit up as she studied the smiling Santa, with his rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, and snow-white beard. “When I was first married, we sent out a card very like this one. I was so proud of it, being a married lady and all.”

  “And when was that?”

  “Oh, I was married in 1966,” she said, proudly adding, “Paul and I are coming up on our fifty-fifth anniversary.”

  “Congra—” Lucy had begun to speak, but then Hetty opened the card and gasped.

  “What a terrible thing to send to someone!”

  “I know,” agreed Lucy. “Hardly a message of peace and goodwill.” She took the card back and folded it. “I think there’s a story here and I’d love to discover it.”

  Hetty shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a happy story. If I were you, I think I’d leave it alone.” She grabbed the cane and, leaning heavily on it, pulled herself upright. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a day to waste. They’re expecting me at the senior center for chair yoga.”

  They walked into the hall, where Hetty lowered the thermostat, and Lucy reached for the door.

  “Not so fast,” said Hetty. “I’d like to see that card again.”

  Lucy handed it over and Hetty peered at it sharply through her bifocals. “That’s a man’s handwriting,” she said finally. “Definitely a man.”

  “I think so, too,” said Lucy, taking the card back.

  “And your house was owned back then by the Pritchetts, right?”

  “Yes, it was. Do you remember them?”

  Hetty shook her head and buttoned up her coat. “I didn’t live here then. We only moved here about twenty years ago.” She wrapped her muffler around her neck, slapped her hat on her head, and began pulling on her gloves. “I’ve done a lot of research on these old houses, that’s how I know the Pritchetts owned your place, but that’s all I know about them.”

  “I have a feeling the card was sent to their daughter, Dorcas,” said Lucy, zipping up her parka. “I think she might have been the right age to get involved in some sort of trouble.”

  Hetty took hold of her cane, indicating she was ready to go. “Not a good girl, then, if that’s the sort of Christmas card she got.”

  As a journalist, Lucy knew the danger of libeling or slandering someone, but from what she’d been learning, she suspected that Hetty might be right about Dorcas. Nowadays slut-shaming was frowned upon, but that wasn’t the case when Dorcas was in her teens, or even when Lucy was growing up. It didn’t take much imagination to understand why young Dorcas might have felt she had to hide the card.

  After she helped Hetty navigate the snowy parking lot and made sure she was safely installed in her tiny car and was on her way, Lucy headed over to the high school, where she had arranged to interview the music teacher about the upcoming holiday concert.

  * * *

  Lucy was a little early, and the lady in the school office told her Charlie Zeigler was still in class, so she paused in front of a trophy case in the hall outside the music room. She listened as the class rehearsed familiar holiday tunes, with frequent stops and starts. The case was set into the wall and contained a number of somewhat-tarnished trophies behind glass doors, as well as a number of aged black-and-white photographs. As she studied the various loving cups, she noticed that the earliest ones dated from the early 1900s, while others had been won by the school’s teams in recent years.

  It was the photographs, however, that really caught her interest. A yellowing typed notice identified Maisie Francis, who was dressed in an unflattering 1920s chemise, as the state tennis champion in 1928. Meanwhile, a somewhat-more-recent photo pictured miniskirted Frankie Goddard as the 1968 state tennis champion. The family resemblance was unmistakable and Lucy did a bit of quick math and deduced that Frankie was quite probably Maisie’s granddaughter, or even a daughter.

  She was smiling to herself, wondering if it was nature or nurture that produced tennis champions in one family, while another family’s members might excel in science, when another photo caught her eye. The label informed her that this was a group photo of the 1961 field hockey team, which won the state championship that year. All the team members were identified in the typewritten caption, including Dorcas Pritchett, front and center, proudly holding the trophy.

  Leaning forward, Lucy studied the somewhat fuzzy black-and-white image. Dorcas was of average height, and her hair was combed into a smooth pageboy. She was wearing a dark, pleated gym dress over a white blouse with a round collar, dark knee-high socks,
and white sneakers. Her face was round, her eyes were shadowed, and she was smiling. She was the very picture of a model student-athlete, perhaps an outstanding player or even team captain, since she was given the honor of holding the trophy.

  Lucy was staring at the photo, wondering what this apparently typical high-school girl had done to inspire the sender of the Christmas card to send such a vile message, when the bell clanged, making her jump. In moments the classroom doors flew open and students poured into the hallway, filling it with noise and confusion as they hurried on to their next class. She made her way against the flow of streaming students to the music room, where Charlie Zeigler was erasing the blackboard; she waited for him to finish. When he’d set the felt eraser down on the ledge and turned around, she greeted him with a big smile.

  “Hi, Lucy,” he said, indicating one of the student chairs with its big arm. “Take a seat.”

  He seated himself in an adjacent desk chair, waiting while Lucy fished her notebook out of her big handbag.

  “From what I heard while I was out in the hallway, it sounds as if we’re in for a real musical treat,” she said, beginning the interview on a positive note.

  “Thanks, Lucy. I think the kids are coming along nicely, and the program has something for everybody. It’s a holiday concert, not just a Christmas concert, you know, so we’ve got a nice mix. It’s not just vocals, there’s some instrumental music, too. Some of it is familiar to everyone, but we’ve got some pieces that will be new to most people.” He paused. “We’re presenting the concert here at the school, of course, but we’re also presenting programs at the senior center and the town hall.”

  Lucy listened with one ear, jotting down dates and times, and probed for an interesting anecdote or two; at the same time her mind kept returning to the photo of Dorcas. When she’d finally finished interviewing Charlie, including his confession that he was really quite excited about Billy Winslow’s amazing skill with the pennywhistle, she’d decided to head upstairs to the school library to check out some old yearbooks. Especially ones from the early 1960s.

  Lucy found Jackie Lawton tacking up some Xerox prints of book covers on the “New Books” bulletin board in the hallway outside the library; she noted with interest that most were graphic novels.

  “Whatever happened to books with words?” she asked, smiling.

  “These have words, just not very many,” replied Jackie, shrugging. She was a tall black woman who was always eager to help with difficult research problems, and popular with both students and faculty. “I can’t say I like them myself, but the kids devour them.” She stuck in a thumbtack, then turned to Lucy. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m interested in looking at some old yearbooks.”

  “How old?”

  “The sixties.”

  “No problem. Follow me.”

  Lucy followed her to a bookcase tucked beneath a large window, where she found yearbooks dating back to the late-nineteenth century. “I had no idea these things went back so far,” she said, pulling out a faded paperbound volume.

  “There are some nineteenth-century class annals, that’s what they called them, from the Brooks Academy that don’t have photographs, just short bios of the students. But once photography caught on, they started including head shots.” Jackie flipped open one of the books, revealing row upon row of serious young men with slicked-down hair. “Only boys back then, of course. The high school was established in 1924, but even then, girls and boys had separate classes, even separate doors.”

  “Wow, how soon we forget,” said Lucy. “We take education for women as a given, but it’s not.”

  “Certainly not in parts of the Middle East and Africa,” agreed Jackie, shaking her head. “But you said you’re interested in the books from the 1960s.” She indicated the lower shelf. Students were beginning to drift into the library and she made her excuse as the bell rang. “I’ve got a class now, so I’ll leave you to your project.”

  Lucy piled up the heavy books from 1960 through 1963 and carried them to a nearby table, where she seated herself, piling her jacket and bag on a neighboring chair. Opening the first book, she felt as if she were traveling through time, to an era when girls wore plaid skirts and saddle shoes, and boys had crew cuts and always seemed to wear sweaters, pleated slacks, and loafers. Eyeglasses were thick and black, circle pins were all the rage, and only a few very fortunate kids had the benefit of braces to straighten their teeth.

  Dorcas, however, had a perfect bite to go with that big smile, shining fair hair combed into a neat pageboy, and an enviable list of accomplishments that would have gotten her into a top-notch college. She was a member of the National Honor Society, class president, and president of the Key Club, in addition to her prowess on the field hockey team.

  In addition to her head shot as a member of the junior class, Dorcas was included in numerous group photos and seemed to be quite the belle of the ball. Except she wasn’t. She wasn’t voted prom queen, and she didn’t even appear in any of the pictures taken at the winter mixer or the junior prom. Was that because her parents didn’t allow her to go? Hadn’t Miss Tilley suggested that her parents were very strict and disapproved of dancing and dating? No hanging out at the soda shop for little Dorcas, who must have chafed at her parents’ restrictions. Or maybe she’d made the best of things, putting her time and energy into extracurricular activities that they approved of, like performing good works with the Key Club and playing on the girls’ field hockey team.

  That didn’t seem to be the case, however. If Lucy’s suspicions were correct, Dorcas had managed to get out from under her parents’ control and got herself entangled in some sort of relationship that hadn’t ended well. Was “GB” one of the clean-cut fellows in the yearbook photos, members of the Key Club or the student council? She scanned the names beneath the photos, looking for a George or a Gary, a Geoff or a Gerald, but she only found Greg, who was two years younger than Dorcas and whose last name was Widdicombe. Nevertheless, she decided it was worth trying to track down the students who had known Dorcas, so she lugged the big books over to the photocopy machine. There she emptied her change purse as she made copies of the group photos in Dorcas’s senior yearbook.

  Her spirits were high when she replaced the books on the shelf and left the library, giving Jackie a smile and a wave. People who grew up in Tinker’s Cove tended to stay in Tinker’s Cove, some of their families had been around for centuries. She was pretty sure that she could find at least a few of Dorcas’s former classmates, people who actually knew her and might be able to tell her why “GB” had been so angry with her.

  Chapter Five

  Lucy intended to google Dorcas, or Doris, when she got to the newspaper office, as well as the others named in the yearbook photos, but realized as soon as she stepped through the door that she would have to postpone that plan. Phyllis was actually pulling her hair out, at least it seemed that way, since much of it was standing straight up. She was talking on the phone through her headset, which Lucy knew she hated and only used when the call volume couldn’t be managed any other way, and was frantically riffling through a stack of papers on her desk.

  “No, Ted, I don’t have it right here, and I’ve got five calls backed up!”

  Lucy immediately went into action, plunking herself down at her desk and hitting the button for line 2 on her phone. Lines 3, 4, and 5 were also alight, indicating a number of callers were on hold. But why? What had prompted all this unusual interest from readers?

  “Thanks for calling the Pennysaver, this is Lucy,” she said, speaking into the receiver.

  “About time,” replied the caller, who sounded like a rather elderly woman. “I’ve been on hold for, well, forever.”

  “I’m sorry about that. How can I help you?”

  “Well, it’s about that letter. I guess it’s a posting, it was in the online edition. Saying that awful, horrible, nasty Philip Ratcliffe should get out of jail. Why would you print something like that? He s
hould’ve been executed, and if Maine had a death penalty, he certainly would have been. And that’s all I have to say.”

  “I understand how you feel,” said Lucy. “I’ll make a note of your call for our editor and I’m sure he’ll return your call. Just give me your name and number . . .”

  The phone went dead.

  Okay, thought Lucy, somewhat surprised at the caller’s reaction, then hitting line 2. “Thanks for calling the Pennysaver, this is Lucy. How can I help you?”

  “You can help me by printing the truth about that Philip Ratcliffe and what he did, that’s how you can help me. He’s coming up for parole and people should be writing to the parole board and making sure he never gets out of prison. You should start a letter campaign or something, make yourselves useful for once.”

  This time the caller was male, and loaded for bear. Lucy remembered the Ratcliffe case, it was one of the first stories she’d covered when she began working for Ted at the Pennysaver. The alarm was first raised by a young mother who had brought her kids for swim lessons at the pond and called the town recreation office to ask if the classes had been canceled for the day because Sally wasn’t there. When Sally’s mother confirmed that her daughter had indeed left for work as usual, searchers began scouring the nearby woods, but found no trace of her. The search continued for weeks, her family made desperate pleas for her return, but it wasn’t until nearly a year later that bloody bits of her red swimsuit were found by hikers some miles away. DNA tests linked Philip Ratcliffe to her disappearance, and he was convicted of kidnapping and murder, but Sally’s body was never found.

  Lucy remembered interviewing Sally’s parents, who were understandably desperate for their daughter’s return; she recalled struggling to contain her emotions until she was out of their house and in her car. Then the floodgates opened and she sobbed, clutching the steering wheel, shaken to her core by the family’s horrible situation. But she had to admit to feeling rather uneasy about the verdict when Philip Ratcliffe was convicted and sent to prison for life, because it seemed to her that the evidence was rather flimsy. A fisherman testified that he saw Ratcliffe’s truck near the pond, but couldn’t quite remember the date, and didn’t see him with Sally. The only physical evidence was that tattered, bloody lifeguard swimsuit, but it had been exposed to the elements for months, and the DNA evidence linking it to Ratcliffe was “suggestive,” but not “conclusive.”