Dr. Fevre was boarding with a family in the village, but they didn’t have room for all four of us. They asked around and eventually Audrey and I landed with an old couple named Eiriksdatter. The old folks had six kids, but their kids were grown-ups now, with little stone cottages and big families of their own. The boys were fishermen, all four of them; and none had drowned. Mr. and Mrs. Eiriksdatter sounded proud and happy when they told us about that; it seemed like a good many fishermen drowned. Later on I noticed that when the old woman talked about it she said it like I wrote it: “Not one has drowned.” The old man never corrected her, but he said, “None have drowned yet.” It makes a real big difference.
We got the kids’ old rooms, of course. They were up under the roof and pretty small, so we never did much more than sleep there. The four boys had slept two to a bed; one room went to Adah and another to Chandra. Adah’s was bigger and had a window, plus plenty of room for Audrey and me to sleep alongside her bed. We pretended to be a little edgy about having to undress in the same little room. Maybe we fooled the old people, but I could see that Adah and Chandra were not taken in for a minute.
After dinner on the first night, while the old man dozed and his wife did the dishes with a little help from Chandra, I bided my time until Adah went up to bed; call it fifteen or twenty minutes. Then I whispered to Audrey, “You ask me a lot of questions, how about if I ask you one?”
“Sure, if I know the answer.”
“Why was Dr. Fevre on that lugger?”
Audrey looked puzzled. “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’m sure he’ll have a story. It may be the truth, but I doubt it. He’d tried to charter our boat first. He said so. It wasn’t available. What did he want it for?”
“I suppose he wanted it to come here and pick him up. Then it would have brought him back to the mainland.”
“To Polly’s Cove, that being where it was based.”
“Right. To Polly’s Cove, where Chandra and his wife live. He teaches in Spice Grove, doesn’t he? There’s a university there? I think you said that.”
I nodded. “He does. But look at the time line. I saw him in the library in Polly’s Cove. He walked through the lobby and he may—I said may—have cut a tattered old Ern A. Smithe’s throat then and there. How long would you say it was between that day, the day I got Adah Fevre to check you out, and the day the Three Sisters sailed with you and me on board?”
Audrey took her time. “Close to a week. Maybe a little more.”
“I make it six days. I may be off by a day or two, I admit; but I think six days is right. We were three days on the boat before we sighted the lugger.”
“Were we? It seemed longer.”
“It was bound to, since we didn’t have much to do.”
“Bad food didn’t help either.”
“Right you are. It could be that you’re more right than you know. Anyway, we’re talking about nine days altogether. Nine days from the time I saw Dr. Fevre in the Polly’s Cove Public Library to the time we both saw him cross from boat to boat on a fishing net. Did I say he was brave?”
Audrey nodded. “I think so.”
“I hope I did, because he is. He’s rich, too. I know he must be because he checked two resource reclones out of the library at the same time.”
“Your girlfriends from Spice Grove.”
“That’s right. Now here’s another question. Was the lugger taking him back to the mainland?”
“I see what you mean. It doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
I paused, listening to old Mrs. Eiriksdatter chatting with Chandra. “No. No, it doesn’t. He would have to come here, presumably with Millie Baumgartner and Rose Romain in tow, and just a day or two later turn around and come back, with or without them.”
Audrey said, “I admitted that it doesn’t seem likely.”
“Agreed, and here’s one even less likely. He was on his way back to Polly’s Cove, but was perfectly happy when he found out we were going to Lichholm. Wouldn’t he have insisted we take him to the mainland first? Or wanted to get back onto his lugger? He was fine with our going to Lichholm. Not one single complaint.”
Slowly, Audrey nodded. “He was on his way to Lichholm in that lugger.”
“Correct, I’m sure. The question is where are Millie and Rose? My guess is that they were on the lugger with him. Either they stayed below and out of sight, or they were wearing oilskins like Dr. Fevre and the Lichholm men and I wasn’t able to spot them among the crew. I think the first one is more likely, but I could be wrong.”
“Has the lugger made port yet? Do you know?”
“No, I don’t. It could have beaten us, but that’s unlikely. Most probably, it was at least a couple of hours behind us. I doubt that it would have tried to tie up after dark, although that, too, is possible. Do you remember the house where Dr. Fevre’s staying?”
Audrey nodded.
“Remember where it is?”
“Down at the other end of the street, about as far from the docks as you can get.” She paused. “It’s almost the last house on the street, and it’s a little bigger than the houses on either side of it.”
“You’ve got it, and it seems to me that it’s possible that Millie and Rose are in that house with their patron. I’m going down there, keeping my ears open and my mouth shut. If they’re there, we may be able to catch a glimpse of them or hear them talking. I know both of them pretty well, and I guarantee that I’ll recognize their voices—if they’re really there.”
Outside, with a cold wind blowing and the snow creaking beneath our feet, Audrey asked, “Why are you so anxious to learn whether your friends are here?”
I told her, “Because I remember Burke and Hare.” I was too cold to grin.
“So do I. There was a show about them a few years ago, a musical. I watched it. Do you think Dr. Fevre might do that? Kill people so he can sell their bodies?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘people.’” I tried to make it bitter, but my breath was a plume of steam.
“I see.…”
“He couldn’t make any money that way—he’d checked them out, so he’d lose his deposits. Still, it might mean keeping his job on the faculty. From what I’ve read, even a tenured professor can be sent packing, although it’s not easy.”
Audrey and I had just about reached the cottage where he was staying when she said, “Do we listen at the keyhole?”
I was listening already and motioned for her to keep quiet. One of the male speakers was surely Dr. Fevre; the other was probably his landlord. A third voice sounded like a woman’s, and I caught the word “wonderful.”
We were nearly at the door by then. After two or three snowy strides more, I knocked.
There was a moment of silence inside, followed by a man’s slow steps.
The door opened, and Dr. Fevre’s host stared. I said, “May we come in? These coats are warm, but we’re freezing anyway.”
When he said nothing, I added, “I promise we won’t eat much, we’ve already had dinner.”
Rose Romain’s slow, breathless voice murmured something I couldn’t quite make out. Dr. Fevre called, “Let them come in. They received me hospitably.”