Mystery on Graveyard Head. Edith Dorian

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ originally; the old walls are eighteen inches thick. Shingles and porches, the barn ell, too—those are what will need attention.”

      “Maybe a few spring cleanings wouldn’t have hurt much either,” Mrs. Purchas suggested mildly.

      Dr. Sutton whistled. “Great Scott, I never thought of dirt,” he admitted. “It must be a foot deep!”

      Grinning wickedly, Steve glanced out of the corner of his eye at Waity. “You get Abby Beamish after it, Dr. Sutton,” he advised. “Abby says there’s no percentage in everyday cleaning; she likes dirt enough to begin on to know she’s done something when she’s through.”

      Waity snorted, and Steve smiled. “Just don’t go buying her a lot of newfangled cleaning apparatus though,” he warned the doctor. “Waity bought a broom down at Randall’s last week, and I heard Abby telling him a new broom might sweep clean but the old one knew where the dirt hid.”

      Dr. Sutton laughed outright. “The redoubtable Miss Beamish it is then,” he announced. “How do I go about luring the lady into my cobwebs?”

      “Mrs., not Miss.” Waity was still snorting when he corrected him. “Dirt’ll do the luring, Dr. Sutton; don’t you trouble your head about that. You’ve got self-preservation to fret over. Dirt lured her into Lem Beamish’s place eight years ago, and before Lem knew what was happening, Abby’d married him.” Waity looked owlish. “Come spring, she’d cleaned Lem Beamish straight into the graveyard. If you’ve a mite of sense, you’ll take out over the clam flats and let Abby Beamish lie.”

      But the doctor refused to be daunted. “You’ve got to admit I’m prepared,” he told him. “That’s more than Lern was.”

      Mrs. Purchas’s eyes danced. “Prepared?” she repeated. “My stars, you’re practically barricaded in the cruiser’s cabin with your diving suit at hand! If Abby Beamish needs a cake of soap, she’ll have to rout out the Coast Guard to find you.”

      Still laughing, she stacked the dishes on a tray to start for the kitchen, but Dr. Sutton reached persuasively for the sweater hanging on the back of her chair.

      “Those dishes have the patience of Job,” he insisted. “Daylight hasn’t, and I’ve come a thousand miles to see a house. There must be a car around here somewhere.”

      “A new station wagon in our barn,” Dr. Cobb offered promptly, and Mrs. Purchas untied her apron.

      “I’m already on my way,” she said. But she paused a second as she started for the door. “Pel, please go find a hammer and a crowbar. Dr. Sutton’s going to have a chance to see the boards off the door over on Graveyard Head if I never wash those dishes.”

       5 • The House On Graveyard Head

      WHEN Linda slid into the back seat of the station wagon with Steve, she still thought her ears had been playing her tricks.

      “Your mother didn’t really say Graveyard Head, did she?”

      “Sure she said Graveyard Head. That’s the name of the headland where the Farr house is.” Steve chuckled at Linda’s incredulous face. “Cheerful sort of address, isn’t it?”

      “But why?” Linda demanded. “For goodness’ sake, why?”

      “Because the Farrs put their graveyard along the shore at the top of the ledges,” Steve explained. “You couldn’t miss it from the water. It’s all tangled up in vines and bayberry bushes so you can hardly find it now, but Grandfather said ships beating up Merriconeag Sound in the old days used to steer their course by the Farr headstones.”

      “I still don’t get it,” Linda said in bewilderment. “Why didn’t they use a cemetery like other people?”

      “But there wasn’t any regular burying ground when the Farrs settled here,” Steve told her. “All the early settlers had family graveyards, and a lot of them kept on using them even after they built a Meetinghouse in 1758. You would have, too, if you’d had to lug a heavy coffin five miles over rough trails to the church ground in Center Harpswell.”

      Linda laughed. “Maybe I would, though I’d never have guessed it if you hadn’t told me. I can’t seem to picture families living in the same house in the same place hundreds of years. Down home in New York hardly anybody we know was even born in the city. Anyway, if I’d been a Farr, I’d have got rid of that graveyard name in a hurry.”

      Steve grinned at her. “You’d have had a swell job on your hands. Fifty years from now Grandfather’s house will still be the ‘Lorenzo Purchas place’ even if Dad suddenly sells it to you tomorrow. Besides, the name fits. Wait till you get a look at that house on the Head.”

      By that time, the station wagon was turning out of Juniper Point and starting along the main road on Harpswell Neck. Dr. Cobb barely crawled. Half his carload was giving him direcions while they hunted for the break in a tangle of bushes that marked the old entrance to Dr. Sutton’s property.

      “There it is, about ten feet in front of you.” Captain Pel pointed to the right of the road. “Better park where you are, Dr. Cobb. There’s no earthly use trying to turn in on the Head. Dr. Sutton’ll need a bulldozer before a car’ll navigate that road again. There’s a footpath, though; duck hunters and berrypickers have kept it open after a fashion.”

      Following his lead, they plunged through the bushes, strung out in single file. Steve and Linda brought up the rear. Bayberry thickets and scrub growth hemmed them in on both sides, and overhead, wind-twisted birches nearly locked branches. Linda hardly took a step without turning an ankle or getting tangled up in blackberry creepers.

      “Those Farrs certainly had sense,” she admitted. “I’d have made two graveyards right under my front porch before I’d carry anything bigger than a pillbox over a trail like this. You don’t suppose Waity would like to lend me that nice stiff horse collar he’s got on his ankle, do you? His foot’s the only one that’s safe.”

      But the narrow rutted path finally opened into a pine woods where the traces of the old road were easier to follow.

      “Going’ll be better in a minute,” Captain Pel promised. “The Head’s so rocky it won’t support much except juniper and berry bushes. That’s what made it so good for a garrison in the old days—not much grass to set afire and no cover for the French and Indians.”

      But Linda was in no state of mind to brood over the past. She could start thinking about history if she reached Dr. Sutton’s house without a broken ankle, and she continued to pick her way gingerly until she emerged intact from the woods. Then she stopped to stare across the headland at the T-shaped old Farr house, its crossbar facing south down the Bay to the open sea and its tail of barn and additions stretching northward.

      “See what I meant?” Steve asked, and she nodded slowly. If there was ever a headquarters for a ghost convention, it was that gaunt, weather-beaten old place with its doors and windows boarded tight and the sea gulls roosting on its chimneys.

      “Bright and cheery all right!” Steve said as they started after the others down the field. “When I was in fifth grade, a gang of us used to come over here just before dark and scare ourselves half to death. Jim Moody had nightmares all night because we dared him to stay alone on the back porch fifteen minutes.”

      “What СКАЧАТЬ