“You’re early today,” she said as she swept. “So am I. So much to get finished—I’m like a headless chook! Come inside and choose an apple?”
At the counter, Mrs. Summers checked her order book. “I’ve a delivery to go up to the house. I won’t send it with you now, it’ll be too heavy. Besides, it’s not quite ready. Time has got away from me this week, I’m afraid, with Perce down at the Station taking care of the grasses. I’ll send one of the lads up with it later. Just let Mrs. Turner know that if she thinks of anything else, she’s to give us a bell and I’ll make sure it finds its way up the hill.”
Becky nodded that she understood. Eager to get to Halcyon, she had turned to leave when Mrs. Summers called her back.
“I do have a little something you can take with you now. Something I’ve been working on.”
Mrs. Summers produced a tiny pink knitted matinee jacket from beneath the counter, holding it up so Becky could see.
“That’s going to be just darling on the baby!” Becky exclaimed.
“Isn’t it? I’ve been saving the wool for something special. Now, let me just check on that delivery while you’re here, so you can let Mrs. Turner know for sure about the time.”
Mrs. Summers called for Kurt, and Becky Baker’s cheeks blushed as rosy as one of the ripe peaches in the fruit boxes at the front of the shop.
But Kurt Summers did not appear from the room behind thecounter. Instead, his younger brother, Marcus, poked his head around the doorway and said, “He’s on the telephone.”
“So early?” Mrs. Summers raised her eyebrows. “I suppose I don’t need to ask who’s at the other end.”
Kurt was on the telephone to Matilda Turner, Becky knew, and this was what she told Sergeant Kelly in her interview the following week.
The policeman seemed interested in this. “Did someone tell you that’s who he was speaking to?”
No, Becky replied. She had been able to guess because of the look that passed between Mrs. Summers and her younger son, which was frustrated but also fond. Also, Becky had seen Kurt and Matilda together near the hollow tree one afternoon when she was walking home, so she knew they were in love. Becky was proud of herself when she told the policeman that. She had put two and two together and reached four. This was something Mrs. Pike said to her when Becky was worried that she wouldn’t be able to perform a work task well enough. “Just take your time, Becky,” she would say, “and you’ll see that two and two usually make four.”
Sergeant Kelly was pleased, too. “That’s very good, Becky,” he told her. “You’re a clever girl.”
Becky knew that wasn’t true, but she also knew the policeman wasn’t poking fun. She recognized his comment as one of the things people said when they were trying to be kind.
Becky wasn’t clever. She wasn’t stupid, either, no matter what some people said. It was only that she had to think about questions for longer than most. Mrs. Pike said that thinking more was no bad thing: it meant that by the time she found her answer, she could be surer than not that it was right.
School learning was different. Becky had left when she was twelve years old. Her daddy had sat her down one night and told her there was a special job for her at the brewery and would she like to come and work with him instead. Becky had been glad enough to leave school. She hadmissed the singing they’d done in the afternoons with Miss Brickell at the piano, and renditions of “God Save the Queen” at assembly each morning, but she hadn’t missed the other songs. There was one that the other children had especially enjoyed:
Becky Baker, the brewer’s daughter,
Fell in the well and no one caught her,
Hit her head and banged her brain,
And never could think straight again.
When Becky was younger, she’d sung along heartily. Her little sister, Fay, was the one who’d told her she ought to quit joining in. Old habits weren’t easy to break, though, and Becky still caught herself humming the rhyme under her breath sometimes, especially when she knew she’d made a silly mistake, like the other week, when she broke Mrs. Turner’s best gravy boat.
Becky might not have been clever like Fay, but she did know that two plus two equaled four, and she was confident that Kurt Summers had been on the phone to Matilda Turner that morning. She knew, too, that Kurt and Matilda had argued, though she did not tell the policeman that as he did not think to ask. Becky had seen Kurt as she was leaving the shop. She’d glanced down the alley beside the building and he’d been standing with his hands on the fence, his head bowed. Becky had spent a lot of time watching Kurt and she could read his mannerisms better than she could ever hope to read a book. She saw the tension in his shoulders, and the way his jaw had stiffened like his teeth were clenched, and she knew that Kurt Summers had just heard something that made him very, very unhappy.
Becky Baker was not wrong. Kurt Summers had indeed been speaking to Matilda Turner early on Christmas Eve morning. This fact was confirmed to police by Marian Green at the telephone exchange during her interview late on the afternoon of Monday,December 28. The call had come through from the Turner residence just after 7:00 a.m. on the twenty-fourth: “I’d been up early,” she told police, “because I knew how hectic the day would be.”
Miss Green was adamant that she did not know what the pair had discussed—“Contrary to what people might think, I don’t make a habit of listening in on conversations”—but, when pressed, suggested that shemighthave heard Matilda Turner say something along the lines of, “I have to see you,” and, “It can’t wait until Christmas,” and possibly even the words “meet you there.” She wouldn’t swear it, she warned the young probationary constable, who was taking notes on his small, lined pad: “I just caught a few words while I was replacing the earpiece.”
She was more certain as to the duration of the telephone call, which she informed police had not lasted more than a few minutes. She was so busy all day that she hadn’t given that particular call another thought. “It was one connection after another, only to get worse in the evening after what happened. You can imagine how the phones started running hot after that.”
Kurt Summers was interviewed by police on Tuesday, December 29. Having been established as Matilda Turner’s boyfriend, he had already been included on the list of close associates; in the end, though, he surprised Sergeant Kelly and Mounted Constable Doyle by turning up at the station of his own accord, first thing in the morning. His father, Percy Summers, was by his side, explaining to the officers that the lad was still in a state of shock, but that he understood it was his duty to render whatever assistance he could.
Kurt nodded when Sergeant Kelly asked him about the phone call, agreeing that Matilda had telephoned him early that morning.
“She wanted to meet,” he said. “She said there was something she wanted to talk to me about in person, but she didn’t know when she’d be able to get away. Her mother had been in a bad mood lately, unusually strict, wanting them to spend time together as a family.”At this his eyes closed involuntarily, and the struggle to retain his composure made his lips press tight. Finally, he managed to continue, his voice reedy with the effort not to cry. “I loved her. I wanted to marry her. I never would have wanted anything to harm her.”
The telephone at the Turner house was situated in a small nook on the side of the landing farthest from the stairs. Mrs. Turner had been known to say that it was like having their very own “whispering gallery,” such that a word spoken at normal volume into the telephone bounced off the far wall and could easily be heard on the landing.
