He grunted, still gazing at the ground as if it required intense concentration.
“Well,” I said, when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to either elaborate or leave. “It was lovely running into you. I’m going to go sketch some insects.”
He touched the brim of his hat but didn’t meet my eyes. “Miss Wilson.”
I ambled toward the stream, swinging my arms like someonewith nothing more on their mind than sketching. I only glanced back once, to see that Phelps hadn’t moved.
Gunpowder. It made perfect sense.Except why would a reclusive collector of insect carcasses have that much gunpowder to begin with? And what was he doing in the middle of the night—reading it a bedtime story?
I reached the stream, selected a rock, and sat down. The water flowed by, the sun sparkled off it, and dragonflies hummed and zipped over the molten surface. My sketchbook was open, but my pencil didn’t move at all.
What had Phelps been doing here? I didn’t think he lived nearby. He’d said that Halder’s place was only “more or less” on his way. So why was he on Halder’s property at all?
Halder doing something odd didn’t surprise me. Naturalists are inherently odd. My father used to make up songs to sing to his pitcher plants. But Asa Phelps had been lying to me, I was certain of it. He was not a terribly good liar. He hadn’t been able to meet my eyes when he did it. I was guessing he did not have much practice in the art.
What the devil is really in that shed?
There was a light in the woods again that night. I didn’t follow it, but I sat up, waiting to see where it would go.
It vanished into the trees in the direction of the gunpowder shed. I lit a match and checked the wall clock, curious as to how long Halder would take this time, then snuffed the candle out again.
Not very long at all, as it turned out. I expected Halder to go around the side of the house again, but to my surprise, the light turned the opposite way, skirted the edge of the clearing, and went south. I lit another match once the light was gone. Eleven minutes. Halder had not stayed long, if he had gone to the shed at all.
Well, that was peculiar, but it was still none of my affair. Phelps had definitely been lying to me, but that did not mean that there was some great mystery afoot. It was pure curiosity that motivated me, and however valuable curiosity was for a naturalist, I couldn’t allow it to jeopardize my work. A job like this came along once in a decade, if I was lucky.
I turned away from the window, padding on bare feet back to my bed, and threw one last glance over my shoulder.
The light had returned. It was going back the way it had come, along the edge of the clearing, toward the shed again.
No,I told myself firmly.It is not my business. Leave it alone.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, determined to sleep. I had almost succeeded when I heard the distant thud of the front door slamming shut, as Halder returned at last.
Feeling both frustrated with myself and resigned to my own folly, I lit a match and checked the clock.
Whatever he’d been doing in the woods had taken him thirty-eight minutes.
“The damnedest thing,” said Mrs. Kent the next morning as I came into the kitchen. She bobbed her head at me in acknowledgment, but didn’t stop talking. “One of the hens missing like that.”
“Huh,” said Jackson.
I sat down and helped myself to biscuits. “You lost a hen?”
“My best layer too.” Mrs. Kent pulled a face.
“Fox?” I hazarded. “Raccoon?”
“No, that’s the strange part. She was inside the coop last night. I check on ’em myself every night before I go to bed, and she was asleep in the nest box. I know because I had to reach under her to grab the eggs, and she wasn’t best pleased about it.” Jackson passed the coffee over and I poured out a cup gratefully. Mrs. Kent pursed her lips, looking more annoyed than I’d everseen her look. “I’m not saying onecouldn’tget into the coop, mind, but if they do, they sure don’t take one hen and go back out again.”
“Fox gets in the coop, it’s a regular massacre,” Jackson agreed.
“So I’m stumped,” Mrs. Kent said. “She was just gone. And no feathers either.”
That did surprise me. Even with my limited knowledge of chickens, I knew that if a predator grabbed one, it looked like a pillow exploded.
“Could it have been a thief?” I asked tentatively.
Mrs. Kent sighed heavily and slumped back in her chair. “Don’t like to think that, but it could be. Can’t imagine any of the neighbors would stoop to stealing chickens though.”
