Murder Most Merry

APPALACHIAN BLACKMAIL – Jacqueline Vivelo

My great-aunt Molly Hardison was a wealthy woman. By the standards of the coal mining town that was home to my family, she was fabulously rich. We didn’t have any particular claim on her; she had nearer relatives. Still, she never forgot us children—and there were eight of us—at Christmastime. Once in every two or three years, she would come and spend the holiday with us.

Mama said Christmas with us was more like Aunt Molly’s own childhood holidays than Christmas at her grand house or with her sons and their snooty wives.

We were poor all the time, and some years we were poorer than others. Nevertheless, at Christmas our house would be filled with evergreen boughs, pine cones, and red ribbons. Mama would keep hot cider simmering on the back of the woodstove so the house always smelled of cinnamon and cloves. No matter how bad things were Papa could take his hunting dog, first Ol’ Elsie and then later her son Ol’ Ben, and bring in game. He brought home quail by the dozens, deer, wild turkeys.

Sometimes he’d be the only person we knew who had found a turkey, but he’d always get ours for the holiday. I think he was smart in the ways of turkeys. I was his tomboy and counted myself in on his discussions about hunting with my brothers. Papa would follow a goodsized turkey gobbler for weeks, learning its ways and finding its roosts. Turkeys like to move around, which is why they fool so many hunters, and they almost always have more than one roost.

I listened to all my father could tell us about hunting and would have gone with him when he began to take Joe and Cliff, but Mama put her foot down. I had to content myself with taking care of the hunting dog.

“Maybe someday, Betsy,” Papa consoled me. “You’d make a fine hunter.”

In any case, our house looked and smelled good at Christmas. It was filled with all the food a resourceful country family could provide. In our neck of the woods that was better than most city families, poor or rich, could do.

So, fairly regularly Aunt Molly would come and spend Christmas in our bustling, over-crowded house. Whether she was there or not, she always sent presents. Her sister, our own grandmother, was dead, which made her something of a stand-in. But we children understood that presents for Christmas and our birthdays would be all we could expect from Aunt Molly, except, of course, for my sister Molly.

I don’t think any scheming was involved on my mother’s part. I think she just liked the name Molly. She named her first daughter for her mother and her second daughter for her aunt. It didn’t hurt that both Mollys happened to be green-eyed redheads. Our Molly was the only redhead among the eight of us and the only one with green eyes. We understood, all of us from oldest to youngest, that our Molly was special to Aunt Molly.

Aunt Molly made it clear that something more than seasonal presents would come Molly’s way. I was five the Christmas that Aunt Molly first brought her ruby and diamond necklace with her. Molly was twelve that year when our great-aunt put that magnificent necklace on her for the first time.

“It isn’t yours yet, but it will be. I’m not having it go to either of my daughters-in-law. It’ll be yours.”

We were all in awe of those old stones that glowed with fire. Even the boys took a look, rolled their eyes, and murmured, “Wowee.”

“When?” my sister Amanda, oldest of all and most practical, asked.

Aunt Molly fairly cackled.

“When? Well, you see, she’ll get to keep it when she marries. Marriage,” Great-aunt Molly said, “is the only choice open to a girl. It’s the only way to live.”

From then on. every Christmas that Aunt Molly spent with us included another look at the necklace and another review of what Molly had to do to get it.

When my sister Amanda was nineteen, she married Dr. Harvey Brittaman, a young G. P. who had just taken up practice in our area. Great-aunt Molly gave them a full set of fine dishes, a hundred and two pieces.

Everybody agreed that none of the rest of us girls was likely to do any better than Amanda had. After all, a doctor!

Sister Molly was seventeen that year. I always thought she was the best-looking of all of us, though later on my little sister Cindy turned out to be a beauty, too. Molly had creamy fair skin without freckles and deep dark red hair. She was slim and tall and wore her hair long. She liked nothing in the world better than reading and carried a book with her everywhere. She would sit on a damp hillside and read until someone, usually me. went and told her to come home.

She had lots of admirers in high school, but two were the frontrunners. Malcolm Bodey was a football player, and Jerry Rattagan edited the school newspaper. Malcolm was planning to go into the mines like the rest of his family. Jerry was going on to the state university.

“You wait for the older men,” Aunt Molly told sister Molly when she came for Amanda’s wedding. “These boys are fine, but someone better will come along.”

That wedding started me thinking. I was ten at the time. I thought about losing Amanda. I thought about marrying in general. I thought about me. I tried to picture me marrying one of the boys I knew, and it was an awful thought. I decided to try again to persuade Mama to let Papa teach me to hunt. I figured what I’d really like was to be a woodsman and live alone in a cabin in the woods. In our house I never had any time or any place alone.

Then I thought about Molly, Molly and the ruby and diamond necklace. For the first time I saw that the necklace hadn’t been anything but trouble. For one thing, it had turned my sister Amanda bitter. Here she was, the oldest and the first married, but she wasn’t getting the necklace. Aunt Molly had given her Royal Doulton china worth a king’s ransom, but it didn’t take away the sting. Amanda bore the brunt of the sense of rejection, but I suddenly saw that it was there for all of us, boys as well as girls.

A year later Molly graduated from high school and went to work at Lacy’s drugstore. She didn’t talk to any of us about what she wanted, but it was easy to see she was unhappy. Malcolm was determined to marry her, and it seemed to me she was weakening.

I felt like there was something about Molly I was missing, so out on the hillside one day I just asked her outright, “How do you really feel about that necklace Aunt Molly’s going to give you when you get married?”

Well, she told me. I guess nobody had ever asked her that question before. She spilled out her feelings, her hopes, her wishes—everything in one long outburst. “Didn’t you know?” she asked. “Didn’t you guess? You’re the one who’s always watching everybody. I thought you didn’t miss a thing—not that I expected anybody else to guess. But I thought you would.”

I felt pretty stupid. Once she told me, it seemed obvious.

That next Christmas was one that Aunt Molly spent with us. She showed up two days before Christmas, in time to put her presents under the tree and to help with some of the cooking. Her coming brought back all the things I’d been thinking about when Amanda was married. When you’re eleven-going-on-twelve, you’re plagued by weighty thoughts.

My brother Cliff was my confidant in the family, but he’d picked that moment to have a chest cold or flu of some sort. He had been moved into the little room at the head of the stairs that was used as a sickroom whenever Mama suspected one of us had something contagious. We were only supposed to pass notes to each other, sending them in on the food trays.

I stood my serious thoughts all on my own for as long as I could, then went and knocked on the sickroom door.

“Who is it?” If a toad had a voice, it might sound all croupy like Cliffs that day.

“It’s Betsy. I’m coming in.”

I went to the far end of the bed and sat by Cliff’s feet. He didn’t say you shouldn’t be here. He just said, “I can’t talk so good.”

“Well, you can listen.” And I told him all the things I had thought about marriage, about the necklace, and about Molly. While I was talking, some things that had never entered my mind before seemed clear. Cliff croaked that since he wasn’t the marrying type and I wasn’t either, maybe we could both be hunters.

I felt a lot better after that. I wasn’t weird after all. I slipped out of his room before Mama showed up with his lunch.

After supper that night we all gathered in the parlor. Cliff, his chest wrapped with flannel cloths that smelled of camphor, was bundled into a chair by the fireplace, Ol’ Ben asleep at his feet. Even Amanda was with us. Her husband Harvey was there, too. but the two youngest children didn’t know that because Harvey was dressed as Santa Claus and carried a big bag of toys.

He distributed presents, and we all opened them. There would be more in the morning under the tree, but we liked to spread Christmas out as far as we could.

Christmas Eve was always the time Aunt Molly asked Molly to wear the ruby and diamond necklace, “for a while, so I can see it on you, child.” Aunt Molly laid it out on the table, and we all saw that it was still as impressive as ever. It seemed to catch the lights of the Christmas tree and the glow of the candles, not only reflecting but matching with light of its own.

Just as Aunt Molly said, “Come here, my dear, and let me put this on you,” Cliff had a fit of coughing. Everyone’s attention turned from the necklace to Cliff.

Aunt Molly laid the necklace down and stood up to look over the back of Cliffs chair. One younger child climbed on each arm of the chair, Cindy on one side and Tommy on the other. Harvey, who was a doctor first and Santa second, tossed his sack to one side and clumped across the room in oversized shoes. Someone tramped on Ol’0 Ben’s tail in an effort to get to Cliff, and I led the dog. drugged by food and the warmth of the fire, toward the door.

“He’s all right. Move back, everyone.” Papa said. “Don’t open that door,” he added to me. “I don’t want a draft through here until I get another blanket.”

I slapped Ol’ Ben on the bottom and sent him off to his box in the kitchen.

The little ones scrambled back to their presents. Aunt Molly, with a hand pressed to her bosom, turned back to the table. Mama picked up a bottle of cough medicine and then almost dropped it as Aunt Molly screamed.

“Who picked up the necklace? Molly, do you have it already?”

Looks of bewilderment met her questions. “Don’t go out!” she commanded Santa Claus, who was trying to slip out the door with his empty sack to change back into his identity as Dr. Brittaman. “Don’t anyone move out of this room until I find the necklace.”

“You can’t suspect Santa Claus!” my brother James shouted, which was a cue for a good bit of silly chatter that had a bad effect on Aunt Molly’s temper. She was much more thorough and more demanding in her search than she might have been otherwise.

Mama and Papa kept trying to make light of it. Of course the necklace was there. It had to be. None of us would take it. Aunt Molly said she would have granted that an hour earlier but the fact was someone had.

Our Santa Claus suggested we quarter the room and search it inch by inch with Aunt Molly supervising each stage of the search until the necklace turned up. That search was classic, something to pass into legend within our family. First, there were twelve people in the room, counting Aunt Molly herself, and someone insisted she should not be exempt from being searched. Santa and his sack were checked. Even Cliff agreed to be searched, his chair, his blankets, his clothes, his flannel wraps, every inch of the space around him.

Every branch of the tree was examined, every present inspected for signs of tampering. Two of them had to be opened and then repackaged because young hands had been scrabbling at them. But neither one contained the necklace. Chairs were overturned. The hanging light fixture was checked. It became a game to suggest new possibilities.

Maybe because he had been caught trying to get out the door, Harvey went to extremes to see that he and his props were cleared of suspicion. He also made sure every suggestion, no matter how unreasonable, was followed up. The windows were tested, even though everyone knew no one had opened a door or window. An icy wind was blowing, and it was snowing outside. Opening up just long enough to toss something out would have let in a blast the rest would have noticed, not to mention that the necklace would have been lost in the snow.

Aunt Molly had never seemed the least bit pitiful to anyone before that night. Now she looked like a broken woman. Her face was blotchy, and her shoulders sagged. I felt truly sorry for her. Like everyone else that night, I wanted to find her necklace and restore it to her, but it just wasn’t possible.

Mama put her arm around her and told her she d walk her up to her room. At the door, Aunt Molly turned and, looking at Molly, said. “I’m sorry, dear.”

“We’ll find it,” Mama told Aunt Molly. “We’ll still find it.”

Papa, Amanda, and Dr. Brittaman were all shaking their heads behind Mama and Aunt Molly’s backs. I knew what they were thinking. That necklace had just plain vanished, and it didn’t seem likely it could ever be found. If it wasn’t in that room, well, it just wasn’t anywhere.

Papa carried Cliff back to his bed. The rest of us also began to get ready to sleep. Somehow no one knew quite what to say to Molly.

We shuffled through nighttime rituals in uneasy silence. This was no way to go to bed on Christmas Eve. Aunt Molly was hurt, and to all appearances, we had a thief in our family. A dull misery settled around my heart.

You wouldn’t think a holiday could recover from a disaster like that, but the next day was one of the best Christmases of our lives. Strangely enough, it was all due to Aunt Molly, too. Several times during breakfast I saw her fingering a small piece of folded paper. She opened her presents with the rest of us and sounded sincerely grateful for her box of handkerchiefs, bottle of toilet water, book of poetry, and the handmade gifts from the younger children. If she was grieving, she was doing it bravely. It seemed to me she just looked thoughtful.

In the middle of the afternoon when the younger children were playing and Amanda and Harvey had gone home. Aunt Molly said she had something to say. She gathered Mama and Papa and Molly around the table. I hung around to hear what was going on.

“I’ve been doing some thinking since last night,” she told them. “No, don’t interrupt,” she cautioned as my mother began to speak. “I think I wanted to arrange for my namesake to have my life all over again, a thing that’s not possible, not even reasonable.” She stopped and sighed.

It’s all right about the necklace. I mean, it isn’t all right that you lost it,” Molly told her, “but it’s all right that it isn’t coming to me.”

Aunt Molly ignored her and continued. “I’d like to see this young woman go on with her studies. Toward that end, I want to pay her way to college.” At a sign of protest from my father, Aunt Molly said dryly, “Believe me, four years’ tuition will be less than the value of that necklace. You will not, of course, get the necklace,” she added to Molly.

“Thank you.” said Molly, her eyes wet and shining.

Molly walked on air for the rest of the day. Aunt Molly beamed. My parents kept exchanging smiles. The rest of us were infected by their joy, so it felt like Christmas morning all day and half the night.

I worked it out the other day that Aunt Molly on that Christmas was about the age I am now. I, of course, am not old at all, though she seemed old to me then. She just recently died, having lived into her nineties. Her large estate was divided among her children and grandchildren, but her will made provision for a sealed manila envelope to be delivered to me.

When I opened the envelope, I found a correctly folded letter on thick creamy stationery together with a yellowed slip of paper folded into a square. I opened the slip of paper first and read the message:

You can have you mizerable necklace back if you promise Molly don’t haf to git married. She don’t want a husban. She wants to go to collige.

I wouldn’t have believed the spelling could have been that bad. I unfolded the accompanying letter and read:

Dear Betsy,

I don’t know how many years will pass before you get this back, but I want to return your note to you.

For days I was baffled by the disappearing stunt you pulled. No one had left the room, yet the necklace wasn’t in the room, I told myself. Continuing to puzzle over the problem, I repeated that paradox endlessly. Finally I varied it a bit and said, “Not one creature went out of the room.” I stopped as I reached that point because I realized a “creature” had left—that smelly old hound. Then I knew my ruby and diamond necklace must have gone out of the room with the dog. He was wearing it there in his box by the kitchen stove all the time we were searching, wasn’t he? Of course, I also remembered that you were the one who sent the dog out of the room while Cliff kept the rest of us distracted. What a determined child you must have been to hold out against all that adult energy!

You always were a clever child, Betsy.

Aunt Molly’d gone home that year with her necklace. Late on Christmas afternoon, it showed up without explanation on her bed. She made sure everyone saw it one last time, then after that holiday never mentioned it again.

When the new semester began a few weeks after Christmas, my sister Molly started college.