Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) by Anna Maclean

something over my shoulder.
    I turned around, knowing already that whatever had so changed her expression was something to dread.
    Coming down the Walpole sidewalk was a group of men carrying a litter, and on that litter was a body covered with a sheet. Rusty, coagulated blood blotted the sheet.
    â€œWhat has happened?” A man with rolled-up sleeves ran out of his cobbler’s shop, a huge needle in one hand and the unstitched leather sole still in his other. He waited next to us on the sidewalk, peering nervously at the approaching men with their litter.
    â€œErnst Nooteboom,” called one of the men. “Found him dead in the ravine.”
    All movement stopped. Gossiping housewives, skipping children, apprentices with brooms, shopgirls carrying trays of tea, even the leaves on the elms seemed to cease their trembling—the entire square froze in disbelief. The two separate rows of tobacco-chewing unemployed laborers grew still. Unexpected death has that effect.
    A woman stepped away from her group of friends. She had fair skin and two long blond braids trailing down her back. A shopping basket hung over her arm. She moved slowly, not wishing to arrive at the side of that broken body but knowing she must. When she pulled the covering off the dead man’s face, six eggs spilled from her basket and broke on the cobbles. No one paid any attention to them.
    â€œErnst?” said the woman gently, as if trying to wake a child from a deep sleep. When he did not respond, she screamed. She shook him so hard the litter carriers had trouble maintaining their awful burden. Finally she collapsed to the ground, wailing, and her friends circled around her once again, not to exchange gossip or recipes, but to comfort, as women do, making a cordon of their arms as though they could fend off further disaster.
    I looked back at the cobbler. “She be Lilli Nooteboom, his sister,” he said. He still held the shoe he had been stitching, and the huge needle with its cord was suspended in air, frozen in time by the coldness of death.
    Lilli Nooteboom would not be comforted by the women. She raged against the men carrying her dead brother, weeping and gasping, tearing at her hair, shaking her fists at the sky. “Where did you find him?” she sobbed.
    â€œBottom of the cliffs, Miss Nooteboom. Seems he fell,” said the man closest to her. He avoided her gaze.
    â€œNo,” she said, now somehow calming herself. “He did not fall. My brother climbed in the Alps; he was a summer guide. He had sure footing, my brother. Never does he fall.” Her voice was accented with deep Dutch “R”s and the upending inflection.
    â€œDon’t know nothing about that, miss,” he replied, still afraid to look into her eyes.
    â€œI do know about that,” insisted Miss Nooteboom. “He does not fall. Something else has happened to him. Oh, I told him we should not come.” And she began to weep anew, then once again controlled herself.
    Her blue eyes were like ice, sharp and cold. “Something else has happened,” she insisted. She looked at the row of laborers in their tweed caps and white tunics.
    â€œWell, will we carry him home?” asked one litter bearer, shifting his weight a little in discomfort. The body under the sheet was not small; it must have been a strain even for four men to carry him all the way from the ravine.
    â€œEh. Home, to the dining room,” said the dead man’s sister in a strangled voice. “I will put a clean sheet on the table and prepare him. And then I will be speaking to the sheriff.” She led the way, looking straight ahead with those piercing blue eyes.
    The processional passed Sylvia and me, where we stood on the edge of the sidewalk in front of Tupper’s General Store. The sheet wasn’t quite long enough to cover the dead man’s feet. I had a good look at them.
    The leather soles of his shoes were worn smooth and had