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

not been crisscrossed with the incised Xs with which walkers and climbers increase boot traction. No sensible person would walk on a cliff in shoes like those on the feet of Ernst Nooteboom; certainly no hiking guide would take such a risk.
    â€œIt were an accident,” said a man behind me. I looked back and saw Mr. Tupper standing there.
    â€œBeg pardon?” I asked.
    â€œMr. Nooteboom. He fell.”
    â€œSo they said,” I answered. Mr. Tupper seemed plainly distressed by something; I could see it in the trembling of his hand. “An accident,” he repeated.
    The procession disappeared around a corner and the day slowly returned to its previous condition: Birds sang in the ancient oaks and elms, children played at stick and hoop, the idling laborers grumped and talked among themselves. Groups of women stood in closed circles, whispering. Now, instead of recipes, they talked of Ernst and Lilli Nooteboom, I was certain.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Knitting Lessons and a Wake
    SYLVIA AND I returned home to find Ida Tupper sitting in the kitchen with Abba.
    â€œLook,” she said with great glee. “Abba is teaching me to knit!” She held up a tangled skein of wool and a needle with two lopsided, uneven rows of knit one, purl two. Ida wore pink-striped linen that day and skirts with enough yardage for two or three of my workday gowns. She looked youngish in a strange way, as middle-aged women who deny their maturity often do when adorned in insistently youthful style. “I thought I would come keep your mother company. We musn’t let her get bored here in the country.”
    Abba, looking patient but tired, was too kind to point out to her new neighbor that there was dinner to prepare and rows of vegetable seeds to be planted and so had let herself be coerced into yet another task. Judging from the unevenness of Mrs. Tupper’s knitting stitches, it was an impossible task.
    â€œI’ve never attempted a sock before,” said that woman gaily. “Mother insisted I learn crewel embroidery and china painting instead, you know—what ladies do. I learned a bit of hat trimming as well, what Parisian ladies occupy themselves with. Trimmed that one.” Ida pointed to a confectionery of white starched lace and peacock feathers now resting on the table near her elbow. “Jonah bought it for me before he left,” she said. “Oh, it is ever so expensive, I’m sure. You’ll not find another like it in Walpole. I asked Lilli Nooteboom if she could make a dress to match and she was just speechless, poor thing. She has no talent for dressmaking, really she hasn’t.”
    â€œAh,” I said.
    â€œLouisa, you look pale,” said Abba, putting down her needles. “And Sylvia, you are trembling. What is the matter?”
    I pumped water into the sink from the kettle, and stuck more wood into the stove to blaze up the fire.
    â€œLilli Nooteboom is the matter,” I said. “Her brother has fallen from a cliff, it seems.”
    â€œErnst?” Ida Tupper looked up from her lopsided knitting. It seemed she was on a first-name basis with a great many people.
    â€œErnst,” she said again, wonder in her voice, and a touch of fear. “I do hope he will recover without a limp; it is so awful when a man limps. Such a nice young man. So very tall, and that funny accent. His sister, of course, is another story. So cold, so formal. She purposely shut a door once in my face; I would swear she did it on purpose.”
    â€œErnst Nooteboom is dead,” said Sylvia.
    I had wished to announce the mortality a little more gently, but Sylvia was in her straightforward phase.
    Ida Tupper dropped her knitting. “Dead? I never thought . . . What a catastrophe.” Her voice trailed off, and I feared she would swoon. She did not. Instead she rose from the wobbly kitchen chair and went to the window. It was the side of the house that faced her own; she stared into