I still have copies available of Cold Midnight, a "YA crossover" mystery set in 1921 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and based on a real "cold case" that the town never closed. By special request, here's chapter 1; you can get the softcover book from me, or the
ebook online.
Cold Midnight
by Beth Kanell
Autumn 1921
Chapter 1
The
new rope worked much better than the knotted strips of sheets. And it was more
than twice as long.
In
the darkness behind the tenement house, untying the knot required her fingers
to dig and tug. Claire wished she’d brought a spike or even a nail. A nail –
there should be some scattered around on the ground. Easing quietly toward the
pool of light spilling from the downstairs parlor, Claire scuffed her shoes
until she felt something roll under them, and coaxed it along to where she
could see it and pick it up. She moved back against the wall and poked at the
knot with the iron point. Done!
Claire
was used to creeping down the back porches and only using her twisted line of
sheeting to drop down the last ten feet to the ground. It could hang there
until she returned. But the rope was different: she needed to take it with her
so she could get where she needed to go.
The
smell of tar hung thick in the warm night air. Main Street, just around the corner
from the tenement house, gleamed under its new coat of paving. No sense
stepping in the soft black ooze – Claire took the back route around the little
green-sided Christian Science church to the alley next to Willis’s hardware.
Carefully, she coiled the twenty feet of rope over her left shoulder. On
tiptoes, she ran up the three flights of fire stairs, avoiding the windows. Now
one long stretch, twenty feet high, separated her from the rooftop. She set her
fingers and toes into the brickwork and edged upward.
After
so many times crawling in darkness up the wall, with its fancy brick courses
and false window frames extending out as perfect footholds, the climb came
easily, up to the last bit where the roof hung over. Until now, the overhang
had defeated her. But this time, with her rope, she formed a sling and looped
it over a massive iron hook at the roof’s edge, built to grasp the snowload and
prevent it from falling on unsuspecting pedestrians in winter. The hook and the
rope sling would provide a way to let go of the wall and swing out.
She
tugged at the sling to make sure the knot would hold. It ought to: a square
knot, the way her father had shown her ages ago. Blue funk gripped her stomach
for a moment. She twisted her left hand around the rope sling, then snatched at
it with her right, flying loose from the wall. Four stories above the ground,
she dangled from her rope loop. Keep moving, she told herself, and heaved with
both arms, until she figured out how to launch her legs up. The scrape of her
boots against the roof startled her.
Don’t
stop now. It’s just like on the bars of the swing. Go!
Seconds
later, Claire stood on the roof of the Willis Block for the first time. The
size of it had always impressed her, as it stretched across five street-level
businesses. Her left arm burned from the rope’s friction, and she rubbed it
while she crouched and surveyed this new view of town. She peered down to be
sure nobody had seen or heard her – but the coast was clear.
First
she looked west, up the ridge, and oriented herself by the dark bulk of the
ancient pines above the town. She could see the distant cliffs block the starry
sky. The grand Bateman mansion spread solidly against the nearer slope, gas
lamps twinkling in the upper windows. There were no lights in the long glassed
greenhouse beside the mansion, but she saw small reflections of the bright
stars of early September.
Slowly,
Claire turned north, gazing past the short steeple of the Christian Science
church to see the massive stone structure of the North Church, then the brick
steeple of the Irish Catholic one. Beyond the handful of large homes at the
north end of town, the land rose to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. She bent to rub one
knee, realizing she’d scraped that, too. Most likely her stockings would cover
it tomorrow, but she would need to be careful that no signs of her adventures
showed around her skirt and blouse, or her mother would grow suspicious.
Claire
swiveled south, toward the dark courthouse with its clock tower, then the
imposing halls of the Academy campus – the school halls that she already hated
after a single week of classes. Claire frowned fiercely, wishing they’d
disappear. For a moment she pondered what it would feel like to set them
aflame, the crisp, snapping fire engulfing them in seconds. But she knew it was
insane, a wild fantasy she’d never actually try. Her father had warned her
about fire-setters and their madness, back before the war, when he still talked
to her about real things.
Claire
closed her eyes and made the final quarter turn to face east, down the slope to
the downtown, the railroad, the river beyond. For a moment longer, she stood
blind, eyelids clamped together. She stretched her arms and hands wide, feeling
the cool night air between her fingers. She sniffed the breeze for river scent,
but she couldn’t find it. At last, she lowered her arms and opened her eyes.
Ah!
Cramped knuckles and scraped knees faded into insignificance. The town lay out
before her as if Claire were its only audience. Golden lamplight and silver
starlight splashed through and against windows. Halfway down the hill the
French Catholic church interrupted with its dark stone steeple. Closer to her,
someone pulled a curtain closed at an upper level. A late truck growled as it
pulled up Eastern Avenue toward Main Street. A dog began to bark angrily, a
second one yelped in conversation, and she caught a hint of a distant shouting
voice.
They
can’t hear me, she thought. They can’t see me. But they are mine, all mine.
The
bells of North Church tolled the hour: ten o’clock. She resolved to explore her
rooftops until midnight struck. Seven buildings linked together meant she could
walk all the way from here to the edge of the last roof above Eastern Avenue
itself. She twitched her rope to lay it flat on the first section of roof, then
started walking.
A
surprising number of objects rolled under her booted feet as she scuffed slowly
along. Although a rounded wedge of moon showed itself above the eastern
horizon, it didn’t light the roof. Claire could feel nails, and the snap of
twigs, and something soft that might be the remains of a bird. She tried to
avoid crushing whatever it was – the poor thing was most likely mangled enough.
Plus, she didn’t want to step in anything that would reek of decay. Continuing
to escape the house at night depended on not leaving traces that her mother
would notice. Her father, of course, wouldn’t notice if she put her muddiest
boots directly onto his lap.
Placing
a hand on a chimney top, she realized someone in the building had lit a fire.
Silly thing to do on such a warm night! But on second thought, perhaps it was
still warm from cooking supper. At home, supper could take place any time
between five and nine o’clock, depending on whether her mother felt exalted
that evening. Sometimes Claire’s mother set a row of candles along the table
and decorated it to resemble a feast, even when supper was only a reheated
slice of Sunday’s pork pie. She’d tear the bread apart with her long slender
fingers, instead of slicing it: “This was how his disciples recognized the
Lord,” she’d explain. “The way He broke the bread. After He rose again, of
course. Drink some wine, Claire. It’s not a sacrament like at church.”
“You’ve
watered it down,” her father would complain if he happened to be there. And
he’d take a draw from his flask instead, then forget to finish eating as he
shuffled out of the kitchen to the parlor and its darkness. Her mother’s
shoulders would slump, half from plain irritation, half from some deeper wound.
“Pray
for your father tonight,” she’d instruct Claire. “Forty ‘Hail Marys’ and then
the Our Father. He needs to go to confession.” Her voice louder, she’d repeat,
“Robert, you need to go to confession. You can’t take Holy Communion until
you’ve confessed to the priest.”
“Go
there yourself, eh,” her father would mumble back, and mutter a curse in French
just to annoy her, and drop heavily into his armchair without turning on a
lamp.
The
warm chimney also reminded Claire that she was walking above tenements where
people lived, over the shops. She hoped their ceilings muffled her footfalls.
Who lived in the rooms just beneath her? Mr. Willis, who owned the hardware?
No, he lived lower down, right above his store. This place must be his
brother’s, the one with all the small children.
The
urge seized her to peer through their windows and catch a glimpse of their
life. Could she reach the fire stairs behind this section of the store block?
She edged eastward, to the back end of the roof, and squinted into the darkness
below. She knew there was another set of stairs, but she had left her rope back
by the first set. Besides, she didn’t know how far this set went. She’d have to
inspect it by daylight before risking the drop.
Back
to the center again, then south, across the roof of the ladies’ clothing store.
Then the two sections joined together below into the grocery and what must be
the little bakery. At last she knew she stood above the photographer’s studio.
The rising moon lit a low wall in front of her, where the roofline rose to go
across the bank at the corner, with a false row of windows along the front.
The
wide, open space of Eastern Avenue yawned in the darkness below. Across the way
was the park, and beyond that, the courthouse. A movement among the bushes
caught her eye: a dog, scruffy and slow. She could barely hear its faint
snuffling.
When
the whistling started, she jerked in place, grabbing the chimney nearest to her
to stop a wave of vertigo. Her head spun. The sweet pure whistle rose in a tune
she knew: “Listen to the mockingbird,” it trilled. The strangeness of it in her
hard-luck town, her town viewed from its high Main Street roofs, nearly blinded
her. Then the whistle began to dance around the tune, ornamenting it, pouring
it into the darkness as if night were shaped with a space that belonged to
music and to joy.
Just
before the tune ended, she realized a boy in dark clothing, with the bulk of a
jacket slung over his shoulder, had emerged from the shadows of the park and
was walking into the long alley behind the store buildings. By the time she
thought to cross the roof and look directly down the side of the building, he
had vanished into the darkness, along with his melody.
In
the boy’s absence, the town laid itself out again, nearly silent. Claire walked
the roof in the other direction, back to where her rope lay folded, getting the
feel of it into her feet. The false windows rising above the front of the
photographer’s building offered a good place to perch, so she circled back
there. Where her hand rested on the brick wall, she felt lumps like chewing
gum. Bird droppings. She scrubbed her hand against her sweater and stuffed it
into a pocket, where her handkerchief sat in a ball.
Why would someone
build a row of false window arches at the front of a building? Just to make it
look taller? There was no glass, nothing behind them except the roof itself.
Claire fingered the brick surface carefully before climbing inside an arch, to
sit curled within the chilly but strong framework. Looking up the hillside to
the west, with the Bateman mansion in the center of her view, she watched the
upstairs lamps begin to go out, one after another in a line. The last one
lingered a few minutes longer. Someone setting aside his or her clothes, no
doubt. Would it be Mr. Bateman himself? No, that upper room must belong to a
maid or the cook.
Below
her, footsteps pattered along Main Street. Somebody was running there, keeping
close to the block of buildings. She turned to hook an arm more firmly, then
leaned cautiously from her position inside the arch, not wanting to make a
sound.
The
person in the darkness reached the corner of Eastern Avenue and Claire could
see enough to be sure it was a man or a very tall, older boy. His arms were
pumping and she could hear his breath, ragged and rapid. From above, the cap on
his head looked like one of her father’s uniform caps. He stopped, reached out,
and pulled the hammer of the fire alarm box. Then he ran.
Bells
rang loudly in the firehouse down the road and in the Methodist church steeple.
Lamps flared higher. Men shouted, and a truck engine roared to life. Claire
pressed her back against the wall. Crouching behind the brick edging, she
watched: one truck, the pumper; then the second one, its ladders hanging off the
end; four men clutching the rails. A fifth man stood by the open doorway,
staring down the road, then bolted back inside, shouting again.
A
harsh charcoal smell filled the night, much stronger than chimney smoke. Not
far from her, metal on metal screeched and more shouts echoed as the new fire
trucks halted just beyond the courthouse. Hunched low, keeping her balance, she
ran to the south end of the line of buildings and saw a red flicker of flame at
the side of the boarding house beyond the courthouse park.
Her
father would be there soon! The fire bells surely had summoned him by now. Any
moment, he might wake her mother, too. Claire needed to return to her bed and
be under the covers in case they looked into her room.
She
fled back north along the roofs, fumbled for the loops of her rope, and swung
wildly for the steps below.
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