He put his arm around her to steady them both so she could lean past and peer into the shimmering darkness.
“Can I help you?” asked a troll.
They both flinched in amazement, nearly tumbling into the flume.
“Can I help you?” asked the voice again through a vertical chink in the side of the mill. “Just a minute. I’ll come around. The mill’s closed for repairs.”
A middle-aged man appeared through a makeshift door. He had a full beard and wore floppy overalls with no shirt, despite early autumn in the air. The stranger wore rubber boots folded over at the tops the way boys once did before running shoes became the universal footwear of childhood. He welcomed his visitors, speaking in a rustic twang that Miranda recognized as pure affectation. The man flaunted a slight Southern drawl as if he had learned to be country by watching reruns of Petticoat Junction.
Morgan noticed his teeth. They were crooked but healthy, despite the ragtag beard and stringy hair. He was probably English. Miranda and Morgan both marked the lack of underwear. When the man stood close, they could see down along his hips where the denim gaped away from his body. They kept backing away from him as they talked.
“You must be R. Oxley, Prop.,” said Miranda.
He acknowledged he was and in his function as curator seemed not at all interested in their identities. “I don’t know anyone called Bray,” he said responding to their question. I’ve researched this town to the roots. There’s no Brays, far as I know.”
Morgan could always tell when someone distorted grammar intentionally. He saw it sometimes with cops, and men in hardware stores. There ain’t no Brays would be trying too hard. There’s no Brays was just about right
“You could try asking around,” Oxley said, “but I’ve read everything there is to read ’bout Detzler’s Landing. And the township, this part of the county.
“There must be a lot,” said Miranda equivocally. Then, with appropriate deference, she asked, “Do you know why it’s called Landing?”
“Used t’be river traffic. You can see where the banks of the river were higher, couple of centuries ago, before the invaders moved in. It was Huron country, but they couldn’t farm it. It was just for travelling through. They were wiped out, and Algonquins took over, Ojibwa hunters. It was better for hunting. They were followed by Iroquois stragglers up from the Finger Lakes who didn’t like life on the reserves. Then Frenchmen came through even before that and established a post here, just a storage shed really. But it was the new settlers who called it Detzler’s Landing. Named it after the first mill owner, who changed the flow of the river. A German who fought with Isaac Brock and Tecumseh. He was wounded, an officer on half-pay, the lord here of his own little realm.”
“You rebuilding the mill?” Morgan asked.
“Restoring. It’s kinda tough. There’s parts from every era. It’s like archaeology in reverse — trying to work your way through from the past to the present.”
“What a lovely project,” said Miranda, quite moved by the man’s sincerity.
“I don’t know about lovely. But it’s fun. Daunting, but fun.”
“Daunting,” said Morgan. “Where are you from?”
“Right here,” said Oxley.
“Sometimes I sleep in the mill. I’ve got a cot. I keep out the vandals that way. They don’t know when I’m here and when I’m not, not when I park out back.”
“You have much trouble?”
“Village kids. You know, nothing better to do. They’re not so bad. They’re used to me now — getting protective, some of them. When it was a mill, they would never have bothered the place. Then it was empty and they figured it was theirs. Now I’m filling it with history, and I got it just about workin’ again. They respect that.”
“How many?” Morgan asked. “You make it sound like hordes.”
“Heathens at the gates? You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of houses and abandoned farms with people living on them.”
“Squatters?”
“Old families mostly. They let the farms run down generations ago and they live on in the houses. It’s a small pocket of poverty here, surrounded by some of the richest farmland in the country. You’ll find more like this over in eastern Ontario, along the edge of the Canadian Shield.”
Someone from around Detzler’s Landing wouldn’t have said Shield, Morgan thought.
“Any fish in there?” Miranda asked, nodding toward the still waters of the pond.
“Carp. Some say walleyes and pike. I’ve only seen carp. Sometimes one’ll get caught in the grid when I’m running the water. D’y’know, this mill powers a turbine combine from water? There’s a steam drive, as well. I’ll have it working by spring. Are you two cops?”
“Why do you ask?” questioned Miranda.
“Just wondered.”
“Did you buy this place from Gryphon Mills?”
“Yeah, Robert Griffin. I never actually met the gentleman. Read where he’s dead. Are you here about that?”
“Did you ever meet someone called Eleanor Drummond?” Miranda asked.
“She sold me the place. She handled the paperwork. Is she dead, too?” He observed them warily as if trying to decide whether they somehow held him responsible. Deciding that wasn’t the case, he relaxed.
“She was a stunning woman — too bad.” They hadn’t confirmed her death, but he knew.
“A very high-class lady.” His drawl had fallen away, and the abbreviated sibilance of what Morgan recognized as residual Cockney pulled his vowels askew.
“Very high class. You don’t find many like her. Sorry, Constable …”
“No offence taken,” said Miranda. “It’s detective.”
“Sorry again, Detective. It’s just that Miss Drummond wasn’t someone you’d expect to see around here. She wasn’t murdered, was she? I suppose she was. You don’t die in your prime except from murder or suicide or accidents or disease, I suppose …” He seemed to be reaching for more possibilities to reinforce his litany of premature death.
“She came out to Detzler’s Landing then?” asked Miranda, trying not to look down the gaping side of his overalls.
“A couple of times. To show me around. To bring out the papers.”
“Did she know anyone in the village?”
“Lord, no! She walked across the dam once, just over to the edge of the old lady’s property. For a minute I thought she was about to pay her a visit. You know how someone stands when they’re stuck between coming and going? Then she turned back, and so far as I know, she never touched ground in the village except on this property.”
“She made quite
