“So you lost your job with them?”
“I was never a regular employee with them. I worked at Paine’s Lumber Mill for forty years. I only helped out at the Johnsons’ and then the Lynchs’ on the side. So it didn’t affect me much, but I can tell you that a lot of noses around here were put out of joint. Servants that had been with the family for twenty years or more, kicked out without so much as a thank-you. Still, that was Horace Lynch for you. Good riddance, I say.”
I thanked him and left him, my mind fully occupied with what he had told me. If the Johnsons came from Scotland then I’d probably been searching for my missionaries in the wrong places. Now I’d have to start from the beginning again and contact all the missionary societies in England and Scotland. I sighed. Perhaps I could save time by contacting some of the names I had been supplied of missionaries who had worked in China. Surely the British missionaries and their American counterparts must have worked in cooperation with each other. I thought of the men I had spoken with the other day at the Presbyterian missions headquarters, but I couldn’t remember their names. I’d have to go back there and ask them.
Then my thoughts turned to the Johnsons and their daughter, who liked to sing and dance and have fun, and the unpleasant Horace Lynch. It didn’t seem like a love match and I wondered if Horace had been more interested in acquiring her mill, her mansion, and her money. Either way, I felt sorry for Emily and her miserable upbringing.
Twenty
Supper was a good hearty pot roast with plenty of root vegetables, followed by an apple betty and fresh cream. I ate enthusiastically.
“So did you find the old Johnson place?” the landlady asked as she brought in a pot of coffee.
“I did. It seems such a shame that it’s being left to fall down.”
“A waste, that’s what I’d call it,” she said. “Sarah here recalls what it was like in its heyday, don’t you, Sarah?” She addressed this remark to the large, red-faced woman who was clearing the dishes from the table.
“I do,” Sarah confessed.
“Sarah was a maid there, you know.”
“Really?”
She smiled. “That’s right. I went to work for the Johnsons when I was fourteen and I stayed with them until they left. I helped look after Miss Lydia when she was a girl. Sweet little thing she was. Sweet and gentle and eager to please.”
“I heard she didn’t take any of her servants when they moved to New York. She didn’t ask you to go with her?”
“No, miss. Didn’t take a single one of us, not even Cook, who had been with the family all those years. But then it wasn’t Miss Lydia’s decision, I’m sure of that. He ruled the roost from the moment he showed up, didn’t he?”
My landlady nodded. “Pity that the Johnsons had to go and die.”
“It was. It was a grand place to work at one time,” Sarah said wistfully. “The house always just so and the gardens were really lovely. Old Mr. Johnson loved his garden, didn’t he. Employed a pack of gardeners—mostly foreigners . . .”
“I remember you were sweet on that one Italian gardener,” my landlady said, giving Sarah a nudge in her amply cushioned side. “What was his name? Antonio?”
Sarah snorted, then chuckled. “Go on with you. That was just girlish fantasies. He never looked at me twice, even though I have to say I was a good deal slimmer and better-looking in those days. If you ask me, it was Miss Lydia he was sweet on. Not that anything could have come of it, given the difference between their stations. But I remember how he used to push her on the swing and she’d look up at him, just so. . . . My, but he was handsome, wasn’t he?”
“What happened to him?” the landlady asked. “Did he go back to Italy?”
Sarah’s face clouded. “No, don’t you remember? He was killed. They reckon he drank too much at the saloon and fell off the bridge on his way home. His body was found floating in the river. Poor man. So young, too.”
She picked up the tray of dishes. “I dare say I’m better off with my Sam. Even if he’s not a barrel of laughs.” She chuckled again as she carried out the tray.
The landlady and I exchanged a glance.
“So would you know of any families around here who were friendly with Miss Lydia and the Johnsons?” I asked. “Someone must have stayed in touch with her when she moved.”
She stood, the coffee pot poised in one hand, and a cup in the other, thinking. “I never had dealings with the family personally, you understand, but Miss Lydia and I were around the same age, so I did hear of her from time to time. Those Johnsons kept a close rein on her, I can tell you. She wasn’t allowed to parties and dances like the other girls. And any young man who showed up on the doorstep was deemed unsuitable. Old Pa Johnson thought the world of her. No man was going to be good enough for her.”