Finding Beinn Bhreagh: A Summer Harbour Story

By Jeanne F. Whyte

A routine drugstore delivery turns into an adventure in espionage and time travel when Patrice (Trice) Archer suddenly finds herself in 1912 Eastern Canada at Beinn Bhreagh, the Canadian home of inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Whisked there from her twenty-first century life, she now straddles two worlds that threaten to collide... because the fabric of time is permeable.

Trice finds new friends, romance, laughter and tragedy as she moves between generations. But the mystery she has been chosen to solve may threaten her life in both centuries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jul 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228824725

Jeanne F. Whyte

Jeanne F. Whyte is a writer, doctor and time watcher. She lives near the village of Summer Harbour from where she can look across the bay to Beinn Bhreagh.

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Finding Beinn Bhreagh

Copyright © 2020 by Jeanne F. Whyte

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-2471-8 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-2470-1 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-2472-5 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Summer Harbour

Chapter 2 How Is this happening?

Chapter 3 Back Again

Chapter 4 Bad Taste?

Chapter 5 Through Golden Fields

Chapter 6 Bradley and Possum

Chapter 7 Suspects and Snobs

Chapter 8 Midnight Collision

Chapter 9 The Parasite

Chapter 10 The Angel At Beinn Bhreagh

Chapter 11 He’d Have Had Me Shot

Chapter 12 Introducing Clara

Chapter 13 The Martin Sisters

Chapter 14 A Moose and a Picnic

Chapter 15 Christmas

Chapter 16 Winter Joys

Chapter 17 Sunday Humiliation

Chapter 18 Losing Sadie

Chapter 19 Old Tears

Chapter 20 Washday with Bradley

Chapter 21 Oscar

Chapter 22 Now I Know

Chapter 23 Confronting a Thief

Chapter 24 Out of Century

Chapter 25 Tell the Truth

For Haileigh, Declan, Elsie,

Angus, Claire, Ally, Abbie and Zoe

Time Is in His Hand

The first time we climbed the mountain we saw the ocean lake curled around the headland on which we stood. A little cove lay beneath us. I watched the waves wash the feet of hills whose heads were wrapped in emerald blue, reflecting the water beneath them.

Summer Harbour’s lights sparkled like a fairy tale village. The lighthouse on the island hovered like a watchful angel over the little houses. To one side, the water gently tapered and darkened as it flowed through the cluster of cottages they call Little Narrows. The windows of the white church beside the lake were alive in reflected gold from the dying sun.

Two stars took their places over the lighthouse and the church and the splendor made my throat ache. We stretched out on the warm grass as the sun slipped away and a crowd of stars joined their two early sentries.

Chapter 1

Summer Harbour

There was a time I didn’t believe in ghosts. Maybe I still don’t, but then nothing has been the same since that summer. I feel like I only had half a life before that. Now I have two lives, and I came close to losing both.

The call came at eleven in the morning. It was hot in the aisle of the drugstore where I was stocking shelves with baby formula. September in eastern Canada can have a few hot days, and this was one of them. Not enough days to justify air conditioning, however, so people just suffer through and wait for the colder weather that never fails them, even in summer.

Trice, can you make a delivery to Beinn Bhreagh (Ben Vree-a) this afternoon? Archie looked worried as he held the phone. It’s a long bike ride, but I can’t leave all of this to do it. He looked despairingly at the dozens of prescriptions lying on the counter.

A bike ride instead of baby formula seemed like a good trade.

No problem. I need the exercise anyway, and the drive to Beinn Bhreagh is supposed to be great.

Getting out of the store into fresh air and sunshine was enticing. I’d been working at the town drugstore for two months. In May, my parents had changed jobs and moved me from a great high school in New York City to an island off the east coast of Canada. We came to a small village called Summer Harbour. They say it’s the prettiest place on Cape Breton Island. Tourists glide to the town wharf in their yachts, awestruck by the beauty. They come into the store and rave about the unspoiled wilderness, wildlife, clean waters, and friendly people.

I wasn’t happy. I’d left all my friends and a great school to come to a small village where nothing ever happened and I didn’t know anyone. Going to a new school didn’t help. I hadn’t made any friends. There was no mall for sixty miles—or, as I had learned in my new school, one hundred kilometres. I’d been told that when the tourists leave in October, the town practically rolls up the sidewalks until June. Every gift shop and most of the town’s restaurants close. I had taken the drugstore job to keep from dying of boredom. It wasn’t a bad job. I delivered prescriptions on my bike, ran the cash, and stocked shelves. It took me away from the computer, which had become my entire life since leaving New York. The exercise meant I didn’t have to join a gym to stay in shape, which was just as well, as there wasn’t one within one hundred kilometres.

The sun warmed my back but a crisp breeze off the Arm of Gold Lake, the large inland sea, cooled my face. Sail boats were coming in and out of the harbour as I cycled along the bay road. Two stately bald eagles sat in a scrubby spruce tree and ignored me as I drove by. Their intent eyes scanned the water, too focused on their fishing expedition to pay any attention to me. A few cars passed slowly, but most of the time I was alone with my thoughts.

I wanted to see the big house at Beinn Bhreagh. In 1893, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, built a mansion on a point across the bay from Summer Harbour. He called it Beinn Bhreagh, or Beautiful Mountain in Gaelic. He spent the rest of his life there and was buried on the hill above the house.

The museum displaying Bell’s inventions stood on the edge of the village. As I pedalled past, I thought about our class trip there a week earlier. The teacher had developed a last- minute headache and left us to do the tour without her. I wondered if the guide had gotten over the trauma of having to instruct twenty-five indifferent high school students. She had a standard, well-rehearsed talk for visitors that deteriorated into frantic damage control. Tugging on her museum-issued, out-of-date vest, she began confidently enough:

Bell had a brilliant mind, which was not satisfied with the mere invention of the telephone. His work included kites, airplanes …

At this point, her gravelly voice hesitated as two six-foot basketball players began tossing a tennis ball over her head. She swallowed and twitched her vest again.

… medical devices such as X-rays and the iron lung, a breathing device for people paralyzed with polio. Now we must be ladies and gentlemen, mustn’t we? She giggled nervously. The hydrofoil, which was a boat that travelled above the surface of the water…

At this point the ball brushed the top of her tight curls and she jumped. The guide, whom I’d met before, looked appealingly at me for help … I guess because I was the curator’s daughter. I lowered my head and carefully examined the stitching on my canvas shoes, pretending not to notice. She looked over her glasses at the impudent young man to her left as he effortlessly caught the ball and sent it soaring over her head once again. There was clearly no chivalry to be had there, so she continued valiantly.

As I was saying, the hydrofoil, the fastest boat of its generation …

Now the ball was sailing over her head from many different directions as other students eagerly held up their hands for a turn. Some didn’t have the dexterity of the original two, and the ball narrowly missed landing on her perky curls several times. She winced as one athletically-challenged twit sent the ball so close to her face that it missed her glasses by a hair.

Flinching, she’d had enough and rushed the presentation to a quick end. "Bell’s many and varied experiments included the invention of a sophisticated early battery, a type known as a selenium. Thank you for your attention. Are there any questions?"

A comedian at the back of the crowd asked the only question of the day:

Who’s Bell?

At this point, Perky Curls fled in relief, leaving us to wander through the building and look at the hundreds of pictures of Bell bent over his inventions, flying his kites, and working on the telephone and airplane.

After his death in 1922, Bell’s children and grandchildren continued to use Beinn Bhreagh as a summer home. I knew from overhearing conversations at the drugstore that Bell’s granddaughter was in the house this summer. She was over ninety years old, and the prescription was for her. As Archie handed the small package to me, he remarked,

This is a bit of a treat for you. No one ever gets into Beinn Bhreagh anymore. It should be interesting.

At least it will be something to tell Mom and Dad at the dinner table tonight, I thought. There’s a problem being an only child: your parents are so anxious for you to be happy that you are constantly reassuring them. Mine were worried that I hadn’t settled in the way they’d hoped. I hadn’t made any friends—that’s what they were worried about. Convincing them that I was deliriously happy with my life was getting exhausting.

At the end of the bay road, a sign pointed to Beinn Bhreagh off to the right. Archie had told me the house was at the end of a five-mile road. After two miles, the pavement ended and I drove carefully over the rutted dirt, swerving to avoid deep potholes. Two large, rundown gates, leaning drunkenly away from their posts, held a weather-beaten sign that informed me this was Beinn Bhreagh. I couldn’t see the big house at all until I rounded the last bend and it was in front of me.

When I saw it, I knew Bell must have become very wealthy inventing the telephone. The house was huge. It looked old and mellowed out, with towers and porches along its length. The big house had seen better days. The paint was faded and chipped in places. The windows looked dark and empty, and the gardens were overgrown with spruce trees and tangled clumps of grasses. Old raspberry canes had taken over one whole side of the lawn. They spread down to the beach, where they blended with the sand grasses.

There was a new car under the portico and the screen door was open. I leaned the bike against the wall and knocked on the screen door. Nothing happened. I knocked again and waited for several minutes. I stuck my head inside the door and yelled Hello? The house smelled damp and musty. It was dark inside the porch, and I couldn’t see much. Eventually, an anxious looking older woman appeared.

Sorry, I was upstairs and couldn’t hear a thing.

I brought your prescription from the drugstore, I said.

She looked relieved. Thanks so much for making the long bike ride. She really needs this, and I’ve been quite worried about her. I’m Mrs. MacDonald, by the way. My husband, George, and I are caretakers here.

I’m Patrice Archer, but they call me Trice, pronounced like ‘Peace.’

What a lovely, unusual name. I heard that your family had recently moved here. You’re new to Summer Harbour. How do you like it?

It’s a very pretty village, I said, avoiding the direct question. She didn’t notice.

Would you like to see a bit of the house while you’re here?

As I was curious about the house, I was glad she asked. I followed her through a panelled hall into a large living room. It was different from what I expected. There was a lot of dark pine panelling above a huge stone fireplace. Ordinary beach shells were pressed into rough plaster on the walls, and old-fashioned chairs and tables stood over threadbare oriental rugs. There were odd things everywhere. A table next to me had legs that looked like they’d been taken off a giraffe, with real skin and fur on them. Nearby, a realistic bat perched on a shelf, and his eyes followed me across the room.

The library was darkly panelled, with a fireplace and books everywhere. I was surprised by a stuffed bear in one corner standing on his hind legs and missing patches of fur. He was almost as tall as I was. The rooms seemed friendly, like an old, rundown car in which the seats are comfortable and the stereo still works.

Cycling back to the store, I thought about Bell and his life a hundred years ago. I learned at the museum that his wife, Mabel, was deaf. They fell in love after Bell became Mabel’s teacher. Eventually they married and had two children, Elsie and Daisy. He came to Cape Breton and immediately loved the island. I knew he had given up living a society life in Washington to spend all of his time here. Must have been a lot more going on back then, I thought gloomily.

As I reached the road outside the gates, a folded paper fluttering inside the bike basket caught my eye. It was the drug information Archie had made me promise to leave with the pills. Disgusted with my absent-mindedness, I picked up the paper and turned the bike back toward Beinn Bhreagh.

I was still lost in thought when I came through the trees and the house once more came into view. Shock waves pulsed through my body as the bike skidded in the dirt. I put a shaking foot down to keep from pitching over the handlebars. I felt sick. Things like this just didn’t happen. I wanted to close my eyes and open them again, but I couldn’t close them; there was just too much to see.

The house was there, just where I’d left it ten minutes ago, but everything else had changed. The paint on the house gleamed, and curtains hung in all the windows. The grass was newly mowed, and I could see a huge flower garden with an arbor. My heart pounded, and I couldn’t think. This couldn’t be a dream. You can’t fall asleep riding a bike. Benches and tables were scattered across the lawn, but I didn’t see them until later.

It was the man smoking a cigar in the portico. He was plump with a long, grizzled beard and dressed in clothes from a century ago. He turned to look at me, and I knew him. After spending a whole rainy afternoon staring at his pictures, I would have recognized him anywhere. The pamphlet in my hand blew away in a sudden breeze as I stared at him.

Hello, Trice, I’ve been waiting for you, he said, as if we were old friends.

I turned the bike around and ran with it back up the lane. I couldn’t get on because my legs were shaking too hard.

A mild, Scottish voice followed me: "It’s no use, my dear;