The wrong bell

“Listen to that,” Ruth said, and rang the bell on her bicycle.

It gave a thin, impatient ping. Ruth stared at it as if it had insulted her.

I had grease on both hands and a customer’s wheel tucked under one arm. “It rings.”

“It isn’t mine.”

That was true. Ruth’s bell had been a squat black thing with a soft double note. This one was a narrow brass dome. Its clamp sat crooked on the handlebar, and the screw had a bright gouge beside the slot.

“It’s the fourth one,” she said. “Four Tuesdays. I want you to put my bicycle right.”

The handlebar was cold enough to hurt my fingers. Ruth had left the bike outside my shop since breakfast, though the morning rain was only just lifting. She had carried mail around Larkmere for thirty-seven years and still treated a wet bicycle as a personal failure.

“I can fit a bell,” I said. “I can’t fit the one you’ve lost.”

Ruth looked across the street. Lea, the new tenant above the bakery, was unlocking her own bike.

“She’s always near it.”

Lea had moved in seven weeks earlier. By the end of her first week, someone had asked whether she was allowed to use the courtyard tap. Ruth had been decent to her in person, which made the accusation sound worse coming from Ruth.

“Lots of people are near your bike,” I said.

“Then ask lots of people.” Ruth rang the brass bell again, hard. “Start with the one I saw crouched beside it.”

Lea looked up. She had heard enough to know we were talking about her. She pushed her bike away without calling across.

I put the customer’s wheel on my bench and loosened Ruth’s clamp. The screw turned reluctantly. Its head had a small V-shaped nick on one side, deeper than the fresh gouge. I recognized it from the bell I had removed the previous Tuesday.

“Someone’s using the same screw each time,” I said.

“Can you tell who?”

“I can tell they’re impatient and own a bad screwdriver. That describes half the town, including me.”

Ruth did not smile. She held out her hand for the brass bell, then changed her mind and told me to keep it with the others. She wanted them together when she found out who had been handling her bike.

---

At noon I took the bell to Ruth’s kitchen. The first three replacements sat in the order she’d received them on the windowsill: a flat black bell with a red striker, a broad silver bell with a thumb lever, and a green one shaped like a mushroom. I set the brass one at the end. She’d paid me to fit two of the earlier bells before she decided to keep the whole collection.

The kettle on her stove had a dent near its spout. When it boiled, a bead of water escaped there and hissed against the hot metal. Ruth moved it to a folded cloth without looking.

“You’ve made tea for someone,” I said.

“Edie’s coming by. I told her you were looking at the bells.”

Edie Calder lived two doors down. She had spent years helping at the old postal depot, mostly sorting donations for its annual bicycle sale. She and Ruth had known each other since before I learned to keep my thumbs clear of spokes.

Ruth opened a drawer and took out a folder of route maps. “You said last week there were numbers under the clamps.”

There were. A tiny stamped plate beneath the silver bell read 2. The green read 5, the black read 1, and the brass bell I had just removed read 4. I had noticed the stamps but assumed they were stock numbers. Ruth turned over three of the maps. Each bore a route number in the same block lettering.

“The depot’s loan bicycles had those plates,” she said. “So the relief carrier knew which one to take. Edie kept them on when she prepared the bikes for the sale.”

“So they came from the depot,” I said.

“Possibly. Look at this.”

She spread a map dated June 2003 over the table. Route 4 crossed the river, followed Chapel Lane, then turned behind the old print shop. On the newer map beneath it, Route 4 ran north to the quarry. The route had changed when the river bridge closed.

“That date makes a difference,” Ruth said. “People remember me on Route 4 by the quarry. I was on the river route first.”

I laid the bells along the edge of the older map. One, two, five, four. Those were routes Ruth had worked, in that order, according to the dates she had written on the folders. The last bell pointed us back more than twenty years.

“What’s at the print shop?” I asked.

“Flats now.” Ruth smoothed a curled corner of the map. “There was a little yard behind it. Edie used to bring us tea there when the depot heating failed.”

She reached for the kettle, though neither of us had finished a cup.

I had agreed to ask Lea what she’d seen. Ruth watched me put the bells back on the sill, waiting for me to say I was going across to the bakery.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said.

---

Lea’s bicycle had a new silver bell on its handlebar. I saw it before I reached her.

She was loading folded canvas bags into the front basket. Her work apron was tied over a heavy coat, and one cuff was wet to the elbow.

“I know why you’re here,” she said.

“I’m looking into Ruth’s bell.”

“You’re looking at mine.”

She pulled a crumpled receipt from her coat pocket and held it out. The date was last Tuesday. The bicycle shop in West Dene had charged her for a bell and a brake adjustment.

“My brake lever was sticking. I bought the bell while I was there.” She rang it once. It gave a clear double chime, louder than the silver depot bell in Ruth’s kitchen. “The shop fitted it.”

“Ruth saw you by her bicycle.”

“I picked up my helmet. Someone had left it upside down on the bench, and it was filling with rain.” She pointed toward the courtyard gate. “Her bike was beside it. I could show you the water that’s still in the lining, if that helps.”

“It helps.”

“Would it have helped if I’d lived here longer?”

I folded the receipt and handed it back. I disliked puzzles unless they had a loose screw. I disliked this question more, because I knew the answer.

“I should have asked what you were doing before I came over staring at your bike,” I said.

“Yes, you should.”

She tucked the receipt away and settled a bag in the basket. She had customers waiting, but she stayed.

“Tell Ruth I didn’t touch it,” she said. “Tell her where you got that from.”

“I will.”

“Good. She can ask me about the helmet herself.”

---

Edie was at Ruth’s table when I returned. She wore a thick cardigan with sleeves rolled to her elbows and had brought a paper bag of pears. Ruth had put one beside my untouched cup.

I told Ruth what Lea had said, including that I had seen the shop receipt and the newly fitted bell. I also told her I had gone over expecting to find a reason to suspect Lea.

Ruth’s face tightened. “I did see her crouch.”

“By the helmet.”

“Yes.”

Edie cut a pear with her pocketknife. “The new people have had a rough welcome.”

Ruth glanced at her. “You could have said that yesterday.”

“I’m saying it now.”

Edie passed me a slice of pear. As I took it, I saw the short screwdriver protruding from her cardigan pocket. Its blue wooden handle had lost nearly all its paint. One corner of the blade was broken away.

She followed my glance and put the pear down.

“You kept the depot bells,” I said.

Ruth looked from me to Edie. “What?”

“The old ones from the sale. You cleared those bicycles.”

“I did.”

“Why are they on Ruth’s bike?”

Edie closed the knife. “We should talk somewhere else.”

“No,” Ruth said. “We should talk here.”

Edie pulled out the screwdriver and laid it on the table. The damaged blade was about the width of the nick on the clamp screw. I had been wrong often enough about marks on metal to leave room for doubt. Edie removed it.

“I used that,” she said. “I reused the screw because one of the old clamps was missing its own. Then I kept using it.”

“Where is my bell?” Ruth asked.

“At home. In the biscuit tin with the others. I meant to bring it back.”

“You’ve had four chances.”

Edie folded her hands. Her knife lay beside them, pear juice shining on the blade.

“I found a photograph when I was clearing Lottie’s things,” she said. “You and me behind the print shop. Lottie took it. There was a Route 4 map in the box too, but it was the later one, from after the bridge closed. I went out to the quarry looking for a print shop that had never been there. Then I found the older map.”

Ruth sat down. Lottie had died in the spring. Edie had hardly spoken about her since the funeral, and Ruth had stopped pressing.

“We’re laughing in the photograph,” Edie said. “Lottie must have said something. I thought you might remember if you heard one of the old bells. Route 1 first, then the others. I was trying to work forward to that day.”

“You could have brought me the photograph.”

“I know.”

“Instead you took my bell.”

“I wanted to hear you remember it before I had to tell you I couldn’t.”

Ruth looked at the four bells on the windowsill. “I rang every one of those. I didn’t know what you wanted.”

“You leave the bike in the courtyard when you go shopping on Tuesdays,” Edie said. “I waited until you went inside the grocer’s. It took a minute to loosen the clamp and put the next dome on. I knew you’d use it coming through the gate.”

Ruth pushed her cup aside. “I rang it because people were in my way. You could have asked me any afternoon you came for tea.”

“Bring mine back,” Ruth said. “And don’t touch the bike again.”

“I’ll fetch it now.”

“After tea,” Ruth said. “You can leave the screwdriver here.”

Edie looked up, startled by the offer and the condition attached to it. Then she pushed the tool across the table.

---

Edie brought the black bell back that afternoon. She had wrapped it in a clean dish towel. I held it while Ruth turned the worn dome in her hands. The little chip near the striker was familiar. Ruth had made it years ago against a stone wall.

“Can you put it on?” she asked me.

I had a proper screw at the shop. Ruth came with me, watched while I fitted the clamp, and tested it herself. The old bell sounded softer than I remembered, though it may have been the traffic outside.

Edie had brought the photograph too. We looked at it on my workbench while Ruth’s fingers rested on the handlebar. The two women stood in a patch of sun behind the print shop, each holding a paper cup. Ruth’s work bicycle leaned against a wall. Its black bell was just visible.

Lottie had caught Edie with her mouth wide open and Ruth bent forward laughing. Neither could remember what had been said.

“I do remember the tea,” Ruth said. “You brought it in that battered kettle, and it leaked all over your basket.”

“It was already dented,” Edie said.

“It was. That’s why I made you carry it.”

They studied the photograph a little longer. Edie asked if Ruth would like a copy. Ruth said yes, if Edie had one made, and handed the original back.

I told Lea that evening what we had found. I kept Edie’s reason brief. Lea listened, then asked whether Ruth knew I was telling her. Ruth did. She had said Lea deserved to know the accusation was over.

“Is she going to say that to me?” Lea asked.

“I think so. I can come with her.”

“I’d rather she came on her own.”

On Thursday, Ruth knocked at Lea’s door. I saw them from my shop window. Lea opened it with her coat half on. Ruth spoke for a while. Lea said something, and Ruth listened with both hands at her sides. They walked to the courtyard together, where Ruth showed her the bike and Lea pointed out the bench where her helmet had been.

The following Tuesday I carried a small workstand into the courtyard. Ruth had asked me to check her front wheel, and Lea needed the brake cable looked at again. Edie brought the pears she had promised Lea, but left them on the bench until Lea came out and took one.

By the next week, two more neighbors had signed up for repairs. Lea found a piece of slate for requests and hung it beside the courtyard tap. Owners wrote down what needed fixing and came out when it was their turn. Edie borrowed chalk to add her stiff back gate latch below the bicycles.

Ruth arrived last, riding slowly through the gate. She stopped beside the workstand and rang her black bell to let Lea pass with an armful of laundry. Lea raised a hand without dropping the basket. Ruth waited, then wheeled her bicycle onto the workstand. Lea crossed Ruth’s front-wheel request off the slate and handed me the chalk.