EXHIBIT No. 22: Bulrushes turned over to coroner
EXHIBIT No. 23: Lunch box
But salient information is often missing; e.g., it was not just any lunchbox, it was a Frankie and Annette lunchbox, priceless, coveted—
EXHIBIT No. 24: Pink bicycle
—again, the significant feature omitted: two luxuriant pink streamers. Except that when Madeleine saw Claire’s bike in the trunk of the police car, there was only one. That’s why Colleen and I went out to the field that day, to the tamped-down spot—to find her other streamer. But it turned out Grace had it.
Grace in the rain with no raincoat on, the bedraggled pink streamer transplanted into the handlebar grip of her beat-up bike, too big for her. Bouncing up and down on the hard seat, stark like the skull of a steer, it doesn’t hurt.
Hey Grace, where’d you get the streamer?
Someone gave it to me.
Who?
Someone.
Madeleine’s breath comes like a dog’s breath. Grace got the streamer from Mr. March. A trophy, plucked by its roots from Claire’s pink two-wheeler. A prize for his pet.
She swallows, her throat parchment. She glances at the archivist. At the other researchers. No one has noticed. What is there to notice? A dark-haired young woman sitting perfectly still, obscured from view by four cardboard crates of documents.
But she has something now. She can tell the police about the streamer. They will find Grace Novotny. Grace will tell who gave it to her. No one will need to know it was Jack who waved that day….
She returns to the page:
EXHIBIT No. 25: Silver charm bracelet in envelope
Not just any charm bracelet; she had the Maid of the Mist, a heart, a teacup and many other things, including her name in silver cursive script, Claire. Madeleine wonders if the McCarrolls have kept it. She wonders if they ever had another child. Perhaps they would rather not know the truth. Reawaken their grief.
EXHIBIT No. 26: Photograph of Claire McCarroll at autopsy
EXHIBIT No. 27: Container of larvae
EXHIBIT No. 28: Bulrushes retained by Constable Lonergan
Moses among the Cattails. Madeleine flips ahead.
HIS LORDSHIP: Do you go to church, Marjorie?
A. Yes sir, and Sunday school.
Q. Do you know what it means to tell the truth?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Are you a Brownie?
A. Well,
Madeleine can hear Marjorie giggle, although the court stenographer didn’t record it.
actually I flew up so I’m a junior Girl Guide now. I have a babysitting badge.
You lie, Margarine! Why did no one check up on that?
Q. How old are you, Marjorie?
A. I just turned ten.
Q. These children are young, I don’t know if I can swear this child. Do you understand the nature of an oath?
A. It means that you swear on the Bible to tell the truth and not to lie in court.
Q. That’s right, Marjorie. What happens to people who do lie?
A. They get punished.
Q. Good. Swear the witness.
Madeleine wonders what she would make of ten-year-old Marjorie now, through adult eyes. Would she be taken in, the way the grown-ups were? Waxy curls. Blue doll-eyes. Polite and slightly, reassuringly, out of date.
MARJORIE NOLAN, sworn:
EXAMINATION IN-CHIEF BY MR FRASER:
MR FRASER: You live with your parents in the Permanent Married Quarters of the Air Force Station in Centralia, Marjorie?
A. Yes sir.
Mr. Fraser, the Crown prosecutor. In the gloomy black robe.
Q. And last spring were you in the same grade, four, as Claire McCarroll?
Q. Yes.
A. Was Claire your friend?
Q. Yes.
Another lie.
Q. And did you know Richard Froelich?
A. Ricky?
Q. Yes, Ricky.
A. Yes.
Q. And on Wednesday, April 10, did you have a conversation with Ricky?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you tell what that conversation was please?
A. Well, Ricky said, “would you like to come to Rock Bass? I know where there is a nest.”
Q. And what did you say?
A. I said, “no.”
Q. Why did you say no?
A. Well,
Madeleine hears another giggle, and the good-natured know-it-all tone. Are some children transparent only to other children?
first of all, I had Brownies that night. So did Claire, but she’s only a Tweenie—
HIS LORDSHIP: Stop right there. Gentlemen of the jury, Mr Fraser has already explained and the witness, Miss Lang who is an officer of the Brownie pack, has already explained what Brownies are. If you are not clear on this, please feel free to request clarification. Good. Go on, Mr Fraser.
It’s strange to picture these grown men—1963 men—grappling with the taxonomy of the Toadstool—Tweenies, Sprites, Elves and Pixies.
Q. And was there another reason you said no to Ricky?
HIS LORDSHIP: Was that a yes?
A. Yes sir.
MR FRASER: What was that other reason, Marjorie?
HIS LORDSHIP: The reason she declined his invitation?
MR FRASER: Yes, my Lord.
HIS LORDSHIP: Go on, Mr Fraser.
Q. Why else did you say no to Ricky, Marjorie?
A. Because I’m not allowed because I am too young.
Q. What are you too young for?
A. To go on dates.
Q. Why did you think Ricky was asking you out on a date?
A. Because he said, “let’s go on a date.”
Dream on, Margarine.
Q. He said that on April 10?
A. Yeah, yes. And lots of times before that.
Q. Where did he say it on April 10?
A. On his front lawn. He was out with the hose.
Q. And what did he say on April 10?
A. He said, “Want a drink, Marjorie?” and then he did something rude.
Q. What did he do?
A. He. He pretended like, you know.
Q. Yes?
A. Like he was going to the bathroom.
Q. Yes?
A. With the hose.
Q. Then what happened?
A. I said “I’m not thirsty.”
Q. And what did he say then?
A. He said, “Would you like to come on a date with me? To Rock Bass? I know where there is a nest.”
Claire said that. No, not exactly, she said, “We can look for a nest.” Madeleine and Colleen were in the schoolyard, Claire had a buttercup. Music was coming from the school, the band was practising … the tattered melody struggling out the windows of the gym at J. A. D. McCurdy School—It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears …—the school band playing as Mr. March thumped time at the piano. Marjorie was nearby with Grace, trying to butt in, she heard where Claire was going and why. And with whom. Ricky, so Claire imagined.
Q. And you said no.
A. I said, “I will have to take a rain check.”
Poor Marjorie. Terribly left out by everyone—except Grace and Mr. March. Is that how he found out where Claire was going that day? Mr. March’s little fiend, running to him, reporting.
Q. Thank you, Marjorie.
A. You’re welcome.
Show-and-tell. “I collect them, sometahms,” said Claire, the weightless robin’s egg cupped in her hands. Madeleine rubs her palm and looks at it. There is the pale scar, but something else is there too—a piece of shell. Pale blue. No, not in her hand, not yet, she is reaching for it in the long last-year’s grass but Colleen grabs her wrist, slaps the knife into her hand, Cut me.
It was only a bit of blue shell, but perhaps it would have been bad luck to take anything from the murder scene—yes, that’s where she found it. A foot or so from the edge of the tamped-down circle. Fairy ring. Was it from Claire’s blue egg? One she found that day?
What if Madeleine had accepted Claire’s invitation and gone with her to Rock Bass? Claire might still be alive. Or would they both be dead?
HIS LORDSHIP: Have you read this statement, Mr Waller?
MR WALLER: I have a copy of Grace Novotny’s statement My Lord, given to me by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr Fraser, this morning. I had not seen the document before, much as I did not know until last week about the existence of the witness, Marjorie Nolan—HIS LORDSHIP: We’ve been over that, Mr Waller.
Mr. Waller. The nice loser in the shimmering silk robes. Defending Rick.
MR WALLER: My Lord, the question of the propriety of concealing a witness—
HIS LORDSHIP: What do you have to say to that, Mr Fraser?
MR FRASER: My Lord, there is no question of the propriety here since Marjorie Nolan’s testimony was not exculpatory.
MR WALLER: My Lord, with the greatest respect I would like to point out that there is a cumulative possibly deleterious effect that could have the effect of causing this trial to become a mistrial—
HIS LORDSHIP: I’ll be the judge of that, Mr Waller.
MR WALLER: Yes, my Lord, but in the interests of avoiding a costly appeal—
HIS LORDSHIP: The Crown has not breached the law of disclosure that I can see.
MR WALLER: No, my Lord, not the letter, but perhaps the spirit.
HIS LORDSHIP: Gentlemen, we won’t need you for a few minutes.
—Jury retired.
IN THE ABSENCE OF THE JURY…
Many pages of legal arguments. Many cases cited by both sides, with a kind of quiz-show virtuosity. Inspector Bradley has the statement he took from Grace in the classroom after three. The defence wants the statement ruled inadmissible. But the Crown says Grace’s statement is consistent with Marjorie’s testimony and therefore ought to be read out in court. All this because Grace is not here to testify in person. Her mother left her father and took the younger children. No one knows where they have gone.
It’s not really a statement at all. It’s a stitched-together series of quotes: answers she gave to the policeman’s questions, which he duly recorded in his notebook. The judge decides that Inspector Bradley will be permitted to read out the statement but, in deference to the defence, only if the inspector consults his notes in order to reinsert the questions “and every other detail” that elicited the responses that became the statement. A short recess is called so that the inspector may go over his notes and those of Constable Lonergan’s, and revise Grace’s “statement” after the fact.
IN THE PRESENCE OF THE JURY…
Although Inspector Bradley will be sworn before he reads Grace’s statement, the statement itself may not be deemed by the jury to be a sworn statement. The judge asks the jury to perform the mental gymnastics of listening and weighing, but not too heavily.
INSPECTOR THOMAS BRADLEY, sworn:
MR FRASER: Inspector Bradley, you are a member of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ontario Provincial Police?
A. Yes sir.
The inspector had the type of face that made Madeleine feel she was lying the moment she walked into the room. She would have felt guilty no matter what she told him. He knew she was lying. Why did he not know that Marjorie was lying? And Grace?
Q. Inspector Bradley, would you please read the transcript of your interview with Grace Novotny?
A. I said, “You knew Claire McCarroll, didn’t you?” At that the subject exhibited signs of distress, she proceeded to rock and to moan audibly.
Grace’s eyes rolling, face crumpling….
I asked, “Did you play with Claire last Wednesday?” Whereupon the child began to cry and to wail,
… that sound, peculiar to Grace, that rose from her throat or someplace deeper, until you couldn’t tell where it was coming from, steadily rising like an air-raid siren.
so I gave the child a kleenex and attempted to calm her.
No one could calm Grace.
I asked her if she had seen Claire that day in the school yard and the child nodded, “yes.” I asked if she spoke to Claire and the child shrugged. I asked if Claire had spoken to the child and the child said, “Yes.” I asked what Claire had said and the child replied, “She asked me to go to Rock Bass.”
Marjorie must have told her to say that.
I asked her what she said in reply to Claire and the child said, “I didn’t want to go to Rock Bass.” I asked, “Did Claire say she was going to Rock Bass with anyone?” The child answered, “Yeah, Ricky.”
Madeleine hears Inspector Bradley’s measured monotone; it marries perfectly with the typed page. But Grace is there too, behind the page. Madeleine can hear her and see her—messy braids, the vague grin, chapped lips. She can smell her, too—old pee and Elmer’s glue….
“Has Ricky Froelich ever touched you as if you were his girlfriend?” She answered, “Yeah, sometimes we do exercises.”
That’s what happened to Ricky Froelich—Madeleine’s guts go liquid—Marjorie and Grace happened to him. And Mr. March, and Jack McCarthy. How did those two wind up on the same side?
“Backbends. And squeezing,” she said.
What has been left out of the inspector’s cobbled-together “statement”? By how many sideways stepping stones did he herd Grace higgledy-piggledy across the stream? Because Madeleine knows Grace never got anywhere on her own.
I asked, “Squeezing what?” She replied, “His muscle. He said to call it his muscle, but it’s really his thing.”
Grace had the courage to say it. Cut from its moorings, but the truth nonetheless. Why was there no one to hear? How loudly must she have wailed it?
“And there’s something else about Ricky,” she said. “He strangles.”
And it was over.
I asked, “Have you ever told anyone about the things Ricky did to you?” She answered, “Marjorie.”
They only had each other.
The child then offered the following statement: “He gave me an egg.” “When?” I asked. “That day,” she said. “What kind of egg? A cooked egg?” “No,” she said. “A blue one…”
Madeleine remembers to breathe.
“What kind of egg is that?” I asked. “A special egg,” she said. “An Easter egg?” I asked. The child nodded, yes, then said, “He said he knew where there was more.”
A robin’s egg, not an Easter egg. That’s what “blue egg” means to a child. Why did Bradley not know that, why did he not ask someone qualified—another child?—Why did he not ask Madeleine?
But it was Easter time. There was Easter art up on the walls of the classroom where the interrogation took place. It was a natural assumption on his part….
“Was it a chocolate egg?” I asked. She replied, “Yes.”
Again, a version of the truth. Mr. March gave out chocolate eggs at the drop of an Easter bonnet. Blue eggshell in the grass….“I know where there is a nest” is all anyone would have to say, and Claire would follow—it’s what Rick said, according to Marjorie. Perhaps someone did say it. Did Marjorie hear it? Did Grace?
Madeleine squints at the page. In the schoolyard, Claire said only that she was going to look for a nest. She didn’t specify a robin’s nest. And yet blue eggshell was what Madeleine found in the grass…. Why would Grace mention a blue egg in connection with that day? Madeleine reaches into the grass for the pale blue fragment. Was it from Claire’s egg? One she was lured with? How could Grace have known that? Dear God … what did the child see?
The shiver runs up her spine—stinging her eyes, which have begun to water, escaping through her lips, and she is gulping air, flipping back to the beginning of Volume IV, to the index of exhibits—because Grace’s art was also up on the classroom wall that day—the day after Claire was murdered. The drawing she had bent over and coloured so lovingly, Madeleine can see it with its gold star, in pride of place among the lopsided Easter bunnies and brightly coloured eggs—the beautiful picture that
Grace made with her dirty bandaged hands that day, brilliant, abundant: a storm of yellow butterflies.
EXHIBIT No. 49: Cotton underpants with yellow moth pattern
They were butterflies, not moths. Only an adult would have seen moths. Oh Grace. What did you see? Madeleine’s tears will hasten the deterioration of these archival documents. They were yellow butterflies, not moths. Why didn’t anyone ask? It was Moses among the Cattails, not Rushes, or even Bulrushes, because Marjorie was there too, in the field beyond Rock Bass. Both children saw what he did to Claire before he covered her body with what the grown-ups called bulrushes, and purple flowers. Both little girls saw how he laid her underpants across her face, which had gone blue with suffocation, oh God. What happened to the children? What happens to children?
Madeleine puts her head down, shielded by the boxes.
In the condo in Ottawa, Mimi taps out the pills from the plastic compartment stamped Thurs p.m. Once you or a loved one are on this much medication, it’s impossible to mix up the days of the week.
She fills a glass and sees the sunset through the window over the kitchen sink. She is fifty-eight. She is in perfect health and will probably live many more years, despite the smoking. She doesn’t want to go on a cruise with a nice gentleman she meets a few years from now. She wants to go with her husband.
She places the water glass and a cluster of pills on the side table next to his oxygen tank. He doesn’t wake up. She turns off the TV, he opens his eyes. “Wha—? Just restin’ my eyeballs.” And he winks at her.
Women live longer. Mimi knew she would have to do this part of the job eventually, she just didn’t expect it so soon. She got a card from Elaine Ridelle the other day. They have retired to Victoria on the west coast, she and Steve still golf, they went on an Alaskan cruise last summer. Elaine has become diabetic but, since Steve is a doctor, I’m his hobby now!
The Way the Crow Flies Page 83