Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  Getting the grey dust off the tub was easy. It was scrubbing the small patch of dried blood, which contained a few long brown hairs from where her head had hit the side of the tub, that made me nauseous. Like a Polaroid photo, her body reappeared in front of me, lying like a broken doll flung into the tub. I sat back on my heels and gulped air, trying not to be sick.

  “Randy, are you all right?” Marni had stopped swabbing the door jamb and was looking at me.

  “Yeah, I’ll be okay. It’s just all a bit much.”

  “I hear you. The police called her folks last night, but I am going to have to telephone them later today, and I just cannot wrap my mind around what I am going to say to them. After all, who would think that working as a waitress, hanging coats and pouring tea, would be a dangerous occupation? It’s not even as if you have to worry about drunks and letches, either. Everyone who comes here is on their best behaviour.”

  “What did you know about her? As a person, I mean?” Perhaps talking about Jossie-the-living-person would erase Jossie-the-dead-body from behind my eyelids.

  “Like most of the kids who work here on a part-time basis, she was a student. She wasn’t a history major, though, which is sort of odd, because that’s who we usually get. History majors and actors. I think Jossie was actually planning to go into museum curating, which was why she had taken the job. She saw it as a win-win thing, make some pin money while in school, but gain a little on-the-ground training in the general day-to-day of running a museum.”

  “I didn’t know that. Was she useful in that respect?”

  “To tell you the truth, if she wasn’t such a hard worker when it came to the events, I would have likely figured out a way to get rid of her. She was just too useful, if you know what I mean. It’s like every time I turned around, there she was, with a question about why I was doing something or had I ever tried doing something else. Not to speak ill of the dead, but it’s not as if I was getting paid to train her in museum studies. At first it was kind of flattering, because God knows no one else thinks my job is in any way interesting. But after a while it got a bit tiring to always be answering questions.”

  Marni pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Funny, eh, to be tired of questions? When all we do is answer questions about the Rutherfords and the House all day long?”

  I smiled at her, and wrung my cleaning cloth into the hot water.

  “No, I get what you’re saying. Sometimes, when people ask questions about your methods and actions, it saps your energy. If you just do what you do, you’re like a machine, clicking away. Once you have to concentrate on your movements, they get bigger in your head—heavier and harder. No wonder you feel tired. Those sorts of questions are not the same as the general House questions at all.”

  “That’s it, exactly. So, while I’m shocked and horrified that she is dead, I can’t pretend she was my very favourite person, and that somehow makes me feel even worse.”

  I patted Marni’s shoulder with my rubber-gloved hand and moved past her to scrub the sink. Pretty soon, we were both scrubbing the tiled floor. We took our grimy water to the toilet and then refilled our buckets with hot clear water from the once-more shiny tub. One more clear rinse of the floor removed the gritty powder from the grouting, and we backed out of the bathroom to tackle the footprints of the police in the room itself.

  The table and chairs in the parlour were taken back downstairs, and Marni had begun to vacuum the lobby while I moved tables back into their regular placement in the sunroom and breakfast nook. I was just coming upstairs with a tray of salt-and-pepper shakers for the tables, when I heard the vacuum cleaner go off and Marni opening the door. I poked my head into the lobby to see Mark and Tanya speaking with Marni.

  “We’ve come to clear away our stuff,” explained Mark. “The detectives called me this morning to say we could remove the clue board, since they’d taken pictures of it last night.”

  I nodded to Tanya, who seemingly took a moment to recognize me. I guess I didn’t really look anything like the woman in black who had been detailed to help her the night before. Today, I was without makeup, wearing a green sweatshirt and jeans, with my hair in a ponytail. I was more like a forty-something Bye Bye Birdie extra than an efficient Mrs. Danvers. To her credit, she smiled anyway, and then followed Mark into the library to clear away the actors’ materials.

  Marni looked at her watch, and then rewrapped the vacuum cord onto its pins.

  “Once we get the library put to rights, we will be pretty much done. I think we should get staff to meet in the dining room. People will be arriving in the next ten minutes or so. Could I get you to go down and get the kettle ready for tea? Several pots of plum and elderberry tea, along with some of the scones reheated in the microwave should do us.”

  Nodding, I headed downstairs to do Marni’s bidding. It occurred to me that I would have to be pretty clear on my job specs from here on in. I didn’t mind pitching in for her because of the unfortunate circumstances, but I had been hired to write and research for the virtual museum, not to work as a waitress or cleaning lady. If I bent too far, it would be my own fault, because managers like Marni were perfectly capable of learning to consistently expect what had been delivered to them once or twice.

  I wasn’t sure if staff meetings were conducted formally, but I opted for a more casual concept. As the kettle boiled, I brought up napkins, side plates, and a handful of spoons and knives. Another trip with a tray of teacups and raspberry butter pots, and I was ready. All that would be required was to pour boiling water into the ten teapots I had loaded and ready in the kitchen, and I wasn’t going to do that until the staff actually arrived. This was a specialty tea house, after all. Someone would be bound to complain of over-steeped tea.

  I started to pour hot water into the pots as I heard the bells ring on the front door. People were arriving. I checked my watch to note that it was still only quarter to two. There’s just nothing like a devastating incident to get people to work on time.

  I hauled up the tea tray and smiled at Brad and Kathy, who were already sitting in the dining room. They were tea house kitchen staff. Roxanne, the head interpreter, was shrugging off her coat in the hallway. Chef Bryan was at the door, speaking with Marni. We were still waiting on three servers, two part-time interpreters and Harold, the man who did the bookkeeping and ordered stock for the gift shop. Marni had said that everyone had agreed to come in, which was why I was shooting for a dozen of everything for this meeting.

  I hurried down to pull the brown paper bag of scones out of the microwave. Not having the time or desire to bake something fresh in the midst of cleaning up crime scenes, we’d pulled some frozen scones from the freezer and set them to thaw. Dribbling a bit of water on the outside of the paper bag before microwaving returned them to their piping hot status, and I shook them out onto three serving plates.

  Now, everyone had gathered upstairs. I set the scones down in the centre of the table. People were already helping themselves to tea. The seat at the head of the table was empty, tacitly reserved for Marni. I wiped my hands on my House apron and took a place next to Harold. He smiled at me and whispered, “You were here last night, right?” I nodded, and he was about to say something more when Marni came into the room, having locked the front door and reset the Closed sign in the window.

  “Thank you all for coming. Before anyone starts to worry, you will all be paid three hours for your time today,” Marni announced to nervous laughter. She sat at the head of the table, and although I had seen her just an hour earlier, grubbing about in cleaning gear, she was now glacially managerial. Somehow, while I was schlepping teacups, she had smoothed and pinned up her hair, changed into a cashmere pullover she must have had on hand in her office, and tidied her makeup. Every face at the table was turned to hers, rapt. Management skills include the little things, like dressing for success, which is why I would likely die an academic freelancer.

  “I wanted us all to get together
to bring everyone up to speed. I was trying to be circumspect in my email to you earlier, but for those of you who weren’t here at the mystery event last night, I am sorry to tell you that it ended in tragedy and one of our own, Jocelyn Jaque, was murdered and found dead in the guest-room bathtub. We will, of course, be trying to underplay this event in any tours that happen, although I am afraid the news will leak out. About sixty guests at the event either saw the body or heard about it, and they all knew where the police were focusing their attentions. It is up to us not to let this overshadow the rest of the history of the House. While tragic, this will eventually be only another incident, not one we will bring up immediately, though we will likely respond with accurate information when it is known to us.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “The police have taken statements from everyone at the event. They may want to take statements from the rest of you as well, or those of you who knew and worked with Jossie.”

  Roxanne raised her hand.

  “Yes, Roxanne?” Marni asked drily. There was no love lost between these two, I had noticed in the relatively short amount of time I had been working at the House. Marni was a City of Edmonton employee, commissioned to make the House, the tea house, and the gift shop a profitable concern along the lines of Fort Edmonton Park. Roxanne, on the other hand, was a provincial employee, hired by the Ministry of Culture to oversee the care and maintenance of a registered historic site and educate visitors to its importance. She didn’t concern herself with the general day-to-day aspects of keeping the House afloat, which was probably why she had refused to do anything for Marni’s mystery event the night before except sit like a lump in the basement gift shop.

  “I had very little dealings with any of the tea house part-time staff, as you know. I don’t see how my statement last night was of any use. I didn’t know the girl personally and hardly even knew what she looked like. Since so many of your staff are part-timers, they might not be able to offer much help to the police.”

  “Jossie was the same age as me, only taller and with long straight brown hair,” volunteered Chloe, who sat across from me.

  “She had the face of a Byzantine saint,” stated the second dishwasher, Jimmy. I looked down the table at him, a middle-aged, dark-complexioned man, and wondered at the imagery. I also wondered what normally quiet Jimmy had done for a living in his home country before heading to the riches of North America.

  “I am sure the police will offer you all a photo to examine, should they decide to interview you. Thank you for mentioning that, Roxanne,” Marni said politely. “In the meantime, we have to determine our timetable for the coming days. I have been informed there may be a police presence in the House from time to time, which is not something we will be able to control. We may wish to cordon off the guest room, though we were given permission to clean away the residue of the police investigation, which Randy and I managed to accomplish this morning.” She nodded down the table to me as she mentioned my name, and for some reason I felt Roxanne glaring at me.

  “So, I’d like, with your permission, to set the tea house work schedule for the coming weeks as usual, but warn you that we might have to close on a dime if the police determine they require the premises. Likewise, we have to maintain tour hours with an eye to having officers coming and going. Officers in uniform and detectives showing their ID will, of course, not be charged admission.”

  I almost laughed, but I guess it had to be said. Roxanne and her minions were sticklers for making people pay their $4 admission. It was a sore spot with Marni, especially when they tried to halt people obviously only coming through for lunch at the tea room.

  “People will very likely be asking you all about the murder, as they read about it in the papers or hear about it on the news. When you reply, please remember you are a representative of Rutherford House and the dignity it stands for. If you can turn their curiosity into more visits, all the better. But, we do not want this turned into a Firkin House situation, by any means. Am I clear on that?”

  Everyone nodded. The Firkin House was one of the historic houses that had moved to Fort Edmonton Park, and it had a reputation for being haunted. The provenance of the “ghost” was unclear, and most of the stories had likely arisen from the amount of time the house had stood empty and lonely on Saskatchewan Drive before being moved to its present home on the Park’s 1905 Street. Interpreters at Fort Edmonton, many of them connected to the Rutherford House staff in one way or another, despaired of being able to offer accurate historical information when visitors only wanted to know if they had ever seen a ghost.

  Interestingly enough, the Firkin House was situated right next door to the first Rutherford House in Fort Edmonton Park. Made of wood and various add-ons, the first house was still quite impressive, but had nothing of the grandeur afforded by the second house, this brick mansion where we all now found ourselves.

  We had been steadily demolishing the scones as Marni spoke, and as the meeting dribbled to a close, most of us stuck around to clean up after ourselves. Roxanne and her two interpreters, Dawne and Arlene, did not lower themselves to such a task, of course, leaving us to clear their teacups away as they convened in the front hall. Trying to be charitable, I supposed she was giving them their work schedules, but casting a glance back up the table at Marni, I saw that the slight had not gone unnoticed.

  This whole arrangement of running of the House by two different parties made for quite a bit of friction, as far as I could see, although the veneer of polite, early-twentieth-century tea-time etiquette tried to gloss over it all. Well, what was Canadian history without a house divided now and then? Just as long as we didn’t get stuck in another referendum.

  I helped tidy by bringing the dishes downstairs, then considered my duties complete. After all, I’d been in early to do grunt work, while all these other folks were going to get paid the minimum three hours for coming in for a short meeting. They could do the dishes. I grabbed my coat and headed back up the stairs, intending to say my goodbyes to Marni on the way out.

  The interpreters were no longer in the hallway, but I could hear voices coming from the dining room.

  “Greta Larsen spoke with me last night.” That was Roxanne’s voice.

  “Yes, I thought she might. I spoke with her and her grandson briefly when they arrived,” Marni was responding, her voice having taken on the same tired tone it always had whenever she was speaking with Roxanne.

  “She is not pleased with the situation, you realize.”

  “Roxanne, I don’t think anyone is pleased with the fact that a young woman was murdered. I spoke with Walter Karras last night, too, and he assured me the board is not going to be holding me responsible for this. As chair, he will be informing the rest of the board. The police are involved. Let them come up with some conclusions as to what has happened before you and the Greta Larsens of the world begin assigning blame, please.”

  I decided this was a conversation I didn’t want to break in on. My role as contractor was tenuous enough, given that I was being paid by the province but had been brought in and ultimately hired by Marni. I had been walking the tightrope of trying to be equally pleasant to both of them. While I had to admit I liked Marni better, I couldn’t afford to play favourites when it came to holding down the job.

  I let myself quietly out the front door and walked home along Saskatchewan Drive, then up the path behind the High Level Diner. On an impulse, I popped into the Diner to pick up two of their breakfast muffins to go. If Steve stayed over tonight, I could heat them up and slather them with butter for a splendid breakfast in bed.

  Since I had spent most of the morning housecleaning elsewhere, it seemed too much of an effort to do anything but tidy up the pile of newspapers and clear away the dishes in my own sink. I had an urge to pamper myself and ran as hot a bath as I could stand. The parallel between Jossie’s last resting place and my bubbly tub were a bit close, but I sank into the water gratefully, stalling only briefly in that moment of b
urning breathlessness when one tries to get used to the heat before stretching out into a position that was sort of creepily similar to the dead girl’s.

  Why had she been upstairs in the guest bathroom, anyway? Her particular job had been to hang coats and keep people from touching artifacts in the parlour once the game had begun, after we’d reset the tables. I was the one who was supposed to follow Tanya upstairs and mind that things stayed all right there. Of course, Jossie’s body had been found before the participants had really been given a chance to spread through the house.

  So, where was Jossie supposed to be during the dinner and table entertainment? Had she been busy being murdered while I was just a few metres away, eating my dinner in the maid’s parlour with Mr. Dafoe, the magician?

  I would have to ask Steve what the timelines really were. She certainly didn’t look stiff, lying sprawled in the tub, but I hadn’t touched her. I wasn’t overly sure how long it took rigor mortis to set in, anyhow. Everything happened more quickly than it should on shows like CSI, and that was where my basic experience with dead bodies came from. Well, that and stumbling across them every now and then.

  The bathwater was beginning to cool off. I contemplated turning the hot-water tap back on with my semi-prehensile toes, but decided I should probably just get out and dry off.

  Clad in a tee-shirt and old yoga pants, I curled up in a corner of my sofa with my laptop to check my email and determine my schedule for the next day.

  While going in today to help Marni out had seemed a sensible enough idea, doing so had eaten up my Sunday entirely, and I had deliberately set out a steady schedule to follow on this project; if I didn’t push myself to be done by January, it would not be monetarily feasible. Besides, I was hoping to snag a couple of courses at Grant MacEwan in the winter term, and needed to be cleared to jump into them, given the word.