“I’d like you to read my diaries,” she said eagerly. “And then perhaps we could ask Perdita to come to you.”
“Miss Brice,” I interjected, “really, I’m just here to—”
“I was turning nineteen when I began the diary you just opened,” she continued eagerly. “That’s the one you are to read first. It was over one hundred and fifteen years ago, but I can still remember everything so vividly. That is where my Perdita began. It was that summer when the Bay knew it could no longer treat me as a child…” Her voice trailed off, and I could see the faint shimmer of tears in her eyes.
Just then I heard Farley barking downstairs; he sounded unusually excited. “That’s my dog, Miss Brice.” This time I put the diaries down on the table beside her. “I think I’d better go get him.”
“Wait! I’d like to—to compensate you for reading them, but you see my nephew’s wife, Ava, took all my money, every cent of it.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said quickly, picking up the two volumes again.
“It was quite a lot of money. I won’t tell you how much, because you probably wouldn’t believe me.” Miss Brice leaned forward earnestly. “George understood, you see. Somehow he knew, and he was very worried about what would happen if I outlived Allan. He even asked Andrew to take care of me…” Her eyes suddenly narrowed, and then her face hardened. “But Ava…George could never have anticipated what she has done. She told everyone that I had hallucinations. She said I would be put in a mental hospital if I didn’t sign those papers. And she told the lawyer I was an impostor—that I wanted to defraud George’s estate.”
“An impostor?”
Marged took up her scarf, placing it lightly on her head, and then trained her remarkable eyes on mine. “Of course no one expected me to live this long. But none of them know I’ve still got my birth certificate. Even if no one believes me—even if you don’t—it doesn’t change the fact that I am Marged Brice.”
She waited for me to speak.
I hesitated. “Of course I’d be happy to look at your diaries, Miss Brice—I mean Marged. But really, the main reason I’m here is to look into the record of your age.”
“Oh, please! Can’t you see I’m asking for help! I’ve never had to say that to a stranger before, and believe me it doesn’t come easily to me. But I must.”
Again I hesitated for a split second—and then half kicking myself, I slipped the two journals into my briefcase.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “Thank you.” She stretched out a pale hand toward me. “I knew you would,” she continued softly. “You see, I asked my trees about you.”
“Your trees,” I echoed vaguely. Farley’s barking was growing more frenzied.
“Yes. But I want to know—and you must tell me. What would your trees say about you?” she demanded. “Would your trees tell me to trust you?”
Now the light from her eyes was so piercing that I almost winced. “Oh, I think my trees would give me a good reference,” I replied, surprised at how easily the answer came.
“You’ll come back—soon? You’ll come back to see me soon?” she asked, withdrawing her hand.
“Yes, of course,” I promised. “It’ll probably take me a few days, but I’ll come as soon as I’ve read your diaries. Why don’t we say by the end of the week?”
“I shall trust you, then,” she whispered, pulling her scarf down over her face. “I shall trust to your return.”
Two
“Edna, you can’t be serious.” I was trying to keep my tone patient. “There’s no way she could be the Marged Brice of that birth certificate.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Edna got up to open the window and then furtively looked around for any of the staff nurses. “They think I’ve quit,” she explained.
“Don’t worry, I won’t give you away.” I took the chair by her desk and watched her take a few hurried puffs.
“Garth, I know what you’re going to say. I did the math, too. If it’s hers, it says she’s one hundred and thirty-four years old. Impossible, right?”
For the second time I explained how extremely unlikely it was. We went back and forth with that for a while, Edna insisting that it was at least possible for a human being to live to 134. At last I decided to change the subject; had a psychologist assessed Miss Brice yet?
“You mean because of her so-called hallucinations.” She took a long drag. “That’s why she’s been put in a nursing home. We’re to keep an eye on her.”
I reminded her that the Clarkson wasn’t set up to do that.
Edna gave me a withering look. “Don’t even think of suggesting a transfer. That’s out of the question. This isn’t the big city, Garth. They’ll cut my funding if I don’t keep my beds filled.” She looked out the window gloomily.
“How did Miss Brice end up here?” I asked. “Is she from the area?”
“I’m really not supposed to talk about this.” Edna stubbed out her cigarette. “But it would be a relief to tell you, because the whole thing has been a bit weird.”
Edna recounted how, ten days earlier, a very “swanky-looking” limousine had dropped off Miss Brice. The “whole thing” had happened pretty fast. A lawyer had contacted her on behalf of the family. He had the papers ready and said the family didn’t want to wait, that they’d take a bed if one were available. Any bed, but it had to be in a private room. The lawyer had also said it would be best if she were kept away from the other residents.
“Why?” I asked. “She seems pretty harmless to me—maybe a little eccentric.”
“She’s not violent or anything like that.” Edna insisted that the Clarkson would never have taken her if that were the case. The lawyer explained that Miss Brice sometimes had hallucinations and that she could become very upset during these episodes. “But that’s not what bothers me,” Edna explained. “After we got her all settled upstairs, she made some peculiar comments.”
“Such as?”
“Well…she suggested she’s been forced to come here.”
I reminded Edna that she probably got that kind of thing all the time.
“Yes, but I’ve gotten to know Miss Brice a little. She won’t say much about it, but it seems she’s been taken care of by her family for a very long time—like fifty years. At first a relative named Allan took care of her and then his son, Gregory, took over. Gregory just died, and now his widow, Ava, has power of attorney for her. I’ve gathered that Ava and Marged don’t get along.”
I asked her what she meant by that. Edna frowned and put her glasses back on, blinking at me like an owl. “It’s those hallucinations. So far, we’ve seen no evidence of them, but the lawyer implied they’ve become so bad that no caregiver will stay on. I think that’s why Ava wants Marged in a nursing home.”
“Did you discuss Marged Brice with Ava directly?”
Edna shook her head. “There’s more, Garth. The really weird part is that the family’s identity is to remain strictly confidential. I even had to sign an agreement about it. No one here is supposed to know who sent her to the home. Even I don’t know all the details because most of my dealings were with this lawyer.”
“Then who brought Miss Brice here?”
“I already told you.” Edna was growing a little cranky. “She came alone in a limo. There was the driver, of course, but he was totally uncommunicative. He wouldn’t even carry that heavy trunk of hers upstairs.”
I couldn’t believe Marged Brice’s paperwork didn’t contain some information about her; surely an age was listed somewhere?
Edna just scowled. “The letter from the lawyer says the lady upstairs was born May 1, 1920—so she’s supposed to be ninety-three years old. But that’s just his letter. There was no official document. When I asked him about it, I got a long-winded spiel about how it wasn’t necessary when a person’s expenses are covered by private funds.”
/> “I’m assuming the name is the same in the lawyer’s letter.”
She lit another cigarette. “It’s Margaret Brice in the letter. But on the phone, the lawyer kept referring to her as Marged. When I pointed this out, he just laughed it off—saying that Margaret and Marged are really the same name.”
I shrugged my shoulders. The two names were pretty close, and practically anyone might mistake them.
“By the way, the family also gave the Clarkson a generous donation,” Edna said. “But I’m not supposed to disclose the amount,” she added hurriedly. “It’s a large amount, and believe me, we can use it. But I don’t like it, Garth. All the conditions they’ve insisted on—it just doesn’t smell right.”
I was silent for a few seconds. “I wonder where she got that birth certificate, then?”
“She refused to have it put in her file, but I’m positive it’s an authentic document. It must belong to somebody.” Edna was now avoiding my eyes. “Miss Brice told me a little about her family. She said she moved to the Bruce Peninsula when she was a baby. Her father—she always refers to him as ‘Tad.’ That’s Irish, isn’t it?”
“I believe ‘Tad’ is Welsh for ‘Dad.’”
“Miss Brice says her Tad had a one-hundred-acre farm north of Wiarton, but it was destroyed in a fire. After that her father became the lightkeeper at Cape Prius out on Georgian Bay.”
I sat up. Cape Prius. My cottage was about half a mile down the coast from the light station. A local community group had recently taken over the light tower and was now running it as a heritage site.
Edna looked down at some notes on her desk. “I called up the curator of that museum they have at the lighthouse. Hugh Brice was hired in 1888, and he lived there as lightkeeper with his wife for more than thirty years. Mr. Brice had a sister, Alis, and she came over from Wales to live with them. Alis married a local man, and then her husband, Gil Barclay, became the assistant lightkeeper. But more to the point, the Brices had only one child—a daughter they named Marged.” Then she stared at me pointedly. “You saw that birth certificate,” she hinted.
“What are you getting at?”
“I can’t explain it. It’s just a nagging feeling I have, but I think she might really be that Marged Brice. I mean, the Marged Brice of the birth certificate.”
I laughed. “Edna, is that tobacco you’re smoking? We’ve been over all that. I don’t think it’s even physically possible for a person to live to one hundred and thirty-four.”
“But did you see her face? I’ve never seen anything like it before!”
“Look.” I adopted a more serious tone. “Don’t you think it’s more likely that there’s been some sort of mistake?”
“But she insists she’s the one and only Marged Brice.”
“Maybe she’s suffering from memory loss,” I speculated. “Or maybe she’s confusing her own identity with her grandmother’s, or something like that. Sounds like she might have dementia.”
“I don’t think so.” Edna shook her head firmly. “I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen all kinds of dementia. She forgets things here and there, just as you or I might, but she’s not disoriented the way people with dementia are.” Then she laughed cryptically. “Well,” she threw back, “what do you make of our mystery woman?”
I waited for a minute, choosing my words carefully. “I think you’re understandably excited by the idea of having the world’s oldest living person here at the Clarkson. But I’ll be frank with you. There’s no one at the Longevity Project who would go for this. A birth certificate without any other supporting documentation is not a credible lead.”
“Do you really think so?” She sighed. “But what if she really is—”
I shook my head emphatically. “The LP requires us to verify a person’s age based on very strict guidelines. There have to be at least three official documents that correlate a person’s age and name, and that’s just for starters. Then there’s positive identification by living sources and the census data.”
“But,” Edna said, her eyes beginning to glint. “What if you investigated? You would be able to clear up this whole thing. I know you would! You’re a historian—a distinguished university professor. You would know how to figure out who she really is.”
I stood up, annoyed with myself for getting trapped so easily. “You know I’m trying to finish a book this summer, and I’ve got—”
“But I don’t think it would take all that long, do you?”
She was probably right, but I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. “Why don’t you just ask someone in her family? There’s got to be someone in her family who could clear up this question of her age.”
She shook her head vigorously. “That’s not an option. I’m not to get in touch with anyone in the family—absolutely not. I’m only to notify them of her death, but otherwise, there’s to be no contact with them.”
“That’s pretty strange.”
“Garth.” Edna looked me straight in the eye. “Just think of what this might mean for the home. We’re facing closure, as you well know. But the government wouldn’t dare shut us down. They’d never do it if we had the world’s oldest living person right here under our roof!” Again she hesitated, watching my reaction. “Couldn’t you just try to find out for us? Couldn’t you just try? It’s only that—I trust you. We all trust you here.”
We both heard Farley scratching at the door, and I got up to let him in. I’d given him a good scolding for the ruckus he’d made, and he gave me an injured look. He was still covered in dust and what looked like cobwebs, and immediately waddled over to Edna for sympathy. She seemed not to notice and immediately scooped him up, beginning to rub his fat, little belly.
“Would you do it—for us? For the home, I mean?” she asked, fondling Farley’s ears. She had taken off her glasses, and now I had two sets of large, imploring eyes trained on me. Just then Farley gave one of his awful sneezes, and Edna was left spattered in an unsightly ooze.
“Okay,” I said, hastily handing her a box of Kleenex. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll look into this. But I’m going to have to do it my way. I’ll need to know the name of the family who put her here.”
“Stewart,” she blurted out. “I know I shouldn’t tell you, but the family are the Stewarts. You know, the really rich ones—the Montreal banking family.”
“The family of the painter, George Stewart?”
“Yes, I believe so. But remember, you didn’t hear it from me.”
I stared back at her in surprise. Now why, I wondered, would the celebrated Stewart family shuffle an elderly woman off to a nursing home on the Bruce Peninsula? And hadn’t Miss Brice mentioned a George during our interview?
“And you didn’t get Miss Brice’s file from me either.” Edna handed me a folder. “I think you should take a look at the paperwork that came with her. If you start asking around about her, you’re only repeating what Miss Brice told you herself. Agreed?”
I snapped my fingers for Farley to come down.
Edna gave him an affectionate hug before setting him on the floor. “You’ve been a naughty boy this morning, haven’t you? He’s been chasing squirrels in the garden again.”
“At least he wasn’t bothering that unauthorized feline of yours. It was a very good thing I didn’t bring him upstairs with me, because Cookie was hiding out in Miss Brice’s room.”
Edna looked at me quizzically. “But Cookie couldn’t have been up there. I took her to the vet yesterday. They’re boarding her for a few days while she has some tests done.”
“That’s strange—” I started to say.
Just then her phone rang.
“Hello—yes?”
She rolled her eyes and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s the health inspector. You won’t forget to bring back that file?”
Three
It w
ould make Ava and her son very happy if I died…
I looked up from my desk and stared out the window at two loons bobbing past my dock. The file from Edna made it pretty clear that the Stewart family expected Miss Brice to die at the Clarkson Home, and preferably in the not-too-distant future. But that wasn’t what bothered me. It was more that Miss Brice’s care arrangement included a two hundred thousand dollar “donation” divided into two installments. Half had been given when she was admitted to the home and the rest was to be received “at her death.”
At her death—balance on delivery? No wonder Edna was uneasy about the whole thing.
I had found no verification of the birth date of May 1, 1920, for the “Margaret” G. Brice mentioned in the lawyer’s letter. There was no social insurance number, no health card or driver’s license, not even a credit card number that I could use to confirm her name. There wasn’t even a previous address or contact information for a doctor in the event of an illness. There was absolutely nothing that I could use to verify the alleged birth date the Stewarts’ solicitor had provided for the woman at the Clarkson Home.
Yet there had to be a trail, I reasoned—everybody was on record somewhere.
I picked up the journals Miss Brice had given me that morning, finally admitting that this was going to take more time than I had anticipated. And all because of two sets of eyes, I thought ruefully—one belonging to a spoiled dog and the other to a portly spinster. Actually, there had been three sets of eyes; Marged’s orbs had been pretty formidable, too.
I stood up and stretched—there was something else. It had been gnawing at me all afternoon. It was the name Marged Brice had mentioned, Perdita. I knew that I’d heard it somewhere before and in relation to my father. Had it been something he was working on before he died?
I began tidying up the papers on my desk when I noticed two Montreal telephone numbers at the bottom of the contract Edna had signed—numbers she was to immediately call in the event of Miss Brice’s death.
Perdita Page 2