by L. R. Wright
“I came for a library card,” he told her. He watched her push her dark hair away from her neck. It curled a little, where it sprang away from her face. He noticed several gray hairs. The skin next to her eyes was crinkled, and there were two horizontal lines in her forehead. Character, he thought, with satisfaction. Her eyes were wide and hazel. Her mouth was wide, too, but her nose was small. He saw her face become pink and realized that he’d been staring at her. He looked away, up at the clock on the wall. “I’ve just got time, before I get back to work.”
She got a blank card from a desk drawer and sat down at a manual typewriter. “Full name, please,” she said briskly.
“Alberg, Martin Karl.” He rested his elbows on the counter and leaned over to watch her type. She was wearing a blue and white pinstriped dress. There was a gold chain around her neck and a gold watch on her wrist; gifts, he wondered? No rings, and her nails were short; she used colorless polish on them. She was tall, about five feet nine, and weighed about 140 pounds.
He didn’t know why he said it. He didn’t often act on his more mischievous impulses. “Are you looking for a husband?” He watched her face, knowing that his own was smooth, expressionless.
She looked up at him quickly, and although her face burned with embarrassment she didn’t look away. Her hands were poised over the typewriter keys. “Are you looking for another wife?”
He shook his head
“Then you have come,” she said coldly, “to precisely the right place.” She turned back to the card in the typewriter. “Address, please.”
“The directors’ house, Gibsons.”
“And is this the book you wish to take out?” She pointed to The Life of Catherine the Great, which lay on the counter between them.
He looked at it in astonishment, unable to remember how it had gotten there. “Yes,” he said humbly. “I’ll start with this one. Has it got anything about pruning in it, do you know?”
She gave him not the glimmer of a smile.
10
HE WENT FROM THE LIBRARY to George Wilcox’s house and parked his car on the verge of the road twenty feet from the gate leading to the old man’s front yard. It was his own car, a 1979 four-door Oldsmobile, nothing splashy, nothing special, except for the police radio.
Alberg crunched along the gravel shoulder toward the gate. The fence was sturdy, but in need of painting. There was a well-trimmed evergreen hedge behind it, and between the hedge and the front of the house was five feet of neatly clipped lawn. The house itself was short and squat, with small windows and a small square porch; it, too, could have used a few coats of paint. And who am I, thought Alberg gloomily, to talk about decrepit-looking houses. At least this one had a neat border of flowers in front of it, instead of a tropical thicket.
He turned into the yard, closing the gate behind him, and went up a cracked concrete walk to the porch. The door was opened before he could knock. George Wilcox peered up at him. He didn’t say anything.
“Hi,” said Alberg, finally.
“Why don’t you ever wear a uniform?”
“It’s distracting.”
“No uniform, no police car. How am I supposed to take you seriously?”
Alberg thought about it. “I’ve got my badge,” he said, and showed it to him. “Does that help?”
“What about a gun? You got a gun?”
“Not with me. Why, do you think I’ll need one?”
“No need for sarcasm, sonny. The badge will do.” He stepped back and opened the door wide.
Alberg squeezed through the tiny hall and into a narrow living room. The high small windows admitted very little light. An oatmeal-colored sofa and a matching armchair, and two occasional chairs upholstered in red wool, sat on the dark brown wall-to-wall carpeting. The windowsills were cluttered with objects: two fat-cheeked Toby mugs; a brass candle snuffer and two brass candlesticks, empty; what appeared to be a wooden salt shaker and pepper mill; a pair of shell casings—standard mementos of the Second World War, except for some unusual decorative work; a pipe holder containing no pipes; two china figurines, possibly Hummel; three china roses in a marble base. There was a television set in one corner, and a collapsed card table leaned against a wall. Everything seemed very dusty.
“Don’t use this room much,” said George Wilcox. “Come on into the kitchen.” He waved Alberg on toward the back of the house.
The kitchen was a bright, sunny square, painted yellow. A worn leather chair sat at an angle to the large window, which looked out upon a small garden and the sea. Next to the chair stood an old-fashioned tobacco cabinet. There was a footstool in front of the chair, piled with magazines and a section of newspaper folded to the crossword puzzle. A TV tray stood nearby. There was no table in the kitchen. The yellow walls were grimy with accumulated dust and splotched with grease near the four-burner electric stove.
“You might as well see the rest of the place, now you’re here,” said George. He opened a door and Alberg followed him into a small beige-carpeted room. Two walls were lined with bookcases, a desk and chair sat by the window, several comfortable chairs were scattered around, and there was a fireplace.
“This is where you live,” said Alberg.
“Here and in the kitchen.” George went through a doorway in the corner of the room, into a short hall. “Here’s the bathroom,” he said, waving to the right, “and straight on here is the bedroom.”
Alberg stood in the doorway and looked around. Small windows again, almost as though the room were in a basement. A large four-poster bed, two dressers, a half-open closet door. On one of the dressers was a framed photograph of a woman. It was angled slightly away from him, and Alberg couldn’t see it clearly.
“That’s it,” said George, reaching in front of Alberg to close the door. “The grand tour.” He went back down the hall and through another doorway which led into the living room, then turned left back into the kitchen. “Fellow who built this place,” he said, “was awfully fond of doors. I took some of them down, you probably noticed. Doorways is one thing, doors is another. Take up too much room. Sit down there, by the window. I’ll make some coffee. Eight of them, there were, when we bought this place. Not counting the outside ones, or closets. Eight doors, in a house this size.”
He filled a percolator with water, poured coffee into the basket, and set the pot on the stove. Then he went into the study and hauled out the desk chair. Alberg, standing by the window, made a move to help. “Sit down, sit down,” said George Wilcox. “No, not here—in the leather chair, there. Sit.”
Alberg sat. George took the straight-backed chair.
“Now,” said George. “What questions?”
He was alert and unruffled. Alberg glanced wistfully at his thick white hair. He himself was sure to be bald, eventually. All the men in his family had gone bald. He checked once or twice a week, and his hairline had already begun to recede. It had started about twenty years ago.
“What do you know about Carlyle Burke?” he said.
George Wilcox sighed. “What’s this in aid of, anyway? I can’t figure it.”
“When you’re trying to find out who killed somebody, you’ve got to poke around in his life a bit.”
“Is that so?” said George. “Is that the way it’s done, then.” He rubbed one scuffed slipper against the linoleum. “Got any suspects?”
Alberg hesitated. “Not really. Not yet.”
“You’re pretty damn calm about it,” said George. “If I were a cop, and I had me a murdered body and no suspects, I don’t think I’d be so damn calm about it.”
“I’m not calm,” said Alberg. “I just look calm. Actually I’m irritated. And extremely curious.”
“Curious.” George chortled. “I’m curious, too.” He leaned forward. “I supposed you’ve looked at the obvious. You know, milkman, postman, paperboy—that kind of thing. And of course the most obvious thing of all, your basic hoodlum, possibly drug-crazed.” He sat back, complacent.
“Yes, M
r. Wilcox,” said Alberg. “We’ve looked at the obvious.”
“How?” said George. The water in the coffeepot began to burp. He got up and turned down the burner.
He had wide, strong shoulders, Alberg noticed. Probably all that gardening. His own shoulders were still stiff and sore, from Tuesday’s efforts.
“What have you done, exactly?” said George, sitting down again. “Besides take the fingerprints of innocent bystanders, I mean. Did you photograph the corpse? Query people up and down the street?”
Alberg nodded. He told himself that he had lots of time.
“You found that fish seller yet?”
Alberg shook his head.
“Probably in Vancouver by now,” said George. “Or on his way to Calgary or someplace. What else? What do you know? The autopsy, for instance. There must have been an autopsy. What did that tell you?”
“He was struck on the head. It killed him.”
George looked at him for a long moment, then sat back and folded his arms. “I always said you were a secretive bunch, you Mounties. In or out of uniform.”
Alberg couldn’t help but grin. “There’s not much to tell you. Really. Okay. There are a few things.” He counted them off on his fingers. “One, the perpetrator didn’t force his way in. Two, the victim was struck from behind, while sitting down. Three, no damage was done—”
“Except to Carlyle,” said George.
“—to the house. Four, nothing was stolen, that we know of. Of course the forensic guys found some fingerprints. The victim’s, a cleaning woman’s, yours.”
The coffee was bubbling now, its fragrance drifting through the kitchen. George got up and took two mugs and a sugar bowl from the cupboard and a small container of milk from the fridge. He smelled this cautiously before putting it on the counter.
“What do you figure from all that?” he said, taking the pot off the burner and placing it in the middle of the stove.
“An unknown person went to Mr. Burke’s house, armed with a blunt instrument. Mr. Burke let him in. He sat in his rocking chair looking out over the water. The unknown person struck him, from behind. He died almost instantly.”
George poured the coffee and put the mugs down on the crossword puzzle on the footstool. He went back for the milk and sugar and two spoons. “Help yourself,” he said, and shoveled sugar into his mug, and stirred it vigorously. “Why the hell would Carlyle let the fellow in,” he said, “if he was carrying a blunt instrument?”
“That’s an interesting question,” said Alberg, reaching for his coffee. “Maybe he didn’t recognize the object as a weapon,” he said, looking at George. “Or maybe the killer used something he found in the house.”
George sipped at his coffee, staring at the floor. “Have you found it?” he said finally. “The object? The weapon?”
“No.”
George looked up. “It’s probably out in the middle of the ocean by now,” he said comfortably.
Alberg observed him grimly. “You can be a very irritating man, Mr. Wilcox. Did anybody ever tell you that? I bet they did.”
George grinned. He drank some more coffee, added a small amount of milk, and stirred it again. He put the spoon down on the newspaper. “Okay. So you want to know about Carlyle.”
“Right.”
“You been down to the Old Age Pensioners’ hall? He was in a choir there. Played bingo or checkers or something, too, I think.”
“Yeah, we’ve done all that. Didn’t help us much.”
George looked at him shrewdly over the top of his mug. “How come I rate the big cheese, by the way?”
“You found the body.”
“That was just my bad luck,” said George. “I told you, I didn’t know him all that well. How well do we ever know anybody, when it comes right down to it?”
Alberg put his coffee down on the TV tray. He took from an inside pocket an envelope on which he had scribbled a list.
“We went through the house pretty thoroughly, of course,” he said, and looked up to see George Wilcox watching him warily. “He had a lot of stuff, did Mr. Burke. A stereo, very good speakers.”
“Huh,” said George, contemptuously.
“A twenty-six-inch remote control color television set. An aluminum rowboat. An upright grand piano, white.”
George grunted.
“A whole lot of silverware: flatware, a tea set, trays and things. A bunch of china—that might be valuable too.”
“Is that what you’ve got written on that envelope?” said George irritably. “You got a list of his assets there, or what?”
“And then of course there’s the house,” said Alberg. “It’s mortgage free. All paid for.”
“Huh,” said George. “So’s mine.”
“He didn’t leave much actual cash,” said Alberg regretfully. “But there are some Canada Savings Bonds, a few stocks—about twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth, all told.”
“Christ,” said George. “Spare me.”
Alberg put the envelope back in his pocket. “He left it all to you,” he said.
For a second George’s expression didn’t change. Then the sneer slipped away, and his mouth fell slightly open. He leaned forward and cocked his head, looking intently at the tobacco stand next to the chair in which Alberg was sitting, as though it were that which had spoken. “What?” he said, staring at the tobacco stand.
“You get it all, George,” said Alberg. “The whole shebang.”
And he watched, bemused, as George collapsed in a fit of laughter which Alberg briefly thought might choke him.
“You all right now, George?” he asked softly, when the old man’s wheezing had subsided. “Because we’ve got a lot to talk about, you and I. And there are a couple of things we should get straight, before we go on.
“First of all,” he said, leaning forward, “I don’t want to waste any more of my time with this cantankerous-old-man act you have so much fun with. And second of all, I know Carlyle Burke was your brother-in-law.”
He sat back. “So let’s get on with it, shall we, George? Tell me why you didn’t get along so well with old Carlyle. And tell me what your fingerprints were doing not just on the phone but all over the damn kitchen. And then tell me why he left everything he owned to you, this fellow you didn’t care for. Okay, George? Start talking.”
11
ALBERG, SITTING IN THE WORN leather chair, fingered the stuffing which oozed from a crack in the seam of the right arm and kept his eyes on George Wilcox.
After a minute, George settled back and folded his arms. “My fingerprints are all over his kitchen because, I don’t mind saying it, I was—I was somewhat discombobulated,” he said, “seeing him lying there. I grabbed at things to hold me up, on the way to the phone. I grabbed at the wall, I grabbed at the sink…” He lifted his shoulders, let them drop.
The late-afternoon sun struck into the room at a steep angle; the windows were marked by the rains of spring and probably winter, as well. Tumbleweeds of dust lay in the corners of the floor.
George sighed. “I met Carlyle a few years after the war,” he said. “Must have been ’48, ’49. Myra and I wandered out here from the prairies. Saskatoon.” His folded hands rested comfortably in his lap. “I was born out here. Went to Saskatchewan about 1930. A bad time to head out there, as it happened, but we survived. I even went to school, eventually, got to be a teacher. Met Myra, got married, et cetera, et cetera.” He shrugged. “Anyway, we got tired of the cold, that’s what it was. Myra’s people had retired out here. I didn’t have any family left by then, except my sister, Audrey. She lived with us.” He shifted a little in his chair. His feet were flat on the floor, toes pointed outward, heels about eight inches apart.
“Myra’s people lived in the Fraser Valley,” he went on. “She wanted me to get a job out there. But I considered myself a city person. There were lots of jobs, back then. I could take my pick, pretty well. I picked Vancouver. ” He tipped his head at Alberg. “Are you a city man, Sta
ff Sergeant?” He leaned toward him. “Is that what I call you? Staff Sergeant?”
Alberg nodded.
George sat back, slowly. “You don’t want my life history. I got a job in a high school, teaching history. Carlyle was on the staff. That’s how I met him.” He turned his head to look out the window. “He taught music.”
“And?” said Alberg, after a couple of minutes.
“And what?”
“Come on, George.”
“You’re calling me George now? Have you got a first name? What is this ‘George’ all of a sudden, anyway?”
“Sorry. You’ve got more to tell me. Go on.”
“Go on, go on,” said George. “As though all I’ve got to do is push a button somewhere and out it comes.” His face was flushed. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and studied the floor. “After a while Carlyle met Audrey, God knows how, I can’t remember how. And it ended up they got married.” He glanced at Alberg, outraged. “I was suddenly his brother-in-law, for Christ’s sake. Couldn’t believe it.”
“Right from the start, then, you didn’t like him,” said Alberg.
George sat up straight and looked out the window again, concentrating. Several moments went by. Alberg waited.
“He played the piano,” said George, finally. “He could play anything. Sometimes he’d go to the music room… I’d be going down the hall, wide and empty, the kids gone for the day, the floor all scuffed; I’d hear him playing. It came soaring out from behind the door and filled every nook and cranny in the school. That’s what it felt like. Mozart. Or Chopin. Or Beethoven. As long as I couldn’t see him playing, it was like some angel had sneaked in to try out the piano.” He sat quietly for a moment. Then, “Ah,” he said, and pushed himself up. He picked up his coffee mug and went over to the kitchen counter. “It was the man’s one redeeming characteristic,” he said. “Didn’t seem right, that he could play like that. But he could.”