My house was a long way from anywhere Benedict was rumoured to hang out. Of course, he might have walked from the Britannia Pub. But Benedict never walked anywhere.
There was no sign of his car.
“Did he use his own key?”
“He didn’t have a key. I haven’t seen him even once since I moved back to St. Aubaine.”
I knew Sarrazin didn’t believe me. I could sense that cranky glare, even though I still couldn’t make eye contact with him. I didn’t feel much like looking at anyone. And I certainly didn’t want anyone looking at me. My eyes were red, my hair was even wilder than usual, my tongue felt breaded and fried. Anyway, the long eye of the law had glared at me enough for one day.
Still, it was in my interest to help the police. “He used to spend a lot of time at the Britannia Pub.”
“The Britannia.” His expression probably captured the typical cop’s view of the Britannia: a hotbed of college kids, small-time crooks, cheap drugs, beer by the quart, smuggled cigarettes, dollar-a-game pool and roof-rattling good music of any kind you could mention. Plus poets, writers, sculptors, artists and other low life.
“Right.”
“Any names?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been in the Britannia for years, since I stopped seeing Benedict.”
“Anyone else who might know what was going on?”
I hesitated. I could feel those bear eyes on me. “His girlfriend, Bridget Gallagher. She owns the Irish shop by the Marina. She’s a very nice person. Oh, God, someone will have to tell her.” I really hoped the someone wouldn’t be me.
It was eight o’clock when the coroner finished with Benedict. She came to the kitchen door, holding her spiral notebook in a long, elegant hand. She was about thirty-five, trim, with an elaborate hairdo, dark brown with several shades of highlights, the type that set you back a bundle. Her name was Lise Duhamel. And a little thing like a dead man at dawn wouldn’t rock her socks.
“I’m finished now, Ms...um.”
“Silk. Fiona Silk.” We’d been through that when she’d arrived. I got the unspoken message she’d seen my type before, in formaldehyde.
“Hello, Frank. Off the top of my head, I’d estimate monsieur has been dead between eight and ten hours. No guarantees,” she said, flashing a bit of dark stocking as she sat down.
Eight to ten hours. That put Benedict’s death between ten o’clock and midnight.
That earned me another bear look. “Why didn’t you call us as soon as he died?” Sarrazin said.
“I told you. I was with Dr. Liz Prentiss at Les Nuances all evening. I found him after I got home.” I glossed over the passing out on the floor part.
“Heart attack, I imagine,” Sarrazin said firmly to Dr. Duhamel. Still rooting for natural causes. Keep the village’s record clean. Minimize paperwork.
Dr. Duhamel wrinkled her nice nose and chuckled. “Heart attack, Frank? Oh, I don’t think so.”
I tried my luck with her. “Definitely not a heart attack?”
She answered as if Sarrazin had asked the question. “It will take an autopsy to be sure, but I think he had some serious internal injuries.”
“Really?” he said.
This time I made eye contact with him. “I told you. Someone murdered him.”
Sarrazin rubbed his chin. He looked at me as if he suddenly realized I wasn’t playing on the same team.
“Well, not me,” I said. “Somebody else. I called you, remember?”
I found myself dropped from the discussion. Sarrazin and Dr. Duhamel moved to the front hall and lowered their voices. I had to creep into the living room, press myself against the wall and strain to hear.
“Are you telling me he ended up in that bed after he died of a beating? That what you’re saying?”
“Don’t laugh,” Dr. Duhamel said flirtatiously. “It looks like that’s what happened. The body was definitely shifted after death.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, yes. Might not have even died here. No sign of violence in the room, no blood.”
I found myself gasping for breath when I finally exhaled. I did my best to gasp quietly and keep listening.
“These kinds of things don’t happen in St. Aubaine,” he said.
“They do now,” she said. “We have pretty good indications he died of a broken neck. Plus some other serious injuries which he didn’t get falling into that four-poster. I’d say he’d been roughed up very, very badly by someone who knew how to hurt people and not leave marks. Naturally, we’ll have to wait for the full autopsy.”
Sarrazin said, “ Merde.”
She chuckled again. “But it won’t take an autopsy to tell us someone stuck that cute little smile on his pretty face. Krazy Glue, if you ask me.”
Three
At some point, St. Aubaine village council must have had a financial surplus, and they’d blown it on the cop shop. Automatic key cards, bullet-proof glass, an intercom system to talk to the desk staff, this police station had the whole shebang.
“Expecting a siege?” Since I’d started to believe this was all a bad dream anyway, why not be flip with the detective?
“Everybody’s a comedian,” Sarrazin said. He slipped his magnetic card into the door.
I was on my way to be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed. Oh well. At least I had that hangover to keep me warm.
The interview room was the sort of place you might expect from the mind of Kafka. The interview too. It varied on the theme of: “Yes, I do think someone else killed him and planted him in my house afterwards. No, I don’t know who or how or what the motive was.”
“Why would that be?” Sarrazin asked me for the fifth time.
“I have no idea. I told you I haven’t seen the man for...” I hoped the tape recorder picked up the outrage in my voice.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve been there. But, it was your bed, so you can see why I’m interested.” He had a tough time getting away from that bed business.
I stared at the blue ink on my fingertips. I would have a tough time getting away from that too. “Somebody killed Benedict, and you’re hassling me. That somebody is on the loose now. The way he died, it would have to be a psycho. You should be more interested in that.”
“What about his girlfriend? Is she a psycho?”
“Hardly. Bridget’s a lovely person. Plus, she’s just a little bit of a thing. She couldn’t lift him, let alone beat him to death. You’ll figure that out yourself when you talk to her.”
“You know, I kind of like the idea that you killed him.”
“Let me remind you that I was...”
“We’ll soon check that, won’t we?” He switched off the tape recorder and stood up. “Don’t stray far,” he said.
Back home, between my desperate hope that I was dreaming and my fascination with the police photographer and the crowd of forensic technicians picking over the house, it was hours before I strayed anywhere.
At ten o’clock, the ambulance attendants wheeled the late poet and philosopher, encased in a black vinyl body bag, out through the front door.
Except for Tolstoy, I was finally alone. But I desperately needed a break from thinking about Benedict. I switched on the radio and caught the tail end of the CBC National news. “The controversial poet, Benedict Kelly, was found dead at the home of romance writer Fiona Silk in St. Aubaine, Quebec today. He was forty-seven. Last week’s announcement by the Flambeau Foundation that Kelly had been the first winner of the Flambeau Memorial Prize for Poetic Literature created an uproar in the literary community. Police are investigating.”
“Be serious,” I said to the radio. Benedict? The Flambeau? Canada’s rarest and richest literary prize? Hardly. A sick joke maybe?
How could I have missed that news? Well. Easy. When you’re a writer with a non-performing manuscript close to deadline, and you’re thinking about using your drop-dead emergency cash roll to buy food, you let your newspapers pile up, you don’t turn on your radio, and
you don’t own a TV set anyway. Your former-almost-lover wins the Flambeau, and you don’t even hear about it.
The Flambeau! It never occurred to me that Benedict was churning out serious poetry. I’d figured his efforts were props for enticing girls out of their skivvies and for encouraging Irish expatriates to pay for his drinks. And here all along they were serious works of literature. It just goes to show you.
The Flambeau was an erotic dream for poets. A serious pile of cash donated by the philanthropic widow of an industrialist. Of course, a lot of good it had done Benedict.
That’s the trouble with national public radio. It gets around. I wasn’t the only one who heard it. My ex-husband-to-be didn’t start with any of the more conventional conversational openings. “This is a singularly inconsiderate and flagrant thing to do, even for you, Fiona. This kind of behaviour is bound to impact your divorce settlement negatively.”
“Leave a message after the beep,” I said.
“And don’t pretend you’re not there. I know better.”
My divorce settlement. Just what I didn’t want to discuss. I needed a clear head to talk to Philip. And if I’d had a clear head, I never would have picked up the phone in the first place.
“Rats,” I said. “I thought you were in Vancouver.”
“Even three thousand miles away, Fiona, you manage to embarrass me.”
Embarrass him? I loved that.
I was still distracted by the idea of Benedict’s body, the Flambeau thing, my blue fingertips, and Philip’s call when I realized Tolstoy was three hours late for his morning outing.
“Good dog. Keep those legs crossed,” I said, fishing out my rain gear. And his Frisbee to make up for the long wait.
Flashbulbs went off in my face as soon as I opened the door. I did my damnedest to slam it before the trio of reporters reached my front steps. “Ms. Silk, how does it feel...? Ms. Silk, have you any comment...? Fiona, can we get a shot of the four-poster?”
Someone jammed his foot in the door.
Tolstoy recovered from the shock before I did and managed a convincing bark. The foot withdrew. Twelve minutes remained of my fifteen minutes of fame, and I didn’t think I could live through them. For once I was glad I had no living relatives, if I didn’t count Phillip, and why would I. Still I needed a solution to the reporters on the doorstep problem, or Tolstoy was going to have a long wait for relief.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d asked Hélène Lamontagne, my good friend and closest neighbour down the road, to bail me out. Hélène is pure-laine Québécoise, charming and elegant. Plus she’s beautiful, a size four, with surprisingly becoming burgundy hair and a flair for the dramatic. She’s also one hell of a community organizer. Never mind. I like her anyway. In spite of the fact that her wretched husband had been trying to oust me from my little converted cottage on its two-acre riverside lot ever since I’d moved in two years earlier. He might have been sleaze personified, and I might have hated the sight of him, but Hélène’s a different matter.
“Fiona! I have been so worried. I phoned and phoned and you didn’t answer,” Hélène said.
“I’m not answering the phone,” I said.
“But what is this terrible news?”
I summed up my shock, paranoia, acute embarrassment and desire to evade the media.
“ Oh là là,” she said. Before I met Hélène, I would have sworn nobody outside of the movies ever says oh là là. But Hélène sometimes even adds an extra là.
“It is a shame. Right after he won such a big prize too. But Benedict was always trouble,” she said.
“No kidding. Which reminds me, do you still have any newspaper write-ups about Benedict winning the Flambeau?”
“In the recyclage.”
“Good. Recycle them to me. I need them.”
“And now you will need new sheets too.”
“Not only that, but Tolstoy needs to pee, and I need a diversion.”
“ Pas de problème. Leave it to me. By the way, did I mention I still need volunteers for the Charity Auction next month?”
“Anything,” I said. “Just get those turkeys off my lawn.”
The media vans peeled out of my driveway, three seconds after Mme Jean-Claude Lamontagne, glamorous wife of St. Aubaine’s most successful developer, let it slip to a reporter that she’d just sighted Fiona Silk, prime suspect, pawing through the black push-up bras over at the Boutique Minou. As soon as the vans disappeared, Tolstoy and I dashed out. My mind was on Hélène’s discarded newspapers. Tolstoy’s mind was on lower things.
Too bad there’s no answering system for doors. People could leave little messages, and you could let them know whether you were in...or not. Hi, this is Fiona and I never, never, never answer my door, but go ahead and leave a message if it makes you happy. Knock, knock...Hi, Jack here, I want to read your meter...give me a call...Hi, this is your newspaper carrier, you owe me for July and August and...Hi, how well do you know your Bible? I’d like to tell you how you can find peace and contentment. I’ll be back next Saturday morning at about seven-thirty. Hi, this is the media. We’d like to smear this story all over every front page and television set in the country. How about opening the door and spilling your guts?
But Dr. Liz Prentiss doesn’t stop just because you don’t answer. When I finally capitulated, she breezed through and slammed the door on a ferret-faced reporter just back from a wild goose chase to Boutique Minou.
She said, “Get me a drink on the double. The police have been trying to poke holes in your so-called alibi.”
What are best friends for?
Four
“What do you mean ‘so-called alibi’?”
“I’m your alibi. Remember? And the local hotshots just blew a lot of the taxpayers’ dollars trying to catch me in a lie.”
“Okay, but why ‘so-called’ ?”
“Get a grip. Your hands are shaking. Make sure you don’t spill my drink.”
She was right. My hands were shaking. After all, she is a doctor (even if no one can figure out when she keeps office hours), and doctors are trained to recognize things like shaky hands.
“I’ve been fingerprinted. I’ve outrun the media. I’ll never be able to sleep in my bed again. I can shake if I want to. What do you mean ‘poking holes in’?”
“Relax. They’re just doing their job.” Easy for her. She was already fully relaxed in the bean-bag chair in my living room, swilling the final two inches of my last bottle of Courvoisier.
“Yeah, but ‘poking holes’ in. I don’t like the sound of that.”
Liz rubbed Tolstoy’s belly with her foot.
The phone rang for the thirty-seventh time. Tolstoy perked up. He loves to hear the voices recording their cranky little messages.
“I hate it when you don’t answer the phone.”
“I’ve had a rough day, Liz.”
“Who hasn’t? You know, this is the sort of thing we can anticipate from now on. Now that we’re forty-five, we have to accept the fact we’ll be surrounded by death and decay.”
“Speak for yourself. I won’t be forty-five for six months. I don’t expect it to lead to a flurry of corpses in my bedroom.”
“I think you know what I mean. We have to come to grips with our own mortality.” She tossed back a slug of Courvoisier.
“You come to grips with your mortality, if you want to. And don’t rule out cirrhosis of the liver as a contributing factor while you’re at it. I’m trying to figure out what happened here last night.”
“See this?” She grabbed hold of the skin at her jaw and pulled at it. “My chin line. Look at it. It’s disintegrating. You know what they call these things?”
“No. I’m more interested in who might have murdered Benedict. You know, since I didn’t and my so-called alibi is having holes picked in it.”
“Poked in it. They call them dewlaps,” she said, still tugging at her chin. “They start to develop around our age.”
“Your age,” I said.
“I’m six months younger, remember? Anyway, let’s deal with the Benedict thing first. I can’t figure out who could have killed him.”
Curled up in the beanbag chair, with her rumpled short black hair, tight black jeans, bare feet, and red toenails, Liz reminded me of a sexy, self-centred cat.
“Just about anybody probably wanted to. Are you telling me you never felt like killing him?” Liz said, barely holding back a yawn.
I ignored a new banging on the front door. “Not in the last seven years. But I take your point. So the cast of possible villains is roughly the population of St. Aubaine.”
“Yeah, that’s a problem. Anyway, my chin line is...”
The banging on the front door escalated. I said, “In the greater scheme of things, I really don’t give a flying fig about your chin line.”
“No need to be nasty.”
“There is a need to be nasty. My home’s been violated. Large strangers have snooped in my medicine cabinet and wastepaper baskets. The coroner was rude, and the police are poking...”
The front door opened by itself. Flashes went off. A ragged fringe of ginger hair shot in. The door slammed behind Josey Thring. Voices clamoured.
“Oh, no, you should have locked it,” Liz said to me.
“I thought I did lock it.”
“Hi, Miz Silk. I figured you couldn’t hear me knocking with all the racket outside.” Josey said. “Jeez. You got every TV station in the region out there. Even some from Ontario. Gonna be a big job to get that lawn repaired.” Josey may be only fourteen, but she runs her booming business, THE THRING TO DO , out of the ramshackle cabin she shares with her Uncle Mike in the backwoods of St. Aubaine. Josey provides services in gardening, repairs, errands and anything else anyone wants done, legal and notso. For a fee. For the record, Uncle Mike is St. Aubaine’s leading drunk.
“How did you get in?”
“Jeez, Miz Silk. A dead guy. In your bed.” Her freckles stood out in sharp relief. Visions of business opportunities must have been dancing in her head, like sugarplums.
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