There was an Old Woman

by Howard Engel

  “That’s ancient history, Benny. Nobody can answer those questions. You’re suggesting that either Ramsden killed his wife because she was carrying on with Newby or that Newby killed her to get her off his back? I won’t buy either of those theories for a minute. Besides, you’re the only one fool enough to call it murder. And damn it all, what the hell does it have to do with the here and now?”

  “I spent a few hours digging around Burlington today, Chris.” I reached down and dropped the manila envelope with the brake cable on the table between us. Chris stabbed at it with his fish fork.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “A broken brake cable taken from Dora’s wrecked car. The wire was half-cut through before it broke.” Chris frowned at the envelope, which he made no further attempt to examine. There was a time and place for everything.

  “Before this happened, while Dora was still close to Newby, she got him to leak to her a list of Morella’s assets so that her sister wouldn’t starve to death with the half-million Morella had planned for her.”

  “You got proof of that in another envelope, Benny, or do you want me to take that on your say so?”

  “You want paper? I can give you paper.” I passed over to him the list that Antonia had taken from Rupe McLay’s files. I added that in my opinion the list was written in Newby’s handwriting. Chris cracked open the second lobster claw with the tool provided. He did it thoughtfully.

  “Later on, quite a while later, Ramsden got wind of this and was prepared to use it against Newby. Ramsden was a greedy man. He was already negotiating with Newby about the Oldridge property. Newby brought up the question of price. Both knew it was the centre-piece of Morella’s Backstreet Revival project. Without it, the plan wouldn’t work. Ramsden held Newby up for a lot more than he was offering. Newby threatened to bring in the Public Trustee. That would have delayed everything without necessarily killing the project. The Public Trustee could sell the property off at a fair price and hold the proceeds for whoever got them in the end. Time was on Newby’s side not Ramsden’s. He’s been next to broke since his disastrous run for mayor. His law practice is all but dead. The only loot he had coming in came from the Bede Bunch and his blackmailing schemes. The only ace he had up his sleeve was to threaten to tell Morella of Newby’s part in his wife’s divorce—the part he didn’t know about, that is. That would finish Newby with Morella forever. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.”

  “Now you’re saying that Newby pushed that flagpole through Ramsden, right?”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “But, damn it all, Benny, you know that Newby found the fucking body! You were there! You saw him do it!”

  “Can you think of a better alibi?”

  “Huh?”

  “In these days of sophisticated crime, nobody suspects the one who finds the body. That’s too easy Why would a killer go back to the scene of the crime several hours after the murder? Why would he put himself at risk? I can think of two reasons: one, to establish his innocence, as I’ve described, and, second, to carry something away from the scene with him.”

  “Benny, you know that’s a load of crap!”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You understate the case.”

  “Will you let me conduct a little experiment that will test my theory?”

  “What’s it going to cost?”

  “Nothing. All I want you to do is to call Newby and tell him to come to your office. Tell him that Cath Bracken will be there with some new evidence. Tell him to bring a couple of lawbooks with him, books on evidence: Forensic Evidence in Canada, Modern Scientific Evidence, and a couple of cases about big take-overs. Could you ask him to do this to assist the investigation, Chris? Set a time, say tomorrow at three. Be your persuasive self. Get Cath Bracken to be in your office too.”

  “I hate these little charades of yours, Benny. You keep dragging me out of the real world and into some cockamamy movie script!”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “How does Cath Bracken fit into this? There’s a detail you haven’t gone into. Well?”

  “Bracken had an appointment to see Ramsden the morning he was murdered, Chris.” I said it as simply as I could, but I knew there was no way of passing on that news without detonating an explosion. He managed to smother most of the fireworks; I could hardly hear the earth shake.

  “Oh, well, I can see why you didn’t mention it.” Chris was sucking on one of the smaller lobster legs. I couldn’t help taking it personally. The look he gave me was hard coming from an old friend. It was only mitigated by the fact that tied around Chris Savas’s neck, beneath the anger in his eyes, was a ridiculous white bib with a red lobster printed on it.

  Half an hour later, I’d told Chris the details he had to know to carry out our charade and the waitress said, “Thank you kindly.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Three days before Christmas, I presented myself at Chris’s office. It was five minutes to three. Savas looked spiffy. I mean for Savas it was spiffy. He had run a wet comb through his remaining strands of hair and appeared with less daytime beard than I’d seen him wearing during the week. A beard grows quickly on a working man.

  The morning had dragged on interminably. I tried to imagine the meeting in Chris’s office. I tried taking all of the parts. I tried to hear in my head what people were going to say. When I began to feel a little smug about the way it was all running as smoothly as a play on its last night, I began to get worried. There had to be a snag somewhere. I went over it again carefully. Then I saw the flaw.

  If things went that way, I thought, I’d look ridiculous. But that was the least of it. Chris Savas could get into serious trouble. I backed up my thoughts again to Chris’s office at three. As I listened to the distant murmur of running water down the hail, I worked out a contingency plan.

  After that, the time went more quickly. Frank Bushmill stuck his head around the door to tell me that our landlady, Mrs. Onischuk, was thinking of putting our building on the market. I tried to put that news out of my head. I like a settled life without domestic surprises. Maybe that’s why I work at trying to tidy up other people’s muddles. I pondered this while drinking cold coffee from a styrofoam cup.

  Cath Bracken was the next person to arrive in Chris Savas’s office, just on the stroke of three o’clock. I introduced them and Cath took the best seat in the room without demurring. We spoke of the coming holiday season and the snow-clogged streets. We were all glad when Julian Newby came into the room, escorted by a guiding constable and carrying a briefcase. Pleasantries were exchanged and Chris offered me the remaining chair. He perched on the corner of his desk or stood with his back to the venetian blinds.

  Newby, even within the bowels of Niagara Regional Police Headquarters, looked unflappable. He took up his briefcase from the floor and opened it on the well-ironed creases in his trousers. From inside he removed the bundle of books and a file with Xerox copies of the cases Chris had requested. Chris took these from him and placed them on his desk.

  “This is a lot of help to us, Mr. Newby,” Chris said. “Saves no end of time.” He joked that it was unusual to see counsel in his office that was unattached to a client.

  “Perhaps you’ve invented a new category, Sergeant, comparable to ainicus curiae.”

  “Maybe, Mr. Newby, but a ‘friend of the court’ will always get a better press than a ‘friend of the cops.’”

  “Perhaps,” Newby smiled.

  To fill time, Chris led Newby through his statement about finding the body last Saturday. Then he compared this statement with small points in what I’d said in my statement. While these small matters were being cleared up, I moved the briefcase to the right side of Cath’s chair. She looked down at it. I held my breath. She looked up at me and slowly shook her head in the negative. I tried to smile, but I could see that the briefcase that Newby had brought into the room with him was not the one Cath saw in Ramsden’s office. Chris looked over at
me and I shook my head. Chris smiled his superior smile. It made a fine contrast with the sad look on Cath’s face. I don’t think Newby was aware of any of this.

  Chris picked up his cue, and began asking some questions about court rulings on admissible evidence. This was when I excused myself to make a phonecall from the empty office next door. When I got back, Newby was holding forth on what judges had ruled and what had been thrown out in a higher court. He hardly looked up as I took my place again. Chris asked him a few questions about a big property take-over that I missed catching the name of, and then he asked Newby a few questions about the fiduciary regulations regarding access to safety deposit boxes. Newby gave full answers to all these questions, and there was just a hint in his voice that he was slowly losing patience with Savas and his scattered barrage of questions.

  Soon, there was a knock at the door and Claudia Morella came in. She was carrying a briefcase in a business-like way. “Here is your briefcase, Mr. Newby,” she said as soon as she had been introduced to Cath and Chris. “Mr. Cooperman’s call caught me just as I was leaving the office.” Newby looked ruffled; he wasn’t used to sharing space with a very junior partner in a small room. He didn’t question Claudia on what she had said. He took the briefcase from her and set it down by his chair. His face betrayed nothing. Claudia appeared to be looking for her cue to get out of there. Like a lot of juniors in law offices, she was getting used to ducking into and out of private meetings. But this one was going to be different.

  “Claudia,” I said, after getting the nod from Savas, “will you answer a couple of questions for us?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, her round brown eyes looking over at Newby, who was seated straight in his chair, not moving. “But may I ask ‘Why?’”

  “It will assist our investigation of Mr. Ramsden’s death,” Chris said. She looked at Newby again. Newby was staring straight ahead of him. Claudia turned to me.

  “Is this Mr. Newby’s briefcase?” I asked, pointing at the one Newby had brought with him.

  “It’s one that has been around the office. It’s not the one he usually uses.”

  “And where is that one?”

  “Why, that is,” she said, indicating the briefcase she had brought with her.

  “May I see that?” Cath asked. Newby passed it to her without a word and she examined it for a minute. I could hear a clock ticking somewhere. “This is the case I saw in Mr. Ramsden’s office the day he was killed,” she said.

  “Mr. Newby? Do you have anything to say?”

  “Say? Why should I say anything? Memory is a fallible commodity, Detective-Sergeant Savas. I carried this briefcase with me to the house, but that was later, when Mr. Cooperman saw me.”

  “I saw you carry a briefcase from the house, Mr. Newby. I don’t think I ever said I saw you with it before we were in the house together.”

  “You see, Mr. Newby,” Chris said, “Miss Bracken had an appointment some hours before you discovered the body and gave the alarm. She says that that brief case was standing beside her chair, giving her the feeling that there was someone else already in the house, perhaps the murderer.”

  “This is highly melodramatic! It’s worthy of television! Just suppose for a moment that it was me. What possible motive could I have for killing poor Mr. Ramsden?”

  “Benny?” Savas looked at me to field all the questions from now on. If anyone was going to be made to look ridiculous under the pounding of Newby’s famous glare, it wasn’t going to be him.

  “Ramsden knew about the list of Morella’s assets that you leaked to Dora Ramsden, which she passed on to her sister.”

  “That may well be, but how does it signify? What could I do about it? Killing Ramsden would have cut me off from completing the Backstreet Revival project. Ramsden alive was our link to the Oldridge property. Dead, his estate would go who knows where.”

  “The Brogan Street project was only one item in your work with Morella. There would be others, but not once he knew of your double-dealing through Dora Ramsden.”

  “Sergeant? Are you going to listen to any more of this twaddle? We both know about the laws of evidence, I think, somewhat better than Mr. Cooperman.”

  “That may well be, sir, but I would like to hear from you in some detail where you were at the time of Mr. Ramsden’s death.”

  At a nod, Cath Bracken, Claudia Morella and I were dismissed from the office. In the hall, I could see that Claudia’s face was white with rage.

  “You tricked me into coming here! You tricked me into being a witness against the kindest, dearest man I know! I wouldn’t have believed people could sink so low.” Having said this, she started to leave, but Cath caught her by the sleeve.

  “If Benny’s wrong, then Mr. Newby will be able to explain how it is that he didn’t want me to see his usual briefcase. He knew I would be here. He also knew that I may have seen the one he left at the scene. Why did he change briefcases before coming out to this meeting?” The woman looked confused. She bit hard on her lower lip.

  “Have you ever seen him switch briefcases before?” I asked. “Was it something he generally did?” Of course, she didn’t answer. We didn’t expect her to. Newby in many ways was a local great, good man. He endowed charities, took on bright young students, fought the good fight in many ways. But he did all of this because Morella’s business made him independent. In the union of his family with Morella’s, through the probable marriage between Gerard Newby and Claudia, Newby was cementing a continuance of these good offices. It didn’t seem to be the right time to mention this, so I kept my mouth shut.

  After about twenty minutes, Pete Staziak went into the office without seeing any of us waiting in the hall. A few minutes later, a stenographer joined them with her dictating book. Nobody seemed interested in coffee. The smokers weren’t even patting their pockets or bags.

  It was nearly an hour later that Chris stuck his nose out his door long enough to say that he was booking Julian Newby in the murder of Thurleigh Ramsden. He wasn’t singling any of us out when he said this. He particularly kept his eyes clear of Claudia’s tormented face. He had already closed the door again before a choked “Oh, no!” escaped her pale lips. I looked at Cath and she looked at me. Together we took an arm each and led her from Niagara Regional. We ended up in The Snug at the back of the Beaumont Hotel, where so many of the joys and tragedies of Grantham are enacted. We were with her, listening to her reiterations of disbelief, until Cath had to leave for the TV station. I offered to drive Claudia home and she let me. When I got home myself, I called Gerard and told him what happened. All in all, he took the news better than Claudia had.

  THIRTY

  There’s really not a lot more to say. The town did its best not to make a circus of the five-month-long trial, and failed. One of Toronto’s top criminal lawyers spent his leisure hours in a room at the Eastbank Hotel. When the trial ended, the hotel management held a small ceremony in which they retired his room number and made him a present of the door. Of course Newby went to prison. Even a defence that put most of the blame on the villain Ramsden couldn’t get Newby off the hook.

  Old Mrs. Ravenswood at last allowed herself to get the help she needed with her drinking problem. At these church basement meetings she sometimes encountered Rupert McLay, whose attendance, she boasted, left a good deal to be desired. But, she allowed that he was a well-spoken “young man with a gift for wry humour.”

  One day while the trial was still going on, the old woman sent her car for me. As usual my answering service got the name wrong, so that it wasn’t until I was ushered into her presence in a big, sunny room that I realized who it was.

  “Sit down, Mr. Cooperman,” she said. “You’ll find that the tea on the coffee-table is still quite hot.” I settled myself and went through the motions of playing with the cup and saucer. The biscuits were oatcakes and not brought out of the Highlands by any rapid means.

  “I brought you here to listen to an old woman ramble. I intend to pay
you for your time, but I don’t mean to hire you. So, you may put that out of your head.” I nodded and she went on. “You know this trial of Julian Newby is most distressful for me. I knew his people, you see. Thank God they’re long dead! What interests me— concerns me, really—is that the name of one of my employees has been repeatedly brought into the proceedings. You know to whom I’m referring, I think?”

  “Catherine Bracken,” I said.

  “Yes, Catherine Bracken. Is there any way that you can see to eliminate her name? It comes up day after day.”

  “Short of Julian Newby changing his plea, no.”

  “I see. I believe you, Mr. Cooperman. My son-in-law holds you in high regard. And I seem to remember you myself from somewhere.”

  “May I ask why you wish to spare Cath Bracken? The Crown’s case depends upon her recognition of Newby’s briefcase at the scene of the crime.”

  “Yes, yes, yes! I know all that. I hate publicity, especially when it comes close. I loathe it.”

  “A news reader is news, Mrs. Ravenswood.”

  “I don’t care about that. I’m thinking of the girl, you silly man! I’ve become fond of the girl and I hate thinking of what this is doing to her.”

  “I think you underestimate Cath, Mrs. Ravenswood. She’s made of tough material. She won’t break.”

  “Yes, I’m rather counting on that. One has to count on something and it’s a comfort to know she’s tough.”

  “I didn’t say unbreakable.”

  “No, I know what you mean. She comes of tough stock, you see. I have every confidence that she’ll get through it.”

  “I didn’t know you knew her family.”

  “Did you not? Yes, I knew her father rather well. But that was a long time ago. Will you be going back to the court-house?”