All is Clam

by Hilary MacLeod

  Hy stood in for the prince, and in the scene where Shores Ella tries on the fisherman’s boot, Jamie thrust a bare foot forward, holding it up high so Hy could see the sole.

  It was red and blistered.

  He thrust a second foot forward. The same.

  Hy was shaking as she slipped the second boot on. Frostbitten. She hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t suspected it. Jamie had skied and seemed in no pain. Jamie was young. He either didn’t feel it or didn’t show it. Rose hadn’t mentioned it. Did she know? Frostbitten feet. Had Jamie been there, that night? In the culvert? Did he see his father die?

  Had he killed him?

  The fish had been swimming around on the screen saver in Gus’s kitchen for days. She’d become used to them, and was having a nice doze when Hy came up from the Hall with Jamie after the rehearsal. Gus had plastered ointment on his feet, and he’d gone skipping out as if there were nothing wrong with them.

  Now Hy was on her second mission – to put Gus in contact with her family.

  “You can forget about the boys,” she said. “Not one of them has one of them things – ” she pointed at the screen full of fish.

  “But Dot does. Dot will.”

  “Where she is? I doubt it.”

  After seven boys, late in life came the girl. Gus had been forty-five. Her namesake, Aunt Augusta, had looked down on the babe and in the accumulated wisdom of her years said, “But Gus, she’s so young.”

  She was. Very young. Abel spoiled her silly, from the get-go, said Gus.

  Dotty, Gus thought of her, a pet name. After all those boys, she’d finally had a girl, but not a real girl, one who cooked and sewed and wanted to be a nurse. No. A boy-girl. A tomboy with a desire to see the world, save the world, and photograph it while she did so. Dot was a doctor. She’d gone and got a medical degree, Gus would say in a disapproving voice. Doctor was better than nurse. But for a girl? Gus had set her sights on a nurse, but had to settle for a doctor.

  Then Dot “upped and chucked it all away.” She’d joined UNICEF as a doctor and photographer, her newest passion growing out of a desire to photograph the misery and terrible beauty of the Third World.

  Gus never knew where Dot was. It’s not that she purposely didn’t keep in touch. A lot of the time, she couldn’t. The last six months she’d been in Africa. Somewhere. Every now and then, a parcel would arrive, containing a bundle of magazines in which Dot’s photographs appeared. There was even a National Geographic. Gus was impressed by that. At least she’d heard of it. But she couldn’t show it to anyone in the village. She flushed red when she opened the magazine to the photographs of near-naked men and women. Dot had taken these photos.

  Gus did show the villagers the parcel’s outer packaging. She’d twisted it up and waved it in the air.

  “Fifty dollars. Imagine. Fifty dollars to send me this…this…” Photographs in magazines she’d never show to Abel. Or any other man. Or woman.

  Hy wanted to put Gus in touch with her daughter by Skype, if possible. But she was having a tough time finding out where Dot was. Gus had forgotten.

  More likely it had never registered with her.

  “Try to remember, Gus. Where is she?”

  “Some forrin soundin’ place.”

  “Well, ya, we can assume that. But where? Africa? Indonesia?”

  “Sounds like you’re sneezing.”

  Desperate, Hy began reeling off country names as they came into her head.

  “Botswana?”

  “No.”

  “Somalia?”

  Gus perked up. So did Hy. Of course. All the agencies were in Somalia. Dot would be bound to be there. Alleviating, photographing the misery. Then Gus shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  “But you recognized it.”

  “I did. Been in the news and such. Thought she might go there. She’s allus helpin’ others.”

  “Like her mother.”

  Gus shook her head again, deliberately misunderstanding. She chuckled.

  “Oh, no, there’s no help for me anymore.”

  Hy kept going. When she got to Eritrea, which she wasn’t sure still existed, she gave up, having exhausted the number of countries that she could think of. There was a long silence while she tried to produce the name of a country she hadn’t already mentioned.

  “I’ve found Dr. Dot!” Ian came tramping through the door, snow all over his boots, giving not a thought to the shining linoleum of Gus’s floor. Authentic linoleum that had survived the monthly polishing Gus still managed to give it.

  “You’ve what?” Gus didn’t know that Hy and Ian always called her daughter Dr. Dot.

  “Found Dot. You can Skype her. Now.”

  Ian grinned a grin big enough to split his face. This was a coup. Genuine coup. And so exciting. Soon they would be connected to Dot in Antarctica. He’d made the arrangement with her moments ago, then sped down here to connect. He fumbled as he worked the keys of the computer.

  The floating fish screen saver disappeared. Gus had become quite used to the fish. She found them soothing and much easier to care for than live pets.

  But a few keystrokes later, there she was. Dot, looking like, well, Dot. Wavy hair, a rich brown and slightly disheveled. High colour in her cheeks. A broad grin and a sparkle in her eye. That sparkle came from her mother.

  “It’s great here,” she said. “The quality of light, the barren landscape.”

  Gus’s chest rose and fell. Offended.

  “We have all that. Of course, if you want real barren, there’s the Magdalene Islands, though why anyone would go there either, I don’t know.”

  “It’s not the same, Ma.”

  And then the question she always asked. Dot might not be able to hear her biological clock ticking, but Gus certainly could. In fact, for her, the alarm had gone off, and there was only one way to stop it ringing. The only thing that Antarctica had to recommend it, in her figuring, was that there were bound to be many more men than women.

  “Is there someone?” she asked tentatively, a question she’d learned was the polite way to ask from listening in to Hy and Annabelle’s conversations. It beat, “Have you got a man yet?” or the not-so-subtle: “Are you gettin’ married anytime soon?”

  Dot’s grin broadened.

  “You mean someone special?”

  Gus grunted.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Who?” Mebbe a doctor. A scientist.

  “The cook.”

  “The cook? A man?” Please God, Dot didn’t like women. Gus had first heard about “that sort of thing,” as she put it, well into her thirties, and she was still trying to figure it out. One thing she knew – it didn’t produce babies. Grandchildren.

  “Yes, Ma. A man.”

  Gus was suddenly glad the cook was a man, although she believed in the division of labour. When she was young, she’d had to cook twenty pounds of potatoes a day and bake a dozen loaves of bread to feed the farmhands. She didn’t mind that. She was glad she didn’t have to muck out the barn. There were jobs for men and jobs for women. Period.

  “Yup. A genius with food.”

  Dot would think that. She couldn’t cook a hot dog. Well, she wouldn’t. Dot was a vegetarian. That was another problem for Gus.

  And then, the other inevitable question:

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know, Ma. It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Well, I signed up for a year.”

  “A year!”

  “Yes. And…I have to tell you – ” The image cut out. Her daughter disappeared. Ian fiddled with the keys, tried to reconnect. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders at Gus, apology in the set of his mouth.

  “That’s all right,” she said. But it wasn’t all right. It was uncomfortable watching the i
mage of her daughter disappear like that. Sliced off the screen. As if she didn’t exist anymore. Communication ended, with no power to control it. The end of the conversation perhaps not worth the start of it, it left such an unsettling feeling.

  Dot had been about to say something. What?

  Murdo knew he should be getting back to the police house, especially as there was an investigation going on. Jamieson was so single-minded, he wasn’t sure she even missed him, except when there was dirty work to be done, like fishing Fitzpatrick out of the creek.

  He was too comfortable to move, sitting here in April’s kitchen, smiling when her horde came tumbling into the room, grabbing at her apron and demanding cookies.

  They almost didn’t hear the knock at the door.

  Murdo heaved himself up and went to open it.

  A small man with a black moustache and a ski hat that made him look like a hairy grade-schooler, stood there, mustering up all the dignity he could over the roar of a snowmobile whose young driver was eyeing the rolling hills, barely concealing a desire to go zooming up and over them.

  “April Dewey?” The man’s thin voice could barely be heard under the roar of the snowmobile.

  “No.” Murdo was distracted.

  “Not here?”

  “Oh, yes…yes…do come in.”

  The man declined with a curt shake of his head. Murdo turned and called to April.

  She wiped her hands on her apron as she came to the door. She looked at the man, not speaking.

  A Jehovah witness?

  He thrust some folded papers at her.

  She opened up the papers, and went so pale you couldn’t see the flour smudge on her chin.

  “You’ve to sign,” he said, thrusting out a clipboard, and handing her a pen. He pointed to the place where he required her signature.

  She scribbled, her hand shaking, Murdo, curious, watching.

  “Aren’t you gonna read it?” asked the man. Murdo was thinking the same thing.

  April shook her head dumbly.

  The man – the bearer of bad news, or good, depending on how you looked at it – shrugged his shoulders, and walked back down the path to the snowmobile. As he got on, April slammed the door.

  April, slamming the door? The news could not be good, thought Murdo.

  “Divorce papers,” she said, a tear trickling out of the corner of her eye.

  The news was good, thought Murdo.

  He put an arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

  He was surprised at the force with which she reacted. She spun into his arms, and pressed her sweet plump body up against his.

  Murdo felt faint with pleasure.

  He couldn’t leave now.

  Chapter Thirty

  The next day brought sunny skies, above-freezing temperatures, and melting snow. Some, like Jared, were hoping the two feet of snow would melt away and they wouldn’t have to lift a finger.

  “It’s heart attack snow.” Gus was keeping an eye out the window at Jamie shovelling the walk, his cheeks turned a high colour of red. When he shovelled the last bit, Gus hauled herself over to the front door and invited him in.

  “Hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies.”

  He was soon stuffing cookies in his mouth and slurping back the drink in spite of its heat. He had a chocolate-brown moustache and crumbs all over him. He swept a forearm across his face.

  Gus grinned. He might have been her own grandchild – or great grandchild – except she didn’t have any. Eight children and not one grandchild. How had that happened?

  She blamed her daughter. Not her sons. They were all out in Alberta, those that were still alive. Somehow, none of them had ever married. They were “living in sin,” Gus said, and her opinion of that was never tested by the birth of a potential grandchild. None of them had ever come back to Red Island. They had, as men often do, joined the families of their partners. Her only daughter was single, and Gus never saw her either, not with her living all over the world like that. And now in that frozen place.

  Dot was her father’s daughter. Abel had been around more when she was a child than at any other time in their long marriage. Most of the time it had been work – the farm, fishing, the store – that had kept him away. After? Maybe just habit.

  Gus wondered how she’d ever managed to get pregnant eight times, but she had. And what did she have to show for it?

  Jamieson was staring at the footprints again. They were teasing her – the woman’s slippers, the cowboy boots, Chinese slippers, rubber boots – all growing larger in the melting snow. The footprints told her who’d been there, but didn’t tell her whether Fitz’s death was an accident or intentional. Her gut told her it was more than an accident. There were simply too many people who would be glad he was dead.

  A tiny bright splash of colour caught her peripheral vision. She pried at it, pulled it out of the snow. A card. A Tarot card. The Hanged Man. Oliver. She imagined him waddling through the snow. It was hard to imagine, but he had done it, because here were his footprints and here was his card. His calling card, she thought grimly. What had he seen? Done?

  The brightly coloured card dropped in the snow, just a few feet away from where Fitz Fitzpatrick was hanging. Had Oliver tipped him off his balance? Deliberately pushed him? A lucky push. The tree snatched the man and his life. Oliver turned away. He dropped the card, and left Fitz gasping for life. Was that how it was?

  She climbed back up from the ravine and went straight to Wild Rose Cottage. She knocked on the door. Rose answered, dressed oddly, Jamieson thought, in a flowing flowered robe, her hair loose and hanging and shining from the effect of being brushed a hundred times. Her face, usually pasty, was glowing, her cheeks flushed.

  Oliver Sullivan was sitting in the lotus position at the entrance to the tent in front of the stove.

  Cozy, thought Jamieson, as she took it all in.

  This case might be going somewhere after all.

  Now she had them together, the interviewing might prove more fruitful. She hoped she’d be able to tell if one was protecting the other. She’d be able to read their body language.

  For one so in control of her emotions, Jamieson was markedly perceptive about other people’s silent messages. What made her seem cold was the same thing that made her so perceptive – she hid what she was feeling, so that she seemed hard, unyielding. It wasn’t so. Jamieson was afraid that if she let any of it out, it would all pour from her in one tidal wave of sorrow and drown her. In the effort to contain herself, she had become highly attuned to other people’s small giveaways, studying them so that she wouldn’t commit the same mistakes herself.

  She towered above Oliver, who wasn’t prepared to stand up, even though it put him at a huge psychological disadvantage. This actually threw Jamieson off. She wasn’t used to people – guilty people – allowing that to happen. Did that mean he was not guilty? Not feeling the need for psychological advantage? She always felt the need for it. That’s why she always stood. It gave her a big advantage. But now the gap was widened even more, and it put her off-balance. She couldn’t look him directly in the eye, not unless she crouched, and her authority would dissolve in that.

  Rose was fussing with the teakettle, looking away from Jamieson.

  What was she hiding? Her face, for one thing. The place where her emotions rested, revealed themselves.

  “No tea for me,” said Jamieson, in an effort to get Rose to look at her, to see if there was guilt – something – on her face.

  But she didn’t. Guilty?

  It put Jamieson even more off-balance, which is why she charged in like a bull. She pointed at Oliver.

  “You killed a man once.” She had Ian to thank for that piece of information. She didn’t like civilians interfering in investigations, but she was grateful this time. He’d told her just this morning, over cof
fee. She’d dropped in with a few computer questions, and when he’d offered coffee, she had accepted. She had called him Ian again. He had called her Jane again. She’d let her guard down.

  Why? Was it the way he looked at her? At her hair?

  Rose turned, shock on her face. Killed a man? Oliver?

  He was looking benignly up at Jamieson.

  “Once. But not twice.”

  “So you say, but you are able – you have done it.”

  “It was not my intent at the time.”

  “So the judge ruled, and I accept that ruling. I wouldn’t contradict the justice system. You had your reasons, noble, we are supposed to believe.”

  Rose stood, holding the kettle aloft, her jaw dropped, her mouth partly open, unable to speak.

  “The point is, you have blood on your hands. That makes it easier to kill a second time, doesn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, because there hasn’t been a second time.”

  Silence. Punctuated by the sound of metal on metal as Rose dropped the kettle back on the stove. It began its boiling-over hiss almost immediately.

  “Oliver, what happened, what did you…? ”

  It was Jamieson, not Oliver, who answered.

  “Shall I tell her, or will you?”

  Again, the benign smile.

  “Why don’t you? I’d be interested to hear your version.”

  If he had hoped to pounce on opinion or conjecture, he was disappointed. She listed the bare details, as toneless and lacking in emotion as a voice messaging system.

  “Young girl. Back alley. Rape in progress. You come around the corner. See it. Jump on him. Pull him off and slam him to the ground. Hits his head. Dead.”

  “Correct in every detail, madam, except nothing said about my emotions. You might term them the motive, I prefer emotions. Were they those of a killer? Or were they somewhat nobler?”

  “Only you can know that.”

  “All I can say, and trust you will believe me, is that it was accidental. It did not give me a taste for killing, as you seem to suggest. I may have blood on my hands, but not in my heart.”

  Rose had turned away again, pouring hot water into the teapot, hiding her face. Relief. That’s what Jamieson would have seen, if she had seen it.