by Bill Rowe
“Jesus. What do they figure the note means?”
“Nobody knows what to make of it. She’s being bullied? She’s running away? She’s going to attempt suicide?”
“Suicide. Is that possible? She’s only thirteen.”
“Highly unlikely. Most suicide attempts by girls are at age fifteen and older, but some do happen younger.” Suzy cited a ream of statistics of girls’ attempts at suicide by age. Where did she get all that stuff, out of the blue like this? She went on: “Rosie was saying that Pagan was very moody and temperamental last summer, maybe depressed. I mentioned to her that you thought she was mooning over someone, and Rosie was wondering if she said anything that might help lead to where she went.”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll see if I can remember something. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Chapter 8
ROSIE MET ME AT her door. She looked worried. She embraced me briefly, asking, “What did she say to you this summer?”
“It was at one of your tennis tournaments. She was going on about love, speaking loud, too loud, and she said something like she’d rather die than lose the love of someone she loved.”
“Who was she talking about? Did she say?”
“No. I just took it—”
“Who was there? Was that the day Mom and he were there with you in the stands?”
“Dr. Rothesay? Yes.”
“Did he hear her?”
“Yes, everyone in the section we were in heard her. It was—”
“What did he say or do? Anything?”
“No, he just looked down. He looked embarrassed, same as me.”
I’d never seen Rosie go very scared like that before. I was going to ask her what she was afraid of when the phone rang. She strode over and answered it, listened, and said, “Can you hold for a second? I’ll make sure.” Then she called out, “Mom, do you ever stay in another hotel besides the Park Plaza when you and he go to Toronto?”
From the living room, Nina answered, “The ah… the ah… Four Seasons if it’s my birthday or our anniversary. Why?”
Rosie repeated the names of the hotels into the telephone and said she’d wait to hear back. She turned to Suzy and me and reported loud enough for Nina to hear: “A girl at the school heard Pagan on the phone in their hall making what sounded like a hotel reservation in Dr. Rothesay’s name and using an American Express credit card number.”
“Yes,” said Nina, “Heathcliff told me he put Pagan’s name on his credit card in case she had an emergency. Maybe she had to get away from abuse or something like that at the school.”
“Well, why hasn’t she called us by now?” said Rosie, walking to the door to the living room. “I didn’t know she had her own credit card. How long has she had that?”
“Ever since she’s been up there,” said Nina. “She was told not to tell anyone for fear someone might try to steal it. She’s only young, you know.”
Rosie looked at Suzy for ten seconds. “Mother, where’s the number to that hotel he’s staying in in Ottawa?”
“By his phone. Why?”
Without answering, Rosie went into the den and dialled. She entered into a tense palaver with someone and came back: “He’s already checked out. First they weren’t going to give me any other information, but when I told them it was a life-and-death family matter and we had to reach him, they said he originally had a late checkout because his flight was not until this evening, but then he checked out even before the regular checkout time, so maybe, they said, he already knows of the emergency.”
We all slumped down in the living room to wait for another phone call from someone. Rosie’s and Suzy’s eyes were seldom off each other’s. Nina stared ahead, immobile. I tried to carry on a cheery, uplifting conversation, but lapsed, unable to continue my monologue. Then the doorbell rang. Three of us got up in unison and went out. Nina didn’t move.
Two young police officers in smart-looking uniforms were at the door, a male and a female, in their twenties. “Good morning,” said the female officer. She looked at her watch. “Correction, good afternoon. Is this the residence of Mrs. Nina Rothesay?” When Rosie nodded, the officer introduced herself and her partner and inquired, “And you three would be?” The male officer wrote down our names as we gave them.
“And your relationship to Mrs. Rothesay is?”
Rosie responded. Her voice sounded very tense.
“Daughter and friends of daughter,” the female officer dictated to the male officer and turned back to us. “May we come in and speak to Mrs. Rothesay?”
Rosie led them down the hall and into the living room. Nina’s eyes flew open when she saw them and she pushed and pulled herself to her feet. “Madam, are you Mrs. Rothesay?” A silent nod from Nina. “Subject signified affirmative,” the female officer reported to the male. “Mrs. Rothesay, I request you to please resume your seat. Thank you. Mrs. Rothesay, is one Pagan O’Dell your daughter? Subject signified affirmative.” She took a deep breath and read from her notebook: “Mrs. Rothesay, it is our duty to inform you that we have been advised by the Toronto Police Department that at approximately 11: 03 a.m. today, eastern standard time, in a room of a Toronto hotel, that is to say, the Victoria and Elizabeth Arms, the said Pagan O’Dell’s body was found deceased. No other details are known to us at this time.”
This put me in a state of paralyzing shock. I could only watch as Rosie folded her forearms tight across her solar plexus and bent forward and crouched until her face was nearly touching her knees. Then I heard one unearthly shriek that sounded so dramatically authentic I thought it must be coming from a television set until I realized it was Nina’s.
Suzy was already at Rosie’s side and I joined her there. The male police officer stood rooted to the floor, gazing out the window. The female officer went to Nina and stooped down by her and put her hand on her arm. Nina now started keening like a banshee in a voice pitched very high, like an over-affected, untalented soprano trying to impress listeners with her singing, but which was only shrill wailing and shouting. The female officer stood and backed away in fright, but stopped herself and went back to Nina. She kneeled on the floor and took her hands.
I put my arms around Rosie’s shoulders while Suzy encircled her waist, and we gently raised her. She rested most of her weight against me, motionless, no sobs, no tears even. Then she breathed in deeply and murmured to Suzy, “The worst of it is I knew in my heart something was going to happen.” She stood there, eyes closed, silent except for her slow breathing for a minute. Then she took the tissue Suzy was offering, and turned to Nina, now whimpering with every breath in and moaning with every breath out. The female police officer looked up at us and asked if there was something she could get her.
“Mother,” said Rosie, almost harshly, “where’s your tranks?”
“In my purse,” she groaned. Her purse was beside her, at the ready.
“Tom, would you mind getting a glass of water,” said Suzy. I bolted out to the kitchen. At the sink, with the water running, I had to lean on my forearms on the counter and close my eyes to fend off vertigo. Pagan dead in a hotel room, Rosie saying she knew in her heart… I could not comprehend in the slightest what was happening.
As I came back in the living room, Suzy asked the police officer, “Do they know who found her?”
“We’re not sure yet,” she replied, standing. “We think it may have been a family member.”
“What?” said Suzy, as she and Rosie lurched towards the officer. “Who?”
The officer backed away until she bumped her partner. There, she said, “We’ll inform you as soon as we ascertain that. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if we can be of further assistance. The Toronto police will be calling you to obtain additional information.” She took down Nina’s telephone number and, following a poke from her, the male officer turned and they both marched resolutely out of the living room single file, down the hall, and out the front door. In a few minutes, a call came on Nina’s l
ine and Suzy answered. It was the female officer to say that “the body of the deceased was discovered by one Dr. H. Rothesay.”
We were sitting there, dazed by this news, when the phone rang again. Suzy picked up the receiver. “It’s him,” she said to us. “He wants to talk to his wife.” As Nina struggled to rise, Rosie lunged from her chair and strode to the phone. With tears of grief and pain flowing from her eyes, a most incongruous conversation ensued. She immediately launched into a ferocious attack on Rothesay at the other end. We could only hear her side of the conversation, and she filled in Rothesay’s responses for us afterwards.
Without a greeting, Rosie had demanded what he was doing in Toronto and how he knew that Pagan was at that hotel. He replied that it was the inexpensive hotel he often stayed at when he was in Toronto by himself in order to save money. Pagan was familiar with it because, sometimes when he was there, if it was a weekend, he might have her out of school for lunch or an afternoon at museums or art galleries, before bringing her back to her residence for the night. His flying to Toronto from Ottawa to see if Pagan was there was purely a gut reaction after Nina had called him this morning. Rosie demanded to know how come no one but he and Pagan knew anything about this secret Toronto hotel, and he replied that she should ask her mother, since Nina knew all about the hotel and the visits and was delighted he was taking the time to invite Pagan out of the school for a little break. There and then, Rosie called out to her mother and asked if she knew anything about this Toronto hotel and Rothesay’s visits to Pagan. Nina answered that she thought so, she couldn’t rightly remember, her mind was gone blank, but she certainly thought so, yes. At which point, Rosie started screeching into the phone at Rothesay. Why hadn’t he called the hotel from Ottawa? Why didn’t he call us or the school or the police and give his suspicions about where Pagan might be? Because, he answered, it was pure speculation on his part—he didn’t want to alarm anyone. But, Rosie roared, you could have saved her life; she might still be alive if you had told someone. He replied very calmly that preliminary reports from the coroner indicated Pagan had died during the night, hours before Rothesay had even learned she was missing.
At that, as Rosie told us afterwards, “I lost it.” She screamed, “But you didn’t know that, you fucking scumbag. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wanted her to die. You probably sneaked up to the room to destroy any incriminating evidence that was there. I’m going to make sure the police investigate all this.”
“Jesus,” I said to Rosie, taken aback by her reaction, “what did he say?”
“He said I was understandably upset and overreacting, and to rest assured that the police were already, with his active encouragement and complete co-operation, investigating everything, and an official autopsy was ongoing to establish precise cause and time of death.”
Rothesay’s reply struck me as reasonable at the time, so I asked Rosie, “Are you really going to contact the police?”
“Yes, I am. Here and in Toronto.”
“What will you ask them to investigate, exactly? What do think Rothesay was up to?”
“I won’t tell them I think he was up to anything. I didn’t know. But I will tell them the whole thing seems strange and mention the questions I have about his actions.”
ROTHESAY STAYED IN TORONTO until the autopsy on Pagan was finished the next day, and then he flew home with her body and had it brought to a funeral director. When I walked with Rosie into the room in the funeral parlour where Pagan’s closed coffin was displayed, I noticed that, by coincidence, it was the same room where a few years before their father Joyce O’Dell had been waked. I glanced at Rosie. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”
I stood beside Rosie for the one afternoon and evening that the visitation took place, while Suzy was in and out with anything her friend wanted. Nina was in a chair across the room with Rothesay standing beside her. It had been agreed between Rothesay and Rosie, with me acting as intermediary between them, that Nina wouldn’t be told until after the funeral what had actually killed Pagan, for fear the news would send her around the bend altogether. Rosie sometimes went to Nina to exchange a word or see if she needed anything, but I never saw her speak to Rothesay.
So many mourners came to the funeral home, there was always a lineup in the corridor of people waiting to get in. Some were recognizable as former school chums of Pagan’s and schoolmates of Rosie’s, and friends and colleagues of Nina’s and Joyce’s, but most of the visitors I’d never laid eyes on before. These, after their condolences to Nina and Rosie, lingered with Rothesay and spoke with familiarity to him. Many turned out to be his patients and a few were his medical colleagues. The charming immigrant Dr. Rothesay attracted more people to the wake of his stepdaughter than did Pagan herself and the rest of her family combined.
Brent came in with his father and they stopped by Rosie and me and gave her their condolences. His father pretended to chat with me while sizing up Rosie. I heard Brent say to Rosie, “I really liked little Pagan. I only had a chance to talk to her a couple of times lately when she was home from school, but she was great, so innocent and trusting, and now look. Jesus.” He put his head down and actually began to weep. Rosie and Brent and I put our arms around each other. Brent seemed to tower over us, and his body in girth felt twice as large as Rosie’s. Tears from such a big male were very touching to us. I could see his father looking with apparent disdain at his bawling super-jock son before he walked over to Rothesay. Whatever he said caused both of them to begin a chortle, which they quickly squelched. They were carrying on like familiars. Brent had told me that his father and Rothesay often discussed investments.
My mother and father came in looking uncomfortable, no doubt because of their estrangement from Nina and Rothesay. They’d already talked to Rosie by telephone, and again when I dropped in with her at our house during a long walk last evening to get away from her own place. Now they went directly to Nina. There, the two women embraced for a good minute, or rather Nina clung to Mom, and when they parted I heard Nina groan, “I’ve really missed you, Gladys.” If Mom responded with a similar sentiment, I didn’t hear it.
Pagan’s little body was cremated, and after a funeral service in the undertaker’s chapel the next morning, we went to the cemetery with her ashes. I had assumed that Rosie would be driving there with Rothesay and Nina, but when Brent and I arrived with Mom in her car, Rosie and Suzy were already there, and Rothesay came a few minutes later. Nina hadn’t felt up to attending the “inurnment” and the girls had come in a taxi. And so, in the presence of just Rosie, Rothesay, Suzy, Brent, Mom, and me, and the female clergyperson, the pot of Pagan’s ashes was lowered into a hole in the graveyard plot originally reserved for Nina next to the headstone identifying Joyce O’Dell, “beloved husband of…”
Rosie and Suzy rode back with us in my mother’s car. On the way to Rosie’s house, Mom tried to probe: “I guess Heathcliff had to rush back to his office to tend on a patient, did he, Rosie?”
“He’s very busy these days, Auntie Gladys, what with his practice and the board and Pagan and Mother and everything.”
When we arrived, Mom gave me a look of surprise when she saw Rothesay’s Land Rover in the driveway, but she didn’t say anything. Rosie asked me if I would come in with her and Suzy because she needed my help with something. She didn’t elaborate. Mom drove away to drop Brent off, a perplexed expression on her face.
Walking to the front door, Rosie told me she was going to answer her mother’s constant question right now about how Pagan had killed herself. I had told her that Rothesay wanted to keep delaying it, with the excuse that the police were still investigating. “Telling Nina at this stage might put her over the edge,” he’d said. Rosie replied sarcastically that her mother had always thrived so well under his care as a doctor she was sure he could help her handle her reaction to the truth. The funeral was over; now was the time.
Knowing what Nina would hear, I asked Rosie if she was sure that Rothesay didn’t have a p
oint. But Rosie said her mother was supposed to be a responsible adult and she couldn’t have essential facts of her daughter’s death kept from her, especially since the police would soon be asking her questions. “Besides,” Rosie muttered, “from now on I’m not letting anything about this stay hidden from anyone.”
On our way in, Rothesay was on his way out. He’d been glad to see us coming, he said, because he had to attend to a patient urgently. He exited with, “Please don’t say anything to upset Nina. She is exceedingly fragile.”
Rosie led us into the living room where Nina was lying on the sofa. “Mother, do you still want to know what caused Pagan’s death?”
“Yes, my sweet, I have to know.”
“It was your sleeping pills. The autopsy showed that she had swallowed a full bottle of your sleeping pills and that she died from the combined effects of that and drowning in her own vomit.”
Nina sat up. “That’s not true,” she barked. “How do they know it was mine? That’s too foolish to talk about.”
“They know exactly what was in her system and how much, and they found the empty bottle under her body on the bed. The label on it identified the barbiturate sleeping pills prescribed to you in your name by Dr. Heathcliff Rothesay last August.” When Nina slumped back, dazed, Rosie said, “You must have mislaid them when you flew up with Pagan, or maybe she took them from your purse. Didn’t you notice them missing at the time? A full bottle?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t remember now. I always have a part bottle and a full bottle with me when I travel, just in case. I think I did mention something to Heathcliff when I came back, and he said not to worry, he wouldn’t see me short. I’m not sure.” She closed her eyes and put the palm of a hand over each eye and commenced to keen: “Oh my Jesus, it’s all my fault. Oh my sweet Jesus, everything is my fault.”