The Dead Letter

by Finley Martin

  “Edna, why don’t you put that gun down? There’s no need in making things any worse than they are.” Anne’s voice had a calm and reassuring ring, but her jaw and tongue felt so taut she was amazed that any words had found the nerve to spill from her mouth.

  Anne’s other surprise leapt from a shape suddenly appearing in the doorway. It belonged to Jacob Dawson.

  “She’s right, Edna. Put the gun away.”

  “Don’t interfere, Jacob…and don’t come any closer,” she said to him as he walked toward her. Her head jerked toward him, and the gun followed in the same direction. Jacob stopped, and Edna turned the gun back to its original target. “I know what I’m doing…what I have to do,” she added.

  “I hope that doesn’t involve killing me,” said Anne, “or Jacob. MacFarlane, I could understand. Peale even. They shared a lot of blame. Other than that…me, Jacob… I can’t see you killing us.”

  Edna ignored her comment, but said and did nothing. She seemed bewildered, uncertain.

  “I am curious, though,” said Anne. “What led you to this?”

  “At our meeting a week ago, you said that MacFarlane was likely the killer of both Carolyn and Simone. Then there was the explosion. You nearly died. It was too coincidental. Jacob and I talked. As you had said, there probably would never be enough evidence to convict him. So I vowed to make him pay for what he did to Carolyn…and me. He destroyed us both, you know. When he killed her, he killed me.”

  “How did you manage it on your own?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t alone. Jacob helped.”

  “But he had an alibi.”

  “For the time of death…yes. But I needed his assistance earlier in the evening. I had been watching MacFarlane for some time…waiting for the right moment. I saw Peale come…and I saw him go. I phoned Jacob, picked him up, and we drove back. Jacob knocked on MacFarlane’s door and retreated. I waited in the shrubbery alongside. When MacFarlane stepped outside, I shot him with a tranquilizer pistol from the Vet College—we use it for anaesthetizing large animals. It took a few moments to put him out. I was lucky. The dart hit a blood vessel. He didn’t realize what was happening until too late. I needed Jacob to drag him off the doorstep and back into the house.”

  “Then I had to leave,” said Jacob. “I had my study group.”

  “Why didn’t you just kill him on the doorstep?” asked Anne.

  “I wanted the details of what he had done. Then I wanted to watch him suffer.” The pitch of Edna’s voice rose, and her words sputtered with venom as she went on: “I bound his wrists and ankles with tape and waited. As he began to rouse from the tranquilizer, I injected him with another drug. It paralyzed him but the right dose allowed him to remain conscious and speak.”

  “And he was able to tell you what happened?”

  “With a little prodding…a carrot and stick approach,” she said with a small guilty chuckle. “I told him I would let him live if he told me the truth. He admitted blackmailing Peale by convincing him that the only way to prevent his connection with Simone coming to light was to frighten Carolyn into silence.”

  “So Peale ran Carolyn off the road,” said Anne with disbelief.

  Edna nodded sadly. Her gaze lowered. Her right thumb tenderly caressed the wooden stock. Her left hand supported the black steel frame. Then she looked up suddenly and said, “I knew then that Peale had to die, too.”

  “And Jacob did that for you.”

  Edna nodded again.

  “I never meant to kill anyone,” said Jacob with a desperate urgency. “Not Peale, not even MacFarlane.”

  Then, fuelled by anger and frustration, he turned toward Edna. “You never told me that you planned to kill MacFarlane. You said it was an accidental overdose. You told me you just wanted to force a confession out of him. You wanted the truth, you said. That’s all.”

  “I got the truth. Then I wanted revenge. If you have an infection, you purge it. If you have a boil, you lance it. If you have a cancer, you cut it out. MacFarlane…he was a plague on society. You should have seen his eyes when I put the oil and potatoes into the pan and lit the stove. He knew what was coming, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. How terrifying to know that you are about to die and can do absolutely nothing to prevent it. I relished every second I watched him. He had to be destroyed. And so did Peale.”

  “Jacob, maybe you should sit down,” said Anne, looking apprehensively at the horror and incredulity spreading across his face. But Jacob ignored her, his attention riveted on Edna.

  “You used me. You conned me into this mess, but I’m not going back to prison for murder again. No, not me. Not again. Not for you,” he shouted and lunged toward Edna.

  Edna’s eyes had widened at Dawson’s outburst but, when he sprang forward, fear charged through her. She swung toward him, her torso canted back defensively, her left hand stretched out to ward off an attack. Her right hand trembled and twitched, and the hammer fell. A flash of light and a terrific roar blazed from the Webley. A sudden enormous wave of sound engulfed the small sitting room and, just as suddenly, an ominous silence swept into its wake.

  Dawson froze mid-stride; Anne’s mind staggered to a halting immobility; and Edna struggled through a portentous astonishment.

  Dawson grasped his stomach. Blood oozed through his shirt, filled the gaps between his fingers, and fell in a trickling, crimson stream onto his trousers. He looked down at the wound and, as if that slight movement unbalanced him, he fell forward, his head at Edna’s feet.

  Edna seemed too stunned to speak or move. The Webley dangled in her hand and fell to the floor next to Dawson’s body. The stark sound of it striking the wood floor sparked a panicky thought, and Edna rushed for the door.

  Anne didn’t stop her. She ran instead to Dawson’s side. He was conscious, troubled, and still breathing. She dialled 911 emergency services for help and tried to stave the flow of blood.

  Outside, a car engine roared to life and sped away. Anne remained with Dawson, tried to comfort him and keep him still until paramedics arrived, but he insisted on uttering what he could. Several short verbal spasms, bursts of words and broken phrases, passed his lips. Then Dawson grew quiet.

  Anne could make out the wailing siren of the ambulance not more than a few blocks away, and, somewhere nearby, another car passed Edna’s house, its sound slowly fading toward stillness, just like the heartbeat of John Jacob Dawson.

  Windshield wipers beat the light rain from side to side as Edna zigzagged across Charlottetown streets to Riverside Drive. Traffic was light on Monday evening, but she slowed to avoid notice by police patrol cars and made a left turn onto the Hillsborough Bridge.

  Her hands trembled as she grasped the steering wheel. She eased into the left lane for a turn onto the Bunbury Road. The rain grew stronger on the bridge, gusts of wind as well. The windshield marbled with wet drops and streaks, and she increased the wiper speed, but that made no difference. The rain hadn’t encumbered her vision. The tears running down her cheeks had. And knowing that truth, a more ardent flow ensued.

  She drove past a string of homes along the Bunbury Road, but they were mere blips in her consciousness. Her mind was not elsewhere. It was nowhere. It dwelled in a vortex of images and a flood of emotions that plucked at her spirit and splintered her reasoning and left her like a dried-up leaf in a draft of wind, and, as such, she perceived herself alone, in an unfamiliar primal place, fleeing pain, seeking relief, searching for a glimmer of peace.

  Peace. The word reverberated in her head.

  Along the road, the houses and outbuildings of the town had disappeared entirely. Clusters of trees and low mounds of wild shrubbery and thick bush had gone, too. A vista opened in front of her. It looked so very big, unencumbered and free in the soft, emerging illumination of a full moon. She felt a weight lift from her shoulders. The rain had stopped, an expanse of water an
d green marshy fields filled her eyes with a satisfying loveliness, hope chimed softly in the warm glow of a pleasant October evening, and Edna depressed the accelerator with an intoxicating abandon. She felt a rush of elation, a delightful inebriation. A white wooden cross loomed from the shoulder of the road.

  Serenity, she murmured to herself as the white Civic struck the steel culvert.

  85.

  Mr. Ahmadi opened the door to his office at Schnelling Engineering. He was a tall, slender man, stooped in posture, and casually dressed in a tweed coat and an open-collared blue dress shirt. Ahmed and A’idah Kikovic preceded him from the office, and, with no sidelong, telling glance or expression, both of them and their daughter Rada passed through the anteroom and headed for the building’s main entrance.

  Anne and Jacqui squirmed in the contoured metal chairs and followed the course of their exit. Only Rada had made eye contact. Her lips parted as if to speak, but she remained wordless and looked ill at ease.

  “Mrs. Brown… Jacqueline…if you please,” said Mr. Ahmadi with a gentle sweep of hand, and ushered them into his private office and toward even more comfortable chairs. Three of the seats faced a rather uninteresting windowless wall. The fourth, his chair, faced the others. Nothing stood between them.

  “It must seem a bit odd to have me as a mediator,” he said. He smiled disarmingly. Anne produced what she hoped would be a pleasant, open expression, though she wasn’t sure she had successfully pulled it off. Jacqui had done the same but sensed that she had already revealed an aura of guilt. Accusations and recriminations hung like stale odours in the still air of the room, and she licked her lips anxiously.

  “It sometimes seems like that to me, too. A civil engineer playing the role of mediator. Is that not so? Or a child playing policeman. Both seem absurd, but let me explain. Like the Kikovics, I, too, am a newcomer to Canada. I have been here fifteen years, they just four. Since I came, I have learned that I must change many things I had grown accustomed to.” Ahmadi paused for a second in order to discern whether his words were penetrating their unresponsive eyes, and then he continued: “I also learned that many things need not change…nor should they change. But adjustment takes time and, when you know no one, and you understand little, you depend upon those who have gone before you. For me, it was Mohammed Attara. He was my guide to Western culture. For the Kikovics, it fell to me to acquaint them with local customs and guide them along a comfortable path in their new home. I look at this meeting as an extension of what the Kikovics and I have been working on. They trust me to listen to them and advise them.”

  “So you represent their side,” said Anne. Anne’s words were objective and unimpassioned but her eyes blinked concern. Jacqui swallowed and gazed at the closed door.

  “I represent no one and no side. Today I listen to the Kikovics and I listen to the Browns. Tomorrow I explore what is custom and what is conviction, what is important and what is superficial, what is possible and what is not. In the end, there is no winner and no loser…just those who have found a path to move forward. Shall we begin?”

  86.

  It was nearing nine-thirty. The glow of evening had faded to a moonless black, and a canopy of trees hid the stars as Anne and Jacqui drove along the road. So close to the city and so little light, she thought. How was it possible? Their car’s headlights illuminated a small break in the tree line. A sign marking the driveway read “Malone.” Anne turned. The driveway snaked through a grove of pines and, into the last half of the second curve, a blaze of light split the darkness.

  It had been just a week, but it seemed like an eternity since Anne had last visited. Seeing it again brought back that old warm comfortable feeling, but it was fleeting. Tonight the structure was lit inside and out for Dit and Gwen’s engagement party and get-together. A dozen cars lined the driveway. The flood of lights and the line-up of cars and the laughter from inside raised an inexplicable barrier in front of her. Anne felt a wave of dread. Her natural impulse was to circle and leave, but that would provoke the curiosity of Jacqui, and Anne couldn’t conceive of an explanation or excuse that made sense enough to stand the scrutiny of her probing questions. So she parked, and mother and daughter made their way toward the front door.

  Knocking had not been customary here but, as she reached for the knob, she froze. She felt a trembling inside of her. Perhaps the boisterous laughter on the other side of the door had stirred it up, but at that moment, cheer and joie de vivre struck her as offensive and unseemly, and she wanted to turn away lest it engulf her like a wave that topples and rolls and drags a person helplessly against a grinding sandy bottom.

  “Mom, did you fall asleep or what? Open the door,” said Jacqui, impatiently moving ahead, grasping the handle and pushing the door open.

  Anne felt a touch of nausea and faintness at the sight of the crowd before her, but she managed to drive it down. Jacqui isn’t the only one who can act, thought Anne, and she forced a smile and strode into the crowd of people.

  “You keep this up and you’ll get honourable mention in The Guardian’s society column,” said Mary Anne sidling up to her.

  “They still have such things?”

  “They’re still popular on forties movies, but for the most part, they disappeared about the same time as gossip over a Monday morning clothesline. But you might generate a small trend on Twitter.”

  Anne laughed. The laugh surprised her.

  “Thanks. I needed that,” said Anne and took her first full breath since she’d entered the room.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” said Anne. “I could use one of those,” she said pointing to Mary Anne’s wine glass. Mary Anne walked her to a self-serve table of wines and whiskies. Anne filled her glass, drank half, topped it up, and surveyed the crowd.

  “Who are all these people, anyway?”

  “Kind of a Who’s Who on PEI,” said Mary Anne. “I don’t know them all…but that guy, the one staring at Gwen’s ass… Jeff Porter, Minister of Technology and Innovation. Over there’s the Premier.”

  “Know him,” said Anne. Mary Anne’s discreet finger continued to point out other guests.

  “John Dunne of Eckles, Dunne and Fry. That clique in the corner…some of Gwen’s colleagues from Halifax…Dashiell, Dit’s brother, Dottie, his sister, Connie, Dashiell’s wife, and isn’t that your buddy chattin’ them up? Doctor who?”

  “Dr. Little. I don’t see Dit. Is he here?”

  Mary Anne quickly checked the crowd. “Was here. Don’t see him now.”

  “Anne,” said a voice from behind her. “I’m so glad you and Jacqui could make it.”

  She turned quickly and saw Gwen Fowler. Gwen looked younger and even more beautiful than the last time they’d met. Gwen took Anne by her arm and began to lead her away.

  “I’ve got to borrow Anne for a few minutes, Mary Anne. Promise to return her in mint condition.” Gwen escorted Anne across the crowded room and down a short hallway. “Someone you have to see,” she said to Anne.

  Gwen escorted her about five steps down the corridor and into a room Dit used as his office. It was a quiet and cozy spot, dimly lit, the same room in which she and Dit had quarrelled about Gwen a week before.

  Dit stood on his crutches at the far end of the room.

  “Anne? What’s going on, Gwen?” He had turned at the sound of someone entering. Even in the subdued lighting his surprise and confusion were evident.

  “What’s this about?” asked Anne, turning toward Gwen.

  “Too much drama between you two. Sometimes I think I’ve wandered onto the set of a soap opera. I half-know what’s going on…at least I think I do…but I can’t resolve it. That’s up to you two. Deal with it…tonight…now,” she said with an uncompromising finality and, as she left, closing the door behind her, she added, “Text me when you’ve reached a resolution.” Anne and Dit heard the turn of a
key in the door.

  “She locked us in,” said Dit. There was some alarm in his voice.

  “Where’s Mom?” asked Jacqui.

  “Gwen spirited her off somewhere mysterious,” said Mary Anne. “And how are you doing? Your mom said that you had a rough time of it the other week. A babysitting gig that turned into party central…and about you losing your best bud.”

  “Yeah…not a good couple of weeks for me or Mom, but the last few days have gotten better. Mom’s work is done, and Rada and I have begun to work things out.”

  “How did you manage that? I thought you were persona non grata.”

  “We’ve been seeing a mediator. Me, Mom, Rada, her parents, everyone.”

  “And?”

  “She and her family are trying to adjust to a new culture. Rada wasn’t quite fitting in socially at school. I thought I’d help, but I guess I blew it. Everything fell apart. Bottom line is I have to be more sensitive to what she wants to do…not what I think she should do.”

  “And Rada?”

  “She has to have patience and show more respect for her parents. Her parents and Mr. Ahmadi talked a lot about how Muslim traditions vary from region to region, and he explained that some traditions go beyond what the Qu’ran says. I didn’t understand a lot of that, though it seemed like they may have been stricter than they needed to be.”

  “I see,” said Mary Anne, “and how’s your mom doing?”

  “Oh she’s doing fine,” said Jacqui. Mary Anne stared pointedly at her. Jacqui’s eyes darted away and returned with embarrassment and guilt toward Mary Anne’s. Jacqui had never been able to slip a half-truth by Mary Anne, and finally she gave up the truth. “She’s not herself. She’s quiet…kind of self-absorbed. A bit lost. Maybe a bit sad, too.”

  “She’s been through a terrible ordeal. It’ll take time to get normal again.”