Foul Deeds: A Rosalind Mystery

by Linda Moore

  FOUL DEEDS

  Linda Moore

  Vagrant Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © Linda Moore, 2007, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Nimbus Publishing Limited

  PO Box 9166, Halifax, NS B3K 5M8

  (902) 455-4286 www.nimbus.ca

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Cover photo: Chris Nicholls, Lorca Moore

  Cover design: Heather Bryan

  Author photo: Chris Nicholls

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Moore, Linda, 1950—

  Foul deeds [electronic resource] / Linda Moore. (A Rosalind mystery)

  Electronic monograph.

  ISBN 978-1-55109-967-5 (PDF).

  ISBN 978-1-55109-975-0 (EPUB).

  ISBN 978-1-55109-977-4 (MOBI)

  I. Title. II. Series: Moore, Linda, 1950- . Rosalind mystery (Online).

  PS8626.O5945F68 2012 C813’.6 C2012-906470-X

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.

  Acknowledgements

  Sandra McIntyre, for being a patient, insightful and inspiring reader, editor and teacher

  Sandy Moore, for always being there and for his genuine encouragement

  Cliff White of the Council of Canadians, for speaking at length with me about various aspects of The Water Wars, and his New Year’s Day Tea with Reading, where this all began

  Howard Epstein, for legal expertise

  Niki Lipman, for the winter writing retreat, and her unwavering belief

  All the listeners: Mary Ellen MacLean, Mary-Colin Chisholm, Patricia Reis, Christina Wheelwright, Alex Pierce and Paula Danckert

  Molly; may she bound with joy in doggy heaven

  William Shakespeare and Sam Shepard

  Foul deeds will rise,

  Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

  HAMLET, ACT 1, SC. 2

  Chapter One

  My heart was beating rapidly. I could feel it knocking against the I Ching, which lay open on my chest at the twenty-fifth hexagram—The Unexpected. I must have dozed off while the first winter storm lashed against the windows from over the harbour. The cat was sleeping too, one leg stretched out along my leg—a disgruntled afternoon sleep taken in resentment for suddenly losing the green garden under lumps of slush and ice. Something was scratching and banging against the outside wall—just the branches of the now-stripped maple, or was it a piece of loose eavestrough? It sounded metallic. I hadn’t taken my blood pressure pill that morning—perhaps that was why my heart was beating so rapidly.

  I climbed off the bed, poured a drink of water from the pitcher on the dresser and took the pill. The house felt cold and empty, and the light was going—dark by 4:30. November dark. Better move the car now on the unlikely chance that the snowplow should come by, then eat something and get ready for rehearsal.

  Glancing at my desk, I noticed the flashing red lights on the telephone and realized the power must have gone off for a moment while I was snoozing. Pushing aside the piles of books and dictionaries, I pulled the phone towards me to re-record the voice message. I was now deep into the Shakespeare work, analyzing an old favourite—Hamlet—and it was proving a perfect way to avoid working on the case. Besides, after the last gruesome investigation, I was trying to change my life—find a more noble pursuit. Shakespeare was a long-held passion of mine, but this recent theatre jag I was on was not one that my boss, McBride, could understand. I was his researcher, his sounding board, his errand girl and general dogsbody. It was too much. As I lifted the phone back to its place, it rang and I jumped, knocking Northrop Frye’s Myth of Deliverance onto the floor.

  It had to be McBride. Hot on the trail, he would be anxious for my list—the names of obscure poisons that might have been used in the crime. It was a long shot, but that was his forte. By the time they hired Private Investigator McBride, people were usually desperate. He was the last resort. In this instance, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had pronounced our client’s father dead by natural causes, and the police saw no reason to make a case out of it.

  I decided not to answer the phone. Let him leave me a message, and I’d call back after I moved the car. I started to pull my boots on, listening to my new recording: “Hi, you’ve reached Rosalind at 423-9762. You know what to do.” The response was an ungodly yelp from the phone, followed by a muffled sound, scuffling, some grunts, and then silence. The loud cry had startled the sleeping cat into a hiss. Suddenly the wind rose and slammed the piece of metal eavestroughing against the window. The lamp by the bed flashed and the power went out as the metal clattered to the ground below.

  I was trembling. Was that McBride, or a prank, maybe? The room was dark. I fumbled for some matches in my cosmetics bag and lit the small votive candle on the mantelpiece. The cat leaped to the floor, and I crouched down and put my hand on her. She started as I touched her, then wrapped her tail around her feet. Her fur was electric, her eyes huge—she looked like an owl. Best to try and reach McBride. I rose and looked at my desk in the gloom. The phone was dead, so the strange recorded cry would be lost. Cellphones weren’t my thing, but I had an old rotary dial phone in the cupboard in the laundry room. Really they were so much more practical—no fancy features but they worked when the power was out. Only two flights down. I pulled on the black cardigan that was lying on the back of the chair, picked up the little candle and descended into the dark.

  *

  The crypt beneath the gothic-styled cathedral was constructed with ancient ironstone, quarried at Purcell’s Cove, and the walls were several feet thick. The room, once an underground chamber where the dead were laid out, was now used as an intimate performance space with a few stage lights and some wooden risers for seating. The ad hoc company of young out-of-work actors was preparing a bare-bones production of Hamlet. At this particular moment, they were trying to solve the problem of making the ghost credible. How should the spirit of Old Hamlet appear? It was a question that could stymie even well-heeled theatre companies with real budgets and a bag of technical tricks up their sleeves, so arriving at an effective, inexpensive solution was frustrating everyone.

  “The old king should look like he’s floating, like he’s walking but his feet aren’t actually touching the ground.”

  “He could be miked so that his voice has an echo. ‘Swear! Swear!’”

  “Maybe we could put him behind a scrim and then with just a tiny bit of light on him he would materialize out of darkness, the way an apparition actually would.”

  “But isn’t it more scary if he’s just there in the flesh—like totally real. Like you or me? Wouldn’t that freak you out even more if you knew the person was dead?”

  This group directing could get rather tedious, which is why Rosalind had been proving useful. Though not a theatre director—in fact, a criminologist by profession—she seemed to be a text genius with real insight into the scenes and a deep passion
for words. She had won them over immediately when she celebrated their choice of location for the production. “Crypt,” she had told them, “is from the Greek krupta, meaning vault, and kruptos, meaning hidden. In Hamlet, the idea of the hidden, of hiding, of secrets and conspiracy, is key. We’re in the perfect place for this old story to be revealed.”

  But where was Rosalind? Had she forgotten rehearsal started at six o’clock? As the actors began to ask one another whether they should just get started without her, Sophie, who was playing Ophelia, borrowed George’s phone. There was no signal in the bowels of the cathedral so she ran up the little stone stairwell and stepped outside through the arched wooden door to make the call. No answer and no recorded message. Strange. Well, there was a lot of heavy weather going on. Maybe Roz was held up by the storm, or having trouble with her car—could be anything. Sophie, already half drenched and shivering, ducked back through the low archway into the building. Hamlet’s words swirled up from below as she descended the stone stairway.

  The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,

  That ever I was born to set it right.

  *

  McBride had left the driver’s window turned down a crack so Molly would have some fresh air to breathe, and had made his way carefully across the icy parking lot in the pelting sleet towards the other car. But now the other car was long gone and Molly could see McBride’s legs on the ground. He wasn’t moving and no one was coming. The wind whistled around the car as Molly began to whine and bark.

  *

  “God, this crazy weather calls for a drink!” It was ten o’clock and everyone was wired from the rehearsal. They had gotten through Laertes’ departure for France, and the admonishing of Ophelia by both brother and father for risking her chastity with Prince Hamlet. Rosalind hadn’t shown up at all; they had plunged on without her.

  Bundled up and hurrying through the stormy night to their favourite drinking hole, The Shoe Shop, the gaggle of actors passed the parking lot at Grafton Street and Spring Garden Road. Sophie, who had a special place in her heart for all animals, stopped when she heard frantic barking coming from an old Subaru station wagon parked with its back bumper against the wire fence.

  “Hey, wait. Do you think that dog’s okay? Doesn’t that look like Rosalind’s friend’s car—you know, what’s his name?” She moved through the gate and, brushing away the snow, peered in the driver’s window. “Yes. I think that’s his dog Molly…”

  “What are you doing, Sophie?” George called out. “Come on. I’m soaked!” The rest of the troupe had hurried on, anxious to get out of the wind.

  “I’m just making sure she’s okay,” Sophie said, trying the car door. It stuck a bit with the ice, but was clearly not locked. “I’m going to open the door and just see what’s going on.”

  “—Sophie!” George protested, but she gave the door a good pull and it came open. She was almost knocked off her feet as Molly bounded past her and scrabbled across the lot to where McBride was lying—his legs protruding from behind a large garbage bin. Sophie, who regained her balance and raced after the dog, stopped cold as Molly reached her target.

  “George!” Sophie cried out. “Someone’s lying there in the snow!” She moved slowly towards the body. “Oh my god, it’s Roz’s friend. Is he dead? He’s not dead is he?” He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t conscious either. George called 911.

  After the ambulance left the scene, Sophie had no interest in continuing on to the bar. She said good night to George and took Molly home with her. As soon as she got into warm, dry clothes, she broke up some bread and soaked it in milk to feed Molly—just the way she remembered her father doing for their old collie, Lochie. She could see the dog was distressed and needed a little comfort. Molly gulped down the repast in true Lab fashion, drank some water, and curled up on a mat beside the cast-iron radiator, but didn’t close her eyes. Sophie had been trying every few minutes to reach Roz to tell her about McBride, and to find out why she hadn’t come to rehearsal. But there was still no answer, still no message. Suddenly there was a loud, frantic knock at the door. Molly started to bark.

  Chapter Two

  I could hear a dog barking and wondered if I had the wrong apartment, but after what seemed like forever, Sophie unlatched the chain and opened the door. I practically fell into her flat.

  “What on earth? My god, Roz—what’s happened to you? I’ve been trying to reach you. Do you know about McBride?”

  That caught my attention as I was stamping the snow and ice off my boots and putting my dripping hat and scarf on the hall radiator. “What do you mean ‘about McBride’?”

  “He’s in the hospital. We found him—George and I—after rehearsal, out cold in that lot at Grafton and Spring Garden. We called 911.”

  “Well, is he going to be okay? What did they say?”

  “His vital signs were good. I gave them my number in case the hospital needs to call. They thought it was a concussion from a blow to the head. The police showed up as well—they think he was assaulted.”

  “Oh my god, Sophie,” I said. “That’s got to be what that bizarre phone call was.”

  “What bizarre phone call?”

  I was suddenly shivering like mad. Something sinister really was afoot. Sophie started talking about Scotch and urging me towards her couch. Molly had picked up a small cushion and was trying to get me to take it. I sat and pulled Sophie’s mohair throw around me to stop my teeth from chattering. She was right—a good belt of Glenlivet would sort me out. She put the glass in my hand.

  “Now when you’ve downed that, you can tell me all about it,” she said. Molly dropped the cushion and climbed up beside me on the couch. Several minutes later I concluded my story: “So the phone was dead, and there I was in the dark, going down the stairs with a candle. I felt like Lady M. after the murder.”

  Sophie was sitting opposite me in an old wingback chair she had inherited from a production of Hay Fever, with her legs stretched out and her feet on the couch. I was wrapped in the mohair, and Molly was curled up between Sophie’s feet and me.

  “There was something wrong with me when I first woke up from my little nap,” I continued. “I could feel my heart pounding. Then, with that wild phone call, the crash against the window, and the power going out, I must have gotten really tense. Anyway, I don’t remember passing out, but I came to about an hour ago on the cement floor in the laundry room. The candle had fallen and gone out. I was completely freaked out and it was bitter cold. I didn’t even bother to try and find my keys—the car was half buried anyway. I just set out for your place on foot and thank god you’re here. I can’t believe I’m finally getting warm.” I pulled the mohair more tightly around me.

  “Wow, what a weird night,” was about all Sophie could manage. “What do you make of the McBride thing?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it. I mean, there have been a lot of random attacks recently, but in this weather—in that parking lot—it doesn’t make sense.”

  “And it doesn’t seem like it was a robbery either,” Sophie added “because the police found McBride’s wallet in his pocket. As a matter of fact, the police seemed to know exactly who McBride was.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m sure they did,” I said. “McBride hasn’t exactly ingratiated himself with the local constabulary. He’s been one step ahead of them too many times. Possibly this beating has something to do with the new case he’s on. This man’s son has hired McBride because he suspects his father was murdered. It could be that McBride is getting close to the truth.”

  “Murder most foul?”

  “That’s right, Ophelia.” I smiled at Sophie. “So, how was rehearsal anyway?”

  “Oh it was…you know…hard, but there were some interesting moments. I mean, we totally missed you. We’ve gotten spoiled by having you there to explain all the tricky bits. I’ve just got to be careful not to let Ophelia get trounced too early, don’t I—I mean she has to keep her spirits up, right? She can’t let Polonius utterly
destroy her in her first scene. Besides, she has to be attached enough to him to be totally distraught by his murder. That’s the final straw for old Ophelia, isn’t it—her father’s murder? That’s when she goes around the bend. He is dead and gone, lady. He is dead and gone. At his head a grass green turf—at his heel a stone….”

  Sophie was half-singing Ophelia’s sad lament, and I started to drift. The Scotch had warmed me and I sank deeper into the couch. Molly closed her eyes and put her chin on her paws. Clearly anxious about McBride, she heaved a little sigh.

  *

  The carts of medication were rattling down the corridor, and McBride was dreaming there were clowns on roller skates coming after him like a gang of paparazzi. He knew he couldn’t outrun them, so he was trying to call for help. But he couldn’t make a sound—it was that old paralysis dream of his. If he could just open his eyes, he could save himself. He had to open his eyes. With enormous effort he managed it—just a little. Just enough to see the fluorescent lights of the hospital’s hallway through the fuzzy blur. There was a dark form leaning in. A cop, maybe. He had schooled himself for so many years to play his cards close to his chest that he knew he mustn’t say anything. He must stay silent to protect himself. The dark figure straightened and stalked away.

  He closed his eyes again. Slowly, he began to recall what had happened to him—the voice calling out to him in the sleeting night.

  “Who’s there? McBride?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re right on time.”

  “It’s bitter out here. What have you got for me?”

  “Back here—it’s in the trunk.”

  Then it must have been someone hidden behind the next car suddenly hitting him across the back of the head. He staggered away from the car and pulled out his phone, hitting the speed dial for Rosalind. He could hear the recording before he was hit again, hard. He yelped and tried to fight back but was fading fast, his knees buckling. As he went under, his face in the snow, he felt the phone being pulled from his hand.