The Night Bell

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  OTHER HAZEL MICALLEF MYSTERIES BY INGER ASH WOLFE

  The Calling

  The Taken

  A Door in the River

  Copyright © 2015 by Caribou River, Ltd

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request

  ISBN: 978-0-7710-8868-1

  ebook ISBN: 978-0-7710-8869-8

  Cover design: Five Seventeen

  Cover images: (background) © my inner child photography | Getty Images;

  (bunny) © Lantapix | Dreamstime.com

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  For my brother, who likes a good yarn.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Hibiki Yoshida drank green tea from a blue ceramic cup. The steam hid his face. “I had been at Dublin Home for only one year when I heard it the first time,” he said. “I was eight years old.”

  Detective Sergeant James Wingate began to write the numeral 8 in his notebook, but accidentally made a zero and crossed it out. He concentrated on his handwriting. The bareness of Yoshida’s walls was distracting. The tea smelled like burning leaves. Wingate shook the pen. “What year was this?” he asked.

  “Nineteen fifty-one. There were four dormitories on the second floor, two in front and two in back, all connected by doors.” He waited for Wingate to write it down. “There were no hallways, so if you were in one of the two front rooms, there were always people walking through. I was in the back at the beginning.” Wingate saw the room taking form in Yoshida’s eyes. “Our dormitory had two stone walls. It was cold. But we were away from the stairs, farther away than the rest of the boys, and if someone came in the night, they would find what they were looking for before they got to us. That’s what we believed.

  “I only had a few friends because my English was so poor, and I tried to spend time among boys who seemed at least as hopeless as me. We kept each other company. Being in a group, we thought we’d be protected from the orderlies, the nurses, the older boys, and the teachers. But of course we weren’t. We were like herring in a school, hiding from barracudas. The barracudas still ate.

  “The first night I heard the bell jingle, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. Some of the older boys tried to scare us with stories of someone who came in the night and stole children to eat them. They called him Old Father Crumb. He had a key to the basement door made out of human bone, and when he opened it it rang a bell. That’s how you’d know it was him.”

  Yoshida raised his cup to his mouth, and drank from it slowly, his hand trembling. Wingate waited for him to regain his composure. “Take your time,” he said.

  “I closed my eyes and lay very still,” Yoshida said, putting the cup down. “I heard nothing, and after a while the restless feeling that had taken hold of me ebbed away and I went back to sleep.”

  The man stopped speaking, but it felt to Wingate that there was more. “Go on.”

  “It happened one other time. When I was sixteen. I’d been moved into the front dorms, where the older boys slept. The sound was nearer the second time I heard it. On New Year’s Eve 1958. We raised our cups of apple juice at midnight and I still wonder what was in the juice. I didn’t finish mine, but I fell asleep very quickly just the same. Some of the boys were asleep on their feet when they marched us up the stairs.

  “I dreamt that there was a girl standing behind my bed, and she leaned over me and dangled a little bell on a chain. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs. I woke up with a start. My heart was still pounding from the dream, and I pulled the blanket up over my face. I heard the other boys breathing shallowly, like panting dogs.

  “The door opened in the room next to ours and footsteps came closer, slow and even. The door to our room opened and he came in and shut the door behind him. A shadow fell across me and I thought I was going to start crying, but he went by. I tried to count how many beds. One … two … he stopped three beds away from me.”

  Yoshida’s eyes reddened. “My friend Valentijn slept in that bed. He was a good kid. Only fourteen. He’d had his growth spurt, and he was bigger than the sixteen-year-olds, but he was slow. And he’d become violent if he was upset.” He fell silent and swallowed nervously. The corners of his mouth moved a number of times but he could not speak.

  “It’s OK, Hiro –”

  “I heard a man’s voice. He said something to Valentijn, and Valentijn said yes, very quietly. And then … I heard the footsteps go past again, but not Valentijn’s voice, not the sound of his feet. I listened to Old Father Crumb go out the door and when they opened the curtains in the morning, Valentijn’s bed was empty.”

  “What happened to him?” Wingate asked. He’d gone as cold as his tea.

  “They found him dead in the snow. They said he had gone out in the night and climbed to the roof, and he’d slipped on the icy slates.”

  “That’s awful. I’m sorry you had to experience that.” He gave Yoshida another minute. His notes, which were difficult even for him to read, would prove he was ready to return to active duty. He wrote Pushed? in his notebook. “What did you hear that night, Mr. Yoshida? Did you hear what Old Father Crumb said to your friend?”

  A drop of tea leapt up from Yoshida’s cup. “He asked him if he wanted to see the stars.”

  ] 1 [

  In 1957, there were five convenience stores in Port Dundas. The ones at either end of Main Street were robbed more frequently than the three in the middle, and consequently their insurance cost more. However, in an act of neighbourliness not uncommon in those parts at that time, the owners of the three middle stores reimbursed the other two, so that all five paid the same amount.

  The store that suffered the greatest number of thefts – and to date, the only robbery at gunpoint – was Herbert Lim Grocery, right at the gateway to the town, behind the sign that numbered its population at 4,280. A bridge ferried cars and bicycles and pedestrians into Port Dundas over the rushing Kilmartin River and delivered them to his doorstep. The bridge brought him a lot of business, but it came in handy for fast getaways too.

  Saturday was market day, and on the afternoon of October 26, 1957, the streets were full of shoppers and strollers, visitors and locals, among them th
e odd drunk, depressive, and pickpocket. Shrinkage was worst on Saturdays. Some of the larger stores in town even hired security guards on the weekends and in the weeks leading up to Christmas and Easter, because a study had shown theft doubled in the weeks before those holy days.

  The cost of lost merchandise was the cost of business, even in a small town.

  Evan Micallef, the second-generation owner of Micallef’s department store, was one of the local businessmen who had hired a security guard. “This is what things have come to,” he told his daughter, Hazel. “You can’t trust anybody anymore.”

  At the urging of his insurance company, Micallef had a plainclothes guard two days a week. The fellow walked around sizing up suit jackets and trying on caps, all the while shooting dramatic, sidelong glances up and down the floor. Every week, a different guy. They caught their fair share of thieves, though; it saved Evan Micallef a lot of money.

  Herbert Lim had no need of a security guard. He sold milk, bacon, butter, comic books, magazines, cigarettes, detergent, a small selection of fruits and vegetables, and dry goods of various sorts. Lim’s also had higher prices than the other stores, owing to its prominent position at the gateway to Port Dundas and being the easiest place to knock off in practically all of Westmuir County. He kept a baseball bat under the counter that he called extra insurance. Some days, when Mr. Lim heard a car idling at the curb outside, he’d steal a glance at the baseball bat. The townie kids knew he had it because he’d brandished it at some of them, just to show he meant business.

  Hazel Dorothy Micallef was fourteen and a half. Her mother had finally allowed her to begin saying “almost fifteen.” She’d been born in Port Dundas and lived her whole life there. In her attachment to the town, she thought of it as something that she owned.

  She had just finished her afternoon shift at her father’s store. One of her chores was working four hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Her father gave her a little spending money at the end of each shift, never more than a dollar unless it had been particularly busy. Despite the addition of the security guards – the most twitchy-looking people in the store, she thought – her father seemed no less perturbed by the possibility that thieves were filching from him. Once you learn suspicion, he warned her, you won’t unlearn it. He’d taken to locking the stockrooms during the day.

  “Here’s a half dollar,” he told Hazel. “Go get your brother and take him for an egg malt or whatever he likes.”

  “Floats.”

  “He’s a bottomless pit,” her father said, smiling. He kissed her hair. “Be good.”

  She decided to take the long way home and smell the air. She rode her bike up Porter Street to O’Neill Street, the most northerly corner in town. The smallest houses in Port Dundas were on O’Neill. Their backyards gave on to the Kilmartin River, and beyond it, the shale bluff that had been one of its banks. There was some danger of falling rock, and the houses on the north side of O’Neill were planted as far forward on their lots as possible.

  Hazel rode the dirt curve at the end of the street to the covered Clasper’s Bridge. Dirt trails led up from there to the top of the bluff. One of the trails was more than two hundred years old: it started here and ran along the top of the riverbank all the way out of town.

  She rode back toward Main Street and was about to cross when she heard someone calling her name: “Hey, Micallef!” There was a person waving from the mouth of Candlestick Alley. It was Gloria Whitman. She was grinning to beat the band.

  “C’mere!” Gloria hollered.

  Hazel rode over. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head: What in creation is that girl up to now?

  “Hi Gloria. What’s the fuss?”

  “I need a lookout.”

  “A lookout?”

  “Can you stay here for one minute? Just stay on your bike?”

  “I don’t know, Gloria. I’m supposed to get Alan and take him out.”

  “Can’t he wait one minute?”

  “I guess …”

  Gloria’s eyes were red, like she’d been rubbing them. “Watch this,” she said, and she darted out.

  Hazel retreated farther into the alley’s shadow and waited on her bike. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was looking out for. In the October sun, people milled back and forth on the sidewalk before her like a pantomime. Their voices reached her as a dim clangour. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be going on.

  Just as Hazel had this thought, Gloria burst back into the alley. She was out of breath, laughing in delight. “Get ready!” she cried.

  “Get ready?”

  She mounted Hazel’s bike, pushing her forward off the seat. “Go!” she shouted. “Start pedalling!”

  “Not unless you tell me what this is about!”

  From the street came a female voice: “STOP THIEF!”

  “Ready now, Micallef?” Gloria gripped Hazel’s shoulders. “Go!”

  Hazel had no choice. She bore down on the handlebars and started pedalling. Gloria had the build of a ballerina, so it was nothing to ride with her on the seat, but it didn’t allay Hazel’s anxiety.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Go across the bridge.”

  Hazel doubled Gloria over the Kilmartin Bridge. “What did you steal?”

  Gloria held up a pack of Luckys in front of Hazel’s face. “Didn’t see me take ’em.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “That was Carol. We’ll be clear of her another hundred yards. But the Chink had his back turned the whole time.”

  “That’s disgusting, Gloria. Don’t call him that.”

  “Mr. Lim. He was busy stacking apples. I just slipped my hand behind the counter and took the first pack I felt. Ruckys! Pretty rucky, huh?”

  “I gotta go, Gloria. Nice to see you and everything.”

  “Oh god!” she said. “She’s coming. Ditch the bike!” Gloria scrambled up the dirt and stone path that went serpentine to the top of the bluff. “Come on!”

  Hazel dropped her bike in the leaves and ran after Gloria Whitman. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest that she could hear it squeak, and she was halfway up the path before she realized that there was actually no one behind her. “Gloria, stop!” she called. There was no answer. Hazel slowed down to catch her breath. Then she walked the rest of the way up. When she got to the top, Gloria was sitting at a picnic table under a sign that read KILMARTIN BLUFF PARK. She was smoking a cigarette.

  “Took you long enough.”

  “What are you playing at?”

  “Just trying to inject some fun into your day, Hazel. When we were kids, you were lots of fun. Full of ideas. Never a dull moment. Now what?”

  “What do you mean, now what? I see you all day long at school, Gloria. You can’t miss me that much.”

  Gloria blew out an elegant smoke ring. “You going to the prom with Andrew?”

  “Prom’s not for months.”

  “I know he likes you. He said something interesting to Ray Greene.” She held the pack out to Hazel.

  “I don’t want your ill-gotten gains.”

  Gloria got up from the picnic table and walked away. “OK. See ya.”

  Hazel felt a burn on her cheek: embarrassment coupled with something else – need or hunger. Even though Gloria was apt to make stuff up, it was true that people told her things. Boys lost their composure around her and spouted all kinds of nonsense. Maybe Ray had talked to her about Andrew Pedersen. “Hold on!” Hazel called. “Wait up.”

  The leaves had started to turn at the beginning of the month and now colour rang down like a curtain, brightening the trees that lined the county’s roads, its backyards. The wind pushed the dry leaves around in the branches above their heads as they walked along the path high over town. Hazel remembered the last time autumn had come so late, in ’53, when they’d gone swimming at Thanksgiving. She’d turned ten the spring of that year. It struck her now that maybe something was wrong, that summer shouldn’t last so long. Gloria s
aid she could live in a climate like this – sunny, breezy, blue skies, warm enough for just a sweater – every day of the year. But Hazel said she’d miss winter and summer both.

  Gloria was going to turn fifteen at the end of January, but they had always been in the same grade. They’d been friends since they were little and the difference in their ages wasn’t apparent to anyone. Gloria was small and fragile-looking, not quite birdlike, but sinuous and light, like a red squirrel or a mink. Her father called his daughter Grace Kelly, but no one would have thought Grace Kelly squirrelly. Hazel was more a Rosie the Riveter type. Big hands, strong legs.

  From the top of the bluff, you had a view of the town entire, its streets sitting in the middle of forest and field like stitches in a sock. “You want some of this?” Gloria offered Hazel a small, battered pewter flask.

  “What is it?” Hazel said.

  “Brandy. The cheap stuff – you know, VS.”

  “You’re full-service today. Where’d you steal that from?”

  “It’s not stolen if it stays in the family.”

  “What do you know about brandy anyway?”

  “I read.” She took a little slug of it. “Rich French people drink it. Although they drink VSOP: Very Special Old Pale. This is just Very Special.”

  “Too bad for us,” Hazel replied. “Won’t your dad smell all this smoke and booze on you?” Out of another pocket, Gloria produced a package of peppermint Chiclets. Hazel took the flask and drank a drop out of it. She’d had sips of her father’s beer or her mother’s Amaretto, but not something this strong. It made her cough. She held her hand out for the gum.

  They continued along the dirt path, which wound in and out of pine forest to the edge of the rock face and back again. At the bluff’s most southern tip, hunks of Canadian Shield with tenacious pines growing through it formed a feature called the Lion’s Paw. On one side, the rock paw towered a hundred feet over the town and, on the other, over hectares of forest.

  Both girls knew the sides of the bluff had formed the original riverbanks: they’d been taught this bit of history repeatedly, from kindergarten. The Kilmartin and Fraser rivers had once met below the town, but the Fraser had dried up in the early 1900s. East of the townsite, its bed formed the foundation of Highway 41 all the way to Fort Leonard.