Cut Off His Tale: A Hollis Grant Mystery

by Boswell Joan

  The officious voice on the other end of the line informed Rhona that Kas was fully booked for days.

  “I repeat. This is a police investigation. I must meet Dr. Yantha today, this morning if possible. And if you don’t arrange an appointment, Dr. Yantha will come to the station at my convenience.”

  The receptionist slotted Rhona’s meeting for ten.

  Rhona felt a pang of remorse: an unknown individual’s life would be rearranged because of her insistence, but what had to be had to be. Time to contact Kas’s wife, Dr. Tessa Uiska, a cardio-thoracic surgeon at Municipal Hospital.

  “Dr. Uiska is on grand rounds this morning, but she works in her office for an hour before lunch. Why don’t you pop in between eleven and twelve?”

  Done. Now for her visit to the psychiatric hospital, a collection of old brick buildings nestled among lawns and sheltering trees. Rhona wondered if the setting helped the patients’ confrontations with confusion and pain. Inside, she wound through a labyrinth of corridors and ended up in a waiting room, empty except for the receptionist who sat behind glass. When Rhona introduced herself, the receptionist nodded and buzzed the doctor.

  The door to the suite beyond the reception area opened. Dr. Yantha, wearing a navy blue suit with a faint purple stripe, a white shirt and a subdued patterned green tie stepped forward with his hand outstretched.

  Psychiatrists made Rhona nervous, but she sternly told herself her battered psyche did not interest the doctor and thanked him for rearranging his schedule and seeing her on short notice.

  In the office shades of sand, cream and white soothed and comforted. Every object, from the corner grouping of oatmeal upholstered chairs to the solid stoneware lamps resting on uncluttered oval pine tables and the muted beige sisal carpeting, contributed to the creation of calm. Nothing stopped the eye or jarred the soul. On the walls, muted misty watercolours of sea and mountains drew the mind to contemplate the solitude of the wilderness. Only a bulky red folder plunked on Yantha’s desk appeared out of place. Rhona assumed it contained Paul’s manuscript.

  When they sat facing each other, Dr. Yantha pushed the folder toward her. “Here’s the manuscript.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Yes.”

  Helpful fellow. “Tell me again why you were reading it?”

  “I don’t remember telling you in the first place.”

  This man annoyed her. “Ms Grant told me her husband had asked you to read it.”

  “Yes. He did.” Dr. Yantha eyed her, and a faint smile curved his lips. It infuriated her to realize he was toying with her like a talk show host with an unimportant guest.

  “Why did he want you to read it?”

  “To verify that his psychological insights were in line with current psychiatric thinking.”

  “And were they?”

  “As much as a layman can be.”

  What a snot. She’d read it herself. No point asking him if he’d identified a motive for murder. On to a new topic.

  “Tell me what you did when you found Reverend Robertson?”

  “I told you in the medical tent after you interviewed Hollis and, to correct you again, I didn’t find him. After the starter fired the gun and my wife began running, I headed for the parking lot. I was walking along behind the crowd when someone called for a doctor.” Yantha lowered his chin and peered over his fashionable half spectacles. “As I’m sure you can figure out for yourself, we psychiatrists don’t usually do emergency first aid.”

  Rhona longed to make a smart retort but confined herself to a nod.

  “When I peered over the spectators’ shoulders at the man on the road, I decided if he’d had a heart attack, I’d clear his airways and do CPR.”

  “Did you recognize Paul Robertson?”

  “Not until I lifted his head. I’m not even sure if I knew then, but a voice in the crowd identified him.”

  “You mean you didn’t know him well enough to recognize him?”

  “Would you recognize an acquaintance lying face down on the road?” His lip lifted slightly. “Not likely.”

  “Had you had much to do with him when he was alive?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever go to his office?”

  “No.” He let the silence lengthen before he added. “My friendship with Hollis began when Tessa, my wife, introduced us at university. I met Paul once or twice, but he wasn’t a friend.”

  Rhona didn’t expect he’d answer the next question any more helpfully than he had the others. “Tell me about the Robertson’s marriage.”

  “I wasn’t privy to the state of their marriage.”

  “I want your perceptions, not a verbatim account.”

  Dr. Yantha, who’d been sitting erect, relaxed slightly. Perhaps he was about to drop his obstructionist attitude.

  “They never met my criteria for classification as a ‘happy family’.”

  From the movies, Rhona realized psychiatrists didn’t offer opinions but waited until their patients couldn’t bear the silence and spilled out their troubles. She tried the technique. They sat and stared at one another.

  “As I told you, Hollis is Tessa’s friend more than mine, but we both agreed Hollis married Paul because she thought it was time to marry and, according to my wife, he was a handsome man with sex appeal. Tessa said Hollis has been preoccupied and depressed recently, but she didn’t pry. She figured eventually Hollis would confide in her about whatever was bothering her.”

  “I thought prying was a professional skill you psychiatrists prided yourselves on having.”

  The doctor bristled. “My wife is not a psychiatrist—she’s a surgeon and, incidentally, psychiatrists do not pry. Anyway, Hollis was not my patient, she’s our friend. Friends exchange confidences, but it has to go both ways or it doesn’t work,” he lectured. “Tessa and I relate so very, very splendidly—Tessa would never have anything to confide. If there was trouble in the Robertsons’ relationship, I expect loyalty to Paul and the Anglo-Saxon stiff upper lip tradition prevented Hollis from sharing the details with Tessa.”

  His tone of voice when he asserted how successful his marriage was alerted Rhona, and she made a mental note to keep his comment in mind when she interviewed his wife.

  “Was your wife a friend of Reverend Robertson’s?”

  “No.”

  “Would she have contacted Reverend Robertson in any professional capacity?”

  “Professional capacity,” he repeated, and shook his head. “Tessa is a cardio-thoracic surgeon. She isn’t the sort of doctor a man who runs marathons has anything to do with.”

  “One more question. I have heard Reverend Robertson characterized as a judgmental Old Testament Christian. Speaking as a psychiatrist, give me an idea how such a man rationalized his womanizing?”

  “I didn’t know Paul. I don’t generalize about people I don’t know.”

  Time to appeal to his professional acumen. Nothing like a little ego stroking. “I realize that, but I’m at a loss to understand how a minister lived with himself knowing he was a womanizer.”

  Dr. Yantha randomly tapped the fingers of both hands on the desk as if playing a piece of music audible only to him. “I can’t speak about Paul, but, if he’s like most of us, a traumatic event in his childhood probably shaped him.” He warmed to his theme. “Perhaps he required rigid boundaries around his life to protect himself from himself. He may have needed women to constantly reassure him of his desirability, or he may have considered sex a means of exerting power. In a convoluted way, he may have told himself he was ministering to the women. I’ve dealt with more than my share of philanderers and sex offenders, and power is most often the motivating force.”

  His fingers stopped, and he ostentatiously lifted his arm to bend his head over his watch.

  Message received. Rhona had more questions, but first she wanted to delve more deeply into his past.

  Eight

  Being jarred awake in the middle of the night by her alarm le
ft Hollis feeling even more sleep deprived and grouchy than she’d felt after Sunday’s and Monday’s insomnia. Her bones ached. She felt as if a monster magnet anchored her to the mattress. Nervy and gritty-eyed, she groaned when MacTee’s whining dragged her out of bed.

  Wednesday, the day she’d promised herself she’d investigate her husband’s bedroom, the inner sanctum, the forbidden room she’d never visited when he was alive. She had to do it—no matter what dark secrets awaited her. Wednesday was also the first of the two evenings Paul would lie in state in the funeral home.

  Out of bed, she wavered in front of her cupboard. Indecisiveness washed over her. What was appropriate?

  The doorbell heralded Elsie’s arrival.

  Hollis shrugged into her dressing gown and dragged herself to the kitchen, where she said hello to Elsie and stepped outside with MacTee promising him a longer walk later. When she came back in, she found Elsie tracing the broken door frame.

  “What happened here, dear?” Elsie poked her finger into a deep gouge.

  “An attempted break-in, but the burglar set off the alarm. I’m calling the locksmith.”

  “Poor dear, as if you haven’t had enough to contend with—I’ll deal with the locksmith.”

  An hour later, she’d dressed, walked MacTee, sipped two cups of coffee, eaten a poached egg and watched the locksmith install a deadbolt. She felt better. Her organizing Virgo kicked in and said enough procrastination. Detective Simpson had said she’d send someone around to pick up his papers, but Hollis wanted to have a look at them first. Wanted to have time to unearth more of Paul’s secret life, no matter how horrible. Something was hidden in the house, something the killer wanted, and she intended to find out what that something was.

  She poured a third cup of coffee, rummaged around in Paul’s downstairs study, picked the ring of keys out of his desk drawer and marched upstairs. The coffee parked on the straight chair outside Paul’s door, she remembered how he’d insisted she leave his clean laundry there for him to deal with. She tried keys until she found one that worked.

  The door swung open. A gray room. No, two rooms. A second small, windowless room opened out of the first. She flipped on the overhead light and stepped through the bedroom into the smaller room rigged out as an office. The small, windowless space closed around her like a coffin.

  Claustrophobia, a problem she’d coped with since her childhood, raised her temperature and made breathing difficult. It would be possible to work here only if she gritted her teeth, breathed deeply and always faced the door.

  Gray dominated: gray walls, government surplus gray filing cabinets, gray steel shelving, gray metal desk and a gray waste basket. No pictures decorated the walls and no carpet covered the floor. Three cardboard bankers’ boxes, a black typewriter case and a black desk chair completed the dismal ensemble.

  Claustrophobia triumphed.

  She rushed from the windowless room to the bedroom, snapped the roller blind, which clattered to the top of the frame, and threw the window open. Deep breaths of sparkling spring air. She filled her lungs repeatedly. Gradually, her panic abated as the air worked its magic.

  Before she pushed herself to re-enter the monastic cell to investigate the desk and read the files, she surveyed the bedroom. Paul had once told her his bedroom furniture had belonged to his father.

  A worn navy and red oriental carpet lay beside the bed. A pair of black-framed steel engravings of battlefield scenes saved the gray walls from monotony. An old-fashioned tailored maroon spread piped with gray shrouded the narrow bed. On the bedside table, Paul had pushed aside a lamp with a clear glass bead base and a once-white silk shade to accommodate a pile of books. More books stacked on the floor beside the bed provided the single deviant note in a room devoted to rigid order.

  Nothing cluttered the heavily varnished yellow oak dresser. Inside, socks, rolled and arranged by colour, handkerchiefs with corners neatly aligned, a wooden box with cuff links lined up like soldiers: anal retentive didn’t begin to do Paul justice. In the cupboard, the shirts, jackets and trousers were each grouped together facing to the right, with the hangers’ hooks turned in. All the shoes, polished with laces tied in symmetrical bows, maintained their shape with the help of wooden shoetrees.

  Interesting though this might be, the files weren’t in the bedroom. Time to ignore her claustrophobia and force herself into the office. Inside, she swivelled to face the open doorway, sucked down the tepid coffee and began.

  The top drawer revealed serried ranks of pens, pencils and paper clips. Deeper in the drawer, wrapped in a piece of chamois, she found a black leather key case with a key she judged to be for a safety deposit box. With frequent glances to assure herself the escape route remained clear, she searched the other drawers for bankbooks or anything else to indicate the location of the safety deposit box and found nothing.

  In the second drawer, Paul had stashed a draft of When Push Comes To Shove but no file cards or research material. He’d once confessed he used file cards rather than a computer because he deeply distrusted computers and believed nosy troublemakers and hackers accessed them at will. Her eyes swept along the bookshelves. The bankers’ boxes held promise, but they were filled with files—dozens and dozens of files. She was certain the cards existed: a compulsive researcher like Paul didn’t destroy anything he took the trouble to write down.

  Personal documents filled the third drawer. She knew she should read them instead of searching for Paul’s file cards, but this was where she might find more damning evidence of Paul’s character and she had to work up her courage. Instead, she rolled her chair backward to a filing cabinet.

  The first file folder in the top drawer, labelled “Acknowledgements”, held a list of the people Paul had intended to thank for their help in researching When Push Comes to Shove. Running her eye down the list of names, addresses and phone numbers, she wondered if Paul had included everyone he’d interviewed. Carson MacDonald, Paul’s editor at the Independent Academic Press, would know. She’d phone him. Before she could change her mind, she dialled the old-fashioned black phone.

  Macdonald sounded surprised to hear from her. No wonder. What kind of a woman would make a call like this before her husband was buried? She soldiered on and inquired whether Paul would have included everyone he’d consulted when he made his list.

  “Paul was punctilious about thanking everyone.” There was an edge to his voice. “Not because he was afraid one of his interviewees would feel left out, but to ensure the individual would be there if he required his expertise again.” He must have realized how nasty the remark sounded, particularly in the circumstances. “Sorry, I’ve had a bad morning. Never mind me, how are you coping?”

  “As the cliché goes—as well as can be expected. Don’t apologize. I’m sure you nailed Paul’s motives exactly.”

  They briefly discussed the book and its possible publication date before the conversation ended.

  The list was long. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. Phoning each person would take ages and probably yield nothing. When she read names and addresses of correctional institution employees, social workers, psychiatrists, professionals employed by the Elizabeth Fry and John Howard societies, teachers, counsellors at half-way houses and staff at several psychiatric hospitals, she marvelled at the variety and shuddered to think how much work lay ahead.

  The list was chronological rather than alphabetical. Quentin Quigley, chief of psychiatry at Kingston’s maximum-security prison, Kingston Pen, was first. No stopping now. Sleep would have to wait. But, given Macdonald’s reaction, she rethought her approach: she wasn’t a cold, calculating woman, and she didn’t want to come across that way.

  She fought through the secretarial defensive shield and reached Dr. Quigley.

  “I’m the widow of Rev. Paul Robertson, who was murdered on the weekend. When he died, he’d finished a book on the relationship between a society which forces homosexuals to hide their sexual orientation and individuals who commit cr
imes to protect the secret. I suspect the police think he was murdered because he knew too much about someone. I believe Paul’s killer thought Paul possessed incriminating evidence and killed Paul to shut him up.”

  “I’m sorry, sorry about your husband, but what does this have to do with me?”

  “I’m coming to that. Because I edited the first draft of his work, the Independent Academic Press has suggested I prepare Paul’s book, When Push Comes to Shove, for publication. Even though this is a bad time for me, I feel an obligation to Paul to complete the work and have it published while people remember him.” Should she confess? She twisted the phone cord around her finger. Better to be honest. “The truth is, I’m terrified. I’m afraid if the killer learns I’m working on it, he’ll think I’m familiar with whatever my husband knew and kill me too.”

  “You’re basing a lot on supposition. And . . . I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “Your name is first on the list of people Paul wanted to thank for helping him. I understand about patient confidentiality, but if you could tell me if you talked about specific men and women . . .”

  Hollis heard him clear his throat and, before he said anything, she rushed on. “I don’t mean you should provide names, but if you tell me whether the individuals you discussed are in prison or in the community, it would help me narrow the search. I haven’t unearthed the code to match the fictitious names with real names and, until I do, this is the only way I can think to proceed. If you tell me about your conversation with my husband, I may be able to isolate the name of the person who gave him information that provided a motive for murder. I realize it’s months since he spoke to you, and you may not recall the conversation.”

  “It sounds impractical.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Rather like the proverbial needle in the haystack.”

  She felt like congratulating him for his originality but said nothing.

  “As a matter of fact, I do remember Reverend Robertson. I questioned his motives. His interest struck me as prurient. We didn’t hit if off. I’m amazed my name was on his acknowledgement list. I don’t tolerate his kind. It was a short interview. I didn’t tell him anything.”