Seaweed on Ice

by Stanley Evans

  Convincing Battle that I wasn’t just an accomplished liar hadn’t been difficult. Now he was thinking things over. I could almost read his mind. Battle had been practising law in Victoria for more than 40 years. For the first time in his long career he’d been made to look like a fool—and by a Native policeman at that. Well, he wouldn’t stand for it. With some effort, he calmed himself and sat back down at his desk. I watched him do some slow deep-breathing exercise—taking a deep breath in through his nose, holding the air in his lungs for a count of 10, then slowly exhaling through his mouth. He seemed to lower his shoulders an inch. He repeated this, his hands resting loosely on his lap. The technique seemed to work; he was ready to speak. He looked me over as if I were a worm in his cucumber sandwich and said, “Let me get this straight, Seaweed.”

  “Sure,” I replied pleasantly.

  With the air of a prosecutor addressing a hostile witness, he said, “You’ve said, Sergeant Seaweed, that on the evening in question you went to Mrs. Tranter’s house with Mr. Lofthouse and witnessed the signing of Mavis Tranter’s last will and testament?”

  “That’s correct. I watched her sign it, then I signed it myself, along with Grace Sleight.”

  Battle’s pose of courtroom detachment vanished. “That is impossible!” he exploded. “What you are saying could not have happened, except under duress.”

  “There was no duress.”

  “I was the Tranters’ lawyer for many years,” he declared, addressing me as if I were hard of hearing. “During that time three wills were prepared by me, personally. The first Tranter will was made in 1950. The Tranters came to my office. They appointed one another mutual beneficiaries. Upon the death of the surviving spouse the remainder of their estate was to go to a designated charity.”

  I interrupted the lawyer’s narrative. “Mind if I ask which charity?”

  “I certainly do mind!” Battle retorted. “That’s a private matter between my client and me.”

  “Your former client.”

  He slammed a fist on his desk and shouted, “Damn your bloody impertinence! I won’t be spoken to like that in my own office.”

  His bluster sounded pretty thin. All the same, I didn’t want to spend all day sparring with him to get at real facts. “Fine,” I said, getting up to leave. “Tell your side of story to the Law Society. I’m sure they’ll give you an attentive hearing.”

  Battle stood up quickly and I heard his intake of breath. He spoke more quietly. “I apologize, Seaweed. Please sit down. Our feelings are getting the better of us.”

  I stood near the door, watching him.

  Battle swallowed, “Look, perhaps you’d like coffee? It’s time for my usual cup.” He shot his shirtsleeve cuff and looked at his watch—a thin gold oval with a sharkskin strap. His wife had probably given it to him on their 25th.

  Suddenly I felt sorry for him. It isn’t easy, being a good liar. I liked his face. There was an inherent good nature in it, laugh lines around his mouth and eyes. He was wearing a pinstriped charcoal double-breasted suit and a white linen shirt with a silk tie, a suitable outfit for an advocate nearing the end of a distinguished career. In all that time he had made only one serious professional mistake. And now he wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

  A clerk brought in a tray—Doulton cups and saucers, silver spoons and a sterling coffee service. Battle poured my coffee straight up. He helped himself to two heaping spoonfuls of sugar and a generous measure of thick cream and stirred the mixture for several seconds longer than necessary. He was still trying to compose himself.

  The lawyer took a sip. “These four walls have heard a lot of secrets over the years, Mr. Seaweed.”

  “It will save us both a lot of skirmishing if I tell you right out that I know a lot about the man you call Eric Tranter,” I said. “I know what his real name was, before he changed it.”

  I saw in his astonishment how Battle’s face must have looked when he was a child, and how it would probably look when he died. His mouth opened but no words came out. In a low voice he said, “All right. Let’s play it your way. Who was Eric Tranter?”

  “The man who called himself Eric Tranter was born in Cheshire, England. His real name was Sir Hugh Baineston. Mrs Tranter was, in reality, Lady Baineston, the former Dorothy Jane Booth. They switched identities with their servants in Germany at the outbreak of war and fled to Canada in the 1940s.”

  Battle sighed. The time for subterfuge had ended. “The Bainestons didn’t confide in me initially,” he said. “It was a long time before I found out.”

  He paused, and I didn’t interrupt. Battle was remembering things from a long time ago. “A man calling himself Eric Tranter came to see me in 1950 and asked me to prepare wills for himself and his wife. I thought Tranter was an ordinary workman. He looked and dressed like an artisan, rather shabby, with nicotine-stained fingers. But he was a great tall fellow with one of those clipped, officer-class British accents. I assumed he was a man who had come down in the world—clogs-to-clogs in three generations, that sort of thing. But it was none of my business. The Tranters needed wills. I did what they wanted and thought that was the end of it.

  “It was 20 years before I saw Tranter again.” Battle shook his head. “He looked dreadful. Pasty skin, gaunt. He was living as a recluse, hardly left his house. He asked me if I could keep a secret. Then he told me his story.” Battle stopped speaking to gauge my reaction.

  “Go on, please.”

  “Tranter told me that he had been living under an alias. He was really an English baronet, Sir Hugh Baineston. Before the war, in Berlin, he’d amassed works of art worth a fortune. He acquired some of this art from Jews dishonestly and was sacked from his job with the British Embassy because of it. In 1939 Baineston and his wife left Berlin for England. Two servants followed them, a married couple called Tranter. Before the party reached the Dutch border, war was declared in Europe. Because of the mess he was in, Baineston had lost diplomatic immunity and couldn’t cross into Holland. It was ironic, yes? Baineston was in the same boat as the Jews he’d betrayed. Europe’s roads were bad, clogged with refugees. The Bainestons and the Tranters were trapped. In desperation they holed up temporarily near Mönchengladbach.

  “Baineston’s art collection was stored in waterproof boxes. Baineston and Tranter hid it all in a bunker they’d dug themselves. When the time was right, the four of them—the two Bainestons, the two Tranters—tried to get over the border. It was night. The Bainestons went first, across a section of cleared forest, and made it into the cover of trees on the Dutch side. The Tranters were unlucky. A dog patrol sniffed them out and they were killed by border guards—gunned down trying to climb a fence.”

  Derek Battle’s coffee was getting cold. “Well, there was nothing the Bainestons could do about the Tranters. Eventually, they managed to reach France, and they stayed there for a bit before they made it to England. At some point they hit upon the idea of assuming the Tranters’ identities and moving to Canada.

  “Hugh Baineston was resourceful, and clever. He waited out the war, then returned to Mönchengladbach. How exactly he recovered his art and got it to Canada I don’t know, but Sir Hugh and Lady Dorothy Baineston became Mr. and Mrs. Tranter.

  “But as Baineston got older, facing his own death, his art collection began to haunt him. Every time he looked at it he saw the faces of murdered Jews. So he came to me again. Told me his idea. He wanted to ease his conscience and began to sell off his collection slowly. The money, every cent of it, went to charity. I was able to help him. By the time Sir Hugh died, he had disposed of art worth a fortune.”

  Battle poured himself another cup of coffee. “Lady Baineston had an eye disorder. Sir Hugh looked after her himself. Towards the end of his life, Sir Hugh also eased his conscience doing charity work. Several days a week he served meals in a soup kitchen for down-and-outers.”

  Battle’s hands were gripping the arms of his chair. He leaned forward and said, “Baineston’s art didn’t go int
o one big sale. It was consigned slowly, so as not to depress the market. Just before Sir Hugh died, he told me that there was still about a million dollars worth of art left to dispose of. Do you know what happened to it, Sergeant?”

  “I think so. Correct me if I’m wrong. The real Eric Tranter had a friend called Micklethwaite. Tranter and Micklethwaite were domestic servants who’d known each other since childhood. When Micklethwaite and his wife emigrated from England to Canada, they somehow found out that the Tranters were imposters.”

  “Correct.”

  “How did the Micklethwaites find that out?”

  “Through the Salvation Army’s Family Tracing Service. See, Eric Tranter and James Micklethwaite were related—they were married to sisters,” Battle said. “The Tranters were killed at the outbreak of war—but were officially reported as missing, not dead. After the war, Mrs. Micklethwaite contacted the Salvation Army in England, hoping to find her sister. The English Sally Ann search produced ambiguous results. The Tranters appeared to have survived the war, but were untraceable. Still, the Micklethwaites never lost hope.

  “In 1950, the Micklethwaites immigrated to Canada. At some point, Mrs. Micklethwaite contacted the Sally Ann’s tracing service here in Canada. Bingo! They got a match. The Micklethwaites immediately looked the Tranters up. But instead of meeting a sister and a brother-in-law, the Micklethwaites met imposters!”

  The lawyer smiled and went on, “Actually, there were a couple of occasions when the cat almost got out of the bag. When the Micklethwaites discovered that the Tranters were frauds, they were ready to denounce them. I talked the Micklethwaites out of it.”

  “You talked them out of it?”

  “Yes, and I don’t regret it,” said Battle, unabashed. “When the Micklethwaites knew the full story, they agreed to keep the lid on. The second, lesser threat came when Richard Hendrix showed up—the real Mrs. Tranter’s nephew, Richard. But Richard had never met his aunt before, so he was none the wiser. In time, Lady Baineston became fond of Richard, Lord knows why. But she made provision for him in her will. Do you need to hear any more?”

  I stood up and stretched across the desk. I shook Battle’s hand. “No,” I said, “I don’t need to hear any more.”

  But even before I reached the door, I thought of something else. “Why did Lady Baineston consign the drawings to auction under her real name, instead of Tranter?”

  Battle reached in a drawer for a box of tissues, blew his nose unnecessarily and walked around the room before dropping the tissue into a wastebasket. At last he said, “Look here, Seaweed. There’s a perfectly good explanation, but I ask for your word as a gentleman that if I tell you it’ll go no further.”

  “No can do. I’ve a pretty good idea why, in any case.”

  “All right. And that reason is?”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “If it’s the reason I think it is, you’re off the hook.”

  “To avoid taxes,” Battle said promptly. “The Bainestons figured out a way to sell their art without leaving a paper trail. The Bainestons wanted all of their money to fund charity, not the fraction left after that crowd in Ottawa got their share.”

  He’d told his story like a man, and I was proud of him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Maureen was backing her car away from the band office when I showed up at the Warrior Reserve. She flashed her headlights, so I went over. She wound her window down. “Chief Numcamais wants to see you. Says it’s urgent.”

  “How come you never phoned me?”

  “I did. Left you a message. Is there something wrong with your phone, or what?”

  “Yeah. It’s on the fritz. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m getting a replacement. What’s up?”

  “I told you,” Maureen said.

  “Chief Numcamais wants to see me? That’s it?”

  “I think so. Except the chief sounded … I think he said something about whales?”

  A group of young boys were beating drums and dancing outside the door of the longhouse. The Warrior Reserve’s normal population is about 350, but today there were probably three times that number crowded on our land. I checked my cellphone while I walked down to the beach. It was dead.

  A few hardy souls were partying near the water, roasting hot dogs and warming themselves at campfires as they maintained their vigil for spirit questers. Freddy Albert was absent from the reserve, and his boat was missing from the wharf.

  I thought for a minute or two, then went to my cabin, put a freshly charged battery in my cellphone, installed new batteries in my flashlight, dressed warmly in woollen clothes, got into my MG and set out for Sooke.

  The drive from Victoria to Sooke normally takes an hour, but I blew a Michelin at Langford. While a mechanic fixed the flat, I purchased a loaf of bread, half a dozen eggs, some bacon, a can of beef chili and one of luncheon meat and a bunch of bananas. It was after dark when I pulled into an empty parking lot near Sombrio Beach.

  A Parks Canada notice said:

  PARK USERS ARE ADVISED AGAINST LEAVING VALUABLES IN CARS. NO OVERNIGHT CAMPING.

  I left the MG unlocked to save broken windows and followed my flashlight’s beam along a seldom-used trail through cold, dark woods. By the time I’d walked to Chief Numcamais’ cabin, the beam was a dim glow. Nobody replied when I hailed the house. I went in. The stove was cold and there was no sign of the chief or his pet raven. I lit the stove and made myself at home. After a dinner of chili, a banana and a cup of tea, I lay down on the chief’s bed and had a good night’s sleep.

  I awoke at daybreak, got the stove going and looked outside. There had been no fresh snow overnight. I breakfasted on bacon and eggs, built up the chief’s woodpile and left the cabin the way I’d found it. With sandwiches in a zip-loc bag, plus bananas and a bottle of water, I set out to follow the chief’s tracks. His prints lay close together and showed heavy heel strikes, as befitted a very old man. He’d moved along steadily, though—I could tell by the little clumps of snow kicked up by the swing of his legs.

  First Nations people have selectively logged this section of coastal forest for a thousand years or more. Many giant cedars showed signs of cultural modification by ancient bark weavers, who had used the shredded or beaten cedarbark to make clothing and mats. Undulating terrain made walking easy. Apart from isolated clumps of salal and Oregon grape, there was little undergrowth. The chief’s trail ran parallel with the shore for the most part, then his footprints suddenly looped inland and ceased entirely before a dense thicket of bushes and loose rock. He had left no back trail, so obviously there was a way ahead. It took me a while to find it, though, and it involved a bit of climbing, a bit of crawling and a lot of squeezing through narrow spaces. Eventually I came out on a treed escarpment overlooking the sea.

  With a telescope I might have been able to see my Coast Salish cousins and their villages, 30 miles distant on the U.S. side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As it was, I could just make out a couple of sailboats and a barge under tow by a slow-moving tug. Then I saw, closer in, a 16-foot aluminum runabout with three people aboard, inward bound. Immediately below me was the beach the chief and I had previously visited. I spotted a heavy knotted rope, one end tethered to an arbutus. The rope disappeared down a narrow hole. I knew where it had to lead.

  The rope was old, and it looked a bit rotten. Throwing caution to the wind, I used it to lower myself to the bottom of the cave.

  Chief Numcamais had lit a fire down there and was seated beside it, smoking a pipe and gazing impassively into the flames. “I’ve been expecting you, Silas. I need company. It’s not good for a man to leave this world on his own.”

  The cave was reasonably warm—I imagined its inside temperature was fairly constant, year round.

  “There’s a boat heading this way with three people on it,” I said. “They’ll be able to land here if they want to.”

  Seemingly unperturbed, the chief took a tea kettle from the fire and filled two enamel mugs. I took
one and warmed my hands on it till the liquid was cool enough to drink. I toasted a Spam sandwich on the fire and offered it to the chief, but he had a bag of dried mushrooms and said that was all he needed.

  He ground some of the mushrooms to powder between his palms and dumped it into our mugs. “Drink up,” he said.

  The potion tasted foul, but I did as I was told. By the time I’d washed the mushrooms down with unadulterated tea, my heart was racing …

  Chief Numcamais was addressing prayers to the Sun, who rewarded good behaviour, when souls emerged from the shadows and walked into the firelight from between the whale ribs. I knew they were life souls because many of them were tiny replicas of people I’d known before they died. They were wearing Chilcat blankets, which surprised me, because Coast Salish ghost people generally wear Hudson’s Bay blankets on their travels. The life souls came on toward the fire in a little procession, one after the other, behind the life soul and the heart soul owned by Chief Numcamais.

  I felt sorry, because after death the life souls of all but infants go to the land of the dead. Heart souls perish with the body. Chief Numcamais’s time was up. He was old and ready to go. It occurred to me that those whale bones and stalactites created a nice cathedral effect. If a man had to leave this life, this quiet cave was as good a departure point as any.

  Eight life souls went into the little house at the back of the cave and returned with a coffin that they placed in front of us. The chief had spent the best part of a year carving that coffin, and he’d done a first-class job. It would be completely watertight, with beautiful bentwood joints.

  Numcamais had been smiling with his eyes closed. Now he opened his eyes and said to me, “Chief Alphonse told me you’ve been reading about Edward Curtis.”

  “That’s right. I’ve got one of his books at home.”

  “Well, if you know about Edward Curtis you’ll know about George Hunt as well,” the chief said, taking a stone tobacco pipe from his pocket and stuffing its bowl with dark shag. He was doing everything slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. The life souls were in no hurry either. They made themselves comfortable around us.