Let's Kill Uncle

by Rohan O'Grady; Rohan O’Grady

  Horrified but fascinated, they came closer to have a good look.

  ‘Ugh!’ said Christie, turning away from a cloud of big blue-bottle flies, ‘poor One-ear. I don’t know how he can eat anything so awful!’

  Barnaby shook his head in sympathy.

  ‘I guess,’ he said sadly, ‘if you get hungry enough you can eat anything.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I couldn’t get that hungry,’ said Christie. ‘Come on, let’s go. It makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Me too.’

  They raced to a stream and were having a cool drink when they were startled to see a large-eyed doe tiptoe to the water.

  The animal lowered her beautiful head and sipped daintily. Huge ferns waved gently about her narrow brown brow, and at her trim hooves, trilliums, like white stars, dotted the mossy carpet of the bank. The sun, dappling though the trees, twinkled on the dark waters and the doe’s nostrils quivered delicately, as though she were a permanent, but sensitive, living part of the forest landscape.

  Then, catching their scent, she moved her nervous ears back and forth in alarm. With two huge springs, she disappeared like a wood nymph.

  The children hardly dared breathe in their wonder.

  ‘That’s the prettiest thing I ever saw,’ whispered Barnaby.

  ‘I could have watched it all day,’ said Christie in a hushed voice, ‘if only it hadn’t seen us.’

  It was the sister of One-ear’s lunch.

  They loved One-ear, and they believed that all One-ear needed to complete his happiness was to accept and return their love.

  Like the woman enraptured of the drunkard, they were convinced he would change. They would transform him.

  One-ear would give up his evil ways and bizarre eating habits. He would, in short, reform, adoring them as they adored him, and he would wax fat on a lovely diet of cinnamon buns and candy, drinking raspberry vinegar ins-tead of blood, and they would all live happily ever after.

  With the stubborn blindness of love, they simply refused to believe otherwise.

  On his part, One-ear detested them more heartily each time he saw them, and the thought of their gummy little hands and licorice-laden breaths made him wince.

  Poor Desmond, who had been driven off earlier with stones and shouts, was invited to join the children in their afternoon pilgrimage to the little church.

  They sat, as they always sat in church, quietly and seriously.

  It was no use, Christie reported, even trying to get Sergeant Coulter’s gun. The same, she imagined, went for Constable Browning’s.

  Barnaby sat gnawing his lower lip.

  ‘You know,’ he said finally, ‘we don’t have to get the guns they wear around their waists. There are guns on the police launch.’

  Christie brightened.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘there’s a locker there with big guns in it on the launch. Once, when I was on the wharf, I looked in and I saw Constable Browning cleaning them.’

  He paused, his face saddened.

  ‘Then he put them back in the locker and locked it with a big padlock.’

  Disgruntled, Christie sagged against poor Desmond.

  ‘Well, that’s out.’ Then she had one of her ideas.

  Only last week Barnaby had fixed Mrs Brooks’s old phonograph which had been silent for twenty years. He was remarkably adept with anything mechanical. Christie, who was all thumbs, looked upon it as a form of magic.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘It’s easy. You’ll just have to learn how to pick locks. Mr Brooks has a drawer full at the store. You had better start practising now. Get a hairpin; that’s how they do it in the movies.’

  Barnaby agreed to start that very afternoon.

  Ah, but there was another problem.

  Sergeant Coulter, he said, always left the launch when it docked at the Island. But, and it was a big but, Constable Browning stuck to the boat like a barnacle.

  ‘Well, we can’t murder him too,’ said Christie.

  He was not in a class with their wonderful Sergeant, but the children were fond of gentle Constable Browning. Besides, he was bigger than Sergeant Coulter or even Uncle.

  ‘I know!’ Barnaby was radiant. ‘You fall off the wharf. Constable Browning will have to jump in and save you. While he is, I’ll pick the lock and get the gun and some bullets. We’ll have Desmond standing right there on the wharf, and I’ll hand him the gun and he can hide it in the wharf shed. Then, at night we’ll sneak down and get it and put it in a safe place.’

  Christie thought for a minute and then turned to him with an alarmed scowl.

  ‘I’m not going to fall off any wharf ! I can’t swim.’

  ‘You’ll have to,’ said Barnaby. ‘I can’t because I’ll have to pick the lock. You’re too much of a dummy to learn.’

  He paused and added reassuringly: ‘There’s nothing to worry about. They give people medals for jumping off wharves and saving kids. I’ll bet Constable Browning would love to.’

  Christie remembered Uncle’s blazing eyes, like peepholes into hell. Anything was better than falling into his hands, and reluctantly she agreed.

  Suddenly Barnaby shook his head and leaned on Desmond’s other shoulder. There were times when it seemed as if every man’s hand was against them.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said, his lower lip thrust out.

  ‘Why not?’

  He leaned across Desmond and looked her straight in the eye.

  ‘Christie, even if we do get the gun, and even if we do kill Uncle, what’s the use? If Sergeant Coulter finds out, he’ll hang us.’

  An awful vision of a noose swinging from a handy tree and Sergeant Coulter standing at the foot of it, looking very cross indeed, flashed before Christie’s eyes.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do? We can’t just sit around and wait for Uncle to kill us.’

  Sensing her distress, poor Desmond turned his empty, lucid sweet stare upon her.

  Christie rubbed her head affectionately on his shoulder and then nearly leaped from the pew. She had another idea. Clapping her hands together, she cried,

  ‘I’ve got it!’

  ‘What?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘We’ll blame it on Desmond!’

  Barnaby looked at her with honest admiration. There were times when she seemed almost inspired.

  ‘I never would of even thought of that. Golly, that’s a wonderful idea!’

  They skipped all the way back to the goat-lady’s, holding Desmond’s hands between them.

  They helped carry milk, bread, butter and fresh garden vegetables over to his shack for him. Nothing was too good for their friend, poor Desmond.

  The next afternoon as they stood on the wharf watching the police launch dock, Barnaby turned to Christie.

  Picking locks was, he said, as easy as pie.

  Poor Desmond was posted beside the shed as arranged, and it was a pair of contented little conspirators who smiled innocently at Sergeant Coulter as he strode up the dock.

  In the launch they could see Constable Browning lounging and reading a book.

  Things went like clockwork, although at the last minute Christie balked at jumping and Barnaby had to push her.

  He marked the spot by pointing his finger at the rising bubbles and then ran for Constable Browning.

  Constable Browning threw down his copy of Astronomy Made Easy and raced to the dock edge.

  ‘Where! Where!’ he shouted.

  Barnaby looked stupidly at the water and then at his finger. The bubbles were all gone.

  He pointed in the general direction and began to scream.

  Fully clothed, even to his hat, the Mountie dived and Barnaby watched the flashing spurs disappear into the murky depth. The hat came up and presently Constable Browning followed.

  Barnaby was now hysterical. He pointed to the left.

  ‘Over there, I think,’ he sobbed.

  Like a military Undine, and this time not empty-handed, Constable Browning surfaced again.

 
Sergeant Coulter arrived in time to haul his dripping constable and a sodden, yellow-haired bundle onto the dock.

  When Christie regained consciousness she was half-covered with a blanket, while two panic-stricken, scarlet-faced, sweating policeman performed the Holger-Neilson method of respiration.

  She brought up buckets of foamy, bitter brine, and was finally carried, her head rolling listlessly on Sergeant Coulter’s shoulder, to the store, where Mr and Mrs Brooks immediately put her to bed.

  She spent the night in Barnaby’s bed, while Barnaby slept in her little carved cot at the goat-lady’s.

  Just before she was tucked in finally for the night, Barnaby leaned over and whispered: ‘Bad luck! It wouldn’t have worked anyway. I got into the boat okay, but it was a combination lock.’

  Christie looked at him fiercely.

  ‘Listen!’ she hissed, ‘The next time somebody has to fall off the wharf it’s your turn.’

  The next day she still felt rather ill, and leaned shakily on Barnaby’s shoulder as they left the store to play.

  Sergeant Coulter was waiting for them.

  ‘I want a word with you, sonny.’

  ‘Me?’ said Barnaby.

  ‘What were you doing on the launch yesterday?’

  ‘The police launch?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘That’s right. I saw you as I was running down the wharf.’

  ‘Oh, then,’ said Barnaby. ‘I was looking for a life jacket to throw to Constable Browning, in case he couldn’t swim.’

  The Mountie nodded and patted Barnaby’s shoulder. It was a sensible thing to do. The boy had his wits about him.

  But their session with Sergeant Coulter was not over.

  ‘You are both to stay off the wharf. You understand? And don’t either of you ever set foot on that police launch.’

  He took each of them by an arm and led them to where there was a view of Uncle’s cottage.

  He pointed across the little cove.

  ‘You see those pilings away over there? About a quarter of a mile from the beach at the foot of the cottage?’

  The children nodded.

  ‘There are only a few dangerous places on the Island. That’s one of them. It’s called Death Beach. You don’t go there, you don’t go on the wharf, and you don’t go in the forest. Okay? You understand?’

  They nodded.

  ‘And we don’t go on the police launch,’ added Christie.

  Sergeant Coulter looked at her quickly to see if she was being cheeky, but she was merely making a statement.

  ‘Good kids.’ Sergeant Coulter patted their heads and gave each of them a nickel.

  The bit about the police launch was rather redundant, for, as Barnaby later remarked, it was impossible to get on the launch unless they went on the wharf.

  They had already been to the forest many times, so they ignored that particular piece of advice.

  And it had never occurred to them to go to Death Beach. It was too close to Uncle’s cottage for comfort.

  They recalled vaguely that both Mr Brooks and the goat-lady had warned them never to go near it.

  Now they were curious about Death Beach and stood for a long time staring across the water. What a sinister name!

  There was a steep cliff crowned by twisting, peeling arbutus trees. At the foot of the cliff they could see an old rowboat, turned upside down and looking like a dead whale.

  In the water were four rows of pilings, standing out like rotten teeth. On the rest of the beaches of the Island the waves pounded regularly, but on Death Beach they swirled and eddied, and there was a dull boom-boom resounding over the waters as a loose log pounded against the pilings. Past it they could see Uncle’s cosy cottage.

  They asked Mr Brooks about Death Beach.

  Yes, he said, Sergeant Coulter was quite right to remind them they must never go there. It was the most treacherous spot on the Island. The pilings were the remains of a jetty that had been built many years before by one of the first settlers on the Island. Why he had picked that spot nobody knew, except that the water was so deep there perhaps he thought large boats could anchor.

  It had always been called Death Beach. Even the Indians had called it that in their own language, long before the white man came.

  There were strange riptides and currents in the waters of Death Beach and they must never, never, never go near that beach.

  ONCE, to the Pacific Coast Indians, the passages of water between the islands had been like the canals of Venice. Through them the giant, lynx-eyed aristocrats, the Haidas, had paddled a thousand miles south in their sixty-foot war canoes, on slave-raiding sorties.

  At one time they had all passed through here, Nootkas, Songhees, Kwakiutls, Salish, dressed like Homeric heroes in their barbarian regalia. With their proud helmets of cedar and copper, tasseled with ermine, their capes of sable and mink, their garments of cedar bark-cloth dyed in harsh primary colours, and their ceremonial robes of dog hair woven with the tufts of the mountain goat, they had paddled through the bright straits, and sometimes they stopped.

  On the very beaches where the children now played so innocently, the warriors had paused to gorge themselves on tyee salmon. Their dugouts, bearing their haughty clan crests, the emblems of the raven, the otter, the killer whale, were dragged up to the beach, while their owners prepared for feasting.

  On these beaches they had dug pits, piled them with stones and heated them until they were white hot. They set out their five-foot wooden cooking vessels, carved with beaked thunderbirds, and filled them with water. Then they dropped the hot stones in and boiled their repasts, ungutted salmon, clams, mussels, venison and berries. Their sauce and their favourite delicacy was the foul oolichan oil, which no white man could stomach, and which they relished like manna.

  When they were gorged, their drums began a muted, ominous roll. The warriors recited tales of their greatness, their victories in war and their transient glory.

  Here, in their potlatches, the symbolic belittling of their friends and enemies by their generosity, they had broken their priceless copper disks, burned their Hudson’s Bay blankets, smashed their rifles and joyfully impoverished themselves. Here, with stone clubs they had dispatched their slaves to shame their guests by their largesse.

  Here they had been and from here they departed, their tenancy leaving no more mark than an army of ghosts. Only the abandoned goddess D’Sonoqua stood deep in a forgotten village in the forest, carved from the living cedar, her mighty arms outstretched for children.

  Only three generations ago the Indian reigned where now Barnaby and Christie played. Two children, innocent of mankind, past or present, children who delighted in finding agates and tiny pink shells and purple starfish and clam holes which spurted like naughty subterranean fairies.

  Two children who wandered, happy, brown and busily plotting murder with an insouciance that would have appalled the former savage tenants.

  And here, Uncle, from his rocky cliff stronghold, licked his chops and leered as he watched them through high-powered field glasses.

  Had they any chance against a wily old pro like Uncle?

  If Sergeant Coulter had known more, he would have said no. But both Uncle and Sergeant Coulter underestimated them. Barnaby would never give in and Christie MacNab was a worthy protagonist for any uncle.

  Forewarned by her mother, she was one little girl who would never be lured into parks or vacant lots. The promise of twenty-five cents or a stick of candy would have been lost upon her. Her strength was as the strength of ten because her heart was pure, because she did not like Uncle and because, in her own uncomplicated way, she rather wanted a million dollars.

  The children had several distinct advantages. For one thing, there was no point on the Island from which they could not hear Uncle’s plane arriving or departing; consequently they always knew when he was in residence.

  Also, their very inexperience helped, for they were not bound by any preconceived principles on the method of murder.
The gun, they knew, was the most sensible approach, but they had no personal preference. Had it been feasible, it would have made no difference to them whether hemp, cold steel or poison were used to dispatch Uncle, as long as Uncle was dispatched.

  Uncle, backed by a lifetime of experience, had marked preferences. He despised the contrivances he had been forced to use in the past, such as hypnotism, stabbing and monkey wrenches. He was too cunning to stick to the same pattern, but he pined for the days of yore. The supple weighted piano wire had been more than satisfactory during his commando days and as far as he was concerned it still was. Of course, things had to be arranged with finesse, one simply did not go about leaving strangled bodies in one’s wake, but then, he was a master in covering his tracks.

  There was also the element of chance, and Barnaby and Christie’s flip of the coin was just as likely to be heads as Uncle’s, as was proved only a few days after their abortive attempt on the police launch.

  It was a burning hot morning, and they sat on the step of the war memorial, gazing at the glittering water, still disgruntled over their failure.

  A trim yacht, flying the American flag, sailed up to the dock.

  The wheels of the gods were beginning to grind.

  There was not a soul about, Sergeant Coulter was not expected until the next day, Mr and Mrs Brooks were having their morning tea in the dim little parlour behind the store, and the children were quite free to wander about.

  As a party of half a dozen hunters streamed from the yacht onto the wharf, a look passed between Barnaby and Christie. A look of pure telepathy, and Operation Police Launch, a failure, was scrapped.

  Without a word Christie slipped silently into the shed on the dock and Operation Yacht began.

  ‘Hey, sonny, is this Benares?’

  The party, laden with fishing rods, shining gun cases, binoculars, cameras and valises, filed up to the sturdy boy who stood smiling a welcome to them.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Barnaby. ‘Benares is four miles south-east.’

  ‘Oh. Well, we’d better pack up again.’

  The speaker, a tall, distinguished-looking man, turned to Barnaby again.

  ‘Is there any place I can get cigarettes here?’