“Do we know what we’re going to ask her about?” Jane said.
“Yes,” said Frank.
Mrs. Beresford was in what seemed to be her usual position of standing in her dirt yard with Tina at her side, neither of them doing much of anything.
The dog ran to greet Frank and leaned into his leg so hard she would have fallen over if he’d moved it suddenly.
“Hi, Tall Ears,” Frank said and reached down to scratch her under her chin.
“I hear you had a heart attack,” said Mrs. Beresford.
“You don’t miss much do you, Mrs. B.?”
“Beresford,” she said. “My name is Mrs. Beresford.”
Frank didn’t blame her for saying it. There was no way he would allow anyone to call him Mr. F. He rubbed the tips of Tina’s ears and enjoyed his new feeling of calm. He was absolutely certain that two weeks ago he would have felt like slapping Mrs. Beresford, and today she seemed comical to him. And totally harmless. Perhaps heart attacks were good things. Mild ones, anyway. Emma was home. Not for long, but even so. You couldn’t beat that as a good thing.
“Mrs. Beresford, do you remember somebody named Mrs. Mortimer?” Frank asked. “She grew up on Monck, would be about my age.”
“Certainly I remember Mrs. Mortimer,” she said and dragged a sandal across the dirt. She was leaning on a cane today, supporting herself with both hands. “And there’s no need to glance surreptitiously at one another.”
Frank pressed on. “It’s just that, well, we know that she also used to take pictures of dead people and we wondered if there could have been any connection between her and Jim Coulthard, since they were in the same line of work.”
“They weren’t in the same line of work.” Mrs. Beresford jabbed her cane hard into the dirt. “Mrs. Mortimer had a respectable business that filled a need in the community at the time. Jim Coulthard was a carny, a scammer, on the wrong side of everything. I don’t like to talk of them in the same breath. He ruined it for her, you know. She had a good little business going, finally found something to do with herself other than stare at people through those oversized glasses of hers. And he up and ruined it.”
“How did he do that?” Jane asked.
“He aimed to railroad her into letting him into her business, with all his wild ideas and crazy schemes. He scared her, with his trying to muscle in. I heard him do it. I was sitting in the next booth at the Red Top eating my supper when he tried to coerce her. She stuck to her guns, though, wouldn’t let him. She was very brave, Mrs. Mortimer.
“But it tainted the good thing she had going and it wore on her, especially after George got sick. She let the business go. Coulthard tried to take it over when she stepped back from it for good, but he couldn’t pull it off. No normal family wanted that wicked man with his costumes and poses and wayward ideas coming anywhere near its loved ones. Oh, he continued to have customers. There’s a market for everything, no matter how low it goes, but it dwindled, and fast. Far be it from me to know the ins and outs of what he was doing, but I know it dwindled.
“And now we know just how low he went with his carryings-on, don’t we? Though the Lord only knows if we’ll ever get to the bottom of it. Is there any progress being made, do you know?”
Mrs. Beresford had been speaking to the dirt up till now, but she looked at Frank when she asked this last question.
“I’m sure you know at least as much as I do, Mrs. Beresford,” Frank said. “I’m not a policeman anymore.”
“You sure don’t act as though you aren’t,” she said.
He considered showing her the photograph, but knew it wasn’t necessary. It was definitely Coulthard’s work. He still had no idea how it related to young Rilla, but perhaps he never would. Maybe, as he previously thought, it was just the mad photographer’s way of signing his work.
Frank smiled at her. He was feeling better than he had in months. He didn’t even spend much time wondering why Mrs. Beresford hadn’t suggested before that it might have been Coulthard who boarded up the girl in the wall. She just hadn’t, that’s all. She hadn’t pulled any punches in stressing how evil she thought he was.
Cautious as he had been broaching the subject of Mrs. Mortimer, he didn’t regret it now, as he’d thought he might. It was obvious that Mrs. Beresford, with all her unpleasant foibles, respected Mrs. Mortimer, even had a protective wing not unlike Frank’s, ready to cover her gently if anyone was going to mess with her.
“All this talk about Mrs. Mortimer,” said Mrs. Beresford. “Why on earth don’t you just go and see her and speak to her yourselves?”
Frank felt like a moron. He looked at Jane. Her mouth hung open like he’d never seen it before. He felt a certain kinship with her then and he laughed out loud.
Jane didn’t make a sound, just stood there with her mouth hanging open. Mrs. Beresford certainly didn’t laugh, but Frank wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she never had.
“So Mrs. Mortimer is still alive then?” Frank asked. “And here in Winnipeg?”
“She is. She lives in one of those three-storey walk-ups on Chandos.”
“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Frank.
Jane drove him home. He’d still be able to fit in a good nap before the barbeque.
Later that evening, when Frank saw Jane to her car, she said, “I think you should go alone to see Mrs. Mortimer. She doesn’t know me.”
“She likely won’t know me either,” said Frank, “But yes, I should go alone. I’ll keep you posted.”
37
Mrs. Mortimer awoke in a sunbeam that streamed through the bedroom window of her small apartment in the Chanta Lisa Plaza on Chandos Avenue. Her eyes didn’t open as easily as they used to.
George had spoken to her only moments before. She went back to the dream. It was where she wanted to be.
Her transistor radio, the one George gave her, rings as though it were a telephone. Someone answers and she hears her brother on speakerphone saying, “Is Mrs. Mortimer there?”
She is on top of the radio in an instant, panic-stricken in case she can’t make herself heard.
“Georgie? Georgie!”
“That’s what they call me,” he says.
His voice is tired and sad sounding.
And then he says, “I’m waiting for you to come home.”
That’s when she had woken up and struggled briefly with her eyes.
George had appeared to her in dreams before, but often in bad ways — trying to be free of her, not loving her.
This one filled her with something that felt in a way like she used to feel when she took pictures of the dead: sure of herself and as though a clear path stretched out in front of her. She felt proactive. That was a word she had noticed lately on television and in the newspaper. Today she would apply it to herself.
The means wasn’t yet clear to her. But there were trains out there, tall buildings, and sharp objects. She could do this thing that would take her to her brother.
It wasn’t a working day for her. She tidied her apartment and dressed herself in loose clothes; she didn’t want to sweat today.
A familiar-looking man walked toward her down the cracked sidewalk. As he came closer he peered into her face, a little too closely for comfort.
“Mrs. Mortimer?” he asked.
She was too stunned at first to answer him.
“I’m Frank Foote. You probably don’t remember me.”
And it came back to her: the day someone had tripped her, the day Jim Coulthard had tripped her and Frank had come to her rescue. He helped her with her glasses and cared about her scraped hands and delivered her safely to George. She remembered him from other times too, but none were as vivid as that day in the park.
“Frank Foote,” she said now.
“Yes. I wonder if you’d like to come with me to the Red Top for a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.”
She hesitated. This interfered with her plan, but she supposed it could wait an extra half hour or so. S
he had heard about the discovery on Lloyd and figured that must be what this was about. They would want to put her in jail now.
“Yes, all right, Frank Foote,” she said. “A cup of hot chocolate would be nice. I’m not much of a one for coffee.”
It was a cool morning. They made the short trek to the Red Top and settled in with their hot drinks. Mrs. Mortimer wanted a jam buster but they didn’t have them anymore.
“Is this about that dead body they found on Lloyd Avenue?” she asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“I think I know who it is.”
The words had been perched on the inside of her lips for days, dying to escape. She just hadn’t had the right person to say them to.
“They said in the paper that the girl had Down Syndrome,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I know what that is. I work at the hospital.”
Frank hadn’t sipped his hot chocolate yet. He held it with both hands and looked at her. She liked the way he didn’t push her. He let her talk and wasn’t afraid of the silences like so many people were.
“Where should I start?” she asked.
She had a chocolate moustache; she could feel it. She tried to capture it with her tongue.
“Wherever you’re comfortable, Mrs. Mortimer,” Frank said. “I’ll try and save my questions till the end, as best I can.”
“I met the Down Syndrome girl twice.”
She told him about the bad thing at the Women’s Pavilion. She had never told anyone before.
“My first instinct was to take pictures of what was going on and that turned out to be the worst mistake of my life.”
She said it matter-of-factly, as though everyone has a worst mistake and that one just happened to be hers.
“What year was that, Mrs. Mortimer, that the baby was born and then died?”
“1970. April of 1970. As far as I know the baby’s name was Buckingham and the Down Syndrome girl’s name was too, because that was the name of the mother.”
“The woman who smothered the baby,” said Frank.
“Yes. She was the baby’s grandmother. She had a gash for a mouth and she didn’t like the smell of my perfume. It was lavender. I met her twice, same as the girl, and both times she told me she didn’t like the smell of me. I was fond of the scent myself. Not anymore, though.”
Mrs. Mortimer sipped her hot chocolate and Frank his. They were the only ones in the front booths. That was good. She didn’t have to worry about someone else listening to her words.
“I didn’t know that Mrs. Buckingham and Jim Coulthard knew each other, not till the day she called me to her house on Wellington Crescent. It turned out he was her yard man. I wasn’t really working anymore by then, but I was lured there by the address.”
She felt herself blushing.
“It used to be my favourite street,” she said.
“It’s a beautiful street,” said Frank. “I’m not surprised it was your favourite.”
“Not any more,” she said.
She told him then about the second bad thing.
“Regina was cold when I got there. It was very cold in the house but I think her coldness was from death. I think she had died the night before and they waited till morning to call me.”
“Her name was Regina,” said Frank.
“Yes. Am I in trouble, Frank Foote?”
“No. You are definitely not in trouble. Please, just call me Frank.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “They killed her. It was murder, just like with the grandbaby.”
Mrs. Mortimer was positive that Frank wanted to ask her why she hadn’t come forward then or now with her wealth of information. But he didn’t. He reminded her of George in his way of not asking the hard questions.
“I saw bruises on Regina’s nose and on her arms as though she had been fighting for her life. I think they smothered her just like the grandmother did the baby. But she was a lot bigger than that little baby, so one of them must have held her down while the other used a pillow on her. My guess is that Jim did the holding and Mrs. Buckingham did the pillow part. She had experience in that area.
“At first I couldn’t figure out why I was there. He said they wanted photographs but that wasn’t it. She said that she couldn’t let me live. That was the real reason. She was worried because I knew about her killing ways.
“Even though I hadn’t yet, she thought I was going to tell about the baby. I was too scared to, but she didn’t know that. She couldn’t believe I wouldn’t tell. Jim said so later. He said he told her I didn’t have it in me, but she wouldn’t have it. She invited me to her house because she wanted Jim to kill me. I escaped, though. They didn’t get me. I went to see Georgie in the hospital instead. It was the last time I saw him except laid out in his coffin.”
Mrs. Mortimer’s breaths were shallow for a bit, but gradually they deepened again and she resumed her story.
“After the first bad thing, Mrs. Buckingham made Jim fix it so he could meet me. He wasn’t to mention the Women’s Pavilion, though. It turned out he was there on the day she killed the baby. He accompanied her, but wouldn’t go in to keep watch the way she wanted him to. Knowing her as well as he did, he knew she’d sell him up the river if anything went wrong. He told me that he’d seen me walk away that day and knew we’d meet again. When Mrs. Buckingham described me to him and ordered him to contact me, to assess me as he put it, he knew where to find me. He recognized me from the neighbourhood and knew about my business.”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” said Frank, “but how on earth did Mrs. Buckingham get away with killing the baby?”
“She was lucky,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “It was a Sunday. There wasn’t a lot of staff roaming around. I can vouch for that. The way Jim told it, an aide brought the baby in to be nursed and Mrs. Buckingham took charge, probably scared the aide half to death. When she was finished her evil task she rigged the baby up in Regina’s arms, called for a nurse, and then pretended she was alarmed. There’s often no outward evidence of smothering, as I’m sure you know, Frank Foote. She probably didn’t have to press down hard enough to make bruises that time. It was just a little baby.
“Regina probably wouldn’t have been in the Women’s Pavilion at all if she hadn’t gone into labour in the back seat of Mrs. Buckingham’s car when Jim was driving. He said Mrs. Buckingham ordered him to drive them home but he disobeyed her and went to Emergency at the General. From there she was transferred to the Women’s Pavilion.”
“You’ve had a lot to carry all these years,” said Frank.
“May I go on now?” Mrs. Mortimer said.
“Certainly, certainly. Please continue.”
“Jim called me to come and take pictures of his dad on the day he died. Only, it turned out it wasn’t his dad at all; it was just an old man near death who didn’t have any family hovering.”
“Jeez,” said Frank. “That could very easily have blown up in his face.”
“Yes. But it didn’t.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, sipping their chocolate that was no longer hot.
“When I saw Jim again I asked him if he would have killed me if he could have caught me that day. He said, of course not. I said, why did he let Mrs. Buckingham phone me and he said partly because she wouldn’t shut up about me. She’d been nagging him for months. And partly because he thought it might be nice to talk to me again. That’s when I realized I was speaking to a crazy person. Up until that moment in my life I actually thought I was the craziest person I was ever going to meet. I sure don’t think so anymore.”
“You’re not crazy,” said Frank. “Not even close.”
“You know what, Frank Foote?”
“What, Mrs. Mortimer?”
“I think there was another reason I was there that day. At the house on Wellington Crescent, I mean.”
She wanted to tell him everything.
“Jim wanted a thrill. I don’t have a full understanding of thrills,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never had one. But I’ve heard about them and read about them and I believe I know what they are.”
Frank reached one of his hands halfway across the table.
“He wanted someone to witness his handiwork, and as far as he was concerned, I was a good safe prospect. He wasn’t wrong.”
She recited the address on Wellington Crescent and the date of her appointment there.
“You’ve got a good memory,” said Frank.
“I don’t choose to remember those things as well as I do. Also, I have a book at home of every appointment I ever made, whether I took pictures or not. It seemed important to keep a record.
“The lavender perfume I wore belonged to my mother. She kept it in the bathroom and I used it all the time without asking. I thought at first that I was being punished for stealing dabs of the scent but I’m pretty sure now that I was off base with that thought.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Mrs. Mortimer,” Frank said.
“That’s what Georgie always used to say to me. I like hearing you say it, too.”
“I knew your brother, George, a little,” said Frank. “He was a fine person.”
“Yes. I dreamed about him this morning.
“It wasn’t just an aversion to the scent,” she went on. “She out and out hated it; she was nasty about it both days.”
They were finished their hot chocolate and Mrs. Mortimer wondered about having another one, but she hadn’t brought any money with her and didn’t know if it was acceptable to have two in a row when someone else was paying.
“Do you believe in trusting your instincts, Frank Foote?”
He got a funny look on his face, one that she couldn’t decipher.
“Good question, Mrs. Mortimer,” he said. “It’s one I’ve struggled with. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my kids to pay attention to the feelings they have inside, especially if something doesn’t feel quite right. And then I follow my own advice and I end up inside out, upside down, and twisted sideways. In a word, wrong.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve heard that same advice as though it was foolproof, but it’s not. It’s just not.”
The Girl in the Wall Page 19