by Bill Rowe
“But she didn’t say anything to you about that branch, did she?” I asked. “It wasn’t even part of her so-called ‘concocted story.’”
“No, her uncle came in with that part for us,” said the Crown prosecutor, Derek Smythe. “The old one-two punch. Oh, it’s all very cute and everything. But perhaps too cute by half.”
Brian leaned over and whispered to me, “Uh, Mr. McGill, maybe it would be best if you left this to me and Mr. Sheppard. He’ll be here in a minute.” He was referring to highly esteemed criminal lawyer Morley Sheppard, Q.C., whom we had retained. My protégé then added a word of caution to me, his mentor, older than him by twenty years: “You may be a bit too emotionally close to the girls.” It was the first time I’d heard “emotionally close” used as a euphemism for “wacky.” But it told me that I’d be going mostly solo in my quest for answers to Esme’s eerie mystery.
First I talked alone to Esme at the juvenile detention centre where they were holding her. I had her repeat what happened at the time of Jason Power’s death. Had she seen anything out in the lake before or during the squawk she thought she’d heard from him?
“No, nothing, Uncle Bill, but I wasn’t looking. I was too busy fending him off and then getting away from him as quick as I could.”
“Did you hear anything besides the noise you think he made?”
“I’m tempted to say I heard a loud sound of water on the rocks, like some big waves were hitting them, but I’m not sure. Before, or maybe at the same time as he was flying through the air, I think I heard a ‘whoosh’ sound of some kind. But that’s very vague in my mind.
“One thing that’s extremely clear in my memory, though, is the fact that he did fly through the air. Last year I watched this horrible documentary on TV about dwarf-tossing—men throwing a dwarf in a Velcro suit up against a Velcro wall—and, it’s awful for me to say it, but that’s exactly what it seemed like with him, Jason, except he had no helmet or protection on. It was like he was a dwarf being tossed by a strong man.”
“Is it possible he jumped or leaped in some way?”
“No, not possible, Uncle Bill. He came flying across. But I know nobody will believe my story and I don’t blame them. It’s too totally weird.”
I was about to tell Esme about what I’d seen out on the lake over two decades ago, but I decided not to. Not yet. I didn’t want to give her any “factual” information of a similar nature that might bolster her imagination, or raise false hopes. I did say, though, “I believe you, Esme. But I need to explore the possibilities, independently, a little more.”
CHAPTER TEN
I had acted for a client, John Tucker, a couple of years before, whose grandfather wanted to deed over to him his house on Old Broad Cove Road, near Windsor Lake. The grandfather, Mr. Hughie Tucker, had lived there all his life, but now wanted to move into a nursing home. His wife had recently died, he loved company, and he had no wish to live with any of his three children, all of whom had made it clear how much they loved the empty nest syndrome they were suffering from, now that all their darlings had left home.
John Tucker, my client, was Hughie’s eldest grandchild and I got the impression he was the only one who paid much attention to the old guy. He wanted me to go to his grandfather and advise him that it was best to sell the house and keep the money himself, or divide it up evenly among his children. “I don’t want my aunt and uncle and my own father sending a hit man over my way,” he said. “Or, at best, all of them going to court to say Pop is of unsound mind. They always claimed he’s more than a bit peculiar with his old foolishness.”
I told John I couldn’t advise his grandfather because of a conflict of interest. If old Mr. Tucker still wanted to give the house to his grandson after getting my advice, other family members might claim undue influence. It would be in everybody’s best interests for the old man to have absolutely independent legal advice.
That was done, but old Mr. Tucker still insisted on giving the house to John. I was glad about it, because I wanted to be present at the signing over, and casually ask the old man afterwards if, in his long memory, he’d ever seen or heard of anything odd and inexplicable in Windsor Lake.
To make it easier to get to Hughie Tucker’s hard-to-find house, the three of us—my client, John, the other lawyer, Steve Jenkins, and I—drove out together. Hughie met us at the gate, spry and twinkle-eyed, and obviously sharp as a tack.
After he’d executed the deed presented to him by Jenkins at the kitchen table, he sat back and said, “This is my best shot at keeping the house in the family for a while. It’s over a hundred years old, and there’s been some wonderful creepy old yarns told right here in this room.”
This was my chance to ask for some examples of yarns concerning the lake, but before I could open my mouth, the old man jumped up and went out to the adjoining porch. There he opened a large tool box and lifted off the top layer of screwdrivers and pliers. “To mark the occasion,” he said, pulling out from the lower compartment a bottle of dark rum. “I know that my grandson is driving, so I’ll go easy on him.”
Into three tumblers he splashed about three ounces of liquor each. Less than an ounce went into the fourth. “I was married fifty-six years and my wife never knew, first nor last, that there was a bottle of this in that box.” He pushed the tumblers toward us—no ice, no mix, no water. “Okay, b’ys,” he said, lifting his own glass in salute. “Go mad.”
“There was a downside, though, Pop,” John said. “You wouldn’t let Nan touch your tool box. No wife of yours, you said, was lifting a hand to do men’s work. So, if a doorknob was loose, or a picture had to be hung on a nail, or a carpet tack was sticking up, she wasn’t allowed to do it. Only you could get a screwdriver or hammer out and attend to the job.”
“Yes, and she always thought I was doing it all myself, and stopping her from doing it, all because of love. So, no downside there, sonny. I got an awful lot of mileage out of that, on top of me few swallies of this. She treated me like King George.” His eyes started to overflow. “Sorry,” he sniffed. “I was supposed to go first, and she was supposed to do all this shagging mourning.” He sniffed again and drank. “My big challenge now is to make sure I can get myself a drink now and then at that home.”
“I’ll fix that up,” said John. “Don’t worry about that.”
I jumped in with the question that had brought me out here. “Mr. Tucker, Windsor Lake up there. There’s not much human activity on or near it. So the trout must be able to grow pretty big there, I suppose. Have you ever seen or heard of any large fish, or any other creature, for that matter, living in the lake?”
“Windsor Lake? A bunch over on Portugal Cove Road pushed for that name years ago. It’s too late now, but I still like Twenty Mile Pond, myself. No, can’t say I’ve seen anything unusual there with my own eyes. But there was always stories going around, a lot of cuffers from the olden days. Old foolishness, I’d say.”
I asked if he could tell me one. He was taking a deep breath to begin, when his lawyer Steve Jenkins stood abruptly with a look of panic in his eyes at the thought of an interminable piece of old foolishness coming up. He had to get back to the office right away, he said. He had an appointment in thirty minutes, and he had to stop at a shop en route to get some mints—couldn’t have his client thinking he was taking a nip of superior black rum in the middle of the day.
We all had to leave in John’s car, so I told Mr. Tucker I’d love to hear his stories and yarns some other time. He’d really look forward to it, he said, and I heard him whispering to his grandson at the door, after Jenkins had gone out, “Next time, get me this other fella for a lawyer, someone who doesn’t mind having a little gab for a couple of seconds.”
I had always meant to go with John to visit Mr. Tucker at the nursing home and chat to him about Twenty Mile Pond, but legal busywork and a lack of urgency at the time soon pu
t my intentions on the back burner.
Now, a year or more later, in the wake of Esme’s experience there, I called John Tucker and asked if his grandfather was still alert and active. “As feisty as ever,” he said. “I was in to see him on Sunday. Sure, he called up Open Line last week after that power outage and blasted the light and power company for being so useless. This is Newfoundland, out in the middle of the North Atlantic, he said. When are they going to notice that there’s wind and rain and salt-water spray out here every now and again?”
“Sounds like a sensible question to me. Do you think it would be all right if I visited him? I’d like to chat with him for half an hour about something I need to know about Windsor Lake.”
“He’d be delighted. He was wondering last year if you ever mentioned to me about following up on that.”
“Did you ever solve the black rum challenge he was worried about at the home?”
“Kind of. They keep a bottle for him locked in a drawer under the front desk and dole out an ounce for him before supper. The doctor says that more alcohol than that wouldn’t be good for him. Pop said to him, ‘I’m eighty-eight. What do you think kept me alive this long?’ But no dice. He says the doc is driving him nuts, going by medical science all the time.”
“Tell him to remind the doctor what Kingsley Amis said. ‘No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home.’”
“I will. He’ll love that. Meanwhile, the upshot of it all, between ourselves, is that I sneak a flask in now and then. He’s got a hiding place. Don’t ask me where.”
“I’d like to bring one in.”
“Good idea. Slip it in with the legal files in your briefcase.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hughie Tucker was glad to see me. After we sat down, the first thing he said was, “I told the doctor what that writer said about giving up pleasure, and he comes back, ‘Oh Hughie, this is a lovely home and we all want to have you around for as long we can.’ My God, a sooky doctor. Is there anything worse?”
I glanced at the door and said, “I told your grandson I wanted to be part of the solution.” I opened my briefcase and presented the flask.
“And you are, sir, you are. That was not necessary, but welcome nevertheless.” He seized it gently, if an action can be soft but decisive at the same time, and went into his bathroom with it.
“Have you got a good place to hide it? I wouldn’t want you to get in their bad books out front because of me.”
“Not going to happen, sir. It will be as elusive to searchers as the monster Old Twen.”
“The monster?”
“Old Twenny, the monster of Twenty Mile Pond.” The hair went up on my neck. “That’s what you came to talk about, isn’t it? The old foolishness about something horrible in Twenty Mile Pond. When I was growing up, the mothers around there used to say to their kids when they were bad, ‘Be good, luh, or I’m going to chuck you in the big pond and Old Twenny will eat you.’ Twenny. Twenty Mile Pond, get it?”
“Yep, got it. Where did that monster idea come from? Did a child, to your knowledge, ever get lost around or drowned in Twenty Mile Pond?”
“Never heard of one. It was just something else mothers and fathers dreamed up to keep their kids in line, like the boogeyman, or Satan, or God. If you’re bad, the boogeyman will get you, or God will send you down to hell so Satan can roast you on a fire forever, or we’ll get Old Twenny to gobble you up. Same sort of nonsense.”
“There must have been something, though, that led to the creation of a specific monster in that particular body of water.”
“Well, there’s a few old yarns and cuffers, and tall tales I used to hear now and then. One had to do with a governor of Newfoundland years ago, I don’t know when. The law says that no one is ever allowed to fish on Twenty Mile Pond, the water supply for the city, except for the governor, and only one day a year. A special privilege for the lord high mucky-muck.”
“Yes, I read about that.”
“So this governor decided to go trouting there with his little nine-year-old granddaughter. One of his servants over from England hauled a small rowboat out to the pond for the purpose. The servant rowed them out to the middle of the pond, where gramps and the little one flicked their lines about in all directions. They were using worms from the barn manure at Government House, and I was told that at one point the old man, who took a nip, knocked the whole can full of worms and manure overboard into the water. He also didn’t like the sandwiches they’d prepared for him—didn’t fancy the mustard. ‘French!’ he bawled out and dumped the whole works into the pond. Now this was the clean drinking water for the citizens we’re talking about here. Anyway, as to what happened next, I was told two different versions of by some old-timers around there. Want to hear them?”
“I certainly do, Mr. Tucker.”
“Some said that a sudden turbulence sprang up in and over the whole pond, but some said there was a commotion around the boat only. Whatever it was, the boat overturned, throwing all three of them into the water. And the boat sank like a stone. Some said it was wooden and should have floated, but got yanked under; others said there was metal in its construction and it was just too heavy to float upside down. Nobody in the boat, the men or the little girl, had life jackets on—it was way back before these politically correct days. They were hundreds of yards from shore, and the little girl was going to drown for sure, and one or both of the men, too, especially if they spent their strength trying to save her.
“But some eyewitnesses reported seeing the girl out in front of the men, swimming rapidly toward the shore. It was almost as if something unseen, some force, was pushing her along the surface of the water. Others said no, the servant grabbed a hold of the girl and swam toward the shore with her, leaving the old guy to fend for himself. The girl got to shore ahead of the men, they said, because some people on land waded out and took her from the servant, who then went back for the guv. Meanwhile, with help from the bystanders, the two men finally floundered in, half-dead.
“Some said the girl reported that a big fish or something helped her to get in alive. Others said she was referring to the servant, who swam like a big fish and saved her life. Whatever caused the near-disaster and the rescue, the governor banned anyone from mentioning any of it in newspapers or anywhere else, publicly.”
“Why do you think he did that, Mr. Tucker?”
“Call me Hughie. Going by my knowledge of human nature, and taking the odd nip myself, I’d say the old geezer was drunk and capsized the boat and nearly drowned his little granddaughter, so the last thing he wanted was anyone asking questions or inquiring too closely. That is, if any of it, in fact, happened at all, which I doubt.”
“Why don’t you believe any of it, Hughie?”
“Well, sir, you see, I’ve been saddled all my life with this burden called a brain. All the same, though, what did you think of that old yarn?”
“Very interesting. What else can you tell me?”
“Listen, Mr. McGill . . .”
“Call me Bill, Hughie.”
“I do have a couple more old stories about the secrets of Twenty Mile Pond, Bill, good ones, but we’ll have to do it on another day. I’ve got craft in ten minutes and I’ve got to get dickied up for the girls.”
“Craft? What do you do there?”
“Needlepoint. I’m working on a cushion with a cute little kitten design on it.”
Looking at the big robust man with hands on him the size of baseball mitts, I struggled to keep the grin off my face. “Any other men doing needlepoint with you?”
“Not one, Bill, my son. It’s okay, though, you can go ahead and laugh. No men? See, that’s the beauty of the thing. I’m in there all by myself with the ladies. I’ve got my eye on this one. She’s only seventy-five, but I think she already hinted to me that o
ur age difference is no big deal. ‘Thirteen years is not very much,’ she said to me one day. She was supposed to be grieving about her last dog, which had just died at that age, before she came in here. But. But. It’s exactly the same difference between her age and mine. Coincidence? I think not. Sorry to kick you out, but I can’t miss craft. Come back again as soon as you get a chance, though.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
At the law office, I asked Brian to track down any references in the public records and old newspapers to governors of Newfoundland fishing on Windsor Lake and any accidents associated therewith, especially if there was a young granddaughter involved.
He looked at me dubiously. “Governors, fishing, granddaughters? Is this relative to the charges against Esme?” After my solemn nod, and under my steady gaze—sane-looking, I hoped—he said, “Well, you never know where any thread may lead us, I guess.”
A day or two later, Brian came back with what he’d gleaned from archived journals and papers. He’d found references to a governor in the last quarter of the nineteenth century who’d prematurely departed from Newfoundland after only a few months. He’d been transferred at his own request to a part of India which was then in a state of bloody insurrection. “I wish to go where the Empire needs me most,” he was reported as saying.
But, for some unknown reason, the newspaper report seemed skeptical about his motives. It kept referring to his “health” in inverted commas, as in, “It is common knowledge that his Excellency’s ‘health’ has been far from excellent, and many observers locally have frankly wondered whether a man of questionable ‘health’ ought to be leaving here for obscure reasons to make his presence felt in so hazardous a part of the Empire.”
But what really attracted Brian’s attention to the piece was the bit on the governor’s nine-year-old granddaughter. “The grown-ups, especially Grandpapa, may not agree,” she was quoted as saying, “but I shall be truly sorry to leave this enchanted isle, and my friend the water goblin.” Her mother explained this reference as originating in the active imagination of a child saddened at their leave-taking.