by Mel Bradshaw
Ned would, I hoped, connect Koch to the fish. But what about those cookies or brownies? There are people that tell someone about every incident in their lives, right down to the brushing of their teeth. It would have been convenient if Nora had known someone she’d have mentioned those chocolate treats to — a confidential friend. I hadn’t found one yet.
If Harry was expecting a thrilling assignment, I had to disappoint him. In the end, I sent him to speak with everyone he could on Elizabeth Street, starting in Nora’s block. I wanted to know if there was anyone that had heard or seen what the artist had in her knapsack when she left her studio one week ago tonight. He should also be asking if anyone on the street had seen Nora with a man, particularly a man in a light-coloured roadster.
Once everyone knew what he was doing, I pulled on my trench coat and headed for the westbound King streetcar stop. After a mild Sunday, Monday was cooler than usual for this date in October, and the look of the sky made me think I’d be rained on before I was done. As I neared the site of the old Central Prison chapel, now providing studio space for two artists, I decided to start by having a word with Ernestine Lopez.
When she answered my knock at nine fifteen, it appeared she had already started work. Her blue-checked house dress bore fresh, damp stains, and she was wiping clay from her hands with a rag as she looked me over. Recognition wasn’t immediate, but when it dawned the expression in her lined face changed from inquiring to unfriendly.
“What are you doing back here?” she growled. “Haven’t you caused enough grief?”
“What grief is that, Miss Lopez?”
“Throwing accusations around, making the best painter in the country incapable of work.”
“I want to hear more. May I come in?”
“And if I say no?”
“Think before you do. When I was here before, we didn’t know whether Nora Britton died accidentally or not. Now it’s clear she was murdered. There’s an official investigation. I’d rather talk to you here, but I do have the authority to take you to police headquarters for questioning.”
Ernestine Lopez fell back from her doorway to let me by. In a gesture of acknowledgement that she wouldn’t be back sculpting right away, she pulled off the man’s cloth cap she had been using to keep her curling black hair out of her eyes.
Upstairs, the same clay infantryman stood on her work stand. His boots, rough blobs three days ago, now showed shape and detail. In clay she had rendered the creases across the toes, the worn laces, and the places where the leather disappeared under the cloth puttees that wrapped the soldier’s legs.
The artist stood defiantly with her back to her work, her hands in her dress pockets, and her dark eyes fixed upon my face.
“Just keep your voice down,” she whispered, gesturing at the partition wall. “He’s been up all night and may just have fallen asleep.”
“What’s keeping him from working?” I asked in an undertone.
“You! Your suspicions, your not believing that he loved Nora too much to kill her. Fear, too — fear that even though he’s innocent he’ll be tried and hanged for Nora’s murder. Mother of God — I had more reason to kill Nora than Herman did.”
“Why?”
“I did, that’s all.”
She was spitting mad. I moved a garbage pail so I could grab and set beside her the kitchen chair she’d offered me on Friday.
“Ernestine, why don’t you sit down?”
She blinked, hesitated, finally shrugged and sat. I stepped back so as not to crowd her.
“Are you Herman’s lover?” I asked.
She glared at me.
“It happens.” I left her time to speak. She didn’t. “Am I way off base?”
“I was.”
“When?”
“Until the end of September — until he got Nora’s letter.”
“What letter?”
“The letter —” Ernestine covered her face with her hands for a few seconds, then wiped her eyes and nose and continued: “The letter she wrote — she was asking to …”
“To do what? To come back?”
“I could have killed her. I daydreamed about it.”
“So he told Nora he’d take her back. He broke with you.”
“Herman and I were to go back to being pals, like before. I tell you, the only way I could get through those days was to plan how I’d feed her poison, how I’d disguise the taste. Pals? How could I think about that?”
“Did Herman keep this letter?”
“Like a holy relic.”
Ernestine Lopez was hipped on Koch; I couldn’t doubt it. But I wasn’t sure yet whether he and Nora had been about to set up house together again or whether that was just Ernestine’s way of convincing me Koch hadn’t killed his wife. I did have an idea as to why Herman wasn’t working. In the open garbage pail I’d moved, I noticed — among the apple cores and cigarette packages — a bottle for toothache medicine.
“The humiliating thing is I couldn’t bring myself to give up this studio. Look at the light.” Ernestine gestured towards the many tall windows piercing each side wall of the former prison chapel. “Think of the storage space downstairs. The Inglis company will throw us out eventually, but meanwhile the rent’s a bargain. I’d have swallowed being their neighbour, pals or no, listening in on their lives. I don’t know which would have been worse, hearing them argue — Herman loves that — or hearing them make up. I’m glad she croaked before she could move in.”
Pulling off a pair of scuffed and clay-stained saddle shoes, Ernestine Lopez set about massaging her toes. She was no longer boiling over with anger. I had the impression that everything she’d just told me she had rehearsed often enough in her mind that, while the animosity was real, the fire had gone out of it. Nora was not worth any part of the energy that belonged in Ernestine’s sculpture. I didn’t see her as a murderess, but I still had questions.
“When did you last see Nora Britton?”
“A year ago, maybe more. Not since Herman took the other half of this building. Nora was older than I am, but looked younger. Pretty in a neat and tidy, schoolgirl way. It was clear to see she had not a drop of passion in her veins.”
“You daydreamed of poisoning her. Did you send her any food?”
“No, I’d have waited till she came here.”
“You mentioned disguising the taste of poison. How would you have done that?”
“Combine chocolate and chili: the strong tastes plus the fire in her mouth would mask any other flavours.”
“I bet. Only wouldn’t so unusual a mix be suspicious?”
“Not at all unusual. Do you eat chop suey? Do you eat spaghetti?”
“Sure — anything as long as it’s cheap and filling.”
“Suppose I invite you to try the cuisine of Mexico.”
“Where they eat chocolate with chili?”
“Since the days of the Aztec Indians.”
“Did you ever tell Herman that recipe?” I was thinking about Professor Linacre’s report on the crumbs found in Nora’s last meal. He hadn’t said anything about chili, but likely hadn’t tested for it either.
“Of course not,” Ernestine snapped. She seemed to forget we were speaking quietly. “Herman loved her; he wanted her back.”
I thought I heard a nose being blown on the other side of the partition wall. I needed to catch Herman Koch before he had a chance to go out.
“One last question, Ernestine. What poison would you have used?”
“Arsenic, I suppose. I never got around to working that out.”
I figured the secret door in the partition wall was behind Ernestine’s bookcase. I told her she’d made a good case for crossing Koch off my list of suspects, but that it’d pay him to grant me another interview. Did she think she could get him to move the piano and let me through? I had to coax her a bit more. I spoke of how we both admired Koch’s art and both wanted him back at work. In the end, she swung the bookcase, which must have been mounted on concea
led hinges, away from the wall.
“Hermie, the cop is here, the plainclothesman. He knows you didn’t kill Nora. Will you see him?”
“Does he have a hair of the dog with him?”
“I do, Mr. Koch. I’ve refilled my flask. But wouldn’t you rather have cocaine?”
Silence on the other side of the wall.
Ernestine glared at me. Before she could start scolding, I put my finger to my lips, and to her credit she held her fire.
“What makes you say that?” Koch asked at last.
“We can talk better if you open the door.”
No answer.
“Mr. Koch, your wife was murdered. That’s the crime I’m investigating. Would you rather talk to the drug police?”
I could hear the piano being rolled aside. The low connecting door forced Koch to stoop as he came through. When he stood up, I had the impression he hadn’t bathed or shaved or brushed his teeth since Friday. His right cheek above the beard line was marked by a large, irregularly shaped scab he appeared to be trying, without much success, to keep from touching and picking at. He still wore the trousers of the brown corduroy suit I’d last seen him in, although he’d shed his jacket. His green knitted tie was loose, his white shirt creased and stained. Whether with blood or food I couldn’t tell.
“God, it’s cold in here.” Koch’s voice was hoarse and he appeared to be shivering. “Give me a drink.”
“Sure,” I said, “if you show me the letter you got from Nora Britton at the end of September.”
He tried to grab my flask out of my side pocket. I got hold of both his wrists. It didn’t take lightning-quick reflexes on my part. He was far from peak form and, I suspected, had never been much of a brawler.
“Enough of that. I don’t want to put you in handcuffs.”
“Let go.”
“My pleasure.” And it was: his breath smelled of rot. “The letter?”
“It’s private.”
“I’m discreet.”
“I burned it.”
“Like you did Nora? Miss Lopez says not.”
Koch turned on the sculptress. “Some friend you are.”
“Baloney, Herman. She cares enough for you to want you cleared of suspicion in your wife’s murder. Just give me the letter and satisfy me that you didn’t kill Nora Britton; then I can get on with putting a noose around the neck of the bastard that did.”
“And if I say no?” Herman scratched at his cheek, then forced his hand away.
“You can delay but not stop me. You know I can fill in forms and use the powers of the police to get the letter in the end. But if you make me go that route, your troubles won’t end there. You’ve been abusing cocaine all weekend. The empty tooth drop bottle in Miss Lopez’s trash pail bears a prescription date of October 15. No toothache could use up that much medicine in two days. You’re the one that drained the bottle, not Ernestine. You maybe thought the drug would stimulate you enough to get you painting again, but you overdid it and now you’re hooked. You have to get more. If I have the RCMP put you under surveillance, they’ll catch you soon enough with either drops or powder, and you’ll go away for seven years.”
“You cops — ah, where’s that drink?”
I was prepared to follow him back through the wall, but he took a creased wad of notepaper from the left hip pocket of his corduroys. Handing it to me, he collapsed with a fit of shivers on the chair Ernestine had vacated when she let him in.
His surrender appeared to relieve the sculptress. She had been following our back and forth like a chair umpire at a tennis match; now she turned away and with a wooden tool began to worry away at her clay soldier.
I unfolded the pages Koch had given me. While no handwriting expert, I concluded after noting the slant, the margin widths, the letter size and spacing, and the sparing use of loops that the same person had most probably written both the letter and the journal I’d found in Nora’s studio. I passed the painter my flask and started reading.
September 27, 1927
Dear Herman,
When I asked for your advice on fixing the colours of the Christ Church mural with waterglass, I’d no idea you’d treat me to a recipe for making the goop — correction, three recipes for (1) potash waterglass, (2) soda waterglass, and (3) double waterglass.
I blinked at the letter. Waterglass was familiar to me, from the newspaper ads, only as a liquid in which eggs were preserved. Evidently it was part of the artist’s bag of tricks as well. I read on in hope of coming to something less technical.
Forty-five pounds of quartz? Twenty-three pounds of anhydrous carbonate of soda? Three pounds of powdered charcoal? I can quite understand that you, who take infinite pains over every detail of a work, would never trust to others to make what you could make for yourself. And perhaps, if I had won the first mural competition instead of you, I’d have worked myself up to do as you suggest. Now, however, time is short and I have no appetite for going the extra mile, not for this congregation.
I do want to create a lasting memorial if only to vex the more prejudiced members of Christ Church. And so I appreciate the advice you gave me as to the preparation of the surface to be painted. I found the plaster quite sound and free of efflorescence. After the scaffold was up, I was able to get straight to the first application of (store-bought) waterglass to the wall. Once that was dry, I proceeded to a second application and now as a new month is about to begin I am ready to start drawing and, soon I hope, painting.
I considered your offer to help with the work. I even installed a bolt on the inside of the vestry door to the Christ Church sanctuary so that no one should barge in on us and find you there. But someone might still see you coming or going. Why risk inflaming short tempers and jeopardizing the entire project? As I benefit from your counsel, you are here in spirit. Incidentally, I chuckled when I read your advice not to mention to anyone the originators of the waterglass technique as all have German names. It was brave of you to joke about it.
I know how you distrust any praise that does not come from yourself. Still, I must tell you I do admire how you have risen above your disappointment without the least resentment of my success. I was disappointed too. Your painting in the chancel would have adorned not just one small Anglican church but the city as a whole. More than an attraction to be gawked at by tourists, a treasure to be studied by artists and scholars. You showed such character in never mentioning your pain. You simply got down to giving me the benefit of your years of study.
With the foundation problems, thanks to you, settled, I have been able to spare some thoughts for the significance of this memorial. As I begin outlining my warriors in charcoal, I ask myself what they would have to say about the cost of winning the war. Some Canadians lost limbs. Some lost the ability to open their arms in welcome.
You have applauded my success with the judges. You tell me to pay no nevermind to what came before. I can’t do that. I shall fulfill my commission, but always aware that my opportunity arises from a wrong done to you.
That’s not all, though. The way you set aside that wrong to encourage me moves me right down to my boot laces. Two years ago, when I took the studio on Elizabeth Street, we decided that neither of us could have the freedom we both value and at the same time live together. The world was wide and wonderful and full of opportunities for the unencumbered. There are still opportunities, ones I do not mean to let slip. At the same time, it has been borne in on me that some people are less wonderful than others. I believe the best use of my freedom is to draw closer to the person my heart recognizes as the most wonderful of all. I’m asking you, Herman, if we might again live together. Being reminded of the sweetness that runs through your temperament, as through your art, makes me miss all the more the sweetness of your touch. I miss everything about you. Please read between the lines. That small-town upbringing still makes it hard for me to say some things. Harder still to write them.
You have dinned it into me that life should be lived with enthusia
sm. The most enthusiastic life I can dream up for myself would be one lived at your side and in your arms.
Love,
Your Nora
I took a deep breath and looked around, surprised to see that the studio with its high windows and plank partition was the same space in which I’d started the letter. If either Ernestine or Herman had spoken while I was reading, I hadn’t heard them.
I’d expected Nora to sound more up-to-date, more like Gussie perhaps. Both women accepted the age’s sexual freedom. But Nora’s way of expressing herself had taken me out of that age, not simply to a smaller town but to an older time. It made my murder victim not stuffy but even more exotic, and did nothing to lesson her hold on me.
The way I saw it, the man she addressed in this letter was exceptionally lucky in his wife and exceptionally unlucky in losing her less than two weeks after receiving it. I was glad to get a glimpse of the more competent Herman Koch, the knowledgeable artist, the creator of the two brilliant paintings I’d seen — the Great Lakes landscape on his easel and the winning yet rejected entry in the first mural competition, the vision of the man in the loincloth rising from the sarcophagus between figures of grief and hope.
“I’ll return this, Mr. Koch, as soon as I’ve made a copy. How did you respond to Nora Britton’s request?”
Koch still appeared to be suffering from the cocaine user’s itch. He scraped at his forehead with his untrimmed nails and continued to finger the scab on his cheek. On the other hand, the rye he’d consumed had stopped, or at least tamed, his shivers. I intercepted the flask as he was again putting it to his lips.
“I’ll have that back now,” I said. “You’re no use to me sozzled.”
“You’re a bully. You know that?”
“Pray you never meet a worse one. Did you tell Nora you’d live with her?”
“Of course he did,” Ernestine spat out, looking up from her work.
“Miss Lopez,” I said, “let him speak for himself or I’ll have to take him away to the station.”