My Darling Detective

by Howard Norman

  During the interrogation, Martha couldn’t help but glance at the window now and then. I stood in the viewing room with Detective Tides and Detective Hodgdon. Naturally, Martha had mentioned their names, but I hadn’t met them before. I would guess that they were both in their early fifties. Tides was trim, about five feet nine, with short, entirely white hair, and wore glasses with owl-eyed black frames. He had an indoor pallor, a tight-lipped smile. Then there was Detective Hodgdon. He had thinning black hair, slicked back; you could see the comb tracks. He was an inch or so taller than Tides and far more wound up. Fidgety and impatient, he habitually snapped his fingers as if time itself wasn’t passing at an acceptable rate. He was out of shape, had an insomniac’s eyes, and, within one minute, exhibited ten different expressions of glumness. Tides wore a pinstripe suit, like he had a formal engagement later and was already dressed for it. Hodgdon’s suit was off the rack, and his white shirt was a size too small, at least around the stomach. Once, when he unbuttoned his jacket as if to let air circulate, I noticed a small Rorschach test of coffee splattered on his shirt, just above the pocket. “In the interrogation room,” Martha told me, “they like to alternate between bad cop and worse cop. That’s why I was glad I was the one in there with your mother. Tides and Hodgdon don’t know a thing about auctions anyway—believe me, they couldn’t care less. They just think, Hoity-toity folks with too much money, just for things to put on their walls.” Martha had also informed me that Hodgdon and Tides had worked together for fourteen years. She had been their colleague for five.

  Ten or so minutes into the interrogation, Hodgdon said, “Detective Crauchet’s using some gentle tactics, you ask me. Maybe it’s a woman-to-woman thing. Me? I’d just say, ‘Hey, dipshit, why’d you want to go and attack those American war heroes in that photograph like you did?’”

  “Look how gussied up the loon is,” Tides said, of course referring to my mother. “Hair all neatly coiffed, that silk scarf. Japanese- or Chinese-looking, that scarf, don’t you think, going by the pattern, that scarf? Slacks, blouse, shoes, all not cheap. Nicely turned out. She’s got to be what, maybe fifty-five, sixty? The point is, she got dressed for the occasion. I’d have to call that premeditated.”

  “Probably been some time since she’d had a night on the town, eh?” Hodgdon said. “Can’t blame her for wanting to escape the loony bin for a few hours.”

  “Rest hospital,” I said.

  Hodgdon turned to me and said, “And you’re who again? I forget.”

  “Name’s Jacob Rigolet,” Tides said. “That’s his mother in there, Nora Rigolet.”

  “Rest hospital. Loony bin. Call it what you want, Jake,” Hodgdon said. “Hope you don’t mind me using the familiar—Jake. I’m a familiar sort of fellow.”

  “Sssshhhh, hear that?” Tides said. “Just now she called it ‘my despised photograph.’ Now that’s personal. That’s very personal. What’s the story with that, do you suppose?”

  “The story?” Hodgdon said. “What is this, English literature class? The story? Leave that to the shrinks. Willful destruction of private property is what we’re looking at here.”

  “Attempted to destroy what she despised,” Tides said. “That behavior’s been around since the Old Testament.”

  “However, considering Halifax isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament—following that logic, what you said doesn’t fall into our purview.”

  “It was just a figure of speech,” Tides said.

  “Oh, right, professor, a figure of speech,” Hodgdon said.

  I cleared my throat loudly and said, “My mother was a librarian at the Halifax Free Library for thirty-eight years. She was a highly respected librarian.”

  “No kidding, the Halifax Free Library,” Hodgdon said. “I got called out there last year. Turns out some dangerous criminal had moved the A volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica over between the E and the F. I thought, What’s the big deal? But the head librarian thought it had gone missing. She actually referred to it as a ‘book kidnapping.’ Needed some drama in her life, or what? I had to include that phrase in my report. Librarians are control freaks.”

  Tides and Hodgdon broke up laughing.

  “That would have been Mrs. Rebecca Savernor,” I said. I had my temper up a little by this time. “She took my mother’s place when my mother—retired. Mrs. Savernor’s a respected librarian herself. Just so you know.”

  Through the window, I saw Martha pour my mother a second cup of coffee from a thermos. Detective Tides and Detective Hodgdon suddenly left the room, like they’d been telepathically called away. At the door Tides threw me a glance of annoyed pity. At least now I could concentrate on the interrogation. “Nora, tell me, why this particular photograph?” Martha said. “You went to considerable effort, sneaking out of the hospital, terribly cold, windy afternoon like it was. Lovely coat, by the way. I admire it.” Martha ran her hand over the collar of my mother’s cashmere coat, which was draped over a separate chair. “But getting back to the auction in the Lord Nelson Hotel. You were, how to say it, very determined, Nora. A very determined woman. So, what is it about this particular photograph? Please tell me.”

  “I demur,” my mother said. “But let me ask you something. It’s Detective Martha Crauchet, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Martha said.

  “Martha, let me ask you something. Would you ever consider participating in Arts and Crafts where I live? It’s every morning at eleven. You could stay for lunch after.”

  So You’re Telling Me That I Was Born in the Halifax Free Library and the Man I Thought Was My Father Was Not Really My Father

  In the library, late on the morning after the auction, I gave Mrs. Hamelin all the details, except about the interrogation. “Your own mother, how sad,” she said. She was slowly shaking her head in pity, and maybe a touch of condescension spicing her sympathetic tone. “As I think about it, Jacob, there’s so little I really know about you. The sort of family you come from. But that wasn’t part of the initial interview, was it? I suppose I didn’t think it necessary.”

  “Do you now?” I said.

  “A little late for that, I’m afraid. Besides, you’ve been a splendid employee for the most part. I’ve no complaints.”

  “When you’ve had complaints—”

  “Yes, I’ve directly complained, haven’t I.”

  “My mother was an excellent librarian. She’s just in a difficult stretch.”

  “How long has this difficult stretch been so far?” Mrs. Hamelin said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “At least three years. She had a breakdown. She went into the hospital a little over three years ago.”

  “Oh, my. I see.”

  “I’m sorry I lost out on the French photograph. But everyone lost out on everything. The auction was shut down right away.”

  Mrs. Hamelin left the library. From my room in the cottage, I telephoned Martha at work. “It went badly,” I said.

  “I thought it might,” she said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting a real education.”

  “Tell me at dinner, okay?”

  “Philomene’s at eight o’clock. Is that all right?”

  “See you.”

  It was one of our longer telephone conversations. Neither of us much liked talking on the phone. We didn’t much like watching television, either. We were radio people. More specifically, we loved the old-time radio shows that were broadcast almost nightly on the series When Radio Was Radio, out of Montreal. Martha had a shortwave and taught me how to use it.

  Movies, now that was a different story. In a five-month period, we had seen Chinatown, The Conversation, The Parallax View, The Odessa File, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Man with the Golden Gun, Lenny, and A Woman Under the Influence. We always sat about three-quarters back from the screen, and Martha had to have an aisle seat. “It guarantees only you are next to me,” she said. “Half the same for you, right?”

  Martha had
all sorts of platitudes. One was, “A person has to run on a very personal kind of logic, or you end up feeling like any other sort of jerk. You just feel interchangeable.” She preferred platitudes that had a practical application. “If the kissing goes well, the rest has a good chance. If the kissing goes badly, best to just have a coffee together and call it a night.” The latter she said on our first date, actually, before any kissing had occurred.

  Philomene’s was on the corner of Cogswell and Lower Water Streets. We had a partial view of the harbor from our table. Once the waiter left with our orders, I said, “On the phone you said you were getting quite the education.”

  “An education having a lot to do with your mother, Jake. I’ve been studying her case file. Which is part of my job, case files are. As you know.”

  “I never thought I’d hear those words: ‘her case file.’ What’s in it, though?”

  “I’ve got to look right at you when I say all of this,” Martha said. “Because if I don’t, you’ll notice. And then you might think I’m keeping something from you. Because I’m not. It’s very important stuff. And it’s likely to get importanter. Is that even a word? Or, more important. The more time that passes, the more important it’s going to get.”

  “They wouldn’t let me visit her today, my mother. I went over to the hospital and they said I should wait a week or so. Isn’t that something? My own mother. My librarian mother. I have to wait at least a week.”

  “The thing is, right in my handbag I’ve got Nora’s case file.”

  “Martha, I realize she’s committed a crime. I know there’s got to be a case file on her.”

  “Yes, but there’s some real surprises in hers. She’s got what we call a history.”

  “Surprises like what?”

  “See, a case file doesn’t just include a description of whatever crime. It includes all sorts of background information. Modern archiving of all sorts of stuff, Jake. So, your mother’s file has a lot of her personal information. You know, dates and places and names, like who she was married to.”

  “What do you mean, who she was married to? She was married to my father. Bernard Rigolet. What are you talking about?”

  “Yes. Right. Nora and Bernard were married. But there’s other information.”

  Martha reached into her handbag and took out the case file. She set it over her plate, opened it, put the third page on top, and traced her finger down a couple of paragraphs. “See, right here,” she said, tapping the page. “Right here it says: Nora Ives. Married on December 19, 1943, to an American named Bernard Rigolet. A son, Jacob Rigolet, born April 18, 1945. Place of birth: Halifax Free Library. Emergency situation. Baby born in good health.”

  “This document says I was born in the library?”

  “A copy of your birth certificate’s also in the file here, Jacob. But yes. Yes, Nora actually gave birth to you in the library. It was assisted by a female police officer.”

  “How could that have happened? My mother never told me that. Why didn’t she ever tell me that?”

  The waiter arrived with our salads. But Martha said to him, “We’re not going to eat, sorry. We’ve decided against eating. But I’m going to pay for the meal, all right? And we’re just going to sit for a while and talk.” She took out her wallet and displayed her detective’s ID.

  The waiter nodded solemnly, which was actually kind of comical, though I wasn’t laughing, for obvious reasons, and he said, “I get it. Just consider you’re paying for your time at the table. Tonight’s not crowded anyway. Wave me over when you want the check. I’ll go and tell the kitchen to hold off on the entrées.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Martha said.

  The waiter took away the salads. Martha sipped some water and said, “I like our waiter for not sacrificing his tip.”

  “Stick to the file, please,” I said.

  “All right. According to Nora’s file, your father—I mean, the man you think of as your father—”

  “What did you just say?”

  “Please hear me out, darling, please. The file states: Bernard Rigolet completed his basic training at Fort Ord, California, on March 9, 1944. He was shipped overseas on March 28, 1944. He was in the U.S. First Army and fought for a year in France before he was shipped to Germany, where he was killed near the town of Leipzig on—”

  “He died two days after I was born,” I said.

  “Yes, on April 20, 1945.”

  “My mother did tell me that. She did once tell me, ‘Your father was killed two days after you were born.’ I remember her saying that. Otherwise, I didn’t know much. She told me that Bernard was an American soldier in Germany while she was pregnant with me. That’s about it, really. I have some photographs of him, of course. I have photographs of them together, before he went overseas. And my mother has dozens of photographs of them together.”

  Martha had her eyes fixed on me, encouraging me to concentrate, waiting for certain facts to sink in. But I was slow on the uptake.

  Martha turned the page toward me. “Look at the dates in your mother’s file here,” she said. “If you look at the dates, you’ll see that Bernard Rigolet was sent overseas on March 28, 1944, like I said—which was more than a year before you were born, Jake.”

  “So you’re saying—”

  “I’m saying that Bernard was not your father.”

  Martha placed her hands over mine on the table and said, “It’s all here in the file, Jacob.”

  “So you’re telling me that I was born in the Halifax Free Library and the man I thought was my father was not really my father.”

  “That’s right,” Martha said. “And because I love you, I’m not going to keep anything from you. And there’s something else. It has to do with the photograph that Nora . . . violated. Threw the ink against.”

  “The photograph that was taken on the day I was born, you mean.”

  “Bernard Rigolet is in the photograph.”

  Martha took out a photocopy of Death on a Leipzig Balcony and set it in front of me. There was a soldier half in shadow, on all fours, looking at another soldier, who had been shot by a sniper and whose blood was darkly pooling near his body. The soldier half in shadow was circled in black Magic Marker. Martha lightly touched the circled man’s body. “That’s Bernard Rigolet,” she said. “The same Bernard Rigolet that all this time you thought was your father, but he wasn’t your father. That’s him. And by the end of the day, April 20, 1945, he was dead. Right near Leipzig. He was killed in another skirmish, after the First Army took Leipzig.”

  You Detectives Stopped By Quite Early

  Three nights after the calamitous auction, we had dinner in Martha’s apartment (I made kale-and-sausage soup, a recipe given me by Mrs. Brevittmore), and afterward Martha and I relaxed in bed, atop the bedclothes, listening to her favorite show, Detective Levy Detects, at its regular time, ten o’clock. Detective Levy Detects was set in a fictional Toronto “just after the war,” as the introductory narration to each episode informed the radio audience.

  “Every episode is like American noir, except in Canada,” Martha once said when she was in a philosophical mood about Detective Levy Detects. “But noir is noir, and it’s the atmosphere that counts, in my opinion. I mean, it could be set in Tokyo or Mexico City or on the moon, for all I care, as long as the language is right and you can picture the sleazeballs and crooked cops and slinky dames and righteous but cynical gumshoes and innocent just-got-to-town types, all moving in and out of the shadows. The radio has to let you see all of this, right?”

  The concept—if that’s the right word—of Detective Levy Detects has to do with time travel. The main setting is a kind of fleabag hotel (in fact, the first episode was titled “Say, What Kind of Hotel Is This, Anyway?”), the Devonshire, where a woman named Leah Diamond keeps a room. She is Detective Levy’s love interest. He is crazy about her. On the day the Toronto newspapers are filled with how Detective Levy screwed up a case involving a kidnapped child, he goes to the bar of the
Devonshire Hotel to drown his sorrows. And that’s where he first meets Leah Diamond. One thing leads to the next, and they take the electric lift up to her room. The narrator said, “Their clothes fell away like they preferred the floor. The clothes, that is.” Pillow talk; then the telephone rings, and to Detective Levy’s great surprise, Leah Diamond not only answers the phone, but says, “Yeah, sure, come on up.” Soon three tough guys and their lady friends, all of whom talk like they are right out of 1940s Gangster Central Casting, walk right in without knocking. Leah Diamond introduces everyone all around.

  Here is where the time travel comes in. By the end of the first episode, Detective Levy understands that every time he enters the hotel, he steps out of current-day Toronto and into the forties. And there it is: time-travel noir.

  At the end of the first episode, Detective Levy and Leah Diamond get married in the hotel room. (“Why rush things?” he says. She replies, “So we can get to the honeymoon part, where we won’t rush things.”) What happens is, episode after episode, Leah Diamond, the hoodlums, and their wisecracking lady friends help Detective Levy solve his cases. “Bring us your little problems, Freddy,” a gangster named Slog Carmichael says to Detective Frederik Levy, “and we’ll work wonders orchestrating our various street smarts, and we’ll make beautiful music together, and you don’t even have to tell nobody we’re the ones upped your crime-fighting IQ. That way we get to help eliminate some of the competition—see, a life of crime is very competitive—and you get all the credit. Life works out fine sometimes, don’t it?”

  But back to three nights after the auction. As I have mentioned, Martha and I were lying on top of the bedclothes. The second I turned on the radio, we heard a tough, bristling woman’s voice say, “Okay, gumshoe, I suppose you wanna know what happened here in my lousy hotel room, right?”