My Darling Detective

by Howard Norman

  I stepped aside but didn’t quite know what to do or where to wait, so I went into the children’s room and stared out the window onto the street. When I turned to look at the card catalogues, I saw that both Jinx and Dr. Margolin were behind the one I had moved, leaning close, like archeologists scrutinizing hieroglyphs. I was horrified, but I had brought this on myself, having, in my letter of application, recklessly attempted, by mentioning my “secret” place, to suggest a more intimate (I actually used the word “familial”) knowledge of libraries than the so-called average applicant. I wondered now why my application hadn’t been tossed into the wastebasket. My fatal mistake had been not letting Martha read the letter before submitting it.

  When I saw Mrs. Margolin and Jinx fit the cabinet back against the wall and begin to walk past the main information counter, I fell in directly behind them. Which is when I heard Mrs. Margolin say, “I wonder, Jinx, did you ever try that? I mean, with your husband. Or someone else. On a table like that?”

  Their conversation continued to the front door, but I had stopped dead in my tracks.

  We had dinner at Halloran’s, Martha and I. We talked steadily, but somehow I felt that a certain unspoken thing lay in wait. After our meal we each ordered a whiskey and sipped them slowly. Martha seemed a little nervous and took my hands in hers. “Jake, about what you did with the French photograph,” she said.

  “I know you haven’t forgiven me,” I said. “I don’t deserve to be.”

  “Forgiving, not forgiving—those words escape me just now,” she said. “The thing I’ve been thinking about is that you dropped my trust. I trusted you to act differently than you did in London. What happened there muddled your intentions, and you became a kind of thief. But the flip side of that coin, Jacob, is that I dropped your trust too.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “When I first studied your mother’s file, the whole backlog of information, I saw that there was some sinister—I don’t think that word is overblown—some sinister connection between Officer Robert Emil and Nora. Something that happened back in 1945. I felt it right here.” She placed my hand against her stomach. “I felt it and I knew that something was wrong. Yet I stupidly tried to . . . I don’t know what. Protect you, maybe. And that was treating you like a child. Your darling detective should’ve acted with more dignity toward her great love. But I didn’t. And I dropped your trust. Even if you didn’t know I had dropped it.”

  “Do you know the sinister thing yet, Martha? The facts of it?”

  “No, not yet. But Tides and Hodgdon are on the scent of it, and so am I. In my own way. My way is different from their way. But the idea is that all three of us end up with the truth.”

  “You mean all four of us, don’t you?”

  “I only meant detective-wise.”

  We each ordered a second whiskey.

  That night, after the episode of Detective Levy Detects, lying under the bedclothes with Martha, I told her everything that had happened at the library, not scrimping on details about the back of the card catalogue. She laughed and laughed. But then she was startled by a revelation. She sat up against the bedpost, took a few deep breaths, held my face in her hands, and said, “Jake, what did you say those initials were?”

  “O-R-E,” I said.

  Martha slid out from under the covers and stood by the kitchen door. She looked so beautiful in that light, but her expression betrayed all composure.

  “Jacob,” she said. “Jacob—think.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She actually needed a drink of water to get through this. She went into the kitchen, poured a glass, and drank it right there at the sink. Standing in the doorway again, Martha said, enunciating each letter, each word, as if it was painful to speak, “O-R-E. Officer. Robert. Emil.”

  “You cannot mean—”

  Martha sat on the end of the bed, took my hands in hers, pulled me close, and said, “What I mean is that it’s you possibly being conceived on the back of a card catalogue.”

  I held her at arm’s length. “I don’t find that funny.”

  “Oh, me neither, Jacob. Believe me. Me neither. But I can’t drop your trust again. I have to tell you that when I read in Nora’s file that she socialized with Robert Emil, I realized that my cold case is most likely your father.”

  Look How Much Can Happen of an Evening

  As it turned out, the couple, John and Philomena Teachout, who’d been living in my mother’s house had decided to move to Regina, Saskatchewan, where they both had found work. Within a week they were packed up and gone, leaving the house, cupboard to tabletop, dusted and mopped to a shine. “To tell you the truth,” Philomena said in a letter left on the kitchen table, “the photographs on the walls were oppressive. But we didn’t feel we could take a single one down. Anyway, we felt fortunate to have your family house for the past year, and we thank you for that.”

  The first week of classes, beginning October 1 (the term began late due to delayed construction on campus) went well. Especially Introduction to Library Science, taught by Dr. Margolin, a seminar with only six students in it. She told us that Dalhousie had paid for the translation of the very book that had coined the phrase “library science”: Versuch eines vollständigen Lehrbuches der Bibliothek-Wissenschaft oder Anleitung zur vollkommenen Geschäftsführung eines Bibliothekärs(1808), by Martin Schrettinger, the librarian at the Benedictine monastery in Weissenohe, Germany.

  In fact, the first six weeks of Dr. Margolin’s seminar consisted of reading and discussing Schrettinger’s book, and two others, which, as she put it, were indispensable to understanding the origins of the field: Advice on Establishing a Library, which was written in 1627 by a French librarian and scholar named Gabriel Naudé, and the Indian librarian S. R. Ranganathan’s The Five Laws of Library Science, published in 1931. I found all of this interesting and wrote the first of three required papers on Advice on Establishing a Library, because I thought that every single thing Gabriel Naudé said was intelligent; then again, when you know practically nothing, so much is a revelation. I received a B-minus on the paper, along with a bunch of questions and a strong sense of Dr. Margolin’s disappointment in the margins. You seem to have read Naudé thoroughly but without much discretion. Why not revisit your opinions with a more refined perspective for your next essay? I soon learned that she had a reputation for being a tough grader. But beyond that, Martha said, “You just seem so much happier since you stopped working for Esther Hamelin.” Privately, I had the notion that my studying library science might bring me closer to my mother. In fact, it had been Martha, during an Arts and Crafts session at Nova Scotia Rest Hospital, who told Nora that I had enrolled. “What did my mother say to that?” I asked Martha. “She was in a mood,” Martha said. “Okay, but what was her response?” I asked. Martha said, “‘My son Jacob, born in a library, please, dear Lord, don’t let him die in one.’” “Whatever I expected, I didn’t expect that,” I said. “I told you she was in a mood,” Martha said. “Making fifty Chinese finger traps in an hour put me in a mood too, come to think of it.”

  A month into my studies, on a Sunday at 7:15 p.m., Martha and I went to see Days of Heaven at the Cove Cinema on Gottingen Street. It was cold and rainy, and there was only a smattering of patrons. As we headed for our favored seats, three-quarters of the way back, Martha on the aisle, I suddenly heard “Jacob” whispered loudly. I turned to find Mrs. Hamelin and Mrs. Brevittmore sitting in the very last row. “Come sit with us,” Mrs. Hamelin said. Martha said, “No, we have our special place.” “All right, then,” Mrs. Hamelin said, and she and Mrs. Brevittmore stood, followed us along the aisle, and sat next to us. Martha was on the far left of the quartet, and sent her box of popcorn down to Mrs. Brevittmore, on the far right.

  The movie began, and none of us said a single word until it ended. This was a good thing, because you didn’t want to be a person sitting near Martha and talking during a movie. Believe me, you just did not. When she heard s
omeone talking, her temper flared like a running wild horse’s nostrils; you felt she could rear up and kick a person. Otherwise such an even-tempered detective, Martha Crauchet. Otherwise so measured in her responses to most everything. “In a dark movie theater I’m like Jekyll and Hyde, aren’t I?” she once said. “You don’t have to say anything. I know I am.”

  When the film ended, the four of us decided to walk to the Wired Monk Café. A cold November rain fell. We each had an umbrella, which meant a shifting configuration depending on the width of the sidewalk at any given stretch of the way. When I walked next to Mrs. Brevittmore, she said, “Mentally, I was blowing kisses to Sam Shepard, the man who played the bachelor landowner who gets killed. I was blowing him kisses through the whole movie. Our little secret, okay?”

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “You just watch,” she said. “When Esther talks about the movie, she’ll extol the virtues of the cinematography, the beauty of the Montana landscape, the vistas, the panorama. And the more she does that, the more I’ll know she was blowing kisses to Sam Shepard and to Brooke Adams, the woman who, though already married, marries the Sam Shepard character. They are both her type. Whereas Richard Gere seemed like a freshly scrubbed boy from an Ivy League college who didn’t know his ass from a cricket out there in the Wild West.”

  The Wired Monk was crowded. But after folding our umbrellas and leaving them by the door, we found a corner table and sat down. “Coffee’s on me,” Martha announced. “A prostitute on Water Street paid me twenty dollars to service her. So I’m flush.”

  Both Mrs. Hamelin and Mrs. Brevittmore stared, aghast, at Martha a moment, and then the irony sank in, and Mrs. Brevittmore said, “Perhaps, Detective Crauchet, you might write down the exact location this took place. Esther and I often walk along Water Street, out past the docks, and when conversation stalls, we have little else to do, really.” We were getting along well.

  Coffees were ordered and served. “The cinematography was excellent,” Mrs. Hamelin said about Days of Heaven. “Many scenes were like beautiful landscape paintings. And the whole story, of course, was an Old Testament allegory.”

  “The plague of locusts put a very fine point on that,” Mrs. Brevittmore said.

  There was a silence, we all sipped our coffee, and then I said, “Mrs. Hamelin—”

  “Esther, please,” she said.

  “Esther, I was in the doghouse with you. And now we’re sitting here together.”

  “Are you glad to be sitting here together?” Mrs. Hamelin asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I dropped your trust.”

  “And I promptly fired you,” she said. “So not only have I burned the doghouse, I’ve given the dog away too.”

  “There, that’s settled,” Mrs. Brevittmore said.

  “I should mention that I’ve hired a new assistant,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “And now that I’ve done so, why not let’s the four of us meet for a movie. I mean on purpose next time. Coffees afterward. That is, when it’s convenient for all of us.”

  This was agreed upon with smiles and nods and the atmosphere relaxing even more. As we went our separate ways after the café, Martha said, “Miracles never cease. Right, Jake? Who would have thunk it—you and Esther Hamelin double-dating, huh?”

  “That thing you said. About the prostitute. Servicing . . . ”

  “Yeah, where did that come from? But it shook some recognition, or acknowledgment, loose at the table. You did know that they are lesbians? And guess what, Jacob? They may not find it all that easy to be out in public, given the conservative shithole Halifax can be. So, my goodness, there was trust there.”

  “Let’s get married.”

  “Did you just propose? In the rain. In Halifax. On the way home from Days of Heaven. Not on your hands and knees. Though of course it’s sopping wet out.”

  “I am proposing. Will you please marry me, Martha?”

  “You already proposed a while ago.”

  “I’m proposing again.”

  “I’m just thinking, My goodness, look how much can happen of an evening.”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Yes, Jake, of course it’s yes. I love you.”

  “Ad infinitum.”

  “Listen to that Latin vocabulary. I’m so happy. What with your library degree, you can soon start discreetly skimming off library overdue fines. Me, I can get involved in all sorts of graft and bribes. In no time we can take out a mortgage. House with a view of the harbor.”

  At the Kitchen Table

  So many of Martha’s and my declarations of love, bewilderment, moods, and, on rare occasions, doubt, all the human stuff orchestrated by intuition and desire to keep us honest with each other, took place at her kitchen table. Which brings me to the morning of December 3, 1977. It was snowing heavily, and when I looked out the window, I saw a woman trudging along the sidewalk, extending her umbrella straight out as if parting the snow blowing horizontally at her.

  “More coffee, darling?” Martha said. It was a Saturday, there was no library science class for me, and Martha had the day off. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  She poured me a second cup of coffee. She was dressed in just her cotton robe. I knew she would go running soon; the weather had to be much worse to stop her from that.

  “I’ve been learning so much from Nora,” Martha said. “At Arts and Crafts.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  Martha stood up, went into her bedroom, and changed into jeans, a T-shirt and sweater, and thick woolen socks. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, put her hair up in a ponytail held by a rubber band, then sat down at the kitchen table again. Me, I sat there in my bathrobe, no doubt looking a wreck, and said, “Want me to get dressed too? Would it help you to talk about this if I did?”

  “For some reason, yes, I think it would, Jacob. There’s no logic to it.”

  “Fine with me,” I said. I went into the bathroom, showered, then got dressed in jeans and a sweater and thick socks, and put on my shoes. “Okay, all dressed up and nowhere to go,” I said, sitting at the kitchen table.

  Martha reached into her satchel and took out a piece of paper, which she set on the table amid the half-eaten toast, the coffeepot and cups, and the cloth napkins she preferred. “I’ll just read down the list,” she said. “This is some of the stuff I’ve learned during Arts and Crafts.” She placed her pointer finger at the top of the list and said, “Number one. The name of the attending physician, jumped right out of the ambulance and ran into the Halifax Free Library, was Dr. Abraham Tone. Nora remembered him sliding his hand across the long desk in the main reading room and a lot of books flying every which way. Nora didn’t suffer a very long labor, she said. Dr. Tone had a nurse along with him. When you were born they all got into the ambulance and went to the hospital. Nora said in 1945 the hospital was near the wharf, but eventually it was torn down and replaced by apartment buildings.

  “Number two. Nora claims—reliably or not—that she remembers all ten of the songs on Your Hit Parade in April 1945—I wrote them down. ‘Sentimental Journey,’ Les Brown with Doris Day. ‘It’s Been a Long, Long Time,’ Harry James with Kitty Kallen. ‘Rum and Coca-Cola,’ the Andrews Sisters. ‘On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,’ that was sung by Johnny Mercer. ‘Till the End of Time,’ Perry Como. ‘Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive,’ that’s Johnny Mercer again. ‘Don’t Fence Me In,’ Bing Crosby. ‘Chickery Chick,’ Sammy Kaye. ‘My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,’ Les Brown with Doris Day again. ‘I Can’t Begin to Tell You,’ Bing Crosby again.

  “Naturally, I could have this list of songs checked out. I’m good at that. It’s part of what I do for a living.

  “Number three. And this is about the day you were born. Your mother said that while she was lying on the library table, she—and I quote—‘closed my eyes and pictured myself doing the Charleston. But for some reason I had a tall stack of books on top of my head like a circus act.’”

  “Has
she confessed that Robert Emil is my father?” I asked. “Has she confessed that Bernard Rigolet is not?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  My Father, Officer Robert Emil

  Part One

  A week after our talk at the kitchen table, Martha arrived at her apartment with Detectives Tides and Hodgdon. Hodgdon had brought takeout Chinese food from Mandarin Palace on Lower Water Street. When we were done eating, Martha said, “Jake, I brought the cold-case file on Robert Emil home with me.”

  Detective Tides cleared his throat and all attention turned to him. “Jacob, what I told your fiancée, Detective Crauchet—yeah, yeah, she told us you were getting married. So, anyway, Detective Hodgdon and myself went through the files with a fine-tooth comb before it went to Detective Crauchet. So I said to her, you know, right, that Jacob Rigolet’s very own mother, Nora—and this is before she was hauled in for her outlandish fuckup at the auction, mind you—is mentioned in the Robert Emil file. Mentioned in association with Officer Robert Emil. Small world, eh? Small world, I mean it can fit on a pencil eraser, the world’s so small here in Halifax, right Detective Hodgdon?”