Martha and I were left alone with Nora Elizabeth for a short while. Then fireman Gossining and nurse Ridgeway lifted the gurney and wheeled Martha and Nora Elizabeth out the back entrance. It was snowing. I could see squad cars, their lights flashing, on either side of the alley where the ambulance was parked. I said to my mother, “Have Officer Sorensen take you home. Tell him to stay with you until I get there.” In the ambulance with Martha, Nora Elizabeth, and me were Dr. Kestral and nurse Ridgeway. Just as Victoria General came into sight, I heard static crackle on the ambulance’s radio, then, “All units, all units, Robert Emil DOA Mercy General, eleven-oh-four p.m.” Old-time radio was not real life, but still, I had heard enough episodes of Detective Levy Detects to know what those initials stood for.
Martha and Nora Elizabeth were in room 51. Dr. Kestral was the attending, and I could see that this pleased Martha no end. “As you can see, they took me off emergency,” Dr. Kestral said. “Because I asked them to, so they did. Because I wanted to follow up properly here.” Sitting in a chair in the corner, I could now get a closer look at the doctor as she checked Martha’s and Nora Elizabeth’s vital signs and wrote on the chart, which hung at the end of the bed. Dr. Kestral appeared to be about forty-five years old. She was quite “willowy,” as Martha would later note, and had a rather thin face, with high cheekbones and dark brown eyes. She struck me as intense and kind.
“Everything looks fine,” Dr. Kestral said. “Your daughter might have a little jaundice. But that’s common, not a bit of concern. We’ll put her under a special lamp in the nursery. Presto-chango, jaundice is gone in most cases. By the way, you’ll want to start nursing her as soon as possible. Someone will be in soon to help with that.”
In walked a nurse. “Hello, my name is Ruthie,” she said. “I’ll be on until seven a.m. See that red button there at the end of the cord? You need anything, just press the button.” She fluffed up Martha’s pillow, put a thermometer in her mouth, and waited for Martha’s temperature to register. She read the thermometer, said “Peachy,” jotted a few things down on the chart, and handed Martha a cup full of ice chips. “These will help the dryness,” she said. “Nurse Marcia Heller will be in soon, help with swaddling and nursing, all sorts of good stuff, okay?”
“Thank you,” Martha said. Her hair was wet from all the exertion, strands stuck to her forehead. When she looked over at me, she said, “I must look a fright.”
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” I said, “the two of you.”
“You better have said that,” Martha said. Nora Elizabeth was sleeping.
Dr. Kestral left the room. “I feel like nursing her,” Martha said. “But look at her sleeping. Just look at her, Jake.”
“Just start right in trying,” Dr. Kestral said, having overheard Martha as she returned to the room. “Perfect timing, here’s Marcia now.”
Marcia Heller was all smiles. She walked over and gently arranged Nora Elizabeth at Martha’s breast, and Nora Elizabeth moved her mouth in a funny way, opened her eyes, cried a few seconds, then latched on to Martha’s nipple. Martha said, “Oh,” and Marcia showed her the proper way to support the baby while nursing. “That’s perfect,” she said. Marcia sat on the end of the bed for a few minutes, observing. “No more need for me here,” she said, and left the room.
“Thank you, Marcia,” Dr. Kestral called after her. Then to Martha and me, “Enjoy your privacy for about another hour. Then I’m afraid there’s a detective needing to ask a few questions. His last name is Tides, if I heard it right.”
“He’s someone I work with,” Martha said.
“I’ve already spoken with him,” Dr. Kestral said. “I told him he could only stay a short time. And believe me, I’ll see to that.”
Dr. Kestral left the room again.
Martha and I had an hour with Nora Elizabeth, who, after nursing, was fast asleep. Martha dozed on and off. Once, when she woke, she said, “Jake, we missed Detective Levy Detects,” which seemed, given the circumstances, a comical non sequitur. But Marcia, the nurse, heard it, and said, “Why, that’s my program too!”
Martha sat more upright. “Did you by any chance hear tonight’s episode?”
“I live two blocks from the hospital,” Marcia said, “so when I took my break, I went home, listened, and came back.”
“Pray tell,” Martha said.
“Let’s see, well, I suppose the big news is, Leah is pregnant again,” Marcia said.
“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “How can that be? Their kid is only a few months old.”
The answer was so obvious to both Martha and Marcia Heller that they could only stare at me. Finally Martha said, “Jake, it’s a new year of episodes. The station’s simply decided to skip ahead a year or so. Get it?”
“Tsk-tsk-tsk,” Marcia Heller said, looking at me. She turned her attention back to Martha. “And Frederik Levy, what a doll. He’s in heaven with the news. There’s a little problem brewing with stormy-tempered Dutch Ponsot, at the hotel. I don’t know what the problem is yet. Always a storm brewing, right? But as for Freddy—I call him that—as for Freddy, he’s a dreamboat. The perfect husband. Want to know what I mean by perfect? I’m a person likes to spend a lot of time alone. So my idea of perfect is being married to Freddy, the next best thing to living alone.”
Martha laughed so hard at this, Nora Elizabeth startled awake, but in a moment fell right back asleep.
“Sorry to break up the party,” Detective Tides said from the doorway. “Can I come in?”
Marcia Heller took Martha’s temperature, recorded it on the chart, and left the room. Detective Tides came in, took a peek at Nora Elizabeth, and said, “Beautiful kid born in the library, eh? Well, you, me, and Hodgdon have seen all sorts of things, haven’t we, Detective Crauchet?”
“We certainly have,” Martha said. “I cannot believe Philip is gone. I still can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, hasn’t sunk in for me, either,” Tides said. “I don’t want to interrupt your family time here, both of you—all three of you, I mean. But I have to ask some questions. For the report, sorry.”
“They said you were in the waiting room,” Martha said. “Let’s attend to business.”
Detective Tides was brief and perfunctory, which seemed best, really. Martha was looking exhausted and needed to sleep, and Tides saw that. But he had these questions. In the main, Martha and I substantiated what Detective Tides already knew, having to do with everything around Robert Emil’s threats. “Right,” he said, checking off each question. “Right, good. Got it.”
Then Tides said, “Well, that about does it, then. I’ll check in on you at home, okay?” He hesitated a moment, then said, “There’s just one thing. Kind of confusing, actually. The extremely personal nature of this lowlife Emil’s vendetta against—against Nora Rigolet in particular. Against your mother, Jake. I mean, the incident in April 1945, and it boomerangs back around, you might say. Right back around to the events of tonight. Now, let me say—at the risk of this making you uncomfortable, it being about your own mother, Jake—let me just say that I saw photographs of Nora Rigolet in 1945, and forgive me for saying it this way, but she was a real looker. And real lookers in my experience have always drawn creeps like a magnet—not that women who aren’t real lookers don’t as well. Women, just by being women, draw creeps like a magnet, but let’s leave it at that. I seldom say things in just the right way, but I mean well and you get my drift. Martha, you’ve learned over the years how to accurately get my drift. Anyway, so I’m perfectly satisfied to believe that the pathological deal here with Robert Emil is, he got fixated on Nora Rigolet and never, all these years, let up on his fixatedness. Every sort of behavior happens, and we write it down in the report. I’ve studied his file very, very closely, Emil’s. I mean, I should get a college diploma just for studying his file. And yet there’s something I’m not quite understanding here. But now he’s all shot up dead and gone, isn’t Robert Emil? So I’ll shut up now and file my rep
ort. Unless there’s something you two can tell me that in your best judgment you think I should know.” He sighed heavily and hesitated a long minute. “Besides the fact that both times, 1945 and tonight, a child was born to the Rigolet family in the Halifax Free Library and Robert Emil was in close proximity. But you know what? I am not averse to recognizing it as a remarkable coincidence. Not me. Besides, we’ve seen all sorts of that, haven’t we, Detective Crauchet? Over the years working together.”
“Yes we have,” Martha said. “Thanks for doing your job so well.”
“Quite a night, eh?”
“Feels like we’ve all lived a lifetime since—”
“Yeah,” Tides said, “right, right. Since what? Since the funeral service, which was one p.m. Life’s been flying by since one p.m.” He looked at his watch. “Just past twelve midnight now—about eleven hours. Some of us made it out alive, some of us didn’t. Eleven very crowded hours.”
Detective Tides shut the door quietly behind him.
The Tahiti Portfolio
Martha, Nora, and I spent the next week basically at home. Like any new parents, we were exhausted, and didn’t know if we were doing things right with our daughter, and Nora said, “There is no right or wrong, there’s just paying close attention and taking turns with everything, figuring it out. Nora Elizabeth’s strong and beautiful and perfect in every way that’s important. That’s what you build on.”
“You sound like Reverend Peck, from church when I was a kid.”
“Reverend Peck? I thought he was a jerk,” Nora said. “If I ever sound as sanctimonious as him again, send me back to the hospital in Dartmouth immediately.”
We could see that my mother wanted to be present every moment for us. To help with everything. She wanted to keep assuring us that the living situation was fine, that she didn’t feel like a guest in her own house. And we were assured. “The time will come when I’ll find a small apartment,” she said. “I’m going to legally sign the house over to you. That’ll be easy. That’ll just take a moment.”
We got Nora Elizabeth’s crib set up in the dining room. We brought her in for her one-week checkup. Things were fine. People dropped by to have a look at the baby. You have a child, life completely changes overnight. We’d been told that, and we believed it, and now it was true. My mother began working again at the Halifax Free Library. Just those few hours a week.
On January 14, we had a visit from Mrs. Hamelin and Mrs. Brevittmore. They brought a pot roast with potatoes and carrots, and a peach pie. Favorites of ours. They took over the house, which greatly amused my mother. The three women hadn’t spent time together, and after dinner Mrs. Hamelin said to Martha and me, “You two go in and fuss over your baby. We want to get to know Nora better.” And we could hear from Nora Elizabeth’s room that they were asking my mother all sorts of questions about her time in Nova Scotia Rest Hospital, her years as chief librarian, and so on. Interlocutrixes in a familial style, and Nora sounded pleased to be engaged as such. They were all drinking sherry and having a good time.
When we put Nora Elizabeth down for the night, and I went in to make Martha a cup of tea, Mrs. Hamelin said, “Jacob, I have something to ask you. Something of some importance. Do you mind terribly?”
Martha came in and joined us in the living room. I set her tea on the table in front of her. Mrs. Hamelin said, “Jacob, quite obviously you have an entirely new life. How wonderful for you how things have turned out. Through all the adversities, how things have blossomed. But I must ask you something.”
“Please ask,” I said. “I can’t really imagine.”
“Here goes, then,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “I want you to bid at one last auction for me. Now wait, wait—just wait before you say no. You’ve met Brice Falter, of course. Brice has been doing a good job for me. He’s a pleasant young man. His mind’s a little lacking in originality. He’s got all that education. He’s been about average at auctions. I’ll keep him on, and he seems to want to stay on.”
“He most certainly does,” Mrs. Brevittmore said.
“What I have to ask is this, Jacob,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “New child, new family arrangement, almost newly minted in library science—quite enough for one life. But would you consider putting your older talents to use for your old employer—for me? Not entirely putting this on your shoulders, either. No, what I have in mind is you accompanying Brice Falter to the auction. Assisting him, one might say. And you’d only have to walk there, because the auction”—and at this point Mrs. Hamelin looked at my mother—“is at the Lord Nelson Hotel, as a matter of fact. In a couple of weeks.”
“I won’t go near the hotel,” my mother said, placing her hand on Mrs. Hamelin’s wrist and laughing a little, “not to worry. Besides, even if Death on a Leipzig Balcony—because I know what you’re all thinking—my fatal mishap. Even if Death on a Leipzig Balcony were up for auction, I would stay here at home with my granddaughter. So let’s all be out front, shall we, and not worry about it? I had lots of time to think things through at the hospital, didn’t I.”
“I’m sorry I even have to refer to the Lord Nelson,” Mrs. Hamelin said, “especially in regard to an auction. But I’m afraid that’s where the auction is to be held.”
“Tell Jacob which photograph you’re interested in,” Mrs. Brevittmore said.
“Yes, back to my request, of course,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “Actually, it’s not a single photograph I so desire. It’s a whole portfolio. Quite rare. Quite unusual. The photographer is Eugenio Courret, French born, who arrived in Peru in 1860 and, with his brother, formed a studio there in 1863. Brice did quite well with the research, by the way.
“The portfolio contains some of the earliest photographs of Tahiti—well, there was this fellow, Gustav Viaud, who’d arrived there a year earlier and who took wonderful photographs too.”
“Usually I wouldn’t ask,” I said. “When I was working for you, I’d know from the research anyway, and from talking with you. But why do you like this Courret’s work so much?”
“Do you miss it even a little?” Mrs. Hamelin said. “Of course I only refer to auctions.”
“I miss doing well at them, a little,” I said. “But when I screwed up, or when I lost out, for any reason, I don’t really miss that. But you gave me an education.”
“As to your question,” Mrs. Hamelin said, “I’m simply mad for this portfolio. It contains mid-nineteenth-century views of Papeete, which is the capital of Tahiti. There are government buildings, a small dock with dugout canoes, children in the forecourt of a church, wonderful views of the harbor with sailing vessels, street scenes—”
“Ahem, perhaps that’s enough detail,” Mrs. Brevittmore said.
“Oh, quite right, sorry,” Mrs. Hamelin said. “I suppose I was overtaken by the nostalgia of working so closely with you, my dear Jacob.”
“I think that’s nice,” Martha said. “Jake, what do you think? I know what I think.”
“Your two cents is worth a million dollars to me,” Mrs. Hamelin said.
“Your last semester’s off to a solid start,” Martha said. “Nora is with us, helping out every day.” She looked at Mrs. Hamelin. “And we could not have better friends.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow and look at the research,” I said.
“And I’ll see to it that Brice is present,” Mrs. Hamelin said.
The next day at around 2 p.m., just as Martha and Nora Elizabeth began their naps, I walked over to Mrs. Hamelin’s house at 112 Spring Garden Road. Mrs. Brevittmore answered the front door wearing her coat and hat, and said, “There’s cookies and tea set out in the library. Everyone’s waiting for you, Jacob. I’m off for my daily constitutional.”
I went into the library. “Oh, Jacob, there you are,” Mrs. Hamelin said, looking up from a book on the long table. “You of course know Brice.” Brice and I shook hands. I sat down across the table from him. “Now, then,” Mrs. Hamelin said, “have some cookies and tea, but let’s start right in, shall we?”
We spent close to four hours with the research. During that time, with her usual meticulous attention, Mrs. Hamelin had us examine, through magnifying glasses, reproductions of several photographs in the portfolio: Palais Pomare, Papeete; Large Tahitian choir seated on a picket-fenced lawn; View of a native shoreline settlement; View across the rooftops of Faaa; View of three European men standing in front of a portico of a house on a tree-lined street; Architectural study of a government building. Mrs. Hamelin provided exacting commentary on each photograph, and it was impossible not to feel her acquisition fever—that phrase of hers again—rising with each photograph.
When Mrs. Hamelin went upstairs for her before-dinner rest, Brice and I spoke a short while longer. “Jake, I’ve lost out at two of the last three auctions. London, Rotterdam, Boston,” he said. “It’d be great if I could win out with this Tahitian portfolio.”
“I can see that,” I said. “But I don’t know how I can be of specific help. But since Esther wants me at the auction—which is surely no reflection on your skill—let’s look at her list of who else is going to be bidding, and I’ll see if I can remember anything about them. Other than that, I’ll be right there next to you. What’s Esther’s ceiling bid?”
“Twenty-five thousand, Canadian,” Brice said.
“She must want this portfolio badly,” I said.
“When you worked for Mrs. Hamelin,” Brice said, “did you ever have the feeling you disappointed her, even when you brought back the photograph she wanted? Because I do. I feel there’s higher and lower grades of disappointment, but disappointment nonetheless.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that once before,” I said. “I felt it all the time. Maybe not quite as much as you.”
During the intervening time between our meeting with Mrs. Hamelin and the auction itself, I kept studying the Tahiti photographs. But only for an hour or so a day. I was mainly paying attention to life at home and my final essay deadline for library science. One afternoon, Detective Tides dropped off a few case files and said, “Nobody’s expecting you to look at these, Martha, but if you feel like it, here’s what I’m working on just now.” He stayed for dinner.
My Darling Detective Page 20