Murder Sees the Light

by Howard Engel

  I moved farther off the shoulder of the road up to my knees and tried to feel underwater to get hold of the frame of the spring. I could feel the current pulling at me. I saw the way it pulled the dirty water I’d churned up down out of sight in a business-like way. I nearly lost my balance a few times and felt better when I had the spring in my grip so that it could make me a more substantial piece of flotsam. Together Joan and I were able to move it up to the road level. It came with beaver-chewed pointed branches and the usual muck smelling of decay and stagnation.

  “The other one’s over here,” Joan said, her chin nearly at water level and the front of her T-shirt skimming the tide. Underwater, her hands were feeling for the remaining bedspring. I could see she had something and watched as her back straightened. What she brought up from the bottom wasn’t a bedspring. The thing that broke the surface had an elbow and fingers on it. It had been in the water for a short enough time that there was no doubting what it was. She looked down at the open fingers. It looked like a distorted picture of King Arthur collecting his sword from the Lady of the Lake. Only this arm belonged to no lady, and it wasn’t clad in white samite. Joan looked at it, looked for a moment as though she was going to shake hands with it—it was a right hand—and then she looked at me. The noise in the air, much more highly pitched than a cicada, was Joan Harbison’s scream.

  SEVEN

  Corporal Harry Glover was a tall silent man who was, like most good police officers, better at listening than at talking. He’d taken over the Annex and had placed his regulation Ontario Provincial Police boots under an antique pine table. He’d left his hat in his cruiser, but his gun was on his belt and his notebook was in hand when I went to talk to him. Joan had just come out after a lengthy session and indicated without saying anything that it was my turn at bat.

  Glover looked up as I pulled up a kitchen chair. His face was long and streaked with lines, odd in someone who couldn’t be much more than thirty-three or so. It was as though all the lines were attached to strings which were all being pulled down at the same angle. His teeth were uneven and his grin was friendly but off balance, favouring the left side of his long, foxy nose. The collar of his shirt was open and the tie pulled to one side. His boots smelled of the scene of the crime, but that was nothing new, we all did.

  “What’s a private investigator doing at Petawawa Lodge, Mr. Cooperman?” He handed me back my wallet as he drawled out his question.

  “Same as David Kipp or Lloyd Pearcy. Catching fish. Not catching fish. Getting a suntan.”

  “I’ll remember that. Thank you for the information. Now back to my question. You haven’t been here before, Mr. Cooperman, the way Kipp and Pearcy have. No, this is your first year, your first week at the lodge, and look what’s happened.”

  “You’re working on a pretty broad assumption, Corporal. You’ve no evidence to suggest that there’s anything sinister in my being here.”

  “That’s right, but I like to see the way it rubs you. Right now I don’t care a pinch what brings you here, but I will later on, and when I do, I want answers not citified malarkey.”

  “Fair enough. I told you down the road what happened. I told you I’d only seen the dead man once. And I still haven’t any idea how he got wedged in against the culvert.”

  “Dead man’s Aeneas DuFond,” Glover said, like he was writing the name at the top of the page. It wasn’t news; it hadn’t been difficult to square away the face in the water with the man who’d told me to fish the shadows the night before. “What do you know about the dead man?”

  “I gather he worked at the lodge and has for the last couple of owners. He worked as fishing guide and kept the boats in shape. That’s hearsay. I don’t know any of that myself.”

  “What else do you know about DuFond?”

  “That’s about it, except that there was a man named Trask who didn’t get on with him.”

  “You suggesting something by that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I brought out Trask’s body last April. He fell off a ladder and bashed his head on the dock he was fixing. He landed in the water and drowned. Nothing funny about that.”

  “I didn’t say there was.” I looked at him, and he looked me straight in the eye for a full minute and then said:

  “I guess you didn’t. What do you think happened out there today, Mr. Cooperman?” I decided to put a little city savvy on this before I handed it over.

  “I guess maybe he could have lost his footing and been dragged under. Maybe he was trying to clear the culvert same as we were. Maybe …”

  “That’s a peck of maybes. For a start, Aeneas wouldn’t have tried to fix the culvert in his clothes. Second, there’s a bash on the back of his head that says he didn’t get wet as his own idea. I’m no doctor, but until the medical report says different, I’m looking for a murderer. So that’s why I’m curious about what a body like you’d be doing up here. Is there something going on, Mr. Cooperman, that I’m going to find out about?”

  “Look, Corporal, I’ve been here for four days. I’ve collected a burn across my shoulders, a peeling nose, and dishpan hands. I caught a lake trout a yard long yesterday, and nobody was on the dock to see it when I brought it in. We all got troubles. I haven’t the glimmering of an idea about why anybody’d want to kill DuFond.”

  “Well, if that’s your story, you’re going to be stuck with it. I’ve got to ask everybody. You’re not a special case.”

  “I know. I read that book too. I saw Aeneas last night right here in the Annex. He left the same time the rest of us did. Except for his brother, Hector; he left half an hour before. We all said good night at about five after eleven. If you want to know what I was doing between then and finding the body, I’m going to be hard-pressed to give you an alibi for the hours from eleven to eight in the morning. I saw Aline Barbour on the dock at eight, then I went fishing and didn’t see anybody but George McCord who asked me if I was getting much. That must have been close to noon. Then I drove into Hatchway, did some shopping at Onions’, had coffee with Mr. Edgar’s friend Lorca at the Blue Moon. Sorry, I don’t know her last name. Then I started back in this direction and ran into Joan trying to free the culvert from the beavers.” Glover made notes in his book and nodded to the tune of each fact that could be checked for sure.

  “Well, until you want me again, I’ll be getting back to cleaning my fish.”

  “Hold your horses. Don’t get your shirt in a tangle. I didn’t say I was done with you yet. And when the detective inspector gets here from Toronto, he may want more than the time of day from you.”

  “You recognized Aeneas right away back there. Did you know him well?”

  “In this job you have to know everybody. He was on the ball team at Hatchway. I recognized him when I saw him in his pick-up truck. Know his brother better. Hec’s not as shy and quiet as Aeneas. Aeneas was a loner.”

  “You have some more questions?”

  “What? Oh, yessiree, I do. Did you go back in the bush either before or after you found the body?”

  “No. I just sat down hard.”

  “What about Mrs. Harbison?”

  “We sat there for a few minutes, then I drove to Whitney looking for you. She didn’t go back into the bush either. At least she didn’t while I was with her.” He stretched his mouth into a practiced scowl. When he didn’t put another question to me right away, I tried one of my own on him. “If Aeneas was as quiet and shy as you say, how could he have collected a bunch of enemies?” He let his face fall slack. He didn’t know the answer to that either. We just sat there for another minute.

  “I want you well out of my way, Mr. Cooperman. You understand? I know that the inspector will want the same thing.”

  “I always try to co-operate with the authorities.”

  “Bull roar! You keep your ass clear of this business. This here isn’t the corner of Yonge and Bloor. We don’t need private cops messing about, getting themselves lost in the bus
h, or stuck in the swamp, or drowning themselves. You got all that?”

  “Toronto’s where you’ll find Yonge and Bloor. Grantham’s across the lake, and closer in size to Huntsville than to Toronto.”

  “Same difference. Anyway, I’ve got to talk to the rest of the people up here, so you’d better clear off. I’ll let you know if I want you.” I got up with a squeak of the chair and headed for the door.

  “You talking to everybody?” I asked.

  “Shit, I said clear off!” I cleared off.

  Back in my own cabin, I pulled the fish out of the refrigerator and stared at it. It stared back at me with large lidless eyes daring me to guess what the first step in cleaning it might be. I hauled it out the back screen door and flopped it on the scaling bench I’d seen the others use. Two grey cats appeared from under Joan’s log house. A scaling knife was attached to the bench with a lank yard of butcher’s twine. I took a few passes at the fish, and silver flecks began to fill the air. I worked it steady and carefully up one side and then down the other, flipping the dead weight so that I could work around the fins.

  Dead weight. I was back in the water by the culvert. Joan’s scream was like something electric, with an amplified bite to it. I blinked to get the picture out of my head again. Fish eyes looked up at me. Better fish eyes. Much better.

  Cissy Pearcy cleared her throat. She was a welcome sight. She crossed the frontier drawn by the cats and blinked up at me, shading her eyes with her skinny red hand. Her summer dress had had most of the blue washed out of it by the sun. She had the sort of face that looked as though it had never made up its mind on any subject. Every expression was somehow contradicted by another, running a fraction of a second later. Every smile had a shadow of fear under it, and every jerky motion forward was immediately snatched back. She looked at the fish and then blinked again up at me.

  “Hello, there,” I said. “The cats have come looking for their supper.”

  “Lloyd’s still out there on the lake and the policeman wants to talk to him. I don’t know what …”

  “Don’t worry. Glover has lots of people to go through. He’ll have all the company he needs for another couple of hours,”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Pearcy. Lloyd’ll be back before it gets dark. Long before.”

  “I know. It’s just that, well, he doesn’t know what’s happened.”

  “He’ll find out all too soon. Let him enjoy himself. Where exactly did he go? Up to the top of the lake?”

  “At breakfast he said he might go up back of Little Crummock. He’s never been there, and Aeneas would never take him in that way.”

  “Why’s that?” She let a shadow pass over the tentative smile. She frowned; like I was Glover now and she wasn’t remembering fast enough.

  “Well, I rightly don’t know. He just didn’t like going in there, that’s all. He took Lloyd into Four Corner Lake the day before yesterday, and that’s twice as far. My, that’s a fine fish you have there Mr. Cooperman!” I gave her my shy but proud smile.

  “What was Aeneas like?” I asked. She made a gesture which lengthened her upper lip for a moment, then she began fiddling with the belt of her dress.

  “Well, Mr. Cooperman, I’ll speak no ill of the dead.”

  “I’m just curious about what sort of man he was. I’m not taking notes like our friend in there. For the next few days he’s going to be on everybody’s mind one way or another, and I never really got to talk to him. I feel a little cheated.”

  “Aeneas was a shy man. Quiet, you know. He’d be sitting there smoking his pipe with Lloyd and me one minute, and the next minute you’d look up and he was gone. I guess it’s being Indian. He’d come into the cabin sometimes and bring berries or bait for Lloyd and me and never say a word about it. He never had much to say for himself, but he was a hard worker. I remember one time when Dalt Rimmer owned the lodge, he, Albert McCord, and Aeneas cleared about an acre of heavy bush to make this clearing bigger. They were at it all day and I couldn’t tell you which one worked the hardest. Say what you like about Indians, Aeneas DuFond was a hard worker.”

  “I never said a word against Indians.”

  “Well, some people around here don’t have much use for them.”

  “Such as?”

  “George McCord for one. He isn’t half the man his father was. His mother’s a better man than he is. George is just plain mean and envious. It’s his nature, I guess. But he’s not the only one with prejudice.”

  “With prejudice? Race prejudice, you mean?”

  “There’s feeling in some people, that’s all I’ll say.”

  “But you’re not suggesting that he was killed because he was an Indian, are you?” She thought a bit before she answered.

  “Mr. Cooperman, this used to be very rugged country up here. When Lloyd and me started coming north the road was a dirt track most of the way, not just the last fifteen miles. In those days the Indians were part of it all and everybody accepted them. But times have changed and it’s the ways of the south that are creeping in along with all the citified gadgets. The new people don’t take to outdoor toilets, so we have to dig up the ground and bury septic tanks; they don’t like coal-oil lamps, so we have the noise of the generator frightening a body every few hours; they don’t like black flies, so they spray the bush. Oh, don’t get me started, Mr. Cooperman. You found my Achilles’ heel. What I mean is, some people don’t like Indians any more than they like the black flies or bad roads.”

  “Speaking of your Achilles’ heel, how did Aeneas and Hector come by those names?”

  “Well, it was their mother’s doing. She was a remarkable woman. She didn’t have much education herself, but she knew all about the Trojan War. She was bound both her sons were going to be teachers. Well, that just wasn’t practical in those days before the highways brought up more people from the south. But Aeneas was the elder and he worked so that Hector could spend time in Normal School. That’s the way it is up here, Mr. Cooperman, people cover for one another. Hector must be the besteducated Indian for a hundred miles around. And his brother was one of the best guides. The family goes back to the very early days, long before this was a provincial park.”

  “Joan told me something of that.”

  “My, Mr. Cooperman, I do admire that fish you have there. When you can buy a fish that fine, I don’t see why some people spend all day trying to catch one. Why, that’s every bit as good as they catch right here in the lake. Every bit.” I was just about to tell her that I caught it when we heard the Delco turn over. Events had bounced Joan out of her routine. “She’s keeping busy, you know. She’s had such a fright. I don’t blame her. I’d sometimes like to talk to that husband of hers. He should be with her at a time like this. The poor child.” I didn’t know how to get the conversation back to my catch, and in another minute, Cissy Pearcy wandered off like she was hunting cobwebs in the bushes. As I cut the fish up the middle, the cats (there were three of them now) moved closer.

  I’d never cleaned a fish before; there are surprising things inside that don’t go along with the picture of crisp golden fillets frying in a pan. My heart wasn’t in it I guess. I threw the head to the impatient cats. They didn’t know about Aeneas. They weren’t finding themselves sickened by his death all over again. I cleaned up the mess on the bench with the blade of my knife, letting the guts fall into the pail provided. The cats grabbed the head and tossed it back and forth. I took the more or less filleted remains back into the cabin with me, left one piece on the counter, and put the rest in a dish back in the fridge. Fish for supper. I didn’t like the sound of that. Most of the fish I eat comes in cans. Fish for supper is a problem that goes with being alive. Poor Aeneas was beyond problems of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I put the fillet in the pan. I put the pan on the burner. I turned the stove on and then I turned it off again.

  EIGHT

  Maggie McCord had made herself very comfortable in her little house overlooking the la
ke. Down at the water a small dock sheltered a beamy rowboat with a small battery-powered motor for trolling as well as George’s compact coast-guard cutter. A rack between two trees held three canoes that looked like they were ready to be donated to a museum. The paddles were cradled in a handcarved holder that had obviously been whittled with love from cedar. A large screened-in porch surrendered glimpses of the lake and island that looked like ads for coloured film. Bluejays were feeding out of a flat can on a rail at porch level and cedar waxwings were eating out of another.

  Inside, the main room looked like a Victorian sitting room with antimacassars on the arms and backs of the chairs and the couch. In fact, every flat surface had been covered with a doily or scarf. The biggest of the latter showed a stag at bay with a hound already biting into its shoulder as hunters with spears closed in for the kill. The biggest piece of furniture was a large harmonium. This supported a skinny pyramid metronome on top. A hymnal lay open on the music rack, and I felt a little twinge as I remembered my performance the night before.

  “Well, now, Mr. Cooperman, I’m glad you were able to come. That chair’s the most comfortable. Men like a chair with backbone. It’s we women who are given up to soft ways and luxury. Although, between the two of us, and since it’s an old woman I am, I’ll say I like a hard chair. A hard chair, like a hard pew, is good for the character, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, but swung out of the room into the kitchen and continued her polite chatter from there. I could hear cups and saucers colliding with one another. I got up from my place— I felt like I was taking advantage—and roamed the room looking at knick-knacks on what-nots and taking in the pictures, mostly watercolours and oils of scenes around the lake. They were all signed “R.B.” I recognized my island stake-out. A couple of enlarged snapshots, probably from the thirties, showed a man with a pipe and soupstrainer moustache casting into the lake, chopping wood, and holding a coffee pot over a campfire. He looked strong and at home in the woods. The broad braces holding up his heavy trousers were reassuring. I could almost smell the bay rum.