by Howard Engel
“My late husband, Mr. Cooperman.” I turned and she was standing behind me, cutting off most of the light of day, holding a tea tray. “Albert was a good man. He knew this bush like a deer or a bear. He could walk in with a hatchet and a clasp-knife and live off the land for a week or for a month. Never needed a compass or matches. He never could understand how other people were always getting themselves lost up here.” She put the tray down on a coffee table made from an old blanket box and straightened herself formally to pour the tea. Her many rings caught the slanting light from the lake and her chins quivered in tandem with the heavy flesh of her arms. She was wrapped in another of her flowing gowns that looked as out of place on the lake as a chipmunk in a boardroom. She was wearing makeup too, laid on a bit thick but not obscuring her best features. She’d been a handsome woman in her day and I wouldn’t have minded knowing her in her prime.
“One lump or two, Mr. Cooperman?”
“Please, it’s Benny. Everybody calls me that. Three, if you don’t mind. I have a sweet tooth.”
“When you say three, are you admitting to the full size of this tooth? I have one myself, and I’m glad to see that you are similarly enlightened. Will you have four?”
“With great pleasure, Maggie, with great pleasure.” I felt relaxed for the first time at a tea party. I saw Maggie put four lumps in her cup and stir with one of the little spoons with figures of men on the stems. She must have seen me staring.
“Apostle spoons, Benny. I have a large collection from my mother’s family. If you look close, you’ll see they’re all different. I grinned over my cup and took a slice of chocolate cake from a crystal cake dish. We stopped talking while we both ate, washing the cake down from time to time with a swallow of tea. When she swallowed, Maggie’s chins bobbed like the Pacific at the change of the tide. There was something Scottish about the way she said look and my name, but for the most part her speech was standard flat Canadian, with maybe a trace of heather around some of her vowels.
“You seem to have recovered from the shock of your unfortunate discovery this morning, Benny.” She wanted to talk about the murder. Fine.
“I won’t go out without my flashlight tonight.”
“Well, I just hope that Harry Glover didn’t frighten you. He has that effect on people who don’t remember when he used to poach game in the park along with the other boys his age. He tried to—what’s the expression?— grill me about poor Aeneas this afternoon. It seems an unthrifty extravagance when his superior will have to do it all over again. Or will they have lost interest by that time? Have another piece, Benny, I can see you looking at it.” I did. She refilled my cup and I settled back. Maggie McCord knew how to live, and I admired her for it.
“Why would they lose interest?”
“It seems they’ll have to admit it was a bizarre accident. Dear me, poor Aeneas never caused such a fuss when he was alive.”
“What sort of man was he?” She tasted the question, moved it around in her mouth a little to get the proper flavour of it, then settled back farther in her seat.
“Aeneas DuFond? Albert said there wasn’t another guide like him in the park. I don’t wish to introduce clichés about Indians, Benny, but Aeneas was born to it as surely as Hector, his younger brother, wasn’t. Hector learned about the bush the way you or I might. But Aeneas just knew. Strange, isn’t it. And when you try to explain it in words, it sounds very backward, even racist. I think he was a good man. I’ll swear he didn’t have an enemy in the world. It’s a great shame, really. But I think it’s absurd, Harry Glover jumping in and calling it murder. Murder? It’s ridiculous.” She was prodding her open right hand with her left fist. Small hands, alive with flashing rings.
“What do you think happened?”
“Oh, it was some strange kind of accident. Something quite simple if you could have seen it, but because he can’t explain it, we’ll probably never know.” I nodded at the possibility. “It’s like that painter who was drowned in Canoe Lake during the Great War. People are forever thinking up plots that will explain how an expert woodsman and canoeist can be discovered drowned in water he knew as well as I know the recipe to that chocolate cake. I can’t remember his name. But it’s the same thing with Aeneas.” She paused, waiting for my nod of agreement. I didn’t agree necessarily, but I nodded to be polite.
“Cissy Pearcy says that Aeneas wouldn’t take Lloyd into the bush back of Little Crummock Lake. Why would that be?”
“Superstitious. He’d never go in that way. He didn’t hold with that country back in there. Didn’t like it, kept away from it. That’s the way he was with people, too. If he didn’t like you, he kept his distance.”
“Who didn’t he like that much?”
“Well, for a start he didn’t think much of Harry Glover. How's that for an ironic garland?”
“The police aren’t everybody’s favourite people.”
“Something more than that. Something they should know about. And he didn’t get on with Mike Harbison, you know, Joan’s husband. Mike didn’t like the way Aeneas played up to Joan while he was away in the city. They had a big fight the time Aeneas built that cedar-strip canoe for Joan. He wouldn’t take any payment. He just left it for her on the dock and never said a word.”
“Sounds like what you’re saying is that Joan’s husband had a gripe against Aeneas. How did it affect Aeneas? Did he stop coming around?”
“Oh, Aeneas was like the weather. You couldn’t outguess him. He never gossiped, but he knew everything that was going on like he was the keeper of the forest. When a family named … no, the name doesn’t matter … started pumping their septic waste into the lake, I always suspected that it was Aeneas who found out about it and got the authorities to put a stop to it. He was simple that way. Something wrong? Get it fixed. Put a stop to it.”
“What about George? How did he get along with George?”
“I don’t know that I like that question Benny. What’s a mother to say about a quarrelsome son? George goes his own way. He’s not a diplomat. Aeneas rubbed George the wrong way.”
“For a man without enemies, Aeneas put a few backs up.”
“He did and he didn’t. He was a quiet man. Private, you know?”
“And he’s always been a guide here at the lodge?”
“Aeneas was here before I arrived, and that’s going back. He helped Dalt and Peg fix up this old lumber camp and build more cabins. After they sold it to Wayne Trask he tried to help him out too, but Wayne was stone-headed most of the time and drunk the rest of the time. That man doted on noise. I never met anybody who had a good word to say for him.”
“Then the Harbisons bought the lodge from Trask’s estate?”
“That brings you up to date. More tea?” I nodded, this time because my mouth was full of cake. Together we’d made a fair dent in it, about as wide as the Niagara gorge. I reached into my pocket and brought a pack of Player’s into view. Then sensing that the time wasn’t ripe, I started putting them back again. Maggie set her chins wagging, miming her insistence that I make myself at home, and produced an ashtray to prove her goodwill. I lit up and settled back watching Maggie McCord. Maggie held her pinky out straight as she poured. Very lady-like, I thought, the way her mother had taught her.
“You seem to know a lot about the people up here.”
“Well, Benny, there are no books. If you don’t read people, there’s nothing to read at all. My late husband wasn’t a reader, and living with him for so many years I got out of the habit. I used to love reading romances when I was a girl. Of course, I always made myself the heroine. But up here I’ve learned to read hands and faces the way a gypsy reads tea leaves.” I looked into my cup to see what my leaves were whispering about me and my business. I stopped myself from pocketing my hands. “I guess,” she went on, “I’ve always had a gift for reading character. My father noticed it and told me it would serve me well throughout my life. And it has. Albert McCord was a good man, even though he wasn’t
an educated one. Nobody could have provided for me better. I gladly changed my Highland home for the peace and tranquility of this northern clime. Excuse me. It’s a touch of the poet in me.”
“Not a bit. I’m on a sugar high myself. That’s good cake.”
“It’s my mother’s recipe, and hers before her.”
“You said that you came from the Highlands?”
“Yes, and now I’m going to end my days here in the Highlands of Haliburton. My late father was Daniel Cruickshank, a doctor with a practice in Dundee. Have you ever been to Scotland, Benny?”
“No, but I was in a play at school about the escape of Bonny Prince Charlie. I liked the sound of the place names: Rannoch Moor, the Atholl hills; the soft sound of the language: ‘… and those in hiding, no used to sore lying, I’ll be thinking …’” I looked down into my tea, turning a little warm on the back of my neck. I hadn’t recited a line from that play in more than ten years. I tried to concentrate on the initial “T” on the silver service. Then I added, a little lamely: “I always thought it would be a nice place to visit.”
“Indeed it would. Albert said that we’d return for a visit, but we never did, we never did.” We listened for a moment to the sound of regret running its finger over the dust on the window sill, then I changed the subject.
“I was admiring the pictures. Real oils.”
“Painter was a smelly silent old hermit who owned a shack back in the bush. He was a trapper, outside the park, of course, but he pretended to be a prospector. Old Dick Berners said he was looking for gold.”
“You used the past tense. He’s not there any more?”
“Oh, no. He died. Cancer. He went back to his shack after checking himself out of the hospital. He went in there to die. Wouldn’t be talked out of it.”
“I’ll have to break the news to my chess partner in the next cove. At the Woodward place. Mr. Edgar says he knew Berners when he was a kid.”
“Oh, he knew him all right. Until the senator took a shine to him, then Dick Berners was just a quaint part of the scenery and not Uncle Dick anymore. Just a funny old prospector. Gold! Imagine prospecting for gold up here.”
I heard a screen door slap open and then shut against the spring catch.
“George? Is that you, George?” Maggie had a high, flutey voice for George. I heard heavy footsteps coming into the front room. Looking up I saw yellow Kodiak boots with laces like spaghetti, dirty drill trousers stuffed into them, and a faded green flannel shirt hanging out over an ample beer belly. The face over a thick neck looked a little small. He was like a kid’s idea of a fully grown adult: huge feet, tiny head. It was a trick of perspective, I guess. I was sitting down. But I wasn’t as far down as all that. George’s head was small. He had a red nose the shape of my thumb, deeply lined on either side, and heavy meeting dark brows with frightened little eyes under them. Perched on top of his head was a striped engineer’s cap. On George, it looked wilted. He didn’t have the features of a big shaggy dog, but he moved like one.
“Ma, I’m just over to see Harry. He’s talking to Cissy Pearcy and he wants to see me next. Oh, sorry. I didn’t see you had company.”
“George, come in here. You won’t keep Harry Glover waiting long. I want you to say hello to Benny Cooperman. He’s got a voice like your father’s. He’s staying at the lodge.” They both overlooked our introduction in the Annex the night before. George grabbed the back of a chair like he had no pants on and nodded his how-doyou-do. A smile showed that he’d thrown away most of his molars. It was a flicker of recognition but some miles short of an offer of friendship. I put down the hand that had been about to reach for either his outstretched hand or more cake. He didn’t offer a hand, and I thought I’d had enough cake.
“George, say hello to the man.” George was a man in his forties, it looked like, but around his mother he acted all of fourteen. He blushed, and his mother settled back satisfied: she’d drawn blood.
“Ma, I gotta talk to you.” I shook the crumbs off my lap and got up.
“You’re not leaving, Benny?” Maggie’s voice sounded surprised, but her hands were already folding her table napkin.
“Yes, I’d better get back to my place. With this Aeneas business, there’s lots of things I haven’t attended to. Nice to have met you George. Thanks for the tea.” I began backing off towards where I remembered the door sound having come.
“Well, now you’ve found your way, don’t be a stranger.”
“G’bye,” said George.
“Probably see you over at the Annex later for coffee.” I found the door and made it slam behind me. I thought of making loud noises on the steps and soft ones coming back to listen close to the door, but I gave up the idea. In a screened-in cottage you could never tell when you were in sight and when you were invisible. George’s reluctance to talk to Glover sounded genuine enough. I didn’t much like talking to him myself. Everybody has guilty secrets.
* * *
I put a black frying pan on the propane stove and added the last of my butter. I thought about sniffing it, but decided not to. My mother always says that if you have to smell something, you might as well get rid of it. Ma was never stuck in a place miles from a fresh pound of butter. I’d heard that breadcrumbs were a good thing to fry fish in, but I hadn’t brought any. So I bashed up some soda biscuits and rolled the fish in them, then, before they all fell off, I dumped the lot into the pan. While I was at it, I put a couple of eggs in a saucepan on the other burner. I could use them for sandwiches, I thought. The eggs floated to the top of the water. I couldn’t remember whether that meant that they were fresh or old. Old was my guess, but I put a lid over them so no one would notice. The fish was beginning to look better. The butter was browning it and the noise sounded very convincing. It even smelled good. I set a place for myself at the table and poured a glass of milk from the ugly plastic pitcher. I considered eating the fish from the frying pan, but I lifted it out onto an ironstone plate. To hell with washing up. Let the maid look after it.
The trout went down very well, if it did taste a little too much like fish. I added a little pepper and salt at the table and was sorry there wasn’t a sprig of parsley handy for garnish. Just under the edge of my plate I propped open The Princess Elizabeth Gift Book, the only book in my cabin, and dined royally. When I was through, I dumped the plate and the pans into the sink and went out to the pump for a pail of water.
Harry Glover was sitting with his tie pulled loose on the dock having a smoke, watching the shadows darken along the shoreline. I left the pail under the nozzle and walked down to the water with my hands in my pockets, feeling the inshore breeze coming off the lake.
“Nice night,” I tried for an opening.
“Uh huh.” This was a very conservative play. Pawn to King Four … Pawn to King Four.
“Still holding the fort all by yourself? No reinforcements in sight?”
“Whitney’s not going to send for Criminal Investigation Branch help from Toronto until they’ve seen the medical report. Too far to come if it’s an accident.” Knight to King’s Bishop Three, twice.
“But you don’t think it was an accident?” He ignored that.
“Then the coroner will get into the act. God, the coroner has a lot of clout. Under the Coroner’s Act, he can seize anything. He could take possession of the whole goddamn park if he wanted to.”
“You’ve decided it was murder. Why?”
“You’ve never been a corporal. You’ve never been a cop in a three-holer town like Whitney.” I must have missed a few moves, because it looked like he’d castled early on his King’s side.
“You can grow old behind a desk in Grantham or Toronto just as fast.”
“But hell, Cooperman, time limps like a one-legged centipede in Whitney.”
We both scanned the water. The islands were standing out against the farther shore. As the light changed they blended in and disappeared like a startled loon. “A case like this could get me out of the rut for a
few days. You know, I’ve never been to Toronto. I wouldn’t mind doing a little CIB work instead of writing up a report on another accidental drowning. I could use some attention, just to remind the force I’m alive.”
“So that’s why you’re going by the book.” Another dose of silence.
“Sit down, Cooperman. You make me nervous standing there. Take a load off your dogs.” I pulled up one of the white slatted deck chairs. “Smoke?” I took his package of filtered cigarettes and fished in my pocket for matches. A line of light was moving into the dark reflection of hills on the far side of the lake, a bright knife blade the colour of the sky.
That’ll be Lloyd Pearcy, I guess,” Glover said. I nodded and we both watched the shape of a boat materialize, getting slowly bigger and bigger. For a long time you couldn’t hear anything. “He knew Aeneas pretty good,” he said slowly. “I guess I better tell him.” He threw his half-smoked cigarette into the water. His face looked older than it had this afternoon. I could see the lines it was settling towards—Harry Glover at fifty, with a little grey hair sticking out of the unbuttoned top of his shirt. “I remember one time climbing the stairs to a walk-up apartment over a store in Haliburton. This was some ten years ago. We got there fifteen minutes after some reporter from the paper arrived asking for a picture of the deceased before the family knew that the head of the house had become deceased. A three-car pile-up on Highway 35. It took most of the night to get them settled. Yes, sir: ‘We need a picture of your daddy for the paper.’” You could hear the outboard getting closer now. Lloyd’s shape was visible in the stern, almost a silhouette. “Lloyd Pearcy and Aeneas did a lot of fishing together. Yes, sir. A lot of fishing, a lot of years.”