Murder Sees the Light

by Howard Engel

  “Look, Norrie, I don’t have any more proof than I’ve told you about. I’m sure it was George and not you who tried to kill me up on Little Crummock.” I shifted haunches and tried to look blank. “Oh well, I don’t expect the local cops will believe me about any of this, but you understand that for the record and for my conscience I have to go through the motions. Even if I get laughed at. Hell, getting peppered by Aline kind of evens the score anyway.” I put out my hand towards the bed, and after a momentary wrestling down of qualms, Patten took it and gave it a harder squeeze than I would have expected from a man in his condition.

  “So long, fella. Don’t take getting whipped so hard. The deck was stacked against you. No witnesses, no fingerprints, and I’ve got a steel-edged alibi. Lorca and the boys will back me up on that. You see, I couldn’t let that dim-witted yokel ruin things for me and just at a time when I needed to keep a very low profile. No hard feelings, Benny?”

  “As long as it works both ways, I’m agreed.”

  “Hell, remember, ‘He will swallow up death in victory …’ The work of the Lord must go on.”

  “Oh, it will. It will.”

  At this point, Glover, LePage, and the guard opened the door. A nurse pushed between them. “Out!” she said. “Out!” I put the bed between us. “This patient is to have no visitors. I have my instructions.”

  “We’re the police,” LePage said quietly, in a tone that cuts through instructions.

  “I don’t care if you’re the Pope. Dr. Sumi told me ‘No visitors’ and that means police, firemen, and insurance agents.”

  “Okay, I’m going.” I made every sign that I was going quietly. At the door, I turned back to Patten. “By the way,” I said, “I know whose face that was at the window. It wasn’t the Evil One. In fact it was someone almost angelic. It was your Uncle Dick. So long.” Patten slipped me a sneer through the triangle of the nurse’s hip and akimbo arm.

  Listening to our echoing footsteps as we walked towards daylight, I noticed that I’d developed an affection for Patten. Maybe it was the fact that I could wipe the floor with him on the chessboard. Maybe I’m a sucker for a face I’ve seen on television so often. I’m a snob at heart, I think. I wasn’t forgetting Section 212 of the Criminal Code, and the fact that George McCord was a victim within the meaning of the code. But the facts were plain; I liked Patten and I never did care much for George McCord.

  Sergeant LePage was leading Glover into an empty private room around the corner from Patten’s. I followed along so as not to get lost. They went into the room and I followed.

  “… Nobody knew how George died. The lid was on tight. You blew it, Norrie. I wondered how Lorca knew about George. You told her. Not very smart …” It was my voice, sounding a little like my brother’s.

  “Harry, what’s going on here?” Both Glover and LePage turned to me.

  “Oh, yeah. I meant to tell you about this set-up while we were on the road. Only you didn’t give me a chance to open my mouth. I figured you’d get him talking. Bet you really got him going, eh?”

  “That’s dirty pool in any league, Harry.”

  “Can’t wait to hear the rest of it.”

  “It won’t get you far in court, you know.”

  “Hey, whose side are you on all of a sudden?”

  “Mr. Cooperman, don’t blame Harry here. I’m afraid I put him up to it. We just got this equipment in, you know, and I was eager to try it somewhere. Harry, you’d better put your autograph on the reel, while I remember. It’s hard enough getting this electronic evidence admitted.” LePage poked a plastic pen at Glover, who took it and put his signature on the reel. LePage added his own.

  “Well, I feel like I’ve been taken for a ride.”

  “You really got him to spill his guts, didn’t you?”

  “More of a slow leak. Damn it, now you know everything about it that I know, except about Kipp.

  “Kipp?” asked LePage. Glover didn’t look at him.

  “What about Kipp?”

  “He ties it all up, that’s all. He saw Patten in the river between Big and Little Crummock on the morning George was killed. It bothered him so much he followed and chopped holes in his boat with an axe.

  “But that was your boat.”

  “They looked alike. Patten must have parked his farther up the river. Kipp took the first aluminum boat he came to and ventilated it.” When I’d said that, I didn’t have anything more to say to either one of them. They were more interested in rewinding the tape to the beginning. The reels whirred as the dark tape collected on the left-hand capstan. They didn’t even look up as I went down the corridor wondering if I would blow my profit hiring a cab to take me back into the park.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I’d just about finished packing. I hadn’t brought much and from the look of that I didn’t think I could ever stand to see any of it again. It was all grist to the laundromat. When Joan came through the screen door, I’d picked out a pair of socks and decided to make Algonquin Park their final resting place. A pair of socks could do worse. By the time we were into our second cup of tea, I’d paid my bill and tucked the receipt into my wallet. I didn’t much like the idea of leaving now that I didn’t have to play fisherman two hundred yards off the Woodward place. Joan could read it on my face, I guess.

  “Well, you could work on your tan out at the end of the dock. You could help Mike refinish the bow of pointer. You could chop wood. I’ve got to get a lot of wood cut before the leaves begin to fall.”

  “Come on, Joan. It’s hardly summer. Give yourself a break.” She laughed through her teeth at that.

  “I told Mike I’ve changed my mind about my birthday present. I’d told him I wanted a new chainsaw. The old one is in terrible shape.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I told him I wanted two new dresses instead.”

  “Good for you!”

  “I should have guessed that you were a detective.”

  “Why?”

  “I just should have, that’s all.” She gave me a look and the meaning went right past me. “I’ve got the cabins rented through to September 15th and the motel units are booked with hardly a break until Thanksgiving. And I thought we were going to go broke. That piece in the Toronto paper worked like a miracle. And now it’ll be in all the papers. Just think: The New York Times! You’d think that people would stay as far as they could, from the scene of three murders but instead, they start leaving messages at Onions’ for me to call. Is it that we’re a bloody-minded lot, Benny?”

  “It’s only human.”

  “There’s a writer coming up. Says he wants to put it all on TV.”

  “Get a certified cheque up front.”

  “I’ll remember. What will you do now?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a week’s mail to get through, bills to pay, a licence to renew, rent to renegotiate, parents to placate.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’ll keep busy. Do you get on with your parents?”

  “They’ll do. My Ma’s a wonderful cook. It’ll be good to get back to her Friday-night dinners.” Joan sipped her tea thoughtfully. “It’s too bad you didn’t really get a chance to fish up here. I’ll bet with a little practice …”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll never get the hang of it like Lloyd. It’s just as well; I’m getting so that I hate the sight of fish.”

  “Then,” she said, “what the hell am I supposed to do with the six-pound lake trout Lloyd and Cissy asked me to give you as a parting gift?”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday. I can always give it to my mother for making gefilte fish.”

  When I had my stuff in the car, I backed it up the road to Maggie’s cabin. I listened to the quiet there in the shade after I’d killed the motor, then I got out and knocked on Maggie’s screen door. At first I thought that there was nobody home. Then I heard slippers flipflopping over the bare pine boards.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought you’d gone. Never thought I’d see you again in this life.” She sounded ti
red and looked terrible. There were purple marks under her eyes, and her skin looked like it was about three sizes too large. She was wearing a flame-coloured wrapper, tied with a belt. She held the door open for me, and I brushed by her. The place was in bad shape. Clothes were decorating chairs and parts of the floor. A bottle of Scotch stood upright on the coffee table. She’d been drinking it in a water tumbler. I didn’t see any sign of water. “Forgive the mess,” she said, waving a rippling arm at the room. “I’ve not been well.”

  “You’ve had a rough time.”

  “You think so? You really think so?”

  “Well …”

  “Let me tell you, Benny. I’ve had it good. I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve always floated to the top. I’ve been lucky and I’ve been loved. There aren’t many who can say both. Do you want a drink? I’m out of tea. I mean I don’t think I could make it if I knew where Cissy hid the stuff. She’s been trying to bring me around, to get me to accept what I can’t change—How does that go? ’The strength to accept …’ Never mind. Albert. Albert was a good man. Everybody loved Albert, and Albert loved me. Poor me, so stupid, willful, and so in love with Richard I couldn’t keep my hands off him.”

  “Richard? You mean Dick Berners?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at me as though she’d already repeated the story seven times. “Yes, that’s the Richard I mean. You should have seen him standing in Piccadilly in his uniform. You’d have thought Boadicea herself would climb down from her monument to claim him. Ah, he was bonny!”

  “Then the story I got was wrong?”

  “You got a lot of things wrong. Wherever I moved in my life, Richard was standing just out of reach. I messed up enough of my life in the early years for six lifetimes, but after I met him … He looked after me, when he could.”

  “He got Trask to stop the blackmail.”

  “But then he died, and it started again.”

  “He saw the orgy going on in the mill.”

  “And pulled Wayne out of the fire, burning himself, scarring himself even more. He used his ugliness as a shield.”

  “You set the fire, didn’t you, Maggie?”

  “Stuff. What makes you say that? Why do you accuse me?”

  “It would have got Trask off your back forever, wouldn’t it?”

  “It might have. But Richard was there. He wouldn’t let me abandon Wayne. He didn’t want his death to be blamed on me.

  “And it never was.”

  “Of course not, silly. Richard saved him.”

  “I mean later, when Dick wasn’t there to help.”

  “You think you know something, but you don’t.”

  “I know that Trask didn’t fall onto the dock he was building. I know that he was hit from behind with a piece of timber and allowed to fall into the lake to drown. I know that then the plank was nailed into place. And then another, and then another.”

  “Talk. That’s all it is. Talk. You can’t prove anything.”

  “Oh, I’m not out to prove anything, Maggie. You’re too old, and I’m too tired. But, you see, I studied the pattern the nails in the dock made. Trask’s, Dalt Rimmer’s, and yours.”

  “You’re turning all my swans to geese, young man. No wonder I never trusted you.”

  “So Richard Berners was loyal all those years.”

  “You wouldn’t understand such things. But he could see. A woman of a certain kind can will people to do things for her. They ask nothing more than the opportunity to serve such a one. Richard would never speak to me because of Albert. My misfortune was in marrying a man that other men respected. I always knew it wasn’t me they respected—loved, perhaps, lusted after, but never respected. But Richard was always near when I needed help. And he gave me things.”

  “Money?”

  “Of course, money. I may be sentimental, but I’m not a fool. I needed it to pay off Trask. I needed it to get George out of scrapes.”

  “There were lots of scrapes, weren’t there, Maggie? I mean apart from George. There was the other George: Georges Ravoux in Cornwall. He put you in a scrape, threatened to show your letters to your father. You’d been stringing Georges, hadn’t you? Your father knew nothing about him. And when Georges threatened to speak to your father, you had to do something. You didn’t want your father to know about your affair, and you didn’t want Georges to know you’d lied in your letters about your father’s opposition to the marriage.”

  “That was a hundred years ago. I was a frightened girl. I had to do something. I couldn’t let it happen.”

  “You know the police think George killed Aeneas. Your George, I mean. And they’ve arrested Norbert Patten for killing George.”

  “I wish they’d hang him! If there was any justice they’d hang him.”

  “What about the justice of letting poor George take the rap for you? You were always getting George out of scrapes you said. The worst of the lot came when he told you that he had to do something about Aeneas, after Aeneas blundered into the mine up on Little Crummock. You managed that very well, Maggie. You had everybody fooled.”

  “Stuff and nonsense. You don’t know what you are talking about.” She sniffed and took the glass in her hand for comfort. It was empty, so it was just for company.

  “You said good night to Cissy and the rest of us outside the Annex on Thursday night and walked by yourself back here to your cottage. Then you took the boat with the silent, battery-operated motor and went calling on Aeneas at the old Pearcy site Aeneas was using. There would be no reason for him to suspect foul play from you, Maggie. He trusted you. Or at least he didn’t not trust you. I doubt whether he would have turned his back on George. George wouldn’t have been able to hit him hard with a paddle in the back of the head, then drag him into the flooded creek that runs under the road, But now it is George’s name in the police report. Pawn takes Pawn. Pawn takes Pawn. Their books are balanced. They aren’t looking for the murderer, Maggie. They think they’ve got him. You’ve pulled George out of a lot scrapes, Maggie, but he’s pulled you out of this one.”

  Maggie wiped her nose on the back of her hand with something like dignity. She was sitting very straight, looking almost tall. For a moment her carriage was all it had been. She didn’t say anything right away.

  “I’m going back to the city now.”

  “I supposed that.” She was quiet for a moment, then she looked up at me with those piercing eyes. “I was thinking of trying to poison you with some preserves I have. But, I declined the temptation. I’m a wicked old woman, Benny; not to be trusted. And I’m a sad old woman, surrounded by the ghosts of her men. The strong ones and the weak ones. The ones I wanted, I could never have; the ones I had, I never deserved and at the same time deserved better. I’ve a violent temper. Oh, when I was a girl I broke hearts all across the room. It was wonderful …” She broke off. “You’d better be off with you, before I change my mind. Think of me sometime when you eat a bite of cake or put the last scoop of sugar in your tea. You’ve a fine voice, and I’d hate to still that, too.”

  “Goodbye, Maggie. I’m sorry.”

  “Tush. Remember, I’m like cream, I float to the top.”

  I got back in the car and circled through the familiar buildings: the cabins, the motel units, the Annex with its open-faced piano and Victrola, the slanted gas pump, the bug-zapper, and the view over the lake to the first and second island. Beyond the islands, at the Rimmers’ point, the cruiser was bobbing at its dock. I was looking forward to getting back to work behind a desk.

  Joan waved from the porch where she was repairing a window screen. As I completed the arc, I think I saw Lloyd Pearcy with his rods and landing net getting into his boat. I headed down the road towards Hatchway. The water at the culvert had subsided a little in the dry weather, but there were bundles of sharp-ended sticks and branches pointing out of the water, sure signs that the beavers were up to their old tricks.

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