After so many years of enforced silence, Grandma began speaking freely about what had happened. It was as if a dam had burst. Grandpa had wanted to tell me, she told Julie, but he’d been at a loss to know exactly when, and in how much detail. Should he come right out and say our father was a murderer? Then he’d died without being able to do so. Maybe this was Grandma’s way of carrying out his wishes.
Sometime after learning the truth, Grandpa had taken the drastic step of seeking custody of Julie, then about twelve. Dad’s response was to unleash the family lawyers on him. They threatened to “put him in jail,” according to Grandma. I already knew from Grandpa that Dad had threatened to prevent our grandparents from ever seeing their grandchildren again. Finally, he and Grandma decided they had no option but to drop the matter.
During that period of struggle between Grandpa and Dad, Julie said, bizarre things happened that made her wonder at times if she was going crazy. Dad forced her to show him all the letters she’d received from our grandparents, claiming they were turning her against him. Julie would still write to them, but only from time to time, and only about superficial matters, so as not to arouse Dad’s suspicions—just to let them know she was all right. During the occasional phone call from our grandparents, she’d be unusually guarded and withdrawn. I knew just how she’d felt. I used to feel the same way in New Orleans during phone conversations with Grandma and Grandpa. “You get so quiet,” Grandma would tell me.
* * *
—
IT’S NOT SURPRISING that, on first returning to Kingston, Julie was torn between wanting to tell someone about the arsenic poisoning and fearing people would think she was crazy. At the same time, she felt she needed witnesses to her discovery. This may sound paranoid, but not to me: even when people are sympathetic, Mom’s story can seem improbable to them, far removed from anything in their personal experience, and sometimes they think you’re just imagining things.
The first person Julie confided in was her best girlfriend. Then she shared the story with her husband and his parents. They were all supportive. It emerged that Julie’s in-laws had once heard rumours through the grapevine in Toronto of a scandal surrounding Carol Blackstock’s death. Julie’s mother-in-law said she’d always found it “unusual” that the cause of death had never been discovered. My girlfriend, Marie, had reacted in much the same way: surprised, even stunned, to learn that I didn’t know the cause.
Despite her emotional distress at the time, Julie resolved that she wasn’t going to let her discovery ruin her life—or her marriage. Within a year, she and her husband would be separated.
* * *
—
JULIE HADN’T WANTED to trouble me with her news so soon, knowing it would hit me hard, just as I was preparing for my first set of law exams. But then she realized she needed to tell me and, after our phone conversation, to speak with me in person.
When Julie arrived in London after the six-hour bus journey, I could see she was upset. I was too, but I was also very glad to see her. I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate properly on anything, not even the upcoming exams, until she and I had figured this thing out together.
Naive as it seems, I hoped talking face to face would enable us to find a logical explanation for our mother’s death. There had to be some circumstance, something we didn’t know, to explain this mystery—or at least help us decide how best to approach our father to get his explanation.
Together, we pored over Grandpa’s documents. The smallest detail might be a key to unlocking the truth.
When no such clue materialized, Julie and I did some brainstorming. How could Mom have died of arsenic poisoning? We ran through every scenario we could think of, plausible or not: she committed suicide; she ingested arsenic by mistake; she was a victim of medical malpractice; she’d been involved with the wrong people in Buenos Aires, who had killed her; she’d been having an affair but refused to leave our father, and her jealous lover poisoned her; she’d been a spy who knew too much and got executed; she’d been poisoned by the crazy cook, and by the time it was discovered, it was too late.
These were all wild and unbelievable ideas. In any of these unlikely scenarios, it was possible Dad had wanted to protect us by sparing us the terrible truth—so he’d invented his all-purpose explanation, which effectively put an end to further questioning. After all, if the esteemed specialists at the Montreal Neurological Institute couldn’t determine the cause of Mom’s death, who could?
To Julie and me, the idea that Mom had died from arsenic poisoning was itself unbelievable. But there it was, in black and white, staring back at us from the autopsy report. When he’d invented his story, Dad couldn’t have known we’d come across this piece of paper many years later.
The problem we couldn’t get around was that Dad had repeatedly said to us that no cause of death was ever found. Now we knew that wasn’t true. He hadn’t said, “To my knowledge, the cause was never found.” He had always stated it with absolute certainty.
Over the next couple of days, while I was in class, Julie did some enterprising research. London, Ontario, is an affluent, mid-sized city, well stocked with professionals. She visited the office of a local criminal lawyer and outlined our quandary to him. He told her it was a very complicated matter, with no clear solutions in view. Later, I spoke to the lawyer on the telephone. “How do people deal with these situations?” I asked in desperation. Julie had told him I was a law student at Western. I guess it was quite obvious to him, even over the phone, that I was upset. He told me to pull myself together; if lawyers weren’t able to deal with their own problems, they had little hope of being useful to others with theirs. True, perhaps—but in the circumstances, not helpful.
Julie also visited a private investigator, who suggested it would be necessary for him to travel to Argentina to interview people about the case. The expense would be out of the question for us. Apart from that, the investigator didn’t speak Spanish, was unfamiliar with the country, and twenty years had passed since our mother’s death. Even if Julie and I could have afforded his services, he wasn’t the right person for the job.
Julie did some reconnoitring on the medical side too. She consulted with her own physician in Kingston. After reading the autopsy and toxicological reports, the doctor described the amount of arsenic found in Mom’s small intestine as being “the size of a candy bar”—many times more than a lethal dose, which can be as little as one-eighth of a teaspoon.
While in London, Julie roamed the halls of the university’s faculty of medicine. When she saw a nameplate that said “pathologist,” she knocked on the office door and asked the doctor if she could speak with him. Amazingly, he was not only very familiar with our mother’s case but had actually been working at the Montreal Neurological Institute when she was there and had been part of the team that treated her. The doctor was probably as astonished as Julie was at this coincidence and took time from his busy schedule to speak with her.
During a post-mortem meeting on the case, the pathologist recalled, someone on the team remarked that Mom’s pattern of getting sick at home, then better in hospital, was typical of classic slow poisoning cases in Victorian novels. He remembered that the post-mortem work was done with such meticulous care that the physicians thought the case was likely headed for court. Spectrometry technology, relatively new at the time, enabled the toxicologist to say that the cause of death was not only consistent with arsenic poisoning, it was arsenic poisoning. Our father, the pathologist told Julie, was under suspicion from the outset. The team didn’t consider suicide a serious possibility, since the intoxication was not only acute but also chronic over a substantial period of time.
I spoke to a family friend, whom I knew well, who was living in London at the time because her husband was a senior faculty member at the university. I thought she might be able to shed some light on what had happened to Mom, especially since she knew the family history
. I also thought that, as an older person I trusted, she might have some words of wisdom to offer.
When we met, I told her about the finding of arsenic poisoning and asked bluntly, “What do you think happened to my mother?”
“It was always a great mystery about your mother’s death,” she replied cryptically. She wouldn’t elaborate.
The next day, she phoned to say that, because she’d seen I was so troubled, she’d spoken to her husband about my question, and he’d agreed to meet with me. When I saw him, he was taken aback, even affronted, by my speculation about Dad. He was positive there must be some innocent explanation and seemed genuinely convinced that such terrible things simply didn’t happen in respectable families like ours.
“Well, Jeff,” he intoned in his deep baritone, “I am certainly a lot more confident in your father than you are.”
Clearly, Julie and I concluded, consulting professionals and family friends would only take us so far. To get to the bottom of this, we had no choice but to speak to our father. We needed to hear his side of the story.
* * *
—
DAD WAS LIVING in Minneapolis with Ingrid and their three children. He was head of the Canadian consulate there after his assignment at the consulate general in New York City. I told Julie I’d call him. I felt nervous about it; I wouldn’t be able to disguise my suspicions about what we’d learned. Dad’s keen instincts would pick up on that immediately.
What else could he expect? When a wife dies of arsenic poisoning, the number one suspect is always the husband. And when it takes twenty years for his children to learn the real cause of her death, which their father has always insisted was unknown, how could he not expect them to be suspicious? It was a phone call Dad must have been expecting for a long time—the knock on the door in the middle of the night. He’d had a long time to prepare for it.
Before picking up the phone, I ran through in my mind every conceivable way the conversation might go. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Oh, hi, Jeff. How are you? To what do we owe this call? Are you getting settled at law school?”
“I’m getting on okay, thanks. Lots of work. How are things in Minneapolis?”
“Oh, we’re fine, enjoying the city and the new house. I’m liking the job. Is there something in particular you’re calling about?”
“Yes, actually. Julie and I have been trying to sort out our grandfather’s papers.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Julie found some material on our mother’s death.”
“Yes?”
“She found an autopsy report showing the cause of death.”
“Yes?”
“It shows she died of arsenic poisoning.”
There was silence for about thirty seconds. It seemed like an eternity.
“Dad? Are you there?”
“Yes.” His voice was completely expressionless. As if he were still waiting for the punchline.
“Do you have any…comment?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Did you know about this?”
“No.”
“You mean…you really didn’t know anything about it?”
“No one ever told me.”
“No one ever told you what Mom died of?”
“I never found out. As far as I know, nobody did.”
For a long moment, I too was at a loss for words. Finally, I told him, “I find that amazing, Dad. I don’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t know what to say either. No one ever told me about it.”
* * *
—
TO THIS DAY, I remain astounded by that conversation. Intellectually, I realize it must have been a well-rehearsed set piece, prepared for a long-expected telephone call from somebody, probably Julie or me. And in hindsight, I also understand that Dad’s response of total ignorance was carefully thought through—perhaps the best answer possible in his situation.
At the time, however, I was shocked by the utter lack of emotion in his voice. He expressed no surprise, horror, sorrow, disbelief, outrage—nothing. He offered me no emotional response at all. He certainly didn’t sound like a man who had just learned that his wife had died of arsenic poisoning. How could he receive this awful news from me, his son, with such cool detachment?
Unless it wasn’t news at all.
And if it wasn’t news to Dad, if his response was a well-rehearsed act, then why didn’t he go all the way and make it a convincing performance? Why didn’t he express—fake—the kind of emotion that I, or anyone else, would have expected from a man in his situation? Surely that would have helped persuade me he was telling the truth.
Something else was missing, and I only came to realize it when Julie brought it to my attention: throughout our conversation, Dad showed no empathy at all—for anyone. Not once did he express any sadness over the manner of Mom’s death or how painfully she suffered. Not once did he exhibit, even in a token way, any sympathy for me or my brother and sister, and how devastated we must have felt about what had happened to our mother.
With Dad, arrogance was inevitably in the mix too. Why should he put on an act for me? It was for me to accept whatever he offered up, and to believe it.
The magic explanation I’d hoped for wasn’t there.
* * *
—
JULIE WAS MORE clear-headed about Dad’s claim of ignorance. Her reaction was unsurprised and scornful.
“He said what!” she exclaimed over the phone. “How in the world could he not have known?”
Julie felt little doubt about Dad’s guilt. For me, it was harder to believe conclusively one way or the other. In spite of the apparently damning evidence, I couldn’t bring myself to condemn him outright. I needed to speak to him face to face. I needed to know if he could produce even one unexpected, as-yet-undisclosed piece of evidence that could put Mom’s death in a different light and exonerate him.
I called him again to say I had to see him. At first, he suggested I come to Minneapolis for Christmas. I told him this was something that couldn’t wait. He asked if I could drive there. No, I replied, the trip would take too long, and I didn’t have the time because of the demands of law school. I had to fly, and I needed him to pay for the airfare, because I didn’t have the money. He reluctantly agreed, but scheduling problems prevented me from going right away as hoped.
I spoke with Julie to rehearse what I’d say and to be sure I asked any questions she had. She didn’t want to speak to Dad herself. She wasn’t as ready as I was to keep an open mind. I asked her if she was comfortable showing Dad the documents we had from Grandpa’s file. She wasn’t. As I’d realize later, she was absolutely right to be cautious.
* * *
—
THE VISIT STARTED out normally enough. Dad picked me up at the Minneapolis airport with my three half-siblings in tow. He and Ingrid gave me a tour of their spacious suburban house. After supper in the dining room, Ingrid and the kids went to their rooms, as if on cue, and Dad and I sat down in the living room.
“Dad,” I began, “I have to say, I was pretty stunned when you told me you knew nothing about our mother’s autopsy or what it found. It really puzzles me, and…and it bothers me a lot, to be honest. I mean, didn’t the hospital inform you?”
He didn’t hesitate. “No. They never contacted me.” He spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact voice, staring me in the eye with a look devoid of expression. He might have been telling me that, yes, it really was true that the dishwasher wasn’t working, even though it was brand new—imagine that.
“Weren’t they supposed to tell you? You know, something that important?” I felt foolish saying something so obvious.
“I don’t know if they were supposed to. I guess I thought they would, if there was anything new to report.” He
looked off through the picture window at the large garden, which backed on to Cedar Lake. The wind was getting up, swaying the bare branches of the trees.
“You didn’t follow up with them yourself?” My sense of disorientation was growing. I was struggling to get my bearings.
He turned back to me. “No, I didn’t follow up. Why should I have? I had my hands full at the time. Dealing with your mother’s funeral, the paperwork, family things, you kids. Then I had to get our lives back on track in Buenos Aires. When I didn’t hear anything further from the hospital, I naturally assumed they had nothing more to report.” He said this with grim determination, crouched over his knees, gazing at the floor. Then he raised his head to look straight at me, lips pursed.
Something in his defiant refusal to bend, to elaborate on his story, to give me anything whatsoever, made me determined to match his stubbornness. “You didn’t wonder how Mom died?”
“Of course I did. But sometimes there are no explanations for these things. You can expend a lot of time and worry needlessly when what you really need is to get on with life—helping the living, like you kids.”
“But Dad—”
He cut me off. “Anyway, what was I going to find out? As far as I knew, nothing. If there was anything new, they would have notified me. And what would have been the result of dwelling on it? Nothing. Nothing but a lot of pain and worry, at a time when the demands of life and work and family required me to try and put your mother’s death behind me.”
“Were the police involved?” This was a question I had to ask, and it was actually easier than I’d expected. It was perfectly obvious to anyone that, under the circumstances, the police would have wanted to know things from Dad, many things. He must have understood that, because he didn’t miss a beat.
Murder in the Family Page 21