Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (32 page)

I slid back to the floor and asked myself the key questions. Who had drugged my dog, killed my old flame and left me to inform the St. Aubaine police about the dead poet in my bed?

The detective from the St. Aubaine Sûreté followed a pair of jumpy patrolmen, who were used to shoplifters and speeding tourists but who had never seen a corpse before. I'd expected the police to bring reassurance and restore equilibrium.

Not this guy.

He was slightly smaller than a grizzly, with the same type of personality. First thing in the morning, and he already had a good start on his five o'clock shadow.

His name was F. X . Sarrazin. He addressed me as
madame
, but he must have learned English from his mother to speak it that well. He stalked around the four-poster. His dark looks grew darker, and his seventeen-inch neck swelled. My socalled watchdog followed him, wagging his tail. Tolstoy was fully recovered, and he does love strangers.

Sarrazin glowered at the sheets and at Benedict and at me. I'd seen him around St. Aubaine, which, when the tourists aren't in season, is small enough to see everyone, whether you want to or not. He seemed to hold me personally responsible for disrupting the routine of the St. Aubaine constabulary.

Every two minutes he wrote in a little white notebook. Something told me I wouldn't like the contents. Perhaps he had trouble believing I didn't have the slightest idea how Benedict had gotten into the house. Perhaps he found it hard to accept I hadn't seen Benedict for seven, maybe even eight, years. Perhaps he thought this was exactly the kind of social clumsiness you could expect from the English.

He didn't seem keen on my unknown murderer theory. Probably because not a single person had been murdered in the eighteen months since I'd moved back to St. Aubaine. When I'd dialed 911, I must have ruined some perfect local record.

Let's just say I found it difficult to communicate with Sergeant Sarrazin. Everything about him aggravated my hangover, but in particular the way he had of humming “I can't get no satisfaction.”

I was glad when the coroner arrived and distracted him. I escaped to the kitchen and made coffee. While it perked, I stared out the window through a curtain of rain. My two dozen maples were still green, but the stand of oak had changed to gold. An early start to the famous Gatineau autumn.

Then it hit me. Benedict would never see the Gatineau colours again. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes. Until Sergeant Sarrazin thundered into the kitchen and sniffed the air.

“That coffee?”

I carried two mugs of very strong, very French roast to the pine table without making eye contact with him. I was concentrating on keeping my hands steady. I was no fan of the late Benedict Kelly, but his death had left me seriously shaken. It was bad enough to have Benedict's body still lying in my tiny, perfect converted cottage on the Gatineau river. It made matters worse having some cranky detective making himself at home in my kitchen. Especially since he kept picking the dead leaves off the philodendron in the corner.

He turned away from the plant, flipped to the next page of the little white notebook and clicked the top of his ballpoint. That would make a nice note: “Suspect fails to water plants.” Just the kind of crime you'd expect in St. Aubaine.

“What did he do?” Meaning Benedict.

“He was a poet and a philosopher,” I said.

“Is that a fact? But I meant what did he do for a living.” He picked up the mug and glowered at it.

I glowered a bit myself. My hangover clanged. I was distressed by Benedict's death. I really wanted to go to sleep, not to cope with someone who looked like he'd been interrupted mid-hibernation.

“I don't know, Sergeant. I've told you already I haven't seen him for years. Seven, no, eight, to be exact.”

“So you don't know what he did for a living?”

“I'm fairly certain he was still a poet and a philosopher.”

And a lounge lizard, some people would have added.

“Where'd he live?”

“He used to have a cottage up past LaPêche. I haven't seen him for seven or eight...”

“Yeah, yeah, you've made that point.” He turned his head so he could glare out the window at the maples.

I'd stopped thinking of him as Sergeant Sarrazin and switched to plain Sarrazin. It let me feel a bit more in control.

“How'd he get here? You drive him?”

“I didn't drive him. And I have no idea how he got here.”

My house was a long way from anywhere Benedict was rumoured to hang out. Of course, he might have walked from the Britannia Pub. But Benedict never walked anywhere.

There was no sign of his car.

“Did he use his own key?”

“He didn't have a key. I haven't seen him even once since I moved back to St. Aubaine.”

I knew Sarrazin didn't believe me. I could sense that cranky glare, even though I still couldn't make eye contact with him. I didn't feel much like looking at anyone. And I certainly didn't want anyone looking at me. My eyes were red, my hair was even wilder than usual, my tongue felt breaded and fried. Anyway, the long eye of the law had glared at me enough for one day.

Still, it was in my interest to help the police. “He used to spend a lot of time at the Britannia Pub.”

“The Britannia.” His expression probably captured the typical cop's view of the Britannia: a hotbed of college kids, small-time crooks, cheap drugs, beer by the quart, smuggled cigarettes, dollar-a-game pool and roof-rattling good music of any kind you could mention. Plus poets, writers, sculptors, artists and other low life.

“Right.”

“Any names?”

I shook my head. “I haven't been in the Britannia for years, since I stopped seeing Benedict.”

“Anyone else who might know what was going on?”

I hesitated. I could feel those bear eyes on me. “His girlfriend, Bridget Gallagher. She owns the Irish shop by the Marina. She's a very nice person. Oh, God, someone will have to tell her.” I really hoped the someone wouldn't be me.

It was eight o'clock when the coroner finished with Benedict. She came to the kitchen door, holding her spiral notebook in a long, elegant hand. She was about thirty-five, trim, with an elaborate hairdo, dark brown with several shades of highlights, the type that set you back a bundle. Her name was Lise Duhamel. And a little thing like a dead man at dawn wouldn't rock her socks.

“I'm finished now, Ms...um.”

“Silk. Fiona Silk.” We'd been through that when she'd arrived. I got the unspoken message she'd seen my type before, in formaldehyde.

“Hello, Frank. Off the top of my head, I'd estimate
monsieur
has been dead between eight and ten hours. No guarantees,” she said, flashing a bit of dark stocking as she sat down.

Eight to ten hours. That put Benedict's death between ten o'clock and midnight.

That earned me another bear look. “Why didn't you call us as soon as he died?” Sarrazin said.

“I told you. I was with Dr. Liz Prentiss at Les Nuances all evening. I found him after I got home.” I glossed over the passing out on the floor part.

“Heart attack, I imagine,” Sarrazin said firmly to Dr. Duhamel. Still rooting for natural causes. Keep the village's record clean. Minimize paperwork.

Dr. Duhamel wrinkled her nice nose and chuckled. “Heart attack, Frank? Oh, I don't think so.”

I tried my luck with her. “Definitely not a heart attack?”

She answered as if Sarrazin had asked the question. “It will take an autopsy to be sure, but I think he had some serious internal injuries.”

“Really?” he said.

This time I made eye contact with him. “I told you. Someone murdered him.”

Sarrazin rubbed his chin. He looked at me as if he suddenly realized I wasn't playing on the same team.

“Well, not
me
,” I said. “Somebody else. I called you, remember?”

I found myself dropped from the discussion. Sarrazin and Dr. Duhamel moved to the front hall and lowered their voices. I had to creep into the living room, press myself against the wall and strain to hear.

“Are you telling me he ended up in that bed
after
he died of a beating? That what you're saying?”

“Don't laugh,” Dr. Duhamel said flirtatiously. “It looks like that's what happened. The body was definitely shifted after death.”

“You sure?”

“Oh, yes. Might not have even died here. No sign of violence in the room, no blood.”

I found myself gasping for breath when I finally exhaled. I did my best to gasp quietly and keep listening.

“These kinds of things don't happen in St. Aubaine,” he said.

“They do now,” she said. “We have pretty good indications he died of a broken neck. Plus some other serious injuries which he didn't get falling into that four-poster. I'd say he'd been roughed up very, very badly by someone who knew how to hurt people and not leave marks. Naturally, we'll have to wait for the full autopsy.”

Sarrazin said, “
Merde
.”

She chuckled again. “But it won't take an autopsy to tell us someone stuck that cute little smile on his pretty face. Krazy Glue, if you ask me.”

At some point, St. Aubaine village council must have had a financial surplus, and they'd blown it on the cop shop. Automatic key cards, bullet-proof glass, an intercom system to talk to the desk staff, this police station had the whole shebang.

“Expecting a siege?” Since I'd started to believe this was all a bad dream anyway, why not be flip with the detective?

“Everybody's a comedian,” Sarrazin said. He slipped his magnetic card into the door.

I was on my way to be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed. Oh well. At least I had that hangover to keep me warm.

The interview room was the sort of place you might expect from the mind of Kafka. The interview too. It varied on the theme of: “Yes, I do think someone else killed him and planted him in my house afterwards. No, I don't know who or how or what the motive was.”

“Why would that be?” Sarrazin asked me for the fifth time.

“I have no idea. I told you I haven't seen the man for...” I hoped the tape recorder picked up the outrage in my voice.

“Yeah, yeah, we've been there. But, it was your bed, so you can see why I'm interested.” He had a tough time getting away from that bed business.

I stared at the blue ink on my fingertips. I would have a tough time getting away from that too. “Somebody killed Benedict, and you're hassling me. That somebody is on the loose now. The way he died, it would have to be a psycho. You should be more interested in that.”

“What about his girlfriend? Is she a psycho?”

“Hardly. Bridget's a lovely person. Plus, she's just a little bit of a thing. She couldn't lift him, let alone beat him to death. You'll figure that out yourself when you talk to her.”

“You know, I kind of like the idea that you killed him.”

“Let me remind you that I was...”

“We'll soon check that, won't we?” He switched off the tape recorder and stood up. “Don't stray far,” he said.

Back home, between my desperate hope that I was dreaming and my fascination with the police photographer and the crowd of forensic technicians picking over the house, it was hours before I strayed anywhere.

At ten o'clock, the ambulance attendants wheeled the late poet and philosopher, encased in a black vinyl body bag, out through the front door.

Except for Tolstoy, I was finally alone. But I desperately needed a break from thinking about Benedict. I switched on the radio and caught the tail end of the CBC National news. “The controversial poet, Benedict Kelly, was found dead at the home of romance writer Fiona Silk in St. Aubaine, Quebec today. He was forty-seven. Last week's announcement by the Flambeau Foundation that Kelly had been the first winner of the Flambeau Memorial Prize for Poetic Literature created an uproar in the literary community. Police are investigating.”

“Be serious,” I said to the radio. Benedict?
The Flambeau
? Canada's rarest and richest literary prize? Hardly. A sick joke maybe?

How could I have missed that news? Well. Easy. When you're a writer with a non-performing manuscript close to deadline, and you're thinking about using your drop-dead emergency cash roll to buy food, you let your newspapers pile up, you don't turn on your radio, and you don't own a
TV
set anyway. Your former-almost-lover wins the Flambeau, and you don't even hear about it.

The Flambeau! It never occurred to me that Benedict was churning out serious poetry. I'd figured his efforts were props for enticing girls out of their skivvies and for encouraging Irish expatriates to pay for his drinks. And here all along they were serious works of literature. It just goes to show you.

The Flambeau was an erotic dream for poets. A serious pile of cash donated by the philanthropic widow of an industrialist. Of course, a lot of good it had done Benedict.

That's the trouble with national public radio. It gets around. I wasn't the only one who heard it. My ex-husband-to-be didn't start with any of the more conventional conversational openings. “This is a singularly inconsiderate and flagrant thing to do, even for you, Fiona. This kind of behaviour is bound to impact your divorce settlement negatively.”

“Leave a message after the beep,” I said.

“And don't pretend you're not there. I know better.”

My divorce settlement. Just what I didn't want to discuss. I needed a clear head to talk to Philip. And if I'd had a clear head, I never would have picked up the phone in the first place.

“Rats,” I said. “I thought you were in Vancouver.”

“Even three thousand miles away, Fiona, you manage to embarrass me.”