Murder Sees the Light (12 page)

“A fitting end,” said Maggie, and George began to laugh at the thought of it.

“What would make a man do a crazy thing like that?” asked David Kipp, moving closer to the group. We all looked to Delia for the answer.

“It appears he was some kind of mystic, belonged to a devil-worshipping sect. He was insane, of course, and if I remember he was disappointed in love.” George sniggered.

“In Germany,” David Kipp said, “there is a Crime Museum at Rothenburg. That's where they keep the Iron Maiden. Michelle and I saw it when we were in Germany.”

“I thought that ‘Iron Maiden' was just a political term of abuse,” said Des Westmorland. Our conversation, in spite of its grizzly subject matter, was integrating Des and his friend into the group, as my old counsellor at Camp Northern Pine might have said. “Was there really such a thing?”

“In the olden days it was a wooden shame-coat that women who committed certain crimes were forced to wear,” said Kipp.

“With steel spikes on the door,” whispered Cissy, making her s's hiss like coiled snakes.

“Well, I don't know about that,” shrugged Kipp. For a moment it looked like Maggie was going to regain the spotlight, but Kipp had tasted the power of regurgitated travel yarns. “There is another crime museum in Paris. It's the official collection of the Paris Police Department. I've seen that, too. It has all the usual Black Museum sorts of things, along with a history of law enforcement from the earliest times. There are documents dealing with the Revolution, and mannikins wearing the old-fashioned police uniforms as they developed through the years. I spent most of an afternoon there. Fascinating.”

“Get back to the 'usual Black Museum sorts of things,'” said one of Kipp's boys. It was a mistake, because his father at once ordered Roger and Chris out of the Annex to bed. That seemed to lighten spirits a little.

“Too bad he can't hear this,” David said. “That part of the collection is full of shabby-looking knives, daggers, and guns. I suppose if you're looking for something specific it might be interesting, but to me a bread knife looks like a bread knife whatever its sordid history.”

“That sounds very brave. I wonder whether you'd spend the night there.”

“I don't believe in ghosts, if that's what you mean, Maggie.”

“Oh, these new rationalists! I'm sure that the angels weep for you.”

“If any place has ghosts,” said Joan Harbison, “it's this place. The police left the body of Dick Berners, the old prospector, in this room overnight. And three months later Wayne Trask was laid out here waiting for them to arrive from Whitney.”

“Albert told me that two lumbermen were killed in an accident on a log boom out on the lake. They brought the frozen bodies in here and stood them up against the wall like sticks of timber.”

“Honestly, Maggie. You're a storehouse of the strangest information.”

“Well, I have a head full of odd things, I'll not deny it. I have to fill my head, you see, I have no books.”

“What was this fellow Trask like?” I asked Maggie.

“From what I hear he wasn't a very savoury character.”

“Unsavoury. Yes, that's the word for him all right. For a while the police thought he'd been murdered; there were many hereabouts who'd have liked to have seen him dead. But they gave up that line.”

“He did have lots of enemies,” Cissy said. “He was a madman. He used to chase women in here. One time he held a shotgun to his own wife's head, and she ran out through the bush naked as a jay-bird and flagged down the first car that came by.”

“He spent time in the loony-bin one year,” Lloyd added, looking at me for some reason.

“They ran him out of Cornwall, Ontario, for fooling around with a doctor's wife,” said Maggie.

“He went after one of my girls one time,” Lloyd said. “He was a crazy man for the drink, you know. Once he got to drinking there was no holding him.”

“He was the former owner of the lodge? Is that right?” That was Des Westmorland again. He was taking in more than I imagined. His lady beamed shy approval of his taking an interest. Cissy, suddenly animated, nodded.

“Flora, his wife, was the only one who did any work on this place. Wayne Trask didn't lift a finger. And when she left, the place just ran downhill. After Trask died, they practically gave the place away it was so rundown.”

“Flora was a great one for crocheting,” Lloyd added. “She sold tea-cosies, scarves, and sweaters to the people staying at the lodge. That's how she put by the money to leave Wayne. She left for a visit to see her mother and never came back. Practically with just the clothes she was standing in. How do you like that?” We all made noises by way of answering, and he began to chuckle to himself, very much aware that he had his audience hooked.

“Trask, you know, old Wayne was a character though. He came up to Sudbury one time and I gave him some work. He was coming off a tear and was short of money. He'd come in to see me and we'd have a drink, and he'd stay and have a few. Then I kept him on the job after there was nothing for him to do—just out of sympathy like. And then one of the last times I saw him, my young lad was with me up here at the lodge, you know. The lad had a Coke and Trask said, ‘That'll be thirty-five cents, please.' I thought he was making a joke.”

“After all the meals he'd had at our house,” Cissy put in.

“Was Trask a prospector?” David asked, a little confused.

“You've been hearing about Dick Berners. He was the prospector,” Joan Harbison said. As though she was feeling a sudden draught, she picked up a heavy piece of birch and threw it on the fire, sending up another shower of sparks. Everybody was quiet for a minute.

“Old Dick was a joke all over,” said George sitting at his mother's side. “He went prospecting all right, but any fool knows there's nothing to prospect for up here. And even if he found a ton of gold, he couldn't mine it because it's illegal to do any mining here in Algonquin Park.”

“Albert and I used to have many a laugh at poor Dick's expense. He was so sure there was gold up here, they say he wrote the Department of Mines. All he ever found was a chunk of quartz, no different from the one Joan's got the door propped open with. Claimed that he should know about gold because he was a mining engineer one time. Albert knew all the men who used to work for the Dunlap Lumber Company in the old days and he found out that Dick was just as much of a joke back then as he was in our time. He'd go into the bush, stay there a few weeks, then come out again. He always said he was getting closer and closer. He finally retired somewhere around Huntsville or Haliburton. He'd done pretty well with his trapping, you see; that was his main occupation. He lived comfortably until he got sick. That's when he came back.” Maggie was looking me in the eye. I was beginning to fidget in my seat.

“Old Dick came back up here to die,” Lloyd said. “No two ways about that. He had cancer and he came back up here, went in to his old camp, and died.”

“Oh, he was a character,” George said. “You could smell him coming through the bush. And always covered with soot from his campfire. You wouldn't want to get closer to him than the end of the cottage units across the field. He was
that
high.” He started to laugh through his teeth, as the picture of old Dick became clearer.

“Oh, let's hush up about poor Dick Berners,” Maggie said, holding her puffy hand to her cheek like Queen Victoria. “I'm sorry I encouraged this. He was a good man, better than any of you will ever know.” She didn't enlarge on that. It was the sort of statement that you have to leave alone. It tended to kill conversation. Joan took a look at her watch and left the Annex.

“Nobody mentioned the incident that happened half a mile north of here at the Woodward place. That fellow had a close call and it was no accident.” I said this and looked around to find guilt written on one of the assembled faces, but all I saw was either blank ignorance or very good play-acting.

“He must have had God on his side to have escaped,” Maggie said, making a private joke.

“Poor Aeneas wasn't so lucky,” Cissy said, half whispering to herself. It was the first time the name in the back of all of our minds had been mentioned. Poor Aeneas.

“You wanted him to take you fishing in the lake northeast of here, didn't you, Lloyd?” Lloyd grinned uneasily.

“Little Crummock, you mean?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn't Aeneas take you in there?”

“Damned shame about Aeneas,” said David.

“I hear he would never go into Little Crummock, Lloyd.” My voice sounded a little more than casual. I tried holding my breath.

“He'd go anywhere else,” said Lloyd.

“But not into Little Crummock.” I stayed with him.

“Superstitious.”

“In what way?” I asked, and Lloyd slowly leaned across to me.

“He said he wouldn't walk into country where he's heard thunder during a thunderstorm without seeing any lightning. That's what he told me.”

For a moment all you could hear was the steady throb of the electric generator. Nobody said anything, and then the lights began to fade as the generator died. The silence that took hold in the dark seemed a million miles deep.

Outside, a few minutes later, the stars were out, more than I'd ever seen before. I looked north for the dipper and found four rather misshapen ones. Cissy and Lloyd bent their necks with me for a few minutes, carrying the indoor silence outside.

“That Maggie's a caution,” said Lloyd.

“She means no harm,” Cissy explained. I looked at both of them, puzzled.

“She is colourful,” I admitted.

“Yes, I love her stories. She just lets them carry her away too far, that's all.”

“I don't understand. She has a good imagination.”

“She has that! In spades. But you see, Benny, she makes things up. You have to take what she says with a grain of salt.”

“A grain?” said Cissy. “You mean a cupful! You can't believe a word she says, she makes everything up.”

“She wasn't born in Scotland. That's one thing for a start. Oh, I allow she was over there one time.”

“But those stories?”

“Something she heard or read about years ago. I think sometimes that she really believes her stories.”

“Is the truth about her so awful?”

“Not awful, just humdrum, like the rest of us. She has a way of talking, though, that hints at a past. I think it's because she looks like a woman with a past. She just plays it up.”

“She comes from Cornwall, Ontario. How's that for a past?”

“I'll have to sleep on that,” I said.

TEN

“What are you daydreaming about?” Patten looked cross. I'd beaten him in the first game and I was throwing this one his way with a silly Queen's Knight's Pawn opening that wasn't going to do me any good. Patten was wearing a buff-coloured safari jacket over his usual torn khaki shorts. Without his sunglasses, he looked less menacing. His eyes were narrow and appeared to be lidless, as though the brows themselves were enough protection for those deep blue, cautious eyes. Up close, the end of his nose was red and shiny, with tight skin pulled over a bum-shaped bulb. This and the thin lips seemed to have been added to his broad face by accident, clearly having been intended for a long lean face. But that was the chemistry that worked so well on television: his features had the look of a man who'd not had a square meal in months but were set in a face that was well fed and content. The beard confused things, of course, but nobody'd ever seen him with a beard on television.

“I'm wondering what plans you have for my unfortunate Bishop.”

“I have no plans, fella, only designs.” He didn't rub his hands together, but he might as well have. I hadn't meant to pass the game to him in a brown paper bag.

“Did the Provincial Police come up here?” I asked touching the wrong piece and then pushing it into the glare of Patten's Queen.

“Oh, they arrived. But we're just poor American tourists who see, hear, and speak no evil. That corporal bought that. We're just minding our business. Too bad about that guide. The Lord giveth and the Lord … Checkbloody-mate, fella!” He had me all right; a little sooner than I expected. I examined the positions while Patten did everything but an imitation of a victorious fighting cock. At last I shook my head slowly so that the inevitability of it all showed. Clean living and the good life won again.

“One more?” he asked, already rearranging the men.

“Nothing doing. When I'm licked, I stay licked.”

We'd been playing inside the house this time. It was still early. I'd done an hour's pretend fishing near the island. I hadn't tied a hook on my factory-tested line. I was busy thinking about a couple of incidents that happened before I went to bed the night before. And while Patten was busy in the narrow kitchen of the cabin making a fruit drink for both of us, I had a chance to think about them again.

After the Annex lights went off, the night before, the party dispersed. Everybody went back to their cabins, or at least to the cabins of their choice.

I took a walk down to the water and watched the lights blinking through the trees at the Rimmers' across the lake, and listened to the conversation of the idle rowboats tied up to the cleats. I sat down in one of the deck chairs, lit a cigarette, and tried to make my mind a blank.

I was nearly dozing off, when I heard the sound of paddle strokes coming quietly over the water. Under the stars, the lake was dead, a dance floor lit by a mirrored globe. The canoe came closer, out of the shadows near the shore. It was Aline Barbour. She beached the canoe, stowed her paddle, dragged the boat a short distance up the beach so that the bow was on grass, and turned the craft bottom up. There was a tidiness about her movements that was almost like dancing. Or maybe I just like to watch other people do the manual labour. Anyway, she wasn't hard to watch.