Murder Sees the Light (20 page)

“We both saw her.… It's her all right.… What could she want now? She was just walking across the road as we came through the lodge from Hatchway.… She didn't see us.”

“Damn it!” said Patten at intervals, drowning out more interesting news. “She must know I'm here. It can't be an accident. She knows the lodge from years ago. Damn it! She wants me dead!”

They were looking back in my direction as I rejoined the group. The only extra information came from Lorca who called whoever it was they were talking about “a revengeful bitch.”

“Well, we should pack you off back to the lodge before you catch cold,” said Patten without much warmth. Lorca brought my clothes wrapped in a sopping towel, and my shoes in a plastic shopping bag marked “Onions.” “Keep the things you've got on. I've got other stuff, fella. I'll send somebody over with your boat later on.” I tried to show that I was grateful, and that I would return the clothes as soon as I'd turned around. Both Patten and Lorca walked out to the Mercedes with me. I got into the front seat, since that was the door Wilf was holding open. He slammed the door shut, so I opened the window.

“We'll have to have another game before I go back,” I said.

“Any time, fella. So long!” He waved, and the car backed up, turned around, and carried me off through the trees.

EIGHTEEN

The OPP detachment at Whitney was manned by a redheaded constable with pink eyelids and freckles. He didn't come close to filling the swivel chair he was sitting in. I wondered if there was such a thing as a summerrelief policeman while he took the information about George McCord and made a few calls. Soon I got to do my song and dance all over again for my old friend Harry Glover. I mentioned the body, the mine, and my bump on the head. Details that were still unattached to recent events I kept to myself. No sense confusing either one of us. The main thing I didn't tell him was that I'd walk back to the cabin with him. He didn't press me, but he let me draw him a map.

“I suppose you've told everybody about it?” Glover looked his question at me like I was on the carpet.

“I came right here. Nobody knows about it except the Indians and you.” That was a line from the Camp Northern Pine hymn. It didn't mean anything to Glover.

“Well, let's try to keep it that way. Better tell the old lady, but apart from that leave the police work to the OPP.”

“Suits me.”

“We can get a plane in there easy from Smoke Lake,” he said, and the freckled kid went back to the telephone. Glover didn't waste any further time with me after I told him I was returning to the lodge. He didn't like me any better than he had at our first meeting, but this time he didn't pick away at me. For some reason I think he trusted me, which was a leg up for one of us. We left the office at the same time. He watched me settle behind the wheel of my car and didn't move back to business until he'd seen me take the road back to the park.

The beavers had been at work again at the culvert as I came back towards the lodge. But two beavers can't plug a hole the way a body can. I splashed through without reducing speed. I was driving with the devil-may-care abandon of a drunk or a fool who doesn't know what time to go to bed. Bed: that was the name of the game from now on. Just then I could have fallen asleep on Dick Berners's stained and torn mattress without thinking the tumbling stuffing was anything other than friendly.

Joan was waiting for me when I finished parking the car. I hadn't even brought back a bag of milk. I remembered with horror that if I got hungry I had some fillets of lake trout in the cabin.

“You went through so fast before, I couldn't catch you. When you didn't come back, I was beginning to get worried. Are you all right, Benny?” I wasn't purposely falling asleep in my shoes, but I was close to it.

“Joan, a lot of things have been happening. I don't know where to start. I've just come back from telling Harry Glover that I found George McCord's body back in there. I'm sorry to tell you, but it looks like he was killed. It was no accident. Glover is flying into the lake to take charge, but I guess we should tell Maggie. Are you feeling strong?”

“George dead? I can't believe it. First Aeneas, now George. Benny, what's happening?”

“Honest, I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew.” Joan was pushing her glasses farther up with a finger on the nose-piece.

“I still can't believe it,” she said, shaking her head.

“I'd better get over there while I can still walk. Can you find Cissy? It'll be better if there are other women around.”

“They're all down on the dock. Maggie went swimming. It was quite a sight. What happened?”

We started walking down to the dock. For the first time in hours, since the sun bore into my back at the break of dawn, I was conscious that there was weather going on outside. I'd been feeling wet and cold so long then, I felt like that was the normal condition of man. This one anyway. I could see Cissy standing on the edge of the dock addressing something large and white in the water alongside it. Most of the regulars were there, although I was too sleepy to count noses. There were several greetings, sour grins, and faint-hearted waves from the deck chairs. Maggie was walking out of the lake towards me, blocking out the sun and dripping. I couldn't do it, not then. I felt like I was facing the bear again. It was a dirty trick to say anything when she didn't even have a towel to protect herself with. So, I waited until she had dried off and slipped into a purple bathrobe. She looked like two wrestlers standing in the ring talking to the referee. I moved closer. Cissy placed a skinny arm on my shoulder. There was no chat. I guess my face was spilling the beans. I couldn't help that. I told Maggie to sit down. I didn't ask her, I told her, and she took it from me. The heat had gone out of the sun again as she looked up at me, her eyes puffy, her chins stretched, her face going white.

“Maggie, it's George,” I said, “He's dead. I'm sorry.” Pause. “I found him up at Dick Berners's cabin.” I thought maybe she'd take it well, so I didn't pad it or stretch it out. I said
dead
not
passed away
or any of the other cushions I couldn't seem to think of. Maybe I thought if the words hurt her, she'd somehow take the news and the shock better.

“Not George! Not George!” The words seemed to snake out of her in a rising whimper that became a cry. Cissy moved in at the right time. “NOT GEORGE! Ohhhh!” I couldn't see her face any more. That was as it should be. What happened now was private, The women shielded her, supported her. She didn't say anything more, just issued great sobs and unrecognizable halfsyllables. Joan was on one side and Cissy on the other, with Delia Alexander holding close to the huge purple shape, a shape which was now gently rocking back and forth as though she was cradling something. I stood back like an extra holding a spear in some moth-eaten revival of
Julius Caesar.
There's an extra in
Macbeth
who comes in at every performance and says “The Queen, my Lord, is dead.” I always wondered whether after the first few weeks of the run if he wasn't tempted to alter the line to: “The Queen, my Lord, is better.”

At the first telling of the news, Lloyd had walked off quickly to get his car. By the time the gaggle surrounding Maggie had got her to her feet, the car was waiting in the sodden grass as close to the dock as possible. They moved towards the car, a cooing and a whimpering filling the afternoon air. They tucked her in; Cissy and Joan got in with her. Delia climbed in beside Lloyd, and off they went. I told Desmond that Harry Glover knew all the details I did, and excused myself before I fell on my face again.

I wanted a bath badly, but I doubt whether I could have coped with knobs and plugs let alone the pump and pails and the propane stove. I pulled the curtains together where I could find any and addressed myself to sleep. I didn't seal the envelope. I didn't add a return address.

NINETEEN

When I awoke, it was dark, I closed my eyes again. This time I was trying to row my way out of the way of a huge freighter, which kept coming at me from all directions through a fog. When it was clear that there was no escape, whichever side I was sleeping on, I threw my legs out of bed and followed them. I looked at my watch at the side of the bed, where I'd left it behind as I sloughed all my city clothes nearly a week ago. Eleven thirty-three. But the Delco was still pounding away, and the electric lights were burning in the Annex. Maybe Glover was grilling everybody. Maybe somebody from CIB had taken over. Maybe it was like the hotdog roast I missed.

I was too turned around to go back to sleep, so I pulled on some clean clothes, added a sweater because I felt a chill, and walked over towards the Annex. It was like the last time I was there, and the time before that. Lloyd Pearcy was at the old record player trying to get the words of “Lindy Lou” straight. Directly under one of the bearskins, Des Westmorland and Delia were sitting and not talking. David Kipp was sitting at the card table playing solitaire, but it didn't look like he knew what cards he was holding. Maggie, of course, was not there. Her seat was about twice as empty as any other place in the room.

All the faces were uniformly long. It was hard to understand that this was all for George. George, whom nobody had a good word for. George, the dim; George, the noisy; George, the nosy; Gloomy George; George, the dead, the late, the deceased, the dear departed of Maggie, the un-dear departed of the rest of us. Maybe the long looks were for Maggie. Maybe, not feeling the loss themselves, they were trying to come at it through the back door. They all liked Maggie. That sounded about right so I didn't worry about it any more. I drew myself a cup of coffee, added milk and three teaspoonfuls of sugar. I usually have two but I was practically in mourning.

David Kipp drifted up to me. “I hope you can tell me what this is all about. I can't get anybody to open up. You were there; what happened?”

“I got hit on the head. After a while I woke up. Somebody got to George while I was out. George isn't going to wake up. Somewhere between me and George the attacker lost his amateur standing.”

“This is turning out to be one lousy holiday. Cooped up here, kept in the dark. It's like television.”

“What do you hate most, the plot or the cast?”

“Oh, what's the use talking to you? You wouldn't understand this, but I came up here to look at birds not sit around waiting for policemen to ask me idiotic questions.”

“Such as where did you go when the lights went out on the night of Friday, July sixth?” Kipp's lip actually quivered. Like he'd learned to do it from practising before a mirror. I suddenly felt like I'd hit him with a brick in a pillow fight. He backed away from me and bumped into the coffee urn. “Hey, be careful!”

I grabbed the urn and pushed him out of the way. “This isn't your night, is it?”

“Goddamn you, Cooperman. Why don't you bugger off?” Kipp's last words were bitten off with a whispering rasp, which made him all the easier to dislike. He gave me one more dirty look then went back to his cards. I moved over to Lloyd Pearcy. He was twirling a small gizmo with emery-paper attached to a wheel.

“I'm sharpening the needles,” he explained. “None of your Victor Red Seal needles. These are cut thorns from out back,” and he held the thing up for me to see, although I didn't doubt him. “You ruffled David Kipp's feathers,” he said with a tilt of his eyebrow. “And him so full of news about seeing both a great blue heron and a dead deer in the water all in one morning. Is that any way to treat a summer naturalist, Benny?” I smiled. He took the needle he'd been working on out, held it up to the light, and fitted it back into the tone arm. He didn't look up when he said: I hear you've been knocked about.”

“Not as bad as some.”

“Cissy's over with Maggie now. She's been there ever since Harry Glover flew in here. Neither one of us much cared for George, you know. He was a mean-spirited man. Stunted. No joy or bounce in him. But, Maggie, now …” I bobbed my head to show that I understood when his words died on the vine. Joan came up to us wearing a proprietary, grim face. All these deaths wouldn't do the lodge any good. If somebody wanted the Harbisons to fail, there are few better ways of doing it than killing off a guide and the next able-bodied man down the road. Joan slipped me a tight little smile with no lingering in it and turned to Lloyd.

“Have you seen Cissy?”

“Not since she went back after supper. Said she'd try to give her something to sleep. She said she's never seen a body broke up like Maggie is. Seems a shame to waste it on George.” Joan raised a mocking, rather teacherly, eyebrow, and Lloyd pretended to bite his tongue for penance. Then she looked a question at me.

“Harry Glover said he'd be back tomorrow, or as soon as a medical report comes in. But I think they'll send bigger fish than Harry, don't you? I mean, don't they have to?” I shrugged, and that was as close to an opinion with weight as they were going to get until Glover himself got back.

“I wish Mike was here,” Joan said. “The city's a thousand miles away when something like this happens. He left just before you came back. Damn it all to hell.”

“Nobody liked George,” I thought out loud. “Couldn't he get along with anybody?” I glanced first at Joan and then back to Lloyd.

“Joan, here, seemed to manage him without too much fuss.”

“Oh, he had his good points, I guess. Most of the time he was like a half-tame bear. And not a bright bear at that. He was always lifting things …”

“Yeah,” said Lloyd, “he was light fingered. Used to pocket things like my best lures when I wasn't looking.”

“He was always denouncing my friends to me, saying nasty things about the Rimmers. Dalt was at the top of George's hate list. He didn't like either Aeneas or Hector, although both of them were harmless.”