What Is Left the Daughter (15 page)

"Get a tarp from the shed, Nephew, and let's get him rolled up properly in it."

So I was fully volunteering in the aftermath, because I followed my uncle's instructions flat-out: hurried to the shed, lifted a tightly rolled tarpaulin from the corner, carried it across my shoulder back to the porch. My uncle took it from me, went inside, unrolled it in the dining room and said, "Now let's situate the body right in the middle."

He reached under Hans's shoulders and I clasped both his ankles and, half lurching, we lifted and carried him into the dining room and set him on the tarpaulin. I reached under the overcoat and took out the gramophone records, placed the bundle on a chair. We then fitted the tarpaulin tightly around Hans. My uncle removed the flowered tablecloth and twisted it into a kind of rope, which he used to secure the tarp at the top. He slid off his belt and fastened it around the tarp at the bottom. I could see the soles of Hans's shoes.

"I'll pull the truck around," my uncle said. I didn't know what he had in mind, exactly. "This rain'll wash the porch clean, but you'd better take a mop to the blood in the house."

I found the mop and bucket in the pantry, ran water into the bucket, adding some liquid floor soap. I then mopped what blood I could detect in the dim light. Things were moving almost faster than I could keep up with. I emptied the bucket in the kitchen sink and washed and squeezed out the mop and put them back in the pantry. I heard my uncle's truck. He'd driven it right up to the house.

My uncle got out of the truck and went to the shed. He returned carrying a toboggan. Runners hadn't been attached to it yet. He set the toboggan on the porch and said, "Let's get him on this." We carried Hans Mohring over and set him on the toboggan. My uncle took a length of rope from his truck and we tied the body to the toboggan, then lifted it onto the bed of the truck. I climbed into the cab and my uncle got in and we drove, not a word between us, to the dock at Parrsboro.

"We'll use Leonard Marquette's boat," Donald said when we reached the dock. "He won't mind one bit. Not one bit."

Now I understood: it was my uncle's intention to take Hans Mohring out to sea. I figured we'd set the toboggan on the deck, and once we got far enough offshore, we'd slide it into the water. But that isn't what we did. My uncle insisted that we lower the toboggan down the ladder fixed to the dock and set it afloat. Then he used a jackknife to sever a lifesaver from its white rope, tossed the float on the deck and used the rope to fasten the toboggan to the boat. I stepped on board and stood at the stern. The toboggan kept its balance, rolling gently in the swell, knocking against the barnacled pylons. My uncle went to the wheelhouse, started the engine, switched on the running lights and slowly navigated through the fog and pitch black, out into the Minas Basin.

My best guess, it was half an hour before I went to the wheelhouse. "We're almost to Cape Split," my uncle said. "Just about five minutes more, I'll cut the engine but not anchor. Then we'll do what's necessary."

"What do you think, Uncle Donald," I said, "that Tilda will believe Hans went for a dangerous
swim?
"

"No, I'll own up to it. I'll take my medicine. But first I feel obligated to send this German fellow to the bottom."

"German fellow Tilda's
husband
you just murdered. Obligated to whom?"

"Now suddenly Hans Mohring's your best friend, huh? Retch off the rail, Wyatt, if you feel so disgusted."

The lighthouse at Cape Split swept its beam, which didn't quite reach our boat, but I glimpsed a flotilla of sleeping ducks about fifty or so feet away. The lighthouse's foghorn was in good working order. In any other circumstance a person might've felt peaceful and sequestered at sea like this. Catch a few hours' sleep before setting lobster traps, say, or fishing nets, and always the surprising color of the dawn light as it tinged the horizon, a normal day in this part of the world, ship-to-shore chat with the local dispatcher, or your wife if your own house was equipped with a two-way, as many in Parrsboro and neighboring outports were. No war bulletins coming in over the airwaves, the static innocent, only interrupting things like "Try to make it back by supper if you can, because Emmeline Bellinger's first birthday party's this evening."

"Let's take him back," I said. "Let's not do this, Uncle Donald. What are we? Let's take him back home."

"We don't have enough petrol to get across to Germany, Nephew." His little joke. "Besides, all those U-boats out and about? No, sir, I'm afraid it's a more local watery grave for Herr Mohring here"—he looked back at what we were towing—"and then I'll go to prison for the rest of my life."

Well out in the Bay of Fundy, he cut the engine. I could see fog swirling at the running lights, but otherwise, nothing. "Fetch a flashlight from the rack there," my uncle said. I found the flashlight and followed him from the wheelhouse to the stern. "Point it so I can find the rope." He opened his jackknife and cut the tie rope and we watched as the toboggan drifted away. "This far out, the winds and tide should favor a long ride, take him straight out the bay. Or any minute he might sink away—that's possible, too. Anyway, I checked the gauge. We've got just enough petrol to get us home."

"Let's get a gaffing hook and pull him back," I said. "Uncle Donald—what are we?"

"I can't tolerate the idea of my daughter weeping and carrying on over his grave."

My uncle returned to the wheelhouse. I stood at the stern the whole return trip to the wharf at Parrsboro.

Tilda had parked my car in front of the house. Not a single light was on. When my uncle and I walked into the dining room, Tilda was sitting at the table. A candle was lit in a brass holder. Tilda wore her black dress. A string quartet by Beethoven was playing. Suddenly there was a horrible screech as the needle failed to leap the bullet hole. The needle caught again, repeating a passage, repeating, repeating, repeating. Tilda had folded the two shirts Hans had wrapped the gramophone records in and set them on the table next to the toboggan runner, which lay crosswise. My uncle and I stood in the doorway, staring at the objects of incrimination, laid out right where we'd had so many family meals.

"Pop, you never once—not
once—
mopped a floor in this house," Tilda said, her voice strained, as if speaking at all caused excruciating pain. "In fact, Mother's the only one ever mopped a floor in this house. Yet it's been freshly mopped, hasn't it?"

Her hands had been under the table, but now she lifted them, and the revolver was pointed at her father. Then at me. Then she put the barrel to the side of her head. "Where is my husband?"

"O
KAY NOW. OKAY NOW,
" my uncle said. He slowly approached Tilda, then tried to pry open her fingers and take the revolver. She didn't put up a great struggle, but didn't let go, either. Grasping her wrist, he levered her hand toward the candle, and when the flame touched her skin, she said, "Oh!" and lost her grip. My uncle placed the revolver next to the gramophone. He lifted the gramophone's arm and set it on its cradle.

Tilda was glaring at me. "Wyatt," she said, just above a whisper, "where is Hans?" My uncle violently pushed me along out the front door, and with Tilda now screaming, "Where is my husband? Where is my husband?" he and I got back in the truck. A short way down the road, I turned and saw Tilda in front of the house. She'd dropped to her knees.

A folded copy of the
Mail
fell open from the dashboard onto my lap. On the front page was a photograph in which dozens of suitcases and trunks had washed up in Sydney. In the photograph you could see the rain. Two men were hauling in a trunk with gaffing hooks.
AT SYDNEY, NS, SEA DELIVERS PERSONAL BELONGINGS OF
CARIBOU
VICTIMS.

"Today I lost both my wife and my daughter," my uncle said.

I had to reach across and switch on the windshield wipers.

We drove straight to the police station in Truro. There my uncle put things directly to the desk sergeant. "In all my days!" the sergeant said. "This is some novelty. Two men show up out of nowhere. Murder and accessory to murder's my educated guess. Best to leave all that up to a magistrate. Is there a vehicle?"

"My truck's right out front," my uncle said.

"Keys?"

"On the seat," my uncle said.

"I'll take you to lockup. Got anyone to telephone?"

"No, sir," I said.

So, Marlais, on October 23, 1942, a magistrate's hearing was held in the library in Middle Economy. It was an irony, locally noted, that Magistrate Dean Junkins, who'd been sent out from Halifax on October 18, was put up in the rooms above the bakery. Cornelia had tidied things up nicely. Tilda had packed up her and Hans's belongings and moved back to the house. Donald and I were delivered by an RCMP officer named Bernard Remmick by car to the library. In the newspaper it was called a paddy wagon, but it wasn't any such thing; it was an automobile like any other. The
Mail
also referred to the hearing as "a preliminary inquiry into the murder of the German student Hans Mohring," but as it turned out, it wasn't preliminary to anything but itself, because the hearing was completed by the end of the day on October 23. My uncle served as the only witness, and since he flat-out testified against himself, that was the end of that. I imagine Magistrate Junkins was home in time for a late supper.

The morning of the twenty-third there was a hard rain. At least 150 people had packed into the library. They'd come in from all the Economys, Great Village, Bass River, Five Islands, Glenholme. Cornelia had brought my uncle's and my suits to Truro, and we wore them to the hearing.

The proceedings began promptly at nine
A.M.
Despite the gravity of the situation, my uncle looked so uncomfortable it had a comic effect. He was among the people he'd known all his life, yet he couldn't meet anyone's eye. He constantly fidgeted, smoothing down his black tie at least a dozen times, before the magistrate, sitting at a table next to the witness chair (a chair from Cornelia's bakery), said, "Mr. Hillyer, I authorize that this hearing has commenced. You may have your say now."

The library hushed right down. My uncle took a sip of water, cleared his throat, looked at Tilda, who sat nearby but not in the front row, then stood up to read his handwritten statement. I'd seen him working on it in his cell.

"You aren't obligated to stand," Magistrate Junkins said.

"I'd prefer not to," my uncle said.

"Sit down, then," the magistrate said.

My uncle sat down and read: "We do not wish to see our hand in what happens, so we call certain things terrible accidents. We call them terrible accidents, but that's not true of what I did. Not true at all. It was no accident, and to my mind, for that reason redemption is far less possible."

Magistrate Junkins, right off sighing with impatience, said, "No religion or personal philosophy is necessary here, sir."

But my uncle seemed to ignore this and said, "Likewise, if a person is dedicated to the truth of his actions, then much can be stated directly. Hans Mohring was age twenty-one only. He wanted to be a philologist. May I consult the dictionary over there on the shelf?"

"You may."

Buttoning the three buttons of his suit coat as if he was about to encounter a sudden chill, my uncle stepped over to a nearby shelf, took up the well-thumbed
Webster's
dictionary, carried it back to the witness chair. He removed the leather bookmark and set it on the small table in front of him. "And 'philology' is defined thusly," he said.

And do you know, Marlais, I had never heard my uncle utter the word "thusly" before. "'Philology: The science of language, especially in its historical and comparative aspects.' And there's another thing philology means: 'the love of learning and literature.' That German student, philology was his interest. My daughter told me they'd talked about philology on the bus ride out from Halifax, when they'd first met.

"Now, stated as plainly as a person can state anything: I, Donald Hillyer, admit to murdering the German student Hans Mohring. Furthermore, I admit, earlier in the evening, to requesting my nephew Wyatt Hillyer, who's sitting right here up front—requesting that he invite Hans Mohring to my house. Wyatt had no earthly knowledge of my intentions. Hans Mohring and my daughter had got married, and Hans wanted to declare himself to me somehow—and by the way, the marriage was performed legally by Reverend Plumly in Advocate. Anyway, once Hans Mohring stepped onto my porch, I struck him with a toboggan runner and then I put a bullet from my revolver into his chest. If it can be put any plainer, I don't know how."

My uncle folded his statement in two, then stood up, probably confused, thinking he'd been standing up and needed to sit down. A current of laughter went through the room, at which Magistrate Junkins said, "I don't see anything humorous in Mr. Hillyer's account or his present demeanor." The room quieted and my uncle sat down again.

"Is there anything else in your initial statement?" Magistrate Junkins asked.

"No," my uncle said.

"Then it's time for my questions."

Magistrate Junkins consulted his notes, and I'm fairly certain that many of the people in the library that day had never seen a magistrate consult notes, and every gesture he made was scrutinized and would, I felt, make for conversation later on.

"Donald Hillyer," Junkins said, "I've had two full days to review the information gathered. Now, I understand that you admit to the murder of Hans Mohring. Be that as it may, back up in time and recount, if you would, for my further understanding, what, in your view, drew you to that heinous act."

But before my uncle could reply, Tilda stood up, and with all eyes on her, she picked up the
Webster's
and returned it to its place on the shelf. She then left the library.

My uncle said, "That day—the day it happened—there were two things that tore me up. First was the radio static. And then came the call from Secretary of the Navy Macdonald, who telephoned my house in person. Those two things."