Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  Stevie frowned at her possession. “It could be another one.”

  “And it isn’t exactly evidence. But it doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “But why, Leo? What would be the motive?”

  “I don’t know.” Leo looked back into the kitchen. He could see Stevie’s camera case on the counter. His eyes searched for the phone. There it was, on the wall.

  “Surely,” Stevie was saying, “Nan would have noticed the scratching and stuff before—”

  “Liz! She’s gone to the Citizen.”

  “He wouldn’t know she knows.”

  Leo bit his lip. “He usually sits at the same bank of desks.”

  “We could have it all wrong.”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling, Stevie.”

  “There’ll be police around. You said.”

  “Zit staffers won’t have much trouble getting access.”

  “He’d have to be crazy—”

  “Then he is crazy.” Leo bolted back through the kitchen door and grabbed the telephone. He held the receiver to his ear, his fingers quickly punched the newsroom’s number. But there was something odd about the phone.

  “Shit!” He slammed the receiver back into the receptacle. “They’re not answering.”

  38

  I Walk Alone

  Roger Mellish had driven past the Citizen several times Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. Each time, parked in front, in the no-parking zone, had been several blue and white police cars as well as the sort of dark unmarked sedans whose very anonymity marked them as official. When he went past the first time he couldn’t refrain from smiling. There was a certain excitement to being the real object of inquiry, being so close to those inquiring, yet so removed from their speculations. But by the third and fourth drive past, with the police vehicles still in attendance, he had started to get a little annoyed. He needed to retrieve the file, had to retrieve it, certainly before the library staff returned Monday morning, but best before 9:00 Sunday evening when the night news editors began their shift. A visit to the newsroom in the afternoon of a non-working day by the food editor might be thought unusual but not remarkable to the few staff in attendance in those hours. But to suddenly arrive at 10:00 or 11:00 Sunday night would be considered most peculiar.

  He could avoid appearing in the newsroom proper by taking the longer route to the library—left down the hall, not right to the newsroom, then go around through the back room. But the more he delayed, the greater the likelihood that others would be using the library. His other option was to go up to the newsroom while the police were in the building—as an employee he had every right—but there was too much risk involved. Who knew where the police were loitering? Or how many there were? Would they search his briefcase? Ask questions? He was, he supposed, on the list of suspects. He had been near Michael’s Tuesday night. He had been at the Galleries Portáge opening. But far down, far far down. After all, what motive could they ascribe to him? What evidence did they have? Even if they found the file, they would never be able to link its contents to him.

  But then that wasn’t the point, was it? He didn’t want them to find the file, couldn’t let them find the file. It wasn’t for his sake. It was for Paul’s sake. And Else’s. Everything he had done had been for their sake.

  By late afternoon his window of opportunity seemed to be closing and he felt anxiety bite for the first time. With one heavy fist he hit the steering wheel and cursed Guy Clark for his arrogance and cursed whoever it was that had found his body. He, Roger Allen Mellish, was the one who was supposed to have discovered Guy dead. He was going to go up to the newsroom early Sunday morning, retrieve the file from its hiding place, shred its contents, and then call the police in a tasteful show of shock and grief. His story would have been that he went to work on his day off to use the computer to write an entry on the Wajan for Bunny Kingdon’s Taste of Winnipeg book. He had even contacted the restaurant Saturday to get the chef’s cooperation. Given the nature of his review, he was only too glad to help. The only risk to this plan, a slim one, he had thought, had been if the inept and lazy security guard had done his job for once and thoroughly checked the building. But, instead, someone else had found the body, thus giving the police a head start.

  At 6:30 he stopped for a quick supper at the McDonald’s on Portage Avenue near Sherbrook, a restaurant he would never have deigned to visit in any other circumstances. But a management indifferent to his opinion of their internationally sanctioned mediocrity and a clientele absorbed either in courtship rituals or in unruly children guaranteed his anonymity. As the hamburger meat slid precariously on its slick of poisonous-looking sauce and bits of lettuce dropped into a Styrofoam container, he told himself that he had nothing to worry about. Even if the police wished to make a wholesale search of the newsroom, he was sure Kingdon would go to some lengths to stop it, or at least delay it. Besides, the library wasn’t the likely first place to look.

  He finished the hamburger, the grease sticks posing as french fries, and a chalky-tasting milkshake. As always, food, even insipid food, was a comfort. He felt a kind of postprandial torpor sneak up on him and he closed his eyes, just for the moment, and the clatter and chemical smells of the restaurant faded. His sleep the previous night had been less than adequate. Out of shallow depths he had surfaced again and again into consciousness, playing and replaying in his mind a cherished scene where he would tell Paul what he had done. He saw himself drive out to the house on the river north of the city, the house he visited so rarely—and wisely so, of course—and there, perhaps in the living room with its grand piano, or out on the terrace if it were still warm, he would reveal everything—well, everything but Else’s cooperation, how she had agreed to make that phone call to Guy. Wouldn’t Paul think him clever? And be so grateful? And finally extend the truly warm welcome that, so far, had always seemed somehow elusive.

  Well, he wouldn’t tell everything. Maybe it would be unwise to reveal Else’s cooperation, how she had agreed to make that phone call to Guy. Or how she had phoned him very early Wednesday morning to, in effect, thank him. Yes, it had been a form of thanks. She and Paul had planned an informal visit on Michael before dinner at the Kingdons’, but had decided against it when they’d glimpsed him, Roger, slip through Rossiter’s north gate.

  He opened his eyes, momentarily startled by the restaurant’s childish colours and bright lights. He needed to tell Paul quite soon. He had hinted of retiring from the symphony, of leaving, going somewhere where the winters weren’t so long and bitter.

  And then, of course, he had lately had this terrible obsessive urge just to talk about what he had done, to anyone. He had almost confided in Nan on their drive home. She had been uncharacteristically silent, and he, admittedly exhilarated, had chattered away. How odd, a murder in a newsroom, he had said, for the news trickled through those remaining at the mall after Martin had been summoned, over the PA system, no less. Oh well, nobody much cared for Guy, he had said. And so on. It was a little frightening now how close he had come to confessing.

  He rose, left the restaurant, and went to the car. His step was buoyant now, his anxiety gone. The air was soft. He looked across the parking lot to see the cold twilight sky slashed by a trail of jet exhaust in the setting sun as crimson as a new wound. The waning light reminded him that time pressed but still he felt assured that before the hour had passed, he would have successfully retrieved the damning file and be rid of it, and with none the wiser.

  And, as luck had it, when he drove past the Citizen once more, no police cars or other official-looking cars monopolized the no-parking zone. The building sat in gloomy solitude. Only a smudge of light from a few of the dusty windows suggested any human habitation, while the street, true to a Sunday evening, was empty of people. He parked one street over, got out of the car, briefcase in hand, and made his way toward the Citizen building. Feeling confident, he started to whistle, an indiscernible little tune—unlike Paul, he had no ear for music—but one which seemed
to come to him out of his childhood. And then he remembered. It was I’ll Walk Alone, a wistful ditty played frequently toward the end of the war. Even if he had been too young to know or understand the words, still, the tune had been oddly heartening in those confusing days after his mother died and he had been lost, an orphan, in the London rubble, before being shipped north to live in the country near Gripthorpe with hateful old cousin Bernice. Not that his courage needed bolstering now. What he was about to do was only a bit of tidying, really—the last act in a stratagem that had already threatened to come apart once. How fortunate that he had logged into Guy Clark’s computer desk Friday evening and read his little reminder to himself with all those pompous asterisks. Although the wording had been brief, and barely articulate, it was enough to tell him that Clark had received a copy of Michael’s information. The covering letter, unaddressed, undated, in draft form, that he had glimpsed on Michael Rossiter’s computer Monday while he had waited for Michael to come back from Bunny’s, had been completed and mailed after all. If Bunny hadn’t asked Michael to help her carry a box of old books to the garage before their meeting, he wouldn’t have had time to let curiosity overwhelm him, wouldn’t have started him trawling through the menu on the floppy disk. He read a few letters slugged MONAS1, MONAS2, etc. Michael was joining a religious community. And soon. It was too bizarre. Then he’d read one slugged RICHTE.

  His world changed in an instant.

  Of course, one could only do with Guy Clark what one had done with Michael. After the first, a second termination hadn’t been difficult at all, though he’d had to use his hands, the way he’d intended with Michael. He couldn’t have risked blood on his suit and returned to the mall. The rubber gloves had been a good idea, made it seem less personal somehow; rather like wringing the chickens’ necks on Bernice’s farm. He’d planned a gloveless ritual for Michael, but walking behind him on his way to the study that evening, Michael had somehow seemed bigger, heftier—younger. Not like that sitting duck, Clark. The advantage was lost with a man as tall as you. So he’d lifted the typewriter as Michael bent over his desk, to stun him, only he’d never expected the luck of Michael’s head falling on a letter spike.

  He turned the corner and brought his whistling in under his breath. Across the street and just ahead of him a woman, almost lost in the shadows, was hurrying alongside the great arched windows of the Citizen Building. At first he thought nothing of it, but then he recognized the stride. It was Liz Elliott. He wasn’t disconcerted. Nothing was going to go wrong. But he was puzzled. Go! staff, except when they were reviewing arts events, rarely worked nights and never Sunday night. He stepped into the darkened doorwell of one of the abandoned stores across from the Citizen and waited. There was no sense in joining her at the elevator. He would give her time to get to the fourth floor on her own. Most likely, he thought, she had some work she had to catch up on.

  After a few moments, he resumed walking up the street, keeping as close as possible to the buildings’ shadows without seeming conspicuous, although why he was being so surreptitious he wasn’t sure—the boyish thrills probably. The only people who passed him were a couple of sullen teenagers all in black who failed to give him so much as a glance. Once opposite the Citizen’s entrance, he crossed the street and quickly pushed his way through the revolving doors into the lobby. As always, the high, narrow chamber provoked disquiet. Perhaps it was the torch lights high on the walls, dimly illuminating the dark marble, or perhaps it was the stencilled designs like those on a pagan tomb, but it was the only physical space from which he sought immediate release. It was why he rarely used the elevator—he couldn’t bear to wait for it. And it was why, despite the poundage born of middle age and fine food, there remained some spring in his legs—climbing three flights of stairs several times a day helped.

  Still, when he reached the fourth floor, he was panting. The past five days had been stressful, and even now, when everything was drawing to a fine conclusion, tension lingered, though he preferred to view it as excitement. Through the frosted glass on the door opening to the tiny elevator vestibule, no shadows showed and no sound came. He opened the door, stepped into the vestibule, and pressed himself against the farthest reach of glass wall that divided the vestibule from the fourth floor lobby. From there it was possible to see if anyone was occupying one of the rear desks in the newsroom. There was no one.

  He pressed the sequence of buttons that unlocked the door. As always, the lock yielded with a sickening grind, and he gritted his teeth as he had done only twenty-four hours previously. Then he had been in a hurry, his nerves razor-sharp, wanting nothing to go wrong. Now, he had time. Not a lot of time. But enough. He turned left, in the direction opposite the newsroom, and made his way down the hall, past the closed door to the sports department, and into the back room. He had chosen soft shoes. He wouldn’t be heard and none of the bored few in the newsroom would think anything other than that one of the sports reporters had arrived for one of their odd shifts.

  He reached the rear door into the library and stopped. He had heard something—the faint but distinctive rumble of a file cabinet drawer closing. Curious, he stood by the door and strained his ears, waiting to hear footsteps fade as whoever it was returned to the newsroom by the main door. Then he heard another drawer open. Then, after a few seconds, he heard it close again. Then another open. And close. And yet another. And still another. All at regular intervals. Someone, he was sure, was making a concerted search through the file cabinets.

  Had figured out the hiding place.

  His heart lurched. He could hear the blood rush past his ears, felt a tautness overtake his limbs. He moved carefully, noiselessly, into the first, and smaller, of the two connected rooms, around the photo file cabinets and toward the dividing wall. Judging by the direction of the sounds that the interloper was busied with the row of cabinets against the back wall, he moved quickly into the room, to the shelter of one of the thick poster-encrusted columns. In that moment, he recognized the back of the head leaning into the file drawer, the short, glossy dark hair, the one hand held high with the ever-present cigarette. He closed his eyes and cursed inwardly. He could feel beads of sweat gathering at his brow; his hands closed in on themselves until they were tight angry balls of flesh.

  What was she doing?

  And then it came to him. On Friday, that look on her face. As white as a sheet. She had had something in her hands, hadn’t she? Even though he couldn’t see. Then she had disappeared into one of the back rooms. He had thought little of it at the time. But now he knew that Michael hadn’t sent his miserable gleanings off to Guy Clark alone. He had sent a set to Liz, too.

  No! That couldn’t be!

  Otherwise why would she be searching the library? There was just the one set of papers, somehow passed from Liz to Guy. A wave of cold panic washed over him.

  She knew! She knew everything!

  And then he knew what he had to do. He edged away from the column toward the door leading to the newsroom and, slowly, ensuring the hinges remained unstressed, pushed the door until it was not quite shut. Then he looked over at the top of Vera’s desk. There it was, neatly placed among the effects of the Citizen’s meticulous librarian—the silver letter opener Vera had received from her staff after twenty-five years of service.

  39

  Concatenation

  Liz could barely remember driving from Dorchester Square to the Citizen. The greater part of her mind had brimmed with other thoughts—despairing thoughts about life’s absurdities, about chance, about how the private and paltry decisions of anonymous individuals were powerful enough to set in motion a whole train of events culminating in tragedy. And how that tragedy could lock you in an awful embrace. If Michael’s son hadn’t felt compelled to seek his father, Michael would never have visited Germany, would never have pulled from his luggage those symphony programs that included photographs of the maestro, would never have shown it to someone who could link a face to an event after all the
se years. But then this string of beads had started with Michael’s meeting the German girl in Philadelphia, just as her own intersecting loop had found its origin in her deciding one day in second year to study not at a carrel at creaky old Elizabeth Dafoe Library where English majors studied, but in shiny new Robson Hall, where law students studied. In the next carrel had been Spencer Elliott, in his final year of law. They had fallen in love, married, grown apart; she had taken a job at a newspaper, met Michael Rossiter, met Paul Richter. What might have happened if she had sat in another part of study hall that day?

  And then it all intersected with one larger, world-shattering event that had deflected millions upon millions of lives. Paul Richter would never have been on that East Frisian Island if there had been no war to put him there. But then perhaps there would have been no war if one individual hadn’t risen to power in Germany. But yet that rise to power was predicated on a whole host of other events, other decisions. As she parked the car and stepped onto the street, the bizarre notion had come to her that she would not be going to the Citizen on a Sunday evening in autumn of a year late in the century to look for this oppressive file if Archduke Ferdinand had never gone and got himself assassinated. Liz shivered, although the evening was not chilly. In a dreamlike, disturbing way, she felt like her very movements along the pavement next to the grey, gloomy Citizen building had been somehow preordained. She felt other eyes watching her. She had become a figure in a film loop, forever and again condemned to walk the same path for some unseen audience. But what she was walking towards, she didn’t know.