Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  “The young mason with one arm was released from hospital and made his way back to the worksite. People were happy to see him, and they all stopped what they were doing for the moment, to greet him, pump his good arm, and pat him on the back. But there was nothing for him to do. Even stirring the mortar was a job for two strong arms.

  “But one arm and a nubbin can, with determination, tie a noose. The young man hanged himself in his rooming house in Old Strathcona, and the arm was never found.

  “Now, it’s not considered a haunting of the House itself, but every so often, joggers on Saskatchewan Drive nod to a young man in loose denim trousers and a work shirt with one sleeve pinned up, standing in front of Rutherford House, as if admiring the lines. And,” the gypsy paused, sweeping the room with her hooded eyes, “on an otherwise calm and windless day, you can sometimes hear a rustling at the side of the house, a sweeping of the bushes and a tossing of the earth, and a voice can be heard ever so faintly, crying, ‘Have you seen it? Have you seen the arm?’” The gypsy sat back up straight and clapped her hands, breaking the spell she’d woven over the crowd.

  People laughed in that way they do to cover their shock or fear. Sensing the storyteller wanted a break, the crowd clambered to their feet and dispersed to other activity centres. I hung back, wanting to check on the windowsills behind the curtains, to be sure no glassware had been perched there. When the room was empty, the gypsy stood and stretched. I noted she was much taller than I had at first estimated. Sitting, she had been hunched over, drawing in her audience. She also had enormous hands for a woman.

  I must have been signalling all these observations with my expression, because the gypsy smiled and said, in a somewhat lower voice than she had previously been using, “Hello, Randy.”

  It was like one of those plastic puzzles where you slide the squares one at a time to get the picture. The tiles rearranged themselves, and instead of an old gypsy woman, I found myself staring at Walter Karras, with a kerchief on his head and bangles and skirts swirling about his body.

  “Marni roped me in, and I thought it would be good fun to see how many people I could fool. I borrowed the costume from the Walterdale Theatre. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s remarkable. You fooled me.”

  Mr. Karras took a mock bow. “Since they stopped the Klondike Melodramas, I’ve not had much of a chance to indulge my inner thespian. This was fun.”

  “You’re quite the storyteller, Mr. Karras.”

  “Call me Walter, please.”

  “All right, Walter. That last story, about the suicide of the workman, was that true?”

  He smiled. “No, I am afraid there are no juicy ghost stories associated with Rutherford House. I adapted a story that used to be told with relish out at a summer camp where my son worked, and tossed in some historic elements to make it something of a learning experience.”

  I laughed. All most of the kids had taken away with them was that they would never talk to an amputee standing on the sidewalk in front of Rutherford House, just in case.

  “I was trying to find some way to deflect attention from the grisliness of what happened upstairs,” Mr. Karras continued. “It would be so sad to me if everyone focused on that poor girl’s death here in the House as the main attraction. It would rob the House of its value historically, and it would diminish the tragedy of her death for her parents and family.”

  I nodded. “I hear you. I’m pretty sure ticket sales are so brisk exactly because of Jossie’s death, but on the whole, they’ve got over that allure pretty quickly and just moved into party mode.”

  “And that is exactly as it should be. This House is a living museum. It is more than just the home of the first premier, after all. It was a fraternity house for a while, housing another premier in his university days. My eldest brother lived here for a couple of years when Peter Lougheed was in residence. And now, it’s been a historic site for a good long time. There are probably a handful of girls here tonight who had their birthday parties here, dressing up and having tea and playing croquet on the front lawn.”

  Taking advantage of his loquaciousness and the lack of partygoers in the room, I decided to ask Mr. Karras what his thoughts were about the events of the past couple of weeks. Maybe an outside view would prove useful.

  “Do you think the deaths of Jossie Jaque and Mr. Maitland are connected? I can’t help but tie together everything that has been happening, including the robbery in St. Stephen’s College, but I just can’t see how it fits.”

  “Robbery at the College? I hadn’t heard about that.” Mr. Karras looked very concerned, which endeared him even more to me.

  I recounted the bare bones, and he tut-tutted appropriately.

  “I can certainly see how you would connect the dots. But, realistically, isn’t it rather a stretch to imagine a crime spree over something connected to Rutherford House?”

  I decided to go out on a limb. After all, I had no idea what the ties and possible loyalties were on the board. But Mr. Karras seemed so sympathetic, and Marni’s mention that he had helped sway the board into keeping my project going pushed me to get his take on Greta. I couched my question without naming names, trying for discretion, but Mr. Karras was no dummy; he’d know exactly who I was talking about.

  “Do you think someone negative on the board might be behind all this?”

  Mr. Karras arched one eyebrow, and a new coldness seemed to enter his eyes.

  “I know the people on the board of the Friends of Rutherford House to be upstanding members of this community, giving their time and energy to preserve our history and heritage. I cannot imagine for one minute that anyone on our board could be suspected of such crimes and I hope I won’t hear of such rumours being spread. If you’ll excuse me, I must go change.”

  It was as if I’d crossed an invisible line and made a serious faux pas. I felt numb and hot in the cheeks, and knew I was flushing with embarrassment. I mumbled an apology and went out into the hall, almost bumping into Winnie-the-Pooh. Lucky for me, he had his back to me, talking to someone, and the dimness of the hall—and his likely blurred vision through the large fuzzy head—meant he couldn’t see my face with its telltale signs of shame.

  Thing is, I wasn’t really certain why I had been snubbed so severely. Up till that point, Mr. Karras had been perfectly willing to discuss hypotheticals. It was only when I clumsily linked Greta to the crimes that he had stiffened.

  Why was that?

  37

  --

  Marni was still shaking her head at the bad taste of a young woman posing in the tub with her head lolling over the side while her friend took her picture. She was relating how she had sent them out of the room and chastened them with a tongue-lashing, before deciding to close the guest room bath door for good.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner, just lock the door.” She grinned ruefully. “The curator in me overrode the caretaker, I guess.”

  We were having a cup of tea after cleaning up the aftermath of the party. I was waiting for Steve to come get me as he had promised, and Marni was hanging out with me till he arrived, which I appreciated. For all Mr. Karras’ assurances that no ghosts lingered around Rutherford House, sitting alone in a historic house on Hallowe’en night was my idea of a spooky setting for a horror movie, an old 1970s one, with Dean Jones in the cast.

  I had told Marni about my discussion with Mr. Karras, and she had tried to settle my mind about his change of attitude toward me.

  “He is really behind the project. Don’t worry about him changing his mind about that. As for his pushback on Greta, you have to give him props for standing up for members of his board, right? On the whole, that’s the sort of loyalty you want to have for your project, and I tell you, once he has said he supports you, Walter Karras supports you all the way. That’s why he was here tonight, and why he popped in to the magic night for a while, too. I’m not sure I’d have the energy to push for some of the things I have done here i
f it weren’t for his good will.”

  I was somewhat mollified, but it still smarted to have been put in my place so definitively. I don’t think anyone since my grade-school piano teacher had ever made me that sorry I’d said something.

  “Well, I will be back in touch with the Widows tomorrow and figuring out when to get a full-scale website up and running. I have about another week’s worth of research to do before setting up the first three of the five sidebars, but we can launch with ‘watch this space/work in progress’ signs on a couple of links, so I’m not worried about that. What I want to figure out with you sometime when you have an hour or so is the information for the interactive parts—bookings and registrations, that sort of thing—and then we can chat about the kids’ area and the blog section.”

  I had been wrestling with the best ways in which to make the website a kinetic area that people would return to on a regular basis. My thought was to have Marni take on a regular weekly update section, where she could post funny things that had happened, a historical fact or two, and her thoughts about an upcoming event. She had such a quick wit and love for Rutherford House that I couldn’t see it being too onerous a task for her, and it would mean return visits to the site, generating more foot traffic to the House.

  Marni shrugged and laughed. “What’s one more thing to do, my list is already a mile long and around the block. You’ll have to show me a way to make the entries without risking breaking all the links and ruining the Internet.”

  I grinned back at her. “Yes, I will make it so you can’t break the Internet.”

  Both of us jumped a little when the bell rang.

  It was Steve, coming to take me back to his place. I gave Marni a quick hug and grabbed my bag. She came along behind me, turning out lights and locking the door.

  Steve kissed me and greeted Marni warmly. “Happy Hallowe’en, ladies. Feel like heading out to smash some jack-o’-lanterns?”

  “I think I’ll leave that to the junior high kids,” Marni laughed and turned down the little side path to her car, parked behind the House.

  “Have you been working your regular cases, or is everyone on extra patrol tonight?” I asked as we walked down the path to Steve’s car, crunching leaves beneath our feet. Soon the snow would come, but the tiny pink fairies and cardboard and tinfoil robots had won tonight, with a lovely dry Hallowe’en for their hijinks. I reached into my pocket for one of the mini candy bars I had picked up for Steve.

  “We weren’t as busy as you might think. I think they put extra patrols on Whyte Avenue and downtown, and there are cars out in the suburbs doing slow drives, but on the whole, I would rather work Hallowe’en in Edmonton than, say, Stanley Cup finals or Canada Day. The kids are happy, the mayhem is minor and diffused right across the city, and there is candy involved.”

  We were stopped at a light, and laughing as two Trekkies and a Dalek crossed in front of the car. A university party was letting out somewhere, I figured.

  “More likely just starting. Parties for twenty-somethings don’t even get going until around ten-thirty, eleven.”

  “How come?”

  “Iain figures it has something to do with the combination of later hours in the bars and the nine-to-ten-o’clock closing hours for stores. It used to be that only restaurant workers and actors would party in the late hours. Now, it could be pretty much anyone.”

  “No wonder there’s such an outcry about the bar scene on Whyte Avenue, if it doesn’t even get started till right around my bedtime.”

  “Oh Randy, you have no idea. The street you see when you shop there on a weekend afternoon turns Felliniesque around two in the morning. Drunks smoking outside the entrances to bars, then meeting up and fighting with other drunks who’ve been fermenting in other bars. Girls dressed up for a night on the town puking in the gutter next to grubby guys living rough and hoping for a handout. It’s not the Edmonton you or I really want to know.”

  We were in Steve’s parking lot by now. Even with the added foot traffic of happy, costumed drunks, we’d made it back to his place in less than ten minutes, which was an added bonus to living on Saskatchewan Drive.

  I hadn’t even found a moment to tell Steve about my furniture purchases, so we unwound with some green tea. I prattled on, trying to make my work with Allen keys sound entertaining. Steve seemed to be listening, but I had the sense he wasn’t totally with me.

  While I wanted to ask him if something was bothering him and give him the opportunity to unburden himself, I wasn’t certain that sort of thing was within the bounds of where we were allowed to go. I had to admit it hurt whenever Steve said he couldn’t talk about something to me. Even if I knew logically that his job came with restraints on divulging information, it seemed to indicate a lack of trust, underlining the chasm between us when it came to his job and the security of the Western world.

  It wasn’t as if he thought I was going to run out and tell people about cases he was working on, I knew that. Still, he would get a look in his eye and clam up, and I would know that we’d wandered into dangerous territory.

  The problem was that I often felt as if I was wandering about in that same territory without much of a map. I could use a bit of information from time to time, even just a landmark or two to watch for. But Steve had taken an oath; besides, Steve’s boss would have his badge if he thought my boyfriend was indulging in “pillow talk” with me. Even so, this barrier made for stilted conversations from time to time.

  The silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable, but I strove to fill it anyhow. I recalled something I had been meaning to ask him, tickled to life by my evening at Rutherford House.

  “Did you guys ever talk to that magician again?”

  “Stephen Dafoe?”

  “Yes, the fellow who did the real magic act the night of the mystery play. I was patrolling tonight from about the same vantage point I had that evening, and I got to thinking about how he had been able to move around the House without people seeing him.”

  “I thought you said he went out the window.”

  “Well, I was pretty sure he did. He had curtains up in front of the windows, at any rate, but who knows, that could have been an illusion, too.”

  “No one can move through walls, Randy, not even a magician. But no, we haven’t tracked him down. I am pretty sure they are still looking for him as a person of interest.”

  “Does that mean ‘suspect’?”

  “Not always, though with the way the papers hype the term, we’ll have to begin to come up with another phrase soon, or we’ll have vigilantes beating up witnesses all over the place. What makes you ask about Dafoe?”

  “He’s a loose end, I guess. Maybe something Mr. Karras said. And in some way, I think he was connected to Jossie, which makes him interesting.”

  “Connected? How do you mean?”

  “We were organizing ourselves for duties that evening, and I guess Marni wanted to give everyone a chance to see the shows, either the actors or the magician. I remember asking Jossie if she wanted to work the main floor and she said something about having seen Dafoe before and not needing to catch his act. She said something about having known him when he taught at a magic school.”

  “Jossie was into magic? That’s the first anyone has mentioned that as a possible connection.”

  “You would think, eh? But no, I don’t really think she was. She had a sort of eye-rolling attitude to it all, at least she did that night. I think she was really just there for the extra money the part-time job brought in. She seemed far less interested in the machinations of the entertainment than the rest of us were. Even the dishwasher was a bit star-struck by the actors wandering about. But she just seemed to be there to do a job.”

  “I think she was an economics major.”

  “And that explains anything?”

  Steve shrugged. “I’m just saying. Thing is, why would an economics major know anything about magic school? Did she have a brother or sister studying to be a magician? Were her
parents circus people?”

  “You would think that Detective Howard might have uncovered that sort of connection by now, if it existed.”

  I had a vision of Jossie, dressed in a blue blazer and plaid skirt, surrounded by a family in sequins and spandex. While it sounded like a great concept for a TV sitcom, it didn’t quite fit my idea of what she had been like. I hadn’t known her well or all that long, but she had made enough of an impression for me to be able to weigh possibilities.

  “Okay, so Jossie knows the magician from before. And Greta Larsen hates frivolity at Rutherford House. And the magician is missing. And Marni is worried about her tenure at the House. And Mr. Karras wants you to either back away from Greta Larsen or focus on her so you’ll miss seeing something else he’s worried you’ll remember. None of which brings us any closer to why Jossie was found dead in the bathtub.”

  “I was thinking about the whole tub aspect.”

  “The tub is important?”

  I glowered at him. “A cop I know once told me that everything is important. As I was saying, there may be some significance to her being found in the tub because, unless you are familiar with the House, you wouldn’t think there would be a tub there. After all, it’s a turn-of-the-century house and unusual in that it has any plumbing at all. Secondly, it’s the guest room, and a slightly smaller version of the Rutherfords’ room. There is no tub in their room, just a walk-in closet. So, if you hadn’t combed the property beforehand, you wouldn’t expect to find a place where you could conveniently ditch a body, right? Meaning, it had to be someone who knew the House well.”

  Steve smiled and poured me more tea.

  “Good theory, but not necessarily sound. If it was a crime of chance, taking place in the guest room, the tub would be a happy discovery rather than a targeted body dump. Or, take into consideration the fact that people do tour the House and may have been there before without being on the board or staff, and some may have done so even before the dinner.”