by L. R. Wright
How long could a parrot live without having its food and water replenished? he wondered. Carlyle might have filled up its dishes the minute before George arrived. Or he might not. It might be time for its next meal right now. Surely it wasn’t stupid enough to remain silent through hunger and thirst, just because a cloth blocked its view of the world outside its cage.
George stared out the window toward his garden and the sea and concentrated. He’d have to go back there, unless he was willing to let the damn parrot die. He’d have to remove the cover from the cage and sneak away, hoping the bird’s shrill cries would penetrate the walls of the house, and the laurel hedge, and catch the ears of the couple who lived closest to Carlyle.
Even if he added water and food to the cage himself, assuming he could find whatever it was the damned bird ate, he’d still have to rely eventually on the parrot’s making its condition known to the neighbors. And if it didn’t, then when the Mounties finally showed up they’d find one dead man and one dead bird.
After a while he got up and phoned Carlyle’s house, hoping to find that the police were already there, but nobody answered. For a moment he almost expected Carlyle, dead, to pick up the phone, and laugh at him, or wheeze curses into his ear. The phone rang and rang and he imagined Carlyle’s open eyes focusing, his battered head lifting, his limp white hands flexing, pushing his body to its knees; George could almost hear his breathing begin again, and the grunting sounds he would make as he dragged himself off the rug onto the bare wood floor and crawled toward the kitchen, heading for the telephone to complete their interrupted conversation.
He hung up abruptly. Eighteen rings, and no answer.
There was, of course, another alternative. He could go back to Carlyle’s house and pretend to find the body. This would involve lying to the police, which he hadn’t intended to do, but it was stupid to balk at lying when he’d just done murder. He didn’t think his eventual punishment would be any more severe if he concealed as long as possible the fact that he’d committed the crime.
Finding the body seemed the most sensible way out of his dilemma.
He would have to put off his nap for an hour or so.
All for the sake of a smelly, mangy, pop-eyed parrot he was going back there.
George went into the bedroom and stuffed his blood-marked sweater and his handkerchief, which he had left lying on the floor, into a green plastic garbage bag, dumped his kitchen garbage on top of it, and closed the bag with a twist tie. He went into the bathroom to scrub his hands and comb his hair. He put on another V-necked cardigan, a gray one, and rubbed a brush over his shoes, which had gotten dusty on the walk to and from Carlyle’s house. He washed out his teapot and his cup and saucer and dried them and put them away. Then he looked at his big, round gold wristwatch.
“Two o’clock,” he said aloud. “I think I’ll wander down to the library, maybe stop in on old Carlyle on the way.” This rang false, but he persevered. He picked up two books that were lying on the footstool in the kitchen, pushed the garbage bag out onto the front porch, left the house, and locked the door behind him. He put the garbage bag out in front of his gate, ready for collection, and set off down the road, along the gravel shoulder, making an effort to lift his weary legs so as not to shuffle. The sun was warm on his sweatered back, and his hand was soon sweaty on the library books he carried. He liked the sun very much.
As he went along he kept an eye on the traffic but saw no car he recognized. There were already a lot of out-of-province license plates, tourists looking hard for God knew what.
George tried to keep his shoulders back and his knees high.
He walked into Sechelt whenever he could, a mile there and a mile back, because the exercise was good for him. He took his car only when the weather was bad. It was in the garage this week anyway, getting its clutch repaired.
He came to the laurel hedge, and then the gate, and went through and down the gravel path to Carlyle’s front door. He was full of admiration for himself as he rapped on the door and stood back, attempting a wavery whistle as he waited for Carlyle. Passed up a hell of a career on the stage, I did, he thought, glancing casually through the kitchen window as if to spot Carlyle in there.
He simulated annoyance as he waited, and still nobody came to the door. He was lapsing naturally into his role as crotchety old man, a role he found came in handy, now and then.
George stopped whistling and banged again on the door, harder this time. No response. He hesitated on the broad front steps, between the geraniums. He started back up the path toward the gate in the hedge, stopped, turned around, retraced his steps, and followed the path around to the back of the house, where he peered into the small yard there, and onto the rocky beach, but saw nobody. He went back to the front steps, and knocked again, and then tried the door, which was unlocked.
“Carlyle,” he called out irritably, but there was no reply, and he didn’t hear anything from the parrot, either.
He went down the shadowed hall, calling, and emerged into the brilliance of the sun-flooded living room. It looks just the same, he thought, as when I was last here, and he blinked rapidly against the sunlight, and then he saw Carlyle’s body sprawled on the braided rug next to the rocking chair.
George cried out and flung up his hands. The library books flew to the floor. His heart made a commotion in his chest. He couldn’t move. “Carlyle!” he said. “Carlyle, what the hell’s the matter with you?” But Carlyle didn’t stir.
(He told himself he was carrying this much too far. Did he think there were Mounties hidden behind the door, for Christ’s sake? But he wasn’t acting at all, any more.)
“Carlyle,” he said again, angry. “What are you doing down there? Get up, man, for God’s sake.” He shuffled toward him and got close enough to see the open empty eyes and the dark red puddle on the rug in which Carlyle’s head was resting. “Oh, Christ, he’s dead; the man’s dead, all right,” said George. There was some relief in this. At least he wouldn’t be called upon to try to administer first aid, about which he knew virtually nothing.
(He was appalled at himself; on whom was he practicing these inane deceptions?)
He stumbled backward into the hall, turned, and blundered toward the kitchen, his hands trying to grip the wall. He grabbed the telephone and attempted to dial, but he couldn’t get his fingers to work. He put down the receiver and clung to the sink, looking out the kitchen window at the lawn that swept gently up to the laurel hedge. He took several deep breaths, then dialed again. He couldn’t remember the emergency number so he dialed the operator. She didn’t seem to mind and connected him quickly with the police.
“My name is George Wilcox,” he said. “I live about a mile south of Sechelt. I came here to see—he’s eighty-five—he’s dead. On his floor, dead.”
“Who’s dead, Mr. Wilcox?”
“Carlyle. He lives halfway along the road between my house and the village. Burke, his name is. Was. Behind a laurel hedge.” His teeth were chattering. He had to get outside and stand in the sun.
“Are you sure he’s dead, Mr. Wilcox? Do you want an ambulance?”
“What? What? His head’s bashed in, man, am I sure he’s dead? This is no natural causes you’ve got here, somebody’s bashed the man’s head in!”
They took some information and asked him to wait there, and he did. But he couldn’t go back into the living room and sit around near the body. He went outside, but the front yard was partly in shade now and his teeth were still clattering in his mouth.
When the police arrived about ten minutes later, two of them, they found him in Carlyle’s small back yard, hunched over on a bench, his hands between his knees, looking out at the sea.
“It was too cold in there,” he said when he saw them.
One of them sat down next to him. “We’re going to have a few questions, Mr. Wilcox,” he said, quite gently. “If you don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind at all,” said George. “Not a bit.”
; 4
KARL ALBERG WAS ATTACKING his back yard with a pair of hedge clippers. All pretensions to cultivation, to horticulture, had been abandoned. It had come down to simple assault, of the armed variety.
He hadn’t intended this. He had bought a book, just the day before, determined to do it right. He had rejected several he’d seen in the Sechelt bookstore; they had titles like The Art of Pruning and Pruning for Bigger and Better Blooms. Then, on a rack in a Gibsons grocery store, he saw exactly what he needed. It had lots of photographs and explanatory drawings, it was written in simple language, and it was bracketed by All About Meatloaf and How to Knit. Alberg took heart from this. He himself made an excellent meatloaf and had been taught how to knit when he was eight, by his taciturn grandfather, an Ontario farmer. So he bought the book, which was called All About Pruning. Last night he’d sat in his living room with his feet up, a glass of scotch at his elbow, and studied. He went to bed confident that by the end of the next day, which he had off this week, his yard would be tamed.
He should have known better. It was amazing how naïve a forty-four-year-old man could be.
Poking among the rose canes in search of “outward-facing nodes,” he managed only to get his hands and face and arms seared with scratches.
Peering into the massive hydrangea bushes looking for the “main branches,” he only succeeded in making the bees angry.
Climbing clumsily, saw in hand, up into the cherry tree was all to no avail because once in the middle of the tree he could no longer see the skyward-shooting “water sprouts” he was up there to eliminate.
He decided to hire somebody to look after the trees. But he was damned if he was going to let the rest of the yard defeat him. So from a pile of rusty tools in the unused garage at the bottom of the yard he hauled out a pair of hedge clippers, oiled them, and attempted to sharpen them, and then, weapon in hand, he charged the foliage which he was convinced endangered the structural stability of his small house.
He had begun this Tuesday in a state of calm. It was one of his good days. He knew right away that he wasn’t going to spend any of it brooding over his mistakes or considering his loneliness.
Clad in cutoffs, a short-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers, he had stood before his bedroom mirror and not been displeased with what he saw. He was tall and broad enough, he decided, that the extra ten pounds didn’t really show. Nor did the gray in his blond hair. He pulled in his stomach and turned sideways to the full-length mirror; not bad. He let himself sag and looked again. Not good. He tightened his muscles and pounded his diaphragm with a fist. Hard as a rock, he told himself. But there was no doubt about it, he was definitely getting thick and somewhat flabby around the waist. He would have to start working out again.
He peered critically into the mirror and ran his fingers over his just-shaven jaw. He didn’t like his face much. It was too smooth, and it looked a lot younger than the rest of him. Only when he was extremely tired did it assume any character. You needed lines and hollows, he thought, for character.
He stood back and took one last look: the legs were pretty good, anyway. Then he had strolled out to work in his garden.
It was now afternoon. The first attack on the roses had hours before sent him retreating indoors to change his clothes. He was greasy with sweat, the knees of his jeans were grass-stained, and there was at least one rip in his long-sleeved shirt. He didn’t remember ever seeing his ex-wife in this condition, after a day in the garden.
He stood in the middle of the back yard and looked around at the chaos he had created. The small lawn was buried under a mountain of debris. It hadn’t occurred to him that when he had done his pruning, the greenery would still exist. There seemed far too much of it to get rid of in any usual way. And he hadn’t even started on the front yard yet. He wondered if he could just leave the stuff there, to wither and turn brown and shrink into a more manageable heap.
“Jesus, boss,” said a voice behind him.
Alberg turned to see Freddie Gainer on the walk that led from the front of the house. He looked startlingly clean.
“I’ve been gardening,” said Alberg wearily. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “I am now quitting. And don’t call me ‘boss.’”
“You look like you’ve been in a war,” said Gainer.
Clean, tireless, and young, thought Alberg, staring at him. Also—and this was illusory—authoritative, in his peaked hat, short blue jacket, and navy pants with the wide yellow stripe.
“What the hell do you want?” said Alberg. “I want a beer.” He tossed the hedge clippers to the ground and headed for his back door.
Gainer picked them up and followed him. He put the clippers on the floor inside the door. In the kitchen, he took off his hat.
Alberg got a beer from the fridge and opened it. He leaned against the counter and took a swallow. “Ah. That feels good. A shower, and I’ll be human again.” He glanced at the constable, then looked at him more sharply. “What the hell have you done to your hair?” It clung to his head in tight, coppery curls.
Gainer’s face reddened. “I got it permed.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Alberg. He wondered if there was anything in Rules and Regulations yet about permanents. He resolved not to find out. “Your damned hat’s not going to stay on, with all that fluff underneath it.”
“Yeah, it does,” said Gainer, and showed him. “You can’t even hardly notice it now, right?” He whipped off the hat. “What do you think, Staff? Women’ll love it. I’m guaranteed.”
“Then what do you care what I think?” said Alberg, irritated. “Did you get that done around here?” he said, as an afterthought.
“Yeah, in Sechelt. There’s this girl I met, she’s a hairdresser. She says they get as many guys as girls going in for this. It’s supposed to last three months, she says. At least.”
Alberg drank some more of his beer. His scratches stung. His head ached. He could already tell where he would be stiff and sore the next day. “You use different muscles,” he said feeling old, “attacking plants.”
“Listen, Staff, the reason I’m here. We’ve got us a homicide, and the sarge said you’d want to handle it.”
Alberg stared at him. “Why the hell didn’t you use the telephone?”
“I did, but there wasn’t any answer. I guess you couldn’t hear it outside.”
Alberg dumped the rest of his beer into the sink and went down the hall to the bathroom, stripping off his shirt. “Fill me in while I get dressed.”
It would be a domestic disturbance, he thought, splashing his face with cool water. Some guy crying and hugging his wife while she bled to death from sixteen stab wounds; and the knife lying right next to him, his prints all over it. He splashed more water under his arms, over his chest, across the top of his back. Or a brawl at a beer parlor down the highway, two good-time buddies slashing at one another with broken bottles, one a little faster, a little angrier, than the other. In his twenty years on the force, Alberg had worked on fewer than a dozen homicides which hadn’t solved themselves at the scene or within twenty-four hours.
No suspicious deaths of any kind had occurred in Sechelt since he’d arrived, eighteen months earlier.
He was rubbing his face and arms dry when he realized what Gainer was telling him.
He caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked scrubbed and healthy and not at all tired, any more.
Gainer, waiting in the hall, wondered hopefully if Alberg would decide that the occasion called for the uniform. Hell, he thought, he’s probably forgotten where he put it.
5
WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the house there were two blue-and-white patrol cars parked on the shoulder. Theirs made three. There was also an ambulance. Two white-coated attendants waited, leaning against the hood, for instructions.
Alberg saw an elderly couple watching from the end of the driveway which led into the yard next door. Across the street, a woman looked out from a window. A small boy cycled past, slowin
g to get a better look at what was going on.
Alberg and Gainer went through a gate in a tall laurel hedge and down a crushed gravel path to the front of the house. A constable was stationed at the door. Sid Sokolowski was giving instructions to a dark-haired, blue-eyed corporal when he saw them approaching. “Okay, Sanducci,” he said, “get at it,” and the corporal went off purposefully toward the far side of the house. Alberg was convinced on little evidence that Sanducci was far more impressed with his own good looks than he ought to have been. He found the young corporal irritating.
Sergeant Sokolowski came up to him, a massive, muscular man whose notebook looked tiny clutched in his large paw. “It happened within the last few hours, Staff. The guy’s name was Carlyle Burke. He was eighty-five. Guy who found him isn’t a hell of a lot younger—George Wilcox. He was a friend of the victim, lives down the road a ways. Dropped in to say hello and found a corpse.”
“Where’s Wilcox now?”
“Around back. Redding’s with him.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“The victim was struck on the head. No sign of a struggle, no sign of a break-in or a weapon. This Wilcox called in at two thirty-seven. Sanducci and Gainer got here in eight minutes. It’s Sanducci’s Italian blood. He oughta be a race-car driver.” The sergeant was fond of categorizing people by blood. Mediterranean types were notoriously fast-moving and quick-tempered; Englishmen were cold and logical; the French couldn’t tell the truth to save their lives; and then, of course, there was the lusty Slav…
“What else?” said Alberg.
Sokolowski checked his notebook. “I’ve sent Sanducci out to start looking for the weapon. Called the detachment, got more guys coming to help him and talk to the neighbors. Next I was figuring to get on the blower to Vancouver.”
