The Emily Taylor Mystery Bundle

by Catherine Astolfo

  "At some point, Percival and Ryeburn had a falling-out. It looks like Ryeburn had been wanting to quit the puppy mill operation too and Percival wouldn't let him out of it. There was some kind of huge argument, during which Ryeburn threatened Percival and told him he had a diary that would prove everything, so don't think about retaliation. In fact, Ryeburn confessed, his son knew everything and that was why he wanted to shut down the mill."

  "His son?" Will and I spoke at once, looking at each other and at Edgar in astonishment.

  "Nathaniel didn't have a son, did he?" I asked stupidly.

  For a moment Edgar was speechless, then he nodded knowingly. "Sorry, sorry, Emily, of course. I didn't clarify. It was Walter Ryeburn who was Bill Percival's partner."

  Chapter 28

  'I am the bridgeman, as my father was before me, and as his father had been before him, down the ages of my family history like a brand.'

  Nathaniel Walter, not Nathaniel Junior, the author of those words, the son whose tortured life had brought him to abuse and be abused. Walter, in love with the beautiful Annie, unable ever to believe that she could love him. Somehow she'd had the patience, the love, the insight, to break through his barriers and convince him that he was worthy of love. Yet after she married him, gave birth to his child, he could not bear to let her out of his sight lest she change her mind, and all of his insecurities and mental weakness had resurfaced. He'd turned their home into a virtual prison.

  How sad and ironic that their son had turned out to be just like his father in appearance and, or so it must have seemed in the teenage years when he too ran away, in temperament. Yet it was Nathaniel who gave real love to animals, and who had respected and loved his father until he discovered the diary, the sordid past, and the cruel present. He begged his father to end it or he would have to go to the police.

  Annie, confined to a wheelchair and at last completely and utterly in her husband's hands, would have to be left behind. Walter, in his distress and anger, had sealed his son's death when he screamed the facts in Bill Percival's face.

  Bill had accosted Nathaniel, followed him to the school, trying desperately to talk him out of turning his father in. How could he put his own father in jail? How could he deny his father this extra money? They weren't really doing anything wrong—who knows all the ways Bill tried to dissuade Nat? Who knows why he pulled out the gun and shot him? Who knows why Bill Percival cared nothing for the lives of the people around him, and the animals in his charge?

  Will and Edgar and I sat for a long time in the hospital room, listening to the faint sounds of tending to illness in the background. I remembered our conversation with May and Alain about evil and the puzzling fact that one person turned to monstrous acts while another, from the same roots, remained good and kind. Walter and Nathaniel, the bridgemen, both born into torn and troubled relationships, both saddled with the mantle of confessor, the responsibility of a small town's traditions. One had retained his humanity and his soul. The other had traded it all in, surrendered to impulses that debased and degraded himself and the people he touched. Yet how cleverly both had worn the mask of innocence, each portraying a different face, each hiding concealed strengths and weaknesses, undisclosed evil or goodness, honesty or deception.

  We all have a mask to wear, I thought, some more hidden than others. My husband and I were not so different, after all, except perhaps that we were painfully, daily, aware of our secret selves.

  "Walter was the one who killed the pony and broke into your house, or so Bill claims. And it does make sense, I guess. He wanted the school evacuated so he could get the diary. Even in his distress about his son, he was protecting himself."

  "Maybe there was incriminating evidence against Bill Percival in that diary, too," I suggested, scarcely believing I was offering up a kind of defence for Walter Ryeburn.

  "You could be right, Emily," Edgar agreed. "It does appear that Walter was obsessed with getting Percival. He was convinced that Bill was the murderer, though his partner kept denying it. Apparently Walter was following Bill around, threatening to expose them both, claiming he didn't care what happened to him any longer so he had nothing to lose. Bill said he promised Ryeburn that he would shut down the puppy mill in Nat's honour, but pleaded to get rid of the rest of the current shipment. He coaxed Walter out to the mill one more time, where they really got into it, and Bill beat the older man to a pulp. Where Walter put the diary, we still don't know and may never." Edgar sighed. "Walter died in his sleep last night."

  Both Langford and I made some inconsequential noise, something like 'huh', not able to feel pity or sorrow at his passing, still remembering his cruel and indifferent face as he shoved Angel into our doorway, or as he paraded his captive wife in front of us.

  I was mourning Nathaniel all over again. I wondered what thoughts had run through his head as he faced his killer. I marvelled at the strength that had propelled him to defy his father. No wonder he had been clutching the picture of his parents and his pets. Even in death, he had wanted to protect the safety and dignity of the animals. I was certain he'd been trying to leave a message. If only I hadn't assumed that the diary was Nat's! How could I have thought that the shy, country, innocent, boy-man that Nathaniel was could have written such a treatise? It seemed ludicrous now.

  "They've still got Annie Ryeburn here in the hospital. I don't know what's going to happen to her once she's well enough to be released. She did say she has a younger sister in Manitoba, so maybe she'll go there. I do believe her when she says she knew nothing about it. I don't think Walter or Nathaniel told her a thing."

  "From what I remember of the diary, I would say silence was their way of dealing with all their problems. I doubt that they really talked to each other or told each other how they were feeling." I squeezed Will's hand. "They never knew true intimacy in their lives. How sad."

  "Yah, true I suppose, but it still doesn't excuse their actions." Edgar stood up. "I'd better let you go, Emily, Langford. I've actually got other things to do. Now that everything is out in the open, the reporters are having a field day. Especially since most of them are still staying at the Inn!" He laughed loudly, enough to catch the disapproving eye of a passing intern.

  "I just can't help but think of how ironic that whole deal is," he continued. "It seems Teddy Lavalle isn't just the chef, he's a partner. Bill Percival actually offered him his percentage of the ownership out of the blue a few days ago—surprise, surprise—and Ted was just arranging for the financing. However, Teddy doesn't seem to be involved at all in anything sordid. So he's running the Inn on his own."

  "The police have ransacked Bill and Marjory's apartment upstairs at the Inn, but nothing so far. I think they burned all the evidence in anticipation of flying out of the country. I guess they figured as long as no one had put them in the picture, they could pretend to sell out and return to England or wherever. Good thing Bill confessed without knowing it and decided to brag about everything in front of other witnesses. Without that diary, we might not have been able to get all the facts. Now we don't need it. We have enough from his own lips to put him away for the rest of his sorry life."

  "What will happen with Marj?" Will asked.

  "I don't know exactly. She's been charged as an accomplice to murder and for cruelty to animals and so on, but who knows what a defence lawyer will do? Maybe she'll claim wife abuse."

  Edgar left us, still shaking his head and muttering. It was good to see the strain of the last week leaving his shoulders, even though there was still a lot to face.

  Langford and I knew that we might have reporters on our heels for a while, but the village would protect us, and in a few days some other murder or equally horrible event would take the spotlights away from Burchill. Maybe we'd even be able to get back to normal.

  The next evening, after I'd been up and around, carefully, all day, I wandered out into the silent hospital corridors, my robe tucked around me, my slippers making swishing sounds as I cautiously made my wa
y through the hallway.

  Her room was on the floor below, so I took the elevator, feeling the drop of my rib cage a little too heavily as it clunked downward. No one said anything to me. The hospital was quiet and sleepy, exhausted from the daily ministry to illness and pain or by the excitement of new birth or the titillation of emergencies.

  Annie Ryeburn was in a ward. All four beds contained willowy, celestial bodies, their faces turned away from the door, as if looking beyond the world to the place where they'd soon be taken. I saw her long flowing grey hair swept up on her pillow, and went to sit on the chair beside her. She looked at me calmly, her eyes wide awake and clear, as if she'd been waiting for me.

  "You're the one he liked," she said, her voice soft and gentle in the night.

  I nodded. "I guess so. I'm certainly one of the people who liked him."

  "But you were the one who made him feel good about himself. He always would tell me that you asked his opinion and told him he did a great job." She turned her head so that she could see me better, her hands fluttering up and down the buttons of her nightgown. "Do you love his Angel, Mrs. Taylor?"

  I smiled. "Please call me Emily. We love his Angel very much. And she seems to love us. I can't believe how quickly she adjusted to us and how affectionate she is. Now I can't imagine life without her. She's become a member of our family." I paused. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Ryeburn. You've lost so much, and here I am rattling on about a dog."

  "It's Annie, and that's all right, dear. I know you mean well. Besides, your having Angel and loving her makes me feel so very much better. Nat would've really liked that. He never thought of her as just a dog, and I know you don't either. Then there are some people who don't think animals have feelings at all." She averted her eyes from me, staring at the ceiling as though picturing her son, as though he were looking down at her.

  "Did—was Angel beaten?" I asked, my voice breaking.

  "I don't think so, my dear, but I'm sure she was born at that terrible puppy mill. There's no telling what she witnessed. Nat rescued her when she was very young. He kept filling up our yard with abused and injured animals. Little did I know where he'd gotten most of them from."

  She sighed deeply, her chest obviously heavy with guilt and regret.

  "You know the funny thing, Emily? I loved Walter. I know he was odd to everyone else and not handsome by a long shot. But I loved him. I married him. I had his son. I told him over and over again that I would never leave him. But he never believed me. He made me his prisoner instead. Eventually, God forgive me, I wished him dead every single day. He wasted and ruined the life we could have had. I guess he never thought he was worthy of it."

  I am the last true bridgeman. I deserve no more than this ignoble end.

  "I wouldn't let him ruin my boy, though. Nathaniel was good and sweet and kind. A little slow, I guess, not a thinker, you know. But decent." Tears swept down her cheeks, lying in the crevices of age, pooling around the creases in her neck. "And maybe he would've found someone to appreciate him. I always wanted to be a grandmother."

  I joined her in tears then, reaching out to hold her hand in mine. We cried gently, grieving the loss of what was and what could have been. When the tears stopped, we sat for a long time in the semidarkness, listening to all the breath in the room. Life continuing.

  "Emily," she spoke suddenly, no tears in her voice. "Do they have any proof about Walter?"

  I was startled by the change in her tone, officious now, her hand removed from mine. "Edgar said since they couldn't find Walter's diary and they couldn't find any written records of the puppy mill or the…"

  "The beast club," she said, each word clipped with disgust. "And I name it after the humans involved, not the poor animals."

  I could only nod my assent. "It's only Bill Percival's word that Walter was involved."

  "You have to get rid of the diary. You have to protect Nathaniel. Even though he's gone, I can't bear for people to know about his father, and to think of that every time they think of my son. That sick old Bill Pervertival can go ahead and say anything he likes."

  I had to smile in spite of myself at Annie's turn of phrase.

  "But I don't want Walter to confirm the dirty rumours in his own hand," she finished.

  "But the diary is gone, Annie," I repeated. "No one can find it. Because Bill confessed, Edgar says they can get a murder conviction without it, so I doubt Walter's part will even…"

  I stopped as she sat up, seeming lithe and energetic for the moment, and reached over to the hook beside her bed for the giant purse hanging there.

  Rummaging around inside for a moment, she finally held up a little brown leather book. "How did you…?" I asked, startled.

  She shut her eyes, the tears squeezing through her tortured lids. "Walter killed that poor pony. He broke into your home. How could he?" I held her trembling hand for a moment, and then I understood.

  "You didn't fall down the steps that night trying to get your medication, did you, Annie? It was the diary you were looking for."

  "He was an idiot for recording all of this in the first place. This filth. These excuses. I loved him. Why couldn't he accept that? Why couldn't he leave the demons behind and enjoy our life?" She shook her head, sniffing, her fists curled in anger. "I always thought there was something lacking in me that I could never give him security." I started to protest, but she held up her hand. "No, I know, his baggage was too heavy. And I was too pretty and too popular. He spent the first few years of our courtship and marriage in a daze, following me around like an anxious mother, staring at me as if I were an apparition."

  "I hauled him from party to party, from neighbour to neighbour, celebrating. He could never see that I was celebrating our love, this amazing man who was so intelligent and funny and caring and gentle underneath that ugly make-up. I wanted everyone to see what I saw, not just the surface. But it only made people understand less and talk more. It made him more insecure than ever."

  "After we had Nathaniel, he seemed even more terrified, for now he had two people to lose. And because his little boy so resembled him, was also given the burden of ugliness, Walter wanted us all to crawl inside a cocoon and never emerge. I kept trying to tell him that looks didn't matter. It was the inside that counted. If only he had believed me. If only he had known that his inside, that part of him buried way, way underneath all the crap and the things he'd done in the past, was wonderful and beautiful."

  "If only he'd had the fortitude to tell Bill Percival to get lost. If only he'd known that even if I had found all this out years ago, I would have forgiven him. I would have still loved him. The one thing I could not forgive was the way he imprisoned me and our son with his fears."

  She fingered the worn leather for a moment, her head down. "Poor Nathaniel found this when he was just seventeen years old. He and his father had a huge row and Nathaniel disappeared. He was gone almost five years. According to Walter, the club had been disbanded and we were both ill, so Nathaniel agreed to return. Walter neglected to mention the puppy mill that was going strong by then. You cannot imagine my joy and my sorrow at seeing my son. I had had so many dreams about where he was, about the new life he was living. I wished they'd all been true."

  "Nathaniel eventually found out about the puppy mill and told his father he'd better get rid of it, or he'd go to the police this time. When Walter told me all this the night before he disappeared, I hadn't a shred of forgiveness left in me. I like to think that he was trying in his stupid way to plot revenge for our son's murder, though. I think the pony was killed as much as a signal to Percival as it was to get into the school and search."

  "You could be right, Annie. You should have seen Bill's face when I told him about the pony. At the time, I thought it was odd. But how did Walter know I had the diary?"

  "After he'd searched the school thoroughly, he was convinced someone from the school had it. He'd seen your kindness when you came to visit us and when he took Angel to you. He suspected you might be
the recipient of Nathaniel's confidence. I don't know how he knew exactly, though. Maybe he was spying on you. Who knows what he was capable of? The last thing I said to him was that he was a pathetic excuse for a human being."

  A shuddering sob rose up inside her, but she stilled it with a breath of strengthening air.

  "I refuse to feel guilty about that, my dear. My husband put me and my son through too much for me to end the rest of my days feeling sorry. If only I had known about the beast club, the puppy mill. If only I had left him years ago, when his paranoia became intolerable, maybe my poor little boy…"

  She was silent for a moment, breathing shallowly, her eyes closed again. When she opened them, her voice was stronger.

  "There is only one thing I can give my Nathaniel now. I want him to have a good reputation. If Walter gets dragged into it by that monster, he deserves it, but the story will never really be confirmed, unless they have this diary. I lugged myself down those stairs, hauled my ass up onto a chair to reach it. I never thought I had that kind of strength in my upper body!" She gave a small, ironic chuckle. "It's amazing what you can do when you need to. And I counted on the fact that our Burchill-born Edgar wouldn't search this old lady's purse."

  "Without the diary, you can cast doubt on any of the stories, can't you, Emily? You can tell the people of Burchill who like to talk about things that the bridgeman was an innocent, drawn into the horrors by the likes of the fancy pants Percivals and that you bet most of what old Bill has to say is lies. Then pretty soon it will be spread everywhere and it will be believed. After all, the Percivals weren't born to Burchill like the bridgemen were."

  She held the diary out to me. "If this is gone, they'll never prove it. There'll always be doubt and everyone will just remember the wonderful parts of Nathaniel and maybe even Walter."