Mary Cyr
Page 40
Pedro Sonora was lying by the statue of Our Lady, near Gabriella’s boyfriend—the rest of the men were sitting or lying a few feet away from him.
Pedro had kept tapping his spoon to the end. He died with it in his hand.
Autopsies showed some of the men had lived nine days.
Mary Cyr’s autopsy showed she died of smoke inhalation. That is, they felt she had become unconscious in thirty or forty seconds.
When they undressed her in the morgue, they found all the headlines. Not one of the papers had burned too too much. They unravelled them carefully—one after the other—her whole life of scandal stapled to her chest—just like the Bob Dylan song said. The last one, before they reached her breasts, was the picture of Denise Albert.
The one closest to her heart.
“My friend, I made you famous and you didn’t even thank me,” she had written.
Underneath all of it her naked body was shiny white.
Victor’s body was exhumed. He had died of a crushed larynx. Little Florin still had a french fry coupon on him.
Lucretia is awaiting trial in the Prisión del Rayo. No one protests her innocence more, and she is known to cry all night, while being taunted by other women.
Principia and Gabriella received the money that Mary Cyr had promised.
They could charge Hernández with half a dozen crimes, including murder and the rape of the Spanish woman.
John told the Cyr family all of this. They kept staring at the scar across his forehead, where they had struck him down.
Sharon DeRolfo moved out of the house, moved away from everyone.
Left her girlfriend and lives alone.
The chapel Carlos had built his wife was removed.
John read all of this meticulously in his steady, steely monotone. But they all listened.
The real problem for Alfonso Bara is he did not allow her to go free weeks before. That was always going to be a problem for him. Now that she had died it was worse. He should have let her go—Constable Fey had said she was innocent the day after John Delano arrived.
He had written this: “There is a Canadian policeman here—a bothersome sort in a way, none too outgoing, but do not underestimate him. He has been here five days; he knows the boy was not murdered by this woman. He is certain adults were involved, and that it had to do with the mine implosion.”
He had sent that off to Bara. But Bara still hesitated. The trap was too exquisite to spring without catching whom he wanted.
Afterwards Bara was clever enough to say he could not chance giving away his position to people who were brutal enough to do what they in fact had done. That the death of Mary Cyr was mob related and no one could have foreseen that—that he had started the excavation in order to free her, and not to condemn her. He became an under chief justice, just as his wife had hoped.
Constable Fey was made captain, was later promoted to district superintendent. He married the young woman who was Mary’s guard and friend.
Tallagonga continues to this day to be prosecutor in Oathoa.
* * *
—
EL did finish his book. In it, he had gone to Mexico to help Mary Cyr, and was thwarted at every turn—and he used much of John Delano’s research, saying it was his own.
People said they were going to build a statue to Mary, right in the square of Oathoa. In fact Tallagonga was one of the statue’s major supporters. But still there are kidnappings of tourists now and again, farther along the coast, and scams are set up to injure tourists and force them to pay huge amounts at the hospital. In fact, Norma van Haut has written on this for Der Spiegel just recently.
Add that to the fact that Nan is still alive and still has enormous power and has decided to donate a church in Mary Fatima Cyr’s honour.
Mary was famous now—more famous than any of her accusers—and all the talk against her just went away.
It was easy enough, really, to find out who it was. His name was on the park bench—written that long-ago November by a hopeful young girl.
“I like Mr. C.—Mary Cyr.”
Generations of children sat on that bench, the evidence beneath their bums.
It was too late now. For forgiveness or recrimination. He had forgotten about the poem. He had forgotten much about her. He would simply fade away.
After that Perley resigned from the paper. All papers, all things, forever. He hardly speaks a word to anyone in the world. But that wasn’t the best of it. No, the best of it was he was seen in the company of a beautiful woman—they danced in bars and clubs, went skinny-dipping in the ocean, and he never once apologized again for who he was or how he looked.
People said he cornered Doc one night and beat him unconscious. Just like that. Not one bit frightened anymore. That was the real secret, unknown and untold, unrehearsed and unfettered; our Perley Cyr was as strong as an ox.
Poor Doc couldn’t go out of his house for more than a year.
“Me?” he said. “Why are people so angry at me—I’d like to know?”
Then he promised he would change—promised his grandmother he would do better. And so far, he seems to have improved.
Ernest Vanderflutin has a part interest in a bakery. He has remarried, to a Jewish woman.
Paco died of booze in 1988.
Father Ignatius was beatified in 2010.
Mary’s diary was returned to the family.
And John Delano would go on, in his own tragic way, and have at least one or more great cases, and like Mary Cyr leave us too soon—but that is a tale for another time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have, as always, far too many people to thank. My dear editor, Lynn Henry. My agent, Anne McDermid. My publicist, Shona Cook. Peg McIntyre, wife, Harley partner, world traveler, by my side for more than fifty years. My granddaughter, sweet Blair Alice, who thinks her Papa has written all the books in his study—but will someday, I hope, realize he has written one or two good ones. Her father, John, and her Uncle Anton know that my love is unconditional—and whomever says the contrary is a liar, fraud, snatcher of souls.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS is one of Canada’s preeminent writers. His novels Crimes Against My Brother and Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul were nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and published to wide acclaim. Among his other recent novels, The Lost Highway was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award; The Friends of Meager Fortune won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book; and Mercy Among the Children won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Trillium Award. Richards is also the author of the celebrated Miramichi Trilogy and has written four bestselling books of nonfiction: Lines on the Water, God Is., Facing the Hunter and Hockey Dreams. In 2017, he was appointed to the Canadian Senate, representing the province of New Brunswick.