by Howard Engel
“So this is Mattie.” I waved the photograph, turning my statement into a question. Gertie nodded. “When was she back there last?”
“That was taken in the early winter of 1986. She went back to see her parents. Her mother’s been sick. They’re both over seventy.”
“Looks like a nice place.”
“Oh, yes, beautiful. It has green and white plastered houses and the church has a green dome like an onion.”
“What’s she like?”
“Oh, like in the picture. She likes to go skiing and dancing. She likes a good time.”
“Does she have a job?”
“That I wouldn’t know. She pays the rent on time. She wears nice clothes.”
“Did you ever hear her talking about Mr. Kiriakis from the Stephenson House?”
“No, she didn’t go for little coffee-klatch confessions. She didn’t pull her hair down with me, although she lived with us for nearly five years.”
“I see. And you’ve no idea where she went?”
“Oh, no. She just left. She didn’t take more than an overnight bag.”
“May I see her room?” Gertie didn’t answer right away. She was trying to remember when she’d changed the bed last, maybe. Her lips were very pale when at last she nodded.
“If you like,” she said.
She got up a moment after I did and led the way up a staircase that was a little grand for a rooming house. She paused outside a door on the second floor and knocked, for form’s sake, then we went in. It was an ordinary bedroom without anything that struck me as odd or unusual. It was clean, tidy, with clothes in the closet and more in the bureau. In a drawer of the bedside table I found a few letters with Austrian stamps. The writing looked German to me and authentic enough to convince a non-Germanspeaking person. I examined some black-and-white photographs and postcards from Schruns. It looked like a nice place to visit. After slipping the letters back into their envelopes and tucking the collection back into the drawer. I turned back to Gertrude, who was trying to stay out of my way. “Are you at all worried about her disappearance, Mrs. Bouts?”
“‘Disappearance’? Why, Mr.—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name …”
“Cooperman.”
“Mr. Cooperman, yes. Mr. Cooperman, until you came I didn’t think it was anything like that. She’s a young girl, but I thought, you know, that she’s a modern woman. ‘Disappearance’ is strong language for staying out all night. I mean, without knowing what you just told me about her friend, Mr. Kiriakis. She still may come home all together, you know, in one piece This isn’t the first time she’s been away without leaving word. Oh, no. At Christmas we didn’t hear from her for nearly two weeks. But that was Christmas, and we were busy and the time passed more quickly. Now, this time, I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe ‘disappearance’ is a big word for what’s happened. But coming just at the time of Pambos Kiriakis’s death … It does pose a question. I think you would be wise to inform the police of what’s happened.”
“Yes. I will speak with Dirk about it.”
“Has she had any visitors, any family coming to look for her?”
“I told you that they are in Austria, ah, but I was forgetting. Her sister Greta came last October. She stayed for three or four days and then went back to New York. She’s a translator at the United Nations.”
“Do you think that Mattie went to see her sister?”
“I don’t think so,” she said with the beginnings of a testy look coming to her face. “I don’t think they get along. Greta is very old fashioned, very serious, very religious.”
“I see. What about other friends?”
“I‘m sorry. I already told you. And now, I must get back to Willum. I’m sorry that I can’t be of more help. Dirk and I want to do the right thing, Mr. Cooperman. Do you think that the police will come to see us?” We moved out of Mattie’s room and down the staircase with the wine-coloured walls that told of grander times, when the living was easy and supported by an army of servants. In the front room again, before moving to the door, I tried another tack.
“Did Mattie have any interest in art? You know, paintings, oils, watercolours?”
“Oh yes, she talked about it. She went to Buffalo and Toronto to see the galleries there. Dirk said he’d show her the Hamilton gallery one day. But she wasn’t a painter herself. She liked to see the pictures.”
“I see. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Bouts. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” I made my way back through the hall to the tall front door. We shook hands formally and a moment later I was looking back over my shoulder at the house, trying to think whether I was imagining the feeling that Gertie Bouts wasn’t telling me everything she might about this business. The house, tidy in its nineteenth-century reserve, wasn’t helping either.
Further up Queen Street, I passed the familiar office of the Beacon. Through the window on the ground floor I could see customers placing ads or picking out words for obituaries and wedding announcements. News of last night’s dirty deed at the Stephenson House had not yet reached the street. The Beacon was an evening paper; it rarely hit the pavement before three-thirty in the afternoon. Next to the Beacon, an old house, formerly used as a real-estate company’s head office, had sprouted a “For Sale” sign. I knew it wouldn’t be long before demolition crews would start pulling down the last of the surviving houses on this part of Queen Street. I could almost imagine the original owner of the property stepping out of a carriage and complaining to the contractor that there must be some mistake.
I walked past the window of the Upper Canadian Bank. As I expected, there were no customers standing in line behind the velvet ropes. Four tellers stood idly at their posts waiting for their eleven o’clock break. I felt a warm surge when I recalled that Jonah Abraham’s cheque was, even as I walked along the main street of Grantham, turning me into a man of wealth and property, comparatively speaking. At least it wouldn’t sink into my overdraft without leaving a trace. That thought led directly to a rut in my recent thinking. I was obsessed with the idea that I had given Abraham a good deal when I’d agreed to continue the investigation I started for Pambos. I wondered when was the last time Jonah Abraham had got a bargain.
A tune came to my lips, a spring to my stride and I almost felt my girth increasing through its association with affluence. A couple of people said hello to me as I came east along the south side of St. Andrew Street. I almost felt like an established merchant on the street, a bit like my father nodding at his competitors as he passed them standing between the large display windows of their stores.
My sunny, daydream died. Jonah Abraham’s daughter was leaning against the street door leading to my office. She looked like she was trying to hold up a falling building.
“Hello, Mr. Cooperman.”
“Goodbye, Miss Abraham.” She blocked my way to the door handle. “Excuse me,” I said, and I tried to say it politely. I pushed past her.
“Why are you so mean to me?” she asked. “I’ve never met anyone as rude as you are.”
“That comes of a sheltered life. You don’t know how lucky you are.” I got the door open and headed up my twenty-eight steps. She was right behind me. I could hear sharp heels on the linoleum. I didn’t even try to close my door. She wandered in and shut it with a flat white palm.
“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you so mean?” She moved away from the door and walked behind the client’s chair. “I could tell Daddy,” she said with a smile.
“Right now I’m on better terms with your old man than you are, so don’t threaten me with an empty gun.” I flipped through the mail that I’d scooped up as I came in. There was nothing of interest, except for a bill from an oil company with an enclosure offering me a device for inflating my punctured tires, with nothing to pay on it for six months.
“Don’t call him that. ‘My old man,’ I mean. You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know he’s worried as hell about you.” I p
icked up the telephone and moved it across the desk. “You want me to dial the number?” She crossed her arms and held onto her elbows for a second, then slumped into the client’s chair. She looked at me like I was the third school principal in a row to tell her she was a candidate for expulsion.
“I can’t talk to him now. Not with you here. I’ll call him later, I promise.” She gave me a blast of those salamandrine eyes again. I wondered if a private investigator is in loco parentis to his client’s offspring. I hoped not.
“Okay, I believe you will. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I just wanted to talk. I know you’re working for Daddy. He told me.”
“So, you’re checking up. Is that it?”
“He’s always getting short-changed. He can’t buy a stamp for the going price. Everybody nicks him. You don’t know what having money’s like.” I thought about that, but said nothing.
“Do you know why he hired me?”
“Naturally. He wants you to find some kind of list of paintings or other. He said that he is suspected of taking the list from a man who has just been killed. Now I can tell you right now that he didn’t do that. He was home with me all night last night.”
“That’s a big help.” She slowly lost the pout on her face and began to look quite proud of herself. “I hope you keep this information to yourself. I wouldn’t share it with the cops if I were you.”
“Why should I do anything you say, Mr. Cooperman?”
“If you want to keep your old man out of jail, you won’t complicate things by inventing phoney alibis that are about as watertight as a broken coffee filter. You were out last night and didn’t get back until after I got to your place. Besides that, the cops know he was at the scene of the crime. He called them. So, please go take a creative writing course somewhere and use your inspiration on paper.”
She didn’t like me again. She’d almost become friendly, but I put things back about a hundred years. She slouched and fidgeted in her chair. I decided to try another tack, just to see what would happen. “What do you know about Mary MacCulloch?”
“Mary Mac …? She owns a picture Daddy wants. A Lamb, I think. She’s very beautiful, and Daddy says she’s very spoiled. He sometimes calls her ‘Bo Peep’ because of all the Lambs she owns.”
“You share your father’s interest in painting, I gather?”
“I love pictures. Yes. But neither one of us …!”
“Hey! I’m on your side, remember? You don’t have to protest your innocence with me. I just thought you might be able to help me out, that’s all. What is this Lamb that Mary MacCulloch has that your father covets?” switched from “old man” to “father” to illustrate the fact that I too could be reasonable when others were prepared to be so.
“It’s a major painting, but on a small scale. It’s only about that big.” She indicated a rectangular shape about three feet by two. “He said he would trade shares in Windermere Distilleries to own it. And you have to understand that Windermere Distilleries is bread and butter to the family.”
“He has a soft spot for Lamb too, hasn’t he. He’s another Bo Peep. Do you think he’s any good?” I expected the look she gave me; the question was a vague probe. I don’t know what I was after.
“Wallace Lamb’s pictures will still be hanging in galleries long after a lot of abstract expressionist garbage has been cleared from the walls of our major galleries,” she said with a face like Joan of Arc or maybe an English suffragette.
“Hey, that’s a little hard on the abstract expressionists. In what way is he so good?” She took a deep breath and began exploring her opinion while she talked.
“Well, Lamb has a way of dividing up the proportions in a painting between the subject and the background that … that tells you it’s a Lamb. You don’t have to look for his signature, you just know a Lamb when you see one. That’s just one thing.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He came from some place north of Toronto. A place called Varney. Have you ever heard of it?” I shook my head and she nodded, agreeing that Varney wasn’t a familiar landmark in her life either. She went on:
“I only know what Arthur Tallon told me about him. About his drinking and womanizing. That sort of thing. His life story would make a great book.”
“He was an important painter for Tallon, wasn’t he?”
“Well, yes. Tallon kept Lamb alive. Gave him enough to go on painting at a time when there was no market for his work. Tallon created the market by selling a batch of his paintings to a well-known diplomat for a song. The diplomat announced that he was supporting Canadian art, and Tallon said ‘The price was right.’”
“You liked Arthur Tallon, didn’t you?” I deduced this from the smile that accompanied Tallon’s bon mot. It was her first big smile, and it was worth waiting for.
“He was ‘Uncle Arthur’ to me when I was little. I can still remember the thrill of running up the stairs to that chilly, white-walled gallery on King Street He taught me to open my eyes and really look at things. Oh, I loved that man. I told him I wanted to marry him when I was seven or eight and he said he’d wait for me. He never did marry, you know.”
“Oh? What was that all about?”
“He just wasn’t sexy at all. He was really the ‘uncle’ type. That’s as close as he wanted to get to people. To women, anyway. The bigger I got, the farther apart we got, as though he was afraid of me. But we were always good friends. He was like Lewis Carroll. You know, the man who wrote Alice in Wonderland.” I was familiar with the book, but the private life of the author was his own business, something unconnected with missing lists and paintings.
“Carroll was ‘funny’ about little girls and couldn’t abide little boys at all.” I nodded, trying to put an end to the digression, since neither little girls nor boys seemed to be involved in the present investigation. I made a stab at restoring order.
“Did you finish telling me all you know about Mary MacCulloch?”
“You’re still on her are you?” She made a gesture that I knew would mature and become useful in middle age, if she lived that long. I kept my eyes on my hands folded neatly on my desk.
“I just asked a question. No need to snap off at me like a sick cat. Why does she make your back hair stand up?” She gave her mouth a tug that showed me that she didn’t like to be questioned about anything. She enjoyed having the conversation on her own terms.
“What do you want me to say? She’s pretty, right? Okay, she’s even better looking than pretty. She has a way about her. She’s rich enough to do what she wants and has a husband who is prepared to look the other way. Daddy says she’s no better than she should be.”
“What does he say about MacCulloch?”
“Isn’t that hearsay?”
“It would be in a court of law, but this is still 200A St. Andrew Street and not the new court house. I withdraw the question. I’ll ask him myself.”
“It’s just that …”
“Forget it, Anna. It’s not important.”
“That’s the first time you’ve used my name.”
“It’s considered good technique in cross-examination. It disarms the witness. Why are you so suspicious of me?”
“People are always gouging Daddy. Always taking advantage.”
“Oh, fine! I was in bed when he called me to come over last night. He sent a car to make sure I wouldn’t disappoint him. I’m sick of rich people and their tender sensibilities.”
“There’s an exchange between Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway about rich people being different from other people.”
“Yeah, they have more money.”
“Oh, you know it then? Why do you pretend that you never read anything more complicated than the comics? I saw you talking last night. You let Daddy do a lot more explaining than he had to do. You know a lot more than you pretend to know.”
“That’s an occupational hazard. A lot of the time I pretend to know a lot I don’t. It works out.” I kept
on going without taking another breath. I asked, “Did Mary Mac-Culloch have a grudge against Pambos Kiriakis, the man who was killed?”
“I don’t know. I heard she did. But who knows about things like that? I may have a grudge against you, but I’m not going to kill you.”
“I hope not.” I felt my collar getting tight again. “Now don’t forget to call your father.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Look, Anna, your old man isn’t paying me to shoot the breeze with his daughter. I’ve got work to do. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of.”
“I’ve heard that before somewhere.”
“Well, drop me a line when you figure it out. Meantime, look, I really have to show some work for the money. Okay?”
“Well …”
“Look, if you’re around the Beaumont Hotel around ten tonight, I’ll buy you a drink in the bar. The place they call The Snug.”
“You can tell me about the progress you’re making,” she said, getting up. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was actually going.
“Yeah, that’s right. Around ten, in The Snug.” A moment later she was gone and this time I didn’t even have to twist her arm.
FOURTEEN
For twenty minutes I enjoyed the silence, played around with the names on a list I’d been making, names that included everybody I’d heard about recently except for Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Lewis Carroll. Then the phone brought me back to the world of the convenience store and the six o’clock news.
“Hello?”
“Hello, there. I just looked you up in the yellow pages and there you were. Just where a real detective should be. This is Mary MacCulloch.”
