I could feel Josey’s eyes on me.
“He broke his neck. No one is quite sure how.”
“Oh, well, murdered, I imagine,” she said.
My jaw plummeted in astonishment. The truth, of course, but exactly what I’d been hoping to spare this fine and delicate old lady.
After a pause, I admitted it was murder.
“Oh, dear, poor Benedict. But he would get mixed up in things he shouldn’t, wouldn’t he?”
A shiver rippled up my back. “He would,” I said. What things, I wondered.
“He was always like that. Even as a boy. I knew someday it would all catch up with him. Still, it’s sad.” She clutched the pink china cup with her tiny faded fingers. “I taught him, you know, when he was a little boy. Back in the St. Aubaine Elementary School. Always into trouble and never having to deal with the results. Some other little boy would get punished for something Benedict had done. Oh, and he could lie like a rug. Charm a snake. You knew it couldn’t last forever.”
Miss Mary Morrison had understood Benedict very well.
“He wanted you to have some things to remember him by.”
She chuckled, “As if I could forget the scamp.”
I rustled in my carryall. And fished out two packages Bridget had wrapped in white tissue paper. Mary Morrison opened the first package and took out a gold Saint Christopher medal.
The unspoken thought hung in the room. Saint
Christopher must have been on vacation when Benedict needed him.
“Allow a little old lady a bit of rudeness and tell me, were you Benedict’s...” she hesitated, “...special friend?”
Josey exuded interest.
“Absolutely not,” I said, with more emphasis than I intended. I switched to a softer tone. “We were good friends years ago. Seven or possibly even eight.”
“I only asked because it was just month or so ago that he visited here with a lovely young lady.”
“Oh?” This in itself shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
“Yes. He was very excited. Things were going very well for him at last. He said he was about to come into some ‘serious dollars’.”
Benedict talking about coming into serious dollars? What a con artist! He couldn’t have known he’d win the Flambeau before it was announced.
“A young lady? What was her name?”
Mary Morrison quivered. “Oh, dear, I can’t remember. It’s a lot easier to remember people from forty years ago than last week.”
“I understand completely. Do you remember if Benedict said where this serious money would come from?”
“Indeed no, I took it for another bit of his malarkey.” Before I could frame another question, Mary continued with her own. “So Benedict asked you to deliver these objects?”
“Um, no, Bridget Gallagher asked me. Do you know Bridget?”
“Of course, I taught her in St. Aubaine too. Always crazy about Benedict, even when she was a small girl. I would love to see Bridget. Why didn’t she come herself?”
“I’m sure she would have, but she has trouble getting around. She broke her ankle.”
“A shame.”
“Also, she was quite worried about her emotional reaction telling people the news of Benedict’s death.”
“Understandable. Still she’s been doing well with all of her businesses, hasn’t she? Much better than Benedict was, I imagine. Still, I’m sure Benedict’s passing would be hard for her. When she’s my age, she’ll be used to it. You can pass that on from me.”
I thought I might not. The second parcel held a miniature water-colour of the river, soft and moody. I was pretty sure some old girlfriend of Benedict’s had painted it, or else Bridget would have kept it, since it was so lovely.
Mary Morrison’s eyes filled with tears. We sat in silence. After a while, she wiped her eyes and managed another smile.
“But here, take a peek at Benedict before you go.”
Benedict rated more than one photo. A graduation shot. A casual smiling Benedict, leaning against the hood of a car.
Josey pointed at a picture of a class of school children, taken maybe thirty-five years earlier. Benedict’s good looks and charm dominated the photo. “Look, and this must be Bridget. You could tell her anywhere. Look at her beautiful red ringlets.”
“And there’s Rachel.” I pointed to a square-faced, solemn child staring beefily at the camera.
The children’s expressions ranged from toe-turned shyness to bold confidence. An old collection of young faces, most familiar. But I’d probably seen them all around St. Aubaine. They were all in their mid-forties now. At least one was dead.
I said, “And before we go, Miss Morrison, I’d like you to have Benedict’s latest book of poetry.”
“Humph,” she said, holding back a smile. “I hope that scamp finally learned to spell.”
Absolutely.
Things got better. Miss Morrison was more than happy to buy two tickets to the One Act Play Competition and equally pleased to engage Josey to paint her kitchen cupboards as soon as Uncle Mike could drive her out for the day.
Mary Morrison snapped a nice photo of us both framed by the cottage door as we left. We waved as we dashed to the car, rain slashing in sheets, sharp enough to sting. We pulled our jackets over our heads. The Skylark sputtered and reluctantly started.
“Boy, how come I never had a teacher like that?” Josey said. Mary Morrison had passed the test.
Tolstoy licked our ears, indicating we had passed his test.
The entire trip had passed my test. I now knew Benedict had visited his old teacher not so long before with a lovely young lady, all excited about some serious money.
Well, well.
Now just what the hell was that all about?
Thirteen
Kostas O’Carolan was next on the list. Bridget had written “poet” next to his name. What else would he be with a name like that? A Greco-Celtic bard to round out Benedict’s collection. When we rolled to a stop in front of what was supposed to be Kostas O’Carolan’s house, I shook my head.
“It can’t be here. This looks like an abandoned barn or something.”
As I spoke, a border collie strolled over and relieved itself on my left front tire. The door of the house opened. Santa Claus rolled out.
We edged ourselves out to meet Santa, leaving Tolstoy, who was not too happy about this Border Collie business, in the car.
Josey scrutinized Kostas O’Carolan’s round rosy cheeks, his round rosy nose and his round blue eyes.
He beamed at us. “Ladies, ladies. Come in. Come in.” There was that Irish accent again. How the hell many expatriate Irish could be living in our region, I wondered. And was I going to have to meet every damned one of them, as I represented the ghost of the poet past?
The place looked like a death trap, with a deep sag in the roof and more than one window covered with cardboard. I didn’t care for the tilt of the chimney either.
Josey scampered through the door, no doubt expecting a sack full of gifts and a turkey dinner waiting on the other side. I inched in and tried not to wrinkle my nose at the combined essence of raw wool, old dog, musty paper, booze and sweat. What the room lacked in furniture, it made up for in stacks of books. Five or six baskets containing half-finished knitting projects perched on top of books and on the floor. Knitting needles stuck out of the baskets.
I checked around for other signs of Mrs. Claus, but found none.
“Now then.” Kostas O’Carolan rubbed his hands. “Now then.”
“Right,” I began, trying not to breathe too deeply.
“Exactly, exactly, exactly. My dear ladies, what do yis say to a jar of something?” He pointed to a bottle of Jameson.
Josey blinked.
“Bit early for me,” I said.
He tsked. “Past lunch.”
“In that case,” I said, sinking onto a stool.
Josey perched on a chair and shook her head.
“Oh, dear,” he
said, sorrowfully. “Tea, perhaps?”
“Yes, please. That would be nice,” Josey said, in a way that would make any mother in the world proud. “Why don’t I make it? Miz Silk can tell you why we’re here.”
I hoped she’d check the cups for mould. I decided not to peer too closely into the glass of Jameson he thrust at me.
“Miz Silk?” Kostas O’Carolan said.
“Fiona.” We hadn’t introduced ourselves or given any indication why we were there. Not that it seemed to make a difference.
“Lovely name. Here’s to yer health, Fiona Silk,” he said, lifting his glass with a graceful smoothness.
“And this is Josey Thring,” I added.
He bowed in Josey’s direction without lowering the glass. “Certainly, you may make the tea, if it will make you happy.”
“It will,” she muttered.
“She’ll be a Virgo, I imagine,” Kostas O’Carolan said. “I like to have a Virgo drop in every now and again.”
From the look of the room, no Virgos had dropped in for the past couple of years.
“You must be wondering why we’re here,” I said before taking a sip of the whiskey.
“Not at all,” he said. “Visitors are always welcome here at Evening’s End. I’ll be glad to show yis the sweaters.”
I ignored this strange remark. I was fretting about how to introduce the Benedict situation without mortifying myself. I would have been happier in the kitchen, scouring crockery with Josey.
I finally said, “So, as to the purpose of our visit...”
“And a very pleasant one it is.” He obviously had the opposite reaction to a knock on the door than I had. Here was someone who welcomed the uninvited with open arms and a glass of good whiskey. Excellent. Maybe I could redirect the bulk of my visitors here. I wondered how he felt about phone calls.
“As you know,” I continued, “the poet, Benedict Kelly, who I believe was a good friend of yours, has been killed.”
The twinkle faded behind the glasses. “Indeed. The poor boy’s killed. That’s tarrible. And he’d won that big prize too. To think I was too under the weather to attend his tiny, pathetic memorial.” He slumped into a chair and took a steadying gulp.
I had a steadying gulp of my own.
“Can you tell me what happened to the lad?” he said.
Someone else didn’t own a television or read the papers.
“The police believe he was murdered.” That was it. That was the way to get people thinking and talking. Tell them the truth.
“In cold blood?”
He had me there. Had it been in cold blood? I had no way of knowing. I considered the Krazy Glue. “Yes. Definitely.”
“Dear me. Poor Benedict, murdered in cold blood. And yis have come all the way up here to...”
“Ah, yes. I have been appointed by Benedict’s estate...”
“Benedict’s estate! Who would have thought our lad would have an estate. Life is full of surprises, isn’t it, Ms. Silk?”
It certainly was. “Benedict left some special possessions to certain of his friends. So, in addition to, um, some other tasks, I’ve been asked to deliver them.” I hoped the bitterness I felt didn’t infect my voice.
“I just can’t get over our Benedict having an estate.” Kostas O’Carolan peered at me shrewdly over his reading glasses. “Imagine the poor boy knowing he was going to die and leaving instructions about his possessions. Very strange. Do you follow me?”
I did. “I take your point. But...”
Kostas slapped his forehead, without spilling his drink. “Ah, what am I thinking of? Oh course! The prize money.”
Now there was an opening. “Um, no. It’s just this package. I’m afraid he never got a chance to get the prize money. He died too soon.” Of course, I was wondering if some other poet might not have made that happen.
“No. Doubly tragic, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know what to think any more.
He picked up the book and blinked at it, shaking his head.
“While Weeping for the Wicked,” he said.
I wondered why he continued to shake his head longer than one might consider absolutely normal.
“It’s the latest collection of Benedict’s poems.”
“I know, dear lady, I know.” He sipped morosely and fingered the binding of While Weeping for the Wicked.
Josey took that moment to re-enter the room with her tea in a cracked but clean mug.
“I imagine it could be worth a lot before long,” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“While Weeping for the Wicked. Bridget said only a small number were printed, and with Benedict winning the Flambeau and, um, dying so soon after, they would be, wouldn’t they?”
Now there was a thought. Would anybody kill a poet on the off chance his books would instantly accrue in value? No, too weird.
“Excuse me,” said Josey, who’d been quiet for too long.
“My dear?” he twinkled at her.
“Who is doing all of this knitting? Your wife?”
“Certainly not,” he said, sitting straighter and puffing out his already puffy chest. “Ladies, you are gazing at, in the flesh, the proprietor of Evening’s End Hand Knit Wool Originals. Kostas O’Carolan, artist-in-wool. Every stitch perfection. Every design unique. Only available in St. Aubaine at La Tricoterie, the best knitting shop in the region. And written up, might I mention, in major shopping guides for tourists. I made the Marci Glickman guide this year.”
“Really?” I said.
“You mean, men can knit?” Josey said.
“Certainly, ladies. The proceeds come in handy.”
“There’s money in it?” Josey liked that idea. Kostas puffed up another size.
“If you’re good.”
“Isn’t that something, Miz Silk?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“I know about these. They’re famous sweaters,” Josey said. “Tourists fight over them.”
Kostas blushed. “It’s a good cause, my dear ladies. I don’t need a lot, but a few extra dollars keeps the books in supply.”
And the Jameson.
He must have read my mind. “My dear lady, let me top that up for you and, since it’s stopped raining, will you join me in the garden? You’ll see why I choose to live in this lovely spot.”
Josey’s eyebrow went up. “I was wondering,” she said.
Stepping through the rear entrance, I averted my eyes from the things that didn’t bear close examination in the kitchen.
The river view stretched away for miles. We were near enough to smell the water. Kostas dried off the wooden garden furniture. That was in far better condition than anything inside the cottage.
“When is your birthday, dear girl?” Kostas beamed at Josey.
“September 18th.”
“Ah. Indeed,” he said. “I should have known.”
September 18th? Less than two weeks. None of the Thrings fussed over Josey, even when they weren’t in jail. Her mother, who’d stepped out to get a package of cigarettes eleven years earlier and was now widely rumoured to be shacked up somewhere with a biker, didn’t even send Josey a package at Christmas.
Everything she owned, from her neat, faded jeans to her equally faded blue T -shirt, she earned by cleaning gardens, fixing roofs, selling junk at the flea market and other activities I probably was better off not knowing about. And this was the year she’d missed out on her trip to France. I decided I really should make her fifteenth birthday something special.
Except for some mental arithmetic about how long it takes to metabolize each ounce of Jameson, the most complicated thought I entertained for the rest of the afternoon was what to get Josey for her birthday.
Kostas had no problem with what to give people. By the time we left, Josey had instructions in the basics of knitting, a collection of needles and some wool to practice with.
I had a headache.
“Poor, poor Benedict,” Kostas hiccoughed mu
ch later, getting us back to the purpose of our visit as I got ready to leave. “Now tell me, my dear lady, when and where do yis plan to be holding the poor, dear boy’s final departure ritual?”
“Um.”
“We have to do it properly.”
“Oh, we will,” Josey said, getting in the spirit. “Miz Silk’s in charge of the scattering.”
“Shhh.” I didn’t want that getting around.
“Of his ashes,” she clarified.
Kostas shot from his lawn chair without spilling a drop and held his glass high. “To the Successful Scattering of the Ashes of our Friend, the Late Poet, Benedict Kelly.”
Successful? Did scatterings have degrees of success?
“I haven’t really given a lot of thought to the details.” I’d thought of the scattering as just another ordeal, like finding out who killed Benedict and finishing my novel. Which reminded me, Kostas was a poet, a backslapper, and he did live in the area. Here was a fine opportunity to make a little progress on another front. I hoped he didn’t see the light going on over my head.
I sighed. “I really can’t get started until I get my car fixed. It’s very unreliable, and I’m pretty well stranded without it.”
He didn’t spot any gaps in logic. “Dear lady, you don’t have a good mechanic?”
I shook my head.
“Indeed, indeed, ladies. I can recommend a first-rate mechanic. A poet too. Marc-André Paradis. You’ve heard of him?”
“Naturally.”
So he did exist after all.
“He doesn’t take new customers, but he might if I explained the importance and urgency of the matter,” Kostas O’Carolan said.
Bingo.
I struggled to keep my mind on the road and not on the new development. What would I learn from meeting Marc-André Paradis, poet-mechanic, once Kostas vouched for me? It was bound to be better than knocking on his door and asking how he’d felt having the Flambeau snatched by the late lounge lizard, Benedict Kelly.
I was yanked out of deep thought by Josey, who’d been extraordinarily quiet following our longish afternoon with Kostas.
“It’s too bad we never did get binoculars.”
“Binoculars? What for?”
Fiona Silk Mysteries 2-Book Bundle Page 32
