There was an Old Woman

by Howard Engel

  After my experience with Cath Bracken, I kept at least two cars sitting between me and Newby. I wasn’t going to get caught again. Too much of my income depended on having the confidence of the legal community. A man like Julian Newby could kill my reputation in less than a minute. All he had to say was that I couldn’t follow a suspect without showing myself.

  Newby drove down Ontario Street to Welland Avenue, where he made a right turn. He had the green light. It was harder for me to make the same turn after the light had changed, but I managed to insinuate the nose of the Olds into the traffic in time to see the Lincoln make a northern turn onto York Street. Now there were no cars between us, so I pulled to a stop. Newby continued three or four blocks and parked the Lincoln. I moved the Olds up the street slowly until I came up behind a parked car about five or six houses below Newby. I got out just a moment after I saw him leave his car. He wasn’t referring to a scrap of paper with an address written on it, so it was clear that he knew where he was going. Through the windows of a parked car, I watched him walk back in my direction. He went up to the front door of a house on the corner of Lowell Avenue and used the knocker. When he didn’t get an answer, he tried again. Again, no response. He backed away from the door, then stood on the edge of the porch for a moment, jiggling the keys in his pocket with his right hand, no doubt debating with himself about what to do next. Then he pulled out a clutch of keys from his pocket and examined them. He selected one and returned to the door.

  In a second, the door was open and Newby had disappeared inside. I left the cover of the parked car and began crossing the street to where a thick maple would offer me similar protection and a better view. I had only reached the centre of York Street when Newby came running out of the house. He was coughing and dry-retching. He held on to the white balustrade and heaved. I forgot about the maple tree. Newby needed help. Something was wrong. Surveillance work suddenly dwindled to a cheap charade. I ran up the steps to help.

  “Are you all right?” I asked in spite of the evidence to the contrary. He looked around to see where the voice was coming from.

  “You?” he said, opening his eyes in a question.

  “I saw you,” I said lamely. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Inside!” he said, pointing to the front door with its brass Medusa’s face on the knocker. “Inside! It’s … it’s Ramsden!” By now Newby had his handkerchief out and had started pulling himself back together. I took this as a cue to go inside.

  Inside the front door, I found myself in a hallway decorated with the sort of prints you see on placemats in the windows of china stores. There was the Cutty Sark and several other big clipper ships under sail. Facing a dark green door, I saw the first of a long line of military prints, engravings of soldiers wearing the uniforms and regalia of the last century or the one before that. I opened the door and entered what would have been the living-room in the old house except that Ramsden had claimed it for himself. There were flags on the wall, a group of framed letters, as well as pictures of various crowned heads. A glass case showed off a red and yellow drum and dark bugle. Above it was a globe with a great deal of pink on it. Behind the desk stood a flagstand. Here were the red maple leaf flag of Canada and the older ensign flag that it replaced. I recognized the flag of Ontario hanging limply from a pointed flagstaff. There was also a space reserved for a Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, but it was not to be found in its proper receptacle. Instead, it was sticking through the torso of Thurleigh Ramsden, who lay stretched across the floor of the den. The flagstaff had been shoved or pushed right through Ramsden so that his mortal remains were transfixed on the pole with the flag pulled part of the way through the wound.

  I wanted to grab onto something. For the moment, I didn’t give a damn about leaving fingerprints for others to find. I felt my knees about to play traitor and I soon found myself sitting on the floor not far away from the open, staring eyes of the corpse. With the blood looking black and the dead look in the wide eyes, I didn’t have to move in closer to try to find a pulse. Ramsden was very dead and had been so for some little time.

  When the whirling stopped, I was aware that Newby had come into the room behind me and was calling the police on a telephone he was carrying. I couldn’t hear the words, but I managed to get up and tried to pull myself together for the series of police officers who were going to fill up the next few hours of my day. Newby was shaking his head from side to side in a vague, hopeless way. He moved his briefcase closer to him and sat down in a Queen Anne chair not, apparently, giving a damn about fingerprints either. Together and without speaking another word, we sat and listened for the sound of the sirens coming north to find us. Instead, we heard the honking of horns as a wedding procession made its noisy way along Lake Street.

  SEVENTEEN

  There was no lunch being served at Niagara Regional Police that afternoon. Or at least I wasn’t offered any From time to time either Chris Savas or Pete Staziak would disappear from their offices, leaving me in charge of the other. I suspected they were making trips to the cafeteria downstairs. I even thought I detected crumbs at the corner of Pete’s mouth on his return from such a trip. I didn’t have my copy of the Geneva Convention handy, but I’m sure there must be a section on this type of harassment.

  By the time I got to the level of my old friends Savas and Staziak, I had told my story at least three times. It was recorded in three notebooks and I had made a statement as soon as I was brought downtown. I stuck to the events of the day as much as I could. There was no sense dragging in irrelevancies like the fight Ramsden and I had had at the top of the stairs at the Kingsway Hall on Ontario Street the other night. That would only confuse matters.

  I lost sight of Julian Newby early on in the questioning. He was being questioned by an inspector wearing kid gloves, I suspected. The chief wouldn’t send him through the works with a trainee seconded from traffic. He would also make sure Newby got lunch.

  “Okay, Benny, let’s get serious on this thing,” Pete said, tapping my statement with his ballpoint pen. “Once again, why were you tailing Newby?”

  “I had an appointment to see him and saw him driving out of his parking lot. I wanted to see where he was off to.”

  “What did you want to see him about?”

  “It says that in my statement, Pete.”

  “Humour me.” Pete lit a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head. Pete knew I’d quit smoking. It was his way of getting at me, keeping the pressure on.

  “I was going to give him a progress report on a job I was doing for him.”

  “The statement says you were going to beg off the case. Why?”

  “Because it wasn’t going anywhere. I found out all I was going to find out on the first couple of days. I wasn’t earning my money.”

  “Come on! What was the real reason? Give me something I can swallow.”

  “Okay. The subject that I was following blew my cover. I was no good after that. I don’t have an office full of operatives to put in my place, Pete.”

  “That sounds more like the Cooperman we all know and admire. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who this is?” We exchanged grins. Queen’s Gambit Declined. “Okay, okay! Continue!”

  “Pete, for crying out loud! I already told you! I followed Newby. Newby went into Ramsden’s house—”

  “He had a key?”

  “No, he walked through the wall! Yes, he had a key!” I said, wishing I’d accepted the cigarette. I could have mashed it between my fingers and let the tobacco fall on the floor. “He wasn’t in there more than a few seconds, then he comes out, all shook up after finding the body I went in, did a little serious gagging and then Newby called you on his handy pocket telephone. I could see that Ramsden had been dead for some time.”

  “Now you’re an expert on ‘time of death’ too. Maybe you’d like to take over the Temperley investigation as well. I wouldn’t want to miss hearing your theories about that!”

  “I figure the
deaths are linked, Pete.”

  “Let’s get back to this script, Benny. I’ll pass on your thoughts about Temperley to Chris. How long was Newby in the house ahead of you?” Pete mashed his cigarette into a half-empty styrofoam cup, like he was reading my mind.

  “Pete, you can’t try to pin this one on Newby. I told you he wasn’t in there long enough.”

  “Just answer the question!”

  “Ramsden was colder than a smoked turkey when I got to him. He wasn’t going to get any deader. You’ve got a preliminary medical report, haven’t you? He’d been dead for a couple of hours at least.”

  “He was in there with Ramsden alone, Benny. He could have gone through his desk, removed documents. Who knows? How long was he out of your sight?” Pete had neatly rescued a stupid question and remodelled it so that it looked more interesting. I thought about it.

  “You’d have to measure it in seconds, Pete. He wasn’t gone a full minute.”

  “But he could have gone through Ramsden’s papers if he knew where to look?”

  “How the hell should I know? He didn’t have a file folder stuffed down his shirt, if that’s what you want me to say. He didn’t dispose of anything while he was with me. I didn’t smell burned paper, and he wasn’t out of my sight until your people separated us for questioning. Check his pockets. Check his briefcase.”

  It was at this point that Chris Savas returned to the room. I’d met Chris about ten years ago. He was a hard man, but a good cop. He demonstrated both of these characteristics as soon as the door was closed.

  “Where does it say in here …” he was waving a copy of the statement I’d just signed, “that you and the deceased exchanged angry words followed by blows in the Kingsway Hall last Tuesday night?”

  “Was it last Tuesday? I’ve got such a lousy sense of time.”

  “Tell me, Benny. I want to hear it all.” He perched his butt on the edge of Pete’s dull grey metal desk and crossed his big arms. He was still wearing a short-sleeved shirt. I wondered whether he’d be as slow changing out of his winter wear in the spring. “Benny, what happened up there?”

  I went through the whole thing, beginning with the run-in with Ramsden on the evening in question and ending with Pete Staziak’s elbows in my ribs at police headquarters after Kogan’s nude demonstration. I wanted to get in the part about Pete, because it told Savas that Pete already knew about all this and I hadn’t been being stingy with the facts. I didn’t tell him about Kogan’s getting me to look in on the inquest or my suspicions about Lizzy Oldridge’s property.

  “So where does the bad blood between you and Ramsden come from?” Savas wanted to know. He pulled on his earlobe and readjusted his purchase on the corner of the desk.

  “He took a dislike to my surname when I told it to him. He made an oblique reference to ‘me and my kind.’” Savas and Staziak exchanged a look.

  “That’s at least consistent with what we know about him,” Savas said. This was his way of saying he was sorry on behalf of Niagara Regional Police for what had occurred. Chris never gives information away without a reason. This was partly because of his police training and partly because he comes from a long line of taciturn Cypriot farmers, who know when to talk and when to listen. “And then what?”

  “He tried to throw me downstairs. When I turned around, he fell over backwards and started yelling that he couldn’t move his legs. But he got up fast enough when everybody ran down to see Kogan’s buff.”

  “You didn’t throw a punch?”

  “No. Neither did he. You think I killed him, Chris, because he tried to eject me, or because I didn’t like his racist suggestions?” Just to bug him, I held my wrists together waiting for him to reach for his handcuffs.

  Our meeting went on for a few more minutes. Pete and Chris wanted to know all I knew about Ramsden and I demonstrated that I wasn’t a good source for anything they didn’t know about already. When they finally let me go, I headed directly to the seafood place in the market and ordered a trout the way my father likes it, cooked in butter and served without adornment. The place was full of shoppers meeting for lunch. Overheard talk was about shopping; packages stacked on the banquettes furnished more proof of the season. This wasn’t the usual late-lunching business crowd of the weekdays, the people without two-o’clock appointments. There were no prospectuses on the tables. By the time I paid my check, the place had nearly emptied. Already the waiters were spreading the coloured tablecloths for the dinner trade.

  When I got back to my office, I checked with my service. There were three calls: Stan Mendlesham from Newby’s office, Detective-Sergeant Chris Savas and, to my surprise, Orv Wishart. I called Mendlesham first. It must have been a home number he left, because the voice of a three- or four-year-old answered and asked what I wanted and why. I was in mid-reply, when the phone was wrenched away from the child.

  “Is that you, Benny?” I told him it was. He went on to tell me that Newby had taken to his bed and wouldn’t be able to see me for a day or two.

  “Then I’ll deal with you, Stan. That’s the way it was set up in the first place.”

  “Julian now wants to handle you himself, Benny. You’ve hit the big time!” Stan laughed, then spoke to the youngster with his hand over the phone for a moment. “Great kid!” he said back to me again. “He can do jigsaw puzzles with two hundred pieces and he’s just turned four! Can you beat it?”

  “Terrific!” I said. “When’s he joining the firm?”

  “He has to get through school yet, Benny, but I’m telling you …”

  Stan went on about his son for some minutes. The important part of the message was to give Newby a day to recover. I wanted to ask Stan about how Newby had keys to Ramsden’s house, but I kept my mouth shut. Maybe I could smoke that information out of Pete Staziak.

  Next I phoned Chris, but he was out, so I left word that I wasn’t ignoring him. Then I tried Wishart.

  “Oh, hello there!” he said when I’d identified myself. He made small talk for a minute—something about the challenge and responsibility of the media—and then he said he’d like to see me. I let him suggest a place and time. When he’d hung up, I wrote “The Snug, Beaumont Hotel, 6:00 P.M.” in my book. I was wondering what it could all be about. I thought of the figure I’d seen lurking under the archway in the Kingsway Hall. My speculations were interrupted by the telephone. This was getting to sound like a busy office.

  “Cooperman?” It was Savas.

  “You got him, Chris. What can I do for you? You hiring outside consultants?”

  “You can tell me what your voice is doing on Ramsden’s answering machine for a start. Why the hell do you starve us for information, Benny? You ration it, you forget to mention it, and I’m supposed to roll over and wag my tail! What the hell was going on between you? What business is Liz Oldridge to you?”

  “Just business, Chris. I was looking into her death, that’s all.”

  “The inquest didn’t name any names, Benny. Ramsden walked away from that.”

  “And we all know how far he got: three days. That’s a pile short of a home run.”

  “Benny, I’m only going to say this once: I don’t want you fucking up my investigation! You hear me? Ramsden’s mine and I don’t want to see you anywhere near him. You still listening?”

  “I hear, Chris. But when have I ever—?”

  “Don’t even ask! First I find out that you two were scuffling at the Bede Bunch meeting, then I discover you’re trying to get back in his good books. I know you can give me a good reason, but I want to hear it without any creative flourishes, if you know what I mean?”

  “Chris, it’s like asking a reporter for his sources. I’ve got to think about it. I’ve got a client-investigator relationship to preserve. I’m not trying to make waves, Chris, I just want to get to shore.”

  “Two days, Benny! I’ll give you two days to get your shit in order, then I want you to give me the facts. That’s forty-eight hours from now and then we talk! You
got that? Because if I don’t have a murderer in the cells downstairs by then, I’m coming calling on you!” I could hear him sucking on his teeth over the phone. It was serious sucking. I could tell.

  “Easy, Chris! Take it easy! I want to find out who did it as much as you do. If I knew anything that was in my power to pass on to you, I would. But I don’t and I can’t.”

  “I’ve lost my sense of humour where you’re concerned, Benny. I don’t want any sheep-dip from you when we talk. You hear? Be seeing you in two days!” He hung up loudly, hoping, no doubt, that my ear was still close to the receiver.

  I replaced the phone slowly, thinking of the unworthy object I was sticking my neck out for. Kogan hadn’t even formally retained me to do anything. I was acting on my own, spurred on by a passive-aggressive layabout who capered under the moon in the buff. I needed my head examined.

  I could also see that Kogan had a good motive for killing Ramsden. Hadn’t Ramsden just caused the death of Liz Oldridge? What could be clearer than that? Who was closest to Liz in her last days? Kogan. Who would resent her death most? Kogan. Who cared enough to demonstrate in the nude? Kogan. Both Ramsden and Temperley had played a part in Liz’s death. Both had kept her away from her money. Who would at the very least shed no tears at their demise? Kogan. I could see Savas coming around to this view if a better prospect didn’t materialize. Without money to hire a good lawyer, I could see Kogan’s future plans put into the hands of the Minister of Corrections indefinitely.

  So, what was I doing? I was trying to stop it. And in order to do this with a mind unclouded by feelings other than those that are right and fitting to exist between a PI and his client, I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and removed an assortment of coat-hangers I’d accumulated there. With them in hand, I went into the bathroom and began fixing the running toilet myself.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Snug in the rear of the Beaumont Hotel was a small-town imitation of an Irish pub. The décor tried its best to make you believe that you were sitting in a hideaway long after closing time. This impression was not sustained by all the local faces in the room. They were all people I went to school with—well, some of them were. They were too Canadian, too caught up in the here and now to help the image The Snug was trying to create. On my way to my seat I heard phrases like “… What’s the bottom line on that?” and “… I didn’t want to take delivery of the goddamned pork bellies, I wanted to unload them!”