There was an Old Woman

by Howard Engel

  I was about five minutes early for my appointment. That was easy for me since the hotel was just a short hike up St. Andrew Street from the office. I returned the greetings of a few familiar faces, who made no attempt to join me, nor did they invite me to join them. It was that kind of place. It was an intimate extension of everybody’s office. The rules were “keep to yourself and mind your own business.” Orv Wishart must have come in the back way. I’d been watching the front door.

  “Hello, there, Benny,” he said. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late. There’s always a string of people waiting for me when I’m trying to get away. I should try using the fire escape.”

  “How is your mother-in-law, Mrs. Ravenswood?”

  Wishart looked solemn. I couldn’t tell whether my question had been taken as an impertinence or whether he was sincerely worried about the old lady. “She’s at home. I’ve got a nurse staying with her for a few days. She hasn’t been all that well, you know.” I didn’t know, but I now knew how her drinking was to be treated. I’d been given the official line. How like a news director: everything had its pigeon-hole.

  I sat back and watched the waiter avoiding eye contact with his customers on this side of the room. When he could ignore us no longer, he came to the table, where Wishart ordered Campari and Perrier and I a rye and ginger. I couldn’t make Wishart look me in the eye. His hands were actively making patterns on the arm of his chair. He continued to make small talk until the drinks came, then he downed half of his pink concoction that looked like cream soda in one gulp. Finally, the moment arrived. He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned close to the table.

  “You remember the other night?” he asked, his eyes still dancing all over the room, like a glitter dome that had lost all but two of its mirrors. I nodded agreement but said nothing. “I saw you there behind the piano,” he continued. “I guess you wondered why I was there?”

  “Sure. I didn’t think you were one of the regulars.”

  “Ha! That bunch? Catch me!” He took the rest of his drink in one swallow. This time the waiter replaced it before I even looked up. “What would it cost me for you to forget you saw me, Ben?”

  “Are you talking seriously? I want to get this straight.”

  “What’s it going to cost?”

  “You know that Ramsden’s dead? That I was there when Newby found him?”

  “Just tell me what you want.”

  “I’m not a bribe-taking man, Orv.”

  “Then you haven’t told the police that you saw me?”

  “I see all sorts of people; I just answered their questions. If they ask me if I saw Orv Wishart lurking around the Kingsway Hall last Tuesday, I’d have to tell them the truth.”

  “And I can’t name a price that would make you forget?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. I’ve been told to stay out of the way of the cops in general and away from this investigation in particular. So I’m not volunteering information I’m not asked for.”

  “You don’t think I killed him, do you?”

  “It entered my mind. I don’t know what I think. Nobody’s hired me to think about it. You weren’t his only enemy.”

  “That’s for goddamned sure!” I’d guessed right and tried not to let it show on my face. “Maybe you’ll come and work for me, Ben?”

  “Not likely, Orv. Not after your introductory offer. I’d never be able to keep my right and left hands straight in my head if I did. I try to keep things simple. Why did you want to see Ramsden? Why didn’t you leave a message on his machine like the rest of us?” Again I was guessing. Maybe there are some lurkers in the shadows who leave messages on tape, but I was betting that Wishart wasn’t one of them.

  “It was business. Just business,” he said.

  “I see. Look, Mr. Wishart, I appreciate your friendly offer, but I can’t make it work that way. Okay? If you want to talk, that’s another matter; I still have most of my drink in front of me. If you don’t want to talk, that’s okay too.”

  “Ben, Ramsden collected things, things belonging to other people, things they would just as soon forget about. Thurleigh kept on reminding them that he still had these things handy, hidden in a safe place. He had something that rightly belongs to me. That night, I wanted to see him about getting it back.”

  “What are we talking about? A photograph? Letters? What?”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Damn it, Orv, I’m just trying to get a picture of the size and shape of what Ramsden had! It’s smaller than a doghouse but bigger than a stamp. Right?” He moved his chin around like he was chewing on a bad almond. It looked like impatience. I could see that he didn’t like my questions. Maybe he didn’t like being interrupted. It didn’t happen that way at the station. On the matter of trust, I gave him my set speech.

  “Look, Orv, what you’re telling me tonight is private. It’s between you and me; it’s privileged information. I wouldn’t tell anybody what you’ve told me. But, you started off by offering to buy my silence. That doesn’t sit so well. Nobody likes being dragged through a murder investigation. I can appreciate that. If Ramsden was a blackmailer, then he probably had more fish than you. That means the cops aren’t going to go after you exclusively.”

  “If they find his hiding place.”

  “I wouldn’t short-change the cops—even the local cops—on shaking down a house. There aren’t all that many places you can hide a doghouse, or even a stamp, when it comes right down to it.”

  “A letter,” Orv said. “We’re talking about a letter.”

  “Does it contain a threat? Is your name on it?”

  “No, no, no. It’s nothing like that. It’s a letter from someone I used to know. This person, in his lifetime, committed an indiscretion. The letter acknowledges this and sets up a trust fund to deal with the consequences.” He was talking in generalities, but I was getting good at seeing through them. I put a mystified look on my face and urged him to continue.

  “It’s not my secret, Ben, or I’d tell you. The letter was written by a very dear friend and mentor. I just can’t tell you any more.”

  “But this letter affects the life of someone else, isn’t that so? Someone who probably knows nothing about this?”

  “And bloody well isn’t going to! Ever! If she … Never mind. I’ve said too much already.”

  “Why do you want this letter back?”

  “So I can burn it or tear it up. Just so I know it’s gone.”

  “And you’d risk a lot to get it. Why? You said it doesn’t touch you.” Orv wet his lips with his tongue and then wiped his mouth with his knuckles. He stared at them for a moment before answering.

  “There’s somebody who shouldn’t find out about this. It would kill her. If the police find it, they’ll go right to her. That’s what’s eating me up. I couldn’t get him to part with it when he was alive and now he’s dead I can’t get to it.”

  “You don’t like the feeling.”

  “That’s right. I guess I get my own way most of the time.” I’m glad he said it. I was surprised that he had that much insight.

  “Why did Ramsden turn to blackmail? He was a practising lawyer, wasn’t he?”

  “He never recovered from that political career of his. Cost him the earth. Especially that run for mayor That left him in debt. And his legal practice had been badly neglected while he was at City Hall as an alderman.”

  “I guess things became worse when he lost his wife.”

  “Yeah. But even when Dora was alive, his affairs were in bad shape. And, you’re right, since her death in ’89, things have slipped. But you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Always the cock of the walk, Burlington Bertie from Bow.”

  “What does that leave us to talk about?” I asked. “I’m still working on that credit report about that woman on your payroll, what’s-her-name?”

  “Cath Bracken? Oh!” For a moment he had a cornered look in his eyes. Then he smiled and looked into his empty glass. “Was that really
a credit report?”

  “It was a job. I get to do things like that now and then. You didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have got elsewhere. Saved me some time, that’s all.” I put my glass down on the placemat. Orv watched me, leaning back in his seat. He’d failed in his mission to buy my silence, but he’d been reasonably assured that I wasn’t about to shoot my mouth off. In exchange I’d found out a few things. One of them turned Orv into a reasonable suspect in Ramsden’s murder.

  We both got up, shook hands and found our way to the front door. I was running into a lot of handshakers these days. The last I saw of Orv Wishart that night was of his large back disappearing into the neon-lit gloom surrounding the hotel.

  Near the door of The Snug, I saw two heads close together. They belonged to Rupe McLay and Antonia Wishart. Neither appeared to notice that Antonia’s husband had just left the room. I thought that if I was ever involved with the wife of a member of this community, I would arrange it better than this. In the meantime, the couple sat, huddled over glasses of imported beer and letting the rest of the world go by.

  NINETEEN

  Anna met me outside my office as we’d arranged. She was driving her own car, so I moved into the passenger seat and buckled up. She leaned over towards me and we kissed. I couldn’t help thinking of what a sight we must have looked: two figures restrained by seat belts, kissing with some difficulty

  “What kind of week have you been having?” she asked, putting the car in gear.

  “Ramsden’s been murdered.”

  “Yes, I heard that on the radio. How are you involved?”

  “I was tailing the guy who found the body”

  “Did he do it?”

  “No, it had to have happened hours before we got there. You’re looking particularly nice this evening.”

  “Is that a compliment or are you trying to change the subject?”

  “Both. Where are we going?” She looked in my direction and frowned.

  “You’ve forgotten! The Christmas party, Benny! The History Department’s Christmas party!”

  “Damn it. I remember your telling me about it. Should I go home and change?”

  “You look terrific. We’re only hungry academics. If it’s hot, we eat it; if it burns, we drink it; if it’s footnoted, we read it.”

  “Where is it?” I was already on the defensive, beginning to feel warm and ready to squirm.

  “Oh, you know Chuck Marley. Immigration History You’ve been to his place at least once before.”

  “Sure. What’s his wife’s name?”

  “Sheila. The kids are—”

  “Don’t overload my circuits. Wait until we get to the door.”

  We drove out of town by the Queenston Road and then on to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a town I hadn’t seen since last summer when we went to see something that wasn’t by George Bernard Shaw at the Shaw Festival. Marley owned one of those sandblasted brick houses that dated from the early 1800s. The place had been restored to within an inch of its life. I got the feeling that the place was so authentic that the original owner would have felt uncomfortable.

  We were greeted at the door by Marley, who was an oversized guy with long arms, both of which he used to give Anna a big Christmas hug. He then went on telling me what a gem I had in Anna, as though I was a collector and she an uncut diamond. It made me feel as though I made it my business to slight Anna every chance I got. By her expression, Anna wasn’t enjoying Chuck either. This ended when Anna gave him a dig in the ribs with her elbow. Sheila, his wife, came along the hall collecting coats and waving a plastic sprig of mistletoe. The light above us was festooned with plenty of the real thing as Chuck pointed out as he went back to Anna for an encore in front of his wife.

  Parties have always been a chore for me. For every conversation you get interested in, there are ten that don’t go anywhere. I sometimes think that the coats on the bed are having a better time that I am. It’s bad enough when you know the people; here with the university crowd, I felt like taking cover behind three straight Scotches. But I’m a coward. Besides, then I would have missed the fact that McKenzie Stewart was standing at the punch-bowl, filling two cut-glass cups with a cut-glass ladle. He carried the punch over to where a woman was sitting. It was not Cath, but an elderly authority on the American Civil War, as I later discovered.

  When he saw me, a smile that was meant for his date died on his face. We made no other contact until much later in the evening, when I found him holding forth on Canadian politics while leaning on the refrigerator door, stopping up the access and passage to more beer. Later still, after the punch-bowl had been emptied for the last time, I heard the name “Ramsden” mentioned. I tuned out the voice of the young man telling me all about his summers in Provence and concentrated on the voices behind me.

  “He was something of a military historian, wasn’t he?” asked the second voice.

  “He had no real credentials as far as I know, but he was an enthusiastic amateur of the Second World War. He was the man to talk to if you wanted to find out what outfit was where. He kept track of regimental movements, details of units, that sort of thing. He didn’t care much for overall strategy. Not much interested in high command politics. But he knew a thing or two about ribbons, arms, medals, men mentioned in dispatches.”

  “I hear he was a colossal snob, Bob. Is that right?”

  “That’s a bit exaggerated, I think. He was quite proud of the museum he set up for the regiment. I think he liked being the official historian of the Royal Grantham Rifles. You know he was a monarchist with extreme views.”

  “Extremely unctuous, I heard,” said the other.

  “That must have been for the joke. But he wasn’t ‘nice,’ whatever that’s come to mean.”

  “Founded the Bede Bunch, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Here they both laughed and then changed the subject, which was just as well, because Anna had arrived to try to interest me in Christmas cake.

  I could see out the twelve-pane windows that it had started to snow. This was no simple frosting, a rap on the knuckles, a warning of serious snow to come. This was the Great Canadian Winter itself, sending heavy cotton-balls of snow to the ground and covering the cars parked in the driveways and along the street. Christmas lights in the houses opposite glinted through the downfall. Distorted golden fanlights coloured the snow-covered front yards.

  Some time later, returning from the bathroom—the toilet seat, by the way, was quilted; the restoration of this house was relentless—I had my third and last meeting that evening with McStu. He was sitting on a staircase leading up to a third floor He looked up at me and pulled at my pant cuff. “Sit,” he said, like a hunter to his retriever. I sat.

  “You’re McKenzie Steward, right?”

  “Cooperman, you know goddamned well who I am. Don’t play games with me. Not when I’m pissed, anyway. That’s when my mind’s super-acute. Where’d you learn karate?”

  “From a ninja in Kyoto who was reputedly one hundred and six.”

  “Goddamned liar! You’ve never been further away from here than Las Vegas. I looked you up.”

  “I went to Miami a few times. You don’t want to miss that.”

  “Your fakery saved you a broken nose the other night.”

  “So I hear. I’m glad I saw that ninja movie.”

  “You been talking to Cath.” He was smiling at the name and I didn’t blame him. “She told me. I know about you and your mother and your father. Anna now. I’ve known Anna for years, you lucky bastard. You don’t want to screw that up.”

  “What’s left to talk about?”

  “Why were you after Cath?” he asked simply

  “That’s my job. One of the things I do. A client hired me and Cath—she asked me to call her that—caught me in the act. Nothing for my résumé in what happened. Either I was careless or somebody told Cath to watch out for me. Maybe you know about that? Where is she tonight by the way? She’s not working.”

  “Some detec
tive!” he laughed. I didn’t see the funny side. I’d goofed again. “If she’s been snatched the kidnapper took her skis too.” He didn’t look worried.

  A woman reached the top of the main stairs and went into the bathroom. McStu didn’t resume his questioning until the lock clicked. “You know who your client is but you don’t know who he’s fronting for. That right?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. He may not be interested in Cath at all; he may be trying to keep my nose away from something else. But, supposing my client and his have an interest in Cath, I can’t guess what it might be. You may know something there too.”

  “You were at this for a week?”

  “About. It’s been like the divorce work I used to do. I noted where she went and who she met, when I could find out. Apart from you, her life isn’t full of secrets. I was wondering, Mr. Stewart, whether your wife might not be behind this.”

  McStu told me to call him that and I gave him full play with my given name in return. He pondered my question and worked on his drink, which he was balancing on a tweedy knee. “Moira’s been my ex-wife since September. I believe she’s happily enjoying her share of my wealth, which isn’t much. Shee-it, all I’ve got left is my ability to make more books. She isn’t dining high on my residuals, because there hasn’t been a big movie sale.”

  “You knew Cath while you were still married, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah, a long time. Can’t pretend I’ve been a regular senior sixer where Moira’s concerned. The biographer will say: ‘He was a man of his time in many ways …’ Shee-it!”

  “Could she have sicced me on Cath, McStu?”