As Daphne takes the suicide note back from Bliss, she pauses for a few seconds while the horrors of the ill-fated day replay in her mind. Yet it is the image of the other woman, Marylyn Maxwell, and her supercilious grin that still irks her the most.
Daphne had met Monty’s wife a few times, when her mother had put her foot down and insisted that she spend the odd weekend in Westchester for a family occasion.
“Ah, it’s Daphne Lovelace, OBE,” Monty would exclaim convincingly whenever they had bumped into each other in public. “Haven’t seen you for ages,” he’d add for the benefit of anyone listening. And if Marylyn was close at hand he’d always made a point of presenting her. “You’ve met my wife haven’t you ...” he’d say, though it was never a question. “This is Daphne Lovelace from the Ministry, dear,” he’d explain to Marylyn, and she would immediately find someone of greater consequence in the crowd. “Oh, look, Monty, dearest. There’s Lord Westbourne over there,” she’d simper, then she’d drag her husband away, calling over her shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Dorothy.”
“Young Jeremy was away for the day,” Daphne tells Bliss as she returns Monty’s suicide note to the cabinet. “He’d gone to the beach with the church Sunday school and the nanny had been given the day off. From what they could piece together, Monty sneaked up on Marylyn and just let her have it, then he came for me.”
“What happened to the boy?”
“No one in the family wanted him. I guess they worried he might turn out like his father, so I offered to bring him up. Well, you can imagine what his mother’s folks thought of that, so they persuaded Marylyn Maxwell’s sister in Vancouver to take him in. The problem was that Jeremy had never met her and he’d got very attached to me after his parents’ deaths. He used to call me Auntie Daffodil—you know the way kids get things muddled up—so I thought the least I could do was escort him as far as Montreal.”
“August 1964,” says Bliss. “That’s why you were in Montreal when you saw the Beatles.”
“Brilliant, Dr. Watson,” laughs Daphne, though her face clouds at the memory of Jeremy’s aunt. “She was a nasty bit o’work,” Daphne tells Bliss, then confesses that once she’d met the woman she had been tempted to hang on to Jeremy and slip out of Canada, to head south through the States to Mexico or South America.
“She was probably grouchy at birth,” continues Daphne, as she recalls her meeting with Jeremy’s maiden aunt to hand over the boy. “She could have been a driving examiner, from the way she carried on, and she was only thirty or so.”
“What do you know about driving examiners?” queries Bliss, and Daphne’s face burns.
“You fibbed to me,” he says triumphantly. “You failed your test, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she snaps. “All right, I did. But only because the car wouldn’t start halfway through.”
“That wasn’t very fair,” sympathizes Bliss, but Daphne looks up with a sheepish grin and decides to come clean. “It wouldn’t start because I’d crashed into a lamppost.”
“Oh, dear,” whistles Bliss, then quickly changes the subject. “Did Jeremy remember you today?”
“Well he was only five at the time,” Daphne says, excusing her erstwhile charge for the puzzlement he’d shown when she’d loudly knocked on his front door.
“Hi. Can I help you?” he’d asked in a strong Canadian accent, and Daphne had momentarily frozen in surprise.
“I think I was still expecting a young boy,” she explains to Bliss. “It was a bit of shock to see a middle-aged man standing there. Mind you, I recognized him straight away. He’s got his father’s eyes, and he’s tall and handsome. Much like you in many ways, David. I can quite see why I was so drawn to him.”
“Oh, Daphne ...”
“Anyway, Jeremy was thrilled to see me, once he knew who I was, and he even remembered sailing the Atlantic with me. We took the Franconia, one of the old Cunard steamers, from Southampton to Montreal, and Jeremy was so excited I think he forgot all about his mother and father by the time we’d crossed the channel to pick up passengers in France. I taught him to say ‘Bonjour,’ and he danced along the Le Havre cobblestones, running up to complete strangers and shouting, ‘Bonjour. Bonjour.’ He was so funny.” Daphne pauses and her eyes go back to the flames as the seriousness of the voyage sinks in. “His little life had been torn apart worse than mine, but he didn’t understand. You don’t at that age. ‘Mummy, and Daddy have gone to heaven,’ he would tell anyone interested, as if they’d taken a cruise on the Nile; then he’d cheerfully add, ‘I’m going to live with my auntie in ’Couver with the bears.’”
“Did he remember calling you Auntie Daffodil?” asks Bliss as he sees the delight in Daphne’s eyes.
“I think so,” she says, adding, “We had tea and he took me on a tour. The old house itself is in an awful state. His uncle would have been the last one to live there, though he died more than twenty years ago. Jeffrey says that he’s got big plans for the whole estate, and the stable conversion that he’s had done is very nice. Of course, he’s just like his father—dirty dishes and laundry everywhere.”
“He’s not married then?”
“No—never has been.”
“Figures.”
“Anyway. I told him that I’d go round a few times to help him straighten up and do a bit of cleaning, if you don’t mind being on your own a bit.”
“Daphne, I don’t mind at all. In fact, I was thinking that it was time I got out from under your feet, to be honest.” “Actually I did wonder if you were missing the high life,” says Daphne, adding, “Jeremy was worried about me neglecting you, but I said you wouldn’t object. It is the least I can do in the circumstances. Of course, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Another week, perhaps,” says Bliss. “I was thinking I might take another trip to Liverpool to check out those addresses. My leg’s much better now.”
Daphne takes another poke at the fire as she runs something else through her mind, then she opens up. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you something. It was a very long time ago, but I’m fairly certain that one of the young men in the Beatles’ photo tried the same trick on me in Montreal.”
“Geoffrey Sanderson?” queries Bliss immediately, recalling the way that she had reacted at the sight of his face and mention of his name on Christmas day.
“He tried to tell me he was George Harrison,” scoffs Daphne. “But I didn’t believe him for a minute.”
“What did you do?”
“The old knee definitely came in handy that time,” she admits with a giggle, then she groans as she bends to put another log on the fire. “There’s a bad winter coming; I can feel it in my bones,” she says, straightening herself with difficulty.
chapter twelve
The bears have long-since disappeared from downtown Vancouver, forced into the surrounding mountains along with the elk and the cougars by the city’s sprawl. But raccoons and squirrels will still snatch food from an outstretched hand in Stanley Park, while feral pigeons and gulls still brazenly whisk sandwiches and snacks from the fingers of startled picnickers on Granville Island.
Ruth’s improvement has been spectacular. It’s her third outing to the park in ten days, and she chuckles in delight as Mike Phillips throws a hunk of bread onto the beach, while Trina tries to chase it down before the ducks and gulls can grab it.
“Oh, Trina,” rebukes Phillips mildly, as she faces off with an overstuffed mallard.
“They get fat and lazy if they don’t have to work for it,” yells Trina breathlessly as she scampers around the beach to the squawks of startled birds.
Ruth is still in the wheelchair, but it’s no longer a necessity, and she spends more time each day peering out of her window at a world that looks the same, but has changed beyond all recognition. Her daily visits from Mike and Trina cheer and encourage her, though there is an artificiality about their conversations as everyone studiously avoids mentioning Jordan, coffee houses, or criminal
charges.
“A catastrophic relapse is quite possible if she is upset,” Ruth’s doctor had warned them more than once. “Her blood pressure is still much higher than we would like to see.”
Raven has visited a few times to relay a spiritually uplifting message from Serethusa. “Tell Ruth not to worry,” her spirit guide had said, “she will soon be led out of darkness into the light.”
“Does that mean I’ll be going home soon?” Ruth had asked; but that was a question that no one was willing to answer.
“When can I go home, Trina?” Ruth wants to know once they have loaded her back into the van and are heading for a tea shop, and Trina looks to Phillips for inspiration. But she’s on her own as Phillips shrugs his shoulders and keeps his eyes on the road.
“Thanks a bunch,” Trina snorts, then she turns to Ruth. “The truth is ...” she begins, then freezes as she searches for humane words to convey the inhumanity of her friend’s predicament. Homeless, penniless, unemployed, destitute, and soon to be a convicted felon, are not words she wants to use. “The truth is ...” she tries again and can see the tears already welling in Ruth’s eyes.
“The truth is, Ruth,” she says, finally spitting it out as she crosses her fingers. “That my husband and I would like you to come and stay with us for awhile. Until you get back on your feet. If you’d like to, that is.”
The tears come anyway, trickling joyfully down Ruth’s cheeks, but she’s not the only one choked up at the good news.
“You’ve got a great husband, Trina,” Phillips tells her with a wobble in his voice as he pats her shoulder.
“Yeah, I know,” replies Trina. “He’s very supportive.”
Three days later, Ruth’s hospital bed has clean sheets and Rick Button arrives home from work, parks in the underground garage, and walks into his kitchen as his wife prepares dinner. “I’ve just found a strange woman watching television in the basement suite, Trina,” he says with a confused expression.
“Yeah, I told you,” explains Trina, as Kylie rushes in yelling, “What’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Tuna Bourguignon with cabbage fritters,” she says nonchalantly, adding, without changing tone, “It’s only Ruth. She’s had a traumatic experience.”
“Oh, great,” spits Kylie, while pretending to vomit. “I guess I’m eating out again, then.”
“OK, dear. See you later,” carries on Trina as she lightly dances around the kitchen in search of condiments, but Rick grabs her arm and eases her to a standstill.
“Tuna Bourguignon?”
“Yeah. Low fat, high protein. Ruth needs a wholesome diet.”
“I realize you’re a home care nurse, Trina,” Rick says, peering deeply into his wife’s eyes. “But I don’t think you’re expected to bring work home with you.”
“Shh ... Ruth will hear,” cautions Trina, wrenching her arm free. “Anyway, she’s not one of my patients. She’s just a friend who needs help. And you didn’t complain when I told you.”
“When did you tell me?”
“The other night in bed.”
“I thought so. And was I asleep?”
“You can’t blame me for that. You’re always falling asleep when I’m telling you things.”
“‘No more strays,’ I said, after the last one you brought home.”
“No,” Trina insists sharply. “You said, ‘no more stray goats.’ That’s what you said.”
“Trina. Nobody but you could find a stray goat in the middle of Vancouver, so when I said no more strays, I meant ... Oh, never mind. How long is she staying?”
“Not long,” Trina says as she bounds into his arms and kisses him lusciously. “Just until she goes back to jail.”
Jail is not in Ruth’s immediate future if Hammer Hammett has his way and, in spite of Gwenda Jackson’s insistence that Ruth be charged with murder, Inspector Wilson of the Vancouver police is floundering in his efforts to prop up the case against her. Ruth’s apparent confession, on closer examination, has sprung a number of leaks, not least amongst them being the fact that the emergency room doctor had clearly diagnosed physical abuse in police custody as being a contributing cause of her condition. “That’s called obtaining a statement of culpability under duress,” Hammett had smugly announced amid a further flurry of writs.
The discovery of a white Carrara marble urn inscribed, “Jordan A. Jackson Aged 40 years,” in the mausoleum of a funeral home by Mike Phillips and Trina had further bolstered Ruth’s defence, although Jordan’s mother had not been at all convinced, and insisted that her son’s ashes should be put under the microscope.
“But what do you want us to look for?” Inspector Wilson had inquired, knowing that, short of a bullet or the blade of a dagger, it was unlikely that any evidence survived the furnace.
“Poison, of course. It’s obvious—the bitch poisoned him for the money. Why won’t you do anything?”
“Because two doctors certified he died of cancer, and we didn’t find any evidence to the contrary.”
“What about the bloody knife?”
“We’ve checked that out, Mrs. Jackson. And the fact is that the DNA doesn’t match Jordan’s.”
Jordan’s DNA had been obtained from his doctor, once Mike Phillips had tracked him down from the death certificate and passed the information on to Inspector Wilson.
“We ran a few tests and took a few samples when I first saw him,” Doctor Fitzpatrick had explained to Wilson. “Though, from his symptoms, it was obvious to me that his cancer was already well advanced. He was HIV positive as well, so he didn’t stand a hope.”
“Why did he leave it so late?”
“Typical male bravado, Inspector,” said the doctor, looking Wilson up and down. “Most men assume it won’t happen to them, and by the time they wake up, it’s too late.”
According to Fitzpatrick, it was much too late by the time Jordan had sought diagnosis and, once he knew the situation, he had refused any treatment, saying that he didn’t want to prolong his family’s suffering any more than necessary. All he wanted to know was how long he had to live.
“I explained to him that there was a possibly that he might recover,” the doctor had told Wilson, though when the inspector asked if that was realistic prognosis, the medic had shaken his head sadly. “No. Not unless you believe in miracles.”
“Not me,” Wilson had retorted. “I’m a cop. I don’t even believe in the Easter Bunny.”
“Nor me,” the doctor had laughed, though he was willing to speculate why Ruth had continued to maintain that Jordan was alive after his death.
“There was no body,” he’d explained to Wilson. “He’d obviously slunk off like a dying cat so she wouldn’t have to face his death. And that’s why she didn’t come to terms with it. He wasn’t dead—not in her mind. It happens all the time when ships sink or buildings are bombed. Some relatives never accept the inevitable and spend years searching mental institutions and the streets, convinced that their loved ones have just lost their memories.”
Inspector Wilson may have nodded his concurrence with the doctor’s view, though he couldn’t get his mind off the fact that Ruth had a hundred thousand very good reasons to want Jordan to outlive the ninety-day qualifying period on the life policy.
The warm afternoon sun is turning the sky rose-pink as it sinks into the Pacific Ocean and Gwenda Jackson eulogizes her son in a Vancouver church.
“God always takes the best ones young,” Jordan’s mother says at the memorial service, now that his ashes have been turned over to her.
There is a sparse congregation: Darcey and Maureen from the crossword gang, Cindy and a few members of the staff, and Trina Button—recording the event on a mini tape recorder linked to a microphone disguised as a pen in her breast pocket.
“Just in case the old witch says anything defama-tory against Ruth,” she had explained to Mike Phillips, showing him the equipment she’d bought at a spy store.
“Good for you,” Phillips had said, and he had volun
teered to spend the afternoon looking after Ruth, knowing that she had not been invited to attend and would not have been welcomed.
Across the Atlantic, in England, the sun had set without ceremony nearly six hours ago, just as a winter storm marched in from the west coast. Black clouds darken an already leaden sky as David Bliss drives back to Westchester from Liverpool, but at least he has eliminated all the surviving members of the Beatles’ ensemble except for Geoffrey Sanderson. Daphne’s Beatles’ CD has somehow stuck on two tracks and will not eject itself from the car’s player, so Bliss has listened to “The Long and Winding Road,” and “Drive My Car,” until he can stand it no longer, and he switches on the radio in time to catch news of the impending depression.
Thank God the snow has held off, thinks Bliss, as he gingerly snakes the car around the unsalted roads on his way back to Daphne’s, and as he parks in the street, he is surprised to find her house in complete darkness.
An icy blast tears at Bliss’s clothes as he tries to find the right door key in the shadows. He is tempted to ring the doorbell, miffed that Daphne has gone to bed without leaving the porch light on, but decides not to. He gets the message. Daphne had thrown a huffy little snit the previous day when he’d said that he was planning to return to Liverpool on his own this time.
“Suit yourself,” Daphne had spat. “I’ve probably got plans anyway.”
“You can come if you want to, Daphne,” he’d said, backing down and attempting to console her. “But I just thought it would be a long day for you, that’s all.”
“No, I understand perfectly, David,” she’d snapped. “As long as you realize that if your leg gives out, you won’t have me to drive you this time.”
Bliss shouldn’t have laughed, but he did, and is apparently paying the price as his frozen fingers fumble with the key in the darkness.
The front hallway is frosty and unwelcoming as he kicks off his shoes, and he shivers with a feeling of déjà vu, though he is unable to finger the cause. The hearth in the sitting room is cold and, unusually, Daphne has already laid the fire for the morning. That’s very strange, he thinks, knowing that she generally leaves the embers to cool overnight.
A Year Less a Day Page 18
