They drove north, skirting Auckland. At just about the point where highway 20 met highway 16, Albert glimpsed a blue sign with white lettering that said Mount Albert. Not far to the east, he knew, was Parliament Row. “Stop here,” he said.
Jimmy pulled to the curb. “What’s up?”
Albert opened the door, got out, walked to the rear of the truck, and looked at his fellow passengers over the tailgate. They seemed to have been involved in intimate conversation and, evidently, were cold, given that they were huddled close together. Odd, Albert thought it warm. Maybe wind had been getting into the back of the truck. “Trouble?” said Angela.
“I want you to go back to Mr. Sweetman’s.”
Angela got to her feet, bending to keep from hitting her head, and Albert helped her out. James Simon followed close behind. “Okay. But why?”
“The cleaning woman was there every time.”
“What cleaning woman?” said Simon, straightening the seams of his trousers with a swipe or two.
“Tanny,” said Angela. “That was her name.” She turned to Albert. “What do you mean? Was where every time?”
“Isn’t it strange,” said Albert, “that she was . . .” Was what? “Cleaning in each of those houses when a lady died.” He held up three fingers, à la Mr. Sweetman. “Suicide, accident . . . murder.”
“Death by misadventure,” said Angela, adopting the official terminology. “But you’re right; does rather push the limits of coincidence.”
Simon spoke. “You think she slipped something in their tea? A little domestic angel of death?”
Assuming that to be the case, Angela demanded: “Why, Albert? What possible reason could the girl have for killing her employers?”
Simon was thinking other thoughts. “What could drive a person to such a thing?”
“That’s what you need to find out.”
“But how? The girl’s dead herself, now.”
Albert shrugged; then a thought occurred to him. “She probably had a mother.” While he couldn’t point to the kind of scientific survey to which his colleagues always pointed to support of an assertion, he felt he was on pretty solid ground with the assumption. “You could talk to her.”
It was a starting place. For some reason, thoughts of Tanny’s mother reminded Albert of another question. “And find out why she died.”
“The accident?”
That was one way of putting it, thought Albert, but somehow the notion of the capable, cold-blooded lady-killing cleaning woman of Parliament Row didn’t jibe with his image of the kind of person who’d die by accident.
Another thought stapled itself to that. “And where is she buried?”
Chapter Eighteen
Albert’s theory notwithstanding, it was not Tanny’s mother, but a damp girl in the flower of youth, her head and torso swaddled in towels, who opened the door in response to James Simon’s knock.
“Whoops!” she said, tugging at those regions of the towel that blushed in their effort at securing her modesty. “I was expecting . . . well, someone else.” She giggled and tossed a glance at Angela, but fastened her eyes—bright blue orbs that seemed fixed in a stare of perpetual surprise—on Simon, who was trying his best to look— anywhere else—while wondering who she had been expecting.
“Come on in, before I catch my death standing here all but naked.”
The door clicked shut behind them, and as the girl ushered them along the narrow passage, Simon studied the wallpaper on either side—some sort of floral print, or possibly aquatic, or scenes of life in Victorian England or Panamanian livestock. In any event, not a young girl’s barely-covered going-away. To Angela, however, the rhythm of the girl’s terry cloth-covered posterior sashaying along the corridor transported her to shower nights in prison: the freezing cold water, and the invasive glare and laughter of the female guards, the visceral memory of trying—with stiff, overused and threadbare towels and friction—to warm herself.
She shuddered, despite the stifling warmth of the house.
The girl arrived at a room on the right and, holding one hand to secure the towel to her chest, with the other gestured to the room. “Wait in there, and I’ll be with you directly I get dressed for work. I have to tell you, though,” she called over her shoulder as she swept down the hall. “I don’t have more than a dollar or two for the kiddies in Africa, or whatever you’re collectin’ for. Neither does Mum, so don’t get your hopes up!”
Simon's eyes remembered to blink, and Angela burst into laughter, quickly clapping her palm over her mouth. “Whoops!” she said, placing a modest hand on her décolletage in mimicry of their welcome. “You should’ve seen your face!”
Simon laughed into his hand. “Not a lot of lady flesh in my line of work, I confess,” he said, reddening.
“Well, I should think you’ve just had enough to fill your quota well into the next century,” said Angela as the laughter migrated from her lips to her eyes.
With a subtle shake of the head, Simon attempted to dislodge the image burned on his retina. Subtlety was insufficient. Change the subject.
“You realize, she didn’t even ask our names?”
“Or give us hers,” said Angela.
“Why is it people always assume when someone in a collar turns up on the doorstep, he’s collecting for something?”
“Unless my memory is playing tricks on me,” said Angela, “you were giving Albert an ecclesiastical shakedown when we first met. The church roof was in need of repair, if I recollect correctly.”
“Ecclesiastical shakedown!” Simon laughed out loud. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that term.” He demurred. “You caught me out. I confess in dust and ashes.” He bowed his head, and swept the room with an apologetic arm. “Touché.”
“Well, if the shoe fits . . .,” said Angela. “Seems you lot spend more time with your hand out for this and that than saving souls or whatever it is you’re supposed to be getting on with.”
“But they’re good causes!”
Angela stared at the fireplace, but her concentration was on the periphery of her vision, which, at the moment, was occupied by Simon. “How’s that coming along, by the way?”
“Pardon?”
“The church roof. All safe and dry for another millennium or two?”
“Hmm.”
“Is ‘hmm’ an answer? Smacks of prevarication to me.”
“Yes, well...”
“As does ‘yes, well’,” said Angela. “Would I be safe in inferring that the old gray lady still has holes in her bonnet?”
Simon hung his head. “You must understand,” he said. “Ultimately, I’m just the vicar. I serve at the sufferance of the C of E, and . . .”
“And once they got wind that Albert had showered you with doubloons to repair the roof of your church, they decided it would be better and wiser—for Christendom and God’s Kingdom, of course—if the money were appropriated for use on more urgent matters.”
Simon raised his eyes, but not his head, to his companion. “It’s called Stewardship in church circles, the workings of which, incidentally, you appear to have a pretty firm grasp.”
“Don’t go poking around for a cleric in my family woodpile, if that’s what you suspect. You won’t find more than a drunken bell-ringer or a lady who arranges flowers around the altar for special occasions. I just remember a BBC documentary about the church. Not much different than any gathering of men, if you ask me; a lot of posturing and grand-sounded speeches but in the end just a pissing contest—subjugation of the weak among them by the strong, with the sour cream rising to those at the top.”
She turned to him directly. “Result? Your poor old lady still has a hole in her bonnet.”
Simon blew a note of irony. “More than one, I’m afraid.”
Angela shook her head. “Albert needs a lesson in the principal of dedicated funds. I’ll have a talk with him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of asking for more!”
“Of cou
rse you wouldn’t. That’s why I’ll be the one to do it. When the time comes. Believe me, he could rebuild Westminster Abbey and not miss it.”
This discussion of spiritual economics had been accompanied by a distant, percussive soundtrack of drawers and doors opening and closing, determined bare feet slapping across creaky wooden floors, and occasional cries of “Ma! Where’s my . . . (insert missing article)?”
“Did you ever read the autobiography of Margery Kempe?” said Simon.
“Name’s not familiar.”
“Very modern woman,” said Simon with an enigmatic smile. “Entrepreneur, business woman, mother of fourteen children who—having delivered that tribe—vowed celibacy, and demanded her husband do the same.
“Went off to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage by herself with several friends—by whom she was abandoned. This was the Thirteenth Century, mind.”
Hearing the advent of their hostess—whose feet, judging from the sound, were now shod in flip-flops—Angela stood up. “She must have been a remarkable lady indeed, to make her way from 13th Century Jerusalem to a 20th Century sitting room in a modest suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. You’ll have to tell me what brought her to mind, one day.”
“You did,” said Simon.
“Now,” said the girl whose uniform—that of a hospital candy-striper—hadn’t been entirely secured from the waist up, as if she’d taken a fashion tip from the fantasy of a fourteen year-old boy. “What can I do for you?” She stood in the doorway, vigorously drying her hair, which motion set off a chain reaction among those components of her anatomy which were not artificially restrained.
Simon and Angela introduced themselves. “Pleased to meet you?” said the girl, ending the statement with the interrogatory lift common to the speech of New Zealanders and Liverpudlians. In this case, it imparted genuine curiosity. “Oh! I’m Colleen, by the way. I should’ve said. Sorry.
“So, what are you collecting for?” said the girl, whose rhythm of speech was directly proportional to the rigor of her hair-drying. “Like I said, I’ve got a few dollars. And I’m sure Mum can dig some change out of the sofa. Ma!”
“No!” said Simon. “No, Colleen, it’s nothing like that. I . . . that is we are just, well, we’re working for a friend . . .”
“A detective,” said Angela unabashedly.
“A detective!” said Colleen breathlessly. She stopped rubbing her hair and sank to the foot stool. “You want to see me? I haven’t done anything, have I?”
Simon was unable to suppress his clerical training in time to keep it from wondering, purely academically, how many questions might be asked of Colleen to which any answer would have been in the affirmative. “No. Of course not. It’s about . . . well, are you, were you related to a girl named Tanny?
“Tan? Yes. She was my sister. A lot older than me, she was, of course. She’s dead. Why?”
“It’s just that . . .”
Subterfuge and prevarication were not among Simon’s stock in trade. For Angela, however – as with Jeremy Ash they were among the brightest tools in her arsenal, . “What I’m about to tell you is just between us. Understood?”
Colleen’s eyes did the impossible, and widened even further. “Right.” She crossed her heart.
“Our detective friend is writing a book . . .” she leaned toward the girl confidentially, which had the magnetic effect of drawing Colleen toward her.
“A book!” said the girl, breathlessly, as if books were the thing most sacred to her heart.
“About your sister.”
“A book about Tan?!” Her entire face withdrew from the unlikeliness of the words. “A detective book?”
“A mystery.”
“A mystery, about Tan?”
“Well, not entirely. But she’s in it. That is, he wants to mention her in it. And he needs your help.”
“My help?”
“We can’t use his name, of course. You understand?”
“Of course!” said Colleen, as if she did, which she didn’t. The sharp glance she directed at the parlor door embodied the hope that her mother hadn’t heard her call and, therefore, would not be showing up to inhibit this free flow of confidence.
“Good!” said Angela, relaxing back into her chair. “Good. That’s a load off our minds, isn’t it, Reverend?”
To her chagrin, Simon didn’t answer at once. The moral lens through which he regarded the world was not a flexible one and had, in regard to its view of the woman beside him, become nearly opaque with fog. How could he possibly feel comfortable in the presence of someone in whose presence he had just begun to feel so comfortable, when it was undeniable that that person could, with neither forethought nor scruple, spin such a yarn out of thin air. “A load,” he said honestly, for he couldn’t think of a better term to describe it.
“A load,” echoed Colleen, as much to lubricate the flow of conversation as to fill the ensuing silence.
“What can you tell us about her accident?”
“She can’t tell you anything,” said a voice, drawing all eyes to the speaker, an attractive woman with a soft nose, whose weepy eyes were lined with suspicion. There was no knowing how long she’d been leaning there in the doorway. “What’s this all about?”
Her pronunciation of “about” betrayed her as Canadian.
“They’re working for a detective, Ma!” said Colleen, choking back her resentment at her mother’s intrusion. “Or a mystery writer?” She cast an imploring look at James Simon, who only said, “Ah . . .” She turned the question to Angela.
“He’s both, really.”
This satisfied the girl. “They want—that is, this writer detective—wants to put Tan in his book.”
“Listen, Mrs. . .” Angela began, but was cut off sharply.
“Go to your room, Col,” she said, standing aside in the door way.
“But Ma! Jeffy’s waiting down at the park.”
“All right, the park, then. Just go.”
Colleen stood bravely, the weight of all the world’s injustice bearing down heavily on her shoulders, and left the room.
“And put on some clothes,” her mother said.
“But I’ve got clothes on!” she said, splaying herself for examination.
“You’re a ten-pound loaf in a one-pound sack, girl. Do as I say.”
Simon found himself admiring the woman and, as she watched her daughter up the stairs, stood to greet her.
“My name is James Simon,” he said, extending his hand.
The woman took his hand limply and let it go. “C of E?” she said, nodding at his collar.
“Guilty as charged.”
“So you should be,” she said enigmatically, turning to Angela. “And you?”
“I’m with, I’m from . . .”
“I’m not interested in your personal history, miss. I just want to know who you are and what you interest is in Tan.” She pointed at the chair Simon had recently vacated. “Take a seat.” She settled herself, somewhat stiffly, on the arm of the Queen Anne chair nearest the door, her demeanor leaving no doubt that she was poised to rise at the slightest provocation.
“We’re working for a detective . . .” Angela began.
Simon held up his hand. “No, Angela. We’re not going to do that.”
“But . . .”
Simon ignored her and spoke frankly to the woman. “May I know your name?”
The response was not immediate, but it was forthcoming. “Ruakari,” she said. “Cindy Ruakari.”
“Mrs. Ruakari,” Simon began. “The fact is we’re a couple of nosey parkers sent on an errand by, well, by another nosey parker who wants to know how your daughter—how Tanny—died.”
“Who wants to know, and why?”
Angela inhaled to respond, but Simon beat her to it. He told her who had sent them and, to the best of his ability, why.
“I know that name,” said Mrs. Ruakari. “I’ve seen him on the telly. Odd bird.”
“None odder,” said Angela,
truthfully.
To Simon’s surprise, the woman relaxed, shifting from the arm to the cushion of the chair. “Not really my kind of music,” she said. “I can understand what people see in it, I suppose, but, well, I’m more Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra than Tchaikovsky.
“He’s here. Found that body on the beach, they say; then there was something about him saving a ship? Hard to keep up, what with the earthquake and all.”
“Yes,” said Simon.
Angela decided to hop on the truth train and see if it got them to the next station. “Do you have a few minutes, Mrs. Ruakari?”
The woman looked at the wall as if there was a clock there. “A few, I suppose, if there’s a point to it.”
“I guess you’ll have to decide whether that’s the case.”
“Go on.”
The tale that followed was a recounting of Albert’s exploits over the last four years, much of which Simon—also a first-time hearer—was as much enthralled to hear as Mrs Ruakari proved to be.
“So, you see, we ended up in New Zealand purely by accident. I think he agreed to the suggestion because he thought, well, he’d get away from murder and mayhem, at least for a while.”
Mrs. Ruakari laughed at the back of her throat. “And he ends up on Parliament Row, of all places! Poor sod.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” said Simon, picking up the narrative, he drew her into a deepening intimacy by taking her through the particulars of finding of the girl on the beach, the near-sinking and subsequent salvation of the Sea Queen, the fishing of Woolie-Woolie’s body from the ocean and, lastly, the totally unpremeditated attempt, or seeming-attempt, at suicide.
The woman book-ended the recital. “Poor sod.” She stood and sighed. “Funny old life, isn’t it?” Pause. “Coffee or tea?”
The visitors stated their preference and, ten minutes later, were sitting, sipping on uncomfortable cast-iron chairs around a small glass-topped table in the tidy garden at the back of the house. In the corner, under cover of a shrub neither could identify—which could be said of most foliage in New Zealand—an unobtrusive trickle of water cascaded into a pool; the concrete floor of its basin was studded with irregular pieces of colored glass. A solitary goldfish hovered over these on tiny translucent wings and contemplated, in his numerous reflections, the condition of his, or possibly her, soul.
Improvisato Page 23
