by Stef Penney
When the tea has arrived, Susannah sits down to keep him company.
‘This is a terrible business, Miss Knox. I wish we were meeting again under happier circumstances.’
‘I know. It is awful. But the last time was awful too–you were … attacked. Are you quite recovered? It looked dreadful!’
‘Quite recovered, thank you.’ Donald smiles, eager to please with good news, though in fact the scar tissue is soft and tender and often aches.
‘Has the man been punished?’
Donald had not even thought about Jacob being punished. ‘No, he was very contrite and has become my sworn protector. I think that is the Indian way of making amends for a wrong. More useful than punishment, don’t you think?’
Susannah’s eyes widen in surprise, and Donald notices that they are a peculiarly attractive shade of hazel, flecked with gold.
‘Do you trust him?’
Donald laughs. ‘Yes! I think he is quite sincere. He is here now.’
‘Goodness! He looked so frightening.’
‘I think that the real culprit was drink, and he has foresworn it for ever. He is really very gentle–he has two tiny daughters whom he adores. You know, I am helping him with his reading, and he told me he finds reading and writing quite as fascinating as hunting for deer.’
‘Really?’ She laughs too, and then they fall silent.
‘Do you think you will find whoever killed the poor man?’
Donald glances at his notes, which certainly aren’t going to help. But Susannah has a way of looking at him with such warmth and trust that he wishes to solve, not just this murder, but all the wrongs there are.
‘I think someone must have seen a stranger in a place like this–it seems people generally know what everyone is doing.’
‘Yes, they do,’ she says with a grimace.
‘Something as abominable as this … we will not rest until we have brought the man to justice. You shall not have to live in fear.’
‘Oh, I am not afraid.’ Susannah tilts her head defiantly. She leans towards him a little, and lowers her voice. ‘We have lived through tragedy, you know.’
It is such an extraordinary statement that Donald stares, as he was intended to do. ‘Oh, I didn’t know … I’m terribly sorry …’
Susannah looks pleased. As the youngest member of the family it is rare that she gets to be the one to relate the Great Story–everyone in Caulfield knows it already, and strangers are not usually left to her mercy. She draws a breath, revelling in her moment.
‘It was quite a long time ago, and we were very little when it happened so I can’t remember, and it was Mama’s sister you see …’
The door opens so suddenly that Donald is sure Maria must have been listening behind it.
‘Susannah! You can’t tell him that!’ Her face is white and taut with emotion, though from the emphasis of her words it is hard to tell whether she is more upset that Susannah is the teller, or that Donald is the audience. She turns to Donald. ‘You had better come; my father has returned.’
Knox and Mackinley are in the dining room, piles of notes stacked on the table. To Donald’s dismay they both seem to have written far more than him. Donald looks around for Jacob.
‘Where is Jacob? Will he be dining with us?’
‘Jacob is all right. He has been taking care of the, er, body’
‘What was his opinion of the mutilation?’
Mackinley stares at him in mild outrage. ‘I am sure his opinion is the same as ours.’
Knox coughs, to draw them back to the matter in hand, but Donald notices that he has receded somehow, while Mackinley has come forward, assuming the lead in their discussion. He is the one in charge. The Company has taken over.
Each man summarises his findings, which amount to the conclusion that no one saw much at all. A trader by the name of Gros André passed through a few days ago. And a peddler called Daniel Swan, familiar to everyone, was in Caulfield the day before, and has moved on towards St Pierre. Knox has sent a message to the magistrate there. Mackinley found a young boy who saw Francis Ross go to Jammet’s cabin one evening–he can’t remember which one–and now Francis is absent.
‘The mother says she doesn’t know when he’ll be back. I spoke to some of the neighbours about him, and he sounds a queer fish. Keeps himself to himself.’
‘Which doesn’t mean that he did it,’ puts in Knox.
‘We have to look at every possibility. We don’t know whether either of the other two visited Jammet.’
‘Surely the trader would have? He sounds French. You said before that it was probably a disagreement over trade.’
Mackinley turns his eyes on Donald. ‘I propose to follow him, and find out.’
‘Well, shall I follow this Swan fellow?’
Knox shakes his head. ‘That won’t be necessary. I have sent a messenger and he will be detained at St Pierre. I have to go there myself, so I will question him. We were going to suggest that you wait here with Jacob and question the Ross boy on his return.’
Donald is momentarily disappointed, and then, realising what opportunities it affords him, can’t believe his luck.
Mackinley frowns. ‘Perhaps they would do better to follow him. If he has run, there is no point waiting until the trail gets cold.’
‘But where would they look? He may not have gone to Swallow Lake at all. We have only the mother’s word for it. And he’s only a lad. He had no motive, as far as we know. Quite the reverse; it seems they were friends.’
‘We have to keep an open mind.’ Mackinley glares.
‘Of course. But I think Mr Moody would be wasting his time rushing up to this lake.’ He turns to Donald. ‘Perhaps you could wait a day or two, and if he hasn’t returned by then, you can go after him. A day will make no difference to Jacob; the boy is no Indian and he’ll be easy to track.’
Jacob is a Christian, but he still felt a deep unease at the thought of contact with a dead body, and one butchered in this way held a particular kind of uncleanness. He and two paid volunteers, one a midwife practised in laying out, were dispatched to bring the body to Caulfield, and she was the only one not stopped in her tracks by the smell. The midwife merely tutted in valediction, and began to sponge the dried blood away. The body had relaxed, so they straightened him and closed his eyes and placed a coin in his mouth. The midwife tied a cloth round his head to keep his jaw closed and cover up the wounds, and then they wrapped him in sheets, until only the smell remained. The road back to Caulfield was so rough Jacob had to keep a hand on the body to keep it from rolling off the cart.
Now it lay on a table behind hastily rigged curtains in Scott’s dry-goods warehouse, surrounded by crates of cloth and nails. The three of them and Scott’s janitor stood round the table in an impromptu silence before turning away. All of them commented on the weather; how lucky that it was cold.
*
Donald follows the smell of tobacco to the stables, where Jacob smokes his pipe in a nest of straw, and sits beside him in silence. Jacob fiddles with the tobacco in the bowl. To talk about the dead man will be unlucky, he feels sure. But he knows that this is what Donald wants to do.
‘Tell me what you think.’
Jacob is getting used to Donald’s peculiar questions. He is constantly asking what he thinks of this and that. Of course it is normal to be asked what you think of the weather, or the prospects for hunting, say, or a journey time, but Donald prefers to talk about things that are vague and unimportant, like a story he has just read, or a remark that someone made two days ago. Jacob tries to think what it is that Donald wants to know.
‘You know he was scalped. It was quick, clean. His throat was cut as he lay down, perhaps sleeping.’
‘Could a white man have done it?’
Jacob grins, his teeth gleaming in the lamplight. ‘Any man can do it, if that is what he wants to do.’
‘Did you get a feeling–about who might have done it, or why? You were there.’
&nb
sp; ‘Who did it? I don’t know. Someone who felt nothing for him. Why did he kill him? Perhaps he had done something a long time ago. Perhaps he hurt someone …’ Jacob pauses, his eyes following the trail of smoke up to the rafters. ‘No. If you want to do that, you want him to be awake, to know you have won.’
Donald nods, encouraging him.
‘Perhaps he was killed for what he was going to do, to stop him. I don’t know. But I think whoever did it has probably done it before.’
Donald tells him about waiting for the Ross boy, and following him if necessary. Mackinley is going after the trader, obviously the most likely suspect, cornering the potential glory of capturing the murderer for himself.
‘Maybe he shouldn’t go alone if this man so tough,’ Jacob grins. ‘Maybe he will do him too.’
He draws his finger across his neck. Donald tries not to smile. Since befriending Jacob he has become aware of Mackinley’s universal unpopularity.
‘Don’t you think it odd that no one has seen any … er, Indians, in the last few days? If it was an Indian who killed him, I mean.’
‘If an Indian doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t be. At least for our people this is true. For others …’ He sniffs disparagingly. ‘Chippewa, I don’t know, maybe they no good trackers.’ He is careful to smile, to show Donald he is joking.
Sometimes Donald feels like a child next to this young man, who is barely older than himself. After he recovered from his wound, he started to help Jacob with his reading and writing, but theirs is not a relationship of teacher and pupil. Donald has a suspicion that the book-learnt knowledge he imparts to Jacob is not really his to give; he just happens to know how to tap into it, whereas when Jacob tells him something, he seems to own it entirely, as if it comes from inside himself. But perhaps Jacob feels the same way; after all the world around him is just a series of signs that he happens to understand, in the same way that Donald can discern the meaning of words on paper without thinking. Donald would like to know what Jacob thinks about this, but cannot imagine how he would begin to ask him.
Maria Knox is observing a phenomenon she has seen many times before: the effect of her sister on a young man. She is used to it, since from the time she was fourteen and her sister twelve boys clustered around Susannah, and altered their behaviour in her presence, becoming gruff and shy or loud and boastful, depending on their nature. Maria they ignored; plain and sarcastic, she was either a playmate or, later, someone to copy homework from. But Susannah was of a peculiarly sunny disposition, and as they got older it became apparent that she was also a beauty. She was never precious; she was adept at most games, and if she was aware of her looks (which of course she was) she was modest, even resentful of the attentions they brought. As members of a family (and of society as well, presumably) carve, or are pushed into, roles for themselves, and then become imprisoned by them, so Susannah became everyone’s darling: spoilt but slightly patronised, in need of protection from unpleasant facts of life like blocked sanitary closets and taxation. Meanwhile Maria became an argumentative bluestocking, reading ferociously through her adolescent years, taking an interest in Expansionism, the war to the South and other subjects generally thought unsuitable for young ladies. For the past three years she has had her own subscriptions to a number of Canadian and foreign journals. She is publicly a Reformer (but secretly favours the Clear Grits), admires Tupper, and argues with her father about his liking for George Brown. All this in a town where reading a newspaper while wearing a dress marks one out as something of a freak. But Maria is aware that the difference between the mental capacities of Susannah and herself is not so very great. If Susannah had been plain and therefore left to her own devices, she was probably just as capable of making herself an intellectual. And she is honest enough to admit that if she herself had been more aesthetically favoured, she would have been lazier in the pursuit of knowledge. It is really such small differences that determine the course of a life.
Every so often Maria brings up the subject of college–she is twenty years old and beginning to feel that if she does not go soon it will become embarrassing. But her family proclaims that she is indispensable, and proves it by involving her in everything that goes on. Her mother consults her about every aspect of the household, claiming that she cannot cope (‘So what did you do when I was a child?’ Maria asks, rhetorically). Her father often discusses his cases with her. As for Susannah, she throws her arms round her and wails that she could not live without her. Of course, it may be that she lacks the courage to make the break from Caulfield. (Perhaps, even, she would not make the grade in the city?) She has wondered about this, but thinking about it too often depresses her, so whenever the possibility occurs, she picks up another newspaper and pushes the thought aside. Besides, if she had gone to college this fall, she would not have been here to support her family during this trying time. Her mother puts on a brave face, but her eyes reveal her worry–on the surface about accommodating two strangers in her house, but deeper down there is a well-hidden terror of the wilderness.
For two days Maria has attempted to get her father alone to ask him about the case, which has been impossible until this evening. She is confident that he will share his thoughts with her, and is keen to discuss her own theories. But after the Company men have gone to bed, his face, never a good colour, is almost grey with fatigue. His eyes are sunken and his nose appears more prominent than ever. She goes and puts her arms round him instead.
‘Don’t worry, Papa, very soon this will be solved and it will become a memory.’
‘I hope so, Mamie.’
She secretly likes being called this–a nickname from her childhood that absolutely no one else is allowed to use.
‘How long are they going to stay?’
‘As long as it takes for them to question everyone they want to question, I suppose. They mean to wait until Francis Ross comes back.’
‘Francis Ross? Really?’ Francis is three years younger than she is and therefore she still thinks of him as a sullen, handsome boy who was much giggled over by the girls in senior school. ‘Well, they don’t need to stay with us. They could go to the Scotts’. I’m sure the Company can afford it.’
‘I’m sure it can. How are your mother and Susannah coping with it all?’
Maria pauses to give this serious thought. ‘Mama would be happier without the guests.’
‘Mm.’
‘And Susannah is fine. It’s an exciting diversion from the usual run of things. Although I found her today on the point of telling Mr Moody about our cousins and I almost lost my temper. I’m not sure why. It’s none of his business, is it?’ After a pause she adds, though slightly ashamed of it, ‘I think she was trying to impress him. Not that she needs to try.’
Her father smiles. ‘I expect she was. It’s not often that she gets looked up to.’
Maria laughs shortly. ‘What are you saying? She is nothing but looked up to, as far as I can tell.’
‘Admired in one sense, yes. But not regarded in the way people regard you, Mamie, with a certain awe.’
He gives her a look. Maria smiles, feeling a blush flare over her cheeks. She likes the thought of being regarded with awe.
‘I didn’t mean to flatter you.’
‘Don’t worry, I am not at all flattered by being compared to Niagara Falls or the Heights of Abraham.’
‘Well, just as long as you’re not …’
Maria watches her father climb the stairs–stiffly, which means he is suffering with his joints. It is awful to watch your parents age and know that pains and frailties are only going to accumulate in the body, building up until it fails completely. Maria has already developed a rather cynical outlook on life, probably another by-product of having a beautiful sister. Who has cast her usual, entirely thoughtless spell over Mr Moody.
Not that Maria is at all interested in him for herself. Not at all. But, just occasionally, it would be nice to think that she stood a chance.
It is becoming c
lear to me that I am going to have to do something. After Mackinley leaves I pace the kitchen until Angus returns, and I don’t have to tell him that Francis has still not come back. I tell him the fishing rods are all here, and that I hid one. Now he too looks uneasy.
‘You must go and look for him.’
‘It’s been less than three days. He’s not a child.’
‘He could have had an accident. It’s cold. He hasn’t taken any blankets.’
Angus thinks, then says he will go up to Swallow Lake tomorrow. I am so relieved I go and embrace him, only to meet with a stiff and unyielding response. He simply waits for me to detach myself, and then turns away as though nothing has happened.
Our marriage seemed to work as long as I didn’t think about it. Now, I don’t know, the more I worry about other people the less they seem to like it. When I thought of nothing but myself I only had to snap my fingers and men did whatever I wanted. Then I try to become a better person and look where it’s got me: my own husband turning away and refusing to meet my eyes. Or maybe it is none of those things, and is simply to do with age–as a woman gets older she loses the ability to charm and persuade, and there is nothing that can be done about it.
‘I could come with you.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I can’t stand this waiting. What if something’s … happened?’
Angus sighs, his shoulders hunched like an old man’s. ‘Rhu …’ he breathes out the old endearment, which causes a small tremor inside me. ‘I’m sure he is all right. He will be back soon.’
I nod, touched by the endearment. In fact, I seize at it like a lifebelt–although, I think afterwards, if I am really still his ‘rhu’, his dear, why does he not look at me when he says it?
As the light fades, I go for a walk, skirt pockets bulging. At least that is what I tell Angus; whether he believes me is anyone’s guess. At this time of day everyone in Dove River sits down to eat, as predictable as a herd of cattle, so no one will be outside or anywhere they shouldn’t be. Nobody but me.
