Death of a Hired Man

by Eric Wright

  “It’ll be something else next time.”

  “Me bothering you, probably,” she agreed.

  “I’ll tell you if you do.”

  “We’re doing well so far, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  They had been married for three months: he, a sixty-six-year-old retired policeman, a widower; she, a sixty-two-year-old widow, who most recently ran a coffee shop in Larch River, where Pickett used to drink coffee when he was building his cabin. They were on their way now to her house in Larch River, one of the homes they shared, and should by now have decided whether to sell it or keep it, but apart from the various sentimental attachments each had to house or cabin, the real-estate market was almost lifeless, and they could justify their procrastination by seeming to be waiting for better times, while in fact they were simply waiting to let the sensible decision reveal itself. They were in no hurry, after all. In their sixties, they had all the time in the world.

  The marriage counselor they had consulted together and separately before they married had warned them that the property might constitute the biggest area of contention, but they had had no difficulty so far. Both of them had lived well within their individual incomes when they lived alone, and after they married and the costs were shared, they had even more money left over. So he continued to maintain his house in Toronto and his cabin and trailer in Larch River, and Charlotte kept her house. It was obvious to Pickett that their lifestyle would be adequately served if they kept his cabin and spent the good seasons in Larch River, and moved to his house in Toronto for the winter, with excursions to Florida and, for him, to England, a place he liked to visit ever since he had spent part of the war there with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

  It was also obvious to Pickett that the idea of getting rid of her house would have to come from Charlotte, who, he assumed, like most women, was sentimentally attached to the place she had lived in for so long, and he would have to allow her to give it up in her own time. Another reason—so said the marriage counselor—was that Charlotte was trying to keep her head, and thus she insisted on bearing in mind the possibility that their marriage might not last, the statistics on the durability of October marriages being no better than on those contracted in May. And so she wanted to keep the house, just in case. Pickett received this opinion and judged it by where it came from, as the disillusionment of a professional watcher of the marital skies, now second-guessing her clients. Pickett was sure it did not apply to Charlotte, although it wasn’t a thing you could ask her about.

  The idea of consulting a marriage counselor before the marriage began instead of when it broke down was Charlotte’s. The idea had appalled Pickett, but he had agreed to go along with it to the extent of consenting to a joint interview, with Charlotte present, and an individual one, without her. The counselor was a woman, and all of her training was directed toward getting people to see the source of their troubles; she’d had no experience in counseling people without any problems. She made an effort to explain to them something called “mirroring,” a technique that as far as he could understand her, involved repeating back what your partner had just said until she agreed you had heard her right, apparently to show how you usually didn’t. But so far, that wasn’t a problem between them.

  The woman had irritated Pickett immediately by telling him that she thought Charlotte a truly special person, shaking her head with amazement either that a woman who ran a diner should have her wits about her or that such a woman should want to marry someone like Pickett. Then she found a way of saying something comparable about him, embarrassing him with a paragraph of praise about his sensitivity, which he thought was bullshit, and then she made her point that each in their own way was so extraordinary that they would have to work hard to humor each other’s uniqueness, a word she used several times, and now he understood she was saying that at their age, they were probably cranky and it was something they should keep in mind. She should just have pointed out that old people get crabby, so they should watch for it. He also didn’t like the way she laughed, or that she laughed at all.

  In his private interview, the counselor had concentrated, as Pickett had feared she would, on the problems he would have in bed. “She gave me a little pamphlet about all the ways they have to help me get it up,” he told Charlotte. “Chemicals, pumps—pumps!—implants. If I use them all, we could do it twice a day.”

  They had been lovers for six months.

  Charlotte said, “She didn’t know. She was trying to be helpful. That’s why we consulted a counselor, to see what might lie ahead.”

  “I don’t need her help. Do I? What did she say to you? About sex?”

  “She told me not to expect too much at first. Said I should be understanding. I am, aren’t I?”

  Much later, when he was over his embarrassment and irritation, they agreed that Charlotte’s instinct had been sound, that at the very least, their vocabulary had expanded in a way that would make it easier to raise problems and, therefore, presumably easier to solve or avoid them. All the language of domestic and sexual problems had been set out, ready for use. They took no further counsel, feeling that premarital counseling for geriatrics was in an undeveloped state, but that wasn’t the counselor’s fault.

  As they approached Whitby, Charlotte said, “Turn up to Greenbank. We could stop at the Chicken Coop and get some bread, too. I don’t know where you buy bread in Lindsay.”

  She meant real bread, the kind Pickett had trained her to like, one of his small triumphs in their marriage so far. Once there had been good bread available in Larch River, but the bakery closed after the baker’s brother was sent to prison for killing a man. Now the only available bread came sliced and wrapped in waxed paper.

  As they turned off 401 on the road to Greenbank, she said, “Tell me again about this granddaughter of yours in England.”

  He had told her the story of Imogen early, told her lightly; then, when they started to think about wills, he had told her again. One of the things that had made it easy for them to make decisions about wills was that both were childless from their previous marriages, and they began thinking the situation through with the assumption that whoever outlived the other would inherit everything. After that, Pickett had explained, the survivor would make out a new will, leaving it to whomever he or she liked. Pick an heir.

  “If I survive you,” he had said, “I’ll leave the lot to Imogen.” Next to Charlotte, Imogen was the one who had given him the greatest pleasure since his wife had died.

  “It was at the end of the war,” he said now. “I was stationed in England in the RCAF. I had a girlfriend, a WAAF, and she got pregnant. She didn’t want to marry me—she thought it was unfair to me—so when her father kicked up a fuss, she and I agreed I should play the villain and refuse to marry her. Complicated, isn’t it, but I was only nineteen. I thought I was being, you know …”

  “Gallant. Would you have married her?”

  “I’d have crawled across broken glass for her. Like I said, I was only nineteen.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing. I came home. She had the baby. I got married to Mary eventually, and we didn’t have any kids.”

  “And you never saw the English girl again?”

  “Sure. Whenever I went to England, like every seven or eight years. I’d arrange to meet her—Mary knew about it—just for a drink. A walk in St. James’ Park. Something like that.”

  “You still felt the same way? And Mary didn’t mind?”

  “No, how could I? I was a happily married man. But it was nice seeing her, sitting in the park, talking. I did all the talking, but that’s the way she was.”

  “Sounds to me like she still had something going for you.”

  “Maybe. It didn’t flare up, though, not when I was there.”

  Gratitude, he thought. That’s what she had still felt for him. For the baby was not his; he had returned to Canada a virgin, which was normal enough for the times.
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br />   His declaring himself the father and refusing to marry her had been more gallant than Charlotte knew, designed for him to take the blame, get her off the hook, and keep dark the existence of her real lover, a married art teacher in Croydon. No one else knew the story now that she was dead, and Pickett wondered if he would ever tell Charlotte. He was not yet sure of how she would react to the notion of a possible circumstance in which all her estate wound up in the hands not of Pickett’s illegitimate “granddaughter,” but of someone who was not even that, someone he was not connected to by blood at all.

  “She came over, you said, this girl.”

  “She lived upstairs in the house for nearly two years. Then she went back to England to enter the university.”

  “And you want to leave her everything? Nothing to her father, your son?”

  “I’m attached to her. I’d rather leave it to her than to anyone else. I never even met her father.”

  “What about those people in Hamilton?”

  “My sister-in-law Verna? Okay, I might leave something for her son, Mary’s nephew. He’s been expecting something since he was in long pants. But I don’t have any obligations to Verna.”

  “Won’t she have expectations, though?”

  “She might have had—no, she did have. But that was before she met Imogen. One day when she came to the house—she used to drop by every couple of months to remind me that her kid was my nephew and to learn if I planned on dying soon—anyway, one day she came and found Imogen there. That was just after Imogen arrived from England, when she had purple hair and a white face. I told Verna she was my newfound granddaughter, and the implications for her kid were so horrendous that old Verna just about lost it. She’d always been worried I might marry the librarian next door, but a kid of eighteen? She accused me of picking up Imogen on Jarvis Street. So we had a knock-down, drag-out argument, which I kind of enjoyed because it gave me the excuse to tell her to go away and not come back.”

  “She sounds to me like someone who won’t give up easy.”

  “Then she’ll give up hard, because I don’t intend to leave her a penny.”

  “This Imogen. Did she remind you of her grandmother?”

  “Yes, she did.” Pickett returned to the topic of Verna. “I’ll leave something for Mary’s nephew. He’s spent a long time expecting it, or his mother has, so it’s not fair to cut him off completely. A few thousand, anyway.” But nothing, he thought, for the blade-faced Verna, his sister-in-law. “Besides, it might stop them from attacking the will. Or that’s what I thought before I met you.”

  “You don’t have to justify it. You want to leave him a bit of money, so go ahead. But you’d better check that out. I read somewhere that it’s easier to attack a will for not leaving you enough than for leaving you out completely.”

  They had both become aware that simply leaving everything to each other was inadequate preparation against, say, their dying simultaneously in a car accident, and they had begun to list other people they wanted to be remembered by, or to whom they felt responsible. So far, in case he died the next day, Pickett had made a temporary will leaving his property to Charlotte—she would inherit his pension automatically—and his money to Imogen. Charlotte left him her house and half of her money; the other half she mentally redistributed every day, but temporarily it was destined for her sister, whom she didn’t get on with and whose husband owned a road-paving company and didn’t need more money.

  “Does Imogen know she’s your heir?”

  “Her father does, and I imagine he’s told her. I wrote to him, telling him I planned to put Imogen in my will, but that I didn’t want to be unfair. Imogen has a sister, see, and I could be leaving a nice little sum. So I wondered if I should leave it to him in trust for the two girls. But why not just leave the two girls half each?”

  “What if I die first?”

  “You leave your money where you like, and anything you leave to me, I’ll put in the kitty for my granddaughters. Might even give my nephew a bit more.”

  “Let’s see who dies first.”

  “That’s it. Don’t rush it. Gives us an interest in life, doesn’t it?”

  “Weren’t you curious about your son?”

  “No.”

  “Coldhearted swine.”

  “My lawyer says maybe I should adopt him.”

  “How old is he?”

  Pickett did the sum in his head. “Late forties?”

  “Your lawyer must be joking. You can’t adopt someone that age, surely?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “If he’s not joking, why would you?”

  “He says that would make him my natural and legal heir.”

  “Are you going to?”

  Pickett took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “I’m going to try. I’ve written to him to suggest it.”

  “Dear God. Have you heard back?”

  “Not yet.”

  All this was news to Charlotte, because until now, Pickett had felt shy of telling her. There was something slightly odd, if not silly, about adopting your own son, but the idea, once born, had refused to go away. It was, in fact, Pickett’s idea, not his lawyer’s, rising out of a conversation with his lawyer about whether his sister-in-law would have a claim on his estate. His lawyer’s response was to the effect that they could not stop her from making a claim, and circumstances might make it plausible. Could Verna claim that her sister, Pickett’s first wife, had made promises before she died? Did Verna by chance have any letters from her sister implying that bequests would be made?

  One reason he hadn’t told Charlotte the truth was that you couldn’t trust an adult woman to understand how a nineteen-year-old boy had acted. And now that he’d found Imogen, he didn’t want to take the smallest risk of losing her. Now once more he felt overwhelmed by a desire to confide in Charlotte, to share his secret, and to account for his strange wish to adopt his own son. He turned to her, preparing the first phrase.

  She said, “I think that’s a lovely idea. Like reconfirming your marriage vows.”

  He said, “I should have told you.”

  “Of course you should. Of course you should. But you wanted to surprise me. Anyway, you have to have some secrets. We all do. Let me know what he says, though.”

  So the moment passed, and Pickett guessed it would not come again.

  3

  The man was sprawled facedown where he had fallen, the top of his head and one temple sticky with congealed blood.

  “He’s been dead for a while,” the patrol officer said. “So when the station told us you were on your way, I figured that for the sake of another couple of minutes, you could see for yourself how we found him.”

  “We know who it is,” Copps announced. He cleared his throat.

  Wilkie put his hand on Copps’ arm to stop him from saying any more, then walked over to the window and leaned his forehead against it while the others waited. Copps moved to him, saying so only Wilkie could hear, “Leave it alone, Abe. I’ll look after it.”

  Wilkie shook his head slightly without answering, then turned and took a long look at the body across the room. Two or three minutes elapsed before he lowered himself beside the body. He looked up at Copps with an expression of wonder.

  “No, we don’t,” he said. “I don’t know who this guy is, but he isn’t Mel Pickett.” Then he stood up and wiped the sweat from his hands on his pants. “So, let’s get an identification. Who phoned in the report?” He clapped his hands to get them all going again.

  “A woman named Eliza Pollock. She stays in that trailer.” The officer pointed through the door at the little house trailer parked on blocks on the other side of the small clearing. “She’s over there waiting for us now.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A friend of the guy who owns the cabin, she says.”

  “Bring her over. Let’s get started.”

  The woman waite
d out on the porch while the officer who had gone to fetch her came in and reported to Wilkie. “She doesn’t want to come in if she doesn’t have to,” he said.

  Wilkie looked over the policeman’s shoulder and saw a woman in her mid-to-late twenties, dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans, and leather ankle boots. Her mousy hair was dragged back and held by a rubber band, creating a stubby ponytail about two inches long. Beyond her, three men were walking down the path from the road toward them: the doctor, a photographer, and another technician. Wilkie waited for them to arrive at the cabin, then spoke to Copps.

  “Let’s go back up to her trailer,” he said. He moved out to the porch. “Sergeant Wilkie,” he said to the woman, holding out his hand. “I’m in charge now. You okay?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m used to this. Remember me?”

  “What?”

  From behind him, Copps said, “This lady is the one found the body of the guy who was killed on the trail, remember?”

  “Now I do,” Wilkie said. “Can we use your trailer, stay out of the way of these guys?”

  She turned and led the way across the clearing to the aluminum steps of the trailer, opened the door and waved him inside. She waited for him to squeeze in before she closed the door behind him, creating maneuvering room so they could sit down at the table in the tiny kitchen.

  “You mind doing this twice?” Wilkie asked. “I mean for now, just tell me what happened and later on, make a formal statement to the constable. That okay?”

  She nodded, holding her arms at the elbows, waiting.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Wilkie’s own crisis had passed, but it had left him aware that she might still be recovering. “It must have been something, seeing him like that, thinking it was Mel Pickett. It upset me when I heard who it might be. What made you go in?”

  “I never thought it was Mel. God, no. I knew it was the man who was living there. Norbert Thompson. I couldn’t remember his name when I called you people.”

  “Right, right, right.” Wilkie nodded himself back to normal. “Tell me how you found him, what you were doing.”