Death of a Hired Man

by Eric Wright

  “I was tidying up from breakfast before I started work, and I noticed that Mr. Thompson hadn’t appeared yet and the porch light was still on. He was normally out and about early. He’s been clearing a patch for vegetables up behind the cabin.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I’m writing a book.”

  “A novel, like?”

  “No.”

  “What kind?”

  She took a deep breath and leaned back. “It’s a social and cultural history of Larch River from its origins, about eighteen-ninety to today, based on the records that still survive of parish magazines, the theater club, the weekly newspaper, and on interviews with three families I’ve found who go all the way back to the first settlement, and on their records, letters, diaries, and other documents. Why do you want to know?”

  Wilkie wanted to tell her that he didn’t really need to know anything about her project, didn’t give a hoot, actually; it was just that he was so relieved not to find Pickett dead that he was having trouble thinking of the right questions to ask her. He was babbling a little, being agreeable. He looked across the table at what she had been working on, evidently something official.

  He leaned over, grinning. “You just finished writing that, what you just told me?”

  “Yes, I did. I’m trying to get a grant to pay for some of the research, and I was in the middle of writing the application.”

  “This is like a hobby, then?”

  “A labor of love. Can we get back to him?” She pointed across to the cabin.

  Wilkie forced himself to look professional. “So what did you do when you saw the porch light on and no one around?”

  “I walked over to see if he was all right, of course.”

  “You knew him, then?”

  “Hardly at all. We were just neighbors.”

  “So you saw his porch light on, and you walked in to see why?”

  “After I noticed the light, I looked for any other signs. There was no smoke coming out the chimney, so he hadn’t lit his stove. It’s still too early to go without heat. There’s a little electric heater in the kitchen that will get you through breakfast, but if you want to heat the cabin, you have to light the woodstove. That’s what living in the cabin is all about. Authentic.”

  “You know the cabin pretty good?”

  “I know the cabin and Mel and Charlotte pretty good, yes. Mel and Charlotte are friends of mine. I got to know them last year.”

  “Because of the homicide? That body you found up in the bush?”

  “That was part of it, but I already knew Mel. I was directing the Little Theatre’s play a couple of years ago, and we became friends when he offered to be our stage carpenter. So when I decided to write this book, I asked him if I could borrow this trailer on weekends.”

  “Okay. Now what’s this guy, Norbert Thompson, doing in the cabin?”

  “Mel rented it to him a few months ago. Thompson used to live on a chicken farm up toward Donnington, with his brother and sister-in-law. They got into difficulties of some kind, had a falling-out, and Thompson left and moved into town, as they call Larch River hereabouts. He was only supposed to be here temporarily, until Mel and Charlotte decided what they wanted to do about the property. I don’t think he was paying much rent, if any. Is Mel really a friend of yours?”

  “He was a buddy of my dad’s.”

  “But personal stuff? Does he talk to you about that?”

  “I never see much of him unless someone gets killed.” Wilkie tried for a laugh. “Maybe two or three times a year. Why? What’s the problem?”

  “I guess it isn’t too personal. You know Mel put this trailer here and used it while he built the cabin?”

  “That much, yes. But I never met him up here until you found that body, and I never spoke to his wife except across the counter of that diner she ran.”

  “Charlotte owns her own house here, and Mel has a house in Toronto, so when they decided to get married, they had four places to choose from, though I don’t think Charlotte would count this trailer. Anyway, they haven’t quite decided which way to go, so they haven’t given any of them up yet. You know all this?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him since last year. Where are they now? At her house in town?”

  “No, in Toronto probably, on their way up here. I was talking to them last weekend about their dilemma. They’ve got to make up their minds. Charlotte’s house has been standing empty since last Christmas, but she’s as fond of her house as Mel is proud of his cabin. She’s thinking of trying to rent it, so as to postpone the decision for a while. Mel is doing the same thing with the cabin.”

  There was a knock, and the door of the trailer opened. Copps’ head appeared in the doorway. “About finished. Can I roll it up?” His eyes rested on Eliza and he came all the way into the trailer while he waited for an answer.

  Wilkie said, “Yeah,” and shuffled sideways out of the space behind the table. “Did you identify Thompson?” he asked Eliza from the doorway.

  “I was never introduced to him as Thompson. I identified the man on the floor as the one I saw about the cabin the last couple of weekends, since I started to come up here—the man I believed to be living in the cabin with Mel’s permission. I remembered afterward that Mel had told me his name was Norbert Thompson.”

  “Good.” Wilkie pushed past Copps, who was still looking at Eliza. “Let us know right away if you decide to go back to Toronto,” he said from the doorway. “I’ll send someone over shortly to take your statement.”

  “I won’t be going anywhere until tomorrow, unless I’m in your way.”

  “Not in ours.” Wilkie stepped out of the trailer and waited for Copps to follow. Copps closed the door behind him and the two men crossed the clearing to join the little group on the porch of the cabin.

  “Nice tits,” Copps said. “Pretty hair, too. She should grow it out.”

  “One blow, administered from behind, with something like a baseball bat, but not heavy enough to kill him,” the medical examiner was saying. “A second wound is more serious, on the side of his head, but it may have been caused by falling against the stove. The corner of the stove fits the wound. I would say he died eight to twelve hours ago.”

  Wilkie grunted and turned to the technician. “You finished?”

  “Unless you want me to look for something special.”

  Wilkie shook his head. “We’ll send him to the lab, see if they can find anybody else’s hairs on him.” He nodded to the ambulance men to take the body away. To the two policemen who had been first on the scene, he said, “Tape the place off until we’ve turned it over thoroughly. You can open up the road, but keep this gate blocked.” To Copps, he said, “Get a formal statement from the girl before we go.”

  “What’s her name again?” Copps asked.

  “Eliza Pollock. Wait, run me into town first, then come back and get the statement, and pick me up when you’ve got it.”

  “Where? Where will you be?”

  “In that diner by Harlan’s motel. The one Pickett’s wife used to run.”

  4

  In Greenbank, they stopped at the Chicken Coop and bought four loaves of whole wheat, which, frozen, would last them two weeks, ate a breakfast of cinnamon buns and coffee, and drove on to Lindsay, where they bought those groceries unavailable in the IGA store in Larch River. They continued north.

  As they approached Larch River, Charlotte said, “I told Harlan I’d fill in for him at the diner while we’re up here if he wants. Rose quit on him two weeks ago and he’s had to use high-school kids until he gets a proper replacement. I’ll get to say hello to everybody. Let’s just put the groceries away and go over there, see how he’s fixed. Then you want to go up to the cabin, right?”

  “I’d like to see how it got through the winter. See how that tenant is treating it.”

  “And see Eliza.”

  “And see Eliza.”

  They pulled up in front of Charlotte’s house
, waved to a neighbor, called across to another, and let themselves in. All the doors and windows were secure and the furnace was functioning, so they turned the heat up a few degrees, switched on the fridge, unloaded the groceries, then drove over to Harlan’s diner.

  Sergeant Wilkie was drinking coffee at the counter, just as if he was waiting for them. He shook hands with Pickett and said, “First chance I’ve had to congratulate you two. But then, I didn’t get an invitation to the wedding.” Pickett said, “Nobody did. But thanks.” He sat down next to Wilkie, and Charlotte, smiled, touched Wilkie on the shoulder, and, went behind the unattended counter, poured them each a cup of coffee, then disappeared through a door at the end of the room to look for her former boss.

  Finally, into this odd silence, Pickett asked, “So? What are you doing here?”

  “It’s our territory now, ever since Lyman Caxton went.”

  Larch River had had one of the last one-man police forces in Ontario; then the police chief, Lyman Caxton, had handed in his badge when his girlfriend’s brother was discovered to be a killer and she left town.

  “I know that. I didn’t know that an OPP officer with your seniority—staff sergeant, is it?—still had to get his hands dirty. What happened?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Wilkie looked at him over his coffee mug.

  “Heard what?”

  “Sorry. I was waiting for you to say something. We’ve got a probable homicide. I was just about to call you.”

  “I’m retired, didn’t you know? You’ll have to manage on your own.”

  “Somebody killed your tenant last night. Norbert Thompson. Hit him with a baseball bat, though he might’ve been killed by the stove as he fell.”

  Charlotte reappeared to stand beside Pickett. She had obviously heard the news already. “Harlan just told me,” she said. “You know anything else?”

  “We don’t know who did it. He was found dead about two hours ago.”

  “Who found him?” Pickett asked.

  “Girl who lives in your trailer.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Eliza. Was the guy a mess? We’d better get up there, see how she is. Put your coat on, Charlotte.”

  “Harlan just asked me if I’d take over right away. He’s been tending the counter himself.”

  “In an hour, tell him. Let’s go up to see Eliza first.” He turned to Wilkie. “Is she still in the trailer?”

  “That’s where I left her. But tell me about this guy Thompson before you run away.”

  “I don’t know much. I let it be known that I wouldn’t mind having a tenant in the cabin, not for the rent but just to kind of caretake it until we came back. You know, some kid throws a rock through the window and then another one, and the place is derelict before the winter’s over. There isn’t much to stop anyone from turning the place over.”

  Wilkie said, “If you’re talking about us, then there never was. We can’t drive up and down every country road twenty-four hours a day, protecting uninhabited summer places of rich city folk, can we?”

  “Were we better off with Lyman Caxton as the town cop?”

  “Probably, as long as he had us for backup. But that was then, this is now. They couldn’t find a replacement for Lyman for the wages they paid, so they contracted with us.” Wilkie drank some coffee. “We’ve had a series of break-ins around here lately. Serious burglaries. I think it’s locals, myself. Did you know this township has the highest break-in rate in the county?”

  “I lost some stuff when I was building the cabin. Lyman got my chain saw back when he turned over Siggy Siggurdson’s place looking for the gun that killed Timmy Marlow, so we thought.”

  “The only thing we’ve got to go on is that all the break-ins have happened on Friday nights.”

  “Kids. The kind that break into summer cottages along the river.”

  “Maybe. But beating a guy’s head in? Old guy? Is that kids?”

  “There are different kinds of kids. But he was younger than me and he wasn’t helpless. He’d worked on a farm all his life. I think he was about as fragile as I am. Maybe there are two gangs.”

  Wilkie looked at him sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  “You just said it could be locals or it could be professionals, a gang from Newcastle. It could be both. I mean, if word gets out that there’s a gang working the whole area on Friday nights, then somebody around here might think that’s a bright idea. Somebody stupid.”

  “Where did he come from, your tenant?”

  “From the country. Not far away. That right, Charlotte?”

  She pulled a stool out from under the counter and sat down opposite them. “He used to run a chicken farm for the Maguires, up past the lake. The farm supplied most of the eggs and chickens around here for people who didn’t have their own. The Maguires used to manage it themselves, the two of them. Then Maguire got sick, one of those diseases that go on for years, and he sent for his brother Norbert to help out. Norbert was working as a janitor in a school in New Brunswick, but he’d been raised on a farm and done that kind of work most of his life. Anyway, he came here about three years ago and did everything, including helping out with nursing the brother. People said that without Norbert, she’d have had to hire two other people.”

  Charlotte looked around the diner, which was now filling up with curious customers, people who had seen the OPP car outside and heard the news. Even without Wilkie’s car parked there, indicating that something was happening, the coffee shop was where the town picked up its gossip.

  Wilkie asked, “How come these brothers had different names?”

  Charlotte lowered her voice. “It’s to do with the way the family was broken up when they were kids. Ask Mrs. Sproat—Mrs. Maguire, she was. Let me get on with the story. What happened was that Maguire died last November, I think it was. Everyone expected Norbert to take his place. It would have been natural enough. Instead of that, she went into Sweetwater one day and came back with a new husband, and I guess told Norbert he wouldn’t be needed anymore. Anyway, Norbert left the farm and got a room in town. He used to eat here in the diner sometimes. He found some odd jobs to do, working on a Christmas-tree farm first, a bit of fencing, stuff like that, so when Mel was looking for a tenant for the cabin, I suggested Norbert because he would know how to keep it up, and Mel offered him the place for free for three months, at least until we came back. I felt sorry for the guy, and besides, it’s a bit isolated, and Eliza—have you met her? Eliza Pollock?—yes, she wanted to use the trailer on weekends, and we felt better knowing that someone was within call.”

  “You have talked to Eliza?” Pickett asked Wilkie.

  “I’m getting a statement. She didn’t see anything.”

  “Good. Let’s go, Charlotte. Eliza might need something.”

  Wilkie looked at his watch. “Will you stay up there until noon?”

  “Right. You’re not done. Sorry. Sure. We’ll wait for you in the cabin or the trailer.”

  “In the trailer. The cabin’s still out of bounds.”

  In the car, Charlotte asked, “What does he mean?”

  “He means they haven’t finished blowing fingerprint powder over everything, or whatever the equivalent is around here—sawdust maybe. We’ll let them get on with it. Just see how Eliza is.”

  “Maybe she’ll be too shook up to want to stay.”

  “That’s what I wondered. But she’s pretty tough.”

  “I’m not. I’d like her out of there until someone’s living in the cabin.”

  “I should tell her to find somewhere else to sleep?”

  “She can come stay with us if she likes. I just don’t want her by herself down there. And Mel, dear, don’t tell me to get my coat on just when I’ve agreed to stay to help Harlan out. Or at any time. Ask me, okay?”

  “I wasn’t telling you, just saying we’d better get going.”

  “You weren’t asking me, though, were you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not, except fo
r upsetting me in some way. Think about it.”

  Eliza was just as dismissive of their concern for her safety as Pickett was of Eliza’s having any say in the matter of whether she should move into town and stay with them.

  “Get your things together,” he said as soon as they were inside the trailer. “The stuff in the fridge will be okay.” He started to move around the trailer, making small tidying-up gestures to help her get ready for their departure.

  She watched him for a while, about fifteen seconds, then asked, “What’s the matter? Somebody paint a red cross on the door? ‘Here Be Plague’?”

  Pickett stopped folding chairs and stacking them on the bunk. “You can’t stay here, can you?”

  “Are they going to cut the power off? The town hauling the trailer away for back taxes?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Charlotte said, “It’s my fault, Eliza. I said I don’t think you’re safe here. I think you should come with us for the weekend.” She added, “We have plenty of room.”

  Eliza moved quickly around the table and stayed Pickett’s hand as he started to open the door to the bedroom. “I’ll be all right.”

  Pickett said, “Someone could break in here with a rolled-up newspaper.”

  “Someone would get a surprise.”

  “You? What could you do against a guy with a baseball bat?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Okay, Mel? Charlotte, tell him not to worry about me.”

  Charlotte slowed down, glanced around the room and moved away from them to the end of the trailer, as if to leave them to sort it out. “You mean don’t nag, right?” She smiled. “You’d better tell him, Eliza.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Why you aren’t worried about being attacked.” She smiled again and looked away.

  Eliza turned to Pickett. “Because I won’t be by myself. Here. Tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Charlotte said, “She means there will be someone else here, too. I think that’s what ‘won’t be alone’ means. Am I right, honey?”