Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  We walked along Parkwood Road, which ran across the top of the campus. The night was clear, and there was a fat, full moon hanging in the sky like a silver apple. There was nobody about but us, and we could see our breath.

  “It’s blizzarding in Kuskawa, I bet,” Richard said.

  “Mmmm. And my aunt and George will be curled up on the sofa in front of the woodstove, with Lug-nut and Rosie squashed in there, too. And Poe on his shelf, his head under a wing, snoring like a freight train.”

  “Ravens snore?” I’d told him about my family, the beasts as well as the people.

  “Poe does. But then he thinks he’s human.”

  “Do you miss your dogs?”

  “Yes, a little bit, although it’s nice once in a while not to have the responsibility—you know, walks, feeding them, paying attention to them—all that. I know I’m really lucky to have Susan and George take them while I’m away. I’d be wallowing in guilt if I’d had to leave them at a kennel.”

  “Separation anxiety, eh?”

  “Yeah. And you know, once this is out,” I said, patting my belly, “I suspect that the babysitting service is going to be a little less abundant. This feels like my last crack at freedom for a while.”

  “You’re happy about the baby, though, aren’t you?”

  “Most of the time I am, I guess. More like overwhelmed though. Scared as hell. Wondering what on earth I think I’m doing, and what kind of mother I’ll be.”

  “I think you’ll be a great mother. Not that I know you, but what little I do know, you’ll be great. Feisty, inventive. Incredibly loving.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Thanks. I don’t believe you, but thanks.”

  We headed down another road, which led towards a group of attractive, low-slung buildings, flanked by trees and shrubs. A sign said “The Courts”, and gave a list of dozens of names of “courts”, which I presumed were residences.

  “I’m in Farthings Court,” he said, and we veered off to the left. “Have you chosen a name for him or her yet?”

  “I think it’s a her,” I said. “Well, I know it is, actually. Not that I had a thingy done—I’ve been a pain in the neck to my doctor, who wanted to do all sorts of tests because she says I’m a ‘mature primagravida’—and doesn’t that sound like a skin condition? I hate that medical science treats pregnancy like a disease.”

  “You strike me as the midwife type,” he said. “You planning to have it at home?”

  “I’d like to,” I said. “At least, home meaning the farmhouse—not my place. It would probably be good to have, you know, hydro and running water.”

  “Yeah, that might be a good idea. So—names?”

  “There’s a fashion right now for calling kids by the place name of where they were conceived,” I said. “You know, like Dakota or Africa.”

  “Uh-huh. So you’re going to call her Kuskawa? Think there are any kids called Wawa? Moosonee?”

  I snorted. “Becker’s condo is on Dill Street,” I said.

  “Dilly? Hey—Pickle! Pickle’s cute.”

  “I bought one of those baby name books, but it didn’t help. They’re all made-up things with weird spellings. I thought about naming her after my mom, Cecily, but there was way too much baggage.”

  “Hmm.” Nice of him not to press for details.

  “In my mind, she’s the Sprog.”

  “That’s a new one on me. What’s it mean?”

  “It’s a family word for child, British slang, I guess. My aunt used it on me when I was small. It’s sort of affectionate and goofy at the same time.”

  “You can’t call your baby Sprog, Polly.”

  “No, it wouldn’t look good on the school registration form, would it? Sprog Deacon.”

  “You’ll never get her into private school that way.”

  “Seriously, though, I think Elizabeth is the best name for a girl, because she has all those options as an adult if she wants to change her name. Liz, Eliza, Betty, Beth, Lizbeth. And I like Bess. Bess is strong, I think.”

  “Bess Deacon. Has a nice ring to it. What does her father think?”

  “Do you know, we’ve never discussed it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. We’ve been in a kind of stalemate for a while. We don’t agree about the most basic stuff, like where she’s going to live—where I’m going to live. Stuff like that.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, no—we haven’t discussed the name. And Becker has a son already, whom he apparently is seeing right now, because I found out this morning that Becker is in Calgary, where his ex and his son are, although he didn’t bother telling me, and I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be blithering on about people you don’t know.”

  “I don’t mind. We’re here. After you.” Richard used a key to open a glass-fronted door which led into a pleasant lobby area. There were mailboxes, a reception desk (unattended), and carpeted floors—the usual middle-class apartment kind of space—cozy and reasonably clean. A short trip down a hallway, and Richard ushered me into his room, which probably had its equivalent in every university in the world. On the left was a desk, a window, a closet with a mirror and a narrow single bed. On the right was the mirror image of the same thing.

  “There’s no roommate,” he said. “Welcome to my private suite.” The desk was covered with brochures and buffle from the conference, sketching materials and a small sketchbook, open at a lovely drawing of the Cathedral.

  “When did you have time to do that?” I said.

  “After you went back to your B&B,” he said. “I carry that stuff with me all the time. It’s better than a camera. I take rotten photos, and I think if you spend your time taking snapshots, you don’t really see things. When you sketch them, you take the time to absorb all the details.”

  “May I?”

  “Go ahead.” His drawings were wonderful, clear, clean lines, just the right amount of shading. He stood behind me, quite close, while I looked though the book. At the beginning were some sketches of Kuskawa, including the Sikwan Falls as seen from Steamboat Theatre, a view I’d seen myself many times.

  “These are amazing, Richard. Hey—you do have etchings. Hah! Of a sort.”

  “Explain that, would you?” he said. He was massaging my shoulders from behind, and my train of thought got thoroughly derailed in a matter of moments.

  “It’s one of those catchphrases. You know—‘Do you want to come up and see my etchings?’ The suave sophisticate seduces the innocent maiden?”

  “I’m not all that suave.”

  “And I’m obviously not all that innocent.” I turned around to face him. His eyes were very large and sort of luminous. He’d turned on the desk lamp, whose shade cast a golden glow over us. We kissed, long and slowly and deeply. He was quite a bit taller than I was, and his height seemed to make up for the sort of sideways cant we had to make to avoid squashing the Sprog. Or Bess, I suppose I should start calling her. “Is this a good idea?” I said.

  “Well, we do have a couple of hours to kill.”

  “I’m way older than you, you know.”

  “Like that really bothers me.”

  “And you’re not grossed out by my, you know, my being pregnant? It’s hardly sexy.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re so sexy it hurts.” Five little words was all. Five little words I realized I’d been aching for—from Becker—heck, from anybody who was willing to tell me that I wasn’t just a vessel all misshapen and grotesque, stretched out of all imagining by the load I was carrying. That I was Polly Deacon, a person in my own right, with or without the Sprog. And here was this incredibly handsome and interesting and intelligent (and young) man, touching me, caressing the back of my neck, telling me I was, well, attractive. And nothing short of a fire alarm was going to turn off the response it called up in me. Put the brakes on? Call a halt? I’d rather have eaten my own foot.

  We moved to the narrow bed and stretched out on it. It was crowded, but it didn’t seem to matter. Gently, we
removed each other’s clothing. The steam radiator by the window hissed companionably. Richard’s body was thin, lithe and wiry. He had no body hair to speak of, except a soft nest of dark curls between his legs. He played his sensitive, artist’s hands over my belly, smoothing and stroking.

  “This is going to require some positioning,” he said. “Excuse me, ma’am.” He wasn’t talking to me, either. The Sprog didn’t appear to mind the company at all, as it turned out.

  Later, we snoozed a bit. Richard had set his alarm for 11:15, to give us enough time to pick up the puppets at the Pilgrim’s Rest and take a cab down to St. Peter’s Street, where he said there was a path leading to the deserted Greyfriars. “One good thing about this,” I murmured, before slipping away into sleep. “There’s absolutely no chance of me getting pregnant.”

  Twenty-Three

  Some change in eyesight is the case for some women—maybe a 10-20% deterioration or so. Within a few months of getting pregnant, they pull out the glasses that they wear ONLY when they’re pregnant, and once their baby is delivered, the glasses go back into storage. But this change doesn’t happen to all women.

  -From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide

  Won’t the guy want to see the puppets, too, before he’ll believe you?” We had made our way back into Canterbury and stopped off at the Pilgrim’s Rest to pick up the puppet case. It was late, and there was no sign of Cedric or Mr. Binterhof. We tiptoed in, not wanting to make Cedric think there was another burglary in progress. I’d asked my host to take the case out of the safe for me earlier in the day, and I’d stashed it under the bed.

  “I suppose he will, won’t he?” I said. The police-puppet and the pregnant lady lay in their little coffin, face-up, looking a little apprehensive, I thought. “And he’ll want to tear them apart, too, if he’s looking for stashed drugs or secret microfiche or something.”

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Richard said.

  “It’s the only way, you know. To make this crazy stuff stop. Trust me.”

  “I’m trying to. So, are you going to let him have the puppets, too?”

  “I wasn’t planning to let him have anything,” I said. “I was just going to show him that the case was just a puppet case and nothing more. My theory is that if I brazen it out and really explain that I don’t have what he’s looking for, he’ll get the picture.”

  “What about ‘his people’? The ones he’s working for? They may not take his word for it, you know.”

  “I guess you’re right. Okay, he can have the case. But he’s not getting the puppets. I’ll take them home in a cardboard box.” I lifted them out and placed them on the bed, side-by-side, their heads on the pillow, then closed the case and picked it up.

  “And what if he does attack you, Polly? What if—just humour me for a second—what if you’ve read this thing all wrong, and he really is the guy who attacked Alma, and he really is a dangerous and ruthless criminal? There won’t be much I can do about it if he pulls a knife on you or something. Or a gun. Have you really, really thought about what you’re doing?”

  I sighed and sat down on the bed. “I’ve been thinking about nothing else, Richard. This whole situation has totally wrecked my trip so far—I know that’s selfish, seeing as at least I’m still alive and Alma isn’t. But point one, I don’t believe what happened to Alma had anything to do with the thug and the puppet case. And point two, if I don’t confront this guy, he’s going to wreck the rest of my trip, too.”

  “What about point three, that if you’d called the police, they’d be there to back you up and arrest the guy?”

  “If the police were involved, they wouldn’t let me near the place. You know that, and they’d just scare him away. Then he’d wait to get me alone again, and he’d be pretty mad when he did, and then he might really hurt me.”

  “You really don’t have much confidence in the police, do you?”

  “Frankly, no. I have too much experience with the real thing. They don’t always get their man, you know.”

  “Well, at least take something with you for defence, just in case this guy turns out worse than you think.”

  “You have a gun handy?” I said.

  “I have this,” he said and handed me a small can of pepper spray.

  “Where the heck did you get that?”

  “I’ve had it ever since I started hiking in bear country,” he said. “I keep it with me when I travel, too, in case of muggers.”

  “And how did you manage to get this past customs?”

  “I keep it in with my deodorant and stuff. Nobody’s noticed it yet.”

  “You know, this could get you a week or two in Guantanamo Bay, if you tried to smuggle it onto a U.S. flight,” I said.

  “That hardly applies here, Polly. Will you take it?”

  “I’ll keep it in my pocket, yes, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “It will. Thank you,” he said. Actually, it made me feel better about this escapade as well, but I didn’t say so.

  I sighed once more, for effect, and got to my feet. “Okay, let’s go.”

  The full moon painted the scene silver. It was eerily bright until we got to the alleyway that would lead us to the ruined monastery house. Then the shadows kicked in. Richard had a keychain flashlight, but I wouldn’t let him use it. “We have to split up now,” I said. I was feeling nervous, but tried not to let it show. “Is there another way in to this place?” We were whispering.

  “There’s another path along the river that leads to a private house on St. Peter’s Street,” Richard said. “It ends in someone’s garden, and it’s blocked off from the main road the same way Cedric’s courtyard is, with a high wooden fence you can’t climb over. The guy will probably come this way himself, but Polly—he’s probably already here, waiting for you.”

  We stepped as quietly as we could along the path and came to the river—a trickle, really, with walls on either side—a deep channel cut into the earth. The moonlight glinted off the sluggish water below. There was a little bridge over the river, and in the near distance, Greyfriars, a black outline against the sky. The weird thing about moonlight, especially when it’s really strong, is that it leaches out colour so that everything looks like a black and white photograph.

  “I’ll go on ahead, Richard. You follow me, but do the cloak-and-dagger thing, okay? Be stealthy. Don’t be seen. He’ll be looking for me, but I don’t think he’ll expect me to have a companion.”

  “You don’t, eh?” he whispered. “How naïve can you get?” I chose to pretend not to hear him. Okay, I was being naïve. And probably really stupid, too, but I had got it into my head that the only way to shake off my pursuer was to meet with him and tell the truth. Too many situations get weird because people make mistakes about each other, good guys and bad guys alike. If the thug was under the impression that I had been supposed to hand over some pre-arranged something-or-other, and I hadn’t, well, he was perfectly justified in feeling frustrated about it. Okay, maybe his tactics lacked refinement, but we can’t all be James Bond. I suspected that he was just some dumb mook who had been hired to take delivery of a package and wanted to do a good job. You may think that this line of reasoning was insane, but I believed (and I still do) that even the villains of the piece thought that their actions were reasonable.

  As I approached the Greyfriars building, I got one of those living-history neck prickles—a nice feeling, in spite of the gothic context. It was a beautiful structure, a tall and thin house of ancient brick, built, as the guide book had said, directly over the river, which ran underneath the double arches at its base, both pointed at the top like church doorways. There were no lights showing, which was no surprise—I didn’t expect that the thug had a key to the place. The guidebook had suggested that it was a ruin, but it looked pretty solid to me. I wondered what it would be like to live there—it had been built hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Would it creak with memories? Would you be able to hear the trickle of the wa
ter beneath the floor? And what was buried in the silt in the river? Coins and bottles and broken pottery, I’d bet. Stuff that people, maybe the monks, had tossed out the window and into the river, or dropped by mistake. Museum stuff now, but then, it had just been something to throw away. And hundreds of years from now, people will be regarding the stuff we throw away in a similar light—excavating our landfill sites, all excited to find a preserved newspaper or an ancient, twentieth century shoe. The garbage of history is thrilling because it confirms that our ancestors were just like us, litterbugs and hopelessly human.

  I wasn’t trying to be stealthy. In fact, I was making sure I could be heard and seen, swinging the puppet case at my side, like I was going on a midsummer picnic, not a care in the world. I didn’t want the thug to miss me. On the opposite side of the river, across from the building, there was a small field, a meadow, really, then a fence backing onto the gardens of private houses on the street beyond. The field looked empty, just an expanse of dry grass, with a mist rising from it. It was not cold, but I was shivering anyway. On my side of the river, there were trees, the walls of a garden much closer to the river, above which I could see the tops of some old greenhouses. And beyond that, a number of trenches dug into the ground. That must be where the archaeological excavation was going on, the one that Mr. Binterhof was working on. There were trees and deep shadows, and I suddenly rather wished I had asked Richard for his flashlight. But of course, he was right behind me—just out of sight. I didn’t dare turn around to see. It would have given him away. But I was glad he was at my back, because I felt exposed and a tad vulnerable.