The Night Bell

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  “Don’t you go upstairs still covered in muck. I’ll find them. They must be with the ashtray.” Emily spoke in a clear voice, at odds with the way she walked, which was like an old woman full of pains.

  Hazel waited at the bottom of the stairs, still in shock. They’d blasted clear to the base of the bluff, tearing away fifteen metres of broken crag and boulder that had obscured it for half a century. The SOCOs had gotten to the skeleton before she could examine it any closer.

  But it had to be Carol Lim.

  And she was smelling cigarette smoke. Had her mother walked all the way to the convenience store to buy herself a pack?

  She checked her cell. Nothing. The remains would be arriving at Mayfair any time now.

  Emily came back down the stairs, flustered. Hazel cut her off at the pass. “Mom? Look at me. Do I look like I’m fifteen years old?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not. And you’re not in your forties anymore. You don’t smoke anymore. You’re confused, Mom. Don’t you know that?”

  “Ha!” she cawed. “Paula, do you hear that?”

  Hazel took her mother’s arm and brought her into the living room to show her it was empty. Except it wasn’t. There was an elderly woman sitting on the couch smoking a thin white cigarette.

  “Hazel,” the woman said, looking her up and down. Hazel realized she was standing there in her bra and underwear. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Mrs. Spencer!” She began to back out of the room, all the while making white-hot eye contact with her mother. “I really … I had no idea …”

  “It’s a surprise to find some people are still alive. Henry Kissinger is still alive. So is Bob Hope.”

  Hazel stood outside the room with her back to the wall. “Bob Hope died four years ago.”

  “Oh shit, did he really?”

  She went to the front hall and took a black raincoat out of the closet. She cinched it around her waist and went back into the living room. “You can’t smoke in the house, Paula.”

  “I forgot,” she said, looking not in the least contrite. “The rules have changed.”

  Her mother waggled the remote control at the television. “That thing is not worth the money your father paid for it,” she said. “Alan was right.”

  “Was he, Mom?”

  “He’s got a good head for things, your brother. But I worry about him.” She took Hazel’s hands in hers. “It’s up to you to look after him when we’re gone, dear.”

  Tuesday was her normal day off, but she was just waiting for Deacon to call her so she could go down to the morgue. Her stomach had turned sour with worry: would the pendant be there? Would it have rusted away? Maybe it hadn’t been silver after all.

  Wingate had texted her asking permission to go back to the archives. It was highly unlikely that Cutter would be there, and he knew he could talk his way past Putchkey. She gave her assent. He wanted to look deeper into Merchant’s relationship with Dublin Home.

  Paula Spencer left.

  “You thought she was dead.”

  “It’s hard to keep track these days, Mom. Don’t you find?”

  “A human life is like a bead of water on a hot griddle. I want to watch a movie.”

  Hazel found an old Natalie Wood drama and her mother became engrossed. She joined her for a while, and then went to the kitchen to make them both toast and peanut butter. She cut thick slices of banana on top and drizzled a tiny bit of maple syrup on it. Her father had come home one day with a hankering for it and it had become a family favourite. Later, it was implicated in the revelation of her father’s affair with Delia Chandler. It had been her recipe. Everyone in that story was dead now except for her and Emily.

  They sat together on the couch, eating toast. She left her mother asleep before the movie ended and crept away to clean up. In the kitchen, the light from the television flickered, a silent party in another room.

  At four o’clock, her phone buzzed. It was Deacon, inviting her down to the morgue. She drove to Mayfair with her lights going but no siren and made it there in less than an hour. Ray, his head wrapped in white gauze, had got there first.

  Deacon repeated the cause of death, but Hazel was barely listening.

  “It’s hard not to conclude it was a fall,” he said. “Lots of blunt-force trauma. But I don’t think that tells us much about what happened.”

  “Where are the personal effects?”

  He pointed her to a table near the morgue door. In a deep plastic bin, she found the remnants of clothing and shoes and a coat, panels of which were still intact. Hazel put on a pair of latex gloves and dug under the rotted fibres: a desiccated pink elastic band, a couple of rusted rings, a pocket Bible, a rusted belt buckle, a metal container, and two small stamped gilt earrings, each in the shape of a leaf and eaten away as if they were real leaves.

  At the bottom, leaning vertically against the side of the bin, she found the graven heart. It was tarnished black and smoothed like a river stone by its fifty winters, but the rabbit was still in mid-stride, running for its life.

  “It is her,” she said.

  Ray lifted his head. “Who’s her?”

  She came over to the steel table on which the bones lay in an approximate human shape. She imagined that skeleton inside Carol’s living body, and all the years it had lain undiscovered among the rocks in the ankle of the Lion’s Paw. “This is a girl who went missing almost fifty years ago. Her name was Carol Lim.”

  “I remember her,” Ray said.

  “I do as well,” echoed Jack Deacon. “How do you know?”

  “She wore this around her neck.” She put the heart into Ray’s gloved hand. “I saw it on her the day she vanished.”

  “Where?”

  “It was by chance. In the fall of 1957, when I was fourteen. I was out for a walk with a friend.” She couldn’t help pausing, watching his eyes. “Gloria Whitman.”

  “Really,” said Ray in a tone of wonder.

  “You remember her. They lived alone in the big stone house at the end of my street, overlooking the river. Just the two of them. Her mother died when she was a young girl.”

  “How did her mother die?” Ray asked.

  “I was told cancer.”

  “What happened on your walk?”

  “We’d gone to the Pit, so Gloria could smoke and drink some of her father’s brandy. Fifteen minutes earlier, she’d stolen the cigarettes she was smoking from guess who?”

  “Herbert Lim.”

  “And so, along comes Carol eventually. It wasn’t ever clear to me if she’d seen Gloria stealing from her father, or if she was just out for a walk like us. She was seventeen. Long hair, black as crow feathers. She must have heard us or smelled the smoke and she came down into the Pit. I remember her talking about sex. She was sort of provoking us. Carol took one of the smokes – I think she took the whole pack, actually – and she wanted a drink from Gloria’s flask. I remember what she said to us when she left us alone. She said, ‘See ya later, lovers.’ She walked away and as far as I know, we were the last people to see her alive.”

  Deacon inspected the pendant. “Do they still own that corner store?”

  “Until about ten years ago,” Hazel said. She suddenly felt dizzy, as if she were going to fall down. “Her father died. Her mother … her mother …”

  Ray reached out and took her elbow. “Hazel?”

  She returned to the box of Carol’s effects, her stomach churning, and ran her hands through them again until she came upon the metal container. “No,” she whispered.

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked.

  “This is the flask. Gloria’s flask.”

  “Carol took the smokes and the flask?”

  “No,” Hazel said. “I remember distinctly that Gloria offered me a drink from it after we had seen Carol. I declined. I didn’t want to smell like brandy. Gloria finished it off … she put the flask away …” She put her face in her hands, and Ray came over and touched her shoulder. “So
me people thought she was still alive …”

  “After all this time? Who?”

  She could barely speak. “Me.” She shrugged off Ray’s touch. “I have to go,” she said.

  “But what’s going on?” he asked her, and she broke down, weeping, and left the room. “Hey!” he called, but he knew he had to let her go.

  After a few minutes, he went up to the main entrance of the hospital. Kids in Hallowe’en costumes were walking through the lobby, and he saw a couple of them go up in an elevator. He found her standing in the dead grass by the entrance to the parking garage. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but to him she looked like a black-and-white photograph. There was a look of pure despair on her face. “Hazel!” he called.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to wave him off.

  He stopped ten feet from her. “It’s OK. I can go away and come back.”

  She muttered something under her breath.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  “No … stay.”

  He went to her and she let him put his arms around her and she wept into his coat. He rubbed her back and said whatever soothing words came to his mind. When she was calmer, she patted his shoulder and he let go of her. She told him what she remembered about the days after Carol’s disappearance: things she hadn’t thought of in decades. She told him about their meetings with Commander Drury. “I’m sure I must’ve wondered about her even then,” she said. “It was just too horrible to consider, but years afterward it would come into my mind: what if Carol’s not in Toronto? What if Gloria killed her?” She looked at him through red, swollen eyes. “That’s the first time I’ve ever said that to anyone.”

  He gave her a moment to finish collecting herself. All around them in the quickly dwindling afternoon light, people were streaming in and out of the hospital, including the early Hallowe’en celebrants. “Greater proportion of costumed patients than normal.”

  “Must be a full moon.” She took a couple of deliberate deep breaths. “In my heart, I knew Carol was dead. Even though I found evidence she was alive.”

  “What do you mean, evidence?”

  She got her keys out. “My first investigation. I’ll tell you another time.” He walked with her back to where they’d left their cruisers.

  They held the press conference at 7:00 p.m. Ray Greene – wearing an OPS cap over the gauze wrapped around his head – and Willan flanked her on either side of the wooden podium at the front of the station’s conference room. Behind them hung the OPS insignia on a white background. Willan’s face looked painted white.

  Cartwright had told her that eleven newspapers and TV stations had RSVPed, including CTV, the Westmuir Record, the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, and the Mayfair Packet and Telegram. There were a number of people at the back with video cameras on their shoulders: TV cameramen, news bloggers. On the rolling bulletin board to her right was a picture of Carol Lim taken in 1956 and, beside it, an image of her bones as they’d been found in the crater of the Lion’s Paw. The reporters packed in close with their notebooks out, like policemen.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Hazel said. “Please keep your questions until the end, there’s quite a bit to get through.” She pointed at the board. “This is Carol Lim. She was born here in Port Dundas, on November 14, 1939. In October 1957, she disappeared, and despite concerted efforts to find or contact her she was never seen again. Earlier today, her bones were uncovered at the new Gateway Plaza site, during a groundbreaking ceremony –” here she gestured to her right, at Willan, and he raised his hand, half waving. “We don’t have final confirmation of identity yet,” she continued.

  “Urbina Kellog, Hamilton Spectator,” said a woman at the front. “I understand, and I can see from that other picture there, that the skeleton was discovered during blasting, not during the groundbreaking.”

  “You’re correct,” Hazel said. “I was getting to that.”

  “You said during the groundbreaking.”

  “It wasn’t. You’re quite right. In fact, it was a groundbreaking, and afterwards a blast.” The skill of restraint came with practice. “There was a … an inaugural blast after the groundbreaking, and it was then that these remains were unearthed. We have every reason to believe, from personal items found at the site, that this is Carol Lim.” A small hubbub erupted. She held her hands up. “This has been a very upsetting discovery, but it is the end of a fifty-year mystery. We send our condolences out today to the whole Lim family. We ask you to respect their privacy at this time.”

  “Was she murdered?” asked the reporter in the front row.

  “Um, thank you. If you’ll hold your questions till the end.”

  “Do you have any suspects?” came a voice from deep within the room.

  “This is a startling development, and we don’t have any theories yet about whether it was an accident or if foul play was involved.”

  “Is the discovery of her death linked to the discoveries in Tournament Acres?”

  “Which paper are you from, sir?”

  The reporter stepped forward so she could see him. He was dressed in a suit and tie, holding a notebook and pen in front of himself. There was no way of disguising his beard. “Royal Canadian News,” said Superintendent Martin Scott.

  “Sir, would you hold your questions until the end?”

  “Actually, I had a question for the deputy commissioner.”

  “It can’t wait?”

  Scott stared at her fixedly. His gaze was about ten per cent mischievous. “I don’t think it should wait,” he said.

  Hazel looked over at Willan, but if he knew Martin Scott, it didn’t show on his washed-out features. He tried to smile as he stepped up to the podium. “Yes? Mr.…?”

  “Scott. Can I just offer my condolences on this sad day. It must be very difficult for you all.”

  “Thank you, yes, uh, thank you, Mr.… Scott.”

  “I mean, your new HQ and the whole plaza up there will certainly be delayed and perhaps even revisited, don’t you think? I bet some people are going to lose a lot of money.”

  Hazel began to smile.

  “Yes, that’s a … something that we, as a unit –” Willan fumbled.

  “Deputy Commissioner,” Scott continued, “do you sit on any professional boards as a paid director?”

  “Do I what? What has that to do with what happened to this poor girl?”

  “Do you have a financial interest in the golf development called Tournament Acres?”

  “I’ll just turn this back over to –” Willan looked to Hazel for help, but there was none forthcoming.

  “Where were you, sir, the night of October eighteenth?”

  “What is this?”

  A low hum began to spread through the room. Scott said, “How close were you to the murder victim Oscar Fremont?”

  Willan decided to take the high road. “Sir, whoever you are, this a press conference about a missing girl –”

  “I’m sorry for interrupting. It’s just, seeing as I needed to arrest you for commercial crimes and major fraud, I thought it would be a good place to come find you. Was I wrong?”

  The place erupted. Willan shouted, “Now hold on! Hold on a second!” but Scott was striding toward him and Willan elected to get out of the room fast. Hazel locked eyes with Martin Scott and mouthed What the fuck are you doing? The press was already streaming out after the deputy. Ray said, “Do you want me to stop him?”

  “I’m guessing the superintendent,” she said, pointing to Scott, “will have a small posse outside waiting for Charles.” She saw Scott coming over. “Thanks for hijacking my press conference.”

  “You can have your fields back now. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Are you telling me that that man killed the Fremonts?”

  “Oh no,” Scott replied. “Unless I’m very mistaken, he had someone else do the killing.” He turned to join in what – from the commotion they heard – was certainly Willan’s arrest o
utside the station house, but Hazel grabbed his arm.

  “What has he done?”

  “Let’s just say he’s found novel ways of benefitting from his position.”

  “You still can’t tell me.”

  “No.” He turned sharply to Ray Greene. “Commander.”

  “Superintendent,” he said.

  “Detective Inspector,” Scott said.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be in touch,” she said.

  They watched him walk through the pen, where he was looked upon as a sorcerer of some kind. “Is he allowed to do that?” Ray asked.

  “Do what? Sashay? Have you never seen a big man sashay?”

  “Make an arrest in the middle of a press conference?”

  She pushed the front doors to the station house open and they walked out into the night. Up at the corner of Porter and Main Street, three RCMP cruisers were blocking traffic in all directions, and in the middle of the T-shaped intersection illuminated by street lights, Superintendent Martin Scott was putting cuffs on Chip Willan.

  ] 27 [

  Tuesday evening

  The moment she walked back into her office (still shaking her head in wonder), Melanie Cartwright was standing at her door. “What just happened?”

  “The RCMP arrested Superintendent Willan.”

  “No way! For what?”

  “Maybe just for being an asshole. And also other things. Apparently, we have to wait for the movie.”

  “Not a good week to be Chip Willan, then.”

  “No.” Melanie stood in the doorway, a distant look on her face. “Is there anything else?” Hazel asked.

  “Oh, yeah, this.” She handed Hazel a printout. “DS Wingate sent this.”

  She took it from Cartwright’s hand. Wingate had written across the top: A link? Found it among the bulletins.

  A.R. MERCHANT

  Merchant Rubber Company

  130 Juniper Street

  Mayfair, ON

  September 19, 1952

  Dear Doctor Whitman,

  I am replying to you from our corporate address. Please do not write me at OPIC, which is for newspapermen and fundraising. It’s an office where anyone might open a letter. In any case, it came to me and I destroyed it as per our arrangement. I hope you are not becoming forgetful.