Death in the Garden City

by Jeanne M. Dams

  She managed to smile at that, so I sat down with my own drink and began. ‘You want to know what happened.’ I made it a question.

  ‘I think I need to know.’

  ‘Yes. Well, my own knowledge is sketchy in the extreme. Alan will probably tell us more when he gets home. You know we went to the gala.’ I began to describe the evening to her. ‘It all went exactly as I had anticipated. Pretty boring, to tell the truth, especially since we didn’t know anybody. Your Mrs – Ms? – Underwood is delightful. How do you know her? If it’s not a rude question. I mean, you don’t move in quite those circles, do you?’

  ‘Hardly. Not since I left Paul. No, Pat Underwood is one of the deep-pocket ladies, but she’s unusual in that she really cares about the causes she supports. She’s a big patron of the library, but she doesn’t just hand out largesse. She comes to our events. She takes home bagfuls of books and somehow finds the time to read them, and argue about them. I think she’s going to buy us the new computer system we need, but first she has to find out all about it, why we need it, what we plan to do with it, why we should spend money on that instead of new books.’

  ‘Hmm. Sounds like a bit of a nuisance.’

  ‘She would be if she were just being obstructionist, or trying to show off, but it isn’t that. She cares passionately about the welfare of the library and wants to make sure we’re not just jumping on some faddish bandwagon.’

  ‘Or,’ I said, taking another sip of my bourbon, ‘giving in to some high-pressure salesmanship?’

  ‘I begin to understand why John’s niece thinks so highly of you. Yes, of course you’re right. Paul’s company stands to make a sweet little profit on the new system, and of course he wasn’t shy about pointing out the advantages of dealing with a local concern. Easier to negotiate face to face, support the local economy, make sure the system is tailored exactly to our needs. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.’

  ‘And it all sounds reasonable.’

  ‘Yes. Paul always does sound reasonable on the surface. Did.’ She suddenly found a need to hide behind her glass. I waited.

  She found a tissue in her purse and blew her nose. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You’re not English, to be embarrassed at any display of emotion, so come off it.’ I didn’t know her well enough to be that bossy, but I thought perhaps it would do her more good than sympathy. Which I wasn’t sure was appropriate anyway.

  ‘The trouble is, I’m not sure what emotion I’m feeling. Sorrow, relief, fury …’

  ‘Or perhaps fear? Someone killed Paul. We don’t know who, we don’t know why. Speaking for myself, fear is certainly a part of my reaction. I don’t know what’s happening, and one always fears the unknown.’

  Amy nodded slowly. ‘Yes. In my own mind, I was quite sure Paul was somehow behind all the terrible things that were happening. And now he’s a victim, and I don’t know what to think. Go on telling me what you know. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’

  ‘I can’t remember where I left off.’

  ‘You’d met Pat.’

  ‘Oh, yes. And she was very nice to us, and introduced us to people, including the chairman – chairwoman – of the evening.’ I hesitated, not sure how much Amy knew about Alexis.

  ‘The Dragon Lady?’

  ‘Is that what you call her? Alan and I have nicknamed her the Siren.’

  ‘Also appropriate. That describes her fatal allure. I concentrate rather on her talent for destruction.’

  I decided I didn’t need to tiptoe. ‘She isn’t very popular, it seems.’

  ‘Not among women. In fact I don’t know a single woman who would choose to be in the same room with her. Men flock to her, of course.’

  ‘There seem to be a few sensible ones. Alan, for one, doesn’t care for predatory females.’

  ‘Nor does John. But they’re the rare exceptions. She goes around playing Lady Bountiful and oozing charm all over the place, and they just fall over like ninepins. I can almost – could almost, I still can’t get the tenses right – could almost feel sorry for Paul. She was leading him a merry dance, and he simply couldn’t see that she was using him. He actually bragged to me about how she couldn’t resist his appeal.’

  ‘But why? I mean, she seems to have quite enough money of her own. At least she gives it away lavishly. What does she need of his? Or is it just the thrill of the chase? Ensnare one more poor helpless male.’

  ‘Oh, no. It isn’t the money. She only goes after men who can get her what she wants. In one case it was control of a company. That little affair broke up a happy marriage, and incidentally increased the Dragon Lady’s wealth a great deal. But that wasn’t the object of the game. She wanted that company. She craves power, and doesn’t care who she hurts to get it. She wants Paul so she can get at the ultimate power. He intends – intended – to be Prime Minister one day, and she meant to ride right along with him to Ottawa. Well, now she won’t get that wish, will she? Unless she can find some other likely horse.’

  ‘Would he actually have stood a chance in politics?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He made a lot of friends over the years, pulled a lot of strings for them. He could call in those favours. He’d been funnelling donations to the Tories for a long time, had contacts in Ottawa. And he was well-liked in Victoria, again thanks to all the glad-handing and the under-the-table deals. He could easily have been elected MP, and from there it’s only a small step to a cabinet seat and then the head of the party.’

  ‘I see.’ Canada, in some ways, had begun to seem so much like America to me that I had been thinking of the path to power in my homeland: local politics, state office, the legislature, the presidency. Now I realized that in the Parliamentary system, things worked the way they did in England. Get elected to Parliament, become more and more important in your party, and eventually when you head that party, and it attains a majority, bingo, there you are in Number Ten Downing Street or whatever the Canadian equivalent is.

  ‘Do you suppose that’s why he’s dead? Someone didn’t want him to succeed in politics, didn’t want it so badly that it was worth killing him?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. But if he had lots of friends in high places, he had lots of enemies, too. Without even thinking about it, I could list off ten people who hated him like poison. Twenty. More.’

  ‘You may need to do just that.’ Alan had entered the room unheard. ‘The police would find that an interesting list.’ He picked up the bottle of whisky and poured some for himself. ‘It’s early days yet, of course, but so far it seems they haven’t the slightest idea who killed him.’

  EIGHTEEN

  I stood up, wobbled a little, and realized I’d been drinking on an empty stomach. Not a brilliant thing to do.

  ‘I’m going to figure out something to eat,’ I said firmly. ‘We didn’t have supper. I was counting on that lavish buffet that we never got to taste. There must be something edible in the kitchen.’

  ‘There’s a great pizza place not far from here,’ Amy suggested. ‘And they deliver.’

  ‘Heaven smiles,’ I said devoutly. ‘Why don’t you order for us? You know what they do best. We like everything, even anchovies.’

  ‘Better order quite a lot,’ Alan suggested. ‘John’s coming over when he can get away.’

  I opened a can of nuts to stave off starvation until our meal arrived and poured water for everyone, and we sat down at the kitchen table. Somehow just Alan’s presence had changed the atmosphere. Or maybe it was turning on the lights; evening had settled in without my noticing, and the room had grown dim.

  ‘So,’ I said, reaching for a handful of cashews, ‘tell all.’

  Alan ran a hand down the back of his neck. ‘Not a great deal to tell. I tried not to get in the way while the scene-of-crime people did their work. It was quite frustrating for them, of course. Hartford was killed, or at least was found, in a side passage of a corridor leading to a service area. The c
aterers had been back and forth all evening, probably twenty people walking everywhere and touching everything. All their shoes had to be examined; all their fingerprints taken. Meanwhile they needed to deal with the uneaten food, salvaging what they could. They couldn’t throw anything out, because until the autopsy we won’t know the cause of death.’

  ‘But I thought …’ I looked at Amy and shut up.

  ‘Yes, there was the one obvious injury. But one can never assume that the obvious is all there is.’

  ‘What injury?’ Amy’s face was pale again.

  ‘I don’t think you want to know,’ I began.

  She looked determined. ‘Dorothy, I’m not a child. Many things about Paul’s life were not pretty. It doesn’t entirely surprise me that his death was ugly, which is what you’re implying. I need to know. How did he die?’

  ‘Apparently,’ said Alan in his driest police manner, ‘from a deep wound inflicted with a knife.’

  ‘He was stabbed.’ She spoke with no expression whatever.

  ‘Yes. We will not be certain of the cause of death, as I said, until the medical examiner has done his work.’

  Amy drank water. ‘And how soon will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends partly on the backlog of work. But as the deceased was an important figure in the community, they’ll probably try to get it done promptly.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll find any other cause of death,’ said Amy after another drink of water. ‘For a man as cordially hated as Paul Hartford, somehow being stabbed to death seems a predictable end.’

  Well, that was a shocking remark, or it would have been if we had known less about the man. In the circumstances we let it pass. A terrible epitaph, but quite possibly a true one.

  John and the pizza arrived at the same moment. Alan got some beer out of the fridge and the gathering took on the air of a rather macabre party. There was too much to say, but as none of it made pleasant conversation, there were long stretches of silence, punctuated by trivialities. Finally John set his beer glass down with a thump.

  ‘Amy, it’s time we spoke the truth. I’m not having any nonsense about speaking no ill of the dead. The fact that he’s dead doesn’t change the fact that the man was a bastard. He treated you and Sue unforgivably. He was a liar, a cheat, an immoral man in every possible sense of the word, and we’re all better off now that he’s gone. If the various police forces wish my help, I will cooperate in trying to track down his killer, but only because a murderer must not be allowed to go free. For the sake of an ordered society, not in this case for the sake of justice. Alan, you’re free of any obligation you think you might owe me. Free to go straight back to England if you want – and I wouldn’t blame you.’

  Alan glanced at me. I shook my head, and he cleared his throat. ‘John, I agree with every word you’ve said, but Dorothy and I have had this out. We can’t leave you with this chaos to resolve, if for no other reason than our love for the beauty we’ve found here. The ugliness must be swept away. If we can help with that chore, we’re yours to command.’

  ‘Besides that, we’re just barely getting to know you two,’ I put in. ‘When the mess is cleared away, we can have some fun before we have to leave. Now eat up. This pizza is too good to waste, and I don’t like it cold the way I used to when I was young.’

  Now that we didn’t have to keep up the pretence of emotions we didn’t feel, we could get down to business. ‘Amy, you probably knew him better than anyone else in this room. Do you have any idea who might have done this?’

  She sighed. ‘Not seriously. I know plenty of people who hated him. I mean, really hated him, not just the dislike we usually mean by that word. Some, like John, hated him on my account.’

  ‘But on my own, as well,’ he said.

  ‘You said that before, John.’ I looked at him intently. ‘You never explained.’

  ‘No, because it sounds petty.’

  ‘It was not petty! Each individual incident, maybe, but as a whole, no. Let me explain, John.’ She took his hand. ‘When John and I first began to take an interest in each other, of course Paul knew about it. He had his spies everywhere, and they kept a close eye on me. Paul was trying to find a reason to take Sue away from me. Even though we’d been divorced quite a while by that time, he was obsessed with the idea. I had something that belonged to him, you see, and that enraged him.’

  ‘He also wanted to make damn sure she wasn’t enjoying herself.’ John finished his beer. Alan poured him another. ‘He never accepted the divorce settlement. He wanted to see her begging on the streets. So seeing us going about to plays and concerts and nice restaurants fed his fury, and he did everything he could to end our relationship.’

  Amy took up the narrative. ‘First it was flat tyres. A series of them. Every time John took me someplace, we would come back to the car to find at least one tyre slashed. We started walking or taking cabs, so he changed his tactics and tried to catch us in compromising situations.’

  I choked on my beer. ‘In this day and age? What could you possibly have done that would be labelled “compromising”? You’re both mature adults, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Yes, but he wanted to prove me an unfit mother, you see, so he could get custody of Sue. She was still in her late teens then. Barely, but Paul could have made capital out of that. Setting a bad example for an impressionable young girl – you can write the script.’

  ‘So until Sue was old enough to be her own custodian, legally, Amy and I took great care never to be alone together, anywhere.’

  Amy giggled. ‘It was like being a teenager again. We travelled with the pack. I did so long to spend time with John, just talking and really getting to know him, but we didn’t dare.’

  ‘That’s not all I longed for, believe me!’ said John, and we all laughed. I was remembering the days before Alan and I married, when only his position in the community kept us from … well, the young always think they’re the only ones who know about passion. They’re so wrong.

  ‘I know, it sounds funny now,’ John continued. ‘It wasn’t funny then. And when none of his juvenile tactics drove us apart, he started a smear campaign. I was still with the Mounties then, and my superior officers started getting anonymous letters accusing me of all sorts of things, from minor dereliction of duty to serious corruption.’

  ‘They came to the library, too. Nobody took them seriously. Our co-workers knew us too well to believe the claims, but in John’s case, the RCMP had to make at least a cursory investigation.’

  ‘And that was infuriating,’ he said, ‘because it took precious staff time away from real problems. In the end I decided to resign, to free the department from the nuisance. They didn’t want me to.’

  ‘No, his boss said he was too valuable to lose, and I told him it would look like an admission of guilt. So for quite a while it looked as if Paul had us exactly where he wanted us.’

  Alan shook his head in sympathy. ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Stay on and keep the department in turmoil, or resign and let Hartford go to the tabloids with “No smoke without fire”. Clever villain, I’ll give him that.’

  ‘But not quite clever enough,’ John said with satisfaction. ‘We knew, of course, who was behind all the persecution, but we hadn’t been able to prove it. No witnesses, no fingerprints, no DNA left behind. It was a surgically clean operation, until one hot summer day. It can get hot here, and that day there’d been a thunderstorm, and we lost power in parts of the city for almost a whole day. One of the places affected was the AIntell building. No air conditioning.’

  ‘Paul always did hate the heat,’ Amy chimed in. ‘His temper was never under very good control, but when he was too warm he lost it completely, raged and stomped about – which of course made it worse.’

  ‘So that day,’ said John with satisfaction, ‘that day he sat down and wrote an especially vitriolic letter about me. Had to write it by hand, since his computers were down. Of course that made him furious, too.
His whole life revolved around the world of technology, so he took it as a personal insult when his machines wouldn’t respond to his bidding.’

  ‘Laptops?’ I ventured. ‘Mobile phones?’

  ‘Of course. But he’d been out of town for several days, and all his devices needed recharging – and of course there was no power to do that.’ John was laughing by now.

  ‘“How all occasions do inform against me!”’ I quoted. ‘Here he was, raging furiously, and unable to do much about it. One can almost feel sorry for the man.’

  ‘But not quite, although in this case his rage was his undoing. He wrote the letter, wrote it with a pen held in a sweaty hand, and instead of giving it to one of his lackeys to hand-deliver, as usual, he put it in an envelope and sealed it and stamped it and mailed it to the RCMP.’

  Alan got it first. ‘So when it arrived, it was positively covered with his fingerprints and sweat and saliva.’

  ‘Enough DNA to convict him of any crime. In this case, of libel.’

  I frowned. ‘Is it libel if it isn’t published?’

  ‘It was published, Dorothy, in the sense of being written and disseminated. A defamatory statement doesn’t have to appear in print to be libel. So of course the crime lab people couldn’t wait to run the tests, and as soon as we had the results we knew we’d get, my lawyer went and had a little chat with Hartford.’

  ‘You sued him?’ Alan asked.

  ‘No, we blackmailed him,’ Amy replied. ‘Our lawyer told him that we had sufficient proof of his “persistent, pernicious defamation” and that we would refrain from legal action only if he ceased his persecution. He tried to bluff, saying we wouldn’t dare make the letters public, but Mike, our lawyer, convinced him that he would be hurt more than we would if his libellous actions became known. “Your spiteful, childish accusations” Mike called them. And really, they were couched in language that would have shocked Paul’s many admirers. He refused to admit to anything, of course, but then his lawyer told him he’d better back off. And he did. There were no more letters, and he was always sickeningly sweet when he ran into either of us in public. I know he hated us even more because he’d lost again: the divorce settlement and Sue, and now this. I’m sure he was planning something diabolical, but …’