Murder Sees the Light (26 page)

“That was when the Harbisons bought the lodge?”

“Yes, I guess it was. Flora'd been cut out of Trask's will. At least that's what he kept telling everybody. But he didn't ever bother to get a lawyer to make the change. Yes, Flora sold the place, and these new people picked it up real reasonable. Old Wayne'd let it go to wrack and ruin. He got some city crazies up here with loud music. You wouldn't believe the strange goings-on. The only fishermen that ever came up then were those mostly interested in fishing the stopper out of a bottle.” He was pulling at his earlobes now and trying to whistle a double note between his teeth, while looking up at the beams of the ceiling. “Chestnut,” he said, hoisting a thumb in the direction of the beams. “Discourages spiders.”

“I'll make a note,” I said.

“You still haven't told me why you think Trask was murdered.”

“That's right, I haven't. Because I don't know who did it. When I do, I'll make sure you're the first to hear. If that's fine with you.”

“Help yourself.” He made another broad gesture, sailing his hand, palm upward, half-way across the room.

“Thanks. I'll do that. But first, I've got to return some dry clothes to Norrie Edgar, the man who rescued me from a watery grave.

“Nobody does things right the first time any more.”

“Somebody's tried to tamper with Edgar's longevity, too. Have you thought that he might be mixed up in this whole mess?”

“Thanks, Benny. I'll put six men on it.” He laughed. Maybe it was a good feeling for a moment talking like a big-city cop.

“Will you still be here when I get back?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If I'm not, you know how to reach me.” I shook my head and made my way out of the Annex into the bright light of day.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Well, look who's here! It's the fisherman delivered from the flood! Good to see you, Benny. How are you, fella?” Patten placed a round white stone over the pile of paper he was writing on and left the table under the cedars to shake my hand. “Come up to the house.” He was no longer wearing a bandage. That made me feel a little foolish.

“I brought back the clothes you lent me.”

“‘… And David returned to bless his household.' Not at all necessary. I told you to keep them. Remember Proverbs: ‘… and the borrower is servant to the lender.' Now we are back on an equal footing, Benny.” He led the way up the rustic steps to the back door of the cabin. Once Patten knew your name, he made sure he used it on you early in every conversation. It was a how-to-winfriends-and-influence-people sort of trick. But he had what my Grantham friend, Frank Bushmill, called a heavy hand with the vocative. Thinking about it, I realized that Patten had built up most of his empire on a firstname basis. His was a multi-million-dollar business and all run by Bills and Charleys and Petes and Joes.

He was wearing a blue velvet sweatshirt over white chino slacks. His sunglasses and beard obliterated the familiar television face. He led me into the big sitting room of the cottage with its huge fieldstone fireplace. “You remember Lorca, Benny? I'm sure Lorca remembers you. Lorca has such a good memory for some things.”

Lorca was sitting in a wicker chair with her back to the unlit fire. She raised her head more at Norrie's comment than as a welcome to me. She was playing it cool. Her polite smile's exaggeration was a measure of our special knowledge. She had a photograph album open across her knees. Nothing like spending a sunny morning looking at pictures. I put my bundle of clothes down and immediately felt less like a pedlar. Patten put his arm on a chair across from Lorca, and I took it.

“Lorca here's just found the senator's picture album, Benny. Wonderful thing about cottages is that they're as close to time machines as we'll likely see this side of paradise. This place has its period written all over it from the kitchen tableware to the reading that's been left behind. Lorca,” he said, in a voice like a drawn wire, “we have a guest.” Lorca slapped the heavy halves of the album together and got up at once. She looked to be beyond rebellion.

“Would you like some fruit juice, Mr. Cooperman? Or some coffee? It wouldn't be any trouble.”

“Juice'll be fine,” I said. I couldn't see that there had been much conversation between these two recently.

Norrie and Lorca viewed each other with suspicion and contempt. Lorca was there because there was no escape, as far as Patten could see, and because of “certain favours” which bound them together. She returned from the kitchen and handed me a chilled glass of what tasted like prune juice.

“Happy days!” I said and caught Lorca in a subversive smile. I sipped in silence for a few minutes. Then I thought of a possible line of attack. “I spent the morning talking to the policeman from Whitney. Has he been up here bothering you?”

“Yes. About that Indian guide and the son of the fat woman down the road. Yes, that was too bad. I was sorry I couldn't help him.”

“The Indian guide was Aeneas DuFond, the fat woman's son was George McCord. Stop playing games with me, Mr. Patten. I'm only half as dumb as I look. You knew both of them, but you told the cops you knew nothing about either one of them.”

“That's easy. I just can't afford to get involved.”

“Whether you like it or not, you're involved. Aeneas's death could have had something to do with his visit here the other day.”

Patten dug in his pocket for a cheroot. He bit the end off and spat the tobacco where the winter mice would find it. His thumb spun the wheel of his Spanish lighter and he blew on the end of the orange rope until it glowed. I fished out a smoke myself and let him light it for me.

“Poor bastards,” said Lorca.

“They rest with the Lord, Lorca. Mind your mouth.”

“George McCord had been working an illegal mine up in the bush. It looks as though Aeneas found a sample from the mine and George found out about it.”

“We keep to ourselves up here, Benny. Isn't that right, Lorca?” Patten made it sound luxurious, even depraved.

“I hadn't noticed. I've been getting ready to watch the leaves change colour.”

“Before he was killed, Aeneas brought you a sample from the mine. He wanted it assayed.”

“Do you sleep with your ear against the front door, Benny, or what? I don't like to feel spied on and betrayed.” Patten was beginning to look ugly. His brows began to crowd together the way they did on television when he was about to make his prime-time pitch of the week. “We never did clear up the little matter of why you've been hanging around here, have we, fella?”

“He saved your life, Norrie,” Lorca said with the big album of photographs open again across her knees.

“That, my dear Lorca, could have been a device to win my trust. Oh, it's been done before. Greedy people trying to stop God's work.”

“I told you before, it's not my secret. I don't care who you think I am or what you think I'm doing. I found out who chopped holes in my boat. Maybe you think that has nothing to do with you. Well, it does. Maybe it has something to do with George McCord's or Aeneas's death. I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out, and I'm not going to be put off by your worries about being spied on or betrayed.” I let that sink in for a minute and watched the lines around Patten's mouth deepen. Even Lorca began looking like a mother cat standing off the brutish hound to protect her kittens. Little Belgium in an old poster. The album had slipped out of her lap and landed at her sandalled feet. She reminded me of the wife or girlfriend who turns to stare angrily at you when you honk at her old man for not paying attention to the bright green of the newly changed traffic light.

“Benny, you can't talk to Norrie like that. He's got nothing to do with these murders. Can you imagine him taking an axe and killing someone with it? It's crazy. People don't do such things.”

“Lorca, shut up and clear out of here. Benny and I have to talk.” Patten hadn't bothered to look at Lorca as he said this.

“But, Norrie …”

“Just clear out, damn it!” She cleared out, giving Patten a wounded look that he didn't even see. “Okay, fella, it's time to have that talk we've been promising ourselves. I want to know you. I will not have mine enemy triumph over me.” Patten moistened his lips with a tongue that darted from right to left like a pink mouse. I took a breath and wondered what I was going to say next.

“Let's go back to that mine.”

“Dead end, Benny. What the hell use have I got for a penny-ante gold mine? Do you know approximately what the net worth of the Ultimate Church is today? Can you see me scraping up ore like some filthy sourdough in the movies?”

“I agree. Nowadays a small-time gold mine is outside your interest. But that's only since you made it in the big time. What about those summers years ago? You had a cousin, or was it an uncle, in the bush, a prospector named Berners. A gold mine, however small, could make a big difference to a trapper like old Dick.” I waited for some response. I waited again.

“You're doing the talking. I have nothing to say on that score.”

“All right, let's start someplace else. What about Aline Barbour?” Whoever said that names can never hurt you missed my glimpse of Patten when I caught him with that missile. He winced like I'd put too much vinegar on his french fries. “I know you know her. I know she was very important to you at one time. And I can guess that she isn't tepid about you. She's been watching this house, Norrie. She's up to no good.”

Here Lorca burst into the room again looking daggers at me and spitting bullets. “Watch out for him, Norrie. I'll bet they're in this together. I saw them both. He may deny it, but I saw them plotting …” Norrie recovered quickly from the shock of the interruption and slapped Lorca across the face. Her tan drained away, at least the blood under it did, leaving a grey, angry face.

“Norrie, don't ever do that to me! You hear? Not ever again. I owe you plenty, but I'm not putting up with being slapped around. You don't touch me again!”

“I'll pitch you, woman, out of my house and bolt the door! Get out and leave us!” He grabbed Lorca by the arm and helped propel her out of the room. He didn't look to see where she landed or even if she landed.

“Cooperman, what is your game? Are you a friend of Aline? What does she want with me? Let the dead bury the dead. She pursues me like an unclean spirit. I uplifted her once. I sent away the scarlet-coloured beast. What does she want of me?”

“There's a name that pulls you together—John Malbeck.”

“Oh, God! He meant nothing to Aline. She may have thought she loved him, but it was deception. Malbeck didn't love her. But I looked after her. I kept her for five years. She was closer to me than that blasphemous child in there.” He sank down into one of the big rustic chairs facing the fireplace and looked into the black hole in front of him as though it were bright with flames and heat.

“You've been set on me, Cooperman. I'm ringed about with spies. I regret nothing in my treatment of Aline Barbour. We shared bad times and good. Malbeck's death had nothing to do with me. He was weak, he wanted sensation. He was too old to hold her.

“Tell me about it. Maybe I can understand.”

“You? You'd better just close the door behind you and never come back. Goodbye, Cooperman. Get out.” He said the words, but he didn't pack enough meat into them. They hit me like balloons the morning after a party, half deflated and slipped from their place of honour. I held my ground and waited.

“I don't suppose you've ever heard of the ritual known as the Golden Dawn? It doesn't matter. It was practised by such people as Aleister Crowley, the man who called himself ‘The Beast 666.' Malbeck was a Canadian disciple. Before Crowley died he had acquired a large North American following. For a short while there was a Thanet-worshipping cult in Ibiza with Canadians involved. Like all cults, this group splintered and fragmented. It drew its strength from Crowley but later disavowed any connection with him. It was called
Ordo Templi Orientis.
They lifted that from Crowley. They practiced ritual magic of a baldly sexual kind. The leader, or chief magician, was a tax auditor for the federal government living in Toronto. He was the leader until things got out of hand.”

“John Malbeck?”

“Yes. He killed himself after his mistress, a partner in the ritual, turned her affections towards the third member of the ritual team. They acted out ritually the impregnation of the Scarlet Woman, Revelation XVII. It had to do with the Mother of Harlots, the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications. The purpose of the rite was to spawn the Evil One himself on the body of the Bitch of Babylon. The rituals were long and elaborate: incantations, talisman-waving, with music. The full rite took four days. And in the centre of the altar was the beautiful raven-haired beauty called Aline Barbour. At first glance she saw only her man, but then she looked again and saw a young man without experience, without guile or deceitfulness. She looked and she saw me.” He looked into the ghosts of the fireplace for a long time. Then he turned and added:

“The ritual was written up in the occult journal called
Agape.
I'm sorry, but I no longer have a copy. Of course the location was never disclosed. After Malbeck's strange suicide, the life went out of the Canadian group for several years. I left the country. I cleansed myself. I washed myself in the stream of repentance. I changed my life. I never saw any of those people again.”

“You say ‘strange suicide'? I'll bite; how did he do it?”

“Malbeck had no starch. He said I'd cheated him.
Cheated
him. Do you think he could have built what I've built? He was a little man in every way; not one mark of originality or calling. I despise the man.”