Murder Sees the Light (30 page)

“But if they found her innocent, I don't see—“

“You don't see the nasty old figure of Wayne Trask running across this information. I know Dick Berners knew. Remember Dick and Trask were partners in a mine over in Hastings County. We know that Berners was in the mine on his own to start with, then little by little it passed to Trask. Why? We don't know. Both Adelaide and Trask came from Cornwall, Ontario. The murder of the boyfriend was the biggest thing to hit Cornwall until the St. Lawrence Seaway. When Trask met park ranger Albert McCord's new wife, he knew who she was, and it didn't take him long to figure out how to turn it to his advantage.”

“Are you talking blackmail, Benny?”

“Unless it's changed its name for business reasons. From all accounts, Trask was a greedy bastard. He tricked his pal out of sixty per cent of that mine. Even though the court had found her ‘Not Guilty,' she'd chosen to come up here under a false name. She might have something to lose if the story of her past became public knowledge.”

“What kind of blackmail could Maggie have paid? Do you know what a park ranger makes? Benny, you've gone too far.” We'd come out of the road from the lodge in front of Onions' store in Hatchway. Glover moved the car along Highway 648, past Wilberforce, and on through Tory Hill, through the granite-rimmed road that twisted around the small lakes of the Haliburton Highlands. Summer people were growing on the shores of these lakes, and jay-walking in the main streets of Haliburton and Carnarvon. A few locals stood back in the shade, blinking as we drove by.

“Blackmail isn't just a rich man's game, Harry. The smaller the crook, the more pitiful the mark.”

“Wayne Trask? When was he sober enough?”

“Where did he get the money to pay his drinking bills? He turned the lodge from a paying proposition into near liability fast enough.”

“Keep going. At least it helps pass the time.”

“Where were we? Maggie is living with Albert, her park ranger; Berners is prospecting for a mine to replace the one Trask beat him out of; and Trask has discovered that Maggie is willing to pay a little to keep him quiet.”

“Berners was a character all right,” Glover said, wiping first one then the other driving hand on his trousers. “I don't mean he was a lush like Trask. Lloyd Pearcy told me that when old Dick came up the last time he brought a bottle for him and Trask and they killed it together. Then he went into the bush to die. He weighed less than ninety pounds when we brought him out.”

“Well, I have a lot of respect for him. He was a funny old cuss: telling everybody that he was still looking for a big gold strike, becoming a walking joke, then settling in as an eccentric so he could work the mine. He was patient too: he only blasted during a thunderstorm. He wasn't greedy. Maggie said the other night that he was a better man than anyone knew. That's hinting darkly without dotting all the i's.”

“Smelly old coot. Looked like the devil's breakfast.”

“With some people, you have to go deeper.”

Kids were jumping off the one-lane bridge into the bright water as we went through Dorset. Small cars were pulling large boats up to the cottage. Other cars were packed so high on top with boats, paddles, and suitcases I was afraid they might turn turtle on Highway 35 and block traffic. Huntsville had been ringed by a circular access highway since I'd been there last. At that time there'd been no trick to going to Huntsville: the road went straight to it, then straight through it. Now you see a bunch of franchised restaurants first, and then an assortment of gas stations. When we got to the main street, it was the one I remembered. I even found a sign pointing the way to Camp Northern Pine. Glover drove straight up to the Provincial Police building. The yellow and black sign neither winked nor smiled, it just stood there looking sober. The trees of the neighbourhood always abandon a police station to the undiffused rays of the sun. I couldn't see anything growing outside. The grass looked like pretend grass at a funeral.

Inside, the place smelled of new industrial paint, and the floors were sticky in the heat. Glover talked a minute to a sergeant, who was built like a tenor, with most of his bulk sucked up into his barrel chest. The sergeant made a phone call and then came over to me with Harry.

“This is Sergeant Aubey LePage. He'll go with us to the hospital. Okay?” As if I had a choice. We got back into the car and, three minutes later, entered the hospital through the Emergency door.

Coming into a hospital with two policemen has its advantages: nobody asks you who you want to see, or whether you're aware that visitors are unwelcome until three in the afternoon. There is something about the businesslike tread, the faint rattle of handcuffs, that makes nurses rustle quickly through the door and orderlies push their trollies out of the road. I came behind them like a little cock boat in their wake. The guard sitting outside Patten's door got up, dropping his magazine as the metal legs of the chair squeaked on the terrazzo floor. The three talked for a minute, and no conversation spilled out between those large huddled backs. The door looked open. I tried it, and it opened wider. Inside, I could see an acre of blue sky between white curtains hanging on tracks around the single bed. Patten was propped up in a bed the shape of a wilted “W.” An intravenous bottle was emptying through a tube into his left wrist. Another, fatter tube, came from under the same arm and disappeared into a pump-like machine on the floor. He wasn't asleep, but his eyes were closed when I slipped into the room. They came open at once.

“You son of a bitch,” he hissed through his teeth, but in a friendly manner. He didn't want to bring a guard or orderly, so he joined the plot just to see where it led.

“You blew the whistle on me, fella, and I'm not going to forget it.”

“Don't get yourself excited. I've got some questions, but I don't want you to rip a stitch. His eyes darkened, so I added before he yelled. “Not about you. I want to know about the fire. How did it get started? Was it part of the ritual gone wrong? Was it Malbeck? Aline? What happened?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

“That's right. There's no reason. Only I think that something happened that night that has been on your mind since then. I'll bet on it.” Patten's white hands were playing with the top of the white sheet where the hospital name was printed. He wasn't looking at his hands. He was searching the corners of the room for an answer written there. He came back at last to my face.

“Okay, fella. Something might have happened. But I don't see how it could make any difference.”

“You, Aline, and Malbeck were doing some sort of incantation. Where was Trask, the owner of the lodge?”

“He had passed out in a corner hours ago. All we had to do was put a bottle of cheap rye or rum where he could get it, and he took care of the rest. He didn't care a damn what we did, as long as we kept it private and paid cash.”

“So, he was asleep. The rest of you were performing the rite?”

“Yes. I can see it quite clearly now. I had felt a hand on me that night. I'd been a novice, then I'd taken Aline away from John. But he was still the priest. He called up the coloured fires of Ephron. His strength was palpable there in the octagon. But the words of the incantation had found my mouth, not his. I called by the Keys of Enoch: 'And let there be after the Calls an evocation by the Wand and let the Marrow of the Wand be preserved within the pyramid.' Aline had turned to me, seeing in me, not Malbeck, the true priest of the Evil One. Then John, white with anger, called out in the Enochian language: 'Behold the face of your God, the beginning of Comfort, whose eyes are the brightness of the heavens.…” Then he pointed at the window and screamed. He said he'd seen the Evil One himself through the window. He had pressed his magnificent ugliness against the glass. I'd seen nothing, and I said so. She looked frightened, and left the octagon, sinking down on a couch. John and I went outside to look at the glass where he said he'd seen the face. The window was dark with soot.

“Malbeck lost all control; he began blubbering. I had to pack both of them into his car and drive back to the city. Aline came with me. I never saw Malbeck again. They say he—”

“Yes, I know. So, the fire wasn't started while you were there. But you left your candles and lamps inside the figures on the floor.”

“They could have been knocked over by Trask when he woke up, but that floor was made of massive planks. I doubt whether an upset candle would account for it.”

“Well, I guess that wraps up the easy part.”

“What's the hard part, fella?”

“It's hard because I don't enjoy sticking it to you. I've tried to figure it out six different ways, but this is the only way that it makes sense.” I took hold of the back of the bed and didn't realize my own highly nervous state until I heard the handle of the bed-crank rattle. I moved closer to the chest-high table that straddled the bed. “You knew Dick Berners and Wayne Trask from the old days?”

“Sure. Dick Berners was my uncle. I liked him. But Trask I only knew by sight and kept my distance. I was a kid, remember, Benny. They were both of them bigger than life.”

“When I first talked to you about old Dick, you didn't know that he was dead. You used the present tense. Who told you that he'd died?”

“I don't know. Somebody on the lake, I guess.”

“Did you know that Trask was blackmailing Maggie McCord about her past?”

“I didn't know she had one.”

“You haven't the monopoly, Mr. Patten. To put it briefly, Berners saved Trask from the mill fire and forced Trask to stop pressuring the old lady. The blackmail stopped as long as Berners was alive. Berners liked Maggie enough to show her boy, George, the gold mine he was quietly working. George also knew about how Trask had twisted his mother until she paid up. Now George didn't have much imagination, but he could see that between what he learned from Berners and Trask he would never go hungry.”

“Interesting, but I don't see what it has to do with me, fella.”

“George dabbled in blackmail as well as petty theft. He tried to take a bite out of a couple up at the lodge, but they sent him packing.”

“So? Come to the point, fella?'

“I think he was putting the bite on you, too.”

“You can bloody well think what you like, Benny, but, supposing he did, why couldn't I chase him away like the lodge couple did? I mean, do you imagine I haven't had to deal with extortionists before?”

“It was the Spanish lighter that gave you away. George must have picked it up on one of his visits. I saw it in Dick's cabin. George had been working the mine; you could tell by the recent newspapers and the way some of Dick's books had been torn up to start the stove. George tried to kill me, but by the time I got back to collect my things, the lighter was gone. There can't be too many of those Spanish lighters in Algonquin Park. The story ended when I saw that the lighter had been restored to its rightful owner. You were at the cabin, Mr. Patten. You killed George.”

“Come off it, Benny. Do you think that the only way to deal with a blackmailer is to plant an axe in his head?”

“That's right. There must be hundreds of responses to a nasty fellow like George. That's why I find it so interesting to hear you say that George was killed by being hit with an axe on the head.”

“If that was a trap, I call it pathetic, Benny.”

“Nobody knew how George died. The lid was on tight. You blew it, Norrie. I wondered how Lorca knew about George. You told her. Not very smart. You thought that it would be general knowledge. All the gory details. You were wrong.”

“There's not a crown prosecutor in the country who would come down on me with something as flimsy as that. You'll just get the horse laugh, Benny. It's too pathetic.”

“Oh, I won't say you didn't have a motive. There was that whole satanist business. How would that sit with the elders of the Ultimate Church? How would the senator have reacted to that?”

“Cooperman, you're talking about murder.”

“Yeah, when the stakes are high, it's the only logical step. I mean look at it as a game. Your options were to pay George or tell him to climb a lone pine tree. There sure are enough of them up here. His options were to keep quiet or to tell the world. Paying George doesn't give you a better hold on George than not paying, because whatever you did, George could have still told the world about the great cult leader running around in the altogether trying to impregnate a virgin with the seed of the devil. Now I can't think of too many papers that would tell George to peddle the story to the competition. So, your only real option was to stop George from saying anything permanently.”

“You make it sound like I'm some kind of monster, fella. You know me better than that.”

“You were just in a corner, Norrie, that's all. I mean, George was capable of pulling down everything you'd built. He guessed that it meant a good deal to you, but he underestimated how far you'd go to keep it intact.” Patten stared at me and for a moment we both listened to the hum of the hospital. One of the bottles on a stand near the bed gurgled.

“Look, Norrie, I don't have any more proof than I've told you about. I'm sure it was George and not you who tried to kill me up on Little Crummock.” I shifted haunches and tried to look blank. “Oh well, I don't expect the local cops will believe me about any of this, but you understand that for the record and for my conscience I have to go through the motions. Even if I get laughed at. Hell, getting peppered by Aline kind of evens the score anyway.” I put out my hand towards the bed, and after a momentary wrestling down of qualms, Patten took it and gave it a harder squeeze than I would have expected from a man in his condition.

“So long, fella. Don't take getting whipped so hard. The deck was stacked against you. No witnesses, no fingerprints, and I've got a steel-edged alibi. Lorca and the boys will back me up on that. You see, I couldn't let that dim-witted yokel ruin things for me and just at a time when I needed to keep a very low profile. No hard feelings, Benny?”