The Devil's Making (12 page)

‘Chad, old chap!' It was my friend Frederick, whom I had not seen for weeks but had noticed in the crowd – rubber-necking, I had assumed, in the American phrase.

We exchanged the usual banalities, and agreed to walk down the street together. Frederick seemed bursting with the need to talk. When we were out of earshot of the gravediggers he asked eagerly: ‘How's the investigation coming? Any dramatic news?'

‘How do you know I'm investigating?'

‘Steady on. Everybody knows that. You're investigating for Pemberton. And behind Pemberton, they say, is Begbie the Indian-lover.'

‘That's not so. Pemberton's his own man. And so far as I know he has heard not a word from Begbie. I certainly haven't. But of course, old boy,' I added in a friendlier tone, feeling I had been too abrupt, ‘I can't tell you how the investigation is going.'

‘Then maybe I can help you.' Frederick seemed delighted with himself. ‘I knew the man, you see.'

‘McCrory?'

‘Well, I didn't really know him as a friend. I never even had a private conversation with him. But we met socially.'

‘Where? I must admit I haven't been able to unearth a social life at all.'

‘At Orchard Farm. With the Somervilles. But of course you don't know them. I'm afraid I owe you an apology, old chap, for keeping it quiet. Wanting to keep the field to myself, as it were.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You've never heard of them? I should have thought every man around here had. They are a bunch of “eligibles” of the first class. Three girls, living on a small farm out in Saanich with widowed mother – very touching. Father was an Englishman, killed by Indians almost ten years ago. He'd tried to settle up island, among the Comox, but they did him in. So mother and the girls came down here, with a little money, and bought the farm. They have help from a mixed couple – a nigger and his wife – trying to get an orchard going. You will probably have eaten their apples and pears, without knowing it. They've planted some peaches too, and say they'll do very well here. And strawberries…'

Frederick did rattle on … I interrupted: ‘And the alienist?'

‘He visited them. Lots of people do. On Sundays only, mind you. That's made clear. You never know what you'd see if you turned up unannounced in the middle of the week. They
work,
you see, in the orchards. One chap I met out there, Beaumont, a Marine, teased them that during the week they must put on trousers. But that was received as bad taste. Things can't be
that
difficult. They're fairly prosperous. Well, after all, this isn't England, is it? They can't sit around all day working on samplers in stuffy rooms. Between you and me the mother
is
a bit of a pill – somewhat pretentious. I suspect she married above herself. Exaggeratedly English, though she left home as a girl. Maybe that's why they emigrated, come to think of it, if she was a servant girl or something who married Somerville who had been an army Major. One is often reminded of the rank. The girls were all born over here, down in Oregon Territory, though it wasn't American then, it was ours. I think I'm reaching a certain
entente
with Cordelia, the youngest girl, who's really charming.'

‘And the other sisters are called Goneril and Regan?' I interrupted, to slow down Frederick's flow, although I was becoming resigned to hearing about the alienist in Frederick's own good time.

‘You mean as in
King Lear?
Ha, ha. No. Aemilia and Letitia. Well, you see what I mean, the mother is pretentious. But they're sweet girls. Aemilia is a bit, well, different – rather too serious for me, melancholic even, but very bright. I say, I think she'd be just the ticket for you, old chap. Anyway, you'll see for yourself. The thing is, I feel more secure, as it were, in my courtship of Cordelia. I wasn't telling you about it, you see. I mean, you will have noticed that I sort of disappeared from our Sunday shooting expeditions.'

‘Of course I'd noticed.'

‘It was very petty of me. I met them at church one Sunday morning. St Marks on Cedar Hill Road, which is nearest to them. Frankly, I'd gone out there to see the “eligibles” once I'd heard they went there. Not very devout of me, I'm afraid. But once I'd met them, and been invited, etcetera, I thought if I told you you'd come too, and then you might take a fancy to Cordelia. There were – are still, damn it! – already other rivals. It would have been too much to add you.'

‘Who are these rivals? Was McCrory one of them?'

‘I'm not sure. The part he played was sort of “friend of the family”, trusted advisor, and so on. In fact he hadn't been there many more times than I. I believe he only arrived in town back in the Fall – or Autumn as I suppose you still say, but I like the word Fall don't you?'

I shook my head, trying not to smile. ‘Can't you see I want to know more about McCrory?' I said. ‘Please tell me more about him.'

‘All right. He was a bit of a swell, very sure of himself, conceited. Most definitely a ladies' man, I'd say. The old mother – well, she's not that old, quite well preserved in fact – loved to fuss around him. He would turn the pages at the piano for the girls. He would discuss varieties of apples, the necessary climate for peaches. A know-all. Walking encyclopedia. You know the type, from Oxford, although by our standards he was awfully brash. Oh yes, another act of his was “the Southern gentleman”, displaced by the war, with some implication of the family mansion being razed by the invading Yankee barbarians. But on the other hand a Southerner with a conscience: the Negro our brother, all men the same under the skin, his understanding of his Celestial servant…'

‘Lee went out there too?'

‘Sometimes. But he would spend the afternoon chatting with the Joneses in their quarters – quite a multicoloured group that was. They have a picaninny of their own, who is coffee-coloured, and an Indian boy who is
said
to be adopted but I somehow imagine is the result of a youthful indiscretion by Mrs Jones.'

‘Really, Frederick, there is no need to be so cynical.' Some of the ‘old' me was still alive.

‘These things do happen. In England too, as you know very well. How many children in your father's parish were conceived out of wedlock? At least half, I'd bet.'

‘Admittedly. My father once calculated it to be two out of three of the first-borns, though almost always their parents married once the woman was “enceinte”. But that is by the by.'

‘All right. McCrory. I didn't like him much, as you can gather. Perhaps jealousy, because he could make the girls laugh, and keep their interest with travel stories. I don't think he had actually travelled much but he'd read a lot, about exotic customs in far off lands, women wearing discs in their noses, and so on. Then he had one of those velvety baritone voices with which he sang Negro spirituals one moment and Down in Dixie the next.'

‘Did he talk about medicine?'

‘He was rather coy about his work, I thought. He said an alienist saw all kinds of patients with nervous troubles, the vapours, and “incipient dementia praecox” whatever that means to medical men – and so he couldn't talk about it. Another of his acts: the mystery man.'

‘How did he meet these people, the Somervilles?'

‘No idea. You'll have to ask the old girl – I mean Mrs Somerville. Well, I'll tell you of a suspicion I have. I
did
find myself wondering if Mrs S was a patient of his.'

‘Why?'

‘There was a certain indefinable familiarity between them. She would pet him, make sure his tea was hot, and so forth.'

‘I didn't know patients petted their doctors. Or was she being motherly? What's the difference in their ages?'

‘She, I'd say, is in her forties. I know Aemilia, the eldest girl, is twenty-four. Cordelia is only eighteen.'

‘And McCrory?'

‘You don't even know his age?'

‘No.' I was annoyed. I had in fact sent a letter to the University of Virginia, and a telegraph to the San Francisco police to which I had not yet received a reply. ‘I only saw him dead.'

‘Must have been ghastly. At any rate I'd say he was about 35. A little young for Mrs S, if that's what you're thinking.'

‘Who else attended these Sunday afternoon gatherings when McCrory was there?'

‘The curate from St Mark's – Firbanks. He was sweet on Cordelia but not a great worry to me. A cold fish. Now more interested in Letitia. Similarly with Beaumont, the Marine. He's a Lieutenant with the detachment on San Juan Island – some of them come over to town on weekends. He's sort of switched to Letitia too.'

‘I see. They move up the line, once they've been displaced by you.'

‘The girls are all pretty, though of course I think Cordy's prettiest. Aemilia is a bit intimidating – almost a bluestocking. She's very good looking, though.'

‘Who else visits?'

‘Mr Quattrini. You'll know him.'

‘Yes. The food wholesaler. I've met his son-in-law, Jeroboam. He must be well into middle age.'

‘I forgot to mention him in the list of suitors earlier. He must be secretly delighted. He really
is
courting Mrs Somerville. There are perhaps other admirers of Mrs S. Well, she's not really that old at forty five or thereabouts, is she? Such as Nally, of the Mechanics' Institute. I've seen him there twice. A local farmer, Sutherland, turned up with his wife so he's not after Mrs S. He has a gangling son who gapes at Cordelia. Then there's John Haddock, the schoolteacher. He talks books with Aemilia. But don't worry, he's married to a little woman just as mousy as himself. They seemed pretty thick with McCrory actually. But I believe they've stopped coming to the farm. I haven't seen them since February.'

‘How many of these people were acquaintances of McCrory away from this Orchard Farm?'

‘No idea. Now look, Chad, the trick is this. The day after tomorrow is Sunday. You can come with me out to St Mark's. Then I'll introduce you to them. Bring a bottle of ale and a sandwich and you and I shall have a picnic lunch, then stroll over there and call on them. Of course they'll be in an atmosphere of gloom because of McCrory's demise. But that should be helpful to you. Only you mustn't interrogate them.'

‘Thank you. It's a good idea. I'll be discreet but I'll ask a few questions of Mrs Somerville if I can have a word with her alone. Where is Orchard Farm?'

‘About a mile from St Mark's, in the valley behind Mount Douglas.'

‘Ah yes.' Two or three miles from Cormorant Point, blocked from it by the mountain. ‘Indians?' I said. ‘Did McCrory say anything about them?'

‘Nothing whatsoever. Odd, when you think of it. From what I read in the paper, he had visited them frequently. But perhaps he was being sensitive. I mean with Major Somerville having been killed by them, and probably scalped or whatever. I believe Indians don't just kill people, they chop them up. What
did
they do to McCrory? I mean, I didn't like the chap, but all the same … What does “horribly mutilated”, as the paper put it, really mean?'

‘It means someone stabbed him, slashed him, tried to bite out chunks of his flesh, chopped his member off, and stuck it in his mouth.'

‘Oh, I say. Not really.'

‘Really.'

‘Well, I'm glad you have him in jail.'

‘I don't think we do,' I said hopefully.

8

‘Christians awake! Salute the Happy Morn!'

It was, after all, not long after Easter. The hymn brought me back to the stone church in Wiltshire: the stained glass window I would look at of St George with a lance, his foot on the neck of the Dragon, scaly as a fish; the pew ends of oak with their carvings of lions, bunches of grapes, and the leafy face of Jack-in-the-Green; the church's six bells, each with a name – Great Tom, Jeremy, Little Isaac and the others, acquired over five centuries; my father in a state of innocent elation like mine now as I sang the hymn. I had given up the church, yet no music could stir me like church music. I had not gone to church in Victoria, not even at Christmas, which I had spent in the jail relieving Seeds who had made an increasingly merry tour of various friends, perhaps to forget the wife in San Francisco. Now I was in something more like a barn than a church, named after Mark, the youngest of the Apostles, with a smell of newly planed wood and fresh paint, six gothic windows on each side and a large triple one behind the altar, all of plain white glass. Yet Parson Coulter's robes of Ascension white were the same as my father's, and the white of the altar cloth no different from home. Coulter's sermon had been a typical English one, about charitable obligations, and delivered, like the usual prayers for the Queen, in an English voice. Although the alienist's demise was the talk of Victoria and had occurred less than two miles from this church, the parson was too much of a gentleman to give a sermon on anything to do with the sixth commandment or the revenge of the Lord against the Moabites. There was even the typical English diversion of young men and women on display, although not so many young women. There were not more than seventy people at the service, and most of them were married couples and their small, restless children, with few old people, and about a dozen young men staring at the main attraction of the service: the ‘eligible' Somervilles.

The experienced Frederick had chosen an angle from which the girls and the mother could be seen in a row, from the side and slightly behind. Directly across the aisle was the delicious sight of hair curling just below the bonnet above a pink cheek, mouth opened delicately to sing, eyes under long lashes cast down modestly at the hymn book. Aemilia, the eldest, was the nearest to me, then came Letitia, Cordelia (Frederick whispered to me that this was she), and the mother. They were not exactly like peas in a pod, but the resemblance was striking. All three girls had the fine turned-up nose and chocolate-box pretty look which the mother, although stouter and with a plumper face, still possessed. I could not see much of their eyes, which might have provided more distinction between them. Aemilia, however, stood out – and literally, I noticed, stood at a slight distance from the others, even more than that required by her crinoline. She was taller, her face was thinner and less conventionally pretty, and what I could see of her hair was a chestnut brown not unlike my own, whereas her sisters and mothers were more fair. They were dressed elegantly but not, by the looks of it, too expensively. Not having had sisters, I knew little of such things.