The Devil's Making (36 page)

With the point of her parasol she began indicating wild flowers growing in cracks between the rocks – stonecrop, saxifrage; and in the grass – ragged starflower, blue camas, columbine, and pink and white fawn lilies. Her manner was light, but conventional. I knew that in this kind of relationship, of interested young man and modest young lady, it might take months before any serious conversation was possible. I was reconciled to this, and now even welcomed it as a way of raising myself above the level of my passions for Lukswaas, which seemed to lurk like hidden animals in the dark forest hundreds of feet below and behind me, invisible behind the slope, crowned with dwarf oaks, against which I was sprawled.

The other young ladies and the men were invisible too, although I could occasionally hear Frederick's voice. But now Aemilia began to quiz me, gently but firmly, about why I had joined the police.

I explained about my letter of reference to Mr Justice Begbie, and my role as an investigation officer for Augustus Pemberton, allowing myself to confide in Aemilia that eventually I might go back into the law but for now I found police work an invaluable experience, even though it did consume much of my life. ‘I even live in the courthouse,' I said, ‘where I have a room. And since it's also the jail, in effect I live in a jail.' I had meant to make this sound amusing, but it was merely dull and drab.

‘Somebody has to look after the prisoners I suppose,' she said gently.

‘Well there is a jailer, Mr Seeds, who also lives there. I've taken the prisoners out on chain-gang, I'm ashamed to say, to build the James Bay Bridge.'

‘You did that?' She laughed, as if ‘gaily', but with an artificial effect. ‘So when you go home this evening, you go to jail.'

‘Certainly this evening, when I give Mr Seeds a hand – literally, since we play cards together on Sunday evenings.'

‘And discuss the criminal mentality?'

‘Not with Seeds. The only discussions I've had on that subject have been with Mr Pemberton, a most intelligent man.'

‘Can you think yourself into the criminal mind?'

‘I try.' I thought of Lukswaas's advice to be like a hunter putting on bearskin. ‘But it's not easy for someone of my rather naïve upbringing and education.'

‘Do give me some examples. Do you encounter any really sordid people, plotting to murder their relations to profit from their legacies, or to swindle the banks on a large scale?'

‘Not really. My detective work has concentrated on very ordinary burglaries, and a couple of small scale frauds – until this recent tragedy, of course, which has occupied most of my attention.'

‘Still? I thought the murderer had been apprehended and all but hanged by now.'

I was surprised by Aemilia's bluntness. ‘Admittedly it doesn't look good for him, since the circumstantial evidence against him is very strong. But I'm not satisfied with the way the case stands.'

‘Really? I should think it would give you pleasure to assist in the punishment of such a dastardly crime.'

‘It would make me sad, should there be a miscarriage of justice.'

‘But that's not possible, surely.'

‘Yes, it is. It's of course difficult to discuss with you the case under investigation. But for one thing, it's not absolutely certain than an Indian committed the crime, and for another it's in my opinion even less certain that
this
Indian committed it.'

‘It probably doesn't matter
which
one committed it,' she said flatly, ‘since I'm sure they're all as thick as thieves. I shouldn't be too surprised if they
all
did it, or if one did, they covered up for him. That makes them all guilty, doesn't it?'

‘I suppose so.' My eye was distracted by two large birds high above us, their wings stuck out rigidly, wheeling in rising currents of air.

Aemilia glanced up. ‘Eagles,' she said. ‘We often see them from the farm. They are as common here as I suppose hawks are in England.'

‘I've never seen them on my tramps in the winter with Frederick.'

‘They like high places.'

We watched the eagles slowly turning, seeming to follow each other deliberately in dips and slides, doubling back on each other. One was larger. Perhaps it was their mating season, I thought – an unmentionable subject. But after a minute or two the light of the sky was too brilliant for the eyes. I came back to earth and looked across at Aemilia. As if my eyes had been changed by looking near the sun, I saw a sort of soft glow on and around her. She was beautiful, a shepherdess of the Versailles or Dresden china type. Inaccessible, of course, under the layers of silky, frilly clothing, and the layers of conventions we lived with. I smiled at our silence, and she smiled back prettily. Indeed she seemed to be letting herself be lighter today. There was no trace of her melancholy. But there had been that vehemence when she had spoken about the Indians. And now it came back, her eyes becoming colder, her voice sharp again:

‘And do you see much of this Indian murderer?'

‘I don't believe he is a murderer. But yes, I see him. He talks little. I'm afraid he's hopeful that I can find the real criminal so that he can be free. He knows I've been given the case. But I'm afraid I'll let him down.'

‘You really believe he's innocent! I thought you had the air of a more sensible person.'

‘Which I hope I am.' I bowed my head politely, although I felt rebuked.

‘You believe in the
Noble Savage,
is that it? You think a man like that has a sensitivity like yours?'

‘At times I feel that, or that in some respects he is
more
sensitive.' I was thinking of Wiladzap's ‘song'.

‘You're an out and out romantic, Mr Hobbes. Fie on you!' This old fashioned phrase – one of a number which could be heard from the Somerville girls' lips, as if at least some of their expressions came from the reading of novels – was perhaps meant to be playful, but was accompanied by a genuine curl of the lip in contempt.

‘Of course I'm not a romantic,' I said. ‘If I had ever been one, I should not be now, after six months in the police.'

‘So what does he tell you, your Noble Savage?'

‘Not much, I must confess. I know little or nothing about him. Nobody does, that's part of the problem. When these particular Indians do talk' (I was thinking of Lukswaas) ‘they do so rather elliptically, and in images. And Chinook is not a help, It's a touching sort of language, in a baby-talk way, but inadequate for explanations…' I stopped because I realized that I did not believe this, and I felt that I was letting Lukswaas down since, although slowly, she had communicated to me some fairly intricate thoughts.

‘I know Chinook,' Aemilia said loftily. ‘Mesika nanitsh chack chack klatawa copa stick stick'. This meant ‘I see eagle go tree tree'.

I glanced up, then looked back to her.

‘Where did you learn it?'

‘Comox.' She was referring to the place her family had once settled in, some 150 miles up the Straits, beyond the Gulf Islands we could see from where we were sitting. ‘We had to use Chinook in trading with the Indians. We would have liked to employ them for farmwork but they think themselves too good for it. They are a shiftless lot.'

‘I understand the settlement, er, failed.' This was dangerous ground, in view of what had happened to her father.

‘Oh yes, it did indeed fail, Mr Hobbes. It failed. In a rotten,
bloody
way.'

‘Bloody', even in the literal sense, was not a word supposed to come from a young woman's lips.

‘Yes. I had heard that, vaguely,' I remarked.

‘No need to be so polite. Not to mince words, three of the settlers in our little pioneering village were massacred, Father being one of them. If it had not been for the timely arrival of Her Majesty's Ship the
Trident,
whose guns razed the Indian village to the ground, we should all have been killed. My father had sent a message to Victoria. He knew trouble was brewing. They were smiling and childishly simple, the Comox; in that way Indians have which seems to have charmed you so, Mr Hobbes. But every now and then they would let a remark drop that we were only having the
use
of
their
land. It was not ours, no, not even though we cleared it with the sweat of our brow, and made fruit and vegetables and grass grow where formerly was miserable, gloomy forest and swamp. The women worked as hard as the men. Myself, between ten and fourteen years old, for four years, and who had known nothing more in the way of hardship than the savannah lands around the Columbia River, I worked like a boy. It was a dream for us all. Foully ended in a treacherous and vile attack by the Indians to whom we were introducing the benefits of civilization. One of them came up behind my father – I saw it myself, with
these eyes,
Mr Hobbes, and I screamed, but too late – and he pulled an axe from his blanket and struck my father down, just as you might fell a tree. From
behind,
Mr Hobbes. They like to attack from behind. So remember that when you turn your back on
your
Indian.'

Not surprisingly, Aemilia was trembling with agitation as she said this. But she shook her head abruptly, as if to cast drops of water from it, and said, ‘Enough. I don't need to bore you with that old story.'

This was, of course, far outside the realm of my experience. ‘I'm very grieved that you had to live through that, Miss Somerville.'

‘Keep it in mind, Mr Hobbes. Keep it in mind when you deal with Indians. If you can't learn from your own experience, then you must learn from that of others.'

I winced. Goodness, she had a sharp tongue. I could not resist saying: ‘But Miss Somerville, I'm sure your heart is not without charity towards these people. I mean, in your own household there is the little Indian boy of the Joneses – a nice looking little chap he is too, and I'm sure you don't think ill of him.'

‘That's none of your business,' Aemilia said sharply. She rose to her feet, in a swift movement which had more strength than delicacy. ‘He is indeed a nice little boy,' she added, ‘
adopted
by Mrs Jones as a mere infant, I believe, and therefore uncontaminated by the society of his own people. But if
I
were Mrs Jones, I should wonder about the
blood
coming through, and I should worry a great deal.' She turned to look for the others, and rose to her feet. I scrambled up, but maintained a respectable distance as we walked in the direction of Frederick's voice, which could be heard from within a group of dwarf oaks. But Aemilia stopped again and looked at me, her eyes steady and not at all emotional. ‘All the same, you believe your Indian will hang.'

‘In short order, I'm afraid. He'll be tried within a few weeks, and on the present evidence found guilty. Then no doubt he will be hanged in the public square within a day or so afterwards. Then his band will disperse, and we shall have no more trouble with these particular Tshimshian.' I felt almost relieved to abandon all hope, and present the stark facts.

‘Good,' Aemilia said. We went to join the others.

Aemilia and I were both silent on the way back to the farm, although Frederick and Cordelia chattered inanely. Beaumont and Letitia, who although they did not seem particularly excited by each other, seemed to get on well enough, occasionally added comments. I could not identify my feelings for Aemilia. I had begun the day in a state of romanticism about her, which I now realized had been forced, although I still felt there was an affinity between us. Only this affinity seemed to extend itself to a capacity to irritate each other, in an intimate way. Although our language had been formal, we had got to the point swiftly, and our conversation had not been empty like – I thought unkindly – that of Frederick and Cordelia.

But although I acknowledged to myself that the affinity between me and Aemilia still existed, I did not feel able to revive it this afternoon. We had said enough. Aemilia's bluntness had made me articulate, more clearly than ever, how dangerous Wiladzap's situation was. This might require desperate measures, and I was ready to abandon politeness and caution.

So when we arrived at the Farm, and climbed down from the buggy to the sound of the usual polite murmurs of assistance from the men, and the giggles of Cordelia, I announced that I would have to take my leave shortly, since I was on duty that evening ‘in the courthouse' (meaning the jail). But if Mrs Somerville was not indisposed, I should like to have a word with her.

This caused a slight flurry as the younger girls looked questioningly at me and Aemilia as if perhaps a hasty proposal of marriage was in the works. I found myself blushing with embarrassment, but Aemilia walked off to the house in a demonstration of indifference, if not hostility. Then the others looked at me as if pityingly … ‘Aemilia does have her moods,' Cordelia whispered to me. ‘I shall go and fetch Mamma so that you can have your talk with her on the veranda.'

Since the sun had moved around to the other side of the house, the veranda was in the shade. It was really a simple wooden ‘porch' with hanging baskets of flowers, and wickerwork chairs. Pleased not to be going inside for a stifling ‘tea', I stood waiting until Mrs Somerville arrived, carrying a small bottle of smelling salts, as if she expected at any moment to be overcome.

‘I'm very sorry to bother you,' I said. ‘But I have to ask you a few questions, in my official capacity.'

‘Oh, it's quite all right. I shall survive, it's only a small headache. And Mr Quattrini will be well looked after by the girls. Did you enjoy your “promenade” on Mount Douglas?'

‘Indeed yes. I had never climbed it before. The prospect is magnificent.'

Mrs Somerville sat down in a wicker chair. I took the chair beside her and shifted it so that I could partly face her. Her chest was heaving in short, sharp breaths: she was much more nervous than her words would admit. But I did not feel sorry for her. I realized that her nervousness and over-refinement were shields. She was in fact a robust-looking woman, with penetrating eyes, an unlined face, and a solid although rather plump body. She was not merely ‘well preserved', but a woman not very far past being young.