There was an Old Woman (15 page)

I was trying to figure out how to get back on the main highway of the investigation, since, unfortunately, Cath Bracken had been turned into a detour. Where were the ramps to help me drive back into the action? Ramsden, of course! I could try to find him in a better mood. Maybe the finding of his friend Temperley would make him more agreeable. All I wanted was a short chat with him.

I paid my bill, bought a Toronto paper, read the headlines and the story about Temperley's murder, scalped from yesterday's
Beacon,
and found my way back to the office. I nearly fell over when I saw Kogan sweeping the stairs. He looked at me as though I'd discovered him cavorting in a pink tutu.

“Morning, Kogan! You're up early,” I said as I passed him and headed for my door. “And on Saturday too!”

“There's going to be a big storm,” he said. “Blizzard!” I'd missed seeing it in the paper, but I wouldn't have been surprised if Kogan's source wasn't a newspaper.

“Where did you disappear to the other night?” he asked. “They wouldn't let me go until it was getting light out.”

“So, they didn't book you into the Venus Art Club?”

“Nope. You knew that? Right?”

“If they had a clean case, you wouldn't be sweeping the steps, Kogan. I'm guessing that the cops had trouble getting a witness to come forward. Happens all the time. Nudity, cases like that. Nobody wants to get his name associated. You understand?”

“I hear you and Thurleigh had a fight up in the hall!” Kogan was grinning as though he could picture the main event.

“Who told you?”

“Oh, I've got my contacts same as you. I hear it was a real dust-up.”

“In that crowd, I must have looked like Muhammad Ali in his prime.”

“I'll bet Ramsden was in good form. I figure him for a dirty fighter, Mr. Cooperman.”

“We collected quite a crowd, Kogan. Then you turned up. We couldn't compete with your act.” Then I had a thought. “Kogan, have you ever run into the Ravenswood family? Do you know Orv Wishart?” To an outsider this might seem a silly question to ask a former panhandler, but in Grantham stranger things have been known to happen. For instance, I knew that Kogan and a well-known local police magistrate used to play football at Cranmer College years ago. Nowadays Kogan, who has not been above dining on cat food, has spent evenings in the company of this esteemed member of the judiciary drinking everything from fine wines to aftershave, if my sources have it right. So, I wasn't surprised when he told me that he and Gladys Ravenswood (née Kyrle) used to attend Mrs. Rankin's dancing class and that Orv Wishart was the maker of prize-winning trout flies. I couldn't see how I could use this information, but I filed it away in my head just in case.

There were a couple of things for me to do once I had opened my office door. The first was to contact Julian Newby and tell him that I was no longer able to keep Cath Bracken under surveillance. I always hated turning off the money-tap, but I try to stay as honest as I can without starving to death. The other thing was to see what I could find out from Ramsden. I put in a call to Newby's office and was startled to get a live secretary instead of an answering machine. She explained that the office is always open until noon on Saturdays. I detected no trace of bitterness in her voice. I love these fine old firms. I asked her to have Mr. Newby call me when he came in on Monday. I was sure that at least the senior partner in the firm kept bankers' hours. She assured me that the message would be relayed to Newby.

The other call I placed was a second attempt to raise Ramsden. I left a message next to my last message on his machine, and leaned back in my chair the way Orv Wishart had. The wonderful thing about the telephone is that it gives you the feeling that you have been working when only your Peter Pointer has. It wasn't even ten o'clock yet, but I already felt like an efficient executive who had made a few smooth moves. Next to pegging stones into the Old Canal, it was my favourite early-morning pastime.

That's when the phone rang. It was that hard-working secretary at Newby's office. Would I kindly come by to see Mr. Newby in an hour? I said I would and hung up. I was surprised that Newby wanted to see me today. I
thought it would keep until Monday. And what about Mendlesham? I thought Newby wanted me to work through him.

I killed the better part of the hour drinking coffee at the Crystal. I couldn't quite bring myself to return to the Di, where the seat was still warm from my last visit. Luckily, I was carrying a copy of one of McKenzie Stewart's novels with me and the time went quickly.

It was just about fifty-five minutes later that I drove the Olds into Newby's parking lot along the side of the house on Ontario Street that served as one of the oldest law offices in town. I was congratulating myself on being early, when I saw Newby himself, driving a dark Lincoln, leaving the same lot. Where can a Lincoln take you in five minutes that's so important, I wanted to know. I wanted to know badly enough to back out of the parking lot myself and follow the big car.

After my experience with Cath Bracken, I kept at least two cars sitting between me and Newby. I wasn't going to get caught again. Too much of my income depended on having the confidence of the legal community. A man like Julian Newby could kill my reputation in less than a minute. All he had to say was that I couldn't follow a suspect without showing myself.

Newby drove down Ontario Street to Welland Avenue, where he made a right turn. He had the green light. It was harder for me to make the same turn after the light had changed, but I managed to insinuate the nose of the Olds into the traffic in time to see the Lincoln make a northern
turn onto York Street. Now there were no cars between us, so I pulled to a stop. Newby continued three or four blocks and parked the Lincoln. I moved the Olds up the street slowly until I came up behind a parked car about five or six houses below Newby. I got out just a moment after I saw him leave his car. He wasn't referring to a scrap of paper with an address written on it, so it was clear that he knew where he was going. Through the windows of a parked car, I watched him walk back in my direction. He went up to the front door of a house on the corner of Lowell Avenue and used the knocker. When he didn't get an answer, he tried again. Again, no response. He backed away from the door, then stood on the edge of the porch for a moment, jiggling the keys in his pocket with his right hand, no doubt debating with himself about what to do next. Then he pulled out a clutch of keys from his pocket and examined them. He selected one and returned to the door.

In a second, the door was open and Newby had disappeared inside. I left the cover of the parked car and began crossing the street to where a thick maple would offer me similar protection and a better view. I had only reached the centre of York Street when Newby came running out of the house. He was coughing and dry-retching. He held on to the white balustrade and heaved. I forgot about the maple tree. Newby needed help. Something was wrong. Surveillance work suddenly dwindled to a cheap charade. I ran up the steps to help.

“Are you all right?” I asked in spite of the evidence to the contrary. He looked around to see where the voice was coming from.

“You?” he said, opening his eyes in a question.

“I saw you,” I said lamely. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Inside!” he said, pointing to the front door with its brass Medusa's face on the knocker. “Inside! It's … it's Ramsden!” By now Newby had his handkerchief out and had started pulling himself back together. I took this as a cue to go inside.

Inside the front door, I found myself in a hallway decorated with the sort of prints you see on placemats in the windows of china stores. There was the
Cutty Sark
and several other big clipper ships under sail. Facing a dark green door, I saw the first of a long line of military prints, engravings of soldiers wearing the uniforms and regalia of the last century or the one before that. I opened the door and entered what would have been the living-room in the old house except that Ramsden had claimed it for himself. There were flags on the wall, a group of framed letters, as well as pictures of various crowned heads. A glass case showed off a red and yellow drum and dark bugle. Above it was a globe with a great deal of pink on it. Behind the desk stood a flagstand. Here were the red maple leaf flag of Canada and the older ensign flag that it replaced. I recognized the flag of Ontario hanging limply from a pointed flagstaff. There was also a space reserved for a Union Jack, the flag of the United
Kingdom, but it was not to be found in its proper receptacle. Instead, it was sticking through the torso of Thurleigh Ramsden, who lay stretched across the floor of the den. The flagstaff had been shoved or pushed right through Ramsden so that his mortal remains were transfixed on the pole with the flag pulled part of the way through the wound.

I wanted to grab onto something. For the moment, I didn't give a damn about leaving fingerprints for others to find. I felt my knees about to play traitor and I soon found myself sitting on the floor not far away from the open, staring eyes of the corpse. With the blood looking black and the dead look in the wide eyes, I didn't have to move in closer to try to find a pulse. Ramsden was very dead and had been so for some little time.

When the whirling stopped, I was aware that Newby had come into the room behind me and was calling the police on a telephone he was carrying. I couldn't hear the words, but I managed to get up and tried to pull myself together for the series of police officers who were going to fill up the next few hours of my day. Newby was shaking his head from side to side in a vague, hopeless way. He moved his briefcase closer to him and sat down in a Queen Anne chair not, apparently, giving a damn about fingerprints either. Together and without speaking another word, we sat and listened for the sound of the sirens coming north to find us. Instead, we heard the honking of horns as a wedding procession made its noisy way along Lake Street.

SEVENTEEN

There was no lunch being served at Niagara Regional Police that afternoon. Or at least I wasn't offered any From time to time either Chris Savas or Pete Staziak would disappear from their offices, leaving me in charge of the other. I suspected they were making trips to the cafeteria downstairs. I even thought I detected crumbs at the corner of Pete's mouth on his return from such a trip. I didn't have my copy of the Geneva Convention handy, but I'm sure there must be a section on this type of harassment.

By the time I got to the level of my old friends Savas and Staziak, I had told my story at least three times. It was recorded in three notebooks and I had made a statement as soon as I was brought downtown. I stuck to the events of the day as much as I could. There was no sense dragging in irrelevancies like the fight Ramsden and I had had at the top of the stairs at the Kingsway Hall on Ontario Street the other night. That would only confuse matters.

I lost sight of Julian Newby early on in the questioning. He was being questioned by an inspector wearing kid gloves, I suspected. The chief wouldn't send him through
the works with a trainee seconded from traffic. He would also make sure Newby got lunch.

“Okay, Benny, let's get serious on this thing,” Pete said, tapping my statement with his ballpoint pen. “Once again, why were you tailing Newby?”

“I had an appointment to see him and saw him driving out of his parking lot. I wanted to see where he was off to.”

“What did you want to see him about?”

“It says that in my statement, Pete.”

“Humour me.” Pete lit a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head. Pete knew I'd quit smoking. It was his way of getting at me, keeping the pressure on.

“I was going to give him a progress report on a job I was doing for him.”

“The statement says you were going to beg off the case. Why?”

“Because it wasn't going anywhere. I found out all I was going to find out on the first couple of days. I wasn't earning my money.”

“Come on! What was the real reason? Give me something I can swallow.”

“Okay. The subject that I was following blew my cover. I was no good after that. I don't have an office full of operatives to put in my place, Pete.”

“That sounds more like the Cooperman we all know and admire. I don't suppose you'll tell me who this is?” We exchanged grins. Queen's Gambit Declined. “Okay, okay! Continue!”

“Pete, for crying out loud! I already told you! I followed Newby. Newby went into Ramsden's house—”

“He had a key?”

“No, he walked through the wall! Yes, he had a key!” I said, wishing I'd accepted the cigarette. I could have mashed it between my fingers and let the tobacco fall on the floor. “He wasn't in there more than a few seconds, then he comes out, all shook up after finding the body I went in, did a little serious gagging and then Newby called you on his handy pocket telephone. I could see that Ramsden had been dead for some time.”

“Now you're an expert on ‘time of death' too. Maybe you'd like to take over the Temperley investigation as well. I wouldn't want to miss hearing your theories about that!”

“I figure the deaths are linked, Pete.”

“Let's get back to this script, Benny. I'll pass on your thoughts about Temperley to Chris. How long was Newby in the house ahead of you?” Pete mashed his cigarette into a half-empty styrofoam cup, like he was reading my mind.

“Pete, you can't try to pin this one on Newby. I told you he wasn't in there long enough.”

“Just answer the question!”

“Ramsden was colder than a smoked turkey when I got to him. He wasn't going to get any deader. You've got a preliminary medical report, haven't you? He'd been dead for a couple of hours at least.”

“He was in there with Ramsden alone, Benny. He could have gone through his desk, removed documents. Who knows? How long was he out of your sight?” Pete had neatly rescued a stupid question and remodelled it so that it looked more interesting. I thought about it.