There was an Old Woman (20 page)

Eight-thirty a.m. was the time of Cath Bracken's appointment to see Ramsden! Had she seen him? Had he cancelled? Had she run him through with a flagpole? These were a few of the things I had to find out. McStu, last night, hadn't hinted at anything wrong. I tried phoning Cath at her house from a pay-phone, without any luck. I tried McStu with the same result. I thought of phoning the station, but she didn't read the news on weekends. I wondered about trying to get hold of Wishart. I didn't want to run foul of Antonia, so I closed the phonebook's weathered pages and walked back to the office. At least on a Sunday, I might get a little peace and quiet.

Or so I thought. At the top of the steps I found the door to my neighbour's office ajar. Frank Bushmill, the chiropodist, was inside lying on his carpet. My heart shifted under my shirt: two bodies in two days! That's too much traffic for me. I checked to see whether the body was breathing. Thank God it was. I pulled back an eyelid and got a look at a pink eye trying to remember how to react to strong light.

“Frank!” I called out, slapping his face. “Frank!” I tried to pull him over to the waiting-room couch, where he had often slept one off in the past. With his heavy winter
coat, it took all of my strength to get him into a sitting position with his back to the couch. He was groaning now, whenever I tried to shift him. “Frank, what happened?” I could see that his wallet was lying on the carpet, open and empty. There was a blue lump on his forehead.

With another effort, I got him on the couch and called the ambulance from his phone on the other side of the partition. I found an open bottle of Jameson in his middle file drawer and poured a little into a glass beaker. This I waved under his nose until his eyelids twitched.

“Frank? Can you hear me?”

“Is that you, Benny? What are you saying at all?”

“Frank, you've been walloped on the head and robbed. Do you know where you are?”

“Hit on the head, was I? I remember, I remember, the house …”

“Frank, I've sent for an ambulance. I'm going to get the cops too.”

“Don't trouble the constabulary. It's their day of rest. I'm thinking it's still Sunday, I hope.” He was making a good recovery I wondered how long he had been out. I had been away from the office since yesterday morning. But Frank can't have been lying there for any great time.

“Frank, do you know who hit you?” He pulled a hand out from under himself and took the beaker from me. He emptied it and looked at me for the first time.

“Damn it, Benny I always get walloped when I do a favour for you!” He began exploring his forehead with
his other hand. “That's a fair goose egg I've got in your service.”

“What do you mean, Frank? You're not very clear.”

“I heard some noise out here and found two young punks trying to break into your office. I surprised them and then they surprised me. There may have been a third one along the hall who came up behind me. Are you keeping your fortune in your office, Benny? Don't trust the banks, is it?”

“Frank, there's nothing in my office that anybody'd want. No money, nothing but my unpaid bills. I don't even have any interesting files. Nothing that would warrant this.” Frank made an attempt to sit up. I helped him. I could see that he was weak, but he kept up a brave commentary until the ambulance people arrived and took him, under protest, down the stairs and off to the General. I put in a call to Niagara Regional Police and told them what had happened.

I waited around for the cops. The investigating officer was called Bedrosian. I remembered him from a long time ago, when I'd been discovered trying to replace a box of jewels that turned out to be a gun. There was no sign that Bedrosian recognized me, but it could have been his investigative style. He'd seen me often enough with Pete Staziak and Chris Savas.

I told Bedrosian what I'd seen and what I'd done. He wasn't as interested in my report of what Frank had told me. He'd have to get that from Bushmill himself as soon as he was feeling better. We walked down the office
stairs together after he'd seen me turn off the lights and shut the door of Frank's office.

Out on the street, the chill wind slapped me in the face. I must have been sweating. I did up a few more buttons, then walked up past the intersection where St. Andrew Street becomes Queenston Road to the old house with the widow's walk on the turret that housed the offices, mess and museum of the Royal Grantham Rifles. The offices were closed, but the museum was open, empty and warmed by overheated radiators that sounded off occasionally, as though they were being beaten by unseen hammers in the basement. The collection was an extension of Ramsden's office: flags mounted on the floor and photographs and framed letters on the walls. There were cases of flintlocks and carbines of all kinds, copper bugles and ancient mess kits. I went over to the case of side-arms and looked at them for a few minutes.

After a bite to eat, I slushed my way over the sidewalks that still hadn't been cleared. When I found that punks had not tried to force their way into my apartment, I ran a hot bath and spent the next hour in it trying to thaw out.

That night, I caught up on my television watching. Before going to bed, I tried to reach both Cath and McStu without getting answers. Those on the TV program
Mystery!
were all the answers I was going to get until morning and the beginning of Christmas week. I wasn't looking forward to any of it.

TWENTY-TWO

Hello?” It was the phone and it was ringing in the dark and I hadn't answered it yet. My greeting was fakery, mere time-wasting until my hands could locate the instrument. When 1 had it, 1 repeated my rehearsed line with an excellent result. The clock on the bedside table told me that it was eight o'clock in the morning. In spite of the dark, I couldn't curse the intrusion and call it unreasonable.

“Hello, Benny?”

“Yeah? Who is this?”

“Cath. Cath Bracken. I just heard about Ramsden.”

“Where the hell have you been for the last two days? I've been trying to raise you three or four times a day.”

“I went skiing. I hadn't planned on it, but McStu couldn't get away. I just went off to enjoy the snow and the weekend. I heard about Ramsden on the seven-thirty news as I was driving home.”

“So, you've been totally cut off from civilization since your eight-thirty meeting with the dead man. Are you sure you didn't panic and run for it?”

“Benny, if I'd panicked, it would have taken me further away than Fonthill! The hills were wonderful!”

“Ramsden is dead!”

“Oh, I know!
Now
I know, but I didn't know when I saw him that he was going to be murdered. The weekend's already making me feel bad. Don't you spoil it too!”

“Where are you?”

“At home. Where else should I be?”

“Well, one place might be in the cells on the basement level at Niagara Regional Police.”

“What are you talking about?”

Cath, the post-mortem report shows that he was killed between eight and ten on Saturday. You saw him in that period. Now do you understand?” There was a long pause, then:

“You better come over.” She didn't even say goodbye. I heard the click and reached for the light switch.

About thirty minutes after I'd hung up the phone, I parked the Olds in front of Cath's house across from the snow-capped mountain of pulpwood on Oakdale Avenue. I recognized McStu's car parked next to a snowdrift in front of me. Cath's BMW was in the shovelled-out drive. McStu opened the door before I could knock.

“Morning,” he said, waving a cup of coffee in my direction. I took it and he indicated the way to the kitchen. I followed and found Cath sitting at a plain pine table. She looked up as we came in.

“Hi,” she said without any great enthusiasm. “What you said on the phone … You've got me worried.”

“Have you ever been fingerprinted?” I asked. “For any reason?”

“Never. Why?”

“Well, the cops will have lifted prints from Ramsden's house. Some of them are bound to be yours, if you touched anything. But, if your prints aren't on file, then they won't bother you unless they find some record of your appointment in his date book, for instance. Your appointment may be recorded on his answering machine.”

“He called me, Benny. He named the time and I agreed to come alone and without a camera crew.” McStu came around behind Cath, sipping his coffee and putting his free hand on Cath's shoulder.

“What time did you get there? I mean was it before or after eight-thirty?”

“I was right on time, maybe a minute or two early. I was a little nervous about seeing him.”

“Was he alone?”

“There was no one I saw,” she said, drawing out the “saw” so that I wondered what her other senses told her. Cath was wearing faded blue jeans, a red, rag-wool sweater and glasses, which made a new Cath for me anyway. McStu was in heavy twill trousers. On top he was wearing a big white Irish pullover with a crew neck. There was a large loaf of brown bread on a cutting-board, to which he returned while Cath was telling me what happened.

“He answered the door himself and we went right into his office in the front of the house. He saw my cassette recorder and told me that he didn't want to be taped. So I put it away.”

“What sort of mood was he in? Did he look harassed or bothered about anything? Was he preoccupied?”

“I suppose the fact that I was with him less than ten or fifteen minutes might be interpreted that way. I'd expected to stay longer, but he gave short answers—not very satisfactory answers—to my questions. Some he just shook his head at or waved his hand telling me to get on to the next.”

“What was the gist?”

“Denial. He wasn't responsible for Oldridge's death. He didn't know of her financial difficulties. He hadn't seen her for a long time before her death, but stood ready to help, had she got in touch with him. In spite of the evidence brought out at the inquest!”

“Did he say anything about the property or Liz's will?”

“Just that he was surprised and delighted to accept the property on behalf of the Bede Bunch. Did he think I didn't know that he had helped her write the will?”

“And he was its sole executor,” added McStu, handing me a sandwich. I took a peek at the filling and put the sandwich back on the plate.

“I asked him if there were any plans in the offing to sell the property. That was one of the questions he dodged.”

“I asked you before whether you thought there was anyone in the house with you and you said that you didn't see anyone. Did you
feel
that there was another visitor?”

“Yes! Now you mention it. I can't place it exactly, but I felt that I was interrupting something. But I can't prove it. I honestly didn't see or hear anything.”

“Ben,” McStu asked, “is Cath a suspect at the moment?”

“No. To the best of my knowledge, we're the only ones who know about her appointment. But she was probably the last person to see Ramsden alive.”

“Except the murderer.”

“Yeah, except for the murderer. Did you tell anyone at the TV station that you were going to see Ramsden?”

“Orv Wishart knew I was trying to get to see him. He knew about the pocket-documentary I was putting together about Liz's death.”

“Did he encourage you?”

“Orv is
all
encouragement. He can't do enough for me. He must be the last man on earth who still opens doors for women.”

“But he didn't know the date and time of your appointment to see Ramsden?”

“It's written on the pad on my desk. If he looked he'd see it. It wouldn't be the first time that he's been into my things when I'm not there.”

Orv bothered Cath. It came out in everything she said about him. She owed her job to him and she disliked the fact and the further disagreeable fact that she might have
to put up with his familiarity if she wanted to hold the job. She'd been reading the news at the station for more than a year. When could she consider that the job was hers?

“You haven't touched your sandwich,” McStu said, and I looked at the uneaten sandwich on the white plate beside me. But he'd been talking to Cath, who picked up her own sandwich and took a bite. I did the same, but I stayed on the crusts and didn't get into the part with the filling. It wasn't that I was Orthodox; it was just that I hate surprises. Virginia ham is a surprise that takes some getting used to. I went on nibbling and listening to catch anything Cath remembered about her meeting with Ramsden.

“You really scared me, Benny, when you suggested that the killer might have been in the house with us.”

“Time of death is a pretty hard thing to pinpoint,” I said, catching the look McStu gave me. As a crime writer, he probably knew more about time of death and rigor mortis and lividity than I did. Why doesn't he try to get to the bottom of this business like the crime writers on television always do?

I managed to sneak my plate over to the wooden sideboard by the sink and ditch my sandwich.

“Cath, how did you know I was following you? It's a matter of professional pride.

“Oh, Benny, I should have told you at your mother's. I got a tip by telephone.”

“A tip? From whom?”

“It was a man's voice. Of course, he didn't give me his name.”

“An anonymous tip! Just like that?”

“You want me to take a lie-detector test?”

“Benny, she told me about it,” McStu added from the sidelines.

“Okay, okay! I believe you. What did you do about it?”

“I tried leading you all over the place, but then I just had to find out who you were. That's when I started tailing you. I am a trained investigative reporter, you know.”

“It's the answer I was hoping for. I'm not getting feeble in my old age after all. Speaking of being a reporter, you once told me you'd started doing a documentary about Liz Oldridge.” I began climbing into my boots and coat as I waited for Cath's answer.