By the Time You Read This (22 page)

Bell’s voice was as soft as it could be while remaining audible, the gentlest beckoning: “Can you tell me why, Melanie? Can you tell me why you couldn’t sleep? What were the feelings that kept you awake?”

“Well, um … I knew it was going to happen. I mean, it always did, whenever he had me alone. Especially at night …”

“You were a child, Melanie.”

“I was eleven years old! Maybe twelve! I should have known better by then!”

“Why? How could you have known? Did someone hand out an instruction manual: ‘How to Tell Mom That Your Stepfather Rapes You’? Have you ever observed twelve-year-old girls on the street? At the movies? Wherever?”

“Well, yes …”

“And what are they like?”

“Airheads, most of them. Complete ditzes.”

“Kids, in other words.”

“Kids. Right.”

“So there you are, eleven years old, maybe twelve, a child lying in the dark in this completely safe and secret environment with a man who professes to love you. Maybe in his way did love you. No one else is around. What was that little girl feeling?”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“Feel like you’re going to throw up?”

A tight nod. She’s pale and quivering, gripping the edge of the couch.

“It’s the words you need to throw up, Melanie. The secrets. Tell me this one thing and the feeling will pass, I promise.”

“No, I’m really going to be sick.”

“You’re lying in the dark. You’re eleven or twelve. There’s a full-grown man beside you. You know he’s going to come over to your bed. You know what he’s going to do to you. What are you feeling? Tell me this one thing, Melanie, and the nausea will pass. You know he’s going to come to you. What are your feelings before he crosses that dark space and comes over to your bed?”

“He didn’t! That’s just it, don’t you see? He didn’t come over to me!”

“What happened, then, Melanie? Tell me.”

“I can’t! I can’t! I don’t want to!”

“Yes, you do. You wouldn’t be here, otherwise.”

“Please. I just can’t.”

“He didn’t come over to you, you said. He didn’t come over to you … and then?”

“I can’t …”

“He didn’t come over to you …”

“Oh, God …”

“He didn’t come over to you, and …”

“I went over to him!”

The tears that came from her then drowned all the tears that had gone before. In all his years as a psychiatrist, Dr. Bell had never seen anyone cry harder.

“I wanted it! I’m so sick! I’m so sick! I wanted him to do it! I wanted him to do it! I did it to him! I did it to him that time, do you see? Oh, God, I deserve to die.”

Bell watched her cry and cry until there were no tears left.

“I’m so sick,” she said weakly. “Really, I don’t know why I’m still walking around.” She looked smaller, as if guilt had taken up physical space in her small frame.

“I’m afraid that’s all we have time for, today.”

“Oh, God.”

“Stay another minute or two, if you like.”

“No, no. That’s okay. I’m all right.”

Melanie smoothed her hair and stood up, tottering a little. She gathered her things, still sniffling, and moved toward the door. She opened it, then stopped.

“God. I don’t know how I’m going to make it till next week.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Sorry, Melanie, I should have told you at the top of the hour.”

“Told me what?”

“I’m not going to be available next week.”

32

A
FTER LUNCH
, C
ARDINAL TOOK
the note with its thumbprint to the station to speak to Paul Arsenault. He was not yet ready to declare himself officially back at work. If he did, there would be a stack of assignments he would be expected to deal with, and pursuit of non-police business would become difficult, if not impossible.

Arsenault took a swig from a coffee mug bearing his last name under the Acadian flag. “You want me to run this for you on the q.t.?”

“You know it’s not orthodox,” Cardinal said. “It’s not officially a case.”

“You’re right, John. It’s not.”

The use of his first name was a bad sign. The use of his first name meant pity or maybe even something worse. Arsenault would have heard about his arrest of Roger Felt. He put his patriotic mug down, got up from his desk and closed the door that separated Ident from the evidence room and the rest of the station.

“Look, John. You come to me with this, your wife’s suicide note, and ask me to run prints, I want to help. Of course I want to help. And I’ll do it if you really want me to. But the coroner looked into this. Delorme looked into it. The pathologist. We all looked into it. There’s just no reason to think anyone else was involved.”

“So humour me. Do it out of pity, I don’t care. As long as it gets done. I want to know who touched that note other than Catherine.”

“But it’s not a fake, John, you said so yourself.”

“All the more reason why there shouldn’t be any fingerprints on it other than Catherine’s.”

“Suppose it comes back and it’s the coroner’s thumbprint? Where’s that gonna get anyone?”

“If the coroner or some uniform made a mistake, fine. People make mistakes, I don’t care about mistakes.”

Arsenault gave it a beat, contemplating the last of his coffee. “You really think she was killed, John?”

“I think someone else read that note. I want to know who.”

“All right, kids. Take ten!”

Eleanor Cathcart came down from the stage wiping imaginary sweat from her brow and sat down in the front row of the Capital Centre auditorium. Cardinal had been here many times as a kid, back when it had been the biggest movie theatre in town.

“My God, we open tomorrow night and our Torvald still has a closer relationship to the prompter than he does to me. What brings you here? I’m so sorry about Catherine, by the way. That woman will be
missed.”

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Cardinal said. “You were the last person to see Catherine alive.”
As far as we know
.

“Yes. I feel in some way responsible: If only I hadn’t raved about my wonderful views! If only I hadn’t let her in! If only I’d stayed!”

“It must be very hard on you.”

“Well, I carry on, you know, but it does have a dampening effect on one’s
joie de vivre
. I have of late and wherefore I know not lost all my mirth, so to speak, though of course I know very well wherefore. Catherine’s gone, she’ll come no more. I have already told your distaff colleague everything I know, of course.”

“This is personal. I’m just trying to clarify a few things in my mind.”

“Yes, of course, poor man.” She laid a benevolent hand on his wrist. “I know exactly how you feel.”

Cardinal asked the questions he knew Delorme would have already asked. Catherine had expressed interest in photographing the view from her apartment building; a date was arranged, Ms. Cathcart let her in and went off to rehearse with the Algonquin Bay Players.

“Did you see Catherine a lot? Up at the school, I mean?”

“Not really. Just bumped into her now and again. Said hello. That kind of thing. We weren’t palsy-walsy or anything. Just cordial. I admired her from a distance, I suppose you could say. There was something beautifully self-contained about Catherine.”

That was true, Cardinal knew, when she was well.

“So you wouldn’t know about her other relationships up at the college.”

“No. I have my own little province in Theatre Arts. Doesn’t overlap terribly much with photography.”

“Did you ever see her with a stranger? Or anyone else that seemed out of place around the college?”

“No. She was usually alone or with students when I saw her.”

“Did you ever see her upset with anyone? Or anyone upset with her?”

“Never. I mean, people worried about her, you must know that. And, well, sometimes other instructors had to fill in for her. But I’m sure they accepted that this was not a matter of caprice.” Ms. Cathcart touched her forehead with elegant fingertips. “Of course, she did have rather a
contretemps
with Meredith Moore.”

“Tell me about that,” Cardinal said. He had heard Catherine’s side of the story many times.

“Oh, it was just college politics as usual. Control of a department becomes available, out come the knives. Really, the Borgias have nothing on academics. When Sophie Klein got hired away by York University, both Catherine and Meredith wanted to run the art department. They were probably equally qualified: Catherine had more honours for her creative work, but Meredith had an edge in administrative experience. The stupid thing was, Meredith seemed to take it as a personal affront that Catherine would even apply. I mean, she seemed to think the crown should have just automatically descended upon her anointed head, God knows why.

“And Meredith was not above pointing out Catherine’s, um, psychological vagaries as a disqualifying factor. There was even a rumour that the dean had received a copy of Catherine’s medical records anonymously, but that smacks of urban legend, at least to me. The outcome you know.”

“Meredith got the job.”

“And I always admired the way Catherine handled it. She never said a bad word about Meredith, or expressed any resentment. But Meredith …”

“But Meredith what?”

Ms. Cathcart flashed a thin blade of smile. “You know what they say: people can never forgive you the wrongs they’ve done you. I’m sure Meredith would have loved to have Catherine replaced. She could barely stand to be in the same room after that, and was always sniping at her behind her back. Dry old stick.”

And yet, when he went to see her, Meredith Moore was graciousness personified. She clasped Cardinal’s hand in both her woody little palms, looked him in the eye and said, “It’s such a shame about Catherine. Such a tragedy.”

“Have you found somebody to teach her courses?”

“In the middle of the semester? Not likely. We have somebody filling in, but it’s not the same as having the person who prepared the course.”

“I’ve heard you weren’t particularly happy with Catherine. That you were probably looking to replace her.”

Meredith Moore had a brittle appearance at the best of times: hair that looked as if it might break off, and a face of fine crepe. Cardinal could almost hear the crackle as she set her mouth in a thin line.

“Whoever you heard that from,” she said, “did not know what they were talking about. Catherine had nothing but excellent evaluations, and her photographs were highly respected.”

“So you weren’t looking to replace her.”

“I was not.”

“How would you characterize your relationship with Catherine? How did you get along?”

“Fine. We weren’t close friends, but I’d say we had a collegial relationship. I have to say, I know you’re a policeman and maybe the manner sticks with you whether you want it to or not, but this feels very much like an interrogation.”

“You said Catherine’s student reviews were excellent. Do you know if there was any student in particular who was giving her trouble? Someone who might have taken offence at a low grade?”

“Not that I know of. And I rather doubt it. She was a good teacher, but an easy marker. Some people are too severe, some are lenient. I try to be somewhere in the middle myself. Catherine was on the lenient side, I think she’d agree with me on that.”

That was true, Cardinal knew. Catherine hated to give anyone who made the least effort a bad grade, and would get upset when she had no choice.

“Did you ever have a student come in here, upset, and ask you to change a grade Catherine had given?”

“No. Mind you, it’s too early in the semester for people to be worried about failing.”

“Catherine wanted to be chair of the department too.”

“She certainly did. She made a strong case for herself.”

“I imagine that could put quite a strain on your ‘collegial’ relationship. Did it?”

“Is that what Catherine said?”

“I’m asking you.”

“It’s safe to say it made us both a little tense. That’s understandable, don’t you think? I don’t imagine the police department is free of competition.”

“Well, no one’s gone off a roof so far.”

Ms. Moore’s mouth opened with an audible snap. “You think she killed herself because she didn’t get chair?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Good. Because she showed no ill effects from it that I’m aware of. And Catherine was a—well, a sensitive soul, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. Did you see her the day she died?”

“I saw her in the hall here, around lunchtime. She was heading into her noon class.”

“What about in the evening?”

“She doesn’t teach on Tuesday evenings.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Ms. Moore was turning red, but from the set of her mouth it was the heat of anger, not embarrassment.

“The answer is no.”

“Were you here at the school?”

“I was at home watching
The Antiques Roadshow
. Look, I don’t know how to say this to you. I’m sorry about what happened to Catherine, I truly am. But my sympathy does not extend to being cross-questioned like a criminal.”

“I realize that,” Cardinal said, and headed for the exit. “Criminals don’t like it either.”