Death Spiral (24 page)

Scarfe was standing at a window looking out over his garden. “Did you say that Millie went over to your father’s place this morning?”

“That’s right.”

“And she was telling Clarence about not being able to reach me the other night? And about missing sleeping pills?” He turned and looked at Wilf.

“She doesn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“That you were seen coming from Sylvia Young’s place. You and your white Cadillac. My father doesn’t know either. I didn’t tell them.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

“Then why was Millie there?”

“Because she thinks you’re having an affair with some mysterious someone. And because of that she thinks you might be planning to murder her.”

Scarfe cast his eyes upward as if he thought God might materialize from out of the ceiling and help him out. He walked unsteadily over to a chair and sat down behind a desk. He began to rearrange some pencils and pens. “This is a nightmare.”

“I know it is,” Wilf said.

“So you haven’t told the police? Or anyone?”

“Only you.”

“And the person who mistakenly thought she saw me, you did say a she, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Has she told anyone else? I mean, besides yourself?”

“No.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

Scarfe fell silent for a moment. “The thing is, a false accusation will do almost as much harm as if it were actually true. You understand that, don’t you? You see my situation.” He looked up at Wilf with a faint smile.

Wilf nodded.

Scarfe seemed reassured. He reached down and opened a drawer.

Wilf gripped his cane and waited to see what instrument of Fate might show itself. After all the sorties, all the rounds of thumping ammunition given and received, cold sweat running, icy fear, was it to end in this quiet room? One short, sharp sound and it would be over. He tried to touch his feelings. He wasn’t sure that he actually cared.

Scarfe’s hand came up holding a bulky envelope. Wilf could feel a shiver move through his body from somewhere.

“This happens to be most of my life savings,” Scarfe said. “Fifty thousand dollars in bearer bonds. You know what bearer bonds are, don’t you? As long as you’re in possession of them, you can cash them anywhere. No questions asked.” Scarfe set the envelope down on top of the desk. “There it is, the rest of your life, Wilf. Just like that. Go wherever you want, do whatever you like. I’ll leave it up to your good judgment how you might want to divide it up with that person who said she saw me the other night. Mistaken as she was.” He pushed the envelope across the desk.

Wilf stood motionless.

“Don’t you see? It’s all for the two of you. All of it. Take it.”

Wilf shook his head.

“Government of Canada bearer bonds. Absolutely guaranteed. No questions asked. One-thousand-dollar denominations.” Scarfe ripped open the envelope and began to pull out a thick stack of certificates. “Fifty thousand dollars. Fifty of them. All yours.” He got up and came around the desk, fanning them out in his hands like a deck of large playing cards. “Look at them, goddamn it! Will you look at them? Goddamn, take them!”

“How am I going to take them?”

Scarfe came to a stop. He looked down at Wilf’s cane. “Oh, I’m terrible sorry, I’ll get a bag for you.” He began to wander around the darkly panelled room as if he’d never been there before. He stared at some shelves on the wall and at a side table for any possibility. “Something with a handle, I guess. Something you can carry.”

“I know what went wrong,” Wilf said. And he did know. It was written all over Scarfe’s body, all over his face.

“Nothing went wrong. I’m protecting my reputation, that’s all.”

“Bradley went wrong. It’s Bradley, isn’t it? He wasn’t supposed to be there.”

And Scarfe’s face went dead white. It broke. “Oh, that fucking harridan. Oh, that fucking whore. Oh, that goddamn fucking whoring pig! Oh my God! Oh Jesus God!”

Tears sprung into his eyes. He walked back to the window. Wilf thought he might walk right through it but instead he slid down the glass and came to rest on the sill. He slumped his head between his knees. His shoulders began to heave. Sobs ripped out of him. Short strangled cries. The bonds slipped from his hands and slid across the floor.

“I knew I couldn’t buy you, Wilf. Not you,” he was mumbling. When he lifted his head, his eyes looked drowned and blind. “I apologize. I have no regret about Sylvia Young though. None whatsoever. She was an entirely worthless human being. Bloodsucker to the core. But Bradley. I killed a child!”

Scarfe shot to his feet as if the horror of that accusation had lifted him up by the scruff of his neck. He reached out and held on to the window. Behind him, out in the garden, Wilf could see a silvery fall of mist.

“Millie and I. We don’t have any children,” Scarfe was saying, “Couldn’t have them. Tried. Well, the fact is we don’t have anything now. I’ll be plucked out of here.” He began to jam the back of a hand into his eyes. “I killed a child!”

Wilf refused to move, to say anything, comfort him, touch him.

“Bradley was never in the house when we met. In case he overheard, you see? Never there. I asked her. Of course I asked her. She said he was staying with a friend.” Scarfe made his way back to the desk and sank down in the chair. He picked up a pen. Looked at it. He put it back down. “You’re kind of an agent of retribution these days, aren’t you? I suppose it’s the war experience. Is that what it is? That’s what gives you an instinct. Is that it?”

Wilf didn’t answer.

“I’m just wondering. Could you do something for me? Could you explain to my wife? She should know. In private, of course. Just the two of you. And in a calm and considerate way. Could you do that for me? Because I won’t be able to, you see, not once the police, once they have me.”

“I don’t know what to explain.”

“No? Well, you could begin by telling a story. She knows most of it anyway. She knows the Saskatchewan part anyway.” Scarfe forced a weak smile. “About this young man who came from a ridiculously poor family. You could tell her about the part she doesn’t know, though, the part about how poverty works, that even if such a young man makes something of himself, studies hard, is hired on by a bank, meets the right people and finally becomes a secretary-treasurer of a large and prestigious firm, it will make almost no difference. He’ll still be afraid of ending up where he started. He’ll still smell the smell of poverty everywhere he turns, he won’t be able to wash himself enough, won’t be able to get rid of it. And so, to make himself feel better, he’ll steal. Oh, not right away. No, he’ll resist for years because it makes no sense whatsoever, but then he will. And he does. And this is where a certain Sylvia Young enters the picture. Not from any intelligence on her part. Christ no. But simply because one day she spilled some ink on an invoice. That’s all she did. That’s the irony of it. That’s where God comes in, I suppose.”

Scarfe pushed himself up out of the chair and felt his way around the edge of the desk like he’d just aged twenty years. “That was part of her job, you see, trotting upstairs to my office for my initials. When she came back to pick up that particular invoice she noticed something peculiar, that bit of ink she’d spilled earlier had miraculously disappeared. And so, being the kind of person she turned out to be, what do you suppose she did? She put a small spot of ink on that same company’s invoice the next month and lo and behold, the exact same thing happened. The ink had disappeared.” Scarfe knelt down on his bony knees and began to gather up the scattered bonds. “That’s how she stumbled on my arrangement. Every month this certain bulk wool supplier submits an invoice to our company. Our woollen mill checks it, initials it, and then when it comes to me for final approval I replace it with an identical one, except that the new invoice has been calculated at a slightly higher price per pound. I fake everyone’s initials and a cheque gets cut. This supplier, my friend and I, we split the overpayment. Nothing extravagant of course, easily within the margin the company can absorb and since I do the budgets and work with our accountant on the year-end reports, nothing I can’t lose in a flurry of figures. I always intended to stop. Every month. But once she began to blackmail me I needed the money even more. Or thought I did. These bonds were her final payment. She made a promise to sell her house, move away, never bother me again. All I had to do was pay her fifty thousand dollars.” Scarfe struggled to his feet again.

“So why didn’t you?”

“Well, as you can see I was about to. But then I thought, she’ll just come back. She’ll want more. I’d been paying her off every month for the last five years. I knew her very well.”

“She’d even dressed up for the occasion.”

“Yes she had. And I’d brought along a celebratory bottle of booze. I always brought her some booze on the few occasions when she wanted to meet with me, when she’d invariably jack up the price. I tried to keep things amiable, you see. She knew the spot she had me in. She could see my fear; I think she could see it all the way back to Saskatchewan. People like her can smell such things, you know. Not like the rest of us. I was wracked with guilt about everything. She had no conscience whatsoever. Do you know what her mistake was? She thought I was too much a gentleman, too meek a soul, to ever do her any harm.”

The bonds fell out of Scarfe’s hands and fanned out all over the floor again. “I believe we can call your father now. Would you do that for me, Wilf? I can’t think of a better lawyer or a better friend.” He began to move toward the door. “Tell him that we’re on our way over. I don’t want to be here when Millie comes home. I’ll get a few things. I don’t know. A toothbrush. Pajamas. And then I suppose, once we’ve had our chat with your father we’ll have to go down and see the police.”

Scarfe stopped at the doorway. “There’s a phone in the corner. Would you call? And when you see Millie for your little talk, would you tell her that there was never any other woman. Never in all my life.”

He disappeared into the hall.

Wilf could see the telephone sitting on a table in a far corner. A bronze statuette of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco sat on a pedestal next to it. Except for the bonds there was nothing in Scarfe’s study that seemed messy or out of place.

All class. Neat. Precise.

A secretary-treasurer’s office.

Wilf looked out the window. Despite the blowing mist he could see that the garden was neat and precise too, laid out with a pleasing symmetry. The several flower beds. The adjoining paths. A pair of balancing trellises. The goldfish pond placed at the very centre. Countless hours spent down there. A great deal of care.

He tried to imagine Scarfe when the snow was blowing all around looking down at that spot of life. Hidden flashes of gold. “Spring will come,” he had said.

Wilf crossed the room and picked up the phone. He had no idea what he was going to say to his father, he’d just have to trust that something intelligent and halfway apologetic would come out.

“Number please,” Nancy Dearborn’s familiar voice came down the line and at that same instant the air in the room buckled and the house filled with a thunderous roar.

Wilf dropped the receiver and ran stumbling for the doorway. As soon as he reached the side hall he could smell an acrid all too familiar smell. He turned the corner into the main hall. A cloud of grey smoke was floating in front of him. He walked through it toward the yellow pool of light. He could see the bottom of Scarfe’s stocking feet.

Wilf leaned against the wall. The smoke began to sting his eyes. A thick ruby liquid was moving swiftly toward him across the parqueted floor.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Wilf wasn’t able to use the phone in Scarfe Telfer’s house. He didn’t want to deal with Nancy Dearborn. Instead he went next door and asked the neighbour to call an ambulance though he’d seen enough to know that there was no real urgency for one. And then he asked her to phone the police.

Wilf remained standing in the distraught neighbour’s vestibule for what seemed a sufficient amount of time to show appropriate concern and then he started walking back toward his own house. He felt numb and that was all. He passed the ambulance going the other way. A block and a half farther along Andy pulled up beside him in the police cruiser and rolled down the window.

“Wilf,” he called out.

Wilf crossed over to the car.

“It was you who found Mr. Telfer, wasn’t it?”

Wilf leaned against the car and stared off down the street.

“The man who just blew his head off? Jesus, you should have stayed there. You should have waited. Better get in the car. We’ll go back.”

Wilf bent down and looked at Andy through the window. “I’ve got some news for you. Last Wednesday evening, sometime in the middle of the night, Scarfe Telfer turned on the gas that killed Sylvia Young and her son Bradley.”

Andy stared at him, “Oh shit, Wilf.”

“I can’t help it,” Wilf said. His legs felt like they were about to give way.

“Will you get in the car?”

“I’m going home. Talk to me later.”

Wilf started down the sidewalk again. Andy pulled the cruiser into someone’s driveway, turned around and sped back the way he’d come.

What am I going to tell the old man, Wilf thought to himself.

It didn’t turn out to be too difficult a task. By the time he’d reached the house he’d decided he wasn’t going to feel anything anyway. No more pain, his or anyone else’s. No more shock. He just had to retreat somewhere. A concrete bunker.

His father, as usual, was in his study. Some of his Nuremberg transcripts were sitting on his lap, or perhaps they were brand new ones he’d had his law society forward to add to his collection.

Wilf stood in the doorway. “Scarfe Telfer is dead.”

Clarence’s head snapped up. “What? God! What happened?”

“He’s at his house. The ambulance might still be there. But he’s dead.”

Clarence took one moment to search Wilf’s face, one terrible moment, and then he rushed past him and out of the house.

Wilf looked at his watch. It was past two o’clock and he hadn’t had any lunch. He walked into the kitchen and began making himself an omelette. He grated some cheese, cracked some eggs into a bowl and switched on the stove.

Pieces of Scarfe’s brain had redecorated the front hall, a rainbow of fleshy pink arcing across the flowered wallpaper.

Wilf was feeling light again. Breathless. He added a little milk to his eggs and began to whisk them around. He looked in the fridge for some green onions. Pepper.

Scarfe had had himself all figured out. Oh yes, he certainly had. An impoverished childhood. Irrational fears. Stole to make himself feel better. All neat and precise and tied up in a bow. He’d tied Sylvia Young in a bow too. She had no conscience and therefore he had no limits. She’d suck him dry, wouldn’t she? There was nothing else he could do, he was simply defending himself.

Wilf dropped a dab of butter in the heating frying pan.

Did Scarfe really think his wife would understand what he’d done? Did he really think she’d feel sorry for him? Anyway, it was all a convenient lie.

“In my life I have never followed egotistical aims and I was never motivated by base instincts.”

Who had said that? It was resonating as clearly in Wilf’s head as if Scarfe himself had just whispered it in his ear. He poured his eggs into the pan. He could hear them sizzle but he couldn’t smell a thing.

Egotistical?

Of course not. His embezzlement was all psychological. He couldn’t help himself.

Base instincts?

Perish the thought. A logical conclusion followed by a dispassionate, intellectual decision. There was nothing else to be done.

Wilf flipped the omelette. He could see Scarfe sitting at his desk. Mist was blowing past the window. He was holding a pen in his hand. Working it out. Precisely. Neatly. Dispassionately.

Option One: give her the bonds, hope she keeps her word.

Option Two: don’t give her the bonds, call her bluff. Riskier.

Option Three: if she actually is going to go to the police out of sheer bloody-mindedness, no matter the consequences for herself, renegotiate.

Option Four: and if she still won’t disappear after renegotiation and payment, if it looks like she intends to keep this going on forever, disappear myself. Sell the house. Move to the United States. The Caribbean. Mexico. Millie and I have already discussed just such a retirement and she won’t need to know the real reason why.

Option Five: go to the company myself, before Sylvia has
a chance, and try to make some kind of restitution in as private a manner as possible. Beg for forgiveness. This is
a difficult one, though.

Option Six:

He was writing this last heading down with a trembling hand. He didn’t dare fill it out. Option Six already felt too good. His heart was pounding crazily. It felt like a release. It felt like ecstasy.

At four o’clock Clarence returned to the house. Wilf was sitting in the front parlour reading the Saturday paper. They rarely used either of the two front rooms. The one was dominated by a grand piano that had rarely been played, and only many years before by his young and beautiful mother. At least that’s what Wilf had been told. The other room had a stiff formality to it, still full of the overstuffed and dated furniture his grandfather had purchased the first year of his marriage.

It took Clarence some time to locate Wilf. When he did he sat down on the other side of the large room, his coat and fedora still on. “I’ve talked to the Chief of Police and I’ve made it absolutely clear that we’ll be happy to discuss anything and everything first thing Monday morning, but I wanted the rest of today and Sunday to be undisturbed. I insisted on it. A little peace and quiet. Time to muster our reserves for the onslaught.”

Wilf looked over the top of the newspaper. “That sounds like a good idea.”

“I can’t imagine what you were doing over there.”

“I had some information.”

“What information?”

“I thought we were going to have peace and quiet.”

“You’re in serious trouble.”

“Why?”

“Because you were with him when he died. That’s why!”

“I killed Scarfe Telfer?”

“Were there any other witnesses?”

Wilf resumed his reading. “Not that I noticed at the time.”

“Look Wilf, I’m not saying you killed him. Of course I’m not saying that. But what I am saying is that I can’t control these things and if the forensics aren’t clear, the Crown will make up their own mind. They always do. There was just the two of you, wasn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“It speaks to motivation.”

“What does?”

“Why the hell would Scarfe Telfer kill himself?”

Wilf had never seen his father look quite so shaken. His face was trembling with a thousand questions.

“Because he was stealing from Parson’s,” Wilf said. “Sylvia Young was blackmailing him. Scarfe killed her. I found out. And so he killed himself.”

He’d just struck his father a mortal blow. Clarence’s eyes bulged out, his mouth moved but Wilf couldn’t hear any sound.

“You’re right, Dad. We should leave it until Monday morning. I’ve already told Andy, anyway.”

His father somehow found his voice. “Do you mean to say that Scarfe had something to do with that woman’s death? Her son’s death? That’s preposterous!” He stood up and started unbuttoning his coat as if the room had suddenly become too hot. He walked out into the hall. He took off his coat. He took off his hat. He bundled them up in front of his chest like a shield and walked back.

He’s not going to leave this alone, Wilf thought to himself.

“How do you know that, Wilf? How do you know?”

“Because there was a witness. Not today. But Wednesday night. She saw Scarfe coming from Sylvia’s house. She recognized him. Well, not him exactly, but his car. Well, not his Cadillac either, but she saw a fancy white car. And as you’ll recall, Wednesday was the night Millie couldn’t locate her husband. Or her sleeping pills.”

“You went over there on the basis of that less than overwhelming information?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell did you say to him? What did you do?”

“I lied. I told him I knew more than I actually did.”

“And then he shot himself?”

Wilf nodded his head.

Clarence stood there clutching his coat and his hat and staring at his son. “I need a drink.” He went into the hall again and disappeared.

Wilf looked back at the newspaper but he couldn’t concentrate. Hunker down in a concrete bunker without even a slit to peek out of, that was all one required. That was the thing.

Eventually Clarence came back carrying two drinks in his hands. He gave one to Wilf and sat down where he’d sat before. They sipped their drinks.

Wilf could tell that his father had resolved for the time not to ask any more questions, but the strain on his face was more than evident. He looked overwhelmed. Before he was half through his drink he had to excuse himself. He disappeared down the hall again.

Wilf remained where he was and waited.

After a moment Clarence returned. “I’m the one who talked to Millie this morning. I’m the one who’s been friends with Scarfe since the day he moved into town. I’m his solicitor, for god sakes, and I’m your father. Why didn’t you come to me if you thought you had some information tying Scarfe to Sylvia Young’s suicide? We could have talked. We could have decided the best thing to do together. Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Just because of that, because you are his friend. I thought it would be more respectful of Mr. Telfer, his privacy, if I went alone. He might have had a reasonable, straightforward explanation.”

“If you’d handled it differently, it might have turned out differently.”

“He broke down. He confessed to everything.”

“If you’d handled it differently, he might not have shot himself.”

“It was because of Bradley. He didn’t mean to kill Bradley.”

“But he shot himself!”

Clarence looked bereft. He looked lost.

* * *

Carole waited until her father had left the house. She could still hear the sewing-machine treadle going up and down, up and down, right above her head. Her mother was occupied, mending something by the light of the window at the back of the upstairs hall.

She picked up the phone.

“Number please,” Nancy Dearborn said.

“Six four one.”

“I was wondering what was taking you so long. Isn’t it just awful? Let me know if you find out anything more.”

“Will you please just connect me?”

Nancy’s voice tightened. “That’s what I am doing.”

Carole listened as the phone at the other end of the line rang and rang. It rang five times before it was picked up.

“Hello,” Clarence said.

“Oh.” Carole’s heart sank. “Hello, Mr. McLauchlin. It’s me. Carole.”

“Yes, Carole.”

“I just heard about what happened. I mean, today.”

“Yes?”

“About Mr. Telfer.”

“Yes. Well, thank you for calling. It’s very thoughtful of you. It’s been quite the shock.”

“Yes. It is.”

“He was an old friend, you know. A dear friend. Anyway, everything’s as fine here as might be expected and thanks again for your call. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”

“Mr. McLauchlin?”

“Yes.”

“Is Wilf there?”

“Wilf? Well, yes he is but he’s resting. I don’t know how much you know about the events of today, Carole.”

“I know he was there.”

“I suppose the whole town knows. Anyway, I’ll pass on your kind concern, and thank you for calling.”

“Mr. McLauchlin?”

“Yes, Carole?”

“I want to talk to Wilf. Please.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

“I’m not sure he’s in the mood to talk.”

“He’ll talk to me. I need to talk to him. Please.”

She could almost hear Mr. McLauchlin thinking out loud, thinking it all through. He was so smart. He’d been away on business for days. His house had been empty.

“Just a moment,” he said.