Let's Kill Uncle (19 page)

He had also purchased two dozen rubbery, listless tomato plants which lay prone in the sun, like guardsmen fainting on parade. Occasionally, when Uncle happened to think of it, he threw the odd bucket of cold water on them.

They were not important, for Uncle’s real interest in horticulture lay deep in the gloomy heart of the forest. A pit, six feet deep, five feet long and three feet wide.

Uncle was returning from Mr Brooks’s store, where he had had to purchase a new shovel, having broken the shaft of the original in his enthusiasm for his work. He met face to face with Sergeant Coulter who was on his way to his father’s cottage for the weekend.

Sergeant Coulter was weary from a day of giving evidence in court. It had been a particularly grisly murder case, and the hours of following the testimony and keeping mentally and physically at attention had left him exhausted.

Sonny Gitskass Charlie, a youth of nineteen, was charged with patricide.

He had hacked his father with an axe and when he was through with his parent he had hacked up the floor.

His half-white mother had fled earlier, taking her younger children with her to hide in the bushes.

His aged grandmother, through an interpreter, testified that when she had barricaded herself in the bedroom Gitskass had tried to break down the door with his axe.

By the time Sergeant Coulter had been called in the father lay dying. The father insisted he had provoked his drunken son and that the youth had acted in self-defence.

Then, at the old lady’s prodding, he had admitted he had begged Gitskass not to kill his grandmother. His exact words were, testified Sergeant Coulter, ‘I said, Sonny, don’t you chop your grandma.’

In the witness stand, Sonny Gitskass Charlie stood sullen and unconcerned. He declared his grandmother was a liar, he had never attempted to kill her, and that he had murdered his father in self-defence.

Sergeant Coulter felt certain the father had lied to protect his son. He believed the old woman, but he had no proof, and the grandmother had heard but not seen the crime.

She was the daughter of a Nootka chief, and when she took the stand she pointed an accusing finger at her grandson. Through her interpreter she declared that Gitskass was just like his great-grandfather, insane and a murderer. He had, she said, killed her favourite son, and since she had
sixteen other grandchildren, she could well spare Gitskass and she hoped the law would hang him.

When Sonny Gitskass was led from the courtroom hand-cuffed to two Mounties, he turned his monolithic face to Albert and muttered softly: ‘You lie. So does the old woman. I’ll get you, horseman.’

The merciless slanted eyes chilled Albert to the bone.

He silently agreed with the old grandmother, Sonny Gitskass was as nutty as they came. For his own future peace of mind, he hoped very much that they would hang Sonny Gitskass Charlie.

When Uncle paused before him, Albert sighed. He was really in no mood to talk, but politeness forced him to stop and smile.

‘Nothing like a bit of hard work when you reach forty,’ Uncle boomed heartily, patting the shovel. ‘Keeps the old waistline down. Ah, but I see you don’t have to worry about that yet, Sergeant!’

Sergeant Coulter nodded and eyed the wicked Uncle. Major Murchison-Gaunt with his deep chest looked to him to be in exceedingly good shape. Not an ounce of fat on him, and Albert was an expert in judging such matters.

Albert looked at the brilliant, cloudless sky.

‘We could certainly do with some rain,’ he ventured. ‘It’s hard on the gardens.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Uncle agreed. ‘But what a delightful spot this Island is, rain or no rain. Forests, the fields, gardens … the cottage looking out over the sea … chambered nautilus and all that. Why, do you know, I put crumbs on the veranda and the squirrels and chipmunks come right up and eat out of my hand. Tame as kittens, cheeky little rascals.’

Albert smiled and nodded.

‘Yes, they’re cute, aren’t they? I had one for a pet when I was a boy.’

He stared at Uncle, and he had a peculiar sensation as he did so. People very often did. It was the thought of the eyes behind the dark glasses. Albert decided it was because Uncle could see him and he couldn’t see Uncle. It put him at a disadvantage, somehow.

‘My, my, it is warm,’ Uncle drew his silken handkerchief from his pocket, shook it and mopped his gleaming brow. A carmined fluff of chipmunk fur floated like down and landed on Sergeant Coulter’s immaculate sleeve.

Albert plucked it off absently.

‘Yes, it certainly is.’ And having exhausted his conversational store, he bade the Major good day.

‘Good day, my boy, good day.’

Jolly old Uncle Sylvester strode briskly up the path, whistling ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic ’.

When he reached the top of the path he turned and saw that the Mountie was out of sight.

He smiled.

Just plain luck about the girl being on the Island. So much more logical, two children drowning instead of one. Mischievous kiddies, they had already been rescued once, and he’d see they were rescued once again. The third time, they wouldn’t come up. Not that they were really going to drown, of course. Bodies had a way of washing back on shore, and it was important that these bodies should never be found.

He was setting the stage carefully. The Islanders would remember them as naughty children who insisted on playing around dangerous waters.

If it had been only Barnaby, even that stupid policeman might put two and two together. This way it very logically
added up to five. Claire, Maude, Robert, Barnaby and little what’s her name.

Uncle sighed. It wasn’t all beer and skittles. He would still continue to get the interest, but since the bodies would never be found, he’d have to wait seven years for the bulk of the estate.

And certainly he had had no idea when he’d picked out this lonely little island, that that idiot officer of the law was an Island boy with an almost pathological affection for his native heath. As a matter of fact he’d always understood that Mounties were posted far from their stamping grounds. They had a reason, he supposed, R.C.M.P. always did, so he’d heard. He sniggered. They probably had Miss Proudfoot tagged as a red spy and the homespun sergeant was keeping her under surveillance.

Nevertheless, the real-estate people had said no electricity, no church services, no doctor. He had assumed that, except in cases of emergency, the police would never visit the Island.

Fortunately one could almost set one’s clock by the sergeant.

Well, back to work. He was extremely interested in the transplanting of the huge ferns in the forest. If the root system was not disturbed, the beds dug deeply enough, and if they were watered frequently, they transplanted splendidly.

And the way they grew! Six weeks after putting them on the grave, he probably wouldn’t be able to find it himself.

Yes, a great man for gardening was Uncle.

He had always liked that song.

Reaching his father’s house, Albert first checked the honey-suckle vine. The earth about the roots seemed cracked and parched but the foliage was healthy. He got a rake, and using the handle as a probe he poked deep holes in a circle about the stem. Drawing up buckets of water from the well, he slowly filled the holes until the soil turned from ashgray to black.

It was nearly dusk, he had not eaten since ten o’clock in the morning and, entering the cottage, he looked about absently for something to provide him with a dinner. Opening the cupboard he scanned the meager supply of food and took out a tin of pork and beans.

He had half a mind to eat them cold, to save himself the trouble of lighting the stove, but he decided that that would be slovenly. He would heat the beans and make himself a cup of tea like a civilised man.

Soon a fire was roaring in the stove, the beans were bubbling and the kettle boiling. The room was stifling from the long daytime sun and a mirage of dancing air hovered over the kitchen range.

He opened the windows and the front door which faced directly on the ocean and thankfully breathed in the sea breeze, then, seating himself at the table, he ate without haste or relish. Food did not mean a great deal to him; his father had been an indifferent cook and as a boy Albert’s favourite meal was canned corned beef with boiled cabbage and potatoes. It was still his preferred dish.

He lit a cigarette with his tea and leaned back, conscious of the frugal pleasure the old man’s house always gave him. The room was almost as it had been the day his father died, for, like his father, Albert was not given to changes.

The old man had lived in barracks for so many decades that the two-roomed cottage had a military starkness, unrelieved by ornaments or pictures. It never occurred to Albert to add any.

The books on the windowsill mirrored father and son, half a dozen prim Victorian novels, including
East Lynne
, which had brought a secret dimness to Albert’s eye. There were a few classics,
Cranford
,
Pride and Prejudice
,
Vanity Fair
, and a Bible which neither father nor son ever bothered to open. Completing the library were Albert’s expensively bound and well cared for books on archaeology, plus a handful of volumes that might be expected to interest a policeman; books on ballistics, forensic medicine and dermatography. At the end of the row was a dog-eared, much thumbed little book, Palgrave’s
Golden Treasury
of verse. It was bound in soft red morocco and had belonged to Albert’s mother. Albert knew most of the poems by heart.

On a spindly bamboo table stood an ancient Victrola from which a large black horn rose like a mute plea for sound. Beneath was a stack of phonograph albums filled with red-labelled records, as thick as piecrusts.

As was his habit, Albert wound the machine and picked out his favourites. The records were all ones his mother had brought to the Island. Albert had never purchased any new ones and saw no need to. Caruso, Madame Melba, Harry Lauder and John McCormack were soon pealing out over the silent beach.

He closed his eyes as the nasal, quavering tenor’s ‘Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms’ floated on the soft night air. It moved him deeply each time he heard it.

She was hardly a ruin yet, as a matter of fact she enjoyed robust health and was only two years older than himself, but to him the words were strangely apt in some mystic way.

When he had played the records and done the dishes, Albert looked around the cottage in dismay. There was, as usual, nothing to do.

The science of fingerprinting had always fascinated him, but when he took down the book on dermatography he found he could not concentrate.

His mind and body usually worked in concert, mental exhaustion bringing physical fatigue, but tonight his brain felt like a wet sponge while his body was charged with alert, nervous energy.

He decided to go for a swim, but after getting into his trunks and wading gingerly over the barnacled rocks, he almost changed his mind. The water was tepid and not the least refreshing.

One look back at the lonely little cottage made him wade farther. After a few minutes the soothing buoyancy of the ocean relaxed him and he swam on and on.

It was not until he reached an icy patch of water that he realised how far he had travelled. The light in the cottage was distant, and he knew he was at a point nearly two miles from the shore, where the current was strong and the ocean deep and cold.

Now he was weary, and he cursed himself for a fool. He floated on his back, resting for a few minutes, then began the tiresome swim home. He had not gone a half mile when fatigue forced him to rest again. He was a strong swimmer, and not a man who panicked quickly, but he felt a certain uneasiness as he saw the oil lamp, so tiny, and looking just as distant as it had when he turned back to shore.

The brief respites he took did not seem to replenish his strength, the tide was changing and he felt as though he were harnessed against it. He was appalled, after floating for the fourth time, to find that his arms and legs seemed even more leaden, but at least the cottage was closer.

When he was within half a mile of the beach he suddenly doubled up with an excruciating cramp. The icy stretch after the bathtub temperature of the shore waters had been too much.

When the pain had passed there flashed before his eyes death certificates and visions of the drowned bodies he had seen. And he who had so recently lectured the children on the dangers of water now remembered the old adages of swimming too soon after eating, going beyond one’s depth and overtaxing one’s strength.

He knew he was in trouble and he prayed he could make the short distance without another crippling seizure. The cottage was very near now, but he was dismally aware that he could as easily drown fifteen feet from the beach as two miles out at sea.

His strength was nearly gone but he gauged the situation and distance calmly. If he did drown, he decided, it would not be because he lost his head.

Finally, gasping and with his limbs trembling uncontrollably, he felt bottom under his feet. Without the water to support him he found he could not stand, and he crawled
on his hands and knees to the beach. He reached it none too soon and gritted his teeth as he doubled over with another cramp. When it had passed, he managed to get to his feet and stagger to the cottage.

Never had he been so spent. Once, while taking cover in a ditch during the preliberation death marches, he had realised wearily that his limbs would no longer obey him, and he had said goodbye to his beloved Island of cranky inhabitants, wild roses and deserted fields.

His youth saved him then, but he felt now that he could not take another step if his life depended on it, and stumbling through the stifling cottage he fell heavily on the iron army cot.