Murder At The Mendel (19 page)

I didn’t take it, and I didn’t sit down when he motioned to the chair across from him.

“I’m a friend of Sally Love’s,” I said, “and I have something for you.” I dropped the tuque on his empty desk, and for a moment it lay there between us, alive with possibilities.

I think I expected a scene – a denial or threats and accusations – but for the longest time there was silence as Hank Mewhort looked down at the hat.

Finally, he spoke. “You won’t believe this, but I’m glad you’re here. Ever since Miss Love pulled those creatures off me after the funeral, I’ve known I had to come forward. They had the time of Reg’s death in the paper that same day, you know, 6:21. I cut the story out of the newspaper.” He opened his desk drawer, pulled out the story and handed it to me. Proof of good intentions.

“Sally Love was in her house at 6:21,” he said. “I could see her through the front window. She was painting. She didn’t come out until later. By the time our disagreement was over, it was 6:35. I looked at the clock in my car.” He looked at me steadily. His pale eyes were as guileless as a choirboy’s. “I believe in doing the right thing,” he said.

“Now’s your chance,” I said.

He walked over and took his Siwash sweater off the coat rack.

“Right,” he said. “Now’s my chance.”

I walked to the police station on Fourth Avenue with him, and I waited with him in the reception area until Mary Ross McCourt was free to see him.

“Councillor Mewhort has information that proves Sally couldn’t have killed Reg Helms,” I said when Inspector McCourt came out to get us.

She raised her carefully plucked eyebrows and looked hard at him.

“True?” she asked.

“True,” he said.

I watched as he followed her down the corridor and into her office. Then I sighed with relief. The wheels of justice were starting to grind.

Five hours later I was sitting at the kitchen table marking thirty-five papers on the failure of Meech Lake when the dogs started going crazy. I went to the front door and there was Sally with her arms filled with pussy willows.

I helped Sally off with her coat and took the pussy willows from her. Then we walked into the kitchen together.

“I have news,” I said.

Sally smiled. “It must be pretty hot. You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”

“I feel like the cat that swallowed the canary. Sal, I found the man you had the fight with the night of the murder. And he’s already been downtown and told Mary Ross McCourt his story. You’re off the hook.”

Sally collapsed onto the kitchen chair. “Oh, my God, Jo, this is so wonderful. I can’t believe it. Is it really over? Is it really over at last?” She jumped up and hugged me. “Who was it?” she said. “Who did it turn out to be?”

“Elvis,” I said. “Back from the dead to give you an alibi. Sit down and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

When I finished, Sally looked serious. “Who would have believed it? Councillor Hank Mewhort, the leader of the pack. Anyway, I’m in the clear. How can I ever thank you, Jo?”

“Be happy,” I said. “Now let’s have some coffee and talk about ordinary things. You can fill me in on Vancouver.”

I made the coffee and we sat at the kitchen table in the middle of my Meech Lake papers and looked at pictures
Sally had taken of her new house in Vancouver. It was beautiful: very West Coast, surrounded by trees, lots of glass and exposed beams and dazzling views. She was filled with homeowner’s pride, and as she talked she drew quick floor plans of the rooms on the cover page of one of my essays.

“Here,” she said. “Here’s where the door is, but we’ll knock that out so Taylor can have a really spectacular bedroom. And that deck can be extended clear around the house, so you can sit there any hour of the day and feel the sun on your face. It’ll be like living in a clearing in the forest.” Then she stopped drawing and looked at me. “Jo, I am so happy,” she said simply. Then she bent over her sketches again.

The night of February fourteenth was a Valentine itself: mild, still, moonlit, a night for lovers. It was a little after six when the taxi dropped me in front of the gallery. Everything was quiet. The invited guests wouldn’t be arriving for an hour and a half. I was there early to help.

The first voice I heard that morning had been Hilda McCourt’s. “Joanne, I’m taking advantage of our friendship to ask a favour. That fine young woman who’s been looking after this appreciation with me just telephoned to say she has the flu. Everything is in the hands of the professionals, but as you know even professionals need a nudge now and then. Do you know Nicolas Poussin’s work? Seventeenth-century French?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think I do.”

“Well, you should,” she said. “He was the greatest of all classical painters. His motto was
‘Je n’ai rien négligé’
– I overlook nothing. When it comes to this celebration of Sally Love’s generosity, I think we should emulate Poussin. Come early tonight, would you, and help me keep everybody up to the mark? After all she’s done for the artistic community of this city, Sally Love deserves a perfect evening.”

When I saw the gallery that night, I thought of Nicolas Poussin. “Je
n’ai rien négligé”
– every detail was perfect. The bright banners bearing Sally’s name were still hanging along the portico, but they were interspersed now with vertical chains of hearts, very stylized, very contemporary. In the reception area a string quartet played Ravel, and porcelain vases filled with roses perfumed the air with the sweet promise of June.

Hilda McCourt came out of the tea lounge to meet me. She had found her classic evening gown: a Chinese dress of red silk shot through with gold, form-fitting and secured from throat to ankle by elaborate frogs. She was wearing a pair of milky jade earrings that fell almost to her shoulders. When I complimented her on them, she smiled.

“They came from a friend,” she said. “He was a missionary in China, but a great lover of beauty.”

“I can see that,” I said.

I was surprised to see her blush at the compliment, but she was quick to seize the initiative again.

“You look lovely, Joanne. Just as I predicted, your face has healed nicely, and that dress was a wise choice. Lipstick red is wonderfully vibrant on ash blondes. There’s a lesson there. After forty, women should stick with true colours; pastels wash us out. Now come along. Let’s get a peek at those studies that are going up for auction.”

The drawings were on display in the Mendel salon. They were mounted simply, and to me at least they were a surprise. In their final form, painted in the fresco, the sexual parts had seemed spontaneous, fleshly imaginings. But here I could see the work behind the flash and the wit. The preliminary sketches showed process. Each of the genitalia was drawn in pen on a kind of grid of faint pencil lines. At the top of each page in a neat pencilled hand were notes on scale and proportion. I looked at the complex relationships of
angles and circles and marvelled at the effort it must have taken for Sally to teach herself the principles of geometry she needed for her work. The studies were designated by number only.

Hilda and I went through quickly. Every so often, we’d stop at a particularly interesting one and speculate about the identity of the owner.

“Tempted to bid on any?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Either number twenty-three or fifty-seven would add an interesting dimension to my bedroom. Now come along, we’d better check on the caterers. They’ve done wonders in Gallery III. If the food is as good as the ambience, we’re home free.”

The caterers had set up round tables throughout the room. Each table was covered by a red and white quilt of the wedding-ring pattern; in the centre a scented red candle in a hurricane lamp cast a soft glow.

I bent to look at the stitching on a quilt.

“Hand done,” I said to Hilda McCourt. “It’s exquisite. The whole room is exquisite.”

“Here comes the man you should praise,” she said as a tall, heavy-set blond man moved carefully among the tables toward us. He looked like a man who cared about the pleasures of the senses. The chain from his gold pocket watch gleamed dully against a cashmere vest the colour of claret, and his moonlike face arranged itself easily into a smile.

“Stephen Orchard,” he said, “from Earthly Delights Catering.”

“I’ve always loved your company’s name,” I said, “and the food, of course. It’s always good news for me when I see one of your trucks parked outside a party I’ve been invited to.”

He beamed. “Would you like a look at what you’ll be eating tonight?” He picked up a stiff menu card from the table nearest us and handed it to me.

Barbecued British Columbia salmon

Consommé Madrilene

Rolled veal stuffed with watercress

Wild rice La Ronge

Fiddleheads

Tomatoes à la Provençal

Sorbet Saskatoon

Coeurs à la crème fraîche

“Perfect,” I said, handing the menu back to him. Then a thought struck me. “Someone did tell you about Sally’s allergies, didn’t they?”

He adjusted the fold of a linen napkin. “Her husband was most conscientious. And really it’s no big deal. I don’t use nuts for parties this size; you’d be amazed how common that allergy is. And everything else Mr. Lachlan mentioned is simply a basis of sound cooking: organically grown ingredients, no additives, no preservatives.” He smiled. “We’re all growing wiser about what we put in our bodies.”

“Yes,” I said, “we are.” I started to say more, but I felt a hand touch my elbow. I turned. It was Kyle, the gallery guard. He was wearing what must have been his dress uniform, navy blue and vaguely military.

He didn’t look very cheerful. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “There are a bunch of ladies out there in ape masks.”

“I believe it,” I said. “They call themselves the Guerrilla Girls. They protest the way women are treated in the art world.”

Kyle nodded sagely, but Hilda McCourt looked baffled.

“Why would they protest an event to honour Sally?” she asked.

“She isn’t exactly in tune with them philosophically,” I said. “She thinks all they care about is numbers, not quality.

Sally believes that if you have talent, you’ll make your way to the top. Of course, in her case that’s been true.”

Hilda McCourt shook her head sadly. “The solipsism of the gifted. They truly can’t understand that we are not all created equal. Still, whatever Sally’s philosophical differences with them might be, I don’t feel we can ignore a protest by other women artists.”

“If that’s all it was, I’d agree,” I said, “but it’s more complicated than that. Sally and I got into a scuffle with this bunch after Clea Poole’s funeral, and it was scary. People in masks are scary. And, Hilda, I don’t think these women are interested in making a political statement. The real Guerrilla Girls, in New York, are legitimate social critics. Even Sally says they’re principled. But I don’t like what I’ve seen of these women. They frighten me. I don’t like anonymity. I like to know who I’m dealing with. I don’t think we owe anything to people who won’t show their faces. I’d be a lot happier if they were out of here.”

Hilda looked thoughtful. “We may just be giving them grist for their mill if we throw them out. I think we should see them.”

“You’re the boss.” I shrugged and smiled at Kyle. “I guess the decision’s made. We have to go see some guerrillas about a lady.”

They were in the reception area, a dozen of them, wearing the outfits they had worn the day of Clea Poole’s funeral: boots that came to their knees, skintight black pants, bomber jackets, big, toothy gorilla masks. Two of them were wearing gorilla hands, and the rest wore gloves. Gorillas or not, they were Canadians in an art gallery, so they were behaving themselves, waiting to deal with someone in authority.

Hilda McCourt was that somebody.

It was a compelling scene: the commanding eighty-year-old with the brilliant hair and the extravagant Chinese dress
and the twelve dark figures towering over her, listening intently.

Hilda McCourt’s voice was the voice of the classroom: “Why don’t you tell me what you want, and I’ll see how much I can accommodate you.”

“We want to poster this event,” one of them said, stepping forward. She handed me some of the posters she’d been holding. I looked at them quickly. They were nicely done, black and white with bold graphics. One showed a loonie with a large bite out of it; the bite represented the income lost to a Canadian artist if she happened to be a woman. Another was a list of the ten top galleries in Canada; a number beside each indicated the number of one-person exhibitions Canadian women had had at that gallery. The numbers were not impressive. Nor were the numbers on a third poster, which showed the proportion of women to men as art critics on newspapers or as directors or curators of art museums. At the bottom of each poster was the imprint: “A Public Service Message from the Guerrilla Girls: Conscience of the Art World.”

I handed the posters to Hilda McCourt. “I don’t see anything wrong with these,” I said. “In fact, people should know this. They could put them over on that wall where the gallery’s stuck all those newspaper stories about Erotobiography.”

“All right,” said a small figure in the back, “that’s one. The next thing is we want to go to Sally’s party – to represent all the women who’ve never had a dinner to celebrate their accomplishments.”

“Or even an exhibit,” said another Guerrilla Girl.

“Or even a fucking chance,” said a third.

“Give us a chance,” said another. “Two, four, six, eight. Empowerment now; women won’t wait. Three, five, seven, nine. They’ve had their chance; now I want mine. Power! Now!” Their voices, muffled by the heavy masks, rose in a
chorus. Their bodies began to sway rhythmically. A stocky woman at the end leaned too close to a porcelain vase filled with roses, and it fell to the floor and smashed.

Suddenly the room was silent.

“That was English soft paste porcelain, more than a hundred years old,” Hilda McCourt said mildly. “A piece of great charm and vigour. Pieces like that always seem proof of our civility.” She took a step toward the Guerrilla Girls. “You may certainly display your posters, but you are not welcome at this celebration. Joanne, I think we should check on the Chablis for dinner. Stephen Orchard wondered if he should bring over another case, just to be on the safe side.”