Murder Sees the Light (16 page)

“You should be all right,” he said, taking his beady eyes off the horizon. His pointed beak of a nose was calling home all the subtle signs of the day to come.

“Think so?”

“Yeah, you'll be all right.” Lloyd looked down at my feet. “You know where you're standing?” I looked down to find a clue.

“Nope.”

“That's where old Trask hit his miserable head. Right on the end of the board you're standing on. Bashed it in after falling from a ladder where I am.”

“You saw it happen?”

“No, but everybody knows what happened. Probably didn't even feel himself rolling into the lake.”

I was standing on a very ordinary piece of dock made from two-by-six planks.

“It's the one that sticks out that did for him,” Lloyd added, as though knowing which plank made all the difference. It was like old people recounting their last meeting with a deceased dear one who'd “had a warning.” To be fair, the plank Lloyd's toe pointed to did jut out from the others because it held a cleat for tying up boats to; it looked like a place where Trask could have put a bad dent in his skull.

“He was working on the dock, somebody told me,” I said.

“Yeah. That's right. Dalt Rimmer finished it up before Joan and Mike took over. Old Wayne built her just two boards along from the one he hit. The rest's Dalt's. I can always tell Dalt's work. He'll never use three nails where one will do. Wayne, now, he never drove two nails the same way, always going around half-cut, if you know what I mean. If his right thumb wasn't black it was his left. That was a man for accidents, all right.” Here Lloyd shook his head, as though Trask were standing in front of him swearing from a newly banged finger and reaching for a swallow of comfort.

“Well, if I'm going, I'd better be going,” I said. I could feel Lloyd's eyes on me as I made my way past those left at the shore end of the dock to the cabin for my lunch and supper. I added a few biscuits and oranges to the eggs and other things, then returned to the pile of supplies. A few minutes later they were all gathered on the end of the dock and I was returning their waves as I started to steer a course up the lake past the first and second islands to the river entrance. I heard Lloyd shouting and jumping around on the shore, so I turned to look back. He was holding my fishing rod and box of sinkers. I went back to collect them. I didn't say anything. There were fewer wavers when I set out on my great adventure the second time.

FOURTEEN

I found the river mouth, and then the faded orange portage sign face down in the bushes, where it wasn't much help to anybody. Dealing with nature directly, without names, eliminated a lot of confusion. I'll recommend it to Dalt Rimmer when I see him again. I pulled the boat ashore in a bit of scrub that passed for a clearing and set the motor under it. The sun was still high enough so that I could hope to get to the smaller lake well before dark. I hefted the pack by leaning it against a tree. When I had it on, I wasn't sure which of us was leading. The way ahead led through the bush on a path that had been well trodden at one time, but which was beginning to allow new growth through the packed earth. Off to the right from time to time I could hear the sound of falling water, occasionally glimpse it. If I hadn't been loaded down with my pack and fishing things, I would have made a side trip to see what was what. I kept to the straight and narrow until I thought my knees would give up and quit. I remembered the map Lloyd had drawn for me, now riding near the top of the pack, but now out of reach: three and fiveeighths miles. That's a long hike when measured in city blocks.

Apart from the sound of the water from time to time, and the warning from some startled bird, the place was quiet. You could have heard a drunk hiccup at three hundred yards. Light filtered through the leaves like weak coffee. The way the underbrush came up to meet the lowhanging branches of the maples, birches, and other trees made the path into a shaggy tunnel. For the most part the way was dry, but there were spongy places that did in my shoes, which, like me, weren't intended for this kind of life. Settling on a stump, I took a rest at what seemed the half-way point. After a welcome cigarette, I was on the march again, whittling down the distance. But there always were more hills and turnings ahead.

At last I saw a clearing forming in the distance, and when I got there I could glimpse water spread out ahead through the trees. It was a twisting quarter of a mile downhill. I was wet with sweat and out of breath. I'd have thought that the downward trail would have been easy, but it wasn't. The front of my shins were yelling at me every step to the lake. I had another smoke overlooking Little Crummock: another long narrow lake with what looked like a twist at the far end. I took Lloyd's map out of my pack. There was a path along the south shore that was supposed to lead to Berners's cabin.

With my breath fairly caught, I hoisted my rig and set off down the south shore. This path was in the same poor shape the other one was in; I wandered away from it twice ending up in one of the better places in the world to discard old razor blades in. In fact this whole north country was good for that; some places were harder to find, that's all. Then I thought about the stuff in the newspapers about pollution in the rivers and mercury in the fish, and I decided that old razor blades take different shapes in different settings. I heard Lloyd talking one night about the lumbering that is still going on in the park, and wasn't that a shame. Then David Kipp told him that cutting helped maintain the place as a usable wilderness area. You don't know who to believe on a thing like that. Anyway, I found my way back to the path and kept on it for another hour and a half. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for having managed to get so far without asking directions from a policeman. My feet had got the hang of avoiding roots and animals' burrows. It was like they had taken over the matter of avoiding a twisted ankle in order to free my mind for more important things.

The only more important thing I could think of was why was I going into Berners's cabin in the first place. For all I knew, Patten could be dead or driving for the border right now. What did I expect to find at Dick's place? Did I think it linked up to the murder? I asked myself these questions but got no satisfactory answers. So I kept walking. By now I was beginning to suspect that I was on a treadmill, and that the scenery drifting by on both sides was a loop that I'd seen before. When you come from the city, you can only take outdoors in small doses. If I saw another blank stare on the frozen face of another deer or another cute chipmunk perched on top of another bracket fungus, I'd throw up. There was the unmistakable hand of Walt Disney in all this. A game bird of some kind I'd seen in
Bambi
ran along the path for a few yards followed by an active brood of eight offspring. All it lacked was a musical score and a philosophical old owl.

Then I saw it. Dick Berners's cabin was sitting high on the uphill side of the path looking as silent and as natural as the rotted stumps I'd been walking over. It was a very cabin-like cabin, built of medium-sized logs, with a peaked roof, tin smokestack in the middle, and old sawblades nailed across the windows with their teeth pointed up, to discourage bears and other unwelcome visitors. The door was fastened with a rusty tongue and hasp and an old padlock that broke when I blew hard at it. Inside it was dark. I saw a woodstove with a rusty pipe slanting to the roof, a plain table with curling oilcloth, a bed with a damp-looking mattress on top, with dark stains and holes from which a froth of fuzz overflowed. Along the wall were shelves with cans with darkened familiar labels indicating beans, vegetables, and soup. A broken bag of something white that the mice had discovered and dragged off leaned against a row of books, and there was a japanned canister that still smelled strongly of tea.

Since I was planning to stay the night, I reconnoitred light fixtures and a greasy-topped jerrycan of coal oil. I could see where candles had been mounted in dead sardine cans, but the mice had eaten them. There were signs that Dick had tried to keep the wildlife at bay: pieces of tin were nailed over holes in the floor. The place smelled musty and sour, like it hid a nasty secret.

I stashed my pack on the bed and smoked a cigarette in the single wooden chair. Not feeling up to dealing with the mysteries of Dick's stove, I ate a cold feast out of my pack: hard-boiled eggs, sardines, a handful of bread, and an orange. I even sampled Cissy's cake. While doing this, I had the leisure to cast my eye around the single room in more detail. It was roughly chinked with cement, decorated with a few crude oil paintings on slabs of wood, brothers to the ones I'd seen. There were other pictures too: a British bulldog standing firm on a Union Jack, torn from a Sunday colour supplement and going brown; a picture of four young men in uniform, two of them sprouting first moustaches. A washed-out cloth poppy was pinned to the frame, a leftover from some forgotten Remembrance Day. Above the door, stuck up with a yellowed Scotch tape, was the top of an American newspaper:
The Evening Star,
written in old Gothic type. He had a collection of cardboard beer mats from places like
The Elephant Public House, St. Nicholas Street, Worthing
and
The Midland Hotel, Peter Street, Chichester.
On one wall, between two pairs of deer antlers, a stringless guitar hung from a leather strap. On top of the table I was sitting at, I found a Spanish rope lighter, in the drawer a yellowed ivory-handled knife with rust spots on the blade along with matching single fork and spoon, all liberally sprinkled with mouse turds. In general, the cabin contained nothing of obvious value. I guess that was the saw-off in the north: you didn't fill your place with burglar-tempting stuff and left it protected by a simple lock. Outsiders, except in emergencies, played the game and respected private property.

I glanced over Berners's dusty library:
Klondike Fever,
by Pierre Berton,
North of the Opeongo,
by Philip Armstrong Scott,
Tombstone,
by Walter Noble Burns, and
Free Gold: The Story of Canadian Mining,
by Arnold Hoffman. Holding up one end of the bed I found some Leacock, Dickens, and Sinclair Lewis. Further underneath and much nibbled, was
A Pocket Guide to the Lake District,
dated 1938. My first big discovery was a sheaf of letters, held together with a greasy piece of binder twine, from French and French, a law firm in Bancroft, Ontario, about some mining leases in the east half of Lot No. 12 in the 14th concession of Anglesea Township, County of Hastings, Province of Ontario. The letters traced a story beginning with the original claim (October 1959) and, moving through the fine print of date and hour of staking, date of recording, number of licence, I came to the name of the lessee, Richard Berners. It looked like he had done most of the manual work, including drilling, that was listed. In 1964, a new name appears: Wayne Trask, who gained a fifteen per cent interest in the project. A year later, he got another fifteen per cent. A year after that, Trask picked up another thirty per cent in two easy stages placed six months apart. French and French didn't tell me what they were mining, but I found a clipping from
The Globe and Mail
about an abandoned ruby mine in the same county and in a neighbouring township. So, that's what it was all about—rubies. But what did mining in Hastings in the 1960s have to do with what was going on now? I asked that question again when I found a cask of black powder and a dozen drill bits tied together with wire. A bottle marked nitric acid sat on the shelf next to an unmarked one that plainly contained mercury. They looked about as innocent as a pair of brass knuckles at a wedding. Mining is illegal inside the park. No known minerals of commercial value are to be found here. That's why it's a park. Find gold and the borders would bend fast enough.

And thinking back to the mid-sixties, who could our miners have been? Berners, of course, and Trask. They'd have still been in their prime. But there were other possibilities as well. Albert McCord didn't sound like the type, but he knew the bush. George would have been in his twenties, and so would my chess partner at the Woodward place. Patten came back to Canada during the Vietnam War. I couldn't actually picture him using black powder, but I couldn't remove him from my list of suspects.

Berners was beginning to irk me. Here he was six months into glory and one of the cutest characters I'd run into in years. He merited close study. And I was enjoying getting to know him by sniffing around his stuff. Unfortunately, there wasn't much more to go through. There were expected things like the rusty traps hanging on nails, the collection of axes, the beaten up 25-35 Winchester with a broken stock, and there were unexpected things like a copy of
Great Expectations
in the wood box beside the stove with the cover ripped off and half the pages torn out. Also among the accumulated fur-balls of the wood box I found newspapers with dates much more recent than six months ago. One was less than two weeks old. It had a section torn out of the front page. I made a note of the date of the
Globe
and the edition.

I found another cache of mouse-nibbled books. The one on top was
Celebrated Criminal Cases,
edited by C.L. Doran. That was my line of country. I flipped through it, looking at the faces I'd seen in other books, the drab dregs of criminality, lives at the ends of their tethers: John George Haigh, Constance Kent, Henry Jacoby, Heath and Hume, Mancini and Manuel, Madeleine Smith, Evelyn Dick, and Charley Peace. A classified index at the back divided them up into categories: Mass Murderers, Murder by Poisoning, Murder by Stabbing, Murder by Strangulation, Gang Murders, Sex Murders, Train and Trunk Murders. Ah, the English especially love their murderers. But why did Berners carry them around with him? I lost my grip on the mousey pages and when I picked it up again it fell open at a case that Berners had read more than once. The pages were dirty with fingermarks. I skimmed the history.