Murder Sees the Light (6 page)

What though the spicy breezes

Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,

Though every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile

Mrs. McCord looked up from her many-ringed fingers to carry me forward into the next verse with an encouraging nod. Cissy Pearcy, at my elbow, shot me a conspiratorial smile. I felt I was there under false colours, but I didn't know how to stop and the words kept coming to my lips just as I needed them. It was strange and a little frightening, as though the dark side of my brain had been salting these old words away without breathing a word. Now the game was up.

In vain with lavish kindness

The gifts of God are strown;

The heathen in his blindness

Bows down to wood and stone.

Nobody was going to take me for a heathen, not that night. They weren't even going to take me for Jewish. What was a nice Jewish boy like me doing singing hymns? Was I just trying to fit in or what? Was it for this that my father had sent me to learn to read Hebrew? In school you have to make compromises, you either stand in the hall looking at sepia engravings of Queen Victoria or you join in with the singing. I had always hated the hall, and I liked singing. I didn't see that I'd necessarily sold my birthright.

When Maggie got to the end of the first hymn, she launched into another, and here too I was able to join in. Join in? Hell, I led the band.

Brighten the corner where you are,

Brighten the corner where you are;

Someone far from harbour

You may guide across the bar,

Brighten the corner where you are.

That one I owed to Miss McDougall in grade five. Ray Thornton would remember her. She used to lead a fortyminute hymn-sing every morning, and we all joined in, Jew and Gentile alike, because we knew that oral arithmetic followed inevitably. I was glad I thought of Ray. It was Ray Thornton who'd sent me up here in the first place.

When the last great chords died out, we were standing there elbow to elbow, listening to the sound come back at us from the lake. And there, unmistakable, in the middle of all the other voices, I was singing my fool head off and enjoying every minute of it.

“Well, now; well now, Mr. Cooperman, you have a rare voice, indeed,” said Mrs. McCord when she surrendered her place at the piano to David Kipp. “Have you studied?”

“I'm afraid I'm just another shower baritone.”

“You're too modest, Mr. Cooperman,” said Cissy Pearcy, handing me a mug of coffee I hadn't asked for. “It's a very true, pure sound, isn't it, Maggie?”

“You're turning the poor man beet red, Cissy. We both are. Come sit down by me, Mr. Cooperman, and enjoy the last of the fire. We all enjoy a little sing-song of an evening. It's become quite the institution. Lloyd Pearcy doesn't often join in. He thinks it's sentimental. But we all like it. Good exercise for the lungs. We don't have to talk about the spirit, do we?”

I sat down, and the coven hung about on both sides. It was my night to be a novelty. Tomorrow I'd be old hat, like the grinning bearskins hanging on the wall. Chris, the younger Kipp boy, announced to the room that he and his father had sighted an Olive-sided Flycatcher. But they didn't score any points for that. Music was still in the room, but now it sounded secular and rather French. You couldn't sing along with David. But you could talk through it.

“David's so competitive. He's always trying to show me up. I always tell him that I can play loudly, and that's my only virtue at the keyboard.”

“That's Debussy, I think,” said Cissy, half turning it into a question. It was the way she had with most things. Do you play Mr. Cooperman?” I shook my head trying to show my profound regret.

“I like this bit,” said Maggie McCord, hooking the air with a finger, and we all listened. Maggie's smile lasted into the next phrase and faded only when a loon far out in the lake added his own inane counter-tenor.

The rest of the evening consisted of more of the same, although we had done with the singing. George had disappeared after his argument with Aeneas; the Pearcys sat close to the fire; Roger and Chris, the Kipp kids, read
National Geographic
; their father held on to the piano bench, playing introspectively with his head hunched over the keys. The shifty couple, Des Westmorland and Delia Alexander, watched the rest of us with their backs to the log wall. Hector said good night at about ten-thirty and we listened to his car drive off in the direction of Hatchway. Aeneas was studying a map of the park which told the whole story, township by township. Without saying anything much he showed me where we were and then pointed to several spots not too far away. “Good lake trout,” he said. “Over here, splake. Up here in the west—walleye and pike.” I'd never heard of splake, but I thanked him for the tips.

At eleven o'clock it seemed that the generator suddenly got louder and then began to die away to nothing. At the same time the electric light slowly faded to black. Having stumbled home on the first night at the lodge, this time I had come prepared with a flashlight.

A small knot of us had moved outside the darkened Annex, where we were about to pronounce our good nights, when the trim figure of a strange brunette walked up the slope from the dock with a blanket over her arm and carrying a paddle. I could make out the shape of a canoe drawn up on the shore and rolled bottom up. The woman smiled as she passed us but made no attempt to join in.

“That's a nice bit of crumpet for somebody,” said Maggie.

“For somebody with his pockets full,” said Lloyd. “Did you see the car she drives?” He shook his fingers like he'd burned them. A well-simonized Lamborghini could be dimly seen sinking up to its expensive hubcaps in the parking lot muck. Next to my rusting Olds, the yellow sports car looked pretty good.

“Her name's Aline Barbour. Arrived the same day Benny did,” added Maggie. “If you ask me, she's just broken it off with her boyfriend. I can sense these things.”

We watched the car retreating back until it was swallowed up in the shadows shortly before we heard the sound of her cabin door. “Not much of a mixer, is she?”

“Has she been here before?” I asked.

“One …” began Aeneas, but he stopped short.

“Not to my knowledge. Oh, you mean my knowing her name. Benny, there isn't much that goes on around here that I don't know about. I know, just for example, that you saved Mr. Edgar's life yesterday.”

“He what?” asked Cissy, and Maggie gave a brief account of my heroism. From the look of the assembled faces it came as news. But you can never be sure about a thing like that.

“Poor Benny,” said Cissy.

“To say nothing of the lucky Mr. Edgar. Well, now, good night.” The group began to break up. “Good night, Cissy. Good night, Aeneas. Good night.” Maggie headed north towards the lumber road that ran through the lodge grounds; the rest of us moved in the other direction.

“Good night, Maggie.”

“Good night, Mrs. McCord.”

“Good night. God bless. Call me Maggie, remember. Everybody does. Come over for tea tomorrow if you like. Good night.”

FIVE

Early the following morning, when the chattering of the birds had made it impossible to sleep, I boiled four brown eggs, chopped them in a bowl, added mayonnaise, and made a couple of sandwiches. These did nothing to supplant the United Cigar Store in Grantham as my idea of dependable eating, but they didn't turn out badly considering the primitive conditions. Through the window the lake looked calm, the white birches framing my view of the dock made the whole panorama look like an ad for hooks, lines, and sinkers. I heard kids squealing down by the dock. This was accompanied by splashing and laughter. From my front door I heard Joan start up the Delco. She didn't usually start it this early, so I took advantage of having the power to put on the cassette I'd brought back from the island. While I listened, I wrapped the sandwiches in the plastic the bread came in.

“… Norrie, you can't afford …”

“This is somebody I practically grew up with. Haven't I ever mentioned Aeneas DuFond?”

“I'm talking security, Norrie.”

“Take it easy, Ozzie. He doesn't know who I am. I'll bet he doesn't see a dozen papers a year. I knew him before I met Van. Stop sweating, Ozzie. He's an Indian guide. He never leaves the park. Thinks Hatchway's the Big City.”

“It's enough that that haberdasher comes here …”

“Benny? Have a heart, I'm learning to beat the pants off him.”

“I could watch that yo-yo fishin' all day.” That was a new voice. I pegged it as the body I'd been calling Mr. Clean. He looked like a bodyguard and now he talked like one, ending in a moronic laugh. But I might be considered prejudiced.

“Shut up, Wilf, we're busy.” So, Mr. Clean is Wilf. Glad to know you. “Funny thing about Aeneas, though,” Patten continued, “he looked me up for a purpose. He showed me this.” I could hear Lorca taking in her breath as something hard hit the wood of a table.

“Son of a bitch!” Another voice. The one I'd been calling Shorty, I thought.

“Crudely put, Spence, but I agree with you there, fella.”

“You haven't got time to get mixed up with some Indian guide.”

“Don't crowd me, Ozzie. All souls are equally precious.”

“Where do you think he got it, Norrie?” Lorca asked. From the sound of her voice, it must have been something to look at. I tried to imagine diamonds, sapphires, emeralds.

“You see, DuFond remembers when Van was trying to get me interested in minerals. You know he was a practicing geologist before he became the junior senator froth Vermont. He took both of us into the bush and tapped away at rocks with his hammer.”

“But he isn't going to go to the papers?”

“Relax, Ozzie. Aeneas isn't going, and neither is the dimwit fisherman who sells the boys his fresh catch.”

“Oh, my God! Another breach! Norrie, your security is shot front and back. If it's known you're not at San Clemente … These guys should be shut up. There's too much riding on this. What if they blab?”

“You worry too much. Now, you'd better get going. Don't forget to speak to Van. Sift him. Test him for leaks. I want to know he's still with us.”

“I talked to P.J. before I left. He knows what we want from Van.”

“And have Ethan take this thing in and get it assayed.”

“Damn it all, Norrie!”

“A promise is a promise.” I didn't know who P.J. was, but I was ready to bet next year's tan that Ethan was Ozzie's driver, Surf's Up. P.J. sounded American, part of the U.S. operation, somewhere between Van and Patten.

Then they got into a squabble about whether Lorca had been drinking or not. She made a valiant defence and was getting a sermon on the evils of drink when the power faded away stopping the machine. As Patten began to lose his grip on the whole empire, he stuck it to the few of the faithful who were ready to follow their leader into exile.

With the sandwiches tucked into a knapsack, I went out into the sunlight. The screen door slapped the frame behind me just as the heat gave me a rabbit punch in the solar plexus. The tin fish, as Aeneas DuFond called my aluminum rowboat, was too hot to touch. I had to be careful how I deployed my carcass. I postponed the moment by going back for the equipment.

Aline Barbour, the owner of the Lamborghini, was lying spread out on an inflatable air mattress at the end of the dock. She was wearing a pink bikini with black piping. There was a lot of tanned skin to be looked at, and Aline Barbour shielded her eyes from the sun and watched me look.

“You're up early,” she said in a drawl. I lowered my eyes. I was no good at these staring contests even with the sun on my side. “They told me your name was Cooperman.”

“Still is. I'm going fishing.” That sounded a little pale coming from a man with one foot in a boat and a fishing rod under his arm. She smiled and tilted her big sunglasses up to her forehead. Her eyes were brown and slightly wild.

“I'm Aline Barbour. I'm sorry, I keep forgetting that everybody doesn't know who I am. I spend most of my time in the theatre. I'm a designer and fairly well known. I forget that the theatre isn't the world.” She took the cap off a tube of white cream and began rubbing it on her shoulders. She did it in a languid way that I don't always associate with eight o'clock in the morning. “See you later,” she said, flicking her mane of hair like a model in a shampoo commercial, and went back to her rubbing. I pulled myself off the dock and into the scalding rowboat.

I took a run down the lake past the Woodward place. The car was still there. At least they hadn't bolted overnight. I picked a worm at random and slipped it along my hook. Over the side with it. Through the water it looked almost white as it slipped out of sight.

I sat like that for half an hour. Nothing moved. My head was getting hot. I should have worn a hat. That made a pretty picture as I closed my eyes against the magenta light creeping through my eyelids. My normal hat would suit the north woods like a bikini at the opera. Couldn't get that bikini out of my head. Was it the pink or the black piping? I took off my shirt, removed the undershirt and dipped it into the lake. After wringing it out, I fitted it to my frying brow. For a minute or so, refreshing rivulets of lake water ran down my shoulders and disappeared into the folds where my belly rested on my belt. Up here in the park, I should take advantage of the opportunity and try to get rid of the flab I'd acquired in the city over the winter. I could hike over to the woodpile and watch Joan chop wood, then hike back for some lunch.

From where I sat in the boat, I could see a fair piece of the lake. The lodge was hidden in its sheltering bay, and the top of the lake was behind the island north of me. The lake was surrounded by rolling hills which came down gently to the shore. Only on the west side was there an abrupt change from land to lake, and here you would have to stretch things to call it a cliff. It was a big lake to get around in in a rowboat, but not much of a challenge for the Rimmers' big cruiser.