‘I see,’ Auphan nodded. ‘You are correct, sir, that is very suspicious.’
‘She hung around for a while after the fire, playing the grieving widow, even though they were not married. We had no home. After a while in a church shelter we were taken in by relatives, which was when Heather left us, and then we entered adulthood, inheriting nothing.’
‘So what do you think happened?’
‘She milked him for all she could, emptied his account . . . that is certain . . . but why she murdered him, why she didn’t just leave him having taken all his money,’ Fisco shook his head, ‘that I will never know. That we will never know. Either he had woken up to the fact that Heather had bled him dry and was about to make things awkward for her . . . or . . . she saw an opportunity to do something she could get away with, even if that thing she saw was murder, just for the sake of doing it.’ He shrugged. ‘The house was fairly remote. It was already an inferno by the time the nearest neighbour called nine-one-one and by the time the fire department had arrived at the house it was a pile of ash. Then, like I said, after she hung around for a week or two Heather left . . . once we were safely with relatives. She gave a statement about knowing nothing about how the fire started but overplayed dad’s drinking. The coroner recorded death by misadventure. There was smoke in dad’s throat you see . . . I don’t know the proper name.’
‘Trachea,’ offered Ventnor.
‘Yes,’ Fisco smiled, ‘that’s the word. Smoke deposits in his trachea, so he was alive when the fire was burning and he breathed in the smoke. That apparently made it accidental.’
‘Apparently?’
‘Well, I don’t drink, I don’t drink at all . . . children of heavy drinking parents usually don’t . . . but I would have thought it would have taken more than beer to knock someone out and so heavily that they wouldn’t wake up in a fire.’
‘I would think the same,’ Marianne Auphan spoke softly.
‘But no examination for poison in the bloodstream was done and ironically, what was left of him was cremated soon after. The city finished the job the fire had started. But the point is they then could not dig him up and test for poison in his blood. The Coroner just accepted that he was drinking whisky and fell unconscious and dropped his cigarette on the carpet and ‘woosh’, and fortunately his children were at their usual character building camp by the lake an hour’s drive away and Heather was in town shopping. No one saw her leave the house, it being remote you see.’
‘Yes.’
‘What else did you find out about her private or her social life whilst she was living with you . . . anything at all?’
‘Nothing. She had no friends that we knew of; I believe that she used to spend her time in McTeer’s Bar on Dunlop Street . . . if you know it. You could ask in there. Been a long time now but she might be remembered by someone . . . she’s the sort of woman who would make a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons. So it is highly likely that someone in McTeer’s will remember her and may be able to provide some information.’
George Hennessey replaced the phone and stood and walked from his office down the CID corridor to the reception area. He stood beside the uniformed officer who indicated a young woman who sat on the highly polished hardwood bench on the opposite side of the room to the reception desk. Hennessey smiled at the woman. ‘You wish to see me, madam?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The woman stood and approached the reception desk, nervously opening her handbag as she did so. She extracted a clear plastic bag of the type used by banks to contain coins. She placed the bag on the desk. Within the bag was a book of matches. ‘Mrs Stand of the Broomfield Hotel asked me to drop this in, sir.’ The woman had a timid way of speaking and seemed to Hennessey to be working very hard to avoid eye contact. ‘I am to say that it has not been touched except by the chambermaid who picked it up, sir.’
‘Thank you. Appreciate the care and consideration.’ Hennessey picked up the bag and examined the book of matches. It read, ‘Sign of the Whale, Barrie, Ontario’.
‘It was found in the room occupied by the Canadian gentleman, sir. It had slipped down behind the bed and was missed during the first clean, sir. I am in York to buy bacon, sir.’
‘Bacon?’ Hennessey smiled.
‘Yes, sir. It’s cheaper in York.’
‘I see.’
‘So I am to hand it in to you when I am in York, buying the bacon, sir.’
‘Oh . . . now I understand. Well, thank you for this Miss . . .’
‘Lloyd, sir.’
‘Miss Lloyd, thank you, very much. Thank you very much indeed. And please thank Mrs Stand also.’
Hennessey immediately ordered an email to be sent to DS Yellich, care of the Barrie City Police, advising him that the Canadian he is seeking is probably a customer of the Sign of the Whale bar on Bayfield Street. He added that latents are to be lifted from a book of matches and will be sent to him.
That done he returned to his desk to complete the six month evaluation of DC Pharoah. He was enjoying writing it. It was a positive assessment, very positive. She was making no secret about her desire to return to London eventually, and he knew that when she did, she would leave a gap. A very noticeable gap indeed.
It was an old house, Yellich thought; at least it was old for Canada. Wholly built of timber, it had turret rooms and a porch on the upper floor as well as on the ground floor. It stood isolated from many nearby houses by approximately one hundred feet on either side. The rear garden rose in a gentle slope to a thick stand of woodland. The house was in a rundown condition and so badly in need of paint or varnish weatherproofing that Yellich doubted that it could be saved. Rot, he believed, must be, in fact could not have failed to be, well established in all that exposed wood. Two large Alsatians appeared at the front door window as Yellich closed the car door behind him. An elderly woman opened the front door but kept the screen door shut. She stared intently at him, unafraid and hostile. She was dressed in black and had long, silver hair. Yellich walked up to the screen door and showed his ID.
‘That’s not a police badge,’ the woman snarled.
‘You can phone the Barrie Police for confirmation.’ Yellich spoke calmly.
‘I have my dogs.’
‘I can see.’ Yellich looked at the two Alsatians who growled and barked menacingly at him.
‘Well you look like a policeman, but the dogs will have your smart little ass if you try anything.’
‘Understood.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘Heather Ossetti.’
The elderly woman groaned, ‘That name . . . that woman. So long ago now, thirty years . . . more. How did you know she lived here?’
‘St Saviours, they gave your home as her discharge address.’
‘I see. They were a bit free with that information.’
‘We assured them it was a murder inquiry . . . so they relented. Your address was not freely given.’
‘A mu . . . again!’
‘Again?’
The woman ordered the dogs to be quiet and then having opened the screen door led Yellich into a dimly lit, cluttered sitting room. The dogs followed and sat at the woman’s feet, not once taking their eyes off Yellich.
‘You don’t seem to have a good memory of Heather Ossetti. It is Mrs Castle?’
‘Yes. Mary Castle. Well, would you have a good memory of her if she killed your husband . . . or in your case, if she killed your wife?’
‘Tell me what happened.’ Yellich sat back in the chair. The pattern was, he thought, becoming well established, and as such he anticipated hearing of a murder which doubtless had looked like an accident.
‘She came here from the nuns. She was quiet, shy, reserved . . . but that was an act.’
‘You think so?’
‘I think so. The report about her was good, positive . . . a quiet girl it said, hard working, but those nuns don’t stand any nonsense and it rapidly became clear to me that Heather Ossetti had realized that she couldn’t beat them and so she did the next best thing, she just didn’t let the nuns at St Saviours get hold of her personality. You know the score; it was the old manipulation by obedience two step.’
‘I see.’
‘We were vetted by St Saviours. They don’t like discharging their girls just like that, that’s the quickest way to the red light district in Toronto.’
‘Yes.’
‘So they employ halfway houses, hopefully to give them some experience of family life. Both the girls we had before went on to get married but Heather . . . she was certainly frightened of the nuns but not of us. Pretty soon she was testing the limits, then pushing them, never enough for us to order her out but enough for my husband to say we’ve made a mistake with this one. We could have turned her out . . . she was seventeen . . . could have and we damn well should have.’
‘But you didn’t.’
Mary Castle shook her head, sorrowfully. ‘No, it was the onset of winter so we decided to keep her until the spring. There is sometimes a false spring in Ontario, just when you think summer has arrived, and it’s then that the snow returns with a vengeance.’
‘Yes, it can be like that in the UK. So what happened?’
‘My husband died. Misadventure.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Just out there,’ she turned to her left, ‘out there at the rear of the house. Not out in the backwoods among the spruce, but just a few feet from safety.’
‘Tragic . . . that really is . . . very tragic.’
‘Yes. It makes it annoying as well as tragic. So close to home. Hell, he
was
at home, just outside the house and in his garden.’
‘So what was the story?’
‘It was the last of the winter. He went to work as usual that morning . . . and just didn’t come home, or so we thought. He worked in Toronto and they still talk about the winter of 1944 in that city when thirty-eight people died in a snowstorm. It snowed hard that day like the winter of ’44. I was out that day visiting my sister. He wasn’t home when I returned but I wasn’t worried because Earl, that was my husband’s name, Earl Castle, Earl always said, “If the weather is bad don’t worry because I am a survivor. I’ll be holed up some place, so don’t worry.” I assumed he’d stayed in his office overnight. He’d done that before along with his co-workers. So the next morning I phoned the company he worked for and was told his car was in the car park all right but that was because he and a co-worker, who also lived in Barrie, had decided to share a car home. They had made it home in a blizzard. The co-worker dropped Earl off at the front gate and had driven on home to his house.’
‘He didn’t wait to see him enter the house?’
‘No, he couldn’t see the front door from the road anyway . . . near white-out . . . but there is a guide rope from the gate to the door.’
‘I noticed it.’
‘Yes. So he, the co-worker, drove away. He also had to get home as soon as he could . . .’
‘Yes . . . understandable.’
‘He said there was about two feet of snow when he drove away after dropping Earl off and it was still falling. The next morning the house was surrounded by snow, six to eight feet deep in places.’
‘Good grief,’ Yellich gasped.
‘Well, that’s Canada. The snow lay, and it lay, then eventually it thawed and Earl’s body was exposed. Fully clothed, still holding his briefcase. For some reason he wandered round the back of the house and lay down.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I have only suspicion.’
‘That’s good enough. Between you and me, that’s good enough.’
‘Well, who was at the house that day but Ossetti.’
‘She locked him out?’
‘Don’t think so. Earl was a strong, stocky man, he could have forced entry. He was also unlikely to go round the back of the house to force entry. If he couldn’t get in the front he would have gone to our neighbours to seek shelter . . . we are lifelong friends and they would have taken him in without a moment’s hesitation. I came home later and got in without any bother. No . . . I think something forced him or lured him out to the back of the house.’
‘All right,’ Yellich glanced uneasily at the Alsatians.
‘He had a slight graze on his forehead which could have been accidental, but also it could have been not so.’
‘Yes.’
‘The inquest was full of assumptions – there was no hard evidence to be had, just assumptions . . . slipped in the snow, banged his head, became disorientated, wandered round the back of the house . . . so it was recorded as being death by misadventure.’
‘But your alternative theory?’
‘Is that Heather Ossetti overheard us talking about her and that prompted a first strike, a pre-emptive strike. She banged Earl on the head but not sufficient to cause any severe injury and then led him in a semi-conscious state outside and let him lay down as the snow covered him . . . and he succumbed to hypothermia and suffocation.’
‘Not an unusual death in Canada I am led to believe.’
‘Not at all and quite convenient if you want murder to look like an accident. Snow can be very useful in that way.’
‘Did you notify the police?’
‘Of course, the following day, but they had their hands full rescuing stranded people, people whose lives were at risk. They couldn’t leave that to search for a body in the snow and by that time, if he hadn’t found shelter, that’s what Earl would have been, a corpse covered in snow.’
‘That could not have been easy for you.’
‘It wasn’t. We searched, me and her, the Ossetti female, we searched as best we could, poking the snow with long sticks, but as I said, it was eight feet deep in places. All I could do was wait for the thaw which came a few days later. It was the last snow of that winter and the true spring followed on not far behind. The snow melted so rapidly that there were floods and it was then that his body was exposed.’
‘I am very sorry.’
‘Twenty plus years ago now. I cherished his memory, I still do and that has kept me going as the years went by.’
‘Heather Ossetti?’
‘Stayed. She stayed with me. Couldn’t be more helpful, eager to go shopping for me, which is quite a trek to the nearest store. Neither of us could drive and the bus service in those days was best described as indifferent. Then, one day, she wasn’t here any more. She’d left a few possessions but had taken mine.’