Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (36 page)

Sullivan grinned ruefully. “Well, I made it to the big city, anyway.”

“I used to play football with this guy,” Kennelly said to Green. “We went to the same high school up in Eganville, and I tell you he was one fine mean ball player. I heard you married Mary Connolly. That still on?”

Sullivan nodded. “Three kids too.”

“Oh well, you always were a good Catholic boy. Fell in love with the first girl you laid eyes on and then never looked at another.” He shook his massive head mockingly. “Boy, I tell you, it’s a small world. So is this a social call, or are you boys here to learn a thing or two?”

“A man named Eugene Walker used to own a hardware store here,” Sullivan asked. “Did you know him?”

“No, but maybe my partner did. He’s been here since the Great Flood.” Kennelly led them inside and bellowed in the direction of the back room. “Tom! Come out and meet a buddy of mine.”

A smaller, older man emerged from an office behind the main desk and came forward, smiling expectantly. Once the introductions were complete, Sullivan explained their mission.

“Yeah, I knew him,” Tom Wells said. “In a small town like this, you get to know pretty near everyone. Walker wasn’t a troublemaker, he kept to himself pretty much. I’m not sure we can be much help to you up here. When I heard he died, I asked around to see if anybody’d heard from them recently, just out of curiosity, you know? ’Cause I used to get my fishing and hunting gear at his shop. But no one seen much of them since they moved out to the country.”

Green spoke for the first time. “I understand he had an assault charge, maybe twenty years ago. Any chance there’s still a file on that?”

Tom Wells scrunched his craggy, sun-weathered face in an effort to remember, then shook his head. “We don’t keep stuff that long, and in that case, the charge was dropped.”

“So you remember the case?”

“Yeah, I was the one took the call,” Wells said. “I remember I was surprised. Eugene was a regular at Paddy’s place on Saturday nights. There were more than a few times when me and my partner had to bring him home and put him to bed. But he was a quiet drunk. Never got into fights, never bothered anybody. So I thought it was kind of strange. In fact, I asked him about it. I didn’t want to lay an assault charge, and I was hoping he’d tell me why he did it, but he never said a word. Just said he’d had one too many, his mistake.”

“Why were the charges dropped?”

“The fellow he assaulted wouldn’t press charges. I tried to persuade him to—I mean, when Eugene wouldn’t give any excuse. The fellow was a visitor, and I had a bar full of drinkers waiting to see if I was going to apply the law. But nobody would say a word if Dubroskie and his cousin weren’t going to. In this town, everybody minds everybody else’s business, including the cops’.”

“Dubroskie?”

“Local farmer, good man. Cousin’s name was something unpronounceable. Polish, began with G.”

“So what did this Mr. G. say about it?”

“Nothing,” Wells said with a shrug. “He was an immigrant, heavy accent, seemed awful confused. Apologizing all over the place if he’d upset anybody.”

Immigrant! Green hid his excitement as another possible piece of the puzzle slipped into place. “And Dubroskie? Did he or anyone else in the family have any idea what was going on?”

Wells shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve known the Dubroskies all my life. Family’s owned a farm west of town since the pioneer days. I went to high school with Karl, and my kids went to high school with Karl’s kids. We never been close friends, because here in the valley, the oldtimers tended to stick with their own. Poles with Poles, Irish with Irish. And people kept the secrets within their own group, you know? I mean, the Poles might fight like cats and dogs among themselves and one family hate another’s guts, but a Protestant Welshman like myself is never going to find out why.”

“So you think people are hiding something about this assault, but only a Pole is going to find out what it is. But Walker’s British—why would he keep an insider’s secret?”

Sergeant Wells’ eyes widened. “Walker? Are you kidding? He was Polish!”

It was Green’s turn to be surprised. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! He had an accent thick enough to cut with a knife. He came here after the war.”

“But his wife… And his name…”

“The wife’s British, you’re right. Fine lady. We always figured he took her name. When he first came, there was quite a stir in the Polish community. I remember my father talking about it. Back then, the communities around here were very traditional—you’d know that, Brian—everyone had their place. Walker fitted nowhere. His wife was British and a Protestant, and the Poles thought he’d turned his back on his Polish roots when he changed his name. Plus he would never talk Polish. He would never talk about the old country. He was one of them, but he avoided them. Him and his wife didn’t really fit in anywhere.”

Green turned to Sullivan. “Call Gibbs. He’s looking into Walker’s war record. Get him to check immigration too and have the reports ready when we get back.”

“Why are you so interested in a twenty-year-old barroom brawl, Mike?” Sullivan took his eyes off the narrow country road long enough to glance questioningly at Green. They were on their way out to the Walkers’ country house, having left a disappointed pair of OPP officers behind at the station. Sullivan had seen the curiosity in Kennelly’s eyes and had tried to persuade Green to let them participate in the inquiries, since it seemed a slow day in Renfrew County, but Green was adamant. He didn’t want extra officers he didn’t know trampling all over the evidence in the house. The extent of Green’s diplomacy had been to assign the officers the task of setting up interviews for them in the afternoon with people who knew the Walkers.

“Because it’s out of character with what we’ve learned about Walker,” Green replied, “and it seems to be a mystery. Maybe his neighbours and acquaintances can shed some light on what he was really like.”

“They won’t tell us a thing, I can guarantee you that. A couple of big city cops barging in out of nowhere? Forget it.”

Green grinned at him. “Give me some credit.”

The directions Ruth Walker had supplied were clear and precise, but even so, after the fourth turn into progressively narrower back roads, Green was glad Sullivan was behind the wheel. All around them stretched nothing but drifting snow, icy fields and the grey lace of barren trees against the sky. Ruth had been surprised when the two officers had asked her permission to search the house, but she had not hesitated an instant. If she had anything to hide, Green thought, she seemed confident it wouldn’t be found.

When they finally turned into the long, narrow lane, they saw the Walkers’ white clapboard cottage set in a windswept clearing at the end. It looked shabby and neglected in the harsh morning sun, and as they drew nearer, Green saw it was badly in need of paint. Sullivan plowed up the lane, parked about fifty feet from the house and surveyed the snowy expanse stretching to the house. At first glance, it seemed to be unbroken except for the tire tracks leading from the shed to the front door and then to the lane.

But as they began their approach on foot, Green suddenly held up his hand.

“Don’t move!” He squatted in the snow, peered at the tracks, then took out his notebook and glanced up excitedly.

“Come look at this! Carefully! What does this look like to you?”

Sullivan studied the marks in the snow. Inside the tracks, at roughly two foot intervals, the tire markings were blurred in an oval shape. “Like someone has smudged the tire track. To wipe out something?”

Green’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “The tire tracks are partially erased by the wind and snow, and that stopped about noon Wednesday. Before Walker was even discovered dead. But these marks are clear. Someone has walked in this tire tread since the snow stopped, and has tried to smudge over the footprint as they went. Which suggests someone has been out to the house since the Walkers left but tried to conceal that fact. Do you still think his death was natural causes?”

Sullivan backed up carefully. “I’ll get the camera.”

Thirty minutes later, they had a roll of detailed photos of the tracks leading up to the house and of the footprints in the snow at the front door. One set of partially obliterated prints with a deeply treaded sole led from the front door and trampled around in an aimless circle before disappearing at the edge of the tire track. Suspecting the prints were Eugene Walker’s, Green made a note to check his boot soles. Inside two of these large boot prints were the remnants of smudged smaller prints again, leading towards the house. These too had been carefully brushed over in an attempt to erase them. Someone had been very, very careful.

Curious, Green bent to scrutinize the front door, but there were no scratches to suggest forced entry. Using a key provided by Ruth Walker, he eased the door open and stepped inside, scanning the hall rapidly for signs of intrusion or disturbance. There were none. The house was quiet and neat. Sullivan took fifteen minutes to photograph every aspect of it before they put on latex gloves and began the search. Methodically they made their way through the small house, sketching and making notes. The front door opened into a small living room on the right with a fireplace at the far end and a door through to the kitchen and pantry beyond. Upstairs were three doors, the first leading into the bathroom and the other two into bedrooms. The furniture in all the rooms was old and frayed, testimony to the Walkers’ limited budget, but the slip covers had been assiduously darned and redarned. The bookcases were handmade by an inexpert carpenter, and the piano keys were yellow with age and wear.

Green tapped the keys idly and was surprised that the sound was still rich and warm, evoking memories of his own mother, not withered by disease but vibrant and tireless as she’d been in his youth, coaxing melody from the leaden fingers of the children on the block. Or all alone at night, after the day’s work, racing her fingers over the keys for hours for the sheer rapture of the sound.

He moved on to study the titles in the bookcase curiously. There was a large collection of British mysteries ranging from Agatha Christie to P.D. James, an aging leather-bound collection of Dickens, a sampling of Atwood, Shields and Robertson Davies, and a shelf of Romantic poets. These all suggested the refined feminine taste of Ruth Walker. There was a corner of gardening and bird-watching books which Green also intuitively connected to Ruth, and another small shelf of best-selling spy thrillers of a more masculine genre. Wedged in the corner was a faded black Bible, St. James version. Green opened it to see the inscription on the inner cover in quilled black ink.
“To our beloved daughter Ruth, London 1932”
.

The Bible, despite its age, did not look much used. As Green flipped through it, a brittle, yellowed square of folded paper fell out. It was a letter, dated Feb. 26, 1947, and written in the same elegant, old-fashioned hand as the bible’s inscription.

Dearest Ruth,

Your father and I received your letter of Christmas time and although we are delighted that you have found new friends and new purpose in your work down there, we urge you not to move too quickly without ensuring that any relationship is firmly founded in mutual interests and values. You are young now, and full of hope and the desire to heal, but two wars have taught your father and me that there are differences between people, differences in upbringing, outlook and values which may loom large once the initial excitement has had a chance to calm. As well, we don’t know what these people have endured and how deeply they may be scarred.

This is not to dampen your enthusiasm nor to deter your generous nature, but rather to temper it with care, lest you suffer again the pain which I am sure is still all too fresh.

Enough said of prudence. Things are still very hard in the city, with long queues and shortages, and people still homeless. The winter has been very hard on your father and his cough is much worse. I only hope that we can come down to see you when spring arrives, for the sun and the sea air would do him good. I don’t believe he has ever recovered from Albert—Lord knows I never shall—and the sorrow saps his strength. But we shall manage, my dear, and we count the days until we can visit you. All our love,

Mother

Pensively, Green turned the letter over in his hands. By itself, it was a mere fragment of history, yet it added one small piece to the mystery of Walker’s life. He called Sullivan over to photograph it, and then he replaced it and the Bible carefully back into place. He and Sullivan then searched through every book on the shelves. If a book could be used as a storage place once, why not twice? But they found nothing, either there or in the rest of the cluttered room.

Next they moved up to the larger bedroom. It had been intended as a master bedroom, but they found only men’s clothing in the closets and drawers. Ruth’s clothing was next door in the smaller bedroom.

“Looks like they slept apart,” Green muttered.

“It’s not much fun sleeping with a drunk. He probably crashed around a lot and got up in the middle of the night to piss.”

“Check the desk drawer for those investment certificates Mrs. Walker mentioned.”

Sullivan opened the drawer of a battered maple desk and found it crammed full of papers—mortgage agreements, house deeds, sales receipts, most over five years old. He found the certificates inside a folder and counted them carefully.

“Eight.”

“Eight?” Green said. “There are supposed to be ten.”

Sullivan counted again. “There aren’t.”

Green raised an eyebrow. “Two thousand bucks. If this was a robbery, why not take all ten?”

“Maybe he was hoping they wouldn’t be missed. Remember how careful the person was to erase their tracks.”

Green shook his head. “Or maybe they weren’t stolen. At least not then. Leave them out. I’ll try to get Ident up here for fingerprinting. And I want to check up on Don Reid’s finances—”

Sullivan frowned. “Why him?”

Green was remembering Don’s reaction the day before when the investment certificates were mentioned. “Just a hunch.”