Seven Days Dead (21 page)

“May I help you?” Sandra calls out.

“I’m looking for Émile Cinq-Mars. The detective.”

Mentioning his old profession is a warning sign, but Sandra invites her around to the back.

Émile is on his feet by the time the visitor appears. She scales the short stairs and arrives with her open palm extended, stepping past Sandra to shake his hand. She’s a handsome woman, though not a conventional beauty, her features strong, and she carries her height with confidence. She then retraces a step and offers her hand to Sandra. “My name is Madeleine Orrock. How do you do?”

“Miss Orrock,” Émile says. He has a handle on whom she must be.

“I go by Maddy.”

“I’m Sandra, and of course my husband, Émile. What can we do for you?”

“Can we talk?” the tall woman asks. “Sorry to intrude. I’m a bit shaky. I’ve just had news. Sir, it was suggested that I come to see you.”

“Who by?” Émile inquires.

“The police,” she states.

Sandra takes a deeper breath, glances at her husband, and offers Maddy a drink. The woman declines until Émile insists, then she opts for a vodka tonic like his. She’s ushered into a wicker chair and Sandra volunteers to make the cocktail. Émile sits on the love seat closest to her. He doesn’t mean to inflict his incisive stare down his imposing long beak but does so in any case. Force of habit. She seems ready to bolt, he projects, so breaks off his penetrating gaze.

“What police?” he asks. “Louwagie, I presume.”

“No,” she says, “no. This one came to see me on his behalf. Officer Louwagie is taking some downtime, this other officer told me, but they both thought that I should be informed right away.”

“Informed?”

“That was the question I asked. Informed? So, expecting to be
informed,
I invited the officer into my house, where he proceeded to interrogate me.”

Sandra hears this last line as she opens the screen door with her hip and places her guest’s drink down on the small oval table beside her. Maddy takes a sip at first, then a gulp, and Sandra asks, “Should I leave?”

Maddy begs her to stay. “This isn’t private. I mean, it
is.
I hope you don’t tell anyone about this, but I’ve interrupted, I’ve intruded. Please stay.”

Sandra agrees after receiving her husband’s subtle nonverbal accord—he is the person this woman has sought out, after all—and Émile continues. “You were interrogated. About what?”

“You two are visitors. You have no reason to care.”

“We heard about a recent murder. Is this related?”

“No, sir. At least I presume that’s a coincidence. My father died two nights ago.”

“You have my sympathies. I’d heard. The police told me. An autopsy is to be conducted.”

“Normally, no one bothers with the death of an old man. Not here. But because of the murder, a visiting medical examiner is handy.”

“What’s become of that?” Émile is forming an impression of his visitor. Her intelligence is apparent, and she probably keeps herself together and controlled. Something’s upset her, and he doubts that she’s accustomed to being in a state. He imagines that her life normally goes along swimmingly.

“Do you know who my father is?”

“Should I?”

“He owns this island. Or he did. Hell, I guess I do now.”

“Owns,” Cinq-Mars repeats, both a leading question and a criticism.

“Okay, an overstatement. I’m
understating
it if I say that not much on this island was bought or sold without my father raking in a cut.”

“I see. And he died of old age?”

“I thought so. I drove in from Boston because he assured me left, right, and sideways that he was on death’s door. Honestly, I didn’t want to come. We had that kind of relationship. Anyway, I was hoping against hope that he might say something. He insisted that he wanted me here. I came, hoping for a deathbed confession. Or apology. Or something.

“You drove through the storm.”

“I did, yeah.”

“As we did, actually.”

“Really?”

“On a different errand entirely. How did you find your father when you got here, Maddy?”

“I arrived too late. He was already dead.”

“Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Yes. Well. Nobody else is. Truth be told, it’s not much of a loss. You’ll find that out sooner or later if you take this case, so I might as well tell you now.”

Sandra and Émile exchange a questioning glance.

“Maddy, there may be a misunderstanding. I don’t know why you’re seeking me out.”

“Officer Methot—Réjean Methot—he suggested it. He said that you already said no to investigating the murder of Reverend Lescavage, but he also said that you might be my only hope. Things aren’t looking too good for me otherwise.”

Émile laments, “I’m still in the dark here.”

“Sorry. I’m rattled. Making no sense. Okay, I arrived home. My father was dead. I’ve been told that he was being looked after by his housemaid. She was relieved that night by Simon Lescavage. That’s what she told me anyway.”

Up to this moment, Émile is feeling that he might be in the company of a soft loony, someone who is bright and privileged from whom he might need to extricate himself early on and perhaps with difficulty. Now the parameters are beginning to interest him.

“The same clergyman who was killed.”

“That’s him. When I arrived home, he wasn’t there. My father was neatly tucked in his bed with two nickels on his eyelids. The bedcovers smoothed out. He seemed peaceful in death. As though he passed away quietly.”

Émile sips from his own drink. He wipes a bead of perspiration from his left temple. Now that he’s gotten over his concern that she might be a trifle daffy, he sees that she’s not only smart but credible. He doesn’t feel he’s dealing with someone who’s trying to put something over on him. Though if it’s true that a policeman directed her to him, he needs to have a word with that man.

“What was the agenda for this so-called interrogation? What did Officer Methot want to know, essentially?”

“Honestly, I think he wanted to know if I killed Simon Lescavage.”

“Really?” Émile is surprised. He recalls that the two officers on the island had not been given laudatory reviews. One was dismissed as being of lesser intelligence, the other a basket case. “Did he indicate why he might think that way?”

“I arrived here during the storm. By boat. With the power on the island off. That’s held against me as if I’m responsible for the rain and the power outage. I was home alone. That’s also held against me. Apparently, the whole point of my arriving in a storm was to do away with people when no one was around. They think I was the last person to see Reverend Lescavage alive, since he was in my house. He left before I arrived. How do I prove that? No witnesses were out on a night like that one.”

“The slimmest, barest of threads. Only natural they’d ask questions, given that you and the minister were in the same house on the night that he was killed, even if it was at different times. They don’t know that for certain. Are you sure that the officer is accusing you of anything? Not just asking the necessary questions?”

All three persons on the porch know that he’s coddling Maddy Orrock now, patronizing her, and both Émile and Sandra see that she does not take it well.

“It gets worse, sir.” Her voice is strident. “Much worse.”

“Go on.”

“The autopsy on my father has confirmed that he apparently did not die of natural causes, as everyone, including myself, had assumed. He died of suffocation. My father, apparently, was put to death. He was murdered. And, while an endless line of persons known and unknown would’ve liked nothing better than to do that to him, I am, apparently, considered to be in that line and also, quite probably, close to the front. Or first in line. So I’m a person of interest in the death of my father, and, since he was last seen in my house, of Reverend Lescavage, too.”

“Did you kill your father?” No longer humoring her.

“Please. Of course not. He was dead when I arrived. Would I have, if I had the chance? I’m not the type. Could I have? Yes, in the sense that I had the opportunity if—
if
—I arrived earlier, but I still don’t have it in me. Did I have motive? I’m inheriting a fortune that was coming my way anyway, so the most I can be accused of with respect to motive is impatience. The whole thing is preposterous, except that I know this island. Once the word gets out—and it will—that my dad was murdered,
everybody
, and I mean everybody, will believe it was me.”

A quiet lingers on the porch, then Sandra says, “That’s dreadful.”

“And how—” Émile begins a question, then checks himself to make sure he is not being impolite. “Not that you are not welcome, you are perfectly welcome, but how have you come to arrive on my doorstep?”

She understands his query. This is an out-of-the-blue visit for her, as well. Less than an hour ago she’d never heard his name.

“My father and I,” she explains, “did not have a good relationship. You’ve gathered that. Yes, an understatement. Still. He’s my father. So having him die, I haven’t known what to think or how to react or even what it is I feel. I have to concede that I’m feeling more than I expected. I’m being hit with a few things that go back a long way.”

Both Émile and Sandra can understand that, and encourage her with nods.

“This policeman arrives. He essentially accuses me of murder. Or
suggests
I did it. Holy shit. I mean, what?
What?
And I learn that my father was suffocated and that’s like,
what?
Why? You know? God, he was going to die anyway, why would anyone bother?”

“Good point,” Cinq-Mars murmurs.

“I’m not proud of this, sir, and it surprises me. I kind of came apart. You know, with the cop in my living room. Got all weepy and frantic and angry and, in the end, indignant. The Orrock in me came out. I questioned who these plebeians are to dare challenge anything I say. Not my best trait. I fell apart. I had the shakes. I still do. Fuck. Excuse me. I haven’t slept much. I think he felt sorry for me, this cop in my house accusing me of murder. I doubt if cops are supposed to be that sympathetic. Maybe he liked me or something.”

She digs out a Kleenex from the front pocket of her tight jeans, swipes away a few sniffles, then resorts to her drink to moisten her throat. They wait. They both know that when she says that the policeman may have liked her, she means that he was attracted.

“The thing is, and this is ironic, and so goddamn baffling in a way, I wanted my father…” This time, and for the first time, she chokes up on mentioning him. “I wanted my father to be here, because he’d know what to do. He would know how to deal with this mess and with this person and with the police and with everything. Even with his own funeral, and I don’t have a clue how to handle that.”

They see for themselves that the stresses of the last two days are resident inside her, suppressed and managed, but liable to burst out and seize control. She is a strong woman despite that, which they see as she effectively pulls herself together again.

“I was angry at myself, more than anything, for wanting my father alive again so he could take charge of the situation. Anyway. Tears and tantrums later, the officer told me about a retired detective who has declined, he said, to help out with the investigation of the murder of Reverend Lescavage. He suggested that I talk to you. He couldn’t help me out. He has a job to do. Throw me in jail, I guess, I understood the gist of his job to be. He said if I need help—which is obvious—then maybe I could ask you to investigate my father’s death. That’s why I’m here. To ask for your help. I can pay you, God knows. I imagine I’m wealthy now, so that’s not an issue.”

Cinq-Mars gives her speech some thought, nods, and mulls things through. He shares a glance with his wife but doesn’t want to hold that look for long. He starts out by saying, “Maddy, you have to understand that I’m taking a break—”

“Émile,” Sandra interrupts. This time he’s obliged to hold her gaze a longer time, give her take on the situation more weight. She can’t see a way around the circumstance that’s presented itself. If he thinks that she should devote her time to rescuing wildlife, if he figures that that’s in her DNA, then there’s no time like the present. As well, he is who he is, she knows it, and the situation is a call to action. “You can’t say no.”

He may be able to argue against her point of view, but decides without any fanfare that that will not be worth the effort. The young woman now appears quite hopeful when he faces her again.

“I cannot accept payment.”

“I know how this sounds, but money is nothing to me, sir. I’d feel better about imposing. You’re on holidays, like you said.”

“The thing is, I’m not a
private
detective. Or a detective for hire. The difference is this. If I investigate what’s going on, I’ll be interested only in the truth. That may save you from further difficulty, or the truth may reflect badly on you. Do you see? You may know your innocence in the affair, but I do not. If I am in your employ, charged with getting you off, I would be hired, essentially, to prove your innocence even if you’re guilty. I won’t do that. If the truth sets you free, if I help you out, when everything is over I’ll submit an invoice, enough to purchase a future trip for my wife and me. Perhaps enough to pay for this one. Such as it is. We’ll see. Should the truth put you behind bars, that is what I’ll deliver when the time comes, if I discover that that’s how things should go.”

She understands. “I’m not afraid of the truth. I’ll be so grateful if you take this on.”

“Mmm.” He’s not wholly committed as yet. “Let me ask you a few questions first. Direct questions, Maddy.”

“I’m a big girl. Shoot.”

“Why
did
you arrive in the middle of the night? In a storm?”

“I drove from Boston. The weather slowed me down. I called my dad. I told him I wouldn’t make the last ferry. He arranged for me to come by private boat. Today, I had that skipper load my car onto the ferry and I drove it off, then all this happened. Anyway. My dad didn’t want me to wait for the morning ferry because he didn’t think he’d live long enough to see me. That he wanted me to visit at all, you understand, was a first. Enough to make me curious enough to come, ASAP. I wanted to hear what he had to say.”