Seven Days Dead (36 page)

“I’ll lay odds that no man really enjoyed his first ever sip of whiskey or beer, either. Not if he’s honest. Or his second. Even his first smoke. Once you’re used to it, you can’t get enough. You’ll see.”

“I guess folks can acquire a taste for just about anything.”

That’s a less friendly remark than she expected, perhaps less friendly than he intended, and her smile changes to a frown.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Matheson asks him.

“What’s in your pocket?”

She’s confused, which was his intention. “This? Dulse.”

“The other thing.”

She checks again. “Twine.”

“You carry it around with you?”

“For when we hang out our dulse to dry.”

“My wife was tied up with twine. So was the Reverend Lescavage.”

“Lots of people carry twine.”

“I’m not sure they do. What do I know, I’m a newcomer.”

“You said it. What do you know?”

“You seem to know that my wife was tied up.”

“What? No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You say. I say that I know enough to ask Corporal Louwagie to arrest you for the murder of Reverend Lescavage.”

The suddenness of his remark takes even Louwagie aback. He anticipated a more roundabout approach. Mrs. Matheson thinks he’s joking. When she sees that he’s not, she snaps back, “You have no proof.”

Cinq-Mars returns her volley. “Interesting response. No expression of shock, dismay, or surprise. No protestation of innocence. No mock alarm. No capitulation, either, I’ll grant you that much. All you want for us to go on is the burden of proof.”

She looks from him to the Mountie, then back again, and whereas Pete Briscoe indicated at least a vibration of fear, this woman shows only defiance. She stands square to him. Hands on hips, her stance combative, she looks ready to brawl. She might be able to whip him, too. While he has the advantage of height and male strength, he also gives away about twenty years. He’s further disadvantaged by minor pains and stiffness, and she’s a workingwoman. With respect to muscle and sinew, there’s nothing soft about her.

“I didn’t understand one effing word you just said just now.”

“That’s okay,” he replies. “As long as I understood it, that’s all that counts.” Ora is walking over, Cinq-Mars is closely observing her as she comes right up to him, initially, then turns back to face her mom. “I’m really only talking aloud to myself anyway,” Cinq-Mars concludes.

“What’s going on?” Ora asks brightly. “How are you?”

Cinq-Mars counters her smile with a grimace. “We need to borrow a shovel,” he says. “A long-handled spade, in particular.”

“Oh sure! I’ll get it.”

Her mother interrupts her retreat. “Ora. Don’t.” She’s sharp, then softens her tone. “Sweetie, don’t bother. I lent it out. It’s not there anymore.”

“Sure it is. You lent it to Petey. I know. He brought it back, Mom.”

The three of them are silent and follow Ora’s walk across the scruffy yard to a garden shed. She unlatches the door, sticks a hand inside, and retrieves a spade. The first drops of rain commence and more are heard in the leaves.

“So you have your shovel,” Ora’s mom spits out. “We’re going to get soaked out here, so maybe you should be on your way. Just altogether piss off.”

Cinq-Mars smiles as though she’s a secret comedian. He waits for Ora, then takes the shovel from her. “Thanks,” he says. To the mother, he offers advice. “One thing at a time.”

He places the shovel with the end of the handle resting on the ground and examines the spade. He looks at Ora’s mom, then back at the shovel. He then places the blade close to her face for an instant, and she backs off to one side, not liking that. As if addressing only Louwagie, although he knows full well that the women can hear him as plain as day, he says, “Mrs. Matheson was in a bit of a crash. A fender bender, really, except that she landed in a ditch down the road from here. At the time, I couldn’t figure out how the steering wheel inflicted her particular wounds, especially because, even though she was bleeding a little, the cuts didn’t seem completely fresh. More as if the accident opened old wounds, so to speak.”

“I see,” Louwagie says, but he doesn’t, not really.

“I couldn’t see how her injuries corresponded to an impact from the steering wheel or even a dash. I looked inside the vehicle, and frankly, Mrs. Matheson,” he says as he turns to face her once again, “there was no blood.”

“Big fucking deal,” she remarks. “I bled after.”

“Mommy!” Ora says, genuinely shocked by her language in public.

“Indeed. As you see, Wade, her scrapes and her lesions and her scabs perfectly match wounds that might be caused if a shovel like this one, or, what the heck, this very spade, got slammed across her face so that she was hit by the concave side.”

He places the spade next to her face for a second or two again before Mrs. Matheson reacts and bumps it away.

Confused, Ora asks, “What are you talking about? What does this mean?”

“I’m sorry to say, Ora,” Émile fills her in, “that it means that after ordering Lescavage to dig his own grave up on Ashburton Head, he was able to surprise your mother and use the shovel to smack her across the face. After that, Mrs. Matheson, you had a battle on your hands. Didn’t you? You’re bigger, stronger, more fit than the reverend, so in spite of your injuries, or perhaps because of them, you ripped the spade back from him again and in the ongoing battle you thrust it right into his belly. More than once. He ran then. Probably not quickly. In mortal peril, he ran for his life, and in the storm and the dark you couldn’t locate him. In the confusion, you dropped the spade. I imagine you as somewhat dazed yourself, perhaps disoriented for a moment or two—you took quite a wallop—so he was able to make progress away from you. Maybe he hid in the tall grasses. But you tracked him down, didn’t you, Mrs. Matheson? Poor guy, in the storm he probably couldn’t tell a straight line from a circle. I suppose he was in pain. Moaning, groaning, that sort of thing. Am I right? He made it away from the original planned gravesite, although still in the vicinity. Maybe he’d gone as far as he could go, and you just tripped over him. That I don’t know. Your idea to bury him wasn’t going to work, was it? It had been a good one, for who was going to find him up there? Yet now you had a further fight on your hands. And blood, from the moment you thrust the spade into the minister’s belly. What to do? You’re bleeding yourself, with this man howling at your feet, his guts hanging out. You had to be quick to finish the job. Strapped him to a tree, with twine, and sliced him up, I presume to make it look like a madman’s job. Or maybe you had some further torture to inflict for reasons of your own. Or you actually are mad. Then you ran off. Trouble is, in your haste, you forgot the shovel behind. Maybe you didn’t think it was important. How could you find it in the dark anyway? Too risky to go after it yourself the next day when you reconsidered. Still, best to have it found. Out of the picture, so to speak. So you sent Pete Briscoe to retrieve it. He buried it. Then he had to dig it up again because you figured your own blood was on it, too. Couldn’t risk it being found. You brought it home instead, because as killers go, you’re a raw amateur, aren’t you, Mrs. Matheson? I’ll be interested to hear what cockamamie story you devised for his sake.”

“You’re insane,” Ora accuses him, but she seems shocked, and isn’t ranting. “Why would my mom do such a terrible thing? Reverend Lescavage was at Mr. Orrock’s house. Anyway, wouldn’t he defend himself? If she did it—
And she didn’t! That’s impossible!
—how did she get the reverend to go all the way up onto Ashburton Head? Drag him by the hair? Why did he go? Anyway, why would she do it? You’re supposed to be smart, but that’s dumb. Wade! Tell him. This is crazy!”

But Wade Louwagie offers no comfort. Neither does her mother.

“Why did she do it?” Cinq-Mars repeats, as though to give the question legitimacy. “How did she get Lescavage to go up there? These are good questions, Ora. You have a right to ask. She’s your mother. She and I are going down to the station before the skies open up, where we will have a long chat about questions like that. Afterward, I’m pretty sure we’ll have your answers. Now, Officer, arrest this one, please. Let’s take her in for questioning.”

“Mommy! What’s happening! What’s going on? Mommy!”

As frantic as her daughter has become, Mrs. Matheson declines to console her, and readies herself instead for some form of hand-to-hand combat with the Mountie. Louwagie is not backing down. Cinq-Mars steps between the combatants, though, and before Mrs. Matheson can deal with his height and his reach, he clutches both her wrists in an iron vise, and before she can react to that leans over and whispers a few words in her left ear. The Mountie and Ora are watching, as though enchanted themselves. Mrs. Matheson instantly goes passive, as though hypnotized. When Louwagie tucks her head down to aid the now-handcuffed woman safely into the back of his cruiser, she meekly complies. Ora suddenly storms the car, but Cinq-Mars places his hands on her shoulders, both to stop her in her tracks and as a gesture of sympathy, even of comfort. The young woman will have none of that and shoves his wrists outward to get his hands off her. She’s standing her ground but is no longer charging, and Cinq-Mars takes that opportunity to slide into the cruiser’s front seat. As the car drives off, he spots her in his side mirror as she follows the vehicle up the drive to the highway, which runs by the yard at a higher elevation. She doesn’t go far before she stops, crumpling, as if from a blow to the stomach. Poor girl. This will be devastating, even more so once she’s over the shock. As the car turns onto the highway, he sees her in full scream, but he cannot hear her over the cacophonous beat of the rain, which at that instant commences to pound the car’s rooftop, and the girl topples over onto the bare dirt of her driveway as the rain throttles up.

From the cruiser’s rear seat, Mrs. Matheson looks back at her fallen daughter. Then she turns around, and her eyes commence to blink rapidly.

TWENTY-SIX

Former Detective Sergeant Émile Cinq-Mars of the SPVM (Service de police de la Ville de Montréal) steps away from the police cruiser in front of the Orrock mansion and indulges in a deep breath, one that falters into a weary sigh. He lingers as he casts a protracted gaze across the vista prepared from the beginnings of geological time. The stately home stands in the foreground, the Bay of Fundy its backdrop, and oh, what his vacation might have been. The air is clear, crisp, still scintillating from the electrical storm days ago that traipsed across the bay to maraud the province of Nova Scotia. Low in the western sky, the sun has not yet changed its hue. Folks soon will be gathering at the Whistle to drink and be merry, watch the whales break the surface of the sea under a reddening sky. A rapt crowd will have plenty to discuss. Returning from his prolonged interrogation of Mrs. Grace Matheson, Cinq-Mars looks exhausted, drained. Yet his work is not done. The more difficult task to his day lies ahead.

Louwagie peels away from the curb, executes a U-turn, and delivers a honk on his way down the hill. Émile strolls up to the house where Maddy Orrock and his wife await. He has good news and bad to relate, and even as the doorbell rings he isn’t sure which is which, or where to begin.

He’ll have to muddle his way through what comes next.

If one thing has both surprised him and made an impression, it is that he expected to require local knowledge to dent the case. The opposite proved true. Only breaking the case gave him the local knowledge he sought. Then, like Fundy’s tide, it surged, quicker than any rider on horseback.

When Maddy Orrock answers the door, Sandra’s right behind her. Alerted by the Mountie’s farewell honk, they’d seen Émile come up the walk. The husband and wife embrace, each comforting the other for the travails of their day. Sandra can tell immediately how fatigued he is, even how old he feels. As they settle into the living room and Maddy offers coffee, Sandra speaks with a different suggestion, as Émile might be too polite to ask. Knowing her husband, having seen this weariness before, she feels an indeterminate portent in the air.

“Whiskey,” Sandra requests. “Émile will have a coffee and a whiskey.”

He smiles, and chooses not to contradict her.

Sandra has chosen to sit tucked in beside her man. As the libations are presented on the table at their knees, they separate slightly to accommodate their movements. Maddy sits in one of the two wing chairs opposite. She’s wearing Bermuda shorts and a light print top, somehow looking younger because of it. Émile notices some ancient scarring around an ankle, and realizes then that’s he’s looking down. He’s sagging, his head too heavy to hold up. The effort to raise his glass helps him raise his chin up, and he studies the whiskey’s color in sunlight reflected off a glass cabinet.

“
The New York Times
has changed its tune,” he mentions.

Sandra neither loves nor hates his non sequiturs. Sometimes she bristles, other times they tickle her funny bone. Unschooled in Émile’s style, Maddy falls for his line.

“How so?” she asks.

In this way he’s allowed to talk, to clear his throat, to settle in and to shape the tenor of the conversation without broaching the subject at hand.

“The spelling of
whiskey
. The Americans and the Irish slip in an
e
before the
y.
Scots and Canadians—and, the Japanese, who are making good whiskey now—dispense with the
e.
For a dog’s age, the
Times
insisted on the American/Irish spelling. They’ve reformed. They will spell the word according to its country of origin when a particular whisky, or whiskey with an
e,
is being discussed. This one, by the way, is
e-
less. You can’t slip a Springbank by me without my being aware. And thank you. It’s delicious.”

She served one for Sandra and herself as well, and collectively, silently, they toast present company.

“Grace Matheson,” Cinq-Mars announces, “Ora’s mom, has been arrested for the murder of the Reverend Simon Lescavage.”