By the Time You Read This

3

WHEN DELORME GOT BACK downstairs, she found Szelagy just entering the lobby with a distraught woman in black: black skirt, black blazer, black hat, black scarf.

“Sergeant Delorme,” Szelagy said, “this is Eleanor Cathcart. She lives on the ninth floor, and she knows Catherine.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” the woman said. She removed her hat and swept black hair from her forehead in a dramatic gesture. Everything about her seemed exaggerated: she had dark eyebrows, dark lipstick and skin as pale as china, though there was nothing remotely fragile about her. Her pronunciation of certain words hinted at a cozy familiarity with Paris. “I let her into the building and she goes off the roof? It’s just too, too macabre.”

“How do you know Catherine Cardinal?” Delorme said.

“I teach up at the community college. Theatre Arts. Catherine teaches photography there. Mon Dieu, I can’t believe this. I just let her in a couple of hours ago.”

“Why did you let her in?”

“Oh, I’d been raving about the views from my apartment. She asked me if she could come up and take photographs. We’re the only building of any height this side of town. She’s been talking about it for months, but we’d just recently set up an actual rendezvous.”

“For her to come to your apartment?”

“No, she just needed access to the roof. There’s a patio thingy up there. I showed her where it was and showed her how to prop the door open—it locks you out otherwise, as I’ve learned from bitter experience. I didn’t linger. She was working, she didn’t want company. The arts demand a great deal of solitude.”

“You’re quite sure she was alone, then.”

“She was alone.”

“Where were you going?”

“Rehearsal at the Capital Centre. We’re opening The Doll’s House two weeks from now and, believe me, some of us are not ready for prime time. Our Torvald is still on book, for God’s sake.”

“Was Catherine showing any signs of distress?”

“None. Well, wait. She was very intense, very anxious to get to the roof, but I took that as excitement about her work. Then again, Catherine is not an easy read, if you know what I mean. She regularly gets depressed enough to be hospitalized, and I never saw that coming either. Of course, like most artists, I’m somewhat prone to self-absorption.”

“So, it wouldn’t surprise you if she committed suicide?”

“Well, it’s a shock, I mean, mon Dieu. You imagine I’d just hand her the key to the roof and say, ‘Ta-ta, darling. Have a nice suicide while I just pop out to rehearsal’? Please.”

The woman paused, tossing her head back and looking up at the ceiling. Then she levelled a look at Delorme with dark, theatrical eyes. “Put it this way,” she said. “I stand here thunderstruck, but at the same time, out of all the people I know—and I know a lot—I’d say that Catherine Cardinal was the most likely to kill herself. You don’t get hospitalized for a simple case of the blues, you don’t get slapped into the ward for a slight disappointment, and you don’t take lithium for PMS. And have you seen her work?”

“Some,” Delorme said. She was remembering an exhibition at the library a couple of years ago: a photograph of a child crying on the cathedral steps, an empty park bench, a single red umbrella in a landscape of rain. Photographs of longing. Like Catherine herself, beautiful but sad.

“I rest my case,” Ms. Cathcart said.

Just as Delorme’s inner magistrate was condemning her for displaying an unforgivable lack of sympathy, the woman exploded into tears—and not the decorous weeping of the stage, but the messy, mucus-y wails of real, unrehearsed pain.

Delorme went with Dr. Claybourne to the ambulance, where they found Cardinal still sitting in the back. He spoke before they even reached him, his voice thick and oppressed.

“Was there a note?”

Claybourne held it out so he could read it. “Can you confirm whether this is your wife’s handwriting?”

Cardinal nodded. “It’s hers,” he said, and looked away.

Delorme walked Claybourne over to his car.

“Well, you saw that,” the coroner said. “He identifies the handwriting as his wife’s.”

“Yeah,” Delorme said. “I saw.”

“There’ll have to be an autopsy, of course, but it’s suicide as far as I’m concerned. We have no signs of a struggle, we have a note, and we have a history of depression.”

“You spoke to the hospital?”

“I got hold of her psychiatrist at home. He’s distressed, of course—it’s always upsetting to lose a patient—but he’s not surprised.”

“All right. Thanks, Doctor. We’ll finish canvassing the building, just in case. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do.”

“I will,” Claybourne said, and got into his car. “Depressing, isn’t it? Suicide?”

“To put it mildly,” Delorme said. She had attended the scenes of two others in the past few months.

She looked around for Cardinal, who wasn’t by the ambulance anymore, and spotted him behind the wheel of his car. He didn’t look like he was leaving.

Delorme got in the passenger side.

“There’ll be an autopsy, but the coroner’s going to make a finding of suicide,” she said.

“You’re not going to canvass the building?”

“Of course. But I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

Cardinal dipped his head. Delorme couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. When he finally did speak, it wasn’t what she was expecting.

“I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I’m going to get her car home,” he said. “There’s probably a simple solution, but right now it seems like an insurmountable problem.”

“I’ll get it to your place,” Delorme said. “When we’re done here. In the meantime, is there anyone I can call? Someone who can come and stay with you? You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

“I’ll call Kelly. I’ll call Kelly soon as I get home.”

“But Kelly’s in New York, no? Don’t you have anyone here?”

Cardinal started his car. “I’ll be all right,” he said.

He didn’t sound all right.