The Suicide Murders

TWELVE

I locked up the shop early. It was the first night in quite a few that I wouldn’t be burning the midnight oil. With spring in the air, I wasn’t anxious to hang around pretending I had honest work to do. Tomorrow, or one of these days, I’d have to finish my income tax. It was a month late, but as I tried to explain to the authorities in a letter, the tax must wait upon the income, not the other way around. With the longer days and warmer nights, I could see the divorce business beginning to flock in. I never liked standing under windows in the winter. People who get separated in the winter deserve to stay married. I remember once I was following this guy who took his girlfriend out for a boatride down at Port Richmond. He spent the whole day out there with her, just gliding under the low-hanging willows. They ate their lunch out of a wicker hamper. It was almost like he was treating me to a day off. Even though I didn’t have a hamper, I’d been sharp enough to realize that I might need something to eat, so I was carrying a sandwich with me just in case. The lettuce and celery were wilted, but the egg was fresh. Next time, I promised myself to have travelling sandwiches toasted. They don’t get as soggy.

Frank Bushmill’s light was still on, but I wasn’t much in the mood to talk to him. He saw me leaving though, and pulled me into his dank office for “a drap of the creature.” He knew I didn’t drink much, but he seemed unable to talk about anything but feet without a glass in his hand.

“How are you and the Russians getting along?”

“Too busy to do any reading, Frank.”

“Too busy to live, then. Here’s a book now. The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien.”

“I don’t read mysteries,” I lied.

“Read this. You won’t regret it. That’s an autographed copy, I want it back.”

“You can have it right away. I never finish books these days. I keep dozing off.” I should have seen luck when it was looking at me. Here was a chance to get away with only a book.

“Read it.”

“I will. I’ll start on it at once. Good night.”

For Frank’s sake I honestly tried, but I couldn’t get the hang of it at all and I gave up about page twelve.

Wednesday dawned bright and fresh. Or I guess it did. I slept away until eight, got up, showered and shaved, and went out to get my breakfast at a restaurant near the hotel called “Bagels.” They have rolls of all kinds, muffins, rye bread both light and dark, but never, never bagels. They just ran out, they didn’t come in today, they didn’t come in yet. For other people there were bagels, but not for me. I tried not to think of it as a conspiracy.

“Morning, Sid. I’ll have lox and cream cheese on a bagel.”

“Have to be on rye or kaiser roll. I’m out of bagels.”

“Maybe you’re not ordering enough.” He looked at me like I said his wife was fooling around with the bus-boy.

“If I got more bagels, I would have left-over bagels. Nobody likes to eat left-over bagels. Nightmares you are trying to give me, Benny.”

I opened up my office door on the sun stealing across my desk drying up the water in the plant I was trying to grow. I moved it to the shade again and pulled the blinds, which made it necessary to turn on the lights. Already I could see it was going to be one of those days. I said a silent prayer, hoping that it might help to get the season’s divorces started. Once the weather brightens up and the hockey disappears from television, a lot of people take up divorce. And I had a whole filing cabinet to accommodate their business.

I jumped to a wrong conclusion. Any day that begins with mail can’t be all bad. The first envelope contained a cheque for two hundred dollars signed by Myrna Yates. The second envelope contained the list of appointments that Martha had sent me from two blocks away three days ago. With a push it could have found me by itself in that time. It was a lined piece of foolscap with jottings in black Pentel. I decided to try the third envelope to see if I’d won the Provincial lottery.

The third envelope was a stiff one with Dr. Zekerman’s name and office address in the upper left-hand corner. It gave me the blue devils opening communications from the grave, or at least the morgue, so I tore it open with more than my usual number of thumbs. From inside tumbled out onto my desk a photograph, three pages of notes, nearly indecipherable, and a folded photo copy of a newspaper clipping.

The photograph was a small album-sized snapshot, a bit chewed around the corners. It showed two smiling girls looking out at me. They were dressed alike in Scottish kilts and hats, the younger one sitting and the older one standing a little behind her chair. To my inexperienced eye, they looked like sisters. The older girl looked about twelve, and her sister about ten. To me, a complete stranger, they looked like nice girls; their foreheads were large, their hair light, but not blonde, and their faces were round and open. Nothing was written on the back of the picture. Nor did the good doctor bother to scrawl a note to me. After all, he could explain everything next time I ran into him.

The photocopied clipping was from the Beacon, dated the twenty-eight of February, 1964. It read:

Elizabeth Blake, 20, pretty first-year student at Albert College, Secord University, was found dead in her Pauline Johnson House room of an apparent overdose of barbiturates by fellow co-ed Susan Weiss at ten o’clock this morning.

The body of the popular student, who was enrolled in the three-year general arts program, was discovered fully clothed in her bed in the newly-opened three-storey residence. Teachers and fellow-students alike were shocked to learn of her desperate end.

Miss Blake had aroused the suspicion of Miss Weiss by not appearing at breakfast or in the Study Hall. (Classes at Secord have been cancelled because of the weather.) With the assistance of Roberta Widdicombe, a graduate student responsible for that floor of the residence, the door was opened and the body discovered.

Investigation of the tragedy has been hampered by the violent snow storm, which has closed all roads to the top of the escarpment and the University. Coroner E.P. Hildebrandt, who has been in touch with the situation by telephone, told the Beacon today that the girl had apparently swallowed all of the sleeping pills in a plastic phial found near the body of the student. He will investigate the matter fully as soon as the weather permits, he averred. Miss Blake is survived by …

And so on. Was the dead girl one of the sisters in the photograph? Or was it a picture of the fellow student, Susan Weiss? Not likely. The Weisses aren’t big on kilts. How am I doing, Dr. Z?

Miss Blake is survived by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. L.M. Blake of Dover Road, and her sister Hilda of the same address.

So, we have both sisters in the picture. But which is which? Most likely the older one went off to school first. Yeah, and the younger was still living at home when the older girl dies. I couldn’t carry water very far in a deduction, like that, so I didn’t try.

Next I looked at the three pages. My second glance found them as hard to read as my first. They were torn from a lined stenographer’s pad, and the pencil scratchings were all in the same difficult handwriting that had addressed the package to me. He might as well have sent me a rag, a bone and hank of hair. I looked harder at the jottings. I wasn’t making it up. They were next door to hen tracks. I thought that I might try taking them around to Lou Gelner. As a doctor, he is something of an authority on bad handwriting. And, to be fair, these notes looked as though they were some kind of professional shorthand, such as the doctor might have scribbled during a therapy session, or just afterwards.

Well, thank you, Dr. Z, you were trying hard to tell me something. It’s not your fault that I can’t lip-read in the fog. Send me another hint, please.

I turned back to Martha’s find after putting the photograph and clipping in my breast pocket. It was just a list of names, names like Jones, Peters, Evans and others each with a time beside it.

Jones

Saturday, 2 A.M.

Henry

Friday, 11 P.M.

Bill

Friday, 1 A.M.

Peters

Friday, 2 P.M.

Careless

Friday, 8 P.M.

Harney

Friday, 7 P.M.

Evans

Friday, 9 A.M.

York

Friday, 2 P.M.

Henderson

Friday, 6 A.M.

Evans

Friday, 3 P.M.

Peters

Friday, 6 P.M.

Richards

Friday, 1 A.M.

Dodge

Friday, 8 P.M.

Plymouth

Friday, 8 A.M.

Ford

Friday, 9 A.M.

Williams

Friday, 6 P.M.

Roberts

Friday, 4 A.M.

There was no continuing time sequence like a desk calendar has. Here the times were all over the place jumping from an hour in the middle of the morning to one after office hours, and then going earlier in the day again before the first appointment. Some of the appointments were made for the small hours of the morning. Chester was beginning to look like a workaholic. All work and no play, Chester, you should have known that. Yet, come to think of it, his wife hadn’t complained to me of his meetings in the middle of the night. That would have put me on the payroll a lot earlier, if he had been jumping out of bed in the middle of the night “to see a man about some shares.” Not bloody likely.

I looked at the names again: Jones, Henry, Bill, Peters, Careless, Harney, Evans, York, Henderson, Evans, Peters, Richards, Dodge, Plymouth, Ford, Williams and Roberts. I was beginning to think that there was less here than meets the eye. The name Bill I recognized right away: Bill Ward. But there are lots of Bills in the world. Call out Bill in the Men’s Beverage Room, and half the place will get up. But it was the only name on the list that was clearly a first name. That made my guess that it was Ward look a little better. There were a couple of repeating names: Peters and Evans. I couldn’t make anything out of that. So I moved on. Three of the names are names of cars: Dodge, Plymouth and Ford. What could I do with a hot clue like that? So I did the logical thing, I put it down and promised that I would figure it out later on. There had to be some way of explaining these meetings that went all around the clock.

I thought about calling my mother. I hadn’t been in touch since Friday. A glance at my watch told me that it was still too early to call. I could usually count on her to be up at the crack of noon in the middle of the week, so I decided to give her another couple of hours. She had a birthday coming up next month. I made a note on my calendar. I dreaded the recurring round of trying to find out what she wanted. If I asked her directly, she would only tell me that all she wanted was to see me settled and happy. I didn’t think I could deliver on that this year. Birthdays were contests that Ma and Pa waged against me with seriousness and energy. There was only one absolutely just right present in a sea of thousands of imitations, and without a hint or a clue I had to pick out the right thing. It would have been easier if she was someone who could appreciate a really good cigar.