The Suicide Murders

TWENTY-THREE

I woke up and it was Friday. The first thought that came to me was Friday night dinner with my mother and father. Then, when my eyes were well and truly open, I remembered how close they’d come to being closed permanently. Ward wasn’t the fellow to change his game plan because of a little guy like me.

There were a few things I wanted to clean up before the weekend settled in on me, so I kept after myself until I was washed, shaved, breakfasted-a bran muffin at Bagels-and on the road to Toronto. It was an hour and a half drive at the best of times, and I didn’t want to get stuck in weekend traffic. It was going to be a warm couple of days, I only wished that I could afford to take a few off.

The highway was busy but not in a snarl. I headed arrow-like towards the head of the lake, through orchards and vineyards with the escarpment following my every move through my left window. Up and over a windy bridge, that managed to rise at least a mile and a half higher than anything that might conceivably run under it and I was on the second half of the journey, this time through mile after mile of one-storey factories and assembly plants. The highway added a couple of lanes as we approached the blue silhouette of the Toronto skyline, and, when traffic slowed to the thickness of warmed-over stew, I began to get my old hay-seed feelings about the big city. I never arrived in Toronto without feeling like I was some rube off the farm come to sell my goats at the market. I let the phallic CN Tower lead me into town, wondering as I drove up Spadina Avenue, how it was that most cities are female except Toronto. Chicago, New York, Paris are the experienced old whores who know all about breaking in a new stud. Toronto somehow missed that cue, and doesn’t know where to get a sex change at this late date.

Spadina Avenue looked the same as when my father first brought me here as a kid. Every other Wednesday he used to buy stock for his store in the wholesale outlets south of Dundas. He’d do a little buying, a little gin rummy, have a corned beef sandwich and gossip with his crowd. He’d catch up on the news: who was in Florida, who dropped dead, who was going out of business. He would save up the best bits to take home to my mother.

“Sophie, did I get a shock today on Spadina Avenue.”

“Manny, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“And him just back from Miami.”

“Manny, I don’t want to hear.”

“I just saw him two weeks ago, healthy, in his prime.”

“I don’t want to hear.”

The Basic Bookstore at 986 Queen Street West was wedged between a cleaner’s and an optician’s. As locations go, it didn’t look very promising, unless you were looking for a tax loss. The guy behind the counter wore his hair long and blond. There was a suggestion of a moustache, which looked like a young lawn with signs saying “please” on it. He was in faded blue jeans. Maybe there are no other kinds today. Deep in the fiction department, I saw a guy in a whole suit of blue denim, a three-piece suit at that. His solid leather hat added a gauche touch. I started out lamely.

“I’m looking for a girl.” I immediately wanted to start over. I put the sales slip down on the cash counter. “The girl I’m looking for bought half a dozen books, real classics, here a year ago last March. A good-looking girl with red hair. Is there the remotest possibility that you might remember something about her. She bought some Rousseau, Plutarch, Corneille and Cicero, all in paperbacks. She might have bought a biography of Charlotte Corday, you know, from the French Revolution, here too. Any chance you might remember her?”

“If she was all that good-looking, I’d remember her. Some days, man, the only thing that happens all day is that a good-looking chick walks through that door. But, like, I’ve only been here a year. So she was before my time. Was she an out-patient?”

“A what?”

“Out-patient. Like, you know, that’s the Queen Street Mental Health Centre across the street. They’re the only people buy English books in this neighbourhood. If she bought books here, it was because she was a patient with street privileges, or she was a visitor. And if she ended up with the books, like, the chances are she was one of the shut-ins out for a walk.”

“You ever work for Pinkerton’s?” I asked. I was always careful to watch the competition.

From this side of the street, the Queen Street Mental Health Centre looked like the sort of building that was designed by the same committee that designed the camel. It consisted of a series of wings shorn from the bird. Later, somebody told me that the old asylum on the same lot had been one of the marvels of early Toronto, and like the rest of those marvels was pulled down. Some of the wings had been built before the old structure was destroyed, and now they leaned away from the spaces it had occupied as though it was a way of avoiding contamination. There were a few visitors-maybe they were patients; who knows? — walking in and out of the place. I bellied up to the Information desk. Behind it, a black woman with a pencil through her hair was cleaning her glasses on a piece of tissue.

“How do I go about finding a patient?”

“When did he come in?”

“I’m not sure. It’s a she.”

“Same difference. What’s the name?”

“Elizabeth Tilford.” She ran a long finger down three plastic-shielded pages of names.

“Uh, uh,” she said. “She’s not in here. You sure she here?” I nodded, and she shook her head. It wasn’t a contest I could win. So I asked her to direct me to the medical records department where I very quickly learned that I couldn’t expect to see any of the files without spending eight years in medical school first. Somehow, I doubted whether Myrna Yates would see me through more than pre-meds. I was on the point of leaving when the clerk who had been so forthright in reading me the rules asked what it was I was trying to find. I could see that he had now taken off his cold efficient clerk hat and was sporting one marked “concerned human being.” I told him that I had reason to believe that a woman who might be needed as a material witness in a murder investigation may have been a patient in that institution. He made sympathetic noises, joining me in railing against hidebound rulebooks and the inflexibility of small functionaries. He told me that I’d have to get a doctor to do my research for me, and that even he would have to have a good reason.

“Have you any idea how long this woman was supposed to be here?” he asked.

“I don’t even know when she left. She was in Grantham by August of last year, and that’s all I know about the movements of Elizabeth Tilford.”

“Well, you get a doctor to drop over, because we keep complete files on everybody, mental history, charts, treatments, everything. Did you say Elizabeth Tilford?”

“I did. Why?” He was biting on his nail as though the answer came from there.

“It’s just the name. Elizabeth Tilford. It strikes a cord. I know I’ve seen the name, or heard it. Just a minute.” He lifted a conspiratorial finger in the air and disappeared. After about two minutes, timed by my pulse, which I could feel beating without placing hand over heart, he came back with a grin that threatened to cut his head in two unequal pieces. “I knew I’d heard the name before, and now I’ve checked. Liz Tilford wasn’t a patient here, she was a nurse. They’ll tell you all about her in personnel. You don’t have to be a doctor to find out about staff.” He thought it was a big joke, and I left him there to enjoy it.

Personnel was a big woman with a plastic tag on her white coat that said “Ferrante.” I told her who I was looking for and she looked encouraging. From a file drawer her expert fingers drew a card to which other cards were attached with paperclips.

“Elizabeth Tilford. Yes, she was a nurse here for many years, worked in just about every department, it looks like, except the kitchen. She took courses on vacations. Looks like she was an all-round good nurse. What were you looking for specifically?”

“When did she leave Queen Street?”

“She took her superannuation in February last year.”

“She took her what?”

“Superannuation. Retirement. She left because she’d reached the mandatory retirement age.”

“How old’s that?”

“Sixty-five. Some take it earlier. Depends how long they’ve been here. We have a formula based on the number of years worked and your age. If they add up to eighty-five, you can retire with full pension. Does that help?”

“I’m afraid it confuses me. I’ve been looking for a young woman.”

“Why don’t you talk with Mabel Kline, she’s senior nurse. She might be able to tell you about Miss Tilford.”

“Where can I find her?” She consulted her watch, and then dialled an inside number with four digits. There was a pause. The upshot of the conversation was that for ten minutes I found myself walking down corridors looking for a certain room number. At every junction, there were arrows with numbers pointing in all the possible directions. I simply had to follow the arrow with the number group that included mine. Easier said than done. I was beginning to believe that my grasp of the fundamentals of arithmetic was slipping, when I blundered into the right wing. I asked directions from a gray-haired man in a wine-coloured bathrobe, and soon found myself knocking on a door with Mabel Kline’s name on it.

The door was opened by a man of about forty. He was wearing a sweatshirt over a soft shirt, and looked like he’d just come from a gym.

“Is Miss Kline around?” I asked.

“She’ll be right back. Have a seat.” I made myself comfortable in one of the straight-backed chairs on the visitor’s side of the desk and offered a cigarette to the man.

“No thanks,” he said. “I’ve given them up completely now. I’ve seen the recent tests on tars, and I’m convinced that there is no way to eliminate all the noxious carcinogenic matter. Did you know that in one unfiltered cigarette, like the one you are now lighting, there is enough tar to destroy about fifty cells in your lungs.”

“Is that a fact.”

“After smoking a package of unfiltered cigarettes, just like the one in your hand, there have been tests to show that pre-cancerous anomalies can appear. They showed experimentally, not clinically of course, that once precancerous conditions exist, that in roughly half the cases the cells finally produce malignancies.” I butted my cigarette in the ashtray provided, and was beginning to feel certain pre-cancerous anomalies forming under my ribs, when a tall gray-haired black woman came in briskly in a starched white uniform. She smiled at me, and gave a dirty look at the health fiend next to me.

“Richard, what on earth are you doing here? I told you I would look in on you after rounds this evening. Now, run along and behave yourself.” Richard got up, nodded at me and left. “Richard is one of my star patients.”

“Patient?” My chest immediately responded to treatment. The furry feeling under my tie cleared up, and I offered Miss Kline a cigarette.

“No thanks. I’ve just put one out. I’m trying to stop. Not doing very well. Clara Ferrante said on the phone that you were looking for Liz Tilford. May I know why?” She blinked her bright eyes and smiled. Her high cheekbones were becoming. She sat very straight in her chair, giving me her complete attention. I could feel her efficiency in the way her hair was drawn back from her forehead by a no-nonsense band of tortoise-shell. I liked her. I explained that the Elizabeth Tilford I was looking for was a good-looking redhead in her twenties, not a registered nurse in her mid-sixties.

“So you see, I’m probably here under false pretenses.”

“Sounds highly unlikely to me as well,” she said helpfully. “Still it obviously is a different woman. No question about that?”

“None. No. It’s just a dead end in my investigation. I want to thank you for your help.”

“Don’t get up yet, Mr. Cooperman.” (I’d given her one of my cards.) “I’ve just had the strangest notion. Liz Til-ford was one of the best nurses I’ve ever worked with. She knew her job, but that was only part of it. You know, this place can get you down after a few years, especially when we were still in the old building. But like very few other nurses, Liz Tilford really cared about her patients. Most of us feel that when you’ve rubbed one back, you’ve rubbed them all, that patients, especially here, are somehow inhuman unconnected bothers. To Liz Tilford, every patient was an individual. She didn’t just remember a few things about her patients and so josh them along and set up a friendly bantering relationship. She really got to know most of the people who were under her care for any length of time. It was a gift. She was missed when she left, I can tell you.”

“What happened to her?”

“For a while she lived here in Toronto, in a small apartment not far from the hospital. Then, I heard she went to live with a married sister in Sault Ste. Marie. I don’t know the name. But, you didn’t let me finish. What I was going to tell you was that during her last few years here, she became very fond of a patient who answers the description you gave of the woman you are looking for. Liz was good to everyone, but there was a special bond between Liz and this young patient. Do you think that might be helpful?”

“It very well might. How can I tell, Miss Kline? I feel like putting my name down to be committed. What happened to this young woman? The patient you mentioned?”

“It seems to me that she left us over a year ago. Yes, now that I think about it, it was just after Liz retired. The last few times I saw Liz was as a visitor to see some of her special patients. Yes, and here’s the link. I was going to mention, when the girl left us she went from here to live with Liz Tilford. I think I remember hearing that Liz had helped a few of the former inmates find their footing in the outside world again. You see, she was an extraordinary person.”

“Yes, I can see that. Thank you for all your help, Miss Kline.”

“Mrs.,” she said, with a turn of her head and a smile. “What will you do now, Mr. Cooperman?”

“I’m not sure. I might go over to that apartment building and talk with the super. I’d like to find out the name of the girl Liz Tilford was living with.”

“Oh, you needn’t go to all that trouble to find that out, I think I can save you steps there. I remember the girl’s name very clearly, because it’s the same last name as my favourite English poet. Her name is Hilda Blake.”