The Suicide Murders

TWENTY-SIX

The sun was unusually brilliant; the spring, which had arrived such a few short days ago, had settled in and made itself at home. The few trees downtown were fattening at the end of their twigs. Soon there would be buds and leaves. The tulips I’d noticed in front of City Hall had blossomed into red and yellow blooms. They’d had help, but there were a few other green stems by the court house, weeds to be sure, but I’m generous by nature. Green is green until August in my book. Then it’s every man for himself.

I went around to the United to pick up some lunch. For once, I picked up the menu and read through the businessman’s lunch. A couple of things looked tempting, but the waitress got to me half a minute too soon and I funked, ordering a chopped egg sandwich on white toast. Today I took an order of coleslaw on the side, and felt immediately better for ordering it. Breaking fresh paths is a heady experience.

I climbed the stairs to my office. I must be getting old; the experience of getting to the top and seeing my name on the glass doesn’t hold for me what it once held. There’s been a fading away of the lustre, just as the gold-leaf lettering was beginning to flake.

Once inside my door, I did something I’d intended to do a few days ago. I’d been thinking about what Mrs. Kline, the head nurse, had told me. I reached for the telephone book, and looked up Mrs. L.M. Blake on Dover Road. The odd piece I’d been holding now slipped into place. The laundry ticket I’d picked up in Liz Tilford’s room at Martha Tracy’s house, bore an address on Dover Road. So, that was it. Elizabeth Tilford, also known as Hilda Blake, had disappeared where a hot-shot detective would never have thought of looking for her. She’d gone home. The listing was under her mother’s name, so her father had died and she hadn’t remarried.

I drove out Queenston Road, a curving extension of St. Andrew Street. It held the bank above the old canal for about a mile, then cut out toward Niagara, as soon as the canal took a bend to the south. Wherever a street joined Queenston Road, in this early section, I could glimpse a vista of grim broken promises. The canal had held out party favours and presents to the men who sunk their capital in setting up mills along the hydraulic races, fast running channels of water which would drive millstones, operate saws, churn butter, or power fifty looms whenever the water dropped to the level of the next canal lock in the series. But now the party was over. Most of the buildings stood derelict-some looked stunned-with broken panes of glass in the rotting window-frames, boarded-up doors, buildings that had once dominated the horizon with towers and the hum of industry.

The road curved along the edge of the old canal now, climbing with it the gentlest face the escarpment presents on the Niagara Peninsula. At the top of the hill Papertown sends out a few streets of welcome. One of them, curving along the top of the escarpment, is the Dover Road. From the backyards along its length, you can see the purple office towers of Toronto and the CN Tower in front of them. But the Dover Road is also the location of the huge green water tower, itself the focus of attention from down on the lake-shore plain.

I checked the number. The house I was looking for was constructed of modest gray brick with a roof with a gentle slope to it. There were curtains in the front windows, and in the back, a low shed. The green tower stood a lot or two away, with the gigantic structure blocking out only the least pleasing view to the lake. It was a small property, in need of some repair to the shutters and the cracked cement of the front walk, but I could think of worse places to spend my declining years.

I knocked on the front door. I could hear an immediate response from inside, probably from the front room, but the door wasn’t answered for nearly a minute. When the door opened, and then only seven or eight inches, the woman with frightened green eyes asked me to name my business.

“Mrs. Blake,” I was guessing, “I’d like to speak to Hilda, if I may. Is she here?” I gave her the best of the Cooperman smile, and let the sunlight catch all my dimples.

“What made you think you’d find her here?” She wasn’t openly unhelpful. She was being unhelpful in a helpful-seeming way. I smiled again.

“I think you’ll find that she’s expecting me. The name is Cooperman. Ben Cooperman.”

“Why don’t you leave the girl alone?” the old woman asked. She was solid and short, with gray hair going a little yellow in its tight curls. She wore an apron over a flowered dress. A brooch, in the shape of a thistle, sparkled on the neat lapel of her collar. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”

“I wish I could answer that, Mrs. Blake. I don’t know all the answers. I hope that Hilda might help me to find some. I need her help, Mrs. Blake.” She looked at me, made what appeared to be half a pout, and then stood back from the door allowing me to pass her stout figure.

The room was full of caged birds of all colours. I counted at least twenty cages, some suspended from ornamental stands, and others set on tables and suspended from wires. The birds were the usual birds, with the usual bright colours that caged birds run to. There were blues and greens and yellows, an occasional glimpse of red, black, pink, and even white. There wasn’t a song bird in the lot. Not a cheerful note in over fifty little feathered breasts. The space in the room not devoted to livestock was taken by a couple of comfortable chairs and an overstuffed sofa with a picture above it of cheerful song birds. On the mantelpiece of an imitation fireplace stood two Dresden birds in china, on each side of a group of stuffed cardinals in a bell jar. It was the sort of living-room that had probably never seen a barrel of Kentucky-fried chicken.

“You’re admiring my birds,” she said. It wasn’t a question. I nodded a lie. “I have more than fifteen different varieties, not all here in the living-room, of course. That black one with the short bright beak is a minah bird, of the eastern passerine type. Some of them can be made to talk, but I don’t hold with teaching animals to do tricks. Some people see no harm in it, but I find it disgusting and degrading. It degrades both the animal and the teacher, if you want my opinion.” I stopped trying to feign interest in her exotic birds, hoping that she might come down and perch somewhere close to my reason for being here. She stopped leading me from cage to cage and said, “You really have to see her, Mr.…? I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Cooperman. Ben Cooperman. If you could tell her I’m here. I think you’ll find that in a way she has been expecting me.”

“Well, if you say that she knows you’re coming, I guess that will be all right. I hate to see her upset. She’s been so brave since she came back home.”

“Brave? In what way?” I guess I turned on her a little more directly than I’d intended. She blinked her eyes a couple of times before trying to answer.

“We’ve had a lot of grief in this family off and on, Mr. Cooperman, and Hilda has kept her little head held high right through the worst of it. At times things looked black for the whole family, but Hilda kept us going, like a little jenny wren fighting off a bluejay. Who would have thought that the cost would be so high? And how I missed her when they’d all gone. First Elizabeth, then Morris, that was my husband-the shock of Elizabeth’s death killed the lamb in less than a year. Then Hilda became sick, but how she fought back. I was very nearly distracted myself, I’m telling you. If it wasn’t for my little friends here, I should have miscarried in my head, I’m sure.” She paused, and looked over my shoulder, as though she could see through the wall at my back. “She’s out in the garden, Mr.… There! I’ve forgotten it again. I’m getting on in years, and my memory isn’t what it was. I used to be able to remember all of ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ by Mr. Longfellow, the poet. Nowadays I can’t remember my own name, so please don’t take offence.” She led me through the house, our way lined by more bird cages, to the kitchen. Through the window I could see her, seated in a lawn chair, looking out over the view from the heights.