The Carpenter Page 9

  — I hope I didn’t wake you, Grandpa.

  — I don’t think you did.

  — You were snoring like mad.

  — Gentlemen like me don’t snore.

  Stan got up from the recliner. He wasn’t sure if she’d been practising or not while he napped, but she put her hands to the keys and began to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” In the kitchen, Mary and Louise were preparing the vegetables.

  Frank picked at the turkey stuffing. When he saw Stan, he offered him a beer, and the two of them went and sat down in the screened-in porch at the back of the house. Cassius was loping around the yard, sniffing at the bird bath.

  — Who was the boy in the car? said Stan.

  — Bobby or Billy or something. He’s been around a little bit, but he’s nobody now. Just as well.

  — She’s got a good head, Frank. If she’s going to university next year, you’ll have to trust her.

  — She’d be young. Just eighteen. It’s still under discussion.

  Stan stood up and watched his dog in the backyard. The dog dug under the cedar hedge at the back of the property until Stan called for him to cut it out.

  — Stan, said Frank, I want to talk to you about Judy Lacroix. I want to know why you’ve got the interest in her.

  — I’m the one who found her, Frank.

  — She isn’t the first dead girl you ever found.

  — No.

  — Stan, I know you might have had a look at the toxicology. I’m not going to make a big deal about it, but I have an idea of who might have showed you. That same person might just have put it back in the wrong place when Len Gleber went to file it. You know you don’t have any official capacity.

  — I don’t need to be reminded.

  — I know that. I suppose I’m just putting it out there.

  — You don’t think Judy was in any kind of situation that was over her head? There was a boyfriend, I heard.

  — Yes, said Frank. Gleber interviewed him, the boyfriend. He’s a low-life, Stan. A nobody. And I don’t think he was quite the boyfriend she let on he was. I think he was taking advantage of a girl who didn’t know any better, whenever he felt the need … Matter of fact, though, it surprises me and exasperates me a little that you know about the boyfriend too. How much more do you know?

  — That business about the boyfriend is about all of it.

  The patio door slid open and Louise came out. She said: Hi Dad, hi Grandpa.

  — Grandpa and I are having a discussion, said Frank.

  — Supper will be ready in five minutes.

  — That’s fine, said Frank. Be sure to knock first next time, you understand?

  — Yes, Dad.

  Louise went back into the house.

  — Judy Lacroix killed herself, said Frank. She was a sad girl who should have been properly looked after, and she wasn’t, and when she couldn’t handle some of the ugliness this world has a way of dumping on people, she went and took her own life.

  Stan nodded. He finished his beer. He looked to see what the dog was doing.

  — It’s a damn shame that you had to be the one to find her, said Frank. But you did find her and then you made sure the right people were in the right place. Thinking about it that way, I wish anytime a body turns up to the public, it’s a retired cop who finds it. But now you don’t have to worry about it any further.

  — I’m not worried, said Stan.

  — I hope not. Now come on. You know Mary doesn’t like supper to be kept waiting. She’s just like her mother in that way.

  — Yes, said Stan.

  Frank got up and opened the patio door and went inside the house. Stan followed.

  Stan tried to put the conversation with Frank out of his head, but a few days after Thanksgiving his telephone rang. A woman’s voice was on the other end.

  — Is this Mr. Maitland?

  — Yes, this is Stan Maitland here.

  — Mr. Maitland, this is Ellie Lacroix calling. I wondered if you’d still want to speak with me.

  He met with her at one o’clock that afternoon. They went to the Owl Cafe and sat in a booth halfway to the back. He had a roast beef sandwich and a cup of tea, and Eleanor Lacroix had a bowl of the day’s soup. She just moved her spoon around in it.

  — I apologize, Mr. Maitland.

  — Call me Stan, and I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.

  — How I spoke to you when you came to see me.

  He put his sandwich on the plate and sat back.

  — I know this has been a real upset to you, Ellie, but I also know that that’s not why you weren’t so quick to chat with me.

  — That’s true.

  — I knew your family for a long time. It’s only been the last twenty years or so, which at your age would seem a lot longer to you than it does to me, that I haven’t had much of an eye on you.

  — I don’t know how old we were, said Eleanor. Maybe six or seven. You and another cop arrested my dad one night. We, me and Judy, we didn’t even know what to think about that. We thought you were taking him to jail but when we got up the next morning he was there at the breakfast table. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

  — Your dad didn’t sleep that night, you’re right about that. He had a long walk back from where we dropped him off.

  — Why would you do something like that, Mr. Maitland?

  — Your dad, Aurel, he liked to have a drink, didn’t he.

  — He drank. But he never laid a finger on Judy or me.

  — You can’t say the same about how he was with your mother, can you.

  Eleanor had the soup spoon closed in her fist. She lifted it in a strange way, as though to emphasize something, and then she put it on the table.

  — I … No, I can’t say that.

  — That particular night he got very rough with your mother, said Stan. I don’t know how much of this you might of known about or not, mind, but the neighbours called us. It was me and Dick Shannon who went over to your place. Ellie, I was a cop for a long time. I did things, I don’t know now if I was right or wrong or what-all, but I did things in a certain way that I thought was right. I didn’t always care to see a man go to jail when I thought I could maybe help him come around to a better way of seeing things.

  — So you hauled my dad out to some back road and kicked the hell out of him.

  — No, Ellie. I never once had any kind of a battle with your dad. All I did was, I had a long talk with him and then gave him a good walk home to think it over. Do you remember him getting rough with your mother after that night?

  — No, said Eleanor. I don’t. Look, Mr. Maitland-Stan. My dad had a lot of problems. He used to have nightmares, from the war, I guess, although that was something he never talked about. I know he got shelled pretty bad and there were some scars on his leg. Anyway, he drank too much. He had a lot of trouble keeping a job. I know. I know. But the first thing I remember in my whole life, me and Judy are sitting on my dad’s knee, and he’s telling us the story of Baptiste and the Devil, my favourite. He could tell it better than anybody else. He talked French so fast you could barely understand him. I loved my dad.

  Eleanor looked out the window. Stan took a bite of his sandwich.

  — I never had much reason to come see your dad after that night. Which is why I didn’t see you or your sister grow up.

  — You want to talk about my sister, is that right?

  — Yes.

  — Don’t you think I’ve answered all the questions the police had for me?

  — Well, the only person’s behalf I’m asking on is my own.

  She nodded and said: Okay. But I want to know some things first, Stan. I want to hear your side. My dad used to say you had it out for our whole family.

  — Is that what he said?

  — He told me what happened with his older brothers. What do you have to say?

  Stan put his hands together under the table. He thought how to weigh his response, then it came t
o him how they were in the wrong place for it altogether.

  — It’s a nice day, Ellie. A little bit chilly but not so bad if you’re moving. Would you care to go for a walk?

  At the corner of Bayview Street and Chippewa Avenue was a three-storey brown-brick. Stan and Eleanor stood across the street. He pointed to the row of windows along the second floor.

  — I had a boxing clubhouse up there. The parish priest, this was Father O’Leary, signed a lease on the room. Me and him, we both thought if we could give the boys from town some better things to do it would keep them out of trouble. I was twenty-four years old and I’d just finished my own boxing career and I came back here and I got hired as a constable pretty quick. When I wasn’t being a cop, I was up there with O’Leary, who’d been a decent welterweight in the seminary. I was up there with him teaching boys from around town how to box. I don’t know how it works for girls, but I think with a boy, he pretty near can’t help it- when he’s changing from boy to man, he’s got a certain taste for breaking things. If you show him how to do it right, then it’s a good way for him and his chums to have a couple go-rounds in the ring and get all that out of them, instead of later on that same night busting chairs or bottles over each other’s heads. You see?

  She looked speculative, said: Maybe. I don’t remember me or Judy ever wanting to break bottles on people’s heads.

  — That’s why I don’t know how it is for girls. Anyhow, your uncle Darien was one of the best natural fighters I ever saw. Your uncle Remi was good too, but Darien was something. He was just barely a middleweight. They didn’t have a whole lot to eat out at your grandmother’s place, and your uncles never filled out right, but Darien still classed as a middleweight. He could throw these hooks like a machine gun. A lot of the other boys in the club quit sparring with him.

  — I never met my uncles.

  — I know you didn’t. They’ve been gone a long time. Would you walk a ways with me? I guess you’re not working at the bank today.

  — No. Not today.

  Stan took a last look at the windows where he’d trained local boys in the art of boxing. Then he and Eleanor walked along Chippewa in the direction of the river.

  — I thought Darien had the makings of a professional fighter. He’d of been, oh, maybe seventeen at the time. Those were pretty lean years. Your uncle made a bit of a name for himself. The men on relief, they had a lot of love for a kid like Darien who came from nothing. They’d come out by the dozens, fifty of them, a hundred, to see him fight. We couldn’t fit them in the clubhouse any more. Anyway, we got going so as I was coach and trainer and Father O’Leary was the manager. We brought on my old cut-man. For a little while things were pretty good. Pretty good. Then there was this fight at the Orangemen’s Hall in Orillia.

  — Orillia, said Eleanor. Yes. My dad talked about that a little bit.

  — Jack Watts, said Stan. He wasn’t any kind of goddamn middleweight but he made the weigh-in for it. He had this haymaker he’d throw. I should of known better. It got to the fourth round and your uncle Darien was on the ropes and he dropped his guard. Just for a second. Watts hit him so hard he … well, that was the fight. The trouble was, your uncle got hit a lot harder than any of us knew at the time. He was never really right after that. I should of known better, Ellie. But I was thinking about winning. I guess maybe I wished it was me in the ring again.

  They’d turned onto River Street and were passing Victory Appliances. On the other side of the street was the library. It was a squat building, with walls of thick limestone blocks and deeply recessed windows. A plaque describing the building’s history was fixed to the wall beside the entryway. They crossed over and Stan led them up the stone steps and through the doors. The interior of the library smelled like dusty books. A directory was mounted on a pedestal just past the front doors. Stan consulted it, squinting, tracing his finger along it. He led Eleanor down a flight of stairs. They came into a room with filing cabinets and a row of microfiche viewers. He brought them as far as a door marked STAFF ONLY.

  — We used to have our offices on the other side of this door. The holding cells were just past that.

  They went back up to the main floor and found a reading room behind the fiction stacks. There was a window looking out of the back of the building. A short downslope to the river. He told her how there used to be a yard enclosed by a block wall out there. At one time it had been stables and then the yard was converted to a vehicle compound for the patrol cars.

  — They used that yard, said Stan.

  — What do you mean?

  — For your uncle.

  — When he died. And you were there.

  — I didn’t kill your uncles, Eleanor, I didn’t. There were some hard years. The boxing clubhouse didn’t last long after that fight in Orillia. Father O’Leary moved to a different parish and the man who replaced him didn’t have any interest in boxing. I don’t think we were two more months at it after that. The farm where your dad lived, your grandmother, your aunts, Darien, Remi, they couldn’t afford to keep it going. They were in some money trouble. There was this one night Darien and Remi got into a fight with some boys at a dance. I brought them in. They came with me easy enough because they knew me. They got locked up in the holding cells. I was on the beat that night so I went back out. What ended up happening here was some kind of dust-up. Your uncles got out, and Darien, he shot the cop who was on duty. Charlie Rayfield was his name. Darien shot him with his own pistol. I don’t know how much of this you might know.

  — Some, she said. I know some of it. But this is different. Hearing it from you.

  — Well, Darien shot this policeman and he and Remi walked right out the door. Pretty quick it was two boys who were in a hell of a lot more trouble than they’d thought of. It wasn’t much more than a day or so before a half-dozen Provincial cops were up here from the city. They took over from us town cops. They hired on a bunch of local boys-men I knew, friends of mine-to help them track down Darien and Remi. There was one thing that the inspector figured out. Charlie Rayfield had a little.22 pistol he wore on his ankle and he’d fired a few shots off. The Provincial inspector, he figured maybe Remi or Darien had gotten shot on the way out, and if that was the case, maybe they didn’t get so far as everybody thought.

  — My dad used to say it was you.

  — I know what your dad would of said. Thing was, I knew your uncles pretty well. I didn’t want it to end in more shooting, and I figured with the Provincials looking for them, that’s what would happen. So I went over to an old bootlegger’s place I knew of, where your uncles used to like to go to have a drink. And sure enough, that’s where they were. The inspector was right, Remi was shot. He was in bad shape, Ellie. He had a.22 bullet in his stomach.

  — What did you do?

  — What I did was I talked them into turning themselves over to me. They were scared. Remi was sick. But while this was happening, Charlie Rayfield died in the hospital. So the charge became murder. The way it turned out …

  — Please. I want to hear it.

  — Your uncle Remi died from blood poisoning. Darien got charged with murder. The murder of a policeman was a serious thing. He went to the penitentiary for a few years. Then in 1944, when your dad was serving in France, they brought Darien back here to town. Right back home. And just out there, where the yard used to be, that’s where they did it.

  — Where they executed him.

  — Yes. He was the last person in the county to be put to death. I spoke to him, your uncle, the night before. He was scared, but not so scared as he could of been. Mostly he wished his ma would of come to see him. But things were different for her. She didn’t have the farm any more. I was there the next day when Darien was hanged. And I was a cop for another almost thirty years after that but there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that morning. Of your uncle up there on the platform. Every day, Ellie.

  She was quiet for awhile.

  — I don’t know what to
say, Stan. I knew some of this but I didn’t know it. I guess I think for all my dad was or wasn’t, how could he have two brothers who ended up like that?

  Outside the window where the vehicle compound and the wall used to be, they’d landscaped a couple of footpaths overlooking the river. A man in coveralls came into view, raking leaves under a red maple. There were some odd characters who hung around the library in the afternoon. A man in a plaid jacket was snoring quietly in a study carrel. A man with mole eyes behind mended glasses was sitting at a table close by, bent over an anatomical textbook, looking at images of the female reproductive organs.

  — It was all a long time ago, said Stan.

  They stayed at the library for awhile and Eleanor held her end of their agreement. She moved into the telling as if it were something that lifted a burden from her. That she and her sister were twins did not give her any great insight.

  — You can know someone better than anybody else knows her, and still you don’t know her at all. How is it that everything went bad for her, but not me?

  Nobody gave Judy’s ailment a name for many years. Troubles with their father, Aurel, were enough. What had no name warranted no sympathy. It wasn’t when their father died but when Eleanor went to college in the city that Judy suffered the most. Telling this to Stan, Eleanor had to pause between her words and look away. She said she felt guilty about that.

  A doctor paid a visit and made a referral. The psychiatrist to whom Judy was referred gave her condition a name.

  While Eleanor went to college, Judy went to a hospital east of the city, where she lived in a residence with some other girls. They were ex-junkies, they were girls with scars in their arms, they didn’t eat right, they didn’t say the right things. But Judy herself got along at the hospital after her first few months. There was a farm on the grounds. There was a new gymnasium. There were things to do with your hands and with your time.

  Eleanor visited when she could. She was going to college and she was not far away. Some of these girls at the hospital were suicidal. They slugged through their time under a constant state of scrutiny.