Blue Moon (16 page)

*****

I uttered these three conflicting, slightly overlapping narratives and, in the process, the police, not without just cause, became convinced I was a compulsive liar. Of more importance than the variants themselves are the events that transpired between the acts, the facts behind the fictions.

In books and movies, detectives never work alone. Sam Spade had partners, even though they tended, as in
The Maltese Falcon,
to get bumped off—thus adding the ingredient of revenge to the narrative. The masterful Sherlock Holmes was always accompanied by the blundering Watson. I should not have been altogether surprised, therefore, when the murder of John Dick was placed in the hands of the seasoned Charles Wood of the Criminal Investigation Branch of the Ontario Provincial Police in Toronto and the apparently kind, silent local, Clarence Preston, whose specialty before he encountered me was Morality.

After the night of my fateful drive with Mr. Romanelli, I waited
in grim expectation of a visit from the police. Like everyone else in Hamilton, I had read a few days before in the
Spectator
about the mysterious partially clothed torso discovered by some frightened schoolboys. I suspected John's relations would be in touch with the police, and I realized it was only a matter of time before I would be interrogated. There was a comical irony at work: the coroner who performed the autopsy was named Dr. Deadman.

When John's relatives had phoned the house searching for him and before the story was in the newspaper, I fessed up to Mother, who now knew what I had been burning that evening. “I venture your father is at the bottom of this.” That was her only response.

An hour before the arrival of Wood and Preston at my doorstep on Tuesday, March 19—eleven days after John died and three days after the discovery of the torso—my father put in an unexpected visit at Carrick Street. During a family lunch, he announced that he was privy to some of the details of how John was murdered. For example, he informed me he knew all about my encounter with Mr. Romanelli.

“Well, if you know that, you know who ordered the execution.”

“No, bairn. That I don't know. My contact—the man who phoned me at the HSR—told me that damned Silesian had been put out of his misery because he had been extremely indiscreet. Seems he was hiding in the bushes on James Street and saw some of the best-heeled gentlemen in the city frequenting your establishment. He named some of them. The man who paid to silence him was never mentioned. Dick died before he could implicate him.”

Testily, Mother interrupted: “We're supposed to believe you had nothing to with the murder?”

“That's the truth, madam,” he rejoined, nodding mockingly in her direction. “Not that I didn't have my reasons to be rid of him. He was telling some awful stories about me at the HSR.” Then, looking around the room as if an unexpected person might have come in unawares, he proceed to tell me I was to tell the police exactly what I had done, although I was not to mention I had incinerated some of the remains.

“Why should I do what you tell me?”

A condescending smile that one gives a naughty child animated his face as he prepared to respond. Just then, the doorbell rang. I pulled myself up, checked to see if my slip was showing and walked into the hallway, where, for the first time, I saw, looking through the
glass that filled half the door, Inspector Wood waiting for someone to answer his summons. Behind him were sergeants Preston and Farrow and Constable Mattick.

An elegant man. Too elegant to be a policeman. That was my first thought about Wood. He identified himself but before going any further, he complimented the furnishings in the room. “Shows remarkably good taste. Expensive. Very expensive in a subtle way. She must have hidden sources of wealth. Don't you think so, Preston?”

I am not sure the good sergeant had any taste, good or bad. A large messy bundle of a man, he mumbled something under his breath. Without further ado, Wood then looked at me: “You have probably read in the paper of the finding of a torso on the mountainside?”

I did not reply, although I could feel my face turning a bright red. He told me about the five children—Dave Reid, his sister Fiona, and Bob, Jim and Fred Weaver, accompanied by Dave's dog, Teddy—who had been hiking a long way from their homes in the west end of Hamilton. Earlier that day, they had come across dead—presumably diseased—pigs that had been dumped by farmers over the edge of the Mountain. Bob and Fred, who had wandered off on their own, came across the dead body, at first thinking it was merely another hog. Then, when the truth dawned on them, they became frightened and ran back to their companions at the edge of the Mountain, who returned with them to the spot. The band of children were not quite sure what to do; they wanted to report their discovery and they wanted to get home to their parents. They returned to the road to flag down a car. No one paid any attention to them. Finally, they formed a human chain across the lane. The man who was forced to stop promised to inform the police. Two hours later, the authorities arrived. “That torso has been identified as the body of your husband,” Wood announced.

Wood's remarkably long nose and delicate, almost feminine facial features, together with his long, angular body, gave him the look of the whippets at the dog races. He frightened me, and I had not yet taken in my father's warning. My eyes flashed: “Don't look at me. I don't know anything about it.”

The inspector looked offended, as if I had insulted him. “Sergeant Preston, the lady knows nothing. Does that surprise you, Sergeant? Shouldn't she know at least a little something?”

This time, the sergeant shook his head vigorously in the affirmative.

“Well,” Wood announced, as he turned his head to examine me, “you had better put your coat on and come to police headquarters and well talk this over.” Just then, my father walked into the room and identified himself to Wood. As it turned out, my father and Preston were old friends. The sergeant had been investigating my father for years but, in return for information on other suspected criminals, he had never pressed charges against him.

When my father—assuming the guise of the worried parent—asked if he could accompany me to the station, Wood told him to suit himself. Farrow and Mattick stayed behind to search the house. On the drive downtown, my father remained silent, but the imploring look in his countenance was hard to miss.

At the station, my father was left in the detectives' office, presided over by the sergeant of detectives, whereas Wood and Preston took me to an unoccupied Crown attorney's office. Various legal tomes were strewn on the table, but the thick dust that covered them showed they had not been consulted in a long while.

“Be a good chappie, Preston, and get a stenographer in here. Mrs. Dick and I will exchange pleasantries while we wait for you. You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you, Mrs. Dick? You enjoy talking to strange men?” There was nothing to which I could reasonably respond, but the conversation soon turned to my black Packard, which I told him I had sold two years before to Bill Landeg. I admitted that I borrowed the car back for a day or two at a time, the last occasion being March 4.

“You're being very coy with me, madam. It will be in your best interest to tell me the entire truth at once.” This statement was issued brusquely as a military command. At that point, Preston, accompanied by the stenographer, returned to the room. Wood then cautioned me, and I began my first, long recitation of what I knew. As I have indicated, Wood cross-questioned me on the ridiculousness of the murderers asking me to convey another car to the Mountain. The real reason, I knew, was that I was to take the fall for John's death or, at the very least, to be fully implicated in it. I suspected Wood was fully aware of this line of reasoning, but he did not let on that he was thinking in this way.

“Do you know how your husband was murdered?”

“No, I am not sure.”

“What do you mean you are not sure?”

“I wouldn't like to say in case I am wrong.”

Then he startled me. “Who had the gun?”

“Well, I have no gun. I don't own a gun.
They
always carry them. They don't fool around. They might put a knife in my back or a bomb under my house.”

“They, they, they. You're not being very helpful. I want you to take Sergeant Preston and myself on a tour of the drive you took on the evening of March 6. Are you willing to do that for us?”

I agreed, and the three of us set out fifteen minutes later with a driver. We went to the top of the James Street Incline. I showed them the spot where I had met up with the large sedan. Then, we continued south to Queensdale, turned east to Wellington, north on Wellington to Concession, and east on Concession right along to Mountain Brow Road. Just beyond where Flock Road intersects Mountain Brow, I pointed out the spot where Mr. Romanelli threw John's cap out of the car. We stopped, but the detectives could not find any sign of it. We got back in the car and continued on Mountain Brow Road in the direction of Albion Falls. When I saw the site where the body had been dumped, I told them to stop.

I can still feel the piercing coldness of that early March evening. Twilight slowly asserted itself as we drove up the Mountain, and we were enveloped in blackness during the descent. I sat next to Wood, who deliberately edged himself away from me, as if to avoid contamination. I suppose I cannot really blame him. A man who worked with evil all his life, he knew the thin line that separated himself from those he pursued. I hugged my Persian lamb coat.

As soon as we arrived back at the station, I was charged with vagrancy—at that time a police procedure for holding someone who was a suspect in a far more serious crime. The following morning, a Monday, I was arraigned before a magistrate. Wearing a broken check black and grey suit and a black tarn, with my coat thrown over my shoulders, I stood in the prisoner's dock while my first lawyer, Mr. Walsh, pleaded for my release on bail. I was remanded in custody.

Later that day, my mother visited me. She began by telling me of the thorough searches that had been made to both the Carrick Street and Rosslyn Avenue houses. In the bedroom I shared with my mother,
they had found a small snapshot of Bill, my bank book showing a balance of $720, and three of hers with just over ten thousand dollars. An arsenal of various guns and a revolver had been discovered at my father's place. Bill Landeg was interviewed about the Packard; he told the police about the note I had written him.

Mother gave me all this information in what was for her a normal, matter-of-fact way. Then, she softened her voice. “Your father came to see me this morning. I was out. He let himself into the house and was waiting for me when I got home. He has new instructions.”

“New instructions! From whom?”

“Shush, dear. Don't let anybody hear you. From the person who phoned him before. Listen very carefully. You must tell the police that Bohozuk arranged the murder, perhaps even carried it out himself.”

“That's a lie.”

“That is of absolutely no account. If you refuse to implicate Bohozuk, he will be murdered. Same fate as John Dick. It's as simple as that. Your choice.”

“I don't follow.”

“Mr. Wood is a very clever fellow. A real Toronto busybody. It was some sort of accident that he was assigned to this case. The only way to outwit him is to confuse him and his cronies. He knows you may have had little or nothing to do with the murder, but he is going to try to use you to get to the bottom of it. Bohozuk is the red herring, as in Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes always knows a red herring.”

“My dear, you'd better hope Mr. Wood doesn't.” Then her smile became malicious: “You've always been such a diligent reader, pet. Now you've got to use your imagination to invent stories. I've given you the plot line; you do the embroidering.”

This conversation with my mother paved the way for my second variant account in which Bohozuk was jealous of my husband and decided to do away with him. Since Wood had only straws to grasp at, he took the bait. In fact, he had hauled Bohozuk in for questioning earlier that day. A man easily inclined towards cynicism, Wood thought my new account plausible. As an explanation, it placed limits on the identity of the culprit rather than forcing the police to consider the possibility that John's big mouth had forced the hand of a powerful consort of mine. All in all, an ingenious manoeuvre. The
police would be distracted at least momentarily. The longer a mystery remains unsolved, the greater the chance of the criminal escaping detection.

On Thursday, March 21st, Wood and Preston returned to Carrick Street, where the good sergeant found a bushel basket filled with ashes. Just outside the garage doors, he also noticed a deep rut running at an angle of forty-five degrees, where a car had recently been driven up close to the garage. The gouge was filled with ashes. Later in the day, Dr. Deadman was summoned to assist in the removal of objects found in the garage.

My mother disliked Wood, but she found Preston congenial. She could talk at him without fear of interruption. On Wednesday, the day before, she told him, her estranged husband had let himself into the house while she was absent. When he learned that the police had searched the house, Donald had rushed upstairs to the attic. A little later, he shouted for her to bring him a screwdriver and hammer. She took them to him and waited, but, just as he was about to open a trunk, he noticed her, swore, and told her to get the hell out. While he was upstairs, detectives Farrow and Mattick came to fetch some of my clothing. Shortly afterwards, when Mother summoned father to supper, he had disappeared.

Intrigued by my mother's story, the good sergeant proceeded to the attic, where he came upon several unlocked empty suitcases and a lady's beige case. “Some of my daughter's books,” was my mother's only comment. She had no idea where the key was. He forced the lock, revealing a burlap bag covering a small wicker meat basket, which contained a cardboard carton. The carton, filled with cement from which clothing protruded, emitted a ghastly smell, like decomposing flesh.