Blue Moon (4 page)

“Something awful's happened to Elizabeth! She's not answering her phone.”

“She has probably left on holiday for a day or two.”

“She wouldn't do that. I'm very close to her. She would've told me. I'm very worried now that you tell me she hasn't rung you. I'm quite close to Elizabeth. I know about her relationship to you.”

A bit startled, I asked her what she thought might have happened. “She's had an accident. For all I know, she could be dead!”

“You are sure something is amiss?”

“I know it. She would've phoned me. We're like mother and daughter. Why don't you phone the concierge and demand to be let into the flat?”

“I do not like intrusive people, nor am I intrusive. Elizabeth may simply wish to be alone.” There was a silence that propelled me to respond: “I shall see what I can do.”

Three hours later, accompanied by Mario the concierge, I entered the suite, which had, as I remember it, intensely bright images on pastel-coloured walls. Mario, nodding in the direction of the bedroom, indicated he would only follow where I led. So it was I who discovered Elizabeth's corpse. The double bed was placed at the side of the room's only window. Her body, cradled slightly to the side, was swathed by a single sheet. The face of the corpse had a benign aspect, a serenity I had hardly ever glimpsed in any of my many encounters with the living person. Death did not obscure her excellent bone structure—it enhanced that aspect of her appearance. In rest, her features hinted at the beauty age had just begun to rob from her. There was a small writing desk opposite the bed and on it I noticed a handwritten page, which I discreetly placed in the breast pocket of my suit.

I felt a comforting stillness in that room. Warm, golden sunshine penetrated the chamber of death, and the body of Elizabeth resembled that of a pre-Raphaelite beauty. A gentle peace had somehow settled
itself. Mario, obviously a devout Catholic, crossed himself and began to weep quietly. I felt I had inadvertently taken part in some religious rite.

That evening, the news of Elizabeth's death filled the airwaves, various commentators offering eloquent assessments of her place in world literature. The local press was not quite so compassionately inclined. Elizabeth's mysterious passing from—it turned out—a heart attack in her sleep was ludicrously compared to the sudden death of Errol Flynn in Vancouver in October 1959. Accompanied here by Beverley Aadland, a seventeen-year-old starlet, the fifty-year-old matinee idol had been at a surgeon's flat to receive treatment for a slipped disk. He regaled those in attendance with anecdotes about W.C. Fields and John Barrymore and then retired to a bedroom to relax before the doctor went to work. A few minutes later, Miss Aadland stepped into that room and returned immediately screaming in horror: “Something is terribly wrong with Errol—he's turned black!” Although adrenaline was injected into his heart, the actor died a few minutes later. After the autopsy, the newspapers gleefully reported that Flynn had the body of a tired old man.
Sic transit gloria.
In their accounts of Elizabeth's death, the local papers suggested that only persons with secrets to hide lost their lives in hotel rooms.

Although in the main retired, I still see a few patients; I could not leave for Toronto at once. I booked my flight a month ahead, fairly confident that I had plenty of time to deal with Elizabeth's remains. I was wrong. Two weeks after her death, I received a phone call from Richard Johnston of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Room at the University of Toronto's Robarts Library.

“I'd like you to take a look at the papers found in Elizabeth Delamere's flat. I gather you are her literary executor.”

“Correct. I shall attend to everything in due course. I was going to get in touch with you next week. Can we wait until then?”

This was, however, a personage who was not about to be brushed off. “The documents point in a fantastical but inescapable direction.”

“Such as?”

“Elizabeth Delamere was not the lady's real name.”

“Go on.”

“Elizabeth Delamere was Evelyn Dick, the Hamilton prostitute accused of killing her husband and convicted of murdering her own baby.”

“I am aware of Elizabeth's past. I was her analyst.”

“So you were in on the secret?”

“I wasn't in on any secret. I was aware of her past.”

“You realize that the existence of the typescript of her autobiography puts me in a difficult position. I suppose you intend to embargo this portion of the archive? You can count on me to be discreet, although I imagine that much more attention will be paid to her now that she has died and given the number of awards and prizes she has won. It's a tricky situation.”

“On the contrary, Elizabeth was well aware the truth would eventually be revealed. She did not wish her real identity to be known in her lifetime. I'm not sure she would have wanted her autobiography to be published so soon. But she certainly wanted it published. She left it to my discretion as to when and under what conditions it should be released.”

“You might consider sooner rather than later.”

“I dare say there is a great deal in what you say.”

In the popular imagination, Karla Homolka has replaced Evelyn Dick as the best-known female murderer born in Canada. Homolka's husband, Paul Bernardo, had a copy of Brett Easton Ellis's
American Psycho
at his bedside—whereas a decade earlier, Jon George Rallo, the Hamilton city hall supervisor who in 1976 murdered his wife and children, had used
Torso,
the book about the Dick murders, as a how-to-do-it manual. The mutilated body of Sandra Rallo was found wrapped in garbage bags in the Welland Canal; her daughter, Stephanie, in Jordan Harbour. The body of Jason, 6, has never been discovered.

In the late 1940s, Evelyn Dick had been accused of murdering her husband by chopping off his head and all four limbs. (The victim's
large penis was his only remaining appendage, leading to the refrain:
How CouldYou Mrs. Dick?
Local wags answered their own question:
Hard to do.)
She was found guilty of the ghastly crime, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. In the midst of their investigation of the “Torso” murder, the police came upon the perfectly preserved body of a healthy, newborn baby boy encased in cement in a suitcase in Evelyn's bedroom closet. He had been strangled. She was found guilty of that crime, sent to Kingston Prison for Women, released after twelve years and then vanished into thin air.

“It's all so improbable” was Richard Johnston's summary of the situation. How could Evelyn Dick have become Elizabeth Delamere? How could she have perpetrated such a masquerade? How could Evelyn Dick have had the intellectual capacity to become a famous writer?

I saw how unsettled he was, but my mind wandered back to the improbable accusation in a recent biography that Graham Greene had once murdered a woman, stuffed her body into a trunk and left the trunk at a railway station in London.

There is also the exceedingly curious case of Juliet Hulme, which was made into the film,
Heavenly Creatures.
At the age of 15, the frail, tubercular English-born Hulme was sent in 1954 to New Zealand by her parents; they hoped the climate in the Antipodes would improve her health. There, Hulme formed a close friendship with Pauline Parker, whose mother objected to the closeness that developed between the two girls. When the mother took steps to separate them, the two friends brutally murdered the older woman—they hacked her to death in a public park. Hulme, who claimed to be on medication that was mind-altering, was convicted of murder and sent to prison/After that, she disappeared from public view. When the film, based on a true story, appeared forty years later, it was a hit on the art-house circuit. Journalists proceeded to track down the real Hulme. She had become Anne Perry, the highly successful writer of Gothic mysteries, who lived in comparative isolation in the English countryside.

Hulme had transformed her life experience into fiction. Was it so strange that another supposed killer, Evelyn Dick, had done the same? Delamere wrote of wronged, often overly passive women who, after great struggles, took charge of their lives. All of the heroines in her early novels murder someone.

Had she been writing about herself? That was Richard's very justifiable question. What did those narratives reveal, he was asking, about the relationship between art and life? Could repulsive behaviour be the foundation of great writing? Is all art a grand fraud?

Evelyn Dick was renowned as a very evil woman; Elizabeth Delamere was a very famous writer. What are the connections between the two strands? Or are there any links at all? Perhaps Evelyn Dick was a very damaged but ordinary—not evil—person? Perhaps she became Elizabeth Delamere to compensate herself for the injustices she endured? Despite my close association with her, I am left with many unanswered questions when I think of the supposedly sullied goods that became, in the eyes of the world, golden.

As I envisioned it, my melancholy task was to sort through Elizabeth's fragments of autobiography, assemble them in the most appropriate order and then find the best way to make the entire narrative flow smoothly. I hope I have done my job satisfactorily, but it is the reader who must decide. The reader of these pages will have many more difficult issues to resolve.

How did such a seeming monster of cruelty and passivity as the young Evelyn Dick become Elizabeth Delamere? Or—you may wish to put the question in a different way—how did Evelyn Dick overcome the deprivations of childhood and young adulthood to become a great writer?

In any event, here is the last book written by Elizabeth Delamere. I leave it to you, the reader, to make your own adjustments—as I did many years before.

Almost every night, I take that drive. I borrow the black Packard sedan, once my car, from Bill Landeg, the garage owner to whom I sold it two years before. It is a late winter afternoon, twilight quickly descending as I drive up John and Arkledun Streets and up the Mountain—really, more of a hill—where about a third of Hamilton's population lives. Quickly, the sky becomes enshrouded in a sullen blackness. Soon, I leave the city behind and reach open countryside. Only a few lights draw my attention as the car sways on its appointed path. All of a sudden, there are only the lights from the car itself, and I have to pay close attention to the twisting road. There are no stars, no
helpful points of light to assure me I am not alone in the universe. Snow begins to fall.

A rabbit jumps across the road, dexterously avoiding the car. Enormous rocks—boulders really—guard the side. They are the only real signposts. I labour to pay attention. I want to be safe, but I know this is impossible.

Is this how I felt
that
night, on 6 March 1946? Or is it my dream state that makes me aware I am soon to be confronted with some form of the unending horror?

All of a sudden, there is the other car—an Oldsmobile—on the opposite side of the narrow road, its headlights beaming. This is the rendezvous point, the Incline. I slam on the brakes, put my cigarette out, look automatically for a split second at my lips in the rear view mirror. The lipstick seems faded, but my face is pure white, much whiter than I ever try to make it. I brace myself, open the door and start walking towards Mr. Romanelli. He walks at a fast clip in my direction, searching for something—the expression on my face. He wants to know how frightened I am. He takes out a lighter, flicks it in my direction and seems satisfied at what he beholds.

He has mean, darting eyes. He is medium in height but looks much shorter, his height diminished by his thick camel-hair coat and a thick waist. I catch a glimpse of a brown striped suit under the coat. He is what we used to call a
real Dago:
Huge nose, a sinister twist to his large mouth, a line of moustache that could have been painted on, and dark, little pig eyes. Having located what he had hoped to find, he does not hesitate. “We are short of fellows, tonight. Plans have changed.” He motions me back to the Packard.

“How changed? What does it matter if some of your men are not here?”

Now, he laughs. Really, he snorts. “Evelyn, you and I are going to take a ride.” This is said as a joke. Now, I am even more confused.

“I was told John would be safe if I came to pick him up.”

“Oh, John is going with us.”

For the first time, I feel a semblance of relief. Perhaps I do not have to worry quite so much. Perhaps this horrible misunderstanding will finally be over. Tm glad he's safe. I was sure this mess could be sorted out.”

This remark seems to astound my companion, He tells me to wait. He will fetch John. He walks back to his car and reaches into the back seat. Slowly, he pulls himself back to the road, a huge Santa Claus bag trailing behind him. He walks slowly back to me, accompanied by a man carrying a large parcel in front of him. I expect the man to be John, but he is someone I have never seen before. Mr. Romanelli opens the back door of the Packard and slowly wedges the bag into the back seat, most of which it fills. His associate wedges his parcel between the back seat and the floor and makes his way back to the other car. I silently witness this dumb-show, not understanding what is happening.

Mr. Romanelli grabs my shoulder and tells me we have to leave immediately. He has to be in Niagara Falls later that night. “Where's John?,” I plead.

He tells me to get behind the wheel as he opens the passenger door and slips in. I do as he says, awaiting more information. Any semblance of comedy has been drained from his face. “For a smart dame, you really play it stupid. You know very well he's dead. His body is divided between that bag and the parcel.”

I cannot make sense of what he is telling me. “I was told to fetch John, that I could take him home.”

Now a smile crosses his face. “That's exactly so. You are picking up John and, if you wish, you can take him home—part of him anyway. He's safe now—from causing you and a whole lot of other people trouble. We've put him out of business.”