Death Spiral (23 page)

“And some sleeping pills were missing?”

“That’s what she said.”

“There must be more to it, for Millie to tell a story like that.”

“There isn’t, believe me. All she said was that Scarfe hasn’t been himself for a long time. Short-tempered. Brooding. I tried to tell her that it had to do with his age. He’s in his mid-sixties, after all—he’ll be retiring soon and I think Scarfe’s the same as a lot of men. When their life work is over they think their lives are over. And then they discover their colleagues don’t give a damn whether they retire or not and neither does the business they poured their lives into. They turn bitter.”

“Did Millie buy your explanation?”

“No. She asked me if I would please, please invite Scarfe out somewhere for a drink, talk about old times and see if he’ll tell me what’s really going on.”

“And you said?”

“That I’d call him first of the week. Pure nonsense. But I never could say no to Millie Telfer.” Clarence sat back down at the table. “She was your mother’s best friend. We go back a long way. The four musketeers.”

“I used to caddy for Scarfe.”

“Yes, you did. And I remember why. Because he’d pay you more than I would and filial affection didn’t seem to come into the picture.”

“Money’s money.”

Clarence smiled. “So it is.”

“I seem to remember that Mr. Telfer always drove a fancy car.”

“A Cadillac man. Always has been. He’s still driving his old Fleetwood. Nineteen thirty-seven or thirty-eight. Something like that.”

“What’s the colour?”

“A kind of cream colour. White leather interior.”

“Yes. That’s it,” Wilf said. He laid his drink down as carefully as he could. It rattled on the counter.

“God, can you imagine such a thing? Scarfe having an affair? And contemplating murder? Poor dear Millie. I had to feel sorry for her. The whole damn town’s spooked, that’s all I can say.”

“I told Andy I’d drop around this afternoon.”

“I thought you said you were keeping your distance. The Duncan Getty mess. All that.”

“I bumped into him this morning. He said to drop around.”

Wilf began to make his way down the steps to the side door. He took his coat off its hook.

“Don’t you want any lunch?”

“I had a sandwich downtown.”

“Well, take the car.”

“It’s such a great day. I think I’ll walk.”

“But you’ve already had a walk.”

Wilf opened the door. He didn’t seem to hear.

* * *

The morning sun had disappeared behind a misty layer of clouds and the light had turned to amber as Wilf hurried along toward the Telfer house. The air felt wet to breathe. A winter’s worth of moisture was beginning to seep up from the ground. Mist shrouded the houses, hung in the trees.

Scarfe Telfer and Sylvia Young were having an affair, Wilf thought to himself. Was that even remotely possible?

He could see an earring lying against her neck again, a round silvery disc like a winter moon. And her face at rest on the melting snow.

How long ago had she left her job in the general office at Parson’s? What had Cathy said? Five years? Four?

A bottle was sitting on her kitchen table. In his haste he hadn’t seen it. Smelled it. Tasted it. Laced with sleeping pills?

The oven door flung open.

And Bradley sleeping somewhere upstairs.

Wilf came to a stop.

He was standing at a corner. The Telfer house towered in the mist across the street. If he remembered correctly there was a lion’s face on the front door. He’d reached up for the iron ring attached to its nose on occasion, knocking for his father to come home or selling tickets for assorted raffles or fundraising for high school projects. But what if Millie came to the door? What would he say?

And if Scarfe came to the door, what would he say?

“I know who you really are.”

Scarfe was his father’s lifelong friend. That’s who he was. And who was he, braced against his cane and standing there? Who had he become? One wrong question to Scarfe Telfer, one outrageous accusation and he’d pull his father’s world down around his head.

Something across the street caught Wilf’s eye, a kind of flickering in the backyard between the slats of the board fence. He felt a rush of panic, turned to leave but he couldn’t. He moved across the street instead, stepping up on the curb and looking through the fence. Scarfe was crouched down in the middle of his sopping garden.

There was a gate a few steps away. Wilf stared at it and then pushed it open. As soon as the hinges creaked Scarfe stood up.

“Well, my goodness. Look who’s here. Wilf! It’s so good to see you.”

“Hello, Mr. Telfer.” He moved through the gate and limped into the garden along a wet sandy path. “I was just passing by so I thought I’d drop in to say thank you. You know, thanks to you and Mrs. Telfer for attending my welcome home banquet. I didn’t get a chance that night.”

“Well, actually you did, Wilf. You were quite effusive actually. But it never hurts to say thanks twice.”

Now Wilf could see what Scarfe had been crouching over, a small pond with a slab of ice floating around in the middle. Water bubbled up on one side.

“Just cleaned the filter. One of the first signs of spring.” Scarfe didn’t look down at the pump though. He kept his eyes, watery and blue and wary, aimed straight at Wilf’s face. What was it that his father had always said about Scarfe Telfer? “Scarfe has class, even though he doesn’t come from class.” Which in his father’s eyes seemed to make it all the more admirable a trait. A natural-born elegance.

He was still handsome enough, Wilf thought to himself, in a silver-haired, older sort of way. And he seemed very concentrated, very alert. But why wouldn’t he be? He had to know who had found Sylvia Young. Everyone in town knew.

“Are there goldfish in there?” Wilf peered down into the murky water.

“Close to a hundred at last count. They’re still sluggish though, hugging the bottom. If things keep warming up they’ll start stirring around.”

“They stay in there all winter?”

“A kind of miracle. I can’t tell you how many times I look out my window during a winter, snow blowing around out here, everything bleak and dead, and I think about this little niche of life. Flashes of gold under the snow. Spring will come, I think to myself.”

Scarfe’s voice seemed to catch in his throat and now Wilf could tell that the fierce light in his eyes was simply pain. A radiant pain. It was apparent everywhere, in the misty air, in the sag of his shoulders, in his clenched hands.

“Nice of you to drop around, Wilf. I should go in now. I have things to do. Say hello to your dad for me, will you? I haven’t seen him for a while.” He started moving off.

“Mr. Telfer?”

Scarfe stopped on the other side of the pond. “Yes, Wilf?”

“Did you see yesterday’s paper?”

There was a slight hesitation, hardly anything at all. “Yesterday’s paper? I’m not sure. I was away on business. Didn’t arrive back until late yesterday.”

“About Sylvia Young’s death?”

“Oh, that. Yes well, I did see that, actually.”

“Then you must know that I was the one who found her.”

“Well, I did. But I didn’t want to say anything. Ask you about it. I’m sure it was very upsetting.”

“You knew her, didn’t you?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“She worked at Parson’s. In the general office. She left a few years ago.”

“People come and go, Wilf. I don’t keep track of everyone. I might have known her. It doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s a tragedy either way.”

“I didn’t realize that the general office at Parson’s was so large.”

Scarfe’s thin chest seemed to expand under his light jacket. “I don’t know what your point is. Do you have a point?”

Wilf couldn’t stop himself. “My point is, someone saw you coming out of Sylvia Young’s house the night she was murdered. She recognized you. She recognized your car.”

Scarfe Telfer went absolutely rigid. For a moment Wilf thought he might fall down.

“That’s a lie.” Whatever colour had been in his face was gone. Grey as slate. Even his lips. As grey as Sylvia Young’s face. “The woman committed suicide.”

“The woman was murdered.”

“You must be out of your mind. My god! Coming in here and saying something like that to me. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what to say.”

“I’d like an explanation, that’s all. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“I wasn’t there!”

“I’ll have to go to the police.”

“What do you mean, you’ll have to go to the police? Are you bloody-well insane?” His face was flushing now. Patches of flaming red. He took a few steps back around the pond. “You can’t run around saying things like that. Have you any idea of the damage you could do, just to mention such a thing? My reputation in the town. My business reputation. Think of my wife, for godsake!”

“Perhaps your wife could vouch for where you were on Wednesday night.”

“Of course she can,” Scarfe screamed. He glanced toward his neighbour’s house. “But as long as I have a breath I can assure you that no one is going to ask her. You’re a disgrace to your father.” He jutted his jaw out so far it looked like he might dislocate it, then he turned on his heels and walked around the pond again. He spun about and came back. “Out of respect for Clarence and out of respect for what you’ve been through, because obviously it’s had an enormous effect on you, I will not press any charges. For uttering this horrible lie, this deformed and outrageous calumny.” He pointed a shaking hand toward the open gate. “Now get the hell out of my yard!”

“It’s too late,” Wilf said. And he knew it was. Too late for everyone and everything. “I’ve already talked to the police. Not about you though. Just in general terms. Would you like to hear what they had to say?”

“No!”

“They found traces of a sedative in Sylvia’s blood. They suspect sleeping pills but they couldn’t find an empty pill bottle anywhere in her house. No prescription from her doctor. No records at the drugstore. This seems to have put them on edge. Of course if she’d wanted to make doubly certain she’d kill herself she could have taken an overdose of sleeping pills. And there’s no trace of the sedative in the remains of that bottle left on the table. But then, if a clever person such as yourself had put her to sleep, he’d have taken that bottle away and replaced it with another one. And the glass she was using too. Hidden them somewhere.”

Scarfe had been standing a little distance away staring at Wilf like a man standing at the side of a road watching his own automobile accident. “You’re babbling. Pitiful sight. You’ll be drooling next. I feel sorry for Clarence.” He swung away and with a display of icy resolve and a squared-off back headed around the pond again.

“Has Mrs. Telfer returned or is she still out?”

Scarfe kept going.

“She dropped in to see my father earlier this morning. Told him you weren’t in the hotel where you were supposed to be on Wednesday night. She was missing a half-bottle of sleeping pills.”

Scarfe’s shoulders flinched, he looked like a condemned man taking fire, but he refused to stop or turn around. He kept heading for the back of his house.

Wilf stood up. “Your wife is very frightened.”

Scarfe kept on. He walked up the sloping lawn. He made it to a flagstone walkway. He was almost at the back door when he came to a stop. He stood there for what seemed a long time to Wilf. “My wife’s not home.” He turned and smiled a weak smile across the soaking garden. “Come on in the house, Wilf.”

Scarfe pushed open the door and disappeared inside.

Wilf stared at the open door. He tried to think of any other option he might have. He knew there were no other options. His body knew that for a fact. His soul knew it absolutely. He began to walk through the garden toward the house.

The back room was full of winter boots and coats and snow shovels and assorted garden tools. A flight of wooden steps led up to another door that had been left half open too.

Wilf pulled off his galoshes, took his time lining them up beside Scarfe’s muddy pair of boots and began to climb the stairs. He entered a narrow hall. He stood there listening.

A thick yellow light was moving at the other end of the house, moving and rippling, as if the flood had crept up the hill and entered under Scarfe’s front door.

Wilf walked toward it and came to a stop at the entrance to a wider hall. Light was seeping in through a large fan of brandy-coloured glass over the heavy front door. He could remember that fan of glass, he could remember standing below it waiting for his father to appear or for Mrs. Telfer to reappear, watching the light creep over the walls, move in syrupy ripples across the parqueted floor.

“Wilf?”

Scarfe was standing behind him. “Please,” he said and disappeared from sight.

Please what, Wilf thought to himself. Please what?

Wilf retraced his steps. A short side hall led off toward an open door. He eased himself down a step and into a panelled room.