Let's Kill Uncle (22 page)

Nevertheless, he didn’t want to go in that beer parlour again. Before last Saturday night and the black eye, he thought he had touched the bottom of the well of humiliation, but apparently he had hardly dampened his boots. There had been a time when he had thought that the night on the beach with Gwynneth Rice-Hope had been the bedrock of the pit, he still blushed when he thought of it, but each fresh session made him realise he would never have a tough hide, he would always be vulnerable, and the next time would hurt as much as the last.

Mr Brooks leaned against the counter reading the latest edition of the
Victoria Colonist.

‘I see the Americans have caught their silk-stocking strangler,’ he said, turning the page and looking up at Albert.

‘About time,’ replied Albert. ‘He left just about every conceivable type of clue behind, including notes to the
police explaining his methods. He still killed seven people before they nabbed him.’

Now if the Mounties had been handling that case, things would have been different.

But Mr Brooks had turned the pages and was reading another story. Suddenly he folded up the paper, gave Albert a startled, embarrassed look and said he was through with the
Colonist
if Albert would like to take it with him.

Sergeant Coulter thanked him, folded the paper under his arm and walked onto the porch, just in time to have his hat kicked off by Barnaby, who was swinging from the roof of the porch.

Sergeant Coulter picked up his hat, brushed it off, gritted his teeth and quietly told Barnaby to get down from there before he fell and broke his neck.

‘I can’t,’ said Barnaby. ‘Get down, I mean. Christie took the ladder away. I’m sorry I knocked your hat off. Ohhhhhhhhh, Sergeant! What a lovely black eye. How did you get it?’

‘What ladder?’ asked Sergeant Coulter ominously.

‘The one we found in the shed with the fire-fighting equipment. How did you get your black eye, Sergeant?’

Sergeant Coulter whispered ‘Jesus’ gently to himself.

‘I walked into a door,’ he said, and standing on the top stair he stretched up, grabbed the boy and swung him to the porch.

‘Wheee!’ shouted Barnaby.

Christie came racing around the corner, looking innocent.

‘Oh, Sergeant!’ she cried, ‘you’ve got a black eye. Does it hurt?’

Sergeant Coulter let his breath out slowly, counted to ten and then addressed the children.

‘Listen, you two! That ladder is government property, you understand? The forest rangers put people in jail for
things like that. Have you got that straight? Now put it back and don’t touch anything in there again!’

Subdued, they nodded.

He turned to go, then noticed the little girl standing with lowered head. He stopped, feeling awkward.

‘I’m sorry, but you’ll both just have to learn not to touch things that don’t belong to you.’

Her head remained obstinately lowered.

‘Now, don’t cry,’ he said as soothingly as he could. ‘It’s all right. Just don’t touch anything in the shed again.’

She raised tearless eyes.

‘You didn’t swing me off the porch!’ she whispered jealously.

So that was it. He sighed, grabbed her under the arms and swung her in a circle.

‘How’s that?’

‘No. Over your head like you did Barnaby.’

Silently cursing, Sergeant Coulter decided Herod was a man whom history had judged too harshly. He lifted Christie again and whirled her as he had done Barnaby.

‘Look, Barnaby!’ she shrilled, ‘I’m just like Peter Pan!’

Sergeant Coulter wheeled with her over his head and suddenly found himself face to face with Mrs Rice-Hope.

The dignified Mountie blushed and set Christie on her feet.

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Rice-Hope, who was exceedingly beautiful and none too bright, ‘when I heard the screams I thought there had been an accident. You’re playing with the children. How sweet, Sergeant. I always thought of you as a man who loved children.’

She smiled charmingly at him and the children, and the children smiled charmingly back at her. Again storms lashed poor Albert’s heart.

‘Why, Sergeant,’ she said, laying a shapely hand on his sleeve in alarm, ‘how did you get that awful black eye?’

It was time for Albert to dabble in the well of humiliation again.

‘In the course of duty, Ma’am,’ he said stiffly, touching the brim of his hat.

It was impossible for his face to get redder. Why, oh why, had he said that! He could have kicked himself. In his confusion he turned to the children.

‘Come on. I’ll buy you each a pop.’

‘Us?’ they cried in amazement.

Sergeant Coulter dispensed gum, usually to rid himself of their presence when they were tiresome, but he just wasn’t a pop man.

Before they could say more and spoil her illusions, he rushed them into the store, grabbed two bottles, jerked the tops off and popped them into the children’s mouths.

‘Quick!’ he ordered. ‘Drink those and keep quiet.’

Mrs Rice-Hope came into the store and left a prescription of medicine on the counter for old Mr Allen.

‘Dr Wheeler asked me to drop this off,’ she explained. ‘Good day, Sergeant. Goodbye children, I’ll see you on Sunday.’

With a friendly wave of her hand, she moved on.

Sergeant Coulter leaned on the store counter. Thank God she was gone before he could do or say anything else foolish.

‘You kids want another pop?’ he asked amiably.

They looked at each other and then at their adored Sergeant suspiciously. Two pops?

As they gulped down the second drink, Christie took time out to belch and ask him how he got his black eye.

‘Door,’ said Sergeant Coulter.

His face was still scarlet, and the children stared at him with curiosity.

Looking out, he observed with horror that Miss Proudfoot was making her way to the store. She took a prurient interest in the affairs of the heart, and the children, even the children, knew from a glance that something ailed Sergeant Coulter.

Albert’s honest face was the mirror of his soul, and in a trice he who had fought the murderous Hun and faced the assassin’s bullet, fled in confusion.

When he had gone, Mr Brooks came running, in response to Miss Proudfoot’s imperious ring. He found the newspaper on the counter.

‘Shall I take it to him?’ asked Barnaby.

Mr Brooks sighed. ‘No. I suppose Constable Browning will give it to him. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway.’

‘Find out what?’ asked Barnaby.

‘Nothing,’ mumbled Mr Brooks.

Sergeant Coulter pondered on the report of the stolen gun.

The Americans very logically concluded that, since they had seen the gun when they docked at the Island, it must have been stolen later. Sergeant Coulter had questioned them carefully, asking if they were sure they had the gun when they left the Island, if they remembered seeing it when they arrived on Benares. By the time they had thought it over and and talked it over, they were all absolutely positive they had the gun when they left the Island, they almost remembered seeing it when they got to Benares. Yes, they did remember seeing it when they docked at Benares. They were certain.

That made it difficult. There were twenty or thirty boats tied up at the dock of Benares during the weekend, with
God only knew how many people coming and going. It would be complicated to trace. But it would turn up. Sometime, somehow. Guns always did. In the meanwhile, Victoria had been notified and pawnshops and second-hand stores all over the province would be watching for it.

Sergeant Coulter told the tall, distinguished American that he was sorry it happened on Canadian soil, but that kind gentleman only remarked there were always a few rotten apples in the barrel, and personally he had found Canadians to be delightful neighbours, fine, helpful people, and even the children had such charming manners.

Sergeant Coulter folded the report and found Const able Browning staring at him with a look of embarrassed pity.

‘What’s Up?’ he asked suspiciously.

Constable Browning fumbled with the copy of the
Victoria Colonist.
He wondered if he should try to destroy it before Sergeant Coulter had had a chance to see it, but, sighing, he realised his sergeant would be bound to find out.

As Constable Browning remembered Saturday night in the beer parlour, and the ring of forty jeering, hooting men laughing at Sergeant Coulter, he swallowed hard. He respected and almost loved his sergeant, and he hated to see him hurt again.

Constable Browning opened the paper and silently handed it to Albert. His finger tapped the story, three paragraphs long, on the back page of the paper, between the legal notices, auctions and United Nations reports.

‘You had better read this,’ he said, then, in deference to the feelings of Sergeant Coulter, he left the launch.

Albert read the story, then to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him, he read it again. He sat back, stunned, wishing for the first time in his life that he were a woman and could have a good cry.

He rose and took down Professor Hobbs’s book. Opening it, he stared at the two gigantic, beautiful Etruscan figures, which still challenged him from the pages.

Fakes.

It hardly seemed possible. Hobbs, the greatest living expert on Etruscan art had vouched for them.

Frauds.

He felt in some obscure way that he had been cheated personally. He rubbed his hands over his face wearily as he remembered how he had boasted of knowing Hobbs. He blushed at how he had bragged to everyone of his proposed trip to New York and the field party in Rome.

Was nothing in his life to be inviolate? He asked very little, and he got even less. Well, it would be a lesson to him to keep his mouth shut.

Put not your trust in professors. In the future the only things he would believe would be his own eyes and ears. His idol was as prone as the next to make hasty, inaccurate decisions.

It was, he knew, unfair to Hobbs, who had merely been duped with the rest of them, and who undoubtedly felt a great deal worse than he did.

Hobbs was human and made mistakes like anybody else, but my God, when he did make one, what a king-sized boner it was.

Well, it was no good brooding over it, although he knew from experience he always did brood over things that hurt him.

He took out his fountain pen and began writing his weekly letter to her.

My dear,

I’m sorry I was so stupid when you asked me about the shiner. Have I ever failed yet to behave in an inane manner when I see
you? God! Why did I have to say ‘In the course of duty, Ma’am,’ as if I expected you to pin the Victoria Cross on me. The truth, of course, like everything else in my life, is ludicrous.

There was a nasty brawl in the beer parlour at Benares last Saturday. Two men got cut up in a knife fight, and Browning was knocked over trying to separate them. Your hero, going to his assistance, caught his spur in Charlie Benedict’s pants cuff, fell and stunned himself nicely, all with no assistance from the hostile crowd.

I know I didn’t have to go into all the details when you asked, but I didn’t have to say that, either. I get rattled enough when I see you, and those two damned kids don’t help. Frankly I’d just as soon face a riot in a beer parlour any day. Oh, they’re not bad, really, I know, although the boy still tells lies. The latest being that his wicked uncle wants to murder him. I suppose the way to look at it is that they’re kids and they live in a world of make-believe.

Speaking of that, I’ve been living in one myself, but I had my eyes, or rather at the present time, my eye, opened today. I won’t be going to New York. The statues in the Metropolitan Museum are fakes. Sometime I’ll write and tell you all about it. I feel very lonely and discouraged, so I’ll close for now.

With love,
Albert

He folded the letter, put it in his tunic pocket and walked wearily up to the wharf. He sat on the edge, his feet dangling over, the way he had sat when he was a boy, and gazed at the twinkling lights of Benares, across the dark waters.

With his head leaning against one of the creosoted pilings, he thought of the night he had declared his love for her. His cheeks flamed at the memory.

He took the letter from his pocket and tore it to tiny shreds, posting it where he posted all his letters to her, on the outgoing tide.

He smiled bitterly as he remembered the night. She had been kind, of course. Somehow he wished that she had been kind enough to recoil in horror, or to strike him.

Instead, she had been kind enough to explain.

She understood his feelings, and they were quite natural. It was to be expected, a young man cut off from the society of women for years, and corresponding daily with someone from home. He must not be ashamed of his feelings, but they were temporary. He had created an image for himself, and he had confused her with the image. She was none of the things he thought; indeed, if he knew her better, he would see only too well her many frailties. He had wanted to love someone and that was the most natural thing in the world, but in his loneliness and need, he had fashioned her. His love was not real, it was the outcome of an artificial situation. She knew he would see the logic of it.

Logic. If he were logical, he would not have fallen in love with a married woman, especially one with an Anglican minister for a husband. Her frailties. As if he cared about her frailties. He loved them too. As if love were logical, as if he could merely say, yes, it is neither logical nor convenient to love you, as a matter of fact, if we’re going to split hairs, it isn’t even moral, so I have decided not to love you.

But, she had continued, she had the deepest affection for him, and she always would have. And she knew, when he had had time to adjust himself, that they would be friends, and share the many delights of true friendship, so much finer than love. The friendship of a man and a woman who had the deepest respect for each other, or was it the deepest affection. And of course, he must realise
once and for all that he did not love her. And now they would forget about the whole ugly mess and enjoy their affection.