Читать книгу Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle - Lou Allin - Страница 23

In the frosty silence of the room, a gravelled throat cleared. “Belle. I didn’t want it to be you.” She wheeled and stumbled, letting the buttons roll on the wooden floor, the elation from her discovery giving way to a palpable fear. “No classes today, a bad cold and laryngitis. Mother had gone to town, and I couldn’t focus on my research, just sat looking out the window. You drove by my island so fast, so unlike you, this haste. A clear purpose in mind. Perhaps that drop told you its golden story. I trailed you, hoping that you might be heading to the Burians’ lodge or to Jim’s camp. I walked the last hundred yards. The cedars hold secrets well.” His red and rheumy eyes fell softly on the buttons. “Lovely, aren’t they?”

Belle would have felt more confident if she hadn’t seen the large pistol in his right hand. “Luger,” he said, a catch to his voice. “My father’s. Canada is not a land of handguns. A classic example of German design, form and function. And it never failed him in the war. I have always kept it oiled and clean out of the same reverence for workmanship.” He brushed its muzzle with his lips, then motioned her to a wicker chair in the main room.

“Why did you kill Jim?” Belle asked, dropping onto the hard cushion.

“Not even a guess? You have enough of the pieces concerning my sister. That receipt which disappeared from my office.”

“That was an accident. I picked it up with my books.”

He coughed as he waved off her confession. “Of no concern now. You traced the hospital, of course.”

“What happened to Eva?”

“Why do I have a feeling that you already know? Still, if you insist on playing the innocent. It’s an old story. She became pregnant and in the fourth month had a miscarriage. There is some question in my mind that it was not an accident, that she used my mother’s herbs. Tansy, for example, is a historical abortifacient. Even the common yew. Whatever the cause, it was traumatic. Eva is a gentle spirit, wished from childhood so much to please, but guilt overcame her small soul. After the pain was over . . .” He sat down heavily in the other chair. “It flows through in my nightmares in a red tide, all her precious blood. She became catatonic, you see. That beautiful, intelligent girl couldn’t even communicate her basic needs. All she did was sing one of Mother’s old lullabies and rock herself. When she wasn’t sleeping for most of the day.” His voice broke.

“Why didn’t you get her treated here? Or in Toronto? Why all the trouble and expense of going to the States?”

“Do you know the number of psychiatrists in the North? When she fell ill, Sudbury was down to three practices. She would have been lucky to be a faceless number in a weekly group therapy session with a dozen other needy souls. Do not be naïve about a two-tier medical system. It’s here already for those who can afford it. And I can. I bought the best doctors and the latest techniques. With our prayers she’ll be home soon.”

“Home to what, Franz? To find her brother a murderer? And are you implying that Jim was the father? That’s absurd!”

He forced an ironic laugh. “Perhaps an improvement on his more bitter fate. Let me explain. Eva was a delicate child, asthmatic, sheltered. She attended a convent school in Ville Marie for most of her education. Even when she came home for the summer, isolated as we are on the island, social activities were few, not that she cared to make friends. Mother became concerned and sought to break into that solitude by enrolling her at Shield.”

“And Jim?” It occurred to her that Franz was moving all too circuitously, using his consummate logic to avoid the truth. Belle was piecing the story together herself, much too fast and much too late.

“Jim was the first friend she found, and she became instantly infatuated. He was scarcely her equal, for all his country knowledge. And that scarred face.” Belle narrowed her eyes and felt a dull rage rise in her heart as he continued without apparently noticing. “From spending most of her life immersed in novels, knowing nothing of the realities of life, Eva took matters of the heart seriously. She was an inveterate romantic like our sensitive young Werther. A first terrible love, an equally terrible rejection. Yes, she tried every sad ploy her old-fashioned books advised, poetry, flowers, invitations. I saw them and wept inside, tried to tell her the lessons we all learn, that there will always be another love. When he didn’t respond, even avoided her, she went into a serious depression. Why didn’t he see how fragile she was?”

“I’m not following you, Franz.”

He was shaking, crying without tears. “She was a sister, a child, all things to me. I tried to comfort her, one night when Mother was away . . .”

“And then?” Belle saw the danger of pressing him too far.

He shuddered, his face pale and clammy, drained by pain. “A scandal would have killed my mother. Eva was her little saint. You saw that shrine. My mother believes the father was Jim, and I have left it that way for all our sakes. It is a shame which will not happen again.”

“And the gold?”

He nodded and slumped his shoulders, letting the gun fall into his lap. “For twenty years, my father had been searching the Bonanza third shaft, hidden in the woods, protected so handily by poison ivy. After he retired, he became obsessed with locating the vein. He told me where he thought the gold might be, but before he found it, he died of a stroke. I continued his work in a desultory fashion, more as a pastime, always careful to brace the timbers and wear a mask in case of fumes from the rotting wood. And about three years ago, after that small earthquake in Quebec, a rock shift here revealed the vein like a timely miracle. I spend the winter refining what I have found in summer. No tracks that way. The vein is almost mined out, but the gold has saved my sister.”

Belle remembered the earthquake. Centred near Chicoutimi, it had struck with evil happenstance the day after her foundation had been laid. “Now I see why you fought the park. Less chance of being observed.”

He bristled as if insulted. “Not at all! Why would I have wanted this land despoiled by such a commercial operation? All of my efforts have been based on a sincere and rational opposition. When Eva comes home soon, I will leave the rest of the metal to heaven where it belongs.”

“Perhaps you should have left the whole situation to heaven. You’ve told me your twisted reasons for killing Jim. But why wait so long? Eva’s been away for over a year.”

“Quite so. After his insensitivity had plunged her into a depression, I let him pursue his common life, allowed him the courtesy of a second chance. Yet he kept intruding like a self-appointed nemesis, bringing me his data on the park, eager as a puppy. And when I got back that day from fishing, there he was, propped here by the stove with a book. Hadn’t wanted to take a chance with the storm and the cold or flu, whatever it was. He’d been bored and looked in my workroom for something to read. Once or twice he’d stopped by and knew I kept some technical works there.”

“Did he recognize the value of the ore?”

“I told him that it was only pyrite samples. Jim was a forester; rocks held no great interest for him. He pretended to believe me, but I couldn’t take the chance that he didn’t. He was honest, if he was anything. Still, it was his fault that I needed it for Eva. Why would I let him destroy our family again?”

“And the drop?”

“Squirrelled it away. I say that proves his intentions. Why else take it?”

“How did you get him to that lake?”

He massaged the bridge between his eyes as if easing a headache. “Not very cleverly, even for me. He stayed for dinner while the storm lifted. And even with a fever, his appetite was sharp enough for my lake trout and a salad.” He paused and turned his eyes to the wall.

“A salad? Out here?” Belle asked in confusion.

“My mother’s herbal studies have many uses. In winter, however, our choices are limited. What would I have on hand at the camp? To shredded carrots and cabbage, I added some sprouts, potato sprouts, chopped up, innocuous in appearance. The deadly nightshade family, and the beauty of it all, with no apparent taste. It’s so common you wonder why children don’t poison themselves.”

A wave of nausea forced bile to her throat, and Belle struggled to control her voice. “My God. And then?”

Franz related the details with the clinical detachment she had come to expect. “After about half an hour, Jim developed a headache, then vomiting, abdominal pain, finally stupor. I don’t think the nightshade would have killed him, a man in such good health, but the question quickly became academic. Around midnight I convinced him to try to reach his parents’ lodge and use their radio phone to call the air ambulance. Except for a bit of wind, the storm was over, and the lodge was only half an hour away.”

“But you didn’t go there.”

“Of course not. I rode behind him on his Ovation, holding him close, barely able to tow my larger sled. I had to stop several times to cool the engine.” Sweat trickled down his forehead as he wiped at his face and coughed thick mucus into a handkerchief. “Jim was barely conscious, unable to notice the route, so it was easy to take a turn to that little swamp lake. I know the territory well; ice is always thin there with a spring running all winter. I stopped at the shore and disconnected my machine. When I got on again, I gunned the throttle and we went out a good distance before breaking through. My flotation suit let me swim back to shore, and minutes later I was at my cabin. I didn’t need to watch him go down. The final act, clumsy though it was, was over at last.”

“And you reversed to cloud the tracks, counting on the blowing snow for cover, in case anyone might have noticed the discrepancy of the wide set over the narrow.”

He nodded. “You were the only one who suspected. And what was there to find? Without that damn drop, you never would have put the whole story together.” The corner of his mouth rose enigmatically. “Dead men do tell tales after all.”

“Melanie never believed in the accident.”

“True, but she didn’t connect me to it either.” He closed his eyes. “She’s so rare. She has Eva’s sensitivity, but an incredible strength. I don’t know how that callow puppy deserved them both.” Then he stood up suddenly, shook himself as if to slough off fatigue, and pulled a length of rope from a hook on the wall. “I tried so many times to distract you, Belle, but you persisted, just like Jim.”

“So the cocaine was planted.”

“Purchased on one of my trips to New York. Then a flight from one of the tourist outfits. I paid extra to set down on Cott.”

“And my chimney?”

“Whoever engineered the initial break-in, Brooks if you were right, made a helpful suspect. How could I know you would turn off your smoke alarm? I thought merely to divert you until you tired of your investigation.” He bent over. “Put your arms behind your back, please, and don’t make this painful for yourself. I would rather not act violently.” Breathing heavily through his mouth and giving an occasional sniff, he pressed the gun to her temple with one hand while the other looped the rope around her wrists and then her ankles. “The arrangements are simple. You are going to have a serious accident in the deep shaft I no longer use. You go down, and your machine follows. There is plenty of rubble for camouflage. I doubt if you will ever be found unless by an anthropologist of the 22nd century. A predicted wet snow will cover the new trail, long before anyone will start searching.”

As the realities of his plans unfolded themselves, Belle suppressed an urge to scream. “Jesus, you’re going to throw me down a mineshaft! And you call yourself non-violent?”

He looked offended. “I am no friend to pain or the indignities of force. Carbon monoxide from my engine can be hosed into the sauna. A quiet and relatively quick door from the world that some people actually choose. Out of caution, I don’t want to inflict obvious damage.”

“Another murder, Franz? Where will it take you?”

“Let me give you a familiar and telling philosophy: ‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ To put it in the simplest terms, my obligation to my family outweighs my feelings for you.”

Out of some Saturday night sitcom formula, Belle tried to keep him talking, as if the DesRosiers, Steve and the entire Musical Ride of Mounties might soon crash through the door with a flourish of trumpets to rescue her. “Congratulations on your Shakespeare. Is this where you tell me that it’s nothing personal?”

“But it isn’t, you know. My compliments to your successful investigation, despite its cost to us both. I wish I could have been a better Ritter.” He tugged on the bonds to secure them and brushed her face with a gentle hand. Then he opened the door and called. “Blondi. Hier.” Some scrabbling from the porch and the dog padded inside, responding to his signals by resting at Belle’s feet. He took off the sunglasses. “Don’t worry about Freya. I shall call at your business and express loud concern about a broken lunch engagement. Your machine and riding clothes will be gone from your home; any of fifty stretches of open water could have claimed you. The way the melt is coming, searchers will have to wait until your body surfaces, which it won’t. It is ironic that you will be perceived as a victim of your most sensible gene pool theory.” He lifted a pair of snowshoes from the wall and swung the door open. A minute later, a motor faded into the distance.