A Year Less a Day (23 page)

“Murder?”

Daphne uses the poker as a delaying tactic and viciously prods at the log as if it is somehow blocking her way. “I knew something was wrong the moment I got back to my apartment,” she tells Bliss eventually. “The front door was ajar. It was either a burglar or Monty. He was the only one with a key, but he wasn't due back from Westchester until Monday afternoon.”

The apartment's open door had drawn Daphne inquisitively, and it simply hadn't occurred to her to call the police. However, she had quietly slipped a needle-sharp steel hatpin out of her purse and loosened her legs before entering. “A sweet smile and a swift kick in the bollocks will drop any man to his knees,” her unarmed-combat instructor had taught her as she'd prepared for war more than twenty years earlier, and it was a tactic that had never let her down. Though, on this occasion,
she had needed neither. Monty Maxwell was the intruder, and he was already on his knees. In fact, as Daphne silently crept into the room, she was fearful of disturbing her ex-lover, thinking that he was praying as he knelt on the floor with his head buried in the seat of an upholstered chair.

“Monty,” she had called softly, but he hadn't moved.

“He was dead.” Daphne says as she puts the poker down and faces Bliss. “He took the honourable way out—a single bullet in the brain.”

“Suicide,” muses Bliss, now understanding the reason for Daphne's paroxysm when Millie had mentioned the Maxwells on Christmas Day.

“There was a note,” says Daphne and she rummages through her writing cabinet to find the forty-year-old scrap of sepia-edged paper.

“I wanted to take you with me, my beloved, but I couldn't wait for you any longer,” reads Bliss. “They will know where to find me. I love you with all my heart. Take care of Jeremy for me ... MM.”

“But you said, ‘murder,'” queries Bliss as he hands back the precious note.

“Marylyn,” Daphne replies. “Apparently Monty had visions of the three of us being together in the afterlife, so he sent Marylyn off with an earful of lead and came for me.”

“But you were out.”

“I was. Although I don't know why. Any other weekend I would have been there, in suspended animation, waiting for Monday when I'd spring back to life.”

“Subliminal messaging,” suggests Bliss. “Something in his manner or tone probably reflected what he was planning, and you subconsciously picked up on it.”

“That's very clever of you, David. Though at the time it just seemed ironic that at the very moment I was
thinking of chucking myself into the Thames, Monty was getting ready to bump me off.”

“So, what happened?”

“I got the blame of course. I suppose I should have known that would happen, but I guess that if loving him was wrong, then I didn't want to be right. But it wasn't fair. Everyone was devastated about poor old Marylyn, but I was the one whose heart had been torn to shreds, and I was the one who had to live with it. I didn't get any sympathy. Nobody said to me, ‘Oh, you must miss him, you poor thing,' like they would have done to his wife, if she'd lived. Nobody blamed her for being a miserable money-grubbing social climber who drove him away.”

As Daphne takes the suicide note back from Bliss, she pauses for a few seconds while the horrors of the ill-fated day replay in her mind. Yet it is the image of the other woman, Marylyn Maxwell, and her supercilious grin that still irks her the most.

Daphne had met Monty's wife a few times, when her mother had put her foot down and insisted that she spend the odd weekend in Westchester for a family occasion.

“Ah, it's Daphne Lovelace, OBE,” Monty would exclaim convincingly whenever they had bumped into each other in public. “Haven't seen you for ages,” he'd add for the benefit of anyone listening. And if Marylyn was close at hand he'd always made a point of presenting her. “You've met my wife haven't you ...” he'd say, though it was never a question. “This is Daphne Lovelace from the Ministry, dear,” he'd explain to Marylyn, and she would immediately find someone of greater consequence in the crowd. “Oh, look, Monty, dearest. There's Lord Westbourne over there,” she'd simper, then she'd drag
her husband away, calling over her shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Dorothy.”

“Young Jeremy was away for the day,” Daphne tells Bliss as she returns Monty's suicide note to the cabinet. “He'd gone to the beach with the church Sunday school and the nanny had been given the day off. From what they could piece together, Monty sneaked up on Marylyn and just let her have it, then he came for me.”

“What happened to the boy?”

“No one in the family wanted him. I guess they worried he might turn out like his father, so I offered to bring him up. Well, you can imagine what his mother's folks thought of that, so they persuaded Marylyn Maxwell's sister in Vancouver to take him in. The problem was that Jeremy had never met her and he'd got very attached to me after his parents' deaths. He used to call me Auntie Daffodil—you know the way kids get things muddled up—so I thought the least I could do was escort him as far as Montreal.”

“August 1964,” says Bliss. “That's why you were in Montreal when you saw the Beatles.”

“Brilliant, Dr. Watson,” laughs Daphne, though her face clouds at the memory of Jeremy's aunt. “She was a nasty bit o'work,” Daphne tells Bliss, then confesses that once she'd met the woman she had been tempted to hang on to Jeremy and slip out of Canada, to head south through the States to Mexico or South America.

“She was probably grouchy at birth,” continues Daphne, as she recalls her meeting with Jeremy's maiden aunt to hand over the boy. “She could have been a driving examiner, from the way she carried on, and she was only thirty or so.”

“What do you know about driving examiners?” queries Bliss, and Daphne's face burns.

“You fibbed to me,” he says triumphantly. “You failed your test, didn't you?”

“Yes,” she snaps. “All right, I did. But only because the car wouldn't start halfway through.”

“That wasn't very fair,” sympathizes Bliss, but Daphne looks up with a sheepish grin and decides to come clean. “It wouldn't start because I'd crashed into a lamppost.”

“Oh, dear,” whistles Bliss, then quickly changes the subject. “Did Jeremy remember you today?”

“Well he was only five at the time,” Daphne says, excusing her erstwhile charge for the puzzlement he'd shown when she'd loudly knocked on his front door.

“Hi. Can I help you?” he'd asked in a strong Canadian accent, and Daphne had momentarily frozen in surprise.

“I think I was still expecting a young boy,” she explains to Bliss. “It was a bit of shock to see a middle-aged man standing there. Mind you, I recognized him straight away. He's got his father's eyes, and he's tall and handsome. Much like you in many ways, David. I can quite see why I was so drawn to him.”

“Oh, Daphne ...”

“Anyway, Jeremy was thrilled to see me, once he knew who I was, and he even remembered sailing the Atlantic with me. We took the
Franconia,
one of the old Cunard steamers, from Southampton to Montreal, and Jeremy was so excited I think he forgot all about his mother and father by the time we'd crossed the channel to pick up passengers in France. I taught him to say ‘Bonjour,' and he danced along the Le Havre cobblestones, running up to complete strangers and shouting, ‘Bonjour. Bonjour.' He was so funny.” Daphne pauses and her eyes go back to the flames as the seriousness of the voyage sinks in. “His little life had been torn apart
worse than mine, but he didn't understand. You don't at that age. ‘Mummy, and Daddy have gone to heaven,' he would tell anyone interested, as if they'd taken a cruise on the Nile; then he'd cheerfully add, ‘I'm going to live with my auntie in 'Couver with the bears.'”

“Did he remember calling you Auntie Daffodil?” asks Bliss as he sees the delight in Daphne's eyes.

“I think so,” she says, adding, “We had tea and he took me on a tour. The old house itself is in an awful state. His uncle would have been the last one to live there, though he died more than twenty years ago. Jeffrey says that he's got big plans for the whole estate, and the stable conversion that he's had done is very nice. Of course, he's just like his father—dirty dishes and laundry everywhere.”

“He's not married then?”

“No—never has been.”

“Figures.”

“Anyway. I told him that I'd go round a few times to help him straighten up and do a bit of cleaning, if you don't mind being on your own a bit.”

“Daphne, I don't mind at all. In fact, I was thinking that it was time I got out from under your feet, to be honest.” “Actually I did wonder if you were missing the high life,” says Daphne, adding, “Jeremy was worried about me neglecting you, but I said you wouldn't object. It is the least I can do in the circumstances. Of course, you're welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Another week, perhaps,” says Bliss. “I was thinking I might take another trip to Liverpool to check out those addresses. My leg's much better now.”

Daphne takes another poke at the fire as she runs something else through her mind, then she opens up. “Actually, I've been meaning to tell you something. It
was a very long time ago, but I'm fairly certain that one of the young men in the Beatles' photo tried the same trick on me in Montreal.”

“Geoffrey Sanderson?” queries Bliss immediately, recalling the way that she had reacted at the sight of his face and mention of his name on Christmas day.

“He tried to tell me he was George Harrison,” scoffs Daphne. “But I didn't believe him for a minute.”

“What did you do?”

“The old knee definitely came in handy that time,” she admits with a giggle, then she groans as she bends to put another log on the fire. “There's a bad winter coming; I can feel it in my bones,” she says, straightening herself with difficulty.

The bears have long-since disappeared from downtown Vancouver, forced into the surrounding mountains along with the elk and the cougars by the city's sprawl. But raccoons and squirrels will still snatch food from an outstretched hand in Stanley Park, while feral pigeons and gulls still brazenly whisk sandwiches and snacks from the fingers of startled picnickers on Granville Island.

Ruth's improvement has been spectacular. It's her third outing to the park in ten days, and she chuckles in delight as Mike Phillips throws a hunk of bread onto the beach, while Trina tries to chase it down before the ducks and gulls can grab it.

“Oh, Trina,” rebukes Phillips mildly, as she faces off with an overstuffed mallard.

“They get fat and lazy if they don't have to work for it,” yells Trina breathlessly as she scampers around the beach to the squawks of startled birds.

Ruth is still in the wheelchair, but it's no longer a necessity, and she spends more time each day peering out of her window at a world that looks the same, but has changed beyond all recognition. Her daily visits from Mike and Trina cheer and encourage her, though there is an artificiality about their conversations as everyone studiously avoids mentioning Jordan, coffee houses, or criminal charges.

“A catastrophic relapse is quite possible if she is upset,” Ruth's doctor had warned them more than once. “Her blood pressure is still much higher than we would like to see.”

Raven has visited a few times to relay a spiritually uplifting message from Serethusa. “Tell Ruth not to worry,” her spirit guide had said, “she will soon be led out of darkness into the light.”

“Does that mean I'll be going home soon?” Ruth had asked; but that was a question that no one was willing to answer.

“When can I go home, Trina?” Ruth wants to know once they have loaded her back into the van and are heading for a tea shop, and Trina looks to Phillips for inspiration. But she's on her own as Phillips shrugs his shoulders and keeps his eyes on the road.

“Thanks a bunch,” Trina snorts, then she turns to Ruth. “The truth is ...” she begins, then freezes as she searches for humane words to convey the inhumanity of her friend's predicament. Homeless, penniless, unemployed, destitute, and soon to be a convicted felon, are not words she wants to use. “The truth is ...” she tries again and can see the tears already welling in Ruth's eyes.

“The truth is, Ruth,” she says, finally spitting it out as she crosses her fingers. “That my husband and I would like you to come and stay with us for awhile. Until you get back on your feet. If you'd like to, that is.”

The tears come anyway, trickling joyfully down Ruth's cheeks, but she's not the only one choked up at the good news.

“You've got a great husband, Trina,” Phillips tells her with a wobble in his voice as he pats her shoulder.

“Yeah, I know,” replies Trina. “He's very supportive.”

Three days later, Ruth's hospital bed has clean sheets and Rick Button arrives home from work, parks in the underground garage, and walks into his kitchen as his wife prepares dinner. “I've just found a strange woman watching television in the basement suite, Trina,” he says with a confused expression.

“Yeah, I told you,” explains Trina, as Kylie rushes in yelling, “What's for dinner, Mom?”

“Tuna Bourguignon with cabbage fritters,” she says nonchalantly, adding, without changing tone, “It's only Ruth. She's had a traumatic experience.”

“Oh, great,” spits Kylie, while pretending to vomit. “I guess I'm eating out again, then.”

“OK, dear. See you later,” carries on Trina as she lightly dances around the kitchen in search of condiments, but Rick grabs her arm and eases her to a standstill.

“Tuna Bourguignon?”

“Yeah. Low fat, high protein. Ruth needs a wholesome diet.”