By the Time You Read This (3 page)

McLeod and Dr. Claybourne went with her in the elevator to the top floor. Then they had to take the stairwell up another flight to a door marked Patio. The door was propped open with a brick. McLeod found a switch and turned on the exterior lights.

The roof had been covered with pressed wood flooring, and there were picnic tables with holes for umbrellas. The umbrellas had been taken in; the autumn breezes were already too cold for anyone to enjoy sitting outside for more than a few minutes.

“I can see why she might have come up here to take pictures,” Delorme said, looking around. To the north, a string of highway lights wound up the hill toward the airport. Slightly to the east was the dark shoulder of the escarpment, and to the south, the lights of the city, the cathedral spire and the post office communications tower. The moon was rolling out from behind the belfries of the French church.

McLeod pointed to an unadorned concrete wall, waist-high, that surrounded the roof. “Doesn’t look like the kind of thing you could easily fall over. Maybe she was leaning over to take a picture. Might want to look at what’s on her camera.”

“The camera was in the bag, so I don’t think she was shooting when she fell.”

“Might wanna check anyway.”

Delorme pointed in the direction of the moon. “That’s where she went off.”

“Why don’t you examine it first,” Dr. Claybourne said. “I’ll take a look when you’re done.”

Delorme and McLeod, careful where they stepped, walked slowly toward the edge of the roof. McLeod said in a low voice, “I think the doc’s sweet on you.”

“McLeod, really.”

“Come on. Did you see the way he blushed?”

“McLeod …”

Delorme approached the railing, head bowed, looking at the flooring in front of her. The area was well lit by the moon and by the roof lights. She paused at the wall and peered over, then walked slowly to the left, then back to the right beyond where she had started.

“I’m not seeing any obvious signs of struggle,” she said. “No signs at all, in fact.”

“Here’s something.” McLeod had spotted a piece of paper wedged under a planter and stooped to pick it up. He brought it over to Delorme, a lined page about four by six, torn from a spiral notebook.

It contained a few sentences, in ballpoint, written in a small, intense hand.

Dear John
,

By the time you read this, I will have hurt you beyond all forgiveness. There are no words to tell you how sorry I am. Please know that I’ve always loved you— never more so than at this moment— and if there had been any other way …

Catherine

3

W
HEN
D
ELORME GOT BACK
downstairs, she found Szelagy just entering the lobby with a distraught woman in black: black skirt, black blazer, black hat, black scarf.

“Sergeant Delorme,” Szelagy said, “this is Eleanor Cathcart. She lives on the ninth floor, and she knows Catherine.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” the woman said. She removed her hat and swept black hair from her forehead in a dramatic gesture. Everything about her seemed exaggerated: she had dark eyebrows, dark lipstick and skin as pale as china, though there was nothing remotely fragile about her. Her pronunciation of certain words hinted at a cozy familiarity with Paris. “I let her into the building and she goes off the roof? It’s just too, too
macabre.”

“How do you know Catherine Cardinal?” Delorme said.

“I teach up at the community college. Theatre Arts. Catherine teaches photography there.
Mon Dieu
, I can’t believe this. I just let her in a couple of hours ago.”

“Why did you let her in?”

“Oh, I’d been raving about the views from my apartment. She asked me if she could come up and take photographs. We’re the only building of any height this side of town. She’s been talking about it for months, but we’d just recently set up an actual
rendezvous.”

“For her to come to your apartment?”

“No, she just needed access to the roof. There’s a patio thingy up there. I showed her where it was and showed her how to prop the door open—it locks you out otherwise, as I’ve learned from bitter experience. I didn’t linger. She was working, she didn’t want company. The arts demand a great deal of solitude.”

“You’re quite sure she was alone, then.”

“She was alone.”

“Where were you going?”

“Rehearsal at the Capital Centre. We’re opening
The Doll’s House
two weeks from now and, believe me, some of us are not ready for prime time. Our Torvald is still on book, for God’s sake.”

“Was Catherine showing any signs of distress?”

“None. Well, wait. She was very intense, very anxious to get to the roof, but I took that as excitement about her work. Then again, Catherine is not an easy read, if you know what I mean. She regularly gets depressed enough to be hospitalized, and I never saw that coming either. Of course, like most artists, I’m somewhat prone to self-absorption.”

“So, it wouldn’t surprise you if she committed suicide?”

“Well, it’s a shock, I mean,
mon Dieu
. You imagine I’d just hand her the key to the roof and say, ‘Ta-ta, darling. Have a nice suicide while I just pop out to rehearsal’? Please.”

The woman paused, tossing her head back and looking up at the ceiling. Then she levelled a look at Delorme with dark, theatrical eyes. “Put it this way,” she said. “I stand here thunderstruck, but at the same time, out of all the people I know—and I know a
lot
—I’d say that Catherine Cardinal was the most likely to kill herself. You don’t get hospitalized for a simple case of the blues, you don’t get slapped into the ward for a slight disappointment, and you don’t take lithium for PMS. And have you seen her work?”

“Some,” Delorme said. She was remembering an exhibition at the library a couple of years ago: a photograph of a child crying on the cathedral steps, an empty park bench, a single red umbrella in a landscape of rain. Photographs of longing. Like Catherine herself, beautiful but sad.

“I rest my case,” Ms. Cathcart said.

Just as Delorme’s inner magistrate was condemning her for displaying an unforgivable lack of sympathy, the woman exploded into tears—and not the decorous weeping of the stage, but the messy, mucus-y wails of real, unrehearsed pain.

Delorme went with Dr. Claybourne to the ambulance, where they found Cardinal still sitting in the back. He spoke before they even reached him, his voice thick and oppressed.

“Was there a note?”

Claybourne held it out so he could read it. “Can you confirm whether this is your wife’s handwriting?”

Cardinal nodded. “It’s hers,” he said, and looked away.

Delorme walked Claybourne over to his car.

“Well, you saw that,” the coroner said. “He identifies the handwriting as his wife’s.”

“Yeah,” Delorme said. “I saw.”

“There’ll have to be an autopsy, of course, but it’s suicide as far as I’m concerned. We have no signs of a struggle, we have a note, and we have a history of depression.”

“You spoke to the hospital?”

“I got hold of her psychiatrist at home. He’s distressed, of course—it’s always upsetting to lose a patient—but he’s not surprised.”

“All right. Thanks, Doctor. We’ll finish canvassing the building, just in case. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do.”

“I will,” Claybourne said, and got into his car. “Depressing, isn’t it? Suicide?”

“To put it mildly,” Delorme said. She had attended the scenes of two others in the past few months.

She looked around for Cardinal, who wasn’t by the ambulance anymore, and spotted him behind the wheel of his car. He didn’t look like he was leaving.

Delorme got in the passenger side.

“There’ll be an autopsy, but the coroner’s going to make a finding of suicide,” she said.

“You’re not going to canvass the building?”

“Of course. But I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

Cardinal dipped his head. Delorme couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. When he finally did speak, it wasn’t what she was expecting.

“I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I’m going to get her car home,” he said. “There’s probably a simple solution, but right now it seems like an insurmountable problem.”

“I’ll get it to your place,” Delorme said. “When we’re done here. In the meantime, is there anyone I can call? Someone who can come and stay with you? You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

“I’ll call Kelly. I’ll call Kelly soon as I get home.”

“But Kelly’s in New York, no? Don’t you have anyone here?”

Cardinal started his car. “I’ll be all right,” he said.

He didn’t sound all right.

4

“D
O THOSE SHOES HURT
?”

Kelly Cardinal was sitting at the dining-room table, wrapping a framed photograph of her mother in bubble wrap. She wanted to take one to the funeral home to place beside the casket.

Cardinal sat down in the chair opposite. Several days had passed, but he was still stunned, unable to take the world in. His daughter’s words hadn’t organized themselves into anything he could decipher. He had to ask her to repeat herself.

“Those shoes you’re wearing,” she said. “They look brand new. Are they pinching your feet?”

“A little. I’ve only worn them once—to Dad’s funeral.”

“That was two years ago.”

“Oh, I love that picture.”

Cardinal reached for the portrait of Catherine in working mode. Dressed in a yellow anorak, her hair wild with rain, she was burdened with two cameras—one round her neck, the other slung over her shoulder. She was looking exasperated. Cardinal remembered snapping the photo with the little point-and-shoot that remained the only photographic apparatus he had ever mastered. Catherine had indeed been exasperated with him, first because she was trying to work, and second because she knew what the rain was doing to her beautiful hair and didn’t want to be photographed. In dry weather her hair fell in soft cascades to her shoulders; when it was raining it went wild and frizzy, which pricked her vanity. But Cardinal loved her hair wild.

“For a photographer, she sure hated getting her picture taken,” he said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t use it. She looks a little annoyed.”

“No, no. Please. That’s Catherine doing what she loved.”

Cardinal had at first resisted the idea of having a photograph; it had struck him as undignified, to say nothing of the fact that the sight of Catherine’s face tore his heart open.

But Catherine thought in photographs. Come into a room when she was working and before you could open your mouth she had taken your picture. It was as if the camera were a protective mechanism that had evolved over the years solely to provide a defence for elusive, breakable people like her. She wasn’t a snob about photographs, either. She could be as ecstatic over a lucky snap of a street scene as over a series of images she had struggled with for months.

Kelly put the wrapped picture into her bag. “Go and change your shoes. You don’t want to be standing around in shoes that don’t fit.”

“They fit,” Cardinal said. “They’re just not broken-in yet.”

“Go on, Dad.”

Cardinal went into the bedroom and opened the closet. He tried not to look at the half of it that contained Catherine’s clothes, but he couldn’t help himself. She mostly wore jeans and T-shirts or sweaters. She was the kind of woman, even approaching fifty, who still looked good in jeans and T-shirts. But there were small black dresses, some silky blouses, a camisole or two, mostly in the greys and blacks she had always preferred. “My governess colours,” she called them.

Cardinal pulled out the black shoes he wore every day and set about polishing them. The doorbell rang, and he heard Kelly thanking a neighbour who had brought food and condolences.

When she came into the bedroom, Cardinal was embarrassed to realize he was kneeling on the floor in front of the closet, shoe brush in hand, motionless as a victim of Pompeii.

“We’re going to have to leave pretty soon,” Kelly said. “We have an hour to ourselves there before people start arriving.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shoes, Dad. Shoes.”

“Right.”

Kelly sat on the edge of the bed behind him as Cardinal started brushing. He could see her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. She had his eyes, people always told him. But she had Catherine’s mouth, with tiny parentheses at the corners that grew when she smiled. And she would have Catherine’s hair too, if she let it grow out from the rather severe bob of the moment, with its single streak of mauve. She was more impatient than her mother, seemed to expect more from other people, who were always disappointing her, but perhaps that was just a matter of being young. She could be a harsh judge of herself, too, often to the point of tears, and not so long ago she had been a harsh judge of her father. But she had relented the last time Catherine had been admitted to hospital, and they had been getting along pretty well since then.

“It’s bad enough for me,” Kelly said, “but I really don’t understand how Mom could do this to you. All those years you stood by her when she was such a loony.”

“She was a lot more than that, Kelly.”

“I know, but all you had to go through! Looking after me—raising a little kid practically by yourself. And all the stuff you put up with from her. I remember one time—back when we were living in Toronto—you’d been building this really complicated cabinet, full of drawers and little doors. I think you’d been working on it for like a year or something, and one day you come home and she’s smashed it to pieces so she could burn it! She was on some trip about fire and creative destruction and some manic rap that made no sense at all, and she destroyed this thing you were creating with such devotion. How do you forgive something like that?”

Cardinal was silent for a time. Finally he turned to look at his daughter. “Catherine never did anything I didn’t forgive.”

“That’s because of who
you
are, not because of what
she
was. How could she not realize how lucky she was? How could she just throw it all away?”

Kelly was crying now. Cardinal touched her shoulder and she leaned against him, hot tears soaking through his shirt the way her mother’s had so often done.

“She was in pain,” Cardinal said. “She was suffering in a way no one could reach. That’s what you have to remember. Difficult as she could be sometimes to live with, she’s the one who suffered the most. No one hated her disease more than she did.

“And if you think she wasn’t grateful to be loved, you’re wrong, Kelly. If there was one phrase she used more than any other, it was ‘I’m so lucky.’ She said it all the time. We’d just be having dinner or something and she’d touch my hand and say, ‘I’m so lucky.’ She used to say it about you, too. She felt terrible that she missed so much of your growing up. She did everything she could to fight this disease and in the end it just beat her, that’s all. Your mother had tremendous courage—and loyalty—to last as long as she did.”

“God,” Kelly said. She sounded like she had a cold now, nose all stuffed up. “I wish I was half as compassionate as you. Now I’ve gone and ruined your shirt.”

“I wasn’t going to wear this one anyway.”

He handed her a box of Kleenex and she plucked out a handful.

“I gotta go wash my face,” she said. “I look like Medea.”

Cardinal wasn’t sure who Medea was. Nor was he at all sure about the comforting things he had just told his daughter. What do I know about anything? he thought. I didn’t even see this coming. I’m worse than the mayor. Nearly thirty years together, and I don’t see that the woman I love is on the verge of killing herself?

Prompted by that very question, Cardinal had the previous day driven into town to talk to Catherine’s psychiatrist.

He had met Frederick Bell a couple of times during Catherine’s last stay in hospital. They had not talked long enough for Cardinal to form much more than an impression of intelligence and competence. But Catherine had been delighted to discover him because, unlike most psychiatrists, Bell was a talk therapist as well as a prescriber of drugs. He was also a specialist in depression who had written books on the subject.

His office was in his house, an Edwardian monstrosity of red brick located on Randall Street, just behind the cathedral. Previous owners included a member of Parliament and a man who went on to become a minor media baron. With its turrets and gingerbread, not to mention its elaborate garden and wrought iron fence, the house dominated the neighbourhood.

Cardinal was met at the door by Mrs. Bell, a friendly woman in her fifties, who was on her way out. When Cardinal introduced himself, she said, “Oh, Detective Cardinal, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not here in any official capacity, are you?”

“No, no. My wife was a patient of your husband’s and—”

“Oh course, of course. You’re bound to have questions.”

She went off to find her husband, and Cardinal looked around at his surroundings. Polished hardwood, oak panelling and mouldings—and that was just the waiting area. He was about to sit down in one of a row of chairs when a door swung open and Dr. Bell was there, bigger than Cardinal remembered him, well over six feet, with a curly brown beard, grey at the jawline, and a pleasant English accent that Cardinal knew was neither extremely posh nor working class.

He took Cardinal’s hand in both of his and shook it. “Detective Cardinal, let me say again, I’m so terribly sorry about Catherine. You have my deepest, deepest sympathy. Come in, come in.”

Except for a vast desk and the lack of a television, they might have been in somone’s living room. Bookshelves, crammed to the ceiling with medical and psychology texts, journals and binders, covered all four walls. Plump leather chairs, battered and far from matching, were set at conversational angles. And of course, there was a couch—a comfortable, home-style sofa, not the severe, geometric kind you saw in movies featuring psychiatrists.

At the doctor’s urging, Cardinal took a seat on the couch.

“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

“Thanks, I’m fine. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Oh, no. It’s the least I can do,” Dr. Bell said. He hitched his corduroy trousers before sitting in one of the leather chairs. He was wearing an Irish wool sweater and didn’t look at all like a medical man. A college professor, Cardinal thought, or perhaps a violinist.

“I imagine you’re asking yourself how it is you didn’t see this coming,” Bell said, expressing exactly what had been running through Cardinal’s mind.

“Yes,” Cardinal said. “That pretty much sums it up.”

“You’re not alone. Here I am, someone with whom Catherine has been discussing her emotional life in detail for nearly a year, and
I
didn’t see it coming.”

He sat back and shook his woolly head. Cardinal was reminded of an Airedale. After a moment the doctor said softly, “Obviously, I would have admitted her if I had.”

“But isn’t it unusual?” Cardinal said. “To have a patient who keeps coming to see you, but doesn’t mention that she’s planning to … Why would anyone continue seeing a therapist they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, confide in?”

“She did confide in me. Catherine was no stranger to suicidal thoughts. Now don’t get me wrong, she gave no indication of any imminent plan. But certainly we discussed her feelings about suicide. Part of her was horrified by the idea, part of her found it very attractive—as I’m sure you know.”

Cardinal nodded. “It’s one of the first things she told me about herself, before we were married.”

“Honesty was one of Catherine’s strengths,” Bell said. “She often said she would rather die than go through another major depression—and not just to spare herself, I hasten to add. Like most people who suffer from depression, she hated the fact that it made life so difficult for people she loved. I’d be surprised if she hadn’t expressed this to you over the years.”

“Many times,” Cardinal said, and felt something collapse inside him. The room went blurry, and the doctor handed him a box of Kleenex.

After a few moments, Dr. Bell knit his brows and leaned forward in his chair. “You couldn’t have done anything, you know. Please let me set your mind at rest on that point. It’s quite common for people who commit suicide to give no sign of their intention.”

“I know. She wasn’t giving away objects that were precious to her or anything like that.”

“No. None of the classic signs. Nor is there a previous attempt in her medical records, although there is plenty of suicidal ideation. But what we do have is an ongoing, decades-long battle with clinical depression, part of her bipolar disorder. The statistics are indisputable: people who suffer from manic depression are
the
most likely to kill themselves, bar none. There is no other group of people more likely. God, I almost sound like I know what I’m talking about, don’t I.” Dr. Bell held his hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “Something like this, well, it makes you feel pretty incompetent.”

“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Cardinal said. He didn’t know what he was doing here. Had he come here to listen to this rumpled Englishman talk about statistics and probabilities? Clearly,
I’m
the one who sees her every day, he thought.
I’m
the one who’s known her longest.
I’m
the one who didn’t pay attention. Too stupid, too selfish, too blind.

“It’s tempting to blame yourself, isn’t it?” Bell said, once again reading his thoughts.

“Merely factual in my case,” Cardinal said, and could not miss the bitterness in his own voice.

“But I’m doing the same thing,” the doctor said. “It’s the collateral damage of suicide. Anyone close to someone who commits suicide is going to feel they didn’t do enough, they weren’t sensitive enough, they should have intervened. But that doesn’t mean those feelings are accurate assessments of reality.”