Talking at the Woodpile (24 page)

“I wanted to talk to you,” I said, feeling cautious but pleased that a conversation had started. “Especially because you seem to have lived here a long time.”

“I'm Lily Bluebell Manchester,” she said holding out her hand. “Yes, I've lived here a long time—maybe too long for some people.” She laughed and blushed.

Her hand was strong like a tradesman's, and her eyes were the brightest blue. I could see how she got her name.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

Lily gestured toward the house, and we walked to the door, stomping the snow off our boots. The house was neat and tidy, and the wood stove gave a warm welcome as we stepped into the kitchen. The aromatic smell of fresh baking filled the room.

“Ginger snaps,” she told me. “Do you like them?”

“I love anything home-baked. My mom bakes all the time.” I hung up my coat and hat and sat at the table.

“Arnold told me Hudson and Rebecca are your parents. I met them both a few times when I visited Dawson,” she said.

“I'll tell them I visited with you.”

Lily reached up to lift down her best cups from a high shelf and set the table for tea. Soon the kettle whistled on the stove. She straightened her apron, then sat down.

As we sipped tea, I hungrily devoured all the cookies on the plate. She watched as if she had seen this many times before.

After two cups of tea, I took out my notebook, crossed my legs and asked her, “Would you tell me about Bob Harmond?”

Her face took on a stark expression, and she rubbed her hands nervously. “There's nothing to say. The RCMP dealt with that.”

I had made her uncomfortable, so I quickly changed the subject. “What about you? How long have you lived here?”

She brightened up. I think she was glad to be asked.

“I've lived in this area all my life. My father was James Copper—Jim—the uncle of Joseph Copper. My mother was an immigrant Norwegian schoolteacher who moved from Seattle and met my father in Whitehorse. I have one brother, Twobee.”

“I've met Twobee and I know Joseph. I see him all the time. He's an interesting person with good stories,” I said. “I never met your father, though Joseph has mentioned him.”

Lily went on. “My husband was Ed Manchester. He was Arnold's business partner until his death.”

“I heard about one partner leaving Arnold over a bear, then another partner meeting an accident,” I said.

“The bear had nothing to do with the partnership breaking up. It was more complicated than that,” she said.

“How so?” I scribbled notes, feeling vindicated that my instincts were right. There had been more to this story than a fight over a bear.

“I'll show you something.” Lily went into her back room, and I could hear her opening and shutting drawers. I glanced around the room. An antique glass-doored china cabinet had shelves filled with collectibles; I recognized some Royal Doulton pieces because my mother also collected them. I glanced at the bottom shelf, and my heart stopped. There sat Arnold's bear skull. It was partially covered with a cloth, but I recognized the empty socket where it was missing a tooth. I almost got up to leave, but the newspaperman in me kept me seated.

Lily walked back into the room, her arm full of photo albums stuffed with loose pictures, and took in the expression on my face. Then she quickly glanced down at the bear's skull and back at me. I didn't know what to say.

“Let me explain,” Lily said, and dropped her albums on the table so that the pictures spilled out.

The kitchen had become a courtroom; she was the defendant, and I was the prosecutor and jury. The truth and only the truth was to be spoken. A piece of her hair had strayed from behind her ear, and she carefully pulled it back. Lily regained her composure and opened the photo albums on the table. I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd then said, “Members of the jury … ”

She pulled out a creased black and white photo with bent edges. It showed four people. Two young men in baggy pants and windbreakers leaned on either side of an automobile. Their hair was greased back in ducktails, and they had confident smiles. Between them two pretty young women sat on the hood, their hair tied with scarves, wearing long skirts that fell below their knees. One girl smiled shyly, and the other was laughing.

Lily pointed to each in turn. “Bob, Alice, me and my husband Ed. We were such good friends—we did everything together. Bob and Ed worked in the store off and on. Then Bob went to work with Arnold, and Ed started in the silver mine at Elsa. Victor the Gypsy was his partner.”

“I know Victor well,” I said.

She sifted through the pile of pictures and pulled out another one. “This might interest you. Do you recognize anyone?”

I took the picture from her hand. It was a group of young men with their arms around each other's shoulders. They all had big smiles on their faces.

“Victor, Ed, Bob and Arnold,” I said. “But I don't know the other two.”

“That's Buford and Craven when they were young,” she said. “They were all friends.”

“Craven and Buford were my neighbours,” I said. “I liked them.”

Lily laid another group of pictures on the table. They showed a group of people in parkas and hats standing around a grave on a cold-looking, cloudy day. Wreaths lay on top of the snow. The next picture was of a headstone. Chiselled into it were the words “Edward L. Manchester. Beloved Husband of Lily Bluebell. 1920–1949.”

She looked up, and her eyes were teary. “Would you like to go see the gravesite?”

I looked out through the window. In the darkness, light from the kitchen illuminated the falling snow. “Now?”

Lily nodded. “I visit it almost every day at all times of day.”

We put on our coats and walked toward the end of town. The moon was as bright as a street lamp. We carefully helped each other up a steep, slippery trail to a graveyard with about thirty graves. Some of the markers were wood, others stone or marble, but every one was different. Each one leaned or stood in its own direction. If it had been day and I'd had more time, I would have liked to read each stone to see what history lay there.

“Ed is over here,” she said. She reached down and brushed the snow off a headstone with her gloved hand. “This granite is from what was then the deepest part of the Elsa Mine. The miners made the headstone.”

I could see the stone had high-grade silver running through it. The miners chose right.

“I always say a prayer,” Lily said.

We stood there as she silently prayed. She closed her eyes, and I watched her lips move. The snow continued to gently fall in the still evening air. Then she took my arm, and we walked back to the cabin and took off our coats. Lily put the kettle back on, and we sat down. Both of us had red cheeks from the cold.

“I'm sorry about your husband. It must have been a terrible time for you,” I said.

“It was the worst of times. It still is. I never got over losing Ed.”

“I heard it was an accident—Arnold told me that.”

“It wasn't an accident. It was all because of jealousy,” Lily said. “Bob was always sweet on me. He married Alice but he let it be known that I was the one he wanted. Ed was the only man I ever loved. Bob meant nothing to me. I told him that to his face.”

“Did your husband know about this?” I asked.

“The whole town knew. There are no secrets here. Ed spoke to Bob on a number of occasions. Bob would show up drunk in the middle of the night, knocking on the door and wanting to talk to me. Ed would go out and push him out of the yard. One time they came to blows, and Ed beat up Bob. Alice would get upset. It was an embarrassment, especially in a small town like this.”

“What about Arnold and Alice?”

“Arnold and Alice were the best of friends, nothing more than that, but Bob was insanely jealous. He accused Alice of all kinds of things. I don't know how Alice put up with it all those years, his drinking and abuse,” she said.

“The argument over the bear was the last straw. It just showed how crazy things were getting. Arnold had had enough of Bob and bought him out. A while later Ed went to work with Arnold, and the mine struck a solid vein of silver. We became relatively rich. Bob never saw a cent of it, and that drove him crazy. All these years Bob has made Arnold's life as miserable as he could. I think he treated Alice the way he did to spite Arnold. He was mean like that.”

“I would like to know what happened to Ed,” I said, “but only if it doesn't upset you. I don't want to cause you any grief,” I said.

Lily spread her hands and sighed. “Ed was an experienced blaster, having set charges hundreds of times at the Elsa Mine. Just before the accident, Arnold and he had drilled powder holes and filled them with dynamite. Arnold walked out to secure the entrance, and Ed set the fuse. The RCMP and Arnold figured there was a mix-up—a faster-burning safety fuse somehow got mixed in with the slower ones. Ed was walking out when the blast went off.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. I didn't know what else to say.

“It was years ago, but it seems like yesterday,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Two weeks after the funeral Arnold came over with a bit of fuse he'd found in the mine. It was the faster-burning kind. Here, I'll show you.”

She got up, opened the china cabinet and reached down beside the bear's head to pick up what looked like a torn piece of short rope.

“This is what Arnold found,” she said.

I held it in my hand. I didn't know much about dynamite, so it really meant nothing to me. After examining it for a polite length of time, I handed it back without saying anything.

“Months later Bob approached Arnold and wanted their old partnership back. Arnold told him to go to hell. That's how things were left for all these years. With Ed gone, Bob tried to bother me, but Buford and Victor stepped in and warned him. Victor told him, ‘I put curse on you, give you headache like you never believe.' I cannot help but think that, all these years later, the tooth was part of that gypsy curse.” Lily tried to be serious, but couldn't help smiling.

“That Victor.” I shook my head.

Lily went on, “Bob threatened Arnold and told him to be careful or he might just end up like his partner. So that's how it's been—people living side by side, jealous, hating each other and looking over their shoulders. You know how it is in these small towns, Tobias.”

Did I ever. I nodded.

“Ed was gone, but I still had a stake in Arnold's property. That's what has paid the bills all these years. I think Arnold has been more than generous,” Lily said as she poured me another cup of tea.

“So no one ever worked out what happened?” I asked.

“Whenever Bob got drunk, he confessed to Alice that he'd murdered Ed. She listened to it for years, never telling anyone. When he was sober, he denied it. Late one night she called Arnold and me over, and we listened in the kitchen to Bob ranting in the living room. He confessed all right. He staggered out to the kitchen and must have caught sight of us leaving, because the next day—the morning that you first met him in the store—he was crying, really upset that he'd let the cat out of the bag.”

“What exactly did he say when drunk?” I'd filled my steno pad and was now scribbling notes on a handful of Lily's paper table napkins.

“He spoke of replacing the fuse with a faster-burning one.” The voice came from behind me, making me nearly jump out of my skin.

Arnold and Alice were standing in the porch. I had been so engrossed in Lily's story that I hadn't noticed them. They walked in and stood on either side of Lily, facing me. For a moment they looked like their long-ago pictures, but older and timeworn. They took seats at the table. Arnold sat close to me and put his foot up on the rung on the bottom of my chair. His brow was furrowed. Alice fidgeted with the corner of the tablecloth.

“The afternoon you met me was the same day Bob met his end,” Arnold said. “Alice and Lily were visiting me for tea that evening when Bob barged in and threw a few swings at Alice, then at me.”

Without hesitation Lily said, “I picked up the skull and hit him across the head as hard as I could. He looked almost comical with the bear's tooth sticking out of his forehead like a unicorn horn. Being hit on the head didn't kill him, though. He grabbed his chest and fell to his knees, then collapsed onto his back. He was having a heart attack. Then he confessed. He said, ‘I did it. I killed Ed.' ‘You rat,' I said, ‘I always knew you killed my husband.' Bob said, ‘I'm sorry,' and lifted his arm, trying to touch my hand, but I pulled it back. He died on the floor of Arnold's cabin.”

“We had no proof of his confession, and the hole from the tooth would be hard to explain, so we left it in, hoping that people would think a bear attacked him,” Alice said. “We drove down to Mayo at midnight and put the body in the Stewart River. None of us felt any remorse. I was a little shaken up, but at least the long ordeal was over. He was a hard man to love.”

“The police questioned us when Bob disappeared,” Arnold said, “but they knew he was often drunk and had heart trouble. They figured he would show up later. As time went on, they seemed glad to forget about him. Bob affected people that way. When the body turned up, they quickly closed the case.”

“You surprised us when you came to take a picture of the bear's skull,” Lily said. “We'd just gotten back from dumping the body. Arnold barely handled it. When he realized you'd taken a picture of crucial evidence, we could only hope the tooth fell out on Bob's trip down the river. When I saw that you recognized the skull in the china cabinet, I knew the truth would have to come out. I should have gotten rid of it. I'm not sure why I kept it.”

“Actually, I put some of it together before I came down here,” I said. “If I hadn't seen the skull again, I would never have mentioned it.”