Inside, I found all of the things that go with a summer cottage in Muskoka. In the large kitchen, there were a leftover icebox and a kerosene refrigerator as well as an electric one. Three stoves told a similar history. The cupboard was as bare as Mother Hubbard’s. The main room, which was bigger than the outside dimensions of the cottage suggested was possible, appeared lined with bookfilled shelves running up well above my head. A fine old library ladder was asking to be rolled effortlessly along the wall. I tried it, and it coasted back to where it had been. I hadn’t noticed the canted pine floor. The books bore the imprints of vanished publishers. A stack of early New Yorkers, pillars of National Geographics, ghosts from another era such as Colliers, Esquire, Vogue, Life and Look. There were three bedrooms. Two were made up, one topped off with a patchwork quilt, the third stripped, with the mattress rolled at the end of the bedstead. In short, as I said to begin with, this was a very cottagey sort of place: comfortable and without pretension. I liked it. If I wasn’t under the pressure of work, I could easily have settled in. Here, at least, I had all of the books I lacked at the hammock back at the lodge.
The kitchen seemed to be the cottage’s centre of gravity. I could imagine people sitting around the wide pine table discussing the ills of the world over mugs of hot chocolate on a chilly morning or settling the NTC fall schedule over a glass of lager on a balmy day in August. The fridge was clean but, except for a bottle of Smithwick’s beer, empty. What I needed was a bag of milk with a date stamped on it. There was nothing to help me confirm Vanessa’s presence here at the time Renata Sartori was being shot. The foot-pedal garbage can was empty, already lined with a new unsoiled bag. A telephone hung from the wall near the door. There was a dial tone when I lifted it. Nearby, a piece of cardboard had been stapled with names and numbers. I made a note of these and pocketed my jottings. Also nearby, hanging from a finishing nail on the edge of a cupboard, dangled several sets of keys, all very helpfully labelled. One set belonged to a cottage marked “Ed,” others indicated “boathouse,” “generator” and “Johnson 55.”
Outside, I found a few paths. One led to a disused outhouse, which had been modernized in every way except in its plumbing: a citified toilet seat, a vase with dried flowers, even a David Hockney reproduction on the back of the door. Another path led to the boathouse mentioned on the ring of keys. It was high and dry, half hidden in the new spring growth, with a spidery window that looked in on a small fibreglass hull and motor. A low grey structure of peeling paint and cobwebs hid a Delco generator under stunted cedar shrubs. All of the keys but the bunch marked “Ed” were accounted for. On a hunch, I pocketed them. After a last longing look at a couch inside the screened-in porch facing the lake, I walked down the hill to my canoe.
Back at the marina, Ifor Evans was peering into the dark, oily secrets of an outboard motor. I know he heard me coming, but he didn’t turn around. I leaned my back against a warm wall and waited. When he finally looked up, he said, “I thought it would be you.”
He went back into the motor with renewed interest. I picked up a rag and handed it to him the next time he tried to reach for it. I don’t know why I try to be ingratiating, but I’m aware of doing it. It knocks off the rough corners of relationships. Sometimes, it puts me in the way of attracting more business. He took the rag from me and handed it back when he was through with it. I felt a little like an operating-room nurse, trying to outguess the surgeon on what he’d be needing next. I saw the hand reach out again and put the rag back in it.
“Wrench!” he said, in a tone that declared me a fool or an idiot. I obliged from the tools laid out on a board running between us. He took it from me, used it, and slapped it back into my hand again, like he was thinking of the operating room too. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, he looked up and out at me. He didn’t say “Thanks,” or anything as gauche as that. For a moment, he didn’t say a thing, then: “That Faulkner kid just about ruined this new motor. Took him only an hour and a half doing doughnuts in the lake. His father should talk sense to him. Kid doesn’t respect anything, least of all a good motor. Comes from a good family too. His people’ve been coming to the lake since my uncle Russell ran this place. We’ve been up here since the fall the S.S. Waome went down up by Beaumaris, coming out of Port Carling. I was a youngster. Nineteen and thirty-four.” I wasn’t surprised to discover that Evans was a bit of a moralist. The lake had its rules, and you disobeyed them at your own risk. Evans was a watcher and a judge. I could imagine him, when sufficiently moved, doling out summary justice to repeat offenders. But, I could be wrong. Maybe I was just tired of waiting for the moment to ask my questions. Before I could, he ploughed into me with one of his own.
“Why are you sticking your nose into this?” I caught my breath.
“Vanessa says she was up here when Renata Sartori was killed. I just had to see that what she said was true. Frankly, I haven’t found her all that truthful in other things.”
“Takes after her father. Always tellin’ fish stories.”
“Was it a fish story when she said she was at her place on Monday the fifteenth of May?”
“Oh, she was here all right. Took a briefcase in with her and some bread and cheese. Frozen dinners. She never could look out for herself proper like.”
A second chance for a question of my own finally came when we were both holding Cokes from the big cooler on his dock.
“Who’s Ed?” I asked.
“Ed? Which Ed do you mean?”
“I mean the one you thought of first. The Ed that gave his keys to Vanessa for safekeeping.”
“Oh, that’d be old Ed Patel. Lawyer from town. His place is at the end of the path that the road peters out into.” Here he indicated a direction with his right hand, vaguely in the direction of the parking lot, which was the official end to this spur of the highway.
“Why would Ed Patel give his keys to her?”
“What are friends for? Ed was like an uncle to Stella while she was growing up.” He smiled to himself at the picture in his mind. Then his face darkened. “Ed’s been in and out of hospital for the last year. He’s in a bad way. Vanessa told him she’d see to his place.”
“She doesn’t take the time to see to her own place. How is she going to look after his?”
“You don’t miss much, for a …”
“She hasn’t had her boat out this year yet. There’s not much in the cupboards.”
“Don’t I know it. Oh, she came with a few groceries when she was up a few weeks ago, even bought bread, cheese and juice from the marina like I told you, but she didn’t bring any of the basics, you know, flour, soda, sugar, onions, potatoes. Just frozen stuff and a few boxes of Kraft Dinner was all she carried with her. She usually treats herself better than that.”
“So, you’ve been looking after Ed Patel’s place as well as hers?”
“Had to be done. A place can go to wrack and ruin in short order here at the lake. If I hadn’t kept the roofs of both places cleared of snow last winter, by now there’d be nothing you could salvage from either place. Ed found this place for Mrs. Moss and acted as her lawyer for the conveyancing. He’s got an office in town.”