“What was he to you?”
“He was a neighbour. For two years I didn’t know he was famous. He’d never tell me.”
“He shared your interest in old motorcycles, I believe?”
“He was a collector. Had a fine Brough. And a Crocker. They’re getting scarce.”
“Would you know all the Brough collectors?” He nodded, quickly. There can’t have been that many. “Does the name Bob Foley ring a bell?”
“Foley? Foley? Yes-s-s. He used to drive Dermot around. Only man Dermot would allow behind a wheel. Stella had no use for him. She’d wince when his name came up. Scared of him, I think. He had an appetite for bikes, though, but he didn’t own any. He was just hungry. Collecting bikes is not a poor man’s game. Not any more.”
“What happened to Dermot’s collection?”
“He left ’em to a British collector name of Horwood. Sir Harry Horwood. Very fine collection. It’s all spelled out in the will.”
“How did you meet Dermot Keogh? You said he was a neighbour?”
“Neighbour, friend, fellow music-lover. Fellow at the marina introduced him to me. He invited me to dinner that same day. We exchanged books and drank a lot of Scotch together. Also Irish, bourbon, rye and a few other things. Once we canoed down the Indian River singing ‘I Am the Walrus’ at the tops of our voices. Damned silly that he should be dead, I’ll tell you. It’s a great loss. I liked the man, Mr.- See, I told you I’d forget.”
“Cooperman,” I prompted. “Did you do any legal work for him?”
“Not much. That city fellow, Raymond Whatshisname, did all the fancy stuff. I wouldn’t know where to begin on those complicated recording and film contracts. No, I stick to the simple staples of a small-town attorney’s practice: conveyancing of real property, wills, torts and a little domestic work. It’s provided me with a good living for over forty years. I can’t complain. I’ve enjoyed the work. Setting something going that would get out of bed and turn itself on in the morning. Know what I mean? Like that palliative care unit I set up. It’ll still be doing good deeds when I’m gone too. Once set up a puppy farm too. Manitoulin Island. Wonder how it’s getting on.”
“When did you give Vanessa the keys to your place?”
“She’s got my keys, and I have a set of hers. We look after one another up here, young fellow. Evans at the marina, he’s got keys too. He sees to our roofs in winter; gets ’em cleared if the snow’s heavy. Alma had keys too, just in case.”
“Alma?”
“Alma Orchard. My secretary. Runs-I should say ran-my offices for me. She met with a tragic accident this spring. And I couldn’t even get out of here to go to Croft’s Funeral Home, and it’s just across the street from here. Big house on the corner. Lots of big houses end up as funeral homes in a town like this. Dying’s a thriving business. That and used cars.”
“When would that have been, Mr. Patel?”
“Call me Ed. Everybody does now, now that Alma’s gone. Could never get her to ease off on formality. You’d think that formality was the only thing that kept that woman hooked together. She died second Monday in May. They didn’t find her until Wednesday. Poor Alma. All those years of filing and writing the numbers of cases in a ledger.”
“Does the name ‘Bowmaker’ mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing. Unusual name, though,” he said, trying to lift himself higher on the bed. I helped him. He weighed nothing at all.
“What about Renata Sartori?”
“Ah, the murder victim! Yes, I knew Renata. Dermot was very close to her. She would have been good for Dermot. Now they’re both gone. And I linger on, temporarily.”
I could see that I was beginning to tire him. That note of sentimentality wouldn’t have crept in normally, I suspected. I made leaving noises, scraping my feet and making the chair squeak on the linoleum. I promised that I would send him a few Erle Stanley Gardners when I next found myself in a bookstore. He waved me off with a forced smile. I navigated my way through the confusing corridors and found my car where I’d left it.
As I swung the Olds out into traffic, such as it was, the first thing I saw was the sign on the front lawn of the corner house: “Croft’s Funeral Home Since 1913.”
On a whim, I pulled into the lot connected to the chapel and parked next to the only other car. I got out and went through the glass doors that had been added to the side of the big white clapboard house. The quiet inside hit me. It was just the quiet of an empty house, but there was an extra hollowness underlying the silence. Then a man in a grey cardigan came through from a room at the back.
“Mr. Egan? I’m Henry Croft. We spoke earlier on the phone.” The welcome that began as friendly as you please wilted as he came to realize that I wasn’t Mr. Egan at all. I quickly explained who I was, that I had just been to see Ed Patel across the street and that he had told me about poor Alma Orchard. The sound of those names warmed him up again. “Oh yes, Alma. She was quite a character around town. Everybody liked Alma once they got on to her little eccentricities. Did you know her, Mr. Cooperman?”
“I didn’t, but Ed Patel was just talking about her and feeling sort of powerless because he couldn’t come to the service you held for her.”
“Yes, indeed. He was missed. But, under the circumstances … It was very well attended. The service, I mean. Alma was local, you understand, and there weren’t many in these parts she didn’t know. My grandmother and hers were great chums when they were young. She’d been keeping Ed’s practice going after Ed took sick. Couldn’t take on new work, but kept up to date on what was there.”
“Was she an elderly woman?”
“Coming up to her retirement. Was worried what she’d do once she shut down the last of Ed’s offices. One here in town, I mean. It was a great shame about Alma. She was a healthy woman and a careful one. Not like her to take a radio into the bathroom with her.”
“Nasty way to go,” I offered.
“Closed casket, of course. They didn’t find her, you know, for some days after it happened. I told her time and time again about living alone in that big old house. It just goes to show you. Naturally, it tested our professional skills out back. But I think we made the best of it. Got her all dressed up in her Sunday best. Mrs. Croft is a licensed female embalmer, you understand.”
“Of course.”
“Yes, she’d just taken off a clean outfit for a bubble bath with the radio perched on the corner of the tub. That’s what Sergeant Hoffmeister told me. The Provincial Police took an interest for a few days. There were things that puzzled them. Things puzzled a few of us.”
“Like what, Mr. Croft?”
“Well, I never speak ill of the dead, Mr. Cooperman. They’re my bread and butter, so to speak. But Alma was never all that fastidious about herself. And I wondered what she was doing all dolled up in clean clothes before she took her bath. Most times you find discarded dirty clothes and linen in the bath or bedroom, but not in this case. She was all dressed up to go out to the church bake sale that Monday when she stopped to take a bath. How do you like that?”
It was nearly noon when I hit the highway back to Toronto. It was a perfect day for travelling in an air-conditioned car. Unfortunately, none of the former owners of the Olds had thought of installing air-conditioning. The present owner hadn’t the initiative either. So he fried, even with the back windows open. Through the windshield, which had by now acquired an impressive collection of dead insects, I could see Canadian Shield granite following me back to town. It quit only as I neared Orillia, where I missed the overpass to Webers hamburger stand. Feeling that lapse keenly in the pit of my stomach, I pulled into the city of Orillia at the first suggestion from the highway signs.
Orillia was a borderline sort of place. For those driving north, it represented the gateway to vacationland; for those moving back to the city, it represented the first touch of urban civilization. Here you were reintroduced to fire hydrants and sidewalks, curbs and parking meters. You were once more in the iron grip of the city. From the highway, shopping plazas and large, flat areas devoted to parking took the place of outcroppings of rugged granite rock. Names such as IGA and Zehrs and Century 21 led the way into the town on Lake Couchiching. In saying that Orillia was the tunnel through which you re-entered civilization, I don’t mean to bad-mouth all of those towns north of there. Places such as Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Huntsville can all boast of curbstones and parking meters, but they are inside the inescapable context of being north. At least to a southerner like me, they are north. So, for me, driving back to Toronto, Orillia was the gateway to the south.