Condemned to Repeat Page 9

  I thought about it with my eyes closed.

  “Marni was downstairs talking to the chef when I went down with a bus pan full of dirty dishes. I saw the actor playing the detective sitting in the alcove of the gift shop, waiting for his cue. Roxanne was down there, too, reading a book. I was certain I saw Jossie carrying dishes down the stairs from the dining-room area, but then the chef chided me for not getting things reset properly, and I noticed all the dessert dishes for that side were still waiting down there. When I went upstairs again, the dining room hadn’t been reset at all.”

  “Did anything else unusual stick out for you? Something out of place, someone where they shouldn’t necessarily have been?”

  “Well, some of it was a bit of a blur. Normally, when I am in the House, it’s just me and a couple of interpreters and three tables of people having high tea. It was as if the fraternity boys were back that night. The House was packed and people were all talking and thumping about. Nothing really stood out. Well…”

  “Yes?”

  “There was an older woman there who didn’t seem all that jolly. She was talking to Marni at one point and seemed really sour.”

  “Did she do anything unusual?”

  “Well, not really. I think she may be a board member who is purported to be opposed to special events taking place in the House. So I guess she was checking up on things. Come to think of it, maybe she was just annoyed because she felt she had to attend, in her capacity as board member, something she didn’t find entertaining or appropriate.”

  Detective Howard made a note, with the tape still running.

  “Tell me a bit more about the magician. What did you talk about when you ate dinner?”

  “He mostly asked me about my research and work at the House and about the House in general. He was interested in the time period, he said. His family had come to the area around the same time as the Rutherfords, he said, but I got the feeling they were in a different tax bracket. I really wanted to ask him about how he managed some of his illusions, but was too shy to do so. So the conversation mostly went where he led it.”

  “How did he feel about the actors pretending to be magicians?”

  “I don’t think that bothered him. I saw him talking to Mark before the event started and got the sense he was giving him some tips on banter and presentation. He really is an interesting person, not the sort of person you would suspect of even knowing a card trick, let alone the amazing stuff he did.”

  “How so?” Howard seemed genuinely curious about the magic, rather than merely leading an interrogation.

  “Well, he came in all dressed in browns and earth tones, and gave off a vibe of being anything other than a performer. I helped him bring in his totes and he was very polite and thanked me. When he was in the middle of his act, he was mesmerizing, a totally different person. You would swear he was a matinee idol, that kind of looks. I have no idea how he did that, with just a change of clothing. And then, after he disappeared, the little brown-suited man reappeared and you wouldn’t have looked at him twice on the street.”

  “And you left him in the maid’s parlour?”

  “Yes, he was still eating. I had finished and heard the cue for helping the actress, so excused myself. I think I promised I’d be back with desserts, and I never did that. He must have let himself out, because when I went upstairs to see about the screaming, I just found his dishes sitting on the floor of the maid’s parlour.”

  “Could he have let himself out one of the back doors without setting off an alarm?”

  “You would have to ask Marni that. I know there was a way to turn them off and that Mr. Dafoe had sorted out with her a way of his disappearing through the parlour window, so I think he may have let himself back in one of the back doors. And the actress, Tanya, was going to head out the back way after her ‘body’ had been discovered. Maybe the alarm stayed off. Hey, are you thinking someone from outside could have come into the house and murdered Jossie?”

  “Well, they would have had to go up the maid’s staircase and walk past you and Dafoe in the maid’s parlour in order to place themselves in the guest room, somehow luring Jossie up there in order to break her neck and toss her in the bathtub. We’re not ruling out an outsider, but logic dictates that the murderer was already in the house.”

  I couldn’t help myself; I shivered. “Do you think it was Jossie the murderer was after? Or did she just get in the way of something else? Do you think murder was the purpose? Or was it incidental?”

  “Right now, we are keeping an open mind about any and all possibilities. If you have any other thoughts about that evening, feel free to call me at any time. Here is my card. You can leave as detailed a message as you like. The voice mail goes to me alone.”

  I pocketed Joe Howard’s card and stood up, glad to be released from the tiny taping room. The air in the main office, which had seemed laced with eau de testosterone on my way in, seemed a lot fresher now. Steve was standing near Nancy Gibson’s desk, shooting the breeze while waiting for me. He smiled as he saw me, and my heart lifted, making me realize how anxious I’d been feeling. I couldn’t imagine being a real criminal herded into an interrogation room, if this is what “helping the police with their inquiries” felt like.

  “Hey, kiddo! Did Joe bring out the brass knuckles?”

  “No, just a rubber hose,” I countered. “So, is that all you folks need me for?”

  “For the time being,” Detective Howard said, coming up behind me with the tape recorder still in his hand. He transferred it to his left hand and stuck out his right for me to shake. “Thank you for your help today. I hope you won’t be leaving town without telling us.”

  “That’s okay. Unless you consider going to the Ukrainian Village for an afternoon leaving town, I’m not going anywhere. And come to think of it, I’ll be taking a police escort with me.”

  Detective Howard smiled. “I think the Ukrainian Village can be considered within the boundaries of accessible contact.”

  “All right then.” I turned to Steve. “You are still free to join me in a jaunt out there, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Why is it you are heading out there, again? Rutherford doesn’t sound like a very Ukrainian name to me.”

  “Well, they’ve set their re-enactment timing around the same time as the Rutherfords were building the new house and he was so focused on building the university. I thought it would be a nice parallel to denote how different country life was, even within the area, to highlight the splendour that was Achnacarry.”

  “Achna-what?”

  “It means ‘place near the fish weir’ in Gaelic. Achnacarry was the name of the ancestral home of the Rutherfords, so that was the name of the brick house.”

  “Okay, so that’s not pretentious.”

  “Not if you think about it from an early-twentieth-century mindset, which, let’s face it, was a late-nineteenth-century frame of reference. Everyone named everything. Heck, people still name their summer cottages. Just drive along the road round Pigeon Lake if you don’t believe me.”

  Detective Gibson spoke up. “These bozos all name their cars.” She nodded her head in the fellows’ direction.

  I laughed with her, seeing the wounded looks on Steve and Joe’s faces. “I rest my case.”

  Steve shrugged philosophically, willing to cede the argument to me. That was one of the many things I loved about him, his lack of a need-to-always-be-right gene.

  “Let me make sure I’m still free for Saturday, before you leave.”

  “That would be great. I’m going straight home now, since it’s too late to go back to the Archives. I really need to pick up where I left off tomorrow.”

  He smiled at me, knowingly.

  “I have a feeling you want to drive out to the Ukrainian Village, right? As in taking your rental car?”

  “You better believe it, buster,” I laughed. “I am turning into a true-blue Alberta girl. Next thing you know, I am going to be buying a straw hat and a pick
up.”

  “Rodeo Randy, now that I would like to see.”

  Walking back through the halls and joking with Steve made the building somehow less authoritarian and stern. When I was finally out in the parking lot, clicking my keyfob to let myself into the little green car, I realized my shoulders felt an entire three inches lower than they’d been on my way into the building.

  In order to take full advantage of the wheels at my disposal, I stopped off at the H & W green grocers, tucked away off any regular bus route on 34th Avenue, where I picked up five bags’ worth of vegetables and fruit for under $30. It really was fun to have a car.

  13

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  Popular wisdom says that it takes three weeks to form a new habit, which is why so many gym memberships languish after ten days and people find that twenty-one-day marker something to celebrate, if they ever reach it, when they first quit smoking. It is alarming to me, however, how quickly I can move into a routine. I was waiting in the parking lot of the Archives the next morning, lunch packed and pencil and laptop ready, when Mr. Maitland appeared at the front doors to unlock the treasure trove. He saw me and waved, holding the door open for me, as I walked toward him.

  “Randy! Nice to see you again. Looks like we’re going to have a sunny day, doesn’t it?”

  “I am hoping the weather lasts. I’m planning to head out to the Ukrainian Village Saturday, and I’d like to take some photos.”

  “From what I hear, the weather is supposed to hold steady for the next five days.”

  I wonder why it is that meteorologists can predict five days into the future, weatherwise, but no further. Is that Siberian High, which seems to be known further south of us as an Alberta Clipper and which the Russians probably call a Mongolian Gust, so predictable that it can be seen five days in advance? Or are they still just guessing?

  It didn’t take much of a guess to predict today’s forecast, though. Mr. Maitland was right, it was going to be a gorgeous day as Edmonton days went, sunny and bright and dry. Though we were all bracing ourselves for the possibility of a pre-Hallowe’en snowstorm that would wreak havoc with all the children who had been planning thin and filmy costumes, which would then have to be covered over by snowsuits and too-small winter boots from the season before, this sunny Indian summer we were experiencing was to be appreciated. The autumn winds had not yet arrived to denude the trees of their golden glory and the sun through the yellow leaves made everything glow a little brighter.

  I followed Mr. Maitland into the warm, beech-lined foyer and resigned myself to an indoor stint. The daylight would still be there at four o’clock, although it was shortening into evening at the rate of about two minutes a day.

  Once in the reading room, I took the box of Mrs. Rutherford’s diaries to my favourite table and reached in for the one I’d been reading before heading off to the police station. I flipped to the middle, where the mysterious S had been mentioned. There was nothing in the previous few pages to denote who S might be. I read on from the cryptic entry. A few pages later, another entry seemed to clarify who S was, even as it opened up a new mystery.

  I am certain it was on my nightstand. S. was downstairs throughout the morning, blacking the stove, so if she had a hand in things, surely there would have been a smudge. Hazel and her friends were off to the lake and I cannot imagine Alec moving it without telling me. I haven’t said anything to him about it. Surely it will turn up.

  Okay, so “S” had to be the maid. But what was Mattie missing from her nightstand that she couldn’t mention to Alec and wasn’t sure she wanted to blame on the maid? Something precious, like jewellery, that she had inherited or Alec had given her? Some important document or book she had been reading?

  I was assuming there had to be some value attached to whatever it was Mattie was missing; otherwise she wouldn’t be writing about it. I wondered where she kept her journals, so that the maid couldn’t read what she was saying. Or maybe the maid simply couldn’t read. It was possible that someone working as a servant in the early twentieth century would have only rudimentary schooling, or perhaps be an immigrant just learning English as a second or third language. Of course, there would have been other people in the house, almost constantly. Two maids could be housed in the second-floor rooms; Cecil’s wife, Helen, lived with them throughout the war; Hazel came back from college and lived there till 1919, when she married. Relatives from down east came to visit and stayed for weeks at a time. Ladies came for tea and to knit for the war effort. The house was, by all accounts, a hub of activity. Given that, I really began to wonder where Mattie could have hidden all her blue-bound books.

  I have gone through all my drawers and the hamper from the attic, to no avail. If it has gone missing inadvertently, somehow it has lodged itself where no one can see it. I fear, however, that it has been taken, leading me to distrust those around me. I am unsure whether my new-forged vigilance is making S. more clumsy, or whether it is a manifestation of her guilt. She bumps into tables and stammers so that I find myself speaking more sharply to her than I have ever done. I am inclined to let her go, yet fear that to have her leave before I retrieve my property might mean it is lost to me forever. Alec is too preoccupied with his present case to notice my nerves, which is probably for the best, as I am not certain I would wish to divulge the loss to him as yet.

  This was fascinating. If I only had some inkling of the year this diary covered, and who “S” actually was. I hadn’t seen a listing of all the maids in the centennial book, but it was possible I had overlooked it, because after all, they were only maids. Wasn’t that a Chesterton observation? That people never noticed the ordinary person in a uniform they expected to see, so they never mentioned a postman or a milkman walking through a crime scene, because they faded into the scenery. Maybe the maids were the same way. The focus was so much on the Rutherfords, and yet how many of us could identify with the upper echelons of early Edmonton society? How many people to visit the website would be more fascinated with the young immigrant serving girls who worked their knuckles red in the hopes of a better life in a new land?

  I exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Maitland while buttoning up my coat, waxing on about my ideas of promoting the maids as a result of reading Mrs. Rutherford’s diaries, but realized he probably had to endure conversations like this all the time. I grinned ruefully and made my goodbyes.

  14

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  I wasn’t sure the Friends of Rutherford House would be all that keen on affording much space on the website to the maids of the House, but since they were letting the frat boys have a strong presence, I figured I could make a case for it as a sidebar sort of linkage. I had spent the rest of the evening thinking about S and the other maids who had inhabited the two small rooms upstairs in the back of the big brick house. The more I thought about it, the more I believed I had my through-line into the website. I made a note to check on whether there were names listed in the account books for maids’ wages. Perhaps I could make a list of names from that.

  There was a real case to be made for highlighting the underclasses within this virtual museum, anyhow, since part of the grander purpose was to make historic resources accessible to all areas of the province, which was a diplomatic way of saying people who couldn’t afford the time and gas money to drive halfway across the province to visit in person. Maybe some of those virtual visitors would get more out of seeing how the servants lived than the first premier of Alberta.

  I was eager to get back into the diaries today so that I could cover some more of the fraternity rosters and a bit more of the CFUW minutes on Friday, my last full day at the Archives. Mr. Maitland waved at me as I entered the foyer. After taking only a few minutes to pop my lunch into his fridge, I soon returned to the box of Mrs. Rutherford’s recollections.

  I had to admit, it was the hint of a treasure hunt that had me hooked, as much as the humanizing aspect of the maids’ stories becoming clearer to me. I couldn’t wait to get back into deciphering the diar
ies to find out what it was that Mattie Rutherford had lost. Was it lost forever? I picked a diary at random from the half of the box I’d not yet perused, but the only mention of maids at all appeared in the next-to-last entry.

  G. left today. I made certain to help her pack, making a great show of folding her clothing for her, telling her to sit while I did so. Could not refuse my offer to drive her down to Walter’s ferry this afternoon. Her young man was meeting her on the other side of the river. She seemed less than grateful and more taciturn the closer we got to the river. Certainly, she might have considered the consequences of her actions before this. I am just as happy to be rid of her. The MacQuarries have a girl whose younger sister is looking for a position in town. Also from near Lamont. She is arriving for an interview on Thursday. Till then, I shall play the navvie.

  I closed the diary and picked up the next in the box. There was nothing but listings of who was at various afternoon events. The book after that had a few notes in it, often quoting things Hazel had written in her letters home from Ladies College. No more mentions of lost objects or truculent maids.

  It was fun to eat lunch with Mr. Maitland, as I couldn’t imagine anyone else being kind enough to let me blather on about interesting comments in diaries, especially about the maids and Mattie’s suspicions about them. He did seem taken with the idea of focusing on maids on the website, understanding immediately my feelings that too many people had been sidelined in the vision of Canadian history. Of course, he might have just been being polite.

  I beavered away for another few hours, and then packed things up. Poor Mr. Maitland was nowhere to be seen. I sure hoped his assistant didn’t decide to extend her vacation. He certainly had his hands full.