Despite the hiccup of encountering a road accident along the way, their holiday could not be getting off to a better start for Sandra and Émile Cinq-Mars. Having booked a cabin built in the 1920s that’s described by its proprietor as rustic, they were never certain if the charm depicted in online photographs might be duplicated upon close inspection. The claim to be charming could cover a plethora of sins, such as musty, damp, drafty, mouse-ridden, and leaky, with lousy plumbing, a filthy kitchen, a plugged toilet, a smoky fireplace, and dismal views of a parking lot or a construction site. Rustic could be deployed to dignify a dump. The ocean view depicted on the Internet might have been superseded by a condominium development a week earlier, or years ago. One never knows.
All such fears are summarily allayed.
Their home for the next two weeks is not only rustic and cozy, it’s tidy, clean, and as charming as a fawn nuzzling a doe in a spring meadow. They can’t get over the loveliness of the setting, the waving tall grasses down to the rocky shoreline, the hilly, picturesque inlet highlighted by small wooden fishing boats in a multitude of colors, which benefit from an old-fashioned winching system to haul them up an impossibly long ramp to cope with the stunning disparity between high and low tides. Émile’s statement, “Charm out the wazoo,” doesn’t duplicate Sandra’s choice of words, but she takes his meaning. They’ve landed not only on their feet but, as near as she can tell, smack-dab in the heart of a summer paradise.
She would not care to survive a winter here, but for the next two weeks, if she’s not quite in heaven, she’s exactly where she wants to be.
“Like living in a Wyeth painting fifty years ago” is how she puts it.
Sandra has brought basic supplies from home: sugar and tea, coffee, a variety of spices, even a large jar of flour in the event that she succumbs to an urge to bake, which she might. The scent of cookies in this old house should be especially tantalizing. Bulk items that she’s not likely to repurchase have been brought along, and she wants to set up her kitchen right away and have that done. Émile prefers to explore, shop later. Their compromise is to stroll on a beaten path through the tall grasses to the shore of Whale Cove, breathe the salt air, relax, then get to work. Exploration of the island will come later.
The trip back into town is also peaceful. The pickup remains in the ditch, and just as they are entering North Head, a police car at full speed swishes past them, cherries flashing. Émile can’t help following the vehicle in his rearview mirror.
“Émile,” Sandra gently warns him.
He tries his best to keep his eyes on the road.
They don’t know where to shop, and while the first store they drop into has a disappointing inventory and high prices, it makes up for that with a convivial air. Lots of laughter and chat among customers and employees. They feel themselves in a different place. After the groceries, Émile stops at the liquor store. He can hardly believe the stockpile of beer, and buys a case, even though he entered for vodka and whiskey. Sandra remarks on his loot as he comes back out.
“Do I put in a call to AA now or when we get home?”
They duck into a bakery, and while Sandra purchases bread, the place triggers a few of Émile’s fonder vices. He comes away with a cake, a pie, and a variety of doughnuts. Sandra thinks that perhaps she’ll put her summer baking plans on hold, or her husband might return from Whale Cove the size of one.
“Did you overhear what they were talking about?” Émile asks.
“Was I eavesdropping on other people’s conversations? Categorically, no,” she teases. But she’s curious. “What was it?”
“Grocery store, liquor store, bakery, people are laughing. They seem happy. And yet, somewhere in the conversation, a dead man gets mentioned.”
“Really?”
“In each place.”
“Did he fall out of a tree?”
After lunch, they set out to explore the island. At Whistle Road Émile wants to turn right. Sandra insists they go left. “I know which way the cop cars went, Émile. We’ll explore the opposite direction.”
He laughs. He’s less keen to investigate the unknown fuss than she thinks. He’s really more curious about the island, and off they go. Some twenty years ago, a young journalist helped Émile with a case. The island was the writer’s ancestral home. When later the detective needed to sequester a young woman from the bad guys, he arranged with the journalist to hide her away on Grand Manan. A ploy that worked. Ever since, he’s been interested in visiting the place, a time that’s come.
On this opening foray, they’re keen on getting to know the lay of the land. Amazing, to drive down to the lower, southern portion of the island and encounter fog, while the sky is as clear as a bell at North Head. South is less hilly and less high. There’s a park with a sand beach and fishing villages to which no picture postcard can do justice. They visit a general store in the town of Castalia that’s a throwback to another century, and except for the familiarity of the canned goods and other supplies, they’ve tumbled not only into another world but into another time. The storefront and the first section fail to indicate the size of the place, but once through there they enter into an expansive space. Here they can purchase steaks or the freezer to put them in, a bolt of cloth or electrical wire, penny candies on one side of the aisle, socks on the other, and beyond that shirts, pants, party dresses, and bicycles. A workingman’s steel-toed boots over here, toys over there, and, in between, computers and cereal. This is where they will shop in the future, Sandra determines, falling in love with the ambience while appreciating the prices, too. She listens for talk of a dead man, but here the employees are stationed too far apart from one another for idle banter to flourish.
Back on the road, she reads out the names of places they will investigate later: the Castalia Marsh, Woodwards Cove, the Thoroughfare, which is a crossing to Ross Island, underwater at high tide, the villages of Anchorage in Long Pond Bay, and Seal Cove, and Jack Tar’s Cove, Deep Cove, and Flock of Sheep. Just south of Flock of Sheep Sandra’s eye catches what appears to be the tip of a staircase on a cliff. Nothing looks private, there are no signs, there’s room to park, so she suggests an excursion. Émile turns around, and soon they are descending a steep stairway to what looks like a secret, small, and remarkably pretty beach in a wee cove below.
They spy sand on the shore sheltered by rock face on three sides. If this is a public spot where they are free to picnic and swim, nap or read a book, then they have truly landed in paradise.
The little cove is exactly that. A special place that could never be accessed without a stairway. Big boulders shelter the sand from the sea, the waves bursting on them first, then running gently up and minding their manners ashore. The couple is about to make the steep ascent back to the car, determined to return in their swimsuits one day with a stocked hamper and wine, when Émile steps past a boulder and is saddened by what lies at his feet. A dog, a magnificent black Lab, dead on the sand. Flies have alighted, but not many, nor have they been intrusive, so the body washed up in a recent hour, the dog, in all probability, having drowned.
Seeing him bent over, Sandra comes up behind her husband.
“Oh dear,” she says.
“Oh dear,” he repeats, and straightens.
“What should we do with him?”
“She’s a female. Maybe not full-grown, but still about fifty pounds.”
“No, Émile, you can’t carry it. More like sixty pounds. Your back.”
“We can’t leave it here. I’m not going to bury it in the sand. It’ll be unearthed in the next storm.”
They stare at the poor animal awhile. No collar.
“We can alert the authorities,” she suggests.
“I bet they have better things to do. In any case, if we leave her for even a little while, the flies and rodents, not to mention the birds, will have at her.”
They share a glance, then gaze at the dog again.
“Okay,” Sandra says. “I can help. Take it slowly. We’ll rest on the way up.”
“I was planning on doing that even without carrying a dog.”
He has to dig in the sand to get his forearms under the Lab, but soon enough he makes it to his feet, adjusts the dog’s weight, and proceeds. Sandra tries to take some of the weight off by putting her hand under the body where it sags between Émile’s arms, but in the end he’s on his own, and they commence their climb. He doesn’t let on that for all his inherent strength, somewhat diminished by his sixty-six years and lower-back issues, the task will probably kill him.
He keeps that prospect to himself as he staggers up the stairs.
* * *
The Mounties arriving by aircraft brought in a dog, a German shepherd. A forensics team, also from the mainland, detailed and scrupulously photographed the site, and the detective from Saint John asked Aaron Roadcap to drop by the local station for questioning. Roadcap politely declined, saying not unless he was fed first. Not having the budget to offer the man breakfast, they drove him home to feed himself and arranged to pick him up later in the afternoon for a talk. The detective agrees with Corporal Wade Louwagie that Roadcap is a curious fellow, although he does not seem to be behaving with criminal intent, guilt, or apprehension. He strikes them both as a peculiar person who is more or less an upright citizen.
“If you believe in the myth of the upright citizen. I don’t, personally. But just because his old man’s a convicted murderer doesn’t make him a killer, too,” the city detective quips.
His partner from the city whose name is Jack Hopple reminds him that “Bad apples don’t fall far from the rotted-out tree trunk.”
“That’s not how the saying goes,” the detective tries to correct him.
“No matter how you say it, still true.”
“You’re too class-conscious, Jack,” the superior admonishes the other detective, although playfully. “Clouds your view of the big picture.”
“We had a chat earlier,” Louwagie mentions. “Roadcap and me. When we were out here alone. He doesn’t believe his father was guilty of that murder.”
“Just convicted of it. Sounds guilty to me. Doesn’t it to you? Is he out yet?”
Detective Marshall Isler may have been thinking the same thought that Louwagie had entertained at the outset of all this.
“Sorry, sir. He’s dead. Died in prison,” Louwagie tells him. “Roadcap was a kid at the time.” He doesn’t know why, he just feels he should stick up for the guy.
A rotund man in his early fifties, with thin gray hair and a thick mustache, Isler jots down a note in a red book slim enough to slip in and out of his shirt pocket. “What can you tell me about our dearly departed reverend? What was he into, besides ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’?”
Louwagie’s knowledge is limited. He’s bumped into him at public events, and has heard nothing untoward about the man. “A bachelor.”
“That’s suspicious right there,” the city detective points out. A bachelor himself, Louwagie fails to agree. The man inscribes a notation in his red book, then inquires, “What else?”
Louwagie says that the pastor’s congregation, Presbyterian, seems to be one of the saner groups on the island. He does not mean to suggest that they’re all batty, only that a few come across as off-the-wall. Every congregation preaches against alcohol, and perhaps Lescavage did, too, despite being known to take a nip himself.
“Falling down drunk type thing?” Isler asks him and Louwagie says no.
“Let’s say that he could drink a lot at times but still hold it. I administered a Breathalyzer once. He barely passed, still, the physical tests he passed with flying colors. Walked a straight line like a train on rails.”
“Why did you test him? Random stop or did he give you cause?”
“Zigged when he should’ve zagged. Said he was reaching into his glove box for something.”
“For what exactly?”
The detective, in Louwagie’s opinion, is overreaching. He comes across as a man who asks questions to make people think he has an idea, when nothing at all is floating through his head.
“We’re going back a couple of years, sir. I’m not sure. Can’t remember. I think he said he was reaching in the glove box for his gloves.”
“Nobody does that,” the detective replies. “Puts gloves in a glove box.”
Louwagie doesn’t think that that’s as profound as the detective apparently believes, but he keeps his peace. He wanders off on his own to sit on a boulder while the detectives do whatever it is they’re so brilliant at. While awaiting their report, he reviews for himself what’s transpired.
Eventually, the forensic folks concede the obvious, that the open air after a vicious storm doesn’t leave much to go on. Much of the blood and ooze washed away. They don’t seem terribly anxious to stir the muck and body slime more than is necessary. They will pick up the pieces, and Louwagie is so relieved that this job doesn’t fall to him, he believes he can French-kiss each one of them and the snoop dog twice. He knows better than to say so and remains nonchalant about this terrific news. He might not recover if he’s required to bag the man’s gooey intestines or separate out his organs. The Mountie has already explained that the desiccated vomit on the cairn is his own, not the perpetrator’s or the victim’s. He’s grateful that the other cops seem to understand and not think badly of him.
Then comes the matter of getting the bagged body out. The undertakers nearly killed themselves coming in when one turned his ankle in a small crevice and came close to stumbling right over a ledge. All he was carrying at the time was a light stretcher. They’re nervous about trying their luck a second time while lugging the dead man along the edge of a cliff. They can also take routes through the forest, where they are liable to get lost. Lescavage was not a heavy man yet his remains make for an awkward weight. To take the longer path in the opposite direction from the way they came in is infinitely safer, and Louwagie makes that decision and hires two local men to spell them along the trail. Miles with a body between them will be cumbersome and tiring otherwise, and pulling it behind an ATV over rough terrain too damaging to the corpse. The undertaker’s van can meet them where they emerge from the trail close to North Head, so that Lescavage, discreetly packed into a body bag, his innards in another, will not be subject to a public viewing just yet.
All are agreed, and Louwagie arranges with his own partner upon his arrival, and the two city detectives, to escort the corpse and its entourage down from high ground. He will do for him in death what he was unable to do in life—protect him.
As he departs with his grim brigade, he notices that Detective Isler is trying to see if the dog can pick up a trail of a different kind, but if the animal has nothing to go on he doubts that the men will learn a thing. In terms of solving the crime, it’s reasonable to suppose that if the killer keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t wave the murder weapon around in a bar, and if he hasn’t conveniently parked his DNA on a signpost, then he has a chance of being home free. Unless someone has openly been threatening the man or was seen coming up here with him—in a storm, in the pitch-black—they’ll have no leads to pursue. They will have absolutely nothing to go on. Likely, that will only focus pressure on Aaron Roadcap, for finding the body while out in a gale at night—two strikes against him—and they’ll have to find the mysterious people he says camped out in the storm, if they even exist.
At least, Louwagie is thinking, as he trails the procession across the lovely mountain meadow, that that would be how he would handle the investigation if it was left up to him.
* * *
The dog lying dead in the open back end of his Jeep is visible as Émile Cinq-Mars asks a pedestrian where City Hall might be located. Fortunately, the old-timer doesn’t glance in the rear. The man with a wizened complexion and a long, crooked, bony finger that he uses as a pointer needs to think twice. In the end he provides simple directions. Driving off, Émile finds the building straight away. Above the door the sign is carved in stone: CITY HALL. He discovers the entry firmly locked. Odd, this being the middle of the day.
“Maybe they take early lunches,” he gripes as he straps his seat belt back on.
“Their lights are on,” Sandra notices. So they are. The side of the building has a bank of windows well off the ground, all showing the interior lit up by ceiling lights hung from chains, the bulbs covered by stout metallic shades.
“Maybe they don’t use the front door for some bonkers reason,” Émile grumbles.
He tries the back entrance then, up a short flight of stairs. Again, the door’s locked, but this time he hears sounds inside, a muffled clamor, nothing he can figure out, so he knocks. When no one answers he puts an ear to the wood and listens. More rambunctious thumping, like a gathering of boxers working out on heavy bags. Still, listening with his ear to the crack, it’s more thunderous than that, yet strangely muffled. He has no clue what’s going on at City Hall to create the noise, and his curiosity is piqued.
He believes he’s in the village of Castalia. He’s not positive of that, either, and no sign is posted to help him out. He strolls around to the far side of the building, out of sight of the parking lot now and no longer visible to Sandra, who’s holding down the fort in the Jeep. He’s glad she talked him out of his original idea, to carry the dog through the front door and drop it on the first desk in sight. He’s done enough lifting for the day without lugging the dead animal around and around this building. The far side does yield an advantage. A window suffers a broken corner, a hole through both panes of glass, likely caused by an errant baseball or a rock. While the windows are too high off the ground for him to gaze inside, here he might better interpret the strange sounds emanating from the room.
This time, he hears a rhythmic grunting to go along with the repetitive thumping. Drolly, he wonders if City Hall hasn’t been transformed into a daytime brothel. One keeping a hectic schedule. Curiosity now has the better of him, but there’s no way into this edifice. Coming full circle to the front door again, he mounts the stairs. He spots his wife leaning forward in her seat to see what on earth he’s up to as he begins to pound, very heavily, on the big wooden door. He bangs it with the side of his fist as hard as he can, even though he knows that the pounding going on inside is much louder. He stops to listen from time to time, then pounds again, less interested in the dog’s carcass now or in contacting an owner than he is in uncovering the origins of the noise. About the fifth time that he stops his banging to listen, he hears something. Or rather, nothing. A change. He hears silence. He assumes from this that his pounding has perked up the ears of those indoors. So he goes at it again, harder than ever, both fists this time, a furious citizen demanding a voice at City Hall.
Finally, the door is unlocked and creaks open a crack. “What?” a high-pitched male voice asks. He can see a portion of the man. Cinq-Mars is over six two when he stretches, while this man is taller.
Forgetting, perhaps, that he no longer carries a badge, he speaks with an authority that sounds official. “What’s going on in there?” And thinks to add, Group sex? before he censors himself.
The door opens a wider sliver, still too narrow for anyone to enter through, although he might make an exception for the man inside, who’s as thin as he is tall, about the width of a fishing pole.
“I believe the operative phrase to be,” the man lets him know, “that that’s none of your concern. Not in this lifetime, nor the next.” Good point, and the visitor agrees, but the fact that the other man talks with the door barely ajar, his face in shadow, undermines his perspective, to Émile’s mind. He’s not inclined to leave just yet.
“This is City Hall. It’s a public building!” The retired cop does irate quite well.
At last, the door opens an appropriate amount. The man is not taller than he is after all because he’s wearing elevated boots which lift him an extra four inches. He has a thin, pinched nose, scant fair hair that’s brushed forward in the front but sticks up in clumps at the back, and he’s sweaty. Very dark brown eyes. He’s wearing what Émile would describe as a kung fu or judo uniform—a thick short robe tied with a jute belt over white trousers that end at midcalf. While he still can’t figure out what could constitute the rhythms he overhead, he’s guessing they have something to do with martial arts. Behind the young man is a wall on which rain gear has been hung to dry, and behind that barrier lies an eerie silence. People are probably listening in, so he’s not going to get a full explanation easily.
“This is not City Hall,” the man informs him, his tone clipped, condescending, weary. “Maybe it used to be. Once upon a time. It is now privately owned.”
His emphasis on privately sounds like a slow incision.
“Ah. I see. Like for a judo studio, something like that?”
“If that satisfies your need to poke your nose in where it does not belong, then sure, something like that. Goodbye!”
“There aren’t any signs up,” Émile protests. “No advertising.”
“It’s a private building. Why do we need to advertise? The old City Hall name is inscribed above your head, but in stone, which is not easy to remove. Nor do we feel the slightest obligation to undertake the cost of doing that. Anyway, it’s part of the original look of the place, so we left it.”
“We?”
“We.”
“There’s a new City Hall, then. I need to find it. I have a dead dog.”
“I’m sorry about your dog.”
“It’s not my dog.”
“I’m no less sorry. For the dog. There’s no new City Hall. Years ago, long before you interrupted my afternoon, towns on this island were independent, each with its own City Hall. Since then, they’ve been amalgamated into one. By the province. Now there’s only one City Hall for the entire island and this is not it. Try North Head, but I’m really not sure and I am busy, so if you don’t mind.”
Whether he minds or not, the young man is closing the door on him.
“Kung fu?” Cinq-Mars asks. “Tai chi. Akido! Which is it?”
“Excuse me? It’s not any of those. Did you run over the dog?”
“It drowned. Karate!”
The man is still shaking his head.
“Bokator!” Cinq-Mars calls out. He wants to get this. “That’s from Cambodia. Choi Kwong-Do, that’s from Korea. Am I getting warmer at least?”
“We’re not a martial arts studio. Sir, I’m closing the door.”
“You’re not martial arts?”
“Sir, if you don’t leave, I’ll have you removed. Don’t knock on this door again. You are not welcome here. Do you understand? I’m trying to be polite. I could say this a different way, but you are not welcome here.”
“A different way. You mean the f word?”
He closes the door quite directly on Émile’s face. Rebuffed, Émile turns, and departs the stoop, miffed that he’s not guessed the activity inside, but now more curious than ever. “They’re not martial arts,” he explains to Sandra, forgetting that she possesses no reference to make sense of the comment. “And so much for island friendliness.”
“What? Who? Why should they be?”
“Friendly?”
“No, martial arts.”
“They pound around a lot and they’re private. They wear these skimpy robes with belts. They’re secretive, I’d say. Any guesses?”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about. Is this City Hall or not?”
“Not.” He starts the ignition. “I’m going to that general store again. I bet someone in there can tell me where to go.”
“I’m sure they won’t be the first or the last people to tell you where to go.”
Émile is too irritated to notice the ribbing.
“By the way, don’t be too quick to sully island friendliness,” Sandra advises him. “I’ve been sitting here reading license plates. Ontario. Nova Scotia. Rhode Island. New York. Even Quebec, and I don’t mean us. North Carolina. Michigan. Missouri. Can you believe that? Missouri. Here. On Grand Manan. So don’t blame unfriendly locals.”
This gives Cinq-Mars pause. People have come a long way, and from many different places, to make pounding noises not connected to martial arts. As the man said, it was none of his business, but in saying that, he might as well have waved a red flag before a bull. His vacation is cracking up to be all that he expected and yet challenging, as well. Nothing galvanizes his attention more than people behaving in a secretive, indeterminate way, especially if they’re on his doorstep, or he on theirs.
At the general store, Émile briefly waits for the cashier to become free. She seems an affable and mature woman, in her forties, whereas others nearby are quite young and might take the death of a dog to mandate either a maudlin or dramatic response. He need not have been that discriminating, for once he speaks to her, she promptly broadcasts the news to everyone within earshot, then proceeds to ask over a loudspeaker for a “Margaret” to come to the front of the store.
“Who’s Margaret?” Émile wants to know.
“A fisherman’s girlfriend,” he’s told. When he returns only a blank stare, she explains, “A bunch of them have black Labs.”
Margaret shows up and is told about the dog in the Jeep and immediately falls into a near panic. The very thing that Cinq-Mars was hoping to avoid. “Oh my God, it’s not Remington, is it? Is it Remington? Oh my God!”
She throws herself out the front door, running from car to car, so that Émile has to chase her down. He cautions her to take several deep breaths, and she does, clutching her chest, before he opens the hatch to his Jeep. “Easy, now.” This seems an impossible instruction for her, but once the hatch yawns wide, she relaxes.
“It’s not Rem. Rem’s a guy dog. This is a girl dog.”
“I explained that to the cashier, but you didn’t give me a chance.”
“It could be Alex Waite’s. He’s got a girl dog.” She’s digging under her apron, which is some bother, then her hands resurface with her mobile phone. Sandra entered the store with him and probably hasn’t noticed this kerfuffle, as she remains inside. He scans the windows for a sign of her, but she’s elsewhere, probably lost in the store’s vast hind room. “Alex,” the girl is saying into her phone, “it’s Margaret.” She is no Peg, this girl, no Maggie. “How’re you doing?”
She crosses her fingers while listening to her friend’s response.
“That’s good to hear. Do you know why?”
Émile hears the man on the other end ask why.
“Before I tell you that, how’s Sass doing?”
She’s doing fine, he says, but the young man is losing patience.
“Okay, that’s good. You know why? Because there’s an old guy here with a dead black Lab. Looking for its owner, yeah. It’s a girl dog, too. Like Sassie.”
Émile waits while she listens to a spiel, and adjusts to being referred to as an old guy. The girl’s expression grows sad. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’ll tell him. Okay. Yeah. That’s too bad, yeah. Yeah. You, too.”
She clicks off her phone.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” Émile repeats, encouraging her.
“The dog is Gadget. I know, a bit weird that name. Anyway, it’s Gadget, and she belongs to Pete Briscoe. He’s brokenhearted, my friend Alex says, because last night Pete was out fishing, only he wasn’t really fishing, he was just riding out the storm, but anyway he was out on his boat and at some point, Pete doesn’t know exactly when or what happened, but Gadget went missing. Off the boat. Into that wild sea. Alex says that Pete’s been bawling his eyes out ever since, that he was on the radio last night telling the other guys about it at sea and bawling his eyes out over the radio. He wanted to search along the shoreline. The guys were warning him off that because it was too damn dangerous and Gadget was either going to make it or she wasn’t. So I guess she wasn’t. Will you tell him? He doesn’t live far from here. You’ll probably have to wake him up like I did Alex—those guys had a rough night—though I’m sure he’ll appreciate that he can give Gadget a proper grave and that. You know what?”
She appears to be waiting for an answer. Émile asks, “What?”
“It’ll be better for Pete in the long run going out to sea knowing that Gadget’s not floating around out there somewhere. I sincerely do think so.”
Émile assures her that he will take the remains to Pete Briscoe if she will be kind enough to give him directions. “I’m only a tourist. I’ve got all the time in the world, so that’s good, but I don’t know my way around.”
Sandra chooses that moment to poke her head out from the massive carnival that is the general store. She’s only checking on his whereabouts, and pops back inside again.
“Lord God Almighty!” Margaret suddenly exclaims. “Can you believe this day?”
“Ah,” Cinq-Mars says, “ah, how so?”
“First Orrock dies!”
“Who’s Orrock?” he asks.
“Only the boss and owner of everything! He owns the fish plant, a lot of the boats. He owns the lobster pounds, the salmon-fishing farms, most of the property. I’m told the only thing he doesn’t own on the island are the banks, but he owns most of the money in them, so there you go. What difference does that make?”
“I see. But I thought this province was owned by the Irving family.”
“Sure it is. But what they don’t own around here, Orrock has a hand in.”
“And he’s passed away?”
“In his sleep. He didn’t deserve that.”
“Too young a man, was he?”
“Old enough. But he didn’t deserve to die in his sleep. He should’ve been drawn and quartered. He should’ve been cut up in slices and tossed over the side as fish bait.”
“I take your meaning. Not well liked.”
“Despised, pretty much. He wasn’t sliced up though. Reverend Lescavage, he’s like a shiny penny, a lucky one, the sweetest little guy, littler than me anyway, but he’s the one who gets sliced. Not in his sleep either, poor guy. At least I don’t think so. He didn’t get fed to the fishes, but apparently, apparently, it was gruesome what happened. The birds ate some of him. What a terrible way for a sweet man to die. Don’t you think so? And on our island! A murder!”
Émile Cinq-Mars is grateful that Sandra has stayed inside and is not hearing this, or she might pack them both up and leave. For his part, he has to acknowledge that as much as he is happy to be on the island, and his first impressions are positive, matters are starting to get interesting.
“Now you show up!” Margaret exclaims.
He’s momentarily confused. How could she possibly know who he is?
“With a dead dog!”
“Oh … right. Right. It’s been quite a day around here.”
“That’s three dyings all in the same little while!”
“Yes, I see,” Émile says, and is more glad than ever that his wife is not within earshot to glean that the dead appear to be falling out of the trees on Grand Manan. Then he has an idea. He’s amazed that he has solved the identity and the mystery of the dead dog by talking to the right person. This may be a place where any investigation into anything can be supported by local knowledge, rather than with what he’s put up with throughout his long career—namely, witness silence. So he says to Margaret, “Listen, I was just down to the old City Hall. To inquire about the dog and what to do. It seems to be occupied by an unusual group.”
“Oh them,” she says.
“Yeah, them,” he says, hopeful. “Do you know what they’re doing in there?”
“Well,” she says, and for the first time her voice falls to a whisper, as if a secret is about to be conveyed, “they think that we don’t know.”
“We,” Cinq-Mars repeats.
“Us. The people. The town. The whole island, for that matter.”
“But you do. Know.”
“Of course we do. We even have video.”
“Really.”
“Yup.”
“So what is it? What are they up to?”
“They’re learning how to fly. I kid you not. I do not yank your chain. Hey, let’s go back in. I’m supposed to be working.”
He walks with her across the parking lot.
“Margaret, ah, what do you mean, fly?”
“Not in airplanes,” she whispers with that conspiratorial inflection again, and adds once more, “We have video.”
“Who does?”
She shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody. It’s been shared, so maybe everybody by now. They sit on the floor and cross their legs and do their meditations and go “Ooommmm,” and nobody minds that so much. Each to their own, right? Then they go bouncing around on the floor, banging their thighs and knees on the floor trying to bounce up into the air. So they can learn to fly. They’re a bunch of loonies. They believe—we saw a group like them on the Internet—they think they’ll fly someday. You know, levitate and like that?”
“How do you think they’re doing?” His question is intended less to find out about a group of initiates, most likely spawned by an East Indian cult, than to discover how seriously the locals take them.
Margaret flashes a smile. “Let’s just say that nobody’s seen anybody hovering above the treetops just yet.”
They arrive at the store’s front steps at the same moment that Sandra is coming out. She’s accumulated more shopping bags and wears a rather sheepish grin. Émile laughs. “No matter,” he consoles her. “We’re on vacation. This helpful young lady is giving me directions to the home of the dog’s owner, then we’re off.”