Book retailing used to be a fairly simple profession. You ordered books; you sold books. Even the chain bookstores that appeared in the sixties and seventies didn’t change things very much. Some customers still preferred the pleasure of browsing in the local independent bookstore.
But in the nineties the so-called superstores blew the old ways to bits. Now, to compete, bookstores have to be huge or at least combine books with a café or a cyber-café and lots of comfortable living-room furniture (I sometimes suspect that the superstores were invented by furniture companies).
Jennifer and I dreamed up various schemes and services to attract and keep customers. One of her more successful ideas was providing some of our clients with credit and delivery services, mostly professors at the universities and lawyers who operated in the high-rises that surrounded us. They phone in an order and we deliver the books to their home or office, at their expense.
I’m less enthusiastic than Jennifer about this system, because it’s too successful, and I’m always the one who has to go and collect the money. Most people pay with a credit card, but there are a few who use this service to return to the good old days of the nineteenth century. They refuse to give their credit card number out over the phone or protest that they don’t trust the mail.
What they really want is a personal visit to settle their accounts. That is the part of the plan I dislike. It flatters them to get this personal service but it humiliates me. I have too much pride to play the role of a tradesman who comes to the back door, ledger book in hand. Jennifer always points out that the program pulls in decent money, keeps our customers happy, provides a service the chain superstores don’t, and I can just put up with it.
So it was early on a beautiful warm Monday in mid-September that I made my way to McGill University to collect outstanding accounts from three English professors and one history professor. I decided to make the history department my first stop, because the man I had to see, Harold Hilliard, tended to be pretty efficient.
I could at least start with someone I liked.
Hilliard had long been one of my favourite clients. He was a high-maintenance customer who demanded and appreciated special attention. His taste in books was excellent — in many ways it mirrored my own. He was sophisticated without being arrogant and he knew what he wanted. What made me especially like him was that he never tried to tell me what books we absolutely had to have in the store. Too many people think everyone will be interested in what interests them.
Professor Hilliard would appear regularly, wearing an expensive brown tweed jacket, and leave me a list of seven or eight books. The list would be neatly typed and it would always include his name, mailing address at McGill, and his office phone number. Booksellers are grateful for such attention to detail.
“All of these books were reviewed in the last couple of years,” he would tell me and when I looked over the titles they would always include the best recent books in history, biography, literary criticism and — believe it or not — modern business practices. I didn’t understand the value of business books to a historian but that is what made Professor Hilliard such an interesting customer; his tastes were eclectic.
I would pack up the books on his list that we had in stock, and special order the rest. When they came in, I’d take a walk over to his office
On that bright September Monday I knew that if his records agreed with mine, and they always did, I’d be out of his office with a cheque for $519.96 within fifteen minutes. Some of his colleagues were not so organized. I heard the same excuses over and over: “How can it be that much? Are you certain?” “I thought I returned that book.” “I’m sorry, I don’t have my my cheque book.” Or sour grapes: “It really wasn’t as good as the review said it would be.”
Professor Hilliard’s office was big and comfortable. You have to be pretty senior or important to get an office like that. It was on the main floor of the history department, which itself occupied most of the southeast corner of the Elwitt Building.
When I arrived the reception area was empty. Even the normally vigilant secretary/receptionist, Arlene Ford, was absent. Pleased that I wouldn’t have to waste time stating my name and my business to the other underlings, I marched right up to Hilliard’s office door and knocked.
I didn’t get the customary “Come in,” in answer to my knock, but the door was ajar. I thought I would just peek in to see if there was any sign of Professor Hilliard. The door swung halfway open in response to my gentle push, but then it stopped. Something was blocking it. I put my head around the door to see what was in the way.
I got the fright of my life.
Professor Harold Hilliard was lying on the floor with his head in a pool of blood. I could only see him from the waist up; the rest of his body was behind the half-opened door but I was pretty sure he was dead. I read somewhere that when faced with a panic situation the normal human reaction is fight or flight. I did neither. There was no one around to fight with and I was frozen in the doorway and couldn’t have moved if I wanted to, and believe me, I wanted to. I don’t know how long I spent glued to the doorsill transfixed by the gruesome scene.
The sound of a woman’s voice shouting, “What do you want?” and the angry click-clack of high-heeled shoes on the vinyl tile floor snapped me out of my daze and I turned to see who was screaming at me. It was Arlene, the department secretary. She was an elaborately turned bleached blonde about thirty-five, who favoured brilliant blue eyeshadow and a shellacked-looking French twist. Suspicious and unfriendly at the best of times, she was now marching down the hall toward me with outrage in her eyes. Clearly, she was not pleased to find me at Hilliard’s office door. She would be a lot less pleased if I didn’t stop her before she discovered the bloody scene for herself.
“Wait a minute,” I said stepping toward her to block her entrance to the office. She gave me a mean look and reached past me to pull Hilliard’s office door closed. But as she did so she caught sight of the body and the blood.Then she screamed and recoiled, practically knocking me off my feet.
She whirled around, grabbed me and tried to shove me up against the wall. “What have you done to him?” she yelped. Then she backed away from me toward the safety of her desk. Fight and flight.
“Me?” I asked incredulously. “Nothing. I just found him.”
Her eyes were drilling into me. I noticed that her black mascara was clumped on her lashes. “Stay right there. I’m calling security.”
I decided staying right there was not really necessary and followed her back to the reception area. While she was on the phone I sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area and thought about the situation.
I had spent enough time with Gaston Lernieux to know that it was important to give a clear and accurate description of events when reporting a crime. I knew that the police spent much of the early part of an investigation trying to sort out the vague and contradictory statements of witnesses. I did not want to be that kind of witness and I made careful mental notes, so that I could give a detailed, coherent statement to the police when they arrived. By that time it had occurred to me that in a few minutes I might be meeting my friend Gaston in unusual circumstances.
Within less than two minutes of being summoned, three McGill security people came barrelling in through the big main doors. The self-important little guy in charge had a walkie-talkie in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a pager clipped to his belt. He was prepared for any communication emergency, but I could not see if he carried a gun.
“Miss Ford,” he said. He had a strong upper-class-twit-of-the-year British accent. “You say a dead body has been found?”
The two uniformed security people remained at the door to the department to ensure that no one not authorized to do so entered.
“He found the body,” the secretary said, pointing an accusing finger at me.
The campus cop turned and took a couple of steps toward me so that he was almost standing on my feet.
“Who are you?” he demanded. He was maybe five-six in his army boots, but so was Napoleon. He had a thick moustache and a Sixth Dragoon Fusiliers regimental tie. He carried “aggressive and efficient” to extremes.
I stood up, which forced him to back up a pace or two. “Wiseman, Sam Wiseman. I came to see Professor Hilliard on a business matter and discovered him dead.” I didn’t like his officious manner, so I asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Julian Alexander. Head of security.”
He turned back to Miss Ford and asked, “Have you ever seen this man before?”
She looked at me warily. “He’s been here once or twice.”
He stood at attention and barked at us as if we were a large group rather than just two people. “You are both witnesses to a serious crime and you will have to remain here until the police arrive. Until they get here I’m in charge.” I was pretty certain that he didn’t have to deal with murders on campus every day, but I still thought his act was a bit much. I guess we all deal with stress in different ways.
I sat back down in one of the guest chairs and Miss Ford sat at her desk as Alexander called the police on his cell phone. He didn’t dial 911. He punched in a seven-digit number that must be known only to security people. He gave a brief description of the situation, said “yes” a couple of times, hung up and slipped the phone into his jacket pocket. On his walkie-talkie he informed someone in the security office that there had been a murder, instructed him to tell a couple of senior people of that fact and ordered him to treat this information as “extremely confidential.” My guess was it would be all over the campus in twenty minutes.
“The police will be here in a moment or two. You will be required to give statements at that time.” He parked himself against a wall opposite my chair so that he could keep an eye on both me and Arlene Ford. We weren’t much in the way of suspects but we were all he had.
As we waited for the cops to arrive I noticed that there were no professors around. It was just a little before nine-thirty and the only faculty member present was dead. Where were the others?
It took the police about ten minutes to get there. When the two uniformed cops showed up Alexander immediately took them to a corner to give them his report. I watched the three of them talk and glance over at me and Arlene Ford. One of the cops then secured the scene with yellow plastic barrière-de-police tape.
As I watched him do so I heard a familiar voice behind me. I was in luck. Gaston had been assigned to the case! I turned around to greet him and I’m embarrassed to report that I had a big smile on my face. I had finally become involved in a police investigation, and I was thrilled. At that moment I was happier at the possibility of being in the middle of a murder investigation than I was sad about the poor victim lying dead in his office.
“Sam,” Gaston said, with a tone of surprise in his voice, and I quickly wiped the smile off my face. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I was here to see Professor Hilliard. I discovered the body,” I told him, standing up as if I was making a formal report.
“So,” he said, and the slightest trace of a smile flashed across his lips. “You may be able to help me with this matter. Once the scene of the crime is secure I’ll want to talk to you.” He motioned for the two uniformed cops to join him, and they went into Hilliard’s office. I took pleasure in the fact that he excluded the Alexander from their conversation. I could hear their low voices but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
A few minutes later he emerged, and went over to thank Julian Alexander for his help. The police would take over now, he explained. The security chief looked so miffed that Gaston, thinking better of it, asked him to remain in the department as the senior representative of the university. Alexander was appeased at once. He arched his back, puffed out his chest and raised himself on the balls of his feet, so impressed was he with his own importance.
Then Gaston came over to me. I’d been going over the details of what I had seen and I was ready with my report. Finally, the detective skills I had developed as a bookseller would be put to good use! Customers ask for that book they “heard about on the radio the other day, the one about the woman who fell in love and moved away. I think the author’s last name began with a B.” With those few skimpy clues a good bookseller will be able to narrow down the search and find the book that the customer wants. It takes clever questioning, an ability to absorb and retain details about lots of different books, intuition, and sometimes inspired guesswork.
And I knew I was good at it. I told Gaston exactly what I’d seen, quickly and thoroughly, leaving nothing out. I was tempted to embellish my heroism in the few minutes after I discovered the body, but I had to report accurately that I had been frozen to the floor with shock. This was actually the only thing that had prevented me from stepping into Hilliard’s office and messing up the crime scene. I didn’t tell Gaston that.
“Sam, it is important that you write up all that you have just told me,” Lemieux said when I finished my oral report.
“I can do that,” I said looking around for a pen and pad. “If you can get me something to write on …”
“Not here. I want to keep the witnesses separated for the moment. I’ll meet you at the usual place for a coffee as soon as I get things moving here. Figure an hour, maybe an hour and a half.”
I didn’t want to leave but I calculated that the best way to remain involved in the investigation would be to follow Gaston Lemieux’s instructions to the letter. As I left the building I passed a group of cops carrying lab equipment and two men dressed in the light grey suits of the coroner’s office wheeling a gurney in the direction of the history department.
I considered what my next move should be. Now that I had my foot in the investigative door, I wasn’t taking it out until I got right inside the house. I walked across campus to the McGill University Bookstore to buy myself a notebook and a pen in order to write up my notes. I could have written my report quickly and returned to work until it was time to meet Gaston, but I didn’t.
I strolled very slowly along Sherbrooke Street, enjoying the special atmosphere of Montreal in the autumn, to the Café Paillon, “the usual place” where Gaston asked me to meet him. I chose a table near the back and got to work over a double allongé. When I finished writing I still had at least half an hour before I could reasonably expect Gaston to arrive. I let my mind wander.
How could I make myself indispensable to this investigation? It occurred to me that I could suppress some information for a short while and then report it at an opportune moment. It didn’t take me more than a minute’s reflection to reject that idea. I didn’t have much in the way of evidence to suppress, and besides, I knew Gaston well enough to know that wasn’t the best way to curry favour with him. After reviewing my options I decided that the role of amanuensis was my best bet. My notes were a good start and I would be ready to perform whatever “literary” chores came my way.
Gaston arrived at the café at about eleven o’clock. Another double allongé for me and a regular coffee for him.
We traded information. I told him that the history department had appeared deserted when I arrived and stayed that way while Arlene and I waited for the cops to arrive. He told me that the faculty were either at their nine o’clock classes or just hadn’t got to work yet. Professors who didn’t have early classes tended not to arrive much before ten o’clock. And after security was called Julian Alexander’s men didn’t allow anyone into or out of the building.
Arlene Ford was actually there but not at her desk; she had gone into the common room just off the reception area, intending to make coffee. She heard me go down the hall and knock at Hilliard’s office door. She came out to ask why I hadn’t waited at reception and she saw me react to seeing the corpse.
I gave Gaston my notes and he gave them a cursory once-over before he folded them neatly and slipped them into his pocket.
“I found something at the scene that I need your help with,” he told me. “The victim was clutching this in his right fist.” He reached into his outside jacket pocket and pulled out an evidence bag with a crumpled piece of paper in it. He smoothed the plastic bag out on the table in front of me and I saw that the piece of paper was a Dickens & Company special order form. “I was hoping you could tell me if this has any significance; other than the obvious, of course.”
We use a standard numbered form for all special orders, noting information about the book and the customer’s address and phone number. In this case the order number was 5643, nothing significant in that as far as I could see. The book on order was Cambridge History of England, Volume 3, The Sixteenth Century and the name of the customer was Professor H. Hilliard. There was no address, just a phone number. I turned it over to see if there was anything written on the back, but it was just a regular customer copy of a special order form.
Gaston leaned forward, both elbows on the table, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “This is serious, Sam. So listen carefully. What I have here is a man who discovers a corpse and just about the first thing we find, and find it clutched in the hand of the dead body, is a piece of evidence that points to that man — you. How do you explain that?”
“I don’t. I can’t.” I stammered.
“Was Hilliard expecting you?” I felt my tension gauge shoot up. Gaston was cross-examining me and it was making me nervous. “Well, not expecting me. But I came to see him about once a month to collect outstanding invoices.” I paused to catch my breath, which was becoming laboured. Gaining control of myself, and developing an unexpected sympathy for those who find themselves in the clutches of the police, I continued. “You can’t believe I had anything to do with his death other than finding the body. You know me. Why would I kill him?”
“You’re right. I know you and I don’t believe that you’re a murderer and I certainly can’t see any motive for you to kill Hilliard. But, and this is an important but, I’m not the only one who sees the evidence and the other homicide detectives don’t know you and might be less willing to believe you. So please, look into the order and see if you can get some information about it that is not apparent at this moment. Because this evidence makes you a suspect.”
I copied the information from the order form into my notebook and said nervously, “You bet I will. But, really, I can’t see anything special about this order. We order hundreds of books each week for our customers. This looks like one of many.”
I tend to ramble a bit when I’m nervous. It helps me to think without letting on what I’m thinking about. In this case my thoughts were: now I have another motive beyond curiosity to stick as close to this investigation as possible. I have to make sure that I don’t end up in trouble for something I didn’t do. I wanted to investigate a murder, not be accused of it.
We were about to leave when one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen walked past our table on her way out of the restaurant. As she approached us the woman suddenly broke out in a big smile. I smiled back, thinking that I must know her from somewhere. A customer, maybe? But would I forget a customer who looked like this amazing vision? Now her elegantly ringless hand was descending onto Gaston’s shoulder. “Guess who!” she said, laughing
Gaston, startled, turned and jumped out of his chair. “Gisèlé.” They hugged and did the Montreal two-cheek, all the while telling each other, in French, of course, how pleased they were to see one another. I got up, hoping to be introduced without delay.
“Sam,” he said. “This is my sister, Gisèle.”
“Plaisir,” she said, shaking my hand. I wanted to say something sophisticated but all I could do was mumble something in French and stare at the tall, slim, black-haired beauty whose firm, cool hand I was shaking. “My friend Sam Wiseman,” Gaston told her.
We all sat down again, she beside Gaston, and they launched into a rapid conversation in French, which I didn’t attempt to participate in. The gist of it was What a surprise to see you, what has been going on, I was just leaving, so were we, do you have time for coffee, no, I’m in the middle of a case, how is Papa? I tried not to eavesdrop on the siblings and to admire Gisèle without staring. I had an overpowering feeling that I wanted to run away with her to a desert island where we would spend the rest of our lives.
I gathered from various references in their conversation that she was a lawyer, working for a law partnership whose offices were just up the street. It was obvious from the easy animated way they talked to each other, in beautiful informal French, that they had a very close relationship. It was nice to see a warmer side of Lemieux. They agreed that it was too bad that they met so rarely. Gaston asked his sister to pass his love on to their mother and said that he would call her in a few days.
Then Gaston was back on his feet, saying that we really had to go. He looked at me inquiringly, “At least, I have to get back, but perhaps Sam would prefer to take another coffee?”
Gisèle then turned her dazzling smile on me for a moment and all my senses cut out. It took a moment for me to realize that she was apologizing to me and saying no, she couldn’t stay either as she had a client coming to meet with her in twenty minutes
In truth, I feared that if I stayed another second with Gisèle not only I would make a fool of myself by falling in love with a woman who was obviously far too beautiful for me, I would also miss out on the rest of the investigation. “I’d better go along with Gaston,” I said. Then glanced at him, anxiously, hoping he was expecting me to accompany him. “To ensure that I didn’t leave anything out of my report.”
Just then Gaston’s beeper went off. He lifted it off his belt and looked at the little display screen and said, “We’ve got to go. The lab team is almost ready to move the body. I want to take one last look at the scene before we lose control of it.” He reattached the beeper to his belt. We said our goodbyes, paid and left the café. Gisèle went off in the opposite direction, back to her law office.
“Your sister is delightful,” I said, feeling that the comment was totally inadequate.
“Yes, she is very charming,” he replied vaguely. He was lost in thought.
Part of me was hoping that we would drive back to the McGill campus in an unmarked police car, sirens blaring and with one of those flashing red lights stuck on the roof — sort of like Kojak. But Lemieux was a pretty low-key guy. We walked.
The day was still fine and as we went along I tried to get Lemieux to advise me on proper etiquette at the crime scene but he barely replied to my questions. He pretty much ignored me for the ten or fifteen minutes it took us to reach our destination.