The following afternoon I walked out Cedar Hill Road to what I was determined – again – would be my final meeting with Lukswaas. I knew however, that we would make love one more time. Only afterwards could I have the resolution to break with her. I hated myself for calculating this, but called it necessity.
The previous night I had visited Wiladzap in his cell. Wiladzap had been eating some of the smoked salmon which had been brought to him, of a sort so hard and dry that it preserved well. He would not speak, but smiled slightly at me, as if he knew there was a special relationship between us – which there was, in the sense that I was working to try and exonerate him, but also in the sense that Wiladzap did not know about: that while he lay on his paliasse in his bare brick-walled cage, his wife had been giving herself to me, out in the wild forest.
When I arrived at the usual meeting place, I stopped and looked around. There was a rustle in the bushes near the path, and Lukswaas stood up. I went toward her, and her tawny cheeks blushed. She looked confused. She reached out and stroked my light grey frock-coat. I realized it was the first time she had seen me in civilian clothes. She would understand nothing of these clothes – that they were in English taste rather than American, or as I saw it, in good taste rather than bad. She was only curious. I felt the gulf between us: me, used to living in layers of civilized concealment, she living with that nakedness which came most naturally to her and which now I desired. But first I held her by the shoulders and looked at her handsome chilcat of light blue and black patterns, clasped over her breasts with a carved wooden pin; her arms with their silver bracelets; her hair with its central parting and neat braids hanging behind her ears with their abalone earrings; at her face, brown but flushed, wide-cheekboned but refined in its length and the firmly cut mouth; her teeth scrubbed whiter than those of most white girls I had seen; her nose fine and straight; her black almond eyes quick and sensitive. ‘I love you’, I could not help saying in English as I stooped and kissed her and held her to me, feeling her hand stroking my back.
We moved apart and she told me we could go down through the forest to a place she had found by the sea. Instead of following her, as I usually did in the dark, I held her hand and we made our way side by side down through the trees. The firs began to be interspersed with arbutus and oak as the land became rockier and better drained by gullies and ravines, then the forest ended at the edge of a bluff, almost a clifftop, though only fifty feet or so high, the sea azure below. Lukswaas pointed out a path descending a gully, and we followed it down over rocks and an almost dried-up stream and into a mass of brambles, with berries like flattened raspberries but yellow and unripe. Pushing carefully through these on the almost invisible path we emerged suddenly onto a beach of soft white sand, in a tiny cove hemmed in by rocky bluffs out of which arbutus trees stuck at crazy angles. The sea splashed gently in white lines along the beach, which was only a hundred feet or so across, half of it blinding white in the sun, the other half, where we stood, in the shade.
Without a word we abandoned ourselves to our usual feverish embrace, taking off clothes, throwing ourselves onto Lukswaas’s chilcat on the sand, giving ourselves to each other, and ending with a convulsive sigh. Then we lay dreamily as usual, although this time there was the glow of multicoloured light through my eyelids. I opened them and looked up through a net of weird red arbutus branches and their dark green leaves to the sky. Lukswaas stirred. She smiled and ran her fingers through my hair. ‘Boo woo’, she said imitating our last shuddering breath. Then she pointed to the sea and explained in her halting Chinook that ‘Boo woo’ was the noise of the whale as it spouted, and it was the word the Tsimshian used for the moment at the end of loving, when the man and woman blew out the breath of life like whales …
I could have, I should have, allowed myself to enjoy this innocently pleasurable remark. But how many other times had she experienced this ‘boo woo’? It hurt me to think of how naively I gave myself to her – to her sweetness, her ‘cleanly wantonness’ as I remembered from some old poem. She gave herself too, but for her it was an episode among many.
I sat up, and Lukswaas too. I got to my feet, and she too, as if wanting not to lose me. She even took my hand – shyly, it seemed. Perhaps the Indians did not usually hold hands. I walked forward into the sun, and could not help enjoying its heat on my skin as I stood looking at the sea. I stepped forward, Lukswaas still holding my hand trustingly, and into the leading wave as it crossed the sand. We both gasped. It was freezing. We stepped back. I looked at us both. A naked woman, tall, brown and lithe, and a naked man, taller and white. In fact, since both of us were slim and smooth skinned, our body hair curly and fine, we looked not much more than a gangling boy and a very pretty girl.
I asked in Chinook how old Lukswaas was, wondering if she knew. She said she was eighteen, and held up ten fingers, then eight. She asked me the same question. I said I was twenty three, and held up all ten fingers twice, then three. We smiled at each other. I could have cried. It was time for me to speak.
I said we could not see each other again. It was not possible. It was not right.
Lukswaas said, changing the subject in an illogical way, that Wiladzap was in the jail. When would he be free? Was I closer to finding the murderer?
I said that I was still working to find the murderer, and I hoped I would, although time was short. In truth, although I did not tell Lukswaas this, I was more hopeful, since I was planning to ask Pemberton for permission to interview Beaumont on San Juan Island: I found it hard to believe that Beaumont could have murdered McCrory, but there were more questions and more of a mystery surrounding Beaumont than anybody else, and this gave me a sort of twisted hope – like one of the arbutus growing crazily out of the rock.
Lukswaas bit her lip and looked at me, frowning. Then she begged me to do all I could to find out who had killed the doctor. Wiladzap must be set free of the jail. How was Wiladzap? Did he eat? Did he walk? What did he say to me?
Yes, he ate a little. And he walked once a day. But he had said nothing. I returned to my original subject. I reached out, took Lukswaas’s hand, and looked into its palm. As I did so I could feel my desire returning, my body coming alive to her. ‘Halo nanitsh nika mesika, mesika nika.’ I said vehemently. (‘Not see I you, you me’). I dropped her hand and turned away.
‘Kahta?’ I heard her say. (‘Why?’).
I turned back wearily to face her, my desire at least gone as I was out of reach of her, and I was trying not to see her as I spoke. ‘Kehwa Wiladzap’, I said. (‘Because of Wiladzap’).
Lukswaas said with what seemed to me unreasonable stubbornness, that while Wiladzap was still in jail we could see each other.
It was as if she did not understand complex feelings at all, I thought. I hated her for the brutal simplicity of her mind: yes, so long as Wiladzap was in jail we were free to see each other. So we would. Enough.
She was looking at me with an intense, worried expression. Then this softened and turned vulnerable. ‘Mesika tikegh nika?’ She asked. (‘Do you love me?’)
I felt deeply touched. ‘Nika tikegh mesika’ I said. Then, for good measure I added what I had said earlier in English. ‘I love you.’
She recognized the words, and smiled. Then she said that when Wiladzap was free from jail, I could have a talk with him. She said that if she could not be with me she would cry and cry. This was as simple in Chinook as English: ‘Nika cly, cly, cly.’
She turned away as if afraid of having said too much. She had. It was indeed too much for me. Was she proposing a sort of trade, where Wiladzap would sell Lukswaas to me? I felt excited, flattered, horrified, and sick.
‘Mesika klootchman Wiladzap, halo klootchman nika’, I said. (‘You woman Wiladzap, not woman me’).
‘Ihtah?’ (‘What’) She looked at me in surprise. ‘Klootchman Wiladzap? Nika klootchman Wiladzap? Wake. Nika ats Wiladzap. Ats.’ (‘Woman Wiladzap? I woman Wiladzap? No. I sister Wiladzap. Sister.’)
I felt as if I had walked into a wall: my body tingled with shock from head to toe. ‘Mesika ats Wiladzap?’ I said numbly. (‘You sister Wiladzap?’).
‘Mesika ats Wiladzap’, she repeated. Then for good measure she added that Wiladzap was her brother. She looked at me impatiently, as if this was obvious and I was being stupid.
‘Nika tum tum mesika klootchman Wiladzap,’ I said slowly. (‘I mind you woman Wiladzap’). I remembered the question she had been asked by Pemberton at the courthouse: ‘Mesika klootchman Tyee?’ Literally, ‘You woman chief?’, meaning the chief’s wife. I repeated it to Lukswaas now: ‘Mesika klootchman Tyee!’
‘Klootchman Tyee? Ah-ha. Klootchman Tyee! Nika Klootchman! Nika Tyee!’ Lukswaas’s voice had risen in a kind of panic.
At last I understood. She was saying ‘Woman chief. Yes. Woman chief. I woman. I chief.’ She was a chief in her own right – there was the mistake.
Lukswaas was backing away from me, her eyes open wide in horror. Her mouth also opened wide and she raised one hand and covered it, still backing away. Horror … I had never seen anything like it, and I felt myself invaded by it, my own eyes and mouth opening wide, as I felt a deep internal chill which seemed to freeze even my heart. I had been making love to a mere girl, thinking she was another man’s wife. My God. I struggled with Chinook: ‘Kunish, kunish man kopa mesika elip nika?’ I called out to her in agony – how many men had been with her before me?
‘Halo man, halo man. Ikt. Ikt. Mesika!’ (‘No man, no man. One. One. You.’) She was shaking her head, still in horror. ‘Klootchman Wiladzap?’ She repeated. (‘Woman Wiladzap?’).
‘Nika wake kumtuks’, I said desperately. (‘I not know’).
‘Wake, wake’. (‘No, no’). She clamped her hand over her mouth again, shaking her head slowly, eyes still horrified.
I felt like death. Our love had been killed on this beach. Of course Indian women were different, she had been more forward with me than a white girl would have been, but I had asked her to meet me in the forest, and she had accepted under the same innocent and overpowering compulsion as mine. But my compulsion must now be seen as a cynical adultery. What we had done was no longer the same, because while we had done it I had thought she was merely another man’s wife in an act of betrayal. I could see all this clearly, but tried to redeem some of it with what was, after all, the truth, calling out in Chinook that while Lukswaas was in my arms I forgot the whole world. ‘Lukswaas!’ I called, but it was as if my words bounced back at me off a stone.
Lukswaas broke suddenly from her position of rigid horror, and dashed across the beach to our clothes. She seized her apron and slipped it on, stepped into her moccasins while pulling her chilcat around her shoulders, and ran away, scrambling through the bushes and into the gulley. I followed her, but half-heartedly, half-paralysed by a huge sense of guilt and stupidity. I stood naked on the beach, hearing the rocks scrape as she made her way up the gulley, then nothing.
I went over to the pile of clothes. She had abandoned my ring, on its leather thong, throwing it in the sand, I picked it up and put it around my neck with her stone, and dressed wearily. All my movements were slow. I looked listlessly around from time to time. My eyes kept being drawn to something which at last I went to examine, dragging my feet. It was a gouged out area behind some rocks just above the high water mark. I realized it was a place where a boat had been pulled in and beached. I thought of Beaumont’s possible trips alone from San Juan, although Beaumont had mentioned landing at Telegraph Cove, a mile to the East. It would take a strong man to haul a boat this far up on the beach. I crouched down and examined the pebbles. Some were marked with brown varnish. But this was common to all boat bottoms.
Who would beach a boat in such an isolated place? But this was soon lost in a return of my agony about Lukswaas.
* * *
I trudged through the forest and back to the road, aware of nothing until I saw a figure on the road in front of me. My heart leaped. I thought it was Lukswaas. But no, it was a man who, to my surprise immediately jumped off the road and took to the woods. Suddenly alert, I tried to follow the man with my eyes, but lost him almost at once. A man in a straw hat darting into the bushes. I might have followed him, out of suspicion, but felt too crushed and weary. I trudged back through the forest, and along Cedar Hill Road.
The implications of what Lukswaas had told me were too painful to consider. Instead I tried to think of the implications for Wiladzap. These seemed so important that I decided to take the unprecedented step of calling on Augustus Pemberton, whose house at the top of Fort Street I would pass on my way into town.
It was late afternoon by the time I reached the house, too early for Pemberton to have dined. I rang, and was admitted by the maid, then shown into a small sitting room or ‘parlour’. It was amusing really, to contrast this simple wooden house – which nevertheless by Victoria’s standards was quite elegant – with the grand Georgian terrace in which no doubt a man of Pemberton’s standing would be living in Dublin, where he had come from.
Pemberton did not keep me waiting, nor did he seem annoyed to see me. Victoria is informal compared to the Old World. ‘Well, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Not on duty, I see.’
‘No. But I have just learned something of importance in the case of Wiladzap, which I feel I should communicate to you.’
‘Of course. What is it? Sit down.’ We sat facing each other in stiff wooden backed chairs.
‘I have learned from the Tsimshian a fact about which we have been in error. The young woman Lukswaas is not Wiladzap’s wife, she’s his sister.’
‘Really? Yes, that is a surprise. Did we not establish the relationship clearly in our interrogations?’
‘I don’t think so. Superintendent Parry and I merely assumed she was Wiladzap’s wife, out at the camp. And then, with the vagaries of Chinook…’
‘That’s no excuse,’ Pemberton interrupted. ‘Chinook’s all right if you know how to use it. There’s a word “ats” for a younger sister, and “klootchman” means either “woman” or “wife” – understandably, since among these people we are not always talking about formal marriages. A wife becomes a woman, becomes a wife again, if you see what I mean. But did she not admit she was Wiladzap’s woman?’
‘I’ve gone through it in my mind, and what I recall is that you asked, “Mesika klootchman Tyee?” Meaning “You are the chief’s wife?” But Tyee means any chief or highly placed person. She herself is highly placed. I think she understood your question as “Are you a chief woman?” Which, in her own way, she seems to be. So she said yes. Of course it would be far from her mind to guess we might consider her the wife of her brother. But from our point of view, she seemed to be treated as his wife: to have a status in relationship to him, to be dressed similarly, and wear bracelets of silver which somehow seems appropriate for a chief’s wife. And at the same time, according to the man Smgyiik’s accusation, she was the object of Wiladzap’s murderous jealousy.’ Here my vehemence might have betrayed some of my agony, if Pemberton, always hasty, had not interrupted again.
‘Nothing more natural,’ he said. ‘The Northern tribes, the Tsimshian and the Haida, are not very well known to us, of course. But I remember Mr Begbie saying that among them the descent of property is matrilineal, that is from mother to daughter. It gives the women a certain status. And I think you’re correct. It was stupid of me not to have been more precise in the interrogation. I too was making assumptions according to my prejudices. Of course she may have a sort of “Tyee” status in her own right. At the same time, as a woman in a matrilineal tribe she would be in the custody, as it were, of her brother. In fact this woman Lukswaas is probably more precious to Wiladzap as a sister than she would be as a wife. These people tend to take on wives and put them away rather easily. But I suppose a sister is always a sister.’
‘Oh God, I’ve been so stupid,’ I said passionately.
‘Come, come. You’ve done a good job, you can’t be perfect. At least you’ve found out this detail now. But mind, Chad, it will if anything make Wiladzap’s case more difficult.’
‘What?’ I snapped out of my own self-pity.
‘You and I may well feel that the case is mitigated by the, let us say, “chivalric” aspect of Wiladzap’s avenging his sister’s honour. A jury may even feel the same. But they’ll send him to the gallows as readily as in the other case. The jealousy of an Indian over his squaw may occasionally provoke murder, but more often he merely sends her away. If she repents and behaves well he may accept her back, although he may have a new wife by then. The old one, the sinner, may have to become the servant of the new. It’s like that among the Salish tribes around here, at any rate. No one knows about the Tsimshian. But a man murdering another for an insult to his sister! It’s punishable by the rope. In law it establishes the mens rea, the intention to commit the crime. Forgive me, you have a law degree, so you know this.’
‘Yes, I see.’ I sighed. Pemberton was hasty, but quick-minded. I could find no argument to contradict him.
‘On the other hand your report was very provoking,’ Pemberton went on. ‘I must confess I was left disturbed by your revelations of this secret world of McCrory’s. It’s out of just such a secret world that the most heinous crimes often emerge. Yet the circumstantial case against Wiladzap is strong enough! And your insinuations about various citizens of this Colony, while disturbing, are not enough to cast doubt on Wiladzap’s guilt. I’m afraid you’ve failed to make an alternative case. Therefore the trial must proceed, and I’m sure Mr Parry has other duties for you. The Sergeant’s stripes will of course remain on your arm. You’ve done a fine and conscientious job.’
‘Thank you, Sir. But I have one more request. An awkward one.’
‘Oh dear. But go ahead.’
‘I talked to George Beaumont, yesterday, the Marine Lieutenant.’
‘Ah yes. From English Camp. I don’t know the fellow. The one who haunted the Windsor Rooms with McCrory. Nothing surprising there. These military chaps have spent time in foreign parts, and they often don’t have wives. At least his case is not so utterly foul as the pox-ridden “man of the cloth” your report so unkindly mentions.’ Pemberton laughed. ‘But I can tell you, having lived in Dublin, that nothing about men of the cloth comes as a surprise to me.’
‘This chap Beaumont. I saw him socially yesterday. Last week he lied to me about his association with McCrory – saying he had only met him at Sunday afternoon teas.’
‘Ah yes, the Somervilles. The mother was a “looker” in her time, but I’m sure there has been no hint, ever, of impropriety in her life.’
‘I’m sure there has not. At any rate Beaumont admitted to me yesterday that he had in fact been pretty thick with McCrory, gone to the Windsor Rooms, and so on.’
‘You wouldn’t expect him to admit it the first time, Chad.’
‘Perhaps not. But Sir, the most important thing is this: I asked him where he was on the afternoon McCrory was killed, and he couldn’t really say. He made a remark about doing some rough-shooting on San Juan Island. I’m sure that if he had been on duty he would have said so. I know he has rowed or sailed across the Straits in the past, even on his own.’
‘All right, Sergeant, sum it up for me,’ Pemberton said rather wearily.
‘Three things, Sir. First, his name is George, and he’s a “King George Devil” if ever there was – something Byronic about him.’
‘Really, Chad. Evidence, not mere impression.’
‘I meant that the vivid impression of him as a “King George Devil” or a “George Devil” might be communicated, in a few words, by a dying man.’
‘All right.’
‘Second, there’s the association, the sexual imbroglio, if you like, between the two men – so productive, as you say, of violent feelings, and especially in this case where there is evidence he was being treated by the Doctor, either formally as a patient, or informally as a friend, for a nervous problem to do with women.’
‘Yes. “Witherspoon”’, said Pemberton dryly.
‘Third, he does not provide an alibi for the day of the murder. My point is, Sir, that under ordinary circumstances – if he were, say, a merchant in this town – I know that I should have no compunction in requiring him to provide an alibi for that afternoon, and in submitting him to formal questioning.’
‘You’re right, of course. It’s so damned inconvenient, his being a military man. If guilty of a crime he must be tried and sentenced by military court. Those are the rules here, even if the crime is against a civilian. A city policeman doesn’t even, I think, have the right to question him in a case like this, except in the presence of a superior officer. A most embarrassing situation it would be if we – it would have to be you and I together, they would merely shoo a junior like you away from the Camp – if we quizzed a man on the details of his intimate life in front of his commanding officer, and our suspicions were proved to be groundless.’
‘We might start with the alibi, not the more sordid details; and he has admitted to keeping company with McCrory.’
‘Do you seriously think he was involved in this murder?’
‘On the one hand I don’t believe he could have been – as an officer and gentleman, of course, and a civilised chap, although somewhat strange. But his involvement with McCrory is unexplained. What I might call the logic of the situation seems to involve him,’
‘Of course, my boy. But to get back to mens rea, where is it? Why would he murder McCrory at that moment? Where was the provocation? And so on. But I take your point. Although it’s most distasteful to me. I shall think about it for a day or two, then if I still feel as I do now I shall compose a most tactful note to Captain Delacombe, Mr Beaumont’s commanding officer on San Juan, and suggest that you and I pay a visit to ask a few “official questions, for the record” to Mr Beaumont, early next week. There’s no hurry. Myself, I used to rush into things when I was your age – a tendency I’ve curbed with great difficulty. It will be three weeks, I think, before Wiladzap comes to trial, so there’s time. I think you’re leading us on a wild goose chase, but I’m ready to back you up on it. One thing, Chad. If an interview with Beaumont should prove to be very embarrassing, your head will fall.’
‘I understand, Sir.’
I had meant to pursue with Pemberton the subject of getting Wiladzap a better lawyer than Mulligan, but now was not the time. With a rather stiff return to formality, Pemberton showed me to the door.