I squeezed into the tiny Peugot I’d rented at the local friendly car-hire. The man suggested I “give it a whirl” around the harbour parking lot to get used to it, and that turned out to be good advice. I hadn’t driven a gearshift for years, and trying to deal with that with my left hand while getting accustomed to being on the wrong side of both car and road was challenging. I narrowly missed scraping the side of a van and moved too close to a pedestrian, almost giving her a heart attack. I crawled around for ten minutes or more before venturing out into the streets. Thank goodness Stornoway’s idea of rush hour was five cars waiting at the light, so it was easy to get into the traffic flow.
I did a couple of big loops of the town, which confirmed my initial impression of a clean, sensible place with no tacky areas to compare with Orillia, and certainly absolutely nothing like Toronto, with its constant struggle against dirt. My palms were sweaty but I was starting to relax somewhat when a motorcycle zoomed across my path, causing me to stop so suddenly I stalled the car. While I grappled with a gear-grinding jolt to get me going again, the leather-clad driver started to wave at me with manic glee. It was Lisa MacKenzie and she was gesticulating in the general direction of the Duke, from which I surmised she wanted me to join her.
I’d had enough of road anxiety by then, so I turned into the harbour parking lot again and manoeuvred myself into a space. I got out and looked around for meters, but there wasn’t one in sight, and I realized I hadn’t even seen any on the streets. What! A town that didn’t get an income from parking charges?
The Duke was in the next block over, and Lisa was waiting in the entrance.
“You’ll get the hang of it eventually,” she said with a grin. “I think you should try to go more than ten miles an hour though. It tends to slow down the traffic.”
“I will, I will. Just give me time.”
We went inside.
“I’m going up to see my brand-new niece. Do you want to come?”
“Sure. Love to.”
I followed her up the stairs, through the door marked PRIVATE and into a narrow, dark hall.
“How did you like the black houses?”
“Oh... we never got there.”
“What did you do then?”
“I watched the sheep-herding demonstration.”
She laughed. “That’s a crowd-pleaser. It’s Dad’s bread and butter.” She looked over at me. “How’s your investigation coming along? Any new news?”
I didn’t have to answer beyond a vague shrug because we were at the apartment. Lisa swept open the door with sisterly unconcern for privacy.
“Feasgar Mhah. Seo Lisa agus Christine.”
Mairi was sitting in an armchair with the infant suckling at her breast. Her greeting to me was warm, but with a drop several degrees towards Lisa. She said something in Gaelic, the meaning of which was clear when Lisa ostentatiously returned to the door and knocked on it.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think my sister was born in a barn,” Mairi commented to me.
“How’s Anna?”
The baby had fallen asleep replete with milk, a tiny drop caught on her upper lip. Mairi gazed down at her. “She’s latched on all right. She wants to feed non-stop though. I’ve no had time to even go to the loo.”
‘“Here, let me take her and you go pee,” said Lisa.
“She’s sleeping. Don’t wake her up.” Mairi handed over the baby.
“And I won’t drop her either, relax. Don’t hurry. Why don’t you get in a shower?”
Mairi got to her feet stiffly and shuffled off in the direction of the narrow hall at the rear of the living room. Lisa started to rock back and forth gently, in that instinctive way all we women seem to have with a baby in our arms. She started to croon to the sleeping infant. She was singing in Gaelic, but something most peculiar happened. I understood what she was saying. Less than a week ago, I would have sworn on a Bible that I’d never heard Gaelic in my life. Now, some strange atavistic memory was starting to surface like artifacts that had gone down with a ship and were now floating upward.
Considerably agitated by this sensation, which I both liked and disliked, I resorted to my old training. Have a look around. Get impressions. Take mental notes. It didn’t matter this wasn’t a case, that mental activity had become second nature. The grey, dreary afternoon had settled in, and the lack of light didn’t help the general appearance of the apartment. Two small windows faced out to the street, but the remainder of the rooms were located at the rear where Mairi had gone, which meant there wasn’t much natural light. She hadn’t switched on a lamp either. None of the furniture matched, and at the moment the room was messy with baby gear, including a large playpen that Anna wouldn’t be needing for some months yet. As if picking up on my thoughts, Lisa flicked the light switch on.
“Bloody gloomy in here.” She was doing a soft jog around the room, and she indicated the brightly coloured playpen. “Tormod gave her that. Too bad he didna get to see you, eh, gle bheag Anna.”
She’d said, “very small Anna.” I was starting to spook myself out. Logically I could believe that Joan had said these words to me when I was “very small,” and they had rested buried in my subconscious until now, but it was a strange sensation, rather like having another personality emerge, as in The Three Faces of Eve. I could only hope my buried Gaelic-speaking self was benign.
“Bugger!” Lisa had tripped over a dirty plate and beer bottle on the floor. “Ha. Colin leaves his spoor behind as usual.” She looked angry. “You’d think the man’d make an effort to tidy up seeing as how his wife just had his baby.” She shifted the infant to one arm and bent to pick up the plate.
“Here, I’ll do that.” I started to collect some of the other spoor, a half-filled mug of tea and a glass, and headed for the kitchen. The counter was covered with a mess of plates with partially eaten food on them, tea-stained mugs, and more empty beer bottles. Lisa joined me, still jiggling Anna.
“I almost forgot to tell you. You know you said to let you know if I discovered anything was missing from the house?”
I nodded, squeezing brilliant green dish soap into the pan.
“I slept over there last night, and I was so restless I decided to sort out some of Tormod’s things. I know Miss Cheerio will want to get her mitts on anything worthwhile, but I thought I’d put in my dibs for anything of sentimental value. I knew she wouldn’t want his paperbacks, so I went into the bedroom.” She half-grinned at me. “You’ve got me wondering about everything. Well, I’m sure the cushion was gone from his chair. I didn’t notice when we first looked around, because I mean, who looks for cushions? But I sat down to open up the drawer, and there was no cushion on the chair. It was one he wove himself when he was just learning, so it was old and ratty, but I can’t imagine he’d throw it away. Those tweeds endure forever.”
“Are you sure it was there when you were last in the bedroom?”
“I can’t swear it, but I did read to him that last time, and I’m sure I would have noticed if it wasn’t on the chair — the way I did this time when I sat down.”
“Was the chair right beside the bed?”
“Usually it is, but this time it was over by the dresser.” She jiggled little Anna in her arms. “Is it important, do you think?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. Perhaps he spilled something and decided to chuck the cushion out.”
“I looked in the outside dustbin. There was no sign of it.”
The baby mewed and smacked her lips. Lisa gave her the tip of her little finger to suck. “Wow, what a grip.”
We actually hadn’t heard Mairi come back into the room.
“What are you two doing?”
“Cleaning up, what’s it look like?”
“Lisa, for Lord’s sake, Christine is our guest. She shouldn’t be doing dishes.”
“Please, I don’t mind at all. You’ve got enough to deal with.”
On cue, Anna opened up her mouth, the lack of teeth making it seem huge, and wailed the thin mewling of the newborn.
Mairi reached for her. “Surely she’s no hungry again.”
It seemed she was, and Mairi went back to her armchair, lifting her blouse as she did so. Lisa took a tea towel and began to dry the dishes, then opened the cupboard door, looking for a home for the mugs. She called over her shoulder to her sister.
“What do you want me to do with Colin’s empties?”
“There’s a carton under the sink. Put them in there.”
Lisa opened the cupboard door revealing two twelve packs filled with empties. “There’s no more room,” she called to Mairi.
“Oh Lisa, for God’s sake, give it a rest.”
“You married him,” Lisa muttered.
I continued to act with selective deafness to this rancour. A final whisk of the dish cloth and we were done.
“By the way, while we’re on the subject of Tormod,” Lisa said. “Mr. Douglas, his solicitor, rang me this morning. Apparently, Tormod left a message on his answer phone. He must have done that on Friday night after the office was closed. He said he wanted to add a codicil to his will.”
“Really? What was the codicil?”
“According to Mr. Douglas, Tormod didn’t specify. He just wanted Mr. Douglas to give him an appointment as soon as possible to make it legal.”
We had made our way back into the living room, and Mairi heard this remark.
“Make what legal?”
Lisa explained. Her sister frowned.
“Is that going to effect the terms of the will?”
“I don’t see why. I did ask Mr. Douglas, and he told me Tormod would have had to put any such request in writing, even if he had said what he intended, which he didn’t.”
Mairi removed her nipple from the voracious infant’s mouth and shifted her to the other breast, wincing as the baby latched on.
“Our Lisa is an heiress,” she said to me.
Lisa snorted. “Hardly that, Mars.”
“You’ll get a good price for that house.”
“I’m not going to sell it.”
She’d obviously forgotten her vow to turn the property into a sex joint.
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
Being around these two was like experiencing a series of depth charges — under the water, but showing themselves by boats rocking violently. Lisa sat down across from her sister, watching the baby feeding. I took the other chair and watched, too. Where else are you going to look? Lisa addressed me.
“It seems that I have inherited Tormod’s entire estate, house and all.”
“So I gather.”
“It’s sort of complicated. Tormod made a will, oh, about a six months ago, after I’d come to work for him.”
She cast a quick glance at her sister, ready to do battle if necessary. Mairi scrunched up her face, but it could have been the baby chomping down.
“Anyway, in that will, Andy got the house, I got five hundred pounds, and the church got another five. But then, Tormod made yet another will, only a few days ago, and made me his sole heir.”
“I don’t understand it,” said Mairi. “Why would a man cut out his own flesh and blood?”
Lisa was working hard to keep her cool. She kept talking to me, but really she was explaining to her sister.
“I think I know what happened. Remember those airline tickets? He’d sold the house to Coral-Lyn’s father, and I bet he then thought the money would just go into his bank account. He’d been asking all sorts of questions about medical treatments in America, especially liver transplants. I don’t know if you know, but the medical system over there is private. If you can pay, you can get what you need.”
I did know that was true, and it was a big bone of contention in Ontario with our universal free health services, which many people thought were inadequate. There were a lot of people with money who hoped it could buy them everything.
“You think that’s why he was going to Texas?”
“Yes. I went on the Internet and did a search. There’s a big hospital in Houston that does great work with his kind of illness. But you have to pay.”
“What does this have to do with him changing his will over to you?” Mairi asked.
“If you hold on, I’m getting to that. I told you, Tormod would-n’t accept the fact that his days were numbered. I believe he thought he’d spend all that money on his treatment. Andy was taken care of by Shirley Temple, so he was all right. Me and the church could divide whatever was left in his account. He never thought it through. Mr. Douglas said he was his usual stubborn self. ‘I’m not on my way out yet, Jim.’ Quote, unquote. Unfortunately, the deal wasn’t closed. The concluding missives or whatever they’re called hadn’t been exchanged. The house was technically still his when he died. Therefore, it comes to me.” She chewed on a piece of skin at the side of her thumb. “Coral-Lyn will probably contest it, though.”
Mairi looked as if she were about to say something, but she thought better of it.
“In which case, I’ll just get what was in his savings account, which I know for a fact was negligible. It might not even be as much as the bequest. His house was the only thing he owned of value.”
I thought this the moment for the truth.
“Lisa, did you know that Tormod had accepted a second offer on the house? Sarah MacDonald had done a gazump. He was selling to a group of Norwegians for a higher price.”
She stared at me in astonishment. “That greedy bastard.”
“Did that deal go through?” asked Mairi.
“No, it wasn’t concluded either. The house still legally belongs to his heir. To Lisa.”
“Lucky her.”
Suddenly, Lisa got up and knelt down in front of Mairi, putting her hands on her knees.
“You and Anna can come and live with me. It’ll be much better than this shit-hole. You don’t want to raise her on top of a bar. The house has a great little garden. There’s lots of room.”
An expression of defeat crossed Mairi’s face. “You forget I’m married. You might take marriage vows lightly, but I don’t.”
She might as well have slapped Lisa in the face. She jumped up.
“Well, fuck you then.”
“Oh that’s nice language in front of your niece.”
Not to mention my delicate ears, but they both seemed oblivious of my presence. That, or I was a good audience. They were speaking English.
“That remark wasn’t called for. I told you, I’m not seeing him any more.”
Mairi’s despair at her own situation made her strike out, fierce as a cornered cat.
“Where were you then?”
“When? What are you talking about?”
“Last weekend, that’s when.” She raised her voice, mockingly. “‘So sorry, Mairi, I can’t come over till Sunday. I have so much studying to do.’ Well, that’s not what I was told when I rang the school. They said all your examinations were finished for the term.”
Lisa stared at her, icy cold with anger. “So, I needed a break. I didn’t want to work in the bar. You know how I feel about it.”
“Where were you then?”
Lisa shrugged. “I just hung out at the school until Sunday.”
“Really? If that’s the case, why did they tell me you had signed out on Friday?”
“Oh, fuck you, Mairi.”
And out she went, leaving Mairi and I and infant singed in the fire.