39
A drowning
At last the butterfly grew tired of being looked at (which seemed to be its chief occupation) and flew off. I reminded Dr. McComb that there was something in the oven that might burn up. We wended our weary way back to the house.
Overseeing the pan he took out of the oven—brownies!—I asked him what kind of butterfly it was. A Dogface, he said. I objected to that name for something so pretty. Then he told me a lot more about it than I needed to know, as he shook powdered sugar over the pan of brownies. I said my mother does that with cakes, only she places a doily on top and then the powdered sugar makes a perfect design. I went on in some detail about my mother’s cakes, which was probably more than he needed to know, so I guess we were even.
But Dr. McComb didn’t seem to mind at all, probably from a lifetime of listening to patients go on about their ills. (Imagine having Aurora Paradise as a patient!) He said my mother was the best cook he’d ever come across and was I one, too?
The question kind of staggered me because it was, after all, a reasonable question. Yet I can’t remember ever having asked it of myself, maybe because of the hint in it of death. I don’t think I really believe that my mother will die and I will then have to carry on. Me taking my mother’s place in the kitchen is the most harebrained notion I can imagine.
“I can’t cook worth a lick,” I said, I suppose to lay that notion to rest. I sat chin in hands watching the brownie pan while Dr. McComb went about the coffee. “I’m pretty good at bartending, though,” I added.
“Are you now? I like martinis, myself. Vodka.”
“That’s Mrs. Davidow’s favorite drink. But martinis are easy; they don’t take any imagination.” I watched him cut the brownies into squares.
“Martinis aren’t supposed to. They’re supposed to make you drunk.”
The brownies were now on the Blue Willow plate. I looked them over. “Well, you can get drunk with imagination as well as without it, can’t you? I’m talking about drinks that take two or three kinds of liquor. Among other things, of course. They’re my inventions. Cold Comfort’s one of them. That’s made with Southern Comfort.”
We both took the two largest brownies. He said, “That sounds imaginative all right. What else goes in it?”
“I’m sorry. The recipe’s a secret.” The recipe changed every time I made one, which was why it was a secret.
“Maybe you can make one for me sometime.”
“I’d be pleased.”
I drew from my pocket the page I had copied from his book, unfolded it, and slid it across the table.
“That looks familiar.” He seemed pleased.
“I got it from the library. I didn’t want to check the book out because other readers wouldn’t see it then. There was only the one copy.”
He sat down and studied it, nodding. “I remember this day well.”
“Where’s Hatter’s Hill?”
“Mile or two the other side of Hebrides.”
Hebrides was the nearest big town. I loved it, for it had department stores and bookstores and candy shops. Stores that we didn’t have in La Porte. I liked to do my Christmas shopping there.
“I liked what you wrote there.”
He smiled. “Well, thank you.”
“You said you looked out over fields that seemed endless and ‘bereft of adornment.’ That’s very pretty. There’s a piece of land I look at sometimes and I get that same feeling. Only I can’t explain the feeling.”
“Where’s that?”
“Cold Flat Junction.”
“I haven’t been over there in a long while. It always struck me as deserted. A strange place. A sad place.”
Sad wasn’t really the right word, but I didn’t want to waste time thinking up the right word, as I wanted to get around to Mary-Evelyn’s death. The coffee tasted surprisingly good with the brownie. Dr. McComb is the only person who has ever offered me coffee. “It must take a lot of patience to watch butterflies.”
“Does. It takes a lot of patience to watch anything. I mean really see it.” He had polished off one brownie and was now studying the plate for another. “Most people aren’t really very observant.” He took the brownie I had my eye on. I guess we were both ultraobservant.
“But if you’re a doctor, you really have to be. I mean, you’ve got to be able to tell things—oh, like about death. What people die from. Don’t you always have to fill out those certificates?”
“Death certificates? Yes. Not anymore, though.” He sighed. I couldn’t tell from the sigh whether he did or didn’t miss writing out death certificates.
“It’s probably not easy, a lot of the time. I mean some deaths can look like they’re caused by more than one thing.”
“True.”
I smiled. What I liked about Dr. McComb (and the Sheriff, and Maud) was that he didn’t tell me I was being morbid, or I should be out playing ball. And he didn’t look fearful. I’ve noticed how easily adults become fearful when children say something they don’t expect.
I went on: “Like, you can’t tell that somebody’s died of a particular poison unless you go looking for that particular poison.”
“You been reading up, I’d say.” He poured us some more coffee. “I’m glad I made the brownies and not you.” He laughed.
Eating my second brownie, I said, “Oh, it’s just interesting. Especially about poisons.” I was getting good at this. “I guess arsenic is the most common to murder someone, right?”
He munched and frowned. “I can’t say with any certainty. I haven’t come upon such cases. I’ve come on accidental poisonings, of course. But poison in that case is pretty obvious. Kids getting into things, stuff like that. Or sedatives, taking too many, which of course might not be accidental at all.”
I brought up shootings.
“You’ve been hanging around Sam DeGheyn too much. What about them?”
“Didn’t you ever have someone get shot you had to pronounce dead?”
“Yeah, sure. Hunting season’s full of ’em.”
“But that’s accidental. I mean deliberate.”
He shook his head. I thought it was safe now to bring up drowning, drowning as just one way of dying among others. “How about drowning? Can you always tell that?”
“You mean tell if someone did or didn’t? Oh, sure. Your lungs fill up with water, you drown. No way I’d mistake that.”
I paused, frowning, as if thinking hard. “Remember Mary-Evelyn Devereau?”
“How could I forget? How could anyone forget that poor little girl?”
I stopped eating. That expression, tears sprung to my eyes, actually described it. It was the surprise at finding Mary-Evelyn’s death was important to somebody else, and after all this time.
Dr. McComb pushed the Blue Willow plate toward me and then took out one of his cigars.
“I know she drowned—”
He sighed. “Indeed she did. No two ways about that.”
“But can you be sure”—I should have led up to this question more, but I was getting impatient—“where she drowned?”
Dr. McComb stopped in the act of lighting his cigar. “What? She drowned in Spirit Lake.” He looked at me for quite a time. “You getting at something?”
I shrugged. “Oh, I was just thinking. Here’s an example: what if I shoved Jane Davidow’s head (it hadn’t taken long to scare up an example) down in a bucket of water until she drowned. Then I dragged her dead body (I can’t deny I was enjoying this) to Spirit Lake or Lake Noir and dumped her in. How would you know she didn’t drown there?”
“How? Well, it’d look pretty damned suspicious for one thing.” He dragged in on his cigar, hollowing out his cheeks.
“Why? What if everyone knew she wasn’t a good swimmer?” Which she wasn’t. “Okay, so it looks suspicious, say. What would you do?”
“Analyze the water. See if it was lake water. See if it was that lake water.” He rolled his cigar around in pouty lips and gazed at me. “What you’re talking about is the Devereau girl, isn’t it? You’re saying maybe that girl didn’t drown in Spirit Lake, but elsewhere.”
There wasn’t much use beating around the bush, I guessed. “I’m saying”—I chomped my brownie—“they killed her.”
Dr. McComb finished lighting his cigar as he stared at me. He seemed unable to say a word. He did not make fun of me or try to dismiss the idea. I knew he wouldn’t.
“You thought it was strange, too, you said so.”
He nodded.
I went on: “Of course, they could still have done it in the lake, only probably on the other side, the side their house was on, for it would have been nearly impossible to take her through the woods and get her into a boat without her yelling or crying. If she was alive, I mean. Ulub would’ve heard her if she’d yelled. You know he was there because he came with Ubub to tell you.” Carefully, I cut the last brownie on the plate in half. I took one half and pushed the plate across to him. But he didn’t seem to notice. He sucked in on his cigar. I ate my brownie, trying not to swing my legs under the table the way I did when I was little. He was looking around the kitchen as if it weren’t his and he couldn’t make out whose it was. Then he studied the ash end of his cigar as if he wasn’t sure whose that was either. I suppose because I wasn’t used to being taken so seriously, or giving any adult something worth thinking about, I was surprised by his silence. I wanted to ask him if he felt guilty about Mary-Evelyn, but I didn’t. It wasn’t my place to.
By now what was left of my coffee was cold, but I drank it just the same, not wanting him to think I didn’t appreciate his trouble.
He said then, “I should have done something.”
He knew. That was probably why I’d told him. I knew he knew. “I should have done something,” he said again.
I was quick to disagree. “The police should have done something. It was their job, not yours.”
He blew out a thread of smoke. “It’s the job of anybody who thinks there’s a wrong been done to try and right it, I’d say. It being your job makes it only one more reason.” He said, “I remember that sheriff. He wasn’t like Sam DeGheyn.”
Who was? I wanted to say.
“He was just a toady, spent most of his time at the pool hall or licking the mayor’s boots. He wasn’t about to mount an investigation.”
“Wasn’t he even suspicious?”
Dr. McComb shrugged. “Beats me. He didn’t let on if he was.” He held his cigar over an ashtray and flicked the long ash from it. “No one I knew of knew the Devereau sisters very well. They were considered very odd. They left Spirit Lake right after. I heard later one of them died, don’t know which one. But I guess they’re all dead by now.” He frowned. “Maybe not. At least one of ’em was probably my age, and I’m still alive. Seventy-six, I am.” He sighed.
Seventy-six. But of course Aurora Paradise was a lot older still, and it’d be some years before he caught up to her. Somehow, as he sat back, he looked older, his eyes now not bright as they had been out there chasing butterflies. He asked, and it seemed more of himself than of me: “Why would three grown women do such violence to a little girl?”
I looked up from the Blue Willow plate. And the word locked in my brain as if it were a puzzle piece that I’d been looking at sidewise out and upside down and every which way but the right one. But now it locked in perfectly.
“Revenge.”
A word, a space to fill a lack.