Lament for a Lounge Lizard. Mary Jane Maffini
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internal injuries.”
“Really?” he said.
This time I made eye contact with him. “I told you. Someone murdered him.”
Sarrazin rubbed his chin. He looked at me as if he suddenly realized I wasn’t playing on the same team.
“Well, not me,” I said. “Somebody else. I called you, remember?”
I found myself dropped from the discussion. Sarrazin and Dr. Duhamel moved to the front hall and lowered their voices. I had to creep into the living room, press myself against the wall and strain to hear.
“Are you telling me he ended up in that bed after he died of a beating? That what you’re saying?”
“Don’t laugh,” Dr. Duhamel said flirtatiously. “It looks like that’s what happened. The body was definitely shifted after death.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, yes. Might not have even died here. No sign of violence in the room, no blood.”
I found myself gasping for breath when I finally exhaled. I did my best to gasp quietly and keep listening.
“These kinds of things don’t happen in St. Aubaine,” he said.
“They do now,” she said. “We have pretty good indications he died of a broken neck. Plus some other serious injuries which he didn’t get falling into that four-poster. I’d say he’d been roughed up very, very badly by someone who knew how to hurt people and not leave marks. Naturally, we’ll have to wait for the full autopsy.”
Sarrazin said, “ Merde.”
She chuckled again. “But it won’t take an autopsy to tell us someone stuck that cute little smile on his pretty face. Krazy Glue, if you ask me.”
Three
At some point, St. Aubaine village council must have had a financial surplus, and they’d blown it on the cop shop. Automatic key cards, bullet-proof glass, an intercom system to talk to the desk staff, this police station had the whole shebang.
“Expecting a siege?” Since I’d started to believe this was all a bad dream anyway, why not be flip with the detective?
“Everybody’s a comedian,” Sarrazin said. He slipped his magnetic card into the door.
I was on my way to be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed. Oh well. At least I had that hangover to keep me warm.
The interview room was the sort of place you might expect from the mind of Kafka. The interview too. It varied on the theme of: “Yes, I do think someone else killed him and planted him in my house afterwards. No, I don’t know who or how or what the motive was.”
“Why would that be?” Sarrazin asked me for the fifth time.
“I have no idea. I told you I haven’t seen the man for...” I hoped the tape recorder picked up the outrage in my voice.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve been there. But, it was your bed, so you can see why I’m interested.” He had a tough time getting away from that bed business.
I stared at the blue ink on my fingertips. I would have a tough time getting away from that too. “Somebody killed Benedict, and you’re hassling me. That somebody is on the loose now. The way he died, it would have to be a psycho. You should be more interested in that.”
“What about his girlfriend? Is she a psycho?”
“Hardly. Bridget’s a lovely person. Plus, she’s just a little bit of a thing. She couldn’t lift him, let alone beat him to death. You’ll figure that out yourself when you talk to her.”
“You know, I kind of like the idea that you killed him.”
“Let me remind you that I was...”
“We’ll soon check that, won’t we?” He switched off the tape recorder and stood up. “Don’t stray far,” he said.
* * *
Back home, between my desperate hope that I was dreaming and my fascination with the police photographer and the crowd of forensic technicians picking over the house, it was hours before I strayed anywhere.
At ten o’clock, the ambulance attendants wheeled the late poet and philosopher, encased in a black vinyl body bag, out through the front door.
Except for Tolstoy, I was finally alone. But I desperately needed a break from thinking about Benedict. I switched on the radio and caught the tail end of the CBC National news. “The controversial poet, Benedict Kelly, was found dead at the home of romance writer Fiona Silk in St. Aubaine, Quebec today. He was forty-seven. Last week’s announcement by the Flambeau Foundation that Kelly had been the first winner of the Flambeau Memorial Prize for Poetic Literature created an uproar in the literary community. Police are investigating.”
“Be serious,” I said to the radio. Benedict? The Flambeau? Canada’s rarest and richest literary prize? Hardly. A sick joke maybe?
How could I have missed that news? Well. Easy. When you’re a writer with a non-performing manuscript close to deadline, and you’re thinking about using your drop-dead emergency cash roll to buy food, you let your newspapers pile up, you don’t turn on your radio, and you don’t own a TV set anyway. Your former-almost-lover wins the Flambeau, and you don’t even hear about it.
The Flambeau! It never occurred to me that Benedict was churning out serious poetry. I’d figured his efforts were props for enticing girls out of their skivvies and for encouraging Irish expatriates to pay for his drinks. And here all along they were serious works of literature. It just goes to show you.
The Flambeau was an erotic dream for poets. A serious pile of cash donated by the philanthropic widow of an industrialist. Of course, a lot of good it had done Benedict.
* * *
That’s the trouble with national public radio. It gets around. I wasn’t the only one who heard it. My ex-husband-to-be didn’t start with any of the more conventional conversational openings. “This is a singularly inconsiderate and flagrant thing to do, even for you, Fiona. This kind of behaviour is bound to impact your divorce settlement negatively.”
“Leave a message after the beep,” I said.
“And don’t pretend you’re not there. I know better.”
My divorce settlement. Just what I didn’t want to discuss. I needed a clear head to talk to Philip. And if I’d had a clear head, I never would have picked up the phone in the first place.
“Rats,” I said. “I thought you were in Vancouver.”
“Even three thousand miles away, Fiona, you manage to embarrass me.”
Embarrass him? I loved that.
* * *
I was still distracted by the idea of Benedict’s body, the Flambeau thing, my blue fingertips, and Philip’s call when I realized Tolstoy was three hours late for his morning outing.
“Good dog. Keep those legs crossed,” I said, fishing out my rain gear. And his Frisbee to make up for the long wait.
Flashbulbs went off in my face as soon as I opened the door. I did my damnedest to slam it before the trio of reporters reached my front steps. “Ms. Silk, how does it feel...? Ms. Silk, have you any comment...? Fiona, can we get a shot of the four-poster?”
Someone jammed his foot in the door.
Tolstoy recovered from the shock before I did and managed a convincing bark. The foot withdrew. Twelve minutes remained of my fifteen minutes of fame, and I didn’t think I could live through them. For once I was glad I had no living relatives, if I didn’t count Phillip, and why would I. Still I needed a solution to the reporters on the doorstep problem, or Tolstoy was going to have a long wait for relief.
*