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‘Because I know where the bodies are buried,’ I said pleasantly. ‘And don’t be afraid; I’ve never been known to hit a woman yet.’
I would have sworn she used some words I’d heard only in logging camps, but I couldn’t be certain because she muttered them under her breath. Then she turned to give Jimmy a hand and I watched them go past the marker and out of sight. The coffee was pretty nigh ruined by this time so I tossed it out and set about making more, and a glance at the sun decided me to think about bedding down for the night.
It was dusk when I saw her coming back, a glimmering figure among the trees. I had made myself comfortable and was sitting with my back to a tree tending the fat duck which was roasting on a spit before the fire. She came up and stood over me. ‘What do you really want?’ she asked abruptly.
I looked up. ‘You hungry?’ She stirred impatiently, so I said, ‘Roast duck, fresh bread, wild celery, hot coffee – how does that sound?’
She dropped down to my level. ‘I told Jimmy to watch out for you,’ she said. ‘I knew you were coming. But I didn’t tell him to go on Matterson land – and I didn’t say anything about a gun.’
‘Perhaps you should have,’ I observed. ‘Perhaps you should have said, “No gun”.’
‘I know Jimmy’s a bit wild,’ she said. ‘But that’s no excuse for what you did.’
I took a flat cake of bread out of the clay oven and slapped it on a platter. ‘Have you ever looked down the muzzle of a gun?’ I asked. ‘It’s a mighty unsettling sensation, and I tend to get violent when I’m nervous.’ I handed her the platter. ‘What about some duck?’
Her nostrils quivered as the fragrance rose from the spitted bird and she laughed. ‘You’ve sold me. It smells so good.’
I began to carve the duck. ‘Jimmy’s not much hurt except in what he considers to be his pride. If he goes around pointing guns at people, one of these days there’s going to be a bang and he’ll hang as high as Haman. Maybe I’ve saved his life. Who is he?’
‘One of my men.’
‘So you knew I was coming,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘News gets around these parts fast, considering it’s so underpopulated.’
She selected a slice of breast from her platter and popped it into her mouth. ‘Anything that concerns me I get to know about. Say, this is good!’
‘I’m not such a good cook,’ I said. ‘It’s the open air that does it. How do I concern you?’
‘You work for Matterson; you were on my land. That concerns me.’
I said, ‘When I contracted to do this job Howard Matterson had a bit of an argument with a man called Donner. Matterson said he’d straighten out the matter with someone called Clare – presumably you. Did he?’
‘I haven’t seen Howard Matterson in a month – and I don’t care if I never see him again.’
‘You can’t blame me for not knowing the score,’ I said. ‘I thought the job was above board. Matterson has a strange way of running his business.’
She picked up a drumstick and gnawed on it delicately. ‘Not strange – just crooked. Of course, it all depends on which Matterson you’re talking about. Bull Matterson is the crooked one; Howard is just plain sloppy.’
‘You mean he forgot to talk to you about it?’ I said unbelievingly.
‘Something like that.’ She pointed the drumstick at me. ‘What’s all this about bodies?’
I grinned. ‘Oh, I just wanted to talk to you. I knew that would bring you running.’
She stared at me. ‘Why should it?’
‘It did – didn’t it?’ I pointed out. ‘It’s a variation of the old story of the practical joker who sent a cable to a dozen of his friends: FLY – ALL IS DISCOVERED. Nine of them hastily left town. Everyone has a skeleton in some cupboard of their lives.’
‘You were just pining for company,’ she said sardonically.
‘Would I pass up the chance of dining with a beautiful woman in the backwoods?’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said flatly. ‘You can cut out the flattery. For all you knew I might have been an old hag of ninety, unless, of course, you’d been asking questions around beforehand. Which you obviously have. What are you up to, Boyd?’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How’s this for a starter? Did you ever get around to investigating that Trinavant-Matterson partnership agreement, together with the deal Matterson made with the trustees of the estate? It seems to me that particular business transaction could bear looking into. Why doesn’t someone do something about it?’
She stared at me wide-eyed. ‘Wow! If you’ve been asking questions like that around Fort Farrell you’re going to be in trouble as soon as old Bull finds out.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand he’d rather forget the Trinavants ever existed. But don’t worry; he won’t get to hear of it. My source of information is strictly private.’
‘I wasn’t worrying,’ she said coldly. ‘But perhaps you think you can handle the Mattersons the same way you handled Jimmy. I wouldn’t bank on it.’
‘I didn’t think you cared – and I was right,’ I said with a grin. ‘But why doesn’t someone investigate that smelly deal? You, for instance.’
‘Why should I?’ she said offhandedly. ‘It has nothing to do with me how much Bull Matterson gyps the trustees. Tangling with the Mattersons wouldn’t put money in my pocket.’
‘You mean you don’t care that John Trinavant’s intentions have been warped and twisted to put money in Matterson’s pocket?’ I asked softly.
I thought she was going to throw the platter at me. Her face whitened and pink spots appeared in her cheeks. ‘Damn you!’ she said hotly. Slowly she simmered down. ‘I did try once,’ she admitted. ‘And I got nowhere. Donner has the books of the Matterson Corporation in such a goddam tangle it would take a team of high-priced lawyers ten years to unsnarl everything. Even I couldn’t afford that and my attorney advised me not to try. Why are you so interested anyway?’
I watched her sop up gravy with a piece of bread; I like a girl with a healthy appetite. ‘I don’t know that I am interested. It’s just another point to wonder about. Like why does Matterson want to bury the Trinavants – permanently?’
‘You stick your neck out, you’ll get it chopped off,’ she warned. ‘Matterson doesn’t like questions like that.’ She put down her platter, stood up and went down to the stream to wash her hands. When she came back she was wiping them on a man-sized handkerchief.
I poured her a cup of coffee. ‘I’m not asking Matterson – I’m asking a Trinavant. Isn’t it something a Trinavant wonders about from time to time?’
‘Sure! And like everyone else we get no answers.’ She looked at me closely. ‘What are you after, Boyd? And who the hell are you?’
‘Just a beat-up freelance geologist. Doesn’t Matterson ever worry you?’
She sipped the hot coffee. ‘Not much. I spend very little time here. I come back for a few months every year to annoy him, that’s all.’
‘And you still don’t know what he has against the Trinavants?’
‘No.’
I looked into the fire and said pensively, ‘Someone was saying that he wished you’d get married. The implication was that there’d be no one around with the name of Trinavant any more.’
She flared hotly. ‘Has Howard been – ?’ Then she stopped and bit her lip.
‘Has Howard been … what?’
She rose to her feet and dusted herself down. ‘I don’t think I like you, Mr Boyd. You ask too many questions, and I get no answers. I don’t know who you are or what you want. If you want to tangle with Matterson that’s your affair; my disinterested advice would be “Don’t!” because he’ll chop you up into little pieces. Still, why should I care? But let me tell you one thing – don’t interfere with me.’
‘What would you do to me that Matterson wouldn’t?’
‘The name of Trinavant isn’t quite forgotten,’ she said. ‘I have some good friends.’
‘They’d better be better than Jimmy,’ I said caustically. Then I wondered why I was fighting with her; it didn’t make sense. I scrambled to my feet. ‘Look, I have no fight with you and I’ve no cause to interfere in your life, either. I’m a pretty harmless guy except when someone pokes a gun in my direction. I’ll just go back and report to Howard Matterson that you wouldn’t let me on your land. There’s no grief in it for me.’
‘You do that,’ she said. There was puzzlement in her voice as she added, ‘You’re a funny one, Boyd. You come here as a stranger and you dig up a ten-year-old mystery everyone has forgotten. Where did you get it from?’
‘I don’t think my informant would care to be named.’
‘I bet he wouldn’t,’ she said with contempt. ‘I thought everyone in Fort Farrell had developed a conveniently bad memory as well as a yellow streak.’
‘Maybe you have friends in Fort Farrell, too,’ I said softly.
She zipped up her mackinaw against the chill of the night air. ‘I’m not going to stick around here bandying mysteries with you, Boyd,’ she said. ‘Just remember one thing. Don’t come on my land – ever.’
She turned to go away, and I said, ‘Wait! There are ghosties and ghoulies and beasties, and things that go bump in the night; I wouldn’t want you to walk into a bear. I’ll escort you back to your camp.’
‘My God, a backwoods cavalier!’ she said in disgust, but she stayed around to watch me kick earth over the embers of the fire. While I checked my rifle she looked around at my gear, dimly illuminated in the moonlight. ‘You make a neat camp.’
‘Comes of experience,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’ She fell into step beside me and, as we passed the marker, I said, ‘Thanks for letting me on your land, Miss Trinavant.’
‘I’m a sucker for sweet talk,’ she said, and pointed. ‘We go that way.’
III
Her ‘camp’ was quite a surprise. After we had walked for over half an hour up a slope that tested the calf muscles there came the unexpected dark loom of a building. The hunting beam of the flashlamp she produced disclosed walls of fieldstone and logs and the gleam of large windows. She pushed open an unlocked door, then said a little irritably, ‘Well, aren’t you coming in?’
The interior was even more of a surprise. It was warm with central heating and it was big. She flicked a switch and a small pool of light appeared, and the room was so large that it retreated away into shadows. One entire wall was windowed and there was a magnificent view down the valley. Away in the distance I could see the moonglow on the lake I had prospected around.
She flicked more switches and more lights came on, revealing the polished wooden floor carpeted with skins, the modern furniture, the wall brightly lined with books and a scattering of phonograph records on the floor grouped around a built-in hi-fi outfit as though someone had been interrupted.
This was a millionaire’s version of a log cabin. I looked about, probably with my mouth hanging open, then said, ‘If this were in the States, a guy could get to be President just by being born here.’
‘I don’t need any wisecracks,’ she said. ‘If you want a drink, help yourself; it’s over there. And you might do something about the fire; it isn’t really necessary but I like to see flames.’
She disappeared, closing a door behind her, and I laid down my rifle. There was a massive fieldstone chimney with a fireplace big enough to roast a moose in which a few red embers glowed faintly, so I replenished it from the pile of logs stacked handily and waited until the flames came and I was sure the fire had caught hold. Then I did a tour of the room, hoping she wouldn’t be back too soon. You can find out a lot about a person just by looking at a room as it’s lived in.
The books were an eclectic lot; many modern novels but very little of the avant-garde, way-out stuff; a solid wedge of English and French classics, a shelf of biographies and a sprinkling of histories, mostly of Canada and, what was surprising, a scad of books on archaeology, mostly Middle-Eastern. It looked as though Clare Trinavant had a mind of her own.
I left the books and drifted around the room, noting the odd pieces of pottery and statuary, most of which looked older than Methuselah; the animal photographs on the walls, mainly of Canadian animals, and the rack of rifles and shotguns in a glassed-in case. I peered at these curiously through the glass and saw that, although the guns appeared to be well kept, there was a film of dust on them. Then I looked at a photograph of a big brute of a brown bear and decided that, even with a telephoto lens, whoever had taken that shot had been too damn’ close.
She said from close behind me, ‘Looks a bit like you, don’t you think?’
I turned. ‘I’m not that big. He’d make six of me.’
She had changed her shirt and was wearing a well-cut pair of slacks that certainly hadn’t been bought off any shelf. She said, ‘I’ve just been in to see Jimmy. I think he’ll be all right.’
‘I didn’t hit him harder than necessary,’ I said. ‘Just enough to teach him manners.’ I waved my arm about the room. ‘Some shack!’
‘Boyd, you make me sick,’ she said coldly. ‘And you can get the hell out of here. You have a dirty mind if you think I’m shacked up with Jimmy Waystrand.’
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘You jump to an awful fast conclusion, Trinavant. All I meant was that this is a hell of a place you have here. I didn’t expect to find this in the woods, that’s all.’
Slowly the pink spots in her cheeks died away, and she said, ‘I’m sorry if I took you the wrong way. Maybe I’m a little jumpy right now, and if I am, you’re responsible, Boyd.’
‘No apology necessary, Trinavant.’
She began to giggle and it developed into a full-throated laugh. I joined in and we had an hysterical thirty seconds. At last she controlled herself. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘That won’t do. You can’t call me Trinavant – you’d better make it Clare.’
‘I’m Bob,’ I said. ‘Hello, Clare.’
‘Hello, Bob.’
‘You know, I didn’t really mean to imply that Jimmy was anything to you,’ I said. ‘He isn’t man enough for you.’
She stopped smiling and, folding her arms, she regarded me for a long time. ‘Bob Boyd, I’ve never known another man who makes my hackles rise the way you do. If you think I judge a man by the way he behaves in a fight you’re dead wrong. The trouble with you is that you’ve got logopaedia – every time you open your mouth you put your foot in it. Now, for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut and get me a drink.’
I moved towards what looked like the drinks cabinet. ‘You shouldn’t steal your wisecracks from the Duke of Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘That’s verging on lèse majesté. What will you have?’
‘Scotch and water – fifty-fifty. You’ll find a good Scotch in there.’
Indeed it was a good Scotch! I lifted out the bottle of Islay Mist reverently and wondered how long ago it was since Hamish McDougall had seen Clare Trinavant. But I said nothing about that. Instead, I kept my big mouth shut as she had advised and poured the drinks.
As I handed her the glass she said, ‘How long have you been in the woods this trip?’
‘Nearly two weeks.’
‘How would you like a hot bath?’
‘Clare, for that you can have my soul,’ I said fervently. Lake water is damned cold and a man doesn’t bathe as often as he should when in the field.
She pointed. ‘Through that door – second door on the left. I’ve put towels out for you.’
I picked up my glass. ‘Mind if I take my drink?’
‘Not at all.’
The bathroom was a wonder to behold. Tiled in white and dark blue, you could have held a convention in there – if that was the kind of convention you had in mind. The bath was sunk into the floor and seemed as big as a swimming-pool, and the water poured steaming out of the faucet. And there was a plenitude of bath towels, each about an acre in extent.
As I lay soaking I thought about a number of things. I thought of the possible reason why Clare Trinavant should bring up the name of Howard Matterson when I brought up the subject of her marriage. I thought of the design of the labels of Scotch, especially on those from the island of Islay. I thought of the curve of Clare Trinavant’s neck as it rose from the collar of her shirt. I thought of a man I had never seen – Bull Matterson – and wondered what he was like in appearance. I thought of the tendril of hair behind Clare Trinavant’s ear.
None of these thoughts got me anywhere in particular, so I got out of the bath and finished the Scotch while I dried myself. As I dressed I became aware of music drifting through the cabin – some cabin! – which drowned out the distant throbbing of a diesel generator, and when I got back to Clare I found her sitting on the floor listening to the last movement of Sibelius’s First Symphony.
She waved me to the drinks cabinet and held up an empty glass, so I gave us both a refill and we sat quietly until the music came to an end. She shivered slightly and pointed to the moonlit view down the valley. ‘I always think the music is describing this.’
‘Finland has pretty much the same scenery as Canada,’ I said. ‘Woods and lakes.’
One eyebrow lifted. ‘Not only a backwoods cavalier, but an educated one.’
I grinned at her. ‘I’ve had a college education, too.’
She coloured a little and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was bitchy, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s all right.’ I waved my hand. ‘What made you build here?’
