GRAVE DEEDS
Books by Betsy Struthers
Fiction:
Found: A Body. Toronto: Simon Sc Pierre, 1992
Poetry:
Running Out Of Time. Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1993 Saying So Out Loud. Oakville: Mosaic, 1988 Censored Letters. Oakville: Mosaic, 1984
GRAVE DEEDS
BETSY STRUTHERS
Copyright © 1994 by Betsy Struthers. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Simon & Pierre Publishing Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Dundurn Press Limited. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Reprography Collective.
Editor: Marian M. Wilson
Cover Illustration: Steve Raetsen
Printed and bound in Canada by Metrolitho Inc., Quebec
The writing of this manuscript and the publication of this book were made possible by support from several sources. We would like to acknowledge the generous assistance and ongoing support of The Canada Council, The Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, The Ontario Arts Council, and The Ontario Publishing Centre of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation.
Kirk Howard, President; Marian M. Wilson, Publisher
Simon & Pierre Publishing Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Dundurn Press
1 2 3 4 5 • 9 8 7 6 5
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Struthers, Betsy, 1951-
Grave deeds
ISBN 0-88924-257-7
I. Title.
PS8587.T298G7 1993 C813’.54 C93-095037-2
PR9199.3.S77G7 1994
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For their advice and assistance, I thank Constable Lynne Buehler, Peterborough Community Police Service; Kenneth Doherty, Manager, Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives; and Dr. Susan Jamieson, Department of Anthropology, Trent University. Any errors are, of course, my own.
And as always, I thank Jim Struthers, my first best reader.
for my parents, L.H. Porter and Susanne E. Porter, with love
ONE
The moment I turned the corner, I saw the crowd. About twenty people huddled together on the sidewalk halfway down the block, mostly women holding small children by the hand. In spite of the breeze blowing up from the lake, chilling the brightness of the spring sun, only a few wore jackets over casual sweatshirts and jeans. Their chatter competed with the squabble of starlings nesting among the new leaves of the maples that lined the street. A couple of elderly men stood in the centre of the road, one of them clutching the leash of a small fat terrier. Its high-pitched yaps were echoed by the excited barking of a Doberman whose head popped up periodically, as it threw itself against the tall wooden fence next door. Two boys on bicycles sped down the hill and screeched to a stop by the women. Voices rose and fingers pointed. A baby cried.
I stopped to consult the letterhead printed at the top of the thick creamy paper on which my aunt had sent me an invitation to visit. I hadn’t known until she wrote that I had an aunt. My father left when I was still a baby; my mother died shortly after my marriage. I never met his relatives and hers were far away in England. As for my husband’s family, well, you know how in-laws are. My lack of relations is only one of the things Will’s mother holds against me. One of the smaller things at that.
The address matched the house; the letter didn’t. Written in beautiful flowing script, the formal note of introduction and invitation induced those fantasies so familiar to my lonely childhood: that I had been exchanged in the hospital at birth and that my real family were rich and loving and looking for me. Not that I didn’t love my mother, but she worked long hours as a lawyer’s secretary. I spent many dark winter afternoons sitting in the front windowseat of our apartment waiting for her to come home, and imagining a different life in a house full of siblings and grandparents.
This house was in a neighbourhood developed at the beginning of the century as a summer residence for the bourgeois of the city, those who wanted and could afford to escape the smell and congestion of downtown in exchange for the long white beaches at the end of a thirty-minute streetcar ride. It dated from that era: a frame cottage with gabled windows overlooking the roof of a verandah that wrapped around three of its sides. Once it had been painted white with dark green trim. What could be seen through the mass of ivy and overgrown bushes that pressed against the walls was gray weathered wood and boarded windows.
I joined the group of watchers, choosing to stand beside a woman my age who stood a little apart from the others, her feet still on the brick path that led to her own front door. She wore a faded pink track suit and new white running shoes; her graying hair was cut short. She didn’t join in the excited speculation of her neighbours, but stared fiercely across at my aunt’s house, her arms crossed tightly over her breasts, her eyes squinting against the sunlight or against tears — it was hard to tell which.
A hearse backed up the drive, crowding a police car onto a lawn of tall grass and dandelions. A white sedan was pulled up on the sidewalk. Red and white rooftop lights flickered in the brilliant spring sun. The crackle of radio static and the urgent repetition of a coded call echoed beneath the twittering of robins and the soothing coo of pigeons that strutted across the roof ridge between chimneys, craning their necks to see if anyone down below was about to throw them food. No one was.
A uniformed policeman stood on the verandah at the top of a flight of four steps. Two men in suits conferred on the threshold. They moved aside as the door swung open. For a moment, the attendant’s back hid the gurney he was manoeuvring down the stairs.
A quiet groan rose when the body, wrapped in a blanket, came into view. The woman next to me sighed heavily and muttered half aloud, “So. That’s that.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “What’s happened here?”
My voice startled her. Her hands dropped to her sides, forming fists. She glared at me and, without answering, turned her back. I watched her stride into her house and winced at the crash of the slammed door.
A small gnarled and liver-spotted