“Detective Wilson,” he shook my hand in a vise grip.
“You’re partners?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he laughed. “We work out of the same division. Happened to be on our way to lunch when the call came in and he wanted to check it out. I’d leave it up to the constables, but … my friend here is looking for a Big Case, get his name in the papers. Hey, Gianelli, you started frothing yet?”
“Lay off,” Gianelli growled. “This is a relative.”
“Of the old lady?” Wilson’s smile hardened. “How could you let her live like that? Die like that? You been to see her lately? Like in the last decade or so? You should be ashamed.”
“I’ve never even met her. I didn’t even know I had an aunt until she wrote me.”
“You got the letter with you?” Gianelli ignored the younger man and held out his hand to me.
I handed him the envelope. He compared the address on it with the one I’d given him and eased the letter out with care. He held it at arm’s length, squinting as he read the short message. He should have been wearing the bifocals I glimpsed in his breast pocket.
Wilson grabbed the letter away from him. “Can’t you read any faster? Where’re your glasses? Dear Mrs. Cairns — that’s you, I presume?”
I nodded. Gianelli pulled a silver cigarette case out from an inside pocket. He tapped it open and offered it to me. I shook my head. He chose a filter tip and made a show of lighting it with a gold lighter. The sun winked on the diamond in his pinky ring. He was exceedingly well dressed for duty.
Wilson continued to read: “I understand that you are the only daughter of my nephew, George Cook. It would please an old woman greatly if you were to forgive the neglect of the past, and come to visit me for tea next Wednesday, at three p.m., at the address above. You may find it in your interest to attend. I look forward to meeting you. I am, your dear Aunt, Beatrice Baker. Will you listen to that? Talk about formal.”
“What’s this about past neglect?” Gianelli demanded.
“I told you I never met her. My father left when I was just a baby, and my mother never talked about his family. I just assumed he hadn’t any, but was an only child like me. Only child of an only child — it was something special we shared. That I thought we shared.”
“You think she was going to give you something? Take you back in the bosom of the family?”
“I didn’t want anything from her. I wasn’t going to come at all at first, but I was curious. I might have cousins. She might have pictures of my father and my grandparents.” I blinked away sudden tears. “I just wanted to meet her. To see where I came from. Is that so hard to understand?”
Wilson folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. He hesitated before handing it back to me. I put it in my bag — so much for family.
“You were pretty cosy with that old fellow with the dog,” Gianelli said. “You been around already? Checking out the place maybe?”
“I’d never seen him before today. He just wanted to talk to someone. You know how old people like to talk.”
“Yeah.” He blew a long stream of thin smoke, a dragon tired of chewing up the little folk. “You’re not planning on leaving town, are you?”
“Give her a break, Joe,” Wilson smiled at me. “We may want to talk to you again — after we speak to Mrs. Baker’s lawyer.”
“Could I look inside?” I asked. I didn’t want to have come all this way for nothing. It was not just the time wasted on the long subway and streetcar rides, but the whole journey I’d gone through in the week since receiving the letter. I had struggled with the memories of my mother and the painful hate she had insisted on in every discussion of my father and his family. “They’ll never get their hands on you,” she would say. “They’re rotten, every last one of them.”
“Who?” I’d ask, when I still asked her questions about them. “Do I have an Oma and Opa like Annie does?” Annie was my best friend, daughter of the large and boisterous family who shared our duplex. There were constant streams of relatives coming and going downstairs. I was informally adopted into the tribe, but there were days when I was left behind: when the families gathered for a wedding or a christening at some uncle’s distant house. There wasn’t room in any of their cars then for me. My mother refused to talk about my father or any of the Cooks. “They’re dead to us,” she said, when I pressed her too hard with my queries. “They never wanted either of us when you were born. We don’t need them. We’ve got each other and that’s all we’ll ever want.” And that was all she’d say.
I sighed, and shook off the memories. I’d decided at long last to come here, and I had come too late.
Gianelli and Wilson exchanged glances heavy with some kind of warning I couldn’t interpret.
“Maybe you can go in later,” Gianelli muttered. “Maybe tomorrow if the lawyer agrees.”
“But it’s a long way,” I pleaded. “And I haven’t got a car. Would it hurt for me just to look around a bit? See her things? There might be pictures of her family. My family, I mean. I won’t take anything, and you can come in with me. Please?”
“Sorry.” Wilson scuffed at a crack in the sidewalk. “We can’t let anyone in until the coroner’s finished with the post mortem. Regulations.”
“Coroner?” I was confused. “I thought she died of a fall.”
“Not exactly.” Gianelli dropped his cigarette butt and rubbed it out viciously with the toe of one shoe. I couldn’t help noticing his footwear: blood-red leather oxfords. Nice. He continued. “It looks like she ran into something. Or something ran into her.”
“The cats, you mean?”
“A bit bigger than that.”
“Are you talking about a burglary?”
“No.” He rubbed his hand over his skull, careful not to rearrange his hair. “I’m talking about murder.”
“Murder?” I leaned back heavily against the maple tree, thankful for the solidity of its rough trunk. I was suddenly very tired. I stifled a yawn. My eyes burned. “I thought it was routine, you being here.”
“Let’s sit a minute.” Wilson cupped my left elbow in his big hand. He tugged gently; I let him lead me to the porch. He made a show of pulling out from his pants pocket a handkerchief as big as a scarf which he spread on the top step before gently pressing me to sit.
Gianelli sauntered up. He stood looking up at us, one foot on the bottom of the four wooden steps, both hands deep in his pants pockets. “You okay?”
I nodded. “It’s a shock. I mean, I was just getting used to the idea of having an aunt, and now she’s dead. Maybe murdered.” I shook my head. “Why me?” My voice rose in a wail of complaint.
The officers exchanged glances. Before they could comment, however, a commotion on the street distracted them.
A long black limousine nosed its way through the thinning crowd of neighbours. It pulled into the driveway, stopped, the engine purring no louder than one of the recently departed cats. The driver didn’t bother looking our way when he got out, but bent to open the back door. He wasn’t exactly wearing a uniform, but the trim cut of his gray overcoat and his formal stance as he gave an arm to the elderly gentleman who was struggling to stand, clearly showed him to be a chauffeur. I’d never met a real chauffeur before. I’d never met anyone who had the means or the need to have one.
The