The Fields of Grief

But in Delorme’s experience there was something imposing about Catherine, something commanding, even when you knew her psychiatric history. In fact, it may partly have been an effect of that very psychiatric history: the aura of someone who had travelled into the depths of madness and come back to tell the tale. Only this time she hadn’t come back.

And maybe Cardinal’s better off, Delorme thought. Maybe it’s not the worst thing for him to be free of this beautiful albatross. Delorme had witnessed the toll on Cardinal when his wife had been admitted to hospital, and at such times she found herself surprisingly angry at the woman who could make his life a misery.

Lise Delorme, she cursed herself as she came to a stop at the crime-scene tape, sometimes you can be a hundred per cent, unforgivable, unmitigated bitch.

If Chouinard had been hoping his speedy dispatch of Delorme would prevent suspect number one from messing up a crime scene, he was too late. As she got out of the car, she could see Cardinal holding his wife in his arms, blood all over his suede jacket.

A young cop – Sanderson was his name – was standing guard by the crime-scene tape.

‘You were first on the scene?’ Delorme asked him.

‘Got an anonymous call from someone in the building. Said there appeared to be a body out back. I proceeded here, ascertained that she was dead, and put in a call to the sarge. She called CID and Cardinal got here first. I had no idea it was his wife.’ There was a trill of panic in his voice. ‘There’s no ID on the body. There’s no way I could’ve known.’

‘That’s all right,’ Delorme said. ‘You did the right thing.’

‘If I’d have known, I’d have kept him away from the body. But he didn’t know either till he got up close. I’m not gonna get in trouble over this, am I?’

‘Calm down, Sanderson, you’re not in trouble. Ident and the coroner will be here any second.’

Delorme went over to Cardinal. She could tell from the damage to his wife that she had fallen from a high floor. Cardinal had turned her over and was holding her up in his arms as if she were asleep. His face was streaked with blood and tears.

Delorme squatted beside him. She gently touched Catherine’s wrist and then her neck, establishing two things: there was no pulse, and the body was still warm, though beginning to cool at the extremities. There was a camera bag nearby, some of its contents spilling out on to the asphalt.

‘John,’ she said softly.

When he did not respond, she said his name again, her voice even softer. ‘John, listen. I’m only going to say this once. What we have here, this is breaking my heart, okay? Right now I feel like curling up in a corner and crying and not coming out till somebody tells me this isn’t real. You hear me? My heart is going out to you. But you and I both know what has to happen.’

Cardinal nodded. ‘I didn’t realize it was … till I got up close.’

‘I understand,’ Delorme said. ‘But you’re going to have to put her down now.’

Cardinal was crying, and she just let him. Arsenault and Collingwood, the ident team, were heading toward them. She held her hand up to ward them off.

‘John. Can you put her down for me now? I need you to put her back just the way she was when you found her. Ident’s here. The coroner’s going to be here. However this happened, we need to do this investigation by the book.’

Cardinal shifted Catherine off his knees and, with futile tenderness, turned her face down. He arranged her left hand over her head. ‘This hand was up like this,’ he said. ‘This one,’ he said, taking her other arm by the wrist, ‘was down by her side. Her arms are broken, Lise.’

‘I know.’ Delorme wanted to touch him, comfort him, but she forced her professional self to keep control. ‘Come with me now, John. Let ident do their work, okay?’

Cardinal got to his feet, swaying a little. Sanderson had been joined by lots of uniformed colleagues, and Delorme was aware of one or two people watching from balconies as she led Cardinal past the scene tape and over to her car. Bits of computer crunched underfoot. She opened the passenger door for him and he got in. She got in on the driver’s side and shut the door.

‘Where were you when you got the call?’ Delorme said.

She couldn’t be sure from Cardinal’s expression if he was taking anything in. Was he aware of the ambulance, its lights uselessly flashing? Did he see the coroner heading toward the body with his medical bag? Arsenault and Collingwood in their white paper jumpsuits? McLeod slowly pacing the perimeter, eyes to the ground? She couldn’t tell.

‘John, I know it’s a terrible time to ask questions …’ It was what they always said. She hoped he understood that she had to do this, probe the wound with the knife still in it.

When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly clear; he just sounded exhausted. ‘I was at the Birches Motel, in my car, with the mayor.’

‘Mayor Feckworth? How come?’

‘He was demanding a full missing-persons on his wife, threatening to go to the chief, the papers. Someone had to break the bad news to him.’

‘How long were you with him?’

‘About two and a half hours, all told. He came to the station first. McLeod can confirm all this. Szelagy, too.’

‘Szelagy was still staking out the motel on the Porcini case?’

Cardinal nodded. ‘He may still be there. He’ll have his radio off. You would too, if you were watching the Porcinis.’

‘Do you know why Catherine would be here at this building?’

‘She went out to take photographs. I don’t know if she knew anybody here. Must have, I guess, to get access.’

Delorme could almost hear Cardinal’s cop mind trying to click back into gear.

‘We should be checking out the roof,’ he said. ‘If that’s not where she went over, then we should be canvassing the upper floors. You should be, I mean. I can’t be involved.’

‘Wait here a minute,’ Delorme said.

She got out of the car and found McLeod over by the Dumpster.

‘Lot of crap all over the place,’ he said. ‘Looks like someone blew up a computer back here.’

‘CompuClinic’s out front,’ Delorme said. ‘Listen, did you see Cardinal earlier this evening?’

‘Yeah, he was in the office till seven-thirty or so. Mayor showed up around seven-fifteen and they went out together. Probably to the Birches Motel, where his wife’s been boinking the Sanitation Department. You want me to call the mayor?’

‘You have his number?’

‘Do I ever. Guy’s been bugging me all week.’ McLeod had already pulled out his cell phone and selected a number from a list that glowed lilac in his palm.

Delorme went over to the ident guys. They were down on their knees picking up small items and dropping them into evidence bags. The moon was higher now, and no longer orange. It lit the scene with a silvery light. A cool breeze carried smells of old leaves. Why do the worst horrors occur on the most beautiful nights? Delorme wondered.

‘You bagged her hands?’ she said to Arsenault.

He looked up at her. ‘Well, yeah. Until we actually rule out foul play.’

Collingwood, the younger member of the ident team, was extracting objects from the camera bag that lay a few feet from the body. He was young, blond, and laconic almost to the point of hostility.

‘Camera,’ he said, holding up a Nikon. The lens was smashed.

‘She was a photographer,’ Delorme said. ‘Cardinal said she went out this evening to take pictures. What else?’

‘Spare rolls of film. Battery. Lenses. Filters. Lens tissue.’

‘About what you’d expect, in other words.’

He didn’t reply. Sometimes it was as if you hadn’t quite hit Collingwood’s Enter button.

‘Found car keys in her coat pocket,’ Arsenault said, handing them over.

‘I’ll check out her car,’ Delorme said, reaching for them.

The coroner was getting up from the body, whacking dust from the lower part of his overcoat. It was Dr Claybourne, already balding in his early thirties. Delorme had worked with him a couple of times before. He had asked her out once, but she had declined, saying she was already seeing someone, untrue at the time. Some men were too nice, in Delorme’s view, too harmless, too bland. It was like being alone but without privacy.

‘What do you think?’ Delorme said.

Dr Claybourne had a ring of red hair round his pate, and pale, almost translucent skin. He blushed a lot, Delorme had noticed, which she put down to his complexion.

‘Well, she’s taken a terrible fall, obviously. And from the amount of blood, she was certainly alive when she fell.’

‘Time of death?’

‘I only have body temperature to go on at the moment, and the lack of rigor. I’d say she’s been dead about two hours.’

Delorme looked at her watch. ‘Which would put it at about eight-thirty. What do the measurements tell you?’

‘Oh, I’d have to bow to your forensics experts on that. She’s eight feet from the edge of the building. The balconies extend five feet. She could have fallen from a balcony, or a window.’

‘From how high, do you think?’

‘Hard to say. Somewhere around ten storeys is my guess.’

‘The building’s only nine. We should probably start with the roof.’

‘All right. I’m not seeing any evidence of foul play, so far.’

‘I have a feeling you won’t find any. The victim is known to me, Doctor. Are you aware of her medical history?’

‘No.’

‘Call the psychiatric hospital. She’s been hospitalized up there at least four times in the past eight years. Her last stay was about a year ago and lasted three months. When you’ve done that, why don’t we go up to the roof?’

McLeod was waving her over. She left Claybourne dialling his cell phone.

‘Feckless Feckworth was not happy to hear from me. I could hear the wife screaming at him in the background. Naturally I brought all my diplomatic and social skills to bear.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘His worship says Cardinal was with him at the Birches till nine-thirty. Szelagy says the same.’

‘You heard from Szelagy?’

‘Yeah, he’s off the Porcinis for the night. He’s on his way.’

Delorme went to her car. Cardinal was where she had left him, looking as if he had taken a large-calibre round in the gut. Delorme led him over to the ambulance.

The paramedic was a hard-looking woman with very short blonde hair. Her uniform was tight on her.

‘Victim’s husband,’ Delorme said. ‘Take care of him, will you?’ She turned to Cardinal. ‘John, I’m heading up to the roof now. Stay here and let these people look after you. I’ll be back in about ten minutes.’

Cardinal sat down on the folded-out tail of the ambulance. Once again Delorme suppressed an urge to put her arms around him, her friend in agony and she has to remain all business.

McLeod and Dr Claybourne went with her in the elevator to the top floor. Then they had to take the stairwell up another flight to a door marked PATIO. The door was propped open with a brick. McLeod found a switch and turned on the exterior lights.

The roof had been covered with pressed wood flooring, and there were picnic tables with holes for umbrellas. The umbrellas had been taken in; the autumn breezes were already too cold for anyone to enjoy sitting outside for more than a few minutes.

‘I can see why she might have come up here to take pictures,’ Delorme said, looking around. To the north, a string of highway lights wound up the hill toward the airport. Slightly to the east was the dark shoulder of the escarpment, and to the south, the lights of the city, the cathedral spire, and the Post Office communications tower. The moon was rolling out from behind the belfries of the French church.

McLeod pointed to an unadorned concrete wall, waist-high, that surrounded the roof. ‘Doesn’t look like the kind of thing you could easily fall over. Maybe she was leaning over to take a picture. Might want to look at what’s on her camera.’

‘The camera was in the bag, so I don’t think she was shooting when she fell.’

‘Might wanna check anyway.’

Delorme pointed in the direction of the moon. ‘That’s where she went off.’

‘Why don’t you examine it first?’ Dr Claybourne said. ‘I’ll take a look when you’re done.’

Delorme and McLeod, careful where they stepped, walked slowly toward the edge of the roof. McLeod said in a low voice, ‘I think the doc’s sweet on you.’

‘McLeod, really.’

‘Come on. Did you see the way he blushed?’

‘McLeod …’

Delorme approached the wall, head bowed, looking at the flooring in front of her. The area was well lit by the moon and by the roof lights. She paused at the wall and peered over, then walked slowly to the left, then back to the right beyond where she had started.

‘I’m not seeing any obvious signs of struggle,’ she said. ‘No signs at all, in fact.’

‘Here’s something.’ McLeod had spotted a piece of paper wedged under a planter and stooped to pick it up. He brought it over to Delorme, a lined page about four by six, torn from a spiral notebook.

It contained a few sentences, in ballpoint, written in a small, intense hand.

Dear John,

By the time you read this, I will have hurt you beyond all forgiveness. There are no words to tell you how sorry I am. Please know that I’ve always loved you – never more so than at this moment – and if there had been any other way …

Catherine

3

When Delorme got back downstairs, she found Szelagy just entering the lobby with a distraught woman in black: black skirt, black blazer, black hat, black scarf.

‘Sergeant Delorme,’ Szelagy said, ‘this is Eleanor Cathcart. She lives on the ninth floor, and she knows Catherine.’

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ the woman said. She removed her hat and swept black hair from her forehead in a dramatic gesture. Everything about her seemed exaggerated: she had dark eyebrows, dark lipstick, and skin as pale as china, though there was nothing remotely fragile about her. Her pronunciation of certain words hinted at a cozy familiarity with Paris. ‘I let her into the building and she goes off the roof? It’s just too, too macabre.’

‘How do you know Catherine Cardinal?’ Delorme said.

‘I teach up at the community college. Theatre Arts. Catherine teaches photography there. Mon Dieu, I can’t believe this. I just let her in a couple of hours ago.’

‘Why did you let her in?’

‘Oh, I’d been raving about the views from my apartment. She asked me if she could come up and take photographs. We’re the only building of any height this side of town. She’s been talking about it for months, but we’d just recently set up an actual rendezvous.’

‘For her to come to your apartment?’

‘No, she just needed access to the roof. There’s a patio thingy up there. I showed her where it was and showed her how to prop the door open – it locks you out otherwise, as I’ve learned from bitter experience. I didn’t linger. She was working, she didn’t want company. The arts demand a great deal of solitude.’

‘You’re quite sure she was alone, then.’

‘She was alone.’

‘Where were you going?’

‘Rehearsal at the Capital Centre. We’re opening The Doll’s House two weeks from now, and believe me, some of us are not ready for prime time. Our Torvald is still on book, for God’s sake.’

‘Was Catherine showing any signs of distress?’

‘None. Well, wait. She was very intense, very anxious to get to the roof, but I took that as excitement about her work. Then again, Catherine is not an easy read, if you know what I mean. She regularly gets depressed enough to be hospitalized, and I never saw that coming either. Of course, like most artists, I’m somewhat prone to self-absorption.’

‘So, it wouldn’t surprise you if she committed suicide?’

‘Well, it’s a shock, I mean, mon Dieu. You imagine I’d just hand her the key to the roof and say, “Ta-ta, darling. Have a nice suicide while I just pop out to rehearsal”? Please.’

The woman paused, tossing her head back and looking up at the ceiling. Then she levelled a look at Delorme with dark, theatrical eyes. ‘Put it this way,’ she said. ‘I stand here thunderstruck, but at the same time, out of all the people I know – and I know a lot – I’d say that Catherine Cardinal was the most likely to kill herself. You don’t get hospitalized for a simple case of the blues, you don’t get slapped into the ward for a slight disappointment, and you don’t take lithium for PMS. And have you seen her work?’

‘Some,’ Delorme said. She was remembering an exhibition at the library a couple of years ago: a photograph of a child crying on the cathedral steps, an empty park bench, a single red umbrella in a landscape of rain. Photographs of longing. Like Catherine herself, beautiful but sad.

‘I rest my case,’ Ms Cathcart said.

Just as Delorme’s inner magistrate was condemning her for displaying an unforgivable lack of sympathy, the woman exploded into tears – and not the decorous weeping of the stage, but the messy, mucus-y wails of real, unrehearsed pain.

Delorme went with Dr Claybourne to the ambulance, where they found Cardinal still sitting in the back. He spoke before they even reached him, his voice thick and oppressed.

‘Was there a note?’

Claybourne held it out so he could read it. ‘Can you confirm whether this is your wife’s handwriting?’

Cardinal nodded. ‘It’s hers,’ he said, and looked away.

Delorme walked Claybourne over to his car.

‘Well, you saw that,’ the coroner said. ‘He identifies the handwriting as his wife’s.’

‘Yeah,’ Delorme said. ‘I saw.’

‘There’ll have to be an autopsy, of course, but it’s suicide as far as I’m concerned. We have no signs of a struggle, we have a note, and we have a history of depression.’

‘You spoke to the hospital?’

‘I got hold of her psychiatrist at home. He’s distressed, of course – it’s always upsetting to lose a patient – but he’s not surprised.’

‘All right. Thanks, Doctor. We’ll finish canvassing the building, just in case. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do.’

‘I will,’ Claybourne said, and got into his car. ‘Depressing, isn’t it? Suicide?’

‘To put it mildly,’ Delorme said. She had attended the scenes of two others in the past few months.

She looked around for Cardinal, who wasn’t by the ambulance any more, and spotted him behind the wheel of his car. He didn’t look like he was leaving.

Delorme got in the passenger side.

‘There’ll be an autopsy, but the coroner’s going to make a finding of suicide,’ she said.

‘You’re not going to canvass the building?’

‘Of course. But I don’t think we’re going to find anything.’

Cardinal dipped his head. Delorme couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. When he finally did speak, it wasn’t what she was expecting.

‘I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I’m going to get her car home,’ he said. ‘There’s probably a simple solution, but right now it seems like an insurmountable problem.’

‘I’ll get it to your place,’ Delorme said. ‘When we’re done here. In the meantime, is there anyone I can call? Someone who can come and stay with you? You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.’

‘I’ll call Kelly. I’ll call Kelly soon as I get home.’

‘But Kelly’s in New York, no? Don’t you have anyone here?’

Cardinal started his car. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

He didn’t sound all right.

4

‘Do those shoes hurt?’

Kelly Cardinal was sitting at the dining-room table, wrapping a framed photograph of her mother in bubble wrap. She wanted to take one to the funeral home to place beside the casket.

Cardinal sat down in the chair opposite. Several days had passed, but he was still stunned, unable to take the world in. His daughter’s words hadn’t organized themselves into anything he could decipher. He had to ask her to repeat herself.

‘Those shoes you’re wearing,’ she said. ‘They look brand new. Are they pinching your feet?’

‘A little. I’ve only worn them once – to Dad’s funeral.’

‘That was two years ago.’

‘Oh, I love that picture.’

Cardinal reached for the portrait of Catherine in working mode. Dressed in a yellow anorak, her hair wild with rain, she was burdened with two cameras – one round her neck, the other slung over her shoulder. She was looking exasperated. Cardinal remembered snapping the photo with the little point-and-shoot that remained the only photographic apparatus he had ever mastered. Catherine had indeed been exasperated with him, first because she was trying to work, and second because she knew what the rain was doing to her beautiful hair and didn’t want to be photographed. In dry weather her hair fell in soft cascades to her shoulders; when it was raining it went wild and frizzy, which pricked her vanity. But Cardinal loved her hair wild.

‘For a photographer, she sure hated getting her picture taken,’ he said.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t use it. She looks a little annoyed.’

‘No, no. Please. That’s Catherine doing what she loved.’

Cardinal had at first resisted the idea of having a photograph; it had struck him as undignified, to say nothing of the fact that the sight of Catherine’s face tore his heart open.

But Catherine thought in photographs. Come into a room when she was working and before you could open your mouth she had taken your picture. It was as if the camera were a protective mechanism that had evolved over the years solely to provide a defence for elusive, breakable people like her. She wasn’t a snob about photographs, either. She could be as ecstatic over a lucky snap of a street scene as over a series of images she had struggled with for months.

Kelly put the wrapped picture into her bag. ‘Go and change your shoes. You don’t want to be standing around in shoes that don’t fit.’

‘They fit,’ Cardinal said. ‘They’re just not broken-in yet.’

‘Go on, Dad.’

Cardinal went into the bedroom and opened the closet. He tried not to look at the half of it that contained Catherine’s clothes, but he couldn’t help himself. She mostly wore jeans and T-shirts or sweaters. She was the kind of woman, even approaching fifty, who still looked good in jeans and T-shirts. But there were small black dresses, some silky blouses, a camisole or two, mostly in the greys and blacks she had always preferred. ‘My governess colours,’ she called them.

Cardinal pulled out the black shoes he wore every day and set about polishing them. The doorbell rang, and he heard Kelly thanking a neighbour who had brought food and condolences.

When she came into the bedroom, Cardinal was embarrassed to realize he was kneeling on the floor in front of the closet, shoe brush in hand, motionless as a victim of Pompeii.

‘We’re going to have to leave pretty soon,’ Kelly said. ‘We have an hour to ourselves there before people start arriving.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Shoes, Dad. Shoes.’

‘Right.’

Kelly sat on the edge of the bed behind him as Cardinal started brushing. He could see her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. She had his eyes, people always told him. But she had Catherine’s mouth, with tiny parentheses at the corners that grew when she smiled. And she would have Catherine’s hair too, if she let it grow out from the rather severe bob of the moment, with its single streak of mauve. She was more impatient than her mother, seemed to expect more from other people, who were always disappointing her, but perhaps that was just a matter of being young. She could be a harsh judge of herself, too, often to the point of tears, and not so long ago she had been a harsh judge of her father. But she had relented the last time Catherine had been admitted to hospital, and they had been getting along pretty well since then.

‘It’s bad enough for me,’ Kelly said, ‘but I really don’t understand how Mom could do this to you. All those years you stood by her when she was such a loony.’