Hole in One (3 page)

So, there I was, at 9:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, banging on the door of the Martin residence, with Hanna at my side. She was radiating girlish innocence, one of the easiest things on earth to fake. We looked like a couple of Baptists come to sell bibles to the folks. I was, on orders, wearing my suit, and Hanna was wearing a dark brown dress, simple, demure, and straightforward, lying in its teeth about its contents. She came as close as dammit to a curtsy when the door whanged open and Art Martin glowered out through the mists of a morning head and wished us a gracious, “What the hell do you want?”

I guess, after all those years of being polite to the passengers and laying off the sauce so he could fly at any time, Art Martin, upon retirement, decided to cram a lifetime's worth of snarling and boozing into a couple of decades. He is one of the large, economy-sized ex-pilots, with fists the size of dinner plates and writhing knots along his upper arms. His eyes are blue, although on this occasion they were mostly red.

After his wife ran off a couple of years ago, he moved from Toronto to Bosky Dell with his daughter Winifred, and, since they live right next door to the golf course, Winifred got a job looking after the clubhouse. It is Winifred who, most Sunday mornings, will nag him until he can't stand the torment anymore and she can lug him off to church, where he promptly falls asleep and snores through the sermon. Thus are we reminded of God's infinite grace. The grace must have been working this morning, because Art, to my astonishment, suddenly reached forward and grabbed my hand.

“Well sir, it's Carlton Withers,” he said. “Come in, come in, my boy. Good to see you. Sit you down, sit you right down. Winifred, perhaps Carlton could be persuaded to take a small drop for medicinal purposes. Fetch the bottle, girl, fetch the bottle.”

While he spoke, he was propelling me by the elbow through a kitchen where you could eat off the floor—local report has it that Art does, from time to time, when he can't get into a chair—and into what you, in your heathenish, foreign way might call a living room, but which we of Bosky Dell recognize at once as the best parlour. I was slammed into one of those old, high-backed chairs, and an enamel mug full almost to the brim with some brown, murky hell's brew was thrust into my hand. I was going to be used, that much was clear, to cancel the church expedition this day.

“Drink up, for God's sake. I made this stuff myself and,” he leaned across the oak table and gave me a playful punch on the arm that numbed it to the marrow, “it has a bit of a kick, if I do say so myself.”

There is a word,
meiosis
, which means “a picturesque understatement,” and when Art Martin spoke of a bit of a kick in describing his fortified blackberry wine, he was indulging in meiosis. I swallowed about an ounce of the stuff, which ran down my throat with a torch and set fire to my tonsils.

“Good, eh?”

I nodded, speechlessly.

“You'll want some more.” And he filled my mug back up to the brim.

Winifred was taking this about as you would expect, glowering with the pure hate we so often find in the uplifted Christian on Sunday morning, and all directed, naturally, at me. I had phoned her to say we wanted an interview for the paper, and she had agreed, reluctantly. Nothing had been said about boozing with her father, although what she thought I could do about it, I don't know. I shot a look across at Hanna, who was actually wearing white gloves, which she apparently thought were de rigueur in the boondocks on Sunday, and she jumped up and pushed a white-gloved finger onto a framed photo on the wall.

“Oh, Mr. Martin, is this your aircraft?”

He looked at her for the first time. “Trim little filly” flashed across his forehead as clearly as if it had been tattooed there.

“One of them,” he said. “Of course, I flew all sorts. Started out flying a Fox Moth, up in the Northwest Territories. Bush pilot, I was.”

“My, how wonderful! I guess that's why Carlton said he wanted to write a book about you. Didn't you, Carlton?”

“I did? I mean, uh, I did.”

There went Sunday. Art Martin began to spout bush-pilot stories, ten percent of which may even have been true, and he stood over me until I wrote them all down in my notebook.

I staggered out of the house several hours later, awash with homebrew and hero-stories, and tottered over to where Hanna sat behind the wheel of the Corolla, humming to herself.

“Well, you took long enough,” she said, as she started up the car and backed down the drive. “Did you learn anything?”

“I learned that the pilots of today have it pretty soft and that if you want to get real, honest-to-God flying, you want to try hauling five-hundred-pound oil drums around in a de Havilland Beaver up north of Sixty. And I learned that there is an Inuit woman in Tuktoyaktuk who once tried to skin Art Martin with her ulu,” I said. “I wonder if it would be possible to track that bold woman down and persuade her to try again?”

“Yes, well, I knew you'd be a washout, so I helped Winifred with the vegetables for dinner, and got the scoop from her. Too bad,” the maddening creature went on, “that I have to do all the work.”

“Stop the car, Klovack,” I groaned. “I am about to unship this blackberry wine.”

Hanna relented, for once, when I returned, groaning, to the car, and, instead of filling me with the tales of her triumph at once, agreed to drop me off at my place and come back later in the evening to, as she put it, “thrash things out.”

I mentioned that it might be better for her to come in and bathe my temples, hold my hand, and perform other merciful acts, but she told me, rather curtly, to forget it. As she dumped me unceremoniously in front of my cottage and barrelled off homewards, I wondered if I should tell her, when she came back, that, according to Alexander Pope, women have no characters at all.

Probably not, I decided.

Many hours later, with the throbbing echoes of a hangover beginning to release their vice-like grip on my temples, I sat in my own living room and peered through the clearing mists, as Hanna, decently clad now in blue jeans and a sweater, told me about her little chat with Winifred Martin.

“She wanted money,” Hanna said.

“Don't we all? No, you mean Winifred Martin wanted money to tell you her story?”

“Uh-huh. She's heard about cheque-book journalism, and she wants some of it.”

I got up and poked the fire.

“I always thought Winifred was one of those stern, non-materialistic types. So you didn't get her story after all.”

“Sure I did. I already told you.”

“But you know the
Lancer
never pays for stories; it doesn't even pay the staff a living wage.”

“Oh, that part's all right. I told her you were working on this as a freelancer, and you'd bring around a hundred dollars tomorrow. Golly, Carlton, you nearly hit me.”

I had given a convulsive twitch at the words “you'd bring around, etc.,” with the result that the poker had flown from my nerveless grasp and clattered to the floor beside Hanna's chair. This cheered up the fire, for some reason, and it began to blaze merrily. All the better for my purposes, which had nothing to do with solving murders. Surely the romantic ambience, especially a crackling fire in the fireplace, could be counted on to melt the female. This, after all, was more or less our former love nest. Over there, behind that pile of old newspapers, blankets, and miscellaneous kitchen debris, was where I discovered that Hanna is ticklish in a most unusual place. Here, where a couple of pots containing decaying vegetable matter lay athwart what was probably, a few layers down, the old green plush armchair, was where I proposed, and drew a round-eyed look, but no response whatever. Back yonder, where the broken vacuum cleaner sagged against an overflow of sweaters, shoes, pillows, and tennis rackets from the open door of the Welsh dresser, was where I demonstrated, for the first time, the advantages of the interlocking, as opposed to the overlapping, grip. The girl must be moved by this rich treasure house of memories, right?

She got up and ambled through the debris towards the kitchen.

“Say, Carlton, you got anything to eat around this joint?” Well, of course I did. There were three jars of peanut butter, half a lemon, a slightly soiled slice of pizza left over from last Tuesday, which could easily be scraped off and heated up, a green substance at the bottom of the fridge, and, of course, that case of canned spaghetti in the bedroom.

“Let's check in the bedroom,” I said. “I know there's something there.”

“Cut it, Carlton,” snapped Hanna. “You'll have to call Mrs. Golden.”

Emma Golden is a comfortable widow in her mid-forties who lives just across Third Street from me. She likes to keep an eye on the neighbourhood, as she puts it, and it is well known that the gumshoes in the KGB and the CIA alike take her correspondence course. She is, nonetheless, a good sort, friendly and tolerant—she rolls her eyes at my housekeeping methods, but never nags—and she always manages to produce, from some inexhaustible source, possibly a well in her backyard, a steady supply of soups, stews, pizzas, lasagna, buns, and bread, which she lugs over and showers down on me. I told her once that she reminded me of the goddess Ceres, well known for her full figure and generous ways, but Emma replied that the only Ceres she knew about was the World Ceres, and how about them Blue Jays?

I phoned her at once, and told her that Hanna had come to visit and was just saying how nice it would be to see her again.

“I'll be right over,” said Emma. A few minutes later, there was a smart rat-tat-tat on the door, and in she marched, with a pot of stew in one hand, a loaf of bread in the other, and a smile wreathing her face.

“I brought a little something,” she said, five of the finest words in the language.

Soon, we were all gathered around the kitchen table, and Hanna was letting us in on what she'd gotten out of Winifred Martin.

Which was not, to my way of thinking, a whole lot.

“She said there were things going on at the golf course,” Hanna reported.

“What sorts of things?”

“Stolen golf carts, smashed windows; somebody broke into the clubhouse last weekend and trashed the place. She said it was like a reign of terror—she wants you to use that in your story, Carlton. She said you should call it ‘One Woman's Brave Fight Against a Reign of Terror.'”

“What brave fighting has she done?”

“None, yet. She said she was just getting ready to strike back by calling the police when this horrible thing happened. Which struck me as funny. Why didn't she call the police right away?”

“In Bosky Dell,” I explained, “we don't call in the cops for minor vandalism and theft, except as a last resort.”

“Why, what have you got? Your own gang of vigilantes?”

“It's not that so much as, well . . .” I trailed off, and Emma came to the rescue.

“Usually,” she said, “it turns out to be some of the locals, you know, high spirited . . .”

“You mean you cover up for the local hoodlums?”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no. We just check it out first. A couple of years ago, when somebody lifted the weathervane off the Schenks' boathouse, and old man Schenk went screaming to the cops, it turned out Dorothy Schenk had lost the thing to Angela Hopkins in a poker game. Dorothy hadn't had the nerve to mention it. It was quite embarrassing.”

“I've said it before and I'll say it again, this place is a hive of activity.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Emma. “Go on about Winifred Martin.”

“Oh, yeah, where was I?”

“You—or rather Winifred—was about to fight back against a reign of terror.”

“That's right. Well, before she got around to calling the cops, this horrible thing happened.”

“Old Charlie Tinkelpaugh, Emma,” I started to explain. “He was—”

“I know, I know,” Emma replied, and of course she did. Probably knew what he'd had for breakfast that day.

“Get on with it, Hanna.”

“Well, actually, there isn't much more. Winifred just said that, for the past three or four weeks, there have been things happening at the golf course, wicked things she called them, and she thinks they have something to do with the murder.”

“She's crackers. And for this you told her I'd pay her a hundred dollars?”

“You did, Hanna?” asked the widow. “That's rich. Where's Carlton going to get a hundred dollars?”

“Oh, he'll manage. Well, at least it's something, not just a whole bunch of garbage about the good old days in the bush. Carlton,” she added, “spent the whole day gabbing to Art Martin about flying, and left all the investigating to me.”

I got up from the table. “This woman,” I told Mrs. Golden, “she . . . ahh, what's the use?”

Emma beamed. “Well, this is more like it,” she said. “I couldn't stand it when you two were being polite to each other all last week. I presume this means that you're lovebirds again?”

Lovebirds. That's Emma talk.

“No, we are not lovebirds,” huffed Hanna.

“What you are looking at over there,” I told the widow, “is not a lovebird, but a bird of prey. Note the beak.”

This, at least, got under the Klovack skin. She is sensitive about her breathing equipment for some reason, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with it beyond this slight, and to me entrancing, bend in it, about halfway down the pike. She shot me one of her death-ray looks, and jumped up from the table. Emma rapped for order.

“Well, never mind. Sit down, the two of you, and have some more stew.”

We glowered, but we sat, and as we began digging in again—this historical research whets the appetite—Emma asked, “Hanna, did she say anything about the Fearsome Foursome?”

“The Whosome Whatsome?”

I saw that a word of explanation was in order.

“Fearsome Foursome. A golf group, and the terror of Ladies' Day.”

Wednesday is Ladies' Day at the Bosky Dell course; when one of the Young Moderns moved to rename it Women's Day, she got a frozen look, but no support.

“Ethyl Podmeyer is the gang leader; the others are Lucille Farnham, Fern Armstrong, and Annabelle Wentworth.”

Hanna chewed on this, along with a bit of crust, then asked, “And why are they the Fearsome Foursome?”

“Very forceful and athletic types, the F.F. In the vanguard of modern thought—they introduced the metal driver hereabouts—community leaders, tough cookies, and solid golfers. They know all the rules.”

“Oh, yeah? Do they know about Winter Rules? Carlton says you can tee your ball up on the fairway because it's always Winter Rules here, because we are so far north of the equator.”

“Carlton,” purred the kindly widow, “takes the broad, flexible approach to golf.”

“The Fearsome Foursome do not,” I chipped in. “They like to catch other golfers in some minor transgression and chew them out. If you don't replace your divot, they're on you like a duck on a June bug. But what does all this have to do with the murder, Emma?”

“Probably nothing. I just wondered, when Hanna mentioned about these things going on down at the club. You know, of course, that somebody spiked the well on the seventh hole, and the Fearsome Foursome all got sick.”

“No. Nobody ever tells me anything.”

“Right,” put in Hanna. “That's why they call you a reporter.”

I ignored this. “When did this happen, Emma? And how sick were they?”

“Well, not so much sick. More embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?”

“Uh-huh. The way I heard it, they all stopped for a drink at the well. You know the well, Carlton.”

Indeed I do. It is part of the ritual of a golf game at Bosky Dell to pause at the old hand-pumped well out on the seventh fairway and pump up a drink, which you down quickly amid glad cries of appreciation, pointing out how much better it tastes than crummy old tap water, even though, in point of fact, it tastes metallic and weird. I think it is where the local spiders go to pee.

“Well, anyway, the girls all had a drink at the well, and about twenty minutes later, on the ninth, they were all caught short.”

“Egads. Caught short, as in . . .”

“Uh-huh. The medical officer of health for the county, they called him in later, and he found traces of a very powerful laxative on that tin-cup thing.”

To add to the atmosphere out at the old well, there is a huge, bent, tin cup, attached to the well handle by a chain, and you drink out of this. Ugh.

“Carlton,” Emma snapped crossly. “It was not funny.”

“No, no, of course not. I was just thinking of the Fearsome Foursome, casting their customary
sang-froid
to the winds and dashing all the way to the clubhouse, where there is only one women's john. I wonder who waited outside till last? Not Ethyl Podmeyer, that's for sure.”

“Well, that's probably the most shocking thing about it, Carlton. The Ladies' was out of order, so Ethyl Podmeyer went right into the Men's, and kicked Barney Marston out. He was just settling down with the newspaper.”

I miss all the good stuff. Barney Marston is a retired stockbroker, a plump and pompous old buzzard, and in losing out on the sight of Ethyl Podmeyer chivvying him out of the water closet I had obviously missed one of the highlights of the season.

“When was all this, Emma?” Hanna wanted to know.

“And how did they keep it hushed up?” I asked.

“Just last week. Ladies' Day, it was, a week ago Wednesday. And of course they kept it hushed up, Carlton. It's not the sort of thing nice people talk about.”

“How did you find out about it?” asked Hanna.

“Oh, I have my ways.”

There are two theories about Emma Golden's intelligence-gathering service. One—mine—is that she has trained all the animals and birds to come and spill their guts to her, the way Tarzan of the Apes used to do, according to Edgar Rice Burroughs. The other—Mundane Whittaker's—is that she uses a combination of blackmail and bribery, centred on her output of pizza and other foodstuffs, to worm things out of anyone who comes within her sphere of influence.

“Well, anyway, Carlton, this lets you off the hook with Winifred Martin,” said Hanna.

“It does? How?”

“Obviously she was withholding information from me. If I were you, I wouldn't give her more than fifty bucks.”

And she got up, brushed breadcrumbs off the front of her sweater, although I would have been happy to do it for her, and started out the door.

“Hey, where are you going? I thought maybe we could talk some more.”

She paused with one hand on the open door. “Oh, I know what you thought, Carlton, but in my books, you're still a creep.”

The door banged to behind her.

“Rats,” said Emma Golden. “There goes five dollars.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I bet Marianne Huntingdon five dollars that this breakup of yours with Hanna was only temporary. You've let me down, Carlton.”