Innocent Murderer (6 page)

I looked at him with renewed interest. Gyrfalcons are the largest falcons in the world and nest off cliff faces that are often inaccessible. Half the time, to even see their nests you have to climb up or fly over. No wonder he was reading about illegal trade in animals. There was probably a whole chapter on gyrfalcon eggs and how they somehow manage to get themselves from Canada to Saudi Arabia on a rather regular basis. But I didn't go there. Instead, I said, “Guess you're not afraid of heights.”

He laughed and was about to say something when we were called in to the meeting. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows as if to say “duty calls.”

I tried to get beside Martha and Duncan but the surg
–
ing crowd took me to a table of strangers. Every crew
–
member and every lecturer (including myself) had to give a five-minute spiel. It was interminable and I spent the whole time waiting for my turn and worrying about it.

In the end my speech went smoothly enough, though the crowd was more interested in the one measly murder case I had worked on than anything else.

And then Terry got up to say her bit. She'd barely begun when someone called out, “Did you cut the ropes on the Zodiac?”

Terry searched the audience for the source of the voice and said nothing. Cut the ropes?

“Aren't you the murderer?” asked the voice. I couldn't find him. Neither could Terry.

I heard a collective intake of breath as the words hit home. It was surreal. The entire room fell quiet, and once again I was aware of it moving gently up and down with the swell of the sea.

Terry slowly turned and looked into the audience, looking for the owner of the voice. “No, I am not a murderer.” Her voice was quiet, defiant. She's been here before, I thought. Handling accusations from a room full of unknown people.

I scanned the audience and found him. Peter. What I could see of his face was cold and ugly and there was a tall, dark-haired woman clamping her hand on his shoulder with a look of what can only be described as alarm. I looked more closely and was pretty sure it was the woman who'd sat across the aisle from me on the plane.

“You had a good lawyer, eh?” he asked in a suddenly good-natured voice, but the look he gave her was one of frightening focus.

She looked at him curiously. “I was acquitted. Every
–
body knows that.”

“You had a good lawyer.”

The woman beside Peter was frowning and hurriedly whispered something to him. Whatever she said worked and the fight went out of him even as Terry said, “Are you trying to accuse me…?”

I heard a chair scrape back and the booming voice of Captain Jason Poole rang through the room. “That's enough everybody.” He stood there with his hands up as if he was about to do a vertical pushup. Terry started to protest but thought better of it, and Peter had melted into the background with the tall, dark-haired woman.

Poole surveyed the room. “I think this meeting is over, folks. Please direct any questions to the expedition staff and pray for good weather.” He started to leave and then hesitated. “And for the record? Ms Terry Spencer was acquitted. End of story.”

But of course, that wasn't the end of the story. It was only the beginning.

Over the next couple of days time kind of stood still in the swirl of fog that followed us like a besotted dog. We couldn't seem to shake it. I went looking for Martha a couple of times to try and find out more about Terry's so-called murder. What with all the racing around to pack and get ready for the trip and then feeling so sick, it had been at the bottom of my list of priorities. But since I'd missed a lot of meals and spent a lot of time in my cabin I hadn't found Martha. I gave up, figuring I'd find out soon enough.

The first day was pretty much a writeoff for any trips ashore because of the fog and the pack ice, so all of us lecturers had to work double time. I hadn't yet given a lecture to Terry's class, so I thought I'd sit in on hers in the dining room to get a feel for it before giving my bit at the end. It appeared that she had already given an assign
–
ment to the class before they arrived on board so she would have some material to deal with. The newcomers presumably would get an assignment today.

Terry had put all her stuff on one of the dining room tables near the front of the room.

She paced back and forth in front of the class and then reached over and took one of the stories from the top of the pile. “Let me read you the opening two sen
–
tences of this essay,” she said, her voice the physical equivalent of someone holding their nose.

“
It was an awful day. I walked along the sidewalk thinking about depressing things and worrying that my life was moving along too quickly
.” She glared at us all.

“I can't count how many times I've had to drill it into my classes to show not tell. This is a perfect example.”

She waved the offending sheet of paper at us. “What kind of awful day? Was it raining, hailing, sleeting? Was the smog smothering our protagonist or maybe it was fog obscuring the author's reasoning? Now try this:

“
The rain smashed into the sidewalk like a hand slap–ping a face
.

“Okay. Maybe a little overdone for a first sentence, but that doesn't just tell you that it's an awful day, it shows you. It gives you an image of what's happening to make it an awful day and maybe make you wonder why your protagonist used such an analogy. And the next sentence — what depressing things is the author talking about? This is a golden opportunity to describe some
–
thing depressing that perhaps links back to an important past event, maybe something like:

“
I could barely keep my leaden feet moving for all the wrenching images of dead and dying people flitting through my mind, mocking me
.

“This gives the reader some indication of the nature of this person; that they're pessimistic and prone to depression. So why is the protagonist thinking of dead and dying people? Choose any depressing thing that fits the story. It doesn't have to be dead people. And the sec
–
ond half of that sentence is so pedestrian. It says nothing to the reader except that life moves quickly, which every
–
one over the age of twenty knows already.

“Say something that has meaning to your character, maybe even something that foreshadows something to come or makes you wonder. What about:

“
Making me wonder if my life had passed me by
.

“This reinforces the depressive nature of our protago
–
nist and sets us to wondering why she's wondering if her life has passed her by. It draws us in.”

The class was silent. I watched them taking it all in. It was pretty clear that Terry had just turned a piece of challenged writing into something more interesting. I wondered who the author was and was glad that Terry had been kind and not identified him or her.

“Tracey.” The name rang out like the lonely hollow sound it was. I'd thought too soon.

We all turned in unison to look at Tracey, who sat frozen in her chair. She was dressed like a grey day, som
–
ber colours that reached to her grey face and iron grey hair. Her thin, pinched features seemed to recoil back, giving the impression that her face was seriously sunken.

She seemed to have shrunk into the chair, her body hunched, her arms hugging herself as if to make sure she was really there.

“Come and get your writing and at least try, on your next one, to make it seem like you're listening to me. If you can't write better than this you'll never get anywhere, and even then you can't be sure.”

“You mean, even if we're good there's no guarantee?”

Terry studied the man who had spoken and said in measured tones, “In this business it helps to know some
–
one, or be someone.” There was a trace of bitterness in her words, but she shrugged them off and held out Tracey's essay.

“Isn't that how you got published?”

Terry turned to face Peter, who had slipped in unno
–
ticed. She looked at him curiously and then laughed. “I guess you could say I became a celebrity and then pub
–
lished a book. But I just got lucky, or unlucky if you look at the jail time I did for something I had no control over.

I just took advantage of bad luck and turned it into good luck. I do NOT recommend you take my route.”

Someone in the audience yelled out “What happened?”

Terry smiled and said, “Read my book. It's all there.”

I thought that was rather abrupt, but it couldn't be pleasant to always be confronted with such an unpleas
–
ant memory, to constantly be asked about it.

Terry waved Tracey's paper at her. When Tracey didn't make a move to get up — I don't think she could've if she'd tried — Terry waltzed over and dumped it in her lap then went on to her next topic, without any sign that she was aware of what she had just done to Tracey. I was very glad I had no work in that pile and looked furtively at Martha and Duncan. Duncan was frowning and Mar
–
tha was biting her lower lip.

“This next needs no explanation.” She walked back and forth with the poor little essay quivering in her hands, stopped in front of Martha and began to read:

“
The saucer-like silent, sizzling sun shone a ray of wonderment upon the little boy, who opened his mouth and gulped it down, quenching his tears away. But be patient, gentle reader, and you shall soon find out what happens to the little ray of wonderment
.”

There was dead silence and then rather a few muffled giggles. I looked at Martha, watched her face hitch a ride on a roller coaster of emotions: astonishment, bewilder
–
ment, anger, realization…. But it was the last one that I'll never forget. She suddenly flung back her head and laughed with the best of us. When the laughter had died down Terry handed Martha her essay.

“Gentle reader? Where the hell did that come from?”

“
Gulliver's Travels
.” Martha didn't skip a beat. “Or perhaps you haven't heard of it?”

Terry studied her for a long time. I thought she was going to say something but she didn't. Instead she turned to the class and gave them their next assignment before asking me to give my lecture. It was just my luck that she was handing over a giggling class to me. I confess I thought that maybe she had done it on purpose, but that was uncharitable. Still — talk about daunting.

I was just about to start when someone poked their head in the door asking for Terry. She scowled but got up and went out, leaving me alone at the front of the room.

I was immediately peppered with questions from people doing research for their books. I finally threw aside my notes and opened the floor, allowing them to query me about the body I had found in the wilderness the summer before. Then they grilled me for information for their own books.

“I'm researching a book where my murder victim is killed in Quebec, then moved three days later and dumped in the woods in northern Ontario. How can my protagonist know how long since death?” asked one man.

“Well, flies love dead stuff and they can find a vacated body really quickly — within seconds sometimes. They lay their eggs and it's the larvae we use to help us pin
–
point the time of death. Since we know how long it takes for each species of larva to develop into a fly, and we know they sometimes colonize within minutes, we can count backwards and find the time of death by finding the time when the flies deposited their eggs.”

“How can my protagonist know that the body's been moved?”

“There are different species of flies in different habi
–
tats. In this situation you would have larvae growing right from death in Quebec and larva growing from three days later when the body was moved to Ontario. Not only would you know the body had been moved, but you could pinpoint when it was moved. Forensic entomology is pretty straightforward.”

It went on like this for some time. I was hoping maybe the questions were over when a chair scraped back and the tall slender woman who had whisked Peter away stood up. She looked me straight in the eye. “My book is set on a ship. That's why I'm on this trip. What would be the best way to murder one of my characters and get away with it?”

“That's not really about forensic biology, since there aren't too many flies out here at sea. And I'm sure you've thought of the best way: just upend them overboard.”

“I had thought of that but there's so much pack ice.”

“You could,” I said gently, “write the pack ice out of the book.”

She looked at me then and I thought I saw a look of sudden desperation, but I must have been mistaken because all she said was “How stupid of me,” and sat back down.

Over the next few days the weather was too socked in for us to take any trips ashore and everyone was getting cabin fever. I spent my spare time in my berth, watching people strolling around the bow of the ship. All of them were wearing winter jackets and some were wearing balaclavas so that they looked like criminals. We were at anchor in some bay we could not see, hoping the fog would break so we could go ashore. But at least it was calm.

From where I stood I could see the entire bow with its myriad ropes and chains, and things that looked like horns. Someone had randomly painted lime green squares on the forest green deck, making it look as though some sort of tropical disease had taken hold and spread.

I was stir-crazy in that cabin. Thumbing my nose at my stomach I went on deck to explore. I needed air the way a sagging balloon does. The
Susanna Moodie
was a working ship, its provenance in days past as a research vessel made it utilitarian. As I strolled around the bow I looked up at the bridge, which was perched on the top deck of what looked like a big, white, square apartment building. It was supremely ugly.