The Piano Maker (14 page)

“Nipped in the face by a horse when she was just a wee one,” said Mildred. “A shame, that.”

Much of Mona’s haunting appeal lay in her courage simply to stand up and sing. And her pure, young voice, lost in all that stone church.

When she gave her tea, she invited Mildred and Mr. Chandler and Claire and Father William. Father William was the only one who did not come; he knocked on her door and explained that it was not something he could do, attend her teas. Not under the circumstances. He said he was sorry and that he hoped she understood.

It was still a good tea. They sat around the low table, and she cut slices from the fresh cake Mildred had brought and served them on the small glass plates from the cupboard. David Chandler had dressed up for the occasion, in
a white shirt and tie and a waistcoat and grey sports jacket that all looked brand new but somehow did not quite fit, or perhaps it was simply that he was not used to dressing like that. He talked about the house he lived in.

“There was never a shot fired,” he said. “From that fort. Not much left of it now, with the earth berms levelled and some of the walls taken down. Some of them are six rows of brick and stone wide, with sleepers of squared logs to tie it all together.”

“I can imagine,” she said. “Our town in France was built with stones as well, quarried stone walls everywhere, from the early Middle Ages. It was laid out in a star pattern. People from the universities would come and sketch that main square and the way the streets radiated out.”

“Was it much damaged during the war?” said Mr. Chandler.

“Yes, it was. Claire and I saw it in 1919, didn’t we, Claire?”

“And not since?”

“No. But I’ve read that the French government might be rebuilding some of the historic towns.”

Mildred asked if the cake was all right. She said next time she’d try mixing in more ground hazelnuts with the flour. They all took a bite and chewed thoughtfully and swallowed and agreed that the cake was very good indeed.

Claire poured more tea for them and offered milk and sugar. It was warm and friendly and not too bright in the room. The sky was going purple, and seagulls were orange
specks up high. Hélène clicked on the lamp. There were few silences among them, and in what silences there were she knew that everyone understood that this was an important event for her, perhaps an end of something or a beginning, but an event that might not happen in this way ever again.

Next morning near the end of her practice session, Father William came up to her. She stopped playing.

“May I see you in the vestry, Mrs. Giroux?”

“Now?”

“Yes, please.”

She stood up and turned to the pews and said to the dozen people there that practice was probably over for the morning.

In the vestry were Sergeant Elliott and a woman in a wool hat and grey coat buttoned up to her chin. As soon as the door was closed the sergeant said, “Mrs. Giroux, this is our matron, Mrs. Doren. I have been informed by my superiors that in your situation, house arrest is in fact not an option. We cleared a cell in lockup for you, ma’am, and the matron will be taking charge of you.”

“Suddenly it’s not an option, sergeant? Why is that?”

“I don’t know. You can bring a small bag of necessaries, but know that the matron will go through them, and she may reject some of them. Like anything sharp or breakable and anything else like belts or laces or pins. We have to,
ma’am. Anything that could be used to harm your person.”

They took her there in a black horse-drawn carriage with a single barred window in the door. Through that window she saw people stepping from their doorways to watch them go by. In the carriage the matron sat on one side, she on the other.

“We have just two cells,” said the matron. “There’s blankets between the cells. I put them up today, so the men can’t see in or reach past them to grab you, but they’ll try to get your attention. Stay on the far side and ignore them.”

The matron sat hunched forward with her elbows on her knees. She said, “He didn’t want to do that, the sergeant, put you in the lockup, but the order came direct from the courthouse in the city. Maybe somebody in town complained, or maybe because it’s a capital case. I don’t know.”

For a while they rode in silence and then the matron said, “Almost there now.”

In the police station she was led past a cell where three men sat on bunks. They swivelled their heads to follow her, and one started making kissing noises. The matron glanced at her and shook her head and then she unlocked the second cell. The row of blankets hung from a laundry line and against the far wall there was a bunk and a chair and a table.

“Your bag,” said the matron. “I need to check it.”

The matron emptied the bag on the table and went through the contents. She held up the comb. “I’ll have to keep that. Oh, and your boot laces. Almost forgot. And you wouldn’t be wearin’ a corset or somethin’ with long
cinch cords, would you?”

“Look at me,” she said. “What would I want to be cinching?”

For a while she managed to ignore the men’s hissing and vulgar talk. The gate clanged open and the matron brought an enamel jug with water and a cup. She stood by Hélène’s bunkside and held out something in one hand. With the other she pointed at her ear.

It was a slice of white bread. Hélène took some and kneaded it and put it in her ears.

The matron was out of her coat now, in a long grey wool skirt and sweater with a braided belt that had a leather truncheon hooked to it.

In the course of the afternoon, Claire came to visit, and so did Mildred and Mr. Chandler and Father William. Every time someone came, the matron let her out of the cell and allowed her and her visitor fifteen minutes in the watch office. That room was heated by a small iron stove, and it had a table and chairs in it. The door had a window on top.

The attorney, Mr. Quormby, was the last person to come that day. He arrived when it was getting dark. He said he’d had to wait for the file to arrive from Edmonton, and then the drive had taken longer than expected because the road was icy in places. He would be spending the night at the hotel.

Mr. Quormby wore a black coat and hat, a white shirt and bow tie and a grey silk scarf. His face was kind in a way, but it was also set and it gave away nothing.

He took off his coat and hat and smoothed his hair, and then for a moment he stood at the door looking out into the other cell, where one of the men was baring his teeth at him.

“Will you be all right here?” he said. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you back into house arrest. Perhaps with more restrictions.”

He studied her, taking his time. “Let’s sit,” he said then. “The bad news is that the charge is first-degree murder with the included lesser offences of second-degree and manslaughter. The Crown will need to prove planning and intent, but first-degree is a hanging offence, Mrs. Giroux. Second-degree is also culpable homicide and it could mean life imprisonment, but there is some leeway for the judge and jury. For manslaughter there is no stated minimum sentence. I’m required by law to point these things out, but I’ll say them just this once. Do you have any questions?”

“Yes. What is the new evidence?”

“I don’t know yet. But eventually the Crown will have to disclose. Mrs. Giroux, I remember the case in general terms. It interested me then and it interests me now. This evening after dinner I’ll look at the file in more detail. For now let me just ask you a few questions.”

THAT DAY AT THE
Sainte Mère de Dieu in Montreal they’d also searched her bag. Not a matron or a sister but an old commissionaire turned her bag upside down on the desk and went through her things with tobacco-stained fingers.

“Nothing sharp in here, or pointed?” he said. “The first chance some of them get, they do themselves harm. The other day, one lad kept his mother’s hatpin and used it in the night. Just keep that in mind, ma’am.”

“I will.”

“And the young lady?”

“She’s my daughter.”

“And his?”

“His what?”

“I’m asking is she the captain’s daughter.”

“No, she’s not. But he was very kind to her at a difficult time. She likes him very much.”

“If she’s not his daughter then she can’t go in. She’ll
have to wait outside. If she isn’t his daughter and she’s not sixteen then this is no place for her, ma’am.”

“In that case, let’s say she
is
his.”

“Ma’am. I have no time for that. There’s the room down the hall, or she could go outside in the park and wait. You need to wait too, for someone to take you in.”

She sat with Claire on one of the wooden benches in the waiting room. The room was over-bright with sunlight and they were the only people in it. On the wall above the door there was a large painting of Mother Mary with her hands reaching out. From somewhere they could hear shouting. Splashing noises. A man screaming.

“While I’m gone, please just wait here,” she whispered to Claire. “Don’t go out there. I won’t be long.”

“What are those noises?”

“I don’t know. Maybe from baths. Maybe they are still using salt water on the burn cases.”

“After all this time?”

“I don’t know, Claire. Maybe traffic accidents come here too.”

“Is he blind
and
burnt?”

“I don’t know. Just wait here for me. Please.”

In the end she did not get to see him that day either. A bell began to ring and they heard running footsteps along the hallway and doors opening and slamming shut. Half an hour later the commissionaire came and sent them home.

“But is he all right?” said Hélène. “What happened?”

“Some of them are having a hard time of it.”

“Would you at least tell him we were here?”

“He wouldn’t know the difference, ma’am.”

“And how would you know that? Just tell him, for God’s sake. Hélène and Claire from Montmagny in France.”

They went several more times to the Sainte Mère, but they never did get to see him. One day when they were there again, another commissionaire wet his finger on his tongue and turned pages in a ledger and then looked up and said that Captain Boucher had passed away five days ago.

“Five days ago? But I was here only last Wednesday.”

“Well, ma’am. We lose so many that paperwork can’t keep up with them.”

In the small park by the hospital, they sat on a stone bench. They could hear streetcar bells, and not far away at a flower stand women bought flowers and carried them up the stone stairs past stone lions to the hospital.

“He was kind,” she said to Claire. “And kindness is much underrated. I know you loved him. I did too.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

She looked sideways at the girl. “What’s the matter?”

“I remember hearing you play the piano for him. You sounded different when you played for him. It made me feel lonely. And angry at you.”

“Did it, Claire? You never said so.”

“Maybe I didn’t know it. Or I didn’t know how to say it. I can tell you now.”

“Why angry?”

“What do you think? I was jealous.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can understand that.” She knew that there was something more she ought to be saying to Claire but she didn’t know what.

She had loved that young man. Or needed him as the only hope and goodness within reach and loved him for that. At the time and in that dreadful place. Loved him differently than Claire’s father, but perhaps just as much in some ways; that was the confusing truth. Perhaps because of the war. The two of them alone on the blue sofa, as if on a safe island afloat among the madness.

Afterward she’d often wondered if she would have loved him as much and felt that way in peacetime, and now she would never know. Perhaps it would have been just as good. She liked to think that.

In Montreal she and Claire lived in a townhouse in Westmount. Claire had her own room with a white desk that she had chosen herself at Eaton’s downtown, and an armoire and shelves and a single bed, all matching. The windows were leaded in the English style, and in the winter months they frosted over thickly and needed rags on the sills to catch the water.

Years went by. In the beginning money was no problem, because the concert swing through Quebec had gone well. For four semesters she taught at the conservatory, but then
the all-male, all-English faculty closed ranks against her and her contract was not renewed. And so money did get tight. Half her income was from classes she gave at the Métropolis concert hall on Saint Catherine Street East, and the other half from tuning the pianos for Musique Gauthier, the largest instrument retailer in Montreal. Madame Gauthier hired her because the shop had carried Molnar pianos before the war and had done well with them. But now unemployment was high and pianos were hardly selling any more.

She wrote to a lawyer in Montmagny instructing him to find a buyer for the piece of land where the house and the factory had stood. He wrote back saying he would try, but at the moment there was no market whatsoever for war-damaged real estate.

She had not heard from Nathan since they’d left London; now she often thought of his offer of lucrative work, and she was tempted to try and contact him.

She called Monsieur de Fougère and asked him how hard it would be to find someone who was or had been working for the British government in Egypt.

“Not hard at all,” said de Fougère. “The Colonial Service is very thorough in its record-keeping. Would you like me to put in a search request?”

“Not just yet,” she said. “But thank you. I’ll let you know.”

After Xavier’s death she’d sometimes wondered why, back in France, Nathan had so firmly dismissed any chance of
locating him. Surely some of the Canadian soldiers still there would have known something about a commanding officer who’d just been posted out. And Nathan had been playing cards with them. Had he actually tried? Had Xavier let something slip to some of the other Canadians, and Nathan found out? Had he been jealous? Had he lied to her?

That had been the first time she thought him capable of that, of lying, but at the time she did not pursue the notion. Now she did, and with the help of Madame Gauthier she compiled a list of companies that were making wooden musical instruments in Canada.