The Piano Maker (6 page)

“Look at this one,” she said. “It must be pear coming off the rollers now. Along with rosewood, pear is our most expensive veneer, and it’s only used for inlay and borders. Remind me to show you the picture we have of the early days of the workshop. The entire assembly was still wood then. Imagine! Oak, usually, or walnut. And just hand tools and iron blades they used, Pierre. Carbon steel was
already available, but even though rust was a problem they preferred iron because it’s softer and you get a better edge. In fact, we still use iron blades for the fine work. Even now. They have edges so keen and flexible, they’ll bend when you run them over your thumbnail. With them the men can make cuts so tight you can hardly see them …” She paused. “What are you smiling at?”

“You, Hélène. Your enthusiasm. Tell me more.”

Two years after she met him, the generals sent Pierre to Rouen, and a year later to Paris. During that time she saw him only every other week, when he had a three-day pass, but it was always wonderful. By the time they sent him to Indochina, he was a major and she was happily married to him.

The Boston and Toronto consignments had long since been delivered and paid for, and Nathan had received his share along with a detailed accounting. He still wrote letters, but she never wrote back. How he knew of the wedding and later of Claire’s birth he never said, but he sent presents, a cut-glass bowl from Prague for the wedding and then a music-box piano for Claire that, when opened, played “Für Elise.” Juliette wrote the thank-you notes.

By then Hélène was finished with her training and ready for the final guild exam. As her work sample the board of examiners wanted a finished soundboard for a baby grand, with frame mounts and bridge indicated and all strings
drawn precisely, all the strengths and angles and supports and pitch notes. She made it from five-centimetre strips of Norway spruce, glued and clamped and shaved to perfection and then marked up in pencil. It took five hours every evening for six weeks. On the day of the examination, two workers helped her load it onto a padded Molnar truck and strap it down and deliver it, and at its destination the men set it on the backs of four chairs. The examiners made her wait and watch while they murmured and scratched their beards and nodded wisely, and measured with parallel ruler and tong-calliper.

She wrote the exam for her trade permit, and when she passed, the lawyer, on Mother’s instructions, entered her as
directrice
in the company documents.

The first grand piano she set up and then voiced all by herself in the cork-lined room was destined for a famous music school in New York. It was checked by Mother and then by Bendix Raoul, and they approved.

They stood and watched as she pressed her own small oval master stamp with the letters
H.G
. onto the transom. It was a rite of passage she would never forget.

ON THE MORNING OF
the move from the hotel to the apartment, she put away her nightgown and her toiletries in the suitcase. She closed the lid and put the suitcase on top of the trunk and then sat on the bed with her hands in her lap. Her coat and hat lay ready by her side.

Out the window it was snowing again, snow that came down so thick she could not see past the trees. She could not see the ocean at all. The world might be ending at the trees.

She heard voices, and stood up and went to open the door. The men had snow on their shoulders and hats. They brought a smell of clean, cold air into the room. Father William asked if she was ready, and she stepped back and waved a hand at her luggage.

“Thank you both for doing this,” she said. “I could carry one of the hat boxes. Or both.”

“Oh, no,” said Father William. “Not at all, Mrs. Giroux. Footing’s poor out today. You’ll be wanting to wear galoshes. Do you have any?”

They took the trunk first, each holding up one end by the leather handle.

“Maybe you go ahead, missus,” said the sexton. “You can open the doors for Father and me.”

Half an hour later it was all done, and she and Father William stood in her new home up the steep stairway at the back of the church. A coal fire was burning in the grate, and they could hear Morris in the bathroom trying the taps and the toilet and the hand shower.

She looked around: bedroom and living room, the furniture in reasonably good condition. Windows with views of the town and of trees and the Gulf of Maine. A small kitchen with a table and a three-ring burner. A larder set into the wall, with vent holes for outside air.

“What do you think, Mrs. Giroux?”

“Oh, I like it. I do.”

“You might want to paint the bathroom ceiling. Morris could help with that.”

“I’ll see.”

“Well, good, Mrs. Giroux. By the way, I have great hopes for our music program. And next year, maybe even for a music festival in the summer or fall. Have I mentioned that? It’s been one of my hopes for some time now.”

“No, you haven’t. A music festival?”

“Yes. I feel sure that our town council would support it. And people would travel for that, bring money to the community. Americans would come across from New York and Maine. We could invite string players and some woodwinds
for a few weeks in the season. Call it the French Shore Music Festival. That has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”

Over the next few days, she opened an account at the Dominion Bank and had her money transferred from Montreal. She practised the piano and worked with the choir, and she emptied her suitcase and the trunk. Some of her clothes had lain folded in there for nearly three years, and she hung them in the closet to let the creases fall out.

She wanted a shelf for her few books and the framed photograph of Pierre, and she asked David Chandler if he could make one. Just three boards, she told him, and with her hands spread out she indicated how wide and how high. He brought it over the very next day and mounted it for her on the living room wall near the coal fire.

She told him it was beautiful. Clear pine, precisely fitted and pegged and varnished and mounted in a clever way, flush to the wall so that one could not see the hooks.

“Let me pay you now, Mr. Chandler,” she said. “I never even asked about the price.”

He laughed and said not to worry. It would not be much, and he’d combine it with the invoice for the shoes.

He looked around. “This is a nice place, Mrs. Giroux. And the views! I’ve never been up here.”

“You must come for tea sometime. I’ll have to go now and practise, but come tomorrow if you can. Around four?”

When he’d left she ran her hand over the shelf. She
touched the wood where the joints had to be, and they were so well made she could make them out only by the change in direction of the grain. Her very own piece of furniture, the first in years, and such good work.

That evening she sat eating dinner with Mildred at the hotel. They had not finished the soup when Morris arrived and said that Father William wished to speak with her.

“What, now?”

“Well, yes,” said Morris. He stood by their table in a black coat with his hat in his hands.

Outside in the street she asked him if he knew what it was about, and he said he did not.

The
RCMP
Ford with chains on the rear wheels was parked by the side door, and when they reached the vestry the policeman and Father William pushed back their chairs and stood up. A closed file folder lay on the table under the policeman’s hat.

Her heart was pounding.

“Thank you, Morris,” said Father William. “Please close the door on your way out.”

They sat down and Father William said to her, “Mrs. Giroux, you know our Sergeant Elliott. Halifax has forwarded a letter from the provincial court in Edmonton to his constabulary. He’ll tell you what it’s all about.”

The sergeant opened the file folder and spread out its contents. Among the papers she saw two photographs of
herself. One was from before the war, and it showed her in the fitted wool jacket with her hair still deep black. That picture had been in a magazine where they declared her to be the youngest woman manager of a company with more than fifteen employees in the whole of Artois province. It had been Pierre’s favourite picture of her. He used to say he loved the proud tilt to her head and her full, kissable lips.

The other picture had been taken many years later by a press photographer at the back of the police station in Edmonton. She was walking on crutches next to a policeman, and her face was bruised and there was crusted blood on it. She wore no hat, and the combs had fallen out of her hair. Her eyes were round, and in them there was only terror.
Madness
, one newspaper had said.

Father William leaned forward to look at the pictures, and impulsively he covered his mouth with his hand and he looked at her and then quickly away.

The sergeant unfolded a piece of paper, and he put it down and smoothed it with his hand. It was typewritten and it had seals and looping signatures on it.

“Mrs. Hélène Giroux,” he said. “You are Mrs. Hélène Giroux?”

“Yes.”

“Please show me your driver’s permit.”

She found it in her purse and pushed it across the table. She did not look at Father William. She could not.

The sergeant studied the document and handed it back.

“Mrs. Giroux,” he said. “I have here before me a warrant to give notice and to apprehend. You are to be held on fresh evidence relating to the unnatural death of Mr. Nathan Homewood in November 1929 in the province of Alberta.” He pushed the piece of paper across the table towards her. “Do you understand? Please take a look.”

“Don’t say anything, Mrs. Giroux,” said Father William. “The sergeant tells me there is no need to say anything now.”

“Well, no, Father,” said the sergeant. “Don’t you be buttin’ in, now. She needs to tell me if she understands the charge. I have to ask. It’s a king’s warrant.”

He looked at her. “Do you understand the nature of this warrant, Mrs. Giroux?”

“Yes, I do.”

She sat back in the chair with her head up and her lips pressed together. She fussed a handkerchief from her sleeve but then pushed it back firmly with thumb and forefinger. The men watched her. When she said no more, the sergeant reached for the warrant and put it among the other papers in the folder.

“Mrs. Giroux, a warrant to apprehend means I have to keep you in custody until the first hearing, but under the circumstances, which are that at the moment I have no separate cell and no matron to keep an eye on you, the Father here suggested house arrest. Which is in fact my other legal option. But it means you would have to agree to remain confined to these premises, the church and the
annex attached to it. If you flee, we will find you and you’ll be sent to the women’s penitentiary in Dartmouth. Fleeing custody would be one more criminal charge against you. Do you understand that, and do you agree to abide by the terms of this arrest?”

She nodded, and he said, “I need to hear you say yes or no with good volume. Father William will be my witness that you have done so, and I will make a note in the file.”

And she cleared her throat and said, “Yes. I do understand and I do agree.”

“You see,” said Father William when the policeman had left. “I had a feeling. I hoped I was wrong, but I had a feeling. A woman like you arriving here out of nowhere. You’ll remember when I asked you if there was perhaps something more that I should know about you. And you said no.”

“Because there wasn’t anything more to tell. And certainly not
this
. Yes, there was a court case three years ago, but why should I have mentioned that when it was dismissed?”

“You might still have mentioned it.”

“I did not see the need.”

“You were wrong. The other day when we were giving you a push, the sergeant saw something about your licence plate that got his attention. Apparently Quebec has different date tabs now. You said you were from Montreal, and you don’t know that? When were you last there?”

“Just before I came here. I had lived there for years and then in Moncton and other places, and most recently I spent a few more days in Montreal. That was when Madame Cabayé mentioned Saint Homais to me.”

“I see. In any case the sergeant made inquiries, and that’s how he learned that they were looking for you. Did you know that?”

“No, I did not. I had been accused of something, but I was acquitted.”

“Accused of what?”

“Does it matter?”

“Accused of what, Mrs. Giroux? The warrant mentioned an unnatural death.”

“Yes. I was charged in connection with that.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The leaded window was dark with the night, and chalices and a glass beaker shone dimly on a stone ledge. Vestments with gold thread hung on a hook.

After a while Father William moved in his chair. “And who was Nathan Homewood?”

“A man I was travelling with. A friend and business partner.”

“I see. Well, apparently some prosecutor has new evidence to do with his death. The sergeant couldn’t say what.”

“I had no idea. I need to call my daughter in London.”

“You can do that from the church office. Mrs. Giroux, promise me that you won’t step through any exterior door or even be seen in a door opening.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Use the phone in the morning. The long-distance exchange is closed now.”

She looked into his eyes and they were sad. Worse, they were disappointed.

“There are explanations for all this,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure. But not tonight. If you would please go upstairs now. I am sorry it came to this. Did you finish dinner at the hotel?”

She shook her head.

“I could have something sent up.”

“No. But thank you. Father William …”

He waited a moment, and when she said nothing more he stood up.

“Let’s talk in the morning. We all need to calm down and reflect on this. Good night, Mrs. Giroux.”

He held out his hand and she almost reached to shake it, but he said, “Your car keys, please.”

The Long Road