Children in the Morning Page 5

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  So we went to the kitchen and to the top of the basement stairs. Jenny said to be careful. “That’s where Mummy fell down and died.”

  So we didn’t run, but they were just ordinary stairs made of wood. There was a little table near the bottom with a jug full of flowers and cards the kids had made, all for their mum, saying how much they loved and missed her. I felt tears coming into my eyes.

  “It’s really awful when your mum dies,” Jenny said. “You wake up crying and wanting her to be there but she never is. Never. And your mum is the only person, except for your dad, that loves you no matter how many dumb or bad things you do. She loves you no matter what, and forever. Nobody else does that, except maybe when you grow up and get married. But even then, it doesn’t always work. Your husband may beat you up. So, anyway, that’s gone. I hope it doesn’t happen to you, Normie. But Daddy says she is still with us, looking over us like a guardian angel. He says dead people aren’t way up high in heaven; heaven is down here too, so dead parents and kids and the saints and angels are really all around us. So it makes me feel a bit better knowing she’s here even if we can’t see her.”

  “Your dad must be really lonesome for your mum.”

  “Yeah, he is. Sometimes he talks to her. ‘Peg! Will you do something about these kids? They won’t listen to me!’ And maybe she’s working behind the scenes because we usually settle down when he does that. They really loved each other,” Jenny said, “and they hardly ever had a fight.”

  “They never had a fight!” That was Laurence. He came over from wherever he had been in the basement.

  “I don’t mean a fight, Laurence, hitting each other and all that like they did in my old house.”

  “Yeah, Jenny’s old family where she lived before, they fought all the time, with their fists and their feet. She was really little but she remembers because it was so bad.”

  “And they used to hit each other with beer bottles!” Jenny added. “But our mum and dad here, Laurence’s and mine, never did that. They just argued sometimes. Especially about Corbett. Here’s the hockey game.”

  It was humongous! It was a whole rink with pretend ice. It was white and it was on a big table. There were all these little hockey players that you could move with levers. One team was blue and white with a maple leaf on their uniform, and the other was red and white, with a big C.

  Jenny pointed to one of the C sweaters. “Daddy calls that la sainte flannelle. It means the holy flannel, because this team, the Canadiens, are so holy in Montreal. And the other guys are the Toronto Maple Leafs.”

  “Wow! This is great. My dad used to play hockey, but he says he wasn’t anywhere near the best player on the team. Let’s play a game!”

  “We can’t. It’s busted,” Laurence said. “I’m trying to fix it.”

  “Okay. Come on, Normie. We’ll do something else.” So we left the hockey rink. Jenny said: “The boys always end up breaking it. They’re too rough with it! But we can have a tea party. I have a tea set, but it’s only a kids’ set. We’re not supposed to use the real dishes, the old-fashioned ones, because they’re from France and they’re antiques. A man was here to look at them one time, and he said they are worth a fortune! But it’s really only the little kids who might break them. We won’t. So we’ll sneak them out and play with them, then put them back. They’re in an old trunk with some other stuff. There’s a huge set of knives and forks and teapots made of silver. And that’s out of bounds too because it’s really expensive. They’re not breakable, though, so we’ll get them out.”

  We went to a separate room in the basement, where a whole bunch of stuff was stored: skis, skateboards, bicycle tires, and old cameras in leather cases that had the shape of the cameras.

  “It’s in this closet.” Jenny got up on her tiptoes and reached up for something by the door. “Oh, this is good! Now I’m big enough to reach . . . the hidden key! I haven’t been in here since before last year, and I was too short. The key is for the lock on the trunk.”

  She fumbled around a bit more till she said: “Got it!” She had a big grin on her face. “I’ll be able to play with this stuff any time I want to now!” She yanked the closet door open, and pulled a chain that made a light come on. There was a big blue trunk made of metal. Jenny knelt down and put the key into the brass lock on the trunk. She turned it, and then asked me to help lift the top up. I grabbed one end of it and she got the other, and we yanked it up.

  “What?” Jenny screeched. “It’s gone! The stuff’s all gone! Somebody stole it!”

  So we didn’t get to play dishes. Or hockey.

  (Monty)

  I had a long talk with Beau over the phone about his whereabouts the night of Peggy’s death. He told me again that he had been in Annapolis Royal for a three-day trial. I had already confirmed his presence at the grand old courthouse. But the proceeding had ended, in an acquittal for Beau’s client, at four thirty on the afternoon of January 15. He told me he had been planning to spend a third night because of the impending snowstorm, so he didn’t have dinner till mid-evening. Before that, he took his time walking and driving around admiring the town’s beautiful eighteenth-century buildings. Where did he stay? At the Bailey House. Where did he eat dinner on the fifteenth? The Garrison. Did he have a receipt for his meal? Of course. He was on his client’s expense account. But the client was not made of money, so when the storm still hadn’t begun by the time he finished his dinner of poached Atlantic salmon — poached as in method of cooking, not illegally fished, ha ha — he decided to cancel his room reservation and drive back to Halifax. It’s about a two-hour trip. The restaurant receipt gave a time of eight-oh-five when he paid for his meal. So this didn’t help us. If he had driven straight home, he could have been at the house before ten thirty, well within the medical examiner’s estimate of the time of death. But, wait, there was something else. He had stopped for gas on the way into Halifax that night. He would dig out the receipt if he still had it; otherwise, I could check with the service station.

  Now, to the matter of expert evidence. Who did he like as a pathologist — not for his or her post-workday bar chat, but for an opinion on an accidental fall? Preferably someone local, so it wouldn’t look as if our theory was so off-base we had to search far and wide for someone to back it up. He suggested Ralph Godwin or Andrea Mertens. I would check them out.

  In the meantime, we had arranged for Beau to have an escorted visit with his children at the family home.

  Bright and early on Friday morning, we pulled up in front of the Delaneys’ house. We could see little faces peering out through the panes of the living-room windows. I couldn’t imagine what this must have been like for Delaney, coming to his own home with a court-ordered escort, even if the supervisors were me and Brennan Burke, dressed in our most casual clothes. Beau must have felt he was in shackles with all his neighbours looking on. In fact I didn’t see anybody around except the kids lined up in the front windows. I saw two hands come out and pull two small children away; there may have been a rule amongst the kids not to line up and stare at their dad, but the little ones couldn’t help themselves. Beau saw them and threw his arms open wide for an embrace. With that, the kids scrambled from the window; two seconds later, the front door was flung open and they all poured out. One little fellow tripped and landed on his knees. An older girl picked him up and shushed him before he started to wail. They all rushed at Beau and, depending on their ages, grabbed his legs, hugged him, or begged to be picked up.

  I looked over at Brennan just in time to see him blink and turn away. It wasn’t hard to read his mind, which was operating on the same track as my own: what would all these children do without their father — where would they end up? — if events should conspire to take him away?

  The little huddle of humanity made its way inside the house, and a tall woman with strawberry blond hair came to the door: “Co
me on inside. I’m Sheila Laing, Peggy’s sister.”

  “I’m Monty Collins, and this is Father Brennan Burke.”

  “Please,” Sheila said, and stood aside so we could enter. We followed her into the living room, which was painted a shade of ochre and had white mouldings. She directed us to a pair of armchairs, and we sat down. The furniture was comfy and well broken in; the only pictures on the walls were the children’s brightly coloured artwork. Beau was seated on the chesterfield with a child on each knee and others beside him and at his feet.

  “Kids,” he said, “stand up and introduce yourselves to our guests.”

  They got up and stood in a clump, and gave their names. In ascending order of age from about five to seventeen, they were Sammy, Kristin, Danny, Edward, Jenny, Laurence, Ruthie, Connor, Derek, and Sarah. There were redheads, blonds, brunettes, and everything in between, green, blue, and brown eyes, and various body types from rail-thin to comfortably padded.

  “Tea, everyone?” Sheila asked.

  Everybody said yes except two of the younger boys, who made a face and requested chocolate milk.

  Brennan and I simultaneously rose from our chairs and trailed after Sheila when she headed to the kitchen. Supervision didn’t mean we had to keep the man in our sights every moment. We sat at the kitchen table. Sheila stood by the sink, facing us.

  “If I thought for one minute that he killed my sister, I wouldn’t be here. With the children, yes. With him, no,” Sheila said to me.

  “Of course. I understand.”

  Brennan nodded in agreement.

  “And I would fight tooth and claw to keep him away from the children. Or . . . I think I would. But that might do more damage to them . . . I just don’t know. They’ve already been through so much. Some of them especially, the ones who come from unspeakable backgrounds. They’re doing well here in the family, but who knows what this will do to them?”

  Sheila cleared her throat, and got busy with the tea things and the chocolate milk. She gave us our tea, then took a tray to the living room. When she returned, she sat at the table with us and said: “You’ve got a good case in his defence, haven’t you, Monty?”

  “I think so, yes. So far, so good.”

  “What do you mean? Things could change?”

  “Well, things can always change in the courtroom. But from what the Crown has given me, it looks good for us.”

  “Jenny and Laurence are very keen on your after-school music program, Father Burke. They love it!”

  “And we love having them. They’re very talented children, particularly Jenny. She’s progressing so fast on the piano that I’m thinking of taking her up to the church organ, and letting her have a go at it.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t she love that!”

  “I have to confess I don’t play the organ myself, apart from a few chords and the notes for the choir. But I know somebody who does play.” He looked at me. My son’s girlfriend, Lexie, is who he meant. “Maybe she’d be willing to come in once in a while and help Jenny out.”

  “She’d be happy to,” I told him. And I knew she would. I made a mental note to ask her.

  “How are the children doing, Sheila? First their mother’s death, then the charges against their father. From what you said earlier, it sounds as if some of them had a lot to deal with even before this.”

  “Little Danny . . . I don’t know if you noticed his right arm?” We shook our heads. “He probably had his sleeve pulled way down. His forearm is crooked. That’s from a fracture he suffered at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend when he was eighteen months old. The mother was drunk and had a pillow over her head, hollering at Danny to stop that fucking screaming. A neighbour kicked the door in, and took Danny to the hospital. He was in bad, bad shape when he came to live with Peggy and Beau as a foster child. He was really coming around before Peggy’s death. Sarah and Jenny try to outdo each other to mother him now! Ruthie came from bad news too; well, several of them did. Laurence and Kristin were adopted as infants; they’re fine. Peggy gave birth to Sarah and Connor. They’re fine, too. Well, Connor went through a bit of a wild period, but nothing nasty. He eventually settled down. Anyway, about Ruthie. Her mother started writing to some sex offender in a Montreal prison; when he got parole, she ran away to meet him and never came back. After being left alone in her apartment at the age of ten, Ruthie wound up with her grandparents. Her grandfather took a great interest in her, especially when she reached puberty. When it was time for her first bra, the grandfather took her to buy it! He kept picking up all these lacy things, red and black, and making lewd remarks, to the point where the woman in the lingerie department called the store security. I guess nothing every came of that intervention, because Ruthie went home with him. Stayed with the grandparents for another two years. Two years of sexual innuendo, the old goat sticking his tongue in and out whenever she went by, and giving her scanty outfits for birthday presents. She was treated as nothing but a sexual object. The grandfather referred to her as a chick and a babe, and the grandmother called her a slut. You can see Ruthie is overweight. You don’t have to be Dr. Freud to know why she deliberately overeats, trying to make herself unattractive. Nothing subtle about it. But she has done wonderfully well since coming here. The children have been thriving. I hope to God they continue to thrive, once Beau has been cleared and comes home for good.”

  We heard giggles coming from the living room, then shouts of laughter from Beau.

  “And they have lots of fun with their dad!” Sheila said.

  “If worse comes to worse — and I don’t think it will, Sheila — is there anyone who can take in all ten children?”

  She shook her head. “Impossible. As much as people would want to, there’s nobody in the family who can take them all in. They’d have to be split up. How would any of us decide which children to take, and which ones would be dumped back into the system, into foster care?”

  I didn’t want to picture the scene: children with bundles of belongings being torn from their home and their brothers and sisters. And their dad. When Beau left with us that day all the kids, with the exception of the two oldest boys who strove to put brave faces on, were in tears. Not just in tears, but weeping inconsolably. The little ones clung to him. All I could do was wave to Sheila, turn away and head for the car.

  Chapter 4

  (Monty)

  Delaney waived his right to a preliminary hearing because he wanted a speedy trial, and we did very well, getting a date in early May of that year. This gave me a little over two months to pull together the evidence and case law I would need to defend my client. I was particularly pleased with the report of our pathologist, Dr. Andrea Mertens. I had consulted her and Dr. Ralph Godwin. I wasn’t confident in Godwin because he didn’t seem confident in his tentative opinion that Peggy’s death was more likely than not an accident. The force of the fatal blow to the back of her head, well, it certainly could have resulted from a fall and it probably did, but he could not rule out a violent shove or a blow to the head administered at the top of the staircase before she ended up below. I could write the Crown prosecutor’s script when faced with that kind of dithering in court. Dr. Mertens was much more solid, and she had a very helpful piece of advice for me, which I followed. She recommended an engineer and accident reconstruction expert named Wes Kaulbeck, who, if we were correct in our theory of the incident, would support us with calculations of the magnitude of the forces that would have been required to fracture Peggy Delaney’s skull, and the mechanics of a fall that could have produced the fracture. I commissioned him to do an investigation and write a report. If the report didn’t help us, it would never see the light of day. As it turned out, it was exactly what we needed, so we added Kaulbeck and Mertens to our line-up of witnesses. I was enormously relieved to have some science in our corner as we looked ahead to the trial.

  I had my kids at home on Leap Year Day. Tommy told
Normie this would be her only chance in four years to propose marriage to Richard Robertson, given the leap-year tradition of women proposing marriage. She informed him that Richard was just a friend, and she got back at her brother by saying: “I don’t hear the phone ringing, I guess Lexie must be proposing to somebody else!” We enjoyed our usual activities: jamming with my guitars, harmonicas, and keyboards; watching old movies on the VCR; walking around Dingle Park and climbing to the top of the Dingle Tower; and not-so-successful fishing expeditions off the edge of my backyard. Normie often went out there with an old fishing rod she had found years before. To my knowledge — and I would know — she had never caught a fish. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, from her point of view, because it led in to one of her pet subjects: if I got her a boat, she could go “deep-sea” fishing thirty feet away from the house and provide a trout, a salmon, or a tuna fish for our supper. Tommy had a bee in his bonnet as well. He wanted a car of his own, nothing fancy, just a secondhand vehicle to get him around the city. That wasn’t a bad idea, but the rust buckets he saw in the newspaper for a couple of thousand dollars looked to me like nothing but trouble. Nobody in our family was mechanically inclined, so I could picture a car spending a lot of time up on blocks in somebody’s shop, and a lot of repair bills coming in. My take on it was that I should just buy him a good used car. But to his mother, Maura, coming from a family of seven kids in the Cape Breton coal town of Glace Bay, giving your child a car of his own was a little too much like spoiling him and making him full of himself. And she worried about him running the roads with a carload of other high-spirited young males. But I figured she would come around eventually.

  “Here’s one for two thousand,” Tom said, pointing to an ad in the classified section. “A Honda. It’s ten years old and got rear-ended, but . . .”

  “I think we should be looking for something a little newer, Tom. I’ll help you find one.”

  “Yeah, but you know what Mum will say about me getting a car.” In a thick Cape Breton accent, he said: “The arse is out of ’er now, b’ys!”