The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [100]
Two men had been seen running away. Had they been recognized? Not conclusively, but it was being rumoured that one of them was Miss Laura’s young man. Reenie said he wasn’t her young man, Laura didn’t have a young man, he was only an acquaintance. Well, whatever he was, said Mrs. Hillcoate, he’d most likely burnt down the button factory and conked poor Al Davidson on the head and killed him dead as a rat, and he’d better make himself scarce around this town if he knew what was good for him.
At dinner Laura said she wasn’t hungry. She said she couldn’t eat right then: she would make up a tray for herself, to have later. I watched her carrying it up the back stairs to her room. It had double helpings of everything – rabbit, squash, boiled potatoes. Usually she treated eating as a kind of fidgeting – something to do with your hands at the dinner table, while other people were talking – or else as a chore she had to get through, like polishing the silver. A sort of tedious maintenance routine. I wondered when she had suddenly developed such optimism about food.
The next day, troops from the Royal Canadian Regiment arrived to restore order. This was Father’s old regiment, from the war. He took it very hard, to see these soldiers turned against their own people – his own people, or the people he’d thought were his. That they no longer shared his view of them did not require any great genius to figure out, but he took that hard as well. Had they loved him, then, only for his money? It appeared so.
After the Royal Canadian Regiment had got things under control, the Mounties arrived. Three of them appeared outside our front door. They knocked politely, then stood in the hall, their shiny boots creaking against the waxed parquet, their stiff brown hats in their hands. They wanted to talk to Laura.
“Come with me, please, Iris,” Laura whispered when summoned. “I can’t see them alone.” She looked very young, very white.
The two of us sat together on the settee in the morning room, beside the old gramophone. The Mounties sat in chairs. They did not look like my idea of a Mountie, being too old, too thick around the waist. One of them was younger, but he was not in charge. The middle one did the talking. He said that they apologized for disturbing us at what must be a difficult time, but the matter was of some urgency. What they wanted to talk about was Mr. Alex Thomas. Was Laura aware that this man was a known subversive and radical, and had been in the relief camps, causing agitation and stirring up trouble?
Laura said that as far as she knew he had just been teaching the men how to read.
That was one way of looking at it, said the Mountie. And if he was innocent, then he naturally had nothing to hide, and would come forward if required, didn’t she agree? Where might he be keeping himself these days?
Laura said she couldn’t say.
The question was repeated in a different way. This man was under suspicion: didn’t Laura want to help locate the criminal who might well have set fire to her father’s factory and may have been the cause of death of a loyal employee? If eyewitnesses were to be trusted, that is.
I said that eyewitnesses were not to be trusted, because whoever was seen running away had been viewed only from the back, and besides it had been dark.
“Miss Laura?” said the Mountie, ignoring me.
Laura said that even if she could say, she wouldn’t. She said you were innocent until proven guilty. Also it was against her Christian principles to throw a man to the lions. She said she was sorry about the dead watchman, but it was not Alex Thomas’s fault, because Alex Thomas would never have done such a thing. But she could not say anything more.
She was holding on to my arm, down near the wrist; I could feel the tremors coming from her, like a train track vibrating.
The chief Mountie said something about obstructing justice.
At this point I said that Laura was only just fifteen, and could not be held responsible in the way an adult would be. I said