.
"Remarkable," said Madeline Deerstalker. "A suicide over Niagara Falls and a locked room mystery. Where is Dr. Gideon Fell when you need him?"
"Who?" I asked.
"A fictional detective who specialized in locked room mysteries," she waved the explanation away with a graceful movement of her hand.
It was about half an hour later and Madeline and I were at our office enjoying one of her chamomile teas while Dancer stood guard by the door. Dancer was a huge great dane named after Northern Dancer because the dog was bigger than the horse. I exaggerate only slightly.
Madeline was her usual imposing sight, with jet black hair, high cheek bones and bone-bead choker, the only clues to her partial aboriginal background. Her pale grey eyes and tailored grey suit contrasted with, but also complimented, her native accessories. A striking woman in her mid fifties, she looked fit and rigorous despite the crow's head cane that rested by the side of her chair.
"Well, if this were a case for a fictional detective, the body in the room would have been Emily Tannen's and the locked door would have been to make it look like a suicide when it wasn't. Druker would be obnoxious enough to be a red herring and Guerra would turn out to be the deranged killer who could never get caught because he is investigating his own crime." I took a sip of the aromatic tea. "In real life, it makes no sense to lock a baby in a room this way. Does some criminal master mind want us to believe a two month old got up and locked himself in? I don't think so. I don't know how that bolt got thrown, but someone outside the room had to have been able to do it. Maybe if we knew how it was done, that would give us a clue who did it."
"Perhaps," Madeline agreed. "But, I tend to doubt it. In fact I can think of several ways it could have been done. No, I don't think 'how' is the right question here. I think 'why' is likely to be more useful. If we could understand the purpose for the action, it might suggest for whom the purpose would be a benefit."
Dancer stretched and yawned by the door, turned around a couple of times before thudding to the floor for a nap.
"What if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Emily Tannen's death was not suicide but murder. And let us further assume that it was Ms. Tannen who went to the extraordinary length of locking the door in that way. After all it was her room and her baby, so it is not an unlikely supposition. Now, there are only two basic reasons for locking a room: to keep whatever is in there from getting out, or to prevent whatever is outside from getting in. Since there is no way a two month old baby could get out by itself, we have to assume the latter reason: if Emily Tannen locked the room, it was for the protection of her baby."
"Seems logical," I agreed.
"If I'm right in this, Alex, it also argues against Ms. Tannen's death being a suicide. Suicides, despairing of life, sometimes take the lives of their children. But Ms. Tannen did not take her child with her, did not harm her child in any way, and if the door was locked to protect the child, as we are assuming, then Ms. Tannen's concerns were for the welfare of her child. If she intended to commit suicide, then locking her baby in--as you witnessed this afternoon, endangered the child by preventing the baby from getting the assistance it desperately required. Endangerment, of course, is the opposite of protection. No, the child was locked in to protect it during Ms. Tannen's absence. Ms. Tannen fully intended to be back before any harm could come to her baby."
I shook my head in disagreement. "I don't know, Madeline, locking a child in a flea trap, like the Grand Torrent, doesn't sound all that protective to me. What if there had been a fire? No one would have been able to get to the baby through that bolted door."
"That is both true and irrelevant, Alex. There are always greater and lesser risks in this life. Ms. Tannen could well have been protecting her child from a far more immediate and likely risk than fire. We have to assume here that she did not intend to be gone from that room for long, that it was vital that she be absent from that room for a brief time and that she saw her child in imminent danger."
"That's a lot of assumptions, Madeline."
"But not egregious, Alex." Madeline started to pour herself another cup of tea, and then stopped. Her hand began to tremble and she put the pot down with exaggerated care. I looked at her with puzzled concern but she shook her head to reassure me while she took a few moments for thought
"Oh, Alex." she said, taking firm hold of my arm. "We've done a very stupid thing. Don't you see, we've placed the baby in extreme danger. In rescuing that baby, we've undone everything Ms. Tannen set out to do to protect him. The answer's right there in why the door had to be bolted the way it was. Why just locking the door wasn't enough. Oh, quickly phone through to your friend Sergeant Guerra and make certain the baby is alright and in his personal custody."
I wasn't so certain. "Are you sure about this, Madeline. I mean, we're just speculating here. If I call Guerra on a wild hunch, I"m going to look a total fool."
Madeline's grey eyes bore into my soul. "Of course, I'm not certain Alex. What is certain in this life? But I race horses for a living now, and I know a good bet when I see one. Place the call. And hurry."
Dancer lifted his head with a kind of sleepy interest, as I went to the phone and dialled the Grand Torrent. To my surprise Druker was at the desk and put me through to Guerra right away.
"Well, Alex?" His familiar voice growled.
"Sam, is the baby still with you?"
"Down the hall with Conner and the housekeeper. We're waiting for a social worker from Children's Aid. Why?"
"Is the baby actually visible to him?" Madeline prompted.
"Sam can you actually see the baby from where you are."
"I can't see through walls, Alex. What's this all about?"
"Madeline thinks the baby is danger. Would you mind checking on it yourself for us?"
"What do you know that I don't know, Alex"
"Nothing, I swear, Sam. But I think Madeline's on to something. Will you check for us?"
There was a pause, then Guerra's voice grumbled, "Hang on." I heard the phone receiver being put down and then silence.
After five more minutes of silence, Madeline asked, "What's happening?"
"Nothing, so far. He's gone to check. The room's just down the hall. Should only take a minute."
Ten minutes of continued silence later, Madeline threw the strap from her huge purse over her head, picked up her black wooden cane and rose to her feet. Dancer lumbered clumsily to attention, wagging his tail. "It's as I feared. Come Alex, we're going to that motel."
If I had a tail to wag, I'd have joined Dancer. I opened the door as Madeline limped toward me, favouring the leg that had been broken some years before when one of her horses rolled on her. The three of us climbed into my Jeep Cherokee and headed across town.
When we finally arrived I took another look at the Grand Torrent as we waited for a woman in a grey Volvo to pull out of the parking lot. It had not improved in my absence, but neither did it look like a place where anything interesting was going on. The stairs behind the lobby desk were painful for Madeline, but Dancer would have taken them in a single bound, if we hadn't left him behind in the Jeep. Conner was stationed outside room 227.
"Is the baby safe?" Madeline demanded, limping rapidly down the hall toward him.
"Sargent Guerra said you were probably on your way over," Conner replied. "Yes the baby's safe. We caught up to them in time. She was already out in the parking lot with the baby in the car when we got there."
"The older housekeeper was the baby's paternal grandmother, wasn't she?" Madeline persisted.
I could see by Conner's start, that Madeline was right.
"Damn, Madeline," I told her. "Now you're starting to scare me."
"Where's the baby now?" Madeline's soft voice was insistent.
"The lady from Children's aid just left with it. You must have past them coming in."
Conner rapped on the door and told Guerra we were there. He came out twenty minutes later. "I want to talk to the two of you," he said. Behind him I could see Helen still in her nylon housekeeping uniform, looking very old and sobbing on the side of the bed. Conner's partner sat dispassionately across the room from her. She was handcuffed to the frame of the bed.
Guerra took us down to room 230 and Madeline filled him in on her conjectures.
"Well, you got it just about right. Helen's son was killed in a car accident, on his way back from visiting Emily, his girlfriend, in Rochester six month's ago. He was Helen's only child and this will be her only grand child. And believe me she's quite the fanatical grandmother. According to her, Emily wasn't anything like the innocent you thought. She needed money and was threatening to take the baby and move to Houston if Helen couldn't come up with $10,000. a year to keep her here. She was promising to never let Helen see her grandson again if she didn't. Helen didn't have the money. They argued and when Emily turned to leave, Helen hit her with a heavy glass ash tray. Thought she killed her. She couldn't feel a pulse. The way she sees it, Emily was stealing her grandson. The only family she had left."
"They were arguing here at the motel?" I asked.
"Yeah, in an empty ground floor room in the smoking section. Anyway, Helen loaded what she thought was the body into one of those laundry carts, pushed her to the side door and into the back of her car. Drove her to the river above the falls and dumped her in. Threw Emily's purse in after her, but it got tangled in some rocks by the side of the river. That's how we were able to identify her so quickly. It had the motel key in it as well. Then Helen goes back to the motel to pick up the baby and finds she can't get in. She figures at first that Emily brought someone else along to babysit, but changed her mind when the baby just kept on crying. When we all showed up she decided to hang around and look for a chance to get the baby away.
"Nearly did too. Look at this room. This is where she took the baby to change and feed it. After the para medics checked it over and Conner left her alone, she used her master-key to get through that door over there into the adjoining room." Guerra led us into the room.
" Notice where the door to the hall is for this room. The hall goes around the corner, she went out here without any fear of being seen, and there is the exit to the parking lot. If you hadn't called, she would be gone. And the baby with her. We caught up with her as she was trying to start the car."
"A sad tale," Madeline shut her eyes tightly. The fringes on her suede bag trembled.
I turned to Guerra and spoke softly. "I have a confession," I told him. "The way Josie and that paramedic were exchanging glances, I figured they were involved in this, somehow."
Guerra smiled. "You noticed that did you? Well let me tell you something, that young paramedic is one of the Falls great romantic attractions. His name is Collin Peck. I know his family from way back. His friends just call him 'Pecker'. He's had more affairs with more women than there are visitors here every year. And little Josie's married to a very large and very jealous labourer from one of the wineries on the peninsula. If the Pecker ever takes a leap over the Falls, I'm going to have half the city and most of the tourists up on suspicion."
I shook my head in rueful wonder.
"But I'll tell you what I can't figure," Guerra continued. "Is how Emily Tannen ever locked that door from the outside. "
"And why she would ever do such a thing." I added.
Madeline continued her meditation for a moment before opening her eyes. "Oh Alex," she said. "Are you still in the dark about that? Obviously she locked the door to prevent the child's grandmother from taking it. That's why the usual door lock wasn't enough. That's how I knew it had to be someone who works here and has a master key. Only by bolting the door could she keep her baby safe for the few minutes she thought she was going to be away.
"And as for how the door was locked...."Madeline rummaged around in the soft leather sack she carried. She pulled out a spool of thread tore, off a considerable length and pulled it through the slotted bar beside the door until the bar was located half way down the length of the thread. Then she stepped out of the room, and awkwardly bent down to ensure the two sides of the end of the thread fit under the bottom of the door. Shutting herself out of the room, she pulled the ends of the thread along the base of the door,tugging the slotted bolt along behind until it clicked softly over the bulbous prong on the door. Then Madeline let go of one side of the thread and pulled until it unwound from the bar and vanished out into the hall.
Good thing Guerra and I were now effectively locked into the room. Otherwise we'd have to get Conner to cut the bolt off the door to this room. I could just imagine what Druker might say to that!
(C) B.E. Fraser, 1994 No copying of this material without the expressed permission of the author is permitted.
