Death of a Sunday Writer Read Online Free PDF Page B

give to the client along with his bill. There was no mention of money received, and Lucy suspected that Trimble was not in the habit of keeping accurate records of untraceable income, fees paid in cash. The exception to the surveillance cases was a missing persons’ case. Trimble had apparently found the person, a runaway girl, in twenty-four hours by going down to a young people’s shelter on Yonge Street.
    Watching for adulterers and looking for strays. It didn’t seem very difficult. What about someone who had been missing for a year? Or twenty? What if someone was trying to trace a relative, someone who emigrated from Scotland — say, twenty years before — a situation that was close to the centre of about a third of the mystery riddles she was familiar with? Where would you start? Lucy found herself musing over whether her library experience would help. The fantasy, the notion that she might try her hand at her cousin’s trade had been lurking at the edge of her consciousness from the time that Walter Buncombe had told her what Trimble did for a living. Lucy was completely aware of the situation she was in. She was a voracious reader — even Geoffrey had not been able to limit that — and she had read not only most of the crime section of the Kingston Public library, but a fair amount of the mainstream fiction also, including Jane Austen. She was familiar with
Northanger Abbey
and believed herselfin no danger of mistaking the real world of her cousin, the “watcher”, for the world of the private eye romances she was fond of. Not at forty-seven years old.
    And yet, now that she had confirmed the truth, she began to wonder again, in a different way. If all real private detectives did was watch, she could surely do that, couldn’t she? What about missing persons? What records would exist? In no time at all she was in the middle of a daydream involving lost heirs, changed names, new and assumed identities, all of which Lucy Brenner would unpeel to the core with the help of her library training.
    She shook herself and called up the next file. It was labelled “Kingdom.” The first page began,
The black, billowing clouds which had promised to drop their ominous loads from the beginning of the equine proceedings parted momentarily as a shaft of golden sunlight pierced the sky to liqht up a red cap in the middle of the qroup of straining horseflesh. The eight conditioned descendants from the teeming loins of those four original Arab stallions swept together around the curving timbers of the final bend to grapple with the last furlong. In the middle, Night Fighter, my favoured steed, threaded its red-capped rider throuqh the throng as I cheered myself hoarse. It seemed as if “Paddy” O’Rourke, that wizard of pace from the “ould sod” had worked his magic again because his mount gathered its miqhty muscles in the last few Yards for a titanic effort, forcing his head under the wire by the inches it needed to be my first winner. Nothing again would ever equal that first thrill, but I have had many like it.
    The narrative stopped here, then began again. This time, the eight superbly trained descendants of the fertile Arabian imports preceded the black billowing clouds, andthe syntax was adjusted to heighten the drama, each sentence getting its own paragraph. Trimble’s labour of love, his life story in the form of a history of his greatest wins, continued with many revisions for seven pages, roughly a race a page. Then it stopped for a series of titles:
    My Kingdom for a Winner

A Bet in Time

Days at the Races

Turf Love

Life Among the Longshots

A Mare’s Breadth
    Then a new narrative began:
The next two minutes would decide his fate. Jack Crabshaw patted the service revolver in his pocket, knowing he had the courage to use it if he had to. Hadn’t he almost done so in ’59 when his burnous had slipped on the way to Mecca? His house, his