Seaweed on the Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

I think there are several different varieties.”
    â€œThe door outside this room is flanked by two pictures. Describe them.”
    I said, “There’s a picture of a girl wearing a party dress to the left of the door. Looks like a hand-coloured photograph. To the right of the door there’s another picture, in a similar gilt frame, of a couple dressed in summer clothes. The woman is carrying an umbrella.”
    I was being tested and I could see how Hunt had become Canada’s wealthiest industrialist.
    â€œYou’re observant,” Hunt said at last. “Unusually so. Probably your Indian blood, eh?”
    I don’t like being patronized and shrugged my shoulders at him.
    Hunt peered into a long dark corridor of history. “The girl in the picture is my daughter,” he said at last, pointing outside toward the garden. “I planted those rhododendrons myself, before Marcia was born. When she was little, we used to play hide-and-seek among them. Now she has gone but the plants are still here. I often look at them and think of her. If you live long enough, Seaweed, you’ll discover that memory is the curse of old age.”
    A self-pitying whine had invaded his voice; there was a sudden moist glitter in his eyes. But the lapse was brief. A moment later the old man’s teeth were showing in another icy smile. The pride that nourished his anger and bitterness reasserted itself. “Tell me something,” he said. “What’s your track record? You were with the serious crimes squad and got nowhere with the Cunliffe murder inquiry.”
    â€œI seem to recall that a man named Jimmy Scow got five years for it.”
    Hunt said angrily, “Scow was a joe-boy, just a gormless van driver. Harry Cunliffe’s real killers are still out there, somewhere.”
    This sudden fit of rage exhausted him. His animated expression faded and he slumped. He raised a feeble liverish hand for support and Service helped him to his chair. Hunt’s eyes closed and his head drooped toward his chest.
    â€œYou’d better leave,” Service whispered. “Mr. Hunt needs his rest … ”
    â€œWait!” said Hunt, blinking his eyes open. “I want this man to find my girl, bring her home.”
    Hunt roused himself, sitting erect and grasping the knob of his cane so tightly that his knuckles whitened. “Let’s get on with it. Dr. Cunliffe has warned me that my heart is weak. I don’t have any years left to waste.”
    Service moved to a chair and sat on the edge of it, leaning forward attentively.
    Hunt said, “Marcia is my daughter. I loved her but I make no apologies for calling her a young fool. Sometimes she nearly drove me mad with her wickedness and ingratitude. I devoted my life to earning money so that … ”
    He broke off suddenly, breathing like an exhausted runner. We waited until this angry spasm passed. In moderated tones he said, “Marcia was headstrong, wilful. She kept running away. Twice from this house, once from her boarding school. To be honest about it, Marcia was more of a trial to her mother than she was to me. I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, came up the hard way. My wife was from a wealthy Westmount family. She had rigid ideas about what well-brought-up young women could do and couldn’t do. There were constant arguments about how much effort Marcia should put into learning French, whether she should take dancing lessons. What kinds of friends she should have. Marcia was never easy, but as a small child she was … ”
    Again Hunt broke off his discourse and stared inward, revisiting scenes that we couldn’t know. “Never mind,” he said. “By the time Marcia was a teenager, this house was like an armed camp, with Marcia leading a rebellion. She didn’t want to take dancing lessons. She wanted to run downtown and associate with riff-raff. She’d bring street people home.