Stain of the Berry (6 page)

I closed the curtains, took one last look around and left.

I knew given the time of day that my chance of finding neighbours to talk to was not great, but I gave it a whirl anyway. And indeed all the eighth-floor doors I knocked on were answered with silence until the last.

"Who is it?" came a faint male voice.

"Hullo?" I called through the door. "My name is Russell Quant. I'm investigating Tanya Culinare's death-your neighbour? I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."

A second or two, then, "Just one moment please."

And indeed I waited an entire moment. What was he doing in there? Laying carpet?

The door creeped open ever so slowly with a bit of a creak and finally produced the apartment's resident, a slender man in his seventies, with a black, pencil moustache and silver hair severely greased back a la Clark Gable (although he more closely resembled Mr. Furley, the Don Knotts character from
Three's Company).
He wore a paisley, black-collared smoking jacket over a white shirt, black pin-striped 26 of 163

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pants and gently worn house slippers.

I held out my hand. "I'm Russell Quant."

The man arched a thin eyebrow astonishingly high on his forehead, tipped his head to one side and slightly forward, and pursed his freshly Blistexed lips all at the same time. He offered me his hand, palm down as if he wanted me to kiss the large ruby ring on it, and said, "My, my, yes you are. Welcome to my home, Mr. Quant."

I shook the hand-passed on the ring-kissing-and gave him a smile. "Thank you. May I come in?" I wasn't sure if I really wanted to anymore. I smelled something off about this guy.

"Where are my manners?" he said with a blush, but still did not step aside. "Of course you may enter.

My name is Furberry, Newton Furberry. Good afternoon."

I looked down at my watch. It was nearing twelve-thirty. "Oh my gosh, Mr. Furberry, I didn't realize the time. I must be interrupting your lunch. I can come back another time."

He chuckled a practiced chuckle. "No, no, my dear boy. I don't sit for lunch until two. We've plenty of time. Please," and now he stepped aside, "come in."

I brushed by Mr. Furberry, getting a healthy dose of freshly spritzed aftershave-barbershop quality.

"Please, just down the hall and to your left."

I followed the instructions and found myself in a world of...well, I wasn't sure what it was meant to be...perhaps a mix between old world grandeur and garage sale kitsch. Other than a small television in one corner of the room, it looked as if Mr. Furberry hadn't been shopping in several decades. Not that anything looked particularly worn or dirty or ruined, just...old. The walls were covered in a velvet-flocked wallpaper of deep, ruby colours, and sepia-toned portraits of distinguished-looking people. The floor was hidden beneath thinning Oriental area rugs and heavy, dark wood furniture. Every surface was littered with books, photographs (some in albums, some just lying about), and tchotchkes of glass and bronze and crystal. On the ceiling was a chandelier that could have used dusting and mottled light came through windows muted by layers of silk and organza. There were no fewer than three fresh flower arrangements in great vases throughout the room, and next to a grandly stuffed armchair was a trolley on which was a bud vase with a single red rose, a half-eaten plate of chocolates and a recently used tea service. This must have been where Mr. Furberry had been sitting in repose when I'd come a'calling. The room smelled of mint and mothballs and was so dim it was hard to believe that on the other side of the wall was bright summer sunshine. In the background I could just hear the strains of some foreign language opera from a...CD? Radio? Gramophone? All in all, the atmosphere wasn't unpleasant, just...peculiar.

"Please, take a seat over here," Mr. Furberry told me in his quiet, gently nasal voice, indicating a low slung couch covered in rich, burgundy velvet. "I'll return shortly. If you'll excuse me." And with that he left the room, rolling the tea trolley in front of him.

After a couple minutes, I contemplated either leaving or snooping. I can usually be counted on to do the latter, so the debate was short-lived. I stood up, feeling a bit like a bull in a china shop, stretched and began to look around. All of Mr. Furberry's things were aged, but fine and well taken care of, possibly cherished keepsakes passed down from ancestors. I flipped through some photos, mostly grainy black and whites, but they meant little to me. I checked out one of the bookcases and found the contents curious and indicative of an eclectic taste in literature. Mr. Furberry enjoyed non-fiction-biographies mostly-of silver screen legends, political heroes and infamous criminals. He also read travel books, adventure tales and historical accounts on a wide variety of subjects. There was not a paperback amongst the bunch. I heard the trolley's wiggle-waggling wheels and plopped myself back on the sofa just in time.

"Did you enjoy looking at my things while I was away?" the man said lightly as he began to pour tea, his 27 of 163

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expressive eyebrow once again perched high on his head.

Whoops. Busted. But how? Did he have one of those paintings with the eyes that move? I looked around for one and picked out a couple that easily fit the bill. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

"No, no, my good fellow, I didn't mean you shouldn't; I meant I hoped you did. You see, that is why I've collected and display my fine things: to share with guests and companions."

Er, okay. I thought a comment on his "fine things" was called for, especially if I expected any help out of the guy. "The portraits on the wall are lovely. Are they of your relatives?"

He gave me a hard-to-read look as he handed me a delicate china cup three-quarters full of tea and answered simply, "No."

Newton Furberry lowered himself onto an upholstered straight-back chair next to the tea trolley and across from me. He made a production of offering me lemon or milk for my tea-I took neither-and dripped a few squirts of lemon into his own.

"I sometimes take milk in the evening, but during the day it seems too much, don't you think?"

Huh? Was this a scene from
Pride and Prejudice?
"Mr. Furberry, did you know Ms. Culinare well?"

"Oh yes, of course, I suppose we must get right down to business," he said in a scolding tone that told me I'd failed in my social graces. But hey, I'm on a clock.

"Thank you, yes. Did you know her well?"

He thought on that a moment, sipping at his tea then carefully placing it with its matching saucer down on a wee table next to him, not on the trolley which apparently was for service purposes only. "Indeed, Mr. Quant, Ms. Culinare and I had a relationship." He stopped there and did the eyebrow thing again, staring at me as if waiting to register my shock. I disappointed him again. "No, no, it's not what you think.

My goodness, she was just a child and...well, my tastes run a little more to the...shall we say, exotic and,"

more eyebrow action, "decadent."

"I see. Can you tell me about the relationship you did have with Ms. Culinare?"

"Sandwich?"

And indeed, on a tray was a concentric patterned mound of delicate "sandwiches," or rather what I'd call sandwich wannabes. These so-called sandwiches were two slivers of paper-thin white bread without crust between which were even thinner slices of cucumber. This guy was really into the high tea thing.

And I'm all for it too if I'm at the Empress Hotel in Victoria on a dull, wet day, but not today.

"No, thank you. They look lovely though."

He sniffed and daintily helped himself.

I waited for him to nibble the thing to nothingness, which took all of one point five seconds and asked again, "About Tanya Culinare?"

Furberry sighed enough to raise his bird-like chest and said, "We played chess. Sunday afternoons this past winter. She wasn't very good, but I was instructing her and she was improving. I was disappointed when she gave it up."

"I'd be interested in anything you can tell me about her."

He gave me a quizzical look. "You said you were investigating her death? Oh my, I've just realized I've 28 of 163

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allowed into my home a complete stranger. Mr. Quant, just who is it that you are? I assumed you were with the police, but now I think not."

"I'm not with the police," I said in my most reassuring voice. "I'm a private investigator."

I thought I saw a hint of a smile beneath the man's Grecian Formula'd moustache.

"Really? How fascinating. More tea?" he offered, visibly thrilling to the intrigue factor of having a detective in for an afternoon sip.

"No, thank you."

"Who is it that's hired you?"

"Tanya's parents," I told him. "They're uncomfortable with the ruling of her death as a suicide. I'm investigating the possibility of there being something more to it."

Another questioning look with the eyebrow at its zenith. "Yet you ask
me
to tell you about her?

Wouldn't her family be able to give you the best information in that regard?"

I thought about how to respond and finally went with, "I'm afraid not."

Mr. Furberry's face visibly fell. He tsked a few times. "I see. My, how sad, how truly sad." He looked away for a second, dabbing the tip of his nose with a hanky he'd pulled from a breast pocket, then returned his gaze to me. "How can I help?"

Ahhhhhhhrrrrrggggggg! "Can you tell me what kind of person Tanya Culinare was?"

"She was not what I, or most other people I would imagine, would call a warm person. I got the distinct sense that she did not allow people to get close to her very easily. Getting to know her would not be a simple thing. She was direct, opinionated, no nonsense." He hesitated for a moment as if in thought, then added, "and fragile. Yes, in many ways she was a fragile young woman. Beneath it all she was kind and helpful. That's how we first became acquainted, you see. I'd come home from a book buying sojourn, laden down with heavy packages, and I'd misplaced my keys. Ms. Culinare happened by and took care of everything. She invited me to rest in her home while she called the building superintendent and arranged to have me let into my apartment. She even went so far as to arrange a new set of keys to be made for me and then picked them up and delivered them to me. She was a very capable woman. At some point she noticed and mentioned my chess set-which I always have set up-do you play, Mr. Quant? Oh never mind that now-and I offered to teach her in exchange for her help that day." He took a deep breath. "I was very saddened by her untimely death."

"Were you surprised by it, Mr. Furberry? Did anything you and Tanya talk about during your chess lessons ever lead you to believe that she might commit suicide?"

The man absentmindedly tossed two cucumber sandwiches into his mouth like peanuts, momentarily forgetting his genteel manners while he considered my question.

"I was about to answer no to that question, Mr. Quant. As I've already told you, she was a very capable person. I'd have a hard time imagining what could possibly drive her to such an act of desperation.

However..."

Yeeeesssssssss?

"However, beneath her protective armour I sensed a woman of heightened emotions. Although I never really witnessed it, I could believe that when she was angry, she would be livid; when she was sad, she'd be desperately so. This is fully speculation on my part, Mr. Quant, I've nothing to support my words, you understand?"

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I nodded. And what the heck, I tried a cucumber thingy. "You said Tanya gave up her chess lessons with you. Why did she do that? And when?"

Again he gave the questions some thought before answering. "I suppose we played three maybe four times in all, between November of last year and March of this. I invited her two more times after the last, both times she turned me down without reason and I stopped pursuing it at that point. Which, I think, was justifiable on my behalf, wouldn't you agree?"

He carried on without my response. "I don't really know why she stopped. The last time we played she seemed distracted, a trifle pricklier than normal. I recall asking her if there was something bothering her, but she passed it off as being in a bad mood. Perhaps she'd simply lost interest, in me, the game, I don't know. I spoke to her only once on the phone after that-a conversation in which she gave me short shrift-and I never really spoke to her again after that. These apartment buildings seem so small, you'd think one would run into neighbours every day, at least in the hallways or lifts, but in truth, that rarely happens."

Interesting. I wondered if something of import happened to Tanya Culinare in March, something that might have led to her eventual demise four months later, something that had required a bat under her bed.

"What about other people coming and going from her apartment? Did you meet any of her friends?"

"No...er, well, now just a moment, there was one girl. I cau...met her as she was letting herself into Tanya's apartment one day. She obviously had her own key or had borrowed it. She said she was a good friend of Tanya's."

"When was this?"

He narrowed his eyes in thought. "Around Christmas, possibly."

"Do you remember what she looked like? Her name?"

"Dark hair," he answered slowly. "Very pleasant smile as I recall. That's all though. No name."

I wondered if he was talking about Moxie. I pulled out the picture I found in Tanya's apartment and showed it to him. "Is this the girl with the key to Tanya's apartment?"

He nodded. "Yes, that's her. Nice smile, wouldn't you agree? Who is she?"

I ignored his questions. "Mr. Furberry, this is important. Did you, in all the time you spent with Tanya, ever get the sense that she was afraid?"