A Very Tranquil Murder

Chapter 7

Jerry's room looked — and smelled — like rutting season had torn through it overnight.

The decorative quilt depicting scenes from 'le bon vieux temps du Québec' had been flung across the room. It lay half-draped over the TV set on the dresser. The matching decorative cushions had been tossed in opposite directions, one landing in the door to the bathroom, the other lying atop an empty case of Molson Export on the floor beside the suitcase stand. The hospital corners that had once anchored the bedsheet to the mattress had been utterly annihilated. The sheet lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, trailing over the footboard onto the floor. One pillow lay half-under the bed; the other was propped askew against the headboard. 

Jerry's bed had been slept in, to say the least. Actually, 'slept' was a polite figure of speech for what Jerry had obviously been up to.

I opened the bathroom door. A fug of body odours lingered in the air. In the garbage pail beside the toilet lay half a dozen dirty tissues and — sure enough — a used condom.

I backed out of the bathroom. Cleaning could wait. My curiosity couldn't.

I crossed the carpeted bedroom, sidestepping the discarded blankets and pillows, to the stand where Jerry's suitcase stood open. These were his final effects: a messy pile of jeans, t-shirts, sweaters, socks and underwear. I supposed I'd have to return them to Carmela, along with his formal wedding suit that hung in a dry-cleaner's bag in the closet. Poking through the mound of clothing in the suitcase, I found something else: a Ziploc bag of pills.  So much for Jerry turning his life around. 

I turned on the table lamp to examine them: Two blue tablets with the imprint "Lilly 4415" — I'd have to look that up in a drug handbook. And four tablets of Temazepam, 7.5 mg. 

I took out my phone and, feeling a little sleazy, snapped some date- and time-stamped photos of the drugs: a close-up of each tablet, then a wider shot of the bag lying on top of the clothes in the suitcase. It was an infringement of the dead man's privacy, but maybe it would help my defence in the lawsuit that Jerry's dad had launched against me.

Should I keep cleaning? It didn't seem like the right thing to do. This room could be evidence. But evidence of what? Both of the bridesmaids had told Sgt. Toussaint that they'd gone to bed around between 10:30 and 11 p.m., leaving Jerry alone in the hot-tub. It looked as though one of them was lying. But what was I supposed to do with that information? I backed out of the room, locking the door behind me. Standing in the hallway, I felt the dread that comes from stumbling over a secret whose implications remain unknown.

I tried to ponder the question calmly over a second cup of coffee in my office. What was I supposed to do with the information? The most obvious answer was: nothing. The first duty of a hotelière towards her guests is discretion. Jerry had slept with one of the bridesmaids — so what? It was no-one's business except their own. But one of the bridesmaids had lied to the police — and that, potentially, was someone's business.

The teapot-clock read 2 pm. I assumed Sgt. Toussaint would be fast asleep, resting up for his next night shift. Be careful what you wish for, he'd said. Murder is bad for business. That was advice I should take to heart. An accidental drowning would pass fairly quietly, but a murder could make the news across the province. As if people weren't already nervous enough about the pandemic — who would want to soak in a hot-tub where a man had been murdered? It was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

And yet, there had been two cans of Molson Ex lying on the flagstones beside the lower pool when I'd cleaned up that morning. What if Angélique and Jerry had stumbled down to the lower thermal pool together after a tryst? What if they'd been popping a few of Angélique's sleeping pills? What if that had knocked Jerry out and he'd slipped beneath the water? Would that make Angélique liable for his death? What if they'd had a fight and she had allowed him to drown — or even held him under?

The office phone rang. I started at the hollow cheerfulness of its electronic jingle.

"Hello, bonjour, La Tranquilité Inn and Spa," I answered with my own imitation of hospitable cheer.

"Hello, this is Anton Monk."

"Oh, hello, Mr. Monk. How is your wife?"

"She's resting. They're keeping her here while they run a few tests. She asked me to call you."

"Oh, yes?"

"She said she had a pedicure appointment booked for 4:30 today. She wondered if you'd make a house-call."

"Yes, of course, I'd be happy to."

"Good. It's the hospital in Ste-Agathe-Des-Monts. Room P-329. I'll tell the nurses you're coming."