By the Time You Read This by Giles Blunt Read Free Book Online

you. It’s very kind of you.”
    “You just have to reheat it. Twenty minutes at two-fifty ought to do it.”
    Others were arriving. One at a time they went to stand by the coffin, some kneeling and crossing themselves. There were teachers from Northern University and the community college where Catherine had taught. Former students. There was white-haired Mr. Fisk, for decades the proprietor of Fisk’s Camera Shop until it was put out of business, like half of Main Street, by the deadly munificence of Wal-Mart.
    “That’s a great picture of Catherine, with the cameras,” Mr. Fisk said. “She used to come into the store looking just like that. Always she’d be wearing that anorak or the fishing vest. Remember that fishing vest?” Nervousness was manifesting itself in Mr. Fisk as jauntiness, as if they were discussing an eccentric friend who had moved away.
    “Nice turnout,” he added, looking around with approval. Catherine’s students, middle-aged some of them, others young and teary-eyed, murmured kind words at Cardinal. No matter how conventional, they pierced Cardinal in a way that surprised him. Who would have thought mere words could be so powerful?
    His colleagues showed up: McLeod in a suit that had been cut for a smaller man, Collingwood and Arsenault looking like an out-of-work comedy duo. Larry Burke made the sign of the cross in front of the coffin and stood before it with head bowed for some time. He didn’t know Cardinal all that well—he was new to the detective squad—but he came over and said how sorry he was.
    Delorme showed up in a dark blue dress. Cardinal couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her in a dress.
    “Such a sad day,” she said, hugging him. He could feel her trembling slightly, fighting tears of sympathy, and he couldn’t speak. She knelt before the coffin for a few minutes, and then came back to give Cardinal another hug, her eyes wet.
    Police Chief R. J. Kendall came, along with Detective Sergeant Chouinard, Ken Szelagy—everyone from CID—and various patrol constables.
    Another bend in the afternoon, and now they were at Highlawn crematorium. Cardinal had no memory of the drive out into the hills. It had been Catherine’s request that there be no church service, but in the will she and Cardinal had had drawn up, she had asked that Father Samson Mkembe say a few words.
    When Cardinal had been an altar boy, all of the priests had been of Irish descent, or French Canadian. But now the church had to recruit from farther afield, and Father Mkembe had come all the way from Sierra Leone. He stood at the front of the crematory chapel, a tall, bony man with a face of high-gloss ebony.
    The chapel was almost full. Cardinal saw Meredith Moore, head of the art department up at the college, and Sally Westlake, a close friend of Catherine’s. And he could make out among the mourners the woolly head of Dr. Bell.
    Father Mkembe talked about Catherine’s strength. Indeed, he got most of her good qualities right—no doubt because he had phoned earlier asking Kelly for tips. But he spoke also about how Catherine’s faith had sustained her in adversity—a patent falsehood, as Catherine only went to church for the big occasions and had long ago stopped believing in God.
    The furnace doors opened and the flames flared for an instant. The coffin rolled in, the doors closed, and the priest said a final prayer. A doomsday bell was tolling in Cardinal’s heart: You failed her .
    The colours of the world outside were unnaturally bright. The sky was the blue of a gas flame, and the carpet of autumn leaves seemed to emit light, not just reflect it—golds and yellows and rusty reds. A shadow passed over Cardinal as the smoke that had been his wife dimmed the sun.
    “Mr. Cardinal, I don’t know if you remember me …”
    Meredith Moore was shaking Cardinal’s hand in her dry little palm. She was a wisp of a woman, so dehydrated she looked as if she should be dropped in water to expand