Death Du Jour

must have been exhausted. Or maybe it was the thing with Ryan. Or her breakup with Striker.

Later, I’d wonder why I hadn’t seen the signs. It might have changed so much.

13

ON MONDAY I GOT UP AT DAWN, PLANNING TO MAKE BREAKFAST for Harry and myself. She declined, saying it was a fast day. She left before seven, wearing sweats and no makeup, a sight I had never expected to experience.

There are records identifying the coldest spot on earth, the driest, the lowest. The gloomiest is without doubt the serials and microform department of McGill’s McLennan Library. It is a long narrow room on the second floor done in poured cement and fluorescent lighting, set off smartly by a bloodred floor.

Following the librarian’s instructions, I worked my way past the stacks of serials and newspapers to rows of metal shelves holding tiny cardboard boxes and round metal tins. I found the ones I wanted and took them to the reading room. Deciding to start with the English press, I withdrew a roll of microfilm and wound it onto the reading machine.

In 1846 the Montreal Gazette was published triweekly, with a format like today’s New York Times. Narrow columns, few pictures, numerous ads. My viewer was bad and so was the film. It was like trying to read under water. The print kept moving in and out of focus, and hairs and particles of debris migrated across the screen.

Ads extolled fur caps, British stationery, untanned sheepskins. Dr. Taylor wanted you to buy his balsam liverwort, Dr. Berlin, his antibilious pills. John Bower Lewis promoted himself as a worthy barrister and attorney- at-law. Pierre Gregoire would be pleased to do your hair. I read the ad:

Gentleman can accommodate respectable male and female clients. Will render hair soft and glossy, however harsh. Will use admirable preparations to produce beautiful curls and do excellent restoration. Reasonable prices. Select clients only.

And now for the news.

Antoine Lindsay died when his neighbor hit him in the head with a piece of wood. Coroner’s finding: Willful Murder.

A young English girl, Maria Nash, lately landed in Montreal, was victim of an abduction and betrayal. She died in a state of madness at the Emigrant Hospital.

When Bridget Clocone gave birth to a male child at the Women’s Lying-In Hospital, doctors found that the forty-year-old widow had recently delivered another child. Police searched her employer’s home and found the body of a second male infant hidden under clothes in a box. The baby showed “. . . marks of violence as though occasioned by the strong pressure of fingers on the neck.” Coroner’s finding: Willful Murder.

Jesus. Does anything ever change?

I shifted gears and scanned a list of ships that had cleared the port, and a list of ocean passengers leaving Montreal for Liverpool. Pretty dry stuff.

Fares for the steamboat. Stagecoach service to Ontario. Notices of removal. Not many folks moving that week.

Finally I found it. Births, Marriages, Deaths. In this city on the seventeenth, Mrs. David Mackay, a son. Mrs. Marie-Claire Bisset, a daughter. No mention of Eugenie Nicolet and her baby.

I noted the position of the birth notices within each paper, and fast-forwarded through the next several weeks, going right to that section. Nothing. I checked every paper on the reel. Through the end of 1846 there was no notice of Elisabeth’s birth.

I tried the other English papers. Same story. No mention of Eugenie Nicolet. No birth of Elisabeth. I shifted to the French press. Still nothing.

By ten o’clock my eyes were throbbing and pain had spread throughout my back and shoulders. I leaned back, stretched, and rubbed my temples. Now what?

Across the room someone at another machine hit the rewind knob. Good idea. Good as anything. I’ll go backward. Elisabeth was born in January. Let’s check the period when the little sperm and egg were introducing themselves to each other.

I got the boxes and wound a film through the spools. April 1845. Same ads. Same notices of removal. Same passenger lists. English press. French press.

By the time I got to La Presse my eyes would hardly focus. I looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. Twenty minutes more.

I rested my chin on my fist and hit rewind. When the film stopped I was in March. I was advancing manually, stopping here and there to scan down the middle of the screen, when I spotted the Belanger name.

I sat up and brought the article into focus. It was brief. Eugenie Belanger was off to Paris. The noted singer and wife of Alain Nicolet would be traveling with a company of twelve and would return after the season. Except for some verbiage saying how much she’d be missed, that was it.

So Eugenie had left town. When had she returned? Where was she in April? Did Alain go with her? Did he join her there? I looked at my watch. Shit.

I checked my wallet, dug into the bottom of my purse, then printed as many pages as my coins would allow. I rewound and returned the films and hurried across campus to Birks Hall.

Jeannotte’s door was closed and locked, so I found the department office. The secretary dragged her eyes from her computer screen long enough to assure me that the journals would be delivered safely. I attached a note of thanks and left.

Walking back to the condo, my mind was still on history. I imagined the grand old homes I was passing as they’d been a century ago. What had the occupants seen when they looked out across Sherbrooke? Not the Musee des Beaux-Arts or the Ritz-Carlton. Not the latest offerings of Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, and the atelier of Versace.