The fifth segment of my next mystery novel, now titled “A Murderer Mistaken”, follows. As previously noted, the novel involves a deceased friend, an abandoned apartment, a search for a safety deposit box, and the shame of long forgotten actions.
The story went on as they both ordered another beer. The next day, he slipped a note into Mr. French’s mail slot directing the good professor to the desk behind which poor Ronald Barnes sat. Just to ensure anonymity and avoid detection, Jack had thoughtfully typed the note. It suggested that Mr. French inspect Ronald Barnes’ desk. That day, in fact that morning, Mr. French asked Ronald Barnes up to the front of the desk where he told him to stand facing the chalkboard. There were a low hissing sound coming from some of the big kids in the back of the class. Mr. French stared them into silence. He went back to the desk, three desks down in the row nearest to the window, lifted the desk lid, and found his fountain pen. He then slammed down the lid, it sounded like a casket closing, and returned to the front of the class where every student in the room thought that Mr. French was about to hit the recently incriminated Roanld Barnes. Mr. French told Ronald Barnes, whose repeated denials began immediately after Mr. French lifted his fountain pen out of Ronald Barnes’ desk, to turn around. There was a frozen moment and then the entire grade six class erupted into laughter. It was almost uncontrollable. Not only was Ronald Barnes crying but he had peed his pants, a large wet spolch having spread across the front of his dungarees like an expanding shadow. Most of the student witnesses thought the pee spot looked like a bad drawing of the province of Ontario. One particularly loquacious pupil was heard over the din remarking that he thought Ronald Barnes looked like he was awaiting punishment, his expectation, which was shared by all, being that Mr. French would strap poor Ranold Barnes, at least a hardy six on each being the inevitable judgment. The poor Barnes boy looked like he was in shock.
Mr. French just stood there waiting for the laughter to subside, surprisingly ignoring the remark about the likelihood of a strapping. After waiting for several minutes, Mr. French took one step toward Ronald Barnes, the dreaded strap already in his hand, stopped and then stood. His back to the class, Mr. French put his arms out like he was about to orchestrate the class, lowered them to his sides, his shoulders sloped, and then audibly sighed. He then raised his arms, lowered them to his sides again, turned around to face to the class for a moment, and then ordered Ronald Barnes back to his desk without further comment. His classmates looked at each other in stunned silence, mesmerized by an unexpected expression of mercy. Ronald Barnes and his stained trousers shuffled back to his desk like his feet were shackled, the thought of a man walking to his execution later occurred to Jack. It seemed strange. In retrospect, Jack wondered why Ronald Barnes did not walk back to his desk with a relieved smile on his face. Maybe he didn’t believe that he had just been blessed with clemency from a merciless guy like Mr. French. Ronald Barnes returned to his desk, sat down and continued to weep, a state which prevailed for several minutes.
Strangely enough, aside from that moment, Ronald Barnes did not make or continue with any protestations of innocence, even to Mr. French or anyone else for that matter. While he was never a particularly ebullient boy, he was sociable enough. No one thought he was odd in any specific way. He was thought to be average, conventional, blending into the fabric of the class like most of his normal classmates. But, at least according to Jack and his partner in crime Peter Walters, the fountain pen incident changed Ronald Barnes. Of course they never shared their psychological assessment regarding Ronald Barnes with anyone else, their fear of discovery overriding any desire to discuss the change in his behavior with their classmates and friends. On the other hand, maybe their own paranoia, which did not last that long anyway, explained any concern that might have evolved. Peter Walters thought that Ronald Barnes had become a loner. Jack could not disagree. And he was guilty about it, guilt he carried into the seventh grade. His friend Peter, who did not seem similarly afflicted, suggested that he should have been more worried about getting caught for their little act of foolishness than guilty about the effect it may have had on poor Ronald Barnes. By the time everybody graduated to high school, any guilt suffered by Jack Quinn faded into the oblivion of the back of his mind, re-emerging occasionally, usually just before slumber arrived.
During that particular drinking session, in addition to his confession of those three incidents, Jack Quinn also told his friend that there was another unfortunate episode about which he had developed a troubled conscience. From the way he made that admission, Mark had inferred that the unspoken episode was somehow similar in nature to the story he had just told about the fountain pen and poor Ronald Barnes. But he said he was neither drunk nor penitent enough to testify about an incident that Jack Quinn said he would likely take to his grave, a fate that was likely fifty years away in the future. But that was back then and this was now, sitting in that decrepit apartment where he was now fading into a dark horizon. Again, as he did about the details of his assignation with a young girl named Alison, Mark pressed his friend about a mysterious circumstance about which he declined to discuss, even though he had brought it up in the first place. Jack resisted any further appeal. Unlike the other incidents to which Jack had admitted that one drunken evening, this secret would remain just that.
For his part, just to satisfy Jack’s drunken insistence on fair exchange, Mark would only provide two examples of guilty misbehavior. Mark could have invoked, if he concentrated hard enough, maybe three or four more incidents about which he would rather not discuss. Unlike Jack and his mystery, he did not have anything particular dreadful to conceal, an aborted homosexual encounter with a stranger in a campground washroom as close as Mark could come to any incident worth concealing. In any event, he told Jack about an unfortunate office affair with a woman who eventually left, or was left by her husband, a tale that so interested Jack that he seemed to sober up a bit to actually pay attention to the details, domestic tragedies he noted were often worth recounting. The other story that Mark was willing to share involved a refund scam at a department store that had employed him for a summer just after he had graduated from high school. While Mark should have he supposed felt a certain degree of remorse after embezzling several hundred dollars by providing confederates with cash refunds for merchandise that was never purchased in the first place, he had amused many of his associates with the story, proud of their entertainnment value.
Regardless of Mark’s efforts to match Jack’s secrets with testimony regarding a couple of his own, it did not prompt Jack to divulge that one incident to which he was unwilling to admit.
