A while ago I wrote about the Brickworks turtles and lucky cats. Consider this the sequel. The old houses on Glen Road, long boarded up and home only to feral cats and raccoons are now under some kind of painstaking evisceration, a process leaving just the brick superstructure. As this photo shows, the houses are all brick, right down to the foundation floor.
Cool.
Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Fifteen
Sparky here. This is Chapter Fifteen of my story about how Gerry Ringbold met his untimely end. The story starts here.
I had first met Carol the same way I meet a lot of people these days. She walked into the women's washroom. It was my first day on the job. She struck up a conversation with me then and it became a regular part of my work day: tirades from Marriba, bullshit from Jennifer and normal talk with Carol.
Her out-of-the-blue revelations of living with Pea and being related to Gerry Ringbold knocked me off my centre for a second.
"How on earth is someone a half-nephew?"
Carol laughed. "I can explain everything, but you're going to have to wait. I gotta run."
And she was gone.
Carol did explain everything over the next couple of days. Some of what she told me I have already told you, such as the details of who got what in Pea's will. But, because life is a mystery that unfolds on its own schedule, I've been holding out on you.
Here's Gerry Ringbold's real back story, far more complete than what Bob Harrison - the Gerry-obsessed reporter - wrote in his piece of alleged journalism I described at the beginning of this story. I'll start with Pea and Stuart.
Peony MacDonald and Stuart Chester's marriage was arranged by their families. Basically a business deal, their union was a merger of old and new money, a trade of a car load of social respectability for a car load of cash. As a bride, Pea was self-involved and spoiled. She considered her new husband to be a social inferior and she never really loved Stuart. Turns out Pea's assessment was fairly astute. Stuart was a gambling, opium-smoking, alcoholic lout who, despite his failings, probably loved Pea, but that didn't stop him from stepping out on her. Or from squandering her money.
Pea suffered enormous humiliation from Stuart as he philandered about town. She also suffered financial setbacks because just about all the money Chester brought to the union was gone in less than three years from gambling losses and reckless investments. Pea exacted punishment in a manner in keeping with their social status and bearing by forcing Stuart to watch her siphon gigantic quantities of money away from him to all the charities she supported over the years.
In their heyday as the city's most beautiful, wealthy, admired and influential couple -- with lots of sad secrets that lots of people knew about but now all those people are dead -- Pea and Stuart maintained along with their charade of a marriage, a staff of about 15 people, including secretaries for each of them, a butler for Stuart, kitchen staff, cleaning staff, groundskeepers and handymen.
One of the groundskeepers had a family of his own and was hoping the Chesters could provide one or two of his children an opportunity. When preparations began in 1955 for the annual New Years Eve party, the groundskeeper approached the butler to ask if his fifteen year old daughter might be hired to help serve guests.
The butler happily said yes.
The groundskeeper's daughter made such a positive impression at the New Year's party that she was brought onto the regular staff where she cleaned and did laundry.
By June 1956, it was obvious the groundskeeper's daughter was pregnant. Everyone knew that Stuart was the father. No one dared breathe a word.
Pea's response was measured and iron-fisted.
The groundskeeper's daughter was given three hundred dollars in cash, a one-way train ticket to Rochester, New York and taken to the train station. Once she alighted in Rochester, the groundskeeper's daughter was brought to the comfortable upstate New York home of two of Pea's cousins who had agreed, in return for consideration, to take the baby once it was born and arrange to have it put up for adoption.
As for what they were to do with the groundskeeper's daughter, otherwise known as Gerry Ringbold's grandmother, Pea forwarded no direction.
You can read Chapter Sixteen here.
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