A Journeyman to Grief (25 page)

Murdoch picked up the syringe, balanced it between his forefinger and thumb, and aimed it into the inspector’s right buttock.

Brackenreid let out a banshee scream and he wasn’t acting. The syringe was left dangling. He took a step backward, tumbled onto his rear, and crashed into the screen, bringing it down. “You fool, you incompetent ape. You’re even worse than Raymond.”

The fall had driven the point of the needle deeper into his flesh and he was roaring in earnest. Raymond and some of the residents came rushing to help. Brackenreid struggled to his feet, shaking them off. With a grunt, he extracted the syringe.

“I’m going to report this,” he shouted. “You!” he pointed a dramatically accusing finger at Murdoch. “You come with me. We’re going straight to see Mr. Cavanaugh.”

“I’ll send for somebody,” said Raymond.

“Never mind. I want the man himself to give an explanation to the superintendent himself or I’ll see he never works here again.”

The attendant smirked. “I warned you he was only a temporary staff.”

Murdoch lowered his head, looking suitably chastened. Tennyson had come hurrying over and he was righting the screen. “Let them go, Raymond, we’ve got to finish.”

The attendant looked as if he would protest, but Brackenreid shoved Murdoch ahead of him toward the door. “Come on, you.”

They got out into the hall, leaving a ripple of excitement behind them in their wake. The residents hadn’t had such a lively afternoon since the most recent inmate had an attack of the delirium tremors.

Once in the hall, the inspector halted and rubbed his buttock with a moan.

“Sorry, sir,” said Murdoch, “but you did say to think of darts.”

“It felt more like you were throwing a bloody javelin.”

“Where to now, sir?”

“I’ve got to get home to my wife and convince her, this is absolutely the wrong place for me.” He looked at Murdoch. “Where are your own clothes?”

“There’s a room just down here that the attendants use. I bribed one of them to get me in here.”

Murdoch thought it wouldn’t hurt to let Brackenreid know that he’d paid out his own money.

“Good thinking.”

Luck was still with them and the hall was deserted. Murdoch opened the door to the room and they went inside. He handed Brackenreid his clothes and the inspector changed into them immediately. He had lost weight during his stay at the institute. Murdoch’s trousers and jacket were tight but not as bad as they would have been a while ago.

“There’s a rear door that the attendants use,” said Murdoch.

He checked the hall first to see if they were safe, then led the way to the door. They practically ran down the path, through the gate, and didn’t stop until they were at the end of the street where Murdoch had left his bicycle. Brackenreid was gasping for breath, but he thrust out his hand.

“Murdoch, I am forever in your debt. I shall have your clothes sent round to you tonight. And all being well, I will return to the station tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

They shook hands and Brackenreid scurried off, Murdoch’s hat pulled well down over his face.

Murdoch waited until he was out of sight, then let go of the laughter he’d been choking back. It would take him a while to get the image of Brackenreid’s buttock as dartboard out of his head.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

T
hree constables and Murdoch were seated around the table in the duty room. All of them were enjoying meat pies courtesy of the station petty cash, which Murdoch had seen fit to filch. He knew they had all worked a long day, and in his opinion, hungry men were easily distracted from the task at hand by thoughts of supper. He’d also ordered Fyfer to make a pot of tea, fresh leaves, if you please. Inspector Brackenreid was a miser when it came to doling out the small allowance the officers were permitted for tea, milk, and sugar. He actually checked to make sure they were reusing the tea leaves in the big pot.

Murdoch was drawing a map of local streets on the brown wall of the duty room. “I’ll wipe it off later,” he said.

“Might be a good thing to have permanently,” said Fyfer. “It’s certainly helpful.”

“Inspector Brackenreid wouldn’t like that,” said Dewhurst, who always took a perverse pleasure from being the voice of doom.

Murdoch wondered how much he was going to be able to draw from the bank account of Brackenreid’s gratitude before it
ran out. “You never know, he may come back a new man and totally approve.”

He couldn’t help but notice how much at ease the constables were without the inspector’s unpredictable presence. Murdoch had invited them to undo the top buttons of their uniforms in the warm room. Their helmets were on the hooks by the door.

He checked his watch. “I don’t know what’s keeping Crabtree, but we should start. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

Burley, the youngest, spoke up first.

“Elijah Green appeared to be genuinely shocked by the news of Thomas Talbert’s death. He said he couldn’t understand why somebody would want to kill a man of Talbert’s age. He asked if the motive was robbery, and I said we didn’t think so. He had no suggestions or opinions as to who or why.”

“Fyfer? What about Mrs. Cooke?”

“She was in the company of Paul Musgrave so they received the news together. Both expressed great surprise. Neither had any idea, they said, who had done the murder, but Mrs. Cooke is convinced there are gypsies in the area. She took it for granted that robbery was the motive, although she said she didn’t expect that Mr. Talbert would have had much to steal. She became quite tearful and she said the news brought up the tragedy of her own husband. All this time, Mr. Musgrave was a great comfort to her.”

He let the inference hang in the air.

“Constable Dewhurst, anything from the cabbies?”

“I’d say nothing different from what you’ve just heard. Shock, surprise, no ideas as to who did it. Like you told me, Mr. Murdoch, I didn’t let on about the way Talbert was tied up, but the cabbie, Wallace, did remark that we’d probably find it was, as he put it, ‘a tribal matter.’”

“What the hell did he mean by that?”

“He thought the murderer must have been another negro man, sir.”

Burley gave a little cough. “I think I have something promising, Detective Murdoch. After I had spoken to Green, I returned to the scene of the offence and I began to interview the residents of the area. I questioned Mr. Magnus Shewan, who lives at 205 Shuter Street near Jarvis. Last night, he was returning from his place of work, which is on Yonge Street. He is adamant he walked by a peculiar-looking couple. So I asks him why he thought they were peculiar and he said the woman was walking a few paces behind the man, as if she were a coulee or some such. The man was definitely shorter than the woman, and he swears they were both dark-skinned. He didn’t notice if they turned into any of the houses on the street. He says it was about half past seven when he saw them.”

Murdoch drew a dotted line on the wall map, along Shuter from Yonge Street to Jarvis and wrote
MS (7:30)
. He noticed that Dewhurst was smirking.

“Yes?”

“I can top that, sir. I spoke to a Mr. and Mrs. Mario Marino, who live at 243 Church Street, which is a few houses north of Shuter. They are of Italian extraction and I would say you’d call them swarthy, especially Mrs. Marino, who has quite a moustache. Mister is quite short, but Missus is taller and stout. They were going to St. Michael’s Cathedral for a special prayer meeting. An Italian man would never hold his wife’s arm, as they consider it beneath them and the wives usually walk a few paces behind. They saw Mr. Shewan coming home. They know him slightly as their habits occasionally coincide, but they don’t exchange greetings. They find him a very ill-mannered man and said they have tried to be sociable but have been rebuffed.”

Burley interjected. “I myself found Mr. Shewan a little taciturn, sir, but I realized he is rather deaf and fairly short-sighted into the bargain, so his lack of manners toward Mr. and Mrs. Marino might not be altogether in his awareness.”

Dewhurst’s expression made it clear what he thought of that, but Murdoch added the Marino couple to his map.

“Did you confirm there was indeed a church meeting at the cathedral?”

“Yes, sir. There was, and it went from eight o’clock to eleven.”

“That’s us Catholics for you. We have a lot to pray about, and for,” said Murdoch, and the constables dutifully smiled at his little joke. “Sorry, Dick, but I think we can eliminate the swarthy, strange-looking couple from our list of suspects. Anything else?”

“The people I spoke to were generally complimentary in what they said about Mr. Talbert, although he kept to himself by all accounts. Some of them were acquainted with the livery and had met Mr. Cooke. The words used to describe
him
were
moody
,
irascible
,
unpredictable
, although one lady on Queen Street who said she used his cabs regularly described him as a most charming and thoughtful man. To tell you the truth, sir, she is elderly and I think she was getting him mixed up with one of the cabbies who generally takes care of her. Her description of him fits Paul Musgrave.”

“Anybody else glean anything as to the general opinion in the neighbourhood about either of the two men?”

Fyfer nodded. “I heard much the same really, although a couple of ladies who live on Shuter Street expressed some disapproval about Mr. Talbert living with a white widow lady.”

“They must be members of Mrs. Pollard’s discussion group,” said Murdoch. “She’s of the same opinion.”

At that moment, the door opened and George Crabtree came in.

“Sorry, I’m late, sir. I had some business at home to attend to.”

“Have a seat, George. There’s a pie for you and some fresh-brewed tea. I hope you’ve got something for me. So far we haven’t got much to go on.”

Crabtree took out his notebook. “I do, sir. I talked to a Miss Laura Brown. She lives on Shuter Street near Sherbourne, 292. She has a little pug dog called Tiger and come rain or shine, every evening, she walks him from her house along Shuter Street as far as Church Street and back. And it’s always about the same time. She leaves her house between eight and nine o’clock, except on Sunday when she goes at six so she can go to Evensong at St. Peter’s. She says that last night, on her return trip, she saw two people walking west on Shuter. She estimates this would be about a quarter to nine. She was able to give me a good description because Tiger was doing his job just then and she had to stand and wait for him. Her impression is that they were American. There was something about the woman’s hat apparently that was different from what you can buy in Toronto. The man was most definitely a negro, and he was wearing a long coat and a fedora hat. She couldn’t say if the woman was coloured or not, as she was veiled. They were walking quite fast, but the woman seemed to move stiffly. Just as they approached her, they crossed to the other side of the road and she noticed the man helped the woman to step off the curb. She wasn’t sure where that was exactly, but she thought she had just gone past Church Street. She continued on her way after that.”

Murdoch put in another line on the map and wrote
(Miss Brown, 8:45) negro and woman
on Shuter Street, near Church.

“What side of the street was Miss Brown on?”

Crabtree looked discomfited. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think to ask her.”

“I want you to find out. I want to know exactly which tree Tiger was pissing on. Take her back there if you have to. Talbert lived on the south side of Shuter Street. It might mean something
or it might not if the two people, possibly American strangers, one a negro, were walking on that side from that direction. The time certainly fits. Talbert was shot somewhere between eight and nine o’clock.”

Murdoch was irritated that George hadn’t thought to ask the woman such an obvious question. He leaned over and chalked in a square on the northwest corner of Shuter Street and Church. The Elliott Hotel. An American lady with a coloured servant, even though she was female and Miss Brown had seen a male, was too much of a coincidence to be ignored. He’d better go and have another chat with the redoubtable Mrs. Dittman. And soon.

There was a tap at the door and Sergeant Hales entered. “Dr. Ogden telephoned to say she is sending over her post-mortem report on Mr. Talbert, sir. She says she was able to start sooner than expected and preferred not to wait for you as she has a social engagement for this evening.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Hold on. I think I hear something right now. Might be the report. Shall I bring it in?”

“Please do. Maybe there’ll be surprises.”

There weren’t. Dr. Ogden wrote that Thomas Talbert was “well nourished and in excellent health for his age.” When he read that, Murdoch thought of Mr. Stokely’s sad words:
He should have died peacefully in his bed.
As they had pretty much determined when he examined the body, death was caused by a bullet severing the carotid artery and was probably instantaneous. “The bullet was still lodged in the skull. I have extracted it and will keep it for your perusal. Professor Broske says he has experience in these matters from his time in the last Italian war, and he will be happy to share with you a simple but effective method by which you can determine if the bullet matches the revolver.”

“He will, will he? First I have to find a revolver.”

He’d been reading the report out loud to the constables.

“Dr. Broske is a friend and colleague of Dr. Ogden’s. A man of considerable knowledge, which he is always happy to share.”

They didn’t miss the irony in his voice, and they grinned at him except for Dewhurst, who probably thought he was serious.

He continued. “The trajectory of the bullet was as we discussed. At an angle of forty-five degrees from entry to exit. The revolver was therefore about two feet lower than Talbert’s neck. He is five feet, eleven inches tall.

“There was some slight scarring on Talbert’s right kidney and some fatty tissue on the liver, which indicated to me that the subject might have been a heavy drinker at some time in his earlier life. Certainly not now, I would say, from the condition of his other organs. The only other thing unusual was that he had a condition known as hexadactyly or, in layman’s language, he was born with six fingers on each hand. He had the more common form known as ulnar hexadactyly, that is to say, an extra little finger. Both of these fingers had been surgically removed in adult life. The most common practice is to suture the small fleshy finger as soon as the child is born and then it simply falls off. However, this did not occur with Mr. Talbert and part of the bone had developed. He had mastoids at some time in his life, which left some scarring in his ears. He also had an undescended right testicle, which would have occurred at birth.