Except the Dying

by Maureen Jennings

  Beatrice interrupted. “That’ll keep ’til you’ve had your tea. Come on now.”

  Murdoch grinned. “All right. Be back shortly.”

  He followed her down to the kitchen, which was blessedly warm and filled with the delicious smell of fried onions. A place was set at the small pine table and he sat down obediently while Beatrice took his plate out of the warming oven. The Kitchens and he had become good friends but he was still the boarder and, as such, certain formalities were observed. He was served separately from the two of them and always got the best cuts of meat and the choicest vegetables. He’d given up protesting. Arthur seemed to subsist on broth and junkets but Murdoch worried that Beatrice didn’t eat enough herself. Even birds couldn’t subsist on air.

  “The water’s boiling when you want it and there’s a lemon pudding for your sweet. Join us when you’re done.”

  She left him to eat alone.

  He eased his chilled feet out of his boots into the slippers she had warmed for him and tackled his meal. The liver had dried out to the consistency of guttapercha but he was too hungry to be fussy. He sliced off a piece, loaded onions on top of it and shovelled it into his mouth. He demolished the meal in no time at all, then sawed off a thick hunk of bread from the loaf beside his plate and mopped up the grease from his dish. The kettle was whistling shrilly and he got up to make a pot of tea. The sweet was lumpy but he wolfed that down too, then sat back to drink his tea. Usually he read the newspapers while he ate but there were none today. Instead he propped up the book he’d taken out of the library the week before. It was a biography of the explorer Henry Stanley.

  He turned the page but realized he hadn’t really taken in the words. He was finding it hard to concentrate. Images of a young naked body kept intruding. Images of raw flesh where the skin had torn from the knees and elbows as they pulled her from the winter’s deadly embrace.

  The three of them were seated in the parlour. The window was closed and Beatrice had lit the fire but it hadn’t yet touched the chill air. Arthur, the lines on his face as dark as scars, was wearing a woollen nightcap and mittens, and Murdoch was huddled under a blanket. The single oil lamp hardly made a dint on the gloom. For the past hour, they had been discussing the day. Murdoch had no worries about them being indiscreet. Arthur didn’t go out and although Beatrice enjoyed hearing gossip, it was from an avid interest in humanity, not to revel in another’s misfortune. He knew she had never repeated any information that she’d gleaned from their chats together. He also knew that her friends and neighbours often pressed her to be forthcoming but she wouldn’t.

  “What’s your next step, then?” asked Beatrice.

  “Wait and see, really. Cavendish did a good likeness and I sent the drawings over to all the newspapers. The Herald and the News should be able to print it in the morning editions. If we’re lucky we’ll get a response soon.”

  “What’s himself have to say about it?”

  “He hasn’t had a chance to say anything yet. He wasn’t in. Bad stomach again.”

  Thomas Brackenreid was the inspector of Murdoch’s division, and there was no love lost between them. Many an evening Murdoch had poured out his anger and frustration to his sympathetic friends.

  Mrs. Kitchen moved her worktable closer to the lamp and spread out a box of shells on the surface. She picked up a small wooden box and arranged the shells on the lid. She added to their tiny income by making craft items and selling them to the fancy goods stores on King Street.

  “What do you think?” she asked the two men.

  “Very artistic,” said Murdoch.

  “The scallop would look better in the centre,” said Arthur.

  “I think you’re right.” She dipped the brush into the glue pot.

  “Best thing is if you find her clothes,” said Arthur.

  “Might be best but he doesn’t know what to look for, does he?” his wife said.

  “You’re right there, Mother. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He coughed violently, then spat into the spittoon. There was a fleck of blood on his lower lip and his wife reached over and wiped it away as calmly as if he were a child with a crumb on his face.

  “Well, whoever or whatever she was, I’m sorry for her,” Beatrice continued. “So young. Somebody somewhere will be worrying.”

  She added a brown auger shell to the rim of the box.

  “Not necessarily at this moment, Mother,” said Arthur. “She could have come from the country. Her family might not be expecting to hear from her for a month or more.”

  “You could be right, Father. God rest her soul,” said Beatrice, and she blessed herself.

  “Amen to that,” said Murdoch, and he did likewise. There was silence in the room except for the soft hiss of the coals burning and the quiet tick of the mantel clock. Murdoch glanced over at Arthur, who was staring into the fire.

  “I almost forgot. There was something I wanted to ask you. What kind of dog is about this big?” He indicated with his hands. “Long-haired. Caramel-coloured with pop eyes and a squashed-in nose. Long ears.”

  Before he got sick, Kitchen had been quite a dog fancier. He considered for a minute. “Sounds like a Pekingese. Wouldn’t you say, Mother?”

  Beatrice nodded. “That or a King Charles.”

  “Not that colour. Why’d you ask, Bill?”

  “Just curious.”

  He related the story of Samuel Quinn and the Virgin Mary, although from delicacy he called her the proper name of Princess. Mrs. K. tutted and exclaimed several well-I-nevers, but they both were diverted by the tale.

  “I miss having a dog,” said Mrs. K. “And Arthur’s always wanted a greyhound, haven’t you, dear? As soon as he’s better we’ll get one.”

  Arthur nodded, the pretense hovering in the air like a miasma.

  Murdoch yawned. Time for bed. “Do you want more coal on?” he asked.

  “If you please. I must finish this box, and Arthur has promised to read to me.”

  Arthur grunted. “She says she wants to hear Paradise Lost. I told her it was written by a Protestant and she won’t understand a word, but she insists.”

  “You can explain what is necessary. You like doing that.”

  Murdoch smiled and started to load lumps of the black shiny coal into the red maw of the fire. The supply was low in the bucket and he made a note to himself to have some delivered for them. Then he shook hands good night and left.

  Beatrice had put a candle ready for him on the hall table, and he lit it from the sconce and went upstairs.

  Last summer, Murdoch had insisted on renting the extra room upstairs for a sitting room. It was a squeeze for him to manage on his wages but it helped out the Kitchens and he liked having the luxury of a separate place where he could sit and read if he wanted to. He went into that room first.

  It was simply furnished with a flowered velvet armchair and matching footstool, a sideboard and two lamp tables. The oilcloth-covered floor was softened with a woven rag rug courtesy of Mrs. Kitchen.

  He placed his candlestick on the sideboard, then bent down and rolled the rug back to the wall. Even though it was getting late he had to do his practice before he went to bed.

  Two years ago last June, his fiancée, Elizabeth Milner, had contracted typhoid. Within five days she was dead, gone as quickly as a shadow on the lawn. He mourned silently, deeply. Still did. But he was a healthy, vigorous man and of late his body had begun to clamour for normal satisfaction. Many a night he tossed restlessly, listening to the church bell mark out each hour until the dawn seeped over the sleeping city, blotting up the darkness, and he sought a relief that not even the threat of confession could stop.

  Shortly before Christmas he decided he had to make some attempt at renewing a social life and enrolled in a dance class given by a Professor Mansfield Otranto. The professor was evasive about his educational credentials but, as he taught dancing and did phrenology consultations, Murdoch didn’t think it much mattered if his mastery of Greek
and Latin was shaky and his accent slithered all over the place before coming to rest in the flat vowels of Liverpool. They’d had three waltz lessons so far. After five lessons Murdoch would be allowed to attend the soiree that the professor gave for his best pupils on the second Saturday in the month.

  He took his patent-leather dance slippers out of the shoebox and slipped them on. Ready? Arms up to shoulder height, right hand resting lightly on the lady’s back.

  “Mr. Murdoch, pul-leez! Don’t push. You’re not trying to get a cow into a barn. Ladies are like thoroughbreds. Skittish and sensitive. You must persuade. And again! Pul-leez, sir, don’t stomp. A person would think you were killing cockroaches. Glide, always glide. Like skating … And with the right … Forward, two, three. Left again, two, three …” The professor’s wife, a plump, well-coiffed woman, thumped out the waltz with military precision on the out-of-tune piano tucked into the corner of the third-floor studio. Otranto took the female part, surprisingly graceful for such a corpulent man. He was short, and the overpowering smell of his violet pomade wafted upwards beneath Murdoch’s nose. The oil, however, could not disguise the sparsity of the hair plastered across his crown, nor could the sweet cachou he sucked on mask his cigar-tainted breath.

  In spite of this, Murdoch was enjoying the lessons immensely and was looking forward to holding an honest-to-goodness woman in his arms.

  Humming some bars from Strauss, he began to dance around his tiny room.

  “Glide! One, two, three. Forward, two, three. Lightly, lightly, like it’s air you’re treading on. Think of clouds, light fluffy clouds …”

  He did this for twenty minutes more, then executed a tricky half-turn and, pleased with his progress, decided to call it a night.

  Chapter Five

  He recognized the portrait immediately, although in it, Therese looked older and of course the artist could not capture the glow of rude health on the lightly freckled cheek that made her so attractive. Fear shot through his body. Had anybody seen him? Could he be linked to the dead girl? He lowered the newspaper, struggling to gain control. Guilt came like acid in his stomach, but it was really the fear that gripped him. If there was one jot of sorrow for the young interrupted life, it was so fleeting he could not have acknowledged it.

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY II

  LIKE ALL THE OTHER POLICE OFFICERS, Murdoch spent long hours at the station. When he entered the station hall early the next morning and caught the usual whiff of sawdust, coal stove and winter clothes, it was as familiar as home.

  “Good morning, Sergeant,” Murdoch greeted the duty sergeant, who was perched on a tall stool behind the high counter. The other man’s dour face changed and he grinned at Murdoch.

  “Would you believe I rode on the Singer this morning?”

  “No! You must have wheeled it all the way.”

  “I did not. I told you, it’ll go through anything.”

  Variations of this conversation had been happening all winter. Because the detective branch of the police force was so new, the status of detectives, especially acting detectives like Murdoch, was unclear. Technically he ranked above all the other officers but below the two sergeants and the inspector. As the only detective he often felt isolated. Then last summer, by chance, he and Sergeant Seymour had started to chat about the merits of the Singer versus the Ideal bicycle. It turned out that Seymour was also a keen cyclist and on that basis the two men had struck up a friendship. The rivalry wasn’t serious and they had gone on a couple of strenuous bicycling trips when their days off coincided.

  “Anything for me?” Murdoch asked.

  “Foster sent over a photograph. I put it on your desk.”

  He nodded in the direction of the three ragged men who were sitting on the bench. They were all watching the two officers.

  “They’re here about the girl.” Suddenly, the sergeant raised his voice. “Hey you! Yes, you in the tartan cap. I told you no spitting on the floor. Do it again and you’ll be charged.”

  The man addressed scuffed his boot into the sawdust on the floor like a scolded schoolboy. The other two shifted their stare into the space ahead of them.

  “Let me get a cup of tea and look at the photograph and then I’ll talk to them,” said Murdoch. He pushed through the gate and walked back to the orderly room.

  The station was not large. On the first floor was the public hall, lit by narrow grimy windows. Most months of the year, the wall sconces had to be lighted and the room was stifling winter and summer. A large black stove dominated the centre, and around the walls ran a wooden bench, rubbed smooth by the rear ends of countless nervous occupants. Across one end of the room ran a high wooden counter, a barrier between police and public. Behind it sat the duty sergeant with his big cloth-bound daily register, and behind him was a desk with a telephone and the telegraph machine, manned this morning by a young constable named Graham. At the rear were two small holding cells for those brought in as drunk and disorderly. Some nights these also had to make do as a place for waifs and strays, as part of the duty of the police force was to give temporary shelter to the homeless. Last year number-four station had handled over a hundred and twenty souls, most of them single men who weren’t vagrants – not yet, anyway – but had no home to go to.

  The backroom where the policemen ate or on occasion questioned suspects was also dark, but there was a cheery fire going in the hearth and, as usual, a kettle of water boiling on the hob. Murdoch poured some hot water into a large teapot. The tea grouts were used over and over, fresh leaves being added to the pot as necessary. The tea thus produced varied from weak as pauper’s gruel to so strong it could take the enamel off teeth. This morning it was a tolerable strength.

  As Murdoch was pouring himself a mug, the ginger station cat rubbed against his legs, purring like a swarm of bees. He bent down and scratched her head.

  “No, I’m not going to give you anything to eat, you slacker. See those mice droppings on the table? How come? There shouldn’t be a one around here.”

  The cat smiled complacently and rubbed her gums harder against his leg.

  “I mean it, Puss. Go find your own breakfast.”

  He picked up his mug and walked on back to his office.

  Barely more than a cubicle, there was room for a desk, scarred and chipped, a chair with the upholstery poking out of the seat and a wooden filing cabinet with two broken drawers. Facing him were last year’s posters from the annual police athletic tournament. Murdoch had won the one-mile bicycle race against stiff opposition, and he enjoyed the memory every time he glanced at his poster. Behind the desk were hung two obligatory portraits. One was of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in ceremonial attire, the other of Chief Constable Grasett, whose patrician face lent authority to the proceedings and also covered a crack in the plaster.

  He sat down and, as he did every day, pulled open the top drawer and took out the silver-framed photograph of Elizabeth. He’d taken it himself with his new Premo camera just after they were engaged. Unfortunately, she’d moved and her face was out of focus, but it was the only picture he had. He gazed at it, said his prayer, planted a kiss on the glass and returned the picture to the drawer.

  Then with a sigh, he picked up the envelope and pulled out the photograph of the dead girl. Foster had propped open her eyes for better recognition and used tints to get a good approximation ofher natural colouring. There was a light dusting of freckles across the straight nose and the cheeks were pink. Foster was guessing there but Murdoch thought, given the girl’s strong body, it was likely she’d had a rosy complexion. Probably fresh from the country. He had to admit he was relieved he wasn’t the one who had to notify the family.

  By nine-thirty, he’d interviewed four people and more kept arriving. It was only Seymour’s formidable presence that prevented the front of the station from sounding like a music hall.

  Murdoch knew the body was not that of Simon Poyner’s wife, who’d never returned from a visit to her aunt in Detroit and who’d now be about
forty. When shown the photograph, however, Mr. Poyner had been caught in a timeless world and said it certainly could be Agnes with some meat on her. Likewise the girl was not Martha Stone, daughter of Ezekiel, who’d walked away from the household ten years ago. She would be fifty-five if she was living. One old woman, all agog with excitement, swore the portrait was that of a schoolteacher from Kingston who’d boarded with her last year. “Lovely young woman, lovely. So tragic.” Unfortunately, the old lady’s testimony kept changing according to what she thought he wanted to hear. One moment the schoolteacher had brown eyes, the next blue, yes, blue, of course. The age didn’t fit here either but he decided to send a wire to the Kingston police anyway. You never knew. There was an outside chance the dead girl might be related to the “lovely schoolteacher.”

  He was considering going to make some more tea when there was a knock on the wall in the hallway. The office was too small to permit a regular door and Murdoch had to make do with a reed curtain. It was Constable Crabtree who pushed through. The curtain clacked and snapped behind him.

  “There’s a gentleman out front, sir. Come about the notice in the newspaper. He claims the girl was his housemaid. Says she disappeared on Saturday night. The description does fit.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Quite a swell. Dr. Cyril Rhodes. Lives up on Lowther Avenue.”

  “Bring him in. I’ve not had much luck so far. How many more now?”

  “A good dozen, I’d say. Constable Graham and me are sorting out the wheat from the chaff for you.”

  The constable left, the reed strips swaying in his wake. Murdoch turned to a fresh leaf in his notebook and placed his pen at the ready.

  In a minute there was another tap and Crabtree pulled aside the curtain.

  “Dr. Rhodes, sir.”

  Behind him hovered a short, middle-aged man. Murdoch stood up and reached across the desk.

  “Detective William Murdoch here.”

  They shook hands. The doctor’s grip was light. Murdoch indicated the chair and Rhodes sat in it quickly. He pulled off his gloves, removed his silk top hat and fumbled with his silver-headed walking stick as he tried to find somewhere to lean it. He obviously wasn’t accustomed to being interviewed by policemen in dingy cubicles where the sour smell of vomit wafted over from the holding cell, courtesy of last night’s resident. The stables adjoined and they added their own contribution.