Except the Dying

by Maureen Jennings

  “I don’t see how she could have avoided it. She was home by ten and her route from the O’Neil is along Queen Street.”

  The inspector was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “The two deaths might be connected, then.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve sent Wicken off to the market to see if a farmer was delivering anything late Saturday night, just to verify, but I don’t really think it’s important to the case. However, I’d say the carriage is.”

  Brackenreid glanced around the little room as if it could provide him some sustenance.

  “Your zeal is commendable, Murdoch, but don’t forget character. A good policeman is a good judge of character. You can draw your dots and arrows ’til Kingdom come, but you’re not going to find any murderers or abductors there among these people.”

  “I beg to differ, sir. Palmer, Lamson and Pritchard were all doctors and young Birchall was a vicar’s son.” He picked up a compass from his desk. “Dr. Moffat says Therese couldn’t have walked far with that much opium in her system.” He stuck the point at the place where Therese’s body had been found. “If she imbibed it half an hour earlier, maximum, she has to have been within this radius.” He moved his pencil in a wide arc. Brackenreid snorted at the extent of the area that covered.

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you, Murdoch.”

  “I know, sir, we have.”

  There was a discreet cough in front of the curtain. Murdoch could see the large outline of Constable Crabtree.

  “Miss Bernadette Weston is here to see you, Mr. Murdoch.”

  “Who’s she again? Name’s familiar,” asked Brackenreid.

  “She was Alice Black’s friend, Inspector.”

  “I’m leaving,” said Brackenreid.

  At the threshold he paused, holding back one of the clacking strips. “I’d like a complete written report on my desk by five o’clock this afternoon … but you needn’t bother with all that nonsense about arrows and dots. Go and talk to the Papists. She must have got friendly enough to let somebody in her drawers. I’ll bet it was him who slipped her the opium.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Privately, Murdoch couldn’t see any good reason why the two things should be inevitably linked, but not knowing who had seduced Therese was an irritant. It was like trying to start a puzzle. If you could get the corner pieces down you were off and running. He grinned at himself. He didn’t even know yet what picture he was trying to put together or even if all his pieces belonged in the same puzzle.

  Time to give it a rest. Perhaps Ettie could offer some enlightenment. He went to fetch her.

  Crabtree, at Murdoch’s request, had brought them both mugs of strong, sweet tea, and Ettie sipped at hers appreciatively.

  “’S good.”

  She was dressed in deep mourning, with a long black cheviot coat and a wide veiled hat that a widow would wear. There was a strong smell of mothballs around her, and Murdoch suspected the clothes, which were too large for her, were rented.

  She glanced around the tiny cubicle and indicated his map. “What’s that?”

  “I’ve been noting everybody’s whereabouts the night Therese Laporte died.”

  She was silent for a moment. “You’re taking care about it, aren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s the medal for?”

  “I won the mile bicycle race last year at the police games.”

  “Didn’t know they had them. I thought coppers was always serious. All work and no play.”

  He smiled, but she wasn’t joking.

  “When you came yesterday, I was what you might call bowled over …”

  “That’s only natural.”

  “You said you knew what it was like to lose somebody you loved.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She frowned. “Who was it, then? Your wife?”

  “My fiancée. She died of the typhoid fever two years ago.”

  “What was she? A lady, or what?”

  “She was a schoolteacher.”

  “Clever, then?”

  “Very.”

  Whatever it was he said satisfied her. She put down her mug of tea.

  “I don’t want to spend time in the Mercy but if it means you’ll get the cove that did in Alice, I’ll do it –”

  Murdoch stopped her. “Ettie, let’s put it this way. I can guess at what happened. Alice got up to use the outhouse, saw the girl’s body just opposite in the lane. Without more ado, she went over there and stole the clothes, hiding them in the outhouse. She kept the boots and the drawers and the rosary. You were asleep in your nice warm bed the whole time. Alice acted alone. Am I right?”

  Ettie hesitated, staring at him warily. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Just one question. Did she confide in you afterwards? What I mean is, did she say exactly what the girl was wearing when she found her?”

  “Just what you saw in the shawl.”

  “No jacket or gloves?”

  “No. We – I mean, Alice – wondered where she’d been. She saw her earlier, you see.”

  Murdoch almost held his breath, as if he were approaching a deer in the forest. “Where?”

  “When she was coming home from the hotel she saw the girl get into a carriage.”

  “Did Alice say whether she saw the driver or occupant?”

  “No, the blinds were down. But she said the carriage was a reddish colour, or dark brown, and the horse was light coloured. The coachman had a black greatcoat and a tall hat on.”

  Murdoch stared at her, waiting, but she stared back. “Is that all?” he asked.

  “That’s enough, isn’t it? You’ll be able to find the sod.”

  “Ettie, do you realize how many carriages in this city fit that description?”

  “No, how many?”

  “Could be over a hundred or more.”

  “Well, that’s your job. At least you know now the girl got into a carriage.”

  “That’s true.”

  Ettie scowled at him. “I didn’t have to come here. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I am, Ettie. I really do thank you.”

  “Alice thought the girl knew the person who was in the carriage.”

  “What made her think that?”

  “Woman’s intuition. She guessed the girl was from the country and that was true, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. She lived down near Chatham on a farm.”

  “I warned Al not to get all leaky but as soon as she heard about a reward she got a gold sign in her eyes. Such a greedy gob and look where it got her.”

  “You think she was killed because of what she’d seen?”

  “Course she was. Alice knew how to take care of herself. She wouldn’t get no cully customer so aggravated he’d up and kill her. Not even that devil of a Tar. If he’s the one done Alice, he’s also the one who did for the young girl.”

  She stood up and pulled the heavy veil back over her face. “I’m off now. I’ve got the funeral to get ready for. You know where to find me.”

  She stuck out her hand to shake and he did so. She was wearing gloves and the leather precluded any sensation of warm flesh, and he was glad.

  “Ettie, be careful.”

  “Course. I always am.”

  With a faint rustle from her stiff skirt and a waft of camphor, she left.

  Murdoch watched the reed strips settle down to stillness.

  Chapter Fifteen

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15

  CYRIL RHODES PACED AROUND his narrow consulting room. He was still deeply distressed by Donalda’s announcement. Everybody would know it was a marital separation, and that could be quite detrimental to his practice. Look what happened to Charles Warden when his wife ran off with young Jarrod. On the surface there was sympathy for the cuckolded husband, but Warden’s practice gradually dropped off until he was seriously considering moving out of the city. It was sheer good fortune that Clara caught la grippe so soon after and he was able to remarry. Even so, patients we
re slow to come back.

  Disagreeable as the thought was, he had to admit he had been having a hard time lately making ends meet. It was expensive maintaining two establishments, and he was not as busy as he would have liked. There were stretches of time when he had nothing to do but wait for the next patient. These days, with the country going through poor economic times, fewer people were coming up the narrow stairs to his consulting room. They were no doubt seeking out physicians whose fees were lower.

  He paused for a moment in front of the window and gazed down at the street. To the left he could see the slender spire of St. James’s Church, sharp-etched against the drear sky. To the right and opposite was the handsome new Somerset Hotel. A ragged boy was vigorously clearing a walkway through the mound of snow at the curb in front. In spite of diligent truant officers, many boys in the city managed to avoid school, they or their parents needing their meagre earnings to survive. This boy made it his job to carry packages, hold the carriage horses if necessary and, summer or winter, make sure that if the guests wanted to cross the road, there was no offending manure for them to step in. It was a good post and Cyril had seen him fight for it on occasion, the way wild animals will fight off other hungry intruders.

  Cyril could sympathize. This stretch of Church Street from Gerrard up to Carlton was jokingly referred to by the trades as “widow’s walk.” There were seven widows living in large houses on the west side and five on the east, all of them well-to-do. He had jumped at the opportunity to rent an office plumb in the midst of these possibly lonely ladies, but it hadn’t brought him the custom he’d hoped for. Initially, they had come in droves out of curiosity, manufacturing trivial ailments in order to assess him, but that hadn’t lasted. It was his fault, he knew. He wasn’t comfortable with a certain class of women, and try as he might to prevent it, his stammer got worse in their presence. To compensate, he became aloof and impersonal. This was not a good style to have with such ladies, who all wanted to be cosseted and flattered and who expected him to spend considerable time listening to them. Over the years they had drifted away, and nowadays the majority of his patients were from the working classes. They expected their doctor to be remote and took his stutter as a sign of his superiority.

  Suddenly Cyril leaned forward, adjusting his pince-nez. My God, surely that wasn’t Martha? Not here. She wouldn’t dare to come here.

  A stout woman in a dark fur cape and wide hat was walking up the street opposite, her skirt lifted indecorously high above her boots. Beside her was a young girl in a bright red tam and matching coat. Quickly, he ducked back from the window and pulled down the blind, just lifting it enough to see. He groaned. It was her. The woman and her daughter were proceeding quite slowly past his office towards Carlton Street.

  He watched, breath held, as they halted at the corner. What was she doing? Surely she didn’t intend to go into the hotel? The livened doorman opened the door in anticipation, but with a haughty toss of her head, the woman turned back to face the road. Cyril shrank back further but she gave no sign she had seen him. She was concentrating on the electric streetcar that was swaying down the tracks towards them. She flagged it to stop. The urchin gave one last ostentatious sweep at the snow but the woman took her daughter’s hand and hurried past him without a glance. They clambered aboard the streetcar, the girl looking over her shoulder at the boy. Encouraged, he started to run after them, but the ticket collector leaned out from his platform and waved him away.

  Cyril watched until they were out of sight. His heart was racing and he felt quite ill. He’d long ago realized the situation couldn’t be maintained indefinitely, but this was horribly close. Things were getting worse and worse, dreadful scene after dreadful scene. When she heard about Donalda’s leaving, it would be even more difficult.

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He was actually sweating.

  Slowly, he went to his desk and sat down. There was a photograph on his desk of himself and Donalda, taken on their wedding day. He was beaming and she looked lovely, aglow with an inner joy.

  He turned the picture facedown.

  A shrill whistle from the speaking tube startled him. He seized his notebook and opened it although Mrs. Stockdale, his nurse, wouldn’t dream of coming into the inner office unannounced.

  “Mr. Shepcote is calling, Doctor. Shall I put him through?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled the telephone towards him and put the hearing piece to his ear.

  “Rhodes here.”

  The voice on the other end was so low and throaty he wouldn’t have recognized it as Shepcote’s.

  “Rhodes, I have to cancel this evening’s salon. I’m not up to it …”

  Cyril’s heart sank. He had promised Charlotte she would meet the famous actress Flo Wortley, and he knew how icy an atmosphere would prevail when he told them it was cancelled. Not from the girl – she was never like that – but certainly from Martha.

  “Rhodes?”

  “Y-yes, sorry. Woolgathering over h-here. Perhaps anoth-ther time …”

  “Perhaps,” whispered Shepcote. Cyril heard the click of the receiver. He had hung up.

  What appalling manners, no polish at all. Surely a person deserved an explanation. Was there anything he could do instead? he wondered. He sat toying with his pen, making scribbles on the blotter. He almost laughed when he realized what he was drawing. A line of stick men, all of them hanging from a gallows. Oh God, what had he got into?

  The speaking tube whistled again.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Latimer is here with his father, Doctor.”

  “Give me a few minutes. And, Mrs. Stockdale, is Mrs. Spoffard on the telephone?”

  “I believe so, Doctor.”

  “Call her up and cancel her appointment. See if she can come tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Doctor. What shall I tell her?”

  “What?”

  “Can I give her a reason for the cancellation?”

  “I don’t have to explain my every move to that woman.”

  “Yes, sir, of course not. It’s just that…”

  Her voice, thin and tinny over the speaking tube, trailed off.

  Mrs. Spoffard was a woman with a lot of influence in the city and she was easily displeased, as Rhodes knew.

  “Say I had a crisis to deal with.” It’s true enough, thought Cyril.

  “Yes, sir. Shall I bring in the file on Mr. Latimer now?”

  “Two minutes.”

  He pulled his notebook towards him and dipped his pen into the inkwell. He was busy writing when the nurse tapped on the door and entered.

  Mrs. Mary Stockdale was a tall, willowy woman with fair hair tightly pinned beneath her white, starched bob-cap. She wore a grey shirtwaist and darker grey woollen skirt. A silver watch was pinned on her bodice and a discreet straight silver brooch with the twined serpent indicated she was a graduate of the Royal School of Nursing. She had worked in the Toronto Hospital until she married, when she had to leave. No married women were allowed. Four years later she found herself with two children and a useless husband and had been forced to return to work. She was efficient, punctual and invisible. Rhodes knew nothing whatever about her personal life and had no curiosity at all.

  She gave the doctor a little curtsy, handed him a buff file folder and ushered in the patient. Latimer was a bent old man who was dressed in a long, foul-smelling goatskin coat. Incongruously, an old-fashioned stovepipe hat, once an elegant green velvet, was perched on his head. Hovering behind him was a big-boned man with the weather-beaten face of a farmer.

  Rhodes pretended to finish his notes while Mrs. Stockdale stood quietly by the door. Then he looked up over his pince-nez.

  “Please have a seat, gentlemen.”

  The nurse brought forward two chairs and the younger man half pulled, half pushed his father into one of them. He sported a handlebar moustache, drooping and stained yellow at the tips with tobacco juice. He quickly stowed a wad back into his cheek
. Mr. Latimer, senior, was short and scrawny with a long white beard and sidewhiskers. His pale blue eyes were swimmy and vacant and he wouldn’t look at Rhodes but shrank down into the chair.

  “So, h-how are we today, Walter?”

  The old man sniffed but said nothing, and his son answered. “We was better for a few days, Doctor, but the trouble has come back again.”

  “Only to be expected. Has he been taking the medicine?”

  “Yes, sir. Just like you said.”

  The old man growled. “She’s still after trying to poison me.”

  “Da, she’s not.”

  Mr. Latimer grabbed at his own crotch and scratched himself. “You’d say that ’cos she leads you around by your pisser all the time, but she put something in me tea. I saw her do it.”

  His son’s face turned even redder. “My wife is a good woman, Doctor, and she loves me da. But he was taking poorly and she thought it would help if she gave him some tonic. To build him up. Completely harmless. She got it from the catalogue, sir. We all take it and it helps us. But Da is convinced and nothing will sway his mind.”

  The old man began to pluck at his beard. “She hit me, too.”

  “Did she now? That doesn’t sound too g-good. What happened, Latimer?”

  The farmer shifted uncomfortably and twisted his crusher in his hand. “She had to, sir … well, you see, truth is me da was after pinching her where he shouldn’t.”

  “I see. Walter, you’ve been misbehaving again … No, don’t spit there! Blast. Mrs. Stockdale, would you m-mind?”

  The old man laughed, showing blackened gums. The nurse went to get a cloth. Rhodes stood up and went over to the chair.

  “All right, let’s get on with the treatment. Mr. L-Latimer, will you stand behind your father. Don’t forget, during the session there must be no interruption.”

  He pulled the other chair directly in front of the older man and sat down close to him with his knees on either side and his feet between the man’s legs.

  “Remember what we did before? Animal magnetism? It helped you calm down, didn’t it?”

  Latimer shrugged but didn’t reply.

  “Now. Give me your thumbs, like so.”