Let Darkness Bury the Dead

by Maureen Jennings

  “There he is,” exclaimed Fiona.

  The mounted guard wheeled around and divided to each side of the landaus, which had halted in front of the dignitaries. The horses tossed their heads.

  The women alighted first and made their way, one by one, to the steps. There, at the direction of a uniformed officer, they lined up, quiet and dignified. At this the crowd fell silent.

  Now it was the turn of the two men. Corporal Mendizabal got out, moving somewhat stiffly. Jack followed.

  “Oh dear. He’s wearing a sling,” said Fiona. “I thought his arm was better.”

  “He said it was sore this morning. He didn’t want to aggravate it.”

  The soldiers who had marched up were now marking time.

  A man in the regalia of a sergeant major stepped forward. He had a voice used to carry across parade grounds.

  “Company. Halt.”

  There was a table behind the dignitaries where the medals were displayed. An aide picked one up and handed it to the lieutenant-governor.

  The sergeant major bellowed, “Mrs. Brown. Step forward please.”

  She did so.

  “Mrs. Brown is accepting on behalf of her son, Private Arthur Brown, who performed acts of great bravery while acting as a telephonist and signaller.”

  Sir John handed her the medal. Loud cheers from the crowd, more waving of hats and scarves. She gave a curtsey and returned to her place.

  Murdoch was keeping his eyes on Jack, who had also got out of the landau and was standing quietly, waiting his turn to come forward.

  One by one the women came up and accepted the medals Sir John handed to them. Each time, cheers resounded. There were many tears.

  Suddenly Fiona pointed. “Look, Mr. Murdoch, there’s Percy. There. Over on the other side behind the rope. I wonder why he’s in a wheelchair.”

  Percy McKinnon was in his uniform, and his legs were covered with a tartan shawl. Behind him, her hands on the handles of the wheelchair, was a young woman, barely more than a girl.

  Something about the sight made Murdoch go cold. He was about to climb down and go over to Percy when the sergeant major called out Jack’s name.

  “Private John Murdoch!”

  Sir John stepped forward holding the medal.

  “Congratulations.”

  Murdoch was close enough to hear the exchange that followed.

  “My friend should be the one getting a medal, not me,” said Jack. It was a declamation.

  Sir John looked bewildered. This was not the typical response. “I’m sure many of our boys deserve medals, soldier. I wish I could hand out one to them all.”

  Before he could proceed, Jack suddenly slipped his arm out of his sling. At first, Murdoch didn’t know what the hell it was. Then he realized Jack had a puppet on his arm. He must have made it from one of his army socks. It had tufts of hair, a wide mouth. There was a strip of bandage around the place where its eyes would be.

  “This is TOM,” said Jack loudly. “That stands for The One Missing. TOM, show Sir John your tongue,” said Jack, and he snapped open the puppet’s mouth, revealing the green cloth inside. “His tongue is green because he was gassed. He was also blinded. TOM, tell Sir John how that felt.”

  At that, the aide, who had seemed frozen in horror, seized the medal from the lieutenant-governor’s hand.

  “We should move on, sir.”

  Nobody seemed to know what to do next. Those closest, who had heard what transpired, looked deeply uncomfortable. The sergeant major himself came forward.

  “Private Murdoch, fall out.”

  Jack returned the puppet to its place in his sling. Smartly he stepped forward.

  “Right turn,” said the sergeant major. He was carrying a rifle and he slapped it against his shoulder. “After me. Quick march.”

  Jack did not hesitate to obey.

  Most of the crowd had not caught on to what was happening.

  Murdoch turned to Fiona. He was livid with anger. “Did you put him up to it?”

  She looked at him in horror. “Oh no. I had absolutely no idea this was going to happen.”

  “I’d better go and see what I can do. The last thing he needs is to be cashiered.”

  Murdoch got down from the riser as fast as he could. The ceremony seemed to be continuing, with the lieutenant-governor getting ready to hand a medal to Corporal Mendizabal. Jack and the sergeant major were marching toward the entrance to the building.

  Murdoch had almost reached them when, on some instinct, he turned and looked back at the group of spectators. Percy McKinnon had started to roll his wheelchair in the direction of the lieutenant-governor and the crowd of dignitaries. Murdoch could see Percy had a lit cigarette in his hand, and on his lap was a tin that had once contained jam. There was a string dangling from it. Even as Murdoch understood what he was about to do, Percy touched the lit end of his cigarette to the fuse. He raised his arm in the air.

  Later, Murdoch thought he must have shouted but he couldn’t be sure. Everything that followed happened so fast, it was a blur.

  Jack turned and, apparently taking in the situation at once, he grabbed the rifle from the sergeant-major, raised it to his shoulder, and fired. He struck Percy in the forehead, right at the place where his V-shaped scar was most livid. As his friend dropped forward, Jack ran to him. He was not in time to deactivate the fuse, and the jam-tin bomb exploded on Percy’s lap.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  THE EXPLOSION RIPPED PERCY IN TWO. The young girl behind him, who turned out to be Winnie Payne, was badly injured and died a few hours later. A few of the people nearby were also injured but all recovered. Some of the spectators on the risers were cut by flying glass from the shattered window of the nearby building.

  Because Percy hadn’t succeeded in tossing the bomb, the lieutenant-governor was not hurt, although he was knocked to the ground.

  Jack was blown backwards. He lay there crumpled as Murdoch ran to him.

  Bewildered, he looked up at his father.

  “How can the Hun be shelling us over here, Pa?”

  Murdoch crouched beside him. He put his arm around his shoulders.

  “They can’t be, Jack. There’s no Hun here. You’re safe, son. You’re safe.”

  “Percy,” whispered Jack. “I shouldn’t have saved him.”

  HOMESICK

  “I love my country,” he whispered

  As he drifted away on the raft of death.

  “There are pine trees

  That the big winds shape,

  Blowing back their branches

  Like hair from young girls’ faces.

  And along the edges of the lakes

  Dance butterflies of summer light.

  My heart aches that I might

  See them all once more.

  Promise me you’ll take me home.”

  “Of course,” I answered,

  To soothe him.

  The truth is

  His bones will stay

  In this foreign land

  Mingled with those he killed

  And those who murdered him.

  So I pressed my lips against his dimming ear.

  “Take comfort now, my dear.

  Here is the home for which you yearn,

  Here is the universal place

  To which we all return.

  Its name is Death.”

  AFTERMATH

  GIVEN WHAT HE HAD DONE, the military authorities were prepared to overlook Jack’s misdemeanour with the puppet. He was recognized as a hero who had saved many lives. However, after the incident Jack went into a state of deep depression. He refused to eat or speak. The doctor at the base hospital said they could try electrical stimulation, or they could brush him vigorously with a wire curry comb. Both treatments had shown some success with soldiers suffering from shell shock who had withdrawn from everyday life.

  Murdoch refused to allow them to try either. He would later attribute his son’s return to sanity to Fiona.

&nbs
p; She showed up at the hospital with two hand puppets. Both were dressed in army uniform. One she called Lieutenant Looz Bowells. The other she introduced as Corporal Con Shense. She plonked herself down at Jack’s bedside, a puppet on each arm. He was utterly unresponsive. Taking each character in turn, she launched into a dialogue.

  LIEUTENANT: So, Corporal, I know you’ll help me out here. I’ll be going overseas soon. What’s the toughest thing about being in the trenches?

  CORPORAL: Lice and rats.

  LIEUTENANT: What? Not the endless noise of artillery? Not the snipers who’ll get you if you move a muscle? Not the machine guns that mow down all your chums in one go? Surely that must be hard to bear?

  CORPORAL: Not as bad as lice and rats.

  LIEUTENANT: Come now. What about the shell holes filled with stinking mud and dead bodies? Horses, mules, men. Makes no difference. They’re all in there. Isn’t that tough?

  CORPORAL: Not as tough as lice and rats.

  LIEUTENANT: But what about the men whose heads are sliced off by a piece of shrapnel as they stand next to you? The ones who drown as their lungs fill up with fluid from gas poisoning? What about the constant fear that you could be next? That must be really difficult to withstand!

  CORPORAL: Not as much as lice and rats.

  LIEUTENANT: So you’re telling me that if I am able to deal with the lice and rats, I won’t find the other elements of war so difficult? Nothing to it, in fact?…Wait a minute—you look as if you don’t agree. Is there something you’d like to say?

  Jack’s eyelids fluttered. “Fuck off, Fiona.”

  —

  After that, Jack’s recovery was quite rapid. He agreed to visits from Father McKenna, which seemed to ease his terrible guilt over killing his best friend. And once he was released from the hospital, he and Murdoch finally did have the “talk.” Hours of it. Jack also gave his father a sheaf of papers. They were his poems; he said they would tell Murdoch what he needed to know about the war as Jack had experienced it.

  It was much, much later that Jack told him about the man he had been ordered to kill. The deserter.

  Mostly, in the beginning, he seemed to need to talk about Percy. Jack said that Percy had killed a German soldier who was about to surrender. This had seemed to send him over the edge, and his mental state had become more and more precarious. He had inflicted an injury on himself soon afterward. He’d lied about the cause, and their superior officers had assumed it was a result of enemy action. Jack felt that made him responsible for keeping Percy from harm.

  “Looking after him kept me sane,” he whispered to Murdoch one night.

  Then Jack himself was injured as he was trying to rescue his sergeant from an exploding ammunition dump. Both he and Percy were invalided out and sent back to Canada. There, Jack had grown more and more worried that Percy had become totally unhinged. He raged about “slackers.” He pushed for conscription. At the same time, Jack said, Percy was angry at the way the war was being conducted by the “brass,” as he called them. War was something you could understand only if you experienced it, he said. His final act of self-immolation, Jack thought, was an attempt to bring attention to the terrible state of affairs.

  Jack had made a puppet; Percy had made a bomb.

  Murdoch knew there was no doubt that Percy had killed Antonio Carella. He had left clear fingerprints on the shovel handle. He was also sure it was Percy who had killed Arthur Aggett after they had argued at Mrs. Schumacher’s, and Percy who had attacked Morris Swartz.

  When Murdoch felt Jack was ready, he filled in the details.

  When he attacked Arthur Aggett, Percy had likely used a pair of the large Chinese laundry tongs as his weapon. He had plunged the tongs into the boiler when he’d returned, which was how he’d scalded his hand. The size of the tongs, with their metal hinge at the end, fitted Dr. Vaux’s description of what might have caused Arthur’s injury.

  If that attack had occurred in a fit of rage, the ones that followed seemed more premeditated. Morris and Antonio had both been given exemptions, and for that reason their names and addresses had been published in the Toronto Daily Star. Percy had tracked them down and waited for his chance to attack. Fired up by anger, not to mention baijiu, he might have tracked down more victims if he had lived longer.

  One more thing had emerged during their investigations following Percy’s death. Percy was the father of Winnie’s baby. He had seduced her shortly before he was sent overseas. He had resumed contact when he’d returned and she had become his accomplice; whether she’d acted willingly or not, Murdoch would never know. According to the city’s registry office, Winnie Payne was sixteen years old.

  It was decided that Jack would be given work to do as a liaison officer for returning soldiers. Help them to readjust, and so on.

  Jack said, “If Mother were still here, I think she’d like me to do that.”

  All Murdoch could say, softly and quietly to himself, was Thank God.

  —

  Madge Curnoe applied to adopt Winnie’s baby once she learned what had happened to the girl. She and her grandmother would raise him. When she asked Murdoch if he would be a fatherly influence, he accepted.

  Shortly after the beginning of the New Year, Murdoch invited Madge to accompany him to the theatre. There was a play on called The Thirteenth Chair, which featured a detective. Murdoch thought they would both have fun critiquing the depiction of police work.

  Sergeant Allen from number four station sent a telegraph to say he had laid down his king and was surrendering.

  LT.-GENERAL E.A.H. ALDERSON, C.B., COMMANDING THE CANADIAN CORPS

  May 4, 1915

  I tell you truly that my heart is so full that I hardly know how to speak to you. It is full of two feelings—the first being sorrow for the loss of those comrades of ours who have gone; and the second, pride in what the 1st Canadian Division has done.

  As regards our comrades who have lost their lives—let us speak of them with our caps off—my faith in the Almighty is such that I am perfectly sure that when men die, as they have died, doing their duty and fighting for their country, for the Empire, and to save the situation for others—in fact, have died for their friends—no matter what their past lives have been, no matter what they have done…I am perfectly sure that the Almighty takes them and looks after them at once. Lads, we cannot leave them better than like that….

  I am now going to shake hands with your officers, and as I do so, I want you to feel that I am shaking hands with each one of you, as I would actually do if time permitted.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m so lucky not to work alone. My good friends are always ready to listen, which was especially appreciated in this case when I read the poems out loud. So, heartfelt thanks to: Brenda Doyle, June Handera, Julia Keeler, Sharon McIsaac, Lorna Milne, and Martha Pagel.

  Because the book is set in Toronto, my English chums—Jessie Bailey, Enid (Molly) Harley, and Pam Rowan—weren’t here to drive me around, find me material, and generally be helpful, but they were with me in spirit. My life would be considerably poorer without them.

  Lynda Wilson and Lynette Dubois were enthusiastic about sharing past times with me.

  The people who assured me I was on the right track by moving ahead to 1917 are too numerous to mention, but if I could shake hands with each of them I would. This applies especially to David and Ruth Onley, whom I am so fortunate to count as friends.

  A special thanks to Marian Misters and J.D. Singh of Sleuth of Baker Street. Their contribution to the health and welfare of Canadian crime writers is impossible to measure.

  Cheryl Freedman was her typical perspicacious self and read an early draft for me. I am most grateful.

  Andrea de Shield at the City of Toronto Archives has always been a big help. Her cheerful encouragement is invaluable.

  I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Christina Jennings of Shaftesbury Films. She has produced the Murdoch Mysteries television show, and because she had faith
from the beginning and never gave up, she has opened so many doors for me.

  And, of course, where would I be without my friends at McClelland & Stewart, especially my editor, Lara Hinchberger, whom I can only describe as long-suffering. And thanks also to Catherine Marjoribanks for being such a careful copyeditor. I’d be a mess without the two of you.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This has been one of the most fascinating of the explorations I have undertaken while attempting to create Detective William Murdoch’s world. Threaded throughout the book are excerpts from various publications current during World War I, and I have used them to illustrate typical thinking. In some cases, they provide an unintended ironic comment; in others, they are moving accounts of a nobility and courage that should not be overlooked. You can judge for yourself.

  HERE ARE THE BOOKS FROM WHICH I TOOK THE INSERTS (not necessarily in order)

  S.J.C., England’s Welcome (On The Coronation of George V). London: Baines & Scarsbrook Printers & Publishers.

  Dr. Stephen Bull, An Officer’s Manual Of The Western Front, 1914–1918. London: Conway, 2008.

  Sir Max Aitken, Canada In Flanders. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916. This was a particularly extraordinary find. I came across it at a used book sale at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. There I discovered a strange and poignant note in the back of the book written in Pitman shorthand. It is as used in the novel.

  Ralph Hodder-Williams, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry 1914–1919, Volume 1. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1923. Not only is this a physically beautiful book, it is wonderful to read. One steps into another world.

  Siegfried Sassoon, “A Soldier’s Declaration,” written on June 15, 1917; read before the House of Commons July 30, 1917; published in The Times of London, July 31, 2017.

  Memorandum on the Treatment Of Injuries In War, Based On Experience Of The Present Campaign. First published by the General Staff, War Office, 1915.

  DETECTIVE MURDOCH MYSTERIES