Good Year For Murder

by Eddenden, A. E.

  “Oh, dear. Could you look after yourselves?” Addie said to the curious onlookers. “There’s porridge on the stove. And tea’s brewing.” She followed Tretheway.

  “Now, Addie. There’s nothing to worry about. Just sit here.” He indicated the red plush chesterfield. “And tell me all you remember about St. Swithin’s Day. I know you’re up on these things.” Tretheway lowered himself onto the deep, cushiony foot stool in front of his superchair.

  “Well,” Addie began, “there isn’t much to tell. He was an English saint. Ninth century. Saint’s Day July 15. He’s called the Rain Saint.”

  “Rain Saint?”

  “Yes. That’s what the rhyme’s all about. He was a very humble man and when he died, he wanted to be buried outside his Cathedral, under the eaves, so that the rain would fall on his grave and the feet of passersby would tread upon it. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Go on, Addie.”

  “Well, after he died and was buried there, this Bishop decided to have his body moved inside the cathedral, as it happened, on the 15th of July. Just before the men were to dig him up, it started to rain. For forty days it rained. So the Bishop had to give up his plan. That’s why, now, if it rains on St. Swithin’s Day, ‘For forty days it will remain’.” Addie smiled. “Sort of a religious Groundhog Day. Don’t you remember?”

  “Vaguely. Was there anything else?”

  The front door burst open and Jake came in with Alderman Ammerman in tow. They stopped at the parlour entrance.

  “That was fast,” Tretheway said. “Morning, Harold. Come on in.”

  “Good morning, Tretheway. Addie.” Ammerman stayed in the hall and dripped on the carpet.

  Addie jumped up. “Harold, let me take your coat. You’re wet. You’ll catch your death.”

  “Nonsense. Never felt better in my life.”

  Addie shook the rain from Ammerman’s coat and carried it to the hall. “Go into the parlour and sit down. What are you doing walking in the rain, anyway?” She hung the coat on one of the large brass hooks jutting out from the wood-framed hall mirror.

  “Morning constitutional, Addie. Haven’t missed a day in over forty years.” Ammerman looked at Jake. “Until this morning. What’s going on?”

  “Just a precaution, Harold.” Tretheway waited for Addie to come in, and then closed the sliding doors to the parlour. He turned to Jake. “Where’s Gum?”

  “On a hike.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just caught Alderman Ammerman coming down his front walk. He told me that Bartholomew Gum was up at Mount Nemo. The Scout Camp.”

  “Where’s Nemo, exactly?”

  “About ten miles north of Wellington Square.”

  “When did he go?”

  “Friday night. According to the Alderman, it’s a weekend thing. You know, hiking, passing badges, sleep in tents, start a fire with one match. They’ll be home tonight. Incidentally, MacCulla’s there too. With his Scouts.”

  “Good. Two less to worry about. Now …”

  “Precautions against what?” Ammerman interrupted.

  “Sorry, Harold,” Tretheway said. “Today’s St. Swithin’s Day.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “There was no need for anyone to be told.”

  “Is there a parade?”

  “No, Harold. No. It’s just an English Saint’s Day. July 15. Like St. George or St. Patrick’s Day. Only St. Swithin wasn’t as well known.”

  “Then what’s all the fuss?”

  For the first time, doubt crept into Tretheway’s mind. But he spoke with confidence.

  “You know what’s been happening around here on holidays. Remember Father Cosentino?”

  “Well, yes.” Ammerman looked resigned. “I suppose you have your duty.”

  “Albert,” Addie said quietly.

  “Hm?”

  “There was one other thing. About St. Swithin.”

  “What was that?”

  “Probably not important.”

  “Addie! Just tell me.”

  “Well.” Addie wriggled herself into a more comfortable position on the chesterfield. “Well,” she repeated, “Swithin was a monk. King Egbert of Wessex was having a terrible time defending England against the Danes. They were robbing and slaying a lot across the Channel. The king called all the monks together to help. To slay back. Now, they all did, but Swithin did a better job than the others. So he was awarded …”

  “Hold it Addie.” They all waited while Tretheway lit a cigar. “Just go back a bit.”

  “To where?”

  “Who was Swithin fighting?”

  “The Danes. From Denmark.”

  Tretheway puffed vigorously on his cigar. “Harold, are there any Danish people on the Council?”

  “Nope,” Ammerman said.

  “Wait a minute,” Jake interrupted. “Isn’t Miss Tommerup Danish?”

  “What ward is she from?”

  “You’re damn right she is. Ingird Tommerup,” Tretheway said. “Her father’s the President of STELFY.”

  “Right,” Jake said. “Danish as blue cheese.”

  Tretheway pointed his cigar at Jake. “Get on the phone. See where she lives.”

  “Right.” Jake left the parlour.

  “Albert,” Addie said. “Surely you don’t think …”

  “Addie, I don’t know.”

  “You know she could be Danish,” Ammerman said.

  For the next few minutes, Addie sat frowning, Alderman Ammerman looked as though he was trying to remember something and Tretheway puffed on his cigar, oblivious to the ashes falling onto his stomach. Jake came back from the hall phone.

  “She’s got an apartment in the city. In her ward. But she’s not there. I talked to the boys downtown. They phoned her place earlier. Her housekeeper says she’s at her summer place for the weekend. In Wellington Square. But she doesn’t know the address. It’s sort of a retreat. And there’s no phone.”

  “Damn!” Tretheway sat up. Addie ignored the ashes falling to the floor.

  “If I might interject for a moment,” Ammerman said. “What is it, Harold?”

  “Miss Tommerup’s summer place. I know where it is.”

  “Eh?”

  “I remember it quite plainly now. She had a summer party for the Council. Lovely little spot. Quite picturesque. There’s a creek …”

  “Could you take us there?” Tretheway asked.

  “Now?” Ammerman frowned. “I think so. Yes.”

  “I told the boys to call the local police out there,” Jake said.

  “Red Rounders?” Tretheway asked.

  Jake nodded.

  Wellington Square was a sleepy village on the North Shore across from Fort York. It had grown to its present situation from a grant of 3500 acres, given to an Iroquois Indian Chief (Thayendanegea) for his loyalty to the Crown during the American Revolution.

  Wellington Square had, among other things, a tree-shaded main street, desirable summer homes, a magnificent sandy beach, two hardware stores, a museum full of arrowheads, and three policemen. Two of the policemen were part-time—Saturday night and special occasions.

  The only full-time officer was Chief Leonard ‘Red’ Rounders, a big, outgoing, bucktoothed, thirty-year-old native raised on a local farm. He was well liked by the merchants and did a passable job in the quiet hamlet.

  In what could have been his moment of glory, Chief Rounders shot the siren from the fender of the Wellington Square’s 1936 Nash police cruiser while in pursuit of a bank robbery getaway car. To be fair, the niggardly village council discouraged revolver practice and actually charged seven cents for each bullet fired by a law officer. The bank robbers were eventually stopped by a road block set up by the Fort York police. Unfortunately, The FY Expositor printed the episode of the siren shooting, which was picked up by the wire services across the country. Chief Red Rounders had no love for Fort York, the Expositor or the FYPD.

  “I hope we get there first,” Tretheway sa
id.

  “I’ll warm the car up.” As Jake went out the front door he heard the Inspector ask Ammerman if he knew how to drive. He thought about the seating arrangements with the Alderman at the wheel and sighed. “At least the rain’s off,” he said, looking at the sky.

  Ammerman weaved the car backwards out of the driveway under Jake’s nervous guidance from the rumble seat. Tretheway stared straight ahead from the passenger seat. The phone rang inside the house.

  “Just a minute,” Addie shouted from the verandah. “It might be for you.” She disappeared.

  The trio stayed in the car. Jake leaned through the small aperture in the back curtain, pushing his arm between the two in the front seat to point out the unfamiliar instruments to the seventy-three-year-old Alderman.

  Addie came back. “It’s Chief Zulp, Albert. He wants to speak to you. And he doesn’t sound very friendly.”

  Tretheway turned as far as he could toward her. “Tell him we’ve gone,” he shouted. “Let’s go, Harold.”

  The car jerked away over the centre line, then back again, scuffing the curb. Addie waited and watched until the car turned the last corner, bumped over another curb and went out of sight. She went back into the house and picked up the phone.

  “I’m sorry, Chief Zulp, but Albert’s gone to work.”

  It took Ammerman a full hour to find the street. At first they had driven, sure of their geography, down the big hill that skirts Coote’s Paradise to the city limits, then along Highway #2 passing miles of farmland, LaSalle Park, the venerable Wellington Square Golf and Country Club and some summer homes, until they reached Beach Boulevard. Here, at Ammerman’s insistence, they turned right (the wrong way) and drove for a mile along the strip that separates Fort York Harbour from Lake Ontario. Then, at Tretheway’s insistence, Ammerman made an illegal U-turn and drove back into the village. After several other false starts, they found themselves on what Ammerman said was Ingird Tommerup’s street.

  “I’m positive this is it,” Ammerman said.

  “Do you see the house?” Tretheway asked.

  The Alderman strained his weak eyes through the flat, upright glass of the windshield. There were no people about. And the grey skies and lowering clouds promised more rain.

  “There!” Ammerman shouted. “Where that car is.”

  The car was a 1936 Nash sedan with a new siren.

  “Damn!” Tretheway glared at Ammerman. “Too many wrong turns.”

  “I knew I could find it.” Ammerman turned sharply up the driveway and braked as hard as he could, but still bumped into the police car with enough force to throw his upper body onto the horn.

  “Jezuz!” Tretheway said.

  Jake jumped out and closed the rumble seat.

  “Those brakes don’t feel right, Jake,” Ammerman said, climbing out of the driver’s seat. The two watched the Pontiac dip noticeably as Tretheway, grunting, lifted himself by the sturdy window post onto the running board and dropped to the ground.

  They stood quietly. There was little wind and no sound of birds. The silence was broken by a lonesome whistle from a distant impatient lake freighter and the first drops of light rain falling on the canvas roof of the car.

  “That’s odd,” Tretheway said.

  “Rounders must’ve heard us.” Jake looked at Ammerman.

  “Check the back, Jake,” Tretheway ordered. “I’ll try the front door.”

  “If I might interject…”

  “Harold. You stay here.”

  Tretheway was halfway to the cottage when Jake shouted. “Here! Around here!”

  Tretheway covered the distance with surprising speed. Jake was kneeling beside the prostrate form of Wellington Square’s finest—Chief Rounders. He was flat on his back, arms and legs stiffly and symmetrically outstretched to form the five points (counting his head) of a star that resembled an oversized children’s party cookie.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Tretheway asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jake said. “I think he’s fainted.”

  Ammerman hovered nervously behind Jake. Tretheway looked a full suspicious circle for anything out of the ordinary.

  “He’s coming around,” Jake said.

  Chief Red Rounders groaned, his eyelids fluttered and opened as his eyeballs dropped into view like two blue oranges in a slot machine. Jake gently patted his cheeks. “Red. Red Rounders. Are you okay?”

  The Wellington Square Chief groaned again and said something.

  “What’d he say?” Tretheway asked.

  Jake helped the Chief to a sitting position. “I can’t hear you, Red.” Red Rounders slowly raised his freckled hand and pointed behind Tretheway. His mouth worked. “R … rain.”

  As though at a signal, the rain became heavier. The familiar hackles rose on Tretheway’s neck as he remembered Addie’s innocent remark about the Rain Saint. He turned and stared in the direction of Rounder’s accusatory finger. The natural shapes of small trees, bushes, vines and tall weeds obscured the corner of the cottage. Tretheway squinted. He saw something else, something too stiff and foreign, an irregular shape that didn’t belong in nature. Tretheway started toward it.

  “Hold it, Boss,” Jake said. “Maybe we should wait.”

  Tretheway ignored the warning. He ducked under a pair of apple trees, walked around a large forsythia and pushed his way through the weeds and scraggly bushes toward the cottage. The rain water from the shrubbery dripped freely from his patent leather peak onto his nose. His thirty-two calibre officer’s issue revolver remained, as usual, jammed into his leather-lined pocket. He stopped at the corner of the summer cottage where an old-fashioned rain barrel stood under the downspout from the roof.

  “Jezuz!” Tretheway said.

  It was overflowing, partly because of the wet weather and partly because of Ingird Tommerup.

  “Jake. You’d better come here.”

  Jake appeared, carrying a large, wicked-looking crooked stick instead of his revolver which he had left in his desk. Ammerman and a groggy Red Rounders were right behind him. They crowded around Tretheway and stared in the rain barrel.

  “Gawd!” Jake said. Ammerman’s jaw moved soundlessly up and down. Red Rounders sat down again on the wet grass. His hat fell off.

  The bare, hairy, muscular legs of Ingird Tommerup, knees locked, stuck straight out of the full rain barrel. She wore scruffy yellow bowling shoes. Her thick navy blue bloomers were visible just below the surface of the water.

  “Let’s get her out of there.” Tretheway grabbed a leg. Jake, hesitating only for a moment, grabbed the other. They struggled with her, cold and stiff and slippery from the rain, until finally Ingird lay on the ground, her long flaxen hair, heavy with water, stretched out behind her.

  “Is she …?” Jake started.

  “Yes,” Tretheway said. “Hours ago, I’d say.” He froze suddenly. “Jake.”

  “Mm?”

  “What’s that?” Tretheway pointed to a reddish mark on the fleshy part of Ingird’s thigh. Jake forced himself to look closely. The weak daylight picked up an indentation in the skin: a perfectly formed cross about an inch and a half square.

  “I don’t know,” Jake answered. “Looks like an emblem of some sort.”

  “A cross.”

  “That’s right. A Maltese cross.”

  “Peculiar.” Tretheway straightened up. “We’ll just keep this to ourselves. At least, ‘till Wan Ho gets here.”

  Jake agreed.

  “And get something to cover her up.”

  Red Rounders pushed himself to his feet. “There’s a tarp in my car.” He recovered his hat and shook the rain from it. “I’ll get it.”

  “You’d better look for a phone, Jake,” Tretheway said. “Try down the street.”

  Jake jogged the two hundred yards to the nearest neighbour and phoned in. In the fifteen to twenty minutes it took the Fort York police to arrive—plus all the necessary ancillary groups—Tretheway and Jake searched the cottage and grounds. F
irst, Tretheway took Ammerman inside the cottage out of the rain.

  “Make some tea or something,” Tretheway said.

  “Tea,” Ammerman said, neither question nor answer, but a simple repetition. It was the first word he had managed since he had seen the rain barrel.

  In the cottage Tretheway found little to enlighten him. It was untidy, but not in disarray. Miss Tommerup’s purse lay on the kitchen table full of money, two expensive fur coats hung in the front hall and one of her dresser drawers, which Tretheway quickly shut, held a week’s supply of clean navy blue bloomers. He raised his eyebrows at the man’s safety razor in the medicine cabinet.

  Outside, even with Jake’s help (Red Rounders was guarding the body and tarpaulin), Tretheway found no helpful clues. The grass around the rain barrel was thick and springy, hardly ideal material for footprints, and the muddy areas around the puddles had either been avoided or unvisited. By the time the first police arrived, all that Tretheway and Jake had found between them were seven arrowheads.

  Sergeant Charlie Wan Ho was in the first car with four other detectives. He made straight for Tretheway.

  “Hi, Inspector.” He smiled at Jake.

  “Hello, Charlie,” Tretheway said. Jake smiled back.

  “Please don’t say it’s another murder.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Damn! Is it Miss Tommerup?”

  Tretheway nodded.

  In the many years Sergeant Wan Ho had been on the force, he had tried to develop a hard-nosed, indifferent, professional attitude toward death. He blew his nose violently.

  “Zulp here yet?” Tretheway asked.

  “Not yet,” Wan Ho said. “I’m sure he’s on his way. Like to catch me up?”

  Tretheway brought the Sergeant up to date from Addie’s first mention of St. Swithin’s Day to the present. Wan Ho stood quietly, nodding occasionally, taking in the information, mentally filing, evaluating and planning. When Tretheway finished (except for the mysterious cross) Wan Ho asked a couple of perceptive questions and then snapped out orders to the waiting detectives. They scattered—one in the cottage, two to search the grounds and the fourth to knock on neighbouring doors.