The gladiators pushed their way through the crowd to boisterous cheering. They had changed into their new T-shirts, paid for by themselves, which added a professional touch to the show. The firemen’s shirts were bright red with the words “SMOKE EATERS” emblazoned across their chests in yellow and orange flames, while the policemen wore a conservative blue style carrying the words “SQUARE JOHNS” in no-nonsense sans serif letters. Tretheway was the anchor man for the police. His XL T-shirt still showed a generous amount of bare stomach.
The teams lined up on either side of the brackish water. Tretheway slipped into the fixed loop spliced into the end of the rope and felt it course roughly over his right shoulder, down his back, under his other arm and return, following the contour of his stomach. The heavy hemp rope, although two inches in diameter, looked no stronger in his grip than a substantial skipping rope. In front of him, the other team members spaced themselves down its length.
Mayor Phinneas “Fireball” Trutt, the official referee, stood to one side and carefully watched the golden tassle hanging over the water that marked the exact centre of the rope.
“Make ready to pull,” he shouted.
The rope tightened as both teams leaned backward. Tretheway dug his heels in; so did the large fireman at the opposite end. The tassle moved slowly back and forth. Trutt raised his starter’s pistol in the air, his eyes fixed on the golden marker.
“Wait for it,” he said quietly, but everybody heard him in the hush. “Wait for it…”
He fired the pistol. All hell broke loose.
Air blew violently from twenty pair of lungs. The crowd shrieked. For ten long minutes, the rope remained as straight as a poker and moved no more than six inches either way. The participants grunted explosively. Their track shoes scored the earth. The rope creaked. Sweat stained the new T-shirts. Painful muscular grimaces replaced scowls. Sinews, unused since last year, stood out like ropes themselves.
Gradually, ever so gradually, the first fireman slid toward the water. Increased efforts on behalf of the Smoke Eaters stopped the advance, but only for a moment. The partisan crowd around the police end of the rope sensed a swing in their favour and cheered louder. Tretheway pulled harder in response. The first fireman was inches from the water when the Smoke Eaters stopped the slide with desperate back-pedalling. After another moment of strained immobility, the first policeman slid toward the water. Cheers rose at the other end. Tretheway felt the renewed aggression through the rope and, somehow over the tumult, heard Addie shout.
“Pull, Albert! Pull!”
When Tretheway heard Addie shout out his first name for all to hear, he called on his reserve strength the way a thirsty camel calls on his stored water supply. Slowly, as though shifting to a low gear, he pumped his huge legs and pulled backwards. Fireman Number One slipped into the water; followed by Number Two. Number Three’s heels skidded into the pond. The policemen had victory in their grasp.
There are times when a small sound will intrude upon someone’s senses under any circumstances simply because it’s out of place; because the sound shouldn’t be there—like the tinkle of breaking glass during a deep sleep; like a baby crying in a business office; like thunder in the midst of a raging blizzard. Thretheway heard an avalanche of paper.
From his viewpoint, he could see over the tug-o-war teams and spectators to where the mountain of newspaper was silhouetted in the low rays of sun. Tretheway thought he saw a head, strangely pointed, or figures, maybe two or three, at the top of the pile. He thought he saw movement there also. Tretheway noticed Jake and other policemen, who were supposed to be part of the Master Plan, cheering their heads off. And he realized that at least four of the police tug-o-war team were bodyguards. He couldn’t see Mac, Pennylegion, Ammerman or Bartholomew Gum. In fact, except for Mayor Trutt, who was holding the pistol in the air and trying to look non-partisan despite the firemen’s imminent defeat, Tretheway couldn’t see any Council members at all. Less than a second elapsed from the time he heard the paper avalanche to the time he made his move.
Tretheway lurched forward and jumped out of the loop. He jogged toward the newspaper pile. The people in front of him appeared to be frozen. To Tretheway, they seemed paralyzed. Their hands were raised, but not moving; their mouths open, but not cheering. Tretheway stopped in front of Jake.
“Where’s Mac?” he shouted.
“E … eh …?” Jake stammered.
“Mac! Controller MacCulla! Where the hell is he?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“What’s going on, Albert?” Addie asked.
“You’re supposed to know!” Tretheway shouted at Jake. “Let’s go!”
Tretheway, with Jake right behind, pushed his way through the crowd, taking precious seconds to lift children, and sometimes adults, out of his path. Behind him, if he had taken the time to look, the last of the betrayed police tug-o-war team was slithering through the mud hole. The perplexed but jubilant firemen were falling back on themselves with the sudden and unexpected victory. Mayor Trutt, no longer able to contain his firehouse sympathies, emptied the starter’s pistol in the air to celebrate the Smoke Eater win. Chief Zulp was not so happy.
“Tretheway!” Zulp shouted. “Tretheway!” His cries were lost in the uproar. “Stop that man! He’s a deserter!”
“Where are we going?” Jake shouted at Tretheway’s back.
“Paper!” Tretheway pointed. “Pile of paper!”
“What?”
“Just follow me.”
When they reached the edge of the crowd, Tretheway broke into a gallop. Jake followed. They ran around to the other side of the newspaper mountain. Tretheway stopped and scanned the pile.
“There’s no one here.” At the base of the pile Tretheway noticed a lumpy, uneven section as though some bundles had shifted. “Dig!” He tossed bundles of newspaper aside like bits of balsa wood.
“What?” Jake asked.
“Dig! Dammit, dig!”
Jake, convinced Tretheway had damaged something in his reasoning process during the tug-o-war, started to dig anyway. More people arrived, including Zulp.
“Tretheway,” Zulp began. “Have you gone mad? Nine wet and filthy comrades. Lying back there. In the muck. What the hell happened?” He ducked a bundle of newspapers that came in his direction.
“What are you looking for?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Eh?”
“Get some help.”
Zulp opened his mouth to shout but changed his mind. He turned toward the crowd. “Get some more men in here. Quickly!”
For five minutes the men laboured wordlessly while whispered rumours spread efficiently through the curious crowd. They found nothing. Tretheway began to wonder whether he had seen anything in the first place; the shadows could have been just shadows or a trick played by the setting sun; wind could have caused the avalanche. Doubt slid under the door of Tretheway’s confidence. He straightened up.
“Tretheway,” Zulp began. “How sure are you …”
“Inspector.”
“Don’t interrupt,” Zulp said.
“Inspector,” Jake repeated. “There’s something here.”
Tretheway walked over. The others pushed closer.
“Give me a hand, Jake.” Tretheway and Jake cleared several bundles of newspaper from the body. The crowd became quiet. Some early arrivals from the RFYLI Brass Band tuned up in the pavilion.
“It’s a child,” someone in the crowd said.
Tretheway gently rolled the body over. The beautiful features of Henry Plain faced the darkening sky.
“Shall I get Doc Nooner?” Jake asked.
“Yes,” Tretheway said. “But there’s no hurry.”
When Doc Nooner arrived he confirmed Tretheway’s opinion. “Nothing you could’ve done. Death by suffocation,” he said, after a cursory but experienced examination. “What the hell was he doing up there, anyway?”
Zulp glared at Tretheway. “Do you know anything about
this?”
“Perhaps I should clear the air …” Tretheway began.
“That’d be nice,” Zulp encouraged.
Tretheway went on to explain why he had left the tug-o-war so suddenly. He told about the figures or shadows at the top of the pile.
“Did you actually see anyone?” Zulp asked.
“I think so.”
“Think? That’s just great. Aren’t you sure? Could you identify anyone?”
“Not really,” Tretheway said. “And at that distance even if I saw …”
“If?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Wan Ho entered the conversation. “You mean, it could’ve been Henry Plain by himself that you saw?”
“It’s possible,” Tretheway admitted. “But it still doesn’t explain why he was up there.”
“To get a better view of the proceedings,” Zulp said. “You know how short he was.”
Tretheway grimaced. “I doubt that.”
“Dammit, Tretheway! There’s no evidence to support foul play.”
Tretheway sulked.
Zulp turned to the Doctor. “Nor any medical evidence either. That right, Nooner?”
“I guess so. Some bruises again. Nothing conclusive.”
“Well, then.” Zulp took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s not panic. Cool heads. It’s a tragedy. But he had been drinking. Wine. Warm day. Where’s Mrs Plain?”
“She’s with Addie and some of the other women,” Jake said.
“Good. Best not bother her. Let’s wrap it up. Call it a day. Nasty day.” Zulp walked away. “Nasty.”
No one objected. There wasn’t much anyone could do. Even if there was a killer out there somewhere, Tretheway thought, it would be fruitless to search for him now. It was getting dark. Hundreds of people were milling about. Where would you look? he asked himself. And who or what would you look for?
Later that evening, Tretheway, Jake and Fred sat on their back porch and enjoyed, as much as they were able to under the circumstances, the star-filled, balmy night. They had rehashed the day, from parking the car to the dance cancellation, including Tretheway’s possible sighting of pointy-headed people, but nothing helpful had come to the surface. Henry Plain was resting at a convenient local undertaker while his shocked family had been billeted with friends. Everyone had left LaSalle Park by ten o’clock except for five policemen stationed at the paper pile. They were there to prevent another tragedy and to preserve any evidence for daylight scrutiny.
“It could’ve been an accident,” Jake said.
“I don’t think so,” Tretheway said.
“But Zulp said …”
Tretheway glared at Jake. Jake didn’t finish. Tretheway took a six-ounce pull on his quart of Molson. He repositioned his upper body and belched.
“It fits too well.”
“Hm?”
“The head civil servant. On Civic Holiday. Smothered in paper. Too pat.”
“When you put it that way …”
“He could’ve been lured behind that pile. Chased up it. Head forced into a bundle. Held there. By one or more persons. Then the avalanche.”
“All conjecture.”
“True.” Tretheway watched a firefly buzz around his stockinged feet. “I liked Henry.”
“So did I.”
Tretheway waved the fly away. “He never hurt anybody.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Go to bed.” Tretheway stood up and stretched. “At least, that’s what I’m going to do.”
On their way through the kitchen, Tretheway grabbed two quarts of beer from the ice box in the the fingers of one hand. The bottles clinked together as he mounted the stairs.
On August 24, St. Bartholomew’s Day, Chief Zulp, or at least Mrs Zulp, informed the switchboard at Central Police Station that her husband would not be in to work.
“He has a slight temperature and a nasty cough. Touch of the flu. Nothing serious, but I think he should spend the day in bed. No,” she said in answer to the switchboard’s question. “He can’t take any calls. Surely you can get by for one day.”
Alderman Bartholomew Gum received no extra guards or care on August 24. The day passed without mishap.
SEPTEMBER
Two things made the September murder different from the others. First, it was unexpected. Second, they caught the murderer red-handed. Or, at least, Chief Zulp said they did.
The month started sensibly enough for the season. Sunday dawned warm and sunny. Higher humidity and showers were predicted for later in the week. Fort York football fans were optimistic about their beloved FY Taggers demolishing the hated Toronto Argonauts in the traditional Labour Day game. Most of the people who had summer cottages were back in the city. Schools opened on Tuesday. So, except for the war news (the Battle of Britain was just beginning) it was a normal start for September.
The Labour Day parade began early Monday morning. It was less militaristic than the Dominion Day parade, but there were just as many uniforms in evidence. The politicians who disagreed with Zulp’s theory of accidental death in the Henry Plain affair were influential enough to demand, and get, extra police protection, especially on another holiday.
All off-duty regular policemen had been called in, a detachment of Ontario Provincial Police was actually marching in the parade, extra Military Police lined the route and the Federal Government, with the idea that one Mountie could still quell an Indian uprising, sent one Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Constable.
The main body of the parade was made up of hard core labour. They were unmilitarily jolly and marched out of step, but their raucous banter gave a sort of industrial Mardi Gras flavour to the procession.
Once again, Mayor Trutt took the salute in front of the City Hall. Labour, military, police, Scouts, Marion Day celebrants, CWACS, Six Nation Indians and others he couldn’t identify filed past Trutt’s sincere, hat-over-the-heart gesture without incident. At the finish of the parade, most of the participants enjoyed a cold cuts and beer lunch—courtesy of the FY Labour Council—before they attended the football game (Fort York triumphed over Toronto in a boring, one-sided match).
While the city held its collective breath, Labour Day drew to a close in every union hall across the city’s wards without a report of homicide.
By the time Tuesday was half over, most Fort York inhabitants hoped with all their hearts that Henry Plain’s death had been accidental. They hoped that, for some reason, the St. Swithin’s Day drowning was the end of it; the finish to the strange chain of events that had plagued Fort York.
There was a slight scare at the end of the first week. A FY Expositor reporter mentioned to Chief Zulp that Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, both fell sometime in September. Before this could be properly researched, Zulp dispatched a Flying Squad (his substitute for the abandoned Master Plan) to the home of Harold Ammerman, the only Jewish member of Council. Four cruisers, sirens screaming, emptied eight policemen onto the Alderman’s front lawn. They came close to causing another political fatality by bursting into the old gentleman’s home and shaking him out of a deep nap. It was Ammerman himself who explained to the protectors that the Jewish holidays started in October this year. This was explained later to Zulp. The Expositor reporter couldn’t be reached.
As each day of September passed, the inhabitants of Fort York grew more optimistic. They endured Maryland Day, September 12, the anniversary of the defense of that city in the War of 1812. Nothing happened. The fifteenth was Independence Day for Central America. A small number of Costa Ricans, wearing gaily-coloured native costumes, jiggled around on the City Hall steps at noon for about five minutes. But nothing happened. The occasion, rather than the holiday, of American Constitution Day, September 15, went slowly through its twenty-four hours. Chilean Independence Day came and departed unnoticed on the eighteenth. A few Anglican churches celebrated the Feast of St. Matthew on the twenty-first. But it was very orderly and religiou
s. Nothing happened.
So by Saturday night, the twenty-eighth, most people went to their beds feeling that the crisis was past. The next morning, however, something happened.
“Beautiful Sunday for your walk, Albert.” Addie bustled about the kitchen. It was early for Tretheway (7:30) but Addie had been up for the last hour cleaning the kitchen after Saturday night’s euchre session. She had also made breakfast already for O. Pitts who had an early sermon practice.
Tretheway looked out of the back window. “Always nice after a rain.” He stretched his arms over his head, lifting the 2nd Life Guards’ crest on his sweat shirt a foot and a half. “Flowers look good. Specially the daisies.”
“They should, Albert.” Addie threw the day-old cigar butts into the garbage pail. Tretheway wouldn’t let her throw them out the same night. “Particularly today.”
Tretheway stopped in mid-stretch. He had the sudden, spooky feeling that he didn’t want Addie to go on.
“Ah…today?”
“Yes.”
“What’s so special about today?”
“You know what kind of daisies they are?”
“Yes. Michaelmas daisies. What about it?”
“Today is Michaelmas Day.”
Tretheway shivered in the warm sunlight.
At about the time Tretheway shivered, O. Pitts discovered, to his surprise, that the front door of University Hall was unlocked. He entered and stood for a moment in the silence. Hearing nothing more alarming than the characteristic complaints and creaks of an old empty building, O. Pitts advanced down the spacious hall and paused again outside the heavy double doors of the chapel. The soft coo of a mourning dove startled him. He pushed quickly through the doors.
Once inside, he was comforted by the familiar surroundings. Warm oak panelling lined the walls. Tall, leaded Gothic windows, sculptured replicas of Baptist Saints glared down on polished wooden pews built to contain a repentant congregation. O. Pitts took pleasure in the orderly fashion in which the rows of seats marched toward the front of the chapel, stopping just before a small stage and a single large stained-glass window. Ordinarily, the stage held a lectern or, as his professors called it, a practice pulpit, but today he saw two persons there, one seated, the other lying down. O. Pitts blinked.
Good Year For Murder Page 9