What Kills Good Men

by David Hood

“Were you working?” Betty asked, either trying to give him an easy way out of Josie’s question or protecting herself from hearing tales of the wild and reckless side of life.

  “Didn’t you say you were off early last night?” Josie remained hopeful, for Squire’s sake, not her own. He had managed to pour himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove. It was still too hot for anything more than timid sips. He would stay with it. It didn’t seem to have been there too long and wouldn’t taste like muddy water when it was finally cool enough to drink.

  “I saw a light under your door when I came in. Maybe it’s you that has a story to tell.” Josie just smiled and pretended to be concerned with her hair, which was falling out of a loose braid. Squire couldn’t tell if there was something interesting to tell or if she was just creating an illusion for his amusement or her own.

  “Well, you’re safe, that is all that matters,” Betty declared as she got up and put her cup and plate in the sink. “I’m off to church. Don’t suppose either of you would care to join me? There is still time if you hurry.”

  “You dress warm. This mild weather can’t last. We’re likely to see snow soon.” Josie pulled her housecoat tighter around her neck and looked toward Squire, then tilted her head toward the stove.

  “Enjoy the service,” Squire said as he bent over the wood bin. Betty smiled through their rejection and hurried off for her coat and Bible. Squire sat back down at the table, feeling a little awkward now without Betty as a buffer. He tried not to look directly at Josie and was glad he really did have to get going once he got enough coffee in. A large part of him wanted to blurt out what he knew. And not just for the thrill of having Josie’s full attention. Organizing the details into a coherent story would help him make sense of it all and give him the confidence he needed to follow Baxter’s instructions. He almost had himself convinced that going over what had happened with someone was good police work.

  “You really are in a fuddle,” Josie said watching him struggle with his thoughts. She wasn’t prying, just observing. She didn’t have to fish, men were quick to tell her things.

  “What’s the best way to keep a secret?” Squire asked, still not quite ready to go.

  “Just like that.”

  “Sorry?”

  She made him wait while she leaned her elbows on the table and took her cup gently in her fingertips. “Keep asking questions,” she spoke between sips. “It makes people think they know more than you. That they have the secrets and you don’t.”

  “What time is it?”

  She smiled. “So that’s your trouble, you have a secret.”

  “No,” he lied, which he knew was another key to keeping secrets. “I have to get to work.”

  Jane had let him sleep as long as she dared. She woke her husband at eight. She knew it was pointless to leave him any longer. He’d just be in a rush and feel more tired than ever. She left him to get cleaned up and dressed while she went back downstairs. Their five-bedroom house was much more than they needed. After Grace it hadn’t been long before Jane was pregnant again. It had lasted five months instead of nine. The midwife was very sorry. She did the tidying up. They stopped trying after the third miscarriage. The doctors had been wrong. There would be no more children. Grace had no brothers or sisters. She had four times the toys and clothes she needed. A wall was removed. Grace’s room doubled in size and the house took on less empty space. Four narrow windows looked out from Grace’s new second-story kingdom. Downstairs keeping house Jane sometimes heard her daughter moving past them acting out the scenes of a little girl’s imagination. Outside above the rooftops the cross of Saint Mary’s stayed with them both like the eyes of the Mona Lisa. Eventually the downstairs bedrooms became Jane’s sewing room and a laboratory of sorts where her husband practised powers of healing on outcasts rescued from dust bins—broken clocks, three-legged chairs, rusted bicycles.

  Jane finished making breakfast in the large kitchen at the back of the house. Outside the face of the sun was a pale yolk in the morning haze. Inside the two large windows, the brilliant white walls and the bright yellow oilcloth with its purple daisies absorbed every speck of light. Even after dark the room was full of sunshine. The warmth from the large Findlay with its cast iron cooktop and enamelled oven door carried the smells of food and dried up the dampness. For Jane the kitchen had always been safe from the ghosts of the unborn.

  Baxter kissed his wife on the cheek and took a seat in the back corner. From the window he could look out over their backyard, modestly refined with its stockade fence, limestone baluster bird bath, and octagon gazebo compete with cupola and turned spindle railing. The grass was slowly going brown with fall and there were no more robins to be seen. Warm scented evenings with a newspaper and some lemonade were still fresh in his memory, though. It was a fortifying thought.

  Jane looked her husband over as she set down a plate of eggs on toasted bread with bacon. He wasn’t wearing his Sunday best. “You’re not coming to Mass, I see.”

  “I’m sorry.” Baxter didn’t miss the annoyance and disappointment in his wife’s voice and hoped the apology he offered in response sounded genuine. He really was sorry.

  “When did you come in? You said you’d only be an hour. Did you fall asleep again?” she asked as she came back to the table with a plate for herself and a pot of tea. She sat down and filled her cup.

  Baxter stared out the window as he ate, studying the gazebo. Its light blue with white trim matched the house. Was it five or six years ago they’d had it built? Grace used to sneak into his wardrobe for clothes to play dress-up. The gazebo was her summer castle. How old was she then? The workmen had carried the lumber in from the street. He could see the company name on the side of the wagon, Mosher Masonry, Building and Real Estate. “Victor Mosher is dead,” he said through a mouthful of poached egg, still staring at the backyard castle.

  “That’s horrible.” Like many people who would hear the news in the days to come, Jane felt closer to the man than she really was. Once or twice a year the Moshers hosted functions that included the senior men on the force. Such things could be miserable, but Jane had always felt comfortable in the Mosher home. Ranks and titles were checked at the door, along with coats and hats. “Catherine will be devastated. Thank God her boys are older. She will need them now.” Jane’s eyebrows lowered and she leaned forward a little, forcing her husband to meet her gaze as she poured him some tea. “What happened, did his heart let go? He was such a hard worker. You should take a lesson.”

  Baxter shrugged off her warning and bathed in the steam rising from the cascade of Earl Grey as it filled his cup. “We don’t know what happened yet. I’m going to see the medical examiner after breakfast, and then I’ll break the news to Catherine. Did Grace leave early? The choir meets beforehand to go over the hymns, do they not?”

  Jane’s hands were long and slender and china smooth and moved with precision. When she set the teapot down hard enough to make the lid clink and scrape against its rim, it wasn’t an accident. She shook her head. “Grace is your daughter, but she’s still young. She hasn’t learned how to go days on end without sleep. She was up late reading a brick of a book on human anatomy she got from who knows where. She showed me some of the pictures. Positively ghastly.” Jane shivered her shoulders as she cut through the white of an egg with the edge of her fork.

  “Any pictures of young doctors in that book?” Baxter glanced sideways at the backyard as he blew on his tea, picturing the aisle from the house to the gazebo, the families seated either side. He could hear the low murmuring of anticipation, feel Grace squeezing his arm, the lump in his throat.

  “She says she didn’t gain a secondary education to keep house.” Jane slowly stirred more sugar into her tea.

  He blinked. Still the scene lingered. “Did I miss something?” He sounded incredulous because he was. “We sent her to school precisely so she could have a good hom
e and family.”

  “I don’t think she wants to wait.” Jane continued to play with her spoon. She followed her husband’s gaze, trying to see whatever it was he was staring at in the backyard.

  “Well then, she should be going to socials, doing some charity work maybe…not burying herself in medical books.” He had finished his eggs and was pouring more tea.

  “No, Cully, she doesn’t want to wait for a man to come home.”

  “Oh, is that so? Well…” He wanted to say more, a lot more. This just wasn’t the time. His jaws worked a strip of bacon as if it were rawhide.

  Jane wasn’t quite done. “Cully, don’t underestimate our daughter. I married you because I loved you and I believed in you and I’ve stood behind you all these years. It wasn’t always easy and Grace knows that even if you don’t.” There was no anger in her expression or voice, only the certainty of stone.

  “What do I know?” Grace was pulling her hair up into a bun to get it out of her eyes, which were red and tired-looking. She had her mother’s face and her father’s shoulders, and height from both sides of the family.

  “Good morning, Miss Baxter.” Had he placed undue emphasis on the “Miss”? He didn’t think so. He was sure his wife felt differently when she cast a sharp look his way.

  “Good morning, Mother. Were you telling Father about my anatomy book? I’m learning that to cure an illness you have to hunt for clues. He would have made a good doctor, don’t you think?” She nodded towards her father as she let out a heaving yawn, and reached for the ceiling from the tips of her toes with her arms stretched as long as she could make them.

  “I could save more lives by closing all the taverns. Will you be attending Mass with your mother?” He didn’t mean to sound cross with Grace. He was sorry to be missing Mass, he enjoyed the ritual. Hearing the word doctor reminded him of the day ahead and that he had better get going.

  Jane had gotten up from the table and moved behind her daughter. She put her arms around Grace and spoke gently into her ear. “Your father has to work.”

  “What’s wrong?” The question was directed to both of them. Now it was Baxter’s face that was hard set as he looked warily at his wife before turning back to the window over the last of his tea.

  “Victor Mosher is dead,” Jane announced, letting go of her daughter and returning to the table. Had she misread his signal or ignored it?

  “Was he murdered? Could I read the medical examiner’s report?”

  “Absolutely not,” Baxter said, in soft denial of his daughter’s enthusiasm for the clinical, which had momentarily overcome her more sympathetic nature. He touched his wife’s hand as he got up from the table. What was done was done. As he passed his daughter he gave her a peck on the cheek before saying, “And please, not a word of this at church. The family doesn’t even know yet.” He paused just long enough for Grace to look him in the eye and know it was an order, then he hurried off.

  The sky was low and drab. The air was heavy with mist and dead still, which made it feel warmer than it really was. Baxter stopped at the corner of Sackville and Brunswick. In front of him, Sackville Street ran downhill, through the heart of the upper streets, and their mix of leaning wood frames and sturdy new brick, all the way to the harbour. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He looked left. From his side of Brunswick Street, the slope of Citadel Hill rose up to the granite walls of the city’s fortress. It looked back in grave silence, adding an eeriness to the morning. Along the east side of Brunswick he could see people moving past the Salvation Army, and farther down, out front of the fire engine house. They walked slowly with open coats, their voices lost in the mist. Before he crossed Brunswick he bent down and picked up a small stick. He tapped it against his thigh as he continued down Sackville Street, tapping in time with his right foot like a regimental sergeant major on parade. He focused on the rhythm, on the facts of the case thus far, and tried to stop thinking about his wife and daughter. Left…tap—Victor Mosher was dead, stabbed wearing his birthday suit, so it seemed. Left…tap—somebody put his clothes back on and threw him in the harbour. Left…tap—Ellen Reardon found Victor and got a bed for her trouble before the tide could drag him out to sea. So far there were no other witnesses, no obvious motive, and he had no idea who might have done it or where it had happened. An open and shut case if there ever was one, he said to himself.

  Baxter passed Argyle, then crossed Barrington Street and stopped at the corner. He looked to his left toward the Grand Parade. He was glad to be too far away. He might see himself coming down the front steps. He hadn’t had enough sleep. Squire had better be inside going through Victor’s office. He rubbed his eyes and walked on, still keeping time with the stick. Ellen was likely still sound asleep. She wouldn’t remember it, but she had met Victor at least once before, if met was the right word. It had happened a few years ago in front of Victor’s construction business. Baxter couldn’t remember if he had heard the story from Victor, or someone else.

  Victor had learned masonry and building from his father. When the time came, he began teaching his sons. Victor and his oldest boy, Michael, were gathering tools for a job. Michael had come out first. Ellen was passed out drunk on the doorstep. There was a puddle of vomit not far from her head. Her dress was hiked up around her waist. She had wet herself. Not sure what to do, the boy had yelled for his father.

  By then Victor had already been in politics long enough to know half the people in the city. Everyone knew Ellen. Victor had had his own way of seeing things, that was true. As the story went, he had spoken to Ellen as if she were upright and proper as a pin. “Ah, good morning, Ellen, bit of a rough night?” She had farted in her sleep. Victor had sent his son on ahead with money and instructions for Thomas Marshal, a local restaurant owner, to feed Ellen if she showed up. If there was any trouble, they would be working close by.

  Victor had pulled Ellen’s dress down and folded one of her arms into a headrest. She had groaned a bit. Her eyes had remained closed. He had found an egg-sized rock and set it at the tip of Ellen’s nose. He had put a note under it: “Breakfast at Marshal’s, paid in full.” Victor’s heart had been in the right place. At the same time, Baxter could see Ellen trading the note and having some hair of the dog for breakfast.

  Baxter turned left off Sackville onto Hollis Street. The history of Europe hung in tapestries from castle walls; the history of the upper streets was preserved in stories like the one he had just recalled. Over the next few days such stories would be the trump cards of every conversation. All of them ending with the same question: who would kill a man like Victor Mosher? Baxter had arrived at the doctor’s front door. He tossed his stick into the street and knocked.

  “Good morning, Doctor.”

  “Right on time, Chief Inspector, please come in. Can I offer you anything?” The doctor was wearing the same clothes. The white coat still looked fresh, but the doctor was a bit rumpled. His hair had broken free of its pomade and become a whisk broom. His glasses were smudged and hanging low and crooked.

  “I’ve had breakfast, thank you,” he replied as he followed the doctor down the front hall. “With enough tea to make it seem like I had more sleep, at least for now. Will your final report say anything more than what we knew last night?”

  As he came off the last step into the downstairs examination room and looked round the doctor, Baxter could see Victor was still lying on the table. The blood-spotted sheet that now covered him suggested Victor had been opened and closed while Baxter was away. He had no urge to lift a corner and make sure. The doctor picked up a sheaf of papers from the second table and began looking through them as he spoke. Baxter listened and tried not to notice the smell that had come to him now that his other senses were a little less overwhelmed by his power of sight.

  “Victor was a little heavy, but otherwise he was fit and strong. None of his major organs showed any signs of disease. He had no deformities or missing
limbs.” The doctor glanced up to be sure he was being followed, then continued. “There was a recent injury to his right wrist. No bones were broken. He was only forty-five years old. As far as I can tell Mr. Mosher was in good health.”

  Baxter took off his coat and hung it over one arm. “Except for the hole in his side.” His voice was matter of fact more than sarcastic.

  Still the doctor raised his eyebrows as he peered over his spectacles. “Yes, Inspector, he was stabbed. Probably with a very sharp knife, it was not a jagged wound.” He took a moment to shuffle his papers, his lips moving in silence as he struggled with his own handwriting. Baxter noticed the doctor’s hands were shaking a little. There was still some dried blood under his fingernails. “His liver was cut. There was some internal bleeding. Judging by the condition of the body, by that I mean the presence of rigor mortis, I would say Victor died sometime Friday night or Saturday morning.”

  “After someone stabbed him.” Baxter had begun to pace the length of Victor’s table. The smell followed him.

  “I agree with you there, Inspector. Victor died after he was stabbed. But I don’t think he died because he was stabbed.” The doctor remained in one spot on his side of Victor. He didn’t seem bothered by the air in the room.

  “What…that doesn’t make any sense. You said he was stabbed in the liver, he had internal bleeding.” Baxter stopped pacing and waited, expecting the doctor to correct himself.

  “Internal bleeding, yes. The kind of massive internal bleeding that would cause death almost immediately, no.”

  “So how did he die then?” Baxter shot back as he turned on a heel and resumed pacing.

  “Well, it’s difficult to say, Inspector. I am a man of science. Only God knows for sure what happened.”

  “I’m sure he does. I am also sure God can speak through you. So use the intelligence he gave you and tell me what you think happened.” Now the doctor was pacing.