What Kills Good Men

by David Hood

  Martin Tolliver was a big man, as tall as Baxter, but sloppy. Pressed and polished he still had the look of an unmade bed. He had large, coarse features and a complexion as open and uneven as melting snow. Despite all that, he was not unpleasant looking. Most people took him for gentle and easygoing.

  They were standing in the large drawing room of the chief’s home. A spattered canvas drop cloth covered the floor in the far corner. The watercolour in the easel was nearly done. Baxter recognized Saint Paul’s. There was a subtlety in the work, a deftness of touch. He never would have taken the chief for an artist. Tolliver followed Baxter’s gaze. For a moment he looked as if he were about to say something about it, talk in a friendly way. Then he looked back as if the painting wasn’t there and Baxter was a stranger.

  “Have you gotten anywhere?” The chief ambled over to the sideboard and poured two fingers of bourbon into a short crystal tumbler. He turned and leaned his weight, ignoring the glassware and bottles as they clinked in protest. He looked at Baxter over the rim of his glass. He didn’t bother offering him a drink.

  “He was stabbed once, here.” Baxter touched his side. “We don’t know where it happened yet, but it looks as if someone put his clothes back on after he was stabbed.”

  “Uh-huh. What else.”

  “Catherine thought Victor was in Windsor with his brother. I think he can help us. I’m going to Windsor in the morning.”

  “Any business troubles?”

  “I’m having his ledger examined and some letters we found. They’re in Latin. Lato something spondes.”

  “Latorem extemplo dare spondes.” The chief turned, and as he refilled his glass said in a voice that was low and matter of fact, without shock or sadness, “Pay the bearer on demand.” He turned back around and leaned once more, the glassware performed another soft symphony. The chief sipped and swallowed. Baxter waited. “How much?” the chief finally asked without looking up, continuing to study the contents of his glass.

  “Five thousand in total.” Baxter waited, a feeling of impatience growing along with an idea he was being cheated or held off. He waited for the chief to help him, to be on his side. He waited for him to tell him whatever it was he seemed to know about Victor Mosher or this case or both. At the very least the chief could tell him how he happened to know any Latin. Neither of them had any secondary schooling. Baxter knew the ritual responses of Mass, which didn’t say anything about IOUs. So how did Tolliver know? What else did he know? Was the chief mocking him with silence? Baxter felt he had a right to know, it was his job to know and the chief’s responsibility to tell him.

  The chief raised himself up and took a full breath. He started to raise his glass, then set it on the sideboard. Baxter could feel himself being studied, weighed. He remained still, eye to eye. “Cully, tread carefully on this.”

  He had come out of a sense of duty and respect for the chain of command. He had been met with suspicion and a lack of confidence. Baxter could feel his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. He tried to unclench his fists and couldn’t. His throat was tighter than his fists, which kept him from speaking, which was surely a good thing. “Let’s talk tomorrow.” The chief patted him on the shoulder as he moved by on his way to opening the front door. Baxter heard the latch and voices from the street coming in on the evening air. Finally he turned. He didn’t stomp or accidentally knock anything over. What he couldn’t bring himself to do was look the chief in the face as he passed.

  It was a pleasant meal. Grace seemed to be able to repeat every word she’d read. He was grateful not to have to talk, and for the balm of her youthful innocence. He asked questions in passing between mouthfuls of ham and scalloped potatoes, then Boston cream pie. Grace went on in detail about rigor mortis and pulmonary oedema. Baxter didn’t bother pretending his questions were not work related. After supper he and Jane did the dishes together, excusing their daughter who still wasn’t tired of reading.

  Jane left him alone afterward. He wandered into his little repair shop. On one of the work tables he had a rocking chair in pieces. He had pulled it out of a snowbank, where it may have been buried all winter. He had made the new runner it needed. He fixed it in a vice and picked up a pencil and carpenter’s ruler. Of course the letters were IOUs. Why write them in Latin and lock them away in a drawer if they were simple receipts or bills as he had originally thought? He told himself it would have come to him as soon as he had had some rest. He measured for the holes and marked the spots.

  Squire had known. Of course he read Latin. He had graduated from the Pictou Academy. Why did he hold back? What was he up to? Baxter found the auger. He needed to change the bit. And the chief was hiding something, he didn’t need to be a detective to know that. The chief didn’t seem surprised about the circumstances of Victor’s death or that he owed or recently paid off a large amount of debt, secret debt, debt kept off the books. He locked the proper bit in place and began turning the first hole. Was the chief not surprised because he had known of Victor’s troubles for some time? Or had he just found out? Did he find out from Squire? Is that how he knew? Had the chief told Squire to hold back information, slow up the investigation? Baxter withdrew the auger and blew at the curly wood shavings. He changed position to begin the second hole.

  His stomach was beginning to churn, souring on the ham. He remembered a case from not long ago, a bank robbery. The thief had made his getaway, but was fool enough to return to the city. Some clever work and a bit of luck and Baxter had his man. Then strings were pulled, a deal was made. Most of the money turned up, no more questions asked. The reward that had been offered was no longer available. It wasn’t the money Baxter resented, though it would have been a help. He was more aggravated by the injustice of it, that he had got no credit for his work. He blew at the second hole.

  It wasn’t the first time. These past few years there seemed to be a wall in front of him just as the chief had stonewalled him this evening. Perhaps it was the will of God. He began to work with a chisel, cleaning up the rough edges left by the auger. He hated the wall most for its silence, its failure to explain itself.

  He blew into the first hole again, then checked its smoothness with a finger. He would clean up the second hole then try to get some sleep. As always his anger was followed by guilt. He had no right to be angry, to overstep, to want what was not given. The second hole had struck a knot in the wood and was more difficult to clear. He held the runner firm with one hand to keep it steady and with the other dug harder with the chisel. He was chief inspector. His wife was proud of him and loyal. They had been granted one daughter at least and she was bright and strong and would make the most of the life in front of her. He worked the chisel harder still, unable to cut through the end of the knot fouling the hole. And then he was overcome by a second surge of anger. It was not enough. He spoke his blasphemy aloud and he was aghast and ashamed. His hand slipped on the chisel. The first drops of blood shone like tiny red suns on the clean white flesh of the wood, anointing it. Then more spilled on the floor where it was dried up by the sawdust. His thumb was badly cut. He held it tightly. He took his time moving to the kitchen. Hurried steps might draw attention.

  Monday

  The first train out was at seven. Only forty miles to Windsor, but at least a dozen stops. The first would be at Rockingham, Bedford next. Then the train would change over to the Dominion Atlantic line at Windsor Junction. Then more stops at Beaverbank, Mount Uniacke, and he couldn’t remember where all else. It would be at least half past nine by the time he could speak to Carmine. He took a seat in the dining car. The waiter took his time, eventually Baxter ordered tea.

  The first lurch of the train clicked his teeth against the rim of the cup. He brushed at his tunic. He would have been more comfortable travelling in his own clothes. Already he was feeling overheated and the uniform was discouraging the company and conversation that could help pass the time. Ladies smiled, men t
ipped their hats. Everyone moved past. No one sat down next to him. Much as he would have enjoyed the distraction, it was more important that Carmine be fully aware that he was under investigation and had misled the police. As the train got into its slow drunken lumber, Baxter sipped his tea and stared out the window.

  Eventually the train turned away from the coal smoke and factory whistles and the low mechanical thrumming of city people. For a while there was nothing other than track through a tunnel of scrub forest. Then things began to open up, distant farm houses with cows and fences and fields scattered with the remnants of the harvest. The sun came out and farther on the smells of melting morning frost, mud, and the unexpected gift of a warm day began drifting in behind the conductor’s calls to board. These were safe smells, simple smells, the kind that would be good for Grace, he thought. He had spent his life in the city, fighting for its soul, for its redemption, to save it from itself, to save it for his daughter. Had he been wrong? Were concrete and steel inherently evil? Was it impossible for people to be good and decent living on top of one another, in the falling-down tenements of the upper streets? The neighbourhood seemed to be sliding down the hill into the harbour to be sunk and done with once and for all. Maybe it was for the best. The stately mansions along the wide flat avenues of the city’s better neighbourhoods were in no danger of sinking. Were the owners holed up in them any better off? He began to wonder if God and the Devil had struck a bargain. Cities with their factory smoke and tavern music and lust for money would be home to Satan, the country with its grass underfoot and trees overhead and living by the season would always belong to God.

  The train slowed down on its way into a station. The scene from his window moved in slow time, like a child falling from a tree, an agony and fascination of detail. On a small rise a few hundred feet from the track a picket fence squared itself around a house and barn. The house, with its two sections of roof pitched high and proud over a two-storey L, stood off at an angle from the track, its shoulders square. It greeted the interloping moon faces behind the glass of the temporarily slow-moving future with a nod that was curt, yet not unfriendly or judgemental. The large double doors of the barn stood wide open like the mouth of some giant animal. From a distance looking into the sun, the contents of its belly remained a secret.

  The shingles, white for the house, red for the barn, were bright and freshly painted. The crops must have been good this year. In lean times the struggle to maintain land and family and some sense of pride would seem a burden, but not today. Beyond the pickets, corralled by pens and lines of split rail, animals gathered in small groups to feed and reassure themselves, each unto to their own space, all of one family nonetheless, sprung from the same ground, as tight and alike as the kernels on a new ear of corn. Beyond them the fields stretched and yawned. Tired from their summer labours, they made themselves ready for a winter slumber.

  By the time Baxter’s gaze followed back to where it started, a small party had gathered just inside the picket fence, four children and their mother, no space between them. The head of the household stood a step apart, not as a show of authority or distance. The slight angle toward them in his stance and glances in their direction drew the eye of the onlooker to his family which he seemed to be showing off with pride. The youngest looked to be five or six. There was likely no more than two years between him and his next older brother. The third child was a girl, ten maybe. From Baxter’s distance only her pigtails gave her away. Father and children all wore overalls tucked into high rubber boots. The oldest boy was nearly as tall as his mother, but his narrow shoulders and thin face said he was most likely in a growth spurt and still only a lad of twelve or thirteen. All of the children had their mother’s sandy hair. They fell off her shoulder tallest to shortest as if in military rank, as orderly and protective as the pickets in front of them.

  It was the mother who most caught Baxter’s eye and wonder. She would be at least twelve years older than Grace. Four children had not taken her figure. Her long hair was tied up, except for a few loose strands caught in the breeze and sunlight. She wiped at them in a carefree way that matched the smile that came to her face now and then. She looked to Baxter every bit a happy person, glad to be who and where she was, that there could be no better place than this. As if to confirm his thought, she reached out now for her husband with one hand and waved to the train with the other. Maybe she could make out his face and was forming her own thoughts of him and was waving as if to say, we are what you see, the soul of this place and we shall endure, you be careful on your way.

  He raised his own hand, just for a moment and gave back a smaller wave. He was not waving at the woman a few hundred feet away, he was waving to a vision he had conjured of his daughter, of a Grace in a possible future. If she was so determined to study medicine she could study animal medicine. If she was determined to be modern let her practice the science of farming, of crop rotation and irrigation and plant breeding and animal husbandry and maximum yield per acre. Here there was no waiting on a man’s return. Husband and wife worked side by side and with her share of responsibility she could find the balance of power she seemed to think was right.

  Cities were supposedly beacons leading mankind out of the darkness. Most days Halifax was just a racket where a few dollars pooled at the cost of so much waste and filth. People here knew better than to expect more from a place where all you produced with your time was someone else’s money. Grace could be well and happy here and he could rest easy knowing that.

  As the train pulled into the station, then rolled back up to speed and on ahead, the bright red and white shingles and the picket of smiling faces and sandy hair disappeared from view. He slumped back into his seat, crossed his arms, let his head fall and tried not to worry about his daughter, about what machinations Tolliver and Squire might be up to and whether or not Carmine had any useful information, and where to turn the investigation if he didn’t. Sometime later Baxter woke with a start. The conductor had given him a not too gentle nudge. Now the man was bellowing like a town crier, “Windsor! This stop, Windsor!”

  In the dream they had all gone to the circus. They walked the midway, he had gotten three rings on a peg. Grace ignored the dolls and picked a magnifying glass. He could not recall what else had happened, only the monsters. He was hot and closed in and finding it hard to breathe. He desperately needed some open space.

  The conductor was homely and gruff and too fat for his suit, but he was not a monster, he was real. Baxter stayed on the conductor’s heels until he had been led off the train.

  The door of a modest two-storey brick townhouse opened after the third knock. “Good morning, can I help you?”

  “Are you Mr. Carmine Mosher?” The post office was next to the train station. Baxter had gotten directions from there. He didn’t really have to ask the man in front of him who he was. He was a little taller and heavier than his younger brother, but he had the same big face with heavy jowls and large round nose that Wilfred Mosher had passed on to both his sons.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Baxter. I’m with the police in Halifax. I need to speak with you, may I come in?” Carmine turned and faded more than walked back into the dimmer light of the entranceway. As he turned back to face his visitor he said in a voice stirred by sadness, “I suppose your being here has something to do with Victor.”

  “Catherine sent word?” Baxter looked to a small side table, the telegram was hanging off the edge. The envelope it had come in was on the floor. They looked as if they had been dropped.

  “So how can I help you?” Carmine kept his eyes on Baxter. He’d seen the telegram once, that was enough.

  “I’m trying to find out who killed your brother.” Baxter remained as square to Carmine as his words.

  “And you think I may have had something to do with it?” A kind of defensiveness had been added to stiffen the batter of sadness. Carmine took a step forward. Baxter kept l
ooking him in the eye, and sensed more than saw Carmine clench his fists. Both men were still for a moment. Then Carmine turned. He bent over slowly and picked the envelope up from the floor. As he placed it on the table, he said, through a long rattling exhale in which Baxter could almost see vaporous images of Victor’s childhood and hear trailing echoes of brothers talking across the dark of a shared room and feel the squeezing of his own heart, “Victor and I were not as close as we used to be. We always got along, though. I loved my brother.”

  Baxter let out the dry empty breath he was holding. “I don’t think you killed your brother. I do think you can help me. Can we sit somewhere and talk?”

  Carmine wiped at his eyes and shook his head. He began patting himself down as he moved past Baxter to a coat stand by the door. “I’m late for work.”

  “I’m sure they would understand,” Baxter suggested. When Carmine continued his search, Baxter replaced the peaked cap he had taken off as he’d come through the door.

  “I need to keep busy. I work at the school, King’s Collegiate, it’s not far, you can walk with me if you like.” Carmine pointed out the front door with the house key he had finally found in one of his pockets.

  Baxter glanced at the grandfather clock that had been keeping an undertaker’s eye on things from the respectful distance of a small front parlour off the entranceway. It was only twenty after nine. He was better than he had expected for time. “Fine then,” he said, checking his hat in a mirror by the parlour door. He waited on the sidewalk as Carmine put the key in his pocket and closed the door without locking it. Baxter pretended he hadn’t imagined the clock dressed in a dark suit with sleeves that ended in mortician hands, hands washed colourless with disinfectant soap, hands that still left a whiff of corpse on everything they touched.