by David Hood
He turned and kept walking, in a hurry now, not to get to his own door, just away from Clarke’s. The warmth of the day had not yet faded, and he prayed it would quickly melt the icy shiver at his back. As the images of his father and Victor Mosher began to fade, new ones took their place. The grinning rats behind the Royal Hotel, the cherry pie in Simon Perry’s split lip, and William Paul, a friend bent into a spy. He was done with the rats and Perry’s lip. He wasn’t finished with William. He had left Baxter’s office with instructions to return first thing next morning with whatever intelligence had been gathered. He would speak to William at the hotel. He would not bring this into the house. He didn’t want to lose William. And he was tired of being between Baxter and Mackay. The chief inspector’s ambitions were tolerable from a distance. Unfortunately Mackay’s penchants kept pushing him up against them. Each of them was a self-appointed saviour. Each of them was trying to hide it. Both of them were failing miserably and making those about them miserable in the process, most of all Kenny Squire.
The sound of his name seemed so real. He braced himself against some new horror.
“Mr. Squire, is that you?” All his demons knew him very well; pretending not to know him must be part of some new game. He was standing in front of his door. How long had he been there, afraid to go inside?
“Mr. Squire.” The voice knew him now, the demons were done playing. He felt a tug at his sleeve and he nearly jumped across the street.
“I’m so very sorry, are you all right?” Her voice was caught between apology and bursting into laughter.
Squire turned. Just seconds before he had felt as though he would be crushed into the mud by the weight of sadness. Suddenly there was hope, a sun rising before his eyes as the western sky faded behind him. Was this a trick or was she really there? If he could just speak, maybe she would answer and he would know he was among the sane and not following in his father’s footsteps.
“Miss Murray. What are you…I mean, how nice…Forgive me, it’s been a very long day.”
She hid her smile behind a hand to save him as best she could. That was as far as it went. Her eyes sparkled and her shoulders shook. Squire had to force himself to prevent his eyes from falling to her bosom. “Well, it’s over now,” she said lightly and patted him on the arm. “Do you know this building?” She nodded toward the door. “I hear there’s a room for rent.” He stepped back so she could see the sign. “Ah, so it’s true.”
“It’s a tough spot,” he said, looking to get even. “I’m here all the time.”
“Raids, you mean?” She looked the building over as she spoke, as if it might suddenly reveal its true colours.
He waited for a moment, let her imagination run on a bit further. Then he held up a key. “Would you care to be introduced?”
He got the look of mild pique mixed with excitement that he’d hoped for. “You live here?”
“No,” he said as he turned the key and pushed the door. “I’m studying to be a thief. I’m hoping you’ll help me look for valuables.”
“I’ll not let this go,” she said with a curt nod, and a look that was all play. “And yes, thank you very much, I will have a look.” He followed her inside, the heartbeat in his ears silencing the demons, at least for now.
The walk away from the Union Bank came in the fading light of a day long enough to have started a week ago. He wanted to feel tired again, go home, let Jane take care of him. He couldn’t. He was too angry now. Napoleon Fish. He wasn’t leading anyone to destruction, he was trying to lead them away from it. He squeezed his fists in anger and he felt a sting in his palm from where he had broken the skin the night before. He looked at it now, a dot of redness, a bloodless pilot hole. If he had the knife now he could score the other hand and then his feet, markers for the nailers, the likes of Saunders. His legs had started towards home on instinct. He was at the corner of Sackville Street. He watched a lamplighter in the block ahead angle the ladder and make his next climb. He could follow the lanterns home to his wife and daughter. He turned and went the other way.
He sat for some time, staring from inertia into the small pool of desk light. He watched reports and other papers drift like dry leaves on a lake. In the background he could hear the building creak and crack as the heat of the day was lost to the cool of night. Now and then he thought he heard the steps or voices of other hangers-on, overwhelmed with work or hiding within it. Now he was sitting in a chair by the shore. Watching the sun dance on the water and smelling the warm salt air. He looked down and found a book in his hands and he began to read. It was a story of adventure, familiar, though he did not recognize any of the characters. The more he read the more the pages faded until all the words were gone. Still he turned the pages and it seemed the book would never end its silence. Now he could hear a voice calling to him. He came to the edge of a forest. There was a flash of skin or the blink of an eye through the leaves and branches. The voice was young, then older, then sad, then far away. He paced along the edge of the trees where the grass was high and scratched his legs. The forest threw him back when he tried to enter. He went off in search of fire. When he returned there was only desert and he was alone in the torch light.
As Baxter passed from one fitful dream to the next the building settled into silence. The rest of the hangers-on from offices above slipped out one by one. The night sergeant dozed behind his own desk unaware that he was not alone. And in the wastebasket beside her father’s desk lay Grace’s application to medical school, crumpled in a ball.
Wednesday
He crept downstairs in a nightshirt and slippers, navigating by cracks of dull grey light. The house was damp and cold. He knew before he pulled back the first curtain that the string of sunny days had broken. He opened Jane’s sewing room, then his repair shop. He stubbed a toe trying to step around the stools in front of the workbench. Hopping on one foot, he noticed an old housecoat hanging behind the door. He tied the belt and limped into the kitchen.
The curtains were already drawn. There was a low fire in the stove. Smells of food hung in the air. He knew a plate waited for him in the warmer and the thought of having it made him feel like a thief. Jane could have never done anything so wrong that she deserved him.
He built up the fire a little and put water on for tea. It looked like an all-day rain, quiet even on a tin roof, a rain you wouldn’t mind walking through. The backyard was doused. He’d missed his chance to do any work. It might be a while before he got another. An all-day rain could go on for a week in Halifax. Rain would soon be snow.
He made tea and said grace and vowed quietly that he would be gracious at the home of his mother-in-law on Saturday. He could do that much. He uncovered his plate and laid the tea towel in his lap. He hadn’t seen yesterday’s papers. The Evening Chronicle was laid out flat on the table. It looked fresh. Jane may not have read it. Grace most likely had, this one or a copy she had taken to her room.
The front page was all war news. The list of volunteers had grown, more families proud and anxious. Pages two and three were more of business and politics at home and far away. Amidst the local gossip on page five there was an announcement regarding services for the city’s fallen alderman, Thursday 10 a.m. at Saint Matthews. A little farther down there was a short piece on crime in the city. “Are decent people safe?” the author wanted to know. “What is to become of us, a city of shut-ins? Venturing out for work and provisions, then early nights broken by nervous peeks under the bed?”
Baxter blew on his tea. He could feel the waters rising. The funeral service would be packed, the latecomers forced to gather round the open doors and down the steps into the street. When all was ready, the pastor would take his place before the throng and official mourning for Victor Mosher would commence. There would be scriptures read, moments recalled, and the air made so thick with the weight of loss it would become almost impossible to breathe. Heads would bow and eyes would close and
everyone would see Catherine all in black and stoic, the children neat in line beside her, chins up, and Carmine looking so much like his brother the eyes would snap back open expecting to find things right after all, it was only a bad dream. Then there would be the slow filing out and the shuffling parade of agony. Thankfully it would be short, just down a ways and across the street. Latecomers would now be early, responsible to make room at graveside for the family. With the frost now in the ground, if the air was just warm enough it would appear as though smoke were rising up from flames below and everyone would try to find some other place to look, or fumble with the marbles of small talk. Finally all places would be taken, the last words said, and the box lowered on its ropes away. The shuffle would go back through the cemetery gates, out in all directions back into regular clothes. The shovels would be taken from their hiding place and the ground made even once again.
The papers would see the troops off to war. Then they would be out for blood. If there was no killer to be sacrificed, the mayor and the chief would be quick to make an offering of their chief inspector. The eggs had turned to rubber. His tea had gone tepid. He moved off in a parade of one upstairs to get dressed, his dishes laid out carefully on the tea towel by the sink.
Before getting back into bed Jane had hung a fresh uniform on the valet. He dressed as quietly as he could, feeling for buttons and arm holes in the half light. He kept himself turned away like a paramour on the skate or as if perhaps the hurricane gathering in his head might travel with his gaze, cloud in the air over the bed and storm away its peace.
At the bottom landing, he stood fumbling with his tunic, his shoes still in the other hand. The house had remained quiet on his way back down the stairs. Her voice took him by surprise and a shoe landed on a sock foot.
“Oh…Good morning, Father,” she said, looking at him only briefly. “I can’t remember the last time you were the first one up making breakfast.” He managed a faint smile. She came a little farther down the hallway. “Remember how you used to make me scrambled eggs and sweet milk tea, then hold my hand to school.”
He nodded and stole a glance up the stairs. It was dark beneath their bedroom door, and Baxter remembered why he had been the one to walk Grace to school. “You used to think lying in was the same as sleeping in,” he said. Then neither of them said anything as people often do in momentary thoughts of the departed. He sat focusing on the tying of a shoe as if it were complex math. “It wasn’t me really,” he said without looking up.
“Pardon?”
“In the kitchen…It wasn’t me. Mother was up, then went back to bed.”
“Oh…Has there been a break in the case?”
“I’m working with a new man. He’s been more help than I expected. We’re meeting this morning with a person who may shed some light on things.”
“You’ve managed to find some evidence?”
He had drawn the laces up too tightly. He untied his shoes and wiggled his toes, then started over. “We know Victor had some money problems. We know where he was the night he died…And we…we’re confident this won’t take much longer.” He spoke with trepidation and she followed his words with furtive glances. The house creaked and groaned from the dampness in the air. Finished with his shoes, he reached for the newel post and stood.
“Have you discovered a motive?” she asked. She stood near the door to the sewing room, close enough to speak quietly, not close enough to make him feel cornered. She had dressed before coming down.
He wondered where she might be going. “We don’t have all the details, though I suspect it has to do with money.” He was saying more than he normally would about such things.
“It wasn’t a crime of passion.” It was a statement, not a question, very forward and not about his case at all.
“Are you suggesting I should take passion into account?”
“Perhaps ambition would be more accurate…or service.”
“I would rather not be forced to consider the matter at all.”
“I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t mean to keep you.” Grace turned away. The ticking of a clock exaggerated the silence. For the next few minutes it seemed to Baxter that time ceased to flow. Moments were lost or thrown away. Only random images remained as if turned from a deck of cards. They landed in silence, though not without the jolt of a nightmare’s waking scene. He saw Grace silhouetted against the light from the kitchen, in mid-stride halfway down the hall, her arms stiff at her sides. He saw his large limestone hands carved into the dim light, reaching for his hat and coat. Outside, looking back at the house from the shelter of his umbrella, he could see that the rain had darkened the spaces between the shingles, making them stand out like the bright shiny teeth in the smile of a killer.
He walked slowly in step with the rain that seemed torn between giving up all together and becoming something stronger. There were other umbrellas and morning papers over hats moving along the sidewalks, on their way to offices and shops that would not open until their owners arrived and had time to settle in. He thought of waiting in his own office and then dismissed the idea. Keeping still behind a desk would take more energy than he could afford. He needed to pace himself.
It was just before eight when an irresistible urge opened Ellen’s eyes. It took her a few seconds to realize where she was. The hay poking her in the face and the smell of horse said she was most likely in some livery stable. An empty bottle lay beside her. Had she shared it with someone? She couldn’t think past the weight of her head and the pressure on her bladder. Her left eye was twitching. She struggled to her feet and groped along the half wall. In the twilight far below the grimy windows near the roof she was all but blind. The eye that wasn’t twitching was swollen half shut. She must have had company at some point. She fumbled with the latch on the stall then pushed through a side door. In the better light she recognized the alley between O’Brien’s and the vacant shop next door. She flapped her arms out of the heavy coat and draped it over a shoulder. She worked her petticoat down and her dress up into a bunch at her waist. She felt for the barn wall behind her then lowered herself down.
Baxter had made the turn around Saint Mary’s and was now coming up Albemarle Street. The rain had stopped. Most everyone who needed to be at work early had arrived. It wasn’t time yet for school or shoppers or peddlers’ carts. The city was quiet in between. Ellen’s water drilled into the mud. The alley rolled itself into a trumpet and its mouth became the shore of a raging river. Baxter heard and then he saw. If Ellen heard or saw she paid no mind.
Part of him wanted to ignore her, only a small part. He spoke looking down the street, as if he were keeping watch rather than trying not to see any more than he already had. “Must you be so vulgar? Could you not find a proper place to do that?”
Ellen didn’t startle at the bark of his voice, or stop. Speaking to the ground in front of her boots she said in a voice flat with abject certainty, “The horses don’t mind.”
Baxter huffed at the logic. Typical, he thought, of such a woman, if she could be called that. Of course she would be first concerned with the sensibility of beasts. “I’m sure they don’t, but decent people do. Put yourself together and go home, before I throw you in a cell.”
Ellen had finished her business but stayed as she was. She seemed to be thinking or perhaps her mind had just gone blank and her body would remain frozen until she remembered she could move. Slowly she turned her head. Though he was still looking away he could see. She knew this and so she waited until finally Baxter looked down the alley and met her eye. She smiled her yellow broken smile and through it said, “Well then, before we go could I borrow your handkerchief?”
She enjoyed watching his face go dull white and hard like bacon fat cooling in the pan. Had she been closer she might have picked up a scent, not the hickory of a smoke house. This was a more acrid and bitter smell, a smouldering conceit. As much as he was certain she deserved i
t, he would not curse her, would not give her that satisfaction. He went on down the street, quickly now. A husky, choking, coughing laughter grew as it tumbled down the alley megaphone and rolled around in the street behind him, without a place to call its own and not one bit lost or at all ashamed.
Baxter checked his watch. The Eastern Trust Company was half a dozen blocks down towards the water. After the second block his pace slowed again. Ellen’s unsightliness had at least cleared his thoughts of Grace and raised his blood. He began to focus on the task at hand.
The Eastern Trust Company was in a line of stone buildings that began at the corner of Bedford Row and Cheapside, across from the post office and customs house. The main entrance to number sixty was open. Inside the main lobby was a sombre horseshoe of frosted glass doors, shiny metal name plates with bold black letters and high wainscoting in a stately dark wood. Baxter sensed movement behind the glass. The people here would be gently wrapped in silk and linen and ultra-fine merino wool. They would be battling against the evils of equality and benevolence. They would be following the divine wisdom of the ledger. The sanctuary of the Eastern Trust Company was two doors down on the left. For a moment he was halted by the fears of an outsider, then in the bottom of his vision he caught a glimpse of the brass buttons on his tunic and he moved forward.