Читать книгу Quarrel with the Foe - Mel Bradshaw - Страница 7

Before leaving the editor’s private office, I picked up his telephone and asked for an outside line. When I rang Bell and gave them my badge number, they were able to confirm one call from a public booth on the west side of Sheppard Street to the Broadview Avenue home of subscriber I. A. MacAllister, which call commenced at 1:44 a.m. and lasted less than a minute. Also a call at 1:51 of similar duration from MacAllister’s residence to the Danforth Dollar Taxi Service. As they had informed me often enough before, the phone company had no record of the content of these conversations or the identity of the parties involved. I always asked, ever hopeful as well as fearful about the progress of snooping.

My next call was to Danforth Dollar Taxi. They claimed to have received a request for a car at 1:51 from a man calling himself Ivan MacAllister. Driver Tony Bellotto promptly proceeded from the company depot at Danforth and Pape to 786 Broadview Avenue and at 2:01 picked up a fare identifying himself as Ivan MacAllister. Said fare was let off at 96 Adelaide Street West at 2:14.

Sounded like speeding, but let that go.

Yet another phone call revealed Morris Watt to be at the office rather than at home, so I deferred the pleasure of a visit to Glen Road. From the Examiner Building up to 96 Adelaide West was too short a stroll to allow for heavy-duty thinking. Instead, I gawked like any rube at all the construction. Since well before the war, Toronto had been putting up skyscrapers with as many as twelve or fifteen floors, but even downtown these towers were still the exception. Four storeys was about as high as you could go without attracting attention or requiring an elevator. Watt’s building had six.

It was on the north side of the street, and the patch of pavement where Digby Watt had fallen was bathed in sunshine. No blood had spilled onto the concrete. There was nothing to mark the spot. The sight of brogues and oxfords, pumps and workboots tramping over it held me a moment, fascinated. It put me in mind of a phrase beloved of military chaplains, something about this being the way worldly glory passes. Pedestrian traffic was certainly picking up as the City Hall clock struck noon. Men in suits were on the march from their offices to their clubs, while their secretaries trotted off to the sandwich shops to pick up something they could take back to their desks. A couple of bank branches and a shoe repair were also pulling in their share of lunch-hour traffic. It would be a lonely street at night, though. No theatres or cinemas, no houses or apartments. No late night cafés. If you shot someone here after midnight with a modest-sized gun, you wouldn’t even need a silencer.

I stepped briefly around the corner of the building onto Sheppard Street to have a look at the phone from which someone had called Ivan’s apartment at 1:44. There was nothing much to see, just an ordinary wooden phone booth with a black coin-phone inside. I poked around the gum wrappers on the floor to see if our caller might have left something personal behind—a hand-written note would have been swell—but there was nothing doing. It was too late to have the handset dusted for fingerprints. It had been too late at 2:45 a.m., the moment the constable had used this phone to call in the medical examiner instead of taking the two dozen extra steps to the nearest police call box. I reminded myself that constables weren’t trained or paid enough to worry about such things. But why had there been no detective on the scene?

I tightened my necktie and went back to Adelaide Street and in through the double brass doors of number 96.

From the directory in the lobby, it was clear to any reader of the financial pages that every occupant had something to do with the Watt business empire, yet neither the building itself nor any of the individual concerns bore his name. Atkins Hardware headed the list, followed by Beaconsfield Power, Canada Ski and Snowshoe, and so down through the alphabet. “P” was represented by Peerless Kitchen Appliances. Unlike the Examiner Building, 96 Adelaide had no concierge or commissionaire to make enquiries of, and I was momentarily at a loss as to how to find my man Morris. If I had to guess, I thought I’d take a chance on Dominion Consolidated Holdings, which had a certain managerial ring. Suite 402.

When the elevator came down and deposited another clutch of lunch-goers in the lobby, the operator was able to confirm my choice. He was a man of about my age with black hair slicked straight back like a jazz-band player and a right arm that ended above the elbow. I thought it would have been more convenient for him to turn about, but he plainly preferred not to unsettle his passengers by staring at them and reached across his body with his left hand to operate the controls. On arrival at the fourth floor, I did not get out right away.

“Were you on duty last night when Mr. Digby Watt left the building?”

Turning, the operator saw the police identification I was holding up. “I leave at six, sir, and come back on at eight in the morning.”

“How many times in a normal week would he stay later than six?”

“He was always in before I got here and after I left. The only time I’d see him would be when he had an outside appointment during the day.”

I saw the car was rated for a maximum of twelve passengers.

“Would you,” I asked, “always notice when he rode with your?”

“Notice?” The man’s grin showed a mouthful of tobacco-stained teeth. “He never rode with me without speaking to me, no matter who he was with. And it wasn’t just the ‘How are you, Harold?’ you get from people who couldn’t care less. Usually, he’d ask me about the hockey game, but if we were alone in the car he might try to persuade me to let him fit me out with some new artificial arm he’d heard about. I always told him I’d rather not, unless he thought a war amputee made people uncomfortable and was bad for business. ‘Not a bit of it,’ he’d say. ‘Harold, you did the Empire proud in France, and I don’t care who knows it.’ ”

The car was being summoned to the sixth floor.

“You’ll miss him, Harold,” I said.

The operator’s mouth tightened. “I thought we were through having good men shot. Hope you get the S.O.B. that did it.”

The fourth-floor receptionist, a grey-haired woman in pince-nez spectacles, sat behind a desk loaded with communication equipment, including a wax-cylinder Dictaphone and an intercom of the speaker and mike variety. I was surprised when instead of using the latter to announce my arrival she rose from her place, puffing a little as if her corset were laced too tight.

She showed me into a well-equipped office of modest dimensions and austere decor. Mushroom-grey would have been too garish a description of the wall colour. The window faced north and was covered by a Venetian blind, closed plainly more for privacy than shade. A second door stood open, revealing an office slightly larger and even less excitingly furnished.

The desk immediately before me was in fact a rather handsome cherrywood, and something told me I wouldn’t be plunking my derrière on its polished surface. On the far side of it, a thirtyish man with dark wavy hair looked up from a pile of telegrams, presumably of condolence. As his baby-blue eyes registered my presence, he passed his hand over the lower part of his face in a reflexive gesture of pain, then rose with a quite creditable smile of welcome.

“Morris Watt,” he said, coming round the desk and shaking my hand. “And you’ll be Detective Sergeant Shenstone. Please sit down.”

The armchair indicated was comfortable, but of the sort you’d find at the head of a dining room table. I was green enough in the ways of plutocrats to be expecting something plusher, more like the bloated bum rests of a hotel lounge or C.P.R. parlour car. While settling in, I noticed in a yellow metal frame on a side wall a recent studio photograph of Morris’s late father; he was smiling slightly but already in life somewhat sepulchral on account of the almost bald head and the dark skin under dark, deep-set eyes. I suspected that even a picture of Digby taken at Morris’s current age would show the son to be the handsomer of the two. The planes of Morris’s face came together in the way sculptors seemed to find congenial when portraying an idealized volunteer to adorn a war memorial. The vertical depression running from his nose to the middle of his upper lip was particularly pronounced in a way that suggested seriousness of character.

“How can I help you, Mr. Shenstone?” Morris had pushed his own chair back from his interrupted reading and was now sitting with his hands folded on his crossed legs. He looked neither nervous nor, despite his prompt, impatient. I was having some difficulty hearing in my mind’s ear the distraught ejaculations Ivan MacAllister had reported.

“Was it your father’s custom to work late here at the office?”

“Yes. Much more so since my mother’s death. That was two years ago now.”

“And did you usually stay and work with him?”

“Not every night. He was aware that, unlike him, I had a wife waiting up for me. But I was always with him when he intended to stay past eleven p.m. Then he felt it would be too late to ask Curtis to pick him up.”

“His chauffeur?”

“Oh, yes. Excuse me.”

“He never drove himself?”

“He didn’t drive, no.” Morris smiled. “Though Curtis did offer to teach him.”

“So on the nights when he was staying past eleven, where did you park the car?”

“Braddock’s Garage on Pearl Street. Do you know it?”

“Just west of York.” I remembered a one-storey building accommodating an automobile livery and repair service. Parking by the day or the month was available on the flat roof. “The car was out of doors then?”

“Yes, but at least it was off the street.”

“The traffic police approve of that,” I assured him. “On the nights the car was parked at Braddock’s, Mr. Watt, did your father usually accompany you from the office to the garage when it was time to go home?”

“If he had, none of this would have happened!” Morris exclaimed peevishly.

Now it starts, I thought. This crying over spilt milk was presumably what Ivan had heard a lot of the night before.

“You can’t be sure of that, sir,” I said. “In any case, it was your father’s practice to wait on the sidewalk while you got the car. Correct?”

“In winter or if it was raining, he might wait inside the foyer till he saw me pull up. But in clement weather—”

“He waited outside,” I supplied. “How long did it take you from the moment you left him till the moment you returned with the car?”

“Never longer than five minutes. I can answer that with certainty because I often timed myself. Five minutes was the maximum until last night. Then last night the car . . . What a nightmare!”

“The car wouldn’t start?”

“It started all right, but before I got it down the ramp and out onto the street, at the first turn in fact, the steering gear failed. I knew right away that it would take some time to repair and that I had no hope of finding a mechanic between two and three in the morning. The thing to do was to call a cab and get my father home. So I made for a public telephone.”

“There was no one downstairs in the garage, no night watchman?”

“No. The only security at night is provided by a padlocked chain across the ramp. People who rent parking space by the month are given a key.”

“Which phone did you use, the one at Adelaide and Sheppard?”

“I knew the closest booth was just south of the garage, on King, so that’s where I went, even though it took me farther afield. That was wrong. I should have gone back and told my father first. Then maybe . . .”

“You might only have got yourself shot too, sir. Did you in fact call a cab?”

“Yes, to meet me at 96 Adelaide West. And then I hurried back there.”

“Last night the weather was good, so I presume you had left your father standing on the sidewalk.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And do you know what time it was when you left him to get the car?”

“Not precisely. It must have been about two o’clock.”

“Two?” Here was a surprise. If Ivan and Morris were both telling the truth, the journalist had been tipped off about the murder at least fifteen minutes before it happened. “Are you sure, Mr. Watt?”

“It must have been two. I had glanced at my watch at twenty to, and at that time we were still working on the annual report. I’d guess it took us twenty minutes from then to put away our papers and get downstairs.”

“How long would you say it was then from the time you left your father until the time when you got back to the front entrance of the office building?”

“I checked my watch while phoning Platinum Taxi. It was eleven minutes past two then. I’d say I got back to where I’d left my father at two fifteen or a little later.”

Morris used a fine old pocket watch rather than a wrist model. As I had with Ivan MacAllister, I checked the time currently indicated and got the owner’s assurance that it hadn’t been reset since the night before. My watch was running just under two minutes faster. I had no idea yet how crucial these stray minutes would turn out to be, but I was taking phone company time, which agreed with Danforth Dollar Taxi time, as the most reliable. Compared to that standard, Ivan’s Bulova was a minute fast, my Waterbury a minute slow, and bringing up the rear at three minutes slow was Morris Watt’s Heuer—which I noticed was engraved with his father’s name: To our dear son Digby on his 21st birthday. A hand-me-down, in short.

“Mr. Watt,” it occurred to me to ask, “what is your position at Dominion Consolidated Holdings?”

A new look of pain clouded the other man’s face.

“I was being trained. You might say my position was ‘the boss’s son.’ ”

“And how long was this training period?”

“Until my father thought I was ready for a more formal place in one of his concerns. Yesterday, he said he thought he’d have a place for me by September.”

“Had he ever said something like that before, named a month?”

“Yes, but then he took his companies public, and all the work involved caused delays. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t pushed ahead too fast only to fall on my face. I had to be able to go into a position and earn respect on my own, not just be tolerated because of my name.”

This was gilding your fetters with a vengeance. In Morris’s place, I’d have done a bunk for Australia—if only to keep from throttling dear old dad.

“And just when did this training position begin, Mr. Watt?” I asked.

“When I got discharged from the army in July 1919.”

“A long apprenticeship.” It wasn’t a question.

“Does this have a bearing on your investigation, sergeant?”

I shrugged. My mouth was dry, and the sun was now well over the yard-arm. I debated with myself whether Morris might have a bottle somewhere for the entertainment of visitors. Digby Watt had been an unwavering prohibitionist. Was there enough rebel spirit or enough cunning in the son to conceal a rum ration under the old man’s nose?

“Let’s go back to last night. You returned to the entrance of 96 Adelaide West about two fifteen. What did you see there?”

“It was awful. My father was on his back on the sidewalk, and another man was crouching over him. I asked what had happened. He said, ‘Someone’s bumped off Digby Watt.’ ”

“His exact words?”

“Yes, ‘bumped off’.”

“And how did you react?”

“I was upset, naturally. I couldn’t tell you exactly what I said. I do recall his suggesting one of us call the police. I asked him to do it as I didn’t want to leave my father’s side.”

“Can you describe this man?”

“Tall, thin, with a moustache. Neither dark nor fair. He wore slacks and a windbreaker. He had a rucksack on the ground beside him. He looked like he might have been on his way out of town for a spot of hiking or fishing, but I gather he’s a journalist. He gave me this card.” Morris took his billfold from an inside jacket pocket and from it extracted Ivan MacAllister’s card.

“I don’t need that right now,” I said after looking it over. “But could you hang on to it, please. What was in this rucksack?”

“I didn’t see. Is it important?”

“Did you see a gun anywhere?”

“Definitely not.”

“While he was away phoning, were you alone with your father?”

“Yes, the street was quite deserted. There may have been a car drive by, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

“What did you do during that period?”

“Naturally, I checked first to see if there had been a mistake, to see if my father might still be alive. That is, I checked for a pulse.”

“And . . .?”

“None. It still seems incredible. Gunned down in the streets, as if by rumrunners—and right outside his own office.”

“Apart from checking for a pulse, did you touch your father’s clothes or body?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry to have to raise this subject,” I said. And I was sorry. Morris seemed such a gentle soul. “When you first saw your father lying on the sidewalk, was his fly open?”

Morris wiped his nose, and his voice became quieter. “Believe it or not, sergeant, I didn’t see. It was only when the other man came back and drew my attention to what had been done . . . there . . . that I noticed.”

“And what exactly did you notice?”

“That my father’s member was outside his trousers. At that point, I took off my topcoat and covered him up with it until the police came and asked me to remove it.”

“Ah.” I cleared my throat. “Can you think of any explanation for your father’s state of undress?”

Morris shook his head miserably.

“Forgive my asking, but might he have been about to relieve himself?”

“Good God, sergeant. I wouldn’t want your job on any terms—not if you have to ask questions like that. The last place he would have relieved himself, even in an emergency, would have been against his own front door. He was proud of this building and all the businesses he conducted from here.”

I didn’t think I could shock him more, so I pressed on. “Was he sexually active?”

“A widower of my father’s age?”

“Look here, Mr. Watt, either your father exposed himself or someone interfered with him. I can’t ignore that. His condition may tell us something about the motive for the murder. I ask you again: did your father have a sex life at the time of his death?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Since he was widowed?”

“I don’t know.”

“You sound less sure. Have you had any suspicions?”

“Sergeant, I refuse to speculate further, and if you wish this conversation to continue, it will have to be on other topics.”

I wondered if he had ever used the words “I refuse” with his father. I helped myself to a couple of mints wrapped in cellophane from a dish on his desk and changed course.

“Let’s go back to last night,” I said. “When did your cab arrive?”

“I didn’t notice the time, but it was just before the constable went to phone the doctor. I asked the driver to wait. I wanted to stay at the scene until a proper medical man had pronounced my father dead. But when the constable got back from phoning, he convinced me that that was already beyond question.” Morris made a visible effort to pull himself together and spoke the next words briskly. “I saw I could do nothing more there, so I went home. That must have been shortly before three, say five minutes of.”

It struck me that Morris’s cab had been a long time coming. He had phoned at 2:09, and the car had pulled up just before 2:45, which was when the constable said he had called for the medical examiner. But then I seemed to remember Platinum was an uptown outfit, handy to the mansions of Rosedale but with no stand in the Bay-Adelaide neighbourhood.

“To your knowledge,” I said, moving on, “had your father received any threats?”

“No.”

“Can you think of anyone that might have killed him?”

“Absolutely not. He didn’t move in that kind of world.”

The first hint of snobbery—but more than I could pass over in silence.

“We all live in the same world, Mr. Watt,” I said. “Like it or not, your father was gunned down. Who would that have made happy?”

“No one,” Morris sighed. “He was a great philanthropist. In the past five years, he gave away more money than he took home.”

“Business rivals?” I suggested. “Former partners or employees?”

“His rivals weren’t his enemies. They knew his success was due to long hours of hard work, and they respected him for it. And for all the hard work, he always was good-humoured and generous towards the people he worked with. You can ask anyone.”

“What about labour disruptions?”

“He treated his workers well. The proof of that is that out of a work force of over eighteen thousand, only one plant felt it necessary to have a union.”

“That would be at Canada Ski and Snowshoe,” I recalled. “There was a strike there two years ago. Some of the plant machinery was destroyed.”

“Communist organizers had turned the workers’ heads. In two and a half weeks, the men were back making sporting goods, and new local leadership had been voted in.”

“What was the name of the strike leader?”

“It was . . . No, I’d better not guess, but I’ll look it up and send it to you if you think it’s important.”

“Could be,” I said. “Was your father involved with rumrunners in any way?”

“None. That’s an absurd question—frankly, uncalled-for.”

“You’re the one who mentioned rumrunners. Why was that?”

“Just because of the shootouts on the street you hear about. There was one in Alberta not many years ago.”

I searched my memory. “The town of Coleman, in 1922, but that was a policeman they killed. His relevance to the liquor trade was obvious. What was your father’s? How outspoken was he on the temperance issue?”

“He gave one or two addresses on the subject. Then again, I don’t see why that should make him enemies: without prohibitionists, there could be no rumrunners.”

“True, sir, but his advocating stricter enforcement of liquor laws could have caused them inconvenience.”

“Well, as I believe he realized to his sorrow, my father—for all his business success—didn’t have that much influence with the law enforcers.”

“Someone must have benefited from Digby Watt’s death,” I observed. “Was he engaged to be married?”

“To Olive? No. No, he enjoyed spending time with her, but I don’t believe he was interested in remarrying.”

“If he had married Olive,” I asked, nudging the limits, “do you think the marriage would have been consummated?”

“I don’t think he would have married Olive Teddington.”

“Or anyone else?”

“There was no one else.”

“Are you aware of the provisions of your father’s will?”

“About that, I suggest you speak to his lawyer.” Morris took a card from his desk drawer and wrote from memory. “Here are his particulars.”

I didn’t press him, as the work day already promised to be long enough. I could get the acting detective to contact the lawyer.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

Morris seemed composed enough to make it safe to return to the subject of the broken-down car. I asked where it could be found at this moment.

“Still on the roof of Braddock’s Garage. Curtis offered to come down and repair it this morning, but I said I preferred him to wait until I knew whether you people wanted to look it over. I asked Cliff Braddock to leave it where it was and make sure it wasn’t disturbed.”

“Exactly right. Could you show me?”

Morris pulled a black-covered agenda towards him across the cherrywood and looked at a page marked by an elastic band.

“Yes,” he said. “I can do that.”

When we stood, I noticed for the first time a loose wire lying on the surface of the desk and ending where one would have expected Morris’s intercom to be. I picked up the unattached wire.

“In for repairs?” I asked.

He nodded. “I just discovered yesterday that when I connect with the reception desk, the switch sometimes sticks in the on position. Don’t know how long it’s been like that. I hope they fix it soon, though. It’s hard on Miss Burgess having always to run in here instead of buzzing.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest he move into his father’s office, but perhaps it was too soon for so bold a move.

As we passed through the fourth-floor reception area, Morris told the woman with the pince-nez that he would be out of the office for half an hour to an hour.

“Would you advise Mr. Tremblay of Beaconsfield Power I’ll see him this afternoon.”

“He’s catching the noon train back to Montreal, Mr. Morris. It would be better if you saw him now.”

“Please ask him to take the four-thirty train instead, Miss Burgess. Perhaps you’d be good enough to phone Union Station and get his ticket changed.”

“Mr. Watt would not have asked him to inconvenience himself that way,” she said.

“I’m the only Mr. Watt there is at present, Miss Burgess. Thank you.”

Morris’s jaw was set during the ride down on the elevator; he did not respond to Harold’s greeting.