Читать книгу Quarrel with the Foe - Mel Bradshaw - Страница 9

Through the front window of the approaching Bay Street tram, I recognized the driver’s mug, so I stuck my head around the partition into the cockpit once I’d hauled myself aboard.

“Tricky steering here, Captain,” I cautioned as the wide double-truck car jogged north through the Queen Street intersection past a similar tub jogging south. The T.T.C. had actually had to dig up the tracks on all the major routes and move them farther apart to permit these new streetcars to pass each other. “Watch you don’t scrape his paint.”

“You again!” The driver managed simultaneously to shoot me a look of mock disgust and ring his bell at a pedestrian apparently bent on becoming Toronto’s tenth traffic fatality of the year. “How long do you have to work at that cop shop of yours before they let you have a car?”

“Ah, Fred, I’ve no place to keep a car.”

It was a good question, though, and I continued trying to answer it once I’d moved back to give the conductor my fare and fold myself into an empty space on one of the longitudinal, wood-slat benches. Not only was the department not making an automobile available, but they steadfastly refused to reimburse detectives for cab fare. So after I’d finished bouncing up Bay Street, I could look forward to a transfer onto the Bloor car eastbound as far as Sherbourne Street and a long walk north. Possibly a wet one, as afternoon had brought back the clouds. This was no style in which to investigate the murder of a bigwig.

Then inspiration struck. I ignored the stop at Bloor and continued up Bay to Davenport, where I dropped in at the city’s mounted police unit. I wasn’t about to trade my kingdom for a horse, but I’d heard that some well-ridden motorcycles headed for the junk yard were temporarily stored in the back of the stables. With the help of a bored groom, I picked out the most roadworthy, stirred it into sputtering life and set it hurtling down Rosedale Valley Road with me on its back.

It’s not hard to get lost in Rosedale, but there is one straight street—the one where the Watts lived. This mazelike luxury suburb with its ravine lots was dreamed up in the nineteenth century, but not developed till the twentieth when cars made it get-at-able and, just as important, when the elite no longer had the unlimited Victorian appetite for parading their wealth. They could no longer be as sure as their forefathers that folks would respect riches as a sign of divine favour—rather than resent them as evidence of social injustice. So while you might want it known you lived somewhere in Rosedale, that didn’t necessarily mean you wanted your house easily found.

In this regard as in others, Digby Watt had seemed to straddle the centuries—not enough of an exhibitionist to live downtown on Queen’s Park Crescent, but far from a shrinking violet.

His palatial house on Glen Road had a curving drive and a porte-cochère. I parked the decrepit Harley-Davidson smack in front of the front door to show I wasn’t intimidated by the place, but I did comb my hair and pop a peppermint in my mouth to camouflage the smell of the beer I’d had for lunch—all of which was just as well, because the freckled housemaid who answered my knock was kitted out in a fresh grey uniform whose pressed creases would have put a guards regiment to shame.

Despite her business-as-usual smartness, there was no hiding that her eyes were red from crying. I got her to say that her name was Nita and that she had been in service with the Watts for four years, since she was sixteen.

The ladies of the household were drinking tea in the conservatory overlooking the back garden. I’d spoken by telephone to Mrs. Morris Watt, who was expecting me, but it seemed Morris’s sister Edith had just come home and didn’t know me from Adam. I overheard the words “man who’ll solve the mystery” pass in earnest undertones between the two even as Nita was showing me a path through the palms and aspidistras. In more ways than one, the heat was on.

Mrs. Watt wore a modestly cut, expensive dress of a navy blue that went well with her permanently waved blonde hair. She rose to greet me promptly and yet with a sort of indolence I took as typically modern and by no means a personal slight. In fact, her social manner was faultless, considerate without seeming too hostessy, appropriate to so serious an occasion as the death of a father-in-law. I tried to picture her with Morris. Her husband would see in her someone brought up with standards of behaviour similar to his own, and with that extra polish women were expected to have. He would appreciate also her womanly figure, and value perhaps a confidence lacking in himself. If Morris were sexually shy, I had the feeling she wouldn’t be. Where did such an impression come from? My experience of women didn’t extend to this level of society, but I thought I recognized what Mrs. Watt possessed. Of the couple, Morris had more in the way of movie star looks. His consort’s complexion was rough, rougher than her face powder could completely smooth over; there were too many teeth in her mouth; her grey-green eyes didn’t point quite in the same direction; and her hips were already starting to spread. Nonetheless, a man who felt desired by her might well think her beautiful. Morris might.

“I got the death notice in all the papers, Lavinia,” her sister-in-law rattled on breathlessly, “but there’s trouble brewing at City Hall. They want some kind of state funeral, which I can’t bear the thought of.”

“Edith,” said Mrs. Watt, “this is Detective Sergeant Paul Shenstone, the policeman who’s investigating the case.”

“One of them,” I grinned. I liked “investigate” better than “solve”. Nice of her to lower expectations when speaking aloud.

“Oh, yes. Hello. Nita, take my coat, would you?”

Housemaid and coat melted silently away.

Edith Watt wore a black, pleated skirt and white blouse that accentuated her schoolgirl freshness. She was past school age, but young enough. Too young to have been prepared for anything like what had happened in the past few hours. Still, she was pitching in with family duties, not leaving them to those with more the hang of death and funerals. Flustered, yes, but not necessarily weak. Maybe she just didn’t think she had to put on a show of composure in front of family and servants. Public servants included.

She had all her brother’s good looks and more. Very dark, glossy hair with a part just off centre, down-sloping eyes of the most vivid blue, an upper lip that dipped in the middle and swelled softly to either side to form naturally that Cupid’s bow so prized at present and so badly approximated with cosmetics. A grin-and-bear-it style of grief wouldn’t have suited her at all.

“I’m sorry to have to disturb you today,” I said.

“I’m not sure anything could make this day any worse,” Edith sighed.

“And the sooner you get to work, the better the chance of finding our father’s killer, I’m sure,” said Lavinia. “Sit, Mr. Shenstone, and tell me how you take your tea.”

“I’ll bet he takes it clear.”

“Correct, Miss Watt.” I took the cup, a chair, and careful note of the tear-dewed blue eyes fixed upon me. “Can you each tell me when you first heard of your father’s death?”

Lavinia began. I dragged my attention her way.

“My husband woke me when he came in. It was three or a little after. ‘You’ve never been this late,’ I said. And he said, ‘Father’s been murdered.’ ”

“Go on.”

“This is difficult.” Lavinia smiled bravely. “We were all so fond of Father. Well, when Morris came in, I was pretty groggy and I asked him if this was a nightmare he was telling me about. He said no, that Father had been shot down in the street outside his office. The idea was horrifying, but I still don’t think I was quite taking it in. ‘Who by?’ I think I asked, and he said, that would be for the police to find out. And here you are.” Lavinia paused. “And then he asked if I would wake Edith, and I said to let her sleep, that she’d need to be well-rested for all she’d have to go through today—yes, Edie, I know that was very wrong of me . . .”

“Very,” said Edith sternly.

“But then Morris went and told you, so that was all right anyway.”

“Miss Watt?” I said.

“I was awakened by knocking on my door. I sprang up with a premonition of something dreadful and reached for my robe. I turned on the light on the bedside table. I said, ‘Come in,’ and Morris came in. He said, ‘I’m afraid I have hard news, sis. Dad’s been murdered.’ I asked if he was sure, and he said yes. ‘Here, in his sleep?’ I asked, and Morris said no, in front of the office, while he was coming home.”

“Why did you ask if your father had been murdered in this house?” I said.

“Just because it was the middle of the night.”

“Before your brother, who was the last person you saw last night?”

“Lavinia—Mrs. Watt. She was going to bed, and I said I’d sit up downstairs and read for a while.”

“What time was that?”

“Jeepers, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps I can answer Mr. Shenstone. The hall clock had just struck eleven.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Watt. And you were both asleep when Morris Watt came into the house?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Neither of you heard his taxi pull up?”

“No.”

“No.”

“Does the family have a second car?”

“An Austin Chummy,” said Edith. “I was just downtown in it.”

“And was that car out last night?”

Both women said not.

“Would it,” I asked, “have been possible to take the Chummy out without your knowledge—after you were both asleep? Neither of you heard Morris’s taxi, remember.”

“That’s true,” said Lavinia. “The Chummy is pretty rackety. Sounds like a motorcycle. I can’t imagine anyone would drive it around in the middle of the night, but I sleep soundly as a rule. I might not have heard it.”

“I certainly would have,” Edith leaped in. “I sleep lightly, and my bedroom is in the back of the house, at the end towards the garage. No one could have taken a car out without my hearing, and last night no one did.”

“Did either of you leave the house between the time you parted and the time Mr. Morris Watt returned?”

“No,” twice.

“And neither of you saw anyone else during that period?”

“No,” said Edith.

“Actually, I did,” Lavinia confessed. “I rang for Nita when I got to bed and had her bring me a cup of cocoa. It would have been about eleven thirty when she brought the cocoa and left.”

“The cocoa was part of your regular bedtime routine?”

“Father didn’t like keeping the servants up that late. So I only did it if he wasn’t home by the time I went to bed. I suppose you’ll think I’m awful going behind his back like that, but I truly didn’t mean any disrespect. And of course I wouldn’t have done it if I had known . . . Oh, excuse me.”

While Lavinia was sobbing into her handkerchief, Edith jumped in.

“He knew you loved him, Vinnie. One just thinks of the strangest things at a time like this. Like the way I laughed at Dad for stringing up a new radio antenna every two weeks. He acted as though with just enough wire stretched in just the right shape, he would be able to receive the one elusive broadcast that would transform his life. And now he’s gone, I don’t feel like laughing one bit, and I really wish he had been able to listen to what he was looking for with all those festoons of wire.”

Here was a new side of the deceased. I put aside my tea and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees.

“Did Digby Watt want his life transformed? From outside, it would seem he had done pretty well.”

“I think . . .” Lavinia pulled herself together, “I think everyone, however successful, wants something they haven’t got. Greener grass and all that.”

“Let’s talk about your late father-in-law, though,” I insisted. “Couldn’t he have bought the greenest grass there is? Or even have hired a lab full of scientists to invent something greener?”

“I don’t know if Edith agrees, but to me he seemed bored. I mean, he never gave me the idea—or Morris, for that matter—that there was anything he was looking forward to doing. Certainly not retiring. I mean, he believed in an afterlife and everything, but in the meantime, while you’re still here, you still have the days and nights to get through.”

“Daddy wasn’t bored,” said Edith. “He was still building and improving his businesses. And—what maybe mattered more to him at this stage—he had his charitable work. I thought he was sad, though. As you know, my mother died two years ago, and that was a cruel blow, but it was more than that.”

“What more?” I asked, getting in just ahead of Lavinia.

“It’s so difficult to say. We sometimes know things without knowing how we know them. Something to do with his faith, perhaps. We’re all churchgoers, but he was the only one of us that really had faith.”

“Morris is a Christian,” said Lavinia. “It’s very sweet of him.”

Edith seemed not to hear her. “I recall some snatch of a sermon or prayer that seemed to hit Dad hard. I think it was just before this Easter. The minister said, ‘Too often we nurse the pain others cause us while blotting from our minds the pain we cause.’ ”

“I hate pain,” said Lavinia. “I don’t even like to think about it.”

“The minister reminded him of someone he’d hurt?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell,” said Edith. “He was a typical businessman who kept work and home separate. He didn’t want us to worry about what went on at the office. That didn’t mean he had guilty secrets; it was just his generation’s way.” She folded her napkin thoughtfully. “I do know he’d recently started carrying around a little book of inspirational quotations. Now we learn that very book saved him from one of the bullets. Strange, isn’t it? I had a look at it on the weekend. Its message for most days seems to be patience in adversity.”

“Do either of you know if he had received any threats?”

Both women said no.

“Did either of you ever hear him argue or have an angry scene with anyone?”

Again the fair and dark heads shook as one.

“He believed in the duty of cheerfulness,” Edith added. “He was never even bad-humoured that I recall.”

“Nor I.”

“Anyone bad-humoured with him?”

“Mrs. Hubbard—” Lavinia began.

“That’s our cook,” Edith explained.

“—scolds him unmercifully about missing meals, but she dotes on him.”

“No one else?”

“No.”

“This must be maddening for you, Mr. Shenstone,” said Lavinia, “but we just can’t think of anyone wishing Father ill. It seems inconceivable.”

“What about Curtis?”

“Curtis? I wouldn’t say Curtis doted on him, would you, Vinnie?”

“How would one know? Curtis is quiet.” Lavinia dropped her voice to a whisper. “Quiet as a mummy.”

“Works well, though.”

“Very.”

I wrote in my notebook. “So at present the household consists of yourselves, Mr. Morris Watt, Mrs. Hubbard, Nita, and Curtis?”

“That’s right,” said Lavinia.

“Curtis lives over the garage,” Edith added, “not in the house proper.”

“Are there any firearms about the property at all, in the house or the garage?”

“Oh, no,” said Lavinia.

“Not that I know of,” said Edith.

“Can either of you think of anyone, inside the house or out, who might have killed your father?”

I braced myself for another chorus of “No, not a soul!” But neither woman spoke. Each stole a glance at the other.

“Would you prefer to interview us separately?” Lavinia asked me.

“Not for the present.”

“I certainly have nothing to say I wouldn’t want Edith to hear. I can’t think of anyone.”

“Neither can I, not off the top of my head. Mr. Shenstone, do you know what my father did in the war?”

I shifted in my chair.

“It’s hot in here, isn’t it, Mr. Shenstone?” said Lavinia. “Do take off your jacket. We’re not as formal as you may think.”

I hadn’t yet changed my shirt and left my jacket on. What I was really itching to do was tell them what I knew rather than find out what they did. Tell them why I hadn’t shed any tears yet for Digby Watt and wasn’t about to start.

“What did your father do, Miss Watt?”

“I’ve only the vaguest idea. He was too old to enlist, of course, so he continued to run his businesses, tailoring them to the demands of the war effort.”

“And do you believe that had anything to do with his murder?”

“How would I know? I was only ten in 1914. It’s just that he sometimes spoke of the years before the war with such nostalgia. No, I can’t be more precise: don’t ask me.”

“All right.” I turned to Lavinia. “Mrs. Watt, did he ever speak to you about the war or the years before?”

“Not about his factories or anything like that. But right before our marriage, he did say I had him to thank for Morris’s coming back in one piece. Morris had wanted to get into the fighting, but Father had used his contacts to make sure his requests for a transfer were turned down. I think he didn’t want my thanks so much as he wanted me to know it was no reflection on Morris’s courage that he didn’t see action in France.”

“I had no idea!” Edith exclaimed. “I kept writing him in England, asking when he was going to get into the scrap. How cruel! But I think the girls, even children, were as war-drunk as the men.”

Silence settled on the conservatory, and for the first time I noticed the murmur of the house—a humming pipe, the tap of the housemaid’s shoes crossing a hardwood floor, the distant clink of dishes being taken out or put away—and further in the background, the purr of traffic from Glen Road. Had Morris and Lavinia ever considered moving out of these comfy precincts into a space of their own?

I was also asking myself whether Digby’s words to Lavinia had done Morris’s character any good, or had been intended to. Before, she might have just thought her husband averse to getting killed. Culpably or commendably prudent, but his own man. After, she must realize that whatever Morris’s willingness to serve as Imperial cannon fodder, he hadn’t had the gumption to get out from under Daddy’s thumb and join an outfit beyond the reach of Daddy’s pull. Would the Italians have cared a fig for the wishes of Digby Watt? The Serbians? The Arabs? There were more than enough belligerents to choose from. What Digby had been telling Lavinia, it seemed to me, was that as long as Digby was alive, Digby’s was the word that counted in the Watt family, and Morris would be kept on leading strings.

“How did that news make you feel, Mrs. Watt?” I said at last.

“I thought,” she replied, “how sweet of Father. He looks after us all.”

“I see. What are the provisions of his will?”

“Here’s what he told me,” Edith jumped in, as if grateful to get rolling again. “A pension for Mrs. Hubbard. Lump sum bequests for Nita and Curtis. I was to get a life annuity with the principal to be divided among my children, if any. I don’t know what provision he made for Lavinia and Morris, but I’d be surprised if he hadn’t left generous contributions to the various hospitals and servicemen’s associations he supported.”

“You know much more than I do, Edie,” said Lavinia, her social manner clearly in a struggle with hurt feelings. “Neither Father nor Morris said anything to me.”

“Never mind,” said Edith, still brisk and with a new hardness in her voice. “It would all have had to change anyway when Dad remarried.”

“Did you expect him to?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Edith.

“Marry Olive?” said Lavinia. “I don’t think he would have. She’s a darling girl, but she’s your age, Edie.”

“There’s no law that makes that wrong, and I don’t think he saw it as wrong.”

“She’s young for her age, though.” Lavinia crossed her legs and touched her hair, less to tidy it than to draw attention to its golden perfection. “She leads a very sheltered life, living with her aunt, selling flowers in her aunt’s flower shop. Olive herself must know she hasn’t the poise to carry off marriage to a more seasoned man.”

“She’d be the person to ask what she knows,” Edith replied as from a high and frosty peak.

Lavinia laughed complacently. Olive had been no thorn in her side, I thought, but sure got under missy’s skin.

“And you, Miss Watt? Did you see it as wrong?”

“Wrong, no. It just made me queasy, because I’d imagine myself in Olive’s place. But I wasn’t in Olive’s place. My father had never treated me as anything but a daughter. As I was saying, I thought Dad was unhappy, and the best part of me wanted for him anything that would make him less so, even if that thing were a twenty-two-year-old wife.”

While they were good words, prettily arranged, Edith’s expression remained a degree below freezing, and I guessed her heart did too.

I wrote down Olive’s address. I might, I warned, have more questions later. Meanwhile, I’d like to take a look around the garage and have a word with Curtis.

“I’ll show him through, Edie,” said Lavinia.

“Mr. Shenstone,” said Edith, “I look forward to seeing you again.”

“Likewise, Miss Watt.”

“You know,” Edith continued with new animation, “I’ve been thinking this over while we’ve been talking, and it seems to me that that minister left out one kind of pain. Besides the pain others cause us and the pain we cause, there’s the pain others cause our loved ones, and cause our neighbours—you know, neighbours in the fullest biblical sense. That pain isn’t ours, and we have no right to blot it out. What that pain requires is justice.”

I could have kissed her for that. Instead, I nodded offhandedly and followed Lavinia from the room.