by David Hood
“What did you say you needed?” he asked as he pulled back the door and stuffed the padlock and key into his coat pocket. Baxter lifted his lantern to take a survey of the stores and only then realized it had gone out. He began patting himself in search of the matches he was sure he had taken from Squire.
“First I need to get this lantern lit…where did I put those matches…do you have any?”
“Don’t smoke, sir. But I think there are some in the sentry box.” Baxter refused to give up and continued digging from pocket to pocket, following the private all the same. Moving about, feeling around the small hut, the private was fully awake now and curious. “So, gov’nor, what’s this all about then?” he called over his shoulder.
“Did you find those matches?”
“Aye, here they are,” the private said, turning and holding them out to Baxter along with a look that repeated his question and said he was owed an answer for his trouble.
Baxter pulled up the chimney and turned up the wick just a hair. He stepped closer. The look on the young soldier’s face didn’t change. He just followed along, taking a match from the box and striking it. It went out before a hand could be cupped around it. Standing at the back of the sentry box, with the big policeman filling the door, the private worked a second time, now in complete darkness. There was a dry, scratchy fumbling, then a scrape and a snap as a match head burst into flame. Baxter’s long thin nose and close-set dark eyes looked serene and terrifying in the glow. The hand holding the match began to tremor slightly, but it found the wick. “What’s your name, Private?” Baxter asked, his voice soft, almost gentle.
“Marsh, sir. Arthur Marsh.”
“Well, Mr. Marsh, what I can tell you is this.” Baxter dropped the chimney. He kept the lantern next to his face, lighting it out of the darkness like a prophecy. “The less you know about this the better off you’ll be, believe me.” The young private considered for a moment, guided perhaps by infantry logic that said knowledge makes you a good target. He nodded, willing now to see Baxter on his way with what he needed, no more questions asked.
Kenny Squire had left the wharf muttering and shaking his head, embarrassed and angry. To make matters worse he was tired from the wind and cold and from the effort of heaving his supper into the harbour. He had rebuked himself, there was no need for Baxter to do it. And no need to withhold the identity of the victim. What did Baxter think he was going to do, run through the streets shouting the news at the top of his lungs? The chief inspector was an arse.
It took the city’s medical examiner nearly five minutes to come to the door. He was a fidgety sparrow of a man, his hands were never still. “Well, who is it?” he wanted to know. Squire told him he would rather not say anything more than that the matter was of great importance and needed to be attended to immediately. “Well, has there been foul play?” the doctor went on, untying and retying the belt on his dressing gown and trying to smooth a thinning head of wiry grey hair that was every bit as manic as the doctor. Squire did the best he could to appease and calm, saying he did not feel at liberty to discuss whether or not there had been an arrest or if the doctor would be called to testify, what the good doctor needed to focus on for now was getting ready to examine a body that he could expect very soon. Yes, Squire did know it was nearly eleven o’clock. Yes, it was likely to be a long night.
Squire left the doctor standing in the front hall of his home with a worried look on his face. When news of the body was delivered at the police station a few minutes later, Mackay could not hide his surprise. “So Ellen Reardon told the truth. Might be the first time,” he sneered. From what Squire had seen of Mackay, he did his job well enough to keep it and he was loyal, if only to his paycheque. He wasn’t concerned with honour or in pursuit of some ideal. Squire did not dislike him, but he had decided Mackay was not to be taken too seriously. And maybe he was not to be trusted. When Squire gave him Baxter’s instructions that no one, including him, was to go near Ellen Reardon, Mackay snorted, “He needn’t worry, I’ve got more important things to do.” So far as the men Baxter wanted, a couple of patrolmen were due to check in. Mackay would hold them at the station. Meanwhile Squire had better get round to the homes of some off-duty officers. Mackay wrote some addresses on a scrap of paper. Squire stared at the hen scratch for a long moment. Mackay snatched the paper back from him and read aloud. Then Squire headed off.
He had managed to keep his ears from falling off by holding his hands over them. That had not stopped the cold from creeping under his collar. It had settled into his shoulders. His feet were numb. When Baxter finally heard the sound of boots and low voices he was relieved and rejuvenated. He checked his watch, twenty to twelve. Thinking Squire would be back in half an hour had obviously been wishful thinking. He tried to stomp some feeling into his feet as he moved off the wharf to greet the men as they came around the corner of Mitchell and Sons. “All right, gentlemen, let’s have you in a line along the building.” He pointed behind them. “Stand easy, but mind what I say, I’ve no time to be repeating myself.”
“Thought we were here for a body, Detective, not a parade,” one of the older officers said as he pulled up.
“Yeah, Detective,” another officer chimed in, emboldened by the first. “Bit late for drill practice, don’t you think?” Despite the backtalk the men moved into a line as instructed. Baxter paused long enough to let them know he’d heard what they said and didn’t want to hear anything more.
“All right, gentlemen, a man is dead and we need to know what happened. What we don’t need is to be giving anything away or sparking rumours or gossip that will only get in our way. O’Brien and Morrow you two go south along the waterfront, talk to anyone you see. Board every ship, talk to a boatswain or an officer of the watch, someone in charge. Ask did anyone see anything suspicious tonight or yesterday, anybody see a fight or an argument, anything out of the ordinary. Sweeney and Thompson, you two go north, same drill.” Baxter stood still and close to the line of men as he spoke. He kept his voice low and looked directly into one pair of eyes then the next, transmitting seriousness, waiting for nods that said he was getting through. “Chalmers, I want you to go to the city’s livery stables and get a team hooked up to a dray or buckboard and drive it back here.”
“Do you want the rest of us to come back here when we’re finished?” Thompson asked.
“No, wait for me at the station when you’re done,” Baxter replied.
“Who’s dead, Detective?” O’Brien asked. “Way you’re carrying on, must be somebody important.”
They all looked at Baxter and waited. He bowed his head for a moment then said, “Gentlemen, this business with the Boers and mustering our men to fight will give us some cover. It will not last long. The city will take this hard. There will be all sorts of talk and gossip that’s going to be hard on the family. I don’t want that to start any sooner than it has to, so for now the fewer people that know, the better. Focus on doing your best to help find the answers everyone will be looking for…Thank you, gentlemen.” A couple of the men bowed their own heads for a moment. Others scuffed their feet and looked toward the end of the wharf. Eventually the line broke up and the men moved off.
Baxter stood his ground, looking each man off without saying a word. Squire remained in place, still without a job to do. The look on his face said he expected to be detailed off for some particularly inane task far removed from any sort of responsibility or demand for intelligence. When the last of the other five officers had moved around the corner of Mitchell and Sons, Baxter looked at Squire and said, “I’ve hooked a pilot ladder over the end of the wharf. Let’s get you down there, get some ropes around Mr. Mosher so we can pull him up.”
Squire was double stunned. First by the fact of Baxter’s sudden trust, and second by the identity of the victim. Squire had been in the city less than a year. They had never met, but Squire had heard the name. “You mean Victor Mosher, t
he alderman?” he asked just to be sure.
“You understand now the need for care,” Baxter said over his shoulder as he led them on to the end of the wharf. “Ok, Mr. Squire, down you go.”
The fidgeting and the manic movements were gone, replaced by a slow steadiness that seemed impossible. Surely the man woken up two hours earlier was a misfit twin mistaken for the medical examiner. The crisp smooth white coat circled slowly around the examination table, pausing, lifting his glasses, making a note, then putting the lenses carefully back in place and moving on. Baxter moved at the same pace in the opposite direction, hands behind his back, shoved into his pants pockets, then behind his back again. Occasionally one or the other of them cleared his throat or made a long “Hmmmm” in response to something they noticed or a question they were chewing on, one not ready to ask aloud. Watching them made Squire a bit dizzy. And he was being suffocated by his greatcoat. Still, he couldn’t move from the corner. He seemed mesmerized by the choreography, as if he were watching a company of Russian ballet dancers or an entourage of French courtiers. Not that he had ever attended such fancy soirées. Squire came from ordinary stock, which provided him the freedom to imagine that naked corpses stewed in harbour water were common centrepieces at elegant affairs.
“Mr. Squire…Mr. Squire!” The voice startled him into blinking and turning his head like a barn owl caught in a flash of light. “Mr. Squire, before you faint away and we have to lay you out on a table, please get that coat off and when you have done so, come here and give me a hand.” There was a small wooden chair beside him which he hadn’t noticed. It stood in the dutiful quiet service of a third-generation valet, Baxter’s coat draped across the arms. Squire laid his coat over top with a nod of gratitude then moved around the table to stand by the detective.
Baxter was bent over peering at a wound about two inches long that ran on an angle following the bottom of the ribcage on the left side of the body. The opening was not very wide and slightly rounded top and bottom, like the little red mouth of some toothless sucking animal. “What does that look like to you, Mr. Squire?” Baxter asked, not taking his eyes off the body, or expecting Squire to draw anything other than the obvious conclusion.
“Looks to me like a knife wound, Detective.”
“Yes it does…Do you suppose Mr. Mosher stabbed himself and then jumped into the harbour?”
“Would he do that? He was very successful, wasn’t he?” Squire asked in return, rising out of the crouch he had assumed to look more closely at the lifeless face of Victor Mosher, a face that grew increasingly ashen and desperate the longer he stared at it. He looked at Baxter, still studying the wound. Was the question facetious? Was there a smirk on Baxter’s face? Squire turned away.
The examining room they were working in had been built in the basement to keep the doctor’s live patients separate from his dead ones, and to make sure his very squeamish wife could not accidentally walk in on an autopsy. She never came downstairs. Victor had arrived wrapped in a canvas tarp. It had taken all four of them to gently manage him off the buckboard and in through a back door. Officer Chalmers was sent back outside before the body was uncovered. Not really knowing what to do with himself, and still a little overwhelmed, Squire had busied himself with folding the tarp while Baxter and the doctor set about removing Victor’s clothes. In the midst of that operation, Baxter had sent Squire off with the tarp and instructions for Chalmers. “Tell him to return everything then head home. And remind him to keep his mouth shut.” Squire hadn’t bothered asking the detective who he thought Chalmers might be talking to in the middle of the night. Better just to do as he was told and keep his own mouth shut. When he came back, the body was naked except for a small towel. If it was true and the spirit lingered, Victor would thank Baxter for that small kindness when they saw one another again. Victor’s clothes had been laid out on a second table. Squire had never known anyone who dressed so well. Of course Victor had not committed suicide.
Baxter was paying no attention to Squire, but continued to stare into the knife wound as if he were waiting for it to speak. Then something did occur to him and he nodded toward the second table. “Mr. Squire, do you remember seeing any holes in Victor’s jacket or shirt?” he asked.
Squire turned toward the detective, glad to be called away from Victor’s face and the warren of self-pity. “I don’t remember seeing any at the wharf. Mind you it was dark and I really wasn’t looking. Then you and the doctor undressed him, remember? I was outside for most of it.” The doctor looked up briefly from the study he had taken up of the hole that had once been Victor’s left eye, nodded to confirm Squire’s account, then went back to his business.
“Right, well, have a look now, will you,” Baxter said as he moved round to stand beside the doctor and watch him take notes.
Undershirt, shirt, vest, suit coat, and overcoat had been laid one on top of the next. Except for their soggy stench they were in perfect order, new perhaps. Working from one side, each layer was folded back and looked over, then the next and the next. Squire replaced each item carefully then peeled through the layers from the other side. “No holes, Detective. In fact, not so much as a pulled thread.”
“What about the blood?” The doctor had finished with the hole in Victor’s head. He was holding up a hand that was the colour of fog except for the fingernails, which had gone midnight black with hints of purple. The intense scrutiny, the sense of foreboding, and the stench of death made the air thick and heavy. There were no windows to let it out. A dark sense of humour might have tried to lighten things by waving the hand and putting some words in the mouth of the dead. If the idea occurred to the doctor, he kept it well hidden. With the lifeless hand still in front of his face, the doctor repeated himself. “What about the blood, the blood stains on the clothes, do you find anything interesting or strange about them?” The doctor went back to his study of the hand, as if he already knew the answer to his question and had asked it simply to keep the policemen busy while he got on with matters unresolved. Baxter, curious to learn what the doctor might have seen that he did not, stepped around to stand beside Squire as the young officer once again went through the layers of Victor Mosher’s clothing.
The harbour had washed away most of the blood, but the front of the white undershirt was almost completely covered by a stain that was now more pink than red. Victor’s dress shirt had the same colour stain, only it was much smaller. The suit was made of wool, a light brown herringbone with threads of orange running through it on the vertical and light blue on the horizontal. The stain on the left side of the vest was the diameter of a grapefruit. The suit jacket was well made, fully canvassed and lined with silk. The stain that had made its way through to the front was light and not much larger than a silver dollar. A skilled laundryman might be able to get it out. The heavy black overcoat didn’t seem to have a mark on it.
“What do you make of it, Detective?” Squire asked, watching the stain grow smaller then disappear as Baxter replaced the layers of clothing one over top of the other as Victor had worn them. Baxter said nothing, just let out another long “Hmmmmm.”
“What indeed?” the doctor said, which didn’t help Squire at all and caused him to throw an aggravated look at the white coat that was now back to him as the doctor moved round to Victor’s other hand.
Meanwhile Baxter was examining the contents of Victor’s pockets, which he had set out next to a pair of black leather brogues at the end of the table below the wet clothes. Gold pocket watch, silver money clip holding thirty-six dollars in bank notes, an ivory-coloured cotton handkerchief, a fountain pen (which Baxter knew had come from Victor’s father), the soggy remnants of two cigars, a ring of eight keys, one dime, one nickel, and three pennies. Baxter pushed the items around on the table. He wasn’t really looking at them, he had already memorized what was there. Lifting his head from the small cache, Baxter wore a look that was tired and sad and hoping against unspeakab
le things seen in the mind’s eye. After a stuttering sigh he asked, “Mr. Squire, does it seem to you that Mr. Mosher fell prey to a robbery?”
Squire looked at the clothes and then at the gold watch and the silver money clip and the fold of bills it was still holding on to. “Not unless Mr. Mosher was robbed of something more valuable than what’s here, Detective.”
“Other than his life, you mean…don’t answer that. I know what you meant, Mr. Squire, and I agree with you.” Looking at him as he spoke, Baxter said, “Doctor Trenaman.” A tone of command had returned to his voice. “Inventory Mr. Mosher’s effects for evidence, in the usual manner. I’ll be back later this morning for your full report before I speak to his wife.”
“I can’t possibly have it written up before noon, Chief Inspector,” the doctor replied without looking up from whatever note he was making.
“That will be fine, Doctor, you can tell me how it will read when I see you at nine.”
This time with his pen lifted and peering at Baxter over his glasses, the doctor said, “I assume you will not be telling Mrs. Mosher that it doesn’t seem as though her husband died with his boots on, or much else.”
Baxter didn’t miss the hint of a smile as the doctor went back to his scribbling. No matter how this case played out there would be tittering, eye rolling, and rampant gossip. Some would add their own twists no matter how straight and true the story was told, others would simply make something up if an official version didn’t come out in the papers. Few, if any, wagging tongues could claim the moral high ground, or could even see it from where they lived. Baxter had been a policeman far too long to be surprised by pettiness and indiscretion, but he still found them disappointing. He truly hoped Victor had not been involved in anything sordid, the loss of the man was shame enough. Those who snickered and chortled had no shame as far as Baxter was concerned. Lapsing morality was no laughing matter, it was dangerous and sad. What’s wrong with people? he wondered. All of this was on the tip of his tongue. All he bothered to say, in a voice as flat as scripture, was, “That is a safe assumption, Doctor.” As he turned for the door he said, “Get our coats, Mr. Squire. Time to wake up the closest thing we have to a witness and see what she can tell us.”
