by David Hood
The men braced themselves as Baxter’s full attention came upon them. “O’Brien and Morrow, let’s start with you.”
O’Brien looked at Morrow and got nothing except a shrug in response, so he turned back to Baxter and started with a shrug of his own. “Not much to tell, Detective. We did just as you asked. We walked south down along the waterfront from Mitchell’s Wharf all the way to the foot of Salter Street.”
“We boarded every ship, no one had anything to tell,” Morrow broke in, glancing at O’Brien as he continued. “We walked back along Lower Water Street. We ran into a couple of old soakers wandering home from the bars.”
“But they were badly mauled. No help at all,” O’Brien said, retaking the lead. “From Mitchell’s Wharf back to the station, we didn’t see a soul. It’s gone real quiet out there, Detective.”
Baxter sighed. “You didn’t happen to run into a shore patrol, did you?”
As O’Brien and Morrow were shaking their heads, Sweeney raised a hand and said, “We did, Detective, at the end of Buckingham Street where we came up from the docks. The lieutenant said he and his men had been making rounds since ten o’clock. Said they broke up a fight and dragged a drunken private back to the barracks. That was all, though, nothing unusual.”
Baxter nodded. Looking up and down the line, he said, “So no one you spoke to saw anyone throw anything in the harbour large enough to be a body?” Heads were shaken, a couple of emphatic no’s spoken to back them up. “And no one saw anyone along the docks with a cart or a dray that didn’t seem to have an obvious reason for being there?” Again the men looked back at the detective with apologetic faces and shakes of their heads. “And no one noticed any unusual boat traffic in the harbour?” Once again no one had any news that might aid the investigation, or give the detective something to cling to. By this time Baxter had wandered to the far end of the counter area, as if he were distancing himself from what he didn’t want to hear. He was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. The expression on his face was as grey and cheerless as the portrait of the Queen that hung on the wall over his head. He was staring at his shoes, unable to think of any further questions or directions. He was tired and his head hurt.
“Detective, if you had told us who the dead man was, we could have asked people if they had seen him or had any information about him. Maybe then our efforts would not have been such a waste of time.” It was O’Brien who spoke, just as his friend Mackay was returning from the basement. Baxter didn’t think the timing was an accident. Mackay had heard the question and quickly got the gist of things from all the long faces. The look on his own said he agreed with O’Brien.
If they were a group of twelve-year-olds and Baxter their leader, there could only be one response to such a challenge, if Baxter wanted to keep his place, that is. He would have to fight O’Brien. Childish, perhaps, and maybe not a completely bad idea. They were about the same age, a long way from twelve. O’Brien drank and ate too much and never took any exercise. Baxter had discipline and about a foot in height along with his pent-up frustration. Men like O’Brien and Mackay had been under his skin for years. They were only a little less shiftless and crooked than the people they arrested. Baxter pushed himself off the wall and took three quick strides toward O’Brien, looking straight through him as he charged. There were sudden inhales, wide eyes, and some backward steps. Still looking holes in O’Brien’s head, Baxter slowed his stride and came to an easy halt at the railing gate. Just before pushing it open he said in a voice as calming as warm milk, “Well, Mr. O’Brien, I’m sure things will be better when you’re chief inspector. For now we’ll do things my way.” Halfway back to his office, Baxter called over his shoulder, “Mr. Mackay, see to it that the men get back on their proper patrols.”
When Baxter returned to his office he quickly closed the door on the whispering behind him. Squire was standing in the corner, barely visible beyond the square of dusky light coming through the glass in the office door.
“Been up long?” Baxter asked as he fell into the chair behind his desk.
“I thought you were really going for O’Brien,” Squire said as he sat back down, facing the desk.
Baxter spoke as he fumbled with the switch under the shade of his desk lamp. “Mr. Squire, a man in my position has to show restraint.” That was true and Squire nodded, though he didn’t look convinced or beyond the notion that O’Brien could benefit from a good thumping. Even if it didn’t do anything for O’Brien, it was sure to be good for general morale.
“Besides,” the inspector continued, looking as if he were recalling a moment in particular, “Paddy O’Brien likes to play dead. But he and Mackay are the same, strong as oxen, and mean when provoked.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I assume you heard the men came back empty-handed.” Squire nodded. “So what does that mean, Mr. Squire?” Baxter was leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head.
Squire shifted his weight. “We have a big waterfront.”
“Which includes the Dartmouth side and the basin.”
“The body could have been thrown in from anywhere…and who knows when.” Squire’s expression said he was asking as much as telling.
“Maybe Victor Mosher found some quiet place along the water and took his own life. That seems unlikely to me, he was too strong willed, too much of an optimist. Somebody killed him. And they didn’t do it out in the open.” As Baxter spoke, it seemed to him that Squire was reviewing what he had seen in the basement of the doctor’s house. A body with a knife wound. Clothes with no knife holes in them. Money, watch, nothing missing. This was not a typical robbery or crime of passion. O’Brien and Mackay were wrong. Asking after Victor tonight could have done nothing more than alert the killer that the body had been found. Or so it seemed according to the expression on Squire’s face. Baxter continued to stare. Or maybe it was just his own thoughts and an effort to reassure himself that Baxter saw in the young policeman’s face.
Whatever it was that Squire was thinking, the question he asked was a good one. “So, Detective, who would want to kill Victor Mosher?”
Baxter leaned forward in his chair and brought both hands down firmly on the top of his desk. The desk lamp flickered and made a faint fizzing sound. “That is precisely the question you are going to start with.”
“Me?” Squire asked, as if Baxter, who was now pointing a finger directly at him, could possibly mean someone else. Baxter ignored Squire’s nerves and went on to explain. Squire was to go home and get some sleep. Then first thing in the morning, as if it weren’t already, Squire was to begin digging into the life of Victor Mosher.
“The councilmen’s offices are upstairs,” Baxter said, pointing at the ceiling. “No one knows yet, so things will still be calm.”
“How am I supposed to get into his office?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re a policeman.” Baxter let him ponder the authority of a young patrolman. Not for long, only a moment. “One of these will likely let you in.” He tossed Squire the ring of keys he had taken from Victor’s effects. Squire stared at them as if they were the first keys he had ever seen. Up to now he had been more of a watchman. Patrolling the streets at night, checking doors, posing a deterrent. He had broken up a few fights. Taken part in a tavern raid, under one or other of the liquor laws. This was the first time he had been called on to think, to look for evidence. Would he recognize it if he saw it? Baxter had anticipated the question. “Go through his desk, everything in his office. Track down his office girl. Find out what he was working on. There will be an appointment book, let’s see who he was meeting with. Take anything that looks important. Start following Victor’s travels over the past few weeks. When you’re done upstairs, go to his business office on Albemarle Street, do the same there.”
Baxter stood up and stretched, then went for his coat on the stand by the door. Squire staye
d glued to his chair. The weight of new and greater responsibility was daunting, not exulting like he had imagined. Squire twisted to face the detective, who was wriggling his shoulders into his coat and holding up a scarf he seemed surprised to see. Before he could open his mouth to ask for a quick review, Baxter had further instructions. “And when you’re done with Victor’s offices, close them up, nobody in or out by order of the chief inspector of the Halifax Police Department.”
“How am I supposed to…”
“Put up signs, use nails, chains, do what you have to, but nobody goes in after you, understand?”
Squire had managed to put the keys in a pocket and pull himself to his feet. Baxter was buttoned up. He had decided against the scarf. It was back on the coat stand. The office door was open. “Detective?”
“What is it, Mr. Squire?”
“Why me, Detective? Why not someone with more experience?”
Baxter stepped into the doorway then turned back to face the young policeman. “Young man like you, eager to make a name for himself, you’ll work hard, do what you’re told, and if something goes wrong you’ll be easy to blame.” Baxter waited, enjoyed watching Squire beam like a first grader with a gold star, then deflate from disillusionment. Despite his efforts to recover, to convince himself his leg was being pulled, Squire had the look of a withered birthday balloon. He studied Baxter’s face. It was stone, then it softened just a little. “The case started with you when Ellen found you on the street. I’m offering you the chance to see it through. Now if you don’t want…”
“No…I want to see it through, and thank you, Detective.” Unable to think of any other way to look less vulnerable and more like he was up to the task, Squire thrust out his right hand and waited for the detective to take it.
Baxter took it without hesitation in a preacher’s reassuring grip. He looked Squire in the eye then turned and walked away. After a few strides he called back over his shoulder, “Switch off the desk lamp, Mr. Squire, and close my office door before you go.”
In the predawn light seeping through the crack in the curtains, Jane looked serene, high above and untouched by the grubby machinations of inhumanity. Baxter watched her sleep as he hung his suit clothes on the valet stand and slipped his pyjamas off the hanger in the wardrobe. Lying beside her he could feel the tension leaving his body. The ugliness and sadness of murder, the unanswered questions that would soon become ringing cries for justice, and the endless frustration that went with the job of trying to push people out of their own way. His wife rolled over, and in a voice only half awake asked if he wanted her to get him up at the usual time. He drifted off with the comfort that comes from complete trust and a sincere desire to be a better husband.
Sunday
According to the Farmers’ Almanac, the city was a month into the fall. But this morning the air felt warmer than usual. Kenny Squire left the police station around 6 a.m. Sunday morning. It would be more than another hour before the sun rose. And yet there was already enough light that he had to look directly at the street lights to notice they were still burning. Squire lived in a boarding house on Albemarle Street. The Dillon family owned it, along with a couple of other houses they rented out. They also stabled horses, and sold liquor and groceries. The Dillons didn’t put up with any nonsense and looked after their places pretty well, which was why Squire stayed with them. That, and the fact that the police department didn’t pay him enough to afford a home in the south or west end neighbourhoods. He lived alongside factory girls, teachers, and domestics who came from small towns just like his. Many of them found stevedores, carpenters, coopers, and labourers of all sorts, or soldiers or sailors, and they became wives and mothers to the mob of children who also belonged to the upper streets. All the necessities of life were close at hand—schools, churches, shops, firefighters, and undertakers. And when the workday was done, or there was no work to be found, the upper streets had plenty of gambling, liquor, and dollymops, which attracted customers from all over the city, as well as those just passing through. The upper streets made some and ruined others. Mostly the place just got along; its people were tough, seldom dangerous.
Squire tiptoed up the stairs with his boots in one hand and his key in the other. The first room at the end of the hall belonged to Billy Two People. His real name was William Paul. He was from the Shubenacadie Reservation about fifty miles north of the city. He worked at the Aberdeen Hotel. You wouldn’t find an Indian waiting tables there or at any other decent hotel in town, so Billy kept his hair short and passed for white.
Most of the time Billy lived quietly. He worked, sent money home, and kept to himself. Once in a while, though, he would take a drink. He drank whisky, cheap whisky, and he drank for effect. He was loud by the third drink. A couple more and he was impossible to ignore. After a certain point there was no predicting what he might do. He could buy you a drink, then look at you as if you’d stolen his wife. Some drinking buddies gave him the nickname Billy Two People, which stuck. It sounded Indian, but that was an accident. Few people knew William’s secret and he wanted to keep it that way. It was only by chance one night that the closet door had been open to reveal the fine beadwork jacket inside. Squire had helped William to bed, closing the closet and then the door to his room. He paused there now. Billy snored, louder when he drank. No sound came through the door this morning. Billy might be on the early shift. Or passed out under a table in some dive.
Josie Blanchard was in the next room. She had recently lost her husband, Raymond. He had wavy hair and straight teeth, and Josie said she couldn’t help believing in him. Raymond was shot dead coming out of the Boston patent office. The man who did it said Raymond had stolen his idea for a new dentist drill. Sometimes Josie would admit that deep down she had always known Raymond was a hustler. But in the same breath she’d say that no man every treated her so well. Squire couldn’t imagine saying no to her. For now she was singing and dancing in the taverns. Squire couldn’t tell if she was looking for another Raymond or just trying to find a way to tell her family she was no longer in Boston and that things hadn’t worked out like she planned. There was a light under Josie’s door. Sometimes he heard whispering or tears when he passed. He listened for a moment. There was a dull thud as if something had been dropped or bumped into. There was no telling which room it came from.
Squire slipped past Josie’s door and opened his own as carefully as he could. Before going inside he looked over to see if Betty’s door was open. She left it open sometimes after getting up in the night. Betty was a widow too. She would never say just how old she was. If Squire had to guess he would say she might be twice as old as Josie. Her husband had been a bosun’s mate. One night high winds had broken a yardarm on the forward mast. John had helped some other men cut it free and heave it overboard into the rough seas. Weeks later Betty heard a knock at her front door. The captain said no one knew what happened for sure, John had just disappeared. Betty said she wished the captain had made something up so she could feel that he was gone. Billy remembered her once saying that she still saw her husband’s face sometimes on men about the right age and then she found it hard to get to sleep. Her door was shut tight. No signs of John.
Squire pulled the thin curtains closed for what little difference it made and lay down. Before he could decide whether or not to take his clothes off and get under the covers he was fast asleep.
The peel of the bells was confusing. Mostly because Squire had forgotten it was Sunday. In the shock of realizing that Victor Mosher had been murdered and trying to formulate a course for the investigation, they had not thought about what day it was. Yesterday seemed like last week. He was trying to remember all the things Baxter had told him to do. He should have written out a list. It was pointless. He needed to take a piss and get some coffee.
Josie and Betty were at the kitchen table. Betty was dressed for church. Josie looked more like Squire, like she had just gotten up.
“Those clothes still look good, honey. They have another day in them no question.” Josie looked Squire up and down as she spoke, but there was a friendly smirk behind the sarcasm. She sipped her coffee and waited to see what would come back from her ping.
“You tear a page out of Billy’s book?” Betty asked. The look on her face was one of concern, not mischief.
“Good morning, ladies,” Squire said, still trying to rub the sleep out of his face and swallow the taste of the baking soda he’d used on his teeth. “Speaking of Billy, did he say he was going out drinking?”
“Don’t change the subject, sweetie. Tell us what you were up to that kept you out till nearly six in the morning.” Squire continued massaging his face, now trying to decide what Josie was up to. She wasn’t a natural gossip. He didn’t suspect her of fishing for juicy stories to spread. More likely she too was concerned, not that Squire may have gone overboard whooping it up. He was young and in her opinion didn’t whoop it up enough. The fact that he was a policeman often seemed to escape her mind or she simply didn’t see the contradiction. A number of men on the force agreed with her. Detective Baxter of course believed a policeman should never be out of uniform.
