What Kills Good Men

by David Hood

  “As we thought, Saunders said the debts were off the books. He checked around. Victor didn’t owe money to any of the banks in town.”

  As Baxter listened he pulled at a thread on the bandage round his thumb, trying to break it without pulling the bandage free. “These debts were personal, not business.” It was a statement more than question. Still he looked at Squire with eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, however Saunders thinks they were witnessed, by a lawyer.” Baxter let go of the thread.

  “So they were personal. They just weren’t friendly.”

  Baxter had come out from behind his desk and was standing over Squire. “I suppose you could put it that way.” Squire reached into his pocket and passed on the note Saunders had given him. There were three names on it. “I think Saunders felt strongly about the last name.”

  “Nothing else at the bank?” Baxter stepped back, looking at the note as if it were a hole card.

  “No.”

  Baxter slipped the paper into a pocket. He took a step back toward Squire. His voice was taut again, as distrustful as the pluck of an E string. “And no one upstairs was helpful or suspicious?”

  “No.” Squire straightened up in his chair.

  Baxter leaned in a little, more wary, almost menacing. “You’re sure? You’re not leaving anything out?”

  Squire was gripping the arms now, as if he were in a dentist’s chair. “No…” And then Squire’s countenance shifted from guardedness to realization. “Oh, I see. This is about the letters…Yes, I know some Latin.”

  Baxter huffed, as if Squire’s admission were pointless, that he had known all along. “I’m more interested in how well you know the chief.”

  Squire had relaxed his grip and let his body once again sink into the back of the chair. “How well I know the chief? I don’t. All I know about him is that I don’t know what to think.” Squire held up both his hands then let them fall back into his lap where they lay in senseless death. “My first day on the job, I got introduced. We talked for about two minutes. Then at this morning’s meeting the chief points me out, says I’m on this case with you. Nods to me as he leaves, like he has faith in me…or…I don’t know what. Now you, I do what you tell me, I do it to the letter…and you look at me like you caught me with my hand in your pocket.” Squire sat shaking his head. Baxter couldn’t tell if it was an expression of denial or frustration.

  “So you didn’t see the chief last night, tell him Victor was dead, the things we found. He hasn’t got you reporting to him on this.” He’d gone this far, pushed Squire to the edge, he had to ask the question, just in case he toppled over. By now Baxter didn’t think he would, he just had to be sure.

  Squire’s voice was tired and resigned. “We shook hands once months ago, that’s the only time we’ve ever spoken. Detective, let me go back on regular patrol. This morning, being around all those people who knew Mr. Mosher, I had no idea what to say. Now you think I’m going behind your back. No thanks. I’d rather break up fights and arrest drunks.”

  Your family was right sending you to school, Baxter thought, looking at Squire, who seemed even smaller than he was, all pulled back in his chair. Better you use your head, you haven’t got the brawn for heavy lifting, or too many bar fights.

  “So you don’t want to hear what Carmine told me?” There was an invitation in Baxter’s voice, it was as close as he could come to an apology, to admitting that ambition had nearly cut off his nose to spite his face, taken away what was probably the best help he could get on this case.

  “Is he likely to end up like his brother?”

  Baxter saw Squire rise a little in his chair and gave the line a tug. “So you do want to know?”

  “I’m not ready to look at another body.” He said it as if it were a condition, like they were settling a contract.

  Baxter nodded in sympathy for the learning of a young policeman. The uniform was not designed to repel grief; it was expected to absorb it. He didn’t say anything about the weight of his own uniform. Instead, Baxter gave Squire a summary of how Victor had ended up at King’s Collegiate and what he had learned in the process. He told Squire the details of the bank robbery. He did not mention his anguish over losing the reward or any credit for the arrest.

  “So according to his brother, Victor leaves feeling much better than when he arrived. Carmine doesn’t know why exactly. However, you think it is because Victor learned that McNeally and Wallace were classmates and friends.” Squire was leaning forward now, his weight in his feet more than in the chair.

  “Correct.” Baxter was playing with a pencil he had picked up off his desk.

  “And three years ago McNeally robs a bank in Maine. You capture him here in Halifax. People from the bank arrive. Instead of McNeally being turned over to the police in Maine, he leaves with men from the bank for Europe to recover bonds he says he has stashed there.”

  “Right again.” Baxter tapped the pencil against his temple.

  Squire continued working out the themes of his sonata following Baxter’s pencil as if it were a conductor’s baton. “When all this happened, you had no idea McNeally went to King’s or was a friend of Wallace?”

  With his baton at rest, Baxter replied, “But I was always sure Tolliver stepped in because someone asked him to. Or he already knew something about the case he wanted kept quiet.”

  Continuing without direction, Squire asked, “Who is Wallace?”

  “Maynard Sinclair Wallace is the son of Hector Wallace who made a fortune in lumber and fish and then went into politics. Hector is long dead. Maynard is settled gentry, the kind you often hear about. The kind you seldom see. He’s American rich. Beats me why he doesn’t go there.”

  Baxter had set the pencil back on his desk. He was taking another look at the bandage on his thumb. “Did Wallace have anything to do with Victor?” Squire asked.

  Baxter put his hand down as if it were forbidden fruit. He looked Squire in the eye and offered up all he knew on that score. “I don’t know.” Then he asked, “No one you talked to upstairs mentioned Wallace?”

  Squire thought first to be sure. “No,” he said, then went on with his thinking out loud. “But when Victor accidentally discovers the connection between Wallace and McNeally it picks him up out of the doldrums. Then a couple of days later he’s dead in the water under a pier…You want to talk to Wallace.”

  Baxter looked at his bandage again, then put the hand in a pants pocket. “First I want to talk to Charles Clarke.”

  “Charles Clarke that owns Clarke’s Place?”

  “You’ve heard of Mr. Clarke?”

  Squire had been in one position too long. He got up and began knocking his feet together, trying to wake them up. He shrugged in response to Baxter’s question. “I’ve heard things. I’ve never had any trouble there. What’s Clarke got to do with this?”

  “I’ll explain on the way.” Baxter collected his hat from the stand by the door which he held open as Squire picked up his helmet. The two men arranged themselves as they walked side by side toward the door leading out of the police station.

  Small dandelion clouds drifted past the late day sun. The two men moved across the Grand Parade in the changing light. The day was still warm, the mood of the city was as high and light as the clouds, refusing to be dispirited by the dour faces of two policemen.

  Victor’s death had been in the papers. As Baxter had suspected, most readers missed that bit of news amidst reports from the front. War always took centre stage. There had been plenty of interest in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. A few men from the city had seen action. Running supplies and attacks on American shipping had been far more common and profitable, very profitable for a few. But that was all long before Baxter’s time.

  He stole a glance at the young man walking by his side. Baxter had been only half as old when the American Civil War b
roke out. He struggled to recall vague memories of headlines and bits of conversations overheard—Shiloh Casualties Top 23,000—51,000 Fall At Gettysburg—they say 5,000 men died in an hour at Cold Harbour.

  Once again there was money to be made in supplies and privateering. The city watched a few men make small fortunes. Some of those men and profits were still here. Others had run off to grander places. And in that war a good many men and some women from British North America wound up on the battlefields fighting on both sides. The fellow who Baxter would eventually replace on the police force had decided to trade in one uniform for another. He died for the Confederacy defending Richmond. Baxter remembered thinking at the time that he and his predecessor might have had much in common, and yet nothing at all.

  When Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, some thought Grant might march north. Such talk had helped unite the provinces into the Dominion of Canada. This Boer War would be the Dominion’s first official foreign war. Nova Scotia had been asked for 125 men. The morning papers had listed the 80 men already signed up, many of them from Halifax. Baxter had not yet seen the list. Later he would recognize a couple of names well known in police court. All ranks of Halifax society would bear arms and wave the flag for Queen and country.

  Public distraction could be of some help. His own distraction could be a disaster. In an effort to focus and push back his fatigue Baxter began to think out loud. He admitted that progress had been made. The day had started with a handful of facts and the idea that Victor’s business dealings might have had something to do with his death, which was nothing more than theory. They had no suspects. Now only a few hours later, the picture had cleared up enough to reveal that Victor had debt problems, unofficial debts he’d tried his best to hide, which meant it was money owed for shady dealings or to crooked people or both. Charles Clarke was beyond shady. Baxter thought of him as a sucking chest wound that pulled a current of bile and effluent through the upper streets. “His place is politely listed in the city directory as a tavern. Everyone knows it’s a brothel.” Baxter’s tone was a weave of disgust and disbelief.

  So far as Baxter was concerned, fire was the only cure. Talk of patience and tolerance was part of the problem. Ugliness never cleaned up easy. Clarke’s place was raided from time to time. As a young officer, Baxter had burst in more than once to find a few men having a quiet drink in full compliance with the liquor laws. Any women that happened to be there wore innocent smiles and kept their faces turned down politely. Men would claim them as their guests. No one would know anything about the rooms upstairs. The smalls, the frocks, the tangled sheets, and scents lingering in the air? “What about them?” Clarke would say. “I take in boarders.” His angry sarcastic imitation of Clarke was thick with venom. The more he talked the more Baxter’s pace quickened, and at times Squire had to take a quick hop-skip to catch up.

  One expected to find sailors and soldiers at Clarke’s. One did not expect to find men of standing in such places. Popular belief said otherwise. The motley crew of degenerates that buzzed around the city’s common toilets could all sink into perdition and good riddance as far as Baxter was concerned. The city didn’t need them, would be better off without them. What the city needed desperately was leadership. If the rumours were true, and Baxter knew they were, Charles Clarke was being allowed to lead good men to ruination. He was a whore-master, a predator, and purveyor of the worst kind of sin, a destroyer, a cancer. He deserved to be vilified, locked away, or better still hanged from a gibbet as a warning to others. Yet the man walked the upper streets to smiles and hellos. He was welcome in every shop. Clergymen of all denominations refused to cast him out and prayed for mercy upon his soul. Baxter’s belligerence and incredulity may have been directed at the complicity of local politicians. Or maybe he was lamenting the want of a crusading army. Or perhaps he was offering a comment on the failings of the Christian faith. Squire decided it was best not to seek clarification.

  Baxter had always thought of Victor Mosher as a moderate. His politics looked for the middle ground. That didn’t mean his principles were easily shifted or went up for bid during heated debate. Victor was a man of honour and decency. Baxter could imagine Victor shaking Clarke’s hand, same as he would shake the hand of every other voter in his ward. Baxter had often read newspaper accounts of Victor’s speeches in Council demanding action against the plague being unleashed upon the city by liquor, vice, and debauchery, and men like Clarke who profited from its manufacture and sale. What Baxter could not imagine, what he had no desire to read about in the city’s papers, he now told Squire, “is the sad fact that Victor Mosher lied to his wife, then snuck off to Clarke’s Place.” They had come to a stop at the corner of George and Grafton. As a pair of hacks went past, Baxter shook his head, still not wanting to accept that reality, trying to erase the images it brought to mind. Over the sound of the horses and whistles of their drivers, he said, “But that is what he did.”

  As they started off again Baxter remained silent. Squire took the opening. “I heard what you said about Clarke’s Place. Now can you tell me how you know Victor went there?”

  “Carmine told me.” As they turned the corner off George Street on to Albemarle Baxter described how Carmine had waved him down as he was leaving the school grounds. “He said maybe Victor had mentioned where he was going to be.”

  “Clarke’s Place?” Squire turned toward the detective as he spoke. No look came back.

  Baxter didn’t have to answer. His inability to hide his disappointment, to appear to be holding out for the possibility that Victor had been somewhere else said all that needed to be said. “After he pretended to be his brother, Carmine mulled things over for an hour or so. Then, he sent a second wire. He sent it to 117 Albemarle Street…so Victor would know I was looking for him.”

  Talking through his thoughts about their conversation in Baxter’s kitchen the night before, Squire said, “If you had waited longer at the telegraph…” Whatever else he thought was kept to himself.

  Baxter shrugged. Squire was right, but if he had found out earlier about Victor being at Clarke’s Place, he might not have gone to Windsor and made the same discovery that Victor found so interesting, the connection between McNeally and Wallace. It was all still veiled in the mist of secrets and of time to come. That didn’t stop Baxter from feeling sure that Victor’s discovery was related to his death. He was equally sure that Charles Clarke could explain how. What Baxter needed to do was get Clarke to a point where he would explain. Waving forward as he spoke, he said, “The next door is Clarke’s. Let me do the talking.” Baxter let out a sigh that was more of a growl. Then he clenched his teeth and banged as hard as he could.

  A latch clicked and the door began to open almost immediately. It seemed to be moving by itself and it was not in any hurry. At the end of its swing, there was a pause, then a man stepped into the light. He was just over six feet tall, carrying at least two hundred pounds, none of them extra. He might have just finished shining his shoes. The dark pants and white shirt showed some wear. They showed no dirt. The features were neither coarse nor fine. And somehow they came together to form a face that was almost handsome. If Clarke had been carrying a Bible, Squire would have pegged him for a church deacon. As it was, Squire stepped back to recheck the number over the door.

  Baxter showed no hesitation. “Good afternoon, Mr. Clarke.” The voice was as warm and sunny as the weather and Squire looked quickly again to see where it was coming from.

  “Well, well, my favourite policeman.” The smile was yellowed and chipped in places, but it made the face handsome for sure. Speaking louder and over his shoulder, Clarke said, “Girls, the chief inspector is here, best be lookin’ sharp.” Then, still smiling, he said to Baxter, “Who’s yer sweetheart?”

  Squire blushed. Baxter ignored the taunt. “We have reports of a disturbance, we need to come in.”

  Clarke looked like he was trying to get the smile off hi
s face and just couldn’t. “Slow day at the station or the temperance people up your arse again?”

  “Have you been drinking, Mr. Clarke?” Both men knew it wasn’t against the law if he had been. That wasn’t Baxter’s point. He hoped Clarke had been drinking and would be more pliable, easier to trip up.

  Clarke stepped forward a little into the sunshine. He tilted his face up and closed his eyes. “Just the sacrament at mornin’ Mass. You could check if you want with Father Murphy at Saint Mary’s.”

  Baxter’s voice remained pleasant while his eyes turned ice cold. “I’d do better to check you for a cloven hoof.” He didn’t bother adding that if Clarke had any faith at all it would be Protestant, one of the many derivatives of the one true faith. Father Murphy might not cast him out. On the other hand, allowing Clarke to take Holy Communion would be a disgrace.

  Clarke lowered his chin and smiled again without a hint of malice or offence. “Now you done cast the first stone, you goin’ tell me what you want?”

  Baxter stiffened a little. He didn’t move forward. “We need to have a look around.”

  Clarke dropped the smile and let a pall of boredom fall across his face. “Go on then, I’ll feed Preacher.” He stepped back into the gloom of the front parlour to his right. A small round rug marked the centre of the room, it looked like a patch of garden soil. A tall end table was rooted there as the base for an equally tall bamboo birdcage with a dome top. A quaker parrot flapped from one perch to another as Clarke picked up a rusting slice of apple from a dish beside the cage. They both ignored the two policemen moving past in single file down the narrow hall.

  Baxter and Squire searched in silent awkwardness, glancing quickly into the kitchen, the drawing room, and then the back parlour. It had been a few years since Baxter had been part of a raid at Clarke’s Place, but the floor plan hadn’t changed. The large pine table in the kitchen with its bench seats was familiar. So were the two large leather chesterfields in the drawing room. He almost said what he was thinking. He was glad he didn’t. Such familiarity would raise suspicion no matter how he explained it. For similar reasons he hoped Squire wouldn’t say anything that suggested previous knowledge. Back at the station when Squire had said he had had no trouble with Clarke’s Place, Baxter had taken that to mean Squire had never been here, under any circumstances. Learning that Victor was known here had been disappointing enough. It was too soon for another lesson in human frailty.