Bloody Relations

by Don Gutteridge

  “We was frantic, sir,” Molly said. “We tried to ask about her in town, but most folks refuse to talk to us.”

  “And we have to be careful who we talk to,” Frieda said.

  “I figured she’d tried to go back home to her parents near Streetsville,” Mrs. Burgess added. “Thank goodness she come back to us.”

  “That was in April?” Marc queried. “So when did Sarah become part of the, uh, business?”

  “As soon as she recovered her strength, which wasn’t long. She’d begged to be part of it soon after she got here, but I said no and that was it. But she had nowhere to go after she lost the baby, and by then she was part of the family.”

  “Just like a sister,” Frieda added, beginning to sniffle again.

  “She fitted right in, didn’t she, Molly?” Carrie said.

  “Some of the gentlemen asked specially fer her,” Molly said, as if that was a feat to boast about.

  Marc looked at Sarah’s benefactress: “Could she not have tried to work at something else?”

  “Something respectable, Mr. Edwards?”

  “I was thinking of something less hazardous, Mrs. Burgess,” Marc said.

  The madam’s head dropped.

  “Why do you need to know so much about Sarah anyways?” Molly asked, stroking the back of her mistress’s neck.

  “Well, it’s occurred to me that Sarah’s suddenly joining the enterprise and, from what I gather now, becoming a favourite among your regulars, might have occasioned some resentment among you girls.”

  This remark was greeted by puzzled silence. The three girls looked at one another, and Molly spoke for the other two: “There was none of that.”

  Marc was inclined to agree but pressed on. “There is also the possibility that one of the rival businesses nearby might, out of envy or competitiveness, wish to ruin you, and how better than to hire some cutthroat to murder your star performer. Surely any sort of scandal here would scare off your special clientele.”

  “I’ll admit there is no love lost between me and Madame Charlotte,” Mrs. Burgess said, “but a murder down here in Irishtown can do nobody any good. We’d all suffer. As we’re going to do soon. Besides, I’ve told you that no one else got in here after midnight except the pale gentleman, and there’s no way anyone could have got into this house once the doors were barred.”

  “Except through the booby-hatch,” Carrie blurted, then slapped three fingers across her lips.

  Marc sat bolt upright. “Are you saying that there is another way into this house?”

  Mrs. Burgess blushed, started to look daggers at Carrie, then turned to Marc and said with a sigh, “I’m afraid so.”

  SIX

  It’s right down here.” Mrs. Burgess directed Marc and Cobb along the narrow hallway that led to the three cubicles and water closet. (It was a cistern Marc had noted on the outside wall.) The curtains were tightly drawn across the doorway to the murder scene; Marc noticed Mrs. Burgess shudder as they passed it. Once at the end of the hall, she stood to one side and pointed at the lower wall. Marc squatted down with Cobb peering over his right shoulder. The outline of a small door, hinged on top like a hatch, was just visible, but he could see no latch or handle. He pushed at the door but it did not move.

  “It opens only with a key,” Mrs. Burgess said. “You can get in or out by kneeling down and squeezing through.”

  “But why on earth would you put a door like this right next to the rooms where your girls work and sometimes fall asleep?”

  “It’s really an escape hatch. I had it put in when the house was first built. I wanted a secret door so if there was trouble in the parlour or these rooms, one of us could slip away and get help.”

  When Marc looked skeptical, she said pointedly, “You’d be surprised how folks around here help one another out. We have to; nobody else will.”

  Marc stood up and stared at the end wall. Unless a direct light were thrown on it—even in the afternoon the windowless hallway was gloomy—the hatch was barely detectable. Which would explain why neither Cobb nor Sturges had spotted it last night. And Carrie, for whatever reason, had chosen not to point it out when she accompanied Cobb on his inspection of the windows earlier.

  “There’s no knob inside or outside,” Mrs. Burgess said. “You need a key to unlatch the lock and to pull the door open.” With that, she reached down into her ample cleavage and drew out a large key on a thin gold chain. She knelt down, inserted it in the keyhole close to the floor, and, using it as a knob, eased the hatch upward. Then she locked it again and returned the key to its bower.

  “But how would one of the girls be able to use this as an escape route? Do they all have keys?”

  “Of course not. That would be foolhardy. I had the locksmith on King Street make only two keys for this lock. I keep one around my neck. The other is tucked behind that picture on the wall there.”

  Marc looked at the dusty, framed engraving of an English racehorse hanging on the wall well above the hatch.

  “Only my girls and I know it’s there.”

  “Well, we’d better check to make sure, don’t you think?” Marc asked patiently.

  With a resigned gesture, Mrs. Burgess lifted the picture off its hook and turned it over in both hands. A small groove had been carved into the bottom slat of the frame to accommodate the key.

  But the key was not in it.

  • • •

  ONCE AGAIN THEY WERE BACK IN the parlour, and ready for another go-round. And this time there was a different kind of tension in the air.

  While the three girls sat somewhat stiffly around Mrs. Burgess and exchanged furtive glances, Marc began. “It now appears that one of your customers may have stolen the escape-door key and used it to slip unnoticed into the hallway, murder Sarah McConkey, and get away into the night.”

  Mrs. Burgess sat tight-lipped. Clearly she had been shaken by the discovery of the missing key. Marc could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.

  “Do you have any idea who might have taken it or when?”

  Mrs. Burgess shook her head.

  “When did you last check to see if it was still in place?”

  “I do so every few days,” she said with some of her former defiance. “The safety of my girls is uppermost in my mind. It was there two days ago.”

  “Did any of you girls see anyone who might have taken it in the past two days?”

  They too shook their heads.

  Finally it was Molly who spoke, looking not at Marc but at her mistress. “It could’ve been Michael, couldn’t it, Mum?”

  “Michael?” Marc exclaimed. “Who in hell is Michael?”

  Mrs. Burgess reddened. “I suppose I must tell you. I didn’t see how it was of any importance earlier.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About Michael Badger. He’s our bruiser. But I sent him packing yesterday morning.”

  This announcement elicited cries of surprise from the girls and a gaggle of questions. Once they were calmed enough to listen to a rational explanation, Marc and Cobb leaned forward with fresh anticipation to hear what the mistress of the house had to say now.

  “Please continue,” Marc prompted, gently but firmly.

  “Michael’s the young man who’s been acting as our bruiser off and on since last fall.”

  “A bruiser’s usually a big fella who keeps the customers from flippin’ their wigs or bustin’ their flies,” Cobb explained to Marc. “Most of the cathouses and some of the rougher waterin’ holes keep one or two on a leash.”

  “And Badger was this sort of protector?” Marc asked.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Burgess said. “Not that we needed much, mind. You’ve probably been wondering why I spent good money to buy land here and build an expensive residence for the trade.”

  “That question had entered my mind.”

  “Well, the answer is simple. It’s safer in here than in the town. We haven’t got any policemen or sheriff to protect us in here, but we look out for
one another. We got rules and we got people who will help see that they’re followed.”

  “Why the bruiser, then?”

  “All of our callers are gentlemen, so we have little trouble there. But whenever a ship arrives or some hooligan’s just come into cash from thieving or gambling, sailors and the like come pounding on our doors and cursing at our windows, annoyed when they can’t get in and threatening to wreak havoc. So, whenever we suspect there might be that sort of trouble, I send for Michael and he comes for the duration.”

  “And he was intimidating enough to scare off any troublemakers?”

  The girls whooped at this, and for the first time Marc caught a glimpse of the happier, youthful side of their personalities that had been cowed by grief and fear.

  “He was a big fella?” Cobb asked, which excited more giggles.

  “Michael Badger is as tall as Mr. Edwards and a foot broader in the shoulders,” Mrs. Burgess said. “And he’s got a shock of orange hair as wild and shaggy as a lion’s mane. One look at him and they’d run like rabbits.”

  “Were you not worried that he’d intimidate your clients or pose a danger to the girls here?”

  This comment induced more tittering.

  “In here, Michael was a softie, wasn’t he, Mum?” Molly said.

  Mrs. Burgess paused before saying, “I gave him strict instructions about his duties and deportment when I first took him on. I realized that the girls might be a temptation to him, so I specifically warned him that they were off limits. If he was desperate for a woman, I told him he could go on up to Madame Charlotte’s and I’d pay the fare. I offered him a wage he couldn’t hope to make anywhere else in the city.”

  “So he abided by your rules?” It was hard to imagine anyone not doing so, Marc thought.

  “He teased us a bit, that was all,” Carrie said.

  “He did make us laugh, didn’t he, Mum?”

  “Oh, how he could tell a story,” Molly added.

  “He sounds like the perfect employee,” Marc said. “So tell us, Mrs. Burgess, why you summarily dismissed him yesterday morning and failed to inform your girls.”

  “I would have told them, of course, in good time and in my own way.” She turned slightly to the women. “You didn’t know it, but that fun-loving, likeable bear of a man was a gambler and, when it came to money, a bit of a wastrel.”

  Mrs. Burgess dismissed their quick protests. “I know this for a fact, for he used his good nature to prey upon mine. Very foolishly, I loaned him money.”

  “You didn’t!” Molly cried, as if that possibility was unthinkable.

  “Not a lot. At least not all at once. But he pleaded with me, saying he’d lost his wages and more at that dive, the Tinker’s Dam, and the men up there were threatening to break his legs.”

  “The Tinker’s Dam is the sinkhole of Toronto,” Cobb said with disgust.

  “So it is,” Mrs. Burgess agreed. “At first I merely gave Michael advances on his wages. I called him in several times when he wasn’t really needed and we spent the evening tripping over him. But soon it became clear to me that he could never work off his debt.”

  “So you decided to have it out with him yesterday?” Marc said.

  Mrs. Burgess sighed. “Yes, I did.” She looked at Molly next to her. “I’m sorry, luv, but I had no choice. He owed me thirty dollars. I told him he had to pay me what he owed within a week or leave my employ.”

  “How did he respond?”

  Tears filled Mrs. Burgess’s eyes. “He laughed in my face. He said he owed more than that to the gamblers at the Tinker’s Dam. So what else was I to do? He hadn’t shown up when we needed him on Saturday and here he was on Monday morning asking for money again. I ordered him off the property. I told him I was going to put the word out in Irishtown, so he knew I meant business.”

  There was a collective gasp from the girls.

  “What do you mean?” Marc asked.

  “He would be persona non grata in Irishtown. If he was to put his big toe anywhere on our territory, a scout or tracker would know, and if he was fool enough to keep on coming, he’d be lucky to escape with his skull in one piece.”

  “So you effectively banished him?”

  “I did, and he knew it.”

  “So he cleared out. And all this happened yesterday morning?”

  “Yes. The girls were still in town shopping after the ceremonies.”

  Marc hesitated before saying, “You do realize, Mrs. Burgess, that Michael Badger is the person most likely to have reason and opportunity to remove the key to the hatch from behind the picture?”

  Mrs. Burgess paled. “He did go into one of the rooms back there to collect his belongings, but—”

  “But he may have become a desperate man, willing to attempt deeds quite out of keeping with his character.”

  The girls cried out in disbelief and anguish.

  “I think we have to entertain the unpalatable possibility that Michael Badger came through the escape hatch sometime last night.”

  • • •

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN MARC and Cobb wended their way back through the maze of Irishtown towards Lot Street. They had done all they could at Madame Renée’s. Mrs. Burgess and the girls, weary and wrung out as they were, were allowed to visit the undertaker to make arrangements for Sarah McConkey’s funeral on Thursday, the day after tomorrow.

  When they had departed, Marc and Cobb, using lanterns, went over every inch of the sprawling house in search of bloodstains or evidence of recent attempts to scrub them away. They found nothing. They reluctantly concluded that none of the victim’s blood—and pints of it had been spilled in that horrific room—had been carried outside of it, except for the bloody footprints made by Handford Ellice when he’d staggered naked into the hallway. Cobb had immediately carried him to a chair and ordered Mrs. Burgess to fetch a blanket or robe for him. Thereafter he had lurched over to another chair by the stove until the blood dried on him and Dr. Withers arrived. Then, under the doctor’s instructions, the distraught Mr. Ellice had been washed by one of the girls and put back into his clothes, unbloodied on the far side of the bed. As the women had made no effort to clean up the parlour before Marc’s arrival, Ellice’s progress from the bed to the hall doorway and thence to the chair were still evident, and unproblematic. Assuming Ellice was somehow innocent, it was the blood from the killer’s hands or clothing that they were hoping to find elsewhere in the house. In particular, they examined the area around the hatch but discovered no traces.

  Then they moved outside and walked all the way around the house. It had not rained for four or five days, and so no telltale footprints were visible in the dusty soil under the windows or near the hatch. A scrawny bush meant to camouflage the latter’s presence had been defoliated by marauding ragamuffins, so the hatch would have been no secret among the inhabitants of Irishtown. Whether that was of any significance remained to be seen.

  “Well, Cobb, what do you make of this business so far?”

  More delighted to be asked than he was willing to let on, Cobb said, “I don’t rightly know the ins and outs of it yet, but I’d put my money on some kinda feud among the low-lifes in there. Somebody snuck in, or else one of them girlies did it outta jealousy.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s those ins and outs that matter. When we know how and why, we’ll have no trouble deciding who.”

  “You think that Badger fella used the key and got in there and back out real quick and quiet?”

  “It’s the most probable possibility,” Marc said, recalling his Aristotle.

  “Lookin’ fer money or somethin’ he could nick and sell?”

  “Perhaps. But my hunch right now, given what we have learned thus far, is that it’s more sinister than simple robbery or revenge, both of which motives may certainly be attributed to Michael Badger.”

  “You ain’t thinkin’ conspiracy again, are ya?” Cobb asked, making the word rhyme with “piracy.”

  Marc smiled, not su
re after having known Cobb for two years now whether his solecisms were deliberate, naive, or a bit of both. “I am indeed.”

  They came out onto Lot Street and headed east towards Yonge, the smell of Barnett’s tannery ripe in their nostrils.

  “I am willing to entertain the hypothesis that Badger had good reason to steal that key and return to the house last night, in spite of the evident risks, to burgle and perhaps do something to damage the reputation of the brothel. But I cannot see a gambler, petty criminal, and deceiver like Badger viciously stabbing one of the girls, whom we are told he treated as if they were his sisters. It makes no sense. His immediate need was money in order to avoid reprisals from the gamblers at the Tinker’s Dam. There must have been a stronger motive.”

  Marc walked along for minute, deep in thought.

  Cobb said, “I’d better go up there and check out that story.”

  “Yes. We need more facts. I also hope to learn from Lord Durham when I report to him this evening exactly when and how Handford Ellice left Spadina. At the moment we have only the women’s word that the sequence of events began shortly after one o’clock.”

  “Is that important?”

  “I didn’t think so at first, but if Ellice left the gala at, say, eleven o’clock, and got to the brothel before midnight, then the women would have had time to rig their little exculpatory drama at leisure. But if he arrived at, say, one-fifteen, as they claim, and you arrived just after two, then their story gains credibility.”

  “You still figure Badger was involved somehow?”

  “I’m saying that if he did actually commit the murder, he would have had some reason beyond petty revenge or simple robbery. He apparently needed cash, a lot of it, but certainly more than he was likely to find lying about the brothel. Where could he get that kind of money?”

  Thinking out loud, Marc continued, the rush of his words matching a military stride that left Cobb puffing in his wake. “Yesterday morning he was caught unawares by Mrs. Burgess’s ultimatum. Let’s say that someone from the city who wished to scupper Lord Durham’s mission had been dangling monetary bait before him in anticipation of doing just that. At first he had refused, out of perverse loyalty to the woman he was fleecing or out of simple discretion. Suddenly he is desperate for money, fearing perhaps for his own life. So he decides to take on the nefarious task.