Winner's Loss

by Mel Bradshaw

  “But of course I didn’t want to speak to you!” Koch exclaimed. “Is grief allowed no privileges?”

  “It’s Friday evening,” I said. “Detective Sergeant O’Brian and I can both think of things we’d rather be doing. So let’s get this over with. When was the last time you saw Nora Britton?”

  “Two weeks ago, more or less. It wasn’t a bourgeois marriage.”

  “All the same, might you have seen her as recently as Monday?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever prepare food or drink for her to take to the church when she was working on the mural?”

  “Never.”

  “You didn’t send her anything to eat or drink last Monday?”

  “No.”

  I asked in various ways if he knew either the retired pharmacist Jordan Stillwater or his grandson Archie. Koch said and kept saying no and no.

  “You mentioned that your wife had set aside money for her cremation. Did she have much money of her own?”

  “Enough to support her between commissions. She did all right.”

  “Now that she’s dead, will whatever she had come to you?”

  “You louse,” Koch said with feeling.

  “Had she made a will?”

  No answer.

  I walked over and put a hand on the back of his chair. “Look at me, Herman.”

  Koch stared out the window, giving me a great view of the top of his scurf-ridden head.

  Harry got up from the piano bench and stepped forward. Neither he nor I intended to do more than crowd Koch, but Koch wasn’t hero enough to call our bluff. He looked up.

  “Did Nora Britton have a will, Herman?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No need to shout,” I said. Then, pointing to the landscape on the easel, “You won’t set any store by my opinion, but I admire your painting.”

  Koch forced himself to nod.

  “Would you show me your design for Christ Church Grange Park?”

  “I don’t have it,” Koch said.

  “It hasn’t been destroyed, I hope.”

  “Nora asked for it and I gave it to her. I don’t know what she did with it.”

  “Can you let me into her studio?”

  Koch said he didn’t have a key.

  “Please don’t leave town until further notice, Mr. Koch. We may want to speak again.” I caught Harry’s eye. “Shall we go?”

  “Sure,” my colleague said. “I’m just curious about these marks.”

  He pointed to tracks in the floor leading from the wheels beneath the left side of the piano out in an arc into the room. When we swung the piano out along this arc, the trap door in the partition was revealed. So much for Ernestine Lopez’s assertion that there was no access from her studio to Koch’s.

  Harry couldn’t wait to get home to his young wife and infant daughter in Riverdale. When we parted company on the eastbound King streetcar, I told him I’d report for both of us to Sanderson. At six on a Friday evening, the inspector was still filling his glass-walled office with pipe smoke and cleaning up correspondence. My news didn’t upset him as much as I’d have liked. He did hold forth on how police work would be harder if cremation became general, but in this case he seemed grateful that his department was spared the work of a murder investigation. He reckoned that the case was now closed, that the coroner’s finding of accidental death would have to stand, and that I should start my weekend and come back Monday morning ready to immerse myself in the apprehension of such devastators of public order as prostitutes and pickpockets.

  Drudgery in my future, but for now, free time.

  I’d told Koch I had better things to do than talk to him. I didn’t. With my pay in my pocket, I thought of taking Ruth Stone out to dinner, but when I called the Dispatch, someone told me she’d left for the day. I started to look up her home number, but let the directory fall closed. I didn’t have the juicy murder case she wanted to hear about. And at the same time I felt there were still angles of inquiry to pursue before I could put the death of Nora Britton out of my mind.

  Two women — two modern working women, engagingly energetic carvers of their own paths. I felt the pull of each. But Ruth was alive: she could wait. Nora needed me more right now. If she’d been killed, her killer’s trail was cooling.

  Instead of Ruth I phoned Dalton Linacre. In view of his dual responsibilities as professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto and as forensic scientist for all of Ontario, I had a hunch he’d still be at work at six thirty on a Friday evening, but I wanted to be sure. When he answered on the third ring, I asked if I could bring him some food samples for toxicological analysis. I was one of the few detectives for whom he’d do work without a formal requisition from the inspector. I think that he was shy as well as conscientious and that he appreciated my never wasting his time or energies with small talk. On this occasion I did ask if I could bring him something to eat along with the samples for analysis, but he said he never ate in the lab: the smells killed appetite.

  I could appreciate his point of view when I picked up Nora Britton’s stinky knapsack from the evidence locker and made myself unpopular by transporting it on the northbound Bay streetcar. Linacre’s lab was in the basement of the University Mining Building at 170 College Street. I entered his dimly lit lair without knocking and found the middle-aged professor bent over his comparison microscope. His dark cowlick stood up from the crown of his head like a bird’s crest while his threadbare lab coat hung over the shoulders of his three-piece suit like a cape. His green bow tie was easily the brightest spot of colour in the room.

  “I need to know if a woman was poisoned,” I said, setting the knapsack down on the table by the door. “These are the remains of what we think was her last meal.”

  Linacre turned towards me and slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. His half-smile of recognition was as effusive a greeting as I ever got from him.

  “Are you talking about something fast like cyanide or strychnine? Or do we check for slow poisons such as hemlock, botulinum, castor beans, or ergot?”

  “Possibly something found in a pharmacy.” I didn’t know which of the substances mentioned this covered. “We’re dealing with a woman found at the foot of a scaffold twenty-something feet high. What we want to know is whether she ingested anything that within eight to ten hours could have caused her death — either because it killed her outright or because it caused her to lose her balance and fall from the scaffold.”

  “Fall while still alive to her death?” said Linacre.

  “Uh-huh. The substance we’re looking for need not be one that kills in itself, merely one that makes a person dizzy.”

  “Dizziness can arise from allergies, low blood pressure, anemia, a heart condition, or other conditions a doctor would know more about than I. But I’m by no means convinced that dizziness alone could account for this death. A fall of twenty feet wouldn’t necessarily be fatal to a normally healthy person. Can you tell me anything of your lady’s medical history?”

  “No, but I’ll try to find out.”

  “I take it the pathologist has not found any noxious substance in her stomach. You might ask him also about any signs of infection or temporary illness.”

  I told the professor that no autopsy had been performed and that the body had been destroyed. While taking that in, he had another look through his microscope at whatever he’d been working on when I came in. I knew he was losing patience with me, and I wasn’t happy about it. I shuffled my feet. But, having already lost Nora to the cremation company’s flames, I didn’t want to lose the chance of finding something in that picnic supper. I stood my ground until Linacre spoke again.

  “I’ll give your big haystack a once-over. Come back in twenty-four hours. You’re welcome to whatever needles I’ve been able to find by then.”

  I apologized for the stench coming from Nora’s knapsack; he said he’d rather deal with poisons than bombs. I’d heard him say on other occasions tha
t he’d rather deal with firearms than bombs. I hoped I never had to bring him a bomb.

  When I left Linacre, I found a student cafeteria with a special on spaghetti and meatballs. I had a plate of that, then another, before walking on to Oxford Street in the Kensington Market area. I entered a yellow brick factory building, climbed unswept wooden stairs to the third floor, and sauntered through the exercise and assembly areas of an athletic club. A handful of sweat-drenched youngsters were lifting weights or laying into punching bags when I passed, but most of the activity at this hour was confined to the illegal bar in-behind. The jumbosized windows in that back room — as much as sixty-four square feet of glass each — were closed and covered with blackout curtains. Photos of local boxing heroes decorated the walls. Warm male bodies filled the room. From a radio turned low, Whispering Jack Smith was consoling the dateless men with his rendition of “Me and My Shadow.” I took the last empty table and a seat at it with a view of the door. Over a double rye, I tried to work out what I would do with myself until I got the results of Linacre’s tests.

  I thought I’d like to speak to Nora Britton’s family and judge for myself whether their beliefs regarding cremation adequately explained Herman Koch’s behaviour. The radial, an out-of-town streetcar, would after many stops get me to the village of Aurora. But it might be more instructive to have a look at Nora’s studio on Elizabeth Street first.

  I finished my drink and ordered a bigger one, keeping an eye all the while on the booze can’s curtained doorway. Even though it was far more likely that Jack Wellington would patronize one of the suburban clubs or perhaps the uptown Casa Loma Hotel, he was the party I hoped to see walk in. Instead, I witnessed the entrance of Oscar Craig. What made it an entrance was that the fight fan and artist had on his arm a theatrical blonde wrapped in a black ostrich boa so substantial that it was difficult to see whether she was wearing anything else.

  These two were a breath of fresh air. I caught Oscar’s eye and beckoned him over to my table. The couple arrived at the same time as the waiter with my tumblerful of whisky. He set it down and promptly yanked from Craig’s hand the chair Craig had pulled out from the table for his feathered friend.

  I got to my feet. “Why not let the lady sit down?” I suggested.

  The muted radio was now massaging our ears with the peppy little ditty “Ain’t She Sweet?” The waiter wasn’t prepared to agree.

  “No women in the bar,” he said.

  I didn’t recognize him or know how much trouble the man was likely to be. He plainly did some work in the gym. There was no extra fat on him that I could see.

  Taller by a foot at least, Oscar looked down on him with amusement in his hazel eyes. “Is that the law?” he said.

  “Club rule.”

  “I think we’ll set it aside for tonight in honour of this very special guest from New York City.” Oscar pulled another chair from the table. “Have a seat, Gussie, and try to overlook the boorishness.”

  “You’re leaving now.” The waiter’s raised voice attracted looks from many tables. One larger man wearing service station coveralls with an oil company name stitched on came over and grabbed Craig’s right arm.

  “You take the other side, Roy,” he told the waiter. “We’re throwing this bum out.”

  “Steady,” I said. I disliked the sight of two against one.

  The big auto mechanic turned on me a contemptuous glance and with the back of his right hand swept my drink off the table. Not to be distracted, I kept my eye on his left, which was winding up for a punch to my jaw. His mistake — for a punch to work it has to come out of nowhere. I had time to duck sideways and twist the big man’s right wrist behind his back. His wrist was thick and strong: it took some prolonged effort to force him down to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Oscar was having no trouble defending himself against Roy. Finally, I got what I wanted, my adversary pinned securely to the planks, his face in the puddle of spilled rye.

  “Drink up,” I said. “Shame to let good whisky go to waste.”

  “Get off,” he gasped.

  “Promise to sit quietly?”

  No answer. I gave his head a twist.

  “Say something while you can, Supertest.”

  He gasped something I charitably interpreted as assent.

  When I got up, Oscar had Roy against the wall and was punching him repeatedly in the gut. The waiter was putting up no fight; his hands hung limp at his sides.

  “He’s finished, Oscar,” I said. “Easy does it.”

  “Mind your own potatoes,” Oscar grunted, but then stopped. “You have a point at that.”

  Clutching his stomach, Roy slumped down to a sitting position on the floor.

  “You do know how to put on a show for a tourist,” Gussie remarked in a friendly way. “Up till now, the biggest thrill Oscar thought up for me in Toronto was a visit to a fish market. This is more like it!”

  “All the same,” I said, still with an eye on the mechanic, “we’d best go somewhere else for refreshment.”

  Oscar, watchful also, was uncurling and rubbing the fingers of his right hand. “You know any other blind pigs around here, Paul?”

  “Dozens.”

  I led the way, followed by Gussie, with Oscar as our grumbling rearguard.

  “Kensington Market offers a slice of immigrant life, unvarnished, as it’s lived by real people. I thought as a thespian you’d be interested.”

  “We have fish in New York,” Gussie shot back. “It’s on the ocean, snooks — remember?”

  We went to a private dwelling on Augusta Street where the householder was a disabled construction worker and his wife was supporting the family by illegally selling whisky legally purchased from the newly created Liquor Control Board. Mrs. Solomon invited us to sit around an enamel table in her spotless kitchen, but Oscar suggested I buy a bottle to take to his studio where we’d enjoy more privacy. It was just a short walk north, he said, no more than half a dozen blocks.

  We walked until a long, dark, castle-like building loomed up behind the streetlamps. Oscar pulled out a key. His studio turned out to be an art room in Central Technical School, where he was employed to give classes.

  We climbed several flights of marble stairs to a top floor much smaller than the levels below. Oscar showed us into one of six classrooms, then went back out into the short corridor to rinse out in the communal sink three discoloured Mason jars for us to drink from. He also brought back a flower vase full of water to mix with the rye.

  “It’s a racket, of course,” he said, gesturing at the student sketches that sat on easels grouped around a plate of fruit. “Art can’t be taught.”

  “Yeah?” Gussie said. “Then why’d you come to New York to take lessons at the Art Students League?”

  “Not for lessons — where’d you get that guff? Just to make whoopee with the more or less talented crowd slumming in Greenwich Village.”

  “If that’s how you’re playing it, Shakespeare, fine by me. You can count on Gus not to muff her lines.”

  It turned out Gussie was an actress, still living in the Village, who had met Oscar there before the war.

  “We had an affair,” she told me in a gossipy undertone. “Maybe more of a fling. I’m actually bisexual. Does that shock you, Paul?”

  She pushed a wave of golden hair off her forehead and fixed me with her dramatically made-up eyes. For all her flapper glamour, I could see under the harsh schoolroom lights the wrinkles beneath her powder. I revised my estimate of her age upward to something close to my own. Girl or woman, though, she was an exotic bird, who made the Toronto she was gracing with a visit feel small and conventional.

  “The last time I got shocked,” I said, “I was trying to fix the wiring in my apartment.”

  “Paul has his own scandalous secret,” said Oscar with a touch of malice. “He’s a cop.”

  “Intriguing!” Gussie leaned towards me, her chin on her fist. “Do you get payoffs from all the speaks in town?”
/>
  “Heck no. I don’t even accept free drinks anymore. Unless Oscar’s treating.”

  Oscar pretended not to hear. He had picked up paper and pencil from the teacher’s desk and was sketching Gussie, perhaps to see if his fisticuffs had done any damage to his hand.

  “These days I find I prefer women to men,” said Gussie, playing with her jar. She had added a lot of water to her rye, but still didn’t seem to care much for the taste. “Between the two of us, I had a liaison with Edna St. Vincent Millay. You know, the poetess?”

  I said I didn’t.

  “The Village is so progressive sexually. You can find some of everything there, every kind of experiment — free love, companionate marriage, you name it.”

  “Did you happen to know a painter named Herman Koch?” I asked on a whim. The rector of Christ Church had mentioned that Koch had studied art in New York.

  “Koch, yes. How could I forget a name that sounds like that in a place like Greenwich Village. He was there after Oscar left, during the war. I think he came down — to study art, sure — but also because he didn’t want to be drafted up here.”

  “Because he didn’t want to fight Germans?” I asked.

  “Not the way he told it. I guess with a name like that he had Germans in his family tree all right. He looked a bit like the young Emil Jannings. But he claimed to be a pacifist altogether. Didn’t want to fight anyone. Now did I sleep with him or not? Wait … yes, I did. Koch had a wife, but he bragged that they had a modern marriage, that it didn’t keep either of them from ‘forming other connections.’ It sure didn’t stop him, but I never heard of her hopping into anyone else’s bed, or letting anyone but Koch hop into hers. Do you know him?”

  “Slightly,” I said. “Was his wife another painter?”

  “Uh-huh. Very quiet and studious. Too pretty to be called mousy, but unobtrusive. Now what was her name?”

  “Nora Britton,” I suggested.

  “That’s the one!” Gussie exclaimed, then asked archly, “Do you know her ‘slightly’?”

  “Not even.” I could hear the regret in my voice. “She died this week.”