Winner's Loss

by Mel Bradshaw

  I quickly covered my smile with the telephone mouthpiece. There was no such rank as deputy inspector, but Rudy had improvised brilliantly, and nothing would have sounded more reassuring to Stillwater than Rudy’s Mayfair accent. I could look forward to some pretty strong reminders that I owed the English-born detective sergeant a favour. Meanwhile, I kept up the farce.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I pretty well stumbled on a jewel robbery in progress. Could you send around a couple of constables to take custody of the perpetrators. Yes, sir. A man and a woman. She’s been shot and needs to visit a hospital before being locked up. He’s got a colourful bruise developing around the mouth, but nothing to trouble a doctor about. Right, sir. Straight to the cooler.”

  While waiting for the uniformed officers, I had Stillwater bring out another couple of chairs. The shopkeeper took one while I placed the other for myself opposite Iva and Lou, who was fine on the floor.

  “I take it you’re not Jordan Stillwater,” I said to our host, who appeared from his bearing and complexion to be in his mid-fifties at most. His hair showed no grey, but that could have been black dye.

  “Certainly not. What gave you the idea I was?”

  “It’s just that on the telephone this afternoon, Mr. Fred Stillwater told me Jordan would be here till five.”

  “I’m Fred. That must have been my father you were talking to. He likes his little jokes.”

  “My arm sure is getting tired sticking up there,” said Iva. “It’s like trying to get the teacher’s attention in class.”

  “Yeah?” said Lou through swollen lips. “And you always wanted to show her you knew the answers, didn’t you, Iva? The girl with all the smart ideas. ‘Make like lovebirds so he’ll bring out the ice,’ you said. Worked out just dandy.”

  “It would have too if the copper hadn’t chased Lloyd away.”

  “Wish I’d never met either of you,” said Lou.

  “Same to you with knobs on.” She turned to me. “So, mister, can I put my arm down?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Only if blood comes through the bandage, stick it up again.”

  When the constables took Lou and Iva off in different directions, there were no fond farewells. I’d be seeing them both again, but for now I stayed with Fred Stillwater. I started by getting him to hang a closed sign on his glass door and taking his statement regarding the robbery.

  I got him to write out a detailed description and evaluation of each of the three rings that had been taken and recovered. He put their combined worth at about eighteen hundred dollars. Permit requirements for possession of firearms had been repealed six years earlier. Permits to carry were still required, but he assured me he never took his revolver out of the store. As to his reason for firing, he said he’d had no time to think it through. His only thought was to prevent the robbers from getting away with his merchandise.

  “Did it occur to you that you were firing towards a public street and might have hit a passerby?” I asked.

  “That’s safety glass,” said Stillwater. If my questions made him uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. He sounded as if he were used to being on good terms with the police.

  “Safety glass won’t shatter, Mr. Stillwater, but it still lets bullets through. Have you ever done any target shooting to familiarize yourself with your weapon?”

  “No, detective, I haven’t had time.”

  He said he’d been in the jewellery business for more than thirty years, but that this shop was new. Among the security measures he hadn’t had time to install was an electric burglar alarm.

  I said I wanted to ask him about the robbers. Had he ever seen either of them before?

  “Not that I recall.”

  “I have reason to believe the man’s name is Lou Sweet. Haven’t you seen him in or around Christ Church Grange Park?”

  “That’s my church, but no — I don’t think so. The name means nothing to me either.”

  “I understand he was helping erect the scaffolding used to paint the war memorial mural.”

  “Ah, I wouldn’t know. I was never in the sanctuary while that work was being done. Is he a church member?”

  “I’m told not.”

  “Good. I’d be sorry to think a member of our own congregation would rob me.”

  “Mr. Stillwater, did you oppose giving the mural commission to Nora Britton?”

  “Forgive me, detective, but what has my opinion on that have to do with the robbery?”

  “I didn’t find myself in front of your store this afternoon by chance,” I said. “I’m investigating the death of Miss Britton.”

  “I thought that death was ruled an accident.”

  “It may have been, but there remain questions I’d like answered.”

  “I didn’t approve of her design, if it was her design and not her German husband’s. It doesn’t express grief as British people feel it. The servicemen depicted are armed and whole. They don’t represent the fallen whose names are to be inscribed beneath the painting. I also didn’t feel a woman would be capable, even with help, of executing a project on that scale. And unhappily I’ve been proven right. The whole idea of blind judging was a mistake in my view.”

  “Did you share your view with other members of the congregation? With your family?”

  “Certainly. Within the family we were all agreed, and a respectable segment of the congregation agreed with us as well. Nevertheless, we had no power to keep the project from going forward. Last year we stopped the commission going to the Hun, Nora Koch’s husband. But if her design had not been accepted, we would have lost both our rector, Mr. Hutchinson, and the church’s principal benefactor, Sir Joseph Deane. There are other generous members of the congregation, and our family does its bit, but ours is not an affluent parish, Mr. Shenstone. We encompass the Ward and most of Kensington, the poorest areas in the city.”

  “Would you have considered Mr. Hutchinson’s resignation a great loss?”

  “Without a doubt. He doesn’t like our family much, but that doesn’t blind me to his merits. He has an orderly mind where most clergymen in my experience are well-meaning dunderheads. His intelligence serves him in the pulpit and no less so when it comes to grasping the church finances. And then he understands the value of showmanship. I don’t know if you’ve heard any of his radio broadcasts, but they brought new members and new money into the church. Don’t think he hasn’t been offered a bishopric. He’s turned down more offers than one. Why? Because he believes the work of the church is done at the parish level. And he does it well.”

  “So from your point of view Miss Britton’s death is the best of all possible outcomes. You lose the mural you disapprove of without losing your rector or Sir Joseph.”

  “That’s an unpleasant way to put it, Mr. Shenstone. I regret Mrs. Koch’s death, but at the same time I feel she brought it on herself.”

  “By provoking the German-haters?”

  “No.” Fred Stillwater’s voice was cold and controlled. “By undertaking work that was beyond her, or anyone of her sex.”

  “I understand that you have a son named Archie, who predicted that Nora Britton would ‘fall off her scaffold and break her neck.’”

  “I didn’t hear Archie say that, but I might have said the same. Did she break her neck?”

  “As good as. The cause of death is still under investigation. Where was Archie last Monday?”

  Stillwater ran a plump finger between his neck and his tight collar. His voice started to rise in volume. “Are you trying to pin a murder on my boy? Push that line and I’ll be having words with the police commissioners.”

  I managed not to tremble in fear.

  “Fortunately,” the jeweller continued, “Archie’s alibi is ironclad. He’s a cook on a freighter that was sailing on Lake Erie.”

  “Nothing to worry about then,” I said pleasantly. “Was food from your house ever sent to the rectory or to the church?”

  This question seemed to cause more surprise than anger. �
��What on earth for?”

  “For church functions, or just to support the rector’s household, or to feed Nora Britton while she worked on the mural.”

  “Our family supports the church and its works with cash, not cucumber sandwiches. We had no interest in supporting Koch’s wife in any way, and nothing was sent to her from our house.”

  “Where were you last Monday?”

  “Will you be asking as much of every Christ Church parishioner that disapproved of that woman’s daubs on our wall?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “I lunched at home Monday and spent the afternoon here conferring with the electrician on the lighting and with other workmen putting the finishing touches on the shop. In the evening, I had dinner at the Board of Trade Club. I was home by ten thirty and didn’t go out again. Do you require a list of witnesses?”

  “Not at present. Do you know where your father was during the same period?”

  “He was also out of town.”

  “Where?”

  Stillwater hesitated. “Montreal. He was visiting friends. You’d have to ask him for particulars.”

  I let my eyes travel around the shop while wondering if there was anything else I should be asking. “What reason might Mr. Hutchinson have for not liking your family, Mr. Stillwater?”

  The jeweller’s face relaxed unexpectedly into a smile. “He’s a teetotal priest — not a common crotchet among Anglican clergy, but just our luck. Ours is not a teetotal family.”

  I thanked Stillwater for his time. He did not thank me for saving his rings, but asked if he would have to appear in court. I said not if Lou and Iva pleaded guilty, which I intended to persuade them to do. In return, I urged him to install grillwork in his shop windows and a burglar alarm. While I was folding up the jeweller’s statement and putting it in my pocket, he tried to sell me a waterproof watch.

  “I caught you glancing at my ad for the Rolex Oyster, worn without the least damage by Miss Mercedes Gleitze on her swim across the English Channel last week.”

  I told him I rarely had much to do with water and took my leave.

  Chapter 9

  Back at City Hall, there was a note on my desk from Ned informing me that Professor Linacre would be at his lab till eleven tonight if I cared to drop around. The acting detective said he’d report later on what success he’d had tracking down the scaffold-builders. I hoped he was starting with Albert Pan and not wasting his Saturday evening tracking down Lou Sweet. I left him a note to the effect that we already had that criminal mastermind under lock and key.

  I deposited Lou’s pistol in the evidence locker and made my way to Lou’s cell for a chat. It started with my asking questions and his mumbling back as he made the most of his bruised mouth. Tedious as it was to get him to repeat answers, I was grateful that he wasn’t the strong, silent type. I didn’t even have to promise that in exchange for his cooperation I’d keep him out of prison; I did no more than issue the standard promise that if he played ball I’d put in a word.

  “You’ve had a busy day, Lou,” I said. “You didn’t just try to rob a jewellery store. You also broke into Nora Britton’s studio and defaced several works of art.”

  “What makes you say that?” Lou mumbled something further. When repeated, it came out as, “I don’t even know where her studio is.”

  “Sure you do, Lou. It’s just down the block from your house, the house Miss Britton made look so bad in her paintings of the Ward. What was it about those paintings that got your goat?”

  “She showed the rough cast cracked and falling off. I did that stucco work myself.” Mumble mumble.

  “Say it again, Lou.”

  “That’s my trade, and I’m telling you it was well done.”

  “You didn’t like Miss Britton’s pictures of Rose either. That’s why you defaced all the ones of her in the studio. It had to be you. Who else would have felt so strongly about them? Who else would have cut you out of the mural design?”

  Mumble mumble.

  “Again, Lou.”

  “She made Rose look poor, as if I didn’t look after her.”

  “Is stealing diamonds your idea of looking after her?”

  “I just can’t find work right now, nothing in my line. I overheard someone in Christ Church say a gent called Stillwater was opening a jewellery store in Yorkville. I told Lloyd Hanson, and he checked it out. Said there was no alarm and we could hold it up easy. I shouldn’t have listened to him.”

  “Nora Britton gave you honest work and you wrecked her studio.”

  “She was dead by then.” Lou was no longer mumbling.

  “How did you manage that?”

  “What? I had nothing to do —”

  “You worked on the scaffolding she fell from.”

  “Talk to the Chinaman. I did nothing but what he told me to do.”

  “The top railing was low — easy to fall over. Why was that?”

  “The dame asked for that herself. Some scatterbrained idea about wanting a backrest for when she ate her lunch up there.”

  “Did you ever give her anything to eat or drink?”

  “Hell no. She could afford to feed herself.”

  “Did you see her last Monday?”

  “No. Our work was done by then and paid in full. There was no reason to see her again.”

  A clerk from the detective office chose this moment to appear outside Sweet’s cell and tell me there was a phone call for me. I wasn’t sorry to go. I’d run out of questions for the moment, and if I thought up some later, well, Lou wasn’t going anywhere.

  “That pistol of Lloyd’s I was carrying,” Sweet said as I started upstairs, “it wasn’t loaded.”

  “I noticed,” I said, “but the law doesn’t care. It was still armed robbery.”

  On the stairs, I asked the clerk if the caller had given a name.

  “He called himself Joe Deane.”

  That put a spring in my step.

  Upstairs, I grabbed the candlestick off my desk and jammed the earpiece tight against my head. “Shenstone here,” I said.

  The voice at the other end of the line was a satiny baritone. “Glad to have caught you, Mr. Shenstone. I understand you’re looking into Nora Britton’s death.”

  I didn’t deny it. I figured Deane had been talking to Eric Hutchinson.

  “I’d be happy to help. Happier than I’ve been about anything since I heard the awful news. Why don’t you come over to the house this evening?” He gave an address on Jarvis Street.

  “What time, Mr. — Sir Joseph?”

  “Now. Sooner the better.”

  I thought about suggesting I come after supper, but that would have been fishing for an invitation. I took the Yonge streetcar north and walked two blocks east on Gloucester Street to Jarvis.

  Along the way, I made a mental list of the people I’d talked to since tying my shoelaces this morning — Carl Moretti, Jordan Stillwater (briefly, by phone, when he pretended to be Fred), Ned Cruickshank, Myrtle Hutchinson, Lloyd (the driver), his wife Iva, Fred Stillwater, Lou Sweet. I followed that by listing the items left on my personal agenda. The main attraction had to be getting briefed by Dalton Linacre on Nora’s vomit and the remains of her lunch. But I also wanted to grill Jordan Stillwater, check Archie Stillwater’s alibi, find out what Ned had learned about Albert Pan, speak with Nora’s family, and identify Nora’s mystery boyfriend.

  I understood the bohemian theory of non-exclusive marriage, but wondered whether the flimsy human intellect might not on occasion find itself insufficient to tame such a stubborn beast as jealousy. Any cop will tell you that, even in this enlightened age, love triangles often end in violent death. And Nora might have figured in two love triangles — one with Herman and her roadster-driving sheik, another with Herman and a sheba of his. I thought I might want another word with Koch’s neighbour through the secret door, Ernestine Lopez.

  The strange thing was that Joe Deane had figured on none of my lists, even though he’d played a
central role in the mural project.

  I expected Deane’s house to be impressive, and wasn’t disappointed. Twilight had faded into night, but the street lamps clearly illuminated a pink brick and stone cube of between fifteen and twenty yards in each direction — a cube relieved by turrets, galleries, bay windows, and more architectural gewgaws than I had words for. With its wide, semi-circular arches and window tops, it appeared to be the same style and vintage as City Hall. Which meant Deane, who could not have been more than a teenager at the time of construction, had acquired it rather than having it built to order. This impression was confirmed by the entwined initials C.C. carved over the front door.

  The doorbell was answered by Sir Joseph himself, wearing checked trousers and a canary yellow cardigan. I recognized his cleft chin and full head of centre-parted, springy white hair from newspaper photos. In person, he was slighter than I expected, short and thin. Out of scale, somehow, with his massive dwelling. My first question was what C.C. stood for.

  “‘Choo-Choo’ is my standard answer, and believe me you’re not the first to ask.” Joe Deane’s amused smile and merry blue eyes suggested he didn’t mind the repetition. “The house was built for some poor chump that put too much money into the Grand Trunk Railway and lost it all. He would have done better to invest in timber leases. No need to embarrass him by giving his name — though a sleuth like you would have no trouble finding it out. Come through to the study, Shenstone.”

  The study was at the back of the ground floor, which gave me a chance to appreciate the quantity of art hung along the way. As to the quality, I was prepared to give my host the benefit of the doubt. Deane led me into an oak-panelled room with a library table as well as a large desk. At the former, two places had been set with cutlery, napkins, and plates of cold meat and salad.

  “I should explain.” Deane was pouring us large glasses of lemonade, about my tenth- or twelfth-favourite drink. “My wife, sister, and youngest daughter wanted to drag me to the Royal Alexandra tonight to see The Vagabond King. They think I’d love operetta if only I’d give it a chance. And this was to be the last performance. I told them not to miss it then, but that regrettably I had to work. It’s true that I’m expecting a phone call I can’t afford to miss, but while waiting I have time to talk to you. Cook put this snack together on short notice. You’ll hurt her feelings if you don’t eat up.”