by Mel Bradshaw
“One fight taught you to box?”
“Night, handsome.” With that endearment — pleasing, I grant you — she hung up on me.
I sat thinking how I’d parry her freckled little fists, then get inside them and grab her by the waist. Lovelorn would have been too big a word, but I did have a question for Ruth’s newspaper column: what if the only girl that could save you from obsessing over a stiff is too busy to see you?
I was just starting to think of taking the Queen car back to my bedsit, opening a can of stew for my supper, and looking on my bookshelf for something soporific to read when Ruth called back.
“Did you ever catch up with Jack Wellington?” she wanted to know.
“I saw him last night in an open car, but not to talk to. I can use his plate number to find his address when the Ontario government offices open tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother. He lives on Lonsdale Road.” She gave me the number.
“How’d you find that out?”
“I’d like to pretend it was brilliant sleuthing. The fact is he’s just around the corner from where my parents and I live on Dunvegan. Daddy’s talked to neighbours that complain about his noisy parties. Don’t thank me; just tell me something sometime.”
“You’re the —”
“Something I don’t know.”
“You might have a better chance as a crime reporter if you wrote under a man’s name, something like — I dunno — Frank.”
“Funny! There’s a Frank here that writes as Flossie for the women’s pages. I’ve already done all I can to fit in: you’ll never see an article by me under any name but Ruth Stone.”
As soon as she rang off, I gathered my coat and headed for the northbound Bay streetcar, which turned west at Bloor and then north on Avenue Road and west again on St. Clair. The intersection of Lonsdale and Dunvegan was just two blocks north of where I got off. If Jack was at home, I was counting on my badge to get me in the door.
The house was red brick with the front door in the middle of its ground floor and two windows to each side. Five windows on the second floor lined up with door and windows downstairs. There didn’t appear to be a third floor: no windows poked through the sloping roof. And no pillars bracketed the door. So, a palace by my standards, but modest for the neighbourhood. Jack likely hoped to do better as a result of more fights won — or profitably lost.
The man that opened the door had the shape of a gorilla and a less friendly expression. He looked more like one of the toughs that had escorted Jack from the Coliseum last Thursday night than like a butler. I didn’t believe him when he said Mr. Wellington wasn’t at home. What was the point of a bodyguard where the body wasn’t? I was even more skeptical when I spotted over his wide shoulder two people descending the curving staircase that took up the back half of the front hall. A grey-haired man wearing an overcoat and carrying a black medical bag was coming down two steps ahead of a woman kitted out in white: dress, cap, and shoes.
The doctor may have been hard of hearing and not have realized how loud his voice was. He pretty certainly didn’t notice the proximity of an eavesdropping outsider.
“The ribs will mend,” he told the nurse without turning around. “The nose too, although he’ll never look the same. His pride’s hurt most of all, so try not to refer to the fight.”
I was exerting myself to prevent the bodyguard from closing the door on me and missed half the nurse’s soft rejoinder. I did think it included the name Dr. Telford.
“Tell the girl that replaces you tomorrow morning, won’t you? I’ll look in, but likely not till midday.”
The doctor pulled up before the door, noticing for the first time the struggle taking place there.
“You, stand back so this gentleman can get out,” said the bodyguard.
I ignored his request.
“I’m a police officer, Dr. Telford. I need a word with you. It’ll be more convenient indoors where it’s warm.”
“Let him in please, Begg,” said the doctor.
Begg stopped pushing on the door. “I’ll have to tell the boss.”
“Yes,” the doctor assented. “You do that.”
Begg went to a phone table in a corner of the front hall and kept an eye on us while he dialed. It was no surprise that by boss he meant Pork Chops, not Jack.
“Detective Sergeant Paul Shenstone, Dr. Telford. Will Mr. Wellington or the other party be wanting to lay charges?”
“I shouldn’t think so. If you’re with the Toronto department, the matter’s outside your jurisdiction anyway.”
“Could it be the fight occurred at Mr. Lariviere’s club across the river?”
“I have to be going, detective. I suggest you address any further questions to Begg.”
“Just one more thing, Dr. Telford — is there any medical reason why I can’t talk to Mr. Wellington himself?”
The doctor ran his hand over the pale stubble that had grown in on his long face since his morning shave. He was tired of me — and, I suspected, of this case. “He was in bed but awake when I left him. Miss Julien will show you up.”
“Just a moment,” Begg called, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with a broad hand. “Mr. Lariviere would like a word with the policeman.”
“Gladly,” I said, as Dr. Telford slipped out the door. “Would you mind waiting a moment, Miss Julien?”
I’d never seen or spoken to Pork Chops, although I knew the stories everyone knew — how he’d taken over his father’s butcher shop, selling cuts of meat in the front while running games of chance in a back room. As his fortunes grew, his stock in trade changed from dead pigs to live horses. Many of the nags he bought won races in smaller tracks across the country and in the States. Competing stables sometimes suffered ruinous fires, not that anything was ever pinned on Pork Chops. To date he’d won nothing as prestigious as the Kentucky Derby or the Queen’s Plate, but no one thought he’d stop until he had. Boxing was a relatively new interest, and — again — there were suspicions he used shady means to make his bets pay off. Buying a ref, for instance. As I’d told Ruth, however, paying a good fighter to lose to a palooka wasn’t something my little corner of the boxing world had seen before. If that’s what the man I was about to speak to had done, I’d happily have seen him under a doctor’s care.
I picked up the phone and identified myself. “Am I speaking to Mr. Lariviere?”
“Indeed, my friend. But what business has a hard-working city policeman like yourself up at Jack Wellington’s?” A smooth voice with a hint of a chuckle behind it.
While Lariviere was speaking, I thought of the last photo of him I’d seen in the papers. Despite his porcine name, he had looked trim and fit in his Savile Row suit. He’d phrased his question to imply I might be out of my social depth.
“I’ve followed Jack enough to know he’d be hard to beat in a clean fight,” I said. “I was just wondering who put him in bed with multiple fractures.”
“Wondering as a boxing fan then, not as an officer of the law. What if I told you that the truth was quite uninteresting, that Mr. Wellington tripped on uneven pavement?”
“That’s not what he told Dr. Telford.”
“Well, whatever happened, my friend, will not require any action on your part.” Lariviere’s amused tone of voice was by now only a memory. “Begg has instructions to show you out when we’re finished talking.”
“Then I suggest you give Begg new instructions. I’m not in your East York club, Mr. Lariviere. This part of Forest Hill is within my jurisdiction.”
“You can’t just barge into a private dwelling.”
“I was invited into Jack’s house, and I’m not leaving until I’ve seen him. If Begg tries to prevent me, he’ll be in the kind of trouble with the law you won’t want. Where was he, by the way, when Jack got busted up? Some job you did of protecting your investment.” I heard nothing from Lariviere’s end of the line. “Begg,” I said. “He wants another word with you.”
“Stay right here,” Begg growled at m
e as he took the receiver.
He could have saved his breath.
“Shall we go, Miss Julien?” I said, starting up the stairs. “Left or right at the top?”
I turned and let the nurse pass me. She had a round face bordered under her cap by severely pinned dark hair. A rough complexion and an unsmiling, thin-lipped mouth made her look a bit hard-boiled, but she answered me readily enough, with a charming French accent.
“Around this way, sir. Follow me.”
Wellington was lying on his back in bed in the room over the front door. One low-wattage lamp was burning in a far corner, and the illuminated dial of a radio shone from a bedside table.
“You have a visitor, Mr. Wellington,” said the nurse. “Would you like to sit up?”
“Uh-uh.”
The voice softly drifting from the radio speaker was that of Charles Hart singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Not the song to snap Jack out of his self-pity. When I approached the bed, I could hear his breath coming and going in short gasps.
“Who is it?” he asked, turning his face with its cracked centrepiece my way.
“Paul Shenstone,” I said. “A police detective and an admirer — at least until recently.”
“Marie, get Begg to throw this bum out.”
“He won’t, though,” I said. “Instructions from Lariviere.”
“Nurse!”
Marie Julien looked at me. I shook my head.
“The quickest way to get rid of me, Jack, is to tell me who broke your nose.”
“He’ll get his, don’t worry.”
“One man did all this?”
“It wasn’t a clean fight.”
“You should have been right at home then.”
Jack Wellington sat up at that, dropping his long legs over the side of the bed. Then, wincing, he got to his feet so he could look down into my face.
“If Begg won’t send you packing, I will.” His fist came flying at my jaw with all the speed Wellington was famous for. I hadn’t a hope of parrying. Still, it was just a warning punch, not hard.
“That’s the spirit, Jack,” I said, stepping back. “You’re not badly enough hurt to be lying around in bed with round-the-clock care.”
I fancied I was ready for his next punch, but he redirected it at the last instant from my face to my gut, and it hurt plenty. I come off well enough in barroom brawls, but I’m not fast enough to contend with pros like Jack. As I doubled over, I thought of head-butting him in his damaged rib cage, but didn’t have the heart. Couldn’t even bring myself to threaten charges of assault. I no longer wanted to punish him for throwing the Lucan fight: someone had beaten me to it and done a more than adequate job. What a contrast tonight’s sorry casualty made with the sheik I’d seen cruising Bay Street behind the wheel of his Big Six just twenty-four hours before!
“I’m leaving, Jack,” I said, retreating further. “Just one thing …”
Apparently winded, Jack didn’t follow me. “Yeah,” he gasped.
“Your fists are the fastest I’ve seen. What did this dirty fighter throw at you, a crowbar?”
Still gasping, Jack might not have answered at all, but then he decided to confide. He still couldn’t get out a sentence of any length.
“Boots! Boots with metal plates in the heel. He kicked me in the face. In the chest.”
“Try to take deeper breaths, Mr. Wellington,” said Marie. “Remember what Dr. Telford said about your needing to clear mucous from your lungs.”
“Ah, dry up! Stupid hag. You’d think Lariviere —”
“What about him?” I said.
“Could have sent — a pretty nurse.”
“She’s a better nurse than you deserve, Jack. Treat her right.”
Marie Julien flashed me a tight-lipped grin she made sure Jack didn’t see.
Chapter 14
With the cars on Sunday schedule, I was late getting home. My stomach was telling me it was as empty as my bank account, but hurt too much for me to think of putting anything solid inside. If it felt no better in a day or two, I figured I’d have to get a doctor to tell me whether Jack had ruptured anything important. Meanwhile I medicated my hunger with a belt or three and went to bed.
I wanted to arrive at City Hall no later than Inspector Sanderson on Monday morning and lost by no more than a nose. I wasn’t used to sitting in his poorly ventilated office before eight and found that one big bonus was that he considered it too early for his first pipe of the day. The inspector remarked on my keenness.
“You must have had a relaxing weekend, Paul. Do any serious courting? A man your age should be married.”
“More productive than relaxing, sir. I believe I have enough to open an investigation into the murder of Nora Britton.”
I laid out the evidence that some fish-based poison, probably tetrodotoxin, had been slipped into the artist’s last meal. The motive, I suggested, was not anti-German feeling. More likely it was jealousy, professional or sexual or some combination of the two. To shore up this hypothesis, I reported that Mrs. Hutchinson claimed to have seen Nora with a lover. I showed the inspector the ribbon copy of my case notes.
“So your top suspect is the deceased’s husband, supplanted both professionally and sexually?”
“Yes, but there’s digging to do before we can make an arrest. I’m asking you to assign some men to look into this full-time.”
“How many? I can let you have Rudy Crate.”
“Rudy’s fine in the office, but I’d rather have Harry O’Brian in the field along with Acting Detective Cruickshank.”
“You’ll have to see yourself if Ned can be spared.” Sanderson uncapped a thick fountain pen and pulled a sheet of office stationery off a pile on a corner of his desk. “I’m writing a note authorizing Rudy and Harry to work with you till Wednesday night. We’ll see then if the game’s worth the candle.”
“Three days? I’d call that chintzy for a murder case.”
“Bear in mind the only member of the public asking for an investigation is Eric Hutchinson, and I understood you to say he’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“I think he is, but there are alibis to check and new leads the public isn’t aware of. We need to know what happened to Nora Britton. So do her family.”
“Hell, Paul!” Sanderson seldom cussed and even more rarely shouted. Today he kept his voice low and disdainful. “You haven’t been speaking to the grieving parents, have you? Guaranteeing them justice?” He redirected his gaze from my irksome face out his office window into the cramped room where we detective sergeants had our desks. Maybe he was looking for someone less disappointing. I flattered myself that he didn’t see one, for he continued more matter-of-factly, “If they paid taxes in this city and felt they could take your promises to City Council, I’d string you up by your thumbs.”
“I promised nothing,” I said, “but I think they’re owed.”
“Not by me — you’re on your own.” Sanderson glanced at the clock and stuck a pipe in his mouth.
I’d taken the hastily scrawled note from the inspector’s hand and was on my way out the door when he called after me, “Did Nora Britton leave a sister?”
“How did you guess?”
“It’s the women with you, Paul, always the women. Report Wednesday night.”
Ned Cruickshank worked out of Station Number One. My first order of business was to phone over and request his services for a few days. Once that loan had been approved, they were able to put Ned himself on the line. I wanted him to see if he could get a photograph of Herman Koch from one of the city newspapers and have four copies made. The artist was famous enough that there had to be a portrait in some rag’s files. Ned was to keep one of the photos and leave the other three on my desk.
Then I wanted Ned to find out where in Toronto you could come by a pufferfish complete with liver and ovaries. He was to show Koch’s picture to every supplier and see if any of them recognized a customer.
I started a note for Rudy Crat
e, but was glad to see him drift into the detective room before I had it done. We were equal in rank, so I couldn’t appear to boss him around. I suggested he field any further calls from the university about fish poison. I said we were waiting for an analysis of some regurgitated specimens from Nora Britton’s stomach. He was to pay special attention as to whether tetrodotoxin was detected. The Englishman acted insulted when I offered to write the word down for him.
I praised his scholarship and asked if, while waiting for the toxicological results, he could test the alibis of the two threat-uttering Stillwaters, Archie and Jordan. Both men had criminal records, so there would be police photographs. He should get copies to the two local constabularies, but this would have to be done by mail and would take time. Neither the city of Toronto nor any of its newspapers yet had machines for sending photos by wire. Meanwhile, Rudy was to make whatever phone calls would tend to confirm Archie’s presence in Sandusky, Ohio and Jordan’s in Milford, Kansas at the time Nora must have been given the chocolate dessert.
Rudy was less happy with assignments requiring exertion and asked to see Sanderson’s note, which he examined carefully, but in the end he said okay. The whole goat gland business seemed to intrigue him.
I left him one of the carbon copies of my case notes.
I still had to decide how to deploy Harry O’Brian. Sanderson had tasked him with compiling data for the Chief Constable’s Annual Report, a labour from which my request for his services in a murder investigation temporarily saved him. When I dropped Sanderson’s note onto his desk, his round face broke into a wide, dimple-cheeked grin. Unlike Rudy, Harry was a man of action who compared desk work to being confined in the stocks.
I considered taking him to again help me interview Herman Koch. I found it hard to think beyond (a) Koch’s plausible motivation for murder and (b) his suspiciously rapid disposal of Nora’s remains. At the same time, we still had to establish that he’d delivered the toxin to Nora. We had to connect him to the poisonous fish and to the chocolate dessert in which the fish poison had been disguised. The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Koch would reveal those connections under any pressure Harry and I could ethically apply.
