Except the Dying (13 page)

He waved and bowed as the cheering and whistling continued. Finally the master of ceremonies returned. He shook Shepcote’s hand and amidst stomping and clapping the alderman left the stage.

Murdoch turned to Canning. “Excellent speech. Was it true?”

The man’s pursed lips relaxed into a small smile. “Some of it.”

Murdoch would have liked to hear more, but with a nod, Canning stood up.

“I’d better see to him,” he said and he left the hall.

Murdoch’s pipe had gone out and he stuffed it back
in his pocket, not wanting to arouse the cupidity of his neighbours, who were fast recovering from the mood that Shepcote had engendered. He had to admit to himself that a tear had formed in his own eye at more than one moment. Mr. Shepcote was a persuasive speaker indeed. The master of ceremonies started to call for silence again and Murdoch realized he was up next. He stood up and made his way down the aisle towards the stage. Over on the far side, some boys had started to sing. It could have been “Land of Hope and Glory,” but he wasn’t sure.

In the wings Shepcote mopped his dripping face and neck and took a quick sip from his whiskey flask. Canning approached him, a towel over his arm.

“Well done, sir. I wish I had a story like that to tell.”

Shepcote didn’t miss the irony in his servant’s tone, and he scowled. “I doubt your life could be told anywhere except in a penal colony.”

In fact, a lot of what he had recounted was true. He had been left fatherless at any early age, but the man he generally referred to as his father had been killed in a barroom brawl. His sister had indeed joined the angels at the age of sixteen when she died of venereal disease. It was concerning his mother that there was the most fiction. Destitute, yes, but never for a single moment could she have been termed self-sacrificing. Her last
words to him were vile curses because he wouldn’t fetch her more gin. It was true that after her funeral he had found money. Hidden under the mattress. Money she had systematically stolen from his trousers, then forgotten about in her sodden mind. With the money, twenty dollars, he had made a down payment on a newspaper stall, cheating a near-blind old man by pretending to give him more than he did. But what was true was that he had worked and clawed his way out of the gutter, driven by a need to be better, to have the kind of comforts he witnessed in the lives of his customers, as distant from that skinny boy as the stars themselves.

And he had done it. He had a fine carriage and horse. A large house. He had married a woman from a better class; his daughter would marry even higher. But in the mixture of lies and half-truths he had handed out this afternoon, there was one total truth. He never forgot he had been a newsboy. Sometimes he awoke at night in a sweat of fear that everything he had built might be taken from him and once again he would be a pauper.

Beatrice Kitchen was darning her stockings, and she held the needle poised in mid-air as she looked at Murdoch.

“Sounds like an improbable story to me. As if angels would soil their hands selling newspapers. It was more likely some Methodist taking advantage of a hungry child.”

Her husband chuckled. “Now, Mother, let Will get on with his tale.”

It was late by the time Murdoch had got home, but the Kitchens were waiting up for him. Beatrice had made him a salty beef tea and he was sipping it.

“There’s not much more to say, really. Mr. Shepcote struggled up the ladder of success by dint of hard work and good morals. I believed him. He made me weep along with all the others.”

Arthur started to cough and Murdoch waited until he’d got his breath. Beatrice handed her husband a cloth to wipe his mouth.

“Any luck with the boys?” she asked.

“I think so. Of course there must have been at least three dozen of them ready to swear they’d seen Therese Laporte, in case there’s a reward in the offing, but two of them sounded believable. One boy described her exactly. He’d been trying to sell his remaining newspapers at the Somerset Hotel which is at the corner of Church and Carlton. He was turfed out sometime after nine and walked down Church. He says she crossed in front of him at Gerrard Street. She was going east. He said she was, and I quote, ‘a tasty bit of crumpet.’”

“Naughty boy!” exclaimed Beatrice. “I hope you gave him a slap to mind his manners.”

“I did.” Murdoch chuckled. “You should have seen him, Mrs. K. His name is Charles Elrod, but he’s got a shock of red hair and he’s been called Carrots so long
he could hardly remember his real name. The other boy’s a bit slow-witted and he was vague. However, he was going home and claims he saw the girl at the corner of Berkeley and Queen streets. She was walking towards Sumach, which is about where she was found. His description was close enough. The problem is he can’t tell the time and doesn’t know when it was he saw her, but he says St. Paul’s had just chimed the quarter.”

“If it was Therese the redhead saw and if she kept walking, I calculate she’d have been at Berkeley and Queen about a quarter to ten, so that fits,” said Kitchen.

Murdoch grinned at Arthur. “We should have you on the force. Yes, that’s what I figured.”

“She could have hired a carriage,” said Beatrice.

“That’s true too. We’re examining the dockets of cabbies who work in the area.”

“Where was the poor child going?” asked Beatrice. “She’s nowhere near the train station on Queen and Berkeley.”

“I wish I knew. However, I’m going to check at the French-Canadian church on King Street.”

“The old Methodist church?”

“That’s it. There’s quite a colony of tanners come down from Quebec and they go to that church.”

“Funny how we all gravitate to our own,” said Beatrice.

“I’m gambling she was heading there. I’ll call on the priest tomorrow. Mr. Shepcote says we can run a picture in his paper free of charge as long as necessary. Somebody will come forward. And at least now we have an exact description of what she was wearing.”

Beatrice broke off the wool thread with her teeth and slipped out the wooden egg that was inside the heel. She picked up another stocking from the pile in the basket and started to examine it.

“I can’t get over the gall of those two young women stealing clothes from the dead. Heathens would behave better.”

Her husband snorted. “They denied everything, I’ll wager. Am I right, Will?”

Murdoch nodded. “Absolutely right. According to them anyone could have put the garments in the outhouse.”

“Which is true, got to give them that.”

“You should just send them to the Mercer and throw away the key,” said Beatrice.

“We can’t do anything until we have more evidence. We brought them down to the station and Crabtree and I were at them all afternoon, but they wouldn’t budge. Problem is, you see, the privy is used by the other inhabitants of the house and it’s quite accessible to anyone in the alley. The bundle was well hidden, but it would have taken only moments to put it there. We had to let them go. For now, anyway.”

Beatrice had found a hole and was busy darning across it. “Have you recovered all of the clothes?”

“There was no, er, undergarment.”

“Drawers or chemise?”

“No drawers.”

“Hmm. Those are easy things to hide. You just wear ’em.”

Murdoch knew for certain that Alice didn’t have them. Perhaps Ettie did.

He sneezed. He’d started to feel under the weather, feverish and runny-nosed. Beatrice regarded him over her glasses like a bird contemplating a tasty morsel.

“My oh my. You look as if you’re coming down with a cold.”

He sneezed again. “’Fraid so.”

She got up. “You just sit right there. We’ll have you right as rain.”

“Don’t bother yourself, Mrs. K. I’m off to bed soon.”

“No bother. I’ve got to tend to Father, anyway.”

She left him and Murdoch grimaced. He was already familiar with Mrs. Kitchen’s home remedies, and some of them were worse than the illness they were curing.

Arthur noticed the expression on Murdoch’s face and started to laugh. Immediately the laughter turned into a violent attack of coughing that left him panting and weak in his chair. He spat bloody froth into the cup. Murdoch thought the smell was worse daily.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“New pair of lungs is about the only thing that’d do me any good, and I doubt you’ve got a set of them in your pocket.”

“Wish I had.”

Kitchen waved his hand in the general direction of the door. “Forgot to tell you, Mother’s trying a new cure on me.”

The door opened at that and Mrs. Kitchen returned carrying an enamel bowl of steaming water. Murdoch jumped up to help her.

“Here, let me.” He took the bowl out of her hands.

“Put it down there close to the fire. Arthur, we’ll have to build up the coals a bit. Mr. Murdoch should be warm.”

Murdoch started to protest but she cut him short.

“Take off your slippers and socks. Come on.”

She sprinkled some mustard powder into the hot water.

“Now put your feet in. Careful, it’s hot.” He eased his feet into the bowl, watching the skin immediately turn pink.

“Sit back,” she said and pulled the mohair shawl up around his shoulders.

He grinned. “I feel like I’m a boy again.”

She patted his shoulder. “Good. You could do with a bit of mothering now and again.”

She went back to her own chair, unobtrusively
moving the tin cup from her husband’s side table and putting a fresh one down.

“Arthur said you’re trying a new cure.”

She nodded. “I was out at the market this morning and there was a new egg-seller at Mr. Howard’s table. Apparently he’s getting too old to come down from the farm now, so this woman is selling the eggs and chicken for him. Odd thing she was, brown as a berry. Probably got gypsy blood. Anyway, we got to talking and I told her about Arthur here and his sickness. ‘That’s easy fixed,’ she says. ‘Make him take twelve raw eggs a day in some heavy cream. Keep him cold at night and don’t let up ’til he’s cured.’ Well, I thinks to myself, it’s all very well for you to say that, seeing as how you’re in the business of selling eggs. She must have read my mind. ‘Cured my father and my own sister,’ she says. ‘And tell you what, I’ll sell you a dozen for the price of ten. How’s that?’”

“Course Mother agreed,” interjected Arthur. “Even though we can’t afford it.”

“We’ll manage. I’m going to advertise for another boarder. Should be all right if they keep to themselves, don’t you think?”

“Anybody who stays here is lucky,” said Murdoch. He stirred his feet in the mustard water, making a tidal wave in the bowl. He grinned at the other two. “I used to do this when I was a boy in Nova Scotia with the pools of seawater left behind at low tide. I’d sit on the
rocks, put my feet into the pool and pretend I was God sending a storm.”

As he watched the water slap in the enamel bowl he remembered his old game vividly. In the middle of the pool he floated a piece of driftwood to represent the
Bluebell
, which was the unlikely name of the fishing trawler his father sailed on. Gradually he stirred the water higher and higher until the waves overwhelmed the flimsy boat and it capsized with all hands on board. He played this over and over, each time with a mixture of Catholic guilt and a pagan delight that he had destroyed his hated father.

“… dear child, God rest her soul.”

Mrs. K. was saying something. He caught the last bit. Ever since Beatrice had heard that Therese was of the faith, her attitude had changed. The girl had risen from one of doubtful character to a child rapidly approaching sainthood.

“Beg pardon, Mrs. K.?”

“You really were off in a brown study, weren’t you. I was just asking if there’s anything else missing. If she was running away she’d take all her belongings with her, I’d think.”

“You’re quite right. The housekeeper is sure she had a canvas valise and some extra clothes. Probably a skirt and a waist at least. Her jacket and gloves are also missing. Apparently she had a rosary and a Bible but I searched her room and they weren’t there.”

Beatrice hastily crossed herself. “What wicked person would steal such holy things?”

“I’m sending Crabtree off to check the pawnshops.”

“Will she be getting a Christian burial?” Beatrice asked.

“Eventually, but we haven’t been able to contact the family yet. They’re all snowed in.”

“Pity poor them when they hear, losing a pure child like that.”

Murdoch had told the Kitchens about the postmortem evidence, but Beatrice hadn’t seemed to quite comprehend the full import. Then she surprised him, as she often did. She stopped her darning for a moment and looked at him.

“There’ll be folks who’ll say she was a sinner, her in the family way like that, but I don’t. It’s my view that somebody forced connections on her and made her take that opium. Whoever they are, God will punish them. And if in his wisdom He doesn’t see fit to do it in this lifetime, I sincerely hope the law will.”

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13

A
LL
W
EDNESDAY, SNOW FLOATED DOWN
in fat, slow flakes that children caught on their tongues, pretending it was ice cream. When night came the manure-dotted streets lay beneath a blanket of clean, fresh snow that sparkled in the light of the gas lamps. By eight o’clock most of the city’s residents were indoors, and even along Queen Street the smooth surface was unmarred by footprints. Only outside the doors of the John O’Neil was the snow heavily dinted.