When I was growing up, Yorkville still had the character of the village it had been before its annexation by Toronto. Now this residential suburb was being drawn into the ever-widening whirlpool of the city. According to the papers, the new public library branch was setting records for loans, including to borrowers living far outside its immediate neighbourhood. The new Mount Sinai Hospital had settled in on Yorkville Avenue, and corner lots on Bay Street were selling to commercial interests for upwards of twenty thousand dollars.
Despite the large number of new businesses, Stillwater Jewellers was not hard to find. I stopped across the street to admire a storefront entirely of glass, including a glass door. With no protective grillwork in evidence anywhere, the façade seemed a cheeky challenge to those coveting the valuable merchandise inside. Although it was still an hour till sunset, the electric sign outside was already lit, and all four of the electroliers suspended from the tin ceiling had been turned on to create dazzling reflections off the polished stones. Through the glass I saw that a stout, well-dressed gentleman with a black moustache had the store to himself. He stood behind the counter arranging gems in the display case. Even at a distance of fifteen to twenty yards, I could see that he was a generation too young to be Jordan Stillwater, the retired pharmacist. I had a remarkably clear view of him, from his pomaded hair to his glittering cufflinks. There was little pedestrian or vehicle traffic at this hour. What shops there were — and these were interspersed with private dwellings — had for the most part closed early for Saturday.
I was about to cross the street when a black Ford approached from my right. It was a four-door touring model with the canvas top up. I waited for it to pass, but it stopped in front of a closed lingerie shop next door to Stillwater’s. The driver, a man whose turned-up collar and pulled-down hat hid most of his face, stayed in the car with the motor running. A woman got out of the back seat on my side of the car, her face mostly concealed by her cloche hat and fur collar. Someone also got out from the front right passenger seat. I couldn’t see much of him at first, but as soon as the two car doors closed, the driver pulled ahead and stopped again in front of Stillwater’s without killing the motor. Then I got a look at the man on the sidewalk. He was wearing a hat and suit, no overcoat. He took a nervous look around and patted his right side jacket pocket, which sagged and bulged. A few words were exchanged with the woman, who took his arm. He shook her hand off, but she put it right back with some sharp rebuke. I could hear her voice but not the words. This time he let it stay. The two headed for the door to the jewellery shop.
As soon as they were inside, I approached the Ford and spoke to the driver.
“Get out of here now. Just drive away.”
Two-days’ stubble decorated the man’s lean jaw. He took a quick look at me and my badge, then fixed his eyes on the road ahead.
“What law am I breaking?” A toothpick bobbed in the corner of his mouth when he spoke.
“None — I’m trying to keep it that way. Scram or I’ll handcuff you to the outside of this tin Lizzie and neither one of you will be able to move.”
The driver released the handbrake.
“Don’t come back,” I said.
The car pulled away. The couple had entered the jewellery shop and were making like fiancés, getting the man behind the counter to show them rings. I quickly checked that the Ford was still driving straight down Yorkville Avenue. When I looked back, the husband-to-be was holding an automatic pistol on the jeweller while his future bride scooped the diamond rings off the counter into her handbag.
Events were moving faster than I’d anticipated. I moved to the edge of the window to be less conspicuous. I didn’t like leaving a citizen at the wrong end of a gun, particularly a gun in the hand of a robber so inexperienced-looking. But the jeweller was holding his hands calmly in the air and appeared to be avoiding any movement that would startle or provoke the gunman. My entry might be just such a movement and increase the risk of bloodshed. With any luck, the robbers would soon be leaving. I could make my move then without endangering anyone but myself.
The woman closed her bag and turned. Seeing no getaway car, she got scared. Then she scared me by grabbing the gunman’s right arm. He managed not to clench his finger on the trigger, but when he turned the sight of the empty curb spooked him. Leaving the woman, he ran to the door and out onto the sidewalk where I felled him with my best rugby tackle. Supine on the concrete, he was still holding his firearm.
“Throw the iron away,” I said.
He tried instead to get it pointed at some piece of me. A shot was fired — but not by him. From inside the shop. I couldn’t yet afford to look in that direction. Sitting astride my man, I punched him in the face. That loosened his grip, and I was able to take possession of the Colt Hammerless .38.
The woman stumbled into the street clutching her right hand, from which blood was dripping.
“God, Lou,” she wailed, “why did you leave me behind?”
“Can it, Iva. Where’s that husband of yours?”
Lou? I took a closer look at the man I’d just socked and saw a long upper lip, a mole on his left cheek. When I pulled off his hat, I was less than astonished to see he was bald in the centre of his head with dark hair slicked back over his ears to either side. I hadn’t had leisure previously to make an identification, but even under more relaxed circumstances I might not have twigged right away that this pathetic creature was the heroic soccer player Nora Britton had portrayed. Lou’s blue eyes were watery and self-pitying rather than coldly focused.
I pocketed his gun and put my handcuffs on him. Having already parted with my own handkerchief, I searched Lou for his. I found it none too clean, so suggested Iva let me have hers to tie around her hand. The bullet had gone right through. I told her I had to take possession of her handbag anyway. The thin square of white lawn I found inside didn’t do much to slow the bleeding. Having just been abandoned by two men, however, she gave me a look of gratitude for the attention.
“They’re bound to have a better bandage inside,” I said, hustling them both into the shop.
The jeweller held a pistol in his hand and was pointing it our way.
“You can put that down, sir,” I said. “I’m a police officer.”
“Anyone can say that.” The jeweller’s voice was tight. The lavish lighting now had another surface to reflect from, the slick of nervous perspiration on his well-fed face.
“Anyone can — but I have the man that robbed you in cuffs. May I approach and show you my badge?”
I felt Iva slipping backwards from my side towards the door. I reached back and pulled her forward. Luckily she was to my right, so I was dragging her by the unhurt hand.
“Never mind the badge,” the jeweller said in a more reasonable tone. He plainly didn’t want the three of us crowding in on him. He set down his revolver — a Smith & Wesson Safety Hammerless, from what I could see — on the counter before him.
Freed from the threat of being shot a second time, Iva sobbed in relief.
I told Lou to go sit with his back against the counter where I could see him, and he complied. He raised his linked hands to his mouth to feel his teeth — presumably to see if I’d loosened any. Since I’d put the cuffs on him, he hadn’t uttered a peep. There was one straight-backed chair on the customers’ side of the counter. I put it facing me two yards from Lou and installed Iva there.
“Mr. Stillwater?” I said to the shopkeeper.
“Yes.”
“I’d like to use your phone. But first this woman has a wound that needs dressing.”
“Serves her right. Don’t waste your sympathy.”
“I’m sorry you were held up,” I replied. “But the person in greatest need here is the woman you shot. Now do you have a first-aid kit or do you want her to go on bleeding on your fancy tile floor?”
Stillwater put his gun in one drawer and from another took a roll of gauze, which he shoved across the counter in my direction. I traded it for Iva’s purse.
“See if all your gems are in there,” I said.
“Your name and rank?”
“Detective Sergeant Paul Shenstone. Check with City Hall.” I gave Stillwater the number of the detective office. “And pass me the phone when you’re done.”
I wound most of the gauze over the handkerchief and tied it. I told Iva to hold her hand up above her head.
“Cripes, that hurts,” she sobbed. She had big eyes in a narrow face, and big teeth now biting into her lower lip. She was trying to be brave and not doing too bad a job.
“Stay tough,” I said. “It’s hot in here, and I don’t want you to faint. I’m going to unbutton your coat.”
“I can do it.” She did it with her left hand.
“What about your hat?”
“I’ll keep it on.”
I guessed the pigeon grey felt wrapping around her face gave her some sense of privacy.
“Mr. Shenstone,” Stillwater called to me. “Deputy Inspector Crate vouches for you. He wants a word.”
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.