VINCE HAD BEEN AGGRAVATINGLY vague about when he was outside having his smoke. Was he telling the truth? Had I overdone it with the car thing? Had he construed that as possible payment? For any information, made up or not?
Somehow, I believed him. But if the shout had come from Mrs. Gilmore, where was her husband? At seven he had said he was still at home. Was it a nightmare? Had anybody else heard it?
There seemed to be no more action at number sixteen. The police hadn’t seriously embarked on an investigation yet. I imagined they were waiting to see what happened to Ida Gilmore. I could continue my own questioning.
I decided to concentrate on visiting the rest of the houses on the row.
After talking to Vince Alexander, I had a different slant on the situation of the street. Was this attack personally motivated? Had Ida Gilmore offended some person, yet unknown, to the point that he — or even she — had gone to the house with a view to confront her?
I took out the list of names I’d made from Might’s before I left. I went to number eighteen first, which was the house immediately attached to the west of the Gilmores’. According to my list, it was the residence of Mario Ano.
Although identical in design to the others on the row, this house looked a bit more polished. That included the large brass door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, which gleamed in the sun. The windows had definitely been washed recently, and the lace curtains were snow white.
I took the ring in the lion’s mouth and rapped. The door was opened at once. A smallish round woman, with dark hair and a dark complexion, stood on the threshold. She’d answered so quickly I wondered if she’d been waiting. For a visitor? For life to start?
“Good morning. Mrs. Ano?”
“Si.”
“My name is Charlotte Frayne. I am an investigator, and I wondered if I might come in and ask you some questions. It’s in connection with the attack on Mrs. Gilmore, which I assume you know about.”
She stared at me for a moment. “I no speak good English. What you want to know?”
I fanned myself. “It’s such a hot day, do you mind if I come inside and talk?”
There was a long pause as if she were translating my words. I was about to repeat myself when she nodded and stepped back.
“Come.”
She led the way to the parlour and gestured to a brocade-covered chair. I could tell the room was not used frequently.
I took out my notebook. I’d become very good at taking discreet notes. I could almost write without looking at the page. Almost.
“May I ask your full name?”
“Angelina Ano. My husband is Mario.”
She perched across from me on the matching sofa. The parlour smelled strongly of furniture polish. There was a white crotched doily protecting the surface of three side tables, and similar antimacassars on the backs of two chairs and the matching sofa. Above the mantelpiece was a rather muddy painting of Jesus holding out his arms to some puffy children crouched at his feet. The shelf was crowded with knick-knacks.
“Is your husband at home, Mrs. Ano?”
“No. He work since six o’clock this morning. He not home until seven. He is teamster.”
I gathered from a silver-framed photograph on the side table that they had two young children. They obviously didn’t visit this room, which managed magically to be jammed with stuff and yet very tidy.
I didn’t stay long, just long enough to elicit that Mrs. Hodge from number twenty had been the one to tell her about Mrs. Gilmore.
Mrs. Ano kept repeating, “Terriblee. Terriblee. Mrs. Gil-more good woman. So sorry.”
I asked her if her husband objected to Mrs. Gilmore’s views on women, especially wives, but either she didn’t understand or pretended not to.
Not much else was forthcoming. She walked me to the door. I imagined her watching as I walked down the path. Her flower beds were flourishing.
Number fourteen was the house right next to the Gilmores’ east side. It had a deserted air: all the flowers had succumbed to the heat, no curtains at the windows.
I knocked anyway.
Mrs. Ano had remained at her door, and she called over to me, “You won’t get no answer. They moved out. Evicted. Couldn’t pay rent.”
“Sorry to hear that. When did they leave?”
“About three weeks ago. Here five years like us, but don’t matter. No rent pay, no house.”
“Right. Thanks.”
I moved on to number twenty. Mrs. Ano went back inside.
EARLY ON IN OUR association, Mr. Gilmore had shared a little technique about interviews. “Go inside the home whenever you can. You can learn a lot about a person from his environment. It is always the silent witness.”
The following notes more or less comply with that injunction.
MRS. EDITH HODGE LIVES at number twenty. She is in her late twenties, has reddish hair, which is unbrushed. Skinny frame. Flowered house dress. Medium height.
She didn’t invite me in, so I had to content myself with paying attention to the outside of the house.
Door and trim freshly painted. Brown. Well-maintained.
She declared herself to be English, here for four years. Married to James Hodge, Canadian born. Printer. He works in Markham and has to leave for work at five in the morn-ing. Winter and summer. Returns by eight. Six days a week.
She speaks with a strong accent, Yorkshire, I believe. She was carrying a toddler in her arms, and they both looked hot and miserable. I followed the same procedure as with Mrs. Ano, showing my licence, etc. Yes, she’d seen the police car arrive. She was sitting on the steps to get some air. She’d enquired and was told what had happened. She went to tell Mrs. Ano.
“Awful thing. Wicked.” But, no, she had no idea who would have attacked Mrs. Gilmore. “Probably some poor sod of a tramp” was how she put it. Lot of desperate men around. No, she had not in fact seen any such poor sod in the area. She herself had been preoccupied with tending to her Jimmy, who was teething. The heat was getting to him. She had to keep bathing him. I asked her if she had heard a woman’s cry sometime about seven or so, but she hadn’t. I didn’t have a chance to ask her about Mrs. Gilmore’s politics or if indeed she had said anything to her. The baby started wailing, and she took him inside.
Number twenty-two. Mrs. Belinda Parker. Elderly. Widow. Tiny frame. White hair still in night braid. Maroon silk dressing gown, gold piping. Left over from husband? Slippers.
The house trim could definitely do with a coat of paint. Flower pots rather than plants in front bed. Lawn wilting.
Here the problem turned out to be the difficulty in getting away. Mrs. Parker answered my ring right away and invited me to come inside. I followed her into the living room, which was suffocating. It seemed to be more used than the Ano parlour, less stuffed, the furniture worn.
There was a photograph in pride of place over the mantelpiece. A regal-looking man in formal clothes. I guessed he was the deceased Mr. Parker.
A large white cat had been sitting on the fireside rug, but it seemed to take a shine to me and jumped onto my lap. This made me even hotter, but Mrs. Parker didn’t move to shoo it away. As it started to purr vigorously, I didn’t have the heart to shove it off. I had the impression Mrs. Parker hadn’t talked to anybody in weeks and wanted to make up for lost time. She insisted on getting a glass of water for me. She had a rather loud voice, which is typical of somebody who is hard of hearing. She actually had an old-fashioned ear trumpet, which she aimed at me so I could speak into it. She put on her wire-framed glasses. Said she could hear better with them on! She was a sweet old soul and didn’t want to dish out the dirt, just to express concern for her neighbours’ hardships. Poor Mrs. Ano. Husband out of work like everybody else. (Mrs. Ano had said he was a teamster who left for work every morning and returned every night. Is he employed or isn’t he?) Poor Mrs. Hodge with that sickly baby. She should take him to a doctor, but she probably couldn’t afford to. I asked her about Mrs. Gilmore stirring up the women, and she laughed. “She certainly did. And good for her, I say. About time women started to stand up for themselves. Wished I’d done that earlier in my life.” She didn’t explain, and I didn’t press her. I might have been there for another hour. She hadn’t heard anything untoward this morning, but that was hardly surprising. These days she wouldn’t hear Gideon’s trumpet if he played it just outside her house. As gently as I could, I moved the cat, whose name was Blanche, to the floor. I promised to inform Mrs. Parker of any developments.
I went to the next house. It looked well taken care of; the flowers had been watered. Lots of yellow daisies in these beds. Anxious white butterflies fluttered around. The owner was listed as Horace Pouluke. Mrs. Pouluke answered the door. She had wide Slavic cheekbones and, given her name, I’d expected her English might be rudimentary, but it wasn’t. She was most articulate. She had heard what had happened but didn’t say who had told her. Two very solemn-looking children, girls who might be twins, were clinging to her legs.
I said who I was and showed my card, at which point she burst into tears. It took her a while to compose herself, and both children began to whimper. What she eventually said was more or less the following.
Mrs. Gilmore is a saint. When Horace ran off and left her with two young children, Mrs. Gilmore was wonderful. She referred Mrs. Pouluke to a woman she knew who was in need of a house cleaner. The wages are good, and she’s allowed to take the children with her while she worked. Jarvis Street wasn’t too far, and Mrs. Gilmore often bought her streetcar tickets. Once again she was overwhelmed by crying. When she calmed down, I asked her if she had ever been witness to a quarrel of any kind between Mrs. Gilmore and anybody else. Never. Oh, she knew that Mrs. Gilmore might ruffle feathers of some people. Mrs. Kubay and her daughter at number twelve, for instance. She knew they could be nasty. Very nasty. They made that clear when Horace left. As if it were her fault and her shame. Arthur Kaufmann hated Mrs. Gil-more, but he’s like that with everybody. Sour as turned milk. He’s a returned soldier, and he’ll let you know every chance he gets how hard done by he is. If she were his wife, she’d leave him. They don’t have children, so there’s nothing to keep her, really.
Vince Alexander, from the repair shop, didn’t like Mrs. Gilmore. She knew that, but he’s a good man. He might get all surly, but that’s not to say he’d hit a defenceless woman half his size.
I threw in that people kept mentioning Mrs. Gilmore might have been attacked by a vagrant, a potential thief. Did Mrs. Pouluke see many such men, I asked. Regularly. At least once a week there’s somebody at the door, asking if they can work for food. The soft-hearted woman wept again when she told me this. “I give them what I can. They’re always so grateful.”
I said goodbye, making the same promise I’d made to Mrs. Parker. I could hear the clang of Vince’s hammer against the auto fender.
I went back to the other side of the Gilmore house, to number twelve. Same iron railings keeping guard on an extremely neat garden bed and straight path. The steps had been whitened. The curtains in the windows were white also. I already knew that a Mrs. Kubay, a widow, and her daughter, Cassandra, lived here. It was she who answered the door. Her elderly mother was hovering behind her. Miss Kubay must be close to seventy, and, not surprisingly, her mother is ninety. She made this a matter of pride and lost no time in telling me her age. They insisted I come in out of the heat, and it was in fact a relief to step into the dark living room, which had a large ceiling fan. Like Mrs. Parker’s, the furniture was solid and Victorian with lots of burgundy plush. Several gilt-framed portraits covered the walls, and on first glance they all seemed to be of dignified, stiff-looking men in dignified poses. Mrs. Kubay noticed my glance and said they were all portraits of her late husband and his board members. She didn’t expound on what board and seemed to assume I would know, which alas I didn’t. Miss Kubay disap-peared into the kitchen and returned with a tray with glasses and a pitcher of cold and very tart lemonade, also welcome. After that it was downhill all the way. A more unpleasant, mean-spirited pair of women would have been hard to find. Mrs. Kubay almost spat when I brought up Mrs. Gilmore’s name. “A disgrace” was how she put it. She knew all about Mrs. Gilmore’s philosophies and activities and thoroughly disapproved. What she said was, “God made Eve to be Adam’s helpmate, and as far we are concerned that’s how it should always be, amen.” I looked at her daughter’s bony hands and for a moment found myself wondering if they were capable of whopping somebody over the head with a heavy candelabra. I would have said no, but she didn’t have any problem carrying the laden tray. She was certainly no frail old lady. Like Mrs. Parker they wanted to talk; but, unlike the other elderly woman, they did indeed want to dish the dirt. They are against, in no particular order, the “Eye-ties up the street. Would you believe they introduced chickens into their backyard? Well, we put a stop to that immediately. Can you imagine, chickens?” The Hodges, who are propagating like rabbits. The Alex-anders, who are not to be trusted as far as you could throw them. The grocer on the corner, who constantly sells them poor quality fruit, and so on. The only one who got the stamp of approval was Mr. James Baker and his wife, Elizabeth, who lived at number ten. They were English and distantly related to minor aristocracy. They spent a lot of their time in England looking after their affairs. It was obvious that the Kubays were not above taking on some reflected glory.
I managed to elicit their opinion of Mr. Gilmore, as opposed to his wife. “A fool,” the younger woman de-clared emphatically. I brought the conversation back to what had happened. “Unimaginable. And on such a good Christian street,” was how Miss Kubay phrased it. “Not quite,” said old Kubay. “The Anos are Papist, as to be expected. And the grocer on the corner is a Hebrew. He’s the only one.” She didn’t say that this was one too many, but that’s what she conveyed. So much for Mr. Gilmore’s declaration that the letter he’d received must have been a mistake, intended for somebody else. This stretch of the neighbourhood had definitely not turned out to be predominantly Jewish. The two women were emphatic about not hearing a sound this morning, although they were early risers. They liked to listen to the wireless in the morning. Religious music, usually.
I extricated myself from them and the dark, stifling house and continued on my way.
There was no answer at number ten; presumably the Bakers were in England supervising the ploughing and breeding of their serfs.
The grocer at number eight is Jacob Selfman, a tiny man who has a club foot. He was not usually at home, he told me, as his grocery shop is on Huron Street, although it is mostly managed by an assistant. Today, however, he’d felt unusually tired and was taking a bit of time to rest. He expressed great regret at what had happened but could offer no theories. Perhaps a vagrant? Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore were good people. Would offend nobody. Perhaps because he is a bachelor, he hadn’t been subject to Mrs. Gilmore’s views and was surprised when I repeated them.
I asked him as discreetly as I could if he had received any hate mail that could be considered anti-Semitic, but he said no. “We get along here. All I get is bills. And the occasional letter from one of my cousins who is in Germany.” He shook his head. “The situation there is unimaginable.” I would like to have heard more, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and he excused himself.
That was it. It was time for me to get back to the office.