The Watts’ living room was large, tidy and drably papered in blue-grey. Nothing was worn out, nothing brand new. A buffet-sized Zenith radio with five knobs, two dials and two ample battery-storage compartments was the most conspicuous item of furniture—even though the Heintzman grand piano soaked up more of the surplus floor space. You’d never guess the Watts’ means from the pictures on the walls, all of which were mass-produced colour prints. All, that is, except for one winter scene in oils. I thought I recognized the original of an advertisement for Canada Ski and Snowshoe. Without the printing, of course.
The family had evidently been enjoying a before-dinner drink. Lemonade. Morris poured me a glass from a crystal pitcher and with determined civility indicated a blue-grey armchair. It had more padding than the furniture down at the office. I didn’t mind it at all.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Watt. Miss Watt. I’m afraid I can’t promise you your car back in time for the funeral.”
Lavinia appeared attached to a divan at several points. A crossword puzzle book and gold mechanical pencil lay on the end table beside her. Her dress today was pearl grey and tasteful, though perhaps a little voguishly short for the room. She gave me a smile that was warmer than a formality—non-committal, yet communicative of the hospitality she would have offered me if it had not been too much effort for her to move.
“Never mind, Mr. Shenstone,” she said. “I’m sure we can make other arrangements.”
“Morris already has,” said Edith, perched on the edge of her chair. “There’s something much more important we wanted to speak to you about.”
Her dress also was short—black and low in the waist, with a starkly white collar. Last evening I had at no time seen her in strong light and had somehow forgotten what an incredibly vivid picture she made. Glowing white skin, piercing blue eyes, hair that—under the incandescent bulbs of the electrolier—made brilliant black no contradiction in terms. I didn’t know if there were any causal connection between an immaculately shaped mouth and a clear voice, but I perceived they sorted well and in combination lent anything said, wise or otherwise, a dangerous plausibility.
“Yes?” I hadn’t quite got Curtis off my mind yet, but recognized that the interruption was no more than might have been expected. I should have taken the chauffeur to the station right away. “I’m all yours.”
“My sister,” said Morris, “tells me there is new evidence as to a motive for killing our father.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Watt.”
Morris and Edith sat to either side of Lavinia’s divan. Plainly Edith wanted to speak and Morris did not, but as he had been addressed he took up the charge, and Edith held her peace.
“Last night you found an allegation that Peerless Armaments made defective shells during the war.” Morris cleared his throat. “I have now spoken by phone to men who worked at the Hamilton plant at the time, and I’ve found that allegation to be true. The case of the gunner whose letter you have, sergeant, is not an isolated one. Between twelve and sixteen hundred bad shells left the factory. Half of those failed inspection and were never shipped. We’ve no way of knowing how many of the others blew up on being fired on the Western Front. The Allied gunners who died as a result were of course never reported or recorded separately from the victims of enemy activity. Each of those gunners must have had comrades, like this Mr. Taylor, who blamed Peerless for what they saw as unnecessary deaths. I am told other Canadian arms manufacturers produced bad shells at an equal or worse rate. Our country was pressed to contribute to the war effort in areas where we had little to no expertise. I’m not saying this, however, to minimize the problem at Peerless, which was aggravated by the deception Taylor alludes to. It is possible that a couple of thousand Canadian servicemen came home from Europe with little love for the Peerless name or for whoever was behind it. As I told you, sergeant, I spent the war in England. I had no idea what was happening in Hamilton, and not the foggiest notion of the consequences across the Channel in Europe. I am cut up about this discovery, to put it mildly. How could it have happened? All I can think is that, as a thoroughly honest man himself, my father put too much trust in the integrity of his subordinates. With nightmarish results. Nonetheless, and here is where my opinion differs from my sister’s, I do not see how news of the defective shells advances your investigation. On the one hand, it gives you too many suspects. You cannot question two thousand men. On the other, my experience of servicemen leads me to think they are unvindictive. Men who have been hurt as badly as men can be did not come home looking for the blood of those who wronged them. Some may have got into trouble as they struggled to readjust to civilian life, but not the kind of trouble we’ve been forced to look at since the night before last. Vendetta is not an English word.”
“You speak,” said Edith, “from knowledge of your own forgiving nature. As for vendetta being un-English, may I remind you that the most admired play in the language is about a son who gets in trouble because he neglects the duty of revenge.”
“Do you think she means Hamlet?” asked Lavinia, perhaps less because she was in any doubt herself than because she tactfully feared I might be out of my depth.
“Shakespeare’s world is not ours, Edie,” Morris mildly observed.
“Fine. Let’s take your two thousand suspects. Fewer than a hundred would live in Toronto, and only one has—to our knowledge—written a letter that closes ‘worst wishes’.”
“Mr. Watt,” I said, “before today, had you ever heard or read of Robert Taylor?”
“I don’t believe so. There were always so many people petitioning my father for help of one kind or another, and when he wanted to find work for ex-servicemen he regarded as deserving, he invariably left the arrangements to me. But I’ve checked my files and found no mention of Taylor.”
“Have you spoken to Taylor yet, Mr. Shenstone?” Edith asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I haven’t,” Edith continued. “He sounded fearsome. But I’ve done one or two other things. When I read Ivan MacAllister’s article this morning, I phoned him up and asked whether he knew Taylor.”
“I’d prefer these inquiries were left to the police detectives,” said Morris.
I nodded full agreement.
“You’ll be quoted in tomorrow’s edition, Edie,” Lavinia warned. “See if you aren’t.”
“Right at the start, I told him I didn’t want my name or anything I said in print. He may flout me, but I say it was worth the risk.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Yes, Lavinia, he did. He told me he was there before Ypres when that shell blew up.”
“The shell Taylor writes of?” asked Morris.
“The very same. He was working the same gun. And he sounds bitter. I think he has as good a motive for shooting Dad as Taylor does. And what’s more, it was Ivan MacAllister that found Dad’s body.”
“Did you know all this, sergeant?” asked Morris.
“Not at liberty to say, I’m afraid.”
“You must have to say that often, Mr. Shenstone,” Lavinia commiserated. “You should have a short form. Something like NALTS—Not At Liberty To Say.”
“My liberty,” said Edith, “is not so circumscribed. And uneasy as that liberty may make my brother, I can answer his question. Mr. Shenstone not only knew. He was there as well. He helped carry the fatally wounded man to the dressing station.”
Mr. and Mrs. Watt looked questioningly at Edith, then at each other. With what manner of being were they living?
“Mr. Shenstone and this man Taylor and Ivan MacAllister?” said Lavinia. “How extraordinary!”
“All there,” Edith assured her. “And a fourth man named Sam Rossi, who was later killed by the Germans.”
“You shouldn’t believe all you hear from newspapermen,” I advised. “As you’ll see when you’re misquoted tomorrow, Miss Watt, they love a good story.”
“Then you’d better just tell us, Mr. Shenstone, as soon as I say something you know to be false . . . Nothing yet? Good. Because this family is both grieving the loss of a very remarkable father and trying to make sense of the singularly upsetting and baffling manner of his death. I think we’ve a right to the truth.”
I’d had this from relatives before and knew my lines. I don’t think I made them sound too pat.
“A homicide concerns everyone.” I paused here to look from Edith to Lavinia to Morris. “It undermines trust right through a society. I respect your grief, but my obligations aren’t just to your family. That’s why I can’t always take you into my confidence to the extent you might wish.”
“You must find society an impersonal master,” Edith rejoined. “Forgive me for thinking that some of those other obligations you feel are to the man you carried on that stretcher, Horner Ingersoll. Of all his pals present that day, you knew him the longest and the best. Yes, the others had fought at his side, but you were the only one there who had been to school with him.”
Lavinia actually sat up.
“How dreadful for you, Mr. Shenstone!” she breathed. “Edie has told us the nature of your friend’s wounds.”
I bet the ladies had had fun with that.
“Is what Edith says true, sergeant?”
“He doesn’t deny it, Morris,” Edith observed.
“In that case,” said Morris, “while I also sympathize with your loss, I can’t think that you are the right man to conduct this investigation.”
“Please feel free, sir, to tell that to Inspector Sanderson.” I had hoped to be removed from the case without having my involvement reach Sanderson’s ears, but Tinker and Ivan were both leaky vessels. I wondered if more beans had been spilled. “Go on, Miss Watt.”
“You mean there’s more?” asked Lavinia.
“I don’t think we need detain the sergeant further.” Morris made to rise.
“I’d like him to hear the rest,” Edith protested. “Please.” Morris relented.
“Mr. Shenstone was only visiting the battery that day,” Edith continued. “He was not a gunner, but rather a noncommissioned officer in an infantry regiment. The 48th Highlanders of Canada, to be exact. That is as much as I could get from Ivan MacAllister, but it was enough to lead me to Mr. Shenstone’s war record. Truly, Morris, this is not as boring as your impatient face would suggest.”
“Morris doesn’t look bored, Edie,” Lavinia loyally objected. “He looks thoughtful. I’m on pins and needles myself.”
“Paul Shenstone’s record,” Edith went on, “is a distinguished one. Mentioned in dispatches 1915, decorated for bravery 1916, commissioned second lieutenant in 1917, and to top it off, the Military Cross in 1918.”
“Mr. Shenstone, I had no idea we had such a decorated soldier in our midst.” Lavinia again.
Morris managed not to wince.
“The citations are very nobly written,” said Edith. “I read them, and then I went to Father’s friend Colonel Paget to ask what it all means in words a girl can understand. Now don’t interrupt: this part is important. Colonel Paget explained to me the horrors of trench warfare.”
“Colonel Paget might have been in a trench for five minutes once,” said Morris.
“Which he admitted,” Edith replied. “But he explained as best he could about the shelling, the wet, the filth, the lice, the disease—what else?” She was counting off on her fingers, at which she stared with a frown of concentration. “Oh, yes—the bad rations, the lack of sleep, the ill-conceived, ill-prepared attacks. And—most of all—the paralysis. For month after month, our fellows couldn’t advance and weren’t allowed to retreat. Military stagnation, moral stagnation, physical stagnation. Not every part of the Western Front was as muddy as Flanders, but it all felt, he said, like a quagmire. And it had our troops in its grip. So—the officers ordered trench raids to keep the men active and sharp. I can see Lavinia has the same question I had: what is a trench raid? It seems you cut your own wire at night, crawl across no man’s land, cut the German wire, jump into their trenches and bring back prisoners for military intelligence to interrogate. No easy feat. Germans—strangely enough—don’t always like being snatched out of their trenches. What do you do if you can’t take prisoners? You cause what damage you can. You spread what terror you can. And you melt away into the night back to your own lines.”
“Are you saying,” asked Lavinia, “that what the citations add up to is that Mr. Shenstone was a trench raider?”
“A champion trench raider. Which means he is a champion at close-quarter homicide.”
“Edie!” Lavinia exclaimed.
“Wait now,” Edith cautioned. “I’m not being as presumptuous as you think. It was wartime. It was his duty. I’m not judging what Mr. Shenstone did in those dreadful years, which I lived through only in a cocooned and pampered childhood. If I had had his training and his strength, if I had been sent into those German trenches, I would possibly have cut as many throats as he did. What I say is this: of all the Canadian victims of the Peerless shells, none we know of died in the company of an older friend than did Horner Ingersoll. That friend was also one with a rare talent for killing men—in the dark of night—in the most intimate circumstances. A gunner, like Robert Taylor or Ivan MacAllister, likely took more lives throughout the war, but always at a distance. They never had to see those lives extinguished.”
“You think I killed your father?” Edith was piquant to be sure, chattering of trench raids in her little convent-school dress. But I wasn’t nearly as amused by her accusation as I tried to sound.
Edith didn’t answer directly.
“Threats were uttered around the guns on the day of Ingersoll’s death. Many were bluster, doubtless. But Mr. Shenstone, who said at the time that he wouldn’t mind getting Mr. Peerless Armaments in a dark alley, showed by his conduct through the rest of the war that he would have known exactly what to do with Dad in that alley.”
“Edith,” Lavinia interjected, “I really must give you a scolding. What you say is not only discourteous but quite unreal. No man could be more clearly on the side of the forces of order than Mr. Shenstone. You have just finished telling us that he is a war hero. He’s also a policeman.”
“A policeman who was, as I learned this afternoon, not on duty the night Dad was shot. I don’t know if Mr. Shenstone has an alibi. If so, I sincerely hope he’ll break his Trappist vows to say so. Today I have learned that he had both the motive and the capacity to kill Digby Watt. Did he also have the opportunity? We wait to be instructed.”
“Steady, Edith,” Morris began. “It’s one thing to point out that the sergeant has a personal interest in the case; it’s quite another to suggest—”
But before he could get further with his protest, a soft insistent tapping at the open door to the hall momentarily caught everyone’s attention. Nita stood there with a folded paper in her hand.
“Come in, Nita,” said Morris. “What is it?”
Without looking left or right, the girl came to his chair and bent over to speak to him in an undertone.
“All right,” said Morris, taking the paper from her hand and reading it.
Nita stood by his side with lowered eyes till he had done so. The women sent her curious looks, which remained unacknowledged.
“Thank you, Nita,” said Morris. He took a pen from his jacket and scribbled something on the bottom of the paper before refolding it and handing it back to the housemaid. “Run along now.”
Once she was out of the room, Morris rose definitively to his feet.
“Sergeant,” he said, “there is no necessity for you to stay longer. If the police need more information from any member of this household, I would appreciate their phoning me at the office.”
“I can’t make any promises, Mr. Watt.”
“No, I suppose not. Well, promises aren’t what I’m looking for. I’ll see you to your car.”
Apparently it didn’t occur to Digby’s son and heir that one of the city’s sixty thousand automobiles might not be at my disposal.
“But, Morris—”
“Later, Edith, please. Sergeant, I’m sorry . . .”
The furrows in Morris’s forehead let it be understood that there were many things he was sorry about, including inviting me in so pressingly and throwing me out so abruptly. Plainly, he had not anticipated what Edith would say, let alone what was in the note. About all, Morris could be expected to have the most lively and anxious regrets, which in the circumstances were best left unspecified. The briefer the adieus, the less wretched Morris would be.
I tormented him only to the extent of approaching Lavinia’s divan and accepting her extended hand. Edith did not offer hers, but whether from principle or distraction was not apparent. Even more surprising, in view of her suspicions, was the absence of any look of anger or dislike in the quizzical face she turned in my direction. Unpardonably, I winked at her as I left the room.