Olive Teddington lived with her aunt on Linsmore Crescent, farther into the eastern end of town than I normally have to go, but it wouldn’t have been more than a fifteen-minute ride out the Danforth if a flatfoot hadn’t taken a notion to pull me over. He objected to my riding on the sidewalk to get around a traffic snarl. Before I could show him my badge, he also drew my attention to the fact that I was leaking fuel and threatened to impound the motorcycle in a police garage. I mentioned, with a corroborative display of credentials, that someone had got in ahead of him. While his tone became more respectful, he still wanted to discuss the wisdom of spewing gasoline on pedestrians and pointed out that the inside of my right trouser leg was wet and that I had better not park any lit cigars in my lap. We did a proper inspection of the trapezoidal reservoir. This was an old machine, and I was beginning to understand why it hadn’t been in great demand. A smallish rust hole at last presented itself as the most probable source of the problem. The constable, who like all constables hoped to make detective one day, donated his well-chewed wad of Doublemint as patching material. But by the time I set out again, I was feeling less jaunty and hoped I didn’t stink too badly of gas to be questioning the young woman who might or might not have become the next Mrs. Digby Watt.
Crescents in Toronto come in every shape but semi-circular. Some meander; others form doglegs. Linsmore was a straight north-south street with jogs at the intersections and a pimple-shaped deviation in its lower end, as if someone had jostled the municipal draftsman’s elbow. The house I was looking for was well north of this blemish, one of those new semi-detached three-bedrooms in the California bungalow style. You saw them going up all over town, each with its chilly front verandah and on the upper level half a dormer window jutting from a picturesque slope of shingles that hid the flat tarred roof behind.
There were no electric bells, and my knocking on Olive’s door brought no response. Eventually I got a housewife in the other half of the semi to let me use her phone. When the operator put me through, the receiver was picked up after a couple of rings, but it was left to me to speak first.
“Miss Olive Teddington?”
By this time I was suspecting she had been given tranquillizers or sedatives to get her over the first shock of grief. There was a pause, and I was about to ask again.
“Yes.”
That sounded awake enough, if grudging. Likely she had been hounded by journalists all day and was wary.
“My name is Paul Shenstone; I’m a detective sergeant. That was me knocking just now.” I left her time to respond. She didn’t. “I’m going to have to ask you some questions. Could you please come to the door?”
She hung up. But through the partition wall I heard shoes on the stairs, and she had the door open for me by the time I got to it.
I followed her into the living room, which, even with curtains open, the front verandah kept dim. Prickly plants in pots filled the windowsill. Olive sank onto a chesterfield in front of them with her back to what daylight there was. I took it on myself to switch on a lamp before sitting, uninvited, in a wing chair.
My first good look at Olive showed her to be a plump girl with red hair pinned up in the back. In spite of her clear complexion, a pear-shaped face with heavy jaw and chin made her appear plain. Mourning can be flattering, but Olive’s appearance was not improved by a shapeless, muddy-brown dress too long to be chic and too short to be elegant—although the sprig of lily-of-the-valley pinned to her bodice did add a note of freshness.
“I’m sorry to bother you today,” I said.
She twisted her fingers and looked behind her out the window. She seemed an unlikely object of a millionaire’s affections.
“Can you tell me, Miss Teddington, where you met the late Digby Watt?”
She gave no sign of hearing me.
“Olive?” I tried.
She looked at me now, her hazel eyes heavy with doubt.
“I understand you were close to Digby Watt. You must have had a terrible shock today. Would you like me to come back later?”
“No.”
“You do want us to get to the bottom of Mr. Watt’s murder, don’t you?”
“I guess that’s an important job for you. He was an important man.”
Here was progress. Better sarcasm than the silent treatment.
“Some people look at it that way,” I assented, “and I guess they’ll be pushing me harder than usual. Personally, though—well, I’d be lying if I said I’m never impressed by wealth or power. But when someone is killed, I don’t play favourites.”
A bitter smile flickered across her face before she again looked over her shoulder at nothing.
“You say he was an important man, Miss Teddington. Was he important to you?”
She looked around as if the question caught her by surprise. “One way or another. Yes.”
“I’d like you to talk about it,” I said. “But wait, don’t say anything yet. I’m guessing you or someone close to you had a bad experience with the police. A bad experience you put down to the fact that you or this person close to you wasn’t a big shot. Am I guessing right?”
An indeterminate movement of the head.
A picked pocket, I thought, a break and enter where the value of the stolen goods was negligible by insurance company standards but significant to the Teddingtons. Jewellery that had been in the family. And the goods might not even have been insured. I could imagine how the complaint would sink to the bottom of the pile. The family would have been told that such crimes were rarely solved, advised to invest in better locks.
“I’m sorry that happened. All I can say is that that policeman wasn’t me. But if you’re afraid you can’t trust me, you can ask anyone you like to sit in on our talk. Some one you can be sure will take your part. Would you like that?”
“No.”
“The one thing I can’t do for you,” I continued, “is go away and not come back. Digby Watt has been shot down in the street. You knew him. I have to hear from you.”
“I met him at church,” she said. Her tongue sounded thick in her mouth. “Danforth Avenue United. I started going when I came to Toronto, in October.”
“Came from where?”
“Hamilton. That’s where I’d lived all my life before.”
“I helped choose and arrange flowers when there was an occasion at the church. He noticed my fussing about. I didn’t know who he was. He said a lot of complimentary things about my arrangements, and he started asking about the flowers, how much shade or sun or water different kinds like. Some questions I couldn’t answer, but he didn’t make me feel bad about not knowing. I guess I just thought he was a nice man who was a bit lonely.”
“You knew what that was like,” I said encouragingly. “You were new to the city and didn’t have oodles of friends.”
“I’ve never had what you would call oodles. Anyway, it got so if I was coming into the church on a Saturday to arrange the flowers for a wedding, he’d want to know about it and he’d come in and watch me. One Saturday when I was finished, he asked me if I’d like to go for a walk. He said I could bring someone else if I liked. Maybe he thought I’d be nervous about him. But I wasn’t, so we started going for walks sometimes. And when we went for walks, he’d take me somewhere for tea. Or maybe he’d take me to hear a concert.”
“What did he talk about?”
“Besides flowers? Often the church. Which were my favourite hymns. Which were his favourites. What the minister had said the Sunday before, and what I thought about it.”
“Did he ever say anything to suggest he had enemies?”
Olive clenched her teeth. Something hostile flashed from her eyes before she could stop it.
“No, he never said a thing. He wanted me to believe he was just a nice old gentleman without an enemy in the world.”
Perhaps, I thought, she’s angry because she thinks if he had confided in her, she could have saved him.
“Were you thinking of marriage?”
“At one time I was. He was a lot older, of course, but as I say, I felt safe with him, and I thought maybe that was the important thing. Young men are usually louts. Besides, Digby made me feel special. He didn’t just spend money on me; he told me I had lovely hair, lovely skin, that I was a lovely girl. The way he said those things I know he meant them. But then, lately, no. I wouldn’t have married him.”
“What changed?”
She was slow getting out an answer.
“I grew up,” she said at last. “And I met his children. Just the once, but I know they wouldn’t have wanted him to marry. After that, I didn’t want to see him again.”
“Did he propose?”
“No. I thought he was leading up to it, bringing me home and everything, but then again maybe he would have been happy just having things go on as they were.”
“I haven’t heard you express any grief or sorrow over his death, Miss Teddington.”
“Haven’t you?”
It occurred to me that the dun-hued dress might not be mourning at all, just her regular work clothes.
“You didn’t go to the shop today, so I presume his death affected you strongly in some way. What were your feelings when you heard about it?”
“It’s strange to have someone you once believed you knew get murdered. I thought a bit about our walks, and how at the time I didn’t realize how little I really did know about him. But he wasn’t a young man, and my aunt says the paper makes it sound like he died quickly. Did he?”
“I don’t know,” I said, the medical examiner’s report notwithstanding. If Olive had anything on her conscience, it wasn’t my job to make it easier.
“Whoever shot him,” she offered, “must have thought he had a reason. Still, I guess Digby didn’t deserve to die more than a lot of other people. I can’t say I cried.”
“Did you have a reason for wanting him dead?”
“No.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have?”
“Whoever he left his money to. Isn’t that usually the way?”
“Did he give you to understand he was leaving any of it to you?”
“No, and I wouldn’t have wanted it either.”
I ran through some of my routine inquiries before returning to her change of feeling regarding Digby Watt. Olive said she had been at home with her aunt the previous evening from six o’clock on. She claimed she had never touched or even seen a firearm and didn’t know whether a .25 was a small gun or a big one.
“And when did you last see Digby Watt?” I wanted to know.
“Last Sunday evening when he and his driver brought me back here from his house in Rosedale.”
“That was when you met his children?”
“Yes.”
“Did they insult you, Miss Teddington, look down on you?”
Again a long silence.
“I have a doozy of a headache,” she admitted. “That’s the reason I stayed home today.”
I crossed the room and offered her my bottle of Aspirin.
“No. Thank you.” She looked up at me and made her next words a kind of reproach. “That’s gentlemanly of you.”
“Were they stuck-up Rosedale snobs who tried to make you feel you came from the wrong side of the tracks? Was that what changed the way you felt about Digby Watt?”
“Think that if you like. Let’s just say I realized that evening what a gap there was between Digby and me.”
What more there was to it would have to wait. It was after six, and I still had to report to Inspector Sanderson. She said if I wanted to do something really kind for her, I could turn off the lamp and show myself out. I did both.