I had no intention of waiting on the sidewalk. I wrote the note Sanderson had requested regarding the chauffeurs and suggested Knight or Howarth visit Stone’s Garage on Bloor East as well, to get their slant on Curtis and see whether the Gray-Dort had been worked on there. The rest of the forty-five minutes I filled with listing names and phone numbers of various labour and left-wing political organizations that might have heard of Sam Godwin. Their offices were closed for the day, so I didn’t feel I was being taken from urgent work when Edith Watt came asking for me at the front desk.
I can’t say I was as indifferent as I pretended to the envious winks and glances I got from the other men in the office. As for Edith, well, they were public servants and knew enough not to leer, but the goofy looks they gave her made me just as glad Curtis wasn’t there to take offence, or to have his respect for the law further undermined. I guessed his duty to stay with the motor was reinforced in this instance by a reluctance to show his face in police stations.
The Austin Seven Chummy could never have been meant to be a chauffeur-driven car. It seated four snugly, or in this case three and a family-size wicker picnic basket. The two-hour trip barely proved adequate for the consumption of cold chicken, potato salad, coleslaw and dinner rolls, followed by jam tarts and gingersnaps. I found the lemonade a cruel trial: all the while I was sipping it, I could feel my flask inside my jacket pocket, but could not unobtrusively get it near my lips. Edith had put me in the left front seat beside Curtis, who was compelled to drive this English toy from the right. She occupied the back with the supper, which she passed forward to me in manageable instalments. Curtis said he’d eat when we got there.
Night fell almost as soon as we left, so very little of the transition from city to suburb to farmland was clearly seen on the way north. The villages of Sharon and Queensville were points of light we passed through and left in our dust as the four-cylinder buggy trundled up the almost empty road at its leisurely cruising speed of forty miles an hour.
“Miss Watt,” I said, addressing her over my shoulder between bites, “what do you think of the idea that a communist shot your father?”
“I think the fact that he was killed on a public street suggests something like that, a political rather than a personal motive. But then the murderer could have killed him that way to cover his traces. And aren’t these political gestures usually accompanied by some indication of what they’re all about? A hammer and sickle should have been painted on the front of his building, for example. Or some one should have phoned to boast and gloat. Has anyone done that?”
“Not that I know of. Not yet.” Officially, I shouldn’t have been giving out any information about the investigation, but I was enough befuddled by my first solid food of the day not to be able to see under what circumstances I might regret saying this much.
“Mostly he was thought a good employer,” she continued, “but to a revolutionary that’s worse than a bad, isn’t it? Misleads the workers.”
“Are you a student of Marxism, Miss Watt?”
“I’m a student of music, and not much of a one at that. My mother was the one who pushed singing lessons on me, so I haven’t been pushed for two years. Really I’m just a spoiled dilettante who pokes her nose into all kinds of reading—uplifting and otherwise.”
To be heard above the throbbing engine, she was leaning well forward in the back seat, her lips so close to my ear I could feel her breath.
“What do you sing?” I asked. “Any show tunes?”
“Art songs. In German mostly.”
This didn’t sound too appetizing, so I asked her to tell me more about her mother. I thought I might probe further Edith’s feelings about her father’s possible remarriage. Besides, I had to keep her talking if I didn’t want the balmy breeze on the right side of my face to die down.
Edith described to me a more or less conventional late Victorian woman—born Dorothy Summers, raised in a small town, member of her church choir. Her marriage to Digby Watt had been a love match. She had adored her children and hoped for grandchildren until taken by influenza in 1924. She dedicated much time to her garden and, like her husband, to charities. Unlike her husband, she was fond of animals and made sure, despite Digby’s objections, that Edith got the horse and riding lessons the girl craved. Digby had thought a car more practical.
I noted this minor conflict between father and daughter in which Dorothy Watt had made sure Edith prevailed.
“Do you still ride, Miss Watt?”
“No. I loaned Tut to a friend who broke his leg. He had to be euthanized.”
“Which?”
“The horse—King Tut. The friend I flayed alive.”
The car engine slowed and sputtered up a long hill towards Aurora.
“Quite apart from the question of age,” I said when we’d safely reached the brow, “were you offended at the idea of Olive’s taking your mother’s place? Possibly eclipsing her memory?”
“All of that, Mr. Shenstone, certainly. But I loved my father too and wanted him to be happy. We all have nobler selves and baser selves, don’t you think?”
The word “noble” gives me the pip. I had thought it and all its tribe had died a well-earned death ten years back. But it wasn’t lost on me that this was the second time Edith had talked as if she harboured dual personalities.
“My nobler self,” she continued despite my silence, “believed nothing would eclipse Dad’s memory of Mum. I believe even if he had married Olive, he would have seen his partnership with her as something completely different.”
“He brought her over to Glen Road last Sunday.”
“Yes, he wanted her to meet his family. I was glad to see she wasn’t a great beauty, to see that his head hadn’t been turned by shallow glamour.”
“What did you think of her otherwise?”
“Very shy at first, overawed by the house. I’m afraid Dad was a little disingenuous about how we lived, and I guess she doesn’t follow the papers, so she had no idea. Once she took it all in, she was even angry. Well, she’s red-headed, so perhaps you can expect hot temper. I don’t doubt Dad would have smoothed it all over with her had he lived.”
“You didn’t like her. Admit it.”
“I tried to like her. She seemed interested in the house, so I offered to show her around a bit. Lavinia didn’t feel like coming, so Morris and Dad kept her company. While we were upstairs, Olive asked me where the money for all this came from, and I mentioned a few of the companies Dad had started and made a go of—Wellington Pork and Poultry, Atkins Hardware, Peerless Kitchen Appliances. She asked if that was the same as Peerless Armaments, and I said that during the war the factory in Hamilton had switched over from stoves to shells. I thought I heard her gasp a bit at that, so I said, ‘Are you a pacifist, Miss Teddington?’ ”
“And?”
“She replied that, on the contrary, she had munitions workers in her family. And then she commented on some old photographs on the wall of the upstairs corridor, and we never got back to the subject. Strange, now I think of it. I still don’t know why she gasped like that.”
I very nearly gasped myself. I was wondering if members of Olive’s family could have made the defective shell that killed Horny Ingersoll . . .
“Do you recall anything else that was said that evening?” I asked at last.
“After the tour of the house, and a cup of tea in the conservatory, Olive said quite abruptly that she wished to go home, that it didn’t do for a young woman to be out late. It sounded as if she were scolding us for something, but I couldn’t quite make sense of it, and I suppose she was still angry at Dad for not telling her earlier how he lived. Anyway, he didn’t seem to think anything of her remark. He just called Curtis and accompanied her home.”
I turned to Curtis.
“What did Digby Watt and Olive Teddington talk about on the drive from Glen Road to her aunt’s house last Sunday evening?”
“I don’t know,” said Curtis.
“You told me you thought highly of Digby Watt, Curtis. Your discretion, which I’m sure he valued as long as he lived, can now only obstruct the investigation of his murder.”
“Mr. Shenstone,” Edith interjected, “Curtis was driving the Gray-Dort that evening. He couldn’t have heard what the passengers were saying.”
“Is that so, Curtis?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a sliding glass screen between the driver’s seat and the passenger seats?”
“Yes, there is,” Edith again answered for the chauffeur.
“And was that screen open or closed on the drive to Olive’s home last Sunday? Curtis?”
“I couldn’t hear what was said.”
“Was the screen open or closed?” I sensed Edith leaning forward to again intervene. “Let him answer please, Miss Watt.”
“I didn’t notice,” said Curtis. He seemed to be driving faster.
“Curtis, stop the car,” I said.
“Do as he says, Curtis,” said Edith.
The car came to a smooth stop on the side of the dark country road.
“Kill the engine, please.”
Suddenly there was no sound but the creak of branches from a roadside tree, the rustle of new leaves, and the hiss of the cooling radiator.
“Now, Curtis,” I said. “Was the screen closed or open? And don’t say you didn’t notice, because you notice everything about your employer’s cars. You take great pride in keeping track of every detail.”
“It was open.”
“That’s better. And did you hear what conversation passed between the late Digby Watt and Miss Olive Teddington?”
“Even with the slide open, Mr. Shenstone,” Edith said, “the back seat is far enough back that with the engine noise the driver can’t hear what’s said in an undertone. I’ve driven that car, and I know.”
Edith had a hand curled over the leather back of each of the front seats. The pale oval of her face was thrust forward between Curtis and myself. It was possible she had something to hide, but I thought it more likely that she was just following the employer’s code of protecting her people, and was really bursting with curiosity. Perhaps she had even tried asking these questions herself and been stonewalled.
“Miss Watt,” I said, “it’s been a long day, and there’s still work to do. You cannot speed matters up by speaking for Curtis. He’s quite able to speak for himself.”
She sat back six inches at that.
“When they conversed quietly,” said the chauffeur, “I couldn’t hear. When I pulled up in front of her aunt’s house, however, Miss Teddington raised her voice.”
“And said?”
Curtis seemed to look to Edith for permission.
“Go on,” she told him. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”
“Miss Teddington said, ‘You killed my sister. I never want to see you again.’ ”
“The girl’s dippy!” Edith exclaimed. “Perhaps dangerously so. What happened then?”
“Then—” Curtis spoke slowly and dully, as if unaware he’d said anything sensational. “—she got out of the car before I could open the door for her, and she ran into the house.”
Edith whistled a falling note. “Good riddance, I say.”
“How did Digby Watt take all that?” I asked.
“He just said, ‘Home please, Curtis.’ Then he pulled the slide closed. I drove him home.”
“Did he subsequently refer to the incident?”
“No.”
“Did he to your knowledge ever see Miss Teddington again?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Curtis,” I said. “Drive on, please.”
Curtis drove on and soon brought the little car to rest again before a pair of white wooden gates, closed but not locked. He got out and opened them, propping each with a metal spike that swung down from the bottommost crossbar.
“Did you know you inherit this cottage and its contents, Miss Watt?” I asked while Curtis was out of the car.
“No. Thanks for telling me. That makes it easier.”
Curtis got back in and drove the car through. When he stopped on the other side, I intended to ask what she meant, but she leaped out and helped Curtis reclose the gates before we proceeded up the curving drive. The headlamps swept over an arc of bordering hedge. Then we swung round into a gravel parking area in front of a white frame two-storey house. Curtis asked if he should accompany us inside, with an emphasis that made it clear he thought Miss Watt needed a protector. She insisted he remain in the car and eat his supper. She would call if she needed him. Practically bounding up the few steps of the unscreened verandah, she took a ring of keys from the pocket of her stylishly pleated spring topcoat and let herself into the cottage. With the sure-footedness of long acquaintance, she picked her way through the dark ground floor. I kept up as best I could, arriving in the kitchen just in time to see her pull the electrical master switch. The lights that came on weren’t too hard on our eyes. Bulbs of low wattage behind ochre shades picked out the dark cedar-panelled corridor and staircase that led us to Digby Watt’s bedroom.
“Don’t touch it,” I barked as I caught Edith groping in a closet.
“I already have,” she said, “just at the end. But it’s there. Looks like Mrs. Hubbard misremembered.”
“Mind if I take it away and have it examined?”
“You don’t mean you think someone might have killed Dad with it and put it back here? No stone unturned, I suppose. Go ahead.”
I used my handkerchief to lift the rifle by its muzzle from the corner of the closet. It was indeed a .25. From it I carefully removed and pocketed a box magazine—currently empty—that when loaded would allow up to five shots in quick succession. If this were the murder weapon, Digby Watt might have been shot from some distance, might never have even seen his attacker. But in that case, the body would have had to have been turned around after it fell. For what purpose?
A dry, cracking sound jerked me back to the present.
Edith had gone out onto a boarded-up sun porch and, when I found her there, was rummaging through a battered secretary desk. A fierce-looking chisel and splinters of wood lay on the writing surface.
“Was the key to that not on your ring?” I asked.
“Don’t know where Father kept the key,” she said, “but you tell me I’m the owner now.”
“After probate. What did you find?”
“An exercise book with Dad’s writing in it and some letters. I’m hoping they’ll give us a clue as to why he seemed gloomy the last few months. I already looked through his papers at Glen Road and found nothing. Now, is there anything else you’d like to see here? If not, we can start back.”
This girl was something new in my experience.
“Are you constituting yourself a detective, Miss Watt?”
“A detective sergeant, I think,” she tossed back. “Isn’t that better?”
“Evolution’s crowning glory,” I agreed.
I looked through the desk and found nothing of interest apart from the documents Edith had already removed. She led the way, first back to the kitchen where she disconnected the electricity, then out to the waiting car.
She suggested we leave the picnic basket in the front, where it had been moved for Curtis’s benefit, and that I join her in the back so that we could go over the new evidence together. Wanting to make sure she destroyed or sequestered nothing, I fell in readily enough. I won’t pretend it wasn’t a squeeze. The back seat was built for two, but only two children could have sat there without pressing against one another, and two men my size would not have fitted at all. There was no trunk, so the rifle lay under our feet. We read by the light of a flashlight borrowed from Curtis’s tool kit. The chauffeur, guardian of appearances, disapproved of the arrangement first to last, but could make no headway against Edith. Sullenly, he wiped the last traces of supper from his mouth, turned the car around, and began the drive back to Toronto.
“Why would he have left his diary at the cottage?” I asked.
“I’m as surprised as you, Mr. Shenstone, but for a different reason. He didn’t normally keep a diary at all. Let’s see what it says. Shall I read aloud?”
“Keep your voice down,” I cautioned, with a glance at the back of Curtis’s neck. “I’ll be following along.”
“Done. Here goes: July 5, 1925. Received a disturbing letter yesterday, forwarded from the city, from an ex-serviceman calling himself Robert Taylor. I’m not sure how to respond. Perhaps no answer is best, as the writer is very upset, possibly unhinged from shell shock. There’s no one in the family I feel like talking this over with. Mustn’t show the children, especially Morris, any sign of weakness. Morris needs to build up his self-confidence, and that cannot be done by letting him entertain any doubts about the ethical basis of our enterprises. Perhaps, though, I can talk the matter out with myself here, despite not having the journal habit. Too much self-analysis breeds unhealthy and unproductive doubts. Dorothy gave Morris a blank book to keep a journal when he was in his teens. I quietly made the book disappear and bought him a ledger book in its place. How horrid of Daddy!”
As Edith flung the scribbler down on her knees, a folded piece of inexpensive note paper slipped from between the pages.
“Is that Robert Taylor’s letter?” I said. “I’d like to read it before you go any further. Better still, I’ll take all these documents to the station. That’s the proper place to examine their contents.”
“Without my presence?”
“This is police business, Miss Watt.” I sounded stuffy to myself, and felt that it was a little late to be playing this card, but I had a strong premonition of what was coming, and I knew I didn’t want that premonition confirmed while sitting thigh to thigh with Digby Watt’s maiden daughter and inhaling the floral scent of her shampoo.
“These are my documents, Mr. Shenstone.”
“After probate.”
“Are you pretending they’re yours till then? I’m not letting you take them without a warrant. Now if you want to know what Robert Taylor says, listen up. No date. Dear Mr. Peerless, If the Boche had won the war, they’d have given you a medal. I served in an 18-pounder gun battery. In 1915, as we were laying down a barrage in the second battle of Ypres, one of your bad shells killed one of our men, a good Canadian gunner valuable to the war effort and a human being with a right to expect better of his own countryman. More than that, Horner Ingersoll was a special friend of mine. If you want to know what happened to him, he had his . . . Oh, God.”
“Give that to me.”
“Don’t pull! Don’t: you’ll rip it. Just read silently along as you said.”
Silently I read: . . . he had his balls blown off and then just bled to death. Killed by a punk shell painted up to pass inspection. I want you to think about that, Mr. Peerless. I’ve been thinking about that for ten years now from 1915 to 1925, and I’m tired of carrying that thought alone. I haven’t had much good fortune since the war, while you dirty profiteers have just gone on making one fortune after another. So you think how lucky you are to have your wealth and your genitals and your sleep at night, because after the rotten ammunition you sent us, I’d say you don’t deserve any of them. Worst wishes, Robert “Tinker” Taylor.
There it was, a second member of Horny’s battery liable to be suspected of killing Digby Watt. Ivan and now Tinker. I did not in the least like where this case was leading.
“Finished?” said Edith, blowing her nose vigorously. “I don’t really understand the part about bad shells, but let’s go on with the diary and see if it’s explained there. I’ll read aloud. No, don’t make difficulties. Anything Dad wrote, I can say. Taylor refers to a time when the Empire had desperate need of shells, and there wasn’t more than one factory in the Dominion that had any experience in their manufacture. We did our best under government direction and were given to understand that every shell we made would be inspected before shipment to London. Naturally, I never authorized any measure that would frustrate those inspections. As for profits during the war, we made much more on pork than on shells, but yes, we were paid. Were we supposed to do the work pro bono and pro patria while other firms whose product was no better were improving their balance sheet? Peerless management was overhauled as soon as I learned that our munitions were not meeting Imperial standards. By 1916, the problems had been fixed, and our shells misfired at no greater rate than those made in Britain or anywhere else. I wish I could say that the experience of Taylor and his companions was a unique one. It was, however, all too common for the period. What is unique is the rancour Taylor pours on my head. No one has ever written to reproach me in these terms. Am I not duty bound to report him to the police as a potential danger to himself and others? I tell myself all these things, and yet I cannot feel quite easy. Perhaps because, of all the injuries a man can suffer, injury there can never be portrayed as noble. It’s a mercy poor Ingersoll died. Most war wounds evoke some sympathy; however, in a case such as his, sympathy would always have been tinged with contempt. I think I shall answer Taylor’s letter. It’s the responsible thing to do. All the same, great wealth is such a tremendous responsibility I sometimes question, God help me, if it’s worth it. A fine state of affairs! At the very least, I should like to know someone for whom I am not Mr. Peerless, or Mr. Atkins Hardware, or Mr. Dominion Consolidated Holdings. I understand those monarchs of old who wished to walk among their subjects in disguise and pass for one of them, if only for an evening.” Edith turned a page, fanned through the remaining pages. “Huh,” she said. “The rest of the book is blank . . . Does this mean Peerless made shells that killed our own soldiers?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Yeah.”
“Could any of those shells have blown up in the factory?”
“Something could have,” I said. “A shell. Powder. A fuse.”
“So,” said Edith sadly, “when Dad walked among the people in disguise and went looking for someone he could be himself with, he found Olive, whose sister was a munitions worker killed at the Peerless Plant.”
“Possibly.”
“There’s another paper tucked in here, a carbon copy of Dad’s reply to Robert Taylor. He must have typed it himself. July 6, 1925. Dear Mr. Taylor, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for your experience with a defective shell made at my factory. I could plead circumstances in my defence, but they would be of no comfort to you. We were guilty of what to you must always seem inexcusable carelessness. One of the great injustices is that wars are never waged by the men who declare them or the men who profit from them. With the wisdom of retrospection over the last dozen years, I am tempted to believe that the latter two types of men should not exist at all. In any case, had I been born a generation later, I should no doubt have given my youth on the altar of patriotism and, had I survived the carnage, should have felt no less bitter than yourself. I cannot restore to you either your sleep or your friend. Should you desire employment, however, now or in the future, I believe there is something I can do. Please write again without hesitation. Warmest regards, Digby Watt. That was handsome of Dad.”
“He seems,” I said, “to have had a way with words.”
“That’s hardly fair. He wasn’t smooth at all in the way you imply. I’m sure this was written from the heart.”
Typed from the heart, I mentally corrected. That inexcusable carelessness business stuck in my craw. Sure, Digby Watt had been careless, I could buy that—so long as he didn’t pretend it was the whole story. Someone acting in his name, after all, had been very carefully deceitful. But I didn’t want to pick a quarrel with Edith on the day of her father’s death.
“Is it likely he sent it?” I asked.
“You’ll have to look Taylor up and ask him.”
“Anything else in that packet?”
“Nothing.”
“Now that you’ve had a chance to read it all, Miss Watt, will you let me borrow these documents and use them for any light they may shed on the investigation.”
“Yes, of course . . .”
She gave me a softer look than I had seen before on her vital and energetic face—or perhaps it was just my fancy spreading its wings in the dim car. Her innocence was appealing and appalling. I turned away, towards the shadowy undulations of the countryside we were traversing, and confronted innocence here too. Here lay fields never cratered by artillery, fields in which no shells had exploded prematurely or lay unexploded and waiting to make new red entries in the balance sheet of a war long over.
“It’s been a disturbing evening,” Edith went on mildly, “but I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting at home discussing funeral arrangements with Lavinia. And I’m glad to know something of the part of Dad he didn’t care to show us. Even if we knew the names of his companies and Olive didn’t, there was still so much he hid from us. It was how he thought a patriarch should behave. It was maddening, but I suppose it’s foolish to be mad at history.”
“We’re all fools then,” I said, looking out for a flare over no man’s land.