THIS STRETCH OF ONTARIO STREET, below Wilton, was inhabited mostly by working-class people. The houses were well tended, but they were small and close together; no grand gardens here. Mrs. O’Brien was sitting at her front window, nursing the latest arrival, a girl, Beattie, whom she’d named after her former neighbour, Mrs. Kitchen. Her three other little ones were kipping in the backroom so she was enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet. The afternoon was drawing in and she’d have to stir soon and light the lamps before the rest of the brood came home from school. Mrs. O’Brien was normally a cheerful-enough soul. She had to be, with eight children to take care of and a husband more often away than not. He said it was hard bloody work being a fisherman and having to deal with all the different kinds of weather that God sent. Why don’t you stay home and take care of the other things that God sends, all eight of them, and I’ll be a fisherman, she’d said to him once, jokingly of course.
She sighed. Perhaps it was the dreary grey afternoon that was making her blue, sitting here watching the wind stir the bare branches of the trees and blow thin plumes of snow from the rooftops. A bit of green would be a balm for her eyes. Mostly, though, she missed Mrs. Kitchen. They had managed to get in a good chin at least once a day, even though Beatrice had a lot on her hands taking care of Arthur. But she had always managed to slip Mary a bit of the roast that they didn’t finish or some tarts she’d made. O’Brien made good wages, but the money didn’t always reach her regularly and eight growing children would eat you out of house and home given half a chance. They’d all of them been upset when Beatrice said she and Arthur were moving to Muskoka so he could get fresh air. She couldn’t blame her, of course, it might be his only chance to get better but she did miss her. The new tenants were friendly enough, but the young one with the twin boys hardly stuck her nose out of the door and the schoolteacher never came round. Mr. Murdoch dropped in last week to see how she was, but a man just wasn’t the same. She couldn’t have a good gab with him, could she?
The baby had fallen asleep and she was about to lay her down when she saw a man coming up the street. He looked well off in his black fedora and long fur coat, but she didn’t recognize him and she had the impression he was looking for an address. Sure enough, at the Kitchens’ house, he paused, checked a piece of paper in his hand, and walked up the short path to the door. He made no attempt to knock but bent down and slipped something underneath the door. Then, quickly, he turned around and walked away briskly the way he had come.
And who are you when you’re at home? she wondered. I hope that’s not bad news you’re delivering. He was far too well dressed to be a mere messenger, so who the devil was he? She’d stood up to get a better look and disturbed Beattie, who scrunched her face preparatory to a good wail. At the same time, one of the boys called out to her from the backroom. Hoisting the infant over her shoulder, Mrs. O’Brien shuffled off to tend to him.
Murdoch put the wet boots on a piece of newspaper on top of his desk and began to make notes. The boots were black, badly scuffed, and the soles on both toes were parting company with the uppers. The heels were worn down and the lace in the right boot was broken and reknotted in three places, the left was laced with string. Typical footwear for tramps. He looked at the string under his magnifying glass, but there was nothing unusual about it. The boots measured twelve and one-quarter inches in length and four and a quarter inches wide, which meant the original owner was about Murdoch’s height of six feet. That didn’t mean that the last wearer was that tall, of course, he could have used them regardless of the fit. Murdoch thrust his hand into the right boot and sure enough his fingers touched something soggy. Carefully, he pulled out the newspaper that was stuffed into the toe and placed it on the desk. The paper was too sodden to make anything of it, he’d have to let it dry.
He upended the boots and examined the soles with his glass. There were several small seeds and bits of straw wedged into the grooves around the nails and he pried them out with his knife onto a piece of fresh paper. Under the glass, the seeds looked like wheat. The boots hadn’t been in the water long enough to eliminate the stink from unwashed sweaty feet, but he thought he could detect a whiff of manure mingling in there like a tenor note in a requiem. Toronto streets were perpetually dotted with horse plop of course and as he knew to his cost, it was all too easy to walk in it. However, this smell had survived at least two days of immersion in water so he thought the manure was more ingrained. He stared at the bits of straw, wishing he had a way of determining if they’d come from a stable or a cow barn. He’d make a tentative guess then that the boots had belonged to a man who’d been on a farm fairly recently.
He turned the boots over and studied them again, but there wasn’t anything else he could deduce. If blood had been splattered on them, it had washed off in the pond water. He pushed them to the edge of his desk and took a piece of notepaper from his desk.
Callahan: send this to all the newspapers right away:
Detective Murdoch of number four station is interested in speaking to anyone who noticed or was in contact with a man who meets the following description. Between five feet eight and six feet tall. Of middle age with full black beard, wearing a long black coat and black fedora and carrying a sack across his back. It is possible this man is a tramp and/or a farm labourer.
Murdoch hesitated, wondering whether to add that the man might be dangerous. He had often complained that the police were all too ready to jump on somebody from the lower classes when a crime was committed, “guilty until proved innocent,” but a solid case seemed to be building up that Reverend Howard’s murderer was a wayfarer and Murdoch’s stubborn refusal to put all his eggs in that basket might be prejudice in reverse.
He added to the note:
This man is wanted for questioning in the murder of the Reverend Charles Howard. He should be considered dangerous.
The response from newspaper advertisements was limited. Not everybody could read and especially in the wayfaring class. He wrote another note to Callahan to be telegraphed to the city’s other police stations, in which he added a description of Howard’s stolen boots and the silver watch. Not that there was any guarantee the man was still be around. He could easily have caught a train and be miles away by now. It wasn’t going to be easy to find him. He’d better send Dewhurst to the station and see if anybody fitting the tramp’s description had boarded a train in the last two days. He wrote a third note for Callahan to send to police stations in the small towns and villages in the surrounding area. Responses from them would be much slower, as few of them had a telegram line.
He picked up his notes and was about to go down to the front desk when he heard hurried footsteps coming down the hall. Crabtree’s large frame appeared in the doorway.
“Come in, George, what’s the matter?”
The constable was rather breathless.
“Don’t tell me you found our tramp?”
“No, I’m afraid not, sir, but I may have made a pretty big catch.”
Murdoch indicated the worn chair that was opposite him. “Sit down and tell me first. I’ve already got a crick in my neck, I don’t want to make it worse.”
Crabtree balanced himself in the chair. “After I left you at the Gardens, sir, I was making my way down Jarvis Street. There were one or two people I’d missed when we was going around and I thought they might be home now. I’d just got as far as Wilton when the next thing I know there was screams and shouts going on, ‘Thief, Thief,’ and this fellow comes running around the corner. Well you don’t run like a hare with people shouting thief if you haven’t been up to something. I sees a couple of gentlemen running after him, but he’s fast and is easily outdistancing them. Then he sees me on the opposite side of the road and that gives him the fright of his life so he turns south on Jarvis, like the devil has lit his trousers. I sets off after him, but I wouldn’t have stood a chance of catching him when darned if he doesn’t put his foot in a pothole and goes a crash. He tries to get up but he can’t run a yard and I’m on him like a flash. I can see guilt written all over him. By that time the two gentlemen catch up to us and say as how he’d just stolen a purse from a poor widow woman who was walking on the street. The cove can’t even deny it because when I shake him down a little red silk purse falls out of his pocket.”
Crabtree patted his jacket. “I’ve got it here.”
“Well done, George,” said Murdoch. “I don’t mean to spoil your triumph, but at the moment I can’t see why this cove is such a prize nab.”
The constable grinned. “I’m getting to that, sir. So I grabbed the fellow by the scruff and made him hop with me to where there were a group of people standing around a poor blind woman and a young tad who turned out to be her grandson. It was her purse all right. The boy identified it and said the man I’d nabbed had just come on them all of a sudden and snatched it from her belt. I had the devil of a time persuading the old lady to come to the station and press charges, but I told her as how it was her duty and so forth and we would if she didn’t so she agreed.”
Murdoch looked at the constable, who was relishing his moment of drama. “Go on.”
“She seems like a good old soul and she’s concerned that my poor klep has hurt himself. ‘Maybe we should have a look at his ankle,’ says she. At which point I notice his boots … They’re his boots, sir, Mr. Howard’s.”
“What! How do you know?”
“Remember the maid said Mr. Howard’s had been recently soled and heeled but he had broken his lace and he replaced it with a brown one in his right boot? Well these black boots the nab had on his feet have an exact same brown lace and they’ve been recently soled and heeled.”
Murdoch whistled through his teeth. “Did you ask your nab where he got them?”
“I did and he said he didn’t remember and that he’d had them for years.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Not a jot. I thought he was lying in his teeth. Anyway, I brought him into the station and had him take his boots off so we could take a look at his ankle and as I suspected, he was a lying bugger … he has bad blisters on the heels of both feet.”
Murdoch slapped the desk. “So they’re not likely to be boots he’s had for years.” He jumped up. “Let’s go and have a little chin with our widow robber. Where is he?”
“In the hall, sir. The lady has been weeping non-stop and says she don’t want no trouble. You’d think we were arresting her. The lad is crying too and the nab is moaning so it’s quite noisy out there.”
“Did you get any names?”
“Yes. She’s Mrs. Annabel Shorter and her grandson’s Bill. They’re from Markham and just here for the day. The thief says he’s Peter Somerset, but I doubt it’s a name his own mother would ever know him by.”
“Let’s go and talk to them, shall we, George? A recently repaired black boot with a brown lace is a bit too much of a coincidence to swallow.”