compared to what Horny and these men had been through together. To face death beside another for as little as a week means more than sitting in the same schoolroom for five years.
I liked Horny well enough, and we’d roughhoused together, but I hadn’t kept up with him once girls entered the picture. I had been a late developer, not one of the fast set.
Still, I didn’t want to tell the gunners any of this. It would have been disloyal. Horny had been a good soldier, as far as I knew, and had met a rotten fate at the hands of his own country’s arms-makers. At the time, I didn’t even know if there was a single owner behind Peerless Armaments. One thing for sure: if there was one, he had not deliberately blown Horny apart. He might not even have given the order to paint over the holes in the metal. On the other hand, he was employing and letting himself be enriched by fraud artists of the most despicable stripe. On that spring day in 1915 outside Ypres, while I listened to Sam, Tinker and Ivan bragging about settling scores, there was one word I couldn’t get out of my head—manslaughter. The slaughter of men as if they were cattle, with no malice—without even the limited malice combatants reserved for opposing armies—but carelessly, wantonly.
I knew that the peacetime criminal code did not prescribe capital punishment for that offence—but since coming to Europe, I’d seen too many soldiers let down by Canadian suppliers, cheated by compatriots who risked nothing. Under the circumstances, I thought executing the bosses—a quick and merciful execution by firing squad—sounded pretty reasonable.
Chapter One
I wasn’t on duty the night Digby Watt was found lying “in the gutter” in front of his office with a fatal dose of lead in his chest. He was found by a journalist who claimed to have been tipped off by an anonymous phone call at around one forty-five a.m. The journalist’s name was Ivan MacAllister. The date was April 20, 1926.
I first read about it in the newspaper when I got to police headquarters later that morning. The article ended jarringly with the words, “Who’s next?” I accompanied my reading with a cup of coffee and a handful of Aspirins. I had a rather severe morning-after headache, something an enforcer of the Ontario Temperance Act could scarcely admit to.
Especially not with Detective Inspector Sanderson looming over my desk.
“Shameful journalism,” said Sanderson. “What business has that rag asking who’s next as if this were the start of a bloodbath?”
It was easy to imagine the inspector in a clerical collar, fixing a congregation with that blue glare under a straight-across hedge of black eyebrow. The high, broad forehead above only added weight to the disapproval. I knew, though, there was something more. A connection by marriage to the publisher of the Toronto Examiner had made the two men dogged rivals.
“All that fear-mongering does is put my detectives under pressure to do a rush job.” Sanderson papered over the newsprint on my desk with official documents as he spoke. “Get busy, Paul. I want you to read the reports of the investigating constable and the medical examiner. Then go round to the house and interview the family. There’s the son Morris who worked with Watt, and Morris’s wife. Also an unmarried daughter, Edith.”
“Sure thing. But won’t Mr. Fergus’s nose be put out of joint if a whipper-snapper like me gets first crack at the genteel folk?” Wilf Fergus at age sixty-three was the city’s senior detective sergeant and let no one, including the slightly younger inspector, forget it.
“Fergus is indisposed.” A twitch of the eyebrow hedge warned me off asking for specifics. “So—I’m giving youth a chance. I assume in your officers’ mess they taught you something of polite society.”
“I’ll try to keep my boots off the furniture.”
“Never mind Watt’s business associates: Knight and one of the acting detectives are talking to them—lad named Cruickshank from Station Number One if you need him for anything. And never mind looking for eyewitnesses. I’ve a couple more men doing that thankless job. Better see Watt’s fiancée, though, if that’s what she was.”
“Fiancée?” I hadn’t come across that in my reading. “Digby’s?”
“The children’s mother died two years ago. My wife tells me there’s gossip about a younger woman, much younger. Get her name from that journalist MacAllister. You should speak to him anyway. On your way now, and, Paul . . .”
“Yes, boss?”
“I don’t like my men drinking, even on their own time. You don’t have to be angelic, but you do have to be alert.”
“I’ll be both, sir.”
I sorted the documents I’d been given into piles. I continued sorting even after Sanderson had withdrawn and had turned his searching gaze on some other sinner. While this wasn’t my first homicide assignment, it was the first time I’d been asked to interview the principals on my own. It was an occasion, if hardly one for butterflies in the stomach. Despite my inspector’s reference to giving youth a chance, I was well into my thirties and past all that.
I tackled the constable’s report first. He had arrived at 96 Adelaide Street West at 2:33 a.m. in response to a telephone call from Ivan MacAllister, of Broadview Avenue, who remained on the scene. Also present when the police arrived was Morris Watt of Glen Road. There, in front of a six-storey office block, had been found the body of a grey-haired male in his sixties lying face up on the sidewalk. Not, as MacAllister reported, in the gutter, but with his head pointed that way, which suggested he had been facing the building when he fell. The constable had neglected to include a sketch with his report. The deceased was identified by Morris as his father Digby Watt. There was wet blood on the jacket and vest, apparently proceeding from three separate gunshot wounds. On closer inspection, it was found that only two bullets had penetrated the deceased’s chest, the third lodging harmlessly in Daily Strength for Daily Needs, a leather-bound volume nestled in his left inside jacket pocket. This bullet, although deformed by the impact, was judged to be point two-five calibre. No firearm was found at the scene, nor any cartridge cases. The deceased’s wallet was in his pocket and contained ninety-seven dollars. The deceased’s fly was open, and the penis and testicles pulled out in full view.
I sat up when I read that. The Examiner stated only that Watt’s clothing had been “disarranged” and that he had been left “partially naked”.
At 2:45 a.m., the constable used the pay phone at Sheppard Street and Adelaide to summon the medical examiner, who arrived at 3:28 a.m. Based on a temperature reading, the medical examiner estimated the body had been cooling for between one and two hours, placing the time of death between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. He gave the opinion that the two wounds were most consistent with small calibre bullets fired from the front. Death would have resulted immediately. No other marks of violence were discovered. There were no apparent exit wounds, so an autopsy ought to be able to recover the two unaccounted-for projectiles. In accordance with police practice, these would be sent over to the University of Toronto for ballistic analysis. The deceased had been taken to Grace Hospital at College and Huron Streets for further post-mortem examination.
I rubbed my temples, then picked a nickel from my right side trouser pocket. Heads I’d go to Glen Road first, tails to the newspaper offices. It was a good throw, the coin rocketing straight and high and executing many revolutions before plopping comfortably into the palm of my hand. I slapped it onto the back of my left wrist.
The king’s bearded profile.
I picked up the telephone and asked
