CHAPTER ELEVEN
7: 05 AM, Monday June 26th, 1922
City Morgue
Mick McDaniels immediately declared her approval of Julia's new style. "Your hair...It's quite daring! I like it, Julia!"
Julia primped in the reflection from one of the glass storage cabinets, liking the way the whole effect framed her features. "Why thank you. You and my sister always were a bad influence on me."
"You're welcome." Mick teased right back.
"It will take some getting used to, but I like it too…" This morning Ruby laughed at her because when she took her usual morning swipe through her long locks - she ended up brushing nothing but air at the end of her arm. She got a second giggle out of her sister as well for automatically tossing her non-existent braid over her shoulder.
Julia flushed. "Besides, it is practical as are the trousers. I was not going to have it keep sliding into my work or keep having the cooler door eat my dress!" She motioned to Mick to take a seat next to her desk in the morgue office. "Wearing a nurses' Bellevue cap was not ever going to be acceptable."
Now it was Mick who laughed at her. "Now there is a fashion statement."
"Stop! Unfair!" Julia complained sharply. "Then there is Detective Murdoch…"
Mick's eyes narrowed. "I did warn you."
"Yes...well, I see what you mean about him." She hadn't intended to sound so defensive. She complained all about it to Mick last night and it took until this morning to calm down and understand he might have been trying to help her. "He is awfully, shall we say, focused. And annoying…" she paused, calculating if it was a good idea to ask the next question. "What do you know about him? I mean, if I am to work with him in the short run, I'd feel better if I knew more about him."
"Other than his excellent reputation for solving crime? I hardly had occasion to socialize with the man," Mick objected with a grin. "The youngest detective on the force. I've seen him testify; he is quite clear and firm on the stand. Defense counsel hate going up against him."
Julia grinned back, trying to engage Mick into a small conspiracy. "I want to know… just...more about the man beneath the badge."
Mick shrugged, giving her a bemused look. "My impression of Detective Murdoch is that he is intense in all he does - and intensely private. Is he giving you a hard time?" she asked with more concern than humour. "Remember, Julia, you don't work for Detective Murdoch - you work for the city and the city managers, so don't let him get under your skin."
She decided she'd better drop it before Mick got suspicious. As for Detective Murdoch getting under my skin... Ha! That's never going to ever happen. She made a gay flick of her hand. "That is neither here nor there. Help me determine what exactly I can do, and in which order, to catch and convict the person or persons responsible for all these deaths."
Julia showed Mick what she had accomplished so far, and the long list of what to do. "At least help me figure out where to start, with the limited resources I have."
Mick got up to check the supply of reagents, using a practiced eye. "Nothing much changes around here. Always squeaking by," she sighed, picking up one bottle after another. "I would advise you to perform tissue samples and lab work on the Jacksons first, because it is necessary to determine if they are alcoholic like the others, and if they are victims of poisoned alcohol or not. If not, you must proceed to a full autopsy for natural causes versus foul play. Normally, you only continue until you have an unambiguous cause of death. More than that is considered to be a waste of time and resources."
They talked back and forth for half an hour until Mick excused herself. Before leaving, Mick made a brilliant suggestion for what to do when supplies ran out.
8:10 AM, Monday, June 26th, 1922
Station House No. 4, after roll call.
The office was filled with dark blue wool serge uniforms and the smell of sweat. It was already almost eighty degrees outside. "Gentlemen, here are the results of our investigation so far," Murdoch pointed to the chalkboards full of notations.
"When did you have the time to do that, Murdoch? You sleep here again?" Brackenreid's voice boomed, prompting a guffaw from Higgins which earned the young man a glare from Hodge and an elbow from Crabtree. Brackenreid waved a sheaf of papers around to get air moving.
Murdoch adjusted his desk fan. He had not been able to persuade Brackenreid to allow one of Mr. Carrier's air-cooling units in the building, but thought he was wearing his boss down - or the scorching, humid Toronto summer was.
He was not going to discuss his sleeping habits. "This will help us determine when and where a common source for the adulterated alcohol was distributed in Toronto...or, at minimum, focus our investigation. I have included Mr. and Mrs. Jackson and Mr. Landswell until we can develop enough evidence to exclude them from the rest of the victims. Dr. Ogden determined the Jacksons were poisoned as well, but not the method or the toxin." As expected, Crabtree was taking copious notes, Hodge and Worseley were inspecting the map and Higgins looked slightly baffled.
He continued. "We are operating under the assumption the victims had to acquire the alcohol from a single original source, even accounting for passing it along to one another."
"And that source is Rocco Perri, the number one bootlegger in Ontario!" Brackenreid announced. "We have to know when and where that poisoned hooch came to Toronto."
He muzzled his own objections and went back to his chart. "Yes, well. We will start with Conrad Landswell. Dr Ogden confirmed Mr. Landswell expired at 8:45 Friday night and was poisoned with strychnine, which was put in his bottle of cognac along with a small amount of methyl-alcohol. We do not know if it was placed there for the purpose of suicide or homicide."
"What about an accident, sir?" Hodge asked.
"An accident is a possibility if Mr. Landswell was trying to combine two bottles of alcohol not knowing one was poisoned." He went on to explain about Brucine and strychnine.
Worseley interrupted. "Then why did he drink it if it was that bitter?"
"Mr. Landswell was keeping up appearances, important for him to be seen drinking from a bottle with a good pedigree!" Crabtree guessed.
"Precisely. Keep in mind Dr. Ogden has yet to complete all the required pathology and chemical analysis, so it is possible all the alcohol-related deaths have a specific chemical composition in common, giving us one interconnected case." Murdoch knew Brackenreid was getting ready to object, so he moved along to cut him off. "We need to find out where Strychnine and or its associated chemical Brucine can be acquired. If not a mass poisoning, then we must find someone who had access to a small quantity of it, and a motive to specifically poison Conrad Landswell with it."
He continued. "Hodge? What do you have on the other victims and more specifically about Mr. Knox?"
"Sir. All the evidence collected by the other station houses has been brought in. I dispatched the alcohol containers over to the morgue. The only problem is this Knox fellow. No container or bottle was identified for him. I will search today, hopefully it hasn't disappeared," Hodge said.
Brackenreid interrupted by coming to the fore, standing before his men. "Listen up. Knox may have wound up dead in a gutter from the drink, but at one time he was one of us...In the war he was military police. So, I expect all of you to give respect for all the victims, not just the gentry, understood?"
There were nods all around. Brackenreid relaxed fractionally. "We caught a break last night, lads. Two of Perri's gang were picked up and are in the cells at station house five. I sent a wireless there this morning and those two miscreants are going to be brought over here for interrogation. I demand complete secrecy about this - just the six of us. I'll rip the hide off any of you if word of this gets out, understood?" More head nodding. Brackenreid looked each man in the eye. "Make sure we release the catch from overnight in our own cells before they arrive. Right then. Carry on."
"Thank you, sir. Crabtree, what about the Jacksons?" Murdoch asked.
Crabtree opened his notebook and pushed pages aside until he came to the right one. "Josiah and Mildred Jackson, both aged forty-five, no children, lived at the Smalls Hotel since 1918. Worked long hours, kept mostly to themselves. They run an antique store off Jarvis which opened in 1916; before that they only did small trade." He paused to get a set of large ledgers off his desk. "I went around this morning, collected the accounting books. The Jacksons owned the shop and a small warehouse. No employees. No creditors of note. Yesterday I got to their solicitor, who divulged the contents of their Last Will and Testament to me last night: Mrs. Jackson's elderly aunt in Mimico will inherit. She may have helped them set up the shop in the first place, selling her worldly goods for her, as it were." Crabtree paused again, looking up from his notes. "Sir. It is early yet of course, but I can find no one with motive to kill them. They appear to be generally harmless people."
"Don't they all?" Brackenreid scoffed. "Follow the money, sunshine, for a motive. Antique dealer sounds like a fencing operation to me. Crabtree, look more closely at the books, get an accountant from city hall if you have to. What about motive for our Mr. Landswell, who, by the way, Dr. Ogden says is not likely part of the other alcohol deaths?"
Murdoch winced, hoping he covered it up so the men did not see him do that behind his superior's back. "We are awaiting confirmation on that, sir," he said mildly. "Barring suicide or a ghastly accident, we are investigating money or woman trouble as the motive for his murder. Higgins, today you have three priorities." He paused for the constable to get a fresh notebook page. "Firstly, please go to the banks as soon as they open and collect more detailed information on Mr. Landswell's finances. Then your next stop is to find this Miss Edwina Virgil. Here is a recent address." He passed the envelope over. "Please find out what you can about her first, then invite her down to the station house."
"Is this gal a suspect? You think she blipped him off, Detective?" Higgins asked, sounding concerned.
"I hope she can positively identify Conrad Landswell's body, and yes, she is a possible suspect if she is the lady who recently broke things off with Landswell." He waited until Higgins wrote that down. "Lastly, you are to investigate more about what Mr. Knox has been doing since the war. Start with the pension office. He served honourably his entire hitch, was wounded, so he may have been awarded a pension." When Higgins stopped his pencil, Murdoch gave out the last assignments.
"Hodge, you help Higgins with investigating Knox. I want to know where he has been in the two weeks before his death." Murdoch still wanted a seasoned officer at Higgins' elbow. "Worseley, you get me a list of all the legitimate distilleries who denature alcohol and ask what formula they use in the process. Do not let on you are looking for Brucine specifically. Understood?"
"Aye, sir." Lorne Worseley, who was just the sort of affable man to charm information out of the distillery managers, bobbed his curly red head.
Murdoch took stock of his men. He saw the strain on them and hesitated to add more, yet honesty compelled him to do so. "Gentlemen, while you work, keep in mind we are not merely solving a series of brutal deaths, we are trying to get to the bottom of all of this to prevent any more poisoned alcohol from entering Toronto and killing anyone else!"
The Morgue
Armed with Mick's sage advice, Julia immediately went back to work on the Jacksons' liver samples to see if they showed a history of alcohol abuse. If there was any, it was not grossly detectable under her ancient microscope. She set about testing their blood samples by rationing what remained of her reagents. The first test turned out to be a waste because results for organic vs. inorganic elements were inconclusive. Next, she next tested for Strychnine, looking for a link to Landswell.
There was none!
Gathering the remaining supplies, she tested for the presence of wood alcohol. Also negative.
Scowling, she pushed herself away from her bench, calling for Jack to bring out the body of Mrs. Jackson. There was no avoiding it now; she'd have to investigate beyond a simple liver sample obtained via incision and sampling. Desperate to avoid a full autopsy requiring time she didn't have, she decided to use stomach contents and digestive tract for time of death, then examine their lungs, following her first guess the poison had been inhaled.
It had to be it? Right?
She got sleeve garters out and slung a heavy apron around her waist. "Might as well not spoil my new outfit on the first day, eh?" she muttered to Mildred Jackson, certain the lady would understand.
Julia used her bone cutters and saw for the task, opening the chest to reach the lungs, removing one and bringing it to her workbench. Sectioning the tissue, she immediately saw gross changes indicating irritation and pulmonary edema. That and the reddened colour of the skin indicated carbon monoxide to her.
Finally! A glimmer of good news. She took another lung sample for toxicological confirmation, since the initial blood work was inconclusive for inorganic vs organic compounds.
"Jack? Please return the organs to Mrs. Jackson as I showed you while I work on her husband." He was young and eager to please, for which she was grateful. Julia stretched, then went to get Mr. Jackson, repeating the process she used on his wife, hoping to find the same thing, excited to be on to an answer.
She next went after time of death, comparing stomach contents, body temperature and rigor mortis to arrive at her conclusion even though Mick had told her she did not have to do so much. Detective Murdoch's reminder about being prepared for testifying in court propelled her to excess.
Julia made preliminary notes for her reports and immediately stored the samples. She could try for a test of carboxyhemoglobin in the venous blood, if she could get the ancient spectrometer to work. She doffed her apron and went to her office to telephone Detective Murdoch to inform him of the results immediately, telling herself she was not merely doing so for Detective Murdoch's approval.
"Station House number four. Constable Crabtree speaking."
Julia tried not to be disappointed. "Constable Crabtree, it's Dr. Ogden. I have results Detective Murdoch is definitely going to want to hear. Is he in? Can you connect him to me?"
"I'd love to, Doctor, but he's conducting an interview. Can I... I take a message or send a constable over for the report?" he asked helpfully.
"It's all right, Constable. I'll bring it over myself shortly," she answered and rang off.
Telling herself her information was critical and time-sensitive, she decided to stretch her muscles, stopping at the water closet to glance at her reflection before leaving. Her new hair style caught her off guard - she'd forgotten about it after Mick's approval earlier that morning.
Julia crossed the laneway from the City Morgue, to Station House No. 4 which fronted on Wilton Street. The pavement radiated heat like an oven outside, making her hasten to the thin strip of shade offered by the side of the brick Station House wall. Once she gained the Station House entry hall, it took awhile for her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the interior, which was only mildly cooler than the street. She'd only been inside once before to meet Inspector Brackenreid, the day she was taken around to meet all the Inspectors and familiarize herself with the police services.
The thirty-odd-year-old Station House showed a great deal of wear and tear. The space was jammed with battered desks, the floors and woodwork were gouged, and the waiting bench no longer had a sheen to the wood. No matter where she looked there were dingy beige walls and dark wood paneling. A pair of glass-walled offices were also painted in deep colours - the detective's was dark green, and the inspector's was burnt orange of all things. Hideous. All in all she found it decidedly dirty and dreary. The cool morgue with its white tile walls and bright, high windows was starting to look better with the bonus - for a Toronto summer - of the walk-in.
The occupants never mind. She swallowed a giggle to appear professional, surveying the men who gaped at her. Now, who can help me?
"Constable Crabtree," she waved and approached. He was expertly typing at one of the large partner desks next to the inspector's office. The machine was as old as the one in her morgue office, yet it was in excellent working order - no sticky keys. She made a mental note to ask who serviced it so she can get hers working better.
"Ah, Dr. Ogden. Er...er...the Detective is still interviewing a…a suspect." Constable Crabtree told her nervously.
He's trying not to stare at me, dear man. She gave him a bold smile. "I hope you can tell me how long the Detective is going to be? I have information pertinent to one of his cases to deliver, personally if possible." Julia did not quite trust yet giving information to one of the constables, even the bright and engaging Constable Crabtree, who might not understand the implications. And she knew if Detective Murdoch had questions she needed to be there to answer them immediately.
"Sorry, Doctor. He took the second suspect in a... a few minutes ago. You're free to wait of course, if you are not busy, unless you'd like me to take your report for the Detective and leave it on his desk?"
Julia considered and rejected it. "Is the Inspector here?"
"I'm sorry again, Doctor. Most of the lads are out on their assignments and the inspector is at a meeting. I... I dunno when he will be back. Soon I imagine. As for me, as soon as I finish this report, I am off again myself." He fed an extra inch of paper into his machine and pounded out the last few sentences, withdrawing the paper in a satisfied flourish. After straightening the pages, he signed them and placed them in a folder. "Detective Murdoch does not like to be disturbed when he is in the middle of an interrogation. I would not advise it, not unless the station house is burning down, and even then, I'd have to think about it," he said with a grin.
His smile, she noticed, was mischievously lopsided.
"However, if you wait outside the interview room, right down that hallway there…" he pointed past the water cooler and time clock, "You might be able to catch his eye." He stood and gathered his helmet and papers. "Please excuse me, Doctor."
Well, this might be interesting.
Julia went down the hallway past a couple closed doors until she came to a sign which stated: "Interview." She heard voices coming through the door, one of which she recognized as Detective Murdoch's. In the dark hallway, someone had turned the lights off. Just past the interview room door was a piece of glass covered by a metal grill. Curious, she peaked around again, fascinated by being on the see-through side of what was obviously a transparent mirror. She could view what was happening, yet from inside the brightly lit room, the glass would be completely reflective.
She edged back farther to peer through the glass, lingering to watch the detective work, chastising herself as a voyeur, but staying all the same. The room was small, wood-paneled, containing a rectangular wooden table and four chairs, two on each side. Detective Murdoch and his suspect sat opposite each other. An overhead light cast harsh shadows on the pair of men, shading Detective Murdoch's cheekbones, making his eyes a deep mask with a curtain of lashes covering his eyes, rendering them unreadable. She wondered if that was deliberate.
She was completely entranced watching Detective Murdoch lead his quarry through a series of questions. She began to understand his method - getting the man to tell his story, then advancing the time frame or going back to the beginning, assessing whether or not the truth was being given - or how much of a lie was being told. The ostensibly mild, proper and self-righteous detective displayed no small amount of deviousness, manipulating the man into a corner with questions and using the suspect's own answers against him. Parry and riposte.
She thought he looked to be in perfect control - a sleek, focused predator stalking his prey. What she witnessed disturbed her - and, were she to be honest thrilled her as well, making her insides come alive pleasingly.
"Mr. Grenaldo, by your own admission you are an associate of Mr. Perri's. You have confessed to supplying illegal alcohol to the speakeasy where we arrested you." Detective Murdoch told the man, in what was superficially a reasonable tone of negotiation. "You can help yourself by helping us. Surely you can have no loyalty to a man who can poison people at random?"
"Prove it, copper! Besides, what do I care for the boozehounds who bought it? Serves 'em right," the suspect said sarcastically.
In a rapid move, Detective Murdoch leaned over a large wooden table and snatched the suspect's collar, bringing him forward over the table. "Men's and women's lives, Mr. Grenaldo. Rocco Perri is the biggest bootlegger in Ontario and now he has become a mass murderer with you as his accomplice!"
What happened next surprised her even more.
"Don't you get it, Murdoch?" The wiry man with a pale scar on the side of his jaw reared back and shouted, eyes round and wild, spittle flying. He shoved the table so hard it knocked into the detective's thighs, jerking himself away and sending Murdoch momentarily off balance.
"Take my confession an' blow it out yer ear! You think yer gonna do exactly what? Throw me in yer cells? The Don Jail? Ha! I'm here on a minor beef. Yer not goin' ta' scare me. I dunno Rocco Perri personal like - but I know he's a scary bastard. He takes care of his own problems. You won't kill me - but he will if I spill. Which I ain't. And lemme tell you this much Murdoch - he's p'robly already got you in his sights. Watch yer back because you won't see it commin'."
Julia gasped, stepping back from the mirror instinctively, even though she knew the man could not possibly see her. Embarrassed at being startled, her hands forming fists, she turned and stalked away from the door to get as much distance as possible from that odious man.