CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
11 am Tuesday July 4th
City Morgue
If he'd been in control last night, he didn't feel so this morning. Murdoch stood nervously on the other side of the morgue slab from Julia, running the rim of his hat through his hands. Just being near her sent him into a kind of overdrive. He'd gotten so used to the cocoon of colourless numbness around his life that now he felt exposed, especially since he'd not been able to speak privately with her since last night, when conversation was a distant second to carnal delights. Once he'd arrived at the office, he'd penned a dozen notes to her and trashed them all as either stuffy or juvenile or desperate.
Last night, he'd been so eager to show her was a whole man - now he wondered if he'd been too forceful, shown her a slice of his dark side, and frightened her off. A voice in the back of his mind only mocked: Were you testing her?
Twice this morning he'd caught her alone, only to have Constable Crabtree interrupt them. The more time passed the more difficult it became. Was she avoiding him, or was just the demands of the work which created this increasing awkwardness between them? Then there was that offhand quip of her sister's in the hall outside Julia's door. What did Miss Ogden mean, Julia was 'a woman of her word'?
Even in the morgue, amongst the dead who were never going to spill their secret, they were not alone; their current chaperone was young Jack Lester, quietly going about his business in the background. He snuck a rapid smile at her across the corpse, hoping she was not aware how blatantly he was fishing for a connection.
She rewarded him with a sly curve of her lips. One band of iron let go of his chest. "Should I assume it was you who provided an updated microscope for the morgue?" she whispered. "There it was, dead center on my desk when I got in this morning."
He dropped his own voice, ridiculously relieved by something as simple as a grin from her. It allowed him to breathe freely again. "You must allow me to help our work, Doctor. It is a step up from what you have here. I assume I can always avail myself of your graces when I have the need?"
A cold wave overtook him when she made a shocked face. Too late, it registered that he made an embarrassing double entendre. He stared at her in horror.
Then she giggled and flashed a teasing grin before straightening and putting a professional demeanor back on. He, gratefully, did the same, thinking Julia Ogden was going to be the death of him.
She set her instrument down and wiped her hands on her holland apron to get back to business. "Well, that's it, Detective. Mr. Swift died from asphyxia secondary to strangulation due to hanging. I can also now confirm Mr. Hudson's cause of death is organ failure secondary to Amanita ocreata, complicated by an underlying kidney disease. Remind me to never go mushroom picking again. Argyle Hudson was poisoned by Randolph Swift."
"Thank you, Doctor. But the facts in the case are not particularly well-established, even now." He grumbled before remembering to be gracious. "We only have Mr. Hudson's hearsay testimony on Mr. Swift's version of events. Even Hudson said Swift was a one-man lie-factory."
"You have my autopsies and chemical analysis," she said with a touch of annoyance. She put hands on her hips and her chin up. "So, Detective, you have wrapped up these cases successfully...with my considerable help. You have the mushroom samples. You have evidence of cognac and strychnine in Mr. Swift's possession."
He knew he still wasn't completely satisfied.
"But…?" she challenged him. "What more is there? You have a timeline from Cpl. Worcester's family in their efforts to exonerate him, the newspaper inquiries, contacts with members of Lieutenant Swift's police unit. It fits with Father Doulton, Mr. Landswell and Howard Knox reading the newspaper inquiries which started the series of events. All of this tragedy because of a few letters about a painting an ocean away from where it was supposed to be."
"Yes. Exactly." A lot of disruption and pain from a few letters...
She came closer, a drying rag in her hands, close enough to sense her warmth and the sandalwood scent she wore at work. Today she was in trousers and a high-necked white blouse. He imagined it covered up another love mark he made on her flesh. Her hair was tucked behind her ears.
"You have Argyle Hudson's statement about the Knox, Landswell and Doulton murders, a signed confession about killing Mr. Swift and a signed confession regarding their smuggling operation during the war, exonerating Cpl. Worcester," she pointed out. "That is a great relief and kindness to Miss O'Mara and the Worcester family, righting a travesty of justice that their loved-one ever went to jail."
He gave her an apologetic grin. "Solved or not, Inspector Brackenreid always prefers that someone goes to jail. He is displeased there is no one left to arrest. And he is the one who will have to tell the mayor his friend had been part of a smuggling ring back in the war. I don't envy him that."
"Well, envy is a sin, Detective." Julia did enjoy a flippant comment or two.
Most of it did make sense. Still...there may have been other things Mr. Hudson was blind to. "Doctor...what do you think about Howard Knox's killing of Father Doulton?"
"What do you mean?" she asked. "You and I have already proven that, conclusively."
"Well, yes...but...Think about it...how did a man without two pennies, as Mr. Hudson says of Knox, get the train fare to go to Hamilton and back, out of the blue? What if Swift is behind the whole thing?"
She was surprised. "How?"
"By giving Knox the money and the motivation to confront Father Doulton." He cocked a grin at her. "Imagine if we had an indifferent coroner with poor chemical analysis skills and no equipment."
"An inferior investigation, where the cause of death went undetermined." Julia nodded. "Considering my predecessor, it is likely. Mr. Swift may have even counted on that, in fact."
"As you said before: people have been hiding murders inside what look like accidents."
"I did, didn't I? I may be getting the knack for this."
Her words both pleased him...and pulled tight on a thread of anxiety.
Julia opened the cooler door, gesturing to him to help her push the gurney into cold storage. "The Pardoner's Tale," she said as she slammed the door shut.
"What?" He was whipped back to the room by the loud bang.
"Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. You must remember - it's The Pardoner's Tale," she said excitedly. "The one where thieves all turn on each other out of greed. In the original story three men come upon a treasure. Two of them plot to kill the third to increase their share of the spoils, stabbing him to death. But the third man has the last laugh - unbeknownst to his two compatriots, he has poisoned the wine, so he ends up killing them in return. In your case, it was Father Doulton, the pardoner, whose intention to tell the tale, as it were, set events into motion. Mr. Knox kills Father Dolton, takes poison provided by Randolph Swift to Conrad Landswell and unwittingly consumes some himself. Mr. Swift then poisoned Argyle Hudson who lived long enough to exact revenge by hanging Swift. It even includes a stabbing and poisoned libation just like in the original story! How positively ironic!"
"Especially considering the men in Chaucer's story deliberately started out in search of Death." Accomplished, beautiful, and classically educated, only Julia Ogden would understand such an obscure, and accurate, reference. Oddly, in this place of death, a surge of pleasure filled him. He caught her eye, hoping she could read his longing.
"Destiny is a funny thing, isn't it?" she said, holding his gaze. "One might say it reaches for us, as much as we reach for it, whether we consciously choose our path, or not."
Her words were like a shock ran through him. He waited until her assistant drifted to the other side of the morgue and lowered his voice. "Julia… Regardless of the Inspector's pique about no one to arrest and send to the cells, perhaps I might take you to luncheon in a little while, to celebrate a successful conclusion to our first case, er...cases together?" He tried to communicate with his eyes. There was so much he did not know how to put into words.
He saw a smile bloom on her then quickly fade. Her eyes shifted away from him, sending his anxiety back into a full charge.
"Perhaps another time. I have an engagement."
"A late dinner, then? We'd have more time-"
"Unfortunately, I'm afraid not."
It took an iron will to keep himself neutral, pleasant, against a surge of disappointment and... some other unruly emotion which might have been shame: shame for allowing a romantic fantasy to supplant reason. "Perhaps another time, then. Thank you again, Doctor. This case could never have been solved without your expertise. Good day." He tipped his hat and left in as dignified a manner as he could for his meeting with the crown prosecutor.
Oh, dear…. Julia recognized that shuttered look on his face. She shook her head. No time for wounded egos, and she could hardly explain why her afternoon was spoken for. The note she found on her desk this morning - the desk which was in a securely locked and guarded morgue - told her to meet the man from the roof where Olive Routledge took her life, across town at one PM sharp.
