Good Year For Murder (2 page)

“Now.” Addie sat down and pulled her full skirt well over her knees to her large but what Jake considered well-turned ankles. “What about that prankster, Albert?”

Jake winced. In the five years he had been the Inspector's driver, assistant, boarder, and confidante (in that order) he had never heard anyone, except Addie, call Tretheway by his first name. His peers and superiors called him, simply, Tretheway and Jake used the titles Inspector, Sir, or Boss, depending on both their moods.

“You really should do something about it,” Addie went on.

“Me?” Tretheway said. “What can I do?”

“Addie,” Jake said. “When you get right down to it, all he's done is play a few tricks. Everybody's laughing about it.”

“Well, maybe.” Addie stirred her tea, spilling some into the saucer. “All the same, I'd feel better if he weren't out there … somewhere.”

*
pronounced
Tre-thew-y

On the twenty-fourth of May, Firecracker Day, Tretheway's prophecies and Addie's fears were realized. Although not an earth-shattering event (the main news story was France defending her soil against her traditional German enemy), it was still more serious than the first three.

Between the Mayor and the eight city Aldermen, (two from each of four wards) was a supposedly unifying, guiding and exemplary body of three Controllers. William Lion MacCulla, Mac to his close friends, was the junior member of this board. The designation “junior” had nothing to do with age (MacCulla was thirty-six). It meant only that he had received fewer votes than the other two Controllers and more than the fourth, fifth, and sixth unsuccessful hopefuls who, in the last election, were two obscure communists and an interesting, lame-duck, write-in candidate named Herbert Drake. Mr Drake came fifth, or closest to MacCulla in the polls on the strength of a memorable slogan: “Even a Lame Duck Could Do Better”. After the election it was discovered that Herbert Drake was an actual lame duck called Herby, which some Fort York University students had nursed back to health over a hard winter. MacCulla took it well enough (better than the communists) because he had graduated from the same University not long ago with a degree in European History.

Controller William Lion MacCulla was slight of frame and about the same height as Jake—5′8″. His face was puffy, but pleasant. He affected rimless gold glasses which he constantly adjusted or polished. His fingernails were always clean. He was big in Boy Scouts, organized shopping or pleasure trips for older constituents and fought for more benches at bus stops. With this image, MacCulla captured the sympathy and votes of the over-sixty citizens of Fort York. In political circles, he was known as the old lady's darling and not too many of his colleagues took him seriously. From the top of his curly, greying hair to the tips of his
small, elegantly pointed shoes, he exuded an old-school charm that had been fashionable in days gone by. He spoke with a lisp.

Controller MacCulla lived alone, halfway up Fort York's mountain (elevation 290') in a gracefully proportioned old house that had been remodelled into fashionable apartments. They boasted luxuries like ten-foot ceilings, thick sound-proof walls, silver leaf doors and deep fireplaces. It was the fireplace that caused the trouble.

At seven-thirty on the cool holiday evening, according to the police interrogation of a witness who was passing MacCulla's apartment at the time, there was a flash of light, an overlapping series of muffled explosions and a manly scream. The smoke poured out of an elegant ground floor casement window followed by Controller MacCulla who jumped the six feet to the grassy slope below. With his Scout uniform smouldering, he ran the quarter mile to the Emergency entrance of St. Joseph's Hospital in his stocking feet.

The hospital kept him for about two hours. They treated him for mild shock and second degree burns to his hands, left forearm and knees. His knees were scorched because of the inadequate protection provided by the regulation Scout shorts he was still wearing after the Victoria Day parade.

The firemen, called in by the same alert witness, had little to do in the way of fire-fighting. It was more of a housekeeping job. They swept up bits of blackened twigs, charred wood and small pieces of curly red paper. Most of the force of the explosion had been confined to the deep fireplace or immediately in front of the hearth. When MacCulla finally left the hospital in late evening, assisted by some of his concerned Scouts, he was greeted at his apartment by two Fort York detectives. They investigated and reconstructed the unfortunate event to the satisfaction of their superiors.

Because of the holiday, and some not unusual confusion in
The Fort York Expositor
news department, no reporters arrived until the next day, Saturday. So the story that the public read was a short, garbled version of the truth. It appeared in the special “Expo Flashes” box reserved for late-breaking local news and contained the adjective “mysterious” more than once—a tactic used by the newspaper's re-write men whenever they were short
of space, facts or imagination. The full true story came out later that night in between euchre hands at the Tretheways'.

The Tretheway homestead was a large, solid brick three-story building on a quiet crescent in the west end of Fort York. Almost everything in the house was slightly oversized—bedrooms, verandahs, bathtubs, toilet seats, sunroom, cupboards, closets, root cellar—which suited the Tretheways admirably. It was a natural boardinghouse. And when Adelaide came from England to join her older brother Albert she recognized this immediately. They bought the house in 1923. It was considered an ambitious purchase for a young constable, but a thousand pound inheritance from a favourite aunt was more than enough to pay the down payment and remodel the house so that it could accommodate the economically necessary boarders.

Tretheway had second floor quarters of his own and so did Addie. This still left room for five or six boarders and, although there was a high natural turnover, there was seldom a vacancy. They were mostly Theology or Arts students, but in the last few years the number of uniformed boarders had increased.

Addie tried to make it their home and in most cases succeeded. Jake was the only more or less permanent guest; that is, he was the only one who wasn't going home from school or away to the war. And the social high point of the house (barring special occasions such as Christmas or New Years') was the Saturday night beer-drinking, cheese-eating euchre sessions. The boarders played for money, but the stakes were low. “Just enough to keep your mind from wandering,” Tretheway used to say.

Tretheway and Jake, of course, were regulars. Addie played sometimes, usually when the students were away or studying for exams, and there were semi-regulars too: policemen friends, neighbours, or members of City Council, among others, who would come uninvited, but welcome, to take pot luck at the tables. One of the frequent contributors to the pot was Controller William Lion MacCulla.

“Can you hold the cards all right, Mac?” Addie asked. “Does it hurt?”

“Not bad, Addie.” Mac plucked gingerly at his white gloves (an old pair he used to wear at official Scout functions) and noticed the burn ointment oozing through the thin material in several places. “I hope this guck doesn't get on the cards.”

“They're old cards anyway,” Addie said.

“There's some on mine.” Tretheway had just been euchred for a two-point loss in a lone hand attempt. “Whose turn is it?”

Tonight there was only one table. Tretheway and Jake, traditional partners, were attacking Controller MacCulla and a Theology student boarder named Orlando Pitts.

“I think it's my deal,” O. Pitts said.

O. Pitts, as he was always called, was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill apprentice minister. He didn't smoke, drink or make merry and frowned openly on people who did. But he was careful about Tretheway. Before taking lodgings, all Theology students were warned to resist their impulses to save the Inspector. Under no circumstances, Addie would tell them, were they to criticize his way of life, habits, language or character. She would place her large, soft hands firmly on the students' shoulders and, usually looking down at them, sum up by saying, “Inspector Tretheway is
not
to be considered your very own special challenge.”

O. Pitts turned over a spade.

“Pick it up,” Tretheway said. “I'll go it alone.”

“Interesting.” O. Pitts smiled.

Mac smiled too.

Jake put his cards face down on the table and coughed nervously. “Good luck, Boss.”

Tretheway played his cards without hesitation, got a lucky trump split and took all the tricks—the last one, exuberantly, with the nine of hearts. O. Pitts' smile faded along with MacCulla's.

“Way to shoot, Boss,” Jake said.

From the card table Tretheway brushed the cigar ashes that had fallen when he had played his last card. “Mark up four, Jake.”

He pulled all the cards together with his huge ruddy hands and, with surprising dexterity, shuffled them as expertly as any Monte Carlo dealer.

“We're six. They're four. One more lone hand'll do it, Jake.”

He fired the cards accurately into four neat piles, one in front of each player.

“Lucky split,” Mac grumbled.

“Nonsense,” Tretheway said.

“I agree with Controller MacCulla,” O. Pitts began. “The law of averages …”

“It doesn't much matter, does it, Sonny?” Tretheway bent toward O. Pitts. The table cut into his midsection. “We're still two points ahead.”

“I know, but…”

“How are your drinks, gentlemen?” Addie rescued O. Pitts.

“I'm fine, Addie,” Mac replied. Jake shook his head and put his hand up in polite protest, his mouth full of Shandy.

Tretheway, without speaking, held up an empty, 22-ounce bottle of Molson Blue. Addie, also without speaking, took it from him. “Tell us about yesterday, Mac,” she said, on her way to the kitchen.

“That's right,” Jake said. “The account in
The Expo
was pretty sketchy.”

“There isn't much to tell, really,” Mac began.

“Tell about what?” O. Pitts asked.

“MacCulla's accident yesterday,” Jake said.

“Didn't you wonder how he hurt his hands?” Tretheway stared at O. Pitts.

“I've been studying,” O. Pitts said.

“Go on, Mac.” Addie was back at the table. She put Trethe-way's full bottle of beer in front of him with, as usual, no glass. Tretheway's definition of an important dress-up affair was one in which beer was drunk from a glass.

“I'll tell you just what happened,” Mac said. “But there isn't much.”

He pushed his chair back from the table, crossed his thin legs and placed his hands awkwardly and gingerly in his lap. Addie rested her arm comfortably along the back of Jake's chair. Jake smiled up at her. Tretheway, pretending not to notice, rocked back on his special sturdy card-playing chair and folded his arms as far as they would go. Because of his chest expanse neither hand quite reached the other arm but came to rest, modestly, one on each breast.

“Remember last night was cool,” MacCulla went on. “And rainy. I was really tired after the parade.” He adjusted his glasses. “And cold. All I thought about on the way home was a nice warm fire. And maybe a warm toddy. I let myself in the apartment, folded my jacket, kicked off my wet shoes.” He thought for a moment. “I pushed a window open a bit. Helps the fire draw. Struck a match. And threw it in the fireplace. That's about it. There
was this big explosion. Then confusion, I guess. It scared me. And the pain. It's hard to remember. But I must've panicked. Jumped out the window and ran.”

“How long between the time you threw the match and the explosion?” Tretheway asked.

“Maybe ten seconds.”

“And what caused the explosion?”

“Firecrackers.”

“Firecrackers,” Tretheway repeated. “I should've known. On Firecracker Day. Still, seems like a lot of damage.”

“They were giant cannon crackers. About ten of them all tied together. And the police said the fireplace directed the force of the explosion straight out. Right at me.”

“Didn't you see them?”

“No. I usually make up the fire early. This one the night before. Paper, wood, kindling. All ready to go. Sometimes it's there for weeks. Nothing worse than an empty fireplace. The cannon crackers were hidden under the papers, I guess.”

Tretheway unfolded his arms and leaned forward. “Then you're saying someone must've planted the crackers between the time you made up the fire late Thursday, and Friday night when it exploded?”

“Sounds reasonable. And I was out all day Friday.”

“And your place was locked up?”

“Yes. But it wouldn't be too hard to break in.”

“Any sign of forced entry?”

“Only when we came home from the hospital.”

“We?”

“Some of my Scouts. They came to see me in the hospital.”

“How did they know you were there?”

“They came to the apartment for a meeting. The firemen must've told them what happened.”

“A meeting after a parade?”

“We always do. Go over anything that went wrong in the march. See if we can improve our procedure.”

“Admirable. But you say there were signs of a break-in then?”

“I'll say. The firemen had broken the door down.”

“Oh.” Tretheway looked at Jake. “Axe-happy.”

“Standard procedure,” Jake said.

“Then, really, we still don't know who did it.” Addie looked
hopefully from face to face. “I mean, it could've been children. Just a prank.”

“I don't think so, Addie,” Tretheway said.

“Oh dear.”

“Now, Addie,” Jake said. “I know it's no joke having first degree burns,” he looked sympathetically at Mac, “but it's hardly a case yet for the Crown Attorney. It could've been meant just to scare Mac. A prank like the others. But whoever did it simply miscalculated the force of the crackers.”