Put on the Armour of Light (5 page)

A
s
a result of the luncheon meeting that day at the offices of Campbell and Bentinck, Barristers and Solicitors, Charles and Trevor found themselves walking briskly, almost trotting, to keep up with Chester Jessup as he led the way to the police station, bail application in hand. Jessup, small, bespectacled and intense, had been the junior lawyer chosen by Blakeley Campbell to take on the McEvoy case. To add to the credibility of the application, Dr. Skene had attached a letter stating that Peter had once been a young man of good behaviour and outstanding promise and that he, Skene, would stand with Charles in providing surety for Peter. It would be an uphill battle, but Jessup said that the support of people respected in the city might well move the judge to approve. Before filing the documents at the court house, Jessup wanted to meet Peter and talk over the specifics of the bail application. They met Setter in his office.

“Come this way and I'll take you down to see McEvoy,” said Setter.

“I'd rather wait here. You go ahead,” Trevor said.

“Come on now, Trevor, I'm sure Peter will want to thank you personally for your generosity.” Charles smiled but looked puzzled.

“Yes, that's the trouble. I'd rather be in the background, frankly. The fact is my father isn't very happy about my being the banker for Mr. McEvoy. I'll be as good as my word — but the less of a personal role I take in all this, the better.”

“Of course, it's up to you. Whatever you prefer,” said Charles. He left Trevor in the office and headed toward the stairs to the cells with Setter and Jessup.

Setter sent the other two down ahead of him and grabbed Constable Smithers by the arm for a quick word. Smithers nodded and walked over to the closed door of Inspector Crossin's office. He straightened his tunic and badge and knocked. After a muffled reply he entered and stood in front of Crossin's desk, his nose wrinkling slightly from the cigar fug that permeated the small space.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Sergeant Setter said to let you know that you'll be needed to sign Mr. McEvoy's bail application when they're through downstairs.”

“Fine. Tell him I'll be here until six. Then Mrs. Crossin requires my presence at supper.”

Smithers remained in front of the desk.

“Yes? Something else?”

“Well, sir. I was just wondering if you'd had time to go over my request for a transfer.”

“Hang it, Smithers. Don't I have enough to worry about?” He sighed and stubbed out his cigar. “You'd better close the door and sit down.”

Smithers did as he was told.

“Now, what's all this about? You've only been assigned to Setter for three months and even then we pull you away for other assignments.”

“Well sir, I'd like to write the sergeant's exam after I've put in enough time in the division. And, well,” He lifted his jaw and focused on a point just above Crossin's head. “I want to get a range of experience before —”

“Lad, you can't get any better experience than where you are right now. You can learn things about investigation from Setter that none of my other sergeants have thought about. He's like a terrier with a bone. He won't quit till he's worked out every angle and he won't let you quit either.”

“I know that sir, it's just that, well …” He fretted at the cuffs of his tunic. “I've heard that Sergeant Setter had to write the exam four times before he finally made sergeant.”

“And you think you'll be held back because you're working for him, is that it? And the boys are ragging you and making jokes behind Setter's back.”

“Oh, give me some credit, sir.” Smithers jumped his chair back a few inches. “I like the sergeant fine, though he does have his funny little ways, and I don't pay any attention to what they say. It's just that, see —” He dropped his voice a little and bent forward. “I have to get on. I got engaged last month. And her father says we can't get married until I make sergeant.”

“Oh, it's like that, is it?” Crossin opened his desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper that Smithers could see was his transfer request. Crossin ripped it in two, then in four, then in eight, and dropped the whole business into the waste paper basket beside his desk.

“Sir! —”

“All right, now you listen to me, Constable.” Crossin leaned forward on his elbows, glaring at Smithers. “I'm going to tell you something and if you repeat one word of it to anyone else, and I mean anyone, I will personally break both your legs.”

Smithers sat up very straight.

“Setter scored top marks in each of those four exams and in the interviews,” Crossin said. “After a few years it got to be embarrassing. If the premier — who happened to be Setter's uncle — hadn't weighed in, he'd still be wearing blue serge.”

“Crikey,” Smithers said and then narrowed his eyes. “But, if he scored so high, why was he held back?”

“There was some nonsense about Setter not making an effort to fit in and work with the other men.” Crossin brought his fist down hard on the desk. “It was all a load of steaming … manure! They were afraid if Setter made sergeant, the constables under him wouldn't take orders from him and there'd be trouble in the locker room.”

“Oh, I see,” Smithers said, looking as if a smell worse than cigar smoke had just wafted in. “Well, that seems pretty hard to me, sir. 'Specially since he proved four times over that he was qualified.”

“Exactly my point; so, Constable Smithers, it behoves you to get just as qualified and the way to do that is to stay where you are and do every blessed thing that Setter asks of you. And when Setter thinks you're ready, he'll recommend you for the exam. Not before. You tell your young lady that you'll be working your blasted arse off for the next two years. And then when there's a position open at that rank, She'll be right proud of you when you get those stripes. Anything else?”

Smithers looked crestfallen. “Two years, sir? I'd been hoping —”

“Two years is average, Constable. Less if you're a bloody genius. Are you a bloody genius?”

Smithers cleared his throat and stuck out his chin. “I, uh, don't know about that, sir. But I intend to do my best.”

After the meeting with Peter, Crossin signed the application and Jessup set off for the court house, looking determined. Charles and Trevor left the police station together and headed down Rupert Street as a light rain began to fall.

“That's a God-forsaken place isn't it?” Trevor said.

“Yes, well, no, not literally —”

“I'm sorry. But you know what I mean.”

“I know,” Charles said. “Actually the cells are not as bad as I thought they might be. They're bad, I grant you. But you hear of so much worse in older cities.”

Trevor was quiet for awhile. They risked their lives by crossing Main Street, dodging wagons, carts, bicycles, and streetcars, and feeling lucky that in the rain the roadway hadn't yet been churned into thick mud. When they reached the other side, Charles was faintly surprised that Trevor continued walking north with him instead of turning south toward the offices of Stobbart and Long, where he was a clerk in articles and studying for the bar examination.

“I hope you will visit my mother, Mr. Lauchlan,” Trevor said.

“Yes, I intend to — and call me Charles — but you said she was very busy these days?”

“Yes. You'll need to be persistent. Once she sees you I know that she'll feel better for it.” Their progress was halted by a large cart loaded with vegetables and they had to wait for it to pass.

Charles stepped closer to Trevor to make sure he could hear properly. “You know, it's strange, but I don't think your mother has ever been very comfortable with me.”

“Well …” Trevor looked a little ill at ease, himself. “… Because of her upbringing, she's had difficulty adjusting to things here in the West.”

It was an awkward subject and this was as close to candid as Trevor had ever been about it. Trevor's parents and, indeed, he himself had been baptized and raised as Catholics in Montreal. When they made the move to the West they decided, or rather his father decided, that they would make a completely fresh start — including changing their religion. Of all the family, this had been hardest on Trevor's mother. Even after eighteen years, Agnes Martland still seemed uncertain when to stand and when to sit in church, and visibly restrained herself from genuflecting before entering the pew. The Martlands baffled Charles and he had always attributed this to their Catholicism, which was as strange to him as if they had come from a foreign country. Now he felt that he should have made more of an effort to get to know them.

“I have things to attend to today. But I'll see her tomorrow if she's at home — and I won't take ‘no' for an answer.”

“Thank you, Charles.” Trevor nodded a goodbye and turned back toward Stobbart and Long, leaning briskly into the rain.

C
harles
walked on, turning his conversation with Trevor over in his mind. Sounds of activity greeted him when he arrived, a little rain soaked, at the church. Miss Perrin, the nurse who visited three days a week, was in the parish hall teaching some young mothers-to-be about the care and diseases of newborn infants. In the basement a group of neighbourhood women were sorting household goods and clothing for distribution. This was a highly coveted job; the sorters got to take some of the best goods home with them.

The rich contralto cadence of mostly Slavic back-and-forth chatter was suddenly punctuated by, “teeeeee paaawtt?” And a choral reply of, “teeeeee paaht!” One bright, slightly raucous peel of laughter above the rest told Charles that Maggie was with them, taking her turn at helping the women with their English. He was tempted to join them but there were some repairs to the gallery in the sanctuary that needed his urgent attention and so he made his way back to his office.

The paint-stained corduroy trousers and thick blue cotton shirt he changed into felt like old friends as he carefully hung up his damp suit jacket and pulled his trousers into tight creases before laying them over the back of his office chair. With his shirt, clerical collar, and black dickey laid over the other chair, the small office resembled a laundry. He looked quickly at the messages on his desk. There was one from Erling Eklund, saying that he would be slightly later than he had anticipated with the equipment to repair the gallery. Charles took advantage of the delay to go down and have a word with Maggie.

The gaslights were on full in the centre of the large basement room, revealing the new wood of the bare rafters and making a pool of light for the women to work in. There was a definite increase in the level of chatter as he joined them and some of the women giggled, their aprons raised in front of their faces. He nodded a greeting to Maggie.

He knew one or two of the women by name. “Mrs. Morosnick, how do you do? Mrs. Sloboda? Very nice to see you.” The women eyed him with sidelong glances.

“And this is Mrs. Kodalek,” said Maggie, indicating a small woman hanging back a little from the main group. “This is her first time here.”

“Mrs. Kodalek, hello. I hope you will come back again,” Charles said, enunciating clearly. Mrs. Kodalek bobbed several times from the waist and gave Charles a wide smile, smoothing her apron with reddened hands.

“
Vin krasniski yak ya doomala! Trocha kygey ale maye mochni nohi
,” said Mrs. Morosnick to her neighbour, pointing to Charles and slapping her thigh, and both whooped with laughter, which set the whole group off.

Charles, a little self-conscious, shot a questioning look at Maggie.

“Apparently they're not used to seeing you looking like a farm hand. I'm not sure, but I think they just said that you're a bit thin — but you have good strong legs,” she said.

“Oh, hahah!” Charles blushed but then struck a circus strong-man pose, crooking his arm to show off his biceps, and off they went again. Once the women had dried their eyes with the ends of their kerchiefs, Maggie seized the opportunity to go through the names of various body parts, pointing to Charles who obligingly flexed or waggled the part in question and gestured to the women to repeat the name. At the end of this game he helped Maggie and the women put the clothes and housewares into boxes. The group dispersed, each one carrying a few prized articles homeward, while Maggie stayed behind to put the boxes away.

“Why are you dressed like that, anyway?” she said.

“A beam supporting the gallery is cracked. People up there were getting a sinking feeling — completely unrelated to my sermon. Mr. Martland is sending one of his work crews over to help me repair it.”

“What would we do without the Martlands?” she said, closing some cardboard cartons. “And what about the bail application?”

“It's being filed at the court house by one Chester Jessup of Campbell and Bentinck.”

“Wasn't it fine of Trevor to offer the money?” she said. Charles, putting a padlock on a storage locker, did not immediately reply. “Well, I think it was fine of him,” said Maggie.

“Yes, yes, it was generous of him.”

“Extremely generous, I'd say. And you would too, only you seem to think Trev is shallow and stuck-up.”

“I don't,” Charles protested. “But he's had the best of everything and I think that can be very — I don't know — distracting, I suppose. I'll tell you one thing though; I didn't think his father would take very well to Trevor footing the bill and apparently he hasn't. Maybe we shouldn't have accepted his offer.”

“Nonsense; it won't do Trevor any harm to stand up to his father. It makes his gesture all the nobler.”

“Do they get along, Trevor and his father?”

“I'm not sure. We talk about all kinds of things. People we know; what he wants to do after the bar examination; sports; politics; religion, of course —” she nodded in his direction. “And I go on about my family, which he actually seems to find interesting. But then if I ask him a question about his family, nine times out of ten he'll make a joke and we'll go off in another direction entirely. And ten minutes after he's gone, I'll realize he changed the subject.”

“Perhaps he's doing that deliberately. Trying to make himself ever more fascinating,” Charles said, only half joking.

She laughed. “I hadn't thought of that. He's that way with everyone though. Charming and good at drawing people out. But there are certain topics he doesn't care to discuss.” She looked suddenly thoughtful. “But, I suppose men are like that.”

There was a door open. All he needed to do was walk through it.

And then it was closed. “Oh, look. Some children's shoes came in this morning,” she said, picking up two impossibly small black boots from a carton. “Since we already have some on hand we should send the new ones over to the children's home. Mrs. Forman says they're desperate for them. And by the way, Trevor is running in the All Charities Foot Race next week — did you know? And his law firm is sponsoring him at twenty dollars a mile. That's one hundred and twenty dollars for the children's home if he finishes the race.”

“Well, that's good work. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of entering the race too.”

“You're not! Charles! You'll fall over after two miles.”

“Why do you say that? I do a little road work with the boy's boxing club,” he said, “And I'll have you know I was very highly thought of on the University College track and field team.”

Maggie just snorted. “Your road work consists of watching the boys run around the park and your glorious sporting career is, shall we say, receding into the distance. I suppose I'll just have to make sure there's a wagon at mile three to bring you home in.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, my goodness! My German lesson's in ten minutes!” She grabbed her hat, handbag and umbrella, and ran up the stairs, hiking her skirts clear of the steps.

Annoying girl
, Charles thought.
Just assumes I can't do it
. In truth he hadn't had any intention of entering the race. He had been as surprised as she was when those words popped out of his mouth. But now a granitic determination formed in his mind. Of course he would enter the race. The church was a member of the All Charities campaign and he had been thinking of taking more exercise. This would be the start of a new health regime.

He took the stairs two at a time up into the cool, whitewashed brightness of the sanctuary. The rain was drumming lightly on the roof and he stopped, cocking his head. So pleasant just to be still and listen to it.
Come on
, he reminded himself,
there's work to be done
. While climbing the narrow stairway to the gallery, he mentally reviewed the steps he needed to take to get some working room around the sagging beam that supported the front portion of the gallery floor. First the front railing and the parapet on which it was fastened would be removed; then the floorboards over the beam; then the decorative boards and mouldings hiding the beam. He set to work with a crowbar, taking down the railing which only two years before he himself had made.

As he carefully loosened the groaning boards of the parapet from their nails, trying not to split the boards, he began to hum softly. Some of the men on the session thought it less than respectable for their minister to undertake this kind of work. But Charles had convinced them that most of the money they raised for the church should go to the programs and services they offered in the building and not to adorn its place of worship. They were lucky that he was able to do a few things around the place; it meant that the church could make do with only a weekend caretaker. They would expand and decorate as money could be spared. And anyway, he enjoyed the work. A well-mitred joint in the wainscoting was a gift to God, a prayer made with his hands.

There was a great deal left to do, though. The interior of the sanctuary furnished the basics for worship but little else. The chancel was a bare platform with a borrowed lectern in place of a pulpit; the choir loft behind was comprised of second-hand chairs on unfinished risers and a small harmonium served in place of a piano. For a baptismal font he used an old Spode ware basin set into a converted fern stand that, to Maggie's delight, Charles consecrated to its new use with elaborate solemnity.

The long, pointed windows, six on each side of the sanctuary, bore the only touch of richness. They were filled with ordinary glass except for the pointed sections at the top. Mrs. Lydia McCorrister had insisted on paying for stained glass panels — from McAusland in Toronto, no less — in memory of her haberdasher husband. The geometric pattern of yellow, opalescent white, and clear bevelled glass was understated but when the sun shone small rainbows appeared on the opposite wall, which captivated children and not a few adults whose attention had wandered from the sermon.

A thumping of boots sounded beneath him and a baritone voice reverberated in the empty sanctuary. “Hello? Mr. Lauchlan? Reverend?”

“Eklund? Just wait, I'm coming down.” Charles set a board down at the back of the gallery and clomped down the stairs to greet Erling Eklund, Martland's foreman, and Kauffman, another worker from the Asseltine and Martland yard. Eklund was tall and solidly built, and though still a young man, his sheer physical presence and booming voice gave him an aura of command. He wore his weathered cap pulled down low on his forehead but it did not quite hide the wine-coloured birth mark above his left eyebrow that extended, jagged like a bird claw, across the bridge of his nose.

The three men finished unmasking the sagging beam, and then wandered around beneath it, eyeing it from various angles. The damage was worse than Charles had expected. Eklund clambered up a ladder, ran his fingers along the widening crack and furrowed his brow while sighting along the beam to where it disappeared into the plaster wall on each side.

“I'm afraid we're going to have to replace it, Mr. Lauchlan. I guess we should have used fir after all,” Eklund said from atop the ladder. “I thought this grade of spruce would be up to the job but it looks like there was a fault in the grain.”

Charles felt a sting of annoyance with himself. “That's my fault, Eklund. I shouldn't have talked you into the spruce. I was trying to shave a few dollars off the budget.”

“Oh, it's just the luck of the draw at the lumber yard sometimes.” Eklund smiled ruefully as he climbed down the ladder. “I can get a wholesale price for you on the fir beam and Mr. Martland will give you half-price on the labour. I'm afraid that's the best we can do.”

Charles sighed. “That's more than generous, of course. All right, I guess we'd better go ahead. If you can get me an estimate for the new beam and the work then my board can approve it fairly quickly.”

“If you can spare a few hours to help, the three of us can get the old beam out today. Then in with the new one whenever you get the go-ahead and we'll leave the mouldings, plastering, and painting to you.”

They hauled in some hydraulic jacks and lumber for temporary supports from the wagon parked outside. Then Eklund sent Kauffman to return the wagon to another work site. Charles and Eklund removed some pews underneath the gallery to provide working space. Then they measured the lumber and prepared to cut it into the right lengths for temporary posts and a plate to support the gallery floor.

“I feel guilty monopolizing your time like this, Eklund,” Charles said. “I know you're of more value to Mr. Martland supervising the hotel site.”

“That's all right, sir. Mr. Martland wanted me to make sure the job here was done right.” They manoeuvred a twelve-foot length of eight-by-eight timber onto a series of saw horses.

“Well be sure to thank him again for donating his top man to the cause here,” Charles said as they clamped the timber firmly to the saw horses.

“I'll do that.” Eklund said, “Oh, Mr. Martland said you know the man who was arrested for killing Mr. Asseltine? That's a hell of a thing. Can you take the other end of this?” He picked up a two-man crosscut saw and slid the other handle toward Charles.

“Yes, true enough.” Charles wrapped his hands around the saw handle. “We're old friends from university — hadn't seen him in fifteen years.” They lined up the saw on the pencil line, bracing the timber with a leg on each side. The first passes of the saw bit tentatively into the wood but then they established a rhythm, extending their arms more confidently with each stroke until the saw broke through at the bottom.

“I hear he was so drunk he can't remember what happened,” said Eklund, loosening the clamps. “But maybe if I did something like that, I'd say the same thing.”

“Well he was certainly drunk enough. By the time the police came he was more or less insensible.” Charles positioned the timber for the next cut. “Just there?”