The Massey Murder (2 page)
Authors: Charlotte Gray
“Black Jack” Robinson, editor of the
Evening Telegram
Archie Fisher, “The Crow,” reporter at the
Evening Telegram
Joseph Atkinson, 49, owner and editor of the
Toronto Daily Star
Helen Ball, reporter at the
Toronto Daily News
T
ORONTO’S
L
OCAL
C
OUNCIL OF
W
OMEN
Florence Gooderham Hamilton Huestis, 42, president
1. Adelaide Street Courthouse
2. Albany Club
3. City Hall
4. Court Street Police Station
5. Don Jail
6. Euclid Hall
7. Fred Victor Mission
8. Massey Music Hall
9. Morgue
10. National Club
11. Osgoode Hall
12. Police Station 11
13. Toronto Club
C
harles Albert Massey sauntered away from the new Dupont streetcar station, heading west into the chilly dusk. Most of a recent snowfall had been shovelled off the sidewalk by Toronto’s Public Works department, which meant that heaped banks of dirty snow protected pedestrians from cars, horse-drawn carriages, and delivery trucks. Dupont was a teeming downtown thoroughfare, lined with grocery stores and bakeries. Massey, a slender man of medium height, carefully picked his way around dog excrement and slushy puddles, thankful that, despite a hangover, he had remembered to pull galoshes over his leather shoes that morning.
Bert, as his friends called him, was a member of one of Canada’s most prominent families, a dynasty that had built its fortune by producing the wagons, tractors, threshers, reapers, and binders on which Canada’s newfound prosperity, and reputation as the “bread basket of the Empire,” was based. The thirty-four-year-old cut a stylish figure, with a diamond stick pin in his silk tie and his dark hair slicked back from his wide forehead. Right now, he was probably too eager to get home to let his thoughts linger on either agricultural implements or the fact that his American wife, Rhoda, had not yet returned from a visit to her family, the Vandergrifts, in Bridgeport, Connecticut—a visit that she had kept extending. When she left a week earlier, they had not parted on good terms. Rhoda didn’t share her husband’s sense
of
fun
. A rather shy New Englander, she certainly didn’t have his appetite for fast cars and late nights: she preferred to stay out of the limelight.
After a block, Bert Massey turned south past the dairy at the corner of Dupont and Walmer Road. Within minutes, he could no longer hear the Dupont traffic or smell the sour milk from the empty churns in the dairy’s backyard. Bert lived in the Annex, the area between Bloor and Dupont, west of Avenue Road, that had been developed over the previous three decades as Toronto’s population exploded and streetcars allowed middle-class residents to live farther away from their workplaces. The Bloor Street end of Walmer Road was the fashionable part, with circular towers, portes cochères, and tall chimneys ornamenting spacious stone mansions. Most of the houses near Dupont, where Bert Massey lived, had been hastily constructed and lacked the imposing bulk, wraparound porches, and extensive grounds enjoyed by Toronto’s wealthier families—the kind of homes that Bert’s rich relatives lived in. Nevertheless, a few of the flourishes of grander mansions had migrated north to Walmer Road’s pokier residences. There were pillared porches, stained-glass windows in some front doors, and dormer windows for attic bedrooms in which servants slept.
Number 169, where Albert and Rhoda Massey lived, was particularly shabby. Squeezed between its neighbours, it lacked their balconies and decorated bargeboards. It was not even well maintained. If Massey had raised his eyes to his roof, he would see that a recent warm spell had melted much of the snow from his tiles, blocking the gutters and creating dangerous icicles overhanging the front porch. Did he make this typical homeowner’s check? Probably not. It was after six o’clock, so visibility was poor despite newly installed street lamps. And he was tired. After socializing until 1:45 a.m. the previous night at a neighbour’s, he had risen early to reach York Motors Ltd. on Yonge Street. Bert Massey did not work in the family firm; instead, he had a job at a
Studebaker dealership, selling cars that were built with American-made parts and assembled in Walkerville, Ontario.
In theory, Bert Massey had a great job in a booming industry. In the past few years, automobiles had gone from exotic rarities to status symbols. Back in 1908, traffic monitors at one Toronto intersection noted only six automobiles in ten hours. Cars were expensive (around $1,400 each—twice the annual salary of a schoolteacher, and four times as much as an ordinary labourer earned), so ownership was slow to gather momentum. But within four years, the motoring craze had taken off, and the same intersection was seeing 382 cars each day. Now, in 1915, there were close to 100,000 vehicles on Canadian roads, the majority of them in the increasingly urban central provinces. It was all quite chaotic: there were no stop signs or traffic lights, and drivers in some provinces stuck to the British custom of driving on the left-hand side of the road, while in others they followed the American custom of driving on the right. Prince Edward Island had banned automobiles altogether until 1913. But what man could resist progress, or the excitement of having a McLaughlin-Buick, or a Ford, or a Cadillac, or a Reo, or a Hupmobile parked outside his home? Even Laura Borden, the irreproachably respectable wife of Prime Minister Robert Borden, cheerfully drove herself through Ottawa’s muddy streets in an electric car.
Bert’s job as a Studebaker salesman gave him a certain social flash, since his friends could glimpse him cruising down Yonge Street, one hand on the steering wheel as he showed a potential buyer how to signal for turns, or double-declutch during a gear change. It certainly suited his employer to have a Massey as a salesman. This week, Bert had been busy helping hang banners and bunting in York Motors’ state-of-the-art showroom for a display of four splendid new Studebaker models in mid-February.
But in practice, Bert’s income didn’t match the flash: he sold on commission, and with a war on, sales had slumped. The job required
him to be smartly dressed, on his feet, and professionally charming all day, no matter how rude or stupid the customers. Today had been particularly exhausting, so icicles hanging off his porch were the least of his concerns. Anyway, Bert Massey didn’t bother much with routine chores—in his wife’s absence, he had barely bothered to sweep the snow off the sidewalk.
Before Bert Massey reached home, he met Ernest Pelletier, the sixteen-year-old paper boy who had just delivered a copy of the
Toronto Daily Star
to the Massey house. Massey flashed his most charming smile as he pulled out a quarter to pay for delivery of the
Star
for the previous month. Ever since Christmas, the war in Europe had dominated the
Star
’s front page: today, the news was that Britain’s Russian allies had attacked German troops in the Carpathians on the eastern front, and its French allies had dynamited a German trench on the western front. As usual, the
Star
had found a poignant local human-interest story for the middle of the page. A short article described how, the day after a local woman had received an official telegram informing her that her husband was dead, a letter had arrived from him containing the message, “Cheer Up Girlie, I’ll Be Home by May.”
Bert Massey turned off the sidewalk towards his front door. He had no idea what awaited him.
Behind the front door stood the Massey family’s English domestic servant, Carrie Davies. Carrie was a mere slip of a girl, a mousy eighteen-year-old who rarely spoke unless spoken to. She was one of hundreds of thousands of demure little housemaids in cities all over the English-speaking world, from Sheffield to Chicago, Manchester to Melbourne, Tunbridge Wells to Toronto. In her black dress, white cap, and starched apron, Carrie blended into the background decor that, similarly, scarcely varied across continents—heavy velvet curtains, dark wood panelling, framed sepia photographs. In the bourgeois world of 1915, the Carrie Davieses barely merited a glance, let
alone a footnote in history. Women like her formed the silent army that kept households humming, and yet remained almost invisible to many of its employers. Carrie’s life was particularly exhausting because she was Bert and Rhoda Massey’s only servant. They couldn’t afford the army of cooks, butlers, parlour maids, and lady’s maids that kept up the houses of richer Masseys. Carrie had to do everything, during days that began at six in the morning and might not finish until well after 9 p.m.
But tonight, this particular young woman carried a gun—Bert Massey’s own .32-calibre Savage automatic pistol. Such guns (“The most powerful, accurate and rapid fire pistol invented”) were available in the Eaton’s catalogue for $18. And she was standing close to the door because she had just told the paper boy that her employer was not yet home. When she heard Bert Massey mount the steps to the verandah, she raised her right arm. At first, Bert did not see her in the shadows. Then Carrie pulled the door open and stepped forward. A shot rang out. A sharp pain erupted in Bert’s left side. He gaped at the young woman before backing quickly down the steps. A second shot rang out. Bert had barely reached the street before he fell and the life began to drain out of him. Carrie Davies lowered the gun, turned round, and disappeared into the house, shutting the door behind her.
Ernest Pelletier was halfway down the block when he heard the shots. For a second, he assumed that the sharp crack was the sound of one of the new electric street-lamp bulbs exploding. Then he swung round—and watched in disbelief as the man to whom he had spoken only seconds earlier staggered down his front steps and collapsed on the sidewalk. Ernest sprinted back to him. Beatrice Dinnis, who lived at 126 Walmer Road, had seen the flash of a gun and heard Bert exclaim, “Oh,” as he buckled to the ground. She was one of the first passersby to cluster around the fallen man, who was groaning in distress. One stranger hammered on the doorway of 169 Walmer, but there was no
answer. So he went next door and asked for a glass of water, explaining that a man had been taken ill on the sidewalk.
Nobody knew what to do. A woman screamed. There was no observable wound, no gush of blood. Yet Bert Massey was obviously in desperate straits. Curtains twitched in Walmer Road windows as neighbours peered through the gathering darkness at the huddle of shocked witnesses. A youth who lived at number 133 ran to telephone the police. Dr. John Mitchell, who lived a few doors north and was familiar to his neighbours, shouldered through the crowd, loosened Massey’s collar, and had him carried into the house next door, number 171. By the time Charles Albert Massey had been laid on a chesterfield there, he was dead. He had not uttered a word since the first shot was fired.
The police wagon arrived minutes later.
Patrol Sergeant Lawrence Brown and two constables marched up to the front door of number 169 and knocked. Again, no one came to the door. Sending Constable Follis to the back door and instructing Constable Martin to stand guard at the front door, Brown entered the unlocked house. Most of the lights were on in the evening gloom.
The front hall was a cramped space: ahead of him, the sergeant saw a staircase leading upwards, and to his right, through an open door, an empty sitting room. The stocky policeman walked carefully towards the back of the house. In the kitchen, someone had just finished making supper, and there was an unbaked loaf of bread on the table. Brown heard a noise from below, and was startled to see Bert Massey’s fourteen-year-old son, Charlie, emerge from the basement in his shirt sleeves. What had he been doing? Perhaps he was smoking one of his father’s cigarettes, or even taking a quiet swig from a bottle “borrowed” from the liquor cabinet. Sergeant Brown didn’t care. He was more concerned by
the boy’s expression of shock at seeing a policeman in the house. The noise of the gunshot had not reached the basement, and Brown realized that Charles Albert had no idea of what had occurred. The policeman took Charles to the front door and instructed Constable Martin to look after the boy. White-faced and frightened, Charles kept asking what had happened. Nobody told him.
Sergeant Brown continued his search of the house. The ground-floor rooms were empty, so he cautiously started up the staircase. When he reached the landing, he heard a tremulous call from the third floor: “Who is there?” He replied, “The police.” The girlish voice said, “Come on up,” but Brown drew his revolver and said, “Come on down.”
It was barely half an hour since the two shots were fired. In a bare attic bedroom, Carrie Davies had risen from the table where, in a state of eerie calm, she had just finished writing two short notes. One was to Maud Fairchild, her married sister who also lived in Toronto. The second was to her friend Mary Rooney, another domestic servant who worked for Bert Massey’s older brother and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Massey, a few blocks away on Admiral Road. Carrie behaved as if in a stupor, oblivious to the furor outside in the street. When she heard the policeman’s voice, she had thrust her hands into the arms of a shabby brown cloth coat and picked up the gun again. This time, she held it by the muzzle. Then she started downstairs.