Except the Dying

One of the men named by John Foy was a butcher who lived on Parliament Street, close to the medical school. Murdoch decided to see him first. Light snow was starting to fall, tickling his face, and the wind was gusting. He’d got off the streetcar at Gerrard, exchanged a few words with an excited Carrots, who greeted him from his spot on the curb, and began his walk east, again aware that he was following in Therese’s footsteps. The residences that lined Gerrard Street were elegant and well kept. Several of them sat in spacious grounds, and brass plates on the iron fences proclaimed these were doctors’ houses.

Just past the corner of Sherbourne there was a charitable home for girls under fourteen who had been in need of rescue. The lamps were lit and he could see into the front room. A half-dozen girls all in neat white pinafores over grey dresses were gathered around an organ. Their mouths were opening and closing like fledgling birds, and he gathered they were singing. Hymns, probably, to judge by their serious expressions. A portly matron was conducting them, waving her arms in awkward dignity. Therese Laporte had not been much older than those girls.

Fred Vose’s shop was above Gerrard Street on the west side of Parliament, the end building of a row of three, all newish looking in elegant pink brick. The store adjacent to the butcher’s was vacant, the windows shuttered, but the remaining one was lit sufficiently for Murdoch to read the plain, dignified sign: J. CARVETH, MEDICAL BOOKSELLERS. Like the sparrows who chase the crows waiting for droppings, Mr. Carveth had situated himself conveniently close to the medical college, and he seemed to have both a sense of humour and a sense of business. In the window was a skeleton pointing a fleshless finger at a stepladder draped with purple velvet. On each step was a fat tome pertinent to the student’s education according to Dr. Osler, including, Murdoch was glad to see, a weighty volume of Shakespeare’s complete works. He paused for a moment, reading the other titles the eminent doctor considered necessary to a medical student’s mental well-being. The Old and New Testament, of course, Plutarch’s Lives and, rather surprisingly, Don Quixote. Murdoch experienced a twinge of envy for the wealthy young men who could afford to spend five years in uninterrupted studies. Given the chance, he would have loved to enter the university, but it was out of the question for somebody with no means except what his own muscles could earn. He moved on.

Mr. Vose’s shop window was hung with several carcasses. Unbutchered pigs, the gash in their throats like second mouths, swayed on big hooks, intermixed with the bloodied bodies of hares and rabbits and sides of beef. Beneath them were displayed various trays of grey tripe, dark red liver and kidneys. Two skinned and eyeless calves’ heads sat in the centre.

A bell tinkled as he entered the shop. He glanced around. There was only one sconce lit, and the corners of the store were pools of darkness where he could just make out the sacks of sawdust for the floor and a couple of tubs of brine in which were floating several pig’s trotters. The bead curtain behind the counter parted and a man appeared from the backroom. He was brawny, with a broad, red face. Muscular arms swelled beneath his blue flannel shirt. His apron was dark with bloodstains. He was smoking a long clay pipe and the pungent tobacco mingled with the smell of blood and raw meat.

“What can I do for you, Captain? The missus craving a nice fresh roast, is she?”

Murdoch spent a moment to shake the snow off his coat and undid his muffler. “Are you Fred Vose?”

“I am unless my mother was deceiving me.”

“I’m Detective William Murdoch, and I’d like a few minutes of your time to answer some questions.”

“Lordy, hammer away, Captain.”

“I understand you’re acquainted with John Foy?”

“I am that. What’s up? Has John done something he shouldn’t?” Vose’s eyes gleamed with curiosity.

“He’s not been charged, if that’s what you mean, but I’m conducting an investigation and I’d like you to verify his statement.”

“Does it have to do with that poor maid as froze to death? She was a maid at Birchlea, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right.” Murdoch chose not to mention Alice Black at this moment.

“John was very shaken by that girl’s passing. As soon as my wife and I read about it in the newspaper we went straight over to see him.”

“What did he have to say?”

“He couldn’t understand how she’d come to die like that. To tell you square, Captain, at one point he was weeping like a woman. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

Foy seemed to show a more delicate side of his nature to his brothers than Murdoch had yet witnessed.

“If you ask me,” Vose went on, “Johnny was more bothered even than Edith … but then she is a bit of a flinty sort, if you know what I mean. It’s understandable, though, isn’t it? That maid was hardly more than a child. Still, I suppose, given she was a half-breed, we shouldn’t be surprised.”