Except the Dying

“Take this note to the police station and ask for Sergeant Seymour. You can stay there for the night. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can find you some work.”

He tore out the leaf and handed it to the youth, then took him by the arm and faced him in the direction of Sackville Street.

“Go down there and when you get to Wilton, turn right. That way.” He indicated the direction. “Keep going until you see the police station. There’s a green light over the door. Do you understand me?”

“Ja. Danke schön, danke schön.”

Murdoch watched to make sure he was going in the right direction, until he was obscured by the swirling snow. Ahead of Murdoch a lamplighter was reaching up with his pole to light the gas lamp on the corner. It didn’t make much difference to the darkness of the street; along Gerrard the lights were widely spaced. Murdoch wished he’d thought to bring his own lantern. Huddled into his coat, hat jammed down on his forehead, he trudged on.

Seymour would be good to the German lad, he thought. He wasn’t a perpetual vagrant, that was obvious, and he’d be viewed more favourably. It was the chronic paupers that the city despised and caused the city council to be emphatic about forbidding begging on the streets. The police had instructions to charge anybody found doing so. Recently members of the Ratepayers Association had suggested sectioning off fifty acres of High Park as a poor farm where the paupers and vagrants could live and work. Murdoch thought the idea was highly impractical. You couldn’t just dump everybody into one huge stew. There would have to be separate accommodations for those with children, for instance. To subject children to the influence of the desperate and destitute was to ensure they’d follow in those footsteps. Besides, he personally was not in favour of the out-of-sight, out-of-mind philosophy. He never forgot that there but for the grace of God went he.

By the time he reached the medical school, the street had emptied as people hurried home for their tea. Only one sleigh, bells jingling, had gone by, driven by a young man almost buried underneath the fur wraps, going too fast for the conditions. He was probably on his way to a sleigh party. The horse was blowing hard, its neck pulled in too tightly, its feet high-stepping. Murdoch hated to see animals treated like that.

The school was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and the buildings were well set back, approached by a wide circular driveway that was rapidly filling with snow. Murdoch could make out the silhouette of the central spire. It didn’t soar as high to heaven as the one at St. James’s Cathedral, the tallest in the Dominion, but it was a reminder that this place of learning was not godless. There was an appropriate turret at each end of the main block for the studious to retire to, and one or two lights winked through the whirling snow.

To the right of the high gate was a brick lodge. Murdoch could see a soft gleam of candlelight coming through the window. The gate was not locked and Murdoch pushed it open, walked over, brushed away the snow and peered through the glass.

The room within was sparsely furnished, an oil stove in the corner, a wooden chair close to it and a table in the centre. On the rear wall was a board festooned with brass bells. A uniformed man was seated at the table, fast asleep and drooping in his chair. Even as Murdoch watched, he swayed to the side but, without waking, righted himself with a little jerk.

Murdoch went in. The porter was a grey-haired man, thin and worn looking. He could have been old or middle-aged, it was hard to tell. His jaw was slack and Murdoch could see he was virtually toothless. His navy jacket was unbuttoned at the neck and stained down the front. A cap was pushed back on his head. There was a tin tankard beside him and the sweet smell of ale hung in the air.

“Mr. Grant?”

He snorted and his eyes opened. “’Oo are you?”

“Detective William Murdoch, Toronto Police Force.”

Alarm shot across Grant’s face. “Sorry, I … I was just catching a catnap. Never happens usually but, well, I’ve been a long stretch without sleep.”

Quickly, he straightened his cap and fumbled with his buttons.

“I’m on a case right now,” said Murdoch. “I want to ask you a few questions concerning one of the students at the college.”

Grant blew out his breath with a whistle of relief. “Thank goodness. For a minute there I thought I was getting the gate. Silly of me. They’d hardly send the police to do that, would they?”

“Not unless you were breaking the law.”

“What? No, no. I do me job like a soldier. Just got a bit tired, that’s all.”

They both knew he could be fired if he was reported for taking a tipple, but Murdoch guessed that Grant was on call twenty-four hours a day with one day off a month if he was lucky. In his opinion, that issue was between the porter and his employer, and if the man could sneak a bit of pleasure for himself, good luck to him.