Except the Dying
- Автор: Jennings Maureen
- Серия: The Murdoch Mysteries #1
- Год: 1997
- Язык: английский
- Год: McClelland & Stewart
- ISBN: 9780771043208
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «Except the Dying». Краткое содержание книги:
In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the unclad body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. Detective William Murdoch quickly finds out that more than one person connected with the girl's simple life has something to hide. From the Paperback edition.
“Harriet, try to tell us what is wrong.”
“Don’t let him marry me, Mrs. Rhodes. Please, I can’t…” Her voice started to rise.
Donalda looked afraid but she said kindly, “Of course you don’t have to marry anybody if you don’t want to, my dear.”
Harriet shuddered and gulped back a sob. “He forced me to drink … to celebrate our wedding. He told me … he told me.”
She couldn’t continue. Donalda’s face was grim.
“Where is Owen now?”
Harriet looked up at her, bewildered. “Owen? I don’t know … Oh, Mrs. Rhodes, I don’t mean Owen.”
“Who, then, Harriet? Who are you talking about?”
It was hard to hear what she said, but Murdoch could just make it out.
“Canning…”
“Your coachman?” Donalda asked in astonishment.
Harriet could only nod.
Murdoch leaned closer, speaking as gently as he could. “Miss Shepcote, where is your father?”
“In the … dining room … Oh, Mrs. Rhodes, what am I going to do?” Her voice began to rise again.
Donalda held her closer, rocking her. Even through her concern, her relief was palpable. “It’s all right, my dear child. He won’t have you. We won’t let him. Hush now.”
Murdoch signalled to Kelly. “We’re going to find Mr. Shepcote, Mrs. Rhodes.”
There was an archway from the drawing room to the dining room and the chenille curtains were closed. They went through.
The dining room was lit dimly by a single guttering candle on the table, and the embers from a dying fire threw a reddish glow over everything. They saw a man slumped in the armchair close to the hearth. It was Shepcote.
He was breathing noisily and his arms hung limply beside the chair. Closer, in his lamplight, Murdoch could see his colour was bad, a bluish tinge around his lips.
“What is it, Willie? Is he drunk?” asked Kelly.
Murdoch indicated the empty vial on the nearby table and the open syringe box.
“Not drunk.”
“He doesn’t look so good.”
Murdoch held the lamp close to Shepcote’s face. He pulled up the lid of the right eye. The pupil was hugely dilated.
“Damnation. Sean, get to the kitchen and make up an emetic. Fast as you can.”
Murdoch quickly extinguished the candle that was on the table and held the wick close to Shepcote’s nostrils. The acrid smell filled the air but the man didn’t stir. Murdoch slapped him hard back and forth across his cheeks and shook him. Nothing. A dribble of saliva was running from the corner of his mouth.
Donalda came through the portieres. Her voice was tight with urgency.
“Mr. Murdoch, I managed to get some story out of Harriet. She says she overheard her father and Canning talking together. Canning murdered that woman you found on the lake. Shepcote was a complicitor.”
Kelly came back with a glass of mustard water in his hand.
Murdoch pulled back Shepcote’s head and opened his mouth so that Kelly could pour some of the emetic down the man’s throat. Shepcote gulped involuntarily but most of the liquid ran out the sides of his mouth. Donalda watched, her body tense and angry.
“Canning told Harriet her father was responsible for Theresa’s death.” She stared at Shepcote. “I want to hurt him. I want him to suffer likewise.”
Suddenly she seized his shoulders and shook him hard. His head lolled to one side. Murdoch was about to restrain her, but she stopped herself.
“It won’t do any good, though, will it? It won’t bring her back.”
“The law will deal with him … if he survives that long.”
Suddenly Donalda caught Murdoch by the sleeve. “Harriet said something about Canning going after another woman – a friend of that dead girl’s–”
“Ettie!”
“Can you stop him?”
“I’ll try. Will you help Mr. Keene? Try to get Shepcote conscious. Do whatever it takes.”
She shook her head. “I have to tend to Harriet first.”
It was her punishment.
“Go, Will. I’ll be all right,” said Kelly. He started to administer more mustard water.
Murdoch left them to it and ran outside to the carriage. He jumped up beside Joe.
“Fast as you can, Joe. St. Luke’s Street. SCORCH.”
The boy cracked his whip over the horse and they plunged into a full gallop. Murdoch held on with one hand and with the other unhooked the side lantern and began to swing it.
“I wish I had a bell, but this’ll have to do,” he yelled at Joe. He stood up in the swaying driver’s seat and, waving his lantern, bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“Out of the way! Police! Out of the way!”
Silver stretched out his neck and galloped like he’d never run before, Murdoch saying a Hail Mary under his breath that the horse wouldn’t falter and that they’d get to Ettie in time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Friday, February 15
BERNADETTE WESTON YAWNED AND STRETCHED. Her shoulders were stiff and her eyes were tired. Trying to do fine sewing in candlelight wasn’t easy, but she’d begged extra work from Mr. Webster so she could pay for Alice’s funeral. Alice would be buried in style. Black horses to pull the hearse, a proper coffin, black crepe for the house, food after for the mourners. Some of the regulars at the O’Neil had passed the hat but they were such a bunch of piss-makers all she’d got out of it was two dollars and ten cents. Perhaps she should move away from here? Start afresh somewhere else? Who knew, maybe she could get out of the game and join a troupe or something. Everybody said she had a great voice.
She sewed the final stitch and broke off the thread with her teeth. She’d managed to repair half a dozen gloves in the last two days. Mr. Webster was a sour old macaroni, but he might advance her another couple of dollars on the next consignment. Bullocks had agreed to let her pay for the funeral in installments. And so they should, considering what they were charging. She and Alice had talked about belonging to the burial club but, more’s the pity, they’d never got around to it. There was a pain in Ettie’s throat. She missed Alice something sore. Who’d she have to joke with now? To chin over a pot of chatter broth? She clenched her teeth tight against the sob that was threatening to come up. After dropping off the gloves, she’d go over to the O’Neil for a gin and some company, try to forget for a while.
She tugged the glove off the wooden form and dropped it in the bag with the others. Then she stood up, yawning again. She’d better hurry. Mr. Webster said he’d wait until eight o’clock for the gloves and he’d never stay a minute longer. Bugger, it was a quarter to, now. She grabbed her jacket and shawl off the peg, blew out the candle and tucked the bag under her arm.
At Quinn’s room she paused for a second, but there was no light under the door and no sound from Princess. They must be out.
Outside, a light, steady snow was falling and the backyard was clean and white. Ettie wrapped her shawl tightly around her head and shoulders as she trudged down the path and into the laneway. Opposite the house, the police rope blew in the wind, still marking off the spot where Therese Laporte had died. That seemed so long ago now. What she and Alice done was wrong, and look where it had got them. They didn’t have the clothes and Alice was dead. Perhaps there really was an angry God up there punishing them like the preachers shouted on the street corner.
She was walking as quickly as she could, but the snow was untouched and slowed her down. Sod it! Webster never waited. She turned out onto Sackville Street.
“Ellie, Ellie, hold on a minute.”