A Journeyman to Grief (13 page)

“You are?” asked Murdoch.

“Lincoln Green, his brother. And you are?” His tone was one of barely reined-in insolence.

“I’m Detective William Murdoch from number four station. This is Constable Crabtree. We are investigating the death of Daniel Cooke. Your brother worked for him.”

“I know that. So did several other men, are you questioning them as well?”

“Linc, watch your manners,” Elijah intervened in a sharp voice. “The detective has a job to do.”

“In answer to your question,” said Murdoch, “yes, we are. Why wouldn’t we?”

Lincoln gave him an odd look, then lowered his head and muttered. “Where there’s trouble, it always lands first on us coloured folk.”

“Trouble ends up with them that deserves it,” said Crabtree.

Lincoln looked as if he was about to give an angry retort, but his brother touched him on the arm. “Why don’t you join us, Linc, and hear what the officers have to say for themselves?” He waited until Lincoln took the remaining seat at the table, then he turned to Murdoch. “My brother sometimes comes over to the stables if I need an extra hand. He’s familiar with the routine and the other cabbies.”

“You didn’t mention that before.”

“It didn’t seem important. It only happens occasionally.”

“Where does he work normally?”

“I haul freight down at the harbour,” interjected Lincoln, but Murdoch didn’t respond to him. He thought he’d put a bit of pressure on the situation by being deliberately rude.

“Does he know what happened?” he asked Elijah.

“I do.” Lincoln answered for himself, clearly nettled. “Cooke got a thorough whipping.”

“That sounds like you thought he deserved it,” said Murdoch.

“No, it don’t. I was just stating a fact. It ain’t for me to say if he deserved it or not, although –”

Elijah gave him another warning glance and he subsided a little. “Don’t mind my brother, Mr. Murdoch. We’re both worried about the situation.” He gave a rueful grin. “I’m probably looking
like a good bet to pin the whole thing on. At least your constable seems to think so.”

“I’m interested in the truth and the facts, Mr. Green, not speculation.” Murdoch hadn’t intended it as a reprimand to Crabtree, but the expression that crossed the constable’s face told him it had been taken as such. He turned back to Elijah. “There are one or two things I need to clarify with you. I was speaking to Paul Musgrave, and he said there was bad blood between you and Mr. Cooke, that you’d had a couple of rows recently.”

Elijah looked down at the table and began to fidget with a knife that had been left there. “I thought he’d get around to dropping that sooner or later. The so-called row weren’t no more than happens between any boss and his stable hand from time to time. I wouldn’t call it bad blood. That implies something ongoing and it weren’t.”

“What did you quarrel about?”

“Nothing serious. He’d got behind with my wages and I was asking him for what was my due. He liked to hold on to his money till the last minute so he was trying to fob me off.”

His explanation didn’t quite fit the picture that Musgrave had drawn, which suggested Cooke was the aggrieved man, but Murdoch let it go for now.

Lincoln leaned forward. “There’s a lot more to this than my brother is letting on. Musgrave has it in for him and has for a long time. He’s hard on his horses and Elijah challenged him more than once. He didn’t like that. Thought the nigger man was stepping out of place, so he held it against him. He’d snatch at any chance he could to make trouble.”

“Is that true?” Murdoch asked Elijah.

“It’s true what Linc says about Musgrave misusing his horses, and it’s true that I did challenge him about it. He’s a man that holds grudges for all he looks like a friendly gnome. But he wasn’t
lying about me having a barney with Mr. Cooke. I saw him standing outside in the yard, trying to listen, but he wouldn’t have known what we was quarrelling about so I guess he’s free to speculate all he wants.”

Elijah Green was a convincing witness, and Murdoch thought a clever one or an honest one or both.

“Why did you ask earlier if we were going to charge you?”

“You had a certain look about you.”

Crabtree snorted in disgust, and it was Murdoch’s turn to cast a warning glance. “Mr. Cooke says that money is missing from the safe. A lot of money. Do you know about that?”

“No.”

“Did you know the combination?”

“No. The boss was very careful on that matter. He wouldn’t open it if anybody was there. He sent me out of the room more than once in case I saw what he was doing.”

There was the merest inflection of contempt in his voice.

“Mr. Cooke also said her husband kept a revolver in the drawer. It’s not there. Did you know about that?”

“Yes, that weren’t no secret. He was mortal afraid of robbers. He made sure everybody who worked for him knew he had a weapon.”

“Had he ever been robbed?”

“Not in the twenty-odd years I’ve worked there.” Elijah gave a sly grin. “I guess the threat worked.”

“His wife says he surprised an intruder just three months ago. Did you know about that?”

“No, I didn’t. He never mentioned it.”

There was silence for a moment and Crabtree shifted in his chair. It was too small for him, but then most chairs were. Murdoch knew his constable was getting impatient. He wanted to return to the station with the suspect in cuffs. He heard the floorboards
creaking overhead and he wondered if Mrs. Green was sitting at the top of the stairs, listening the way Lincoln had been. She had seemed so nervous when they came in, and Elijah and Lincoln were both tense and wary. Was it as simple as they said, a negro family on the fringes of a crime that they feared they might be easily blamed for?

“Mr. Green, I understand you sometimes sleep on a cot in the barn, and during his search, my constable here found some articles that might be viewed with suspicion.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lincoln burst out.

“Exactly what I said, no more and no less. We are investigating a suspicious death and among things, we find a blood-stained piece of sacking apparently hidden –”

“It wasn’t hidden,” interrupted Elijah.

“Yes, it was. You never said you had a hideaway up there.” It was Crabtree’s turn to raise his voice.

“I never said anything because it isn’t. It’s just a place I kip down in if I have to. I explained about the sacking.”

Elijah looked away. Lincoln was staring at the scrubbed table, not moving.

“Did you sleep there on Tuesday?” Murdoch asked.

“I did. Like I said, I was concerned about one of the horses.”

Murdoch took out the envelope he had brought with him and handed Elijah the piece of paper Crabtree had found.

“You have admitted that this is your handwriting, but you have refused to say what is the significance of the words.”

“There isn’t no particular significance.”

Lincoln glanced over and made an overly hearty gesture.

“I know what that is, Elijah. Them’s the words you made up for little Donnie so he could practise his handwriting. Show them.”

Elijah nodded. “Right. Of course they are.”

“Does the child have a notebook I can see?” Murdoch asked. Catch them in the small details and they’ll trip up on the bigger lies. But he saw immediately he hadn’t trapped them. Lincoln got up and went over to the kitchen where the children had been earlier. He made rather a point of shifting away some newspaper. “Ah here it is.” He returned to the table with a dog-eared scribbler, opened it, and handed it to Murdoch.

The last page was filled with a large, childish scrawl and sure enough there were the words from the piece of paper:
The Master
.
Advance
,
Retreat
, and so on.

“You look surprised, detective. Did you think coloured folk don’t know how to read and write?”

“’Course he don’t think that, Linc. But does that answer your question, Mr. Murdoch?”

“Why didn’t you tell the constable that at the time? Constable Crabtree said you wouldn’t offer any explanation and you were quite belligerent with him.”

Elijah looked down at the table. “Begging your pardon, sir. But the constable was trampling all over my own place as it were. I got riled up a bit, that’s all. I didn’t feel like answering what is nobody’s business but my own. And Linc here can attest to the fact that I have a stubborn streak a mile wide.”

“That’s right, he does.”

Elijah tapped on the sheet of paper. “I can see looking at this list of words, they might seem odd but they don’t really seem relevant to what happened to Mr. Cooke, do they? I mean there is ‘hit’ and ‘mark’ and ‘fall,’ but that’s about it.”

You are a cunning fox, aren’t you? Murdoch thought. There’s just enough plausibility in what you’re saying. Enough but not sufficient. He decided to try another tack.

“Mrs. Cooke told us that her husband received a message while he was finishing his supper that seemed to alarm him. He
rushed out immediately but didn’t tell her why.” The two brothers were both looking at him now with real curiosity.

“The butler said the message was delivered by a man he hadn’t seen before. He described him as stocky build, about five-foot-four or-five inches tall. He was wearing a fedora pulled down tight over his eyes, a long dark overcoat, and he had a white muffler wrapped around the lower part of his face. It was a fairly mild night, so I am assuming the scarf was to disguise him rather than for warmth. There wasn’t a good light in the porch so the butler can’t give a really good description. However, he is sure the man was a negro.”

Lincoln pounded on the table. “What do you mean, ‘sure he was a negro’?”

“His skin was dark.”

“Anybody can black their faces and pretend to be one of us. Only last month our pastor had to go to city council and protest about the minstrel show that was coming to town. They’re all white men and they daub on burnt cork and paint their lips red and never heed for a minute that they are insulting us coloured folk. It would be easy for a white man to darken himself and make out he was a negro.”

Crabtree was making it obvious what he thought, but Murdoch didn’t answer. It was something he hadn’t considered. Lincoln was quite right, and if it was true what he said, the messenger had certainly succeeded in throwing suspicion onto the stable hand.

“Has anybody been around the livery recently who might fit the description I just gave you?” Murdoch asked.

Elijah shook his head. “Nobody.”

Lincoln poked him. “What about that coloured woman you told us about? She was a stranger. You should tell the detective what happened. We want to help him solve his case, don’t we?”

Elijah shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell, really. This woman was just a casual visitor. She only came by once. About a week ago, it was.”

“What did she want?”

“She said she was the personal maid for an American visitor, a widow lady who wanted to inquire about hiring a cab privately while she was in town. That’s all there was to it. She said she would come back the next day and make final arrangements, but she never did.”

“Can you describe this woman?” Murdoch asked.

“I suppose so. She was dark-skinned, medium height, a bit on the stout side.”

He paused, clearly reluctant to say much.

“What else?” Murdoch asked impatiently. “What was she wearing? How old would you say?”

Elijah shrugged. “Quite well dressed but very sober, as I recall. Her walking suit was navy or black. She had on a felt hat with a bit of ribbon, but, as I say, all very plain. Age? Not young, probably close to fifty.”

“And you’d never seen her before?”

“Never.”

“She could have been scouting out the place,” said Lincoln. “Whoever attacked Mr. Cooke knew there wouldn’t be anybody around on Wednesdays after half past seven.”

“How did you know what time Mr. Cooke died?” Murdoch jumped in.

Lincoln grinned. “Elijah told me he found him at half past nine. He locked the stable sharp at half past seven, then came home for his supper. What happened must have been between those two times. And in case you was wondering, we were all of us here and can vouch for him.”

Murdoch looked at Elijah. “Why did you bother to come home? You had to get right back again to feed the horses. Why didn’t you stay at the stables?”

“My children like to see their pa before they go to bed. My wife and me say their prayers with them. So I come home whenever I can.”

“I could call them down here and ask them if that’s true,” said Murdoch.

That got a reaction out of Lincoln especially, but Elijah also tensed. “It’s your right to do that, mister. They’ve been brought up to be truthful, but if it isn’t absolutely necessary, I’d prefer they were left out of it. It’ll only upset them. Look, we have a Bible over there on the dresser. If you want me to, I’ll swear on it that I didn’t have nothing to do with Mr. Cooke’s death.”

His brother shoved back his chair and went to the dresser. “Here’s the Good Book, mister. I’ll swear on it too if that’ll keep you away from those children. We’re telling the truth.”

He brought a large black Bible to the table and stood with it at the ready. Murdoch waved him away. “This isn’t a law court. Was anybody else in the barn when this strange woman appeared?”

“There may have been, I don’t really remember. If the cabbies aren’t working they sit out in the room next to the tack room, but she didn’t come in really, just stood in the doorway.”

“And that was all she said to you, that she wanted to hire a carriage?”

Elijah bit his lip. “I suppose we remarked about the rain. It was coming down cats and dogs at that point…oh, she did ask me about church. She said she’d heard about a preacher named Archer and she wondered if he was still with us because she wanted to go to church. I said as how he was elderly now and wasn’t preaching any more but Pastor Laing was and he could
drum up as powerful a sermon as I ever heard. She asked where the church was, I told her, and that’s it.”

“Did the woman mention where she was staying?”

“No, she didn’t. As I said, the encounter only lasted five minutes or so.”