Murder at the Movies (Albert J Tretheway Series) Page 2

  “We’ll leave our coats on, Mrs Whiteside.” Tretheway removed his cap. “Just tell us about the phone call.”

  Mrs Whiteside spoke quietly. “It was a man, I think.” Her brow wrinkled. She crossed her arms underneath a black cashmere cardigan that hung over her narrow shoulders. “He asked me if I believe in reincarnation.”

  “Reincarnation?” Tretheway repeated.

  Mrs Whiteside nodded. “I thought it was some sort of religious call. So I said, ‘I don’t answer questions like that over the telephone.’”

  “Quite right,” Jake

  “Then the voice said…” Mrs Whiteside hesitated, “…what I told Addie.”

  “Which was?” Tretheway prompted.

  Mrs Whiteside looked out the window. Jake followed her gaze nervously.

  “‘Your husband is in the garage.’”

  Outside the chimes continued their wind song.

  “Mrs Whiteside.” Tretheway paused. “I don’t want to bring up any unpleasant memories, but wasn’t your husband killed about a year ago?”

  “Yes. He was.” Her eyes filled. “A plane crash. In the lake.”

  “Could he still be alive?”

  “No. Everyone agreed. The Coast Guard. All the rescue people. The insurance company.” She took a deep breath. “He went down with his aircraft.”

  “Yet nobody ever found him?”

  “No.” Her brow wrinkled again.

  “One more thing,” Tretheway went on. “Do you have a car?”

  “No. I sold it after my husband …”

  “Then the garage is empty?”

  “Yes. Except for the usual odds and ends. Garden tools, garbage cans, pots. And my bicycle.”

  Jake smiled. He remembered wondering how anyone could ride such an old black clunker around the neighbourhood and still look so elegant.

  “We’ll take it from here,” Tretheway said. “I’m sure it’s just a prank. A sick prank. There’s a lot of funny people out there.” He clapped his cap back on. “Let’s go, Jake.”

  “I do appreciate you coming over like this,” Mrs Whiteside said.

  “Don’t worry,” Jake said. He held the door open for Tretheway, then followed his boss into the cold night.

  The garage, separated from the house by a line of cedars, stood by itself at the rear of the lot. Tretheway strode purposefully up the driveway. Jake lagged behind.

  “There’s been a certain amount of traffic here,” Tretheway said. He stopped and pointed at the pattern of ruts and footprints in the old snow. Jake caught up.

  “Probably delivery vehicles,” Tretheway said.

  “Maybe a coal truck,” Jake suggested.

  Tretheway nodded. He resumed his stride.

  “Shouldn’t we have something?” Jake asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like a revolver?”

  “What?”

  “Or even a stick?”

  “Here.” Tretheway took a long flashlight from his overcoat pocket. “Take this if it makes you feel any better.”

  Jake grumbled, but took it.

  They stopped in front of the wooden garage doors.

  “Did you hear that?” Jake asked. Tretheway shook his head.

  They both listened.

  A lone aircraft droned overhead. Car wheels whined in an icy rut blocks away. In a nearby yard two cats yowled over territory. Then a noise came from definitely inside the garage; metal dragging over concrete, several harsh metallic clanks, followed by something that could only be described as a snort.

  “If I didn’t know any better…” Tretheway swung the doors open.

  A large, whinnying dapple-grey horse broke from the garage. Its huge shoulders brushed Tretheway roughly aside and knocked Jake off his feet into a snowdrift. Tretheway recovered first.

  “Grab her!” he shouted.

  “Me?” Jake pushed himself out of the snow. “Horses don’t like me.”

  “Damn.” Tretheway started down the driveway. As a former cavalry man, he found it hard to understand anyone’s fear, ignorance or dislike of these noble beasts. He caught up to the horse at the edge of the street where she had stopped, reins dragging, as though waiting for him.

  “There, there,” Tretheway soothed. He picked up the reins carefully. “What the hell?” he said suddenly.

  Jake, close behind, saw it at the same time. “What is it?” He turned the flashlight on.

  “Don’t spook her,” Tretheway said.

  Jake shut the light off. But not before the two of them had seen the hat fastened firmly on the horse’s head: a bowler, at a rakish angle.

  “Easy girl.” Tretheway gently slid the wide elastic from under the horse’s neck and removed the hat. The horse shook her head, relieved, Tretheway imagined, of the indignity. He hefted the bowler thoughtfully.

  “You’re not thinking what I’m thinking?” Jake asked.

  “Hardly,” Tretheway said. “How could it be mine?”

  “You’re right,” Jake agreed. “They all look alike.”

  Tretheway flipped the hat over. Jake turned the flash on again, careful not to shine it in the horse’s eyes. The beam of light illuminated clearly the gum drop stains on the bowler’s white satin lining.

  “What’s going on?” Jake looked at his boss.

  Tretheway shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “But who…”

  “Go back to the Whitesides’,” Tretheway ordered. “Tell her what happened. Call Central. See if anyone’s reported something unusual. Like a stolen horse.”

  “Right.” Jake pushed through the evergreens, scattering snow on his way to the house.

  “Jake,” Tretheway called after him. Jake stopped.

  Tretheway held the bowler up. “My hat. Let’s just keep this between you and me.”

  “Gotcha.” Jake touched his forehead with the flashlight.

  By the time Jake got back with some information, Tretheway had walked the horse back up the driveway into the protection of the garage. He had thrown his greatcoat over the animal’s back and rump. The thought crossed Jake’s mind that the horse was lucky to have been found by someone as large as Tretheway.

  “Well?” Tretheway stood next to the steaming horse, basking in the amazing amount of heat the animal gave off. The garage was almost warm.

  “There was a call about a stolen horse,” Jake reported. “Two, three hours ago. From the Royal Oak Dairy. They’ve got a small farm and barn not too far from here. Over on the highway.” Jake pointed south.

  Tretheway nodded. “I know the place.”

  “Apparently the driver left the horse alone for a moment while he put the wagon away. After his milk deliveries. When he came back, the horse was gone.”

  “Wasn’t he surprised?” Tretheway asked. “I mean, surely this doesn’t happen every day?”

  “Yes, he was,” Jake said. “But not as much as you think. According to the dairy, it’s not the first horse they’ve had stolen. But the time of year is unusual.”

  “Oh?”

  “This is the first one in mid-winter. They’ve had several horses stolen, or borrowed they say, in the fall. When FYU starts its school year. They’ve never had one injured. And they’re always returned or found soon after. Initiation? High spirits? Maybe. But not really criminal.”

  Tretheway fumbled in his pockets for a cigar, then remembered they were in his greatcoat pocket. He pointed to the shelf where his bowler lay. “Anything about the … ?”

  Jake shook his head. Hooves clip-clopped on the cement floor as the horse shifted its weight. Jake backed off.

  “Easy, easy.” The horse nuzzled Tretheway. “She won’t hurt you.”

  Jake looked unconvinced.

  “Nice warm smell, isn’t it?” Tretheway said.

  Jake wrinkled his nose. “I called the dairy. They’re sending a trailer over.”

  “What’s her name?” Tretheway asked.

  “Whose name?”

  “The horse.”


  “I didn’t ask.”

  Tretheway shook his head.

  Back at the boarding house, Tretheway consoled himself with a quart of Blue. He had missed Hollywood Playhouse, Grand Central Station and half of the late news. Addie had waited up for them. When they told her the horse story (minus the part about Tretheway’s bowler), she found it hard to believe, but was more concerned with her friend’s well being.

  “You’re sure Mrs Whiteside’s all right?” she asked.

  Tretheway and Jake nodded.

  “Good.” She packed her knitting away. “Now I can go to bed.”

  “Good night, Addie,” Jake said.

  “Albert.” Addie stopped by the hall closet. “There’s an odour about your coat.”

  Tretheway smiled. “Pure horse, Addie.”

  She cluck-clucked her way down the hall. Tretheway puffed on his cigar. He waited until Addie could be heard going up the stairs before speaking.

  “Does this horse episode remind you of anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “A movie.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “What does Flying Deuces bring to mind?”

  “A soft shoe.”

  “What?”

  “Remember when they sang ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’?” Jake explained. “How they danced? Fred Astaire’s great, but when Stan and Ollie break into a soft shoe routine there’s no one …”

  “Never mind that. What about the ending?”

  “Eh?” Jake paused. “Let me think. The Foreign Legion, the wild flying sequence, the crash. Then Ollie going up to heaven. A little corny maybe …” His eyes grew into saucers. “A horse. Then Ollie turns into a horse.” He jumped up. “With a derby on!”

  Tretheway waited for Jake to calm down before he went on. “And remember they discussed reincarnation earlier in the movie?”

  “That’s right.” Jake sat down. “Ollie said he wanted to come back as a horse.”

  “Doesn’t that remind you of tonight? A plane crash? With the pilot killed? Reincarnation? A horse with a derby?”

  “Just about bang on.” Jake’s eyes were not returning to their normal size. “But what’s it mean?”

  “Probably nothing.” Tretheway pushed himself out of the easy chair. He flipped his cigar into the fireplace. “Just a dumb student prank. Inspired by a silly movie.”

  Jake followed him down the hall. He watched while Tretheway took another beer out of the ice box and lowered himself gingerly onto the front edge of a kitchen chair. He stared across the room.

  “So how come you’re worried?” Jake said.

  Tretheway took a long pull from the fresh quart.

  “There are lots of things out there I can’t figure out,” he began. “Like Adolph Hitler’s behaviour. Or Chamberlain’s. Or even Roosevelt’s. The war in Spain. Japan ravaging China. IRA bombings. But that’s big stuff. I can’t do much about it. And you like to think somebody else is keeping an eye on things.” He turned and glowered at Jake. “But a few hours ago, only five blocks from my house, a nice widow lady is scared out of her bloomers by a sick phone call. Someone steals a horse and hides it in her garage. With my bowler on its head. Just like the movie. Coincidence? A prank? The start of something? I don’t know. And it bothers me that I can’t figure it out. That’s why I’m worried.”

  Tretheway cradled his beer in one arm and clumped down the cellar steps to perform the nightly cold weather ritual of furnace stoking. Jake stood by himself in the kitchen. He listened absently to the muffled noises reverberating up through the network of old pipes and hot air ducts as Tretheway hurled shovelfuls of coal into the insatiable innards of the grey metal monster.

  The twin vertical creases between Jake’s eyebrows deepened. When Tretheway worried, he worried.

  Chapter

  3

  The parade of movies continued into February. Tretheway and Jake saw such beauties as Drums, Count of Monte Cristo, Dawn Patrol and You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man while enduring others best seen once and forgotten. This category included Boy Meets Girl, The Devil Is Driving, Men Are Such Fools and Hold That Coed.

  Usually just Tretheway and Jake went together, but there were exceptions. Addie went to Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm. Tretheway passed. Bartholemew Gum joined them for Gaiety Girls and, a week later, Blondie. Jake saw them all.

  Bartholemew Gum played cards regularly at the Tretheways’ well known Saturday night euchre sessions. He lived with his mother only a few blocks away on the periphery of Coote’s Paradise, a wildlife area protected in perpetuity by the Royal Fort York Botanical Gardens Society. As children, both Gum and Jake had roamed its two thousand acres of natural parks, forests, ravine trails and, depending on the season, canoed or skated on its marshy expanses. Active in the scout movement, Scouter Gum led his troops on hikes to destinations in Coote’s with the evocative names of Kingfisher Point, Ginger Valley, Rat Island, Sassafrass Point and the Desjardins Canal. His colourless eyes gazed kindly at birds, animals and life through thick rimless glasses he had worn forever. He walked slowly, carefully looking down as though avoiding insects. What hair he had was curly.

  Bartholemew Gum accompanied Tretheway and Jake to the showing of Only Angels Have Wings.

  During the month several things happened that were to cause Tretheway some concern. On Sunday the eighteenth, in the late evening, a phone call verging on hysteria came into Central. A lady living in the area of Dundurn Castle reported a bird, a very large bird, sitting on a sturdy branch of an apple tree only feet from her rear window.

  “I’ve seen smaller people,” she exclaimed.

  The police calmed her down. They asked for a description. When the caller came back to the phone, she had to admit, with a touch of embarrassment, that the bird had flown. The police were naturally skeptical. Even the caller began to doubt her sighting. They didn’t send a car.

  The next call was different.

  “Could you describe the bird?” the policeman asked.

  “Big. Black. Some white on the wings. Skinny neck. His head looks bald and orange. White bill. His legs are pink. Eyes red.”

  “You’re sure about this, sir?”

  “He’s sitting on my back porch,” the gruff voice continued. “Under the verandah light. He’s growling at me like a dog. We’re eye to eye.”

  “What?”

  “The son of a bitch is four feet tall.”

  The police sent a car.

  Three burly policemen, aided by two SPCA employees hastily called in for the occasion, eventually cornered the disoriented bird in one of the small backyards. The amazed captors watched while the creature spread its wings, almost ten feet across, and attempted an awkward escape. It half flew into a fence and a tree, then rammed a storage shed in the next yard. Even though it was stunned, it took all of them to hold the bird’s wings down and slip a small sack over the upper part of its body. A convenient but puzzling length of stout rope already tied to the bird’s left ankle was used to bind its legs together. The SPCA pair carried the subdued bird to the waiting ambulance for the trip back to the shelter, an end to the night’s entertainment. An early phone call to the police from Dundurn Castle the next day explained the whole thing, almost.

  In 1832, Allan Napier McNab purchased property in Fort York’s north-west end with a breathtaking view of Wellington Square Bay. Immediately the young lawyer began construction of a regency-style mansion that was to be, in his words, “the finest home west of Montreal.” McNab named it Dundurn after his ancestral seat in Scotland. Impressed with its grandeur, the locals dubbed it a castle. The misnomer stuck.

  Dundurn Castle contained about fifty rooms. They included an imposing entrance hall with a magnificent hanging walnut staircase, an elegant drawing room, a library, several sitting rooms, a smoking room and a formal grand dining room with French doors leading onto terraces and gardens. It also boasted a schoolroom for McNab’s daughters.

  Sir Allan McNab, knighted for his actions
in the 1873 Rebellion, went on to great political success. He became in turn the leader of the Tory-Conservatives, Speaker of the Assembly and, from 1845 to 1856, the Prime Minister of Canada. During this period several additions were made to Dundurn; a family burial plot, stables, two elaborate gazebos, a small octagonal building to house cockfights and, of course, the customary aviary.

  Such an estate demanded a lavish lifestyle, which in the end proved too expensive even for Sir Allan. At his death, Dundurn was heavily mortgaged. The furnishings were sold at auction and for two years it stood vacant. Subsequent residents also found it too costly to maintain. In 1900 the City of Fort York purchased the whole property and renamed it Dundurn Museum. It became a storehouse for artifacts and old furniture donated by well-meaning citizens. The locals still called it Dundurn Castle.

  When the Museum staff reported for work that Monday morning, they discovered the damage. A heavy wire screen covering the outside section of the aviary had been cut and rolled back, providing easy access to the open skies for all the birds. This included their prize ornithologic exhibit, the California Condor.

  As a possible compensation for being scared out of their wits the night before by an intimidating vulture, the people who lived in the neighbourhood of Dundurn awoke to a birdwatcher’s bonanza. Grey and white cockatiels, tropical love birds, pheasant peacocks, South American cardinals, Peking robins and Zebra finches flitted as birds of a feather through trees and bushes or came to rest on porch railings and bird baths. During the next couple of days, some were humanely trapped by the SPCA or local birders and brought back, while a few, unused to freedom, returned on their own. Others fell prey to cats, hawks, freezing weather or simply flew to the horizon. By week’s end, most of the birds, including the star condor, were safely back inside the repaired aviary.

  The police classified it as a malicious prank and spent minimum time on the investigation. Citizens in the area and those who read about it in the FY Expositor tut-tutted over another case of senseless vandalism and went on to other things. Not so Tretheway.