Chapter Eleven

THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY was a flat-faced, two storey building and everything about it seemed pinched, from the dun-coloured brick to the low roof and narrow windows. A high fence enclosing the entire building kept the curious from observing the supplicant paupers as they lined up daily to get their bowl of free soup. Murdoch opened the gate and walked up to the door, which was tall and wide with a stained-glass fanlight and arched lintel. The elegance was unexpected, like a friendly smile on the bailiff’s face. He pulled on the bell and the door was opened promptly by a white-haired old man in a dark formal suit.

“You’ll be wanting to see Superintendent Laughlen, I presume,” he said in a hoarse voice, as if he had spent his life shouting. Murdoch wasn’t sure why the porter made that presumption, perhaps nobody else in the House received visitors. He handed over his card, which the man glanced at briefly.

“Ah yes,” he croaked. “Come this way.”

He ushered him into a hall that was so ill-lit, Murdoch could not tell what colour the walls were painted. Something dark and sober, but there were no decorative pictures or furniture as far as he could see. He wasn’t surprised. This was a charity house funded by the city taxpayers, no luxury would be allowed. The old man, he almost called him a gaoler, shuffled across to a door to the left, tapped and pressed his ear against the door. In response to a command that Murdoch could not hear, he then beckoned and opened the door.

“Detective Murdoch to see you, sir.” He backed out. What had he been? A circus barker? A music-hall master of ceremonies? Murdoch thought perhaps he should burst through the portières with a triumphant hurrah.

“Go in,” the old man whispered and he shuffled off.

When he entered the room, Murdoch could understand why he hadn’t heard Superintendent Laughlen answer the knock. He was seated behind a massive desk at the far end of the room that was spacious but as dreary as a Trappist refectory. There was no other furniture except for two plain wooden chairs in front of the desk. This was a business office, with one small fireplace, plain Holland blinds on the windows, and walls lined with filing cabinets and shelves of what looked like bound annual reports.

There was one lamp on the desk, the wick turned low, throwing Superintendent Laughlen’s face into shadow except where the light reflected from his bald head. As if to balance the dearth of hair in that location, he had a full beard that jutted out from his cheekbones to the top of his waistcoat.

He got to his feet immediately and came around the desk with his hand outstretched. He was a big man without his flesh conveying in any way that he was convivial.

“Good day, Mr. Murdoch. I was expecting somebody from the police to come. It’s concerning the tragic death of Reverend Howard, I presume.”

“Yes, sir, it is. And may I express my condolences.” “Thank you. We are all quite devastated.”

Laughlen pulled over one of the straight chairs for Murdoch and eased himself into a second one so he was facing him without the barrier of desk or privilege. Murdoch liked him. His brown eyes were sincerely doleful.

“How is poor Mrs. Howard?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Have you made progress with the case?”

“We have not yet caught the person responsible, superintendent, but we are making progress.” Murdoch took out his notebook. “One of the reasons I am here is because Mrs. Howard told me her husband did visiting duties for the House of Industry and I wondered if I could have a copy of his list.”

“Of course.” Laughlen got up at once and headed for the filing cabinet. “But I heard that Charles had surprised a thief. Is that not the case?” He opened one of the drawers, flicked through the folders, and removed one. For a big man, he moved lightly and quickly. He returned to Murdoch.

“We’re by no means ruling out a thief, sir, but I don’t think he was taken by surprise. The evidence suggests that Reverend Howard allowed his attacker to enter his study.”

Laughlen looked shocked. “Do you think it was somebody he knew?”

“That or somebody he might expect to be there. Tuesday was his regular office day.”

“I see.” Laughlen took a sheet of paper from the folder. “Here is the most recent list. He made his monthly visit just last week. He had a heavily populated district and he had twelve applicants. You can see he gave tickets to all but four of them.”

The superintendent sighed. “Reverend Howard had only been with us since January, but he showed signs of being an excellent Visitor. His inexperience made him a little too generous perhaps, but he was not without perspicacity. He could detect frauds as well as any of our more experienced men.” He handed the piece of paper to Murdoch. “You can keep that sheet, detective, I have a copy.” Like a lot of bald men, Laughlen had a habit of stroking his head as if unable to accept the loss it revealed. He did so now. “Am I correct in assuming that you suspect the, er” – Laughlen stumbled over the word murderer – “the, er, culprit, might be one of our applicants? Somebody the pastor rejected perhaps?”

Howard was not the only one who showed perspicacity.

“I am exploring that as a possibility. Did Reverend Howard ever mention any trouble to you?”

“Not at all. As you see, this month, he refused help to only four families. One of those is well known to us and they were turned down without ceremony. The husband is a lazy good-for-nothing and he always sends his wife to beg for him.”

Even lazy-good-for-nothings have to eat, Murdoch thought, but this wasn’t the time to discuss the limits of charity so he made no comment. There were three other names on the list with a stamp beside them, Refused.

“Do you know anything about these ones, sir?”

Laughlen glanced at the list. “No, they are not known to me. Last year we had well over two thousand families who applied to us for relief so alas, I can hardly know each one personally.” He sounded genuinely regretful rather than defensive. “I can look at the slips and see what Reverend Howard wrote on them if you wish.”

“Thank you, sir, that would be helpful.”

The superintendent returned to his desk. “They are all here, as a matter of fact, I haven’t yet pasted them into the report book.” He riffled through a pile of papers, pulled out four, and brought them over to Murdoch. “He rejected a Mrs. Tugwell, a widow; the Gleeson family; a woman, Mary Hanrahan, not married; and Thomas Coates.”

Murdoch looked at the slips. They recorded the name, address, and age of each applicant, the number of people in the family, and a comment in Howard’s neat handwriting. All four of these applicants had been refused as “undeserving.” Mrs. Tugwell was cited as living with her daughter, who was a known woman of intemperate and immoral habits. Gleeson was malingering and capable of working, Miss Hanrahan was a drunkard, as was Thomas Coates.

“What is the procedure for somebody in need of relief, superintendent?”

Laughlen sat down and leaned back in the chair, as much as he could without imperiling his own safety. “Every weekday afternoon from two o’clock until five, one of our trustees receives applications from those who consider themselves to be destitute.”

He must have seen something pass across Murdoch’s face because he added quickly. “Please don’t misunderstand me, my good sir. I would say that the majority of the cases that come before us are genuinely in need of assistance. Often the husband is ill or injured and unable to work. More often than I care to say, it is a woman, close to her confinement who has been abandoned by her spouse, leaving her with children to feed. Those are our most heart-rending cases and I would say the most deserving.”

Murdoch remembered what Amy had said to him. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that the murderer was a woman. Laughlen continued.

“But we also have to sort out those who would not work for a living if the Lord Jesus himself asked them to. All applicants are assigned to one of our Visitors, who then goes to their residence to see if that person is deserving of the relief. If he considers them to be so, he will give them tickets so they can receive bread and coal, and they can also come to the House for a daily bowl of soup.”

“If a family is refused help, what would they do?”

“Oh, believe me, Mr. Murdoch, they find somewhere. Hunger is a strong motivator. And as I say, these are people who prefer to drink and live off the charity of others rather than work.” He tucked his hands under his beard like a man accustomed to giving interviews. “It is my duty as superintendent to be frugal with public money. We can accommodate about a hundred permanent residents in the House itself, mostly elderly, decent folk who have ended up friendless and alone and no longer capable of fending for themselves. However, our primary work is with outdoor relief. Last year, we gave out relief to more than eleven thousand persons, men, women and children, at a total expense of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. That works out to one dollar eighteen cents per head.”

“Economical for sure.”

Laughlen missed the irony in Murdoch’s voice or chose to ignore it. He was warming to his subject, a man who took pride in his work.

“Our volunteers are mostly men of the cloth, but we do have two or three laymen; one is an eminent lawyer, one a grocer who is a respected elder of his church. We could not afford to do our work without their contribution.” Another head patting. “Our biggest headache continues to be the casuals. You’re probably more used to calling them vagrants. Men for the most part, although I have seen an unfortunate woman or two.” He shook his head sadly at those particular daughters of Eve. “These men have no home, some of them have come into hard times through no fault of their own and those men I am only too glad to help, but too many in my opinion have chosen a life outside that of normal men where they have no responsibility and subsist through the good nature of others. You must know the kind of man I am referring to, Mr. Murdoch. You’ve had to arrest a few of them, I’ll warrant.”

Murdoch nodded. The question of vagrancy was a bone of contention at the different police stations. The law said any man thought to be a vagrant had to be charged and brought before the magistrate. In the winter, the cells were frequently clogged with men on their two-week sentence, glad to be out of the cold in spite of the discomfort of the jail. They invariably brought bedbugs and lice with them to the cells. Most officers wanted the House of Industry or the religious House of Providence to house the men instead. Murdoch agreed with that. In his experience, the majority of these vagrants were too beaten down by poverty and drink and their attendant ills of malnourishment and disease to be true criminals. But they were a nuisance, begging for money from respectable citizens when they dared or were desperate enough.

Laughlen patted his head again in a search for hair. “Of course, since we instituted the labour test, we have been able to weed out the corrigible from the incorrigible. We show compassion to the elderly and the infirm but not to the lazy. Any man that refuses to work is, by the same token, refused another night’s lodging. If we are looking for criminals, there would be a place to start. Many of them take actual pleasure in defying society’s rules.”

“Would Reverend Howard have had anything to do with the casuals?”

Laughlen pursed his lips. “He had no need to. Other volunteers manage the casual poor and the Visitors are not required to come to the House. Once a month, I gather up the applications and send them over to them.” “So he would not necessarily have known any of the casuals or they him?”

“That is correct. They come here by five o’clock in the evening for a bed for the night. During the day, after the work is complete, they are not allowed to stay here. You never know where they are wandering. They go to another institution, most likely. There is the House of Providence that the Sisters of St. Joseph run. Apparently they insist that the receivers of their charity stay for prayers. We are non-denominational so the men usually come here first. You’d be surprised how ungodly many of these people really are, Mr. Murdoch. Some of them avoid prayer as much as they avoid water. But it is not inconceivable that one of them would know of the pastor’s habits and go there to dun him. It would fit your picture of somebody he’d let into his study.”

“Do you have a list of those men, sir?”

“Yes, we have a register. I’ll get the porter to make a copy for you. Not that it will help that much. They are not allowed to stay more than three consecutive nights in the casual ward and when they leave here, we have no way to trace them. Almost three-quarters of our tramps are not from Toronto and none of them have proper addresses. They are like sharks that I believe never rest. Homeless, friendless, they wander the land searching for who knows what. Are they Christ among us, Mr. Murdoch? Come to test us? Sometimes I wonder about it.”

A little surprised by such a poetic turn of phrase from this practical man, Murdoch could only nod.