Authors: Maureen Jennings
Reordan wet his lips but didn’t face Murdoch. “The one who had hit Sam says to me, ‘We heard you fellows was talking of tarring and feathering the scabs. Is that true?’ I couldn’t answer even I’d wanted to. There had been loose talk about what we’d do to scabs if they was brought in, but it was just talk as far as I was concerned. ‘Is it true?’ said the fellow again and he kicked me good in the chest. I tried to shake my head but he weren’t looking for an answer. ‘We don’t like that,’ he says with another kick. ‘We’ve as much right to work as you do.’ The other fella didn’t utter a word, just him. He was the leader. Then he goes, ‘So we thought we do a bit of tarring up ourselves,’ he says. I could smell hot tar and then I saw they’d brought a bucket of pitch with them and a sack. ‘It’s got to be hotter,’ he says to the other cove like he was asking for a cup of tea. ‘The feathers won’t stick else. And we want them to stick. We want all you lads to see what scabs can do back if they’re pressed.’ I tried to struggle but they had the better of me. The one talking gave me the boots again and again and I could heard the crack as my thigh bone shattered. He laughed when he heard that, like he was enjoying himself.”
He stopped talking and took another swig of the whisky. Seymour stood up and took him by the arm.
“John, you aren’t going to find peace in that bottle. Do you want me to tell the rest of it?”
The Irishman was trembling violently and Murdoch’s own mouth had gone dry at the horror of the story. Reordan allowed Seymour to lead him to the chair and he collapsed into it, his head in his hands. The older man touched his shoulder gently.
“There wasn’t anything you could do to defend yourself.”
Reordan looked up and his eyelids were red, the scars on his head livid and raw. “Or Sam, right? I couldn’t help Sam either.”
Seymour waited for a moment, gripping the man’s shoulder until he gained more control. “The leader turned on Sam next–”
“He was just a lad,” cried Reordan.
“He was that and he’d been knocked unconscious with the billy so he couldn’t resist either. They poured hot tar over him and then rolled him in the heap of feathers they’d dumped on the ground. John was next.”
Seymour’s voice was matter of fact, not from lack of feeling so much as controlled outrage. “The tar was almost at the boil and immediately burned his skin wherever it touched.”
Reordan held up his hand. “I’ll tell him the rest,” he whispered. “Maybe it’ll help him understand.” He licked his dry lips. “They rolled me in the feathers the way they had with Sam Gibson. Then the short guy, the talker, looks down at me and says, ‘Let’s have pity here. Poor cove’s burning up. He needs cooling off.’ He made a gesture to the other fella. ‘Go on,’ he says, ‘cool his head off.’”
He couldn’t continue and Charlie again spoke for him. “The man undid his trousers and made his water–on John.”
Reordan held up his hand. “That’s enough for now.”
Murdoch’s neck tightened. “I assume these men were never caught,” he said after a moment.
Reordan spoke so quietly he could hardly hear him. “Of course not. They was helped to get away because the bosses were glad about what had happened to us, even though both Sam and me were hurt real bad. They thought it might make us workers buckle under.”
“It did just the opposite, I’m happy to say,” interjected Seymour. “They held the strike for three more months.”
“But there must have been an investigation?”
“I’m ashamed to admit it, Will,” said Charlie. “but the local police officers were in sympathy with the bosses. They did almost nothing. The two men have never been found or their identity discovered. Their faces were hidden and all John could offer was a general description of height. The leader was short and he talked with some kind of accent. He had a raspy voice, but the scarf muffled everything and he was most likely trying to disguise his voice. The man who defiled John was about six feet tall and seemed the younger of the two.”
Reordan looked over at Murdoch. “I’m going to find them some day, don’t you doubt it.”
Seeing the look in the man’s eyes, Murdoch didn’t.
“I didn’t get no compensation,” Reordan continued. “The boss said I wasn’t injured while doing my work even though it was his frigging property I was trying to protect. I’d have been in a bad way if it weren’t for the Knights. They paid for a doctor and gave me a stipend to keep me going. I don’t have no family, but Mrs. Pangbourn, who used to live here, is my aunt. She had to go take care of her sister in Vancouver so she asked me to come here and run the house for her. Charlie, here, was already a boarder so he stayed on, then Amy and Wilkinson joined us. I ain’t too proud to tell you, Detective Murdoch, that these folks keep me alive. It ain’t just the money they gives me, it’s that they treat me decent as they would any other human being. And in return I’m what you might call their bulldog. I might be crippled but I’m still capable of a good bite if need be.”
Murdoch stood up and walked over to him. “You’re as strong a man as I’ve encountered, John Reordan. Will you shake my hand now? I’m not here as an enemy but as a friend.”
At first, he thought the Irishman would spurn him but he stared into Murdoch’s eyes for a moment, then smiled slightly. “Like I said, I’m a bulldog sort of fellow. I can smell out friends.” He took his hand.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
R
eordan declared they could all do with a mug of tea and he limped off downstairs to make it. At his leaving, Murdoch could feel himself letting out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding. Seymour went to the desk.
“Do you fancy a pipe, Will?”
“I do, thank you.”
Seymour took out a clay pipe and a packet of tobacco from the drawer. “Badger suit you?”
“It will.”
Murdoch had his own utility French briar in his pocket and he stuffed it with the aromatic dark tobacco that Seymour offered. Neither of them spoke until their pipes were lit and drawn.
“That’s a terrible story Reordan has to tell,” said Murdoch.
“It is indeed and I doubt we’ll ever find out who did it, more’s the pity.”
They smoked in silence for a while, each lost in his own thoughts. Murdoch had no doubt how he would have felt in those circumstances and how corrosive would be the desire for revenge. He sighed and brought himself back to the present.
“So tell me a bit more about this organization you’re so enamoured of. I thought they were almost non-existent in Ontario now. Faded like hothouse flowers in winter.” He deliberately made his tone ironic to see Seymour’s reaction. He got one. The sergeant’s voice was sharp.
“Not exactly. They’re smaller in numbers now, unfortunately, but still fighting for justice for every human soul.”
“A noble aim indeed but unrealistic, don’t you think?”
“I’m surprised to hear you, of all people, say that, Will. You’re a man who fights for justice too in your own way.”
Murdoch puffed out a cloud of smoke. “I
enforce
the law, Charlie, that’s different.” This wasn’t the time to launch into a philosophical exploration of the problems of enforcing laws that seemed cruel or unfair. It was an issue Murdoch was constantly uneasy about and had not resolved in his own mind, except that on more than one occasion he had chosen to interpret the law morally rather than literally.
Seymour placed his pipe carefully on the lamp table beside him. “Let me read you something, Will.” He went to his bookcase and took down a fat binder stuffed with newspapers. He untied the string, shuffled through the papers, and plucked one out. “Here we are. This was written by Mr. Kilt, editor of the
Ottawa Citizen
, in October of last year. Listen to this. ‘What hope is there for a society with such extremes of wealth and poverty as our civilization shows? At the bottom rotting, corroding want and squalor; at the top, enervating luxury, reckless extravagance, useless purposeless lives.’” Seymour paused and looked at Murdoch to see his reaction.
“I wouldn’t mind a taste of ‘enervating luxury’ before my life is over,” said Murdoch with a grin.
Seymour didn’t smile back. “It’s a taste people get addicted to. Let me continue…‘What hope of such a society except that it is susceptible of fundamental reform or radical change? Consider how fruitful it is of meanness, of over-reaching, of envy, jealousy and all uncharitableness.’” Again he paused but Murdoch didn’t risk a comment, just nodded to him to go on. Seymour’s normally calm voice was full of passion.
“‘How can it be anything else? A society which in its industrial constitution is at war with honour, honesty and justice, is not likely to beget generosity. It inevitably generates the vices, not the virtues, the baser not the nobler qualities of the soul.’” He put down the paper as reverently as a priest might put down a piece of consecrated parchment. “You asked me if I believe in what The Noble and Holy Order of Knights stands for. That’s my answer, Will.”
“That’s a radical view they hold. The only hope for society is fundamental reform? Smacks of anarchy to me.”
“You’re wrong about that. They are no destroyers of order, they believe in order, but a fair and just order where workers are accorded respect and treated with dignity. Surely you must agree with that, Will?”
“How can I not? But underneath the dazzling rhetoric that you just read to me, there is a bias. Meanness, envy, and lack of charity are not the exclusive prerogative of the rich.”
Seymour frowned. “That is not the point. I am not green, Will. You can’t be a police officer as long as I’ve been and not see depravity and viciousness in all walks of life, but that is no different from saying that a diseased body shows all manner of ugliness on its skin. If society is a balanced and equitable one, it is healthy and manifests such. There is no place for crime where there is no want.”
Murdoch thought Seymour was omitting a large proportion of crimes for which the motive was human passion. The envelope of photographs on the desk was a mute testimony to that.
The sergeant went on. “Look at the charges that as police officers we lay. It is the poorer classes who are driven to steal or even murder each other. How many charges are ever laid against the rich culls? One in a hundred?”
Murdoch drew some more on his pipe. “That doesn’t mean the rich don’t commit crimes, only that they aren’t ever charged.”
Seymour’s normally impassive face was slightly flushed with the ardour of an acolyte. Their eyes met and to Murdoch’s relief the sergeant suddenly laughed out loud.
“Will, you’re looking at me as if I’m a candidate for the loony bin. I don’t have a lance in my wardrobe nor a suit of armour. These are ideals I’m talking about. High ideals I know, but if we don’t dare to dream of what might be, what are we?”
Murdoch jabbed at the air with his briar. “That I will concede.”
The tension between them eased.
“When did you join the order?” Murdoch asked.
“September last year. But I should make it clear, the Knights don’t uphold strikes and walkouts. They believe in negotiating with the bosses in a reasonable way.”
Again Murdoch was struck by what he thought was sentimental thinking on the part of a man whom up to now he’d considered as down to earth and as clear-eyed as a collector of night soil.
“Do the Knights know you are a police sergeant, by the way?”
“No, but the only occupations officially barred are bankers, lawyers, gamblers, and saloon keepers.”
Murdoch laughed. “A motley group who deserve each other.”
“Indeed.”
“How big are the meetings? Would somebody have recognized you?”
“Oh I can’t believe it’s one of the members who’s doing the dirt. First, we take a solemn oath of loyalty to defend and protect each other and, second, our meetings are quite small. There’s been nobody I knew attending. But each assembly has regular meetings. Perhaps by bad chance, the Judas saw me going into the meeting hall. Could have been an old nab of mine wanting to get his own back.”
Experienced officer that Seymour was, Murdoch could tell he was falling into the old trap of blame-the-stranger. The truth might be too painful.
“When did you ever know a lag to use such decorous language, not to mention that the letters are typewritten? And what puzzles me is why the man doesn’t just come right out and say what you’re up to? Why all the circumlocution?”
There was thumping on the stairs and Seymour got up to open the door. Reordan came in carrying a tray with three mugs and a plate of bread and butter. Seymour didn’t offer to help him and Murdoch realized it must be a point of pride with the Irishman to manage by himself. He put the tray on the washstand. Unobtrusively, Seymour took over and passed one of the mugs to Murdoch.
Reordan took the other and slurped down some tea. He was noisy about it, not from bad manners but because scar tissue around his mouth made it difficult for him to drink properly.
“I heard the last bit. You two keep saying ‘man,’ but do you know for certain it’s a boyo? It could be a missus.”
“That’s true, but it don’t feel like woman’s work? Wouldn’t you say, Will?”
Murdoch blew on his mug of tea. He’d already discovered it was scalding hot. “We can’t totally dismiss that as a possibility.” He took a bite of a piece of bread.
“Sorry we don’t have no jam,” said Reordan. “But the bread’s fresh-baked this morning.”
“It’s delicious,” replied Murdoch, and it was. He was suddenly ravenous and munched through the thick, crusty slice. Reordan watched him, as proud as any cook summoned to the dining room while the mistress sampled the baking.
“What would help is if we had a list of the members of your local assembly,” Murdoch said to Seymour.
“I don’t have anything like that. We keep all names secret to protect each other. It’s not so long ago that men lost their jobs if they were suspected of organizing the workers.”
Reordan winked at Murdoch. “I’ve got one. I earn my stipend from the Knights by keeping track of the dues. I’ve got a list. Shall I show it to him, Charlie?”