The Body on Mount Royal by David Montrose

Author:David Montrose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Véhicule Press

Chapter Thirteen

I like the old downtown part of Montreal, the old geegawed stone buildings that have been sitting there getting sootier since the city was founded, the narrow one-way streets, the stately dark-grey halls of banking and finance.

And I found, this morning, that I also liked the way the little Morris behaved in this part of town. Sometimes it had been so much trouble wheeling Riley through these streets, I’d left him behind and walked. Now the Morris puttered along, in and around irritated stalled taxis, under the running boards of high trucks, skipping away from traffic lights with two wheels on the road and two in the gutter.

I parked on Notre Dame Street at the back door of the Bank of London—it fronts on St. James—got out, and walked leisurely across the sidewalk. Before I made the bank, a paper stand stopped me. Copies of the Clarion were plastered all over the stand, and the headlines were attracting customers as if they were the announcement of a new war.

FINANCIER MURDERED IN LOCAL GAMBLING DEN, the black line across the top of the paper shouted. I bought one and looked around for a place to read it. Across the street was a tavern.

I went in and ordered a quart of Molson, and sipped. The tavern was curious enough to get some of my attention before I settled down to the Clarion; it was a small, quiet tavern, ordinary in every respect but one—it was fronted by a large, ornate stained-glass window. The pictures of the window apparently depicted stages in the brewing of beer, but that didn’t make any difference. One still got the rather eerie feeling of sitting drinking in a church. The sun came through the window and dropped a patch of crimson on my hand, holding the glass. It was only the crimson from a brewer’s jacket but it was the same shade as the patch of St. Peter’s robe that used to fall on my hand in the middle of the sermon, at the church I went to with mother years ago. I felt guilty enough to pick up my Clarion and my beer, and move to another table.

Under the black top head, the Clarion had a series of drop-heads discussing the location of the gambling club (“Apartment on Sherbrooke West Raided as Result of Crime”) and the identity of the victim (“C. Winston Wales, Investment Banker, Shot by Unknown Gangster”). There was also one picture on the front page—a picture of Wales, the pathetic little man who had died in the hallway before apartment sixteen.

The story, for which MacArnold had been given a by-line, didn’t give much play to the killing. It told how Wales’ body was still warm when Framboise and his squad, summoned by an anonymous telephone call, arrived on the scene. It gave a brief review of Wales’ life.

Then MacArnold took the bit in his teeth and galloped into the part of the story he had background material to write. He told

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