Uncommon Sons: Families' Storytelling Trilogy, #2

By Bruce Bishop

Immerse yourself in a tale of murder, discrimination, diversity, and discovery

 

1935. Nova Scotia, Canada.

 

Marc Youssef constantly wrestles with his commitment to his strict Lebanese culture and upbringing. But when you're a thirty-four-year-old bachelor — and you are secretly attracted to other men — deception at home and at work simmers daily and threatens to boil over.

 

After two guests are found dead in the tony railway hotel in Halifax where Marc works, his job is compromised, and his personal life is vulnerable to exposure. One of the suspects in the possible murder investigation just happens to be Marc's clandestine and married love interest.

 

Journalist Eva McMaster, Marc's best friend, is determined to help him find out what really happened. The two become unlikely sleuths in this bizarre incident that becomes the talk of the east coast city.

 

Uncommon Sons is a fascinating tale of sexual identity, systemic racism, familial obligations, workplace pressures, and the bonds of love and friendship prior to World War II.

 

Interlinked to Bishop's debut novel, Unconventional Daughters, this page-turner further explores what happens when adults are not what and who they are expected to be. Pick up a copy of Uncommon Sons and reunite with some of the beloved characters from the author's debut novel. The third book in the trilogy, Undeniable Relations, was originally released in December 2022.

 

Praise for Uncommon Sons

 

"…an exploration of identity and prejudice, of the tension between old ways and new. … Mr. Bishop handles these difficult issues deftly and with sensitivity, as his main characters Marc and Eva seek to find their own way through the discrimination that surrounds them in their quest for a more tolerant world."

– Riana Everly, author of The Assistant and Through a Different Lens

 

"An intriguing mystery, great characters, and a lesser known facet of Canadian history combine to make Uncommon Sons a compelling read!" – Linda Bennett Pennell, author of Miami Days Havana Nights

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce W. Bishop
• Release date: Jun 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781777414146

Bruce Bishop

Hello readers! I'm a former travel & lifestyle journalist and guidebook author who switched to writing novels in 2020.  I live in one of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and I often set my novels in this beautiful part of North America. (And because of my backgound in the travel industry, I can't resist including other destinations from Sweden to Singapore, where my characters may find themselves in!)

Book preview

Another drop in a reservoir might seem to not appreciably add anything or change anything beyond the drop becoming another part of the whole. Such a drop is indistinguishable from any other drop, yet without them, the reservoir would soon cease to be a reservoir. Although a drop might seem insignificant, it is essential to the whole. Ah, little drop, you didn’t know you were essential, did you?

—‘Appearances’, The Wonder Within You – From the Metaphysical Journals of David Manners

ONE

A blanket of Sunday morning calm wrapped the stately Pan-Canadian Princess Hotel in the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on December 15, 1935. As the sun began to rise in shades of pink and orange over the deep harbor, its rays were reflected in the windows of the guest rooms that overlooked the mirror-like body of water.

In one of those rooms, the curtains hadn’t been drawn the night before. The sun penetrated the room and spotlighted two dead bodies. One was slumped in a ragdoll heap between the bathroom and the bedroom. The other lay on his back against the door leading to the hallway. Both had met their fates approximately eight hours earlier.

A gala pre-Christmas dinner, the biggest social event of the season, had been held the previous evening in the Hotel’s dining room to a sold-out crowd of some of Halifax’s wealthiest citizens. The Monday morning newspapers planned to report on the movers and shakers who had been in attendance, and the society columnists would speculate on those who may have been from away and were visiting their relatives and friends in the provincial capital.

Julia MacNamara, a middle-aged housekeeper, had worked at the Pan-Canadian Princess since it opened in 1930. She squinted over a copy of The Montreal Gazette in the women’s changing room since she had ten minutes to kill before the start of her day shift. She sipped a cup of black tea and silently cursed the fact she definitely needed reading glasses.

She had found the newspaper the day before while cleaning a guest room and was anxious to read what excitement might be happening in Canada’s second largest city, especially just before Christmas.

Her eyes widened as she looked at a full-page advertisement from Henry Morgan & Co., Limited, ‘Montreal’s Own Store Since 1843’, offering rhinestone bracelets and necklets for seventeen dollars and fifty cents each, which she was certain had to be a misprint.

Canada was in a Depression! Who can afford such luxuries?

But there were also cream lace handkerchiefs advertised at a dollar and fifty cents each, and she thought she might possibly be able to afford one someday.

But where would I go to show off a fancy handkerchief? Maybe a funeral. Nothing exciting ever happens here compared to the big cities like Montreal or Toronto.

Julia could not have predicted that she, her place of employment, and her city, would be thrust into the national media spotlight in less than forty-eight hours. Canadians from Vancouver to Charlottetown would be reading about the mysterious and highly suspicious deaths of two noteworthy guests whom she was to discover later that day.

* * *

THREE MONTHS EARLIER

Marc Youssef had not been able to take a weekend night off in months, but the last place he wanted to go was home to spend this precious free time with his family.

As he left the Pan-Canadian Princess Hotel via the staff exit, he breathed in the crisp fall air of south end Halifax and wandered northbound along Barrington Street, dead leaves fluttering as he walked. It was still Atlantic Daylight Time in September, so at six thirty the sun was only hinting to set.

Stopping in front of the Capitol Theater at the foot of Spring Garden Road, he glanced at the marquee and then studied the poster and lobby cards being displayed for the movie currently playing.

The Girl Friend starring Jack Haley and Ann Sothern was promising Singing! Dancing! Loving! and Marc smiled at the photo showing a blonde beauty between two men in Napoleonic attire, one looking wary and the other looking serious, but dashing.

He thought the movie would be the perfect mindless diversion he sought, and he’d be able to snap out of his present mood. He was lonely tonight and felt preoccupied.

The Capitol was the largest movie theater in the city. It was not only a cinephile’s haven but an escape for Haligonians weary of the hardships of the Great Depression. For many years prior to 1929, its grand interior inspired comfort for many Maritime moviegoers.

At the Capitol, one could be transported to mythical kingdoms, or to the seedy streets of New York; to musical landscapes with bright eyed singers and fast-footed dancers; and become involved in romantic entanglements with stunning starlets and handsome leading men. For a dime, one could be entertained for at least ninety minutes, and if you were lucky, for three hours during a double bill.

He absently paid the ticket seller inside the entrance and made his way to the canteen, where he bought popcorn and a Coca Cola, feeling like he should splurge for the first time since he had left his former job.

This past May, Marc had returned to Halifax where he had been born. He had been living in Yarmouth, an historic seaport of a few thousand souls approximately two hundred miles from Halifax on Nova Scotia’s southwestern coast.

His first big job break had been in 1931 as the dining room manager for a newly opened Canadian Pacific Railway hotel, the Lakeside Inn & Cottages, located just outside the town. It was a standout success from day one, even in a severe economic slowdown. For this first generation Lebanese Canadian, the job had been instrumental in getting his second position at the much larger, Pan-Canadian Railways’ Princess Hotel in Halifax. He was thirty-four but had the energy and drive of a man in his early twenties.

He had enjoyed his time in Yarmouth and had become friends with a journalist his same age, Eva McMaster, whose unique family and all its bizarre machinations had made his own family look downright dull in comparison.

He had come close then to telling Eva about himself; that he had an innate, romantic desire for the company of men and still had no words to describe exactly how he felt. Acting upon those feelings was against Canadian federal law. It wasn’t a state of being that one could easily or proudly divulge, and even the term ‘homosexual’ had only been coined in Germany sixty-six years earlier. Marc realized as an unmarried man of Middle Eastern background who was in his mid-thirties, having an attraction to other men was definitely not a topic one could discuss openly.

Eva was currently living in Halifax with her eleven-year-old son, Angus, and Marc chided himself for not being in touch with her more regularly.

His position at the relatively new Pan-Canadian Princess had been all-consuming since he had arrived in the city. His busy work schedule was partially the reason why he was once again living with his parents. He had not yet found the time to rent a place of his own. His parents, on the other hand, expected and welcomed their unmarried only son to live with them, as was the tradition in Lebanon, the old country.

He entered the auditorium as the lights were beginning to dim. The theater was crowded, but he spied a couple of open seats in the middle of one of the shorter rows on the right side. A single man was seated on the aisle, and a young couple was already snuggling with one another at the far end of the same row by the wall. Marc excused himself to the man on the aisle and slipped into the third seat.

He found the movie entertaining, but not terribly memorable except for the principal song Two Together, sung by the leading lady early in the picture. The unlikely plot revolved around a playwright whose badly written play about Napoleon’s exile ends up being produced by two con men songwriters who manage to bring it to major success on Broadway.

The lights in the theater came up slowly as the closing credits began to roll at the end of the screening, and the man two seats away from Marc chuckled, and turned to him, saying, Well, there you go. If only things could work out that easily in real life, eh?

Only in Hollywood, as they say, Marc replied, businesslike.

He was struck by the man’s ready smile and ease in conversing. He looked to be a few years younger than Marc, and a bit taller, as Marc had inherited his family’s shorter stature. Marc was often regarded as foreign thanks to his swarthy looks, olive complexion and Roman countenance, as compared with the majority of Nova Scotian Canadians who were of Anglo-Saxon heritage.

He thought the fellow with his wavy strawberry blond hair and slender build must be of Celtic stock. Perhaps a swimmer or a gymnast? When the lights came up in the theater, he also noticed a scar, approximately three inches long, above the man’s right eye.

The teenagers at the end of the row remained in a fiery embrace, and had no intention of leaving soon, so Marc held out his hand to the stranger, and said, Hello. I’m Marc Youssef.

Nice to meet you, Marc, the man said. I’m Ian Leslie. I daresay that a musical featuring Napoleon still doesn’t appeal to me much. You? He started to get up from his seat.

I’ll have to agree with you on that, Ian, Marc said. But how about a musical with Count Dracula in the leading role? There was a jazzy guy who loved the nightlife!

Ian laughed as they walked out of the auditorium together.

Barrington Street was buzzing on this Saturday night with many of the cars on the thoroughfare driven by young people in their parents’ vehicles, out to see and be seen. Taxis tooted their horns, a tramcar jangled by, and Marc felt the first drops of rain on his face.

Maybe I’ll run into you at the pictures some other time, Ian said, offering his hand to Marc. I go whenever I can. It’s my way of escaping, I suppose.

Not having any male friends in the city, Marc felt he may have found a confrère in Ian and didn’t want this to be their first and only encounter.

I like going to the pictures a lot, too. I just wish I could get out more often to see them. Marc raised the collar of his blazer as a slight drizzle began.

Well, I’d say, you’ll have to find a way to do so! What kind of work keeps you away from the Capitol?

Marc explained he was the food and beverage manager at the Pan-Canadian Princess, and since he was a new employee, he tended to work long hours.

What of you, Ian? Surely you can’t get away whenever you want! Where do you work? The weather was getting miserable, and yet Marc wanted to find out more.

His new friend suddenly looked uncomfortable and stared at his feet for a moment.

I lost my job a couple of years ago; my old accounting company told me I was ‘redundant’. Right now, I’m doing some studying, and like most guys, I’m constantly looking for work. Four years into this official Depression doesn’t make the search easy.

Marc noted that Ian had not mentioned if he had a wife and children. There was no wedding band, either.

It’s strange that he had the money to go to the pictures.

All right, then… for the hardworking jobseeker, I am formally inviting you to enjoy blueberry grunt or apple crisp in the Tearoom on the eighth floor of the Hotel—with the beverage of your choice, of course, Marc said, grinning. I’m working all next week until three in the afternoon, and I fully expect Mr. Leslie to grace me with his deep voice and charming presence.

I heard the view from the top of the Hotel is spectacular, Ian said. That’s kind of you, Marc. I will definitely take you up on your offer. Thank you.

My pleasure, Ian. Have a good Sunday tomorrow, and I’ll see you soon, Marc said. They shook hands once again, and Marc hurried away in the mist, walking southbound.

TWO

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1935

At the start of the work week, Marc encountered a hotel guest with a personality so contrary he wondered if the man had spent his entire life getting up on the wrong side of the bed. It was an unusually brisk September morning, but the walk to work had been invigorating, and Mark was in a good frame of mind. And then he met Judge Addison DeMont who appeared at the entrance of the Hotel dining room for breakfast.

Is there any particular table where you would care to sit, sir? Marc asked the lanky man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties. His hands looked enormous when seen against his tall but slight frame, and his bald head shone in the sunshine coming in through the windows of the dining room. It made Marc think of a large eggplant that was beige in color instead of purple. He stifled a smile.

I am Judge Addison DeMont, and you clearly don’t recognize me, but I want my regular table where I am seated when I patronize the Pan-Canadian Princess, he told Marc, squinting at him through thick rectangular glasses.

My apologies, Judge, but as I’m a fairly new manager here, we haven’t yet met, so I am sadly unaware of your preferred and usual table.

That is not my concern. I will speak to the General Manager regarding this oversight later. The Judge relaxed his stiffened shoulders a little and pointed to a table for two in the far corner of the dining room.

My table is over there.

Marc picked up a breakfast menu from the maître’d station and motioned for the Judge to follow him. It was preferable to not engage the man in further conversation.

Right this way, Judge DeMont.

As Marc pulled out a chair for his guest to be seated, the Judge said, What is wrong with your leg? Were you in the Great War?

A bit taken aback, Marc said, No, I wasn’t, Judge. I had a bout of polio as a child. It shortened my leg, causing the limp.

Hmph. You still could have contributed to the war effort.

Marc smiled thinly and decided not to answer.

Would you care for a coffee or tea to start with, sir?

Tea. Milk on the side, naturally.

As Marc was leaving the table, he heard from behind him, And bring me today’s paper and an ashtray. There isn’t one on this table.

Marc turned and nodded to acknowledge the man’s additional requests. He saw there were several people waiting to be seated at the entrance of the room, so he told Rebecca, one of his part-time waitresses, to bring a newspaper, an ashtray, and a coffee to the gentleman in the far corner.

A few minutes later when he was seating a family of six in the center of the room, he heard a loud crash of china on the hardwood floors, and a man yell, You stupid, stupid creature! I told that mulatto idiot who seated me that I wanted tea with milk, not coffee, dammit!

Ensuring the family he was engaged with were comfortably seated with menus, Marc swiftly walked to the Judge’s table. Rebecca, now shaken by the accident and the outburst, was picking up the pieces of a broken ceramic coffee pot, while a harried-looking busboy hurried over to the table to mop up the spilled coffee.

I do apologize, Judge. In my haste, I told the young lady to bring you coffee by mistake.

The service standards in this hotel have dropped drastically since my last time here, Judge DeMont said. He opened up the newspaper beside him, shaking the pages into submission.

Bring me three scrambled eggs with brown bread toast, he said, staring at the newspaper, and then looked up at Marc.

Can you get that order correct, Mr. Peabrain?

Yes, sir. Would you like bacon or sausage with the eggs?

Did I ask for meat? I do not eat meat. And, by the way, there will be a Mr. Herbert joining me momentarily for coffee only. Show him to my table. If he wants anything to eat, serve him, but his food is not to be put on my bill.

* * *

Rebecca ran to the kitchen and into the dishwashing area, and tearfully threw the broken pieces of the ceramic pot into the proper garbage container. She was a studious-looking young woman who was familiar with a bully’s behavior.

Jackie Williams, the pastry cook and the first Negro hired by the Hotel to work professionally in the kitchen, was in the middle of making a trifle for the dessert buffet. He noticed the waitress’s erratic activity, wiped his hands on a clean towel, and approached her.

Are you okay, Rebecca? Jackie asked, aware he should not touch his fellow employee in distress.

Grateful, Rebecca looked up into Jackie’s concerned face.

Yes, I’m all right, thanks, Jackie. The world’s most obnoxious customer happens to be sitting in my section. I hope this isn’t a sign that today will be a bad one because I have a big chemistry exam tomorrow morning.

Ginger-haired and petite Haley Jameson, the salads and condiments cook, walked up to her fellow staff members as she adjusted her hairnet which looked completely misplaced above her delicate features.

You okay, darlin’? she asked Rebecca.

Rebecca sighed and smiled.

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Haley. I just have a nasty customer to deal with this morning. It’s not like I already don’t have enough to worry about today.

Show me which one, Rebecca, and maybe I can rough him up for ya!

Haley led Rebecca over to the swinging exit door of the kitchen in which a porthole window had been installed to facilitate a view of the dining room.

It’s that bald guy over in the corner with the huge hands, Rebecca said. He’s horrible. It’s like he takes joy in embarrassing you in public.

Haley peered through the porthole window and groaned.

Wow; I cannot believe that bastard is here. Yeah. I know who he is, she said, her voice shaky. She almost ran from the door to her assigned area where she had been busy making salads.

Rebecca was surprised at Haley’s reaction, but had no time to ponder, so she left the kitchen and resumed her serving duties in the dining room.

Jackie had watched the back-and-forth between the two women and walked over to Haley’s station in the kitchen.

Okay, young lady, who’s the big bad wolf in the dining room who’s bothering Rebecca? You’ve had a run-in with the guy, too?

Haley placed the knife on a cutting board that she had been using to chop green peppers.

He’s someone from my past I hoped to never see again. That’s all.

* * *

I’m sure you’ll enjoy Halifax, should you decide to move here, Judge DeMont, Arnold Herbert said.

He was a fresh-faced real estate agent in his mid-twenties who had been recently hired by one of the city’s largest brokers. Having spoken to the Judge over the telephone, he had already figured out that his potential new client was a pompous bore who needed to be dealt with in a delicate yet firm manner.

It’s not Montreal, and it’s certainly not Sydney, where I’ve been living, but I suppose it will do for a respite, DeMont replied.

Did you live in Montreal at one point? There are so many interesting parts to that city.

Indeed, I did, and studied law at McGill University. I am fluently bilingual, of course, which has yet to be of much use here in Nova Scotia except when I am presiding over a case that involves Acadians, he said with a dismissive tone. But I tend to grow weary of the underclass, you know. My good friend Paul-Adrien Leaud— he started, and looked closely at the realtor for an acknowledgement.

Noticing the blank look on Herbert’s face, he continued, "The celebrated journalist and publisher in Montreal, has frequently complained to me about the calibre of people who live in the neighborhood where he publishes his paper, Les Brûlots. I do empathize with his plight. I do not want you to be showing me any homes for sale in any area here that might have gambling dens, Negro shacks, cutthroat Slavs, Oriental grocers, or Bulgarian ruffians. Do I make myself clear?"

Arnold Herbert raised his eyebrows at his client’s lack of diffidence.

Well, sir, I somehow doubt there is one Slav or Bulgarian in all of Halifax as we’re not the most multi-ethnic city in the country, that’s for sure. But we’ll do a thorough search of available properties for sale or rent, and I’m sure you will find a suitable home.

Fine, although I’ll rent for the first year, and perhaps buy the property later. And naturally, I don’t want to live on a street where there are any known Jews.

Arnold Herbert reddened. He was born as Chaim Avraham in Boston twenty-five years earlier. He picked up his coffee cup and finished the contents in one gulp so that this uncomfortable meeting could be finished. He wondered if he could fire the Judge as a client already, but in the Depression, he needed every house sale he could close.

* * *

Rebecca sat on a bench in the women’s changing room and took off her shoes. She rubbed her aching feet and longed to be able to put them in a pot of hot water with some Epsom salts to relieve the pain. She idly wondered how many miles she walked in the course of a week as a waitress and as a student on campus, not to mention trudging from her residence room at Shirreff Hall on the campus of Dalhousie University to the Hotel.

Her strict Methodist upbringing in the small town of Berwick in the Annapolis Valley had served her well. She wanted a career where she could help others, and she had decided to train to be a nurse. She was one of one hundred and ninety-two females registered at Dalhousie in 1935 and was determined she would succeed.

Her father, who had owned a shoe shop, had not helped her financially to any great extent to pursue her studies in Halifax. He was found dead in his store one morning the previous year; an apparent heart attack. A month later, she was relieved to be told she was the recipient of a modest but recurring scholarship that covered her annual tuition. Still, the Hotel provided important income towards her housing.

She hated what she thought was her greatest drawback: she did not suffer fools gladly, and when verbally attacked, she felt not only humiliated but impotent. The Judge had reignited those feelings in her when he berated her in the dining room that morning.

Her temples were throbbing. She was used to getting headaches when the stress of her schooling and work collided, and today was one of those days. Still, she was grateful to have a split shift where she had three hours off before returning to the floor to serve more guests. She would prolong a cup of tea at a café she frequented on Hollis Street while she studied for her examination the next morning.

THREE

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1935

The Tearoom at the top of the Pan-Canadian Princess hotel was surrounded by a rose garden on the roof that was tended carefully by a calm and wizened gardener who checked in daily on his prized beauties.

He had stopped cutting any roses several weeks before this sunny Friday in September and was letting the plants form natural seedpods. He glanced at the good-looking young man who stepped off the elevator and walked at a brisk pace to the entrance of the Tearoom.

There were only a few lunch guests who remained at their tables at two-thirty that afternoon, and Marc was already tallying up check receipts from the waiters. He was anxious to leave his shift at three and had resigned himself earlier in the day that he’d not lay eyes on Ian Leslie ever again.

He was standing at the host’s station when Ian approached and asked, If I promise not to order any food this late, can I still come in?

Taken by surprise, Marc looked up from his paperwork and beamed.

Well, Mr. Leslie, I thought you had forgotten all about the wonderful desserts here in our Tearoom, Marc replied. And I made sure Chef saved one portion of our famous blueberry grunt and one of the apple crisp just in case you did remember!

They shook hands and Marc led Ian to a table for two apart from the other diners. It was next to one of the large windows overlooking the park across Hollis Street and the rest of Halifax beyond.

How has your week been going, Marc? Ian asked as he sat down while Marc