Plot

Det. Murdoch investigates the murder of Richard Dawkins who was beaten to death at the dinner table by two masked men just as he was about to make an important announcement to his business associates. Since nothing was stolen Murdoch's new boss, Inspector Hamish Slorach, calls the killing an assassination. Dawkins was rumored to be selling his chandlery business. The harbor master says Dawkins was anything but a saint and the police should look to the seedier side for a solution to his death. Const. Jackson is badly beaten by two thugs which seems to confirm Murdoch's suspicion that the men who beat Inspector Brackenreid are the same ones who killed Dawkins. When they find a dead woman on the shore, Dr. Grace determines she was clubbed to death the night before the attack on Dawkins and was manacled before she died. Meanwhile, suffragettes recruit Julia to their movement and she is joined by Emily Grace. Receiving little support politically, they decide to hold a protest march. They are all soon in jail.

Murdoch investigates near Toronto harbor the fatal clobbering of local merchant Richard Dawkins in a fancy restaurant by two masked men, just as he would make an important announcement to his business associates, including the late harbor master's wife and successor and the chandlery owner whose business he planned to buy. New precinct boss Inspector Hamish Slorach rules the non-robbery an assassination. A woman's corpse washed on the shore. In an effort to increase order, constables are dispatched to the area and run foul of the dockworkers, criminally led by the violent brothers Mick and Tim O'Shea, who beat even Murdoch, while Crabtree's handling of urchin Simon Brooks turns the rascal cooperative. Inspector Brackenreid physically recovered from his pummeling but shows no interest to resume police work, until the above workers suspected of his beating come to his home Brackenreid. The constabulary, posted as 'demonstrative observers', engages in a melee on the docks with the workers who prevent them from arresting the suspects. Dr. Ogden and Dr. Grace are arrested for demanding women's general suffrage in front of the Ontario legislature.