Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  Back in the cashier’s suite, another night passed, slowly. Next day at noon, Harris tried again, walking north of Queen Street on Yonge to the end unit of a short row of Georgian yellow-brick houses.

  He had first come here nine years ago in the winter of 1847, before he had been employed by the bank. At his father’s instigation, he had been working to establish the York County Millers’ Association and had needed advice on a matter of legal incorporation. He had heard that William Sheridan was one of the best lawyers in the province, and by no means the most expensive, but that Sheridan might not be available, as he was devoting more and more of his time to politics.

  On that January morning, the first thing the eighteen-year-old Harris had heard when he opened the street door was a cascade of angry abuse.

  “If you would make a supreme mental effort, Mr. Small,” a deep Irish voice thundered, “you would realize that I have a coach to catch to Montreal. What bloated idea of your own importance could have made you think that I have so much as a second to spare on your flea of a client’s libel action?”

  Harris had leaped back down the steps, flagged down a horse-drawn omnibus descending Yonge Street, and held it the thirty seconds more it took a chunkily handsome man in his mid-forties to burst into the street. A second, boyish figure, vapour ballooning from his startled mouth, followed as far as the top step. Sheridan was waved a farewell he didn’t look back to see with a handful of the papers he had not had time to read.

  Returning the salute on his behalf, Harris bundled his quarry aboard the omnibus. Together they rode it to where it turned east along King Street. Then they ran and slid the two remaining blocks to Weller’s Stage Office on Front Street. Sheridan already had his ticket to Montreal. Harris took one as far as Pickering, which he judged would give him time and to spare to explain his problem.

  As the coach runners skimmed over the frozen roads, Sheridan relaxed inside his furs. He understood what the York Millers wanted and saw no particular difficulty in doing it. He said something about the beauty of the Canadian winter and how much he enjoyed sleighing—not as far as Montreal, to be sure, which was where Parliament happened to be sitting—but in short spurts. Did Harris have a horse and sleigh of his own? No? Then he must take Sheridan’s out for a turn sometime, out on the bay, with a team in tandem.

  Harris smiled at the extravagance.

  “I mean it,” the lawyer protested. “You’ll see. Life’s so full of pleasures, my young friend. I’m a jackass to let my temper get the better of me the way it did back there. It will be the death of me.”

  “I don’t know about that, sir,” said Harris, crossing several degrees of intimacy at a bound, “and I don’t know much about law—but if the flea of a client had opened that door instead of me, I suppose there might have been another libel suit in the offing.”

  “Slander, Mr. Harris, for verbal insults. I’d have put nothing so damaging in writing.”

  The young lawyer Sheridan had left gasping on the doorstep that day later became his partner and Harris’s closest friend.

  Today Jasper Small was to be found in Sheridan’s room rather than his own, ostensibly cleaning up Sheridan’s affairs. Letters and documents covered both the open front of the writing desk by the door, and a fully extended gate-leg table in the bay window. A wavy-haired man of roughly Harris’s age was moving these papers about without appearing to sort them in any way. Small’s fleshy moon of a face and pale grey eyes made him look the dreamer even when delivering an elegantly conclusive argument in court. Whether his present task absorbed him Harris found hard to tell.

  “Dine with me, Jasper.”

  “I can’t,” said Small. “Oh, hang it, I shall. The Trafalgar House has received a shipment of the most amazing claret.”

  The firm of Sheridan and Small having a progressive reputation, Jasper felt at liberty to wear a bowler in place of a top hat. His morning coat was impeccably cut and pressed, as were his matching loose trousers. An extra-elaborate tie knot was his only real touch of dandyism.

  Harris had no criticism to make of Small, and yet as the two emerged onto the plank sidewalk, he realized he had come expecting too much. While more composed than on his return Wednesday night from the Humber Valley, he felt as tense as a drawn bow. He wanted Small to provide all the answers and reassurances that had so far eluded Harris himself.

  “Sorry for your loss,” he mumbled, to at least get that out of the way. “There was no chance to speak at the funeral.”

  Small shook his head as if he could not believe what he was about to say. “I took the old man papers to sign Friday afternoon. He was on the mend. No more pain in the gut, he says. The next day off he pops.”

  “Oh? You don’t think his death was natural?”

  Harris had heard no suspicion of this—none, that is, but Septimus Murdock’s. And what did the accountant not suspect? Belonging to the Roman Catholic minority in a Protestant town could only reinforce the apprehensiveness of his temperament, and his noting the “significant coincidence” of Sheridan’s death with the Glorious Twelfth was all the easier for Harris to dismiss in that Murdock had so far refused to be more explicit.

  Orangemen did have reason to dislike Sheridan. Although a Protestant Irishman himself, he had joined Robert Baldwin in trying to outlaw the Orange Order back in the days of Governor Metcalfe. Sheridan’s rhetoric at the time, moreover, had been far less temperate than Baldwin’s. But dislike was one thing, murder another. Besides, this dispute was thirteen years old. Drunken brawls might be a Toronto Orange tradition. Long-nurtured grudges and stealthy vendettas, as far as Harris knew, were not.

  Nor did Small appear to have foul play in mind.

  “Natural to be sure,” he replied. “As natural as quack medicine. I’m just not convinced it resulted inevitably from his illness.”

  Harris asked who had been Sheridan’s physician.

  “An old friend,” said Small through clenched teeth. “Hell, Chris Hillyard was already old in ’23 when Willie Sheridan first came to this country.”

  “I’m surprised Sheridan never made us acquainted,” Harris observed.

  “Well, in fact Hillyard did retire for a few years, disappeared to the Indies, and then committed the capital error of coming back. He likely gave Sheridan a purgative thinking it was a sedative.”

  Such bitterness, not typical of his pleasure-loving friend, Harris attributed to the sudden weight of sole responsibility for the affairs of the partnership. Feeling oppressed, Small required an oppressor—which did not of course mean he was wrong about Hillyard. In any event, Small’s frown melted away when a girl with sleeves pushed up to her elbows showed them from the inn door to a white-clothed table and set a bottle of red Bordeaux before them.

  The Trafalgar House was a small hotel with an oenophilic owner and an indifferent cook. Harris contented himself with bread and cheese to accompany his glass of wine, while it took Small the rest of the bottle to wash down his portion of boiled beef.

  “Could anyone else have killed him?” said Harris as soon as they were alone. “Possibly not by accident.”

  “Whoa, what kind of question is that?” Small took a steadying drink.

  “Well—had he received any threats? Did anyone come to the office—I don’t know—brandishing a revolver?”

  “There were times I came close to brandishing one myself,” Small replied. “And he certainly made enemies, but apart from the Orangemen—which is to say, apart from the police, the fire department, the carters, the innkeepers and the politicians—any enemies he made he made into friends again right after. My money stays on the medico. But what’s your interest, Isaac? Why so keen?”

  Harris shrugged stiffly.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Small, wiping his mouth on a corner of his napkin. “Then what’s this about threats against her father?”

  The two seldom spoke of Theresa, whom Small had courted for eight weeks and Harris for considerably longer—so much longer as to not
seem a fit subject for raillery.

  After two false starts, Harris explained his belief that Sheridan’s death and Theresa’s disappearance must be linked. He spoke also of his own researches to date and of his unsatisfactory interviews with Crane and Vandervoort.

  Small leaned forward. “You won’t take advice on this subject, I know.”

  “Likely not.” Jasper’s most recent advice—only half facetious—had been that to circulate the blood and reset his compass what Harris needed was to visit a whorehouse, a good one. Jasper knew just the place. On the whole, Harris found he dreaded Small’s advice.

  “Let me just say, Isaac, that involving yourself in the search for Theresa can do you no good.”

  “That’s not the—”

  “No, listen—”

  “She has been missing four days,” Harris in turn broke in. “All I want is to know she’s safe.”

  “We all want that,” said Small with murderous mildness, “and then again, suppose you desert your bank and kill your horse galloping it all over the continent. I won’t speak of the worst outcome—but take the best case. Even if you find her safe and whole, you’ll be bringing her home to Henry. Can you swallow that?”

  “If she wishes it.”

  Small studied his friend’s face. “Given the state of your feelings for her, you can’t be serious.”

  “Yes, certainly, of course—but Crane is not above suspicion in all this. Why isn’t he looking for her himself?”

  “Business preoccupations, I would guess.”

  Harris took this as a further instance of Small’s contempt for sentiment. “You be serious, Jasper. Any normally affectionate husband would leave his immense wealth to look after itself for a week.”

  “Not so immense as all that. Have you not heard?”

  Harris had not. He had got in the habit of paying no more attention to Crane’s activities than he could help. Crane took his business to the Commercial Bank, and their ways seldom crossed. References to Crane in the press were generally laudatory.

  Railways he had built in the southwestern part of the province had, to be sure, suffered mishaps. Bridges had collapsed. Iron rails had split in the severe Canadian winter. Stoves had set fire to passenger coaches with fatal results. Deaths had resulted from the lack of gates at level crossings. By then, however, the customer had always paid and taken delivery of the line. Crane had fulfilled his contract and never seemed to come out the loser, not even in terms of reputation.

  But Small knew more than was in the papers.

  “He has overreached himself,” the lawyer announced authoritatively. “He has committed too much of his personal capital to risky or long-term ventures.”

  The Kingston to Cape Vincent railway car ferry was a case in point, said Small—who had sat at the same piquet table as the treasurer’s daughter. Loading trains on boats was to cost less than bridging the St. Lawrence. Wolfe Island did stand in the path of navigation, but Crane had allegedly taken up shares with both hands on the mistaken assumption that a canal across the obstructing land mass would soon be completed. Such miscues weren’t like him. Nevertheless . . . Untypically, also, he had undertaken railway contracts east of Toronto for shares instead of bonds or cash. That meant higher construction standards and worries about rising costs.

  “His shrewdness has deserted him,” Small declared, “and—whether cause or effect—he’s desperate for funds. There are even rumours that he has touched friends for loans.”

  “Next you’ll be telling me he has lost money at the race track,” said Harris. “How long is he supposed to have been feeling the pinch?”

  “A year,” said Small, “fourteen months. And he never bets on horses—or drinks, or smokes, or swears. So much for the wages of virtue!”

  Harris thought back to Tuesday. The exquisite carriage in which Crane had taken them to the graveside was so new that the ship that had brought it from England might still be in the harbour. A bold purchase. And yet the most distinguished mourners had seemed to avoid Crane as they would not have done if he still smelled of success.

  “Whatever his difficulties,” said Harris, “he should still be more concerned about his wife.”

  Small smiled like a Buddha. Plainly, he thought Harris biased.

  Harris was, of course. “Are they happy together?” he asked.

  “Like any couple. I rarely see them together.”

  “When did you last see Theresa?”

  “Friday at her father’s. She had more or less moved down there from Queen Street East while he was ill. I was sitting in the old boy’s room, waiting for him to wake up from a nap, when she came in and shooed me out. She said I could tell the housekeeper to serve tea to her and myself in the parlour. She let me back upstairs later on, but only on condition I not bother her Papa with business. So the papers never did get signed.”

  “Anything important?” said Harris.

  “Everything I do is important, Isaac. My God, I wish we had time for another bottle of this.”

  Small was mooning over the wine label, ostensibly dreaming of the château where it had been pasted on.

  “A new will perhaps?” said Harris.

  “Nothing I intend to blab about. Not a will, though. His will is no secret. His daughter gets the villa and its contents. Most everything else, no great hoard, goes to charity. Oh, and I inherit his share of the practice, which at present seems a very mixed blessing.”

  “But would the estate be large enough to restore Crane’s fortunes,” asked Harris, “assuming he could get his hands on it?”

  “Not nearly.” Small pushed back his chair, which the innkeeper’s daughter took as a signal to bring the two hats.

  Harris ignored his and remained seated. “How did Theresa seem?”

  “In the sickroom, quite under control. She knew just how far open she wanted the windows and what covers should be on the bed. When her Papa woke up, she took his temperature with a thermometer, which is more than I’ve ever heard of Christopher Hillyard’s doing.”

  “And downstairs at tea?”

  “Agitated,” said Small, evidently choosing a word softer than the one he felt appropriate. “She complained of the stifling heat and of want of air. At one point, she excused herself, and I heard her cross-questioning the housekeeper in a most dogged and ferocious manner such as a judge would hardly let you get away with in court.”

  “On what subject?”

  “Couldn’t hear. It just seemed indicative of what state her nerves were in. No wonder they snapped when—you know . . .”

  “That’s how you explain her disappearance?” Having ruled out this possibility himself, Harris rose impatiently from the table. “After a calm Sunday dinner, she just ran wild. Well, if she has lost her wits, she can’t have hidden herself too cunningly.”

  “I imagine someone has seen her,” said Small.

  “You can imagine anything you like. If you really want to set your mind at ease, Jasper, you can imagine some Christian soul has taken her in and is plying her with roast goose.”

  Harris walked Small back to his law office, though he was already likely to be missed at the bank. Irresolution gnawed him. His momentary hesitation before attending Sheridan’s funeral was but a love bite to this. In the Holland Landing of his boyhood, there would have been no question. Everyone would have helped beat the bush for the missing woman. Urban cynicism might colour Small’s advice, and yet Harris lived in the city now too. If Toronto’s neighbours were not to be counted on, it wasn’t because they lacked hearts, but because they by and large worked for others and were not masters of their own time. No more was Harris. He would likely have to act alone if at all and turn his life upside down to do it.

  And then again, the circumstances remained so clouded—everything from Sheridan’s death to the state of Theresa’s nerves. If there had been some cry for help, some unmistakable plea, the path ahead would have been plainer.

  On the steps where Harris had first heard Sheridan’s vo
ice, Small turned.

  “She mentioned you, Isaac,” he said. “I didn’t know whether to tell you.”

  “Please do.”

  “She asked did I think enough time had passed that you could regard her now as just a friend.”

  Pain rippled through Harris’s stomach, chest, and throat. “And you answered?”

  He knew he had given Small no reason to believe he was over his disappointed love. Time and again Small had introduced him to charming young women that he had danced with for part of an evening and gratefully seen whisked out of his arms by enthusiastic young men. As lately as Saturday, he had danced the polka—which was taking ballrooms by storm, and which Methodists found so lewdly suggestive. For better or worse, Harris was not very open to suggestion, he guessed. He nonetheless would have found it hard to forgive if Small had said anything that might have deterred Theresa from seeking his aid.

  “I said, ‘Try him.’”

  “Good.” Harris let out a breath he had scarcely been aware he had been holding.

  “I gather she didn’t,” said Small.

  “No. I wish I had known.”

  “Well, she didn’t tell me she was about to vanish.”

  “Of course not,” said Harris gently. “Thanks.”

  Chapter Three

  The Rouge Valley

  Well-established habits carried Harris through Thursday afternoon’s routine business—interviewing loan applicants, authorizing replacement of a cracked window pane, reprimanding a chronically unpunctual teller, perusing economic reports. Canadian wheat production for 1856 was expected to reach twenty-six million bushels. An impressive figure, probably still on the low side—although the new peace with Russia and the consequent reopening of trade to the east could not but depress the price those Canadian bushels would fetch in England and France. The fat years might well be ending.

  Harris found it impossible to care, preoccupied as he was with what act of friendship Theresa had required. He had kept Small standing on his office steps and asked him that question in various ways, but—beyond sympathetic companionship during William Sheridan’s indisposition—Small had no ideas at all.