Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  “Better moral economy,” said Small, “to have killed Ingram.”

  “Crane must have thought, ‘Better late than never.’ Did you mark his ease at the bones inquest?”

  Small grinned. “Satisfaction at Ingram’s passing?”

  “Nothing would surprise me less. I’m wondering if Crane might not have made his last payment to Ingram in a form he knew would prove fatal. Namely, alcoholic drink.”

  Small wiped brandy and cherry syrup from his mouth with a corner of napkin and remarked that their time would be better spent in ordering and drinking their own champagne than in returning to Toronto to discover the source of Ingram’s. Another blackmail victim might have sent it. Even if Crane were found to be involved, they would have little power over him. A case of wine from an abstainer was anomalous, but not criminal, or even—outside the Temperance Lodges—sufficiently embarrassing to be the subject of hard bargaining. What they needed to learn was not how Ingram died, but what Ingram knew.

  Harris shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He felt saddle sore from the afternoon’s twenty-mile ride, and there was something else. He suggested taking their cigars outside.

  Nine o’clock had sounded, and the moon was up. They strolled down to the harbour, passing along the short side of the now quiet Bonsecours Market. This recent limestone structure in the neo-classical style—prodigiously long in comparison to its width—extended with its pavilions, bays and columns nearly five hundred feet along the quays, and a northerly breeze made the two smokers content to walk up and down for a time in its lee. Crowning the market’s midpoint rose a noble silver dome, doubly noble in the silver moonlight. Glancing up, Harris felt drawn to this temple of healthy commerce—and repelled by the quite different dark market of secrets he was about to enter.

  Small’s logic unsettled him. Small’s reference to “hard bargaining” suggested that whatever so-called crime Crane had committed might not be one for which he could be hanged or locked away from Theresa in the Penitentiary. What they were hunting might simply be a source of scandal. Something, it might be, public knowledge of which would intolerably damage Crane’s business or personal reputation—something comparable to the cholera letter MacFarlane had taken such extreme measures to suppress. Possessed of whatever Ingram had known about Crane, Harris would find himself in Ingram’s shoes. If he managed to get his hand on the lever with which to pry Crane away from Theresa, Harris would also be a blackmailer. The idea revolted him.

  At the same time, a high-minded contest seemed hopeless when Theresa’s champion surveyed the armour shielding her antagonist—the company directorships, the private railway coaches, the King Street office block, the iron-hulled steamers, the mechanics and labourers to command. At the centre, invulnerable, strode a parricide libertine, Theresa’s legal husband, breaker of necks as well as hearts. How shameful was it to shame him into effectively renouncing her?

  Perhaps Harris should be prepared to incur shame for his lady’s sake, even if she shun him for it. His pre-eminent goal must be her salvation, not his honour—nor yet her approbation. And still, though he lose her, he would dearly have liked to deserve her, which a blackmailer could not hope to do. Or could he?

  What reprieved Harris from this maze of conscience was the difficulty of discovering what, if anything, Crane had to conceal. The double murder could not be bargained over. To admit knowledge of those crimes would be to place Theresa in mortal danger. Harris wondered how to proceed. In Montreal there was little more he could learn. He would see Theresa tomorrow and question her in the light of this afternoon’s developments, but unless she showed him other paths to follow, he supposed he would have to set out for the Northwest.

  Harris felt a chill disproportionate to the breath of autumn in the air. He was thinking, as he had just before finding Theresa, of the unearthly vastness of the country. He had read enough accounts by travellers of both sexes to know it was possible to live and move and receive hospitality up north, and yet he himself had travelled too little, lived over the shop too long. When he pictured the setting of Ewing’s death, Harris’s fancy drew in waves and trees three times the height of any he had seen, sketched rocks more massive than the Bonsecours Market itself, and painted all with frost.

  Such was the country that beckoned. He could not send or take Small, whose particular talents would be better employed making sure Theresa received the best possible care from the Brays and putting as many obstacles as possible in the way of any action Crane might take to reclaim his wife.

  Small and Harris walked out to the edge of the revetment wall. As they listened to the harbour waters lap against hulls destined for the farthest reaches of the globe, Harris laid his project before his companion. He would sail from Montreal tomorrow night. In order to follow as closely as possible Crane’s northward route of seven years ago, Harris would journey first south and west all the way to Detroit. There he would take passage for Sault Ste. Marie. He tacitly wished Small might devise some alternative.

  “When you go,” said Small, “try to find that man who served as mate on Steadfast and see if he thinks the ship could have been made to break.”

  No one spoke while the mantel clock in the Brays’ front parlour struck four. Despite its title, the room was cosily informal—its light clutter of books, child’s letter blocks and sleeping cats tending to steer guests into deeply cushioned armchairs of long service. All the same, no one but the hostess seemed at ease.

  Harris had never to his knowledge seen a divorced woman and, while she was far from the focus of his attention, did not altogether take Mrs. Bray for granted. To divorce an adulterer, he believed, was not to slight the marriage vows but rather to enforce them with justified austerity. And yet she remained easy in small matters, not indiscriminately austere like her husband. She was broad-jawed, stout, fair, something over thirty, and German-speaking to judge by her w and her v.

  “We have more tea if anyone is ready,” she offered. Ve haf . . .

  No one was.

  Philander Bray had set an icy tone by announcing to Harris that as long as William Sheridan’s daughter lodged with his family, she was to see no one except by his permission. Theresa, he said, understood and accepted this condition and regretted having gone driving with Harris and his friend the previous morning.

  “Is that not so, my dear?” he now asked.

  “The fault if any was mine,” Harris interposed, fervently wishing Bray might be called away from his hearth on some urgent and lengthy ecclesiastical errand.

  In writing to Theresa the previous evening, Harris had requested an interview. She replied that Mr. Bray would not be lecturing Saturday morning and wished to work undisturbed at home, but that he would “not refuse” a call Saturday afternoon. Harris marvelled at such cordiality and filled the morning with preparations for a northern journey. He bought maps and arranged transport. He questioned Father Gouin, confirming if not much extending the story as he knew it. Activity increased his confidence in his project. Now he needed to discuss it with Theresa.

  “Your fault was great, Mr. Harris,” said the clergyman, “but I wait to hear from her.”

  Theresa’s eyes blazed forth. She wore no cap and her short, chestnut hair gleamed richly as she swung to face her catechist. Her hands lay folded in the lap of a new striped gown, folded not like linen but like wings, ready to rise on the instant to great tasks. She looked to Harris more vital than at any time during the past half-month. He let her speak for herself.

  “You and your family, sir, have been most kind,” she said with utter conviction, despite her annoyance. “I’m grateful for your help on any terms.”

  “You’re very welcome,” said Mrs. Bray. Plainly she felt it was time to change the subject. “But Mrs. Crane has a decision to make and naturally she wants the counsel of an old friend like you, Mr. Harris. Won’t you tell him, Theresa, what you have in mind?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Bray urge me to go to the United States as the surest way to escape Henr
y’s grasp.”

  “Immediately?” Full of his own—admittedly tenuous—plans for her protection, Harris was taken by surprise.

  “Henry may arrive at any moment,” Theresa replied, “and I don’t see how I can ask this family to place themselves on the wrong side of the law for my sake.”

  The clergyman and his wife protested simultaneously.

  “They won’t want us in gaol!” exclaimed Mrs. Bray. “Have no thought of that.”

  “A just battle is a joy,” Bray grimly intoned, “but I am advised that in this case, a delaying action of one month at the outside is the most that can be hoped for.”

  Harris wavered. As a temporary measure, Theresa’s going abroad would certainly buy time—enough time for him to discover what, if anything, Ingram had been holding over Crane.

  “Our friends in Boston would help her to the nursing work she desires,” said Mrs. Bray. “There is even a Female Medical College where she could qualify as a physician. But she won’t go without your blessing, sir, in view of your great services to her, so don’t you think you could give it?”

  “You see how persuasive Charlotte is, Isaac,” said Theresa. “What do you think?”

  Harris thought many things he did not say. The first was that this didn’t sound like a temporary change of residence. The second was how few friends of her own sex Theresa had had and how natural it was that this sensible and kindly European woman should have the power to persuade. Mrs. Bray’s very lack of marked American characteristics made her proposal the more seductive. Travel was easy, borders permeable. There was nothing in Charlotte to remind Theresa of her father’s distrust of Yankee republican notions of government, or to remind Harris that his father had at Queenston stared down the barrels of Yankee muskets. Harris wondered if he had been too quick to dismiss the option of exile—and yet he wanted a chance to explore the alternative first.

  “Mr. Bray spoke of delaying Crane,” he said. “It has just occurred to me that—whatever he may say—Henry is bound to appear at the continuation of an inquest in Scarboro next Thursday. He cannot be expected here in Montreal for at least a week. I wonder, Theresa, if you might not postpone your decision for a further week or two after that.”

  “To what end?” said Bray.

  “To allow time for me to travel to Sault Ste. Marie, where I expect to make discoveries that will prevent Mrs. Crane’s husband from persecuting her further.”

  Theresa started to speak.

  “What discoveries?” demanded Bray. “Explain yourself.”

  “I should like to do so first to Mrs. Crane,” said Harris.

  At this, Mrs. Bray claimed to hear one of her children crying and excused herself. A marmalade kitten followed her out. Her husband remained.

  “Mr. Bray,” said Theresa, “I don’t know what impression you can have formed of my father’s friend Isaac Harris. This man has given practically all he has for my welfare, without prospect of reward. Trust him as you would yourself. Even if I were to forget that I am a married woman—a plain impossibility—he would not forget. There can be no impropriety in my speaking to him alone.”

  This tribute aroused in Harris such longings as belied it, but it had at least some of the desired effect on Bray.

  “You may speak apart. I shall sit by the window and read.” The cleric promptly took up a pamphlet entitled The Immaculate Conception Exploded: A Protestant Episcopalian View. With the grey light from Craig Street pouring in at his back, his eyes were in deeper shadow than ever.

  Harris somewhat self-consciously moved to a chair nearer Theresa. The rustle of her new dress—doubtless one of Mrs. Bray’s taken in, but very becoming—did nothing to steady him. His cheek tingled where her lips had touched it the day before. She misconstrued his flushed face.

  “I see my watchdog has angered you too,” she whispered, “but we must remember he would be poor protection if he were as easy and affable as some of our British priests. Why do you wish to go to Sault Ste. Marie?”

  So Harris got his chance, of which he proceeded to make very little. Theresa didn’t know if Crane had ever been or might have been the victim of blackmail—and if Harris intended to blackmail Crane into leaving her alone, she thought it a dangerous plan, not to mention an ignoble one. She did not want Harris to make this trip on her behalf. She would rather he not go. No, she knew nothing of Harvey Ingram, Colin Ewing, the latter’s death, Crane’s movements at the time, or indeed what Harris was talking about. Henry had killed Papa and, before her eyes, Sibyl. These events so filled her heart she could not begin to contemplate wrongs more remote.

  Harris understood—in her place would have felt the same. Still, it was awkward.

  Then Theresa, for her part, wanted to know the contents of the document for which her father had died and about which Small had made such a secret at their last meeting.

  “You must have wormed it out of Jasper by now,” she whispered.

  “Dr. Hillyard has yet to answer our telegram.”

  While this was true, it failed to satisfy her.

  “But hasn’t Jasper told you?”

  “In confidence,” Harris replied miserably, setting himself and Theresa even more at odds. Their differences distressed him the more for being of necessity expressed in the most intimate undertones.

  Bray cleared his throat and looked pointedly at the mantel clock.

  “I could try to get Jasper to tell you while I’m away,” said Harris at something approaching normal volume, “but I take it you won’t wait.”

  She had reasons not to wait. She didn’t believe in Harris’s errand, whereas by turning Bostonian she could have work, training and perhaps a New England divorce that would cancel Crane’s legal hold over her—so long as she never came home. If she would have him, Harris would join her in the republic, but with the heaviest of hearts. It seemed intolerable that the monster who had already taken so much from Theresa should deprive her of her native land as well, the land whose governance her Papa had helped shape. And still in Massachusetts, law or no law, Crane might molest her.

  “I’ll wait because you ask it,” she said coolly and distinctly. “Please don’t try to explain.”

  Harris hated to avail himself of such deference—a most inauspicious substitute for mutual sympathy—and hoped that this was the last time he would ever have to do so.

  “Theresa,” he murmured, “I’m sorry . . .” It was too late, though, to continue privately now that they had spoken aloud.

  “So, my dear,” said their host, “has he given you reasons for procrastination?”

  “I find I need more time to compose my thoughts,” Theresa replied, “that is if I may stay here another fortnight or so.”

  “Let us say three weeks. Now perhaps Mr. Harris will accompany us to Evensong.”

  “With pleasure.” To Theresa he whispered, “Thank you.”

  Christ Church Cathedral on Notre Dame Street was a neoclassical temple over whose altar imposingly stretched a painted Last Supper—after da Vinci, Harris supposed. The subject, together perhaps with the time of day, led him into far from pleasant speculations. During the Lord’s Prayer, he stole a glance across at Theresa, seated between the Brays’ young daughter and son.

  “. . . deliver us from Evil.”

  Lips moving soundlessly, head gracefully inclined, she would have afforded the greatest artist a model of saintly devotion, except that her eyes—instead of bending heavenwards or resting serenely closed—were clenched shut. In leaving Montreal, Harris wondered, to what fate would he be abandoning her?

  The children clung affectionately to her on the short walk back to Craig Street, but ran ahead as soon as their father had the door open. Theresa squeezed Harris’s arm.

  “When Henry comes knocking,” she said, “I hate to think you’ll be a thousand miles away.”

  “Come with me,” he suddenly urged, braver at the mere thought of her beside him on those northern shores. “We’ll succeed better every way.”


  Already, though, she was following Charlotte Bray inside. While it still lacked an hour until sunset, in the front hall a lamp was being lit. Theresa turned in its glow.

  “Forget I spoke, Isaac. I know no harm will touch me under this roof.”

  Harris did not forget, even when five days later a gale on Lake Huron was doing its utmost to pitch all food from his stomach and every thought from his head.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Thousand Miles

  Theresa picked a child’s pair of breeches from the mending basket beside her. When that was empty, there was in the Brays’ basement another hamper of clothes donated by more affluent Anglicans and needing repairs before distribution to those in want.

  “Should I patch this pocket or just shorten it?” she wondered aloud.

  There was no one to hear. Philander was on his way to McGill to distinguish between three Greek words for “love,” Charlotte and the two chicks on theirs to the market to choose between pyramids of rosy apples. And the surviving child of Charlotte’s first marriage no longer shared the Montreal house. Now that he was sixteen, Theresa had been told, he had gone to learn civil engineering with his father in Hartford. Well, it was weather to be going somewhere. The sun shone for the first time in days, falling through the shutters to trace on the worn carpet a fiery grill.

  The parlour otherwise felt drowsy. Theresa had opened the casements but dared not unlock the shutters, for the low windows gave directly onto the sidewalk. To keep alert, she instead moved to a straight-backed chair.

  She would get more items done, clothe more people, if she just stitched across here above the hole.

  “So my terrier thinks the poor don’t need deep pockets,” she heard her father chuckle. “Why not sew them shut altogether?”

  She wanted to answer that there was other work she was better at. She shared much with the Brays, including more and more a healing sense of family, but their small household could never employ her fully.