Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  “Henry Crane?” he asked. “Have you ever heard that name?”

  The lightkeeper folded the cloth he had been using on the ironwork and from the pocket of a blue jacket took a softer one for polishing the lens.

  “Never have,” he said after a period of reflection. “Ingram mentioned no name. An unwilling backer, he said—and he offered me some advice I never asked for. Powerful friends, he said, are no substitute for a well-stocked mind.”

  “What do you think he meant?”

  “Underhand dealings—if a bamboozling fool like that means anything at all. I don’t know what your interest in Ingram is, mister, but even if you are his friend, I can’t tell you anything different. I served with the U.S. navy till ’53. I got this post because the Lighthouse Board said I was the best man to fill it. That Ingram of yours knew nothing of shipping or navigation, not that I could see—but then there was no Lighthouse Board when he came here.”

  “Harvey Ingram is dead,” said Harris. It seemed unnecessary to disown friendship with the deceased. “I should just like to know what claim he had on the backer you mention.”

  “He didn’t say. I didn’t press him, wanting no more of his foul breath than necessary. If he’s dead, it’s of drink, I suppose.”

  No more could Harris learn, however his questions were phrased. In ’49, the lightkeeper had been sailing the Atlantic Ocean, and so had never heard of Colin Ewing.

  On resuming his voyage north, Harris felt justified in making certain suppositions.

  Suppose that on October 11, 1849, Lightkeeper Ingram sees Henry Crane at Presque Isle and tells him what Steadfast’s mate is putting about—namely, that Colin Ewing is hideously burned and will last no more than a week. For that week, Crane hides. Later, Ingram learns the date of Crane’s tardy arrival in the Sault. Ingram starts the rumour that business in Detroit was not what kept Crane from Ewing’s death bed. Because of its disreputable origin, this rumour is ignored, and Crane moves south before he can be much embarrassed by it in any case. In Toronto, Crane’s fortune and influence grow.

  Further, suppose that eventually Lightkeeper Ingram learns the more-than-embarrassing secret of Henry Crane’s delay, the where and why. This time he tells no one but Crane. Now he has enough power over Crane to get himself appointed lightkeeper in Toronto. Crane would have had to call in some favours for that, considerable favours as Ingram is an American, but still Ingram wants more. Pressed for ever larger payments, Crane eventually turns for help to MacFarlane.

  So much it seemed safe to assume, but to the secret itself Harris felt no closer than when he had left Montreal. What had taken Ingram from ’49 to ’53 to find, Harris must uncover in three weeks, most of them necessarily consumed by weary travel.

  What card had Ingram held? What tool or device had worked the extortion? Still, after all these miles, the only guess was Small’s. At parting, the lawyer still clung to his idea that Crane had risked wrecking Steadfast in order to kill Ewing. That was no way to make money.

  From the deck of the Lady Elgin, Harris once more sent his eyes around the horizon. The shore behind was now a hazy thread, the shore ahead not that even. He wondered if Crane might have had a non-pecuniary motive for wanting Ewing dead.

  Harris had previously discounted Crane’s lechery as the source of blackmail. Crane must at the Sault have had at least one mistress, if not what Cuthbert Nash called a country wife—but what of that? Even a plurality of country wives had taken nothing from the prestige of Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. These were Indian women, after all.

  Of course, a Theresa Sheridan contemplating legal marriage could be expected to hold less worldly views. During courtship, Crane might have paid to keep word of his paramours and any children by them from Theresa’s ears. Coincidentally, it did seem that Ingram’s blackmail had commenced in the year of that courtship, 1853. Later, though, when Crane’s bride was securely bound to him and her good opinion of no further value or interest, and when the favours expected from his father-in-law were not forthcoming, Crane would have been less spendthrift in concealing what no one else would hold against him. Ingram must have been paid to hide something else. By the same token, discovering a concubine or even an unofficial family would not give Harris the bargaining power he needed over Crane.

  For these reasons, as well as from aversion to the subject, Harris had thought little of Crane’s northern amours. Suppose, however, Crane had killed his partner over a woman both wanted. To this woman Ewing might have been expected to surrender his claims after becoming engaged to a girl in Chicago. Suppose he had not. He still had a month or six weeks before his marriage in November. Having counted on being left in sole possession of the field, might Crane not have become jealous? Certainly.

  Might he have become murderously jealous, even to the point of jeopardizing his own steamer? Unlikely.

  Nevertheless . . .

  A new avenue of inquiry opened before Harris. He would much rather discover a murder than a scandal. Considerations of honour and security alike made him prefer arraigning Crane to threatening him. Harris wanted a hard indictment with all the daylight power of the Crown behind it, not hard bargaining in the shadows with only his unseconded nerve flickering between Theresa and her tormentor.

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

  A helpless desire to shield her from all unkindness, an ache that never left Harris, grew painfully acute. His fingers tightened around the steamer’s wooden rail. Until he returned he had to trust to others, to herself, but trust was difficult so long as his arms remembered how pitifully light and fragile Theresa had felt when Harris carried her from the Lansing shack a bare three weeks ago. She was stronger now, he knew. Under the Brays’ roof, she would come to no harm. And yet he needed as a wound needs stanching to fold his darling once more in his arms.

  First he must rub his nose in her husband’s debauches. He had to find and question any woman that had shared Crane’s bed in the north. Somehow this had not before been quite clear to Harris’s mind. It was now.

  As he looked for the unknown land ahead, he felt the frontier he was crossing in himself.

  No healthy nature can grieve and fear uninterruptedly. On Thursday afternoon, 11th September, Theresa’s gloom began loosening about her the moment she stepped from the Brays’ monotonous sanctuary into the city streets. Retracing her steps some minutes later, she left Rasco’s Hotel in a veritable bubble of cheerfulness. She had banteringly impressed upon the ostlers that the grey mare Mr. Harris had left with them had friends in Montreal. She extracted a promise that in Mr. Harris’s absence Banshee was to be walked for half an hour in the stable yard every day without fail. Surprise visits of inspection were hinted at.

  How little exercise she could herself afford she did not mention. The ordinary jostle of traffic on a shopping thoroughfare like St. Paul Street came as a rare luxury. Gratefully she breathed everyday odours of cheese and tobacco and lard. Brighter snatches of Ecclesiastes came to mind.

  “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.”

  She turned right on St. Joseph Street and crossed the Place d’Armes in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. To this point she was sure she had not been followed. On Craig Street she became more cautious. From the intersection, she noted two men standing in conversation on the sidewalk opposite the Brays’ door. She took a turn around the block only to find them still there. She had to get back to the house. The servant, if not Charlotte Bray, would by now have returned and be concerned about her. She reconnoitred the back lane.

  The houses pressed their faces to Craig Street in a row as flat as ironed ribbon. Out there, everyone stood in plain sight, but back here a jagged succession of sheds and broken fences afforded hidy-holes in plenty. If Henry’s spies could not see Theresa coming, neither could she see them lurking.

  A sun-dazed dog sniffed the back of an outhous
e. Otherwise the lane appeared empty. Then, from where the Brays’ yard must be, their serving girl ran out, her straw-coloured hair coming undone, the hem of her Saxon blue dress trailing in the dust. She looked both ways, too quickly to see anything.

  “Mrs. Crane,” she called timidly, and then with anxious force. “Oh, Mrs. Crane, do come back. What will Mistress say?”

  Theresa had not the heart to conceal herself before the young woman glanced her way again.

  “Mrs. Crane? Oh, thank God!”

  “Not so loud, Janet, please.” Theresa advanced to meet her. “Let’s go in.”

  “But where have—?”

  “Don’t stop out here,” Theresa interrupted, taking the girl’s arm and propelling her forward.

  The dog whined as they passed the outhouse. Theresa turned her head and into her face was thrust a thick cotton pad, covering nose, mouth and eyes. Both her arms were seized from behind. Janet was screaming.

  Theresa could pull no air into her lungs through the cloud-soft layers of fabric. All the strength of fear flowed into her limbs. She squirmed and twisted to shake off what seemed a light grip above either elbow. Each constraining hand closed just enough to convince her it was irresistible. Her shoulders were pulled flat against her captor’s chest.

  This was it then, death by suffocation. Another, less assured pair of hands not only kept the pad against Theresa’s face, but so increased the pressure on it that she thought her nose must break.

  Father in heaven, no! Truly light is sweet.

  Blindly she kicked out, but could feel her slippers glance harmless off sturdy legs, while the exertion made her all the more desperate for the oxygen denied her. She kept kicking anyway.

  “Help, murder!” cried the servant.

  “Hush now, miss,” a paternal French voice instructed her. “Chut, hurlez plus. This lady is a danger to herself and others. Son arrestation aux ordres de son mari est parfaitement conforme à la loi. See how her infirmity makes her struggle.”

  “You’re choking her, sir. Do let her breathe.”

  “Oui, mon enfant, à la bonne heure. Now, Mrs. Crane, will you calm yourself or must we use the chloroform?”

  “Tilt back her head,” said a younger, quavering voice. “Shall I pour it now?”

  Theresa scarcely heard any of this for the sound of her own lungs bursting.

  Chapter Twenty

  The First Crime

  The Lady Elgin docked at the Sault on the morning of Saturday, August 30. When Harris set foot on the Canadian bank of the St. Mary’s River, he found himself on a low, not totally flat stretch of ground, bounded in the middle distance by round-topped, rocky hills. Nearer the water, bush fires had evidently consumed the larger trees. Their charred stumps were still visible, but as much as ten years of new growth already wreathed the village in green and autumn gold. This was again not the forbidding scene Harris had anticipated. There was no beauty here to stop him in his tracks, but still a pleasing novelty of configuration combined with a humanity of scale.

  At the edge of the settlement stood a few birchbark wigwams, also round, like bowls turned bottom upwards. They reminded Harris he had strayed beyond the territory of the Mohawk, traditionally longhouse-dwellers. Shipboard talk had it that still more than nine residents in ten of Sault Ste. Marie, C.W. were Ojibway Indians or half-breeds, although plainly most had built their habitations to the white man’s pattern. That is, a single storey of timber squared and covered over in clapboard. West of their houses, some fifty of them or more, rose the tall peaked roof and taller flagpole of the Hudson’s Bay Company post—and to the east a distinguished, two-storey edifice of red fieldstone, put together in a hybrid French and English style. Towards the stone house Harris directed his footsteps. Built for a fur trader when furs were wealth, it had recently—since Father Gouin’s time—been converted from an unused private residence into the Stone House Hotel.

  And a comfortable hotel it was. The innkeeper and his wife were instantly inviting him into a parlour crammed with sofas, armchairs and footstools. They were offering him a glass of dandelion wine while he waited for a room to be made ready and a lunch to be served. What they could not do, having arrived too recently at the Sault, was assist him with his inquiries.

  These he attempted to pursue among the Indians, starting that afternoon. He approached one of the clapboard houses.

  An Ojibway man, lately returned from fishing, sat on his doorstep in buckskin trousers and no shirt, although the mercury stood below sixty Fahrenheit degrees. A red kerchief tied his long, black hair behind his head. His long, oval face remained still and solemn behind his clay pipe as he pretended not to notice his visitor. Harris introduced himself.

  “Would you like to buy some fish?” said the man.

  “Thank you, no, Mr . . .”

  The fisherman, who barely moved his lips when he spoke, now made a sound something like, “Kabaosa.”

  “Excuse me,” said Harris. “Would you kindly say that again?”

  “Andrew Jones.”

  From the Ojibway’s unchanged expression, there was no telling whether he was offended or jesting. Unaccustomed to Indian ways, Harris had thought the use of a name might be courteous, but he seemed to be making a mess of it. He was distractingly aware that red men—whether called Kabaosa or Andrew Jones—would predominate at Sault Ste. Marie only until the place became prized by newcomers of Harris’s own complexion. Suspicion of the white man was natural. Best for him simply to plunge ahead and let it be seen that his present business had nothing to do with driving people from their homes.

  “I was wondering, Mr.—uh—Jones, whether you knew Mr. Henry Crane or the late Colin Ewing when they were living here.”

  “They bought my fish.” Andrew Jones permitted himself what might have been a smile, but it was gone too soon to be confirmed.

  It transpired that the partners had bought many local fishermen’s catch, both to feed their sailors and to salt for resale in other ports.

  “I understand they had a woman to cook for them,” said Harris. “Where would I find her.”

  “Why ask about a cook?” said Jones. “Don’t they cook for you at the Stone House?”

  “Very well, thank you, but Henry Crane is famous now—and, when a man is famous, people want to know the story of his life.” Harris had not mentioned that he was staying at the Stone House, but he supposed it was a safe guess as it was the only hostelry on this side of the river. Although he had been considering citing Hiawatha as a sample famous man, he decided not to complicate matters.

  “You won’t spear many fish in the forest.” Jones now chuckled openly. “Why not talk to Henry Crane?”

  “I need,” said Harris, “to talk to many people. Now about this cook . . .”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “And before her, did they have another woman to look after them?”

  Jones shrugged.

  “Perhaps you could direct me to another informant,” Harris suggested, “someone who knew Henry Crane better. You couldn’t? Tell me this then, if you will—did Crane and Ewing get along well together?”

  “I never saw them fight.”

  “Did Mr. Crane show interest in any woman?”

  “Steamboats interested him,” said Jones, “and fish.”

  Baffled at every turn, Harris tried a bolder question. “Mr. Jones, did Crane have a mistress or what they call a country wife?”

  “This family is Christian.” Andrew Jones knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose with dignity. “We know nothing about country wives.”

  The interview was terminated, but was to be repeated with negligible variations before other doorsteps. Some men had had no dealings with Crane closer than having cut fuel wood for him one winter when hunting was poor, while others had the by now familiar excuse of having arrived at the Sault too lately to have known him at all. Some had come from Fort William or Michipicoten on his steamers—though none had been a passenger on Steadfast on O
ctober 9, 1849. One man said Crane and Ewing’s cook had died of old age. Another claimed she had moved away. Whether Crane had paid attention to any woman on either side of the river was a question that none would answer and that many seemed to resent as a slur upon the chastity of their female relations.

  The Ojibway women Harris spoke to, often found at work in their vegetable patches, would be even less communicative. They would have too little English or pretend to. Many referred him to their husbands. One pretty mixed-blood girl burst out laughing at the mention of Crane’s name. She would not at first say why. Harris pressed her.

  “‘Crane’ is one of the clans of the Ojibway,” she replied at last, “the first clan at Baw-a-ting. That’s the Sault here. It’s funny to hear of a white man with that name.”

  “Did you know him?” Harris asked—but he could learn nothing further from her and soon realized she would have been a child of only seven or eight when Crane left.

  Over the following days Harris continued his inquiries with no more success. He paid a call on the customs officer. He visited the Hudson’s Bay Company post, which no longer received furs in any number and was in essence an imposing retail store. He visited the Indian reserve at Garden River. He would have sought advice from the Anglican mission, but the priest was tending his flock on Manitoulin Island, a part of his parish some 150 miles distant.

  Harris also tried his luck on the south bank of the St. Mary’s River. He found the American settlement still recognizable from Father Gouin’s description, the chief improvement being a year-old canal with two locks of 350 feet each. From May to November, a ship or two a day now passed up to or down from Lake Superior.

  Unfortunately, Steadfast no longer plied these waters. Her new owners had her serving ports on Lake Michigan now, nothing this far north. Harris had been hoping to see with his own eyes how this steamer’s engine was mounted—and where, in her first year of operation, the copper pipe had broken. He doubted now if he would have time. It disappointed him to hear that the vessel that had so elaborately been broken up, portaged in pieces, and reassembled above the rapids should so easily have slipped back below them and away.