Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  The mate who had brought Ewing to Father Gouin had also left the Sault. Sailors familiar with Steadfast were to be found in the American taverns, but none believed Ewing’s injuries could have been other than accidental. The Sault in ’49, as now, had been no more than a trading post. There had been no machine shop or skilled shipwrights, and a screw-driven vessel would have been novel anywhere. Harris’s best information was that some defect in the way Crane and Ewing’s steamer had been put back together after the portage had led to the accident fatal to one of its owners. Ewing was the one who knew engines, but had a reputation for impatience and neglect of detail. What a dreadful price he had paid!

  As for Crane’s reputation, he was the one for raising funds and wooing customers. Not a drinking man, but affable—no wearisome temperance fanatic. Always ready to do business. In fact, Crane had left the Sault to confer with mine officials in Marquette before reassembly of Steadfast had been completed and a final inspection made. If he had weakened the mounts, it could only have been through an accomplice. Of such an individual Harris could uncover no trace.

  The sailors had never heard Crane speak of a woman, much less seen him with one, but then he lived on the Canadian side of the river, where they rarely had occasion to go.

  On Thursday, September 4, Harris went in to dinner in low spirits. It would have required more hope than he could muster to keep seven weeks of anxiety and exertion from showing in his face. The innkeeper’s wife noticed his dejection when she came to tell him that, although the steamer from Collingwood had not yet arrived, she would wait for it no longer before serving the evening meal.

  “You must find us dull here, Mr. Harris,” she observed, “compared to the cities of the South.”

  “On the contrary,” Harris protested in all honesty. “My preoccupations make me poor company, I’m afraid, but I begin to feel quite at home at the Sault.”

  He was developing an affinity for the place—perhaps because Holland Landing had during his youth there played a similar rôle on a smaller scale. In that gateway village between Lakes Ontario and Simcoe, his first notions of commerce had formed. How Harris would have exulted—with less pressing inquiries in hand—to survey as he now could all traffic passing between the continent’s two largest bodies of fresh water! Here was opportunity, here excitement. Even now, he could not but spare a thought for the forest and mineral wealth of the Superior shores, most particularly for the iron ore deposits. The future would be built as no age before it on iron and steel.

  His mood, notwithstanding, remained bleak. His bright and sweeping prophecies showed Harris nothing of his immediate path. Either he must gain somehow the confidence of the reticent Ojibway, or he must leave Sault Ste. Marie. In the latter case, he would begin to retrace his path towards Presque Isle and try to find out where Crane had disembarked—or, possibly, jumped overboard—while Ewing was expiring. The wrong choice would prevent Harris’s timely return to Montreal or force him to return empty-handed. There might be no right choice.

  Under the circumstances, he could hardly do justice to the succulent whitefish, followed by caribou, wild rice, squash and beans. Nor did he find that he cared that the bread was made from maize, a subject of some complaint.

  “The Hudson’s Bay factor has wheat flour shipped in for his personal use,” grumbled a fellow guest, a mining man who passed through the Sault regularly. “Hang the expense! The Company coddles him out of its own vanity.”

  The innkeeper’s wife was starting to explain that with farmers now settling in the area, there would soon be wheat flour in plenty, when to Harris’s surprise a more pugnacious reply erupted from the doorway behind his back.

  “Not a word against the Company there, whoever you are. Not in my hearing.”

  The irascible voice was one Harris had heard just days ago. It hardly seemed possible, but on turning in his chair he found the new arrival was indeed Cuthbert Nash, round-bellied, grey-bearded, motley-dressed, the warehouse clerk from Lachine. The steamer from Collingwood must have just landed him. From the luggage in his hands and on his back, it looked as if Nash had brought all his possessions, but he mentioned to his hostess that his furniture was to follow. He had found he was not suited to life in the South. Next day he intended to present himself at the local Hudson’s Bay post in the hope of obtaining work nearer his Indian family.

  “And proper bread,” the mining man snorted.

  Harris saw good fortune in Nash’s arrival. Here was someone who, for all his eccentricities, both spoke Ojibway and had known Crane in the forties. Nash, however, treated the detective’s first overtures with unaccountable suspicion. Yes, he remembered Harris—only too well!

  By now every portion of every bed at the Stone House had been spoken for. While Nash warmed himself with a glass of toddy, Harris quietly arranged to swap his own private room for half of the ex-manager’s shared one and lay disguised under the bedclothes by the time Nash retired. He took care not to sleep for fear of missing his chance. He need not have worried. Nash’s cursing and stamping on entering would have wakened a stone, to say nothing of his smell on undressing. Clothed, he emitted a conventionally repulsive perfume of grease and sweat, but the removal of coat, shirt, boots and trousers released an odour of human waste stale and filthy beyond even that of Mrs. Lansing’s shack. Harris braced himself.

  He had taken the half of the bed nearest the door. As Nash climbed into the other side and made to extinguish his candle, Harris sat up. He felt ridiculous, but forged ahead.

  “Mr. Nash, I must talk to you.”

  “What? You?”

  Nash’s voice rose almost comically with the shock of the encounter, but Harris was too busy dodging the candle flame being waved in his face to think of laughing.

  “Steady there,” he said.

  “This is another of your blasted tricks!” Nash withdrew an inch or so, his face an angrily flushed island in its grey sea of whiskers. “Too late to find another berth,” he grumbled, “but you’ll keep your mouth shut if you prize the teeth in it.”

  “You can’t box in bed,” Harris advised, calm only because desperate for Nash’s help. “This meeting apart, how have I tricked you?”

  “Ask your friend Mr. Crane.”

  “Crane?”

  “It happens I ran into him as I was preparing to leave the island of Montreal.” His left hand still clutching the candle, which drizzled tallow freely over the blankets, Nash stabbed the accusing, black-nailed index of his right hand into Harris’s chest. “He set me straight on one or two points, you can be sure.”

  Proof against Nash’s physical threats, Harris nonetheless felt at this announcement an icicle of fear press against his spine.

  “Yes? What did you say to him?”

  “Told him the kind of question you were asking.”

  So Crane knew his secrets were being probed. This Harris had wanted above all to avoid, believing the industrialist would make life harder for Theresa in proportion as he felt himself hunted. His wife had run away from him. He might not know how much she knew, but he must doubt her loyalty. If attacked, he would try to prevent her giving comfort to his enemies, would place her under lock and key if nothing worse. Such was her abhorrence of him, Harris dreaded that worse would follow without Crane’s further contriving.

  “Well?” Harris demanded. “On which points did he correct you?”

  “You said he had no wife, when all the while you had designs on Mrs. Crane.”

  “I said I meant to find if he was a fit husband, as I know he is not.”

  “Cock-and-bull equivocation.”

  A squall of wind rattled the shutter. The room was getting colder. Nonetheless, Harris slipped from under the covers and lit a candle of his own. It cheered him little. His return to Montreal was made more urgent by Nash’s revelation, and in the interim Nash seemed ill-disposed to assist him. Well, with the cat partly out, he might as well open the bag.

  “Crane murdered his father-in-law,” he said.
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  “I spoke to—”

  “Kindly note, Mr. Nash, that I do not equivocate,” Harris broke in. “On July 12—not two months ago—the man you spoke to smothered William Sheridan in his bed.”

  Even if he believed Harris, would Nash care? By the standards of the post manager’s frontier existence, Crane’s bloodless crimes might appear rather tame.

  Nash scratched an unwashed armpit consideringly. “The name,” he said, “means nothing to me.”

  “A Member of Parliament, former Minister of the Crown, a friend to the poor, champion of responsible government and of reform.” Harris saw that none of these attributes meant anything to Nash either. “A widower constant to his wife’s memory,” he continued more urgently, “a devoted daughter’s tender father, a gentleman of your own age, in the prime of life, cravenly suffocated—with a pillow.” Seizing one from the bed, Harris brandished it for emphasis. “And the next day this same Henry Crane broke a serving woman’s neck. He was seen doing it.”

  “Why then is he not arrested?”

  “The witness is prevented from testifying. That’s why I need your particular help, Mr. Nash, in uncovering any wrongs Crane may have committed here, in the North.”

  “I have my own affairs to occupy me,” Nash replied testily. “I must see the factor—”

  “Yes,” Harris agreed, “but you speak the Ojibways’ language and know how to gain their confidence, I’m convinced.”

  “Never doubt it! Gentleman in his fifties, you say?”

  “Laid in the earth at age fifty-three. Will you come with me tomorrow morning?”

  “If I am at leisure, and my mind doesn’t change.” Nash snuffed out his candle and lay down, taking some time to arrange the pillow. “Doesn’t surprise me about Crane,” he said a moment later. “I’ve a keen nose for any character defect.”

  Next morning, the two stepped from the Stone House together, as Harris had wished. Misgivings nevertheless assailed him. For Nash’s abilities he had only Nash’s own boastful word, whereas Nash’s temper he had had more than one occasion to observe. Might the former post manager not spoil all by want of tact?

  From the first encounter, such fears were wondrously dispelled. Cuthbert Nash’s character showed quite another facet in his dealings with the Ojibway. Red skins did not appear to inflame his anger as did white. With the Indians he was by appropriate turns grave and dignified or merry and droll, but—so far as Harris could judge by tone of voice—never critical, never exasperated.

  “Your Ojibway,” he remarked to Harris, “doesn’t like to utter his own name. So if there is no third party to do the honours, you’re best to dispense with introductions.”

  Harris doubted if his ignorance on this point had caused his interview with Andrew Jones to miscarry, but clearly he had put his foot wrong at the start.

  Finally, he learned something to his purpose. Nash had them directed to the village’s greatest gossip, from whom they heard that Crane and Ewing’s last servant—mentioned in Father Gouin’s diary—had perished in a cholera outbreak three years ago. She had been in her sixties. Before her, they had employed a much younger woman. Susan Iwatoke had left the partners’ household and the Sault in May of 1849. Some said she had kin in Michilimackinac.

  The clue was slender enough, but there at least was a possible place between Presque Isle and the Sault for Crane to have disembarked. Nash would not further delay reunion with his own unofficial family. Harris set out alone.

  Theresa supposed she must have stopped struggling. She was not chloroformed. The cotton was tied so she could breathe a little, though still not see. She felt herself bundled into some conveyance and driven away from Janet’s wails at a pace sufficient to prevent the servant’s following and on a route with enough turns to confuse Theresa’s own sense of direction.

  Wedged between her abductors, she tried to note what passed between them. They had been awaiting this moment for a whole week, without thinking she would ever be fool enough to venture out. At last they had her, a nice clean catch. Not a mark on her. Theresa’s panicked pulse all but drowned out their mutual congratulations, and yet suspicion crept upon her that the younger voice for all its huskiness was female.

  The carriage stopped. A large, loose, confident hand on her right arm and a small, tight, nervous one on her left led Theresa indoors and up a broad staircase. Pretending to stumble, she managed with her shoulder to loosen the blindfold. On her left she glimpsed a boy’s baggy jacket and shako hat, but the trousered legs did not swing from the hips as a boy’s. Then also, the throat was smooth, the chin and cheek unwhiskered. Theresa believed she had seen this girl once in feminine dress, but when and where she could not think, and other matters presently took her attention. At the man on her right she never got a look.

  They were no longer climbing. Theresa was pushed through a door which locked behind her. As soon as her hands were free, she tore the hated pad from her face.

  From what she could see, she was alone. The room was square and high-ceilinged, with one fireplace and only one door. A Brussels carpet in a floral pattern covered the middle of the floor, while a few thinly upholstered chairs and a sofa stood with their backs to the walls. A parlour then, but with two peculiarities. On the one hand, it was quite bare of movable ornaments or other small objects such as vases, table lamps, busts, books, mirrors, sewing boxes, fire-tending implements or even hanging pictures. On the other hand, and this darkened the room considerably, an armoire had been dragged in front of the only window.

  To prevent the casement’s opening, thought Theresa. The ton of oak defeated her utmost exertions to budge it.

  A vertical ribbon of glass remained uncovered. Theresa peered through it and blinked, for there across Foundling Street rose the stone walls, tin roof and spire of the Grey Nuns’ convent. The sight of her former refuge did not wholly reassure her. Of greater promise was the traffic passing just below her. She must attract someone’s attention.

  With the key to the armoire, which by some oversight had been left in its door, she began tapping on the window glass. One or two pedestrians glanced up. Apparently unable to see her in the darkened room, they shrugged and hurried on. Theresa tapped harder till the window cracked, then hammered a hole in it with her shoe, sending shards of glass down onto the sidewalk. She listened a remorseful instant for the cries of the injured. Hearing none, she put her mouth to the opening and set about yelling “Help!” and “Au secours!” for all she was worth.

  But no, her cries would alert any enemies in the house. Better to throw out a note. She took the white cotton blindfold as her paper and carefully cut open her finger on the broken glass.

  “H,” she traced out, “E.”

  It was a small cut, and the blood came slowly. She was attempting to knead it down the arteries towards the wound when the door opened and closed.

  Henry Crane was in the room. He advanced slowly. From where Theresa crouched, her husband looked menacingly tall and broad-chested, although his florid face expressed for the moment bemusement rather than intimidating purpose. His eyes weren’t yet used to the semi-gloom.

  “Theresa?” He stepped closer. “What are you doing?”

  “Stop there!”

  “Oh, you’re bleeding.” He stopped with a shiver. “Do you want attention?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder as if to assure her that the attention would not come from him.

  “No, thank you, Henry.”

  Never had she spoken with such icy contempt. Her blood, she realized, was her surest protection against her weak-stomached antagonist. She stood up, but stayed pressed to the wall by the window so as to keep something sharp within reach.

  Determined to guard this advantage, she didn’t altogether listen to what Henry said next. By his tones of sincerest tenderness, she knew some trick was intended, and she heard as through a benign mist.

  “. . . overjoyed to see . . . so many weeks of not knowing . . . dreadful weeks . . . your crushing bereavement . . . share
d bereavement . . . I too . . . I—” Something here about his still not understanding why she had run away. Pain in his voice, then promise. “. . . agree to forget . . . dispense with explanations . . . all I ask . . . consent to return quietly with me.”

  Through the mist, a warning bell. If her consent was sought, she had better attend.

  Crane moved a chair into the middle of the room and held it invitingly.

  “You won’t have to plan any dinners, Theresa,” he announced in an expansive voice. “You won’t have to pay any visits or play hostess at any entertainments. All that is over. You’ll have peace and seclusion just as you would in the country. You know how sheltered from neighbours our villa is. You’ll be at liberty to read soothing books and to enjoy your orchard. The fruits are at their loveliest ripeness now. I know you won’t want to miss them.”

  His pose of providing for her welfare, convincing once, had become clownish. Why did he bother? It didn’t take Theresa’s educated eye to see that what Henry intended was an Edenic prison, justified before the world by his wife’s feeblemindedness.

  “You’re welcome to all the apples you can eat,” she coolly replied, still standing her ground. “All I ask from you is to be left alone.”

  “Will you not live with me, wife?”

  “No, Henry, I won’t. Now that’s understood, I should be obliged if you would permit me to leave.”

  Silence hung between them.

  “My friends will be anxious,” Theresa added self-consciously. “Your messengers gave their servant a scare.”

  “Are you sure you’re quite well?” asked Crane. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

  He’s determined, Theresa thought with a shudder, to have me confined as a lunatic, a prisoner in his house or somewhere worse. Disdain gave way to apprehension.