Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  She turned irritably away, then back to face him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said less gruffly. Although the anomaly of her position reflected no discredit on her, her sensitivity was understandable. Its remedy coincided with Harris’s dearest wish. “As soon as you like,” he went on, “or think compatible with your bereavement—”

  “It would not stay tucked anyway,” she said, forestalling his proposal. “I don’t know why this business of going home is becoming so difficult. My only friends were the MacFarlanes, and the cholera letter already makes it impossible to see them again. Give me your hand to hold, Isaac . . . That’s good.”

  She held it hard until her fear seeped away through the contact. For Harris, the first good was her appeal to him for strength, and his being there to respond. Then presently she began to feel and explore—so slackening, shifting and tightening the pressure of her fingers on his as to keep sensation fresh. This delighted and disturbed his entire body, and at the same time, squeezing back in answer to her lead, he felt engaged in silent conversation that after so much separate experience brought them closer together than words.

  She held his hand till Scarboro. She dropped it abruptly when, at that station, an imposing personage in black climbed aboard and surveyed the occupiers of seats as if they were so many usurpers.

  “Who’s that swell?” said Harris.

  “George MacFarlane’s secretary,” Theresa breathed.

  When MacFarlane joined him, the secretary—shrunk in height and bulk as might an elephant beside a whale—pointed out two empty places well behind Theresa and Harris. MacFarlane nodded affably and with heavy tread followed his minion. Theresa pretended to look out the window, but Harris saw they had already been recognized.

  “Hallo, George,” he said.

  “A great thing, this railway, isn’t it, Harris?” MacFarlane let one massive hand rest on the younger man’s shoulder as the train resumed its lurching march. “And a great burner of my trees, but they will be gone soon enough.”

  “I believe,” said Harris, “you’ll find a seat further back.”

  “Yes, plenty of room—but coal is the coming fuel, as our mutual friend Mr. Newbiggins never tires of saying, and if you will follow my example, coal is where you will put your money. Flora, my muse, what a pleasure to see you safe after all this time!”

  Theresa looked up into his wide blue eyes with cold dislike.

  “Your poor father,” said MacFarlane, “a loss to all who cherish British freedoms. And this imbroglio of Henry’s—unspeakable. Accept my sympathy.”

  “Henry’s affairs will be spoken of at tomorrow’s inquest,” Harris felt impelled to observe. “You may find your own freedoms touched upon.”

  Hillyard would not be the coroner presiding and might therefore testify regarding the document taken from Sheridan’s box. Harris expected that prospect to ruffle the would-be knight’s good humour. He was disappointed.

  “You prophesy boldly, Harris, like a true Kelt, but when better than on All Hallows Eve? I’ve written a slight essay on the topic for tomorrow’s Globe. In the old country, though, it was matches and marriages young people like yourselves chiefly tried to forecast this night.”

  “Mr. MacFarlane,” said Theresa, “do give my regards to your wife and children.”

  “Gladly, dear girl, but we must chat.” MacFarlane clapped Harris’s shoulder. “This cavalier won’t object to exchanging seats with your ancient friend for the balance of the journey.”

  Harris rose, welcoming the chance to escape from under the sexagenarian’s weight. MacFarlane mistakenly thought this meant compliance. He made to sit.

  “Out of the question.” Harris’s arm barred his way.

  “I see you think you know something to my discredit, but I assure you no imputation will touch me. Let’s be agreeable.”

  “By all means.” Harris wanted to ask whether the cholera sufferers had agreed to be put ashore. Nothing would be gained. He was still looking up, up into the craggy face of one of the two or three richest men in the country. “We shall agree, George, that you’ll sit with your secretary.”

  “Theresa, perhaps you would care to join me.”

  “She declines,” said Harris.

  “Can you not let Miss Sheridan speak for herself?” MacFarlane chided. He smelled of peppermints, good Cavendish and even temper.

  “I have been spoken for,” said Theresa. “Please leave us.”

  MacFarlane withdrew, smiling Keltically at the ambiguous turn of phrase. However much Theresa meant by it, or knew she meant, Harris felt for her a surge of affection that for some moments obliterated all the world besides.

  Finally, the Don River trestle rumbled under the carriage wheels, none of which had come off. They were entering the city. Ahead, through the rain and dark, loomed its first two landmarks—the chimney of the new gas works and the Berkeley Street Gaol, site of public execution.

  “Why did George have to mention its being Hallowe’en?” Theresa said. “According to Papa, the old heathen, this is the night when spirits walk, everyone who has perished in the past year.”

  On the left now, out the far window, stretched the peninsula and the harbour it cradled. All ships but one lay dark and still. At the same time, a surprising number of men were moving purposefully about the docks. Some wore police tunics. The near, right window framed the market, asleep below City Hall’s clock tower, and then the broad plain of the Esplanade sweeping up towards Front Street. Again for this late hour on a wet night, there seemed an abnormal bustle. Harris set his watch back to ten fourteen.

  “You have no enemies among the spirits,” he said distractedly.

  “No, mine are living—but you start to count and see how many dead there have been since the twelfth of July. Look, is that Jasper?”

  Harris leaned across her to open the window. The lawyer was running hatless beside the slowing train, his wavy hair rain-plastered to his head, his overcoat unbuttoned and flapping like a neglected sail. He had not seen them yet.

  “Jasper!” called Harris. “Jasper, what news?”

  Small looked up. Normally remote and enigmatic as the moon, his round face was a drenched image of consternation.

  “Crane,” he panted. “Crane has escaped.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Triumph

  An untypically scowling Inspector Vandervoort was stepping out of the railway station telegraph room onto the platform. His tweed cap sat low over his eyes. The skin by his nose flamed with drink, almost to the redness of his side-whiskers. It seemed a safe bet that the medal inscribed “Be sober and watch” was not in his waistcoat pocket.

  “What happened, John?” said Harris, flanked by Theresa and Small.

  Vandervoort showed no surprise at their presence. “He’s out. He’s wounded.”

  Harris bit back a reproach. He was familiar enough with the shortcomings of the present police department, and with Vandervoort’s own. Theresa addressed the lapsed Son of Abstinence.

  “Where did he go?” she said.

  “Without offence, Mrs.—Miss Sheridan, surely you are the expert disappearer. Your guess is worth two of mine. I’m doing what I can to find him, but I’ve too few men. Most of the ones I have are idiots. Some are in Crane’s pay. What I’ll say for certain is that no train or vessel has left Toronto in the half hour he has been loose.”

  “Then he’ll try to reach the States by land,” said Harris, “or to reach another port. Can he sit a horse?”

  Vandervoort shook his head. “He took a rifle bullet in—” The police detective glanced sideways at Theresa and decided against naming the spot. “Between here and here,” he concluded, successively slapping abdomen and upper thigh.

  “By road then,” said Harris, not much encouraged.

  “If he’s shot,” Theresa observed, “he’ll be very scared. That is, if he’s conscious at all.”

  She spoke without sympathy or cruelty. Her practical tone reassured Harris on her account�
��and yet he continued for some reason to discount this wound, as if Crane could somehow buy his way out of it.

  “I’ve just asked the next constables east and west to stop every vehicle on the highways,” said Vandervoort, “but that leaves a dozen or more back roads.”

  “I’ll see if the Attorney General will request help from the Garrison,” Small volunteered.

  “Attorney General? If you have pull in that quarter, Mr. Small, pull away.” Vandervoort’s old grin flashed briefly, more sardonic than ever. “I’d have to go crawling from chief to aldermen through all the approved channels.”

  Small left at a run.

  “We’ll find him,” said Harris, alert to the need, though at heart weary of searching. “Where in town are you looking?”

  “Crane’s house and office, of course, and those of his closest associates.”

  “His own brougham and chaise?” Theresa aptly inquired.

  “Both accounted for, Ma’am,” said the policeman. “That is, Miss. We believe he meant to sail on his propeller ship Triumph yonder, so we’re turning her inside out. Now, Harris, I’ve learned better than to tell you not to stick your nose into this, and frankly I’d be glad of your help—but before you do anything, take Miss Sheridan somewhere safe. We don’t want her standing in the path of a bullet.”

  “Crane’s not armed?” said Harris.

  “He’s never even owned a gun!” Theresa exclaimed.

  A constable was now at Vandervoort’s elbow, importuning Vandervoort to settle some dispute with the sergeant.

  “Navy Colt revolver,” the inspector threw back over his shoulder as he permitted himself to be led dock-wards. “Shot Morgan dead with it.”

  A policeman’s murder—that must be driving the search, even if the inspector made it sound an afterthought. Harris remembered the deceased struggling at his ledger, registering a Colt Navy revolver.

  “Morgan was one of the constables that came for Sibyl,” said Theresa, “the quiet, more conscientious one. Shall we find out from the livery stables what carriage has most recently been hired?”

  “I don’t want you out on the streets getting shot at,” Harris quickly replied. To lose her now . . .

  “Nor I you, not without me.”

  Searchers called unproductively to each other along the docks and through the rail yards. Wind whistled in the telegraph wires. Under the overhang of the station roof, gaslight fell full on the bright face tilted up towards Harris’s. Theresa’s greathearted words stirred Harris without undermining his resolve.

  “Come,” he said, “I’ll see you to the hotel.”

  “Don’t take the time, Isaac. If you won’t let me go with you, I can wait for you up there, in Papa’s house.”

  Harris looked up in surprise. There it stood on the north side of Front Street, grand and neglected pending probate of William Sheridan’s will, facing the harbour with semicircular portico, centre gable, and nine enormous windows, now dark and vacant.

  “You have no key.”

  “I know where one is hid,” she said.

  “You have no key, but Henry does. Listen, Theresa, tell me about the hidden key and then wait for me—wait, mind—here at the station.”

  “Take a constable, Isaac.”

  “You heard the inspector,” he said. “There are none to spare, and the constables can’t be relied upon in any case.”

  “Take me then. Rely upon me.”

  Her face shining out of the black bonnet overwhelmed him almost. “There has been shooting,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Take a gun then, dearest Isaac, please, at least.”

  “There’s no time. Where’s the key?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said, setting briskly off across the open ground between the tracks and Front Street.

  Harris overtook her. “Theresa—”

  “It’s my home.” She walked on.

  “Then walk so I’m between you and the windows,” he said.

  According to Vandervoort, Crane had a thirty-six calibre pistol. Unused to firearms, he would not shoot accurately with it at this range. All the same, Harris led Theresa in a wide arc around to the back lane. The windows in the west and north faces of Sheridan’s villa were as dark as those looking south. At the rear of the property, there were no lamps by which their approach could be observed, and the rain kept the dead leaves from crunching beneath their feet. They reached the house. Backs to its red brick wall, they stopped to catch their breath.

  Was Crane inside? He would need a cab or carriage to leave the city, and a place to wait while one was found. None would have been arranged in advance if he had meant to leave by water. Perhaps this residence of Sheridan’s was too much in the public eye for a hiding place, but also desirable because above suspicion. And the back lane was discreet enough.

  “You’re not coming in,” Harris whispered, determined, if she objected, to abandon the endeavour and risk the assassin’s escape, permanently galling as that would be.

  “I’ll keep watch. If anyone comes, I’ll warn you by breaking a window. I won’t have you trapped in there.” She crouched and pointed to a brick in the second course above the foundation, two in from the corner. “The mortar is only mud. Loosen it with your penknife. The key’s behind.”

  He had her keep watch from the garden shed, which was weathertight, and entreated her by all things precious to take no chances. Leaving her the brick and knife, he crept down the outer stairs to the kitchen door. He tried it before inserting the key. The door yielded freely. Harris held it closed but for a wide crack. The cellar-damp odours flowed out, replacing in his nostrils the smells of the wet garden.

  Until this moment, it had seemed only a rather vulgar hypothesis that Crane would seek refuge in his murdered father-in-law’s villa. The open door was the first sign someone was indeed here.

  Harris glanced back towards Theresa’s shed. It was comforting to see no trace of her, but detestably foolish to compromise her by looking. He would not look again.

  In Crane’s place, Harris would have remained in the kitchen and ready to leave, not dragged himself upstairs. He would be watching the outside door. Anyone standing in the opening would make an easy target, even for a poor shot. Harris widened the crack an inch. He opened the door just enough to slip through, dropping to a crouch once inside. No gun went off, the only sound the scrape of boots—Harris’s own—on the brick floor. He removed them.

  At the far, south end of the kitchen, the door stood open to the servant’s room, and through its windows fell some glimmer from the gas lamps on Front Street. The long kitchen table stood out in silhouette. Otherwise, Harris must rely on memory for the location of the furnishings—sink and then wood stove to his right, dish dresser and churn to his left. He crept down the left wall towards the light, but never in front of it.

  This was lunacy. Crane and death could be waiting anywhere. Fired from within the room, the cone-shaped lumps of lead would tunnel right through a body, in and out, two wounds per ball. Pain, Harris had heard, was more acute at the wound of exit. A dozen wounds without reloading.

  Harris considered looking for a weapon of his own, one of those sharp or heavy objects in which kitchens abound. He concluded, however, that it would be awkward to carry and more so to use, unaccustomed as he was to taproom brawls.

  It took him a stealthy half-minute more to reach Sibyl’s room, into which the street lamps let him see unseen. Crane was not there. Harris began to think the basement held no one but himself. From within the house he had heard no sound he did not cause, no step or breath, no rub of fabric, no click of a pistol’s being cocked.

  He entered the housekeeper’s cell and lit a match with his teeth. The room was unchanged from three months before, though since reading of what had passed here, he saw it through different eyes. The bedstead seemed higher and narrower, the place beneath it where Theresa had cowered more exposed. The dust lay undisturbed. No wounded man had bled here since.

  He s
earched without result the basement storage areas. Then he climbed the stairs, fourteen of them, none of which creaked. Nor did the plank floors. He recalled Theresa’s complaining of how quietly Sibyl had moved around.

  Up here, curtains darkened even the front rooms. Harris lit a kerosene lamp, which he took care to hold well away from his body. Let the light be the target. Finding nothing, he began to wonder if the unlocked kitchen door might not have resulted from carelessness and have dated from an earlier visit of Crane’s.

  One storey remained to inspect. Harris doused his light and ascended the wide, spiralling staircase. Again the wooden treads—twenty-two this time—fitted so well that they uttered not a squeak beneath his stockinged feet. At the top he paused. Again from the house there flooded back to his ears nothing but absolute, sepulchral silence. And then something creaked. Not a floorboard—a bed-rope. The sound came from the right and in front, the southwest bedroom, William Sheridan’s. Crane was lying on Sheridan’s deathbed.

  Assuming Crane were conscious, Harris could advance little further without disclosing his own presence. Nothing more was heard from the room for some minutes. Harris began to doubt. Might it have been a rat? Then the ropes creaked again, as under a man’s shifting weight. Nothing so far suggested the room held more than one person, but a man with a revolver was worth six with muskets. Harris edged forward through the upstairs hall.

  Hung from the right or north side to open inwards, the bedroom door stood ajar, so he saw the tall windows before he saw the bed. All the curtains were open. The sky had cleared somewhat, at least to the south, and at the docks the one steamer he had noted from the train still blazed with lights. That would be Crane’s ship, Harris realized, still being searched for her owner.

  Her owner was here. Why would a man pursued, a man in pain, have climbed those thirty-six steps? Perhaps Crane wanted something special of Sheridan’s he had never managed to make for himself, but almost certainly too he wanted to view something special he had made, his iron-hulled, screw-driven Triumph, the fastest ship on the lake, the product of his genius that had been meant to save him from his persecutors—and now could not.