Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  Marc’s head jerked back as if struck. He had assumed that this voluntary and detailed confession had been done as a form of expiation prior to her surrendering to the authorities. But she had just informed him that she expected to carry on with her life, chastened perhaps but unpunished.

  “Mrs. Thedford,” he began in what he hoped was a severe tone, “you are aware that I admire you and that I abhor the violence done upon Tessa by Merriwether. But I represent the lieutenant-governor and the Crown in this matter, and I have no choice but to do my duty. I intend to wait while you get dressed, then escort you to Government House. There you will be incarcerated, and I will wake up my friend, free him from the fantasy he has been living, and return him to the world.”

  She smiled. There was true warmth in it. Then she frowned. “You must believe me when I tell you I am truly sorry for what I’ve put your friend through. I regretted what I had done the moment I saw him again in that room, dazed and self-accusing. But there was no turning back. And I knew it would only be a question of a day or two before he was exonerated. But then, when I learned he was your friend, I felt dreadful.”

  “You’re telling me that you intended to confess all along? And yet you expect to get on a steamer tomorrow and sail off for Detroit?”

  “Yes. That is what I have just done, confessed my guilt. And, yes, at noon tomorrow, my company and I will be bound for Detroit.” She seemed amused, though there was an edge of solemnness in her gaze as well.

  “Then you don’t know me very well.”

  “On the contrary, I know more about you than you can imagine.”

  “That’s as absurd as your thinking I won’t take you to the governor.”

  “You will not do so, not because of what I’ve said or may do, but because of who I am.”

  “You’re Annemarie Thedford.”

  “Am I?”

  “That may be a stage name, I realize, but what does it matter to me if you have another?”

  “A great deal, I hope.”

  She leaned over and laid a hand on his knee. “My real name is a variant which I adopted many years ago—after I left England. Look at me. I am tall and fair and blue-eyed.”

  Annemarie Thedford. A name from the past flashed before him. But it was impossible. That person was long dead. Dead before he had been born. Yet, just as she whispered the words to him—as if speaking them too loudly might annihilate what they named—he said them silently to himself.

  “Mary Ann Edwards.”

  She gazed steadfastly at him, waiting for the shock to pass and the implications to sink in. Finally, he was able to say, “You are my aunt Mary.”

  “Not quite,” she said. “I am your mother.”

  SEVENTEEN

  When Marc had recovered enough to find breath and voice, he heard himself say, “But that’s not possible. Mary is dead, I’ve seen her grave. And my parents were Thomas and Margaret Evans. They are also dead.”

  Mary Ann Edwards took Marc’s hands in hers in a grip that was both tender and firm. “I’m sorry that I could find no gentler way to convey such news to you. But I was as stunned and bewildered by it as you are now.”

  “But how? When?” Marc stammered as the chilling implications of her claim began to take hold.

  “‘How’ is a very long story. ‘When’ was yesterday at luncheon.”

  “When you met Major Jenkin.”

  “Yes. Such a dear man. I took an immediate liking to him. He loves to reminisce, so I encouraged him to tell me about the wars in Europe. Well, he kept mentioning his best friend Frederick. To be polite, I asked a question or two about this Frederick.”

  “And you discovered his name was Edwards.”

  “Yes. My brother, whom I last saw leaving for Europe in 1805 or ’06.”

  “But surely you were not surprised to hear his name mentioned by Jenkin?”

  “When I first met you on Monday, I noticed your name, of course, but Edwards is a common enough surname in southern England. It occurred to me that you might be a distant cousin—your height and colouring were right—but that was all. I was more concerned with your bearing and intelligence. But when I realized that Owen knew Frederick well, I began to pester him with questions about the family, about my nephews in France, and he eventually got around to Jabez and the estate in Kent. Then I was certain. It was both strange and exciting to hear about my brothers after twenty-seven years of pretending they didn’t exist.”

  Marc began, vaguely, to sense where the story was heading. “And at some point, my name was mentioned.”

  “Yes.” She gave his fingers a squeeze. Part of him wanted to tear away from her grip and this scourging narrative, but another part admitted that he must know the truth, whatever the cost. “Owen, dear soul, was going on about how wonderful Jabez was—it was all I could do to hold my tongue—and how he’d adopted a five-year-old lad whose parents had died and, he said, this was all the more admirable because the boy’s father was a mere gamekeeper and the mother a tenant-farmer’s daughter. He must have thought me mad, the look I had on my face, when I demanded to know their names. It took him a minute or two, and I thought I might faint waiting, but he finally said Thomas and Margaret Evans. And then I knew for certain. I let him babble on—oh, how grateful I was for his garrulousness. But the child who was ripped from my breast, who I never would have abandoned for the world, was alive, was thriving, and close enough to touch.”

  She released his hands, as if perhaps she had said enough to hold him there while she wept quietly and composed herself.

  “But I stood over your grave-marker in the garden by the big house, and wished you had lived that I might have an aunt … and a kind of mother.”

  “Bless you for that.”

  “Uncle Jabez thought you were dead. He grieved over you for years. I was forbidden to speak your name because it hurt him so much.”

  A series of expressions passed across Mary Ann Edwards’s face in quick succession: contempt, anger, sorrow, regret, resignation. She took a deep breath, pulled the lapels of her robe tightly together, and said in a low, sad voice: “I thought I had worked out all my anger towards Jabez—after all, it’s been twenty-seven years—but you never do, not when the betrayal is so great.”

  “Uncle Jabez betrayed you?”

  “Yes. But you’ll need to know the story from the beginning to understand what happened, if you are to forgive him. I cannot, but you must.”

  Marc realized that she was as exhausted as he was, but the adrenaline was running strong in both, and he sat back, bracing himself for the secrets that were about to be revealed into a new day’s glare.

  “When I was almost eighteen, Jabez decided I should go up to London to Madame Rénaud’s finishing school, after which I would ‘come out’ and be matched with a suitable husband. I was a tomboy around the estate, I fought against the plan, but when I was forcibly removed to the great metropolis, I soon discovered I liked it very much. Not the ladies’ school, of course—Madame Rénaud was about as French as Yorkshire pudding—but the nearby theatres. I sneaked off every chance I got to one or another of the summer playhouses. During vacations I stayed with an elderly cousin who didn’t keep close tabs on me, so I was soon landing bit parts and getting to know many of the actors. Eventually I met your father.”

  Marc waited, fearing the worst.

  “Don’t worry so: he wasn’t a syphilitic pimp. He was a tall, handsome young man of twenty-five, the youngest son of a country squire who had once been a renowned barrister in the city. His name was Solomon Hargreave. He was a talented actor, but his father disapproved of his chosen profession, cut off his allowance, and impounded his grandfather’s legacy. Solomon thought me talented as well as beautiful, and before long I simply abandoned the school and moved in with him. He was very much in love with me. I was still young and naively romantic. I was surprised and confused when I was told I was pregnant.”

  “You did not marry?”

  “No. It didn’t seem to matte
r, though Solomon was willing, I believe. We were quite happy as we were but, of course, when Jabez learned I had abandoned school, he came up to London in a perfect fury. We had a great row, but he left, saying he would be back. I was very frightened, but managed to hide my pregnancy from him. Solomon was off on a trip up north with a touring company, so I moved to a cheap flat where Jabez couldn’t find me. Solomon was due back in a few weeks, but Jabez discovered me first by bribing someone at the theatre. I went into labour two months early.”

  “So I was—”

  “A bastard, yes. But a beautiful, blue-eyed babe, nonetheless, wee and shrivelled and underweight at seven months, but kicking and screaming for the teat. I must say that Jabez’s concern for my health and that of the baby was genuine and took immediate precedence. He sent for Margaret Evans from the estate, and had her nurse me and take care of you. But when Solomon arrived a few days later, everything changed. After Jabez took a couple of swings at him, he calmed down and settled on a quick wedding. Solomon was, after all, a gentleman, if also a blackguard in his eyes. But I was defiant. I wanted to be an actress, to make a life for myself on the stage. I told Jabez that we would marry when we were ready to and that I would raise my son backstage. Actresses were then, and still are, regarded as no better than whores. But looking back on that moment now, I believe I suspected even at that youthful age that I preferred women to men: something was urging me to resist marriage.”

  “Yet you became Mrs. Thedford?”

  She smiled wryly, but continued her tale. “I did not understand how determined and how cruel my eldest brother could be. When Solomon had gone off to the theatre, Jabez exploded in a fury of curses and recrimination. So towering was his anger that I feared for my life. But it was my baby’s life he was after.” Her expression darkened at the memory, as lines of bitterness twisted at her mouth.

  “Surely not. Uncle Jabez was—”

  “Kind and considerate, yes. As he had been to me. But ever since our mother’s death when I was myself a baby and our father’s death a few years later, Jabez saw himself as responsible for me, for my upbringing, my education, even my morals.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jabez left in a huff. But two days later, after a long nap—I was still weak and not fully recovered from the birth—I awoke to find Jabez standing over me, and Margaret Evans and my unnamed son gone. ‘The bastard has been taken to an orphanage,’ Jabez said in the coldest voice I’d ever heard in a man. Then he handed me a large sum of money—in cash—and announced that I was no longer an Edwards, and was to have no contact with him or Frederick or anyone else we knew: I was, in his words, ‘dead to the family and to the world.’ He left before I could think of a reply. I have not seen him since.”

  “Then how did I get to the estate?” Marc asked after a long moment. He was sure he knew the answer. Even so, Jabez’s heartless abandonment and shunning of his own sister was a devastating truth, whatever the mitigating circumstances might have been. Marc had literally been stolen from his mother.

  “I only learned the bare details of that much later. You see, when Solomon returned to find the child gone, I thought he would fly into a rage of his own and confront Jabez, demand the return of his son, and scour the alleys and byways of London until you were found.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. He was, in his way, attached to the notion of a child, but he had only seen you for a short while, squalling for food and attention, and he soothed me by saying it was all for the best, we were destitute, we both wanted to have careers in the theatre, we were young, we would have legitimate children of our own, and so on.”

  “And he won you over?” Marc said.

  “You must believe this if nothing else, Marc: I did not abandon you. As soon I could walk, I went to every orphanage in central London in search of you. I was frantic, but you were nowhere to be found.”

  Their eyes locked. “Yes, I believe you,” Marc said, “because I’ve watched you with Tessa, Thea, and the others. You do not let go easily.”

  “Soon we started to spend Jabez’s blood-money. I felt that without Solomon to back me up, I could not go down to the estate and demand you back. As an unmarried English-woman, I had no legal right to my own child: you were Solomon’s or Jabez’s to fight over. So when Solomon suggested we flee to America to start over again, I said yes. And we did. And except for the child I left behind, I have had no regrets about that.”

  “But you still thought I had been left with an orphanage?”

  “Yes. Solomon and I arrived in New York late in 1810, and having some capital, we managed to do well. I blossomed as an actress, soon outshining him. We lived together as man and wife, but my proclivity for female company and companionship was becoming blatant and undeniable. We quarrelled often. Finally, he decided to return home. His father had died, and he hoped his oldest brother would give him a second chance. I stayed and prospered.

  “Then about a year later Solomon sent a letter, the only one he ever wrote to me, saying that he had made a search for our son, and after much effort had located a woman who admitted being the wet-nurse for you at a rented house overseen by Margaret Evans and sponsored by Jabez Edwards. At some point, they had taken you back to Kent and represented you as the child of Thomas and Margaret Evans, who had no child of their own. Solomon didn’t know, nor did I, that they had christened you Marcus. But at least I knew you had survived and were being raised by good people on the family estate. That’s the last I heard about you—until yesterday. I had no idea that Jabez had adopted you and given you our name. I wanted to dash into the theatre and embrace you till I dropped. But I could not do so. You were investigating a murder I committed.”

  Neither said anything for a full minute.

  “But you ‘prospered,’ as you say. You became Mrs. Annemarie Thedford.”

  “That’s another long story, but yes, I did. I moved to Philadelphia, where the theatre business was booming. I re-invented myself in a country that encourages a fresh start and admires it when it works. I invented a Mr. Thedford, alas deceased, presented my hard-won capital as an inheritance, played the merry widow, fell in and out of love many times, and finally moved back to New York as that ‘widow from Philadelphia,’ eventually buying into the Bowery.”

  “And helped reclaim one or two others like yourself along the way.”

  “Yes. Including poor Jason.”

  Marc felt suddenly drained and utterly exhausted. The candles were low and flickering. “What do we do now?” he asked, seeing no way forward. “Either my best friend hangs for murder … or my mother does.”

  “Ensign Hilliard will be freed tomorrow, one hour after our steamer departs.”

  “But how?”

  “You do not think I would have left your friend to pay for my crime? I sat down after our rehearsal yesterday—when I got to spend two hours alone with my son—”

  “You deliberately arranged for those scenes, didn’t you? Including my playing Hamlet to your Gertrude?”

  She smiled. “I knew those hours and our brief moments together on the stage last night would be all that would be allowed me. But listen: I have prepared a detailed confession for the police.” She got up, went over to the davenport, and picked an envelope out of the papers there. Marc’s mind lingered for a moment in the past.

  “That hand-mirror, the one I held up to Gertrude’s face, it came from home, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, as did these brushes and the candlesticks. They were left to me by my father, part of a matched set given to my parents as a wedding gift. All three of their children have pieces of the set.”

  “I remember seeing that design now, on Uncle Jabez’s hair-brushes in his room.”

  She gently but resolutely brought him back to the present. “This letter of confession is unsealed and undated.”

  She removed one of two sheets and gave it to Marc. “Can we trust Constable Cobb?”

  “Of course.” Marc scanned the letter and the si
gnature at the bottom.

  “Then bring him with you to the wharf at noon tomorrow. We depart for Detroit then on the Michigan. I’ll date the letter today, and seal it. I’ll ask Cobb to take it directly to his chief. I’ll make sure to leave a few papers in here with my handwriting and signature on them. By the time the magistrates have perused the letter and determined its authenticity, I’ll be in the United States.”

  “But they still might not believe you. Barclay Spooner is determined to see Rick hanged.”

  “On this second page I tell the police exactly where they can find the candlestick. You mustn’t see this page: I don’t want you compromised. When they find the candlestick, they’ll discover Jason’s blood and hair still on it. I decided to leave it as it was when I devised this plan. And Owen Jenkin was in this room on Monday afternoon and evening: he can verify that the candlestick was one of the pair he saw here.”

  “And with the explanation of the two screams laid out in this letter, the sworn testimony of the others makes perfect sense.”

  “Nor am I underestimating the persuasive powers of my son.”

  There was nothing left to do now but hold each other. Neither would let go. From the other room, Tessa let out a contented snore. Marc did not shudder.

  THE MID-OCTOBER DAY WAS BRIGHT WITH sunshine in a high, cloudless sky whose deep blue mirrored the unrippled surface of Lake Ontario. On such a day as this, it was hard to imagine the province could be anything but prosperous and peaceful. The weather had made the harvesting of crops seem almost a leisure activity, and an improved harvest it had been throughout the broad countryside. And here on Queen’s Wharf at the foot of John Street, Lieutenant Edwards stood bare-headed in the plaintive breeze and bade good-bye to Mary Ann Edwards. Beasley, Armstrong, Jefferson, and Tessa and Thea had already boarded the Michigan, and were leaning against the rail, waving or otherwise acknowledging the farewell plaudits of the several dozen fans who had come to see the Bowery players off. An hour earlier, Jefferson and three bulky draymen had muscled a number of steamer-trunks aboard—four of them inexplicably lighter than they had been upon arrival. Constable Cobb stood a few yards away, impassively observing Marc and Mrs. Thed-ford.