Across the street Cobb noticed that Marc was still up in Briar Cottage. He had nothing concrete to report, but the possibilities had increased dramatically.
TWELVE
The Legislature was set to open on the first Monday in November, and Brodie’s trial on the following Thursday. Marc made sure he spent at least one hour a day with Brodie at Harlem Place, not because he had anything yet to tell him about the plan for his defense, but because he wanted to keep the lad from falling into a depression. Marc encouraged Brodie to talk about the man they had both admired, Doubtful Dick Dougherty, and Brodie responded enthusiastically. He reminisced quite happily about Dick’s famous and infamous trials – what he knew of them as he watched and listened in the sanctuary of his boyhood home and what he learned later by secretly reading the old New York newspapers stored in a nearby room. Diana Ramsay, of course, wanted to visit him as well, but Brodie, fearing for her reputation, forbade her to come. Instead, the lovers corresponded by letter, twice daily.
When not cheering up his client or playing with Maggie at Briar Cottage, Marc spent his time in the service of the Durhamites. Robert Baldwin’s stratagem of winning over the moderate conservatives in the Assembly by feeding Governor Thomson the arguments he would need to do the actual persuading was working better than anyone had anticipated. As opening day approached, it looked as if there would be fewer than a dozen dedicated Tories left to vote against the union in the form desired by the Governor and the Whig administration back in London. However, the hardliners were expected to mount an indirect challenge by offering amendments that would in fact gut the main bill itself. Hence, Robert, his father, Marc, Francis Hincks and other Reformers continued to meet quietly with individual MLAs as they arrived in town in a concerted effort to keep the temporary coalition shored up. Having the Reform party itself keep a low profile while Governor Thomson did the arm-twisting and blandishing was paying huge dividends so far. Still, the entire enterprise was as fragile as a house of cards.
***
The rehearsal on Saturday evening began right on schedule. As promised, the director called on stage only those involved in the particular scene to be worked on. The blocking and the delivery of lines (script in-hand, still) was patiently monitored by Sir P., with interruptions that he presumed to be warranted and judicious, though they were not always accepted in that spirit. As Cobb’s first scene was forty or fifty minutes away, he asked if he might begin painting the flats. So, while the Crenshaws, as Demetrius and Hermia, continued to flounder and squabble, on stage and off, and fray the sweet temper of their director, Cobb was supplied with bottles of paint and brushes by Mullins the gardener from a stock located, Cobb assumed, in the summer kitchen some distance away. As Mullins communicated exclusively in grunts, punctuated by the occasional monosyllable, Cobb was not quite sure where that room was, but he did understand that, from now on, he was on his own. Which suited him just fine.
Donning a plasterer’s smock that dropped to his knees, he set the flats up against the inner wall near the curtained-off wing to the right of the stage, in which Sir P. had had Mullins place four comfortable chairs upon which the actors “on call,” as it were, could sit and converse quietly. As Sir P. had boasted to Cobb, his talented lady had sketched several backdrop scenes to suggest various parts of the magical forest: mostly bushy trees, dark starlit skies, a cloud-besieged moon, a brown boulder or two, and one flowering shrub. He began with the sky, of which there was plenty. As he daubed slowly away at this task, he was able, off and on over the course of the next hour, to eavesdrop on a number of nearby conversations.
Thus:
Clemmy: I still can’t understand why Sir P. would ask a common peeler to Oakwood Manor. He might as well’ve asked the gardener!
Dutton: I think there’s a lot more to Cobb than meets the eye.
Clemmy: He looks perfectly stupid to me. Cyrus an’ me didn’t join this silly play-business to concert with the likes of him. My husband’s daddy was a war hero, you know.
Dutton: He’s learned all of his lines.
Clemmy (indignant): He had a head start!
Dutton: And he’s quite comical, you must admit.
Clemmy: With that nose, who wouldn’t be?
And:
Crenshaw: I’m beginning to regret I ever suggested this play to you. You’re embarrassing me in front of the very people we’re hopin’ to impress.
Clemmy: We’re every bit as good as they are!
Crenshaw: Of course we are. But I don’t get invited to Bishop Strachan’s for dinner once a month, do I?
Clemmy: Just because he’s got a title an’ oodles of cash.
Crenshaw: And donated a good chunk of it to the vicarage restoration fund.
Clemmy (after a pause): I just wish you’d keep yer eyes offa that creature!
Crenshaw: I told you to quit harpin’ on that. It’s a dead horse.
Clemmy: I think I better go to the ladies’ room.
Crenshaw (in an angry whisper): You’ve had enough of that stuff!
And:
Lady Mad: Is he bothering you, Lizzie?
Lizzie: Who?
Lady Mad: Mr. Dutton.
Lizzie: No, not at all. He’s lovely and kind. Like a grandpa.
Lady Mad (whispering): Just keep an eye on his hands, luv.
And:
Clemmy: Don’t you find it hard to keep good servants these days?
Lady Mad: I brought my maid with me, and Perry brought Chivers, of course.
Clemmy: An’ the grammar they talk! Ya practically haveta teach ‘em their own language. An’ the pertinence of some of them!
Lady Mad: But you must remember, my dear, we live among colonials.
And:
Dutton: How’s Bernice holding up?
Fullarton: Quite well. Thank you for asking. I feel terrible coming out here three evenings a week and leaving her alone. But she insists that I do.
Dutton: She’s a fine woman.
Fullarton: Yes, she is.
Dutton (after a pause): Have you been up to see young Langford?
Fullarton: He sent word that I was not to come.
Dutton: I can’t believe they’ll convict him.
Fullarton: All I can do is offer myself as a character witness. Which I’ve done.
Dutton: Yes. I’ve done that, too.
Cobb’s own scenes went well. The first one, where Titania wakes up and falls in love with him, particularly pleased Sir P., whose rubicund face had grown alarmingly more rubicund as his frustration with the Crenshaws accelerated. Cobb was grateful that Lady Mad had chosen to lay a scarf over her décolletage and to omit the unscripted testicle-squeeze. In the second scene Bottom is found in his lover’s bower, surrounded by her fairies who, when they were finally released from their half of Oakwood Manor, would be feeding him delicacies while his inamorata caressed him with word and deed. He thought he might suggest to Dora that she pay especial attention to the action in this scene and the salubrious effects it worked upon the male in question.
By nine o’clock Sir P. decided he had suffered all the indignities and disappointments a baronet ought to. A glassy-eyed Hermia had just tripped over one of the chalk arrows and upended Demetrius when an abrupt halt was called to the dismembering of the Bard’s divine comedy. With seething politeness, Sir P. ordered his actors to seek out a quiet spot and study both their lines and their blocking assignments – along with the many suggestions offered for their execution. He himself was going off to the solitude of his library for half an hour, after which he would return, like Achilles from his sulking-tent, to deliver them the director’s “notes.”
Cobb returned to painting another sky. And soon discovered he was out of blue paint. Over at the long-table, he asked Lady Mad for directions to the summer kitchen. She pointed him to the door next to the ladies’ room, the one that Sir P. had huffed through just ten minutes before. It opened onto a long hallway, at the end of which Cobb had been assured lay the kitchens and, beyond
them, the summer kitchen. On each side of the hall he noted that several doors marked the presence of the Shuttleworth’s various dens, sitting-rooms and such. They were all closed, except one. And as Cobb passed it, he was startled by the high-pitched scream of someone in distress.
“Oh, you mustn’t! I’m a lay-dee!”
The door was ajar less than a handspan. Cobb hesitated to push it open, but the thought of someone behind it needing help encouraged him to do so. Perhaps Mrs. Wade, Lizzie’s mother, was being threatened by an intruder (the burglar with a price on his head?). Anyway, he was a policeman and bound to do his duty. He barged into the room with a bang.
It was a bedroom, a man’s bedroom if the dark curtains, carpet and coverlet were any indication. But it was definitely occupied by a woman. Alone. Standing in front of a three-sided, floor-length looking-glass. In her corsets!
As the flung door rattled against the wall, she jumped with a jiggling of stays and a crackling of whalebone, and turned towards the sound. Her face had been trowelled with makeup and dusted with talcum. Her lips were a crimson slash and a blond wig, cockeyed and frizzled, teetered precariously upon her head. Below the corsets, her nether extremities floated in a pair of pantaloons.
But this was no lady.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Cobb?” Sir Peregrine said, squinting through the black bars of his eyelashes. He was breathing heavily – either from his screaming performance for the mirror or startlement at Cobb’s arrival – which had caused his stays, stuffed with silk handkerchiefs, to undulate.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. But I heard a scream an’ thought – ”
Sir P. laughed nervously with his clown’s lips. “Ah, that. I was just – ah – rehearsing. As I often do when I’m alone and unobserved.”
“Is that yer Puck get-up, then?” Cobb said with suitable sarcasm. What on earth was the fellow up to? This behaviour, whatever it was, seemed outrageous, even for a baronet.
“No, no, of course not. You see, Cobb, when I was at Harrow, I was often cast in the women’s roles in the plays and skits we boys put on. No girls available, eh? And when Lady Madeleine and I took up dramatics as entertainment in our London residence, I would do the same whenever we were short of female volunteers. This is the undergarment for my triumphant role as Beatrice in Much Ado.”
“You plannin’ on re-prizin’ that role here?”
Sir P. chuckled in the indulgent manner he had been taught to effect whenever the foibles and fecklessness of the unlettered classes warranted it. “When I get frustrated, as I was by the execrable efforts of the Crenshaws out there, I come in here, dress up like Beatrice and attack the ungrateful world with her wit.”
“Yer mirror, ya mean?” Cobb said, recalling that the screech he had heard did not sound like any lines Shakespeare might have penned.
“My mirror, as you say. Now, sir – ”
“I’m off to fetch my paint,” Cobb said, backing towards the doorway. “Sorry about bargin’ in on ya.”
Well, Cobb thought as he heard the bedroom door click resolutely shut behind him, I’ll have something to tell the major tonight.
***
Marc put his pipe down and said to Cobb, sitting opposite him in the parlour of Briar Cottage, “So you think that Sir Peregrine might be a cross-dresser, and that he was willing to pay Duggan ten pounds a week to keep it from the general public?”
“It’s possible, ain’t it? I know that the gentle-tree don’t fuss overmuch about that sort of behaviour back in England, but Sir P., as we call him, is tryin’ to be a somebody out here, startin’ up the Shakespeare Club, holdin’ fancy balls, an’ suckin’ up to the likes of Bishop Strongarm.”
Marc smiled, “Have you forgotten that I too am a bona fide member of the gentry?”
“You don’t count. You went Indian a month after ya got here.”
“Still, you may be right. I suspect it is something he would want to keep hidden, if it is true.”
“But I seen him, major. You wouldn’t believe the get-up he was in. It’d make a brothel-keeper blush.”
“He offered you a plausible explanation, though.”
“It was all he could come up with.”
“What I’d like you to do next Tuesday is find a way to get into his bedroom again. Look in his closets and drawers. There’s a fair difference between costumes and ordinary clothing. If he is a cross-dresser, you should find evidence of it in that room.”
“I can get into that hallway pretty much anytime I like. I just haveta say I’m fetchin’ more paint.”
“Good. And the sooner the better. The trial starts in five days.”
“And I got some other fair leads,” Cobb said with some satisfaction.
“Such as?”
“Well, this Dutton fella seems to be attracted to very young girls. He’s been givin’ Lizzie Wade the lecher’s eye.”
“But he hasn’t really done anything improper?”
“Not yet. But I heard Lady Mad, as we call her, warnin’ the girl about Dutton’s strayin’ hands. An’ that woman knows all about such things.”
“It’s not a lot to go on – yet.”
“An’ then there’s Fullarton. I think he’s got his eye on Lady Mad. There’s a lot of friction between them, but that’s usually a sure sign there’s lust somewhere in the picture. And I seen the fella limpin’ a bit – she must’ve give him a kick about a foot lower than she was aimin’. I’m gonna watch both of ‘em like a hawk.”
“From what you say, there’s plenty of opportunity for mischief between the acts, as it were. But remember, I’ll need pretty conclusive evidence.”
“I got that, I’m sure, when it comes to the Crenshaws.”
“You have?”
“Clemmy Crenshaw is addicted to opium.”
Marc did not seem to be properly surprised at this revelation. “You’ve seen her taking it?”
“I have indeed. And I seen the glassy eyes an’ stumblin’ about that it causes.”
“Lots of people in this town take more laudanum than is good for them.”
“I know. But these Crenshaws are both tryin’ to climb as far up the social ladder as they can. The husband is a Councillor an’ factory owner, but they’re dyin’ to get in good with Sir P. an’ the real Family Compacters. Clemmy could scuttle them hopes if her addiction was known by everybody.”
“Possibly. But if she’s displaying the effects of the drug openly at Oakwood, the Shuttleworths have probably guessed already what’s going on. Still, it could be that Cyrus Crenshaw was willing to pay off Duggan before his wife’s appearance at the manor this week. But somehow it doesn’t seem enough. Not yet.”
Cobb knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and said, “Are you gonna tell me what you’re plannin’ to do with all this dirt if an’ when we get it nailed down?”
“I am, old friend. As soon as it’s credible enough to take to court. Until then, it’s just a possible line of defense. But I promise that you’ll be the first person to know if I decide I can use it.”
“You got any other defense in mind?”
Marc shook his head.
So, Cobb thought, it’s all down to me.
***
On Monday morning a dishevelled Clemmy Crenshaw arrived at Smallman’s shop on King Street between Bay and Yonge. Rose Halpenny met her at the door to the dressmaking side of the enterprise, and tried not to look amazed. Clemmy’s ringlettes had been steamed into place once more but not quite subdued, and her powdered and bedaubed face seemed to have been made up by a masochist.
“Don’t worry, missus,” she said to Rose, “I always look a fright before lunch. You got the costume ready?”
Rose did have Hermia’s costume ready, and with a curt nod directed Clemmy behind a screen to remove the ghastly green frock she was wearing. Rose slipped the costume over the screen, and suggested that Clemmy put it on carefully, as two or three seams had merely been basted to allow for last-minute adjustments.
“Ooo – ain’t i
t lovely!” Clemmy cooed.
Not exactly lovely, Rose thought as she waved Clemmy towards the nearest beam of sunlight, but it would do. Designing what was supposed to be little more than a shift and still render Clemmy a virginal lass of eighteen was one of the greatest challenges Rose had faced in the two years she had been working for Beth Edwards. Using what amounted to sleight-of-hand and misdirection, she had rigged out a sequence of tucks, folds, drapelets, pleats and ruches in a fine muslin cloth – all calculated to give the illusion of a slimming, down-flowing line.
“Good gracious!” Rose barked at the sight suddenly before her. “You can’t wear your corsets under it! You look like you’ve jammed a chemise over a suit of armour!”
The sharpish lumps and angles, used to girdle Clemmy’s own lumps and angles, not only spoiled any slimming effects of the frock, they had succeeded in protruding beyond it in several places.
“Oh . . . but I couldn’t take my corsets off!” Clemmy cried, adding acute distress to her general state of anxiety. “They – they hold me together!”
Rose – who was a talented dressmaker and a good-hearted soul, but no diplomat – eyed the rents in the costume where rents were not expected, and replied, “But I spent a dozen hours making this thing so you wouldn’t have to buttress yourself with whalebone!”
“Well, how was I supposed to know, eh? I ain’t no mind-reader!” Clemmy’s rejoinder was meant as a reproof to one she considered to be a member of the labouring class, but quickly wilted into a whine, and finished up as a sob.
“Now, now, woman, there’s no need to get upset. Here, I’ll try to remove the costume without ripping it any further. Then I want you to go back behind the screen, strip down to your undergarments, slip on the chemise I left for you in there, and come back out here so I can see if the damage can be repaired.”
Clemmy felt that the mollifying tone in the dressmaker’s voice barely outweighed the imperative nature of these requests, but she acquiesced rather than appear too uppity with the hired help.
Desperate Acts Page 17
