Desperate Acts

by Don Gutteridge

  Minutes later, she crept out from behind the screen with both arms folded across her drooping bosom, and walked over to the low fitting-stool with mincing little steps in order to minimize the undulation of her liberated body-parts.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll soon have you lookin’ like a goddess.” This kind remark came not from Rose but from her employer. Beth Edwards had just arrived with Charlene and Maggie in tow.

  ***

  It didn’t take Beth long to work her natural charm on Clemmy Crenshaw and her “delicate nerves.” While Rose plucked and pinned and re-pinned the costume, now beginning to “flow” about the ungainly figure within it, Beth engaged Clemmy is a casual conversation that included much talk about the proper way to raise youngsters and keep a busy household afloat, interrupted from time to time by gurgles of approval from the youngster herself. Having raised four of her own to thriving adulthood, Clemmy felt she was able to maintain the high ground in the dialogue, and Beth was not about to deny her this meagre pleasure.

  The upshot was that Rose was soon able to declare the costume almost fit for public display, and Clemmy did not recoil from the image of Hermia she was coaxed to view in the looking-glass held up by Beth.

  “With a proper hair-do and a little tiara of flowers, you’ll do fine,” Beth said with only slight exaggeration. Now, if the woman could be persuaded not to paint her face with a mop, there was legitimate hope for her stage debut.

  At the door, Beth said that she would bring the reworked costume to Clemmy’s house for the final fitting at ten o’clock Tuesday morning. This pleased Clemmy very much. As the proprietor of a successful business, Beth Edwards was a candidate for Clemmy’s roster of approved people – even if she did drop the “g” off her “ings.”

  “I’ll have some tea ready, Mrs. Edwards, an’ we can carry on with our chat. Bring little Maggie, if you like.”

  “I’ll need to ask her first,” Beth smiled.

  ***

  Monday afternoon saw the opening of the Legislature, a parliamentary session that would one way or another determine the future of Upper and Lower Canada. The presence of a new governor, Charles Poulett Thomson (soon to be Lord Sydenham), who had brought with him not only extraordinary executive powers but a keen mind and intricate knowledge of the workings of British government, had stirred the passions of Upper Canadians in ways they thought they had exhausted. The galleries were packed. Hundreds stood outside in the chill November wind off the lake, waiting for word on the contents of the Speech from the Throne.

  Inside, after the pomp and ceremony of the opening protocols, the tall and impressive figure of Governor Thomson rose to speak in a voice that was deep, authoritative, and very much vice-regal. In a straightforward manner he discussed the political impasse and economic stagnation that the fruitless struggles of the past decade had produced. Then he announced what everyone present more or less knew: both the Upper and Lower House – the Council and the Assembly – would be asked to approve the Union Bill already accepted in principle by the Mother Parliament. They would be asked to endorse the following: first, the merging of the two provinces per se; second, an equal representation from each province in each of the two legislative chambers; third, the granting of a permanent and sufficient civil list (to provide the executive with a talented, committed and continuing cadre of civil servants); and fourth, that the provincial debt of Upper Canada (£75,000) be charged upon the joint revenue of the united provinces.

  Much of the groundwork for the successful passage of these terms through the Council and Assembly had already been laid. Governor Thomson had shamelessly appealed to the sense of loyalty to the Queen that animated the appointed Councillors, while simultaneously threatening them with the loss of their lucrative, lifetime sinecures (to be reviewed now by each successive governor – including the present one). Robert Sullivan, Baldwin’s cousin and law partner, had worked up an anti-French speech that, as chairman of the Legislative Council, he planned to deliver the next day with a nice blend of guile and eloquence. Meanwhile, the Assembly would move into committee-of-the-whole and debate the bill clause by clause. Here the deftly orchestrated scheme of the Governor and the Reformers had borne fruit, for the dozen or so moderate conservatives they had been importuning had agreed to vote in favour of union and its terms.

  What neither the Governor nor Robert Baldwin knew, however, was that the murder of a common blackmailer would soon threaten to bring their carefully constructed strategy crashing down.

  THIRTEEN

  An elderly maid with a wall-eye answered the door of the Crenshaw residence on York Street at five minutes to ten on Tuesday morning.

  “Whaddya want?” she said, intensifying her natural scowl. “Tradesmen go to the back door!”

  Beth smiled as if she had reason to. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Crenshaw. I have her costume here, an’ she’s invited me to tea.”

  The maid squinted at her with her good eye. “Ah. Then you must be Miz Edwards. I was told to take ya into the sitting-room.” She stepped aside to let Beth enter the cramped vestibule. “But you won’t be gettin’ no tea!”

  With that cryptic remark the woman turned and began to trot off down the narrow hallway, her heels sending up tiny puffs of dust from the carpet. Beth determined that she was to try and follow – or be left stranded.

  At the end of the hall, the maid stopped, and then rapped smartly on a door, as if banging on it would frighten it into opening. She waited ten seconds and thumped again, upping the volume.

  “Perhaps she’s not in this room,” Beth said helpfully.

  “She’s in there alright.” And with this certainty in view, the maid flung the door aside and stepped back so that Beth could survey the interior of a modest lady’s sitting-room.

  Pink damask curtains were drawn across the only window, rendering the room dark and gloomy. Beth could just make out the silhouettes of a sofa and two chairs, and a sideboard too massive for the space assigned to it. A trio of candles in their sconces were burned almost to the wick.

  “I don’t see – ”

  “On the sofa. Dead to the world,” the maid said without a hint of disgust or reproval. “She may wake up, an’ then again maybe she won’t.”

  Before Beth could inquire further, the woman had departed and could be heard tramping down the hall. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Beth could indeed make out the form of Clemmy Crenshaw comatose on the sofa, attired only in a tatty dressing-gown, and snoring softly. Beth laid the costume down on a nearby chair, and was about to retreat when she was stopped by the sound of Clemmy’s voice behind her: “Is that you, Mrs. Edwards?”

  Beth turned. “I brought your dress, ma’am. You can try it on when you’re feelin’ better.”

  Clemmy rose groggily onto one elbow. Her unpainted face was blotched and puckered. The pouches below her eyes were blackened by fatigue, and the eyes themselves were bloodshot, their dark pupils dilated. “I told Mabel we was to have tea. Where’n hell did she get to?”

  “I’ll go an’ see what I can rustle up,” Beth said, her concern for Clemmy’s condition evident. After two wrong turns, she found the kitchen and an ancient cook who was just pouring herself a cup of tea from a cracked crockery-pot.

  “I think yer mistress is in need of that,” Beth said sweetly, but for her pains got a grunt in return. However, two mugs of sugared tea were soon plunked on a tray alongside a plate of tired biscuits.

  Beth thanked the cook and returned to Clemmy with the refreshments.

  “Oh, Mrs. Edwards,” Clemmy said from her sitting position on the sofa, “you are a most kind woman.”

  ***

  The tea seemed to give Clemmy enough energy to let Beth wriggle her into Hermia’s frock and pronounce it a successful fit. But the costume had no sooner been removed than Clemmy’s weight went slack against Beth, who dropped the garment and reached for the nearest forearm. With great difficulty, a hundred-pound Beth wrestled the unconscious and much heavier wom
an over to the sofa and lowered her as gently as she could onto the cushions. Clemmy slumped onto her back with eyes closed, jaw slack, and mouth agape.

  Beth retrieved a woollen afghan from the back of one of the chairs and placed it over Clemmy’s lumpish form, now clad only in a cotton slip. Then she leaned over to check her breathing. To her surprise, though the eyes remained shut, Clemmy began to speak, not in her customary high-pitched voice, but low and murmuring.

  “We’re just as good as they are, ain’t we? We wasn’t born with silver spoons in our mouths. Cyrus an’ me worked fer everythin’ we got, ten times over. We didn’t have time fer a lot of fancy schoolin’ – ”

  “It’s all right, Clemmy. You don’t have to speak. I understand. An’ you need to rest now. You got a rehearsal tonight an’ – ”

  “But we made it, didn’t we? Own a factory . . . servants . . . nobody thought we’d do it . . . showed ‘em, didn’t we, Cy? An’ you growin’ up with yer daddy dead like that . . . everybody talkin’ . . . not your fault yer daddy got shot fer runnin’ away from that awful battle, was it? We made it anyways . . . we . . . we – ”

  Beth drew the afghan up to Clemmy’s spittled chin, and watched the woman sink into a deep sleep. She wished she had not heard what she had just been privy to. That was the sort of secret no stranger had a right to know. But Beth knew there was one person who should know it soon.

  ***

  That afternoon the debate on the Union Bill and its terms began in the Legislative Assembly. As if to illustrate Governor Thomson’s point about the fractious confusions of colonial politics, the union clause itself was introduced in the lower chamber by the Governor’s house leader, “Sweet William” Draper, his Solicitor-General, who had serious reservations about the terms but would eventually and reluctantly vote in favour. Seated beside him, however, was his cabinet colleague, Attorney-General Hagerman, who would lead the right-wingers in an all-out attack on the bill. Indeed, the entire first day was consumed by lengthy and scenery-ripping diatribes from this hard-line cabal, even though its motley members would not necessarily break bread together outside the Assembly. Ogle Gowan, Provincial Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Lodge, ranted against all things French and republican. Merrill Bannerman, speaking on behalf of Bishop Strachan, fulminated against those godless democrats in their midst who would seek to promote the profane cause of responsible government and the separation of church and state by any means – including a morganatic marriage with Quebec traitors. Other more conventional Tories viewed the union proposal as a Radical-Whig plot hatched in London to dismantle the British Empire by cutting the colonies adrift from their anchorage in Church and Crown. The Reformers, lacking such grandiloquence, listened politely – and bided their time.

  ***

  The arrival of Clemmy Crenshaw for the Tuesday evening rehearsal caused a brief sensation: underneath her voluminous coat she was discovered to be in full costume – a living, breathing and very giddy Hermia! While this enthusiasm was, in the director’s eyes, preferable to her lethargic lurching and garbled recitations, it had its downside. Not expecting Hermia to be where she was supposed to be, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena (uncostumed) took turns bumping into her. In contrast, Sir P.’s Puck was amazingly agile, as the plump baronet proved to be as light on his feet as a slightly overweight ballerina. However, the wood-nymph costume he had chosen to don this evening – with diaphanous wings and a drooping tail – did little to disguise Puck’s flabby belly and spindle-legs. So much so that every time he pirouetted or pointed, Clemmy Crenshaw, still giddy, emitted a snicker (then a “whoof” as she took her husband’s elbow in the ribs). In the wings Cobb heard her say to him, “But I can’t help it. He looks like a big, ugly bumblebee!”

  Meanwhile, Cobb still had not become jaded by the pantomimed caresses of the fair Titania, and particularly enjoyed the participation of the four Wade children in the fairy costumes delivered to Oakwood Manor just hours before from Smallman’s. How pleased the little tykes were to pamper and praise the fairy queen’s donkey-lover, and permit him to deliver his best comic lines – despite the fact that his ass’s head was not to be had until Saturday. The only discordant note in this otherwise harmonious “bower scene” was the fact that Lady Mad had chosen this evening not to adorn the upper half of her perfumed bosom with a camouflaging scarf. As usual, Cobb’s alarm registered most dramatically in his nose, a development that prompted the fairies to giggle behind their wings and irritate their uncle. When not involved in his own scenes or absorbed in painting trees, Cobb kept an eye on Dutton and Lizzie, but caught them in direct conversation only once – discussing the merits of the apple tart on offer in the dining-room. More intriguing was the deliberate snub offered to Lady Mad by Horace Fullarton when they almost collided in the wings: a sure sign of something personal and complicated between them. But what?

  Cobb’s opportunity to search Sir P.’s bedroom for definitive evidence of his cross-dressing came about nine o’clock when the director yelled at Peaseblossom and Mustardseed for whispering off-stage, sending them into instant tears and bringing their aunt into the lists on their behalf. Harsh words were exchanged between the baronet and his lady, and the four youngest Wades were shunted off to their nanny. Sir P. called for a half-hour break, waved his cast towards the dining-room, and retired in a huff to his nearby den. Cobb, who had been painting the last of the trees on the last of the flats, muttered aloud that he was out of green paint, shucked his smock, and walked slowly into the hallway that led to the Shuttleworth’s private quarters. No-one appeared to notice.

  Making sure he was alone, Cobb eased open the bedroom door and peered inside. The room was empty. He stepped in and surveyed the scene. On the far side, beyond the bed, stood a pair of highboys and between them a large, double-doored wardrobe – their gleaming walnut veneers reflecting the glow of half a dozen candles. To his right a squat woodstove radiated the last of its heat. Obviously, some servant – the imported Chivers most likely – kept a watch on his lordship’s creature comforts. Cobb left the door ajar so as to be able to hear anyone approaching from either end of the hall.

  Avoiding the three-sided, floor-length looking-glass, Cobb hopped across the braided rug towards a small door cut into the wainscoting and almost invisible to the untrained eye. He fumbled about for the latch, found it, and eased the door open. Behind it lay the pink bower of Lady Madeleine. As he had thought, man and wife had separate sleeping chambers: among the gentry, cohabitation was a relative term. He now turned his attention to the first of the highboys. One by one he slid open the smooth-gliding drawers. To his disappointment he found only items that any gentleman would wear: shirts, stockings, male underclothing, waistcoats, scarves and ties. As he felt about with his fingers, he was careful to turn each neatly folded item over without unduly disturbing it (either Chivers or the baronet was fastidious).

  He went next to the second chest of drawers on the other side of the wardrobe. And struck the mother-lode. Every drawer was jammed with frilly, silky, lacy undergarments worn only by women, none of which was neatly folded. Cobb’s fingers recoiled at the touch of them, as if he had shoved his hand into a pail of eels. But manfully he pursued his quarry – unearthing a variety of stays, girdles and corsets – sufficient to outfit a chorus-line in Paris. And none of them compact enough to adorn a trim figure like that of Lady Mad. If further proof were needed, he soon found it when he opened the huge wardrobe – one side of which housed the usual array of gentleman’s frock-coats, silk jackets, and trousers – while the other side sported a rack of matron-sized gowns and evening-dresses: garish and, to Cobb’s mind, grotesque.

  So, Sir Peregrine Shuttleworth was a cross-dresser, and possibly more. Fodder enough here to feed several blackmailers! Well, it had taken him a week, and not a little humiliation, here in Oakwood, but Cobb had finally produced a suspect with a powerful motive for murder. It was true, he assumed, that back in England such outrageous behaviour among the lordly set would scarcel
y rate a raised eyebrow, provided it was kept discreet. But here in the colonies where the ruling Family Compact was spearheaded by the upright and pompous Bishop Strachan and where Sir P. as an outsider was trying to make his mark – here such a perverted obsession, if publicized, would be anathema.

  So absorbed was Cobb in such self-congratulatory reflection that he almost failed to hear the tap-tap of footfalls in the hall – followed immediately by the stifled giggle of an excited female! Without waiting to see whether she was heading his way, Cobb stumbled into the wardrobe, pulled several yards of silk around him, and eased the door towards him with one finger, leaving it perforce about an inch ajar. For a few seconds the rasping of his own breath deadened all competing sound. Then, to his horror, he heard the clump and clatter of footsteps at Sir P.’s bedroom door.

  “In here, lover, in here!”

  It was the voice of Lady Mad, hoarse with passion.

  The response to her plea was male, but murmured too low for Cobb to distinguish either the words or the identity of the speaker. But he would lay odds on Horace Fullarton.

  The next sound was that of a couple lurching or staggering into the room, followed by another lusty giggle and the wheeze of Sir P.’s mattress as the lovers collapsed upon it. Oh my God, Cobb thought with a rising sense of both excitement and panic, they are going to satisfy their adulterous cravings on the baronet’s bed, not six feet away! Just then something lacy wafted against his face and clung to it with the tenacity of a spider’s web. Fearing he would sneeze, he tried to blow it off with a series of ferocious puffs, but failed.

  Meanwhile, with a minimal rustle of reconfigured clothing, Lady Mad and her lover had achieved physical engagement – if the gasp of the lady and the muted grunt of the gentleman were any indication. This assumption on Cobb’s part was quickly validated.