Desperate Acts

by Don Gutteridge

  Cobb, who had found that his buttocks had crept almost over the edge of his chair, sat back with an all-purpose sigh. “Who are you plannin’ to torture first? You realize, don’t ya, you’re gonna be floggin’ an’ humble-izin’ some pretty important people? An’ only one of ‘em c’n be guilty of murder. Ain’t that dangerous, an’ lowdown to boot?”

  It was Marc’s turn to sigh. “I know it’s harsh and certainly unjust, but it’s the only defense I’ve got, short of exposing the real murderer. I need to throw enough doubt on Brodie’s guilt to have him acquitted or have the jury deadlocked. What I intend to do between now and next Monday is decide on which of the five suspects is most likely the culprit, and call him first. If I can break him or even have him appear equally culpable, I may not have to embarrass the others. And I’ll certainly feel about an inch tall if I have to ask Horace Fullarton for a character reference for Brodie, then turn on him like a mad hyena.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re convinced Brodie’s innocent, ain’t it?”

  “I’ve never thought otherwise, not for a split second.”

  “Well, major, I’d say that what you’re proposin’ to do is as close to play-actin’ as anythin’ we’ve got up to at Oakwood Manners.”

  “And what role do you think I’d be taking on?”

  Cobb grinned. “Doubtful Dick Dougherty bedazzlin’ everybody within hearshot!”

  Marc smiled at the compliment and its perceptiveness, then looked serious. “I may need to be as good as Dick was if I’m to see a find young man acquitted of a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “My money’s on you,” Cobb said, and meant it.

  FOURTEEN

  When Marc arrived at the Court House, somewhat groggy after being wakened intermittently throughout the night by a teething Maggie and a fretful Beth, he got two surprises, neither of them heartening. The first one concerned the witness-lists. He handed the clerk his own roster – that included Horace Fullarton, Andrew Dutton and Celia Langford – and received the Crown’s in return. Subpoenas, where necessary, would go out within the hour. As expected, the Crown proposed to call Dr. Angus Withers, Cobb, Sturges, Gillian Budge, Dutton, Fullarton, Cyrus Crenshaw, Tobias Budge and Sir Peregrine Shuttleworth. If called in this order, the Crown’s tactics were crystal clear. After Dr. Withers reported on the injuries and time of death, the two policemen would be compelled to discuss the confession, after which the testimony of those at The Sailor’s Arms would, minute by minute, seal Brodie’s fate. But it was the unexpected name on the Crown’s list that gave Marc a nasty shock: Celia Langford.

  What on earth would the Crown – Alf McGonigle to be precise – want with Celia? Brodie’s statement admitted his receiving the blackmail note, and the note itself had been destroyed. All Marc could think of was that, according to Brodie, Celia had been present when the note arrived a week before the fatal encounter took place. Perhaps McGonigle was going fishing for something Celia might have heard Brodie say at that time, or later, about his intentions. After all, Brodie had claimed in his statement that he had planned to entrap the blackmailer, expose him, and haul him off to the police quarters – but had lost his temper and struck Duggan on the cheek. By putting the “confession” into evidence, the Crown was taking a calculated risk: while the eye-witness testimony jibed with Brodie’s account (except for the battering with his walking-stick), the jury would have to be persuaded to interpret Brodie’s truncated version as a deliberate, self-serving attempt to save his neck. But they might not see it that way. Under British law, a defendant like Brodie could not testify on his own behalf, but in this instance some of the lad’s own words and intentions would get admitted, and might be believed. Unless Celia had heard him utter more incriminating ones! Marc would have to go to her as soon as possible and find out.

  The second nasty shock came just as Marc was set to leave, when he asked casually after Alf McGonigle, and was informed that the fellow would not be prosecuting Brodie after all. He had been given leave to attend his dying mother up in Newmarket. But a suitable replacement had been found by coaxing an experienced barrister out of semi-retirement.

  Marc did not need to be given the name. “Kingsley Thornton,” he said.

  “The very man,” the clerk smiled, knowingly.

  Thornton had been a renowned barrister at the Old Bailey in England for many years before retiring to Upper Canada to be with his extended family. Last January he had been lured out of retirement to prosecute a local man for murder, having been drawn to the case by the equally talented barrister he was to face on the other side: Doubtful Dick Dougherty, Brodie’s guardian. Although things had not gone his way, he had obviously enjoyed the contest, and was eager to slip back into harness. Which was not good news for either Marc or Brodie. This was to be Marc’s first trial as a barrister. He had had superb tutors in the Baldwins and Robert Sullivan, and an incomparable exemplar in Richard Dougherty, but Thornton was a seasoned professional – eloquent, disarming, and quick to exploit an opponent’s weakness. Moreover, he had been handed an airtight case, one which left the defense with no choice but to execute a daring, high-wire act. Marc thought he had better deliver this disquieting news to Brodie – as soon as he had talked to Celia.

  Some of the subpoenas had likely gone out already, but if Celia had been an afterthought, there was a chance he could get to her before she was served. If not, he would be ethically bound to quiz her only on the testimony she was going to provide the defense as a character-witness. He went straight to Miss Tyson’s Academy on George Street, and was relieved to find Celia sitting in the headmistress’s office poring over her French verbs. She looked up and gave him a welcoming smile.

  “Marc, come in. I’m minding the store for half an hour. You’ve got some news about the trial? Brodie seemed awfully down when I left him this morning.”

  “I’ve got news,” Marc said evenly, and sat down opposite her with his coat still on.

  Like her brother, Celia Langford was blond to the point of being mistaken for albino – except that the eyes were a transparent blue instead of pink. Like her older brother, she too was intelligent, warm-hearted and amazingly resilient, considering the blows life had dealt her almost-eighteen years. She had lost a mother, a father, a guardian and a country. Her brother was all she had left.

  “Take your coat off first,” she said sweetly, not yet alarmed, “or you’ll roast in here.”

  “Have you received a subpoena from the court yet?” Marc said, his coat still on.

  Celia shook her head, and looked puzzled. “I’m testifying for Brodie, am I not?”

  “You are, but your name has been appended to the Crown’s witness-list as well, put there, I suspect, by the newly appointed prosecutor.”

  “But I’ve got nothing to say that he would be interested in, have I?”

  “Unless he plans to question you about Brodie’s mood when the blackmail note first arrived, or something he may have said thereafter.”

  There was a flicker of anxiety in her eyes as she replied, “He did let me see the note. It just said that the fellow knew a secret about Diana that she would not want known, and that Brodie was to take five pounds to that alley. But they know this already.”

  “Yes, they do. But remember that Brodie claims in his statement to the police that he intended to confront the scoundrel and have him arrested.”

  “That’s what I gathered then, Marc. He told me not to worry, that he would take care of things.”

  “Nothing more specific?” They had gone over this before, but Marc had to be sure there were no further remarks that might be prodded loose by the wily Mr. Thornton.

  “No. That was all. At least about that note.” Celia blushed and looked down at her grammar textbook. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”

  Marc could hardly believe his ears. “What note are you talking about?” he said as firmly as he dared.

  “It’s not important, really. Brodie asked me not to mention it.”

  “Duggan sen
t a second note?”

  “Yes. It was shoved under the back door, and brought to Brodie and me in his study.”

  “When?”

  “We got it about a quarter of an hour before Brodie was to leave for the Shakespeare Club on that dreadful night.”

  “But Brodie says nothing about a second note in his statement!”

  “I know, and that’s why we decided not to mention it. You see, it was just one sentence – something like, ‘Be there tonight or Miss Ramsay is ruined.’ That’s why Brodie simply forgot to put it in his statement. It didn’t say anything that the first one didn’t.”

  Marc sighed, but tried not to let his alarm show too vividly. While the note itself could be irrelevant, Brodie’s leaving it out of his account would appear to be a deliberate omission – a lie, in legal terms. If exposed, it could undermine any attempt by Marc to show that the “confession” was the truth and not a self-serving deception.

  “If the Crown does discover this business, Celia, they will certainly press you for anything you might have heard Brodie say when he read the second note, particularly because it came just minutes before he left for The Sailor’s Arms.”

  “I understand. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  “Did Brodie say anything that the Crown could use against him?”

  “He just said what he had the first time: ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll look after this.’ He is very protective of me.”

  While these comments were delivered in a straightforward manner, there was an evasiveness in her expression that was worrisome.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “I am. Don’t worry. There’s no way I’m going to hurt Brodie’s case.”

  Marc admired her loyalty and did not doubt her courage, but she had never stood in a witness-box and faced the civilized fury of a Kingsley Thornton interrogation.

  ***

  As Celia had forewarned Marc, her brother was uncharacteristically downcast. Under the terms of his release, Brodie had to surrender to the court by four o’clock today, and would remain in custody until the trial was over – and he was either acquitted or found guilty. But Marc could not think of any tactful way of introducing the topic of the second note. They were alone in Brodie’s study, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, Marc began:

  “Celia tells me there was a second note from Duggan.”

  Brodie blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Oh, that. I stupidly forgot to mention it in my statement, and then when I did remember it later on, I figured it was foolhardy to claim I’d merely forgotten it. But it was just a little reminder from the blackguard before the gathering at The Sailor’s Arms. I showed it to Celia.”

  “And you didn’t say anything aloud when you read it in the presence of your sister?”

  Brodie said quietly, “She’s not going to be put on the stand about that business, is she?”

  “I’m afraid so. And she’s going to have to face Kingsley Thornton. He’s been appointed prosecutor for the Crown.”

  Brodie flinched. “Christ, Marc, is there any good news?”

  “Celia will do fine as long as she only has to tell the truth,” Marc said, and stared at Brodie.

  “If they think she heard me say something damning, they’ll be disappointed.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Besides, nobody knows about the second note but you, Celia and me. Thornton may be cunning, but even he can’t ask about something he’s not aware of.”

  This was not quite the answer Marc was hoping for, but he felt he shouldn’t press the issue any further. Instead he said, “I do have more positive news.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Marc outlined the strategy he had developed for Brodie’s defense. Without giving the particulars of the three secrets he and Cobb had uncovered, Marc explained that he could, with a lot of skill and some luck, introduce three or four plausible, alternative theories of the crime and its perpetrator. Brodie listened without interruption.

  When Marc had finished, he said, “You’ve discovered motives for three of the five possibles, then? What about Budge and Dutton?”

  Marc told him about the “grudge” motive he could, if necessary, ascribe to the barkeep, and intimated that Dutton was the least likely suspect anyway.

  “You’re not going to expose any of these secrets in the courtroom, are you?’

  “I don’t see the need to. Blackmail per se is the motive, not its unsavoury detail. Besides which, I don’t have enough hard evidence to proceed very far before being stopped in my tracks by the judge or Thornton.”

  “Still, you will be suggesting publicly that one of these gentlemen is a murderer.”

  “Yes. That’s essential to our prospects.”

  “Could you leave Horace to the last?” Brodie said, leaning forward with a most solemn look on his face. “What good will it do if I get off and lose the respect of a man I think of as a kind of father?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t been able to decide in what order I’ll recall the five possibles. Or indeed how many I’ll need – or can get away with. But I do know how you feel about Horace, and I’ll bear it in mind. I promise.”

  “Thank you. He’s no killer, and I can’t imagine what he’d have to hide from a blackmailer.” Brodie took a deep breath and added, “Nor do I ever want to know.”

  “Do you want me to drive up here this afternoon and take you to the Court House?”

  “Stan Petrie is going to do that,” Brodie said, referring to his faithful manservant. Then he blushed slightly. “We’re going to stop for ten minutes at Baldwin House.”

  “Good. You’ve put Diana off for too long.”

  “I know. And, besides, she threatened to intercept me on the lawn in front of the jail if I didn’t show up first at Robert’s place.”

  At the door, Brodie said to Marc, “My life is in your hands.” Then, when he saw the expression on Marc’s face, he added, “They’re good hands.”

  ***

  Stan Petrie drove Marc down to Front Street and then west to the parliament buildings between John and Simcoe. Marc thanked him, and entered the foyer of the House of Assembly. The afternoon debate was just underway as Marc made his way up to the crowded gallery. He stood at the back and looked for signs of Robert and Francis Hincks on the spectators’ benches below, but could not see them. They were no doubt not too far away, shoring up their unlikely coalition. But their efforts and stratagems were paying dividends right here before Marc’s eyes. Before the hour was out, the Speaker called for a division on the union clause of the bill. The bells rang vigorously. The spectators buzzed – many excited, some anxious. When the vote was taken ten minutes later, the political union of Upper and Lower Canada was approved by forty-four to eleven – a landslide. The opposition had collapsed.

  It was by no means finished, though, as Marc and the Durhamites well knew. The hard-line Tories would try to win back the support of the moderate conservatives, and mavericks like Tiger Dunlop, on the question of the specific terms of the union. If successful, they could emasculate the union principle itself. Several of the terms to be debated now were emotional powder-kegs. For example, the House, as committee-of-the-whole, was set to discuss the number of seats each province would be allotted in a bicameral Canadian Legislature. The bill as it stood called for equal representation in both chambers, a proposal that favoured Upper Canada with one hundred and fifty thousand fewer people than Quebec. This advantage, however, was not enough for the Tory group. To offer equality of opportunity to a race of backward people – who, as recently as two years before, had taken up arms against the Monarch and invited American freebooters to invade Her Sovereign soil – was tantamount to sanctioning treason, was it not? And how much of the current Upper Canadian debt was due to the rebellion itself? And so on. These were irrational or misguided arguments in Marc’s view, but they stirred passions and opened wounds only partially healed. The outcome of this part of the debate was not a foregone conclusion.

>   Marc left the Assembly a few minutes later and walked along Front Street to Bay, where he poked his head in the door of Baldwin House. Robert was not in, but Diana Ramsay, looking radiant despite the worry in her face, greeted him in the central hallway. The very sight of her should go far to boosting Brodie’s sagging morale, he thought. After all, it was for her honour that he had bearded Duggan in the first place, and it was she who figured wholly in his vision of the future.

  “How is he?” she asked Marc.

  “Holding up well,” Marc said, taking her gloved hand. “And he’ll be even better – soon.”

  ***

  Beth was seated at the desk in the study, writing a letter. Two other letters lay open beside her. She looked up, smiled, then said quickly, “What’s happened?”

  “Oh, a couple of surprises in the case, that’s all. I’ll tell you about them, if you’ve got a moment.”

  “Ya mean, if Maggie don’t wake up an’ surprise us?”

  “Something like that.” Marc nodded towards the half-composed letter. “Writing to the Iowans?”

  “One to Winnifred, an’ one, later, to Mary.”

  Winnifred Goodall and Mary Hatch had been neighbours of Beth when she and her first husband, Jesse Smallman, had operated a farm near Cobourg. They and their husbands had been caught up in the maelstrom and aftermath of the rebellion two years before, victims of the hatred and thirst for vengeance it had engendered throughout the province. It was said that as many as ten thousand farmers and their families had pulled up stakes, sold their land for a song, and moved to the far-off, nameless spaces west of the Mississippi. The Goodalls and Hatches had been amongst them, trekking to the Iowa territory and taking along with them Aaron McCrae, Beth’s young, handicapped brother. Every time Marc watched Beth read one of their many letters, he felt a rage build up inside him – at the injustice and random cruelties that the abortive revolt had wrought. He and Beth, like countless others, had lost good friends, whom they would never see again. It could not continue. Robert’s obsession with responsible government and a secular state was directed aright. Upper Canada had to be made a place where diligent and honest citizens could work, feel safe, seek justice under the law, and be ruled by those they elected. And that included Brodie and Celia Langford. Marc was not going to lose one more friend – whatever he had to do.