“The debate on the civil list should peter out tomorrow afternoon. The reactionaries are fearful that a permanent, centralized and efficient civil service will encroach on their local privileges and sinecures. But it will pass, provided the coalition we’ve forged holds up as it has thus far.”
“So the entire bill could be passed by late tomorrow?”
“Yes. But that’s not the end of it. The Tories have dreamt up a series of amendments and, if they fail, hope to append a number of attachments which, if approved by a majority, will distort the bill’s intention and make it impossible for the Governor to approve.”
“Such as?”
“That English be the sole language of record for both houses. That the capital of the new dominion be Toronto. That no known rebel be allowed, ever, to stand for parliament. That the property qualification for the franchise be raised to exclude the riff raff. There’s even a suggestion that resident aliens, about a quarter of our current population, be denied the right to vote or hold office.”
“Good lord. So it looks as if this thing could drag on till Monday or Tuesday?”
“More than likely. But we’ve weathered the storm to this point, eh?”
We have, Marc thought, though for Brodie Langford the thunder and lightning were just beginning.
***
Marc and Beth agreed not to discuss the trial over supper. Charlene had propped Maggie in the wooden chair Jasper had built as his gift to the baby, and then headed across to check on Etta, who was recovering her health but not her spirits. Beth talked about the addition to their family, expected some time next April or early May, and once again offered suggestions about what sort of rooms could be built onto the existing stone cottage without diminishing its charm. Maggie appeared to be intrigued by the discussion, contributing an occasional gurgle.
They had just about reached a consensus when there came a single rap on the front door, after which it was flung open by the hand of Constable Cobb.
“Sorry to barge in like this,” he panted at Beth and Marc as they emerged from the dining-area. “But I got news.”
“What is it?” Marc said quietly. But his pulse was racing.
“Itchy Quick’s been spotted near his shack. If we leave right now, we may be able to catch him there.”
And Itchy was the only one who might know where Nestor Peck had got to.
“It’ll take me a few minutes to hitch up the horse,” Marc said, reaching for his hat and coat.
“No need, major. I come here in a cab.”
***
The cabbie whipped his animal smartly, and they drove north up to Duke Street, then east a block to Berkeley. Here the going got much rougher, as north Berkeley was largely undeveloped, the road becoming little more than a rutted path cut through scrub-bush and swamp. Marc thought that either the wheels would fall off the vehicle or he would. But Cobb kept urging the cabbie to continue on at a breakneck speed.
“Faster, Abner! There’s a pound in it fer ya!” he hollered up to the wide-eyed driver on the bench, then looked over at Marc and whispered, “If ya got one handy.”
“We may not get there at all,” Marc shouted above the din of the rattling wheels and shuddering undercarriage. “What’s the hurry?”
“I figure them two scoundrels’ve spent all of Duggan’s loot an’ slunk back into town. An’ we need to talk to ‘em before they find some other hole to crawl into!”
As it turned out, they had no need to hurry, for a quarter-mile south of Itchy’s shack, they met the fellow himself, trundelling as briskly as his cumbersome body parts would allow. He flagged them down from the edge of the road. His round, fleshy face was beet-red with exertion and excitement.
“I was just comin’ ta fetch you, Cobb!” he yelled up at the figures in the cab.
“An’ we been comin’ to find you, you skedadellin’ son of a bitch!” Cobb replied. “Where the hell’ve you been fer two weeks?”
Itchy recoiled at the slight, but it took three or four panting breaths before he could retaliate. “I – I been visitin’ my sick papa in Newark. Is that a crime?”
“I don’t believe ya.”
“I come to get you, Cobb, to try an help the law, an’ all you c’n do is insult me an’ my poor papa.”
“I doubt you ever had one.”
Marc stepped down and stood between Itchy and Cobb. “What is it you’ve got to tell us, Itchy? Do you know where Nestor Peck is?”
“’Course I do. I found him in my kitchen when I got back there about noon, didn’t I?”
“Ya mean when you an’ him stumbled in there,” Cobb persisted.
Itchy kept his agitated gaze on Marc. “He’s in a bad way, Mr. Edwards. I spent all afternoon tryin’ to help him, but I just seem to make things worse. Please, come an’ see what you c’n do.”
“We’ll take the cab,” Marc said. To Abner he said, “Have you got room for me up there with you? We need to get this man aboard. And there’ll be two pounds in it for you.”
Abner nodded enthusiastically, and Marc leapt up beside him. Itchy climbed warily up on the leather seat and squeezed his bulk in next to Cobb.
“Yer papa really sick?” Cobb said.
“Got the quinsy somethin’ terrible,” Itchy said.
They started to jounce again, and no more could be said.
***
Several bone-jarring minutes later the cab came to a halt at a scruffy laneway that drifted into a clutch of cedars, where Quick’s shack stood facing the world at eccentric angles. Itchy tumbled off the seat and lumbered off down the path, with Marc on his heels.
“You better stay here an’ wait fer us, Abner,” Cobb said to the driver. When Abner opened his mouth to object, Cobb said, “You want yer two pounds, don’t ya?” Then Cobb sped after the other two.
Without saying a word, Itchy pushed open the flimsy door of his house and stumbled into the main room, illuminated only by the natural light falling through two small windows. With Marc and Cobb close behind, Itchy went through a curtained doorway into what had to be his bedroom. And there, perched on the edge of a rough bedstead, his skinny buttocks just balanced on the wooden side-slat, was Nestor Peck. He was as naked as a plucked pullet. And trembling all over. And emitting a low babbling sound that might have been a moan or a plea. His face was swollen twice its size, the lips blackened and puffed. His eyes were open but rolling up and down in their sockets – unseeing.
“Jesus,” Cobb whispered, “the poor bugger’s flipped his wig!”
Before Itchy could stop him, Marc reached up and drew aside the burlap curtain covering the lone window in the room. Cold, late-day sunshine poured in. And they could now see that Nestor’s pale, leprous skin was dotted everywhere by inflamed and suppurating sores. Cobb fell back against the commode, gagging. Marc’s stomach lurched, and he closed his eyes against the horror of Nestor’s mutilated body.
“I been tryin’ to get him to lie down or take some tea or just talk to me – ever since I found him here at noon. But he’s just been sittin’ there, gabblin’ like a loony.” Itchy had tears in his eyes.
“He ain’t said a word?” Cobb said.
“Just a few, when he first seen me. All I could make out was he’d been livin’ in a hut with some trapper way up Yonge Street. An’ run over somethin’.”
“Wasps,” Marc said. He was kneeling in front of Nestor and looking closely at his right arm. “He must have stepped on a nest of them. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Cobb knelt down beside his long-time snitch. “Hey, Nestor. It’s me, Cobb. You know me?”
While the babble-moaning did not pause, Nestor’s gaze brushed across Cobb’s distinctive features, and he nodded.
“He ain’t loony,” Cobb said. “’Least no more’n usual. He’s just in agony.”
Again Nestor nodded.
“And he sure as hell didn’t run off to Buffalo with Duggan’s loot!”
“We gotta do somethin’,” Itchy said.
“I suggest
we get him to a doctor as soon as we can,” Marc said.
“I got a better idea,” Cobb said. “Let’s get him to my missus.”
***
While Marc remained with Itchy and poor Nestor, Cobb – reinforced by several of Marc’s pound notes – directed the cab hastily down to Baldwin House. There, the family’s four-seater was commandeered, and then driven by the Baldwin’s own driver back up Berkeley Street. As Nestor shrieked piteously every time he was touched anywhere close to one of his three-dozen wasp-stings, Marc, Cobb, Itchy and the driver had to pick him up by the palms of his hands and soles of his feet and ferry him to the vehicle covered only by a red flannel sheet. Once inside, they kept Nestor suspended between the facing seats – his babbling now punctuated by periodic sobs – until they reached the Cobb cottage on Parliament Street just above King.
Young Fabian Cobb, who was playing outside, spotted the carriage a block away, and by the time it reached the house, Dora and Delia had joined him on the stoop. Once again, as he had done so many times in the past three years, Marc watched in awe and admiration as Dora Cobb dealt with a medical emergency. Nestor was pitched, buttocks-first, onto Dora’s upturned palms, whereupon she wheeled her two hundred and some pounds about and waddle-trotted the patient into the cottage, his scrawny limbs thrashing helplessly under the sheet. Marc thanked the driver, and followed Cobb into the house. Itchy, much relieved, decided he needed a drink in town, but promised to come by first thing in the morning to check on his pal.
Fortunately, Dora had been preparing a bath for the children, and so two huge pots of water were already boiling on the stove in the kitchen. Still holding Nestor aloft by the buttocks, Dora issued a series of commands to Delia, Fabian and her husband – initiating a well-practised sequence of actions. The gleaming copper bathtub was pulled out from behind its screen into the middle of the room. The boiling water was poured into it, and quickly tempered by buckets of cold water transferred from the well out back. Delia was ordered to the nearby medicine cupboard, and returned to the tub with a vial in each hand. Dora was panting now under the strain of her squirming burden, who sensed that something more unpleasant than three-dozen wasp-bites was about to happen. Still, she hung on grimly, and gave her daughter precise instructions about the dosages she wanted applied to the bath. Seconds later, the bath-water began to bubble and dance, and a pungent aroma suffused the room.
“Pull off that rag!” Dora said to her husband.
“But he’s buck-naked!” Cobb said, glancing at Delia.
“That little pickle of his wouldn’t make a nun blush!” Dora said, “so do as you’re told, Mister Cobb.”
Cobb flipped the flannel sheet up and away from Nestor’s ravaged body, and the gasp from the children was not induced by his wizened male nakedness. With the dexterity of a juggler, Dora tossed Nestor into the air and, just as he was about to splash into the foamy, aromatic mixture, she seized both elbows as they flew by, steadied his flight-path, and eased him down as gently as a baby into its bath.
Nestor let out a howl that would have rivalled King Lear’s over the corpse of Cordelia, and sustained it for twice as long. While everyone else winced and fell back, Dora hung onto those two slippery elbows like a pair of forceps. Over and over, she dunked his body up and down in the medicinal concoction calculated to cleanse, purge, and heal – never once letting Nestor’s inflamed sores touch the metal of the tub.
“Help! Help! I’m bein’ drownded!”
“Well,” Cobb said to Marc, “she’s got him talkin’.”
Just then, at a signal from Dora, Fabian held up a soft, muslin sheet. Dora hauled Nestor up and out of the bath, set him on his feet, and wrapped him in the sheet as tenderly as she would a newborn in its blanket.
“You got the cot set up?” she said to Delia, who nodded.
“Fabian, you bring them salves in, an’ lots of dressin’s.”
Nestor was led off to Dora’s sewing-room, which doubled as a spare bedroom or patient’s recovery-room when necessary.
“She’s gonna apply some poultices,” Cobb said. “She’s real good at that.”
“She’s real good at a lot of things,” Marc said.
Cobb beamed, happy to take reasonable credit for his wife’s accomplishments.
***
Twenty minutes later, while Marc and Cobb were still mulling over Marc’s afternoon in court, Dora came back into the kitchen.
“When can we talk to him?” Cobb said, realizing, as surely as Marc did, that, given the effectiveness of Kingsley Thornton’s efforts so far, Nestor might possess information that could blow the Crown’s case apart.
“The poultices’ll start to work right away. The swellin’ in his face is already on its way down. I give him a sleepin’ potion with a good dose of laudanum in it. He oughta sleep fer a week.”
“Don’t say that, missus! We gotta find out what he knows about Duggan.”
“He ain’t eaten in days. When he wakes up in the mornin’, I’ll start spoon-feedin’ him. If you’re lucky, he could be sensible by the afternoon or evenin’.”
“Damn!”
“You’ve done wonders for him and for us, Dora,” Marc said. “I’ll stop by after the morning session in court and check on his progress.”
Dora grinned. “Nice to be appreciated,” she said and, glancing at Cobb, added, “by a gentleman.”
***
On the stoop, under a cold but clear November sky, Marc said to Cobb, “Thanks for all this. It could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
“But Thornton’ll be finished by noon-hour tomorrow, won’t he?”
“It’s my defense that matters. And that won’t begin until Monday.” Marc was about to leave when a new thought struck him. “Say, you’ve been on the day-patrol this week, haven’t you? That means you left your post at six tonight to pursue Itchy and Nestor?”
“That I did, major. I figured that there business was more important than helpin’ drunks weave their way home to their gripe-ful wives or shooin’ stray mutts outta alleys.”
“I suppose the day-patrol is a lot more pleasant than night-duty.”
“Usually is.”
“Why ‘usually’?”
“You ain’t gonna believe this, but Wilkie, who’s been takin’ my night-shift, caught the burglar we been huntin’ fer a month or more.”
Marc laughed, though he could see Cobb had found no humour in the improbability. “The culprit must have tripped over him, eh?”
“You got that exactly right,” Cobb sighed. “Wilkie was sound asleep under three blankets near the garden-shed behind a mansion on York Street when the burglar, luggin’ a gunnysack full of loot, trips an’ falls on top of him. This is just enough dis-turbulence to jar Wilkie awake. He opens his eyes an’ sees this fella with a black mask on his face, scrabblin’ around amongst the silver candlesticks an’ snuffoxes. An’ real slow it begins to dawn on Wilkie that this guy ain’t the butler come into the garden to polish the family inheritlooms at four in the mornin’. So he gives him a friendly rap on the noggin with his truncheon.”
“And?”
“And it’s Wilkie that gets to collect the ten dollars!”
Marc tried not to laugh. “Well, old friend, I guess virtue still has its rewards.”
SEVENTEEN
The trial of Brodie Langford continued on Friday morning. To come were the critical witnesses in the Crown’s effort to construct a story of blackmail, intemperate youth, sudden rage, cunning improvisation and calculated deception. Cyrus Crenshaw was first up.
As it turned out, there were no surprises in his testimony, for which Marc was grateful, but it was damning enough anyway. Crenshaw testified, in a straight-ahead and unequivocal manner (much appreciated by Thornton, who let him talk away as much as he pleased), that he had left the meeting via the cloakroom about three or four minutes after Fullarton, and observed two men in the alley. One was comatose on the ground and the other crouched over him. In the jurors’ minds, th
is account followed nicely upon the one Fullarton had provided yesterday, in which two men had been seen grappling in anger. Now one of them had evidently knocked out the other, and the victor was checking out the damage. Like Fullarton, Crenshaw had not seen their faces or recognized either combatant, and he too had exercised a gentleman’s prerogative and scuttled off home. Again, Thornton pressed the business of the attacker’s hatless head and familiar blond hair, but Crenshaw stuck to his original claim.
Marc began his cross-examination by once more going through the motions of demonstrating that the precise time-line being presented by Thornton was not really precise at all.
“Could you not have left seven or eight minutes after Mr. Fullarton instead of three or four?”
“Anything’s possible,” Crenshaw shot back.
Marc now moved to a point mentioned in Cobb’s notes of his interview with Crenshaw that had been conveniently overlooked by Thornton.
“You told Constable Cobb when he spoke to you that you thought the man crouched over Albert Duggan was feeling about the injured man as if he were concerned that he had hurt him badly, did you not?”
“Milord, I must object. The question involves pure speculation on the part of the witness.”
“I am almost quoting from the constable’s notes, Milord.”
“You may answer yes or no,” the judge said to Crenshaw.
“I did say somethin’ like that.”
“Thank you. One final question. You cannot say with any certainty that the man crouched over the victim was the defendant, Mr. Langford?”
“I could not, sir.”
Marc concluded by requesting permission to recall Crenshaw. Thornton looked puzzled, but not worried. He did not even bother to rebut. No member of the jury would believe that it had not been Brodie, in view of the lad’s own statement. And he would tidy up the time-line and sequence of events in his summation. But for Marc the departure times were significant. If Crenshaw had been only three minutes behind Fullarton, he could not only have witnessed the punch to the cheek but also heard enough to realize who Duggan was – and take the decision to finish him off after Brodie ran.
Desperate Acts Page 24
