Sturges muttered agreement. “You c’n always count on a politician undoin’ himself,” he said with philosophical satisfaction.
“So Billy got in there legitimately, then? Did he say what they quarrelled about?”
“Point of honour,” Sturges said, hitting the spittoon. “That’s all he’d say.”
“And he’s in the cells, I assume.”
“And likely to stay there awhile.”
“What do you mean, Wilf? The lad’s not really dangerous to the public at large. In fact, as far as the local populace is concerned, Sergeant McNair is a war hero. They know full well it was he, not that puffed-up brevet colonel, who distinguished himself at Windsor and captured Coltrane. There’s not a man or woman among them who won’t, when they hear of the duel, wish that Billy had finished the job then and there.”
“Christ, Marc, take it easy. I gotta sleep nights, ya know.”
“Oh, I am sorry, Wilf. I should’ve realized that having to arrest Billy and hold him here has put you and Cobb in a very ticklish situation.”
Sturges sighed. “It won’t be the first one we been in, but I sure ain’t lookin’ forward to a bunch o’ frothin’ Orangemen struttin’ up and down in front of this place fer days on end.”
“So you’ll want Billy released as soon as possible?”
A deeper sigh. “I wish. But Magistrate Thorpe won’t ’ear of it.”
“But that makes no sense—”
“It does to him. He says he’s got two affidaveys there swearin’ to the fact that Billy vowed to kill Coltrane before he could be hanged. He knows Billy wouldn’t stand a chance of doin’ so, and will probably regret what he said when he’s cooled off after a chilly night in the cells, but Thorpe’s terrified of the governor. He knows Sir George wants this trial and a public hangin’ more’n anythin’ else, and so he can’t take a chance on lettin’ Billy loose. He’s denied bail, at least until Coltrane gets turned off. After which I figure the charges against Billy’ll just fade away.”
“But it’s freezing in the cells. If Billy’s kept in there for three or four weeks, he could catch a fever and die!”
“Some do. Though the mob is more likely to bust ’im out before that happens.”
The two men let these grim possibilities settle between them for several minutes.
“I’m going to enlist the services of Robert Baldwin to defend Billy,” Marc said quietly. “He may have more luck with posting surety. At any rate, we’ll need to see the prisoner as soon as possible tomorrow.”
“You seem to ’ave a personal stake in all this.”
“I do. Beth’s friend and employee, Dolly Putnam, was engaged to Billy and is still in love with him. Billy’s been a troubled young man ever since the business in Windsor, and his troubles look to be a long way from over.”
At the door, Sturges said, “I’ll find a nice warm room upstairs fer you and Baldwin to interview Billy. Just send me a message about the time.”
“Thanks, Wilf. You’re a good man.”
“Upholdin’ the law can be a bitch, can’t it?” Sturges replied.
FIVE
Jasper Hogg, the young man next door who did odd jobs for Beth around the house and garden while conspiring to effect as many side glances as possible at Charlene Huggan, came over to Briar Cottage at eight o’clock and hitched Dobbin to Beth’s sleigh. Marc had insisted that if she were foolhardy enough to work at the shop in her delicate condition, the least she could do was drive there in comfort and safety. And as Beth had already determined on this course of action, she was pleased to assent to it. Marc decided to walk to Baldwin’s this day so that Beth could pick up Dolly, take her to work, and break the disquieting news in a tactful, womanly way. Robert was still at breakfast in the domestic section of the grand house on Front Street but came over to the offices of Baldwin and Sullivan shortly after receiving Marc’s note from a servant.
“I heard about this duel business late yesterday,” he said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, and Marc realized that keeping a low profile and abstaining from the rough-and-tumble of political debate had left the committed young man restless and bored. “What can we do to help?”
Physically, Robert was a younger version of his handsome and multitalented father. They were both of medium height with heart-shaped faces, weak chins, slicked-back brown hair (the elder’s now graying elegantly), and dark, darting eyes that observed much and understood more.
“I would like you to represent Billy McNair.”
Baldwin smiled. “With able assistance from my apprentice, I presume?”
“I would be pleased to help.”
Robert went over to his desk, brushed aside some papers there, and sat down. “Well, then, put your feet up on the fender and tell me everything you think I should know.” He reached over and nibbled at a macaroon.
Marc gave him chapter and verse about the incident and its aftermath. When he had finished, Robert said, “It’ll be a pleasure defending a local hero from the wrath of the law, won’t it? It’s been a while since I’ve been on the right side.”
• • •
Billy McNair was brought through the tunnel that connected the jail with the Court House about eleven o’clock that Tuesday morning and taken up to a commodious, carpeted room warmed by a sizzling coal fire. The winter sunlight backlit the padded armchairs and glazed the tea tables. Seated and awaiting him were Magistrate James Thorpe and two wool-suited gentlemen, one of whom Billy recognized instantly. Calvin Strangway, the jailer, pushed him into the room, then—realizing where he was—steadied his prisoner and stepped on the shackles to keep them from rattling.
“Good God!” Marc gasped. Billy was dishevelled, hollow-eyed, shivering, and bound hand and foot. “Get those chains off the boy!”
Strangway blushed. “Rules is rules, sir. I ain’t allowed.”
Magistrate Thorpe intervened to say, “It’s all right, Calvin. Take them off and wait downstairs.” Thorpe had offered Baldwin the use of his own study as interview room, in part, Marc thought, to compensate for his refusal to grant bail. A communiqué had arrived from Government House instructing Thorpe not to release the prisoner under any circumstances.
The jailer unlocked the various shackles and scuttled away. Billy, apparently shamed by his experience in the cells or perhaps just exhausted by it, rubbed absently at his wrists and stared at the carpet. Thorpe quietly left the room by the other door. Marc wasted no time.
“Billy, this is Mr. Baldwin. He’s an attorney and has agreed to act for you. Please, sit down. There. I’ll pour you a mug of coffee while you tell us what happened and how you think we can best help you.”
Billy nodded glumly but took the mug eagerly in both hands.
Robert smiled at him and began. “We need you, first of all, to tell us precisely how this unfortunate incident came about. We need to understand what provocation may have been proffered and what sort of collusion took place to allow the duel to proceed.”
Billy stared at the lawyer. “What difference does all that make?” he asked. “I aimed a pistol at the bastard and missed. End of story.”
Marc was not displeased to see some fire come into Billy’s eyes. Defiance, even surliness, was better than silence and despair. If they were to argue extenuating circumstances and possible criminal collusion on the part of the organizers of the fiasco, then they would need Billy’s spirited cooperation.
“Humour me, then,” Robert said, unfazed by his outburst. “We’re told that you requested an audience with Major Coltrane and that, apparently, he agreed to it. What was the purpose of your visit?”
Billy finished his coffee and fingered the abrasions on his wrists. “I wanted to look the murderer in the eye and tell him what I thought of him.”
“But you were the one who captured him at Windsor and brought him to your camp some miles away,” Robert said, remembering the newspaper accounts provided by everybody concerned except Billy himself.
Billy’s reply was delivered
without emotion, as if the details were self-evident and unimportant to boot. “He was unconscious. He never opened his eyes all the way back. The colonel’s eyes just about popped out of his head when he saw it was Coltrane and I gave him the papers he was carryin’. Then we took him away to the hospital at brigade headquarters in Fort Malden. I waited for a bit while the surgeon worked on his wound, then left. I never saw him again till last Sunday.” He smiled grimly. “And I never got to look the bastard in the face till then, did I?”
“I think I can understand your motive for going to Chepstow,” Robert said, “but you must have known that Coltrane was certain to be condemned by a public criminal proceeding, after which he would hang in the yard outside this very building.”
“I guess I just wanted to tell him that it was me that saved his miserable life,” Billy said evenly, “the one who allowed him to be brought here and strung up like a Christmas goose.”
“You saved his life?” Marc interrupted, incredulous.
“He was bleedin’ to death. He’d just rigged up a trap fer my unit and killed my best friend. And fool that I was, I put a tourniquet on his left arm, an orange silk kerchief of Dolly’s that she give me before I left Toronto.” Tears of anger or regret blurred his vision, and he looked away. “I never did get it back.”
“So, tell us what happened when you got in there to see him on Sunday.”
Billy held out his mug for more coffee, then stared at the sunlight on the carpet as if he might not see its like again. When he spoke, his voice was subdued, almost solemn. “It didn’t go the way I thought it would. He’s a big braggart of a man. He didn’t seem the least afraid of dyin’. When I told him I was the one who captured him, he laughed and said, ‘You wouldn’t’ve got me if I’d had even half an eye open!’ I wanted him to know that a lowly militia sergeant had trailed him through the bush and got the better of him, but I never got to it. Instead, I started yellin’ at him, callin’ him a killer and a connivin’ ambusher, but he just laughed louder and started lecturin’ me on the ‘realities’ of battle, as he called them. Then he boasted how his mates were comin’ to rescue him and how he’d never see the inside of a tyrant’s courtroom.”
“So he doesn’t know you actually saved his life?” Marc asked.
Billy shook his head. “All I could see was Mel’s ruined face and his killer was sittin’ across from me snortin’ snuff and tellin’ me it was all part of war and fightin’ fer a cause you believed in. So I stood up and said I was gonna go to the papers and give ’em the story they’d been tryin’ to get outta me fer a month.”
“Why would that bother him,” Robert wondered, “when nothing else seems to have?”
Billy smiled, and this time there was a glint of satisfaction in it. “I got to him with that, I did. I told him I’d tell the papers that he ran away like a coward from the fight in the orchard, that he wasted his troops’ ammunition, and they had to scuttle away like whipped hounds. Only a lucky find at the old fort allowed any of his men to escape.”
“But isn’t that what happened?”
“No. I was the one that saw the bastard organizin’ a proper orderly retreat, just like our own colonel taught us. He was already wounded, and only left the battle when it was lost and he had to regroup.”
Something occurred to Marc that had been puzzling him ever since reading the varying accounts of the Battle of Windsor in December. “Just how did Major Coltrane find the crates that were left in the redoubt? It’s obvious that the fortification was beside the creek they were using as an escape route, so they could hardly miss that. But I’m told that Colonel Stanhope indicated in his official report that, although overlooked by Captain Muttlebury during the removal detail, the crates were still buried. If not, then even poor Muttlebury would have noticed them.”
“Coltrane told me about that, before we both lost our tempers,” Billy explained. “He said his men wanted to surrender. Four of them’d died at our hands already. They begged their commander to let them hunker down in the old fort when they spotted it. There they could run a white hanky up the flagpole and surrender peacefully.”
“But it didn’t unfold that way.”
“No. Coltrane said he’d heard we had hidden caches of arms all around the county, and he suspected the sod wall there would be a logical place. He claimed our fellows had left two or three spilled cartridges in plain sight nearby.”
“So they dug around and came up with a crate or two of bullets, powder, and some muskets?”
“Yeah. I figure it must’ve been them cartridges the captain left that gave the show away, ’cause we weren’t more’n ten or twelve minutes behind them. Then that bastard, instead of usin’ the fort to fight a proper battle, comes up with the idea of runnin’ up the Yankee flag and hidin’ in the bush to cut us down from the side.”
“Couldn’t you see their tracks leading there?” Marc said, recalling his own winter battleground in Quebec.
“The sun was in our eyes, and they sneaked out the back and circled around.”
“He seems to have counted upon the inexperience of your officers,” Marc commented. He knew all too well the occasional carelessness of officers whose vast experience had not been sufficient to temper their arrogance.
Billy just shook his head.
“Take us back, then, to the point where you threatened Coltrane on Sunday,” Robert said.
“Well, like I said, I finally got to him,” Billy replied, perking up. “He said I didn’t have the guts to lie about somethin’ as sacred as courage in battle, he blustered on about codes of honour and a lot of other horseshit, but I kept the picture of Mel’s smashed face in front of me and told him flat out that I’d say he ran from the fight. It’s true enough that he was a cowardly assassin and I was going to let the whole world know about it. His name’d be so blackened, no one would lift a finger to rescue him.”
In the retelling, Billy’s eyes lit up and Marc could see the grit and self-confidence that had carried the lad through slaughter and its random terrors. War had darkened Billy’s view of humankind, as it had done for Marc, who had also seen his best friend cruelly cut down. But in doing so, it had also made him a man. Which could prove more difficult than helpful in the present situation.
“You were very foolhardy to do that,” Robert said gently.
“I started to think so this mornin’,” Billy said more soberly. “But two days ago I didn’t care, I just wanted to puncture that bloated vanity of his, and I did. He huffed up like a rooster and said I’d insulted him, and if I thought he really was wicked and cowardly, he’d give me a chance to settle scores—man to man.”
“He suggested a duel?” Robert said, knowing it was so but still finding the fact incredible.
“He caught me off guard,” Billy said, reddening slightly.
“Sounds as if he’s rather skilled at that,” Marc said. “But how can a constantly guarded prisoner arrange for a duel outside his cell?”
“He said he could persuade his jailer, Lieutenant Bostwick, to set it up for the next mornin’. I had enough breath still in me to ask about weapons and seconds, and he said Bostwick would supply pistols and act as umpire and second fer both of us. Bostwick is the colonel’s adjutant and an old crony, so I figured I didn’t haveta worry about him bein’ unfair or dishonest.”
“No wonder Bostwick was chagrined to see Cobb arrive,” Marc said.
“And the colonel,” Robert added. “So you agreed?” he said to Billy.
“Yes. I was to come to the little garden he used to exercise in at seven o’clock the next mornin’. When I asked about the guards on the back gate, he said they were usually asleep, but he could arrange fer Bostwick to take care of them.” Billy looked at Marc, then Robert. “I couldn’t say no, could I?”
Marc said nothing but had to agree.
• • •
Billy did indeed arrive at the back gate of Chepstow shortly after seven, while it was still dark, and the sentries were, as predicted, fast
asleep. Lieutenant Bostwick was waiting in the enclosed garden with two pistols on a tray. Major Coltrane then came out of the back door of his quarters (always barred on the outside by the jailer but not so that morning) in his tunic with no overcoat. Bostwick explained the rules and then held the tray out to Coltrane, who chose a pistol with no great care or seeming concern. The adversaries exchanged no words. At twenty paces apart the two men were to turn around, wait till the umpire’s hanky hit the ground, then fire at will.
Billy had never before fired a pistol, even though he was an experienced hunter of small game with a rifle and musket. But as he took his ten paces, all his anger and outrage at Coltrane—which had mellowed somewhat during a sleepless night—flared up as he thought about his life without Mel at his side and the failure of his engagement to Dolly, and the last thing he saw before he wheeled and prepared to blow this demon creature to the far reaches of hell was his friend’s inexhaustible grin. He heard his own pistol explode, then Coltrane’s. Something thudded into the wall behind him. (In his report, Cobb had noted that he and Constable Brown had returned to Chepstow and examined the garden wall behind each of the shooters. They dug out a ball four feet to the right of where Billy had stood and two feet above his head. No bullet was found in the wall opposite. Cobb’s conclusion: Coltrane, a crack shot, had deliberately missed his opponent; Billy, with malice aforethought, hadn’t even hit the garden.) Billy readily admitted making the death threats before witnesses but confessed now that he genuinely regretted doing so.
“You mean to say that you wouldn’t carry them out now even if some miracle were to occur and you would be given a second chance?” Robert asked carefully.
“I had my chance to do it honourably,” Billy said with conviction. “If I was to do it now, I’d be no better than an assassin. Like him.”
Death of a Patriot Page 6
