“I do appreciate what you’re doin’ fer me,” Billy said with glum resignation. “But Mr. Strangway says the governor’s fixed on me as the culprit and I better prepare to make peace with my Maker. I told him I didn’t want to see no preacher in here!”
“Fortunately, your jailer is not your attorney,” Robert said soothingly. “Nor is Sir George the maharajah of Upper Canada. You will get a proper trial. Mr. Dougherty and I—along with Chief Justice Robinson—will see to that.”
Marc cleared his throat. “But right now, Billy, you are the one who can help us most.”
Billy looked up expectantly. He was a young man, fatherless since three, who was always more comfortable helping himself than relying upon the aid of others. “Tell me how,” he said.
“I’d like you to think back to the day you captured Coltrane, painful as that may be,” Marc said.
“I think of it every day. What do you need to know?”
“You were the one to go through Coltrane’s papers, and you delivered them to Colonel Stanhope.”
“I was.”
“Can you recall what those papers were?”
“I can. There was one with military orders on it fer Coltrane’s unit and with it a kind of battle sketch or route march. Most of it was mumbo jumbo to me. Then there was a silly proclamation to be read aloud in village squares. I just folded the three sheets up and gave them to the colonel. He seemed very pleased.”
“And nothing else?”
Billy hesitated, then said casually, “There was a personal letter, but I tucked it back into the major’s blouse.”
“Personal?” Robert said with restrained excitement. “How so?”
“Well, it was a love letter from some lady, his mistress, I think. It was written in a woman’s style anyways.”
“Can you recall any names in it, or what it said?”
Billy had to think about this. “It was addressed to ‘my dear C’ or somethin’ like that—no name. I don’t remember anything particular about the message, except it was gushy. It didn’t have anything to do with Coltrane’s unit and so I really didn’t want to read every word. There was another initial signed at the bottom.”
Marc and Robert waited, but Billy just shook his head regretfully.
“Could it have been a ‘D’?” Marc prompted.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t swear to it.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to,” Marc said, thinking hard about how he might use this new information in any interview with Almeda Stanhope. Then he turned his attention back to Billy. “Was Coltrane taken to the surgeon as soon as you reached headquarters?”
Again Billy did not hesitate. “He was. I took him there myself, and I watched the surgeon cut off his shirt and cauterize the wound.”
“Where was the love letter you’d tucked in there?”
This time Billy did pause to reflect. “It fell out. And I said to the doctor and one of the majors, ‘It’s okay, it’s just a letter from his girl.’ So the surgeon tucked it into a leather Bible Coltrane kept in his kit.”
Marc whistled.
“What is it?” Robert said.
“That same leather Bible sat on Coltrane’s desk, between the two snuff boxes.”
• • •
Robert and Marc walked through the tunnel to the Court House. Robert had suggested that they inquire of Magistrate Thorpe, who had been assigned to prosecute the case, whether the Crown’s attorney had taken possession of the affidavit Coltrane signed just before his death. After which, they intended to return to the office and mull over the implications of what Billy had just revealed. However, they were forestalled by the unexpected appearance of Chief Sturges in the hallway outside Thorpe’s chamber.
“What’s the matter, Wilf?” Robert said. “You look as if you’ve been hit by a cricket bat.”
Sturges grimaced. “Not me, lads, but poor ol’ Cobb got it, flush on his bald spot.”
“Is he all right?” Marc asked, instantly concerned.
“Who would do that?” Robert demanded at the same time.
“That gang of thugs picketin’ outside the jail yesterday afternoon. We’d been just ignorin’ them, but ’is majesty ordered us to clear them off the road, so we went out to persuade them, like, and the next thing you know, there’s a stampede, and Cobb gets clobbered with a stick, and when he falls, he manages to sprain his wrist. His helmet took the sting outta the blow, but he’s got a mighty sore arm. I told him not to show up here for two weeks. I’ve just been signin’ up supernumeraries to cover for him.”
“I’ll go over and see how he’s doing,” Marc said to Sturges, “as soon as I can. He’s only two blocks from my house.”
“I’d advise that,” Sturges said, forcing a chuckle, “ ‘cause Dora’ll need people to keep him outta her hair—else he’s likely to get another whack on the noggin!”
“It’s too bad it was Cobb,” Robert said. “You could use him when the Orangemen go marching later today.”
“You’re right, there. Cobb’s my best man. But we’ve been promised help from the two Toronto militia regiments.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, Sir George has called in all the officers fer a strategy meetin’ this mornin’. They oughta be there fer the next hour anyways.”
Marc didn’t even say thank you or good-bye. He was heading for the door and Chepstow, twenty minutes’ walk away. Colonel Stanhope would be the first officer to answer the governor’s call to arms. Which meant he would be absent from home, for an hour or more.
Almeda Stanhope would be on her own.
• • •
Marc walked north up Brock Street and approached the house cautiously from the side. It was past ten o’clock, and the colonel was almost certainly at Government House preening and advising. It was the butler he had to be wary of. He realized that this might be his only chance to confront Almeda before the trial next Friday. He crossed his fingers, nodded to the sentries on the walk, stepped up onto the porch, and tugged the bell rope. Thirty agonizing seconds later, the door was opened by Shad.
“Whaddaya want?” he snapped in a very unbutler-like tone.
“Kindly tell Mrs. Stanhope that Mr. Edwards must see her. It is a matter of life and death.”
“She ain’t home.”
“Sir, I know she is, by the colonel’s command.”
“Know an awful lot, don’t ya?”
Marc merely waited the man out. Finally Absalom Shad turned and disappeared down the hall, but not before kicking the door shut in Marc’s face. With one foot against the jamb, Marc easily stopped it from clicking closed. He heard voices from what he took to be the women’s sitting room near the head of the hall. Shad shuffled back to Marc, still truculent. “This way, sir. The lady will see you.”
Almeda Stanhope was seated on the very edge of a brocaded settee near a Venetian marble fireplace. She turned to face her visitor, and Marc saw a striking woman of forty-five with rich, dark curls, faded gray only at the temples, and very delicate, feminine features of a kind favoured by porcelain artists. She was fashionably attired, and except for the perilous perch she had on the settee’s edge, one would have taken her for the chatelaine at ease in her own home and ready to welcome a gentleman to tea and polite conversation.
Marc bowed. Shad had taken his overcoat, hat, and gloves: he sensed this visit would be neither brief nor pro forma.
Almeda looked directly into Marc’s eyes. Her own revealed a woman of some character and depth, no cringing wife to a martinet husband. In a low but controlled voice she said, “You’ve found the letter.”
This was not the way he had envisaged the conversation opening, but he recovered enough to say quietly, “We did.”
“It was stupid of me to keep it in the first place,” she said without emotion, as if the fact were in evidence and irretrievable.
“May I sit down, ma’am?”
“Please, do. You must forgive my manners; I’ve been somewhat distracted of late.”
>
Marc sat down opposite her on a Queen Anne chair. “You’ve had a man murdered in your own house . . .”
She nodded. “The gown was mine, of course—Mrs. Edwards knew that—and the question of Patricia’s having to wear it only came up after the New Year. You see, my husband has been paying so much attention to his army career, he has neglected his business.”
Along with sizeable chunks of cash paid out to a blackmailer, Marc thought. “So you were a trifle, ah, impecunious?”
“Yes. It turned out that we couldn’t afford to buy Patricia the coming-out gown she deserved. I tried to make it up to her by letting her choose one of mine to be made over for her. I was certain she’d pick one of the two I bought in September, but she chose otherwise.”
She made a small grimace of self-recrimination and continued. “To my consternation, she took the gown with the letter in it to her room. Next day it went straight to Smallman’s. I thought it best just to wait and hope it wouldn’t be found, and even if it was, I counted on Mrs. Halpenny’s discretion. I assumed she would immediately tuck it into one of the pockets or give it to me personally. My only fear at that time was that my daughter would find it. I didn’t know, of course, what was to happen here on Thursday.”
“Before that, however, I believe you’d been distracted by more pressing, personal concerns,” Marc prompted.
“My life has been full of pressing personal concerns,” she said with a rueful smile. “Don’t believe only what you see around you here.”
“You were worried sick about Patricia and Caleb.”
She flinched. “I was. But someone helped me out there, didn’t they?”
“I don’t believe it was Billy, ma’am; that’s why I’m here. I have no desire to disrupt your household and domestic life arbitrarily or needlessly, but I know you can help me prove the lad’s innocence.”
Almeda smiled with her lips, but her whole countenance seemed to darken. “None of us is innocent, Mr. Edwards. At least not after we’re weaned.”
“You realize that I have grasped the implications of the letter you kept and hid from your husband.”
“You’re only guessing that it concerned me and my husband. How do you know it wasn’t sent to one of my servants?”
Marc decided to ignore the evidentiary aspects of the matter for the moment. “It is a love letter to an older woman with whom the writer had had an affair in their youth. The ogre-husband is wealthy and thus ripe for blackmail. The love affair was renewed last spring, a time when you and Gideon were visiting relatives in St. Thomas, a half-day’s journey from Detroit. The lovers share a political ideal: to ‘liberate this province.’ A blackmail threat has already been made, and the ogre apprised of the liaison. None of this sounds like a billet-doux penned to a servant.”
Almeda stared at the fire and played absently with her fine, manicured fingers. “You are very perceptive. They told me you knew how to investigate.”
“Have I interpreted the letter correctly?” Marc said very gently, almost in a whisper.
“No, not quite. Not at all in any way that really matters.”
“But blackmail is a powerful motive for murder.”
Almeda appeared not to have heard this probing remark. She continued to stare at the fire. “You see, Mr. Edwards, Caleb Coltrane and I were cousins. His sister Gladys and I were not only related but the best of friends. We grew up together just outside of Detroit. Caleb and I had a brief but passionate romance when we were very young, children really, trying on adult roles. It was over in a single summer.”
“But you did see him last spring?”
“I went from St. Thomas to see Mrs. Dobbs—Gladys—who now lives in Detroit. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years, not since her husband died.”
“And Caleb was there?”
“He came on the second last day.”
“The letter suggests you renewed your relationship.”
“I know what it says. But I also know what happened.”
Marc saw where she was going. “The reinfatuation was entirely on his side?”
“It was. He was obsessed with the republican cause and his role in the Michigan chapter of the Hunters’ Lodge. He was a man of many passions. But we did not ‘renew our relationship,’ as you so tactfully put it. And I have lived happily in this province and this city for twenty years. Both are my home. My husband and daughter are British subjects.”
“Then you’re suggesting that the letter is a fantasy on Caleb’s part?”
“He was a fanatical democrat. In his zeal he may have misread my response to him in Detroit.”
“But he speaks of using that affair to blackmail your husband, and of reuniting with you when the province has been liberated.”
“I assumed that he needed money.”
“Surely your husband would have confronted you about the attempted blackmail and the grounds for it, doubly so if he were pressed for cash.”
Almeda stared hard at the flames, as if her glare could douse them. “Of course, he did. I told him the truth. We never spoke of it again.”
“But he didn’t exactly believe you, did he? He is a proud and vain man. He feared any breath of scandal would scupper his hopes for standing and success, so he succumbed to the blackmail. And he continued to do so throughout Caleb’s incarceration in this house—not with dollars but rather with favours of every kind, including the exposure of his daughter to the blandishments of a villain.”
“Gideon does not discuss such matters with me; I’m only his wife,” she said, with no attempt to acknowledge the irony or moderate her bitterness.
“You must have wondered why Caleb was treated so well, why he was able to insist that Patricia visit him for lengthy breakfasts.”
“Of course I did!” She had turned at last to face him. “But I got no answers from my husband, and I had no control over my daughter’s romantic foolishness!”
Marc leaned forward. “Mrs. Stanhope, we have every reason to believe that Coltrane had in his possession, at Windsor and here at Chepstow, an incriminating letter that he had hidden somewhere and with which he was able to threaten your husband. My hunch is that it was a letter in your handwriting, either a love note or a letter with enough ambiguity, given the circumstances, to persuade your husband of its potential dangers if made public.”
“I did write Caleb a letter after I got home. As his cousin and friend, I begged him to abandon the Hunters’ Lodge and stay where he was, safe in Michigan. And naturally I expressed my joy at seeing him and Gladys, the three of us together again . . .”
So there was such a letter! Billy’s hazy description of it did not do it justice. The question was, where was it?
“But why do you need to know all this? Even if I had had an affair with Caleb in Detroit—and I didn’t, as my cousin Gladys will tell you—what pertinence does it have to his murder? You may be right about my husband’s pandering to Caleb; I don’t have any idea of what they discussed or why. If Gideon didn’t believe my denial, he has not raised the issue since. And Caleb was destined to be hanged by the end of the month.”
“Blackmail and threats, based on tangible evidence, are both sound reasons why Caleb might be murdered. After all, he still held a trump card—your letter, however tenuous its implications—one he could play before he could be hanged.”
Almeda went white. “Oh, I see. You’re trying to give my husband a motive for murder!”
“Yes. But rest assured we could never prove he did it. However, we need to show the court only that there were other, plausible sus—”
“And rest assured I will not take the witness stand and give evidence that might implicate my husband. It would destroy him.”
“I understand, ma’am.”
“And surely you would not deliberately smear his good name on the basis of one letter from a self-serving fanatic?”
“I would not, unless we were to find the other letter, the one actually used for blackmail.”
“If s
uch a letter exists.”
Marc nodded. The thought of a subpoenaed Almeda Stanhope being grilled by the ruthless Mr. Dougherty sent a chill up Marc’s spine. But it might be necessary. He was convinced that somewhere among her frank admissions lay a lie or two. But where?
“Thank you for speaking so candidly with me. Nothing you said will leave this room unless it proves vital to saving an innocent youth from the gallows.”
Marc rose and bowed. He paused halfway to the door and turned around. “May I ask one last question? Why did you keep Caleb’s letter in the lining of your gown?”
Her eyes were filled with tears, the dignified tears of one who has suffered and survived. “You don’t understand, do you? You’re not a woman. What Caleb and I had that summer long ago was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’ve only felt half-alive since. I love my husband and daughter, but I wanted to keep some warm reminder that I could touch from time to time, when I was out dancing and trying to be happy.”
Marc had a sudden and palpable image of this intelligent and mature woman on the arm of the nouveau-riche merchant who thought he was Lord Wellington.
The front door banged shut. They both froze.
“The colonel!” Almeda gasped.
Marc put his finger to his lips.
They heard the sound of Stanhope stamping about as he removed his outer clothing. Then the voice of Absalom Shad as he came running down the hall towards his master: “I wouldn’t go in there, sir, the Duchess is—”
But the door to the sitting room burst open, and Colonel Stanhope marched in. His gaze took in his wife, then the intruder. His moustache bristled like barbed wire strummed.
“I specifically told you to stay away from my wife, sir, and you have deliberately and callously disobeyed me! Now—”
“I apologize, Colonel, but you left me with little choice. The trial is next Friday.”
“How dare you continue your impudence in my very presence! I want you to leave my home immediately, or I’ll be forced to draw my sabre and give you a proper thrashing!”
Death of a Patriot Page 16
