“Were you perchance in Caleb Coltrane’s brigade?”
Unsure of the intent of the question, Bradley Tompkins hesitated before answering. “I was. And I must admit, sir, that I admired him. He was a true believer and no coward. But I knew I could never be like him.”
“I’m investigating his murder,” Marc said, “and endeavouring to save a man who has been falsely accused of the crime.”
At Bradley’s startled reaction, Marc briefly outlined his purpose in Detroit and emphasized the short time they could spend there. “If there is any way your knowledge of the area might help Cobb and me, I’d be grateful. And so would Mrs. Cobb.”
Bradley gave the matter some thought. “Well, sir, Major Coltrane had the loyalty and respect of all the men under him, but he wasn’t liked very much by some of the other regional captains of Michigan Lodge.”
“Political jealousy, perhaps?” Marc said, knowing much about such matters.
“I’m sure he was being put forward for president of the Michigan branch. But then he got captured, didn’t he?”
“Is there any way I might be able to meet some of the executive members of the Lodge?”
“Oh, I can get you to the Hunters easily enough.”
“You can? How?”
“The Michigan Hunters meet for three or four days in the middle of each month at the Wayfarers Inn, a tavern about ten miles south of Detroit on the main road to Toledo. They may have started yesterday or today, but most of ’em should still be in the area another day or two. They’re pretty fussy about who they let near the place, though. The authorities know all about the meetings, but so far as I know, they look the other way.”
“Is there a contact I could make in Detroit?”
“Yeah. Go to the Woodward Tavern and ask fer Phineas Quincy. I’ll draw you a map of Detroit so you won’t get lost. But you better have a good reason for approachin’ him. He’s a cunning, mean bastard.”
Marc smiled. “Don’t worry: Citizen Quincy will be delighted to see me.”
FOURTEEN
It was early afternoon on Tuesday when Marc and Cobb found themselves crossing the icebound Detroit River, heading towards Wing’s Wharf, a spot suggested by Bradley Tompkins as a safe and reasonably inconspicuous point of entry into the United States of America. An icy north wind chilled the sleigh’s occupants and left them breathless, despite their furs, Cossack caps, and swaddling scarves, and caused the vehicle to lurch and yaw in random gambits. While the windswept ice looked from a distance as smooth and polished as silver plate, up close and on top, it was rough, bone-jarring, and unpredictable.
“I think my teeth might be chatterin’,” Cobb shouted, “but I’m shakin’ so hard all over I can’t tell!”
“We’re almost there!” Marc shouted in return, and jerked at the right rein to bring the skidding horses back to the straight and narrow.
Only the anticipation of the possibilities that lay a quarter mile ahead kept both men from being overwhelmed by exhaustion. So far, it had been a physically numbing expedition. After a change of horses and a quick, cold supper in London, they had raced through the snowy dark of the Longwoods road towards Moraviantown. Cobb insisted on driving with his one good hand so that Marc could doze fitfully beside him and, taking turns thus, they reached at ten o’clock the log hut near the hamlet that served as an emergency way station for desperate travellers. The place had been shut up and barred, but Marc pounded on the plank door with his frozen fist until the proprietor finally opened it a crack, just far enough to allow the barrel of his pistol to emerge at eye level. In his plummiest tones and with a flash of silver coin, Lord Briggs ingratiated himself to the point where the door was opened and the weapon lowered.
The inside of the place was even less appetizing than its exterior. “ ‘Least there won’t be no rats,” Cobb had muttered. “They wouldn’t be caught dead in this sty.” There were only two other curtained-off rooms besides the main one, so the lord and his man curled up in the one not occupied by the proprietor and his woman, with only a smoky, fading fire in a wattle fireplace to provide an illusion of warmth and with much concern about that pistol and the distinguished guest’s coin-filled purse. Neither proved an impediment to sleep, however, and with horses rested and fed enough to get them to Chatham the next morning, they were at last on the final leg of their arduous journey. As they were leaving Moraviantown, Marc thought he felt the cold shudder of ghosts, of the Shawnees and their charismatic leader Tecumseh, who had fought and died nearby for their own cause and, incidentally, helped preserve a less than grateful British colony.
“That must be the wharf over there,” Marc said, and directed the horses towards a wooden pier to the left, now entirely encased in ice. It was deserted. On the steep riverbank above it stood several substantial brick buildings, warehouses most likely, with wind-tossed smoke roiling from their chimneys. Out on the river, they had encountered half a dozen sleighs bearing goods and passengers going both ways, as if the border were a negligible detail. No one paid them the slightest attention, even though Marc had decided to leave their own cutter at a livery stable in Windsor and rent a gentleman’s fancy one-horse sleigh with leather seats and polished mahogany trim, locomoted by a charcoal filly with bobbed tail and beribboned mane.
Marc had to walk the filly up a winding path to Griswold Street above the wharf. The street itself was deserted, though the clanking of hammers on iron from the nearest building indicated that productive labour was going on behind its walls. Marc knew that Detroit had been a boomtown for the past five years, notwithstanding the currency crisis and banking disaster of 1837. Property here was selling for more than ten times its counterpart in Windsor; that is, until a few months ago when the economic bubble had burst. The scrambling and chaos that followed had left hundreds of men without employment and others desperate to hang on to what little they had—conditions conducive to easy recruitment by the Hunters. The streets and alleys had also become extremely dangerous, so much so that a group of vigilantes known as Brady’s Hundred had been organized to patrol the town from dusk till dawn. It would not be prudent to move around Detroit and environs without due caution and a plausible excuse for doing so. But Marc felt that he and Cobb were well prepared.
With studied ostentation they drove their fancy rig up Griswold to Jefferson Avenue, where the way was suddenly alive with traffic, human and animal. The boardwalks on either side were crowded with shoppers, sliding in and out of small clots of loiterers, who could have been lounging thieves, lurking spies, or simply the forlorn flotsam of the economic collapse. Whoever they were, they were following the progress of Lord Briggs and his man with sullen, unwelcoming eyes.
“You sure ya want every dog and his fleas knowin’ we’re here?”
“That’s the plan. Remember, the story here is that we’ve just arrived from Cleveland en route to Chicago.”
“Well, then, I figure we better get a move on.”
At Jefferson and Woodward, the main intersection, they drew up in a lane beside the Michigander, the city’s premier hotel. Marc was impressed by the abundance of trees and shrubs along the thoroughfares and around the sturdy brick and stone dwellings. Handsome retail shops vied for attention with smoke-belching factories. Though a third the size of Toronto, Detroit was in the process of catching up and quickly. While Bartlett went looking for the ostler, Lord Briggs checked in, letting his polysyllabic English ripple across the carpeted and discreetly lit lounge. A few minutes later, Bartlett joined his master in the presidential suite, replete with fresh fire, hot food, cold beer, and a bathroom sporting a copper tub.
“You go on down to the tavern, Cobb, and get yourself refreshed. I’m going to have a bath and a nap: I need to have all my wits about me before we set out. Please wake me at three-thirty.”
“If I don’t collapse with my chin on the bar.”
• • •
Marc was dressed in the expensive, tailored garments he had brought with him from England three
and a half years before and rarely worn since. His suit coat was plum-coloured and velvet-trimmed, with matching trousers and fashionable ankle-length boots. The overcoat was fur-collared and rakishly cut, and the beaver top hat was spanking new. Under it, his lordship boasted a powdered wig, borrowed from the Baldwin collection. The two days’ growth of beard was shaved so close, his cheeks looked as pliant and pink as a sow’s buttocks.
“Jesus, Major, I better stay upwind of ya!” was the valet’s summary opinion.
They stepped out of the lobby onto Woodward Avenue, where the sleigh and filly were waiting. They drove slowly up towards Larned Street, looking for the Woodward Tavern, passing several posh hatters and haberdashers and two noisy pubs that were not the one they were seeking. They came up to the intersection and peered ahead towards the soaring steeples of three churches.
“It ain’t likely to be in that block, Yer Gentleship,” Cobb said. “Maybe young Tompkins was havin’ us on.”
“There was a dingy-looking house on the other side of the road,” Marc said. “Let’s check it out.” They wheeled back down Woodward. The place spotted by Marc was a clapboard cottage, or had been at one time. A new rectangular window with expensive glass had been set into its low façade, but it was now nearly opaque with frost and grime. Marc got down from the rig and walked over to the window, pressing his face up close to the glass: “I can just make out a W and two O’s. I think this is it.”
“Nice spot fer a run-day-view.”
Marc pushed open the door, and in they went. It took thirty seconds for his eyes to adjust to the murky light inside, but eventually he could make out a plank bar along one side of a large room, and five or six tables along the other. As far as he could see, no one occupied them at the moment. A bald-headed fellow with side-whiskers and a filthy apron was swabbing the bar with a rag that could have been related to the apron. As Marc crossed over to him, signalling Cobb to remain at the door, he spotted a shadowy figure seated in a far corner nursing a glass of beer in one hand, while holding his chin with the other. His heavy-lidded eyes did not turn in Marc’s direction.
“Tell me, my good fellow, is this the Woodward Tavern?” Lord Briggs said to the bartender.
“It was, the last time I looked at the letterin’ on the window.” This may have been a humorous sally, but it was delivered without obvious intonation. However, the bartender was scrutinizing the newcomer with undisguised interest.
“I’d like a glass of your finest ale, if I might.”
“Well now, you might if we had such a thing.”
Marc smiled amiably. “Then anything warm and frothy will do.”
“I reckon you ain’t from around these parts,” the bartender said, going over to a tapped keg and drawing a quantity of beer into a battered pewter stein.
“I’m from London, England, actually. My name is Lord Athol Briggs. I am a journalist with the well-known weekly Egalité.”
“Sounds Spanish to me.” He plopped the stein on the bar.
“It’s French for ‘equality.’ My editors and I are fascinated by the success of the American experiment. I have been sent out to America to gather stories and do interviews with republican enthusiasts and, in particular, with leaders of the underground movement known as the Hunters’ Lodges. My man and I have just arrived from Cleveland.”
“You won’t haveta go interviewin’ none of them lads, Athol ol’ boy. Just stop anybody on the street here and ask them about freedom and democracy. Ya see, in this country everybody’s born equal and everybody is free to choose what he wants to do with his life. I chose to be a barman, you see. But if I’d’ve had a mind to, I could’ve become the president or a senator or a banker. It’s all a matter of choice, not where ya was born or how pretty yer palaver is.”
“Sir, that is precisely the sort of sentiment I have come to record for the thousands back home who read Egalité and are starved for such stirring examples of individual human endeavour. I have been told that the Hunters’ Lodges have been formed spontaneously by men who love liberty and find their own government unwilling or unable to assist in freeing the shackled citizens of Upper Canada.”
“Well, I wish ya luck—”
“I’ve also been told that I might meet a Phineas Quincy in this tavern, a chap who may be able to put me in touch with those I seek to interview.”
The bartender blinked. “Well, Athol, I reckon you was told wrong. I ain’t seen Quincy in here in over a year.”
The dozing figure in the far corner came awake at this point and struggled to its feet. “I might be able to help you.”
Marc turned to the voice and said affably, “Oh, I do hope so. I’ve come a deuce of a ways in the foulest weather—”
“Lemme have a gander at yer newspaper.”
Marc removed a copy of Egalité from under his arm and handed it to the stranger, who came up to the bar and began to peruse it in better light. “You the fella that wrote this?” he said, pointing to the front page.
“Guilty as charged,” Marc said cheerfully. “Bartlett, see to the horse!” he snapped at Cobb, who scowled briefly, then clumped out to the street. “There. We can talk in private, gentleman to gentleman. Do you know where I can find Mr. Quincy?”
“I do. But if it’s the Hunters you’re interested in, I’ll do as easy as him.”
“And you are?”
The fellow grinned, exposing the gaps in his rodent-quick teeth. Above them a pair of tiny, protruding, metallic eyes looked bolted in place. In fact, his entire face appeared to have been pushed forward, as if some malcontent had punched him in the back of the head: nose, cheeks, lips, chin—all squeezed frontally, like a spooked weasel’s. “I go by the Hunters’ name of Uncas.”
“Your members have pseudonyms?”
“Only them at the top of the heap.”
“I’ve been given confidential information that there are meetings going on at the present moment a few miles south of here. I’d like to attend one of these, get the flavour of your group gatherings, as it were, and interview your chief.”
“President, we call him. And you’re in luck. The meetin’ tonight is to select a new president fer the Michigan branch. It’s at the Wayfarers Inn at eight o’clock. Be there early, yer bona fides’ll haveta be checked out before you’ll be let in. Come unarmed.”
“Will I need a password?”
“You will. It’s ‘Paul Revere rides a donkey.’ Think ya c’n remember that?”
“I’ll write it down.” Marc tossed a coin on the bar. “Tapster, give this gentleman a drink.” Then, as if he had just thought of it, Marc said to Uncas, “Oh, by the way, sir, would you happen to know where I could find a Mrs. Gladys Dobbs?”
Uncas’s eyes narrowed. “Now, what would you be after her for?”
“She is the sister of one of your distinguished military heroes, Major Caleb Coltrane, the Pelee Island Patriot.”
“That she is. But her brother’s rottin’ in a British prison.”
“I am hoping to get background information on him. My sources in Cleveland and Sandusky have given me a vivid account of the Pelee Island battle last winter. I intend to write its history for my periodical, and whenever possible I like to add personal, familial touches to such material.”
The weasel’s teeth nibbled at its lower lip. “Can’t see no harm in it.” He turned to the bar, where he seized the proffered whiskey glass, drained its contents, and intoned conspiratorially, “Corner of Larned and Shelby, a white cottage with a blue door.”
“Thank you, sir. I trust we’ll meet later this evening?”
“As I said, come unarmed.”
• • •
Five minutes later Marc pulled the rig up in front of a white clapboard cottage with a pale blue door. Some children ran past, hurling snowballs like grenadiers. One of them paused long enough to wave a welcome to the anonymous visitors. Two little girls, scarved and bundled against the cold, stood on a neighbouring stoop and stared at the gleaming sleigh and its
bewigged charioteer. Puffs of woodsmoke lazed above the cottage’s chimney pot.
“Hard to believe Coltrane came from a peaceful place like this,” Cobb said as they walked in single file up to the door with the fading blue paint.
Marc’s knock was answered immediately. The woman who stood before them was clearly in mourning, clothed entirely in black, including the apron about her waist. She was wiping her hands on it as she stood before them, appraising and suspicious, before asking, “What can I do for you gentlemen today?”
“Please pardon this intrusion, ma’am.” Marc smiled, then bowed and removed his top hat. “My name is Lord Athol Briggs. I’m a journalist with a British newspaper, Egalité, and my man Bartlett and I have just arrived from Cleveland, where I was privileged to learn many details about your brother’s heroics at the Battle of Pelee Island and the raid on Windsor.”
“You know who I am, then?”
“Mrs. Gladys Dobbs, sister of Major Caleb Coltrane?” Mark took his cue from her stricken expression at the mention of Coltrane’s name. “The late Major Coltrane. We were very sorry to be told of his death.”
Gladys Dobbs’s defenses dropped slightly, and she gazed at them with new interest.
Marc pressed ahead. “I hope you will forgive our intrusion at this terrible time, but I have been following your brother’s exploits and his fight for democratic ideals with great admiration. I’d like to tell my readers about his life; indeed, it is all the more important that the world know of his heroism now.” Marc winced inwardly at having to float such lies before a woman who looked to be still in shock with her grief. He promised himself that he would write to her after the trial and tell her as much of the truth as he knew. She deserved nothing less.
Death of a Patriot Page 20
