Dougherty began his cross-examination by motioning his associate, Robert Baldwin, towards the high bench. Robert handed up to Justice Robinson a single sheet of paper, then walked over and gave a similar one to Kingsley Thornton. Finally he placed a third before the nervous Mr. Shad.
“What you have before you, milord, is a partial mock-up of a document which was seized in Detroit last Tuesday evening by Mr. Edwards. Mr. Baldwin is now giving you this original document along with Mr. Edwards’s sworn statement of its provenance.”
The judge held up his hand for silence and then perused the material before him. With a puzzled glance at Thornton, he said, “Proceed, Mr. Dougherty.”
“Mr. Shad, please tell the court how long you have been a member of the Michigan branch of the Hunters’ Lodge.”
This stunning remark caused a sensation in the chamber and a fearful trembling in the witness.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Shad stammered, with a weak attempt at truculence.
“I think you do, sir.”
“Milord! Counsel is badgering the witness! Moreover, he’s off on yet another of his fishing expeditions!”
“Where is this going, Mr. Dougherty? There’s been no reference to the so-called Hunters’ Lodges in Mr. Shad’s testimony.”
“My question goes directly to the credibility of this witness, milord. As the mysterious Mrs. Jones was the last person to see Coltrane before the defendant did, I need to explore fully Mr. Shad’s account of her arrival and her actions thereafter. I do not wish the jury to accept at face value his claims thus far.”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge said. “But go slowly.”
Dougherty nodded and may even have smiled. His eyes moved to the witness’s and locked on them. “Please look at the paper before you, sir. On it you will find a dozen coded names selected from the original document now in Mr. Justice Robinson’s hands. Below this list is an explanation of how the code works. It is fairly straightforward, based on a three-point, repeated sequence. That is, to decipher the first coded letter of a name, we count one letter ahead in the alphabet. Thus a B would be translated as a C. To get the second letter of the name, we count two letters ahead, and to get the third letter, three letters ahead. At the fourth letter, we start at one again. Using this formula, my associate has decoded the heading that appears on the document. Please read it aloud for the jury.”
Shad’s voice shook, but he managed to say haltingly, “Membership List of Hunters’ Lodge, Michigan Branch.”
The crowd’s excitement had turned now to expectant silence.
“Very good. Now, sir, read aloud the first decoded name on the list.”
“Lucius Bierce.”
“The so-called general of the Windsor raiding party, was he not?”
A ragged chorus of assent from the galleries supplied the answer.
“Now, read the one below it.”
“Caleb Coltrane.” Shad’s voice was a mere whisper.
“And the second last name on this selected list?”
Shad started to tremble all over. “Absalom Shad.”
The buzz in the room took an angry turn. The judge gavelled it down.
“Would you please answer my original question, then. When did you join the Hunters?”
“I have no idea how my name came to be on that list! I’ve been livin’ here for years.”
“Mr. Shad, I submit that not only are you a bona fide member of the heinous Hunters’ Lodge, but you have been acting as a secret agent on their behalf, and that—as the defense will show when we present our side of the story—you were ordered by another high-ranking member of the Lodge, one Ephraim Runchey, to poison Caleb Coltrane so that he could not be elected in absentia president of the state branch of the Lodge.” Dougherty delivered these accusations in a steady, rumbling basso, devoid of theatrical dudgeon.
“That’s a lie!”
“Milord!”
“You, sir, had the readiest access to the victim, you—”
“I was never a member of the Lodge!” Shad shouted to the agitated spectators. “My brother Simon was; he got caught stealin’ guns from the Detroit armoury and General Brady put him in jail. He had no money for a lawyer and my mother was desperate. Runchey come to me and said the Hunters would help him, but only if I cooperated with ’em.”
“Mr. Shad,” the judge said kindly, “there’s no need to—”
“But it had nothin’ to do with murder. I was to vouch for him so he could get in to visit Coltrane, and when the time come for him to escape, I was to help them. I didn’t know they put my name on their list!”
“And so you helped Runchey, then?” Dougherty said.
“He come to visit the prisoner on the Saturday, five days before the murder. I told the colonel that he was a friend of mine I knew from Detroit. But that was all. I wasn’t asked to help with any escape plan, and I wouldn’t’ve done it anyways. I despised Coltrane and all he stood for—”
“Enough to poison him?”
“No!” Shad’s eyes were wild with fear, outrage, hurt. “I wouldn’t do a thing to harm the Stanhopes or bring shame on their house! Mrs. Stanhope took me in when I had nothin’, when I was a hopeless drunk. She brung me here and give me a job in her own home. She saved my life!”
“Are you quite through, Mr. Dougherty?” the judge said sternly.
Thornton was on his feet, teetering with feigned rage. “Milord, is Mr. Dougherty going to prove that every witness for the Crown is independently guilty of murdering Caleb Coltrane?”
The simmering anger of the crowd was now turning slowly towards sympathy for the abused and loyal butler.
“The witness is dismissed, and this court is adjourned until ten o’clock Monday morning!” the judge said, with a fearsome rap of his gavel.
And none too soon, Marc thought. It was going to be an interesting interval.
EIGHTEEN
Robert ordered Marc to spend Saturday evening and all day Sunday at home. The two-hundred-mile trek from Detroit to Toronto, followed by an exhausting day and a half in and out of court, had left him visibly fatigued and mentally drained. “If we need you, we’ll send for you, though you’ve already done yeoman’s service. Now leave the lawyering to the lawyers.”
So, that night Marc and Beth curled up in front of a blazing hearth and read to each other, while Jasper Hogg—putatively present to chop kindling and top up the cistern in the water closet—talked nonstop to Charlene in the kitchen. Early Sunday morning, Marc and Beth harnessed Dobbin and went for a leisurely drive into the countryside. Two hours later, with Charlene and Jasper, they strolled through a goose-feather snowfall to the new Congregational Church on Hospital Street at Bay. It was only on the way home that Marc began to wonder what tactic Richard Dougherty might work on poor Almeda Stanhope, who had been, as expected, added to the Crown’s witness roster. Would he not be better off laying out the defense case, rather than badgering the Crown’s witnesses to the point where the jury felt sorry for them and thus more likely to accept their version of events? Brilliant as he was, Dougherty seemed to have forgotten that he was an outsider with a checkered past, and physically off-putting to boot.
• • •
It was just past suppertime on Sunday evening at the Cobb residence on Parliament Street, and Cobb was snoozing in his favourite chair. With a splint no longer needed, his sprained wrist was healing steadily. He could flex it without pain, but it still had little strength in it, certainly not enough to make a two-handed collar of some wriggling miscreant. The half-read newspaper, resting on the fulcrum of his nose, rose and fell with his contented breathing.
“Dad! Wake up!”
Cobb blinked awake, scattering all four pages of the Constitution. It was Fabian, looking more excited than usual. “Where’s yer mother?”
“Out on a call. But come see! Somebody’s prowling about the chicken coop!”
Cobb was up in a flash and, with one foot fast asleep, hobbled into the summer kitchen to
wards the back door. “Stay in here,” he ordered, then stepped warily onto the stoop. The skies had cleared, and the partial moon on the fresh snow threw enough light for him to make out the silhouette of the coop thirty feet away. The chickens by the sound of it were in turmoil. A fox or coyote? No, Fabian had said somebody. Cobb reached down and picked up a stout walking stick he kept beside the door. He quickly spotted the shoe prints. They seemed to indicate that a single person had been moving back and forth across the yard, perhaps casing the house for an attempted burglary.
Just then the rooster let out a fierce squawk, and Cobb trotted towards the sound. As he got to the henhouse door, he heard a yip, then a yelp, and a second later a dark male figure came staggering out into the moonlight. Cobb lashed at it, aiming for the bare head, but the cudgel smacked against one of its lurching shoulders.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” The figure howled like Poor Tom on Lear’s heath. “Ya’ve gone and busted my back!”
“Jesus Christ and a donkey!” Cobb shouted. “What in hell are you doin’ rummagin’ about in my henhouse?”
Nestor Peck ignored the question, vigorously rubbing his throbbing shoulder with one gloveless hand.
“You’re damn lucky Shanty-clear didn’t pluck yer pecker off! He don’t appreciate competition.”
“I was just comin’ to see ya, and I thought I might borree an egg whilst I was here,” Nestor said, and added, “I need a cup o’ tea, Cobb. I’m frozen right through to the nub.”
Ten minutes and two cups of tea later, Nestor got to the principal point of his house call, a risky move for a known snitch. “I had ta come here ’cause you’re not out where you oughta be,” he whined. “So what I’ve come ta tell ya oughta fetch double the usual.”
“I’ll let ya know after I hear it. Them’s the rules.”
Nestor smiled, exposing a mushy set of blackened gums. “I know where Lardner Bostwick is.”
Cobb did his best not to look elated. “And where would that be?”
“He’s been drinkin’ up at the Tinker’s Dam, drinkin’ steady fer a week. Right now he’s holed up in Tipsy Dan’s shack.”
“If he’s still there when I get to it, Nestor, I’ll give ya a dozen eggs and throw in the rooster!”
“The eggs’ll do fine.”
• • •
Cobb quick-marched the two and a half blocks to Briar Cottage to relay the news to Marc. Fifteen minutes later, they were whizzing along in the cutter, northwards to the end of Jarvis Street, with Jasper Hogg perched on the seat back and hanging on as if clutching Charlene. The plan was simply to burst into Tipsy Dan’s shack—just off the lane that led into the shantytown of thieves, inebriates, and ne’er-do-wells—grab Bostwick, and haul him into the sleigh before anyone could ask why or raise an objection. It went off without a hitch, except for the fact that Bostwick was indeed comatose and a deadweight. Tipsy Dan didn’t even bother to wake up. As there was no room in the cutter for the body and three pallbearers, Marc volunteered to walk down to Baldwin House and bring Robert to Cobb’s place, where they had decided to take Bostwick for resuscitation. Robert came to the door himself, tossed his dinner bib to a startled Cummings, and raced after Marc with his overcoat dangling from one arm.
Cobb met them at his front door and directed them to sit in the parlour near the fire. It seemed that when he and Jasper had lugged Bostwick’s stinking bulk into the kitchen, they had been greeted by Dora, just returned from a successful delivery. She had immediately banished the upright males to the next room, shut the door, and set to work upon the unknowing victim. They heard the scrape of the tin tub across the kitchen floor, followed by the swish and gurgle of hot water (always on the boil in a cask-size kettle), a sequence of thumping noises, a mammoth splash, and a wrenching, drawn-out moan.
“Missus Cobb’ll sober the bugger up or else scare him to death,” Cobb said reassuringly.
Moments later, Dora’s head swung into view. She smiled at the visitors. “I got the stink washed off him and enough coal-tar on his noggin to kill a ridge-o-men of cooties. He ain’t sayin’ much, but he’s awake.”
The men went into the kitchen, where they found Lardner Bostwick wrapped in one of Dora’s flowered flannel robes, glowing pink of cheek and chin. The eyelids sagged, but the dark orbs behind them were taking in the world again, and not liking much what they saw.
Unable to douse the fiery demons in him with drink, Bostwick had apparently decided he would try drowning them with talk. No interrogation was needed: his story poured out so quickly that Marc’s shorthand scribble could not keep up with it.
“I don’t know what kinda hold that bugger Coltrane had over the colonel. All I know is every time he farted, I had to run and wipe his arse. We gave him wine and whiskey and snuff and brung his personal effects from Detroit. But the colonel’s been like a big brother to me, so I put up with it for his sake. I worried about Patty bein’ in there alone with him every mornin’, but it was the colonel’s call, though I did tell her mother about the visits.
“Then this Billy fella, one of our own sergeants, gets in a spat with Coltrane and agrees to a duel. Coltrane tells me to get the colonel’s permission—or else. So I go to the colonel and he’s furious. He says no. I wait a while and he comes to me and says it’s okay as long as I don’t tell him any of the details—he’s coverin’ his own rear end, eh?—but when he points to the pistols in the study, he says, ‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you put a paper ball in one of the pistols and make sure the Yankee shot chooses it.’ Then he walks away and pretends he knows nothin’ about what’s gonna happen. So I load the pearl-handled one with the blank—’cause I know the major will take the best-lookin’ weapon—and the other gets a regular ball. Then Monday mornin’, Billy shows up, and I present the pistols. Wouldn’t ya know it, but the Yankee picks the one with the bullet. I almost shit a brick.”
“That’s why I only found one bullet—in the wall behind Billy where Coltrane’s shot ended up,” Cobb said.
“I couldn’t believe he coulda missed, ’cause of the way he was always braggin’ he’d been a crack shot since the age of eight. But I was damn glad he did. Then the coppers come, and the colonel storms out there like he’s outraged and pretends to chew me out.”
“So he really didn’t drum you out of the house or the regiment?” Marc asked.
“No. He give me fifty dollars and told me to go to ground fer a few weeks.”
“You damn near went underground,” Cobb said.
But Lardner Bostwick did not hear the comment, for suddenly his eyes rolled back into their sockets, syllables spilled out of his mouth with gusts of spittle, and his whole body began to quake.
“Christ!” Cobb cried. “He’s got the heebie-jeebies!”
Dora was summoned to minister to the stricken man. She managed to get a large dose of laudanum down his throat, and he was soon calm enough to enter a fitful sleep. Cobb carried him over to the stove and wrapped him in three blankets.
In the next room, with Jasper reluctantly dispatched home, Marc and Robert conferred on the significance of what they had just been told.
“Our biggest problem, Marc, will be to get him strong enough to testify. By the look of it, considering we’ll have to start the defense tomorrow, that won’t be possible. In the least, we need a signed affidavit. I’ll take your notes and have Clement draw up a statement. If the fellow dies, it might be enough.”
“Either way, this testimony is helpful, Robert. Stanhope was counting on Billy’s killing or seriously wounding Coltrane—despite the possible loss of face attendant upon his not delivering Coltrane to the court. Still, no one could fault him for a duel he could claim he didn’t condone, and who better to assassinate the meddlesome blackmailer than a young war hero? One way or another, what we know for sure, and what Dougherty can exploit, is that Gideon Stanhope made one indirect attempt upon the life of his blackmailing prisoner. Why not another?”
Robert nodded. “I suppose Cobb will have to repor
t Bostwick’s reappearance to his chief in the morning.”
“They’re welcome to him,” Marc said, “whatever’s left of the poor sod.”
• • •
Everyone involved in Billy’s defense was up at the crack of dawn. Clement Peachey arrived at Cobb’s house at seven-thirty, where a somewhat recovered Bostwick was able to sign Robert’s rendering of last night’s statement with a trembling hand. The Cobbs acted as witnesses and Peachey notarized it. At about the same hour, Marc arrived at Baldwin House. He and Robert took the Baldwin’s four-seater up to Dougherty’s, and while young Broderick assisted his guardian in dressing behind an enormous screen near the fire, they related the events and consequences of the previous evening. As usual, Dougherty made no comment, not even a grunt to indicate he was paying attention. When Robert finished, Dougherty said, “I think you should go to the bank today, Brodie. They’re expecting you.”
“We’re both coming to court,” Broderick said.
“I think this statement of Bostwick’s could be our best hope,” Robert said. “It confirms intent, and along with motive and—”
“Our best hope,” Dougherty said, “is Chief Justice Robinson. The fellow may be a wool-dyed Tory, but he reveres the law.”
As you do, Marc thought.
• • •
Marc watched as Almeda Stanhope walked with grace and self-composure up to the stand to be sworn in as the Crown’s first witness of the day. He was sitting between Dolly and Beth in the front row of the left-hand gallery. The Cobbs and Mrs. McNair were in the row behind them. Dolly peered up at Billy standing in the dock until he noticed her, then gave him an encouraging smile. He returned an abbreviated version of it, then looked over at the bench and the witness stand beyond it. Each day so far, he had clamped his gaze onto the proceedings and kept it there. What he was thinking as he did so, no one knew.
Death of a Patriot Page 26
