Turncoat

by Don Gutteridge

  “Nobody knocks in these parts,” a light, feminine voice said from the shadows within. “I’ve been expectin’ you, Mr.—”

  “Edwards,” Marc said. “Ensign Edwards.”

  “I TAKE IT YOU’VE MET ELIJAH,” Bathsheba Smallman, known to all as Beth, said to Marc. They were sitting opposite one another in the parlour area—marked off only by a braided rug and an apt arrangement of hand-hewn chairs made welcoming by quilted seat pads—balancing cup and saucer with accompanying bread and jam (the bread fresh out of the iron pot over the fire, the jam homemade).

  “Yes, but I’m afraid he wasn’t overly helpful,” Marc said just as a spurt of jam struck his chin. He rubbed at the offending blob, then licked it off his finger.

  “Huckleberry,” Beth said. “Grows like a weed in these parts.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “Elijah’s harmless,” Beth said. “He’s very protective of me and Aaron.”

  “Your brother?”

  “That’s right. You’ll meet him when he gets in from collectin’ the eggs, if he doesn’t get lost first.”

  When Marc looked concerned, she smiled reassuringly and said, “Sometimes he gathers more wool than eggs.”

  Marc could not take his eyes off Beth Smallman, even though he was aware of her discomfort as she glanced away and back again only to find him helplessly staring. As she did, sunlight pouring through the window behind her lit the russet tints of her unbound hair and framed her figure. She was as small and trim and wholesome as Winnifred Hatch was tall and hot-tempered and daunting. And he was charmed by the teasing lilt of her voice, with its exotic accent.

  “You’re in the district to look at buyin’ grain for the garrison, you say?”

  Marc blinked, took a sip of his tea, and forced his gaze past her to the petit point figure of Christ on the wall beside the window. “That’s correct. I’m merely lining up possible sites for the quartermaster’s inspection later this month.”

  “Elijah tells me we’ve taken in more Indian corn than our cows can eat.”

  “I’ll take a look before I go, then.” The tea was consumed, and the bread and jam with it.

  “I’m sure Elijah will oblige you.” Beth smiled. She was wearing a plain blouse and heavy skirt with a knitted cardigan tied across her shoulders. A white apron and cap lay on the pine table near the fire, waiting.

  “There’s somethin’ else on your mind, isn’t there, Ensign Edwards?”

  “Yes, there is, ma’am. And I apologize for being so roundabout in approaching it.”

  She caught the sudden seriousness of his tone and looked intently towards him, willing him to speak.

  “I have some disturbing news,” he began.

  “I can think of no news that could be more disturbing than what I’ve had to bear these past weeks.” She steadied her voice. He turned away briefly, but she had quietly composed herself, except for a slight glistening at the edge of her blue, unblinking eyes.

  “And December last as well,” he said softly.

  Now he had her full attention and more: something sharp and suspecting entered her look—at once vulnerable and hardened by necessity.

  “Why have you come?” she said. “Who are you?”

  “I have been ordered here by the lieutenant-governor to investigate your father-in-law’s death.”

  “Investigate?”

  “Yes. And I have already reached the conclusion that Joshua Smallman was in all likelihood murdered.”

  A thump and a scraping clatter from the kitchen area forestalled any immediate reaction to Marc’s news. Beth rose to her feet, a look of concern flashing across her face. “It’s Aaron,” she said.

  Into the centre of the room came a tall, thin young man with an unkempt mane of reddish hair. He dragged one foot along behind him and, with a lurching effort, swung a basket of warm eggs up and onto a sideboard. As he did so, the left half of his face stretched. “I d-d-didn’t break any,” he said with a lopsided grin. Then he spotted the visitor and froze.

  “I didn’t expect you would,” Beth said. “Say hello to Ensign Edwards.”

  Marc rose.

  “Mr. Edwards, this is my brother, Aaron McCrae.”

  Aaron simply stared, not in fright but in fascination at the scarlet frock coat, many-buttoned tunic, and glittering buckles so abruptly and magically set before him. “Where’s your s-s-s-sword?” he asked.

  “I am pleased to meet you,” Marc said, “and my sword’s tucked safely in my saddle-roll.”

  “Aaron’s goin’ to be sixteen next month,” Beth said.

  The lad nodded but seemed more interested in shuffling an inch or two closer to this mirage in his parlour.

  Beth touched him on the arm. “Mr. Edwards and I have some important business to talk over. Go out and help Elijah with the feed, would you?”

  Reluctantly the youth shuffled himself out the back door.

  “He was born like that. With the palsy. He’s not really simple, but it’s a strain for him to talk. With us, though, there isn’t much need.”

  They sat down again.

  A log rolled off its andiron, spraying sparks into the air, and the brief flare sent a wave of heat to the far side of the large room where they were seated, reminding them how cold it had become. Beth pulled her cardigan on with a shy, self-conscious gesture, but Marc had already averted his eyes.

  “Murder is a terrible word, Mr. Edwards,” she said at last.

  “Does it surprise you to hear it used in association with your father-in-law?”

  She did not answer right away. “I didn’t believe the magistrate’s findin’ for one minute,” she said slowly. “Father wouldn’t have got himself lost out there, even in a blizzard.”

  “More experienced woodsmen have,” Marc said. “Or so I’ve been told,” he felt constrained to add.

  “The horse he was riding was the only one we’ve ever owned.”

  “Your … husband’s?”

  She nodded. “All he had to do was drop the reins and Belgium would’ve carried him home safe and sound.”

  “You told this to the inquest?”

  She smiled wanly. “I did.”

  “Mrs. Smallman, I’m certain you are right.”

  If she found this remark unexpected or patronizing, she gave no sign. “He went out there for a reason, that much I do know,” she said.

  “And I believe that that reason, when we discover it, will lead us to his murderer.”

  “You forget that he walked into a bear-trap,” she said. “That was … tragic, but not murder.” She swallowed hard, fighting off tears, and suddenly Marc wished he were any place but here.

  As quickly and tactfully as he could, Marc told her what he and Hatch had found the previous afternoon out near Bass Cove.

  “You’re saying someone just stood up there and watched him die?”

  “Yes. And that is tantamount to murder, especially if your father-in-law was deliberately lured out there.”

  She turned and looked closely at him. “Joshua Smallman was a lovable man. He could not bring himself to tell a lie. He had no enemies. He gave up his business in town to come back here and help me run the farm.” Her voice thickened. “He was the finest man I’ve ever known.” The pause and the candidness of her glance confirmed that she was including her husband in the appraisal. “If he was called out on New Year’s Eve, it was to assist a friend or someone in need.”

  Marc hesitated long enough for Beth to discern that he had absorbed and appreciated the reasonableness of this claim. After all, it coincided with everything he had heard so far about Joshua Smallman. Still, someone seemed to have wished him harm, or at the very least colluded in his death. He pushed ahead, gently. “Would you tell me as much as you can remember about that evening? If it’s too painful, I could return another time.”

  “I’ll make some more tea,” she said.

  “WE WERE PLANNIN’ TO HAVE A little celebration here to mark the end of the year, it bein’ al
so a year to the day since Father’d arrived. You understand, though, it couldn’t’ve been entirely a celebration.”

  “Yes. Your … husband must have been uppermost in your thoughts.”

  “Still, we were preparin’ a small party, with the Huggan girls, Emma Durfee, Thomas Goodall. We’d even asked Elijah to join us, but he’d already dashed off to visit Ruby the cook up at the squire’s.”

  “Philander Child’s cook?”

  “Yes. Father felt strongly that we had an obligation to these kind people, whatever our own sorrows might be. About six o’clock, right after milkin’ and supper, one of Mr. Child’s servants came to the door and said they were expectin’ Father at the gatherin’ of the Georgian Club—”

  “I know about that,” Marc said. “Had your father forgotten about the New Year’s celebration up at Child’s?”

  “He said—rather mysteriously, I thought—that he was through with all that frivolousness. I know he’d missed a few meetings of late, and he seemed to be growin’ a bit weary of their whist games and political chatter, but I was still surprised when he suggested that we plan our own celebration. Anyway, he sent the servant back with a polite refusal, and we started to get ready for some mulled wine and a few treats Father’d brought us from Cobourg.”

  “Did he seem upset or agitated?”

  “No. I could see he was sad, of course, as I was, but we were both tryin’ very hard not to be. Mary Huggan and her sisters were due to come over at seven. Father’d even hauled his violin out of the trunk.”

  “What happened, then, to call him so suddenly away from all this?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Just before seven, he went out to check on the animals for the night.”

  “A regular routine?”

  “Yes. Once in a blue moon Elijah gets into the liquor and so Father always checked the barn with him, or on his own, before comin’ in for the evenin’.”

  “As he did that night.”

  “I can only assume so. Father was gone a little longer than usual, I think, but the girls had arrived at the front door gigglin’ and carryin’ on, so I can’t say for sure. But when he did come in, he was a changed man.”

  “Describe him, please, as precisely as you can.”

  “As I told the magistrate, he was excited. Not pretendin’ to be happy as he’d been before. ‘I’ve got to go out, Beth, dear,’ he said. ‘Just for half an hour or so.’ When I looked amazed, he smiled and told me there was nothin’ to worry about …”

  Despising himself, and beginning to feel more than a little resentment at the predicament in which Sir John had so cavalierly placed him, Marc forced himself to ask, “Did he have a note or letter or paper of any kind in his hand or on his person?”

  “No. But he said he’d gotten a message, an important one that could change all our lives for the better.”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been unable to forget them.”

  Marc pressed on lest his nerve fail him utterly. “But you saw no letter, and he never said or hinted who had sent this message to him?”

  “I told the inquest that I heard what could’ve been paper rustlin’ inside his coat. But he’d been doin’ the year-end accounts earlier in the day and so there was nothing surprising about that.”

  “The surgeon says no papers of any kind were found on him.”

  “I know. I could’ve been wrong. I was so shocked to hear him say he was headin’ out into that awful weather and just abandonin’ his guests, I wasn’t thinkin’ too straight.” She sipped at her tea, found it unconsoling, and said, “But he seemed genuinely excited. Happy, even. I heard him ride out on Belgium twenty minutes later.”

  “If there was a note, with instructions about a rendezvous and some bait to lure him to Bass Cove, could anyone else here have read it?”

  Beth Smallman peered up at Marc with a look of puzzlement, pity, and the beginnings of anger. “I’m pleased you are takin’ such an interest in Father, and I would like some questions about that night to have better answers, but my husband’s father was an honest and well-loved gentleman. If somebody deliberately killed him, then you’ll have to come up with something less fanciful than notions about secret notes and mysterious footprints in the snow. You’ve got to hate or fear somebody with a passion before you can kill them. If there was a note, I was the only person here that night capable of readin’ it. Unless you suspect Emma Durfee.”

  Marc got up and made a stiff bow. Beth’s features softened, and in other circumstances he was confident she would have smiled. “I have inconvenienced you long enough and imposed unconscionably on your hospitality,” he said, wrestling his way into his greatcoat.

  Beth took an elbow and helped him complete the task.

  At the door she said, “You will let me know what you find?”

  “I can do no less, ma’am.”

  “Call me Beth, please.”

  He touched the peak of his cap and left.

  MARC WAS GRATEFUL FOR THE SLOW walk back to the mill, one that didn’t include a further encounter with the misanthropic Elijah. He needed a few quiet moments to mull over what he had learned before rehashing it with Erastus Hatch.

  He was convinced that a note had been delivered. Joshua’s decision to leave the house had been made sometime in the half hour or so in which he was checking out the barn. Most likely as he was returning to the house, someone gave it to him—a servant or stableboy on foot or someone who had ridden in from farther afield specifically for the purpose. The need for detailed directions and some elaborate “hook” strongly suggested written instructions, but a personally delivered oral message, though riskier, was not out of the question.

  At some point he realized he was going to have to interrogate Elijah about when he had left for the Child estate and whether he had seen his master beforehand. But deep down he was certain that, until some motive became clear, little beyond informed speculation was possible. Nevertheless, he was still in possession of a salient fact known only to him: Joshua Smallman was an informer for Sir John. No one in the region, not even a friend like Hatch, was aware of this. But had someone discovered or guessed at the truth? Some rabid annexationist or firebrand among the apostles of the rabble-rousing Mackenzie? Even so, the area was thick with Tories and loyalists, any one of whom could be (and likely was) viewed as a spy with a direct link to the powerful Family Compact in Toronto or the government itself. You’d have to arrange for the deaths of a lot of locals to assuage that particular fever, Marc thought. At the moment, the most plausible premise was that Smallman had discovered some critical information, the revelation of which presented a real danger to a particular individual or cause. Such information may have been revealed already (Sir John would not be above withholding “politically sensitive” material from his investigating officer), prompting a revenge killing.

  It was far too early to tell anyone what he knew about Joshua’s relationship with Sir John. That he must, at some time, tell Beth Smallman that particular news filled him with dread: she obviously worshipped the father-in-law who in less than a year had become “Father.” Any suggestion that he might have been leading a secret life and had perhaps used her political activities to gather information on her associates might prove devastating. Then again, Beth Smallman did not appear to be a woman easily devastated.

  AT THE MILL, THOMAS GOODALL INFORMED Marc that Constable Hatch had been summoned to Durfee’s inn to settle a dispute between two patrons over a bar debt. At the house he found no one in the parlour or dining area. Hearing voices from the summer kitchen, he walked down the hall and peered through the barely opened door.

  Mary Huggan and Winnifred Hatch were bent over a washboard, their faces as steamed as a Christmas pudding. Winnifred’s attire was more serviceable than it had been yesterday, a shirtwaist and voluminous skirt, but still she looked more like a lady-in-waiting who has discovered she must do her own laundry and has decided simply to get down to it wi
thout complaint. On a clothes horse set up beside an iron stove throbbing with heat, Marc saw the linens and stockings he had abandoned on his bed—now scrubbed white. Just beyond it, where a curtain had been pulled back and fastened, he noticed that the quilts on what had to be Thomas Goodall’s bed were rumpled from recent sleep and other nocturnal activity.

  Edging backwards, Marc eased the door shut.

  FIVE

  The evening being clear, cold, and still, Marc and Erastus Hatch decided to walk the quarter mile to Deer Park, the estate of Magistrate Philander Child. They could have taken the route south along the Miller Sideroad to the highway, then east past Durfee’s inn and Dr. Barnaby’s house to the stone gates Marc had observed from horseback the previous day. However, since no snow had fallen to blur the “gossip trail,” as Hatch called it, they ambled along its meandering, well-travelled way through a pleasant winter wood, most of which, Marc learned, was the property of the wealthiest man in the township. As they walked, and between puffs on their pipes, they found ample opportunity to exchange the news of the day.

  Marc summarized his interview with Beth Smallman, omitting only his subsequent speculations. Then he recounted his successful subterfuge of the afternoon when, to establish his cover story, he had ridden east along the second concession to the farm of Jonas Robertson, a loyal Tory whose grandfather had once represented a rotten borough in Shropshire before the family’s fortunes had declined. Ensign Edwards had gone through the motions of examining the surplus bags of the finest maize in the county and confirming their producer’s own assessment. During this exchange of mutually flattering pleasantries (even now, Marc marvelled at his guile and the ease with which he had been able to prevaricate), Robertson had disembowelled the reputations of several “republican” farmers along the Farley Sideroad, whose seditious behaviours apparently threatened the political stability of the province and even the health of the local grains. Marc had begun to realize why Sir John had placed so much trust in level-headed men of goodwill like Joshua Smallman. Could such qualities, as valuable as they were rare, provide motive for murder in and of themselves?