Turncoat

by Don Gutteridge

  “There’s still O’Hurley,” Hatch said between yawns. “He may be the only one alive who can tell us what really happened in that barn a year ago.”

  “I’ve got to tell Beth, of course. The one good thing to come out of all this so far is that her husband did not take his own life. You can’t imagine the relief it’ll be to her.”

  “She’ll have to know something about the ugly circumstances, though.”

  Marc sighed again. “I know.”

  “Anyways, O’Hurley should be safe under lock and key. MacLachlan’s sending a courier up to Perry’s Corners and another to Toronto. In fact, there’ll be couriers galloping up and down the province all night.”

  “Well, sir, I’m too tired to think straight,” Marc said, getting up.

  “I quit thinking an hour ago,” Hatch replied.

  MARC HAD WILLED HIMSELF TO WAKE at dawn, and he almost did so. Certainly it was no later than seven o’clock when he slipped into Jesse’s clothes and padded out to the main room. Mary had the stove going and was humming some Gaelic ditty. In the hearth in the parlour, a fire was starting to warm the air.

  “We’re to let the mistress stay abed,” Mary said. “She worked alongside Major Barnaby until the wee hours. And such a ruckus, eh, among Christian men who oughta know better.” The apostasy of Christian males did little to dampen the girl’s spirits, as she resumed her ditty with scarcely a missed beat.

  Just as Marc finished a hasty meal of bread and cheese, Hatch opened the front door and came in. He set down an armful of parcels on the writing table and brushed the snow off his coat. He and Mary exchanged glances, the latter blushing nicely.

  “I got some unsettling news,” he said to Marc. “Durfee tells me one of the couriers sent back in the night from Perry’s Corners reported that O’Hurley has flown.”

  “Damn!”

  Mary giggled.

  “It seems his jailer got overly interested in some of O’Hurley’s liquid wares. O’Hurley got clean away. But he left the donkey behind.”

  “They’ll never get him,” Marc said. “He’ll be in Lewiston by noon.”

  “There’s worse news,” Hatch said, with a very unserious twinkle in his eye. “Durfee says MacLachlan’s constables came riding up at daybreak and rousted him out of his wife’s arms to tell him that Mad Annie and her litter had broken out of their escape-proof jail.”

  “I can’t wish them ill,” Marc said, surprising even himself at his sudden sympathy. Last night’s brutal raid had left a sour taste in his mouth.

  “You heading over to Beth’s later?”

  “Right away.”

  “But it’s the Sabbath, she’ll—”

  “I don’t want any of this news to reach her before I do.”

  “Didn’t see any smoke up that way.”

  Marc pulled on Jesse’s Mackinaw and the fur cap, still encrusted with Connors’s blood. “I’ll be back soon. We both have a lot of deep thinking to do.” He paused at the writing table. “What are these parcels?”

  “The big ones are clothing for the Hislop children. Winnifred collected them at the church yesterday. She’s going to drive the cutter out to Buffaloville after the service this morning to deliver them. The others are letters for some of the folks out that way. Durfee gets Winnifred to take them along whenever she can.”

  Marc was staring, incredulous, at one of the letters. It was addressed to Miss Lydia Connors, Crawford’s Corners, Upper Canada.

  “Lydia Stebbins … is a Connors?”

  Hatch’s face lit up, then turned a slow, rosy red. “By God, that’s right. I remember Winnie telling me something about that last year, but as usual I was only half paying attention. Something about Lydia’s mother down in Buffalo refusing to admit the girl had gone and married a fool like Stebbins.”

  Without a word of farewell, Marc whirled and left the house.

  He ran along the path beside the creek and into the rear of the Smallman farm. No one was up or about. Several cows were lowing, as if in distress. Elijah’s cabin was sealed and smokeless. Marc hurried by and, rapping once on the summer-kitchen door to announce his arrival, he stumbled inside.

  At the door to the big room stood Aaron, surprised and still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The house was as cold as a tomb.

  Five minutes later Beth emerged in a nightshirt and shawl. Her eyes were wide with expectation. Marc had seized the opportunity to change back into his uniform, which Beth had brushed and laid out for him.

  “It’s all right, I’ve brought good news,” he said immediately to quell the rising anxiety in her face.

  “Then we’ll have time to make a fire and have a decent cup of tea.”

  AFTER THE TEA HAD BEEN POURED, and Aaron had left to split wood in the summer kitchen, Marc sat down beside Beth and tactfully recounted the remarkable events of the evening past.

  “Murdered?” she whispered, as if the word itself were tantamount to the deed. “But I saw him there in the barn—alone. I’d watched him grow more troubled and heartsick every day. No one, not even me, thought it was anythin’ other than what it seemed to be.”

  “I understand. You hadn’t the slightest cause to think anyone would want to murder your husband. But Hatch and I heard a dying man’s confession. He mistook me for his priest, remember. There can be no doubt about it. And when we find O’Hurley, we’ll know all the facts.”

  Beth said nothing for a long time. Marc watched her intently, wanting so much to lay a comforting hand over hers, but knowing there were more questions to come, brutal ones that had to be answered.

  It was Beth who finally reached out and folded both of his hands in hers. “You don’t know what solace you’ve brought me this mornin’.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I can get on with my grieving for Jess now.” She squeezed his hands fiercely, but he knew the passion in the gesture was not meant for him. “And then maybe I’ll be able to get on with my own life.” A fresh thought seemed to strike her. “I’m only twenty-three years old.”

  Marc went over to the fireplace and poured more hot water into the teapot. He gave Aaron a salute through the open doorway, and walked back to Beth.

  “I think I know why Jesse was murdered,” he said. “And it may also help me to find your father-in-law’s killer.”

  She looked up politely, her mind elsewhere.

  “You will need to know why, won’t you?” Marc said.

  “Yes. I think I will.”

  “It may be painful.”

  She smiled ruefully. “I’m growin’ used to that.”

  “I’m convinced that Jesse had some kind of dealings with his murderer in the weeks before his death. We know that Connors and O’Hurley were peddlers of rum and possibly other contraband from New York State. We found Jesse’s name on what we’re assuming to be one of their lists.”

  Seizing on the word “assume,” she said, “Could there be some mistake?”

  Marc placed his hand very lightly upon her wrist and looked straight into her eyes. “Please tell me: could Jesse, in his desperation to save the farm and show his father he could make it on his own, have thrown in with smugglers to get the money he needed to keep up the mortgage?”

  Beth did not turn away, but she dropped her eyes as she said, “Yes.”

  “Did you suspect anything like that at the time?”

  “Only that he started behavin’ rather odd, comin’ and goin’ at all hours. He told me he was doin’ carpentry work out on the Pringle Sideroad. I asked him about the cask in the barn, and he said Hislop or somebody’d given it to him as payment for a corncrib he built. But why would they want to murder him over a bit of smuggled rum?”

  “I’m not sure they did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was told on Wednesday evening that sometimes these peddlers are used as couriers and go-betweens for seditious activities. A secret society called the Hunters’ Lodges may have been imported here from the United States, with a view to providing support for Mackenzie�
�s more radical proposals, maybe even insurrection or an invasion in aid of one.”

  “That’s just talk,” Beth said. “I’ve heard nonsense like that for years. Nobody really believes it. You heard what Mr. Mackenzie said at the end of his speech last night.”

  “If Jesse were even toying with the notion of linking up with these lodges, he could have learned vital and dangerous information. He may even have discovered it inadvertently while participating in rum-running, since the two activities are often combined.”

  “How long have you been listenin’?” Beth was staring anxiously at Aaron, who was standing by the woodbox with an armful of split logs.

  “I just c-c-come in,” he said, dropping the wood helter-skelter at his feet.

  Beth looked relieved. “It’s all right, Aaron. I’m not mad at you.”

  Marc suddenly had an idea. “Did anyone question Aaron about the night of Joshua’s death?”

  Beth grimaced. “MacLachlan and Mr. Hatch, both of ’em—in my presence. He was out back for a few minutes and saw Father walkin’ past towards the front of the house. He saw no one else.”

  Marc looked at Aaron, who was following the conversation closely. “Son,” he said, “would you think back to the night when Mr. Smallman rode out into the blizzard?”

  “I reme-m-member,” Aaron said.

  Beth couldn’t bear to see her brother distressed. She turned to Marc. “Please—”

  “I’ve got to,” Marc said. “Think carefully, Aaron. When you saw Mr. Smallman pass you on his way from the barn to the front door of the house, was he carrying anything in his hand or did you see anything sticking out of his pockets?”

  Aaron smiled and said without hesitation, “He had a letter.”

  Aaron stood placidly amidst the scattered wood, but Beth leapt up. “Why didn’t you tell that to Mr. Hatch?” she said as gently as she could.

  “He d-d-didn’t ask me.”

  “Don’t you see what this means, Beth?” Marc said. “You were right all along. There was a written message calling him out there on some pretext. It was a rendezvous. There was foul play. And we must pursue his killer until we find him!”

  “Calm yourself. You’ll have a fit.”

  “I’m having more than that! I know who killed Joshua.”

  Beth’s face betrayed her skepticism. “You do?”

  “First of all, the motive behind the murder was Joshua somehow discovering among Jesse’s effects evidence related to his dealings with Connors and O’Hurley. You said last night that Joshua became obsessed with Jesse’s suicide. He may have deduced that Jesse was rum-running. He could have bumped into Connors anywhere about here last fall. He might have learned, from Winnifred or Durfee, that Mrs. Stebbins was Connors’s sister and—”

  “What?”

  “When I left the mill,” Marc said breathlessly, his heart racing as fast as his mind, “I saw a letter from Lydia Stebbins’s mother in Buffalo: it was addressed to Lydia Connors.”

  “She was a Connors?”

  “That’s right. And her father was a bigwig in the Loco Foco wing of the Democratic Party, a group of fanatics who hate centralized government and big banks and go about rattling sabres everywhere. The Hunters’ Lodges could easily be an offshoot. And Connors’s mate O’Hurley was hiding out at Stebbins’s place the day I went there. He hobbled my horse so I couldn’t trail Stebbins to some secret meeting out past Mad Annie’s.”

  Beth leaned back, a bit overwhelmed by Marc’s fervid narrative. “But I heard he’s a gambler and dicer,” she offered.

  “He tells his wife and everybody else he’s going hunting!”

  “Most of the farmers hunt—”

  “Don’t you see, hunting is the code word. And he’s never come back with a deer that anybody’s actually seen. Gambling at Mad Annie’s was just another cover story, like the hunting. Somewhere out in the bush there were secret and dangerous meetings going on.”

  “But how did Father—?”

  “Joshua would’ve found out from you that Jesse was out in Buffaloville doing carpentry work most of the summer and fall before he died. My hunch is that your father went out to Stebbins’s place to confront him with whatever he thought he knew. Remember that Joshua must’ve had mainly suspicions at this point. If he had had hard evidence, he would have gone immediately to Philander Child with it.”

  “Come to think of it,” Beth said, “Father did go out that way—once—sometime in October, to look at some pigs.”

  Marc scarcely heard. “As it was, he was probably relying on surprise and conviction. We’ll likely never know exactly what Joshua thought he knew: whether it was suspicion that Jesse was a rum-runner whose death could have been linked to those outlaws, or something more sinister, like secret societies and vendettas against turncoats.”

  “Turncoats?”

  “Well, if Jesse joined the Hunters even nominally and then got cold feet, they would have considered him to be a turncoat. In that case, either Connors forced him to hang himself, or he and O’Hurley did it for him.”

  Beth shuddered. “So you’re sayin’ that if Connors didn’t kill father, then Stebbins did?”

  “It could have been any one of the Hunters,” Marc said. “Stebbins no doubt denied all the accusations, and, without proof, being an honourable man, Joshua told no one for the moment. But I’m certain he had not given up. Nevertheless, the wind was up among the conspirators. My guess is that on New Year’s Eve one of their lesser lights delivered a message to Joshua. The bait would have been information related to Jesse’s death. It might well have hinted that somebody knew something to suggest it had not been suicide after all. That would have drawn your father out in a blizzard on any night. It would also have sealed his own silence in the interim. Likely he was instructed to tear up the note and scatter the pieces, or his killer callously came down from the cave and removed it.”

  Beth was having difficulty with the pace and fever of Marc’s monologue as well as with what he was saying. For a moment she had an image of this man in the thick of some battle, eyes ablaze, sword raised in righteousness. “But Azel and Jess were good friends,” she said. “We went to rallies together.”

  “Not everyone is what he seems,” Marc said, and the sudden deflation of his voice and demeanour caused her to glance at him in alarm.

  Marc took a deep breath. “I should have told you this right at the outset,” he said quietly. “You must believe me when I say it was not because I mistrusted you. I trusted you right away, and I’ve had no cause to regret it.”

  “What is it?” Beth appeared incapable of bracing herself for more news, good or bad.

  “I didn’t want to tell you unless it became a necessary part of the investigation. I think now that it is.” After the briefest of pauses he said, “Joshua Smallman was a commissioned informant for Sir John Colborne. He sent back monthly reports on suspected incendiaries in this district.”

  Beth sighed, not with disappointment but relief. “I’ve known all along.”

  “You have?”

  “Oh, he never told me. But I knew all the same.”

  “But you took him to Reform rallies, to party meetings!”

  “I told you that first day: he was the most honourable and decent man I ever met.” Something in her glance intimated that she might have added “until now.”

  “You see, I knew he would report the truth. And the truth’s always been that the farmers of this township are simply fightin’ for their rights and their livelihood by electin’ members who’ll represent their interests. It’s not been us who’ve twisted the laws for our own ends.”

  Marc wisely refrained from mentioning contraband rum and bat-wielding rallymen. “I’ve got the last report he ever wrote in my saddlebag,” Marc said. “When you read it, you’ll see that your faith in him was justified.”

  “But why is this important now?”

  “If the Hunters, or whoever they really are, suspected your father was an informant or even a person
al friend of Sir John’s, they would be even more desperate to silence him, and to do it quickly.”

  Beth took that in. Then she said, “But what are you goin’ to do about Stebbins? You’ve got no more proof than Father had.”

  “Maybe not—not until we run O’Hurley to ground anyway. But I don’t intend to wait for that to happen. If Stebbins himself didn’t kill your father-in-law, then he knows who did. The answers lie somewhere in Buffaloville. And, Sabbath or not, I’m riding out there as soon as I can get the horse saddled. I’m going to shake the truth out of that conniving weasel and then haul him before the magistrate!”

  At the door Beth said, “Be careful. There’s been too much death around here lately.”

  MARC HAD JUST FINISHED SADDLING THE colonel’s horse—which showed no sign of lameness, thanks to a temporary shoe and the ministrations of Thomas Goodall—when Hatch came puffing up to him. He had a piece of paper in his hand, but before he could comment on it, Marc launched into a sustained narrative of his theory of the murders of Jesse and Joshua Smallman. Thomas and Erastus stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

  “So you see,” Marc concluded his tale, “it’s been about rum and politics all along. I’m going to tell Stebbins that you and I witnessed Connors’s deathbed confession, and that he admitted to Jesse’s murder and complicity in Joshua’s. That ought to shake him up!”

  “My God, but you’re a devious fellow for one so young.” Hatch laughed. “I reckon you’ll be pleased then to see what I’ve dug up for you.” He held out the quarto-sized sheet of paper he had brought with him.

  “What’s that?”

  “All this talk about smuggling reminded me of one of them lists we found back in December. In fact, it’s the one we mentioned to you Wednesday night. I took it from Isaac Duffy before we packed him off to Kingston for smuggling. This one’s got names, places, and the kind and amount of booze as well. It was enough to nail the bugger in court.”

  Marc was scrutinizing the information. It covered the full page. Under headings for “Rum: Jamaican” and “Bourbon: Charleston” appeared lists of names and what seemed to be townships or locales.