Unholy Alliance

by Don Gutteridge

  “One of them French gents,” Cobb said.

  ***

  Marc assured Macaulay that he would wait until Cobb’s return from the Kingston Road on Sunday or Monday before interrogating any of the Quebecers or, for that matter, Robert or Hincks, who technically shared their motive. Meantime, he would keep his eyes and ears open for any further evidence, but that was all. For they still had those historic documents ready to be signed: thus there was every reason to delay accusations or intrusive interrogations that would shatter the trust needed to legitimate the terms of the accord and make them operable over the next year or so. Somewhat relieved, Macaulay went off to round up clothes for Cobb and to arrange for the constable’s early-morning getaway. Cobb himself went into the butler’s quarters to try and get some sleep.

  Marc found Robert and Hincks in the billiard-room.

  “There’s been a development in the case,” he said quietly, not wishing to excite them unnecessarily. Both men were looking exhausted, and very much dispirited.

  “Thank God,” Robert said. “We’ve come so very close to our goal.”

  “Yes, we have. But I’m afraid this development will occasion a delay in the investigation – until Sunday at least.”

  “That long?” Hincks said.

  “I’m sending Cobb out of town on a mission.”

  “You’re after that malcontent, Harkness, aren’t you?”

  “Giles Harkness has a powerful motive,” Marc said to avoid an outright lie. Macaulay had agreed to keep the news of the impostor to himself, and Marc felt it best that no-one else know anything about the current direction of the investigation.

  “And he would know how to get in and out of here without anyone being the wiser,” Hincks said, cautiously hopeful once again.

  “You and Robert should go back to Toronto tonight. There’s no reason for you to stay on, and your appearance in town carrying out your customary activities is the best defence we have right now for keeping everything here at Elmgrove under wraps. Come back after church on Sunday, unless I send for you earlier.”

  “You’ll stay on, then?” Robert said.

  “Yes. I’ll give Garnet some help in amusing our guests, and I’ll keep on poking about – discreetly – for evidence. Would you mind letting Beth know about my plans? And ask her to inform Dora Cobb that her husband will be away from home, possibly until Monday.”

  “We’ll be happy to do that,” Robert said. He put his hand on Marc’s shoulder. “I don’t know how we would manage without you.”

  Marc was touched, but he knew what they did not: if Cobb was not successful on the Kingston Road and the present line of inquiry proved abortive, all that had been achieved this week would be lost.

  TWELVE

  Marc was surprised that he fell into a sound sleep and woke up at eight o’clock on Saturday morning feeling almost refreshed. It was eight-thirty when he arrived in the dining-room amidst the aroma of sausages and coffee. But only Louis LaFontaine was seated at the table, just finishing his meal. He gave Marc an abbreviated smile and motioned him to an adjacent chair. Marc nodded, quickly poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down.

  “Where are the others?” Marc asked. “Or have I outslept the entire household?”

  Another smile, slightly broader. “I believe you have at that. But, then, while you worked feverishly all day yesterday, we spent the time pretending not to worry.”

  “I suggested that Robert and Francis go home to their families until Sunday afternoon. Cobb and I have taken statements from them, so there is little more they can do here – until . . .”

  “Until you and Mr. Cobb catch the murderer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Please don’t fuss unnecessarily about us. Mrs. Macaulay, it turns out, has an extensive collection of French books – novels, poetry, and political tracts. Whenever you do not require the library for your investigation, our host has invited us to read there or in the beautiful parlour or in the privacy of our rooms.”

  “I won’t be using the library, and Constable Cobb is off investigating in the city. I trust you’ll have a quiet day.”

  LaFontaine excused himself and left Marc to his breakfast. A few minutes later Prissy Finch appeared in the doorway. Marc assumed she was here to clear away dishes and check the food supply, but she stood still, hands behind her back, and looked over at him uncertainly.

  “Come in, Miss Finch. You’ll not be disturbing me. I’m almost done.”

  “Prissy,” she said. “Everybody calls me Prissy.”

  “Did you wish to talk to me?”

  Prissy nodded, and took several small steps towards the table.

  “I’m sorry you and Austin had to get tangled up in the investigation.,” Marc said. “But you know, don’t you, that you should not have lied to us, even to protect your fiancé.”

  Prissy reddened slightly. “He ain’t my fiancé no more. And I’m very very sorry I lied about where he was on Thursday night.”

  “I see. Then you do know that he and – ”

  “I do. We ain’t got many secrets downstairs. And I know he did it because of what I did with poor Mr. Chilton.”

  “Why did you lie for him, then, if you already knew he didn’t need an alibi?”

  Prissy looked down at her shoes. “I didn’t want everybody – up here – knowin’ what he did with poor Hetty. And I was certain Austin had nothin’ to do with poisonin’ Mr. Chilton. Don’t you see, sir, Austin got even with me, not the butler. That’s his way.”

  “But if you loved Austin, why did you let Chilton press his affections on you?”

  Prissy looked up and, with a touch of defiance, said, “Austin wasn’t payin’ me much attention lately. He was upset that Giles run off an’ he didn’t like anybody takin’ Alfred’s place. I – I only wanted to make him a little bit jealous.”

  Marc said very gently, “Perhaps he was trying to make you a little jealous by sleeping with Hetty?”

  “You’re kind to think that and I’d like to believe it,” she said, coming right up to the table, “but I come here fer another reason. I found somethin’ you need to see.” From behind her back she brought out a wine bottle.

  “Where did you find that?’ Marc asked, eyeing the label.

  “I was tidyin’ up Mr. Bergeron’s room a few minutes ago and I found this bottle stuffed inside one of his big pillows when I went to fluff it up.”

  Marc took the object from her. It was a litre of sherry, partially consumed and recorked.

  “Thank you, Prissy. You’ve done well.”

  “I gotta do a lot of things awfully well to make up fer the mess I made downstairs,” she said, and turned towards the door so that Marc would not see her tears.

  ***

  Erneste Bergeron was sitting peacefully in an easy-chair in the parlour, smoking a pipe and taking in the snowscape beyond the French doors. He glanced up as Marc came up beside him with the sherry bottle in plain view.

  “This is yours, I believe,” Marc said evenly.

  Bergeron’s only response was a deep sigh. He motioned for Marc to sit in the chair nearest him and said with an embarrassed smile, “I feel so very foolish, Mr. Edwards. It was a stupid thing to do – hiding my wine in a pillow – but I had a moment of panic when I heard the butler had been poisoned by drinking sherry laced with laudanum.”

  “But you must have soon learned it was Amontillado? Everybody else seemed to know.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And this is a hunting sherry – one you brought with you, I assume, because it doesn’t match the brand Macaulay has been serving.”

  “That’s right. I have trouble sleeping, as you know, and at home I take a glass of this sherry before I retire. I knew Mr. Macaulay would have sherry in his stores, but I thought my own brand would be better – for me.”

  “I still don’t see why you hid it from us.”

  “That’s simple, or so it seemed yesterday. You see, I came here very uncertain of the kind of all
iance LaFontaine was hoping for. I knew about the attempts here to keep Upper Canada a secular state and to veto any sort of established church. I am deeply religious, and I feared for my own church and its schools.”

  “And then you got to observe the Anti-Christ firsthand across the negotiating table,” Marc smiled.

  “Yes. Mr. Baldwin is obviously a devout Christian, an Anglican even. I believed him when he said our religions would be protected. And I passionately wished to see the economic reforms proposed in our meetings come to fruition. So, when the butler was found dead, and a bottle of sherry with laudanum in it suspected as the instrument of his death, I feared that my weakness for sherry and the bottle in my luggage – along with the access I had to the laudanum in the bathroom – would cast suspicion our way and, in the least, break the bonds of trust we had so painstakingly established. I know it seems foolish in retrospect, but I went immediately to my room and hid my sherry where I thought no-one would find it – in a decorative pillow that hadn’t ever been used as far as I could tell. But the maid was too conscientious. She insisted on fluffing up all the pillows in my room whether they needed it or not.”

  “That must have been her doing,” Marc said carefully, “because I assure you I have not asked that your rooms be searched.”

  “So you are now looking outside the estate for the culprit?” Bergeron said hopefully.

  Marc offered him a noncommittal nod.

  “I do hope you’ll forgive my foolish fears.”

  “I already have,” Marc said, then rose quietly and left the room.

  Well, he thought as he headed down the hall in search of Macaulay, Bergeron could now almost certainly be eliminated as a suspect. His enthusiasm for the alliance was undoubtedly genuine, as was his religious fervour. It was hard to envision him poisoning the impostor, even if he somehow discovered he was a spy, making off with the three-page summary of the proceedings, and hiding an irrelevant sherry bottle ineptly in his own room. LaFontaine – like Robert, Hincks and Macaulay – was not even in the picture. And the servants likewise. Even Bragg, if Prissy was correct, was more into petty revenge than deadly conspiracies. That left Tremblay and Bérubé. Somehow before Cobb returned on Sunday, Marc would have to develop a tactful strategy for bearding those two.

  Unless, of course, Cobb were to unearth fresh and convincing evidence of another kind. And Marc had learned never to underestimate his partner and friend.

  ***

  It was pitch-dark when Cobb guided Ben and the two-man cutter out of Elmgrove and onto the Kingston Road. Fortunately the six-year-old horse that Struthers had introduced him to outside the stables was a mixed breed that combined endurance and reasonable speed. “Give him his head and he’ll get you where you’re goin’ on his own time. He won’t need feedin’ an’ waterin’ every five miles,” Struthers had advised. So Cobb did just that. It was not often that he took the reins of a sleigh or a carriage, as in town he walked wherever he needed to go. Once in a while the police would commandeer a vehicle from one of the local livery stables or, on a rare occasions, a saddled mount. But Cobb had been raised on a farm outside Woodstock, and although his father sometimes let them drive the Percheron team to church and back, he and his brother Larry (christened Laertes) would hitch them up whenever Papa was off on an errand to the neighbours and race down the back lane pretending they were Ben-Hur among the Romans. No such boyish temptation presented itself this day, however. Cobourg was about seventy meandering miles away, and he might have a dozen stops to make before he got there late in the day. Instead, he tied off the reins and left his progress to Ben’s experience and judgement. This stratagem allowed him to begin sampling the hamper of delectables prepared for him by Mrs. Blodgett and the Janes sisters.

  A couple of miles out of town, just beyond Scaddings bridge over the Don River, sat a rough log tavern operated by Polonius Mitchum. Although it was unlikely that the real Graves Chilton had got this close to Elmgrove before being waylaid and robbed of his identity, Cobb decided to stop there and try out his cover story. At five-thirty in the morning, only the ostler would be up with the animals, but that was the man he wanted to see.

  As he anticipated, the ostler did recall every occasion the Weller stage had stopped at Mitchum’s over the past two weeks. Not often, of course, and only when some passenger or other insisted on stopping for reasons of thirst or intestinal emergencies. However, like most ostlers and stablemen, this fellow had a keen eye for faces and eccentricities among stagecoach passengers. Unfortunately, on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the previous week, there had been no stops made. And before the Tuesday in question, he was certain no-one fitting Chilton’s description (bald or otherwise) had been among the paying customers who did stop.

  Confident now that his pretending to be a cousin of Chilton’s on the lookout for a butler who hadn’t arrived when scheduled to, Cobb pointed Ben east along the Kingston Highway through the snowbound bush of Upper Canada. The road itself, more like an exaggerated lumber trail, weaved its way around impenetrable clumps of hardwoods, stretches of stubborn evergreen, frozen swamps, and rigid outcroppings of rock. But as no snow had fallen since Thursday evening’s brief squall, the roadbed was packed flat and icy. Ben clopped along at a sprightly pace while the runners hummed behind him.

  Just as the sun was rising above the treeline about seven o’clock, Cob spotted a square-timber dwelling built too close to the road to be merely a farmhouse. He pulled up in front, and was pleased to see a sign scrawled in chalk above the rickety door:

  DЯINK & FOOD

  Through an oil-paper window, he spied a flicker of light.

  A stout woman with a friendly face blemished by the elements (or too much of the inn’s liquid product) came out to greet him, blowing clouds of her own breath before her.

  “What’re ya doin’ on the road this early, young fella?” she boomed, wrapping her shawl more snugly about her throat.

  “I’m on a mission to find my missin’ cousin,” Cobb said.

  “Well, I ain’t got yer cousin inside, but I got plenty of stuff to stoke yer vitals!”

  Cobb was happy to pay for a small whiskey, despite the dingy interior of the hovel and a glass that had never been baptized with soap. And his hostess was just as happy to talk.

  “Weller’s sleigh usually stops here comin’ an’ goin’,” she said in reply to his opening query. “A week ago Tuesday, you say? Now let me think. Yes, that was the day the young lady puked all over my welcome rug. There was only two other riders with her, her husband and an elderly gent.”

  “And the next day, the Wednesday?”

  “That’s easy. There were four passengers: a very chatty merchant gentleman from Montreal, headin’ to the big city, he said, to sign some paper or other that’d make him rich. But I let all that sort of braggin’ roll off like water down a duck’s ass. An’ there was a girl with a club foot, got on at Cobourg, I think, along with her mother and uncle.”

  “What about Thursday?” Cobb asked, knowing as he did that the impostor was spotted by young Cal Struthers getting off Weller’s stage late Thursday afternoon.

  “You’re expectin’ me to remember an awful lot, ain’t ya?”

  “What if I was to buy a jug of yer hooch? Would that re-gress yer memory?”

  “Might do the trick,” she chortled as she gave his gentlemanly duds a further appraising look. “Let me see . . . It was Thursday of last week when Danny Stokes the driver pulled in with a near-lame horse. My husband – least that’s what he calls himself – helped him put a new shoe on her. The passengers all sampled my wares except fer this well-dressed fella who talked with a ten-dollar accent. Coulda been English. He turned his nose up at my hot biscuits.”

  “Was he bald-headed?”

  “Yer cousin was hairless, was he?”

  “Bald as a bull’s whatchamacallits.”

  “Well, this fella kept his fancy hat on in a most unmannerly way, but I could see his greasy orange hair stickin’ out
from under it.”

  “Then that wouldn’t’ve been my cousin Graves,” Cobb said. He gave her a quarter for a jug of her homemade whiskey, thanked her, and headed back out into the cold – mightily pleased with his efforts in there. For he now knew that the real Graves Chilton had not got this far, that somewhere east of this point the red-headed impostor had pounced.

  “Let’s go, Ben. We got a ways to travel yet.”

  ***

  Marc spent the rest of Saturday morning in his room going over the accumulated notes he and Cobb had made on the case. He was looking for any angle they might have overlooked or any questions they might have failed to ask. They had not pressed the Struthers, father and son, very hard, particularly in light of the fact that they seemed to be the only employees on the estate who had ready access to the outside or were unaccountable in general for their whereabouts. But they had no discernible motive, and of all the persons resident in Elmgrove this week, they seemed the least perturbed by the events in the manor house. But something was definitely niggling at the back of his mind, some fact or other he had not viewed from every possible vantage-point. But two hours spent poring over these notes did nothing to bring it to light.

  At one o’clock he went to the dining-room for some lunch, and was relieved to find only Garnet Macaulay there. He looked haggard, but did his best to greet Marc with a smile.

  “I don’t think I could play another game of backgammon or piquet without having a brain seizure,” he said, poking at a soft-boiled egg.

  “That bad, eh?” Marc said, sitting down.

  “It’s Bérubé. He’s mercilessly sociable. LaFontaine is quite content in the library reading back issues of Hincks’s Examiner and the Tory Gazette. Bergeron is reading in the parlour. But I was unable to get away from Bérubé and the games table – that is, until I got an inspiration.”

  “Which was?”

  “To find him a risqué French novel from Elizabeth’s collection. He’s reading it in the sanctity of his bedchamber. Thank the Lord for minor mercies, eh?”