Bessie’s snoring stopped. Some unintelligible sounds began bubbling out of her slack mouth. There was enough moonlight for him to see her eyelids flutter. What could he do if she woke up now and saw him standing beside the bed with the flies of his long-johns open? Without taking his eyes off her face above the coverlet, he began to back out of the room, ignoring the cold draft shooting up the folds of his nightshirt, and taking a moment to tuck his penis back into its proper pouch.
“Where’re you goin’, lover?”
Cobb froze. And waited. The snoring started up again, just audible. She was talking in her sleep. As he backed into the hall, he heard her mumble something else, something that sounded like “brave . . . brave” – and repeated several times. Well, women had their fantasies too, didn’t they?
Beginning to shiver mightily with the cold, Cobb trotted down the hall to the door of Bessie’s quarters at the far end. He thought he might find a blanket in there that he could use to cover himself. But when he tried the door, he found it locked. He padded back down to the dining-area. The room was still relatively warm, but cooling rapidly. He dragged the two armchairs close together, slumped down in one, pulled Alfred’s fancy overcoat across his shivering body, and curled his legs up on the other chair.
Chilled, aching, uncomfortable, he was astonished to find himself drifting instantly towards sleep.
***
Cobb awoke with a start. Which wasn’t wise because it was enough to send him crashing, rump-first, down between the two chairs that had served him as a makeshift bed. He groaned and rolled free of them, onto his side. His back and legs ached. The throbbing in his skull was threatening to shatter it. His tongue tasted like one of his socks. And for a frightening second or two he was not sure where he was. Gradually, however, Bessie Jiggins’ dining-room came into focus and, with it, recollections of the horrors of the night just past.
He shuddered, moaned against his various aches, and struggled to his feet. He had to grab the chair-arm to steady his dizziness and keep himself from toppling. The room was still dark, but a brightening behind the calico curtains indicated that the sunrise had already begun. He could hear no other sound but his own harsh breathing. Then he began to shiver with the deep chill of the room.
At some cost he hobbled over to the kindling-box and proceeded to get a fire started in the hearth. Then he crept across the hall and, going no farther, monitored Bessie’s snoring for a full minute. Then he reached in through the doorway and retrieved his clothes. Back in the dining-room, he stood as close as he dared to the fire and wriggled into his shirt and trousers. He spotted a kettle of water nearby and put it on the hob. Then he sat down to think.
He thought about the tale Bessie had spun about the butler’s illness and the day’s delay in his leaving for Cobourg with Brutus Glatt. He thought about the door to her quarters being scrupulously locked. And then it hit him – with a gratifying wallop! He knew now what word she had been mumbling as he had scuttled out of her clutches a few hours ago. And it wasn’t “brave . . . brave.”
What to do, though? Only one option presented itself. In stockinged feet he padded resolutely across to the scene of Bessie’s aborted assault. She lay on her back, sawing logs – crosscut. Her nightgown was still bunched at her throat, and the comforter had slipped down far enough to expose four-fifths of her stunning breasts. But Cobb forced himself to look past their splendid arches and rigid nipples to the key that lay nestled between them at the end of a thickly braided golden cord.
He could see no way of getting the loop of cord over her head without waking her, so he took out his penknife and approached her, one tiny step at a time. Just as he reached the edge of the bed, a floorboard protested at the pressure on it. Bessie’s eyelids fluttered. Her snoring stalled. A small bubble of spit appeared between her lips, expanded and burst. Cobb froze. What would she think if she were to open her eyes at this moment and see a fully clothed man arched over her naked form with a knife brandished in his right hand?
She didn’t wake, however. Very slowly the snores started up again, irregular and staccato at first, but soon ascending to their customary operatic pitch. Holding his breath, Cobb leaned over her as far as he could without collapsing onto those womanly hillocks, rubbed the blade of his penknife with his thumb until the metal was warm, and eased it under the cord without contacting flesh. With his other hand he grasped both sides of the loop just above the knot that held the key in place, and then, closing his eyes, he pulled the blade up against the golden braid – slowly . . . slowly . . . a millimetre at a time.
He felt a hand on his thigh. He stopped cutting, and tried to breathe, then not-breathe. Despite the chill in the room, his brow was awash with clammy sweat. The fingers of Bessie’s left hand did a little jig high up on his trouser-leg. He saw a smile interrupt her snoring. The fingers fell away.
Without realizing it, in his panic at the arrival of her fingers, he had jerked away just forcefully enough to have his blade sever the cord. The key now lay atop her left breast. With a trembling that threatened to undo him but which he couldn’t control, Cobb succeeded in lifting the key free. Still trembling, he backed out of the room, and stood in the hall gasping for breath. By God, he’d been in a dozen donnybrooks and pummelled toughs in alleys all over Toronto, but he hadn’t been this nervous since the birth of his daughter Delia!
Well, he had the key. And one chance to test his theory before the sultry Siren back there woke up and discovered she had been forsaken. At the door to Bessie’s own quarters he inserted the key without difficulty, turned it slowly, and heard the lock give way. He inched the door inward.
He was surprised to find himself inside a spacious room partially illuminated by bars of sunlight slanting through gaps in the shutters that were tightly closed over two wide windows. A heated room! Quickly he took in the pot-bellied stove, the three-pillowed sofa, the padded easy-chair, the ornate escritoire littered with papers, and a bookcase stuffed with leather-bound volumes. The lace curtains framing the windows and the mauve covering on the sofa suggested a woman’s room – for sitting, writing, relaxing.
Cobb was disappointed to find it empty.
However, straight ahead among the morning shadows he spied a short hallway with a door at the end of it. He moved silently across the room, and as he neared the hallway, he noticed another door to his left. It was half open, enough for him to take a peek inside. In the dim light he could just make out a gleaming copper bathtub and detect the lingering scents of perfumed soap and bath powder.
He turned his attention now to the door straight ahead. It wasn’t locked, and gave way with a squeal when he pushed it inward. He could see nothing in front of him but darkness.
“Anyone in here?” he called out softly.
A human figure of some sort fell into the faint lozenge of light spilling through the opened door. Two huge dark eyes in a white face stared up at the intruder.
“Who are you?” the face inquired in a tremulous whisper.
Cobb jerked back, startled, and struck his head on the door-sash. “Jesus, fella! You give me a fright!”
“She made me do it, honest!” The crouching figure, a male despite its being clothed in a pink nightgown, lurched forward and wrapped its bare arms all the way around Cobb’s ankles.
“I’m Cobb,” Cobb said as he tried to disentangle himself, “a policeman from Toronto. An’ you gotta be Mr. Graves Chilton from London, England.”
The shivering creature at his feet burst into tears.
FOURTEEN
Cobb half-dragged and half-carried Graves Chilton to Bessie’s sofa, where he propped him up against two pillows and drew the pink nightdress discreetly over the fellow’s thin, hairy legs. Cobb sat down next to him.
“I’ve come to take you outta here,” he began, trying in vain to make eye contact with the butler, who had stopped snivelling but still refused to look up at his rescuer. “And I need you to tell me how you come to be in this predict-a-ment. I take it you been a prisoner in
these rooms fer the past eleven days?”
Chilton nodded, then finally glanced up at Cobb, who was surprised to see that, except for the brief effects of the sudden tears, Chilton did not look like a man who had been starved, abused, or sleep-deprived with worry for almost two weeks. “I was on the stagecoach from Kingston – on a Tuesday, I think . . .”
“That’s right. You was headin’ fer a job at Elmgrove in Toronto.”
“With Mr. Garnet Macaulay, yes. And I remember becoming ill as we pulled up to some wretched-looking wayside inn, and that large woman – the one who’s been at me all these days and nights – ” He paused and a shudder passed through him.
“She beat ya?” Cobb said, incredulous.
“Not exactly,” Chilton mumbled, and hung his head once again.
“But you were a prisoner in here?”
“She gave me a cup of tea to settle my stomach, and when I woke up I was lying back there – on that bed in that dark room.”
“She must’ve drugged yer tea.”
“I – I tried to get out a window, but the shutters are nailed tight.”
“That’s why it’s so dark in here.”
“Then that woman came – she made me call her Dearie – and told me I was in a cabin deep in the woods, with only snow and trees and bears around us.”
“You don’t know where you are?” Cobb cried, scarcely believing his ears. “You’re in the livin’ quarters of Bessie Jiggins, the woman who runs the inn you landed in. An’ the Kingston Road is twenty yards to the north of us!”
Chilton was stunned. “She lied to me,” he muttered, and looked as if were about to cry again.
“Of course she did. Fer reasons I’ll tell ya about later, she needed to keep you from gettin’ to Elmgrove fer a week or so. Lockin’ you up here an’ spinnin’ you a yarn about bein’ a prisoner in the wild woods was her plan all along.”
“Locked?”
Cobb’s jaw dropped. “Jesus, Chilton, didn’t you try an’ get out that door over there? Even to have a peek at the trees an’ the bears?”
“I heard her locking it a few times, but not every day.”
“An’ you never once tried to get away?”
Chilton put his head in his hands. At the same moment Cobb caught sight of a small sideboard angled into a far corner and only now visible in the fading shadows of the room. Sitting on top of it were three bottles of Scotch whiskey, two of them empty.
“She kept you supplied with booze?”
Chilton nodded, and mumbled through his fingers, “I’ve got a terrible weakness for the drink. It was my undoing back in England.”
“So you’ve been liquored up fer a good deal of the time you was supposed to be kidnapped?”
“She knew I couldn’t stay away from it. Diabolical, she was.”
“An’ she kept you well-fed?”
“Yes. We – we had some meals in here together.”
“An’ just how was she supposed to rustle you up good grub way out in the bush amongst the bears?”
Chilton shook his head. “I was – I was groggy with the drink.”
Another, more incredible, thought popped into Cobb’s head, as he recalled the copper tub and the still-warm stove, and noticed how neat and tidy these quarters were. “Don’t tell me you two cuddled back there in that bed?”
A sob erupted from Chilton. “She made me do it,” he wailed. “She was insatiable. What could I do?”
“An’ scrubbed yer back in the copper tub? An’ powdered yer butt afterwards?”
“You don’t know what it was like!” Chilton shouted with a touch of defiance.
Oh, don’t I? Cobb thought, but said, “So what’ve we got here? A fella that might’ve been drugged or just ill from the journey, a fella who wakes up unmanacled in a dark room an’ don’t think to try the unlocked door, a fella who’s gullible enough an’ yellow enough to let an unarmed woman bamboozle him, that takes to the drink she gives him like a duck to a pond, paddles in her bathtub, takes his meals with her and – in short – lets himself become a love-slave fer eleven days! You weren’t kidnapped, sir, you were cuddled to death!”
“It was the gorilla,” Chilton said, pleading his case and glancing at the door he had not bothered to test. “She said he was her lover and if I left the safety of these rooms, he would rip my arms off in a jealous rage!”
“Brutus? The stableman?”
“She brought him to the door once, and he growled and howled like something unhuman – and monstrous!”
“He’s a mute, you silly man! An’ he’s harmless.”
“I – I don’t think so!”
The door had swung open with a bang, and Cobb turned just in time to see Brutus Glatt bearing down upon him. And Brutus was not here to wish the guests “good morning.” Cobb jumped to his feet, but before he could get his arms up to defend himself, Brutus thudded into him, chest to chest. The breath went out of Cobb as he stumbled and fell flat on his back. Brutus followed him down, and the man’s enormous weight collapsed full-length on top of him. Cobb felt his ribs flex, and a sharp pain tore all the way down his spine and into his thighs. He cried out in agony. As Brutus reared back, Cobb instinctively threw his hands up to ward off the blows expected. But his assailant went for the exposed throat. His huge, muscular fingers closed over Cobb’s windpipe, cutting off his breath and the scream that boiled behind it. Brutus’s fiery stare and his garbled curses were only inches above Cobb’s face.
“Help! Help! He’s killing him!” the butler shouted at no-one in particular.
That’s a lot of use, Cobb thought grimly, as he fought for air – even as his mind was entertaining the impossible possibility that he was about to die.
“Let him go, Brutus! Now! He wasn’t trying to hurt dear Mr. Chilton.”
Brutus rolled off Cobb, checked to see that the victim had resumed breathing, and then stood up meekly beside Bessie Jiggins. She was standing in her pink nightdress, a twin of the one draped over Chilton, with her hands on her hips. “The game is up, Brutus. No sense in making it worse.”
***
“He’s not a violent man,” Bessie was saying to Cobb. “Horses don’t take to violent men. He keeps half a dozen stray kittens in his little cabin beside the barn. When one of our horses gets sick, he sleeps in the stall next to it.”
Cobb fingered the bruises on his neck. “I c’n see why he’d be protective of you, but why go after me when you were a room away?”
Bessie smiled, despite her nervousness. She had been eyeing Cobb closely ever since they had sat down at the table in the dining-area near the comfort of the fire Cobb had built earlier. Graves Chilton had reluctantly agreed to let Brutus escort him into the kitchen, where the stableman had fired up the cooking-stove and offered to help the butler into the clothes he had not seen for eleven days.
“Brutus wasn’t protecting me,” Bessie said. “He thought you were going to hurt dear Graves.”
Cobb was taken aback, even though he knew he should not be, given the bizarre goings-on among these eccentric characters. “But I heard you told yer lover that Brutus was a limb-tearin’ brute.”
“Unfortunately, that was Graves’s first impression of the gentle soul, and nothing I could say thereafter would change his mind.”
“And I suppose it wasn’t you who told the fella he’d landed in the middle of a forest surrounded by bears an’ ice?”
“A figment of his overheated English imagination. He had become terrified of our woods during the coach-ride from Kingston – all those trees and no people. He was deathly sick by the time he staggered in here.”
“An’ you calmed him down with a cup of clear tea?”
“He passed out before he could drink it. We carried him into my quarters and put him to bed, and told the coach-driver to carry on without him. He had his ticket to Toronto, and we figured we’d put him on the coach when it came here the next afternoon, along with his baggage.”
“An’ he ain’t recovered yet?”<
br />
She smiled again, less nervously this time. “He was fine by Wednesday morning. Feeling quite perky, if you know what I mean.”
“Assisted by a cup or two of yer best whiskey?”
“He spotted my supply on the table, and how was I to refuse a sick and frightened man?”
“Who was also quite perky.”
“Well, he got perkier as he went along.”
Cobb heaved a big sigh. Part of him admired her cunning and temerity as she attempted to mollify a man whose “cousin” she had flagrantly abused and who himself had barely escaped strangling at the hands of her henchman. “So you’re gonna stick to yer tale of a fella so un-armoured of the drink an’ the fair sex that he curled up in yer pink nightie fer eleven days an’ didn’t once beg to sniff the open air?”
“I doubt he’ll say otherwise,” she said, maintaining her bold stare on him.
“I guess we’ll haveta see about that when he remembers who he is an’ where he was goin’.”
“You aren’t his cousin, are you?”
“No, ma’am. My name is Cobb all right, but I’m a constable with the Toronto police. I been out lookin’ fer Graves Chilton on behalf of Mr. Garnet Macaulay, the gentleman who was expectin’ him to arrive in town last week.”
“I see.” Cobb could hear the wheels turning in her head as she reassessed him and tried to decide where she now stood. “Well, I’d say you’ve done a fine job in tracking him down. His baggage, I assume, has already been dropped off at his employer’s. Brutus put it on the coach a few days ago.”
Cobb smiled darkly at the brazen lie. “I’m afraid there’s more to it than that.”
“I thought as much.”
“The baggage did get there, but another fella callin’ himself Graves Chilton arrived with it. An’ this one wasn’t bald like the one you waylaid. He had a head full of orange hair.”
“My word, an impostor! What is the world coming to?”
“An’ this one was spotted gettin’ out of a cutter driven by your Brutus – in Cobourg on Thursday mornin’ of last week – just in time to hop onto the coach fer Toronto.”
Unholy Alliance Page 22
