“I – I can’t know or be responsible for persons Brutus might give a ride to on his way into town.”
“There’s no use lyin’ any more, Bessie. Like you said when you stopped Brutus from doin’ me in, the game is up.” He did his best to look stern as he added, “The impostor’s confessed everythin’.” He considered this falsehood a minor offence, given the string of whoppers he had just been subjected to.
Bessie visibly sagged. So much of her undeniable appeal lay in her exuberance and good humour that Cobb was shocked to see the flesh of her face droop into folds, and the rosiness fade from her lips and cheeks.
“I haven’t a clue who the impostor was,” she said in a voice he had not heard before, and he was inclined to believe her.
“Then why did you agree to waylay the real – bald – Graves Chilton an’ keep him, ah, occupied fer almost two weeks?”
“I didn’t really kidnap him, you know. I only locked the door when I thought one of those rubes in my taproom might wander back there and scare the shit out of him or young Cassandra might decide to practise her techniques on him.”
“We’ll come back to that. It’s the impostor I’m interested in. Why would you get mixed up in some loony scheme to send a fake butler to some fancy manor-house in Toronto? You’re an innkeeper, aren’t ya?”
Bessie sighed, and for the first time Cobb saw in her face unmistakeable signs of the rough and challenging life that she – and poor Brutus – had had to endure. “It’s all about this place, Cobb. The Pine Knot is all Brutus and I have after a lifetime of effort. I wasn’t about to give it up without a fight.”
“Whaddaya mean, give it up?”
“I’ve got a mortgage on the inn with the Bank of Upper Canada. Brutus saw some horses last spring that we just had to have – if those vultures in Cobourg weren’t going to steal our business. I borrowed money to buy them. We’re doing all right because of them, but I got behind in my payments to the bank.”
“They wouldn’t foreclose, would they?”
“I didn’t think so. But two weeks ago today – Sunday – a well-dressed gentleman arrives at my door to inform me that he’s learned from a friend of his at the bank that if I don’t come up with the money due by the end of this month, the bank will take my inn.”
“What made you believe him?”
“He had a letter from some bigwig at the bank. He wasn’t bluffing.”
“Wanted the place fer himself, did he?”
“Not at all. He would not tell me why, but he said he was willing to give me enough cash to make the payments due and a lot more besides. I almost fainted, and I’m not exactly shy, am I? The sums he mentioned were damn near enough for me to own The Pine Knot outright.”
“But in order to get the money you had to do him a big favour?”
“Yes. He seemed to know a great deal about me. And he didn’t realize it, but I had spotted his name on the letter he showed me, and I knew who he was.”
“What was the favour – kidnapping a butler?”
She smiled grimly. “He didn’t put it quite like that. He said it was important to him, and to other important people in Toronto, that a Mr. Graves Chilton, a butler en route from England, not reach his employer in the city when he was supposed to. He needed to be delayed for ten days or so, that was all. This butler would be aboard Weller’s stagecoach from Kingston some time in the week following that Sunday. My task was to invite him in for a drink and find a way to keep him away from Toronto.”
“Did he know Chilton had a weakness fer whiskey, an’ women?”
“Yes. I don’t know how he knew, but he did.”
Whoever he was, Cobb thought, he also knew about Bessie Jiggins’ attraction to men and her considerable appeal to their baser instincts.
“His advice to me,” she continued, “was to persuade him to stay here overnight in my bed and be driven into Cobourg in time to catch the stage before it left in the morning. That in itself should be simple enough, he said. Then I could proceed at my leisure to get him drunk and take him off to the barn or some abandoned cabin and keep him caged as long as necessary. Then we could take him along the Kingston Road and drop him in the middle of nowhere. He wouldn’t know where he was or what had happened to him, poor devil. And who would be the wiser?”
“But you didn’t have to do all that, did ya?”
“I never intended to. I had other, safer, plans, didn’t I?”
“But where does the red-headed fella come into it?”
“The idea was to have some crony of the schemer take Chilton’s place. My job was to get Chilton out of the way and stow his baggage.”
“But that was on the coach, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Once Chilton passed out during the stopover, I went out to the driver and told him the man was quite ill and we needed his suitcases in here until we got him better and on his way again.”
“Very clever. What then?”
“I was to send a message to a Mr. Smith, care of The Cobourg Hotel, that ‘all was ready’.”
“Mr. Smith, eh?”
“By the next evening, the Wednesday, Chilton was in my quarters, deliriously drunk – ”
“An’ perky.”
“That, too. Brutus delivered the news in Cobourg. And at ten o’clock that night, in the dark, this stranger arrives and announces that he is now Graves Chilton.”
“He didn’t give you his real name?”
“No, I swear. He had no need to, you see. He had the first instalment of my reward with him, and he assured me I’d get the rest of it if I managed to keep the real butler under wraps.”
“Why didn’t he just hop on the stage in Cobourg at nine in the mornin’?”
“He needed access to Chilton’s belongings. He’d brought a suitcase full of his own butlering clothes, but when he rummaged through Chilton’s bags he discovered he was about the same build. He was particularly interested in the various papers he found among Chilton’s effects. In the end, he left his own stuff here and went off with every scrap of the other fellow’s.”
“Off with Brutus the next day to catch the mornin’ stage?”
“That’s what Brutus told me. I wasn’t the least bit curious about the reasons behind all these shenanigans, even though I should have been, perhaps. But I’ve had to battle this world tooth and nail on my own for more than twenty-five years, and I’ve had to make myself as selfish and as watchful as I could – even when I didn’t like what it did to me.”
Cobb sat back, vastly satisfied. He had not only confirmed the presence of an impostor in Elmgrove, he had discovered how the ruse had been perpetrated. In the process he had rescued the real Graves Chilton and, if the roadway stayed as it was, would be able to deliver him, rumpled but unhurt, to his rightful owner.
“What happens to me now?” Bessie asked quietly.
“Well, the way I see it, you did a great wrong to Mr. Chilton an’ you did so without knowin’ what worse wrongs might be happenin’ in Toronto because of what you was doin’ here.”
“I couldn’t give up The Pine Knot, could I? I could take myself elsewhere, I always have, but – ”
“But what would Brutus do – without his horses?”
She nodded slowly, and dropped her eyes.
“I guess it’s up to the butler in yer kitchen, isn’t it? You did nail yer shutters shut an’ you did lock that door more’n once.”
Bessie smiled, and some of the fire returned to her cheeks. “What’s he going to tell the magistrate, eh? That a forty-five-year-old woman pleasured him into a helpless pulp?”
Cobb loved the way she laughed with her eyes.
“You got a point there, and I don’t care a fig one way or another about that business. But what I gotta know, an’ you gotta tell me, is the name of the so-called gentleman you spotted on that letter, the fella who set the whole scheme up an’ oughta be in jail.”
“But I can’t do that, Cobb. I’ve kept my part of the bargain I made with him. I deserve to
have the other half of my fee. Brutus and I, at long last, might own something nobody can ever take away from us.”
“You got enough to keep the bank from foreclosin’, ain’t ya?”
“I’ve already sent them a cheque.”
“You’ll haveta be satisfied with that, then.”
“Or?”
“Or else I’ll haveta drag ya to the magistrate an’ have ya charged with conspiracy an’ fraud – fer a start.”
“But I know nothing about what the ruse was for!”
“And I believe you. But will the magistrate? Yer Brutus was seen deliverin’ a fake butler to the stagecoach in Cobourg – with Graves Chilton’s ticket in his hand and a sled full of Graves Chilton’s bags. Who’s gonna believe you didn’t help the culprit make the switch an’ steal that luggage? Are you gonna blame it all on Brutus?”
Bessie Jiggins did not turn away, did not let the colour drain from her cheeks. She stared at Cobb with a look comprised of admiration, fear, bemusement and affection.
“I have only one regret,” she said, “and that is that I can’t remember how good we were when – you know – when we were . . . together last night.” Then she reached over, squeezed Cobb’s hand, and gave him the name.
***
Sunday morning for Marc was even longer than Saturday afternoon and evening had been. He had arrived home the previous day about two o’clock for a joyous reunion with Beth and Maggie. Both were in good health and high spirits. Now that she had discovered the wonders of upright locomotion, Maggie felt she had to demonstrate every one of her new-found moves several times over. Beth had been free of cramps and false labour since Thursday and insisted on bundling up and going for a walk down Sherbourne Street to the lakefront. Here they watched the ice-skaters and bladed skiffs skimming over the frozen bay where the north winds had blown the snow clear. But by the time they got home for the supper that Charlene had prepared for them (and for her easily impressed fiancé), Marc was already fretting and wondering how Macaulay was making out in his effort to distract the visitors from Quebec, and whether Cobb had made it safely to Port Hope or Cobourg.
After supper, Marc had walked to The Cock and Bull on York Street, where he found Nester Peck, Cobb’s snitch, and bribed him to track down Giles Harkness. When he got home, Charlene and Jasper unrolled the plans for the proposed addition to Briar Cottage (for the humpteenth time), and made several suggestions even more outrageous than previous ones. Marc had feigned interest as best he could. And while he wished nothing more than to drive straight back out to Elmgrove to relieve Macaulay, he realized that it was more important that he, like Robert and Hincks, make public appearances and create, for any overly curious Tories, an air of normality about his movements and intentions. Thus, on Sunday morning, while Robert and Hincks made certain they were observed with their families in their pews at St. James, Marc and his loved ones made the weekly trek to the Congregational church on Hospital Street.
After lunch, while Charlene and Jasper took Maggie sledding, Marc brought Beth up to speed on the case. But the walk to the church had tired her more than she would admit, and he heard her snoring softly in her rocker in the midst of a most insightful summation of the known facts and various conclusions that might be drawn from them. An hour later, he asked Jasper to hitch Macaulay’s horse to the cutter, kissed Beth and Maggie goodbye, and headed out to Elmgrove.
He took a roundabout route, going west for a block, then north, and finally circling back to King Street and pointing the horse eastward. At the estate he found Macaulay by himself in the library. The Quebecers were in their rooms napping or reading before afternoon tea was to be served at five o’clock.
“I feel I’ve just weathered the Battle of Waterloo,” Macaulay sighed. “But LaFontaine has been as good as his word. I’ve not heard a single complaint and no-one’s threatened to leave. However, as soon as they’ve eaten, they’ve asked for us all to assemble here – for the showdown.”
“And we’ve got nothing positive or new to tell them,” Marc said gravely. “They’ll have no reason to sign our accord and little incentive to hang around Toronto waiting for an inquest that can spell nothing but trouble for them.”
“Cobb’s snitch wasn’t able to locate Giles?”
“Not yet. But if he is in the city, Nester will find him.”
Just outside the front window they heard a shout of “Whoa!”
“Thank God,” Macaulay said. “Robert and Francis have arrived.”
“Someone else to share the gloom with, eh?” Marc said.
“I’ll go and say hello,” Macaulay said.
Marc sat by himself for a few minutes and, once again, tried to think of anything he or Cobb might have overlooked. Nothing came readily to mind. He got up and stared out at the snow-covered driveway, willing Cobb to appear. But, of course, he didn’t. Perhaps the Quebecers would wait until it got dark about seven o’clock before giving up on the police, and the Reformers of Upper Canada.
Macaulay came back into the room.
“Robert and Francis are taking their things to their rooms. They’ll join us in a minute.”
Marc nodded, but he hadn’t actually heard what Macaulay had said to him. He suddenly knew what had been overlooked, what had been nagging at him for two days. “I’ve missed something that could be important,” he said.
“You have?” Macaulay said, much excited.
“Yes. We’ve been assuming all along that the three pages missing from the butler’s ledger, which we now know contained details of our private discussions, had been torn out of the book and removed by the killer.”
“Why else would they be torn out?” Macaulay asked, somewhat deflated already. “Surely you were right in concluding that the ledger was the perfect hiding-place for those notes on our meetings. If the impostor removed them himself, he risked their being discovered – by one of us or one of the staff, who have access to his rooms and legitimate reason to go there. And, remember, we haven’t found those pages anywhere.”
“True, but what if the impostor were funnelling his notes to those on the outside as the meetings progressed? A sort of meeting-by-meeting summary?”
“I did think of that, Marc, but Cobb and others, including me this morning, have walked the periphery of Elmgrove and found no evidence of anyone coming or going. You’re not implying that someone came down the front lane?”
“Think back to Thursday, Garnet. We met at eleven to finish our discussion of step one, and then we broke for a working lunch. Did Chilton, as I’ll call our impostor for the moment, not ask for permission to go to the stable to check on a supply problem?”
“That’s right. He thought Struthers guilty of something or other.”
“But Struthers denied that the butler ever got there.”
“My word! You think this Chilton might have been delivering a page of notes to someone out there who could spirit it away to Toronto? To one of our opponents?”
Marc nodded. “Did Chilton not also take a fifteen-minute constitutional every evening about five o’clock?”
“That’s right. As he did on Wednesday and again on Thursday.”
“I’ve at least got to check out the possibility that some sort of relay system was set up to systematically steal vital information from us. After all, insinuating a phoney butler into Elmgrove was a complicated, bold and risky venture: there had to be a powerful motive behind it.”
Macaulay frowned. “You’re not going to accuse Struthers, are you? He’s absolutely trustworthy.”
“Don’t worry, Garnet. Desperate as I am, I’m not about to jump to conclusions. I’m just going for a walk, a fifteen-minute constitutional.”
***
After dressing for the outdoors, Marc left the house by the back door, the one off the rotunda and the one the impostor had probably used on Thursday in the early afternoon and again at five o’clock. Struthers or his son had shovelled much of the snow off the well-used path that led to several nearby sheds and a chi
cken-coop and, farther to the northeast, to the stables and the Struthers’ cabin just beyond it. The constant tramping of the Elmgrove staff during their various duties had left the path a hard-packed walkway threaded between two-foot banks. Marc felt the sting of the north wind on his left cheek as he made his way past the chicken-coop and into the open space before the cedar grove a few yards ahead. He crossed the rutted lane that Robert’s sleigh had used to enter the estate unobserved from the bush on its northern border last Wednesday. He was grateful for the shelter of the cedar windbreak when he reached it, but as yet no particular plan of action had presented itself. He had thought that by putting himself in the butler’s overshoes, so to speak, he might get some flash of insight into how those ripped pages could have been smuggled out of here and into the hands of one or the other of the Tories in the city proper.
He was thinking so intently that he stumbled over the edge of the bank on his left. As he straightened up, facing the cedar windbreak, he spotted a rumpling of the snow just past the nearest tree. It struck him then that “Chilton” could have jumped the bank easily and vanished into the grove without a trace. Who would go in there in ordinary circumstances? Marc hopped over the bank himself and stepped knee-deep into the drifts that linked cedar to cedar. While the trees had acted generally as a buffer against the prevailing wind and drifting snow, random gusts over the past few days had created an eddied effect within the grove itself. In the narrow open spaces between trees Marc could see whorls and zigzag patterns sculpted by these variable gusts, but these were not enough to camouflage completely the telltale marks of human footprints. Obscured as they were here and there, Marc was still able to track them through the grove to its northern edge, a distance of about twenty yards.
He stood panting between two cedars, and stared due north. From where he now stood to the far edge of the estate he estimated to be forty or fifty yards. Up there, the bush, with the lumber road just inside it, was thick with spruce and cedar. But directly between him and the bush sat the small hay-barn he had noticed on their arrival last Wednesday morning. It appeared “Chilton” had thrashed his way through the cedars to this spot. But if he had come this far, then how he got over to the barn or how his accomplice had got here from there was not easy to determine, for the snow over the intervening space was unmarked. The occasional drifting of the past two days would have filled in some part of any footprints but not enough to cover them up. Reluctantly Marc had to admit that no-one had walked to or from this spot.
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