“About the proposed meeting between Baldwin and LaFontaine?”
“Yes. Harkness had the dates and locale, and even the names of the Frenchmen coming from Quebec. But he also had information on the new butler. He was to be Graves Chilton from England. The fellow was already en route from London. Harkness was subsequently told by his crony – Austin Briggs, I think his name was – that Chilton had reached New York and would arrive at Elmdale on Weller’s stage from Kingston on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of the next week.”
So, Bragg had rummaged through the letters in the library and given Harkness what he needed to know, Marc mused. As a favour to a good mate, perhaps, or merely because he too could not abide Alfred’s being replaced by an outsider. That Bragg knew nothing about spying or murder, Marc was still certain, though he dreaded having to tell Macaulay about his manservant’s disloyalty.
“What did you do with this information?” he said to Winthrop.
“Nothing at first. I put Harkness in the kitchen with some breakfast, and sat down to think. Here was a Heaven-sent opportunity to infiltrate the secret meetings and get information that would please the Bishop and his Tory associates, information that could help prevent a political and economic catastrophe.”
“Not everybody sees it that way,” Cobb felt obliged to say.
Winthrop ignored Cobb, as he had studiously tried to do from the outset of the interview. “I already knew in general that a new butler was on the way. My brother Ethan in Cobourg had an English butler, who had heard the news along the grapevine that servants seem to have. This butler, Marcel Flett, once worked for me years ago when I lived in Belleville, so I knew him well. I knew he would leap at the chance I was about to offer him.”
So, at long last, they had a name for the man whose body they had found stiffening in that cramped little office at Elmdale.
“But Flett was in Cobourg,” Marc said, “and Chilton was due at Elmdale as early as the next Tuesday.”
“That’s right. I hadn’t much time. I told Harkness to leave his boarding-house, move in here, and await further instructions. Then I rode to Cobourg and, late that Saturday evening, I broached my bold scheme to Flett at my brother’s house. I offered him a ridiculous sum of money, which he accepted greedily, but it was really the potential for excitement and danger that prompted him to join forces with me – that and the fact that he’s been an ardent Tory and monarchist all his life.”
“So yer brother was in on this, too?” Cobb said.
Winthrop glowered at the constable. “No, no, not at all,” he said to Marc. “You mustn’t involve Ethan. All he knew was that I wished to borrow Flett for a few weeks, and was happy to accommodate me.”
“So you persuaded Flett to pose as Chilton,” Marc said, “but there was still the real butler to deal with.”
“Yes. I knew a lot about Bessie Jiggins. She was infamous in Northumberland County and the subject of many conversations between Ethan and me over the years. I also knew that she was in desperate straits financially.”
“How could you know that?” Cobb snarled.
Still looking at Marc, Winthrop said, “I have friends in the Bank of Upper Canada. Several weeks ago one of them sent me a note indicating that Mrs. Jiggins had missed yet another payment on her mortgage and that the bank was going to foreclose and seize the property if the debt were not settled by the end of February. My friend wanted to know if I would be interested in purchasing the inn at a good price.”
It was Cobb’s turn to glare at Winthrop, but before he could comment on such a flagrant violation of business ethics, Marc said, “So you already had the letter you needed to intimidate the woman into kidnapping a man she did not know and had no quarrel with?”
“There was no intimidation. She had herself been fearful of a foreclosure, and naturally jumped at the chance to earn enough money to forestall the bank’s intentions. Nor was it kidnapping. From Harkness, I knew that Macaulay had been warned about Chilton’s weakness for drink and the fair sex. I mentioned this as a possible means of her effecting a delay in his journey. How she managed it was up to her.”
“That ain’t what she told me,” Cobb said, intensifying his glare and letting the wart on his nose quiver menacingly.
“We know much of the rest,” Marc said. “Her assistant, Brutus Glatt, was sent into Cobourg on the Tuesday evening to alert Flett that Chilton had been successfully ambushed. Flett arrived the following evening and the switch of identities was effected.”
Winthrop managed a grim smile. “Yes. The only risk, once Chilton was out of the way, was that on the Thursday morning when Flett got on the stage at Cobourg, there would be a local passenger or two who might recognize him.”
“But he was feigning illness, wasn’t he?” Marc said, “and had bundled himself up?”
“Just as we had planned it. He never spoke a word between Cobourg and Elmdale. And, according to the note he smuggled to me via Harkness, he arrived there with Chilton’s baggage, Chilton’s clothes and Chilton’s papers. He was unknown in Toronto, so there was no way anyone at Macaulay’s would not accept him as the legitimate English butler, especially Macaulay, who is notoriously feckless and trusting.”
“All that remained, then, was for you and Flett to set up a means of transferring the purloined information from the negotiations to this house?”
“Harkness knew exactly how to do that, and to advise Flett on the best way to eavesdrop. Flett’s knowing French was a bonus. His mother was born in Calais. I could have waited until the meetings were over and had Flett simply do a bunk with his accumulated notes, but I wanted progress reports. The business might have gone on for days, and I was also hoping that something might turn up to allow me to disrupt the negotiations themselves, something dramatic that would further ingratiate me with the powers-that-be here in Toronto.”
Marc leaned forward and said, “But I am puzzled as to why a successful businessman like yourself would risk going to prison for fraud and conspiracy to kidnap merely to ingratiate himself with his Tory cronies? Or was it the nobler, if misguided, notion that you were saving the province from democracy?”
“But you don’t really understand, do you? I have invested most of my fortune in the new order, as it were. Using insider information, one of the benefits of being on the fringe of the Family Compact, I have been purchasing a dozen seemingly worthless properties along the main streets of Kingston. Lately, as others have been trying the same moves, however, the prices have been rising and I have had to mortgage my business here and even this house to continue buying. I even borrowed heavily from Ethan.”
“You knew for certain that Governor Poulett Thomson had decided to make Kingston the capital of the united provinces?”
“I did. Lord Sydenham, as he is soon to be called, made that determination some time ago, though he has not yet announced it publicly. But I wanted more than the wealth that might accrue from my efforts in Kingston.” He gave Marc a solemn, almost pitiable, look as he added, “I have contributed more than enough to the life of Upper Canada to be named a member of the new Legislative Council.”
Cobb snorted: “So you wanted to be filthy rich and a lifetime member of the bigwigs’ private pre-serve to boot?”
“Walking these documents over to the Palace would not have hurt your chances any, would it?” Marc said, glancing at the charred pages Cobb had set beside him. “And as a member of the appointed council for life, you could ensure your Kingston properties would continue to be offered every advantage?”
“The risks seemed justified – at the time,” Winthrop said with obvious regret but, as yet, little remorse. “I’m a childless widower,” he added as if that helped to explain his folly.
“So, thus far, everything had gone according to plan. By last Thursday evening you had three reports from Elmdale, and you knew an agreement was imminent. Why on earth, then, would you jeopardize all you’d gained by putting a lethal dose of laudanum in a bottle of Amontillado from your stores an
d having Harkness deliver it when he went back to the hay-barn at five o’clock on Thursday afternoon? It makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Flett turned out to be a worse blackguard than Harkness,” Winthrop said bitterly. “When Harkness arrived here about four o’clock with a summary of the morning session, there was an extra note from Flett. He demanded double the amount of money I had offered. I believe he had grown weary of the butler business.”
Marc nodded. “I see. And you assumed this would not be the last demand he would make?”
“I was certain of it. Even though I doubted he would risk implicating himself, he knew I had a lot more to lose. He could inform on me and scuttle off to the States or even England. I couldn’t let the bastard blackmail me for the rest of my life!”
“So you decided then and there to poison him – knowing his fondness for drink?”
“Yes. And don’t let that weasel Harkness tell you he wasn’t in on it. He stood right here and watched me empty out several ounces of the sherry, pour in a vial of laudanum and recork the bottle. He was more eager than I to do in the man he assumed was Chilton and the usurper of his brother’s place.”
“So Harkness did think it was Chilton all along?”
“There was no reason to let him in on the scheme out at The Pine Knot. But even though the man had an offer to be part of a horse-raising farm near Burford, and I agreed to help him buy a stake in it, he was obsessed with his brother’s death and his future role at Elmdale. Alfred had been the only father he ever knew. He foolishly thought that somehow, with Chilton out of the way, he himself would magically turn into Elmdale’s butler. He took the sherry out there all right, and Flett accepted it as his due.”
“But why kill the blackmailer out there? With a scheme that might not work, with the potential to harm others?” Marc said. “You’d have plenty of time and opportunity to get rid of him later and with much less risk.”
“But there was a more compelling reason to do it out there, and do it quickly. I wanted the negotiations to be thrown into chaos. What surer way to do that than to have a servant murdered under mysterious circumstances? There was, you see, something else in that report of the Thursday-morning session.”
Even as Winthrop was speaking, Marc knew what had precipitated the callous murder of Marcel Flett. “You read the butler’s notation about the last item added to the coalition’s platform, didn’t you?”
“I damn near fainted, right in front of Harkness.”
“What’re ya talkin’ about?” Cobb said, completely at sea.
“Daniel Bérubé, a merchant and businessman like Mr. Winthrop here, asked that the unholy alliance go on record as favouring the immediate removal of the capital from Kingston to Montreal.”
“And if that happened,” Winthrop sighed, “I would be a bankrupt, my Kingston properties devalued or worthless. Even if I were made a Legislative Councillor, I might be helpless to stop it. So, you see, the decision to do away with Flett was easy. I would eliminate a blackmailer and bring the negotiations to a halt.”
“You assumed that being treated as suspects in a murder inquiry would be enough to destroy any sense of trust between English and French, and send the Quebecers scurrying back to the safety of their own bailiwick?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“But how’d you know the butler would guzzle the sherry down on Thursday night?” Cobb said. He was intrigued by the twisted intricacies of Winthrop’s scheming, but nothing rich folks did ever really surprised him.
“That was the weakness of my plan, wasn’t it? If Flett shared it with others, no-one would die, but they would still be sick or befuddled, and the seeds of suspicion would be sown. But then I’d have to deal with Flett afterwards, wouldn’t I? Yet I was pretty certain he would keep the special sherry for himself or use a bit of it to weaken the knees of the nearest maid – his other character flaw, I’m afraid. He was a selfish, vain, ambitious fellow, who would interpret my gift as a signal of my acquiescence to his new demands. I couldn’t see him not celebrating his fortune and success that very night.”
“But you weren’t sure, were you?” Marc said. “Or else you wouldn’t have risked sending Harkness back out there at five o’clock on Friday, Saturday and again today.”
“That bumbling idiot was supposed to leave the hay-barn and find a way to discover what was going on in the manor-house. Flett didn’t show up Friday or Saturday. Was he dead? Was he merely disabled? Had the meetings broken up? I was near frantic with not knowing. Nobody seemed to be leaving the place until Saturday when Baldwin and Hincks were seen about town, looking perfectly normal. None of the Frenchmen had left, at least not by the back route they used to arrive there. I approached Angus Withers on the street, but was unable to get anything from him without giving myself away. On Saturday I ordered Harkness to approach Struthers, a friend of his, and get some hard news, anything to relieve my anxiety and let me get some sleep. But the bastard cowered in the barn and refused to budge. This afternoon, I told him to stay at Elmdale until he had the information I needed or I would turn him into the police and put all the blame on him. Surely he could slip up to one of the girls out gathering eggs or feeding the hens or emptying the slop-buckets.”
“He never left his sanctuary,” Marc said. “He mistook me for Chilton, and I had him red-handed. He seemed genuinely astonished when I told him Chilton wasn’t Chilton and that he’d been dead almost three days.”
“Serves him right,” Winthrop muttered.
“Even so,” Marc carried on, determined to get the whole truth out while he had the chance, “you were still left with the real butler, who was bound to show up sooner or later. What if he had arrived in the middle of our negotiations? Would not Flett have been exposed as an impostor, and would he not have implicated you to save his own skin?”
“Flett was instructed to take to the woods the second he spotted the real Chilton,” Winthrop replied, not unimpressed, even now, with the care with which he had planned his deception, despite its having gone wrong. “He was an expert on snowshoes. He was to go to the trapper’s cabin, then make his way back here.”
“But even if Chilton didn’t show up until after you’d poisoned Flett, would there not then have been an effort to determine who the poisoned man was? And surely your brother would soon come to you wondering why his Mr. Flett had not returned from your care?”
Winthrop put his head in his hands. “I figured no-one would believe Chilton’s fantastic story . . . and Mrs. Jiggins would never give herself away, would she? She didn’t even know my name.” He glanced up at Cobb, who had cleared his throat.
“So you figured,” Cobb said with some satisfaction.
“And your brother?” Marc asked Winthrop.
“I – I intended to tell him about the spy business and swear him to secrecy. He is after all a Tory loyalist, and would applaud my effort to discredit and dismay the Reformers. But no-one, certainly not my brother, would suspect me of killing my own agent, would they? And that fool Harkness should have been miles away in Burford by now!”
“You’ve got too many ‘should’ves’ in there,” Cobb opined.
Winthrop looked up. “Why do you think I haven’t slept for three nights?”
No-one spoke for a while. Winthrop finished off his whiskey and stared blankly at the dead fire. Then he brightened in a grim sort of way, and said with real conviction, “So you’ve been scurrying about out at Elmdale from Thursday until this afternoon looking for a killer amongst the staff and distinguished guests? If so, then I’ve accomplished something, haven’t I?”
“Whaddya mean?” Cobb said. “We got you a rend-a-view with a rope.”
Winthrop almost smiled. “I succeeded in wrecking the negotiations. There’s no way they could have survived three days of false accusations, wounded vanities and mounting frustration, could they?”
Marc was quick to respond: “I’m afraid you’re right. How could trust and compromise between two groups natural
ly antagonistic to one another thrive – or even survive – in such an atmosphere? You can tell your influential friends, from your prison-cell, that the unholy alliance has not happened, thanks to the death of a butler in their midst.”
“And that means, then, that there’s every likelihood the capital will remain in Kingston,” Winthrop said, grimacing at the irony.
“So you’re gonna be filthy rich after all,” Cobb said, then added with a gleeful grin, “I’m sure Jack Ketch’ll be pleased.”
***
When Beth Edwards woke up on Monday morning, she was startled to find her husband asleep beside her. He must have slipped into bed sometime after ten o’clock, when she herself had kissed her sleeping child goodnight and retired. Eager to hear all the details of the murder investigation that had occupied Marc to the point of distraction since Friday morning, she kissed him slowly and tantalizingly awake.
“There’s more where that come from,” she smiled, “but first things first, eh? I want the whole story.”
Marc knew her well and, weary as he was, he immediately began to summarize the case for her. He also knew enough not to omit unsavoury detail or try in any way to mitigate the vices and follies of those around them.
When Marc had finished his lengthy account, aided by periodic prompts from his audience, Beth leaned back on her pillows and said, “So what’ll happen to Mrs. Jiggins?”
“Chilton himself is not about to press charges, and Winthrop swears she knew nothing of the purpose behind the identity-switch. At most, she could be accused of public mischief in abetting what a good barrister would claim to be little more than a prank. So no-one seems keen to arrest her, certainly not the officials in her county, where she, her mute friend and their horses are legendary.”
“Sounds like she’s famous fer other things as well. I wonder that poor Cobb was able to resist all that temptation.”
“So do I,” Marc said with a wry smile.
“I’m glad she didn’t set her lecherous eyes on you – handsome as you are.”
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