Minor Corruption

by Don Gutteridge

  “No fortune involved,” Cobb said. “It was Tim that arranged fer her to get on steady with the Baldwins, and he warned her not to come home – ever – without some company.”

  “He’s turned out to be quite a lad.,” Sturges said.

  “Yup, it was him who persuaded Lottie to testify when I told them what happened to Betsy and what the trial was about.”

  “And Thurgood said he realized he was not likely to get a chance to seduce her at home,” Marc continued. “But in his twisted mind, he thought if he could get her alone for a few minutes he could make her love him, and then they could be together as often as they could arrange it.”

  “A sick man, that,” Sturges said, shifting his foot on the padded stool.

  “So that malarkey about buyin’ a pony was all true?” Cobb said.

  “It was. He had saved a little cash and did make a deal for the elderly beast in Whittle’s barn. Thurgood said he knew Betsy went to the barn despite his disapproval. Sitting near Sol Clift on the third of August, a week after Betsy went on steady at Spadina, he did see the girl turn north towards the barn. At twelve-thirty he and Whittle went up to repair the sluice at the weir. Once there, Thurgood announced that he could fix the broken logs himself if the boss wished to slip up to the trout pool for a little illegal angling. Whittle jumped at the chance. And, I gather, Thurgood routinely covered for Whittle when the miller went poaching and risking the nullification of his lease.”

  “And went about lying on the witness-stand,” Sturges said, “givin’ Thurgood a perfect alibi.”

  “Yeah,” Cobb said. “He had to lie because if he’d’ve told the truth, he was in danger of havin’ his lease provoked.”

  “Right,” Marc said.

  “So that’s what put you on to Whittle?” Sturges said to Cobb, mightily impressed.

  “When I heard Edie Barr go on about Uncle Seamus not allowin’ any poachin’ on Trout Creek, the bells started ringin’ in my noggin. I thought: maybe the miller wasn’t at the weir all afternoon. If so, that left Thurgood – ”

  “Unaccounted for,” Marc said. “Right on. Thurgood waited until Whittle was out of sight – the pool there is hidden by bushes along the shoreline – and then scooted up to the barn. Where he found Betsy feeding the pony.”

  “And he raped his own daughter,” Sturges said with disgust.

  “He still doesn’t see it that way in his own mind, although he knows it is wrong and that he will go to jail for incest and corruption of a minor.”

  “How does he see it?”

  “He claims that the girl acquiesced and that what they did in that stall was to make love.”

  “Absurd!” Sturges said, and winced as his foot wobbled.

  “Well, remember, Sarge,” Cobb said, “Jake Broom said he didn’t hear any scream or whimper or cry fer help, and her frock was hangin’ neat as a doe over the wall nearby.”

  “Betsy was either too terrified to call out or resist,” Marc said, “or else she resigned herself to her fate in the face of her father’s awful power and authority. I doubt she knew what was happening to her.”

  “Did he hear or see Broom come upon them?” Sturges asked.

  “He heard a noise, he said, as Broom was scampering away, but didn’t see anyone. Still, it was enough to make him stop his outrage and order the girl to dress and hide out along the creek until the coast was clear before heading home. Needless to say, she was warned never to tell: he told her that if she did, she herself, he and her mother, too, would all be ruined, and probably go to jail.”

  “And she didn’t tell, poor brave soul,” Sturges sighed. “Not even when he gave her a chance to the night of her death.”

  “Thurgood himself went back down to the weir, certain that his daughter would now come to him and that they would be lovers forever.”

  “Enough to make a man puke, ain’t it?” Sturges said.

  “But she never returned home again,” Marc said, “until three days before her death. And while she continued to bring her father Mrs. Morrisey’s lunch, she never went near the barn or gave him any opportunity to repeat his outrage. She was in many ways a remarkable young woman. She tried to make a life for herself at Spadina, and thrived on Uncle Seamus’s friendship and tutelage.”

  “How is Seamus?” Sturges asked Marc.

  “Not well. He’s relieved, of course, that the trial is over and he has been acquitted of all charges. But this dreadful business may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. At any rate, he’s to live out his days at Spadina in the care of people who are truly concerned for him.” There was relief on another front as well. Hincks, at Robert’s suggestion, wrote to Louis LaFontaine in Montreal, conveying the good news and, probably, saving the political alliance.

  “So,” mused Sturges, “Whittle and Thurgood lied fer one another on the stand? Each givin’ the other an alibi – fer different reasons.”

  “It was a happy arrangement and until Cobb ferreted out the truth, it kept my mind away from either of them as potential rapists.”

  “But I still don’t get the business about the hair,” Sturges said. “Thurgood ain’t old and he’s got black, curly locks.”

  Cobb looked at Marc, who said, “I managed, inadvertently, to suggest the answer during one of my frantic and misguided cross-examinations. I speculated that the mill-hands could easily and naturally come by whitish hair. After all, they work in the midst of wheat chaff, wheat dust and milled flour. And the morning of the rape, all of them had been kept busy shovelling up a spilled load of grain. Thurgood’s black curls were dusted grey-white. None of the men bothered washing until the end of the day, so Thurgood’s hair – in the tricky light and shadow of that stall and with his curls sprayed wide in his exertions – looked much like the whitish halo around Uncle Seamus’s head.”

  “I see,” Sturges said. “And Thurgood is a wiry, slim fella who could’ve looked old to an excited Jake Broom?”

  “I feel terrible about Broom,” Marc said, glancing at Cobb. “The poor devil really was in love with Betsy, and all kinds of thoughts must have gone through his head as he came upon that scene – with Betsy apparently accepting the physical advances of a sixty-year-old. Why he ran and why he decided not to reveal what he’d seen, only he really knows. But I was dead wrong to accuse him of rape. It was the last thing he would ever have done.”

  “And if I’d’ve done a proper investigation in the first place, there wouldn’t been a trial for Seamus Baldwin.”

  “But it was your brilliant work that exposed the culprit,” Sturges said forcefully. “And without the trial you wouldn’t’ve heard about the ban on trout fishin’ from Edie.”

  “Well spoken, Wilf,” Marc said. “But I’d like to know from the horse’s mouth, Cobb, just how you put together your second and successful investigation.”

  Cobb beamed. “I own it mostly to you, Major.”

  “How so? Surely it wasn’t my losing my temper and making false accusations against you?”

  “Well, that put a bee on my bottom, all right. But, no, it was you always tellin’ me not to accept coincidences.”

  “I do recall saying that more than once.”

  “Well, when you told me to do my job, I got to thinkin’ that maybe I had started out with only one suspect in mind. But I really didn’t fancy any of the young mill-hands. Then I remembered. In the last week of July or so, three things happened, three things that might be connected. Betsy Thurgood gets a steady job at Spadina, and I know from the trial that she did not ever return home until her ma got sick in October and she come back to help out.”

  “And two or three days later, Tim Thurgood elopes and vanishes,” Marc said.

  “Right. That’s number two. And number three we all know about. On the very next Saturday, Betsy foolishly leaves her pa an openin’ and he takes it.”

  “So you assumed that her brother Tim had deliberately waited to leave until he was sure Betsy was away from home?”

 
“It seemed possible. And why would a fifteen-year-old girl not go home once to visit her ma – not a half-hour away? Could it be she was afraid of her pa? Likely, eh? But then lots of terrible fathers beat their kids. Maybe that was all there was to that.”

  “But you recalled the older sister leaving and not returning?”

  “Right again. But I had one big problem with this theory.”

  “Thurgood had a perfect alibi,” Sturges said, happily getting into the act. “Sworn to by the miller, who seemed to have no reason to lie.”

  “But then I remembered Edie tellin’ the court about Whittle bein’ forbidden to fish in the trout pools, and suddenly the miller had a reason to lie.”

  “And the bugger’ll just say he misremembered and avoid perjury,” Sturges muttered. “But when he asked Thurgood to lie fer him and say he was at the weir all along, Thurgood must’ve been mightily relieved. He was home free.”

  “Well, then, the first move I made after gettin’ permission from you, Sarge, was to drive up to the mill. I wanted find out if Whittle’d been anglin’ instead of fixin’ the dam, and I also figured him or one of the hands would know if Tim Thurgood had any friends in the area. ‘Cause it was Tim I needed to talk to, to find out if his pa was a pervert.”

  “And you succeded both ways,” Sturges said proudly.

  “I did. Whittle spat out a deny-all about poachin’, but his eyes were lyin’. Then I went to the farm where he sent me, and Tim’s friend, Will Getty, finally told me I could find Tim at the hotel in Thornhill, usin’ the name Kilbride. I knew I had to get up there and back before nightfall, so I rented a horse.”

  “The supreme sacrifice,” Marc said, much amused.

  Reminded of that harrowing journey, Cobb unconsciously adjusted the pillow he had been sitting on. “And when I finally found Tim and his wife, there was a second lady seated at the kitchen table. I knew right off it was Lottie Thurgood and I’d hit the bull’s-eye.”

  “You had no trouble persuading them to come into town and do their duty?”

  “None at all. They were as mad as could be, both of ‘em, though Lottie looked awful frail. I hired a carriage and we drove back, slowly, to Toronto. My rear end still recollects every bump.”

  “Cobb took them home, reported to you, then came to me,” Marc said. “Early in the morning Robert and I worked out our new defense. Fortunately we had to use only part of it.”

  Also, at Marc’s the previous evening, the two friends had fallen over each other with apologies for their sharp exchange in the attorneys’ wig-room. Marc readily admitted that if he had not been so eager to become Doubtful Dick Dougherty, he might have done some investigating on his own and discovered the truth. He had relied solely on Cobb’s recorded interviews when he could have been out at Spadina quizzing the servants and spending more time with Uncle Seamus. He had visited the crime scene once – but that was all. While he couldn’t tamper with the Crown’s witnesses, he could have walked over to the cluster of workman’s houses and played investigator. But he hadn’t. For his part Cobb had confessed to focussing solely on whether or not Uncle Seamus had committed the crime and, having once determined the case, to clinging to it at all costs. Still, their deeper accusations about motive went undiscussed, and it might be some time before their friendship came fully back on course – if it ever did.

  “Well,” Sturges said, summing up, “there are really only two completely positive things to come outta this case.”

  “What are they?” Marc said.

  “First of all, I got word an hour ago that Mrs. Trigger was found dead up in Newmarket. Fell down in a drunken stupor, I’m told, and struck her head on somethin’ sharp.”

  “Good riddance,” said Cobb.

  “And the second thing?”

  “We’ve found ourselves a bona fide detective, ain’t we?”

  And he looked admiringly, imploringly at Cobb.

  ***

  In bed that night, after she had heard all of the pertinent details of the case and accounts of Cobb’s brilliance, Beth said, “Do you think Thurgood went after Betsy while she was nursing her sick mom?”

  “Thurgood told the magistrate that the girl slept beside her mother the whole time – ostensibly to nurse her better.”

  “It seems that Betsy did lie to get the five pounds to procure an abortion. Why would she herself have not hinted that a midwife would be a good idea that evenin’, knowin’ it would be the notorious Mrs. Trigger?”

  “She knew her father, eh? He’d never call a doctor. Who else, then, but Mrs. Trigger? And remember, Betsy played ignorant of the facts of life when it’s obvious now that she knew the trouble she was in and, vaguely, who might help her out of it.”

  “The poor girl probably only knew that a midwife would know what to do.”

  “She was still an innocent in my book.”

  “What I don’t get, though,” Beth said, stifling a yawn, “is why Thurgood would pursue Uncle Seamus so madly when he himself defiled his own daughter. Wouldn’t he have been wise to just let sleepin’ dogs sleep?”

  “True. But Thurgood tried to extort money from the Baldwins before making his charge against Uncle Seamus public. He was enraged when they slighted him, and once the whole business got rolling, after Jake Broom’s accusation, there was no way for him to stop it. Besides, he never imagined anyone would discover the truth. Once Betsy appeared to have named Uncle Seamus as the father of the child and he had his alibi handed to him, he must have felt invulnerable.”

  “He also had a wicked temper,” Beth pointed out. “And all that grief and guilt had to go somewhere, didn’t it?”

  “This whole affair has been one vast tragedy.”

  Beth brightened. “But it was you who realized someone other than Uncle Seamus could have big, grey hair. It was you who thought up the idea that the wheat chaff and tricky lighting could’ve caused Jake Broom to make a terrible mistake.”

  Marc smiled. “It was, wasn’t it? You know, Mrs. Edwards, you’re married to a genius.”

  Beth leaned over, kissed him and said, “You ain’t there yet, luv.”

  About the Author

  Don Gutteridge is the author of more than 40 books: fiction, poetry and scholarly works, including the Marc Edwards mystery series. He taught in the Faculty of Education at Western University for 25 years in the Department of English Methods. He is currently professor Emeritus, and lives in London, Ontario.

  Other Books in the Marc Edwards Mystery Series

  Turncoat

  Solemn Vows

  Vital Secrets

  Dubious Allegiance

  Bloody Relations

  Death of a Patriot

  The Bishop’s Pawn

  Unholy Alliance

  Desperate Acts

  Or visit the Simon & Schuster Canada Website

  Coming Soon in the Marc Edwards Mystery Series:

  Governing Passion

  The Widow’s Demise

  Available from Bev Editions

  Excerpt From Desperate Acts

  One

  Toronto, Upper Canada: 1840

  The blizzard that howled across the icy expanse of Lake Ontario and struck the defenceless city broadside on this particular midwinter evening was little noticed by the five gentlemen seated in the drawing-room of the Bishop’s palace on Front Street. After all, supper had been lavish, as usual, and more than satisfying, especially so since not one of the prelate’s guests felt himself to be less than deserving of the great man’s largesse. Friday evening was secular night at John Strachan’s palatial residence, an opportunity for men of worth and promise to congregate, sup well, gossip idly, and then move on to discuss the pressing political issues of these turbulent times. Though the guest-list varied from week to week, those attending invariably shared a number of beliefs and convictions. That all were adherents of the Church of England was a given, and whether that fact was instrumental in shaping the rest of their character or not, they were, to a man, High Tory in th
eir politics, conservative in their morals and demeanour, terribly sensitive to distinctions of race and class, and inclined towards capitalist enterprise. And no less importantly, they were susceptible to a good cigar and a fine sherry.

  Enjoying the latter post-prandial refreshments, while the wind scoured and screeched against the red-brick walls and mullioned windows, were Ignatius Maxwell, receiver-general of Upper Canada and judge-designate; Ezra Michaels, local chemist; Ivor Winthrop, furrier and land speculator; Carson James, a non-practising barrister with a very rich wife; and their host, John Strachan, the recently elevated Bishop of Toronto.

  “That was one superb dinner, Bishop,” James said, inhaling deeply, “and, if I may say so, was meticulously presented. I don’t know where you find such well-mannered and properly trained servants, but they are most impressive.”

  “Worth their weight in gold,” Michaels added, reaching for the sherry. “We’ve had three maids and two houseboys since September.”

  “You’d think with so many people out of work and begging for employment, that they’d be happy to do an honest day’s work without complaining or demanding higher wages,” Winthrop said solemnly.

  “Or dropping the crystal,” Maxwell said with a chuckle.

  “I take no credit for my servants’ performance,” Strachan said in the deep, authoritative voice that had made his sermons at St. James justly renowned. “It is Mrs. Strachan alone who manages my household, with thrift and a good heart.”

  “I take it you’ve all heard about poor Macaulay?” James said.

  Several murmurs followed this remark, but Michaels, looking puzzled, said, “You mean his wife going off to Kingston to see her specialist?”

  “I did hear that,” James said, “but I was referring to what happened to his butler before Christmas.”