“Did he leave the whist table alone?”
“Yes.”
“Not with one of the players?”
“No. They were there until nearly midnight.”
Marc’s hopes sank. They had to find the culprit who drove Ellice into town.
“But he was spotted leaving the grounds.” Durham smiled at the effect this revelation had. “At precisely ten minutes past midnight, in one of the carriages, accompanied by a gentleman and possibly his lady.”
“Then it could have been one of the whist players after all. Do we know who?”
“Alas, no. Two different stableboys saw Handford stagger into the carriage, but neither can recall whose carriage it was—only that it was likely a barouche. It was dark and several other carriages were leaving about the same time.”
“Damn. Most of the guests came in barouches.”
“Wakefield will continue the investigation out at Spadina. It’s still possible that someone will recall something of significance.”
“I hope so. But this new information is helpful. It tallies with the account of events given by the women at Madame Renée’s, and makes it almost impossible to believe that they had time to perpetrate the crime as a group and cover their tracks. And it suggests that Mr. Ellice was plied with drink—possibly even drugged—and may have been seduced into accompanying one of the whist players.”
“Those conclusions, however tentative, sound reasonable to me.”
“If true, it narrows our search to four men, not the dozens now scattered across three counties.”
“Though it is not inconceivable that a fifth conspirator may have been engaged to do the transporting.”
“Perhaps, but I now have four people to interrogate that I didn’t have half an hour ago.”
Durham looked at Marc as if unsure how he should broach the point he felt obliged to make. “I think we have to be extremely tactful in how we go about interrogating prominent citizens about a murder, especially those not known to be Whig sympathizers.”
“But I—”
“And that is why I invited you to lead the investigation rather than leaving it to the local authorities.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Durham dredged up a smile and said, “Now, I sense you’re keen to begin theorizing.”
Marc smiled back. “Yes, sir, I am.” And with that, he sketched out his hypothesis—now reinforced by Wakefield’s report from Spadina—that the murder was the result of a conspiracy to derail His Lordship’s mission and its perceived pro-Reform bias. One or more of the whist players—Finney, Hepburn, O’Driscoll, Harris—had arranged to get Ellice drunk and lure him to a brothel. Hiding close by was a recruited thug, who knew the routine of the house and possessed a key to its hidden entrance, not six feet from the door to the victim’s room. When the house was quiet, said thug slipped in, slunk into the cubicle where Sarah McConkey and Ellice were asleep (his snores audible through the netted opening of the window), and created mayhem.
“Surely the slaughter of an innocent girl—fallen soul though she was—seems a bit extravagant for the purpose of embroiling my family in a scandal,” Durham ventured.
“I agree, sir. As I mentioned earlier, Badger had a personal grudge in addition to his need for money, but even so, I don’t believe he was paid to kill anyone. When we apprehend him—”
“If we do—”
“If we do, then I’ll bet we find that he was hired to beat up the girl, perhaps knocking her unconscious, then scoot back out the hatch before the women were wakened and came running in. That would be enough to compromise your nephew, especially if the respectable citizen who set this up informed the police or encouraged Mrs. Burgess to make a complaint. Or perhaps Badger was meant to break Mr. Ellice’s leg or otherwise incapacitate him so he would be found there in disgrace.”
Durham looked skeptical. “Would he be able to do any of this and get away?”
“I believe so, for two reasons. First, he was a professional bruiser. He made his living by intimidating rowdies and beating people up. He’d have little trouble silencing Sarah while he clubbed her unconscious or smashing a leg with a brick, and then retreating through an unlocked escape hatch only steps away.”
“And all this to sabotage my mission?”
Marc grimaced. “I’m afraid so. Remember, we just fought a bloody civil war over the fate of these provinces, and publicly hanged several of the rebels. Even as we speak, our borders are being threatened by Yankee fanatics.”
Durham nodded in sad agreement, then said, “Well, it’s a plausible theory. But as I see it, we need to find two men before we can take it one premise further: Michael Badger and the man who took him to the brothel.”
“Cobb is heading to the Tinker’s Dam tonight to look for Badger and check out Mrs. Burgess’s characterization of him as a reckless gambler and deadbeat.”
“Meanwhile, I’ve prepared the ground for you and me both to assess the character of the whist players.”
“You have?”
“After Wakefield’s report, I anticipated that we might need to examine these men, even if only to eliminate them from our suspicions. You said you’ve read the characters and relationships among the women of the brothel during your time there this afternoon. Well, I have invited Finney, Hepburn, O’Driscoll, and Harris to meet with me here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, ostensibly to have them offer advice to me and to be privy to some of my current thinking on potential solutions for the political problems in Upper Canada.”
“But won’t they be suspicious, especially if more than one is in on the game?”
Durham gave Marc a look that he must have used a hundred times in cabinet meetings just before revealing some particularly subtle piece of political deception. “I’ve also invited Robert Baldwin, son of the squire of Spadina and lifelong Reformer, to provide diversion and ballast.”
“But you said ‘both’ of us.”
“I did. You will bring your notebook and sit in a corner with Charles Buller, as my recording secretaries.”
“Two secretaries?”
“It’ll reinforce the importance I attach to their every word, eh?”
Marc was impressed. “So you’ll get to look these chaps in the eye while I observe unnoticed from the side?”
“Exactly. Moreover, I intend to invent some pretext for asking, casually you understand, about certain events in the card room last evening. We’ll test their responses and go from there.”
“I’ll be here, with notebook, before ten.”
“Good. I feel we’ve made real progress in just a few hours.”
“Thank you. Oh, one last matter: was there any further information from Dr. Withers about Sarah?”
“He submitted a copy of the written report prepared for Chief Sturges. There’s nothing new. She was stabbed once and fatally. There were no other wounds or even bruises. Interestingly enough, according to Withers, she had not been . . . engaged, shall we say, during the evening. Poor Handford was so inebriated he must have doffed his clothes and then collapsed on the bed and fallen asleep.”
“It does sound as if he might have been drugged.”
Durham sighed. “You may be right. If so, your conspiracy theory gains credibility.”
Marc wished now he had checked the decanters on the sideboard at Madame Renée’s. It would be far too late to do so now. More likely, though, any drugging had taken place out at Spadina or en route to the brothel.
“Dr. Withers released the girl’s body to Mrs. Burgess and the undertaker late this afternoon. Apparently her own family has publicly disowned her.”
“Sadly, I believe that is so,” Marc said, “though I intend to verify it.”
Marc rose and the two men shook hands.
Outside it was now dark. Marc walked briskly towards Sherbourne Street and home. One of the cabs that had just started to patrol King Street slowed expectantly, but Marc waved it on. He was far too agitated to ride in style. He was not only in the
midst of a murder investigation that might heavily influence the future of Upper Canada, he was about to be allowed entry to the inner sanctum of high-level politics. At ten o’clock tomorrow he would be privileged to watch one of the most brilliant public men of the post-war period in action.
• • •
SOMEONE WAS JABBING COBB IN THE ribs with a truncheon. But whenever he tried reaching for his own trusty instrument of justice, his arm froze in mid-reach and his ribs took another wincing blow. Cold panic twisted in his gut . . .
“Dad! Wake up!”
Groggily, Cobb forced his eyelids open.
“You said to wake you up before dark, but we couldn’t get you to budge!”
Delia and Fabian stood beside his prone figure with expressions of bewilderment and irritation.
“Mom ain’t home, so it was only us,” Delia said, more in the way of defence than apology.
“It was Delia’s idea to use the soup ladle on your chest,” Fabian said.
“Missus Cobb’s been out all night?” Cobb sat up, trying to shake off the lethargy of deep and illicit sleep.
The children laughed. “It’s not morning, Dad. It’s about nine o’clock at night. We’ve been trying to wake you up for almost an hour.”
“Jumpin’ Jesus!”
The children recoiled, not so much at the expletive as at the daunting sight of their father clad only in cotton drawers that did little to prevent his paunch from greeting the world raw and unmitigated.
“Fetch my clothes! I gotta be up to Lot Street before dark!”
“It’s too late for that,” Fabian said.
• • •
COBB FOUND CONSTABLE ROSSITER AT HIS customary post, a nameless dive on Yonge Street near Lot. Rossiter had the northeast patrol and the distinction of policing the worst den of thieves and miscreants in the city. Where Irishtown was an unintentional slum inhabited mainly by fatherless families, the unemployed, and sundry others left stranded and friendless by mainstream society, it was blackguards and outright felons who populated the shacks and hovels grouped around the Tinker’s Dam along a straggling lane that ran off the corner of Lot and Jarvis. Cobb never went there alone at night, though he had often been compelled to join Rossiter (and once, a sheriff’s deputized posse) in search of men wanted for serious crimes. If they didn’t turn up their quarry on the initial sweep, there was no hope of getting anything truthful or helpful from the rest of the population.
Rossiter was not happy about having his backgammon interrupted but agreed to come when informed that this case was so important that Chief Sturges himself had offered to cover Cobb’s southeast patrol until it was solved. It was pitch-black by the time they turned onto the lane that led to the Tinker’s Dam. Rossiter had brought along a lantern, but Cobb refused to let him light it.
“We’ll nip along in the moonlight,” Cobb said. “Our only chance of catchin’ the bugger is to surprise him in the back room where there’s usually heavy bettin’ on the dice.”
“If they ain’t off in the fields watchin’ a cockfight,” Rossiter said.
They made their way cautiously along the lane, hands on truncheons just in case they were mistaken for ordinary citizens who had wandered in unawares. But no one accosted them. Several dogs barked ferociously from nearby outposts but chose discretion over valour. Up ahead a barn-like blotch of shadow against the moonlight, low from the east, signalled their proximity to the Tinker’s Dam. At the same time the burst of laughter and umbrage from its open doors and paneless windows struck the constables like the wall of a tidal wave.
“Well, they sure as hell won’t hear us comin’,” Rossiter said.
“You go ’round back,” Cobb directed. “There’s a door that opens up from the root cellar. Stand there with yer club at half-mast and rap the bugger on the noggin when he comes out. I’m goin’ in a-hollerin’ his name, and he’ll make like a ferret in a burrow.”
“Jesus, Cobb, be careful. They got knives in there, and pistols too.”
Cobb waved him to his post, then strode into the mêlée with his truncheon cocked. No one noticed. The light tossed up by the candles was uncertain and more camouflaging than revealing. The noise level among the tipplers—crowded half a dozen to a table-cum-tree stump or sandwiched along the raw plank that served as a bar and separated the throng from the barrels of whiskey behind it—was so deafening that Cobb could not detect his own bellowed threat: “Police! We’re here to arrest Michael Badger! Give him up now!”
Cobb prodded his way through the stench and smoke, but there was so much incidental elbowing going on that no one particularly noticed a jab from a constable’s truncheon. “Michael Badger! You’re under arrest!”
“What kinda whiskey did ya say?” the bartender shouted next to his ear.
Exasperated, Cobb pushed towards the door to the gambling den. Suddenly a large and very ugly man lurched in front of him. “Where the fuck do ya think yer goin’?”
“In there, to arrest Michael Badger.” Cobb raised his stick and pointed it at a spot below the man’s chin.
“Michael Badger ain’t in there, so bugger off!”
“I think I’ll just see fer myself.”
“I’d advise against it, Consta—”
No further syllable emerged because Cobb’s truncheon had poked its snout well into the bruiser’s voice box and sent him gagging against the bar. Cobb pushed open the door and stepped brazenly into the gambling den. “Where’s Michael Badger?” he boomed.
A dozen men, crouched in a circle around a pair of dice and wads of wagered dollars, looked up, their eyes removed from the tumbling and fickle bones for the first time in an hour. They froze in place there, as if the mental effort and emotional anguish demanded by the game had left them disoriented and momentarily petrified. Finally, one of them, whom Cobb recognized as Burly Bettman, stood up and declared, “That son-of-a-bitch deadbeat ain’t here, and if he was, I’d rip off his legs and bash his brains out with ’em.”
Bettman either owned the Tinker’s Dam or had it by squatter’s rights.
“Badger owes ya money, I take it,” Cobb said.
“More’n thirty bucks. The stupid bugger don’t know when to quit.”
“When did you see him last?”
“He was in here Saird’y night. Tried ta sucker me inta double or nothin’. I told him ta pay up by last night or I’d double the debt and then take it outta his hide slice by slice.”
“Okay, you fellas c’n go back to losin’ yer shirts,” Cobb said. “But I’d check them funny dice if I was you.”
Cobb went looking for Rossiter. He found him beside the cellar door, standing over a prone figure lying motionless in the grass.
“What the hell—”
“You said to conk the bugger,” Rossiter protested.
“Yeah, and I told ya Badger was six feet tall with a bushel of orange hair. This guy’s five feet and bald. I hope ya haven’t killed him.”
“But he come bustin’ up outta that doorway like he’d seen a ghost.”
A sudden groan suggested that the victim was still alive. Cobb bent down and turned him face up. “Christ! It’s Nestor Peck, one of my snitches.”
“So it is,” Rossiter said, more surprised than concerned.
“He must’ve heard my voice in the barroom and skedaddled. The last person he’d want to be seen with in this territory is a constable.”
“We just gonna leave him here?” Rossiter said, stifling a yawn.
“Yeah. You hit him in the one spot he can’t be hurt. But I gotta see him and my other snitches first thing in the mornin’ to put the word out about Badger. If he’s been holin’ up in one of these shacks around here, he’s long gone by now. His name’s mud in these parts, and pretty soon he’s gonna have the whole town snappin’ at his arse.”
Nestor groaned again and tried to open his eyes.
“We better get a move on,” Cobb said.
Rossiter agreed.
• • •
&n
bsp; COBB STAGGERED INTO HIS PARLOUR, FLOPPED into an easy chair, and let his boots drop off. “Missus Cobb!” he shouted.
Dora came in from the kitchen, an apron tied around her nightdress. Her parabolic curves consumed the doorway. “Shoutin’ may get you respect in the dives you free-kwent, but it don’t travel far in this place.”
“I was just askin’ if you was home, luv.”
“Askers don’t beller.”
“Glad ya got home just the same.”
“Darn glad to be home. I’ve had one helluva day.”
“Don’t tell me about it, please.”
“I wasn’t plannin’ to.”
“The kids got me supper. They’re gettin’ better at it—”
“Is that a complaint, Mister Cobb?”
Just then Delia called from the kitchen.
“What the heck’s she doin’ up?” Cobb said, happy to redirect the conversation.
“School’s out and it’s summer, ya old fart. They ain’t little kids no more.”
“Ya mean ta say Fabian’s still outside?”
“Yer deed-duction is ah-cute tonight, constable.”
“He’s playing hide-and-go-seek with the boys,” Delia said from the kitchen doorway, her tone part reproof and part envy.
As if on cue, the front door was flung open and ten-year-old Fabian stumbled into the room, flushed and excited.
“What’s happened?” Dora said.
“We saw a bogeyman!” Fabian said, his pale eyes delightedly wide and eager to calculate their effect of his words on the elders.
“Don’t be daft,” Cobb said.
“But we did, Dad. Butch and me were hiding in the bushes up near King Street when this monster pops up out of nowhere and roars at us.”
“Just some tramp,” Cobb said, glancing at Dora but not ready yet to risk a wink.
“You probably scared him more’n he scared you,” Dora said.
Bloody Relations Page 10
