Bloody Relations

by Don Gutteridge

  “I won’t ask ya to sit down, Mr. Edwards. I got a meal to eat and cows waitin’ to be milked. Out here in the country we have real work to do.”

  “Very well,” Marc said, taking in the neat, clean, well-tended sitting room. On a polished hardwood table, the Bible took pride of place, and embroidered religious homilies decorated all four walls. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that your daughter is dead.”

  This dreadful revelation had no effect on McConkey. He merely stared malevolently at Marc as if waiting for the next sentence.

  “She was murdered early yesterday morning—”

  The rattling of pans in the kitchen stopped abruptly.

  “In a house of harlotry,” McConkey snarled. “I already know that.”

  “How could you?”

  “Our pastor was in the city this mornin’. That evil woman had the gall to approach him about takin’ the funeral service.”

  Marc tried not to let his disappointment show. And he hoped “that evil woman” had not told the pastor any of the sordid, politically sensitive details. He nodded in the direction of the kitchen, where all was silent.

  “I was gonna tell her,” McConkey said with a guilty start. Then, with fierce accusation, “I guess I don’t need ta, now.”

  “I am sorry,” Marc said, “but I must ask you some questions about Sarah as part of my murder investigation, painful though they may be.”

  “Why’re ya botherin’ to look fer her killer: she was a whore.”

  “Now see here, McConkey—”

  “ ‘Wherefore if thy hand or foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee!’ ”

  Marc held his temper with great difficulty: there were higher stakes at play. “You may have disowned your daughter, sir, but that is of no importance to me here and now. I’m going to ask you a series of questions about Sarah, and I want full and truthful answers from you. If not, then I shall return with the sheriff and a magistrate’s warrant.”

  “All right, then,” McConkey said with a show of petulance. He wasn’t accustomed to being bullied in his own home, but he sat down. Marc pulled up a chair opposite. The kitchen curtain swayed and went still.

  Slowly and systematically, Marc took McConkey through what he assumed to be the relevant details of Sarah McConkey’s aborted life. Yes, there had been a suitor for her hand who had been willfully rejected. The ensuing confrontation had caused the “wayward witch” to pack a valise and strike out on her own for the city. Yes, the Reverend Finney was known in Streetsville, having been a circuit rider here in the past, and Sarah had headed straight there looking for work. Finney had immediately sent word to the McConkeys but was told to keep her if he so wished. He did, but three weeks later, in early October, a letter arrived from Finney informing them that Sarah had been found to have committed “abominations” and had been summarily dismissed with a stern warning to head straight home and beg her father’s forgiveness. While certainly not inclined to forgive her, the McConkeys had nonetheless been willing to take back the prodigal. But she didn’t come home. Worried now, they asked their own pastor, the Reverend Solomon Good, to try to locate her. He was able to learn only that she had vanished into Irishtown, whose iniquities dwarfed those of Sodom and Gomorrah. Then to their shock and consternation, Sarah arrived on their doorstep in mid-November, thin, pale, and pregnant. The malignant source of the pregnancy was not in doubt: Sarah had fallen as far as a Christian woman could. Despite her tearful pleading, McConkey had done his duty: he threw her out and publicly disowned her. Neither he nor his wife had seen or heard of her since.

  Marc thanked McConkey and stood up. “The funeral is tomorrow morning at the old Mechanics’ Institute building on John Street at—”

  “We won’t be there,” McConkey said.

  Marc glanced at the kitchen curtain.

  “Mrs. McConkey feels exactly as I do,” her husband said.

  He followed Marc out as far as the gate, then turned without saying a word and trudged solemnly towards his bawling cows.

  Just as Marc was untying his horse, Hilda McConkey emerged from the front door, peered anxiously about, then trotted out to Marc. The struggle to suppress her tears and the feelings they might assuage had made her small round face a constricted death mask.

  “You goin’ to the funeral?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Say a prayer fer my Sarah, will ya?”

  • • •

  IT WAS A LONG RIDE HOME in the waning day. Marc wasn’t sure what he had hoped to find in Streetsville. Perhaps a thwarted lover who had somehow contrived to take out his rage on the beloved? With a desperate Michael Badger happy to sell him a key to the hatch? Or perhaps some aspect of Sarah’s tragic story not yet known and somehow relevant to her death? Instead, McConkey’s account supported in every respect that of Mrs. Burgess and her girls, as well as that of Madame Charlotte. There were no missing weeks in the narrative, no further revelations to be made. He would have to work with what he now knew. Perhaps Finney or his young son was the father of Sarah’s child. If so, then why would a Methodist minister arrange the demise of his mistress after the child was stillborn? Maybe the child had not died at birth! But where would Sarah hide it? Could she have been blackmailing Finney? Despite the risks, Marc knew he would have to interrogate Finney tomorrow, and interrogate him hard.

  Still, in his heart of hearts, Marc clung to the notion that the primary target had been Handford Ellice. It was Sarah who was the random factor, not Ellice. The timing and circumstances were just too pat: Lord Durham and his mission had to be the efficient cause of the string of events culminating in that squalid death scene. But so far he had failed to find any real evidence implicating any of the whist players. And unless Badger were caught, such evidence was unlikely to turn up.

  It was eight o’clock when he left Sir George Arthur’s mount at the stables and plodded up to the verandah of Government House. An orderly led Marc not into the governor’s office, nor the adjacent meeting room, but straight through to Sir George’s living quarters and a comfortable drawing room. Lord Durham was seated in an armchair, smoking a pipe. One look at his face told Marc that Badger had not been found, and Marc himself was unable to disguise his own disappointment at the day’s efforts on the earl’s behalf.

  “Sit down, Marc,” Durham said wearily. His face was drawn.

  “I’ve just spent three hours with the most tiresome, small-minded, and mean-spirited men imaginable.” Then he smiled. “Reminded me of home.”

  “How is your nephew doing?” Marc asked, recalling that Beth was to visit him in the afternoon and wanting to delay his report as long as he could.

  Durham brightened immediately. “Mrs. Edwards came to see Handford after luncheon, and according to Lady Durham’s account of their meeting, she succeeded in bringing him out of the delirious reverie he’s been in since they brought him here yesterday. Once he saw that she was alive, his nightmare of having stabbed her vanished. She stayed long enough to get him talking and feeling a bit more normal. Then Lady Durham spent the rest of the day convincing him that he did not murder anyone, that he was a victim of circumstance only. She has planted in his mind the notion that Sarah was murdered by someone else for reasons to do with the inmates of the brothel. Still, the horror of waking up covered in a girl’s blood remains with him, and always will.”

  “I hope she emphasized that the knife was placed in his hand with malicious intent,” Marc said.

  “She did.”

  Though how anyone could have placed it there without himself wallowing in Sarah’s blood was still a prickly question.

  “I don’t have to tell you that we have not found Badger,” Durham said, “but I need to hear whatever you’ve discovered today, however dispiriting it may be.”

  Marc proceeded to describe the visits he and Cobb had made to the homes of the four whist players, and the fruitless results. Alluding to Cobb’s interrogation of Madame Charlotte and Mrs. Burgess and to his own
trip to the McConkey farm, Marc sketched out Sarah’s saga and the slim pickings to be inferred from it.

  Durham sucked his pipe back into life. “Finney looks like our best bet, doesn’t he? It’s possible he may have had a double motive: to embarrass me and to get rid of a woman who might prove his ruin. Still, unless we can tie him to Badger, we don’t stand much of a chance of proving anything.”

  Into the brief silence that followed this unsettling remark, Marc said, “When you mentioned the lost snuffbox to the whist players this afternoon, did you discover anything we didn’t already know?”

  “Alas, no. In fact, they were not only forthcoming about the two hours or so they spent with Handford, but positively voluble. They freely admitted escorting him to the bar—man to man, as it were—and were complimentary about his whist-playing skills. They said he simply excused himself shortly before midnight and headed, they assumed, to his private quarters. No monogrammed box was left anywhere within their sight. They all wished Handford a speedy recovery.”

  “Well, one of them is lying—Finney, by the looks of it. Do you want me to have a serious run at him?”

  Durham thought about the suggestion. “No. You may interview him if you like on the pretext of getting background information on Sarah. But you must be tactful. I can’t be seen bullying one of the province’s significant churches, even indirectly.”

  “I’ll be the soul of discretion, sir.”

  Durham smiled, then his expression darkened. “What if it turns out that none of the whist players is involved? What if it was someone else at Spadina who drove Handford into town?”

  “But it had to be someone in that card room,” Marc insisted. “That’s where Mr. Ellice spent the last two hours before his disappearance.”

  “I thought so, too. So I sent word to Wakefield to get a list of all the guests seen by the staff in that room at any time after ten o’clock.”

  “How many are we looking at?”

  “Well, excluding the women and several gents too arthritic to move without help, about eight.”

  “You have the names, sir?”

  “Yes, but not one of them resides in the city. Three are from Brantford and west, two from Port Hope, and the other three from Niagara and beyond.”

  Marc did not reply. The futility of following up these possible leads needed no gloss put upon it.

  Durham took a last puff on his pipe. “What will you do tomorrow besides interview Finney?”

  “Cobb and I are going to Sarah’s funeral at ten. I intend to keep a close eye on the women of the two brothels, who may be there. I want to study the dynamics of their relationship, if I can.”

  “Funerals and weddings often compel people to reveal their true selves, eh?”

  “Exactly. Then I’ll go to Finney’s.”

  “I’ve been promised more troops to search for Badger. Sir George is more than eager to help. I have been impressed, I must say, with the absolute discretion of you and your policemen.”

  “Thank you. How much longer have we got before—”

  Durham frowned. “Tomorrow night at eight o’clock, Magistrate Thorpe and Chief Constable Sturges are to appear in my office here, at which time, failing the discovery of the real killer, I shall turn Handford over to them.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Marc said, wishing it were so.

  • • •

  BETH WAS WAITING FOR MARC. CHARLENE, sensing excitement in the air, reluctantly went off to her room, where she contrived to sit reading very close to her door. Some cold roast, cheese, bread, and a flask of cider awaited Marc on the sideboard.

  “No good news,” Beth commented, watching him eat.

  “I’m afraid not. Badger’s still on the loose. I’m going to wait until morning to fill you in on all the details of the day. Right now I’m tired and discouraged. Perhaps in going over things with you tomorrow, I’ll be better able to compose my notes, and one of us might even think of something that’s been overlooked.”

  “All right, love, I understand.” Beth poured herself a glass of cider. “But I have several things to tell you that can’t wait.”

  “About Ellice? I know most of it already. His Lordship was very pleased with the miracle you worked on his nephew this afternoon. After you left, his aunt was able to engage him in conversation and at least begin to convince him that he too is a victim in this business.”

  “I’m glad, for Handford’s sake. But there’s more.”

  Marc was not sure whether he should be anxious or excited. “Did he tell you something important that happened at Madame Renée’s?”

  “He gave me a description of his nightmare.”

  “About stabbing you.”

  “About pulling the knife from my neck.”

  “I don’t quite follow. Are you saying he has no memory—even in his fantastic nightmares—of pushing the knife in?”

  “I am. His nightmare, which he’s had over and over, was of pulling the knife out.”

  Marc reached across and clasped Beth’s hand. “This could be critical to the case,” he said with rising excitement.

  “I thought it must be but didn’t see how.”

  “Cobb and I have been mystified as to how the killer could have managed to plunge a dagger through Sarah’s throat, pull it out, then reach over and place it in Ellice’s hand without getting her blood on him or tracking through it as it spouted onto the bed and the floor. Now I think we know.”

  “Handford himself pulled the knife from Sarah’s throat, then?”

  “I’m sure he did, half-consciously, in a drunken doze, perhaps assisted by a little laudanum administered out at Spadina. We may never know for sure the exact sequence of events.”

  “So the killer could’ve just stabbed Sarah and run?”

  “I’m certain of it now. It was enough that Lord Durham’s nephew be discovered naked beside a murdered prostitute and covered with her blood. Ellice unwittingly capped the deception by pulling the knife out, as any human being would have done in those circumstances, drugged or not. Which means that one of the women could have committed the act without bloodying herself or even waking the others.”

  “Or anybody with a way to get in and out of that little door.”

  Marc sighed. “Yes. We have added another detail to the picture, but it doesn’t point us in any one direction.”

  He swallowed the last of the roast. Beth hadn’t stirred. “There’s something else you need to tell me, isn’t there?”

  “Yes. It’s not directly connected, like the nightmare business, but Lady Durham wanted you to know.”

  “Wanted me to know what?”

  “When I left Handford’s room, Lady Durham led me into her sitting room and told me something about her nephew, something not even her husband is aware of.”

  Marc felt the hair rising on his neck as Beth told the tale.

  When Handford Ellice was fifteen, he was caught in the stable with a girl by his mother and a visiting prelate. The young couple were naked and basking in the afterglow of their sexual exertions. If the girl had been a servant or the daughter of a tenant, money would have exchanged hands and the matter been soon forgotten. However, the girl was the youngest daughter of the neighbouring squire, eighteen years of age, and a willing participant, it seemed. While this sort of indiscretion was bad in and of itself—considering the lustre of the Ellice name, the petty ambitions of the squire, and a priest’s witnessing the transgression—the girl was found to be black and blue on every part of her body not normally camouflaged by clothing. Distraught at being discovered thus, the girl alleged that Handford and she had been often in that loft and that after sex, which she claimed he always initiated, he routinely beat her, being crafty enough to whack her with his riding crop only where the bruises wouldn’t show.

  Handford—stuttering, confused, ashamed—protested that this was only their second encounter and swore that he had never hurt the girl. When he had inquired after her bruises, she just lau
ghed, he said. The upshot of all this was a stalemate in which the entire matter was hushed up and satisfactory accommodation reached. The squire received ten acres of prime hunting ground he had long coveted and the shocked prelate was given a living at the discretion of Bear Ellice, the lad’s illustrious and absentee father. The Ellices of course got to retain their respectability.

  Marc let the incriminating details accumulate before he said, softly, “Does Lady Durham believe her nephew was a sadist? And could be one still?”

  “She doesn’t want to believe it. You just said yourself she spent all day convincing him he couldn’t have killed Sarah.”

  “Yet she wanted me to know, even though Lord Durham himself does not?”

  “Yes. She thought you should. She wants to have the truth for herself, awful as it may be.”

  “Even if it means I have to go up there tomorrow evening and tell her that her nephew is not only a murderer but a species of madman?”

  “I think you have to consider it a possibility.”

  Neither of them slept well that night.

  TWELVE

  Marc made his way along King Street to the police quarters at the rear of the Court House. There, referring to his notes and under the baleful watch of Gussie French—who resented any official document not transcribed by his own pen—he brought Chief Sturges up to date on the investigation. In turn, Sarge told him that the search for Badger would be intensified within the city. Ten supernumerary constables had been called in from the city and surrounding county, and a dozen snitches had been given cash advances to reinforce their loyalty to the Crown and its immediate objective. If Badger were still here, the chief vowed, he would be flushed from cover before sundown.

  With this guarantee to buoy his spirits, Marc carried on to John Street and the Mechanics’ Institute. He found a modest crowd of mourners gathered for Sarah McConkey’s funeral and Cobb waiting for him in the stuffy vestibule.

  “All the ladies are in there,” he said with mild reproach. “They decided they might as well get on with it.” It was clear that Cobb felt that his time and Marc’s would be better spent in the hunt for Badger.