Bloody Relations

by Don Gutteridge

“Nothing of the kind. You dropped Mrs. Hepburn off here, then you and Ellice walked up to Lot Street, one block north, and entered Irishtown.”

  Hepburn guffawed, choking on his cigar. “You’re jesting! Go into that den of thieves and cutthroats after midnight on my own?”

  “You were well known in there, sir, and I have learned in the past two days that your status as one of Madame Renée’s regulars would have given you immunity and right of passage. I suspect there may have been a system of passwords in addition to coded knocks on a scarlet door.”

  “You have a vivid imagination, I’ll say that for you.”

  “You knocked on that door, pushed Ellice in, and left before you were recognized—knowing that the lad’s ready money and harmless demeanour would get him serviced by one or another of the girls.”

  “I trust that you’re not suggesting that the purchase of the favours of a female is a crime? If so, then few gentlemen in this town or any other would escape hanging.”

  Hepburn’s feigned amusement was almost credible.

  “The crime, if you like, was to have Lord Durham’s nephew found in a sleazy brothel, in the certain knowledge that any sort of scandal among the earl’s entourage would surely scupper his mission and lead to his immediate recall.”

  “But who would know of this indiscretion besides the man who directed him there?” Hepburn seemed to be toying with his accuser, as if Marc were an impecunious client begging for a loan he knew would be refused.

  “What would Ellice do when he woke up in Irishtown?” Marc replied. “He wouldn’t even know what city he was in! By morning, Lady Durham would be in a panic and forced to raise the hue and cry for her missing nephew—who might have been kidnapped or murdered, for all she knew. In these times any such calamity is possible. The chances of keeping the sordid business quiet were slim indeed.”

  “So the perpetrator of this so-called crime must have had a political motive?”

  “Exactly. For instance, a Tory banker and charter member of the Family Compact, whose fortunes are threatened by the continuing instability and the failure of the royal authority to calm the uppity natives.”

  “And if young Ellice had managed to crawl back to the city, hire himself a gig, and drive to Spadina undetected, then what?”

  Was the man actually enjoying this game?

  “That possibility was anticipated and forestalled.”

  “Indeed. Sure you won’t have a cigar? Or a chair?”

  “Because of that necessity the whole scheme went awry.” Marc found himself pacing back and forth across the room like a Crown counsel, feeling just a bit foolish as he fired his barbs both obliquely and directly at the witness in his baize box.

  “It did?”

  “I suggest, sir, that you paid Michael Badger, a former employee who subsequently worked as a bruiser in Madame Renée’s brothel, to sneak into the house in the middle of the night and create some kind of disturbance, something that would be certain to expose young Ellice publicly by involving the police.”

  “How very clever.”

  “Too clever by half, however. For what you didn’t know was that Badger bore a grudge against the madam and her business, and in a sudden rage stabbed the prostitute to death and fled.”

  That remark got the banker’s full attention. He removed the cigar from his lips and watched it slowly descend in his fingers to the table. “Ellice was found beside the murdered girl?”

  “You know damn well he was!” Marc stopped and leaned on the baize cover with both hands. “You’ve already admitted knowing about the stabbing of Sarah McConkey, and since it was you who led Ellice to her, how could you not connect the two events?”

  Hepburn looked genuinely shocked. Marc was pleased that he had finally pricked that maddening façade. “But Matilda only told me that some harlot had been stabbed in Irishtown. Even the rumour mill has been starved for details.”

  “Well, sir, now you know. Your conniving plot to embarrass Lord Durham resulted in the vicious murder of an innocent girl, however fallen we may think she was. You paid the assassin to enter the premises. You seduced the young man and led him to that door. In my book that makes you an accessory to murder. You are as guilty as Badger. What is more, I think you’ve known since Tuesday morning exactly what must have happened.”

  “You’re certain it was Ellice there?”

  Marc suddenly realized that Ellice’s secret was now out. But then if the killers were not exposed by eight o’clock, all would be lost anyway. He plunged ahead. “There is more.”

  “How could there be?”

  “We found Michael Badger’s body an hour ago in a ditch at the end of Jarvis Street—where you left it after shooting him point-blank in the heart.” While Marc didn’t believe this, he felt justified in using it for its shock value.

  Hepburn’s jaw dropped. “Now, young man, this has gone far enough. I’ve humoured you because I’ve nothing better to do with the remainder of the afternoon. But Michael Badger was an employee of mine, and my housekeeper’s only brother. In fact, he was like a son to me—Matilda and I have no children of our own—and I am shocked and grieved to hear of his death. I thought he had got safely out of town and away from his creditors.” He started to get up. “I must tell Mrs. Hepburn immediately. Does Una know?”

  “Yes. She’s at the Court House now. But I must, as a deputized constable, ask you to sit down until my interrogation is completed.”

  “But your accusations are preposterous! You’ve spun a fantastical tale that would be more pertinent to The Mysteries of Udolpho than to Toronto. You haven’t offered a shred of proof—”

  “Ah, but I have the proof, sir. Hard-and-fast evidence that you did lead Ellice to the murder scene and did hire Badger to invade the premises. That should be enough to get an indictment from the magistrate.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Hepburn glared at his accuser but stayed in his seat.

  “First of all, we have testimony from your stable hand and barouche driver that you did have a third party in your carriage, one fitting the description of Ellice.”

  “But I know for a fact that Willy Falmer did not give Constable Cobb that version of events.”

  “True, at least not yesterday. I’m sure that out of loyalty or other more tangible considerations he backed up Mrs. Hepburn’s version, but he has since changed his mind.”

  Marc hoped this lie would be sufficient to unnerve the suspect. Instead, Hepburn smiled tightly and stared hard at Marc. “That is not possible, sir. Willy Falmer left town at dawn this morning. He is on his way to join his brothers somewhere beyond the Mississippi River.”

  Good God, the man was more cunning than Marc had anticipated. It was time to play his second trump card. He drew out the note he had plucked from Badger’s pocket. “I have here, sir, all the proof I shall need to link you to the paid assassin. This note, foolishly signed by you, was found on Badger’s body, along with a stolen key to facilitate his entry into the brothel.” Marc dropped the letter on the table and Hepburn glanced at it, looking puzzled.

  “This is my letter to Michael,” he said. “And?”

  “And it accompanied thirty dollars, also found on Badger, the money he earned by entering the brothel and stabbing a girl to death. Mr. Hepburn, you have a clear motive for leading Ellice there, and here is incontrovertible proof that you hired a bruiser to cause some kind of mayhem that night.”

  Hepburn paused to gather his emotions and his thoughts. He stubbed out the cigar. He flushed and then paled. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “This is all too much. I am overwhelmed.”

  “Do you wish to confess, then?’

  Hepburn smiled wanly. “I’m afraid not.”

  “But you’ve just admitted that the incriminating letter is your own!”

  “It is. But the money was Michael’s, not mine.”

  “Surely you can come up with a more plausible explanation than that.”

  “It’s true. You see, sir, Michael w
as in many ways a good man, a sort of gentle giant. He was not in the least violent, though he knew how to intimidate if he had to. He was more of a conniver and would-be confidence man, a charmer of gullible ladies. I don’t believe for a second that he was capable of murdering anyone in cold blood. His principal weakness was gambling, and it looks as if it led to his death. He was a hard worker whenever he needed to earn money to feed his vice. I paid him well, and both his sister and I tried to get him to save money and straighten his ways. We were both upset when he went to work for Madame Renée.”

  “I am not a fool, sir. I suspect you were quite happy with that particular employment when you began hatching your little plot.”

  “Then in January he came to me and asked me to deposit his wages in my bank, wages from Madame Renée and from the odd jobs he was doing for me. The account was set up so that only I could withdraw the money or both of us in person. It was the only way he knew to stop himself from squandering his earnings in the dicing dens. If you wish proof of this arrangement, you’ll find all the relevant and notarized documents at the Commercial Bank.”

  “But what else would he need savings for? He merely wrote worthless promissory notes and got himself into serious trouble at the Tinker’s Dam.”

  “Incredible as it may seem, he was planning to go off to the Iowa Territory and try his luck at farming.”

  “So you’re telling me that this note was in response to Badger’s written request for his own money.”

  “I am. Una Badger brought me that request Tuesday at luncheon. I recognized Michael’s handwriting, as I’m sure Una did when she surreptitiously read it.”

  The man was ingenious and abominable. His alternative explanation provided a foolproof cover story for the dastardly transaction that had resulted in Sarah’s death. “But you did not go back to the bank to get his money, did you?” Marc said, trying to hide his desperation.

  “No, I didn’t. Una described how scared and distraught he had been that morning and begged me to help him immediately. According to our long-standing arrangement, I was to send him his money—in a dire emergency—by messenger to the post office on George Street, where he would pick it up. I assume he feared his pursuers would be watching this house. So I got the cash from my own safe here and had it delivered. I can give you the name of the lad who took it there.”

  Marc sat down at last. It was all coming unravelled. He could see no way to challenge Hepburn’s devious account, especially if the notarized documents existed and Una Badger became his unwitting corroborator.

  “I know you and your wife gave Mr. Ellice a ride to town, and I know you led him down to the brothel. And I’m equally certain that your whist-playing chums are co-conspirators. I am deeply grieved that, for the moment, I cannot prove these things. But I am warning you that I will not stop trying.”

  “You cannot prove what did not happen.”

  Marc sighed. “What still baffles me, though, is why your wife would lie for you. Perhaps when the grisly facts of what happened at Madame Renée’s come out, as they must, she will change her mind.”

  Hepburn’s withering look said, Don’t count on it.

  Suddenly Marc had another inspiration. “I think I can guess why she lied for you. I’ll wager she knows all about your addiction to the girls at Madame Renée’s, a squalid obsession that could potentially ruin your standing in the community. You’re a banker and a pillar of your church and, alas, an habitué of Irishtown stews.” For a split second Hepburn looked abashed. Marc pressed his advantage. “She is probably ashamed and afraid. I pity her,” he said, without pity.

  “Are you quite finished? If so, I have grieving of my own to do.”

  Marc showed himself out.

  FOURTEEN

  When Marc reached the station, he found only Gussie French scribbling frantically at his table, heedless of spattering ink and ravenous flies. “Has Cobb come back?”

  “Gone off home,” Gussie muttered without dropping a stitch. “Lucky bugger.”

  “And Sarge?”

  Gussie appended an extra period for emphasis to the sentence he had just finished, and looked up. “Chief Sturges went off to find Sir George and tell him to call off the fox hunt.” He nudged a sheet of paper with the feathered end of his quill. “Cobb left you that,” he said, and resumed scribbling.

  Gussie had taken down from Cobb a summary of Angus Withers’s comments after he’d examined the body of Michael Badger in the ditch where it lay. The bullet appeared to have entered the chest in a slightly upward trajectory. The shooter must have been shorter than Badger. The lead ball had struck bone—a rib or vertebra—and thus had barely exited the body: Withers found its misshapen remnant in Badger’s shirt. He concluded from its size and the probable force of the entry that it came from a small-bore pistol, the kind easily concealed and deadly only at close range. The debris found on the victim’s shirt front included gunpowder, bits of grass, and wisps of dry straw. Thirty dollars had been wadded in one of his pockets. Estimated time of death: between one and four in the morning.

  That was it. Not a lot, but Marc found himself unable to care very much. The interview with Alasdair Hepburn had left him angry, confused, and ultimately drained of emotion. He knew he ought to feel at least some sense of triumph in that Michael Badger—on the strength of the key he was carrying and the motive supplied by Mrs. Burgess (with intent to rob possibly thrown in)—would be fingered for the murder. There would be no trial, nor any need for anyone to know or care who the aristocratic stranger was. Handford Ellice could be released to accompany Lord and Lady Durham back to Quebec tomorrow. Sure, rumours would circulate and fester, though Marc doubted whether Hepburn himself would be the source: that spiteful sword could prove to be double-edged. But a public scandal would definitely be averted. Still, Marc did not feel in the least triumphant.

  He decided to leave a note for Chief Sturges explaining why he had taken the letter from Badger’s body and admitting reluctantly that it had turned out to be innocent and unrelated to either murder. He took a step towards the door of the chief’s office.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,” Gussie cautioned.

  “I thought you said Sturges was out.”

  “He is. But there’s a female in there, waitin’.”

  Marc had no choice but to conduct one more interview. He opened the door carefully and sat with Una for a moment before asking her to tell him about her brother.

  “Michael was ten years younger than me,” Una Badger explained. She dabbed at her eyes with Marc’s handkerchief. “Our mother died when he was six, so it was me who raised him and looked out for him. I knew him, Mr. Edwards, as a mother knows her own child. I knew his good points and his bad ones—and he had plenty of both.”

  Una confirmed the essential details of Hepburn’s story. Badger did have some sort of arrangement with his employer to help him hold on to his earnings. While she did not know for sure, she assumed the note she had taken from Michael and delivered to Hepburn on Tuesday was connected with that arrangement. And, yes, Mr. Hepburn had been very kind to Michael, despite his gruff manner and quick temper. He had tried to dissuade him from his gambling and binge drinking, but had always taken him back regardless and given him work. In fact, a makeshift bunkhouse had been set up in one of the unused barns at the back of the property so that he would always have a place to sleep, day or night. But he had not used it to hide out on Tuesday or yesterday. She had checked it many times.

  “So your brother would have confided in you?” Marc said.

  “About some things, yes.”

  “Mr. Hepburn told me that he noticed some change in Michael after the new year.”

  “That’s so. Michael came and told me that he was twenty-five and it was time for him to do something decent with his life. He talked about going away to the States, far from his cronies and the habits he couldn’t seem to break.”

  “For which he would need to earn money and not gamble it away.”


  “Yes. And he tried, Mr. Edwards. Only God and I know how hard he tried. And now he’s dead, shot by those terrible men—”

  She sobbed into Marc’s hanky.

  “I’m sorry, but it all seems so unfair. He stopped drinking, he really did. Mr. Hepburn gave him work making shelves and cupboards for his new library. I tried to talk him out of being a bruiser in Irishtown, but he said the money was too good and, besides, he liked being there. When he come here on Tuesday, I knew something horrible had happened to him, but I thought, He’s going to get away now because he has to: not to our cousins in Port Sarnia but all the way across the border where he’ll be safe from his demons and be happy.”

  Marc reached across the chief’s desk and laid a hand gently on hers. “But we were told that Michael had run up more gambling debts in recent weeks. He may have been saving his money at home, but he was issuing paper promises up at the Tinker’s Dam.”

  Una merely nodded. Then through a screen of tears, she said, “I knew he couldn’t stay away from that place as long as he lived in the city and as long as he had ready cash from that madam woman. But I swear, Mr. Edwards, it was only two or three binges: most of the time since January he was sober and working—for Mr. Hepburn or in Irishtown.”

  “Unfortunately, he had a serious falling out with Mrs. Burgess on Monday. He owed her a lot of money. We found on him a key to a secret door in the brothel, and you and Mr. Hepburn have confirmed that he came for money ostensibly to leave town. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the police are going to name him as the murderer of Sarah McConkey.”

  The shock of this revelation registered on Una Badger’s face and was slowly absorbed. Then she straightened her back and stared directly into Marc’s eyes.

  “Mr. Edwards, Michael Badger was a gentle man. He never swatted a fly if he could avoid it. I know. I watched him grow up. As a boy, he was big and awkward with a stook of orange hair that stuck up every which way. He was teased something terrible. But he never struck back, even though he was twice as strong as his tormentors. Do you know what he did?”