Death in the Age of Steam (20 page)

At the Great Western station again, Harris approached the ticket counter, then turned away. He couldn't determine in which direction to travel.

Wanting a cigar, he went back outside, where his eye wandered over the maelstrom of brakesmen, firemen, switchmen, inspectors, tradesmen, apprentices, porters and clerks. Whenever he noticed one less occupied than his fellows, Harris pounced. Some responded willingly, some sparingly, some not at all to his inquiries as to what reputation the baggage master enjoyed. Overall, report attributed to Gunn above fifteen years of blameless railway service in England and Canada, a good head for the names of railway employees, and eyesight—as corrected—as acute as anyone's. Nothing Harris heard resolved his vacillation.

He doubted Gunn's sighting of Theresa. Was this baggage master at all likely to be a painstaking observer of female physiognomy? Crane's, perhaps. Yes, Harris would grant him Crane. The railway builder's pink visage and portly form might well be familiar to functionaries of Gunn's rank. Harris knew from painful experience that Crane had indeed been riding the G.W.R. west one week ago, on the afternoon of July 21. That Crane was travelling with a woman, or expecting one imminently to join him, would help account for his violent disinclination to have Harris ride with him from Toronto to Hamilton.

Gunn might have seen a woman accompanying Crane. Suppose further—what was less probable—that she matched Nicky's description point for point. That description had seemed conclusive to Harris only because Nicky himself had framed it and because the woman described had been seen at the gate of Sheridan's villa. Crane was an adulterer, after all. If his travelling companion resembled Theresa, the reason might be that such was the general stamp of woman that caught his fancy. Or perhaps he wanted someone who would pass casual inspection as his wife. Whoever had sat with Crane in that first-class carriage could now be in Chicago with him, and it would be madness for Harris to pursue the couple nearly five hundred miles on so slender a chance.

Less than slender. There was no chance really that it was Theresa. If it were, her disappearance would have been mere theatre, a trick in which she and Crane had colluded for some dark purpose. Crane's approach to Harris at the funeral would
lack rhyme or reason. No, Harris knew Theresa's character to be too frank and direct for such plotting, and she must in any case loathe Crane too deeply to so collude with him.

Or was that merely Harris's dislike, which he wanted her to share? He knew nothing of her feelings. His wish that she no longer be able to abide Crane's company might, he reluctantly admitted, be distorting his assessment of possibilities. What, after all, was his warrant that Crane was unfaithful? The sportive chatter of a bawd. Harris winced. If Theresa's father had fallen victim to a violent conspiracy, Theresa might surely be excused for in turn conspiring—for her own protection—to drop from view. Perhaps she had genuinely disappeared from Crane's house on July 13. Perhaps she had returned to enlist Crane's aid only after her father's funeral and after Crane's ride to the cemetery with Harris. Harris couldn't explain the grisly arm or other remains, but from Theresa's presence at Crane's side, it didn't follow that she knew of them.

So which ticket to buy? A train tooted twice and left for Toronto without Harris. He took another turn around the rail yards.

Two Saturdays ago, an ostler had seen Theresa in Thornhill, and Harris had failed to credit this authentic sighting because of his mistaken preconception as to which horse she had been riding. He didn't want to repeat that mistake. It seemed he could not yet afford to turn towards the home of Marthe Laurendeau in Canada East. He must at least find someone who had seen this companion of Crane's from closer quarters than had Gunn, someone who could render Gunn's identification either more probable or less.

Wearily Harris booked his passage on the 5:45 westbound express. He still thought Gunn's clue chimerical and did not mention it in the letter he wrote while awaiting his train's departure.

Afternoon, July 28, 1856

G.W.R. Station

Stuart St.

Hamilton, C.W.

My dear Mother,

Toronto, as you can see, is doing without me and will have to for some days more. When I do return, it will be to the American Hotel at Yonge and Front Sts.

I have left the bank. Between the two of us, I think the directors were galled that a mere cashier should have been reading the charter. I am disappointed in them, but not much put out, and have no fear for my future. In this prosperous time and province, opportunities abound.

I do not, however, propose to take up any just yet. All my energies are absorbed in the search for your late M.P.'s daughter, Theresa Crane, missing now for fifteen days and nights. Some garbled account of the matter you may have seen in the Toronto papers. Contrary to them, I believe there's a good chance she is alive and that she left home of her own volition.

My present intention is to ride the Great Western Rwy. between the Niagara and Detroit Rivers, stopping to inquire at stations, hotels, stage offices and livery stables. I am somewhat hampered by having no photographic likeness to show.

If you can think of any place she might have gone, please let me know. Her husband is of no help. With me he acts as if he would be just as happy if she were never found.

It may surprise you to hear I was at the mill yesterday morning. My circumstances appeared to upset Father, and it was at his request that I left without greeting you. Owing to the difficulty he has reading, the fact that I have written you would be easy enough to conceal from him, but I do not desire it. Preferring rather to keep everything above board, I nonetheless leave the matter of disclosure to your judgement. You best know his moods.

Love to you all from the Head of the Lake. Hamilton's motto is, “I advance.” Amen to that.

Yours always, Isaac

For the next three days, Harris kinked his neck muscles sleeping
on railway carriage seats and ulcerated his stomach with railway station food. It took this long to convince him that Theresa had not gone west. It took this long to bring him face to face at last with Mrs. Fitzroy, whose husband had left her for the California gold fields in '49, and whose wistful favours Crane had purchased with a twenty-dollar washing machine and a considerably costlier cashmere shawl. Apart from her colouring and a very approximate resemblance around the mouth, she was to Harris's eye nothing like Theresa. She it nonetheless was whom Gunn must have glimpsed through the glass. The preceding week she had kept Crane company as far as Detroit, then returned alone to her home in Port Dalhousie.

Her single room was hung with other people's drying bed linen and children's diapers. Believing her a loose woman, those who brought her their soiled bundles addressed her churlishly, and she replied with as much spirit as she could. Harris trod softly over what was for him unfamiliar ground. Mrs. Fitzroy had had little enough joy in her life for the past seven years and had very little more now, living as she did for Crane's occasional summons. Her brother was a railway conductor who acted as pander. Of Mrs. Crane she knew nothing and preferred not to think, while of Crane himself she would say only that he was a good man with much on his mind. All Harris got from her was a heavier heart and evidence independent of Esther Vale that Crane had broken his marriage vows.

When he left her, it was with no clear sense of direction. For a time he continued his inquiries through the Niagara peninsula. Crossing the new half-million-dollar Suspension Bridge, he fared as poorly in the States as at home.

On Friday morning, a new month began, badly. At Table Rock overlooking Niagara Falls, he had his pocket picked of fourteen pounds and a not particularly valuable watch he had used since he was nine. A constable assured him that by the standards of the resort, he had nothing to complain of. Many visitors were beaten as well as robbed, and had Harris any idea of the number that came to the Falls only to do away with themselves? In the summer months especially—sucked into the
gorge as if by mesmerism.

Scarcely more cheerful was the abrupt realization that the first of August was Theresa's birthday. It caught him while he was scouring the Front for a tolerably honest and not dangerously intoxicated hack driver to take him to the station. Into the gorge beside him hurtled walls of water, their spray cool on his cheek. At the same time, he was ringed by a scum of thimbleriggers, photographers, vendors of Indian bead work and touts for everything from scenic towers and menageries to excursions on the new
Maid of the Mist
steam ferry—all of whose voices combined to outroar the cataracts. Theresa was twenty-four today. Harris decided to walk.

From the Falls themselves he felt no fatal tug. A quarter mile downstream, however, past the verandahs of the last hotel, the river racing far below appeared deceptively calm and inviting. Theresa, though, he insistently told himself, whatever her circumstances, had too much character to contemplate . . .

Besides, did an act as momentous as suicide not require a more tasteful
mise en scène?
Harris quickened his pace to avoid one more Irishman with goose feathers in his blackened hair, war paint on his face, and machine-basted moccasins to sell.

Just ahead, the Suspension Bridge smiled a grotesque eight-hundred-foot-wide smile in cables hung from stone towers in two nations. Scowling back, Harris made his way to the bridge's upper deck along which the Great Western as well as pedestrians crossed the Niagara River. He intended to ask how soon he could expect a Hamilton-bound train. It was time to return to Toronto and start over, from zero.

The young toll collector posted at the Canadian end of the bridge was staring at a coin in his hand, too lost in wonder to pay Harris's question any heed.

“It's a real gold eagle,” he said. “See where I bit it? Ten U.S. dollars. Said he wouldn't be needing any change.”

A party of sightseers had come up behind Harris and were clamouring for admittance to what a sign advertised as a “Panoramic View of the Falls from the Greatest and Safest Bridge in the Engineering History of the Planet!”

“
Who
said?” Harris asked the boy above the din.

“Fellow that just walked out there. Doesn't dress rich either. Craziest thing I ever saw to pay a twenty-five cent toll with a ten-dollar gold eagle.”

“Eagle, hey?” cried stout Daddy Sightseer, his hand describing a broad arc over the wood lattice railing towards the depths of the gorge. “When he's done flying, he won't miss it . . .”

Harris didn't hear any more. Reflexively he ran out onto the bridge to rescue whatever unseen figure the boy was pointing towards. The plank walkway was no more than a yard wide and encroached on at every step by braces for the railing and by the suspension wires connecting the span to the swooping cables overhead. Harris had also to dodge the men and women—some in full skirts—who were negotiating this obstacle course in the opposite direction.

At last he could pick the individual out. The closer he got, the more familiar appeared the yellow waistcoat and the long head—turning now in sharp-featured profile as the man stopped above the middle of the river. He peered down at the green water marbled with foam, then consulted a pasteboard rectangle in his right hand. So as not to alarm him, Harris slackened his pace as he came up.

“Hallo, Oscar,” he said.

The coachman took an instinctive step away as he looked up, tottering against the railing, which came only to his mid-thigh. Harris got a steadying grip on his right arm. Oscar's eyes were red and showed no sign of recognition. Vapours too sweet for whisky swirled around him. Cherry brandy perhaps.

“It's Isaac Harris, Oscar. We were speaking ten or twelve days ago at Mr. Crane's.” To find Oscar entertaining desperate thoughts surprised Harris more than perhaps it should, given the symptoms of neurasthenia he had noted on that earlier occasion. No great blow would have been required to confound so ill-ballasted a bark.