Death in the Age of Steam (47 page)

When he found himself weeping, he realized he was not the man to advise Hillyard. All the same, some maggot of inquisitiveness made him stagger to a bookcase and take down MacFarlane's novel
Flora
. He read the inscription.

“Let me see if I recall it,” said Small, looking for words up
among the pendants of a crystal gaselier. “Yes, more or less—‘To Theresa Crane, a refreshing young friend, who may discern in her lively self some resemblance to the heroine of this simple tale. In doing so, she would confer the greatest honour on journeyman author'—large signature here and flourish—‘George MacFarlane.' Henry thought his wife was being called a backwoods bumpkin. He refused the volume houseroom.”

“Sheridan compared the hand with that of the
Katherine
's instructions,” Harris suggested.

“Those instructions,” said Small with a sigh. “How Willie cursed their author for not using a secretary!”

“Perhaps there was no time to collar one before the brig left New Brunswick.”

But Sheridan had hoped the scripts would differ. Their congruence had made it harder to put the matter out of his mind. Besides, Hillyard was always there to put it back in as through the ensuing fortnight the stomach pains repeatedly dimmed and flared. “Iliac passion,” Hillyard had muttered by way of diagnosis. Small thought the later attacks as much due to a misguided over-prescription of laxatives.

MacFarlane's lawyer was asking Hillyard for a withdrawal of the allegations made to the Crown's representative concerning his client, for an unqualified written apology to his client, and for an immediate return of any property of his client's, including any documents or correspondence pertaining to his client's vessels or former vessels. How, Hillyard persisted in asking, should he treat these demands?

After a number of unavailing recommendations that his friend seek other counsel, Sheridan suggested there was no immediate need to do anything. If MacFarlane sustained no injury, Hillyard would pay no damages. In his defence, moreover, the doctor might plead that he had written to Sir Edmund neither falsely nor maliciously, but in all honesty and for the public benefit. Finally, the
Katherine
letter was its recipient's property, not its sender's.

Hillyard calmed down sufficiently to leave his scabs
undisturbed, for a day or so. Then, on the night of July 8, he woke Sheridan up to announce that his house and surgery had been broken into. Nothing had been taken, but everything had been disarranged. Yes, he could tell. He had left his effects in an informal order very different from the shambles in which he had found them. Locked drawers had been forced.

As to motive, physicians were widely—if baselessly—reputed to be rich. Then again, the less educated relatives of patients whom no medicine could have saved sometimes fancied they had scores to settle. The object of this crime, however, Hillyard believed to be neither booty nor vengeance.

“The letter,” he said. “Good thing I gave it to you.”

Suspicion that he was right made Sheridan no friendlier to the prospect of “Sir” being prefixed to George MacFarlane's name. Ultimate responsibility in the matter rested in England with the Secretary of State for the Colonies. To him Sheridan began to think of applying. If he got no satisfaction before the start of the next session, he might even have the matter raised in Parliament.

While briefing Small on these subjects, Sheridan began vomiting freely, hideous bilious matter such as Small had never seen, and promptly took to his bed with his worst attack of abdominal pain ever. When Small visited on 10th July, he was instructed to prepare a letter to the Colonial Office. Sheridan would decide the next day whether to sign and send it.

“None of us,” said Small, “was thinking rationally. From declining to represent Hillyard, the old bear had almost reached the point of taking on Hillyard's crusade himself, risking his life in ways at least some of which should have been clear to him. Hillyard? He was not trying to kill his friend. He just couldn't bring himself to forget MacFarlane and practise medicine. As for me, my senior partner was a second father—more hot-blooded certainly but also more affectionate than my own. I feared for his life. I feared for mine without him. I've always seen myself as loyal Second-in-Command rather than as Officer Commanding. Now I was doing Sheridan's work as well as
mine, an unwanted promotion seemed imminent, and I was expected to confide in no one.”

Small spoke collectedly, but Harris could sense his loneliness. Society was Small's oxygen. His need for others made him want to be loyal, but also made it hard for him to be unflinchingly reticent—and, open-hearted as he was, Small must have felt the strain of bearing unassisted and unconsoled the full weight of his ailing chief's ideals.

“On July 11,” said Harris, bringing them to the eve of Sheridan's murder, “you were in court regarding an indenture.”

“Gratifying that someone noticed. The employer had flouted the educational provisions, wantonly stunting a young girl's mind. My pleading would determine her future. I had by the same date to draft a letter to the highest Imperial authorities on behalf of all the victims of the '32 cholera. Thursday and Friday I neither ate nor slept.”

“Then on Friday afternoon you didn't even get a chance to show Sheridan your draft,” said Harris. “Did he tell you Crane had come calling that morning?”

Small shook his head. “On MacFarlane's business?”

“Presumably.” Harris didn't try to hide his disappointment. Significant and shocking as Small's revelations had been, they had not so far yielded anything of immediate use to Theresa.

“All I know of Crane's involvement,” Small confirmed, “is what you pieced together in the coach. The idea that he took the
Katherine
letter by arrangement with MacFarlane—that relieved my mind of even less congenial hypotheses.”

“You suspected,” Harris said bluntly, “that Emily Sheridan's daughter took it to protect a spreader of the plague.”

Knowing the letter's contents made this suspicion monstrous—but Small hastened to deny that those contents could have been known to Theresa.

“She would have recognized MacFarlane's hand and nothing more. The first three letters she would have read are
qlb
. How could she have known they stand for
put
—as in, ‘Put ashore . . .'? Because of my warning, she might have thought it a document
harmful to her friends without realizing its gravity. Without further inquiry, she likely would not have either destroyed this paper or returned it to its author, but her own disappearance put it just as effectively beyond my reach. I confess I came to Montreal hoping to recover it from her.”

“And you meant to use it as her father would have,” Harris added.

MacFarlane would by now have burned this compromising manuscript. Harris regretted its loss. The smoke of the fire stung his nostrils. It was a minor loss compared with the loss of a man like Sheridan, and yet Harris understood how Sheridan—as legislator, democrat and widower—could have defended the letter with his life.

“Deuce knows what I should have made of it, Isaac,” said Small. “Perhaps nothing. With William Sheridan gone, perhaps MacFarlane didn't need the letter. Hillyard had given up. I was so distracted I didn't even open Sheridan's strongbox for a week after his death. Then, when I did, I felt—well, you know the rest.”

Small supposed a sense of culpability gave some people the will to do better in future, but he had in the past six weeks discerned no such improving effect on himself. He was as happy without the shame and expected to be more productive as well.

Harris acknowledged his point, ungrudgingly but briefly. Now what evidence might they produce against the actual remover of the
Katherine
letter—a double murderer and Theresa's pursuer? Was there anything they could take to the inquest when it resumed in six days?

Small considered. The old set of summer migrants had long since left the lounge, and a new set was arriving for a last smoke before facing afternoon tea. Harris was restless from too much sitting. Small continued to consider.

“I wonder,” said Harris, “if Crane knew the letter's contents. From what you say, the key to the cipher was not in the box.”

“It applied to all communications for the year. The sailor told Hillyard, and no one who has once heard it has ever found it necessary to write down—‘Britons never will be slaves.'”

“Expressing heroic resistance to health regulation. Delightful!” Harris saw MacFarlane planted on his Queen Street battlements, untroubled victim of his own charades. “He'll have schooled himself to find Sheridan's death surprising. I don't see how we could get him to rat against Crane, do you?”

“Sir Rat, you mean? He would have to incriminate himself.”

“If only your damned law would let Theresa testify . . . Look, Jasper, I'll just put a bullet in Crane's head, and you can defend me after.”

It surprised Harris to hear bubble from his lips a daydream unacknowledged in his darkest thoughts. Some dank fold of his brain must have been secreting it, though, for with the words the act presented itself complete to his senses.

Next Thursday he could be in Wilson's farm yard. He would have a clean shot just after one p.m., when Crane stepped down from his brougham. Wait till Matheson the lawyer was clear. Crane's chest would make a better target than his head, of course, keep the bullet lower too, reduce the risk to Farmer Wilson's livestock. Harris felt his Sharps hunting rifle steady against his shoulder. No anger shook his aim. It would be as easy as cancelling a cheque. In fact, he was always at his calmest with a firearm in his hands. You had to be.

While Harris was dreaming only, and by no means planning Crane's death, still the absence of any plan to free Theresa drew the dream into its vacant place, as lungs will draw foul air when denied fresh.

What was Small saying?

“I should be better qualified for my part, Isaac, than you for yours. One does not become a man-slayer all at once. Degeneration takes time . . . Come to think of it, why not look back over Henry Crane's life for another felony?”

“How's that?” said Harris. “Are you saying a man can't break necks without having picked locks, or kill without having coined? I should have thought that crimes of choler such as Crane's proceeded not from a sky prepared with clouds, but rather from the blue.”

“And was Crane never in high temper before 12th July?”

Harris saw Small's point, yet doubted. “We have to keep him from Theresa. Have you heard rumoured any misdeed grave enough to meet that need? Adultery, you said this morning, is not enough?”

“Quite insufficient,” Small airily replied, “and in Toronto he is such a public figure that any meatier scandal would have been difficult to keep hidden. However, he was not always so well known.”

“His early career,” observed Harris, still far from sanguine, “lies buried far away in the Northwest.”

“Along with his first partner—who died, I understand, a violent death.”

“An accident.”

“Perhaps.” Small retreated into his Buddha smile, then straightened his cuffs, seeming to recall his new-found sense of purpose. “Perhaps an accident,” he said. “Would it be heartless to hope not?”

To give himself and his horse a stretch, Harris parted from Small for a couple of hours. He wanted as well to reflect upon Small's advice.

Banshee's sides were plainly sleeker than a week ago, her eye brighter. When Harris mounted, the animal wobbled her head, expressing readiness for action. Instead of taking her up the mountain as usual, he rode south and west through the factory district. Despite the city clatter, he felt himself just as effectively alone.

Jasper was no help. Willing as he now professed himself to be of service, his best thoughts amounted to no more than wishes. Harris had no idea under what circumstances Crane's unfortunate partner had perished—not so much as whether he had been burned, crushed or drowned—and Small knew nothing more. Inquiries could be made, yes, but were they worth the time?

How much simpler, Harris told himself, how much more expeditious in view of Crane's imminent arrival in Montreal, to simply remove Theresa from the jurisdiction! She must see that too. Crane would leave her in peace in New Brunswick, or New England, or New Zealand, or . . .

Harris couldn't quite persuade himself to this course either. Steam power had so abridged distance that no place on earth seemed quite far or new enough.

The cotton and cordage mills behind them, Harris had his mount pick up her gait. They were following the tow path of the Lachine Canal, up which chugged paddle-wheelers Harris had last seen four hundred miles away. There went the gleaming
Cytherean
. Her banners tumbled on the late summer breeze, and her Botticelli goddess rose on a clam shell from the pilot house. Time and space shrank.

They must have been shrinking for Crane as well. The part of Crane's life that he had left on Lake Superior, perhaps in the belief he was leaving it forever, his own steamships and railways had been bringing closer every year. Somewhere between Sault Ste. Marie and Fort William might lie a youthful shame he had counted on never to overtake him.

A shrinking world penalized the fugitive, but benefited the pursuer. Better at these odds to pursue
.

At the instant it formed, this insight struck Harris as pivotal. He felt its heft and shapeliness. It fell into his dialogue with himself like a greased pin into a hinge. In truth, however, without having made any conscious decision to do so, he was already pursuing Small's suggestion. He was already proceeding full gallop towards the Lachine offices of the Hudson's Bay Company, the likeliest place on the island of Montreal to obtain information regarding Crane's northern years.