Authors: Don Gutteridge
Tags: #mystery, #canada, #toronto, #legal mystery, #upper canada, #lower canada, #marc edwards, #marc edwards mystery series
Desperate Acts
A Marc Edwards Mystery
by
Don Gutteridge
ISBN:
Published by Bev Editions at Smashwords
Copyright 2015 Don Gutteridge
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Other Books in the Marc Edwards Mystery
Series
ONE
“So, tell me about this Shakespeare Club,” Marc
Edwards said to Brodie Langford as they left Sherbourne Street and
turned west onto Front. “Why not simply take up with the amateur
players who hang about Ogden Frank’s theatre?”
Brodie grinned before answering – to let Marc
know that he was aware of the deliberate naiveté of the remark.
They had become fast friends over the preceding seven months, and
enjoyed the kind of gentle teasing which that sort of bond
encourages. “We are as fine wine to plain vinegar,” he said,
squinting into the October sunset that bathed the broad lakeside
avenue in shimmering waves of gold and vermilion. “Our sole purpose
is to read, discuss and otherwise venerate the Bard, and only the
Bard.”
“I suspect the great man himself would feel
more comfortable among a troupe of actors, however sweaty and
thick-tongued,” Marc said.
“Very true. But we do occasionally stoop to
acting out a scene or two – by way of illustration, of course.”
“Of course. You wouldn’t want to tear a scene
to tatters, not with the likes of Sir Peregrine Shuttleworth
keeping a close watch on the proceedings.”
Brodie laughed. “I find my membership in the
club about as amusing as you do. And just as incongruous and
unexpected. But, then, if you had told me a year ago that I would
be where I am today, I would have called the asylum-keepers to come
and get you.”
“You’ve come a long way in a short time,”
Marc said, his tone now as serious as it was full of admiration for
this remarkable young man of nineteen years.
Orphaned at the age of thirteen and
subsequently raised by his dead father’s law partner in New York
City, Brodie Langford had, in the past two years, suffered an
abrupt and scandal-ridden uprooting from his native land, followed
by a constrained and circumscribed existence here in Toronto with
his young sister and their beloved guardian, Dick Dougherty. Brodie
had idolized Dougherty – in spite of the man’s questionable past in
New York – and had felt more and more responsible as the health of
his “uncle” had deteriorated under the strain of exile and
ostracism. Even so, Brodie had managed to secure a position at the
Commercial Bank, where he had impressed his skeptical superiors and
thrived. Then, just when life had begun to offer him a glimmer of
hope, he and Celia had been orphaned once again – in the most
sordid and tragic circumstances.
“You know, don’t you,” Marc said, “that I
heartily approve of everything you’ve done since your Uncle’s
death, the manner in which you’ve conducted yourself and the wise
decisions you’ve made for you and your sister?”
“Much of which has been the result of your
avuncular
advice,” Brodie said, only half-teasing. Marc was
not yet twenty-nine, and, while recently made a father, he was not
quite ready to accept the more senior role of elderly advisor.
“Well, you look every inch the gentleman
tonight,” Marc said. “If a young man with a New York twang can ever
pass for such in Her Majesty’s colonies.”
Brodie was wearing a dark frock coat cut in
the latest style and a matching top-hat that served not only as
proof of his affluence and taste but also as a startling contrast
to his blond hair, pale complexion and almost transparently blue
eyes. In his right hand he swung a silver-tipped walking-stick with
a handle carved like a wolf-s head, as if he disdained in the
vigour and pride of his youth to have it touch the rotting sidewalk
or assist his striding in any discernible manner.
“I hope you don’t think me too forward or
presumptuous in agreeing to take part in the club’s activities?”
Brodie said as they strolled past the City Hall, which faced Front
Street at the foot of the market. “It was Mr. Fullarton’s idea. He
thinks it’s time for me to move out into society and make my
mark.”
Horace Fullarton was the manager of the
Commercial Bank, Brodie’s superior, and very much the young man’s
champion. In fact, Marc had heard elsewhere, Brodie was being
groomed as Fullarton’s right-hand man. With the death of his
guardian and the subsequent inheritance of both his father’s estate
and his guardian’s (to be shared equally with Celia when she came
of age next year), Brodie had become suddenly rich, with plenty of
money to live sumptuously for the rest of his life – without
working a single day. And although he was now wealthy and
independent enough to move back to the United States (anywhere but
New York, that is), he and Celia had decided to remain in the city
their guardian had chosen for their exile after his ignominious
banishment. And, more compellingly, Richard Dougherty, the “uncle”
they had worshipped since childhood and who had become a second
father to them, was buried here. Who else was there to place
flowers upon his wide and lonesome grave?
Nonetheless, here or abroad, money was money,
and oodles of it generally seduced its possessor into a life of
leisure and moderate debauchery. But Brodie was American, not
British. He saw himself becoming a man who would do something in
the world. With his father’s charm and a mind keen for business, he
had cared not that he had begun as a lowly bank clerk. He believed
in his own abilities, and was Yankee enough to think that social
class was something you chose. Nor did his unexpected wealth alter
his determination to succeed on his own in the financial arena. (It
had not yet occurred to him that he had the wherewithal to found
his own bank.) His principal concession to wealth had been to move
him and Celia out of their rented cottage on Bay Street into a
two-storey brick residence on Sherbourne Street north, in a area
where houses with spacious parkland about them were being
constructed as quickly as the new middle-class itself. Their cook
and butler, who had been Dougherty’s day-servants, followed them
faithfully, and settled into the servants’ quarters of Harlem
Place, as they had named their new home.
“By rights, I should really be tagging along
with you to Robert’s place,” Brodie said as they crossed Yonge
Street and paused to admire the play of sunlight and shadow on the
perfectly still waters of Toronto Bay, framed by the island-spit
that gave the city its splendid harbour. There were no houses of
any kind on the south side of Front Street to block the view or
suggest that the bustling capital was anything but comfortable with
being a “seaside” port or otherwise concerned that its parliament
buildings, its most prestigious domiciles and its commercial heart
was thus visible and vulnerable. “I must admit, Marc, that while I
understand the significance of the current political debate – how
could I not, knowing you and Robert as I do? – I am nevertheless
unable to sustain a proper interest in it.”
“There are, of course, other reasons for a
bright and not unhandsome fellow to visit Baldwin House with me,”
Marc said. Such an allusion to Brodie’s love life might have drawn
a blush a few months ago, but the young man’s obvious success at
winning over Diana Ramsay had left him immune to the older man’s
teasing.
“Diana has taken her charges out to Spadina
for a few days – to enjoy the country air while this Indian summer
lasts,” Brodie said.
Miss Ramsay was governess to Robert Baldwin’s
four motherless children. Robert shared one half of Baldwin House
with his famous father, Dr. William Warren Baldwin, and ran his
legal practice, Baldwin and Sullivan, from the other half. Spadina
was their country residence. Robert was slowly becoming as
well-known as his father, both of them heavily involved in
promoting political and social change that the conservative clique
who had ruled the province for thirty years labelled “radical,”
“subversive,” and “anti-British.” Marc was headed for the Baldwins’
parlour for an evening meeting of half a dozen Reform-party
stalwarts, during which a critical strategy for the fall session of
the Legislative Assembly was to be hammered out.
“Would I be foolish to suggest that you and
Miss Ramsay are beginning to take each other seriously, despite the
frightening discrepancy in your ages?”
Brodie didn’t blush, but he gave Marc a
mocking chuckle. “She’s not yet twenty-three, hardly a candidate
for spinsterhood. And I’ve been told I look a good deal more than
nineteen.”
“But it
is
getting serious?”
“Yes. But I doubt you’ll be hearing the banns
read any time soon. I have the means to support a wife, all right,
but I am determined to do well at the bank – I feel I owe it, and
Mr. Fullarton, a great deal. He had faith in me before I had faith
in myself. I expect to devote the next two years at least to
fulfilling the promise he has seen in me. Furthermore, Diana has
become devoted to Robert’s children over the past year, and she is
determined to remain their caregiver until the youngest, little
Eliza, is of school age.”
“Despite the dictates of her heart?”
They were approaching Bay Street, where Marc
would turn north a few paces and find himself before the elegant,
colonnaded residence of his friend and fellow barrister.
“I admire her loyalty, and we are quite
content to keep each other company, as we do now, for the
foreseeable future,” Brodie said with all the fearless certainty of
youth. “We understand each other completely, for in a way we are
both orphans.”
Marc stopped. “I knew Miss Ramsay was here in
Toronto on her own, but I was unaware she had no parents back in
Montreal.” As someone who had lost – and found – several parents,
Marc was uncommonly interested in the subject.
“She has an older brother and his family
there. He raised her and made sure she was well educated, but both
her mother and father died of cholera when she was nine or
ten.”
“And like you, also, she is more or less
exiled from her home city?”
“Not quite, though I see what you mean.
Robert, you remember, was passing through Montreal in 1836 on his
way home from Ireland. Charles Ramsay’s father had been an
acquaintance of Dr. Baldwin, and Robert looked the family up when
he arrived there in December of that year. He was much impressed
with Diana, who made it known she was looking for a position as
governess or tutor. So, when the children’s regular governess
resigned to get married a year ago last July, Robert wrote
immediately to Charles. Who, it seems, was more than delighted to
let his sister go off on her own to the wilds of Upper Canada.”
“And the rest is history, eh?” Marc
smiled.
Brodie gave his elaborately knobbed
walking-stick a drum major’s twirl. “Well, I’ll leave you and
Robert to solve the problems of state. I’m off to The Sailor’s Arms
to see if I can prevent the assassination of Julius Caesar by his
faithless followers. Or something like that.”
“I’d keep an eye on Cassius, if I were
you.”
***
Marc walked slowly up the east side of Bay Street.
It was not yet a quarter of eight. He was early, as he often was,
and reluctant to abandon the warm and unseasonable sunshine
flooding Front Street behind him. In the steep shadow of Bay
Street, the autumn air was chill, with the foretaste of winter in
it. The Baldwins’ manservant answered his knock and showed him into
the parlour. Taking his coat and hat, he assured him that Dr. and
Mr. Baldwin would be along in a few minutes. Marc sat down before
the fire, as comfortable in this room as he was in his own
home.
