Desperate Acts (2 page)

Which was where his thoughts now mutinously
drifted, despite the importance of the evening’s agenda to the very
future of the province. For Briar Cottage was the place where he
felt most himself – after a youth spent and misspent in an aborted
career as solicitor, followed by a boring (and then a bloody) stint
in the 24th Regiment of Foot – interspersed with occasional,
free-lance investigations into serious crimes. Much of this most
recent sense of belonging was due to Beth, the love of his life,
and the hourly presence of Maggie, their six-month-old daughter.
Having expected to be presented with a son, Marc had thought that
it might be quite a while before he “took” to Maggie. But the
period of estrangement had lasted only the length of time it had
taken the newborn, asleep in his arms, to open her eyes and say
hello with them. Beth was now back at work, supervising the
operation of her King Street business,
Smallman’s
– a
millinery shop and adjacent dressmaking establishment. Three
mornings a week she and the baby, accompanied by their servant
Charlene, drove down to the shop and stayed there until
mid-afternoon. Maggie was the principal attraction among the
seamstresses in the dressmaking section of the enterprise, and
appeared none the worse for the ordeal.

This domestic harmony had been doubly
welcomed, for the past few months had been among the most frantic
and anxious of Marc’s life since his harrowing experiences during
the uprising of ‘37. On the personal side, his long-time friend,
Major Owen Jenkin, had retired from the army and come to Toronto to
attend Maggie’s christening and to look for a place to live – as
close to the Edwards as possible. But three days after the
ceremony, he had had a heart attack while out walking with Marc,
and had died in his arms. On the public side, while studying for
his bar exams and apprenticing law under the tutelage of Robert
Baldwin, Marc had had to make increasingly more time to compose
leaflets, pamphlets and broadsides for Robert and his “Durhamites,”
the self-appointed group of politicians and their associates who
were trying to rouse the populace in support of the recommendations
of Lord Durham’s
Report.
The hard-line conservatives and
Tories, with their fists on the levers of power, were dead-set
against them. With rallies and counter-rallies, fulminating
editorials from either side of the press, veiled threats, and
outright intimidation, it had been both an exhausting and an
exhilarating summer.

Somehow Marc had managed to deal with his
grief and squeeze out enough hours to prepare for his final exams –
and still reserve a few precious moments each day to watch Maggie
try out yet another variant of her brand-new smile and, later, to
hold both of his lady-loves close to him in the warm, breathing
darkness of their mutual room. Last month he had been called to the
Bar, and was now a full-fledged barrister. Surely his adoptive
father, Uncle Jabez, would have sat up in his English grave and
smiled at the sight. Both had been proven right. Marc had known at
twenty that his reckless and adventurous spirit would find no
satisfaction in a stuffy solicitor’s office, shuffling paper, as
Uncle Jabez had done for two decades. So he had abandoned the Inns
of Court for the Royal Military School at Sandhurst. Which decision
had brought him here to this outpost of empire – to war, love,
marriage and, fortuitously, to police work. The latter had
rekindled his interest in the law, not that of a clerk’s cubicle
but the grand theatre of the criminal courtroom. Brodie’s guardian,
Dick Dougherty, had been one of its finest practitioners, a model
and an inspiration for Marc. So, the adopted son of Jabez Edwards
of Kent, England was at last a lawyer, here in the capital of Upper
Canada!

Robert Baldwin had immediately offered Marc a
position in his own firm, but he had not yet accepted (though he
had indicated he would be ready to “fill in” there, should the need
arise). Marc felt, for the time being at least, that he wanted to
be free to move his life and his talents wherever they would do the
most good. And right now, assisting the Durhamites in their
struggle for responsible government was paramount. Nor did anyone
know how long the struggle might take or in what directions it
might lead. A bloody rebellion had been fought over the issue
already, and Marc had more compelling reasons now than ever to make
sure that another one wouldn’t be necessary.

And just yesterday morning, Beth had
whispered to him the news that she was once again pregnant.

“Ah, Marc, you’ve arrived early,” Robert
Baldwin said, coming into the room with his father. “What a
surprise.”

***

Brodie continued along Front Street at a leisurely
pace. While he was looking forward to his evening at the
Shakespeare Club – his third such evening since he had been
persuaded to join by his supervisor, Horace Fullarton – he never
hurried this pleasurable stroll eastward along Toronto’s bayside
avenue. Looking left, one’s sensibility was stroked by the subtle,
natural tints of the water, the gently treed island, the silts and
sands of the shoreline, and the vast skies that seemed to hold them
all in place purely for the benefit of those observing their
wonders. Then, glancing right, the eye took in the architectural
niceties of the city’s most expensive and ostentatious residences –
Somerset House and the Bishop’s Palace being the most prominent of
many. Farther along at John Street stood the twin parliament
buildings, where during the upcoming sessions the fate of the
colony would be decided. Nearing Peter Street, Brodie picked up his
pace. On the far corner, facing the bay, sat The Sailor’s Arms,
site of the weekly meeting of the Shakespeare Club.

At first glance The Sailor’s Arms did not
appear to be the sort of place where a group of gentlemen would
gather to venerate the Bard and confirm their own worthiness, while
sipping brandy, sniffing snuff and nibbling sweetmeats. The primary
purpose of this public house was signaled by its location: a
hundred yards from the Queen’s Wharf. Its half-dozen second-floor
bedchambers attracted officers and sailors from the many
passenger-ships, mail-packets and freighters – men seeking
overnight accommodation and a noisy, well-lubricated taproom. But
at the back of the building, occupying the entire rear half of the
upper storey, was a single, commodious room – eminently suited to
lodge meetings, folk dancing, or any event where ample space, a
generous hearth, and continuous catering from below were
prized.

Some members of the Shakespeare Club,
affronted by the raucous, boozy atmosphere of the tavern, preferred
to enter the clubroom via the stairs at the rear of the building,
although to do so they had to step perilously close to the flotsam
and stench of the alley back there. But Brodie, by far the youngest
member of the idolators, did not mind passing through the taproom.
In his youthful exuberance, he enjoyed tossing the barmaid or her
husband a genuine Yankee smile, inhaling the masculine smoke of the
seafaring patrons and then, with a wink and a nod, stepping into
the narrow stairwell used by the staff to appease the needs of the
gentlemen in the clubroom above. (Last week, they had been waited
upon by Etta Hogg, the young sister of Jasper Hogg, who lived next
door to Marc and Beth and who was courting Charlene Huggan, their
servant. Brodie hoped Etta would be on duty again tonight. Her
fragile, freckled beauty – so different from Diana’s dark and
sensuous allure – stirred in him feelings both erotic and
protective.)

With this latter thought uppermost in his
mind, he walked into the taproom, and was confronted by the usual
din of argumentative male voices raised ever higher in
self-defeating waves. But just as the door clicked closed behind
him, the din stopped, as if some invisible choir conductor had
given the signal for silence. So abrupt was the cessation of noise
that Brodie assumed his entrance had somehow triggered the event,
and he braced himself for the onslaught of stares that must soon be
trained upon him. But not one of the three-dozen patrons jammed
into the room was paying the slightest bit of attention to him.
They were all transfixed by a scene unfolding at the far end of the
bar – in front of the stairwell to the meeting-room above.

Tobias Budge, proprietor of The Sailor’s
Arms, had both of his hairy-knuckled hands around the coat-collar
of a skinny fellow, who was struggling helplessly in the barkeep’s
fierce grip, though it was apparent the victim was trying harder to
maintain his dignity than he was attempting to escape. Budge was
alternately jerking him up off the floor until his feet flailed at
the air and dropping him slack-kneed upon its stone surface.

“You’ve got a helluva nerve stickin’ yer ugly
beak back in my pub, mister. But I’m a tolerant kind of guy, eh?
Until you start pesterin’ the hired help.
No
body, especially
the likes of you, interferes with my maids an’ lives to brag about
it!”

The skinny fellow did not respond to his
assailant’s charge. Instead, he peered over at the mesmerized
audience with a smug smirk on his face, which seemed to convey the
notion that it was the victim who was more likely to come out of
this contretemps triumphant. The shaking and bobbing he was
suffering, however, was making it difficult for him to portray
himself as the eventual victor. As was the red welt on his cheek
where, Brodie concluded, Budge had slapped him (producing the sound
that had rendered the pub’s patrons speechless).

“You’d better let me down, Budge, I’m warning
you!” This threat came out somewhere between a snarl and a whine,
and drew a derisive response from those observing the fun. “I was
merely
talking
to the girl.
Ask
her!”

The girl, Brodie now noticed, was cowering
behind the combatants and clutching the arm of Gillian Budge, a
fiery sprite of a woman with eyes as sharp as cut-glass – whom
no-one, obstreperous drunk or overly amorous sailor, dared cross.
As Brodie feared, the girl in question was Etta Hogg. He had a
sudden urge to step up and slap the impudent villain on the other
cheek, although it wasn’t clear whether Etta was cringing from any
ill-treatment given her or simply reacting to the violence of her
employer’s response to it. Budge’s wife was standing stock-still,
staring at her husband’s back with a look that seemed only
partially approving.

“I don’t
need
to ask her! You grabbed
her hand when she was tryin’ to get away from yer stink, an’ that’s
all I needed to see. Now get the hell out of here an’ don’t ever
come back!”

“Perhaps I would if you had enough sense to
let me down!”

This witty riposte drew sympathetic laughter
from the hard-drinking sailors. Seeing no humour in the remark,
however, Budge thrust the fellow down so suddenly that his knees
buckled and his rump hit the floor with a comical thud.

“How’s
that
now? Down far enough?”

The skinny fellow gave the onlookers a
lop-sided grin (made necessary by his swollen left cheek) and tried
manfully not to grimace as he tottered to his feet. He did not move
immediately towards the door, however, despite the glowering
presence of the barkeep a foot behind him, fists clenched. Rather,
he brushed himself off with meticulous care, obviously proud of his
black morning-coat (one size too large for the thin but muscular
body), his frilled blouse and knotted tie. He straightened the
latter with slow precision, then glanced about for his top-hat and
cloak (on a nearby chair, miraculously upright). He plunked the hat
over his rigidly parted, coal-black hair, rolled his enormous black
eyes at his audience in a gesture meant to mock the futility of
Budge’s crude intervention, pointed the elaborate curvature of his
nose towards Brodie and the door, and walked serenely out into the
October evening. But not before he swivelled his head around and
called back, “You may live to regret this, Budge. If I let
you!”

The taproom was rocked by spontaneous
cheering.

***

“Are you all right?” Brodie said to Etta.

“I think so,” Etta said, releasing her grip
on Gillian Budge’s arm and offering Brodie a less than reassuring
smile. At this moment, though, she looked more embarrassed than
frightened.

“She’s perfectly fine, Mr. Langford, as you
can plainly see,” Gillian said sharply. “And if my husband hadn’t
acted like a gorilla, she’d be a damn sight finer!”

“But, luv, I’d already given that slimy snake
fair warnin’ – ”

“Have you forgot it’s me that gives out the
warnings in this establishment?” Gillian said in a way that was
itself a kind of warning.

Tobias Budge’s thick brows arched upward as
if they’d been poked with a pitchfork. For a second something
rebellious smouldered in the pits of his eyes, but it was promptly
extinguished by the hair-trigger smile he routinely manufactured
for his customers, which he now turned fully upon them. “I seem to
have frightened the ladies,” he grinned. “And all that excitement
must’ve made you fellas thirsty. Who’s fer a flagon of ale – on the
house?”

The roar of approval from his clientele
drowned out the rebuke that his wife hurled his way, and, moments
later, Etta, Gillian and Brodie found themselves swept back towards
the stairwell as the crush of parched sailors and their companions
pushed up against the bar in quest of free beer.

“Are you up to looking after us tonight?”
Brodie asked Etta above the din. “You’ve had quite a shock.”

“I’m fine, Mr. Langford,” the girl said,
glancing sideways at Gillian with a slight tremble of her lower
lip. “Mr. Budge always helps me out.” She peered hopefully over at
the hubbub around the bar, but as big and burly as the barkeep was,
he could not be seen.

“
I’ll
be assisting you tonight, Etta
dear,” Gillian said in a voice that managed to be both soothing and
just a touch menacing. “And you, young sir, should be getting up to
your meeting. I can hear Sir Peregrine’s foghorn already.”