Desperate Acts (5 page)

“With both of you in it,” Hincks said,
winking at Marc.

“That’s still some way off,” Robert said.

“I wish,” Marc said, “that we could get
French accepted as one of the languages of the Legislature. It
would be a lot easier to welcome our French colleagues in a chamber
where their native tongue was spoken and made part of the permanent
record.”

“I agree,” Robert said. “But again, that is
one of the many tiny but very red rags we must
not
wave
before the Tory bulls.”

“Much as we’d like to,” Hincks said. “But the
immediate way ahead is to cobble a road the moderate Tories can
feel comfortable riding upon – to their own extinction.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite so cynically,
Francis,” Robert said.

“Still,” Marc said, “everything depends on
our getting this Union Bill approved next month.”

“If we don’t,” Robert said, “God help us
all.”

THREE

On the night-shift, Cobb rarely patrolled his
assigned area in a set pattern. For one thing, he liked to spend
some time in the several taverns and public houses en route – to
lend his calming presence and slake his thirst, while picking up
any news relevant to crimes committed or contemplated. For another,
a repeated routine tended to bore him, and boredom tended to
increase the desire to find a snug haven and snooze. But whatever
route time and chance prompted, he always managed to pass by or
near the two parliament buildings – coming and going. Parliament
was due to open, he was told, in two or three weeks, and tensions
in the capital between the “loyalists” and the “Durhamites” was
already high. In addition to the irksome rash of burglaries along
Front Street and elsewhere, veiled threats had been made against
the property and sanctity of the Legislature. While Cobb placed no
credence in them, he felt it would not hurt to have the uniform of
the law be seen nearby with all its conspicuous authority.

The northern perimeter of his patrol did
bring him across the street from Government House, but the police
happily left the protection of His Excellency and his six-acre park
to the regular army. Still, Cobb got a chuckle thinking about the
demi-royal residence now being occupied by
two
bigwigs: Sir
George Arthur, the little martinet calling himself
Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and the recently arrived
Poulett Thomson, the supreme Governor of both the upper and the
lower province. And since it was said the two men were on opposite
sides of the Union Bill debate, he wondered what they found to chat
about at teatime.

Cobb walked around both parliament buildings,
not forgetting the extensive gardens behind them where enemy
grenadiers or sappers (or, more likely, a pair of panting lovers)
could be lurking, bombs at the ready. Back out on Front Street, he
strolled west – wholly at ease and very much enjoying the sudden
arrival of Venus and its retinue of stars in the south-western sky.
On a whim, or perhaps to delay checking out The Sailor’s Arms a
block farther on, he swung north up John Street to Wellington. A
woman smoking a clay pipe on her verandah waved to him, and he
waved back. On Wellington he drifted westward again, thinking
mostly about how well Delia was doing in her studies at Miss
Tyson’s Academy and just how he and Dora might manage her
second-term fees.

“C-C-Cobb, come quick!”

Cobb snapped out of his reverie in time to
catch young Squealer before the boy tumbled headlong into his
robust, belted belly.

“Slow down, lad. You’ll injure us both!”

“You gotta come, Cobb, right away,” Squealer
panted as he fought any breath left in his scrawny urchin’s body.
He was one of a dozen street kids who hung about the taverns, Court
House, City Hall or market in hope of earning a penny running
errands and delivering messages.

“Come where?” Cobb said patiently. He knew
better than to take the boy’s excitement at face value.

“To the Sailor’s Arms!” The lad’s voice began
to rise and splinter (the source of his nickname).

God, Cobb thought, fingering his whistle, not
a dust-up or a full-scale brawl this early in a fine Indian summer
evening. “What’s goin’ on in that dive?”

Squealer’s cry soared into falsetto:
“M-murder! Somebody’s gettin’ murdered!”

***

Cobb followed Squealer in his best loping trot,
constrained as always by the risk of his thick, muscled pot-belly
becoming overbalanced and pitching the neighbouring parts in an
unfriendly direction. They were rushing down Peter Street and were
almost at Front when Squealer wheeled and darted into an alley.
With just a second’s hesitation, Cobb loped in after him. It was so
dark now that Cobb could see only the thrashing of the boy’s bare
legs just ahead of him. Somehow they managed to avoid stumbling
over the discarded crates and barrels that littered this and every
other alley in town. Half a minute later Cobb pulled up beside
Squealer, and followed his gaze up to a faint light in the
second-storey window of a large building.

“This ain’t The Sailor’s Arms,” Cobb said
sharply, grabbing the boy’s left wrist. “What’re you tryin’ to
pull?”

“B-but it is, Cobb. This is the back end of
it.”

“I’ll back-end yer arse if you’re havin’ me
on,” Cobb said just as Squealer broke free of his grip.

“Upstairs! In that big room! I c’n still hear
‘em!” Squealer had dashed around the west corner of the building –
up to what looked like a door.

Cobb was about to put his threat into action
when he heard the faint but precise cries of a number of
voices.

“I think they’re doin’ it!” Squealer sobbed,
overcome by it all.

Cobb brushed past him, found a latch, and
stepped into a dark stairwell. Looking up, he could see a partially
open door with a light of some kind behind it. Taking the stairs
two at a time, he barged his way into what appeared to be an
anteroom, lit by two flickering candle-lanterns. The cries were
suddenly vivid in his ears: they were definitely raised in anger
and tinged with a strange kind of exultation.

“Jesus,” he whispered to himself as he drew
out his truncheon, “somethin’ awful’s goin’ on in there.” Where “in
there” was he was not quite certain. He was vaguely aware that The
Sailor’s Arms might have such a private upper room, and could
easily imagine it being used as a gambling or opium den where all
kinds of mischief might be hatched. It was this thought that made
him hesitate and wonder if he ought to risk going in alone. Then he
noticed along the inner wall of the anteroom a row of neatly hung
gentleman’s coats and cloaks, a sight which puzzled him
momentarily, until he remembered that gentlemen were capable of
anything when their interests were at stake.

“Aaaghhhh!”

This cry of utter anguish struck Cobb like a
cold dagger in the belly. Someone
was
being murdered! With
no thought for his own safety, he shouldered aside the inner door
and plunged into a large, brightly lit room. Directly before him he
saw a ring of five or six well-dressed men, each uttering some sort
of triumphant howl in various keys as they hunched forward over
some object amongst them. In their right hand, several of them were
raising and lowering what appeared to be silver-bladed knives.
Others were lifting their hands over their heads, then dipping them
down towards what had to be the target of their violence and source
of their exaltation. He had interrupted some bloodthirsty, satanic
ritual!

“Stop where you are!” Cobb shouted. “I am the
law!”

For a brief moment the hunched and
gesticulating ring of assassins froze before Cobb in a grotesque
tableau: mouths agape, heads swivelled halfway around to take in
the interloper and his awesome command, eyes stiff with surprise.
Several knives clattered to the floor. Then the murderers, if that
is what they were, fell back and aside as Cobb inched slowly
forward, truncheon cocked, towards the victim – now exposed in a
pathetic heap on a small platform or dais.

Keeping a sideways glance on the perpetrators
of the outrage, Cobb stepped up to the corpse, and as he did so it
began to show signs of life. It rolled lumpily over onto its back
and opened its eyes. No knife-wounds rent the white robe the fellow
was wrapped in, nor was it stained with his blood. He sat up, his
corpulent bulk propped up by his hands splayed out behind him. On
his head, slightly askew, sat a somewhat tattered wreath composed
of vine leaves. The white robe appeared to be a single linen
bedsheet inexpertly folded so as to resemble a Roman toga.

“Jesus,” Cobb hissed, “who in blazes are
you
? Banquo’s ghost?”

***

The eight assembled members of the Shakespeare Club
invited Constable Horatio Cobb to join them in a good laugh over
the misapprehended “murder” of Julius Caesar by Brutus, Cassius and
their fellow conspirators. While Cobb did not see much humour in
the situation, he was moderately mollified by a tumbler of
first-class Burgundy and several pats on the back for “being a
sport” about it all. Brodie, embarrassed and apologizing profusely,
escorted Cobb into the cloakroom and watched him descend the stairs
and disappear into the darkness. A spacious window in the rear wall
of the cloakroom overlooked the alley, and Brodie took a moment to
peer into the moonlit area immediately below, where Cobb had been
stopped by a skinny ragamuffin whose hand was now stretched out,
palm upwards. Cobb made a threatening gesture that had no apparent
effect on the lad, took two steps away, paused, turned back, and
deposited a coin in the boy’s hand.

Brodie smiled to himself and went back in to
join the others, still buzzing and chuckling over the incident.

***

The topic for discussion on this particular
Wednesday evening, assigned last week by their chairman – Sir
Peregrine Shuttleworth,
bart.
– was “Were Brutus and his
associates justified in overthrowing the legitimate ruler of Rome?”
The normal procedure for these weekly gatherings, as far as Brodie
could tell from his first two sessions, was to begin with a round
of drinks, during which pleasantries and light gossip were
exchanged and everyone got into a relaxed state. This part of the
evening (and the last one as well) took place at the east end of
the room where their hosts, the Budges, had arranged two settees
and several padded chairs around a threadbare carpet – with
cigar-stands and spittoons placed at strategic intervals. Then, at
eight-thirty or so they all moved to the west end of the room where
a long executive table was set up, with comfortable chairs for a
dozen or more. Here the serious discussion of the Bard’s works took
place, punctuated by dramatic renderings of favourite passages to
illustrate a point or indulge an ego. But this evening Sir
Peregrine had suggested that they “get in the mood” for the debate
on the ethical implications of tyrannicide by staging the
assassination scene from
Julius Caesar.
No-one had been
surprised that Sir Peregrine had brought along a costume for his
self-appointed role as Caesar, as well as several wooden
stage-knives to be plunged hysterically into the bloodied tyrant.
It had been their third run-through (the fervour of the
conspirators’ “plunging” and ululations being not nearly hysterical
enough on the first two tries) that the unwitting Cobb had
interrupted.

Thus it was close to nine o’clock when the
group finally settled down around the long table to entertain the
question of the week. Self-conscious about his youth and his New
York twang among these British gentlemen, Brodie had spent much of
his time so far listening and observing. He realized, and accepted
the fact, that only the sponsorship of Horace Fullarton, his senior
at the Commercial Bank, had allowed him entry into this exclusive
club of middle-aged gentlemen. Although Marc Edwards and others –
after the scandal and tragedy of last March – had done their best
to disabuse the better classes of Toronto of their misguided
opinion of Brodie’s deceased guardian, the taint of Dougherty’s
supposed “sins” still clung to his wards. And, Brodie told himself,
a desire to re-establish the good name of Dougherty – and, by
association, Langford – had been the prime motive for his accepting
Mr. Fullarton’s offer to join this club.

“Gentlemen, I trust our little stage-play,
with its truly dramatic climax, has put you all in the proper frame
of mind for discussing this evening’s question, the meat of which
is: When, if ever, is it right to overthrow a legitimate ruler, as
Brutus did Caesar?” Sir Peregrine smiled his most ingratiating
smile, bringing all of his jowls into action and inducing a flush
across the vast expanse of his hairless head. “And, as you were
perusing the text in preparation, I trust also that you reflected
upon what the Great Versifier himself is telling us about the
issue.”

There was an awkward silence, broken only by
the drumming of Sir Peregrine’s plump, effeminate fingers on the
table-top. As the chairman waited impatiently for someone to leap
into the fray, Brodie recalled what Mr. Fullarton had told him
about this portly caricature of an English nobleman. Shuttleworth,
it was said, had inherited, at the tender age of twenty-five, a
thriving cotton mill from his ruthless father and, having been bred
and raised to be the first true gentleman in the family, had had
the good sense to let the business run itself. His only
contribution to its success was a suggestion that they concentrate
on producing stockings for Wellington’s army in its long fight
against Napoleon. For such “meritorious service to King and
country,” Shuttleworth had been made a baronet and his wife,
Madeleine, by proxy, a lady. Their arrival here on the outskirts of
empire, however, had not been part of the Shuttleworth march to
destiny’s beat. Fate took a hand in that. Lady Madeleine’s sister
had emigrated to Upper Canada with her husband, who became wealthy
speculating in land transactions and hobnobbing with those who
mattered. But the fellow had been irresponsible enough to squander
much of his fortune and then die under a falling tree while
supervising the clearance of a prime lot – leaving a wife and six
children with little money and a half-constructed mansion. Having
worn out their welcome on the fringes of London society, the
Shuttleworths made the magnanimous decision to sell off the
nettlesome business, pack up their accumulated trinkets, and sail
for the New World. Arriving only last July, they had managed to
complete the construction of Oakwood Manor in one of the park lots
up on Sherbourne Street north, with a generous (albeit separate)
wing provided for the widow and her destitute brood.