Desperate Acts (7 page)

If any of the members had ever doubted the
wisdom of making Sir Peregrine Shuttleworth their chairman and
cheerleader, this description of civilized behaviour among the
gentry of the mother country and the possibility of re-creating it
in one of her colonies scotched all skepticism and naysaying. The
Shakespeeare Club had existed for more than four years in Toronto,
but its success had been intermittent, the low point having been
reached last winter when it had all but disbanded. Sir Peregrine,
with the same zeal he had used to complete Oakwood Manor and
organize his needy in-laws, had re-formed and revitalized the club,
and given it fresh prestige and new purpose.

“Are you suggesting that we find such a
drawing-room and – ”

“We shall use Oakwood Manor, Cyrus. What good
is it to have a splendid home like mine and not deploy it to the
uttermost?”

“But there is still the matter of the
ladies,” Horace Fullarton said. “You mentioned Lady Madeleine and –
”

“And in addition to that sterling gentlewoman
I can guarantee the avid participation of my wife’s niece, Lizzie
Wade. We shall require one or two more, of course, and I would beg
you to inquire after your spouses and daughters in that regard. No
previous experience is necessary, and you might suggest to them
that the gracious hospitality of Oakwood Manor will be lavished
upon all who participate.”

There was much to digest in these
unlooked-for and gratuitous offers on the part of a genuine English
aristocrat. Sensing this, Sir Peregrine said in his summing-up
voice, “I have stretched your patience far enough for one evening,
gentlemen. In the coming week, I suggest you mull over the
possibilities I have presented. Let us meet again as usual at eight
o’clock next Wednesday.”

With that, the meeting broke up. Most of the
members left via the cloakroom and back stairs to the alley in
order to avoid the clatter and stink of the taproom below.
Fullarton and Brodie, however, remained behind until Gillian Budge
and Etta Hogg came up to clear away the mess. Fullarton – a
considerate man and one who, with an invalid wife, seemed sensitive
to a woman’s delicate health – had suggested to Brodie that they
send for a taxicab and drive young Etta home, should she not have
recovered from her ordeal, the details of which Brodie had earlier
conveyed to him.

Certainly Etta looked even paler and more
distracted, dropping a glass and tipping over an ash-tray – before
Gillian said, not unkindly, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, girl, go off
with these gentlemen and get yourself a good night’s rest. That
blackguard, whoever he was, will not set foot in this place again.
If he tries to, he’ll have
me
to contend with, not my
ham-fisted husband!”

“Come on, Etta,” Brodie said. “Let’s get your
coat and be off.”

“You won’t tell Jasper or my mom about
tonight, will you?” Etta said as they started down the stairs to
the tavern.

“What did that man say to upset you so?”
Fullarton inquired as gently as he could.

“Oh, I couldn’t repeat it, Mr. Fullarton. Not
in a million years!”

And that, Brodie suspected, was all they were
likely to hear about the matter.

***

Some time later, one of the club members might have
been observed walking north up Peter Street. Crossing Wellington,
he carried on north towards King. But instead of continuing in that
direction he paused, made certain he was alone, and turned into the
east-west service lane that ran behind the houses and shops on the
north side of Wellington. He seemed to be counting the buildings as
he went along – cautiously, furtively, perhaps – with only
intermittent pools of moonlight to guide him. Then he stopped,
appeared to be checking his bearings, spotted some object of
significance, and eased over to it. It was a trash-barrel set out
behind a butcher shop. From a deep pocket the gentleman drew out a
brown-paper package tied up with string. Glancing – fearfully? –
from side to side, he slid the parcel onto the lid of the barrel.
Then he wheeled about and hurried off, not once looking back.

It was some minutes later before one of the
elongated shadows on the wall of the shop shuddered, and a
dark-suited, male figure emerged, moving with surreptitious but
confident steps towards the barrel. Peering east and west along the
length of the lane, he picked up the parcel and tucked it into his
coat. Then he strolled off towards John Street, whistling.

FOUR

Brodie and Horace Fullarton dropped Etta off at her
house on Sherbourne Street. She had said nothing to them during the
entire cab-ride from The Sailor’s Arms at the other end of town.
Brodie put this uncharacteristic silence down to her reticence to
reveal the details of the insult directed at her in the taproom. As
she, her mother, and her brother Jasper lived next door to the
Edwards, Etta had met Brodie a number of times in Briar Cottage,
and was normally a greater chatterbox than Jasper’s lady-love,
Charlene. Moreover, Brodie had caught her more than once casting a
furtive glance his way. But tonight she mumbled a “thank you” and
vanished up the walk.

“She’ll get over it,” Brodie said. “She’s
young.” That she was not more than a year or so younger than he,
did not enter into his calculations.

“Does anybody know the name of the fellow who
accosted her?” Fullarton said, ever solicitous of those in
distress.

“Not really, though I’m pretty sure the
villain had been drinking in there on other occasions.”

Fullarton asked the cabbie to drive them
farther up Sherbourne Street to Harlem Place, where Brodie lived.
He himself lived downtown on George Street. The night-air was
chilly – after all, it was past mid-October – and doubly so after
the simmering brightness of an Indian summer afternoon and a
spectacular sunset. They drew their lapels up over their scarves
and spoke without turning their heads.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, sir, how a
recent arrival like Peregrine Shuttleworth managed to revive the
Shakespeare Club?” Brodie said as they bumped along the rutted
roadway in the moon-washed dark. “I’d heard it was pretty well
dead.”

“Please, Brodie. Outside the bank, I insist
you call me Horace.”

“As you wish, sir.”

Fullarton laughed, something he rarely did,
though the lines around his mouth and eyes suggested he had done so
often in his younger and happier days – before Bernice’s illness
and the realization that they would have a childless marriage.
“Well,
Mister
Langford, I must accept some of the blame
myself.”

“I am not surprised.”

“Thank you for that, but my role was really
more of a prompter than a director or leading man. You see, when
the Shuttleworths arrived in the summer, Sir Peregrine came to our
bank to do business.”

“Yes, I do remember seeing him there.”

“In the course of our conversation he
mentioned that he was setting out to complete the construction of
Oakwood Manor, and he invited me for dinner that evening. I almost
never go out, as you know – I don’t like to leave Bernice alone too
much – but her sister was staying with us for a few weeks, so I
said yes. After the meal, he toured me about the half-finished wing
and outlined the changes he was contemplating for the main section.
I made a few comments here and there, and suddenly Sir Peregrine
decided that I had an eye for architectural design. He insisted I
return and continue our discussion of his plans. Well, the upshot
was that I must have gone out there nine or ten times over the
course of a month.”

“So you met Lady Madeleine and her
family?”

“Yes. Mrs. Wade and all six of her children,
though the baronet rationed their appearances.”

“During which time the subject of Shakespeare
arose?”

“Indeed it did. Both the baronet and his lady
are mad about plays and play-acting. As he hinted tonight, his
ballroom was designed to be converted into an amateur playhouse at
an instant’s notice. So, naturally, I told him about the on-again,
off-again Shakespeare Club here in town.”

“And the rest is history.”

“Something like that.”

“Have you been out to Oakwood Manor since, to
see the finished product?”

At that moment the cab struck a rock in the
road, the horse lurched, and the vehicle came close to tipping
over. When the ride had smoothed out (relatively), Fullarton said,
“Bernice took a bad turn in September and I – ”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know – ”

“She’s much better now, Brodie. Much
better.”

The cab pulled up in front of the gates
before Harlem Place. The two men, so much like father and son, said
their goodnights – reluctantly.

Brodie was let in by Petrie, who had been
Richard Dougherty’s valet and butler, but was now an all-purpose
man-servant who lived in, along with his sister, Mrs. Crockett, the
cook and self-appointed “nanny” to young Celia. Stan Petrie and the
Widow Crockett arranged for occasional help to come in and do the
chores that needed doing about the house and garden. Petrie,
however, insisted on looking after the newly purchased horses and
anything remotely connected with them.

“You needn’t have taken a taxicab, Mr.
Langford. The mare would’ve given you a good gallop down Front
Street on a such a beautiful evening.”

Brodie smiled, still feeling awkward in his
relations with his servants, even though he and Celia had been
raised amongst them in New York City. Being master of a household
at nineteen (well, almost twenty) was something that would take
getting used to, especially by one who had been brought up to
revere the egalitarian ideals of the United States of America.

Celia was still up, reading a book in her
study. Brodie poked his head in the doorway and said, “Time for
bed, don’t you think?”

“I just wanted to finish this section. Miss
Tyson is giving me a tutorial on French irregular verbs tomorrow.”
Celia, as pale and blond as her brother, tried not to yawn as she
smiled up at Brodie, whose indulgence she felt guilty taking
advantage of, but did anyway.

Brodie was justifiably proud of Celia’s
intellectual accomplishments and her rapid progress at Miss Tyson’s
Academy for Young Ladies under the active tutelage of its
headmistress. While he had not yet broached the notion to her,
Brodie had already visualized Celia operating her own academy some
day soon, and indeed he had purchased this large house with its
several wings and a spacious park-lot with a view to that end.

“However, I think I’ll get up early and do it
in the morning,” Celia said, setting the French grammar aside.

“A wise decision.”

“By the way, Mrs. Crockett gave me this
letter.” She drew an envelope out of the folds of her frock. “It’s
addressed to you.”

“Who delivered it?” Brodie said,
surprised.

“Mrs. Crockett found it slipped under the
back door to the kitchen. She thought she saw a youngster
hightailing it around the barn.”

One of the many street-urchins paid to run
errands, Brodie thought. But why the secrecy? “I’d better have a
look, then,” he said evenly.

He took the envelope from Celia. His name was
printed in block capitals on the outside. It wasn’t sealed. He
pulled out the single sheet of ordinary writing-paper and read the
contents, printed also in crude upper-case.

LANGFORD:

I KNOW ALL ABOUT MISS RAMSAY’S DIRTY

SECRET – AND THE WORLD WILL KNOW TOO UNLESS

YOU BRING 5 1-POUND NOTES WRAPPED IN BUTCHERS
PAPER

& LEAVE IT IN THE TRASH CAN NEAR THE BACK DOOR
TO

THE SAILORS ARMS – NEXT WENSDAY EVENING AT 9-30.
BE

THERE OR ELSE.

“What’s wrong?” Celia said, getting up.

Brodie knew better than to try to keep the
note away from his sister. They had shared so much, happy and
tragic, over the short span of their lives. He let her take it
while he strove to compose himself.

“This is from an extortionist,” she said.

“It is. But there’s nothing to worry about,”
he said not too convincingly. “Diana has no guilty secret she needs
to hide from the world.”

“But it says – ”

“It’s some opportunist taking a wild stab at
me where he thinks I’m most vulnerable. Remember, sis, that you and
I are wealthy residents of this town, and natural targets for all
sorts of schemes to get at our money. You wouldn’t believe the
harebrained financial offers and business proposals that have been
pressed upon me since Uncle died last spring. And, I suspect, that
if Horace Fullarton were not known to be my employer and protector,
I would have received much worse.”

“I didn’t know, Brodie. You should have told
me.”

The gentle rebuke hurt, but not nearly as
much as the truth. His beloved – his all-but-betrothed – did have a
terrible secret, one she had confided to him and thereby sealed the
bond between them forever, even though she had confessed to him
thinking that her revelation would destroy their relationship. Two
years ago she had become pregnant with a child fathered by a young
French-speaking Montrealer who had pledged his troth, but shortly
afterwards found himself embroiled in the rebellion. At the Battle
of St. Eustache he had been killed while defending the local church
from English firebrands. Diana’s brother, with whom she lived,
arranged for her to go off to a cousin’s farm near Chambly,
purportedly as governess to a nearby wealthy family. The baby girl
was born there in April of 1838, and after nursing it for two
months, Diana left it in the care of her cousins and returned to
her brother’s house. Her brother’s plan was to have the infant
brought to him as a foundling a month or so later, and adopted. He
and his wife had one child of their own, a ten-year-old son, but
longed for a daughter. Soon after the baby arrived and the
elaborate deception was played out, Robert Baldwin’s request for a
governess came by letter, and the decision was made to send Diana
to Toronto – for the best.