Minor Corruption (3 page)

***

Robert was standing in the doorway of the library as
Marc and his party were moving down the hall towards the foyer.
“Marc, could you spare me five minutes before you go? It’s
urgent.”

“Politics?” Marc said with a half-smile.

“Only indirectly.”

“Isn’t that usually the case?”

“Alas.”

“Give me a minute to visit the water-closet,”
Marc said.

“I’ll wait for you in here, then.”

Marc handed Maggie over to Diana, apologized
to Beth for his being delayed, and then found the smaller hallway
that led to the water-closet. On his way back, he passed an open
door and overheard this exchange:

“But if he loves me, why did he insult me by
callin’ out
your
name?”

“He don’t love you like that, Edie. He don’t
love nobody like that. He’s a nice old gentleman.”

Edie snorted. “You’ve got a lot to learn
about men!”

There was no immediate response to this
remark, and Marc was just about to carry on to the library when he
heard a girl’s snuffle that quickly turned to weeping.

“I’m sorry, Betsy. I really am. My mom says I
got a big mouth and a tart tongue. But you
are
younger than
me, ya know.”

A maid’s tiff, Marc thought, the kind he had
heard often during his childhood on his adoptive uncle’s estate in
Kent. He sighed, and headed for the library.

***

Robert came straight to the point. “It’s my uncle,
Marc. He’s getting to be a problem here and could soon be a bigger
one in the city.”

“I don’t follow. How can he be of concern,
isolated as he is out here in the countryside?”

Robert frowned and looked decidedly
uncomfortable. But he was not a man to back away from trouble or
his duty. “You saw how he behaved out there.”

“A man in his second childhood, I’d surmise,
enjoying the children he didn’t have in his other life.”

“If that were only the whole story . . .”

“Seamus was a lawyer, wasn’t he? And a
bachelor?”

“He was married as a young man, but his wife
died in childbirth along with the babe. He never remarried.”

“Stuck to the law?”

“Yes. As a solicitor, doing the dog-work for
a prestigious firm in Cork. And leading a narrow, monotonous,
constricted life, I’m afraid.”

“With a personality unsuited to that kind of
life?”

“In the extreme. My grandfather forbade him
to pursue his first love: the stage. Well, last winter he suffered
a nervous breakdown of sorts and abruptly retired – alone after
thirty-five years service.”

“He had your family back in Ireland, did he
not?”

“Over the years he had become increasingly
estranged from them, and then when he needed them most – ”

“They were not there for him?”

“Something like that.”

“So your father suggested he might as well
come out to the colony, where a ready-made and loving family
awaited him?”

“My father is as perceptive as he is kind. He
believed that because he and Uncle Seamus were close as children
and he had known him well that my children and their many friends
would be the tonic he needed to restart his life. After a furious
exchange of letters and exhortations, he agreed to emigrate.”

“And it’s obvious, is it not, that the fellow
loves children. And yours are out here every weekend and a good
deal of the summertime. So what’s the problem?” Marc had a pretty
good idea what the problem was, but he was hoping against hope that
he was mistaken.

Robert smiled grimly. “I don’t believe for a
second that you did not see the inappropriateness of some of his
behaviour today.”

“It looked to me as if the girl deliberately
leaned into him,” Marc said carefully.

“Perhaps. But it was he who invited the maid
to play and he knew full well who he was grappling with. He has
played this parlour game before, and he can see quite well through
that fake blindfold.”

“And you think his hands lingered a bit too
long where they shouldn’t have?”

Robert sighed. “He does a ventriloquist act
at parties, using Edie or Betsy as his dummy, sitting on his knee
and flapping their lips whenever he pokes them in the back. I must
admit it’s hilarious, and our guests love it and the girls,
especially Edie, don’t seem to mind. But good Lord, Marc, the man
is sixty years old! And my housemaids are barely sixteen!”

“Perhaps you need to talk to him. Clear the
air. Set some limits on his behaviour.”

“You’re right. And my father and I want
nothing more than to do just that. But we’re also fearful of
undoing the gains he has made thus far in restoring his mental and
physical health. He was deeply depressed and melancholic when he
first arrived. But after that display today, we may have no other
choice.”

“Perhaps you could replace the maids with
more mature servants.”

“You don’t really mean that, do you?”

Robert knew his friend too well. Both he and
Marc felt strongly about employing girls whose family life and
grinding poverty made escape their only option. Edie Barr and Betsy
Thurgood were the daughters of nearby mill-hands, who themselves
led a hardscrabble existence. Robert would no more think of sending
his young servants home penniless any more than Marc would have
returned Charlene Huggan (now Mrs. Hogg) to her abusive father in
Cobourg.

“No, of course not,” Marc said, sitting down.
To this point the two men had been standing beside the big mahogany
table that dominated the book-lined room. Robert joined him. “But
if it is even remotely possible that your uncle has a prurient
interest in these girls, then you must act to protect them. They
are in a real sense your wards.”

“That’s what has made the past few weeks so
agonizing for my father and me. We are devout Christians, and we
take the guardianship of those in our care as a solemn
responsibility. So far we have made certain that my uncle’s contact
with the servants is formal and usually within sight of
others.”

Marc was tempted to mention the conversation
he had just overheard, but felt it was unfair to prejudice either
Betsy or Edie on the basis of a twenty-second bit of dialogue for
which he had no context. Besides, Robert already had his suspicions
about the potential improprieties. Instead, he said, “You hinted
earlier in the hall that there was an indirect political
implication in this business. I don’t see any except the
possibility that a scandal might occur that would tarnish the magic
of the Baldwin name among Reformers in the province.”

“I plan to make sure that does not happen,
but there is a further and more imminent issue.”

“And that is?”

Robert reached for the macaroon dish he
always kept to hand and whose contents he used like worry beads.
“Uncle Seamus wants to help out in chambers. The truth is he is no
longer melancholy, but simply bored.”

“But I thought he liked the outdoors: hiking
and trout fishing and that sort of thing.”

“He does. And with duck and goose hunting
coming up, I figured he’d be well amused. But not so. He’s
determined, he says, to pay his way.”

“But I assumed it was the
law
that
drove him nearly crazy,” Marc said.

“True, but he feels he needs to earn his
keep,” Robert said with a resigned sigh. “He knows that you and I
and my cousin Bob are increasingly involved in politics, leaving
the day to day running of the firm in the overworked hands of
Peachey and our clerks. I don’t see how I can refuse his offer. So
far I’ve put him off by saying that we won’t need extra help until
the assizes begin in two weeks. He’s agreed to wait.”

“But aside from the fact that the work might
set back his progress or that he may turn out to be more of a
burden than a help to us, what is there to worry about in the
larger sense?”

“You saw the man out there today. Even
without the presence of children, who do set him off in dramatic
fashion, the fellow loves to play pranks and practical jokes. And
my four children and two young maids will be right next door. I’m
afraid he will materially disrupt the work of chambers at a time
when you, I and Francis must begin devoting all our energies to the
coming elections and maintaining our alliance with Louis.”

Robert was alluding to Louis LaFontaine, the
leader of the radical
rouge
party in Quebec, and to the
secret alliance that he, Marc and Francis Hincks had hammered out
last winter. As the date for the proclamation of the united colony
approached and the elections that must ensue shortly thereafter,
Robert, as leader of the Upper Canadian Reformers, was spending
more and more of his time writing to and visiting ridings across
the province. He was hoping to drum up support for the nomination
of strong candidates, ones who would also show a willingness to
work with their French counterparts as the struggle for a
responsible form of government continued. Increasingly he had been
asking Marc either to accompany him or had been going off on his
own as far afield as Windsor or Cornwall. That left Robert Baldwin
Sullivan as the lone barrister in the firm and Clement Peachey as
the sole solicitor. And while Robert didn’t need the money
generated by his law practice (the family was well off), he was
loath to give it up. For although he was the only man whom
Reformers of all stripes trusted, he had not sought leadership nor
did he enjoy it. Always he saw himself doing his duty and then
retiring to the more peaceful satisfactions of his chambers.

“No need to worry,” Marc said with more
assurance than he felt. “Let me take your uncle under wing when he
arrives in town. I’m not due for any travel until the end of
October. In that way you’ll be free to move about as you’re needed.
I’ll see to Uncle Seamus in the city while you and your parents
look out for him in the country.”

Robert smiled, as fully as he ever did. “I
was hoping you would say that. I don’t know what I would do without
you.”

“I’ll accept the compliment after the event,”
Marc said.

A pre-emptive squeal from Maggie in the
crowded foyer drew Marc back to his primary duties. “My daughter
says it is time to go home.”

As they were settling in the brougham –
Brodie, Diana, Maggie and Junior – Beth turned to Marc with a small
shudder and whispered, “Did you see the look on that girl’s face
when Seamus touched her?”

Some four weeks after Eliza Baldwin’s
birthday party, Constable Horatio Cobb found himself on an unusual
errand: he was walking north up Frederick Street in the “old town”
to visit his boss. The day had begun normally enough. He had
arrived at the police quarters in City Hall about seven o’clock to
check in and begin his day-patrol, had nodded to Gussie French, the
police clerk, and was surprised when that earnest fellow, who
rarely returned his nod, looked up, frowned, and shoved a note into
Cobb’s hand – before going back to his hen-scratching. “It’s from
the Chief, so you better read it,” Gussie had muttered without
pausing for a comma. And it was. Chief Constable Wilfrid Sturges
requested his presence as soon as convenient at his house on
Frederick Street above Newgate. Cobb knew the house – a
whitewashed, clapboard cottage ringed by the flower patches that
were Mrs. Sturges’s lifeline to the Old Country she had never
really left – but he had never been inside of it. Sturges, or Sarge
as he was affectionately called after his rank in Wellington’s
army, kept his private and professional lives separate. Cobb
admired him for it. Cobb admired him for everything. But why would
he be summoned to the man’s home? Sure, Sarge had been having a
rough time with arthritis and gout, and spent much less time in his
office than he used to. But he always made it to police quarters at
least three times a week, giving him lots of time to speak
privately with any of his constables, should he have need to. In
fact, he and Cobb had been alone for an hour yesterday when Gussie
had been called home over the noon hour to deal with his
obstreperous son.

But a summons was a summons. And it was a
glorious Indian summer day in early October, perfect for a casual
stroll up Frederick Street. He had even spotted his friend and
sometime co-investigator, Marc Edwards, driving his buggy along
King Street with Beth at his side. He would have been heading for
the chambers of Baldwin and Sullivan and she for her shop farther
west on King. Both of them gave him a wave and a cheery “Good
morning!” and he had tipped his helmet like a proper gentleman,
knowing that the Major, as he called him, would appreciate the
irony of the gesture.

Cobb came to Sturges’s cottage, ducked under
an arbour and its last frail roses, and rapped on the front
door.

***

“I wanted to have an uninterrupted chat with you,
Cobb, well away from the rabbit ears of Gussie French and any
outside interruptions.”

“You know I’ve never turned down a chat,”
Cobb quipped, hoping against the odds to lighten the atmosphere in
the room. They were seated cheek by jowl in the Chief’s den, which
was not much bigger than a water-closet. A warming sun through the
tiny southeast window provided the only heat and a single candle
the only additional light. Sturges was seated in a plush chair with
his right leg stretched out upon a leather hassock with horsehair
stuffing sticking out all over it. His swollen right foot was
thinly wrapped with gauze, but its red and painful puffiness could
be seen clearly – and felt. Some days the gout prevented Sturges
from walking altogether, and even on a good day he now got around
gingerly with the aid of a cane. It made Cobb shudder, not merely
at the undeserved suffering this man was being asked to bear but at
the sort of decrepitude and indignity that awaited everyone
unfortunate enough to live too far past middle age.

“You don’t mind
coffee
in the
mornin’?” Sturges said solicitously.