The Bishop's Pawn
Authors: Don Gutteridge
Tags: #crime, #politics, #new york city, #toronto, #19th century, #ontario, #upper canada, #historical thriller, #british north america, #marc edwards
A Marc Edwards Mystery
by
Don Gutteridge
ISBN: 978-1-927789-46-9
Published by Bev Editions at Smashwords
Copyright 2015 Don Gutteridge
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Other Books in the Marc Edwards Mystery
Series
The Bishop’s Pawn
is wholly a work of fiction,
but the political tensions and debate over responsible government
following the
Durham Report
of 1839 were real enough and, as
depicted herein, form an important backdrop to the novel’s action.
The particular characterization attributed to actual historical
personages like Sir George Arthur, John Strachan and Robert Baldwin
are fictitious. The portrayal of Tammany Hall and its leaders in
New York City is based on the historical record, their corruption
and malfeasance having been well documented.
I am indebted to the following works, which
provided helpful background information: Gerald M. Craig,
Upper
Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841
; Sylvia Boorman,
John
Toronto: A Biography of Bishop Strachan
; George E. Wilson,
The Life of Robert Baldwin
; Gustavus Myers,
The History
of Tammany Hall
; Jerome Mushkat,
Tammany: The Evolution of a
Political Machine, 1789-1865
; and Mary C. Henderson,
The
City and the Theatre: New York Playhouses from Bowling Green to
Times Square.
ONE
Toronto: March, 1839
Doubtful Dick Dougherty was taking his early-morning
constitutional, ambling placidly down the west side of Bay Street
as he had done now each day for the past six weeks. “Ambling” would
have been his own description of his descent, though the rare
city-dweller abroad at seven A.M. in the near-dark might have
referred to the locomotion of his three-hundred-pound bulk more
aptly as “trundelling.” Still, such ordinary folk seemed pleased
enough to see the infamous barrister – touching the peak of a
tradesman’s cap in silent greeting or nodding sleepily from the
bench of a market-cart or waving a trowel from the other side of
the street in jocular salute. These courtesies were invariably
acknowledged by the single dip of a Dougherty chin (one of
several), as if too fervid a response might upset the delicate
balance of the great man’s progress through the streets of his
adopted town. On this particular morning Dougherty had slowed his
pace, though only he would have noticed. For spring was in the air.
Its taste could be detected on the tongue, its scents anticipated
in the redolent breeze wafting up from the lake at the foot of the
street. The last of the winter slush had melted in yesterday’s sun,
while the overnight frost had kept the side-path stiff and
conducive to walking for those prudent enough to rise before dawn
and venture forth into the free and unfettered air of Queen
Victoria’s dominion.
No such thought – and certainly no such
constitutional strolling – would have been possible two months ago;
indeed, would have been unthinkable. Public disgrace and
dishonourable exile had been Dougherty’s lot, and he had, it
seemed, given himself up to the inevitable. Only the presence of
his wards, Brodie and Celia, and his promise to their dying father
that he would look out for them as if they were his own (as they
were, in the way that mattered most) had kept him from making an
immediate, self-administered exit from an ungrateful and unjust
world. Even so, he knew now, with the clarity that usually
accompanies hindsight, that he had been subconsciously eating and
drinking himself to death. He had not left his cottage for weeks.
He had feigned interest in Brodie’s enthusiastic accounts of his
daily triumphs at the Commercial Bank where he worked as a clerk.
He had shamelessly let Celia, beautiful and intelligent and craving
society, cater to his incessant needs and peremptory demands, as if
she were no more than a charwoman or a hired nurse.
All that had changed dramatically when, in
January, he had permitted himself to be persuaded to become engaged
in the defense of a young man charged with murder. His brilliant
performance before the Court of Queen’s Bench and Chief Justice
Robinson had resulted in the most satisfactory outcome that could
have been imagined. Ordinary folk had cheered him as he left the
courtroom, and in the numerous taverns of the town his verbal
exploits and crafty legal manoeuvres had risen to the status of
legend. Even the more elevated classes, who had heretofore fed the
rumour mill with lurid and fantastical tales of the iniquities that
he was alleged to have perpetrated in his native New York, had been
compelled to offer him grudging respect.
But such an unexpected response to his
courtroom performance and its happy consequences – a military hero
exonerated and a traitor exposed – had put the Benchers of the Law
Society in a difficult position. Indeed, they felt themselves to
have been thrust unfairly upon the horns of an ethical dilemma.
For, against their better judgement and with motives more political
than forensic, they had, last January, agreed to grant Richard
Dougherty, an ostracized but not-quite-disbarred advocate from a
foreign democracy, a temporary license to practise law in Upper
Canada. Having taken for granted that he would fail, they had been
chagrined and aggrieved at his success and his nettling popularity.
How could they revoke his license now? On what grounds, other than
incontrovertible proof of the indiscretions and turpitude that had
seen him expelled from New York, could they possibly refuse to
welcome him into the provincial fraternity? The very thought of
that repulsive, waddling, triple-chinned, upstart Yankee occupying
a seat in Lawyers Hall at Osgoode made their periwigs tremble.
Already they had twice postponed a scheduled hearing to consider
his case, hoping that the man himself would come to his senses and
return quietly to his retirement. To their consternation, however,
he had – not three weeks ago – brazenly tacked a gold-lettered
shingle upon the front door of his cottage on Bay Street above
King:
R. W. Dougherty: Attorney-at-Law
As far as anyone knew, he had not taken any
clients as yet (serious crimes, his specialty, were thankfully few
and far between in a capital city that boasted not more than eight
thousand souls). Surely the fellow would have the decency to
abstain from active practice until the Benchers convened at the end
of the month and made their decision.
Dougherty ambled past the British-American
Coffee House. Its aroma of coffee and fresh baking were as
tantalizing as the comfortable chatter of the early-risers already
settled at a favourite or privileged table inside. Resisting
temptation, he crossed King Street, glancing east and west to note,
as he always did, that none of the elegant shops had yet opened,
though a wreath or two of smoke above several of them suggested
that the servants were up and about. At Market Street (now called
Wellington by those in the know), he had to pause briefly to let a
drayman and his mule pass by, the split logs in his cart rattling
in discordant tune with the frosted ruts of the poorly gravelled
road.
Below King, the side-path became one of the
intermittent boardwalks that the city fathers referred to as a
public improvement, but the thaws and freeze-ups of a capricious
winter and unannounced spring had left them more treacherous than
ever. Dougherty teetered to his left and resumed his ambling,
discreetly, along the rutted roadway. He tried to suppress the
mutinous thoughts that insisted on tweaking him at moments like
this: that the fine thoroughfares of his native New York City were
cobbled and impervious to weather and wear; that hardwood walkways
provided secure paths for promenading or for the brisk,
business-like trod of men with purpose and importance. Already, in
that great metropolis several of the main streets were being
illuminated with the wonder of the gas-lamp! He quickly blotted out
the image, fearing it might overwhelm his current resolve.
After all, backwater though it undoubtedly
was, Toronto had offered him a second chance, a reprieve from
despair and physical decay. Days after the trial had ended in
January, he had begun to remake himself. He had tempered his many
appetites – for food, drink, cigars, even coffee. With the
ever-loyal assistance of Brodie and Celia – bless them – he had
started to exercise. At first he had been able merely to
circumnavigate the parlour of his cottage no more than three or
four times before his ankles ached or his breath seized somewhere
in his mountainous chest. Then it was out onto Bay Street, a
willing ward on each arm, for an unsteady progress down the
half-block to King, across to the other side, and then – woozy,
puffing but determined – back up to the cottage. When his legs
refused any further abuse, Celia and Brodie would slide him,
lock-kneed, along the icy pathway as if he were a marionette on
skates. Finally, five weeks ago he had ventured out under his own
steam (his keepers an anxious quarter-block behind him). Two weeks
later, somewhat slimmer and certainly more robust of leg and lung,
he had begun his unsupervised morning constitutional, following the
same unchanging route, seven days a week.
More important than his slowly recovering
health and the occasional brief bout of optimism was the decision
to send Celia off to Miss Tyson’s Academy for Young Ladies to
resume the studies she had had to abandon when they had left New
York and made their way here over a year ago. A cook and
housekeeper were hired during the day to give Celia the time and
leisure necessary to scholarly pursuit, for which she had always
shown a precocious capacity. (Still, the sainted girl insisted on
tending to his every perceived need until ordered to her room and
her books.) Brodie, more confident and gregarious, had taken to
banking as a duck to its pond, exhibiting his father’s easy ways
with both the common people and their betters. Dennis, God rest
him, would have been proud of the lad. And now that his guardian
seemed able and willing to take care of himself during the day
without intimidating the servants overly much or too often, Brodie
no longer had to dash home for luncheon and a discreet assessment
of the invalid. He could now devote his full attention to the
Commercial Bank and to the young governess at Baldwin House. It was
amazing, Dougherty thought as he watched the first pale intimation
of daylight wash across Toronto Bay below him, how the diminution
of guilt and self-loathing improved one’s general outlook.
At the corner of Bay and Front, on the other
side of the street, stood the handsome, porticoed residence of Dr.
William Warren Baldwin – physician, lawyer, architect, and a
gentleman of the most liberal propensities. The solid brick
structure served the Baldwin family as townhouse and attorney’s
chambers, and Dougherty never passed by without saying a quiet
prayer, to whatever god might happen to be listening, for Dr.
Baldwin and for his son Robert. Since the trial and his
rehabilitation, Dougherty had spent a number of afternoons in those
lawyerly chambers and more than one stimulating evening in the
family parlour adjoining them. Why, just last night, he had sat
before a warm fire upon a welcoming sofa trading witticisms and
bons mots
with Robert and his father, and with young Marc
Edwards, their apprentice and articling clerk. Marc was the man
most responsible for the investigation and successful prosecution
that had brought Counsellor Dougherty back from the living
dead.
