The Bishop's Pawn (25 page)

“They set him up,” Marc said. “Entrapped him
to shut him up.”

His mother nodded sadly.

Dick was hauled down to the municipal court.
Winship went through the motions of laying charges of buggery and
rape against him, but he had barely begun when Alderman Nathaniel
Bloodgood made a timely appearance. He had come directly from
Tammany Hall with a proposal. Dick was to hand over all his notes
and affidavits concerning the pedophiles at the Manhattan club, in
return for which Dick would be given twelve hours to pack up his
belongings and leave the state – with no charges laid and no report
about his outrageous behaviour to the New York Bar.

“It was Hobson’s choice, and Dick knew it. He
went home, told his wards to get ready, retrieved the papers and
took them straight to Winship and Bloodgood. Then he came here – to
tell me what had happened and why he had to go.”

“They didn’t give him a chance to fight back,
did they?”

“No. And as you know, Tammany subsequently
spread vague rumours of the charge and Dick’s apparent flight –
ruining his reputation here and abroad, and ensuring that he could
never really return.”

Marc shook his head. “But with the affidavits
surrendered and destroyed, and the boys bought or frightened off,
it’s hard to see how Dick would pose any threat to the
powers-that-be here in New York. Whatever he might say – and he
said nothing to anyone, not even Brodie – he had been thoroughly
discredited in advance.”

“But, you see, he didn’t surrender all of his
papers.”

Marc was stunned, not merely at this
unexpected revelation but at the offhand way in which his mother
conveyed it. “
You
have them?” he said, open-mouthed.

She smiled, and there was a sorrowful kind of
satisfaction in her eyes. “He kept back one affidavit and its
background notes – of a fifth boy who lived alone and did not
associate with the others. He gambled that Winship and Bloodgood
would not find out about him. ‘These papers are my insurance
policy,’ he told me that afternoon. He asked me not to read them,
but to keep them in that safe over there in the wall beside the
screen. If the justices ever attempted to revive the charges, even
after his death, I would have some bargaining power here to save
his reputation and protect his wards. You see, the rumours about
his homosexuality were something he could live with – they were
part of his being alive and successful in New York – but he lived
in mortal fear that the trumped-up charge of his being found in bed
with a mere boy would be publicly and irrefutably revealed. And in
a sad way, I think he felt guilty about his own sexual deviancy.”
She looked him squarely in the eye. “I understood, of course, even
though I have never felt so myself.”

“Is it possible that Winship or Bloodgood
recently got wind of the missing affidavit, and were afraid that
Dick, who had begun to come back to life in Toronto, might act on
it?”

“It’s a possibility, but a remote one. It
takes an awful lot to truly frighten Tammany.”

“I was shadowed by a tough-looking character
for a few blocks this afternoon.”

“It could mean little,” she said not too
convincingly. “Tammany is suspicious of anyone whose business is
not their own.”

Marc was silent for a full minute, then said,
“Will you show me the papers? There may be some names in them that
will lead me to the persons here who are worried about my presence
and purpose in the city.”

“You could end up doing more harm than good,
Marc. I loved Dick very much, and these papers are still his only
insurance against the defamation of his life and character.”

“I understand.”

“But I am too tired to think about it right
now. I have to go next door where the cast is dining and
celebrating, and pretend to share their happiness. But please come
to the play tomorrow night. I’ve got a small role only. I’ll have a
supper prepared – bring Brodie if you like – and I’ll have an
answer about the papers for you then.”

Marc rose to go, but stopped when he heard
the sound of a footfall, of someone stumbling perhaps, just outside
the door. Marc rushed over and flung it open. A door slammed
farther down the hall. When he reached it and jerked it open, he
saw that it led to the wings. The theatre beyond was in
semi-darkness. A janitor was haphazardly sweeping one of the
aisles. That was all.

“Did you see who it was?” Annemarie said when
Marc returned.

“No, but whoever it was, he was listening
outside your door and in one hell of a hurry to get away.”

“Then you must be
very
careful.”

“If they suspect that
you
have any of
Dick’s papers, then you must be careful, too.”

They embraced for several long seconds at the
door: mother and son.

TWENTY

In the darkened foyer at the front of the
theatre, Marc was approached by a stagehand. “A lady outside asked
me to find you an’ give you this,” he said, handing Marc a folded
note.

Marc moved under a wall-sconce and read:

Marc darling:

I spotted you ten rows ahead of me, and waited in
the foyer, but you didn’t come out. I hope this missive reaches
you. If so, please come for tea tomorrow morning at eleven – at the
wine-shop on the corner of Park Place and Church.

Love,

Eliza

***

It was well past midnight when the taxicab dropped
Marc off in front of The Houston Hotel and he was let in by a
grumpy porter. Still, Marc was surprised to find Brodie in their
rooms, wide-awake and obviously eager to relay his news. And while
Marc had discovered more than he wanted to know about the Manhattan
Gentleman’s Club, he realized that the ugly details needed to be
conveyed to Brodie slowly and tactfully – in the morning when his
head was clear and he had had time to reflect further on his
mother’s story.

So he smiled noncommittally at Brodie and
said, “I thought you young ‘swells’ didn’t eat supper until one
A.M.”

“We started early ” Brodie said. He paused
theatrically: “And ended rather abruptly.” He turned so that the
lamplight revealed the welt on his left cheek.

“You’ve been assaulted!”

“Yes, but it was nothing serious,” Brodie
said, grinning.

“Then you must tell me what happened –
precisely.”

Nothing short of an earthquake could have
stopped the young man from telling what had happened to him at the
Manhattan Club.

He and Carleton Buckmaster had been joined by
two other former schoolmates, both of them older than Brodie and
Carleton. They had spent the hours before midnight participating in
the various pleasures of the house. They had gambled, at cards and
at dice, and lost more than they could afford (the Buckmaster
credit, however, seemed inexhaustible). They had drunk freely and
smoked assiduously. They had embarrassed themselves in the
billiards room. Finally, Carleton suggested they move to the
brothel, where the two older chaps soon found a pair of soul-mates
and disappeared, leaving Brodie and Carelton to join the sing-along
around the piano and take turns blushing at the mock advances of
the girls.

“You weren’t tempted?” Marc teased, wondering
where this tale was heading.

“A little, I admit. But the image of Miss
Ramsay kept me honest.”

When the older pair returned from their
fleshly entanglements, the group decided to have a bit of supper
and depart. Afraid that his evening would be wasted, Brodie had
left them in order to engage one of the older members in
conversation. Seeing Carleton nod to him that they were about to
leave, Brodie asked the elderly gentleman if there were anyone
other than these girls available ‘for a young man with special
tastes.’ The old fellow had not seemed in the least startled by the
question, but his answer proved arresting: “We ain’t been mixed up
in any of that nonsense since the incident a year ago last
fall.”

“I’ve learned a bit more about that incident
myself,” Marc said, but the import of his remark did nothing to
stall Brodie’s determined narrative.

“Anyway, we left right after that, so I
couldn’t pursue the matter further, though I’m sure it’s important
somehow. But it’s what happened
outside
that’s most
interesting.”

“Where you were assaulted?”

“Marvin and Todd and Carleton stopped on the
verandah to light their cigars, and I deked around to the side of
house to take a leak. I’d just finished when two hulking creatures
stepped out of the shadows. I caught a fist on this cheek and went
down before I could blink. I lay there senseless and unable to call
for help. I braced myself for more blows. But they didn’t
come.”

“Your friends arrived?”

“Not yet, no. The biggest fellow leaned down
and said to me in a horrible whisper, ‘We been askt to bring you a
message, Mr. Langford. Get outta town tomorrow, an’ don’t come
back.’ If there was more I didn’t get to hear it because my chums
came running around the corner, and the goons took off.”

“Well, there’s no doubt that you and I have
stirred up a hornet’s nest. And the queen bees are on to our game,
alas. I think that we had better stay together for the rest of our
time here. I’ll have to take you along to Eliza’s with me tomorrow
morning.”

“The beauty you courted back in Toronto?”

Marc smiled. “I’ll tell you everything in the
morning.”

***

Although many different emotions registered in
Brodie’s face as Marc retold the story of what had actually
happened to his guardian on that fateful day fifteen months ago,
his principal response was relief. To Brodie, the man who had loved
Dennis Langford and helped raise his son and daughter, who had read
them fantastic tales and epic poems, who had suffered with them
through their childhood illnesses – such a man could never have
caused bodily harm to any fellow human. And Brodie’s boyish faith
had now been shown to have been justified.

While they ate a late breakfast and mulled
over the events of the previous evening, Marc called the porter to
their table and asked him to have a taxicab brought to the door at
ten-thirty. They would drive, together, to Eliza’s place. Brodie
was curious about this mysterious lady from Marc’s past, so Marc
obliged him by recounting, in a bowdlerized version, the tale of
their brief but passionate relationship in the winter and spring of
1836. He had not seen or heard from her since she and her Uncle
Sebastian had left Toronto abruptly in June of that year for New
York City, where they were to set up a branch of the family’s
business: importing and exporting wines. Eliza Dewart-Smythe was as
intelligent, knowledgeable and commercially astute as she was
beautiful.

“And just how serious were you about this
paragon?” Brodie asked as he drained his coffee and peered over the
rim at Marc.

“Well, I
did
propose to her once.”

“And she turned you down?”

“She threw me over for life in the big
city.”

***

For Constable Cobb, Tuesday was going to be a day not
much better than Monday had been. In mid-morning, he had left his
headquarters at The Crooked Anchor and walked over to Briar Cottage
to take a gander at Beth’s babe, which had arrived, as usual, in
the middle of the night – disrupting his sleep as Dora rolled
thoughtlessly over him in her haste to heed Charlene’s call for the
midwife. But when he reached the front stoop, he was nearly swept
away by the din of excited and very female voices from inside.
Every woman within three blocks must have congregated to offer
their assistance, show solidarity in their common cause, and gather
fodder for subsequent social discourse. He could hear Dora’s
authoritative bellow above the other hen-babble, and that more than
anything precipitated his immediate flight. (When he had suggested
at breakfast that he’d like to inspect the new arrival, a
sleepy-eyed Dora had snorted, “You better wait a while, that
blazin’ beak of yours might scare the wee thing out of a year’s
growth!”)

So Cobb had then made the rounds of the other
taverns he regularly patronized, in hopes of meeting up with one of
his snitches who might have information to sell regarding Reuben
Epp or for that matter anything useful about the poor-box thefts at
St. James. Except for the solace of a few flagons of ale and a fish
pie at lunch, however, the effort had proved fruitless. Even his
snitches had gone to ground. He did manage to get some satisfaction
later on when he upbraided a drover for whipping his ailing horse
in front of
Smallman’s
and a dozen appalled ladies. And, O
lucky day, the fellow had had the impertinence to backtalk a minion
of the law and then take a swing at his helmet. After which, to the
cheers of the nearby chatelaines and the approval of the beast, he
had deployed the horsewhip on the villain’s backside.

It was sometime in the middle of the
afternoon when the idea struck him: if he couldn’t resolve the
mystery of who had aided and abetted Reuben Epp, then by God he
would find out what was going on at St. James. That the Poor Box
had been rifled – twice – was one fact. That someone had
deliberately, in the night, done the rifling was another. And that
Constance herself was up to no good was a safe assumption. Dora had
told him at breakfast, before the jibe at his nose, that tomorrow
afternoon there was to be a christening held at St. James and
presided over by the bishop-in-waiting. The unfortunate infant was
the scion of one of Toronto’s wealthiest families (“That’s all we
need,” he’d said to Dora, “another little Family Compacter.”) That
combination, of Dr. Strachan and conspicuous wealth, was sure to
draw three or four hundred well-wishers to the ceremony. Constance
Hungerford and Mavis McDowell would doubtlessly have their Poor Box
within easy reach. If the thief were to follow his customary
pattern, he would strike sometime late Wednesday evening or early
Thursday morning. And this time Cobb intended to be ready.